The Spy

by Marc Eden

  “Yes, sir. That hot shower did the trick,” she acknowledged, “and thank you for the—”

  Hamilton nodded.

  “—uniform.” Her hands hurt like hell.

  De Beck joined them in the dining room, complimenting Valerie on her appearance, as well as on her commission. Privately, he wished the Commander was miles away. It had been a long time since he’d met a girl who attracted him this much. A Lieutenant, to boot. And to think...

  They would soon be alone together in France.

  In the annals of the British Empire, reported by Rudyard, the dawn comes up like thunder; but at Achnacarry Castle it wasn’t thunder that men had to deal with on a morning—but death. To Valerie Sinclair, death was something that happened to somebody else.

  This position was soon to change.

  By lunch of the second day, she had learned how to kill with the knife and how to use the rifle butt as a weapon. In the afternoon, the carotid, how to break the nose, how to snap the human neck—the most vulnerable part of the skull—and what nerves to crush...German, of course. By twilight, how to puncture his heart. By supper, how to rupture his spleen.

  It was dark, and exhaustion blazed in her brain.

  In the dining room, the men seemed to be enjoying the evening meal. Hamilton helped her to cut the meat, because of her hands. Valerie waited until Pierre finished, and when he left, she said: “I’m not at all sure I could bring myself to kill anyone, unless, of course, I had to.” She thought of the teachings of her father, and now she might be called upon to take a human life. In running from death, she had run towards it.

  It was as though Hamilton could see into the window of her mind. “The first real knowledge most men ever have is the knowledge that they are dying,” the Commander said, and he filled his plate. “Even so, for them as well as for us, death is an unfathomable darkness...” Valerie, who was sipping her milk, spilled it. “As I said before, when it comes to a German or yourself, there will be no time to think, or to be self-sacrificing. You will cause him to die by whatever method you are learning here. The German soldier is formidable and brave. To kill him”—and he speared the meat—“is merely a matter of what’s appropriate at the time.”

  Valerie stared across at him and suddenly didn’t wish to eat. The dining room wavered and withdrew, reverberating like the distant splat of bullets; like the overloud voices of a dream. Fatigue, with a mumbled excuse, pulled her from the table and hurried her to her room. There, safe from Hamilton’s scrutiny, she sat on the edge of her cot, shuddering with horror. Exhaustion seeped into the comers of her being, wretched nausea; and deep, explosive shocks.

  The Spy was still in Scotland.

  The hours passed, and she was aware of being cold. Dawn with grey face, with pocked Commando visage, leered at last above her bunk. She awoke, and tried to focus, then crossed her eyes, as though staring at some rapidly moving ghost. She staggered out of bed, feeling drained of all desire except to return to it.

  Breakfast and scalding coffee got her heart started. The Commander was not yet about, though Pierre was soon in attendance. Not a bad sort of chap, really. And he seemed genuinely interested in her. She acknowledged the Frenchman with as few words as possible. She was too tired to talk. Too tired, even, to chew.

  She poked wearily at her breakfast.

  All around her, beneath the cold lights of morning, the cacophony of men pressed inward upon her brain. The sounds of eating, cursing, and hard male laughter crashed against her ears, welling up like cigarette smoke, evocations of a terrible strength. Somehow, she knew, it couldn’t be any other way: they were here to cut throats. They were here to be hardened in the way that iron is hardened, to become lethal as steel. But Valerie wasn’t made of steel, she was made of woman. Like a car, being wrecked, she was running out of gas. Here because of Hamilton, that fact seemed to be lost on them. Commander Hamilton would help her. Hamilton would understand...

  Hamilton was coming through the door.

  “Good morning!” he said, rubbing his hands briskly together and commandeering the seat next to her. He poured himself a steaming cup of coffee.

  Her prayers were answered, he was smiling at her.

  “Well now,” the Commander said, glancing impatiently at his watch, “ready for another go, are we?”

  Fast Machines!

  Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza, and Duesenberg: their clutch and gear systems. How to hot wire and steal a Mercedes Benz. Trucks: what they contain and where, what they can do, and what you might have to.

  Next, the Body, also a machine: how to use yourself as a fulcrum, how to break arms, how to cross a river with a rope.

  Lunch!

  In the afternoon, how to get through barbed wire, and where to cut it...ducking live ammunition.

  Rat-atat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat Rat-atat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

  Two and a half feet above her, a stationary machine-gun lays down a steady, unwavering blanket of bullets. She has but to raise her head to have it blown apart. She gets caught in the barbed wire, starts to clear herself and remembers at the last moment—death is no longer happening to somebody else. It is inches away! Eyes fearful, hugging the earth, she becomes a part of it. She curses, she waits, she rips herself loose!

  Rat-atat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat...

  Valerie’s heart was in her mouth as her belly scraped on the clay.

  Minutes became hours.

  “Here is a rope,” a Mr. Groggins said, “here is the grappler on the end of the rope. And here, come over here. You see up there? That is a cliff.”

  She squinted upwards at the giddy height, into the blind eye of the sun. It was not at all like the cliffs of Dorset. Looped with barbed wire, there was something different about it: the way that steel is different from rock.

  “Climb it!” Groggins said.

  She stared at her raw and bleeding hands.

  “Try spitting on them,” Groggins suggested.

  Later, after she had skidded and crashed a dozen times, after she got over the barbed wire and learned how to “sling it”—and got to the top—Hamilton informed her, in her case, that the rope would first have to be stolen: probably, a French clothesline.

  Commandos instructed her.

  An hour went by. Bridges were built, using human bodies: ascending vertically, geometrically, forming ladders. The sun was sputtering. She glanced up. It was like a bola.

  Time for tea.

  Hamilton walked over to the Staff Building. Not invited, she stared after him. Groggins pointed a stubby finger. She had a lecture to attend. It was half a mile and she would have to run. Pebbles flew from her heels and the dust had her dizzy. She arrived, neck hot from sunburn, and joined her unit.

  “You’re late,” her instructor announced, “go back and try it again.” Men laughed and she could hear them behind her. The sun was at her back. Groggins was waiting, he pointed with his finger. “A little faster,” he said.

  Sinclair flew like death.

  Pain was cracking, dry in her throat. “That’s enough,” she heard. Stumbling, she fell into their midst. They had gathered at a tarn without water, dry gulches bleeding up over a rise onto a field of blistered rock. The men made room for her, and the sweating girl tucked herself in.

  A review of garrote, she sat among stranglers. Surrounded by sun-blackened faces, flaring their nostrils, she was seeing what she had come to learn. Invisible to their speaker who was standing on a ledge, the men were looking at her with bony eyes, stripping her of her clothes with slitted thoughts. They were enjoying it: nailing her, brutally and at once, the way a big dog moves swiftly to grab a smaller one: locking in, with the first thrust. Some of them were staring straight ahead, and they were the worst. Trembling, arms around her knees, she pulled in her feet, fighting back the tears. The men were grinning. Sinclair waited, tossing her head. He moved closer. Imagining tobacco juice, she turned her head to one side....

  And spit.

  “Oh! I am so terribly sorry,” she said. />
  He wiped it off his pants.

  Twilight came, and the hope of deliverance, but night arrives with a bang! Hamilton decides to squeeze in an extra hour of night firing. Ears ringing, she skips the late supper, and sleeps in her clothes.

  She dreams of guns.

  Sunrise.

  In the dining room the radio is blaring.

  Deutschland wird entweder eine Weltmacht werden, oder nicht! Die Welt ist nicht eingerichtet fiir feighe Nationen!

  roared the Reichmaster, leaning into the ganglion of microphones and nodding three times between sentences.

  Starke liegen nicht in der Verteidigung, sondern im Angriff!

  “According to this morning’s BBC report, quoting the Home Office, more than 30,000 people were killed last night in one of the worst raids on London. His Majesty, the King, traveled to the East End to comfort some of the grieving people. From the Northern Registers, the temperature in the Highlands is 81 degrees, as of midnight, with clear skies expected. In other news, following last Wednesday’s meeting of the House of Lords...”

  Hitler again:

  Unser Feind Nummer Eins ist England! England kann uns nicht widerstehen! Amerika wird uns nicht widerstehen! Das Grosse deutsche Reich...!

  “Oh yeah? Fuck him! Who, the King? Fuck him, too!” An American Ranger turned off the radio. It was on a shelf, at the end of the dining room. Hamilton was telling the man’s officer what a great sport the King was. Sinclair looked at her tray: any meal could be her last.

  It was her fourth and final day of training.

  “So then!” said Hamilton, arrived at the site. Behind him, hot sunlight welled along the crag. “Come over here, Lloyd—that’s a good fellow. Now Valerie, this ‘German’ has a gun. You need it. How are you going to get it? The moon is full and our friend here is on guard duty. McGinty?”

  McGinty, the Senior Trainer, showed the girl what could be accomplished with a large stone if the intended victim were unsuspecting and no other weapon were available. He went through the method of obtaining the gun from the German, over and over again. Then a dummy was used to enable her to hit with the stone so that it would put the victim out. How to hit in another, a vital spot, to kill him. The difference, it was explained, was the Geneva Convention. It was further explained that following the Commando raid on Vaagso, in Norway, code-named ARCHERY, Hitler had directed that all Commandos be shot on sight.

  So much for the Geneva Convention.

  “The choice of one is not a choice,” the Trainer explained, and he ran her through the demanding exercise until her legs trembled, and her body staggered from the overkill. At last, Hamilton and the Trainer were satisfied. Stewing in her own sweat, she stank like a Brighton whore.

  “Well, Sinclair,” said the Commander, “I think you are nearly there. Do you not agree, Sergeant-Major?”

  The lass will be a fighting man yet, sir” the Trainer acknowledged, grudgingly.

  Valerie glared at them both.

  Lunch was canceled; the world was a blur.

  The blur was the sun in her eyes and the place was a wide ring where the heat shimmered upwards from the dust. Spectacles were put away and watches were removed from wrists. It was the hand-to-hand combat zone, the “dessert” of the death camp, and the customers looked hungry:

  It was her on the plate.

  It began simply enough—slowly and carefully—how to encircle, where to grab, the mechanics of the throw. The chops, in slow motion—the rock-hard repetition. By late afternoon, she was half-blind from the sweat and half-choking from the dust of the ring. “Have it now, do we?” asked the Trainer.

  She nodded numbly, fumbling with her belt.

  Hamilton had been bothered by the girl’s words in the dining room: I’m not at all sure I could bring myself to kill anyone. The words stuck in his craw. It just wouldn’t do. Thinking about it, he tapped deftly with his riding crop and pulled her partner aside. “A little walk, you see...”

  Valerie saw him interceding. She was grateful.

  When they were a few yards out of hearing, Hamilton clasped his hands behind his back, leaned forward, and said to the soldier: “Knock the hell out of her.”

  “Sir?”

  “You know how, don’t you?”

  “Yes sir, but...”

  It was an order.

  “Do it,” the Commander said, ‘let’s see what she’s made of.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  “Ring time!” announced the Trainer. The men who were watching walked over and stood around—American Rangers and British Commandos—tough, gaunt-looking men with dark eyes and unshaven faces. The sun was like a wheel and she was suddenly in the middle of the ring, facing a swift-looking man who wasn’t smiling.

  “Give him hell, Lilly!”

  “Ten bob says he takes her.”

  “You’re on.”

  “All right lads, this is the real one now!” The Trainer circled the ring in a half-crouch, clapping his hands in rapid encouragement. “Give it your best!”

  Hamilton nodded to her from ringside.

  Valerie assumed the position.

  The first blow with his foot to her head caused her teeth to crack! She staggered, but kept her balance. They circled. He reminded her of a rooster, the kind of cock you bet on for money. Sinclair remembered him now: it was the man she had spit on, in the strangulation lecture. She lunged. She missed. He threw her down. Up.

  The chop!

  Her head exploded, and her nose, which was now bleeding.

  He hit her again! Her world shattered, like glass! She was in the sand, on her butt! Her lips were numb. He had split them!

  The Trainer jumped to stop it! Hamilton held his arm.

  Sinclair staggered up! She scrambled free, gaining ground, fighting for time! Her head cleared...From the corner of her eye, she could see them standing there. She realized that Hamilton and this damned soldier had made a deal, that... The soldier made a grab! He had her by the wrist.

  He was hurting her!

  Could she take a picture, she would see herself dead. Instead, from the secret place of her mind, reaching out beyond her own body, she felt the grip of The Spy.

  Instruction was entering....

  Sinclair steadied, staring down the corridor of pain.

  She reversed it—and, as though having entered another world, she suddenly seemed to hang bodiless in time and space. She heard, rather than felt, something snap inside of her and it was like the sudden crack of a dry branch. Instantly, it was a feeling that she hated. Therefore, it was a feeling that she loved...

  It was the taste of blood.

  She spun him!

  Her mind had gone cold, like steel, but there wasn’t time to think about that either. Her body now thrummed with a murderous joy! Throwing out the book, her fist caught him in the stomach! His breath came out! She chopped! Had he not been the best in his weight class, the blow would have killed him. Stunned, bleeding, off-balance, the man stared at her in disbelief.

  She slapped him!

  Commandos almost never attack from the front: he didn’t expect it. Her knee came up! He grabbed himself! His head dropped in agony, and the heel of her hand cracked like a hammer into the base of his neck!

  “The Liverpool Chop,” noted a Ranger, with satisfaction.

  She was roaring and blind from the dust, the sun was in her eyes, and she was going to kill him.

  The cock was red-faced and furious. He was hurt now, and dangerous. “I’ll bust ‘er bloody arse!” they heard him yell. His head snapped back with blood spewing from the ferocity of her fists! Strong arms grabbed his, and hers. She kicked—and shrieked and bit!—at whoever it was who was holding her.

  It was Hamilton.

  The soldier, his face a sponge, was in the grip of the Trainer.

  There was a warm round of applause, and much spitting of tobacco juice. Bets were paid. Water was splashed. The sun was setting. But the Commander, with arms of iron, kept her locked.

  “Joll
y good. Well then, come along my dear,” said Hamilton, aware of teeth marks in his hand, “and let us have a nice relaxing dinner together. Perhaps I can talk you into a drink, hmmm? You certainly deserve one.”

  He released her, and she spun round to face him.

  Delivered with rage, humiliation, and white-hot tears, Valerie Sinclair’s answer, exploding in Hamilton’s face, echoed away across the dying fields:

  “You rotten son-of-a-bitch!” she howled.

  Two hours into darkness, and with the shades pulled, the light in the window was still burning. It was in the officer’s briefing room, where Hamilton had finally got her calm enough to listen. It had taken some doing. When she did, she understood. The Commander had left strict instructions for them not to be disturbed.

  Hamilton said, “We are going down to Cornwall. For security reasons, we will travel separately. Lieutenant Seymour will coordinate. Our launch rendezvous is a hotel called The Red Lion, in Polperro. I want you to take the night sleeper, from Inverness to London, Euston Station. From there, go by tube to the main line station at Waterloo. You’ll be able to catch the afternoon express to Falmouth, where I’ll meet you. Well motor to Polperro.”

  The Red Lion...

  “Got it.”

  Her photographic memory snapped a picture of his instructions, of the complex military directions. The Camera Shop, damaged in the fight, had opened again.

  The Commander was off the hook.

  “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes then.”

  A cold breeze was blowing. Nightbirds cut dark arches against the scarp of the hills. She waited, shivering on the porch of her billet, with her gear. Above a black and jutting Scotland, a silver moon rode low in the Mars sky.

  A horn honked.

  She hurried to the car and Hamilton hoisted her gear. Pierre had left earlier, booked for London. There would be just the two of them. Sinclair got in and closed her eyes. Through the gates of the ancient castle grounds the woman who was not supposed to be here was leaving as quietly as she had come. She thought back to that first night following her arrival. The Spy had looked in on her. She had tried to take his picture, but couldn’t. Why couldn’t she? The Commander, having checked with the man he’d assigned to her flat, and been informed of nothing unusual, had concluded that The Spy had left town.