‘No other competing offers?’
‘None that I’m aware of.’
‘Then, if I were you, I wouldn’t place all my faith in these West Country estate agents. Your Horris Lamb could well be entertaining another offer.’
‘But … but I have agreed to purchase the cottage and have given him a deposit.’
The thought of such a betrayal had unsettled her. ‘Trust is such a fragile thing.’
‘Has someone made a counteroffer?’
She was a woman, then, who did not take kindly to her plans being interfered with. ‘A Roger Banfield and a George Crawley. Both are masters at that school of your husband’s.’
Quite obviously the brigadier had been having her followed just as he had done in Kent and on the Continent, and just as obviously he now wanted her to know this, but was he really Osier?
‘My dear, let us not fence with each other. You will never get that daughter of yours out of this country without my help.’
The high colour that raced into her cheeks only made her all the more alluring, she saying, ‘Am I to understand that you will help me and if so, Brigadier, what in turn are you asking?’
‘Nothing but a little cooperation. What could be simpler?’
Setting her glass aside, Christina got up. ‘I really must go. It’s getting rather late.’
‘Of course.’ Reaching to put out her cigarette, he said, ‘One always has to be careful of fire in these old houses, but why not wait until we’ve had a talk? MI5 has people watching that daughter of yours and hoping AST-X Bremen’s sleeper will fall into their net along with anyone else he might have with him, but they still, I must emphasize, do not know who this sleeper really is.’
Getting up, he went over to a cabinet to open a drawer, now had a pistol in hand, a Mauser. Not knowing quite what to do, she waited, he then handing her the weapon and saying, ‘It’s fully loaded. Keep it with you if you wish, but please do listen to what I have to say. We’ve much in common and are, I believe, after exactly the same thing. That husband of yours might take it upon himself to intervene, and I do know MI5 fears that he might, but we two can and will solve everything, though I must ask, could he have followed you here?’
‘Ash? I … I don’t know. We … we did meet at the cottage, but …’
Was the husband waiting outside? wondered Gordon.
It was now, felt Ashby, nearly an hour since the last of the other guests had left. Fog had drifted in to shroud the house called Llynwood and make more distant what lights were still on, but why had Christina chosen to come here in the first place and why had she stayed? Granted the sleeper had to be someone close to the school, but someone from here? Try as he might, no name came forth, and when the front door opened and a man came out wearing a dark blue duck coat and gumboots, the beam of the torch shone on the stone steps and metalled drive.
Following him at a distance through park and woodland, Ashby soon came to a paddock and stables. Four hunters were in box stalls, and as the man passed them, he checked on each before taking the ladder and climbing to the loft, Ashby then hearing him talking to someone.
‘Morgan, my pretty, don’t be so eager. She has come to us and will stay the night.’
There was a pause, and then, ‘What is it? Has she followed me here or has someone else?’
The light was extinguished. The horses fidgeted. Perhaps five minutes passed, perhaps a little more, Gordon now certain someone had followed him, Morgan telegraphing this by her nervousness.
Christina Ashby had been shown the fog and had quite willingly agreed to stay the night, but had she inadvertently led that husband of hers to him?
Feeling for the perch, he put the hawk back on its roost. Drawing off the gauntlet, he pocketed the torch and climbed silently down the ladder. If Ashby were here, he couldn’t be interfering in Cornwall, and perhaps that was all to the good, but only if the schoolmaster didn’t take a notion to make a blessed nuisance of himself and spoil everything.
Reaching the ground at last, he switched on the torch, a man of sixty perhaps, felt Ashby. Again the man looked into the stalls, even said a few quiet words to each of the hunters, seemed prepared to let himself be watched, though not knowing really by whom or from where, and certainly he was Hilary’s Brigadier Charles Edward Gordon, but could he be the sleeper? Christina’s having come here implied that he was, her staying the night only reinforcing it.
Taking the pins from her hair, Christina could see the brigadier’s reflection in the dressing table’s mirror. Insisting that he build up the fire before he went off to bed himself, she hadn’t dared ask if he was Osier, nor had he said it in so many words, but every time she went over things in her mind, it all made sense. Agent 07392. Someone, then, who was exceedingly well placed: Brigadier Charles Edward Gordon of MI6.
He had even given her the gun, which now lay on the dressing table. He had gone out to have a look round, but had come back satisfied, and as he came towards her now, she hesitated, her hands still touching the back of her head, he putting his own on her shoulders and saying, ‘You might like a little company, but if not, please simply say so and I’ll leave.’
When he held her breasts and trapped her arms up like that, he smelled nicely, was gentle but slightly withdrawn, as though he always had to keep a little of himself back.
Laughing softly, looking steadily at him in the mirror, she said, ‘Undress me.’
This he did with surprisingly sensual patience, he fingering each garment while running that gaze of his appreciatively over her, touching her here, touching her there, making her lift her arms up straight above her head, he turning her and touching her again and again.
He had a good body, tangled grey hairs on the chest and groin, the maleness of him extended but not yet fully erect and, Gott sei Dank, he hadn’t been circumcised. The scar of a bullet wound drew her lingering gaze, so, too, that of the shrapnel that must have torn across the left side of his rib cage and up under that arm. Gently leading her over to the fire, he held her by the hands, looked steadily at and into her, let her feel the warmth on her backside, and said, ‘I meant it, my dear. I will get that daughter of yours out of this country and safely home, but of course you must help me a little.’
Lieber Christus im Himmel, what the hell did he want? she wondered, but he kissed her again and again. Brushing her hair up and out of the way, he found the curve of a shoulder and gently bit the skin, his Schwanz now stiffly erect and hard against her seat, she closing her eyes as he slid his arms under hers and lifted her up, placing both hands firmly against the back of her neck. ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Take me here on the floor.’
Gently chiding her, Gordon ran a hand down over her breasts and the flat firmness of her stomach, and only when he touched her mons to part the lips, did she arch her back, his other hand now caressing that softest of bottoms. Dear God, but she was a beautiful thing.
Throwing a last glance towards the dressing table where she had left the Mauser, Christina felt herself letting go. Turning to face him, she sucked and bit a stiffening nipple, he sliding fingers into her, her clitoris now so stiff she tried to hold on, tried not to come, but did.
As she climaxed, she threw her head back, the whole of her quivering, she to kneel on the floor now, to demand, for suddenly everything inside her was going crazy and he was making it happen. Giving a broken cry, she tilted back her head, he to hold her by the breasts and pull himself deeply into her again and again until he, too, had climaxed.
Stroking her as they lay together, he whispered, ‘No doubts about me now, my pretty? If there are, you will find all the proof you need at the embassy, for I arranged for a little something to be sent over to the admiral that Joachim will now have and will then send back to you to cement our relationship.’
Alarmed, scrambling to get up, she had to be held down by force, he whispering into her ear, ‘Dearest, t
he Thule Sólarsteinn of Herr Beck hasn’t yet arrived off our coast, but no attempt will be made to take your daughter until it does, so please be patient.’
‘Are you Osier?’ she asked.
If ever a woman could kill, this one could, he felt, but smiling at her, said, ‘Osier, of course, but you had best not tell anyone, had you?’
Still far from satisfied, feeling as if she had just given herself to the enemy, he could see that she was desperately hunting for a way out but was held too tightly, her arms now pinned to the hearth rug, he all but on top of her.
‘Your code number,’ she asked.
‘My dear, why would I have been told a code number that has been routinely assigned to me by AST-X Bremen? All of my contacts with them, and there have been only a few, have been through the use of Osier.’
But hadn’t that butcher, Herr Reiss, said that he only knew the numbers of those for whom he sent messages? ‘I still want it.’
Her breath was coming too quickly, her chest rising and falling, the anger clear enough. ‘Would that I could give it to you, but I can’t. Hadn’t we best simply trust each other, seeing as you want your daughter but without my help, are unlikely to succeed? After all, isn’t that why Burghardt had to awaken me?’
Reiss might not yet have been given Osier’s number. Mollified somewhat, she lay there, his hold gradually lessening until kisses and then encircling arms were hesitantly accepted, he entering her again. But long after he had gone to his own room, still having left the pistol with her, Christina lay next to the fire, wondering about him—wanting, she knew, to believe he really was Osier. Touching those places he had touched, she found her throat still dry. He had sent something to Canaris. What could it have been?
The coffee was Dutch, the rolls German, the butter Danish. It being Sunday, Bremen had yet to awaken. Thumbing through the document Canaris had given him a week ago yesterday in Berlin, Burghardt again read through the summation of New Scotland Yard on the murder of Daisy Belamy, yet still he couldn’t make up his mind. The thing seemed too good to be true. A scandal for MI5, what there was of Britain’s counterintelligence service suddenly awakening to the guilt of one of them. A major coup for AST-X Bremen. Gold on a platter.
More coffee didn’t help, nor did another roll with Frau Albrecht’s gooseberry jam. Was there not something wrong with the document? Though yet to be formally charged and arrested, Colonel Buntington Hacker had most probably killed Ashby’s barmaid in an excess of zeal, but could this source of the admiral’s have been deliberately fed the document? And if so, why, please, would anyone other than an Abwehr agent do such a thing, knowing the disaster it would cause MI5 when released to the British press?
Certainly the document was genuine. He had had all the routine tests conducted, the paper, the type, even an analysis of the wording. It was from New Scotland Yard, and someone very high up in things had had it stolen.
There wouldn’t be any other copies on file. Given circumstance and time, Hacker could well go free, AST-X Bremen and the Abwehr being accorded the blame.
Again he read through it, yet still his hesitation refused to leave. Reluctantly folding it, he slid the document back into the envelope Canaris had provided. Four bundles of British one- and five-pound notes lay beneath the pistol he, himself, had chosen. The courier would come at 0600 hours. By noon the diplomatic pouch would be in London and at the embassy.
Before she had left for England, Beck and the general’s daughter had been into the office safe, and he had to smile at the irony, for the two had wanted Osier’s identity, and now here was himself desperately wanting that of the admiral’s source.
Another Osier? he wondered. Another agent known only by number? Internal politics being what they were, he couldn’t have asked or questioned the admiral’s judgement. And, yes, there were still those infernal holdovers from the times before the reorganization. The chaos of those early years of espionage in Britain had left a legacy of agents, some still known only by their numbers, they jealously guarded not only by the agents but by those who had put them there.
At just over a kilo, the Danish M1910/21 pistol was heavy. Sturdy and eminently reliable, its weight and length had gone against its adoption and very few of them existed. Not as sleek as the Luger, it was blocky like the Mauser. Danish, of course, because the man to whom Christina Ashby would take it was Danish, or so his false papers would state.
Fortunately the general’s daughter had had the good sense to tell the embassy where she might be contacted, the Rose and Thorn in East Quantoxhead under the name of Mrs. Talbotte. And fortunately, given his instructions to him, she had yet to trouble Bridgwater again. She would deliver the money, the document and the gun when the Thule Sólarsteinn docked in Weymouth, and would lead whomever would follow her right to that yacht, they and herself believing Werner Beck would be there.
Beck wouldn’t be, of course, for he had taken that yacht of his down the estuary and had let MI6 see him do this, they concluding he was on his way to Cornwall, but once at sea, Beck had transferred to the Reisende,* an armed merchantman that would take him to Cherbourg where he would then board the Hálfdan Ragnar, a yacht supposedly out of Copenhagen, the sails chalk red with age, the leftovers from a coastal lugger. Beck wouldn’t be putting in to Weymouth at all, someone else would. Instead, he was sailing as a Danish ex-bumboat captain, a drunk but attempting to dry himself out and travelling under the name of Harald Jensen, having lost wife and sons to a desperate need for alcohol.
The child would be taken, the general content, the admiral pleased and none of them the wiser.
On Sunday afternoon, 12 June, a young couple came to the cottage to do some sketching. In better times Hilary knew she would have shown them round and tried to make friends. Both were British, the girl with gorgeous, soft red hair and lovely sea-green eyes, he tall and dark, and with honest sky-blue eyes and tousled black hair.
He called her Ginger, she called him Biff, and the two were a pair of larks, loving every minute of their day, sketching the cliffs, the sea and moor, even hunting for birds’ nests. Of course they wanted to study the ruins, and of course she told them it was far too dangerous, but at 4.00 pm, wanting to get a closer look at them and all but certain they could mean no harm, though keeping the Webley close, she called out, asking if they would like tea.
Biff answered that tea was out, ‘But will you accept this?’ he asked. ‘Ginger thinks you might like to have it.’
The sketch was beautiful, the distant engine house bleak, a relic of its times and superb, if available, as a jacket illustration for a novel yet to be completed.
‘Don’t smudge it with your fingers,’ he said, and he had the nicest of smiles and a lot like Karen’s father, for it lit up his eyes and spread nothing but an aura of sincerest warmth.
‘Thanks. It’s … it’s awfully decent of you, Mr. … ?’
The wind pulled at his hair. ‘Just call me Biff. Ginger does.’
Was he Welsh? she wondered, that accent suppressed, his wife not saying anything much but standing out there distant on the road, waiting and waving, the wind tugging at the collar of her blouse and blowing that lovely hair about.
‘Are you sure you can’t stay for tea? It’s nothing fancy. You wouldn’t be putting us out, and both Karen and I would love a bit of company.’
‘Ginger has to do her letters home, but thanks. Perhaps another time.’
‘The sketch is perfect. Tell your wife I’ll hang it on the wall next to my desk.’
‘You’re the writer, aren’t you? Yesterday the woman at the post told us you wouldn’t mind a couple of amateur artists tramping about the place.’
‘Please feel free to come again. It was kind of Mrs. Carne to have sent you.’ How could she be so trusting? wondered Hilary. Had the loneliness got to her?
Late that night a rockfall, somewhere in the mine, sent its echoes up through
the cottage, she sitting bolt upright again in panic, moonlight everywhere. Out over the sea there would be a sheen of silver; out over the moor, the Wheal Deep would throw its shadow.
Holding the painting at an angle to the moonlight, she realized that Biff and Ginger had signed it with their initials: BG, Brigadier Gordon.
‘Ash,’ she softly said, though he was nowhere near. ‘Ash, in spite of my doubts about him, the brigadier did send help, but I still wish you were with us.’
Late on that Sunday, as Gordon scanned the summation of New Scotland Yard’s investigation into the murder of Ashby’s barmaid, the schoolmaster’s wife watched him closely. She had been out and about, was still flushed and breathless. The woollen skirt had caught some burs, as had the ankles of her silk stockings. Grass and mud clung to her shoes.
‘Were you followed?’ he asked, tossing the document onto the table where the banknotes, a thousand pounds’ worth, lay with the Danish M1910/21 Burghardt had sent the woman.
‘Ash did try, but I lost him this time.’
Gordon noted how the excitement of the chase still pinched her nostrils and made her eyes even more alive and alluring. ‘My people were in contact this afternoon, my dear. Hilary Bowker-Brown had no fear of them, but is being watched round the clock by MI5. Apparently your daughter, though wary of them as visitors, now feels comfortable in the presence of the girl, even to holding her by the hand when Hilary invited my people to tea. They are ardent Welsh nationalists, Christina. Young, in tiptop shape and exceedingly cool-headed, but they must, I fear, know absolutely what Joachim has in mind. Did he not put a note to that effect in that diplomatic pouch he used?’
Osier had obviously not been in wireless contact with the Kapitän, thought Christina. Perhaps he hadn’t yet been told of the Bridgwater set, perhaps he felt she herself would be looking after such things and he had no need to risk his own security, but still she would have to test him further. ‘Will your people bring Karen here to Llynwood, or take her to the yacht?’
The Sleeper Page 23