The Spy Who Never Was

by Tom Savage

  Nora shook her head. “What if I get in trouble there? Your wife’s reputation, her record, her credit score—”

  He smiled and shrugged. “We will say that her purse has been stolen. No biggie!”

  Nora stared at him. Then, with a sigh, she capitulated. It was the most expedient solution—false papers in some other name could take days or even weeks, and she didn’t have the time. She’d told them the whole story, start to finish, with names. She could trust the three people in this room with her life, let alone the details of a CIA op that was getting shadier by the minute. Now they knew all about Julie/Chris/Rose, and they agreed that Nora had been used for ulterior purposes. Of course, neither she nor they had any idea what those purposes were. Not yet, anyway.

  “What about these?” Nora asked, holding up the two tracking devices from her purses and the gray CIA cellphone. “Mr. Cole and his associates think I’m flying home later this morning. These will tell them I’m still here.”

  Jacques merely grinned and looked over at the Brissons.

  “This will be handled,” Michel said, and Michelle nodded in agreement. “We have a friend from the old times who has access to the airliners at de Gaulle. He is with the people who place the food in the—what is the word?—galleys? I am taking these objects to the airport, and he is sending them in your flight to New York. Your employers will think you got in the plane.”

  Nora frowned. “They might have someone at the airport, checking to be sure I’m on the flight.”

  “Ah, that is the chance you take, mademoiselle,” Jacques said. “But the plane flies à onze heures, and by this time you are in another country with no trail from here, yes? Your train is à six heures, and by neuf heures you are in Basel. The train from Basel to Lucerne is half an hour from then, and this ride is une heure. You are off the train in Lucerne à dix heures et demie—ten and thirty, yes?—half an hour before the plane goes. It is the easy-peasy!”

  Nora smiled. She remembered from her last visit that, despite his fair fluency in English, Jacques had never quite mastered English numbers—but he always relished the chance to say “half an hour.” She glanced at her watch.

  “My train is at six o’clock,” she said. “It’s four-thirty now. I destroyed all the Julie Campbell identification they gave me, but I’m worried about my luggage—I hope they haven’t planted any more bugs anywhere.”

  “Not to worry,” Michelle said. She stood and went off through the beaded curtain, returning almost immediately with a shiny metal device that looked like a TV remote. She waited while Nora opened her suitcase, and then she went to work on it. The black Coach shoulder bag came next; every item was inspected, especially the phone Jacques had given Nora. Finally, Michelle ran the device all around Nora herself, checking her black denim pantsuit and boots. “You are clean.”

  “Thank you,” Nora said. “Now I need a mirror.”

  She picked up the blond wig and followed Michelle through the beaded curtain and across the kitchen to the bedroom. Nora sat at Michelle’s dressing table and went to work on herself, referring to the photo in Marianne Lanier’s passport. She noted with amusement that Marianne had apparently worn this very wig when the photo was taken. Marianne’s face was wider and fuller, without Nora’s pronounced cheekbones, but Nora applied base and shadow to the planes of her face until she’d achieved a fair copy of the woman in the picture. She also added the ten years that were the difference between them, emphasizing the lines on her forehead and around her eyes and mouth.

  Michelle watched the process, fascinated. “I have never had this art. It is a good talent for an agent.”

  Nora smiled at her in the mirror. A good talent for an agent. From someone of Michelle’s probable level of experience, that was a true compliment. Nora was grateful for these people, Jacques and his family and the Brissons. They might just get her through this, whatever this was.

  She thought about that as they went back to join the men in the living room. She’d already dismissed the idea of contacting the CIA station here in Paris, or even in America—they knew nothing of any of this. Edgar Cole and his assistants were acting outside the confines of the U.S. government. Nora would have to handle them on her own.

  She hadn’t told her husband yet; she’d wait until she was in Switzerland before calling him and telling him she wasn’t coming home today. His reaction was difficult to predict; either he’d be upset and ask her to come home at once or he’d go into his quietly supportive act. He’d done both on various occasions, but Nora knew he wouldn’t ever try to stop her from doing something once her mind was made up. Which left her with only one question: What the hell did she think she was doing?

  As usual, Jacques Lanier provided her with the words that put everything in perspective and motivated her to continue in this endeavor. Before she said goodbye to her new friends and followed Michel out the back way to hail a taxi to Gare de Lyon, the older man embraced her.

  “You will be fine with what you go to do, Nora,” Jacques told her at the door. “There is something in you they do not teach in the CIA, or in any schools. You are having the sense of what is right. You know what must be done, always, and you have no fear of doing it. I think this is your best weapon as an agent in the field.”

  “Thank you, Jacques,” she whispered.

  “De rien,” he said. “You have not killed Le Faucon, but he will be unable to move for quite some time. Now you must find this woman, his wife, and protect her from the people you have helped to set upon her. It is not really your fault that she is in danger, but you feel the weight of it, yes? We will continue to look for Daniel Fenwick and Ben Dysart here in Paris. Go and find Chris Waverly, mademoiselle. Find Rose.”

  Chapter 24

  The early train from Gare de Lyon to the city of Basel on the French-Swiss-German border left the station a few minutes after six o’clock. Nora fell asleep at six-twenty, and she was awakened by a friendly conductor when they arrived in the Swiss border city.

  The three-hour ride east through the French countryside had been in a TGV train, once hailed as the fastest transport on earth—and with good reason. It was just as well that she’d slept; she wouldn’t have been able to see much of France beyond the windows, anyway. The fields, towns, and highways flew by in a constant blur. She’d driven roughly this same route the last time she’d been in France, and the car trip had taken twice as long.

  In Basel, she changed trains to the SBB, the Swiss Federal Railways, trading the sleek blue-and-silver French bullet for a sleek red-and-silver Swiss bullet. She’d been examined in the Basel station by Swiss border police, and she’d passed muster as Marianne Lanier, a Paris wife and mother on her way to join her sister in Lucerne, where they would attend several concerts at the Culture and Congress Centre, the city’s latest artistic pride and joy. The border agent smiled at this and nodded vigorously; he was evidently a music lover. Her passport was stamped, and Marianne Lanier was warmly welcomed to the country and sent on her way.

  She called Jeff from the second train because she knew he’d still be asleep. She left a message telling him not to go to the airport; she was busy here and would explain later. It was a total cop-out on her part, but she’d decided not to muddy these waters with her husband’s reaction. Whether he was pro or con, the point was that he couldn’t get involved. She also reminded Jeff not to approach Edgar Cole. Jeff wasn’t supposed to know about any of this, and as far as Cole knew, Nora was on her way home now. If Jeff accosted Cole at this point, seeking an explanation for his secret op, Nora would be compromised—and so would Sonya Hoffman.

  The Swiss train was nearly as supersonic as the French one had been, so sightseeing was still difficult, but Nora noticed again what she always noticed about the country. She’d been here three times in the past, twice in Zurich and once in the very city to which she was now heading. She’d been driven through a lot of the Swiss countryside as well, and it was definitely the cleanest country she’d ever seen. The cities, vill
ages, mountains, valleys, and fields were spotless, as though everything had just been washed, polished, and freshly painted, and all the colors were vivid. She glanced up through the window: Even the sky above Switzerland was the clearest blue imaginable.

  As the train neared its final destination, Nora tried to arrange her thoughts. She needed to fill in all the blanks of this case, and she needed some sort of plan for how to proceed. She knew only one way to do that. She pulled her notebook and pen from her shoulder bag and began to write a new list.

  1. Edgar Cole lied to me. There probably never was an extortion scheme—TSB is a CIA in-joke, and the man they claim is the blackmailer wouldn’t blackmail anyone. The blackmail note itself is based on probable lies.

  2. Amanda Morris is probably the same Amanda Jeff met five years ago, which means that anything she told me is now suspect.

  3. They got me to be Rose to smoke out Daniel Fenwick. Why?

  4. Bernard Clement thought I was Rose. Why?

  5. Yuri Kerensky knows exactly who I am, and Daniel Fenwick knows I’m not a legitimate CIA agent using the Chris Waverly identity. How?

  6. Yuri Kerensky is married to a woman named Sonya Hoffman at Hotel Toler in Lucerne. He says Edgar Cole is trying to kill her. Why?

  7. Is Chris Waverly/Rose a real person? Jacques thinks so—he thinks she’s Sonya Hoffman.

  Nora studied that final item for a long moment. Is Chris Waverly/Rose a real person? That was the big question. And yet, when she thought about the last few days of her life, it made an odd sort of sense.

  Three people in three political hot spots, all slipping invisibly in and out of operations under the guise of “Rose,” moving her personal effects around from plane to hotel to plane, always one step ahead of everyone who would wish to confront her. It was possible, certainly, but was it practical? Could anyone—even the CIA—keep the lie going for nine years without ever being called out on it?

  There was a much simpler explanation.

  Suppose Chris Waverly were real. This woman would be a highly trained field operative—a newer, younger version of the late Fiona Fenwick, Daniel’s famous sister. Instead of MI6, she works for us. She might even use the cover name Julie Campbell; she might even be a nurse; she might even live in New York City. Maybe all the cover items they’d given Nora were based on fact.

  Nora was ending one mission and initiating a new one, her own mission, giving up a chance to go straight home in favor of a trip to another country. She was helping a man she’d just stabbed in self-defense, a man who’d threatened her, a Russian mercenary who accepted contracts to murder people. Why?

  Because she didn’t believe it. Any of it. Edgar Cole and Amanda Morris had told her many things in the last few days, most of them lies. They’d planted devices on her, followed her, intentionally placed her in harm’s way. Now, Nora was playing a hunch: If the good guys weren’t particularly good, there was every chance that the bad guys weren’t necessarily bad.

  Her instincts as an actor told her even more: When a ruthless, internationally feared killer thinks he might be dying, he doesn’t plead with his intended victim. He doesn’t hold up a wedding ring in pathetic desperation. The Falcon wouldn’t go down with a whimper—he’d die like the legendary badass he was. Unless…

  Unless he’d changed. Unless he wasn’t The Falcon anymore. If Yuri Kerensky had renounced his former ways, there was only one explanation for it: love. Nora was a sucker for a happy ending. If she could help, she would. But it was more than that, and she knew it. Jacques had been right, as ever: Nora had helped to endanger Kerensky’s wife, and she felt the weight of it. She would stop feeling guilty only when she knew this woman—whoever she was—was safe. Then, and only then, Nora could go home to her own family with a clear conscience.

  The conductor made the announcement for Lucerne, and everyone else in Nora’s car began collecting their belongings and putting on their coats. As the train sped along beside the wide, dark blue lake toward the station, Nora checked the time: ten thirty-seven. Michel Brisson would be at Charles de Gaulle now, handing off her tracking devices to a French operative who apparently had a cover job with the catering services for the airlines. With luck, Mr. Cole and Amanda would be monitoring the devices remotely and assume Nora had gone to the airport and boarded the plane. If Nora knew Jacques Lanier—and she did—there would be someone at the New York end as well. The devices would be whisked from the plane and taken to her home in Long Island or her apartment in the Village.

  She left the train and entered Bahnhof Luzern station. She was on the shore of Lake Lucerne in Old Town, where many of the hotels were, so she hoped she wouldn’t have far to go. She asked at the information window for directions to Hotel Toler, delighted that she’d been right—it was just east of the station along the shore. She proceeded outside and through the grand archway into Bahnhofplatz, to find a taxi.

  Chapter 25

  The sprawling city of Lucerne is a collection of seventeen towns and municipalities, some of them situated on the four branches of Lake Lucerne and others on the Reuss River, in the exact center of Switzerland. These towns are so close together as to form a seamless whole, an urban area of city and suburbs covering parts of three Swiss cantons with a total population of a quarter of a million. Because of all the water everywhere, there are many bridges, the most famous being the stately wooden Kapellbrücke, Europe’s oldest covered bridge. Other attractions are the Culture and Congress Centre; the Swiss Museum of Transport; and the celebrated frieze of a mortally wounded lion carved into a sheer rock face in a small park in the Old Town section, a memorial for fallen Swiss Guards known as the Lion of Lucerne.

  The biggest attraction of the city—literally and figuratively—isn’t in the city at all. Mount Pilatus rises majestically alone above the south shores of the lake, a stunning sight from every part of town. The world’s steepest funicular railway takes passengers straight up through the clouds to the hotel, restaurant, and viewing platforms at one summit of the multipeaked mountain. From there, they have a spectacular view of the city, lake, and countryside far below and the surrounding Swiss Alps, including the Jungfrau, one of the highest points in Europe.

  Nora remembered her only visit here, on her honeymoon twenty-three years ago. She and Jeff had seen all the sights and spent a day going up Pilatus in the dizzyingly steep train and down in an equally precipitous tramway gondola. They’d seen Brecht’s Mother Courage in German at a grand old playhouse in the appropriately named Theaterstrasse in Old Town, and taken a boat tour of the lake and river. Even so, she had to look around now to get her bearings.

  The taxi moved along the shore, then turned inland for two blocks, depositing her on a corner in front of a handsome blue building with lots of Old World charm, all crossbeams and iron-hinged oak doors and flower boxes in the windows. She noticed a much larger hotel nearby, a glass-and-chrome nightmare that was part of an international chain, and she shuddered at the thought of having to stay in such a place. She took it as a good omen that Sonya Hoffman had the same taste in hotels as she: the smaller, the better. She paid for the ride with Marianne’s Visa card.

  German—or a Swiss derivation of it called Alemannic—is the principal language of the region, so Nora wasn’t surprised to be greeted as gnädige Frau by the young man at the front desk in the lobby. She rolled her suitcase over to stand before him, smiling, the delighted Frenchwoman in Switzerland.

  “Guten Morgen,” she said, using up the bulk of her vocabulary in German, then continued in English with Marianne Lanier’s French accent. “I’ve just arrived in your beautiful city, and I’m looking for an acquaintance, a woman named Sonya Hoffman. I understand she might be here.”

  When she said the name, the man frowned; he seemed to be wondering why she would ask for this woman. He recovered quickly, smiling and nodding. “Sehr wohl, gnädige—er, yes, madame, Frau Hoffman is employed here, but she will not be in the hotel until four o’clock this afternoon.” He reached for his
phone. “May I inquire who asks for her?”

  Nora thought fast. Sonya Hoffman was on the staff here, not a guest. Either way, there was no point in asking this man where Nora could reach her now; he wouldn’t give out that information until Frau Hoffman told him it was all right to do so. If he called her, she’d be suspicious—her unconscious husband, in the hospital in Paris, hadn’t told her to expect Nora Baron. Sonya might not even know yet that her husband was injured. With another Parisian smile, Nora expanded her performance.

  “Oh, don’t bother her now, please. She doesn’t know I’m here, and I want to surprise her. I’ll see her at four o’clock. Meanwhile, have you a room for the night? I’ve only stopped off here on my way to, um, Italy, and I thought I would only be here a few hours. But I’ve changed my mind—I’d like to stay the night and continue my journey tomorrow.”

  The man consulted his computer screen. “Yes, madame, we have a single room on the first floor, and a suite on the second—”

  “The single room will be just fine for me. Shall I register now?”

  It was over in minutes. She had to show him Marianne’s passport and use Marianne’s Visa card again, but she now had a place to park. She’d decide how long she was staying in Lucerne when she’d talked with Frau Hoffman. She asked the man to change some euros for Swiss francs so she’d have cash on her, and he politely obliged.

  Frau Hoffman. Nora tried to puzzle that out as the concierge rang a bell and an ancient bellman shuffled in to take her suitcase and lead her to an equally ancient elevator next to a wide staircase to the second floor. She could have climbed the stairs with the suitcase faster than the lift took them there. She was ushered into a small, pretty room looking down on a side street, not the main square of the front entrance, but she wasn’t here for the sightseeing.