He told me that he’d be in touch with me as soon as he’d relayed the successful completion of my assignment and been informed of my departure details.
“God willing!” I said, under my breath.
But then it occurred to me, as soon as I’d left, that Buchholz and his mother would certainly be safe for as long as I chose to remain in Britain. The authorities wouldn’t want to give me any reason to panic. It was only after my return to Germany that they’d finally feel free to move in, because then there wouldn’t seem to be a link between myself and their beating down a door at dawn—enemy agents were being flushed out all the time. More than one thing could have led to the apprehension of the Smees, inside their tiny spyhole in Paradise Street.
An idea blossomed.
As I passed the young woman in the gymslip, I gave her a cursory nod.
“Sorry I’ve been so long. But I also kept your friend waiting here on Friday—and, from the looks of it, I doubt his Evening News was half as entertaining as that puzzle of yours!”
My reasoning had been as follows. If I could make out I had realized from the start I was being watched, then the British wouldn’t believe I had knowingly compromised my compatriots.
Therefore the Smees must be innocent. They weren’t conspirators; they were simply friends of mine—and British ones at that! (Heinrich could have been more correct in his note than I had realized.)
Even if suspicion lingered, it would no longer be a matter of priority to pull them in. Buchholz and his mother would have more time to effect their escape.
Indeed, I imagined that as soon as the shop closed tonight—or, at any rate, as soon as Frau Buchholz had had sufficient chance to step properly out of character—they might be discussing this very eventuality. I should have let them know that for the present they were safe.
I thought about hurrying back, but I was already running late. I would return after the theatre.
So much for my reasoning, then. I saw the confusion on the girl’s face, yet didn’t wait for her reaction.
It followed me, however.
“Mister, I dunno what you’re on about! You a bit cuckoo or summat? On leave from the loony bin?”
Briefly, I paused to look back.
Then, although I was by now several feet away, she held up the puzzle as if to ward off the blows of a maniac.
“I warn you, mister, jus’ you try an’ touch me an’ I’ll be screamin’ for me mum! An’ she won’t ’alf give you a proper seeing-to!”
Before I rounded the corner into Marylebone High Street, I glanced behind me a second time. She hadn’t moved—was looking understandably irresolute. For a moment I thought I had behaved badly. Unsportingly. Had it really been so necessary to let her know she’d goofed?
But then I recollected myself.
Of course it had.
I hailed a passing taxi.
My third taxi of the day … The first, carrying me from Waterloo to the Prince of Wales, had provided me with a really happy journey; my second, from Leicester Square along to Abbey Road, with an outstandingly profitable one. This present ride, taking me to Charing Cross, saw me filled with self-disgust.
Oh, God!
What a fool I had just been!
30
And I had believed myself so clever! I had truly thought that I had discovered a way to save my friends. But why—why—hadn’t I realized? That instead of saving my friends I had only sabotaged my own future. Made MI5 aware I could no longer be of service to them. That there was now nothing left but to move in and arrest me.
And how long was that going to take? How long before my latest inept tracker could make contact with HQ? (She was hardly any distance from the post office, admittedly, or even from the phone box I myself had used on Friday; but it was more than possible she’d find a queue in both places.) Perhaps I should rush back now, while there might still be time, to knife her in the back or garrotte her with one of her girlish pigtails?
Oh, yes. Sure! Perhaps I should cut it off and use it to garrotte myself? Carry my self-destructive tendencies to their logical conclusion.
For to have spoken to that woman in the first place … hadn’t that been inexpressibly self-destructive? And I was convinced that—if he’d seen it—Johnny Walker would have given me a very understanding nod.
But while I’d been sipping at those three good measures—no, more like two really; I’d drunk only a small amount from the refill in the broken tumbler—I had thought that absolutely nothing mattered any more … that all I had to do was somehow get through this awful evening that approached, without letting Sybella Standish tumble to the fact she’d been unmasked. And how clear-headed would I need to be for that?—she was far too pleased with herself ever to suspect discovery, unless you actually announced it. As regards anything else, I simply hadn’t cared. Most definitely I hadn’t envisaged having a brainwave during that brief journey between the newsagent’s shop and the High Street.
Now, ironically, the shock of what I’d done seemed to have left me utterly and non-self-destructively clear-headed … when this was obviously too late to be of any consequence.
I got to the Corner House four minutes late. She was there. This afternoon she was wearing pale blue with white polka dots, a white jacket and a small jaunty hat that had a wisp of veiling. I paid off the taxi and strode across the pavement. On reaching her I uttered an exclamation. I looked back towards the kerb.
“Oh, damn! That was silly!”
I had naturally raised my hat, but appeared not to have noticed that I hadn’t kissed her, nor made any comment on the way she looked.
“What was silly?”
“I should have kept the taxi.”
“Why—aren’t we stopping here for tea?”
“Yes, but there’s something I should see to first. You don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Only five or ten minutes along the Strand. We can easily walk it.”
I may not have kissed her but despite all good intentions I couldn’t push her hand away when it brushed against my own. Although I knew she was a fraud—that her professed liking of me was probably no more than purely that: professed—and although in addition she was wearing gloves, white cotton gloves, still, the physical contact continued to supply a charge.
But now the situation was about to change. And when it did, she would be free to suppose that my own behaviour had been every bit as calculated as hers. This thought brought satisfaction.
Well no, to be honest, it didn’t—not as yet—but I was hopeful that it soon would … certainly by the time I was back in Berlin and being hailed as a hero, a shrewd manipulator; a thorn in the flesh of MI5.
Even the admiral would approve—and all the more so for having realized that I wasn’t just a yes-man.
(But, of course, this presupposed that I wasn’t going to be arrested … which I felt quite positive I was.)
She began to swing my hand. But when she stopped doing so, even then she didn’t release it and, despite myself, I felt powerless to draw it away. “What lies along the Strand?” she asked. “Only five or ten minutes along the Strand?”
“Oh,” I said, “any number of fine things.”
“Yes, but don’t be annoying. What in particular?”
I spoke the words lightly. “Did no one ever tell you that when you grew up you’d need to learn a little patience?”
A shrewd manipulator, they would say—oh yes, assuredly. But how about a Pagliacci? No, they would never say that. Yet as an epithet I thought I might have valued it more highly. Even as an epitaph. He could appear light-hearted, no matter how he hurt.
“Well, that will be all well and good for when I do grow up,” she said. “But in the meanwhile I feel it’s actually the here and now that matters.”
Earlier, I might have replied: Then in that case you must never grow up!
But since this would have implied a future in which I hoped to be involved, I now confined myself to someth
ing a great deal more relevant.
“Anyway, you’ll soon find out what lies along the Strand.”
“Oh, all right. I can see I’ll have to give in. Naturally I shall attempt to do so with rare dignity and grace.”
“And as it’s somewhere I’ve never been into myself—but possibly somewhere you have—I’m hoping you may be able to advise me. At any rate, I shall be interested to note your reaction.”
Mean, I thought. Mean and nasty and below the belt. No matter how he hurt. More than a shade ambiguous, perhaps.
“Somewhere I may have been into? Well, now, let me see. I’ve been into Simpson’s. If only on the very rare occasion. Or—not to put too fine a point on it—just once. Their roast beef was excellent.”
“It isn’t Simpson’s,” I told her.
“I’ve been to the Tivoli many times. Oh, many times. Anything up to four or even five.”
“Nor the Tivoli,” I said.
“I saw Jezebel there … and The Adventures of Robin Hood … oh, and something else … and possibly something else.”
I myself had seen both of those films, but held back from saying so.
“No, it isn’t the Tivoli.”
“Oh dear, now I’m running out of inspiration. Of course, I’ve been to the Civil Service Stores, but that’s well in the other direction. I haven’t been to the Savoy or the Savoy Grill, which I can see we’re fast coming up to.” She sounded apologetic. “So, apart from lots of oohs and ahs, I’m not sure if my reaction there could ever be precisely helpful.”
I shook my head. “Never mind. It won’t be necessary.”
“Oh, but that’s sad!” I received a sideways glance from beneath demurely lowered lashes. “Because the fact I haven’t been there, not even to the Grill, doesn’t mean I’ve never wanted to. You mustn’t think that.”
“Really? Well, in that case, I can only express my surprise.”
“Surprise?” She laughed. “Surprise at what?”
“At the notion that you haven’t yet managed it.”
It was some three or four seconds before she replied to this.
“Mmm. I may have to reflect on that one for a bit. But I was only speaking foolishly, you understand. Who gives a fig about the Savoy Grill? And I hope you realize I’m the modern type of woman: one who always likes to pay her own way!”
“Oh, bravo,” I said. “Yes. Bully for you!”
With her free hand she lightly punched my upper arm, her handbag knocking against my sleeve, but I could tell her playfulness was now becoming strained.
“That is, I mean, when RKO isn’t picking up the bill. Or aren’t picking up the bill? It gets a bit confusing, regardless of the Inc.”
I didn’t reply.
She persevered. Oh, what a plucky little find, I thought, for the Intelligence Brigade! They should have put her on a poster. No doubt one day they would.
“Ah, yes, I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. “At last! Simpson’s, the Tivoli, the Savoy—you must think me very stupid!” She smote her forehead in exasperation. “No, we’re heading for a shop of some kind, aren’t we? It’s all so depressingly simple! There’s a girl you want to buy a present for; a girl whom so far you’ve been keeping ever so quiet about! Therefore a girl you’ve clearly got designs on—perhaps are even secretly engaged to—”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t anything like that.”
I took a deep breath; half hoping she might step in to fill the gap.
“Because, after all,” I went on, when it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen, “I don’t think we can both have fiancés. Can we?”
I even allowed myself a further short pause.
“Secret or otherwise.”
She didn’t say anything. Nevertheless I’d felt the shock that ran through her. Illogically, it made me wince.
Yet on the other hand … Yes, on the other hand! Why should I even care—why in the name of heaven should I even care? It was no more than she’d have done to me, had our positions been reversed.
She still kept pace with me—although she wasn’t, like myself, just staring straight ahead: I remained conscious of her scrutiny. Well, at any rate, that obviously reduced the need for any schoolgirl with her puzzle and pigtails. She in fact had almost certainly been given the rest of the evening off. Bad luck, of course, if Sybella and I parted company much earlier than envisaged. Bad luck for all of those shifty secret service types, the Lieutenant Commander Montagues of this world, together with anyone else who was wanting to keep tabs on me. Wanting to know, presumably, how long I meant to stay.
So all right. They’d just have to resume their surveillance later on, when I got back to Mrs Hilling’s.
It was galling to have to admit that up till now I hadn’t been aware of them in Abbey Road.
Though, damn it, I kept on forgetting, didn’t I? Kept on forgetting that their little game was up. Their little game? My own little game, equally. That at any second now a car could come skidding to a halt beside us and a couple of plain-clothes men leap out of it … one of them brandishing handcuffs.
Stupidly, from force of habit, as we crossed Lancaster Place I put my currently uncuffed hand beneath her elbow. She pulled her arm away sharply. I carried on as if I hadn’t noticed.
“I hope you’re going to agree that it wasn’t a bad estimate.”
“Estimate?”
“I said five or ten minutes along the Strand. In fact it’s taken twelve.”
She looked about her. “Well, surely you can’t be meaning here?”
“Somerset House? Well, why not? Why ever not? You seem surprised. But people do come to Somerset House, don’t they? People who want to trace their family trees or find out who inherited from Uncle Max; and just how much the old man had to leave. Or whether So-and-So was really born in wedlock—and where—and what on earth was the name of that rapacious widow whom he upped and married? Hundreds of good reasons for everyone to flock to Somerset House. Don’t tell me you yourself have never been?”
“No, I have never been to Somerset House.”
She declared this emphatically, as though she were speaking to someone of severely limited intelligence.
“Oh dear. Then, after all, you won’t be able to tell me where I ought to go. What a shame! I’m sure they have a special section.”
“A special section for what?” she asked, dully. “What are you after?”
“Nothing fancy. Merely a birth certificate.”
“Why do you want your birth certificate?”
“I don’t. Not mine.”
We had reached the main door. I didn’t push it open immediately. Perhaps I felt some need to prolong this moment of heady victory.
“Whose, then?”
“Well, what makes you think it would be either mine or my father’s?”
“Your father’s? Who ever brought your father into this?”
I didn’t answer. Produced an enigmatic smile. Enigmatic—and also, I guessed, immensely irritating.
“And anyway,” she said, “why should you want to have the birth certificate of somebody who’s dead? Even supposing it were going to be here, which I—”
She broke off.
“Oliver, why in God’s name are you behaving like this?”
“Actually, if it helps at all, I don’t believe it’s going to be here, either. We’re wholly at one on that.”
“Oh, what is the matter? I really don’t understand. I don’t understand anything any longer.”
“Oh, on the contrary,” I said, “I think you do! And, by the way, my name isn’t Oliver. It’s Eric. Or Erich—depending on who happens to be speaking it at the time. Shall we go in?”
Yet if this were truly the prologue to my moment of vindication … well, to be honest again, it didn’t feel like any of it would provide a lot to write home about. I had been so much happier this morning.
So very much happier.
There was an official who stood to one side of the vast marble-floored v
estibule: a short man, balding, with—I noticed, as we drew nearer—grey hair protruding from his ears and his nostrils, and black hair coating the backs of his hands. I asked him how to obtain copies of birth certificates; explained that neither of the two I sought was actually my own.
“Then the first letter of the party’s name?” he queried.
“M,” I said. I winked at Sybella. “M for Martin.”
“And the first letter of the second party’s name?”
“M,” I smiled. “Also M for Martin. Now you might reckon that’s a bit of a coincidence—but, no, not really. A little like Alexandre Dumas, if you see what I mean: Dumas père et Dumas fils. Except that those two shared a given name and these two don’t … unless in this instance you count the family name, which I suspect was a name not actually given until a month or so back—let’s say, the end of March, the start of April? But I can see you think it’s getting complicated.”
Complicated? Plain crazy, more like! What did I suppose I was doing? (You a bit cuckoo or summat? On leave from the loony bin?) God in heaven. What a time for me to start to wonder.
I mean, to wonder why no one had yet turned up holding out that pair of handcuffs.
I couldn’t have been mistaken, surely? Both the girl and the fellow? Innocent bystanders?
No. It wasn’t possible. Just was not possible!
I had lost the hairy man’s attention. His stare had transferred itself from me to Sybella. It seemed no less dazed, however.
Sybella was heading for the exit.
The attendant, of course, must have observed her departure with a lot more surprise than me. We heard the brisk tattoo of her heels striking the marble. It resonated throughout the lobby. It reminded me of the frenzied tapping of Blind Pew, on the highway, just seconds before he was mown down and trampled beneath the horse’s hooves.
31
I went after her.
Thankfully I saw her, just across the road, starting to descend the stairs beside the bridge. These led to the Embankment. I didn’t hurry. I kept some half-dozen yards behind and she didn’t look back. She was heading in the direction of Charing Cross but when she reached a small public garden she went in. I stood near the gate and waited until she’d sat down. Then I followed the twisting path towards her bench … which may have taken me some thirty seconds. She didn’t once glance up. Her face was obscured by her handkerchief.
Letters for a Spy Page 19