The Best of Our Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  ooo000ooo

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  London

  6 June 1944

  His initial thoughts in the first few seconds after he awoke were always about who he was. A few days previously, he had attended a lecture in London on existentialism. ‘Who Are We?’ it was called and he sat amused at the back of the hall, smiling at the thought of the earnest audience worrying about their purpose in life and who they really were.

  You want to try being me. You want to know what it is like to have to be a different person every few weeks, to be constantly changing your identity. And try keeping that up for years.

  After all that time, the effort of remembering who he was each day was beginning to exhaust him.

  He had never before heard the telephone ring in the main hall of the house at that time of the morning. From his bedsit on the first floor the sound reverberated across the hall with its chipped and noisy floor tiles, up the pretentiously ornate staircase with its cheaply varnished banisters and missing balustrades and along the threadbare carpet to his room, the acoustics making it sound as loud as if the phone was ringing outside his door rather than some way below it. The first ring came at six in the morning. Two shrill blasts, then silence. He turned over to go back to sleep and realised he was not alone. Whoever it was, she was fast asleep and did not look nearly as attractive as she must have done the night before, which was usually the case. Through the prism of a glass, they all acquired a flattering sheen at some stage of the evening. Daresay that they thought the same of him. He would not learn his lesson, but from what he could recall and from the state of the bedclothes, it had probably been worth it.

  Something beginning with ‘S’, he seemed to remember. Not Susie, not Sheila – though there had been a Sheila not that long ago. Sheila from Stockwell. Sandra? Could be Sandra. Sandra was in a deep sleep, lying on her back, head tilted back on the pillow at an odd angle, mouth slightly open, the make-up which she had not bothered to remove smeared across her face and the pillow case and probably some on him too. The sheets were gathered around the top of her thighs.

  He lay there for a moment, contemplating her breasts and the nipples which were somehow still hard. Maybe, if he was very ...

  The phone rang again. Just the two shrill blasts. He looked at his watch. Five past six. He wondered. No. Not possible. Impossible, in fact. Only in a dire emergency.

  He touched the small strip of flat bone between Sandra’s breasts, though he was now not sure if it was Sandra after all. Maybe Stephanie. It didn’t matter if you couldn’t remember the right name, just so long as you did not use the wrong one. He walked his fingers slowly down her body, a light touch at first then firmer. She started to respond in her sleep, writhing at first. His hand was just past her belly button when she began to wake up, trapping his hand between her legs. She opened her eyes and turned over to face him, her wide smile revealing teeth stained with a cheap lipstick. Some of her eyelashes were stuck together with blobs of mascara and she reeked of cigarettes. He had seen better in the hardest bars in Hamburg, but once they started to respond, it didn’t matter. She pulled him towards her.

  Three more blasts of the phone.

  This time there could be no mistaking it. Two normal rings then the phone cutting off halfway between the next two. Three rings. And exactly five minutes after the last call. He could hear Mr Fraser come out of his downstairs flat and talk angrily as he answered the phone.

  ‘Hello? Hello ... anyone there?’

  There wouldn’t be.

  She was working hard on him now. No subtlety but plenty of experience to compensate. She made him respond soon enough. He was already inside her and could be finished in a minute if he wanted. He always could in the morning. Two more minutes and he could even satisfy her, which was not necessary but always a bonus nonetheless. Helped ensure a return visit was how he liked to put it. But the phone calls had signalled something more urgent. He did not even have one minute.

  He pulled out of her quickly, roughly pushing her hands away as she tried to coax him back in.

  ‘You have to leave now.’

  ‘What! At this time of the morning? Who was it who was all over me a minute ago? You woke me up for it!’

  ‘You have to leave. You must go now.’

  He was out of bed now, naked.

  ‘I can see you still want it ...’

  He walked round to her side of the bed and hauled her out of it, quite roughly. He picked up her clothes from the pile by her side of the bed and thrust them at her.

  ‘I am sorry. I suddenly realised I was late for something. You must go. Here, take this.’ He had picked up his wallet from the desk and handed her a one pound note.

  ‘What kind of a girl do you take me for?’

  ‘I take you for a very nice girl who I would like to see again and take out for dinner. This is for a taxi.’

  ‘Crikey. I could buy a taxi with that. Where am I going to get a taxi at this time in the morning?’

  ‘Please be quiet on your way out. Look ...’ He wondered whether to try using the name Stephanie, but in the circumstances it was too great a risk getting her name wrong. ‘... I promise I will come and visit you at the bar tonight and I promise I will take you to dinner at the restaurant of your choice.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Of course.’ The easiest thing in the world was making a promise that you had no intention of keeping. You just ... promised. It was what he did.

  He waited until she was out of the front door and watched her disappear down the street. Of course, Mr Fraser would not be happy about this. Even now he would be writing down what time she had left in his little notebook in his spidery handwriting (‘I have the evidence here, Mr White, in my own fair hand’). He preferred landladies, he could always count on being able to charm his way around any woman. But Mr Fraser and charm lived in different worlds.

  ‘You know it is quite against my rules for you to have visitors ...’ he would say.

  So far, a pound or two pressed into Mr Fraser’s bony hands had worked. Probably wouldn’t again, but it didn’t matter. He would have to be out of this place before noon anyway. That was the procedure: if you get the emergency signal, get out within six hours. The sooner the better.

  He checked that the door was locked, then slid the extra bolt into place, used his overcoat to cover the gap at the bottom of the door and moved the dresser away from the window. The floorboards opened easily enough, as he had made sure they would. The transmitter was on the dresser now. He hooked the aerial high inside the window, just inside the net curtains and turned the transmitter on. He was connected surprisingly quickly. He scribbled the coded message on a pad on his right. The transmission only lasted a minute. He decoded it even before he stored the transmitter away, which was the wrong way round.

  ‘Large-scale invasion Normandy underway. Clarification urgently required on first sector. Urgent you check Nero to confirm movements.’

  The best advice he had ever received in this business was not to panic. It was easy to say that, everyone did. It was an obvious thing to say. But the man who had taught him had been an intelligence officer in the Great War and had survived an interrogation by the British by convincing them he was a deaf mute. His advice was this: when you find yourself in a really difficult position: stop. Have a cigarette and think. Five minutes.

  So he stopped for five minutes, had a cigarette and thought. He would have to leave the flat, too risky to stay. Of course, he already had somewhere to go – he would never be in the position of not having a fallback position. But the message was clear. Check on Nero. That meant being in Pimlico sometime around eight and following him again. He was always having to do that. Nero was not bad, he always varied his route, but for someone in his mid-twenties he was slow, which must be because of his injuries. Not quite sure of the whole business, not that it was his business to be sure anyway. When he had first come here the work had been more varied. Travelling around the coun
try. More excitement. Now it was just following this man and until a few weeks ago his wife. But it was what Berlin wanted and what Berlin wanted ...

  He started to pack. Everything he needed in two large suitcases and a smaller one. He would leave the house at seven — before that would feel a bit too early. It would be pushing it a bit; he needed to get down to Clapham first, but if he then took a taxi from Clapham to Victoria Station that would help. It was an old trick, if you have to resort to using a taxi, take it to a train station. No one ever thought there was anything unusual about that. He could take one large suitcase with him now, drop it off at the place in Clapham and then be in Pimlico by eight to pick Quinn up on his way to work. Back here, pick up the other cases, send one last message to Germany before he left this place, pay off Mr Fraser (‘No, no – please keep the deposit, for your troubles. You have been very accommodating. Thank you.’) He had learned that the word ‘accommodating’ worked wonders with the English lower middle class, which is what Mr Fraser clearly aspired to. It was what they spent their lives doing. Then he would take the other cases over to Clapham. Tonight he would have to start finding a fallback for Clapham. It was going to be a long day.

  Funny thing was, he had never expected them to use the emergency code to get him to contact Berlin. Two rings on the phone. Gap of five minutes, two more rings. Another gap of five minutes, then three rings. That means contact Berlin. Urgent. Very urgent. The most intriguing part of it was that there was someone else in England who would have made the call and somehow Berlin would have been able to contact them. The British had picked up so many Abwehr agents that he had come to assume he was the only one left in the country. It was of little comfort that he wasn’t.

  ‘Large-scale invasion Normandy underway.’ Well, there’s a surprise. It was, actually. Not a surprise that the invasion was underway, they’d taken their time about that. But Normandy was a surprise.

  ‘Urgent you check Nero to confirm movements,’ the message had said. What else have I been doing the past few months? Pimlico to St James’s. And back. Two or three times a week. How often did Berlin want reassurance that yes –that’s where he works, yes – goes in every day, all day.

  ‘Clarification urgently required on first sector.’ How on earth was he to find that out? Walk up to Quinn and tap him on the shoulder ‘Excuse me ... How come you chaps aren’t on the beaches of the Pas de Calais this morning?’ Follow him into the office and ask ‘What is all this about Normandy then?’ He’d have to work on that one.

  He finished his second cup of tea, decided it was going to be a busy day and poured a generous measure from the brandy bottle before packing it in a case. He had already denied himself one pleasure that morning so he was entitled to a small drink.

  ooo000ooo

  Edgar had been up since four in the morning. The initial reports were quite good, though the Americans seemed to be taking a bit of a hammering on the western beaches.

  At six thirty he took a call from one of the MI5 duty officers.

  ‘Cognac had an early morning alarm call, sir. Three calls to the house phone between six o’clock and ten past six this morning. Caller hung up after just a couple of rings.’

  Cognac. The man who had caused them more trouble than entire German divisions. They knew he had entered the country early in 1940 and assumed it would be a matter of time before they picked him up, like they had with all the others. He was a well-known Abwehr agent. One of their best. He’d been spotted in the West End in May 1940 by MI5 and there were other confirmed sightings in Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. But they were never able to lay a hand on him. He had an ability to vanish, thin air and all that.

  He had assumed almost mystical qualities in MI5 circles, but along with luck on Cognac’s part and sheer incompetence from some of those following him, Edgar put Cognac’s ability to evade them down to two factors: one was his sheer ability and the second was his way with women. Edgar had sat in on one interview with one of them. A woman in her late forties whose husband was a prisoner of war in the far east. Cognac had stayed with her for a couple of months in 1941, originally moving in as a lodger. She was totally besotted with him. ‘I have never been satisfied with a man before, sir. I would have done anything he asked,’ she admitted, staring intently at a lace handkerchief she was twisting in her hands as she spoke. She had made a good stab at appearing ashamed, but it was not difficult to see the passion in her eyes as she spoke about Cognac.

  Then a stroke of luck. In September 1943 they had been following Quinn to work, which was routine, they did it once or twice a week, as part of their monitoring of him and his wife. The man following Quinn that morning, who was especially good at his job and had the ability to follow someone from a very long way back, spotted Cognac in between him and Quinn. Instead of panicking like the rest of them had – and allowing Cognac to get away – he followed Cognac. Back to a house in Hendon, where he had a small flat. After that, it was a matter of keeping an eye on Cognac, who in turn was keeping an eye on Mr and Mrs Quinn.

  Edgar assumed that the Abwehr were so pleased with what they were getting from Magpie that they had put Cognac on to them to be absolutely sure that she was where she said she was and Quinn was doing what she said he was doing. So in turn, MI5 kept an eye on Cognac, but let him get on with it. He kept them busy enough, checking out Quinn and Magpie and then hanging around the second and third division bars in the West End. He was usually lucky, Edgar noticed. He preferred to go back to their place or book a cheap hotel room where the manager was prepared to ignore the form filling for an hour in return for double the rate. It was rare for him to take one of them back to his place.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the MI5 man. ‘Those phone calls to the house were obviously a signal for Cognac to contact Berlin. Post Office have traced the calls as coming from a series of telephone boxes in and around Waverley Station in Edinburgh. Cognac contacted Berlin around six twenty. Radio boys triangulated the transmission to his road in Hendon, but Bletchley across the transmission anyway. Still working on the final version, but they reckon it’s to do with D-Day. Seems Cognac has been asked to keep a close eye on your man today. Reference to the first sector too. Bletchley working on that.’

  Edgar called Archibald.

  ‘John. I think that you had better come over for a chat. I know that we weren’t planning to do so, but I think we are going to need to tell Quinn today.’

  ooo000ooo

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  London

  6 June 1944

  Quinn remembered little of the walk back to Pimlico. He was vaguely aware of a lighter mood in the air, people slapping each other on the back, strangers exchanging smiles.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘It most certainly is, isn’t it.’

  ‘Not long now.’

  As he walked past Westminster Abbey he noticed a steady stream of people going in. The relief that people felt as they anticipated the end of the war could not be exaggerated, although the euphoria was a long way off.

  Owen Quinn could not imagine feeling more depressed. The shock that had numbed him since Edgar began talking to him in the park was beginning to wear off. It was being replaced by a boiling rage against the injustice at the way his life had been ruined. The physical effort of walking was difficult. As often happened in times of stress, his back was beginning to ache.

  Once he was in Alderney Street his pace quickened. He would get out of his uniform, have a bath and, most importantly, a drink. He thought about Edgar’s plan. He would have to go along with it, there was no alternative. He would need to pack a case. At least it would get him away from the flat for a few days.

  He climbed the steps into the house, holding the door open for the odd-looking civil servant who always wore a bowler hat and who lived in the flat next to him. So he’s come home early today too.

  Quinn checked the table in the hall for any post. The tall aspidistra, covered in a sheen of dust, stood sentry over the few bills
and handwritten correspondence. Just one letter for him, the envelope bearing his mother’s distinctive script. Its theme would be familiar (‘... looks absolutely splendid, as does the front garden....so please Owen do make an effort to come and visit your father and I, neither of whom are getting any ...’).

  Roger. That was what the neighbour was called. He had been useful enough when they first moved in, even offering the services of his own cleaner.

  There had been a forgettable evening just before their first Christmas here when Roger had invited Nathalie and himself in for drinks. Roger, it turned out didn’t drink. Not alcohol, anyway. An evening of tea and barley water and some hard biscuits apparently baked by Roger’s mother. They nodded at each other. Two men and a woman were following Roger, who held the door open for them. Quinn hadn’t seen them before but he did not give it a second thought, it was a transient sort of a house anyway.

  He ran up the stairs as fast as his back and legs would allow him. He decided he would have that drink before the bath as well as after it. Roger was behind him too, which was odd – he hadn’t stopped outside his own flat.

  ‘Owen – are you all right?’ Roger was standing immediately behind him now. He could hear more people climbing their staircase. Owen nodded.

  ‘Mind if I come in, Owen?’ Before Owen had time to say that actually, yes – he did mind, Roger had pushed past him in his tiny entrance hall and had walked into the lounge. Owen stood in the hall. The two men and one woman who had followed them into the house were now standing in the entrance to Owen’s flat, waiting for the hall to clear so that they could enter too.

  ‘Come through, Owen. Let me explain.’

  Roger had sat himself down in one of the large armchairs. It was the one Owen usually sat in. It was the one he had been sitting in less than seven hours previously when he had listened to the news. Owen sat in the other armchair. No one had sat in it since Nathalie had left. He heard his front door shut and voices in the hall.