The Spy

by Marc Eden

  The Prime Minister mounted the stairs.

  In the darkened study, in currents high above his desk alive with frequencies of voices past, a letter lay unsigned beside a humidor of black Havanas, next to pencils stubbed from pads of notes, with pages missing.

  Upstairs, loud with voices, he entered. In the large bright maproom flashed with pointers, thick with smoke and waiting for him, the war went on that wasn’t there. Calling back to them, from courage, they did not hear it:

  The red telephone was ringing!

  Thunder boomed beyond the windbreak.

  Rains splattered across the fields. Falling away in the roar of the weather, shrill as a scream through the ghostblack night, the sound had stopped.

  Valerie listened...

  Giant clouds exploded ahead of them, lightning illuminating the flats of the sea. In the back seat of the speeding limousine, rich with ozone and the mysterious smell of felt, she had put down her lipstick. Ryan could hear it, too: bells and conversations, high above them, in England’s stormy air. She rolled down the window, engulfed in the surge of the wind. The horizon rose distant, where hills were; and above it, the void was; and the icy bright blinking of stars.

  The powerful black and silver car shot down the snake of the road! Tooling up the lanes of night, across countryside familiar, he soon had them free of the coast. Nervously, Valerie glanced over her shoulder. Weren’t they being followed! No, not the way Ryan was driving. He said: “Why do you think he hired me?”

  Valerie shook her head, she didn’t know.

  “For this...” the driver muttered, and he broke all laws save the laws of physics, in ascending a slippery rise. Valerie liked him, they could work together. Crashing through a roadblock, wood spun behind them. The road up ahead could be washed out any minute, because of the storm. Conquering curves, he jumped to the ALTERNATE ROUTE, tires whistling up traindark culverts: black tracks, disappearing into rain, “—hear what I have to say,” she heard him saying, “before we get there...” She had a right to know.

  Valerie listened, her heart in her mouth.

  Twenty years ago, before either of their times, the man destined to become The Spy had been an International Banker, secretly pledged to undermine the fascist dictator, Franco. The demands on the Spanish Dossier, represented in New York at that time by Brown Bros. Harriman, had caused him to deal heavily on the French Bourse. Loyal to the Bank of France, and on a tip from Rothschild, who seemed embarrassed by it, he had pursued it until it lead him to the discovery of a crooked picture: the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, effected against the interests of the people of the United States. Aware that he himself had been a party to it, though unwittingly, and at the same time enjoying enormous personal wealth, The Spy had pledged his life, his fortune, and his uncanny comprehension of The DEAL, to the redress of justice and to the protection of Individual rights...rights, if his friends, the Bankers, had their way, that were scheduled for absorption in a Treasury Series of New World Orders; where personal tax, disguised as interest; and mortgage rates, compounded over time, would absorb all profit from the produced value of work, indebting those who performed it. The self-serving convenience of invented laws by bureaucratic leaderships, particularly in the United States, would enforce the collection of money. On that day, voters voiceless, all the lemons would be squeezed dry. Thus, the Individual, correctly numbered, would serve the Bankers; and the Bank would become the State. In that same year, 1913, the Individual 1040 Tax Form slipped quietly through the American Congress, becoming the first of an arsenal of weapons by the London Financial District directed against the Constitutional protection of American citizens; and the inviolable rights of each Individual: the right to the protection of life, the right to the protection of work, and the right to the protection of choice. It was all figured, down to the last twenty-dollar gold piece; the actual writing, left to the Warburgs. Years would go by and the picture that was crooked, carefully concealed in those years, would begin paying off: farms would fail, the absorption of land. Stock markets would crash, the absorption of gold. And wars would follow:

  The absorption of value.

  Cloaked in their dark clouds, the world had narrowed, but his circle of friends had widened. One of them was the physicist Nicola Tesla. The eccentric Serb, sought by few, and master of electrical resonance, had pointed him in the right direction: quasi-organic intrusion into electronic communication, including phone lines. Later, confirming results with the renowned Dr. Steinmetz, pioneer of magnetic transformers, Ryan’s employer had asked himself a question: how safe are the secrets of time? Advancing into chemistry, he had concluded that if they were to be safe at all, they would be safest with him. Meanwhile, the secrets of banking, and cash accumulation, along with his hard-won scientific knowledge, shared with Ryan, had put him on a parity, and in a fighting-stance position, as it were, with those whose purposes it was to pull the wool over the face of the world:

  Over Eisenhower’s, in particular.

  From Ryan, who had driven down from Dublin, Sinclair was now hearing about Bernstein; and their impending meeting with The Spy. Where? That there would actually be one, coiled as it were in dark mysteries, was the news of the hour. So, for her personally then, where had it all begun? Had it started at the vicarage? When she had first known she was different? She remembered her years of struggle, to be somebody; meeting Mrs. Churchill at the Royal Hotel; the Ferry Pilots, and the months at Weymouth; Lieutenant Carrington; and David Hamilton. Suddenly, she was feeling terribly frightened: it was her son. The Allied cause was looming larger than the storm. And of England’s imminent danger, her real traitors, what?

  De Beck!

  Ryan came out of a skid, his hands were on the wheel.

  “De Beck? He’s a German.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Friend of yours?”

  “Blimey, no..!” She whacked him.

  His foot hit the gas.

  Valerie, fighting for the big picture, was seeing it.

  There had been a dream—or was it?—the face of de Beck emerging out of it. Another’s, too! Had Marchaud been there? It was night, they had come rushing out of a tunnel...Certainly they had! Now, as if arriving from the future, other photographs were coming into focus: falling and fluttering through the night.

  Valerie grabbed at them, she was remembering:

  Thursday afternoon, on their way to Polperro in the Rolls, she had noted the thickness of the Frenchman’s neck, his insistence on details. His arrogance at the dance, insensitivity to her pain at Achnacarry, and flawless American accent—had not Hamilton himself remarked on it?—had all been pointing to the obvious, to the singular photograph of a German agent:

  Teeth flashing in the sun...

  The Spy had called her at The Red Lion.

  Coming closer to her ideal—she was still wearing that damned Rubinstein bra!—he was also the one to whom they were going; but it was his call to her in the Manager’s office, thwarting the British Override, that had forced her to decide. Trees were rushing past, eerie outposts of the dangers all around them. Valerie clung to the strap. Now, staring through the glass, catapulting through the darkness, she was witnessing the world of The Spy.

  Ryan said it: She could expect him in France.

  “Will there be a mission then?”

  The driver thought that there would. Of course, it could be delayed for a few days: until General Eisenhower returned from Normandy. Would she be going? “That’s not for me to say,” Ryan said. “Why don’t you just relax?” The Spy was leaving England, they would protect her son.

  “Got it.”

  Ryan had heard something, he was watching the heavens. Valerie leaned forward, she looked through the windshield: Ursa Major stood before them.

  It was upside down.

  With polarized light for the central girders, otherwise known as stars, their floor of work had become the other part of the physical tunnel of time...reaching all the way into France. Slowed to twent
y-nine miles per hour, Ryan held them steady.

  Valerie started blinking...

  Ursa Major turned right side up.

  Click!

  Ryan shifted gears, the Camera Shop was open.

  Night closed over the Channel, strong winds running north. Prints of the Alternate Route, taken as living pictures, they were developing on the submarine:

  The Captain appeared.

  The whole place smelled of carbide!

  Sounds and great, deep rumblings...

  The submarine was ascending.

  She could feel it in the change of pressure and in the quiet sway of bulkheads, along passageways devoid of men. It was Blackstone’s voice, addressing the ship:

  A woman on a man-o-war!

  Step by step, Hamilton was hurting. His refraction of this basic law, necessitated by the undisciplined nature of men, had led him to the isle of the leper. With a will of iron, he was leading her, the untouchable, by the hand.

  Step lively now, he could hear himself saying, come along this way, child, this way, they were at a ladder, careful now—

  The submarine surfaced.

  Hamilton and de Beck climbed through the conning tower and down the rungs onto the deck. The Captain and several of his crew, working forward, were preparing to launch a small rubber raft.

  It was the Carley float.

  Hamilton moved forward to the bow. His eyes searched the skies, as if looking for the approach of her plane. The rains had stopped. Waves sloshed gently against the hull.

  De Beck studied the shoreline, where fog was forming. It was not a clear sea, but that would be in his favor. Binoculars swept the beach. “Seems clear,” the Skipper said, his face shadowed. “Yes, Sparks, what is it?” The radioman had approached, he stood at the Captain’s side. The men were proceeding with the raft. Silently, Pierre joined them. Hamilton was observing.

  “Commander Hamilton?”

  Hamilton turned. The Captain handed him the radiogram, it was deciphered. From Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten; Mountbatten of Burma:

  Beaulieu...

  Hamilton read it, he glanced at the sky. Dieppe came to mind. He remembered her, the way she had looked. Strapped into a parachute, she had just had her teeth cleaned. He had bought her a drink, at Leed’s...Mary Gladstone, Number Fifteen. The radiogram had released him from his chains, defining Number Sixteen, Sinclair’s, question: If neither she nor de Beck made it, what would happen to England?

  Hamilton pocketed the paper. He motioned the Captain aside, away from de Beck; and they had a quiet conversation. The Captain nodded, he said something to his men: the Carley float was being pulled back aboard. Pierre had seen it:

  Something wasn’t right!

  Hamilton was looking at him. The Commander’s eyes were hard, like stars. De Beck wheeled, he was staring at the beach; his mind punctured, as though by injections of ether...

  What has happened to GOLDILOCKS?

  She is smiling shyly. Softly, she was singing: a lullaby in French, her child’s voice melding with the mourning of the owls.

  She was there! Ahead of him! In his future!

  Behind that tree—and there—from the black draconian tunnel, emerging out of blue light into Brittany, two girls had hurried to be ready. Through the physical tunnel of time, one of them is carried home to England. The other remains, waiting to welcome him. She stands, in reception, shadowless in the white heat of the moon. Behind her, swastikas, bobbing in torchlight, and the final dreams of children. Her arm reached out, she was waving to him! Pierre was wild, they had pulled him to the deck.

  Valerie! Nous le tenons!

  Hands, bearing handcuffs, had taken hold of him; he was beyond help. God was singing. Her song was Justice. Holding high a torch, she was coming for him: for what he had done, for who he was; for the unspeakable thing he had become:

  Le Partenaire, n’est ce pas?

  De Beck was screaming.

  Back ablaze by moonlight, he was seeing it before: glancing over his shoulder, in darkness, on last night’s rutted road. Sweet as the sting of a black, black rose with its single thorn of death...calling his name from the shores of France:

  Stood the girl he had left behind!

  Sinclair sorted through the photographs.

  The prints of her friend, standing on the beach in France, would become her favorite. Valerie tapped Ryan on the shoulder. He turned. She handed him his lighter. He had wondered where it was. The limousine was accelerating. She looked out the window: the stars were blue. Having geared herself for raindrops, here they were, speeding through surprises.

  Was it because of the weather!

  Along the windy reaches of the road, and spinning behind them, projections of her past had become mirror images. Faces on prints, emerged out of time, they were the pictures of the people of the secrets. Sent by an English shopgirl who had photographed their motives, and who wasn’t as dumb as she looked, Valerie had forwarded the proofs.

  They had been delivered to the secret place of The Spy, along deserted comers of counterespionage, somewhere up ahead. There, balancing a flashlight, he would be looking at them:

  Hamilton, loyal Welshman, yet in the dark following Blackstone’s orders; taking Pierre to France without her; his grey eyes searching the skies for a plane.

  De Beck, teeth flashing in the sun, spying for—

  The black glove turned another...

  —von Schroeder, Commandant of Abwehr: a position allowing the Nazi banker to steal the Bomb from his own people. Summer days in snapshots: Berlin. London. Marley Square, home of Abwehr; home of bankers, of apple strudel and cinnamon; and handcuffs and black chains, and years of trust:

  Mary Gladstone.

  Mountbatten, studio pose, who in ordering the arrest of de Beck had blocked von Schroeder’s transfer of atomic secrets; preventing the completion by the Gestapo of the murder of Valerie Marchaud...

  The flip side.

  Saving Sinclair.

  In Blackstone’s reverse shot, a montage, Mountbatten is perceived as having become irresponsible to the real purposes of GOLDILOCKS. Parker takes credit. Full control of the mission, reverted to Blackstone, would ensure the successful return of the German data by de Beck.

  Black glove, finger missing, turned the prints...

  Churchill, a glossy, shown later in his published works, will leave the Waterfall, carrier for the first nuclear bomb, unnamed; an oversight that will prompt MI.5, on the first anniversary of the fire at the Hotel Ritz, to bum their card catalogues. What will not bum, passionately protected and held in Egalité by General LeClerc of the Free French, will be the biological transcripts of the two Valeries, Sinclair and Marchaud:

  Who were separate, if equal; and often on the run.

  Meanwhile, The Spy, entering once again into the life of Valerie Sinclair, and in a personal way, had fitted his movements to hers, like a hand to a glove. Having made the arrangements with Ryan to escort the British photographer to her mysterious rendezvous, hadn’t he overlooked something?

  Valerie fished through her prints.

  The London Financial District?

  Protected by Bletchley Park, yet dealing from the Top to steal nuclear technology for his partners, Blackstone’s Blackmail List had come back to haunt him—leaving Mountbatten a hero, stuck with Bull Durham; and with Sinclair in the Middle:

  Which is no place for a Lady to be.

  Mouse in a hole and plugged by the Override Code; seemingly, with no way of escape, The Spy had appeared and belled the cat for Valerie Sinclair, freeing her from the grip of the British Lion.

  The snout of the car was gulping at the fog.

  It was the mist, curling across the blinded fields pierced by the chilling lamps of the car. Valerie snuggled deeper into her coat. The motor throbbed, devouring the miles. “What are your hobbies?” She was asking Ryan.

  He thought about it. “Welding, maybe.”

  “Was it you then, in Polperro, at the tomcat’s house!”


  Ryan wouldn’t say that it wasn’t. He was talking.

  He spun them over a bridge. It led to Bernstein. Hearing from the Boffin, James Bridley, that his best bet to get to the girl would probably be The Spy, Bernstein had immediately forced Bridley into a comer. Returning his call, and being low on chips, James Bridley had cashed his last one, lifted from Parker; and dealt the Override to Bernstein. Armed with the Code, whose parts were now in order, thanks to Bridley, in debt to Alan Turing; the lawyer had cut a deal with the Boffin for Ryan’s unlisted telephone number, courtesy of the El Flamingo. After various negotiations, the lawyer buying the drinks, Ryan had put him in touch with his employer. Receiving the Override from Bernstein, The Spy had used it to call Sinclair; by-passing Hamilton, while duping his Security Team into thinking it from Churchill.

  Seems Bridley and The Spy had once worked together on the same motion picture; Bridley, on behalf of the Baker Street Irregulars, having used the occasion to get the goods on actor Herbert Marshall—politically suspect at the time—background information he hoped to peddle to the War Office. Tossing a few after work at their favorite bar—farewell drinks prior to Bridley’s departure to join Mountbatten—The Spy had suggested that Bridley try wiring the urinal downstairs, since Marshal was in the habit of talking to himself while using it, a consequence of faulty zippers in the flys of his suits, picked up dirt cheap from that British assistant of Madame Roc’s. Unquestionably upset by it, Marshall had been drinking more than he ought; an unfortunate fact which had furthered his problem, in the El Flamingo, around the corner from Harrod’s and just up the street from the back room of Bobby Blake’s.

  Well sir!

  Never one to let a zipper stand in his way, Bridley would have wired that urinal too, had it not been for the intervention of that Irishman, Ryan, waiting to spirit The Spy up to Scotland. Ryan, the first to check the call from Bernstein, had also been the first to read the letter from Ike: carried in the lawyers’briefcase, from Southwick. Checking the signature, he had transferred it immediately to The Spy; who was glad to hear that Bridley was still alive.