by Paul Griner
“Then let them. Let someone else transmit the information.” He had a movie to make, a life to begin to inhabit.
“The German army hasn’t broken down under tremendous pressure. What makes you think German intelligence has? They’re crippled, not killed. They have to hear from you, and your information has to be accurate. You know that.”
He did, that was the rub. Yet he was tired of it. More than 90 percent of what he told them was true; 95 percent, probably. But it was that 5 percent that mattered, information that they got only from him. That the real invasion hadn’t happened yet, that Normandy was just a feint, that Calais with its working port was the true target. And as long as they believed him, they’d hold their mechanized armies in reserve, and the Normandy invasion would have a better chance. But would a few more bits of misinformation really be so bad?
Bertram had said no to changing the landing coordinates; Claus had been prepared for that. What surprised him was the depth of his disappointment. For Winifred, Myra, even Herbert. Their physical selves, but also their mental ones. The constant sirens were literally driving people mad; a woman on his block had been taken away screaming in the middle of the night because she’d snapped. Really, though, it was Kate that bothered him, the danger to her. Why pretend otherwise? He sat forward.
“You support my idea?”
“My support is immaterial,” Bertram said.
“Not to me. I could quit. Or what if I went ahead and did it anyway?”
“In either case you’d be interned as a danger to the war effort.”
“You couldn’t speak on my behalf?”
“It wouldn’t matter.”
He pried at Bertram’s doubts again. “You don’t think we should do this?”
“You mustn’t twist my words. To make myself absolutely clear, you may not jigger the landing results.” He shrugged. “And it wouldn’t be of much use to try. Even if we allowed it, you couldn’t misdirect them. Too many people know where the bombs are falling.”
“But it’s not published information. The Germans don’t have it. We’re squelching every bit of it. The papers only say that they’re hitting southern England.”
“So far.” Bertram pulled a map of Croydon from a drawer. Dozens of crosses marked where bombs had hit in the past weeks, decimating the borough. “This is from the Croydon Times. The censor canceled it, but eventually they’ll have to let one pass.”
Claus looked it over. “Eventually, yes. But even then the map won’t say when the bombs hit, so the Germans won’t get much of anything from it. I can’t possibly give them times and locations for all their bombs, just enough to influence them.”
“True again. And yet, if they have other sources, they’ll quickly point out your mistakes, and then the Germans will begin to suspect you. You must always keep your eye on that. Nothing else matters.”
Claus dismissed the notion. “Other sources? Another spy? You must know them all by now. The ones I’ve given you, the ones those men have.” Germany always alerted him to impending arrivals, and each time he turned over a new name, Claus knew he’d sealed the man’s fate. A few would transmit from various safe houses, especially if they had English contacts they were supposed to meet. Most would hang.
Bertram steepled his fingers. “Tell me about Julius Silber.”
“Who?”
“Exactly.” From his bookshelf, he selected a slim green book. “Julius Silber. Very few know of him. We certainly didn’t. A senior postal inspector during the last war, almost from the beginning.” Bertram peered at Claus over his glasses, as if trying to determine how much more he should say. “He’d come here from Germany specifically to spy. Very successful. Made it undetected through the entire war and then went home. We’d never have known if he hadn’t written about himself.” He set the book down, spine along the desk edge. “Cost several people their jobs. But the point is that we knew nothing about him—didn’t even suspect that he existed. I don’t doubt that twenty years from now we’ll have our own Julius Silber to deal with. And I don’t want to help him out in any way, which letting you change the locations might do.”
Bertram plucked a pear from his desk and turned it in his hand, giving Claus one of his rare smiles, which were always disconcerting; his teeth were so small they seemed nonexistent, his mouth mostly red gums, as if he’d just eaten an especially bloody meal. Claus was saved from contemplating it further by the clock striking and the cuckoo shooting out, launched into its hourly frenzy. Inside its chirping beak was a miniature camera; the Abwehr had sent it to Claus and he’d turned it over immediately, explaining to his German handlers that it must have been intercepted by the censors.
Bertram put the pear down and it occurred to Claus that he’d never seen Bertram eat anything, never observed him doing anything remotely human; even his breathing was unnoticeable, even the pipe on his desk, bowl always full, was never burning. He seemed to have effaced anything not having to do with his realm, the shadow war against Germany.
“We’ll have those launch pads soon enough,” Bertram said. “Or such is our hope. In the meantime you might as well tell the Germans the truth. Morale’s so bad it’s even reached the papers. The censors thought it would be worse to deny it. Correctly, probably. And if you give it to the Germans a day or two before it hits the papers, so much the better for you.
“Speaking of which,” he said, and pulled a piece of crisp paper from another of his innumerable files, “we need you to send this. Operation Leopard.”
Unnecessarily, Claus smoothed the page before beginning to read, a habit to buy himself time. Troop deployments, altered train schedules, operational code names. “Pas de Calais,” he said, when he was done. “So the invasion is to happen at last. And how did I come across it?” He folded it and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“Of course it isn’t real,” Bertram said. “But you’ve several options for how you found out.” He flipped open the blue folder on his blotter. “Tottingham, Mrs. Honeywell. Perhaps Madame Blavatsky.”
Claus thought them over. “Not Honeywell. She wouldn’t be able to put all this together. The Air Ministry wouldn’t have it all.”
“Tottingham could.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not. As a builder, he has access to many of the bases there, but I don’t know that he’d gather all these pieces on his rounds. He’s good at telling us what’s happened, not what’s about to. I think Madame Blavatsky is best.”
“Distraught wives?” Bertram ran his fingers down the folder. “Yes, that should work. You see?” he said, and smiled. “That’s why we can’t afford to lose you.”
Claus had created Madame Blavatsky, a fortuneteller who lived outside of Hastings, between an American army base and a British aerodrome, and from whom officers’ wives routinely sought good news about their husbands’ upcoming operations. She made up her face with an ace of spades, wore acorn earrings, and had one large expense—black-market fabric, to make her multicolored capes. Necessary, Claus had explained, to have her clients believe her, and the Germans were happy to pay.
“You might have her arrested soon,” Claus said.
“Yes. When Madrid and Berlin get this, they’ll press for more details. Exact dates. The train schedules will give them an approximate time, but they’ll want perfection. And if she’s arrested, it could be a reason the operation doesn’t come off.”
“Certainly. The Americans would want to stall for at least a couple of weeks after that, which would buy us more time.”
Bertram made a note on the file. “I’ll slip an item into the paper next week, sufficiently vague but with her name prominently displayed. Send it off immediately, and say that Winifred’s husband has confirmed the shipping details.”
“Some,” Claus said. “But we shouldn’t go too heavily down that road.”
“No? Too much, you think? All right. We’ll keep it mostly Madame Blavatsky.”
Th
e truth was Claus felt squeamish taking advantage of Winifred’s present condition, even though she’d never know it. Using people, however blind to it they were, felt suddenly less acceptable. It had been years since he’d had such qualms; it was almost as if the war were beginning again for him under different circumstances.
Bertram seemed to intuit his mood. “Cheer up. Your wireless will be back in service.”
Claus turned his eyes back to Bertram’s instantly. Not looking at him would be read as dissimulation; he knew Bertram well enough for that. “Did my German finally come?”
“Yes. And with him your vacuum tube. Captured just north of Reading.”
“Recently?”
Bertram looked at his notes. “Not quite sure on that score. In any event, you’ll be able to use your radio again.”
The radio. Claus had never liked it, had been glad it was broken. Before the war, in Hamburg, his mother’s cousin had invited Claus home after agreeing to buy an industrial film. Once there, he’d offered Claus the radio.
“Whatever for, Robert?”
Pink and pudgy, Robert had shrugged. “Who knows? It might come in handy in the next few years. The English government has never been especially kind to you. The Americans either. You’ve said so yourself. And what happened to you broke your mother’s heart. Her last letters to me were filled with nothing else.”
True, though Claus hadn’t fallen for the sentiment; the real issue was that Robert, a former socialist, admired the Nazis. Claus had demurred but mentioned the offer to his boss at Taylor Films, who’d evidently told a friend in military intelligence. A week later Claus was summoned to an office in Jermyn Street, where a government official told him that on his next trip to Germany he was to accept the radio. It hadn’t been a request; Claus’s immigration status was cloudy. Claus had kept the handsome Saba model in storage for years, along with its codebook. At their first meeting, Bertram had told him to begin using it.
Now, Claus said, “They must be desperate, dropping someone in after the invasion.”
“The endgame is precisely when one is most likely to take risks, and is therefore most dangerous.”
“You admit it’s the end.”
“The beginning of the end. But the end itself may take a long time,” Bertram said, and slipped into his usual Latin pedantry. “Nil actum reputa si quid superest agendum. ‘Don’t consider that anything has been done if anything remains undone.’” As if casually, he added, “Trust no one you meet. No one.”
He stared at Claus so intently, Claus wondered if Bertram knew more about he and Kate than he’d told. Then Bertram stood and opened a metal box.
“So,” Claus said. “Money.” He liked to get this part of their meeting over with as quickly as possible; it was humiliating to have to account for every penny he spent. “I need double the normal amount today.”
“A fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi,” Bertram said as he fiddled with the money.
“My feeling exactly.”
Bertram smiled. “Ah, so now you’re a Latin scholar, are you?”
Claus translated. “‘A precipice in front, wolves behind.’”
Bertram stopped counting, small fat thumb motionless on a pile of pound notes, but he mastered himself sufficiently not to look up. “You know Latin?”
“You’ve used that one before.”
Bertram went back to his counting. “Unlike me to repeat myself. Weary, I suppose.”
“Aren’t we all?” Claus pulled a sheaf of notes from his breast pocket.
“What’s this?” Bertram took a quick look. “Rent, tube rides, toothpowder. No. I don’t want them.” He folded the receipts and gave them back.
“But I always give them to you.”
“Not today. Not to me at least.” He opened the door. “To Miss Smithers. I’m afraid I do have other meetings and this one has already run over.”
Claus understood; the Latin had been a mistake. There was ever something of the scholarship boy about Bertram—the Union Jack bow ties, the heavily thumbed copy of Debrett’s left casually on his desk, the frequent mentions of his Boodle’s membership—and since Bertram was never quite sure of his position, he was quick to quash those who challenged it. Showing Claus the door was a way of showing him his place.
This is the man I work for, Claus thought. It didn’t improve his mood.
Madge was just outside the office, but even standing still she managed to look the bustling blonde.
“Been listening at keyholes?” he asked.
She put one manicured hand on her narrow waist. “Should I have been?”
“You didn’t miss anything. You’ve wonderful color, by the way.”
“Tar beach.”
Madge moved beside Claus with her careful stride, putting one foot directly in front of the other as if walking an invisible chalked line. Through an open window came the sound of Vera Lynn singing on the radio. “One simply has to visit it in this dreadful weather. It would be a sin not to snatch any sunshine when it comes. Besides, we’re so god-awful busy that if I don’t take my lunch, Bertram won’t give it me.”
“You look years younger.”
“In other words I looked older before.”
“You see,” he said. “I can’t win.”
Flirting required an effort, and he wished he could be more like her; her professional insouciance seemed to both recognize and dismiss the importance of her work. I do it well, but somehow I can’t take it all that seriously. It had been months since he’d thought of this work with anything but dread, and even now, his mood lighter, it was hard to muster sufficient enthusiasm to banter.
She held up a green file. “Air Ministry,” she said. “Care to walk me? We lie out on our lunches. The roof’s quite a spot, filled with beautiful girls.”
“Sorry,” Claus said, “not today.”
She sighed. “It’s never a good day, is it?”
Feigned sadness. They weren’t allowed to see one another outside of the office and even if they met accidentally they were to ignore one another.
“So,” she said. “If you’re not falling for me, who’s the lucky gal?”
“No one, I’m afraid.” He thought happily of Kate and sat beside Madge’s desk. “I only want to get paid. Bertram said I was to give you a list of my expenses.”
“Ah, the usual. It seems I’m only good for money.”
He didn’t touch the obvious line. “Listen, I’m sorry to rush you, but I have to be at the MOI soon.”
“My, you’re in a mood.” Her voice turned brisk and chilly. She yanked open the top desk drawer, scissors and pens rattling against metal. “Old piss and vinegar must have been particularly sour today.”
Guiltily, he touched her arm. “Are there days he isn’t?”
“Not round us. Perhaps at home he’s secretly nice to the help.”
“Does he have help? Who on earth would stay with him?”
Softening, she gave a quick half smile. “He must have, mustn’t he? The big cheese?”
June 28
THE POST WAS NEARLY fully inhabited again. A few wardens were talking quietly over a pile of abandoned playing cards, the fine-boned Rosalyn shaking her head, Williams sullenly silent, Herbert, with his blue breast-pocket square, bent over a map of London, since in the aftermath of the V-1s, the invasion of Normandy and the euphoria it had generated had been nearly forgotten. Londoners once again were worried about their own survival, and with good reason: thousands had died already from the buzz bombs.
“When is Monty going to get on with it?” Rosalyn said. Monty was bottled up on the east flank, supposed to head for Calais, where most of the buzz bombs were being launched. It was the same everywhere; people were discussing the bombs and not the invasion. That too would go into his report, along with Rosalyn’s weary resignation. Only six months on the job, she was normally so vital it seemed at times that her very cells would burst into flame.
After the Blitz ended, in May of ’41, the wardens had gon
e home when the all-clear sounded around midnight, but these past weeks they were back to sleeping on post, as if the war were beginning all over again. It was depressing. They no longer played darts or cards while talking about their own plans for after the war, or how England would change; instead, they were on about the damage and the bombs, speculating about how long London—themselves, really—could stand it. Long-term odds weren’t good, especially from Herbert, who before the war had been a bookie in Prague. “Six months and we’re through,” he’d first said. Recently, as the bombs came with greater frequency and deadlier accuracy, he’d dropped it to four. It was extraordinary how Claus’s short time with Kate—a few hours of wakefulness, if he totted it up—had changed his perspective. For the first time in months, years perhaps, he felt apart from the gloom.
In the kitchen a green bowl with three brown eggs was sitting on the counter.
“Have one, if you’d like,” Myra said.
“Oh, hello,” Claus said. “Didn’t see you.” He was surprised she’d spoken to him. They’d dated a few times just as the war began and then quarreled violently, and since then she’d been cool to him at every turn. Cold, even. Deserved, since he’d started the quarrel on the slimmest of pretexts, but sometimes her manner still irritated him; one more thing he wasn’t allowed to explain. After the war, he kept telling himself, though with the advent of the buzz bombs that day seemed to be receding farther into the future.
“Sorry, didn’t meant to startle you,” Myra said. “I’m being quiet. It’s late. But you really should have one.”
How many mornings he’d wanted eggs. They were becoming easier to find, food more plentiful as the V-1s continued and London emptied out once again.
“No, thank you.” He knocked them together with his finger. “I’m too tired.” He was. He’d spent an unfruitful day at the MOI. The script wasn’t coming along, and Max, who had tried not to push, nonetheless had made it clear that the deadline was fast approaching.