The Nazi Spy

by Alan Hardy

  Something clicked inside him, his face softened, and he held out a hand to her.

  She moved up to him, and tentatively took it.

  They clasped each other’s hands tightly.

  He made no other move. He didn’t try to kiss her, let alone try anything else.

  Fiona breathed in deeply. He was learning. He was beginning to behave towards her as she wanted.

  Please God, in a little while she might have him eating out of her hands…

  “All right, Fiona, let me get this straight,” said Matthew, as they sat side by side on the sofa in the study, bodies not touching, but hands still clasped together. “You’re saying I could have been responsible for shooting down Freddie’s Spit because I wanted you just for myself? Is that it?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “I wasn’t even in his squadron at the time.”

  “But you were nearby, Matthew.”

  “So, I was so madly in love with you that I became a crazed killer?”

  She smiled.

  “I’d hardly ever met you, Fiona. I—”

  “You’d kissed me once. Do you remember?”

  He nodded.

  “And the letters between us, which you’re not now denying you wrote,” she murmured coyly, “made you…well…”

  “So, a few letters, and one or two glimpses of you, made me fall madly in love with you, and turned my thoughts to ones of murder. Right?”

  “Why not?”

  She smiled at him again.

  “Why wouldn’t I just strangle him, or blow his brains out, or push him off the cliffs at Beachy Head?”

  “If you blasted him out of the sky, nobody would ever find out. Fog of war, as Group Captain Jenkins said. No fingerprints. No witnesses in the vast, empty, blue sky. You’d be in the clear.”

  “Well, you certainly have a vivid imagination, Fiona.”

  “And how did you know his plane came down at Beachy Head?” she asked acutely, giving him a hard look.

  Matthew looked chastened for a moment.

  “But everyone knows that.”

  “Do they?”

  “For God’s sake, Fiona, am I being interrogated?” snapped Matthew, half-jokingly, and half-seriously, making as if to shift away from her, and pull his hand away.

  She clung on to his hand, keeping him close to her.

  “Joking apart, Matthew,” she said, turning to look him full in the face, “do you absolutely deny it?”

  “What a curious look in your eyes,” he murmured.

  “Well?”

  “You’re being silly, Fiona. Of course I didn’t—”

  “Then who did?”

  “But nobody murdered him!” he insisted. “Friendly fire is friendly fire. Just a bloody accident!”

  “And his telegram?”

  “But, darling, you seem to think we’re living out chapters in an Agatha Christie novel, or a few reels in a Hollywood melodrama. You really have to—”

  “Then who else could have done it?” she cut in excitedly.

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me, Fiona,” he remarked laconically.

  “Well, obviously, you know more than me, but it’s pretty clear there’s something going on between Paula Wentworth and George Turnbill, isn’t there? And he was stationed at Biggin Hill, right near Tangmere, I mean, he had a motive too, didn’t he?”

  “And what would be his motive?” asked Matthew, looking very curiously at her.

  “Well, as you probably already know,” she answered, a little sheepishly, blushing awkwardly, “Paula is a lady who is no better than she should be, and…well…I think Freddie was one of her many admirers…”

  “So?”

  “So, George Turnbill’s motive would be to eliminate his rival for Paula’s affections.”

  “Oh, Fiona, you have such an eighteenth-century view of affairs of the heart, when they were all duelling, and calling each other out, and eliminating rival suitors… Only, nowadays, it’s not pistols and cutlasses at dawn, it seems, it’s Spitfires two o’ clock high in the sky.”

  “You’re just being silly, Matthew!” she exclaimed, turning away, and looking annoyed.

  “Is that what you want us to become? A sleuthing couple? Examining clues with our magnifying-glasses to deduce who was Freddie’s murderer?”

  Once alone, and pacing up and down the large drawing-room, she felt greatly relieved.

  Things hadn’t gone so badly in the end. Matthew had behaved respectfully towards her, totally unlike Freddie.

  That tetchy rudeness of yesterday had disappeared, and her succumbing so easily to his sexual advances—however breath-taking it had been at the time—had not led him to mistreat her.

  They had just ended up chatting—almost in jest—about her suspicions regarding Freddie’s death.

  He hadn’t professed his undying love for her, and nor had she for him. It was difficult to say definitely exactly what relationship they had, or were going to have. He was fond of her. That was for sure. They had held hands for quite a while, but he hadn’t then thought that what had happened last night gave him the right to jump all over her again. That was good, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to be judged in the way she herself judged Paula, or even Belinda. She so wanted the romantic story she had fantasized over in her youth—and which she had never had the luck to experience—to be something attainable, real, now standing before her in the person of Flight Lieutenant Matthew Manfred.

  Mind you, he had given her a nice peck on the lips upon leaving. That was lovely, wasn’t it? She thought he really understood her, and her fears about such matters, and would treat her properly. That was so important for her, not just because of the great disappointment dirty, old Freddie had been, but also because there had been such an emotional void in her life, even before Freddie entered upon the scene.

  And she had compensated for that feeling of emptiness by formulating and storing away secrets in her mind, which she had to keep apart from the world around her.

  So, where had she got to in her tasks?

  Well, Matthew was definitely the letter-writer.

  Why had he denied it? Why had he got George to cover for him?

  A young man’s shyness? Embarrassment? Even shame? He had pretended to be someone he wasn’t. He had chosen to delve into her most private thoughts, and the most intimate moments which she had shared with her husband, many of which had horrified her. That prurient interest might well be something he would rather not admit, but hide away in his mind.

  She and Matthew, they were so alike in so many ways.

  Apart from their ages. That was another reason she expected him to behave honourably towards her. She wouldn’t accept that her intense feelings could be dismissed as a young man’s short-lived, passionate involvement with her. It had to be something deeper, or, failing that, nothing at all.

  Time would tell.

  There were many other things to sort out before the answer to that problem would be answered.

  So, Task Number One was achieved.

  Task Number Two was to find out who had killed Freddie. Matthew denied that it was him. Was he telling the truth? She tended to believe him. But even if he had not personally fired the 20 mm cannon shells which ripped Freddie’s Spitfire apart, and thereby made Fiona’s life so much sweeter and carefree, had he been involved in its planning?

  Time would tell.

  She had to get Matthew to confide in her. He had to reveal all his little secrets to her. She had to find out who he really was.

  Because, just as she was convinced that Freddie had been deliberately targeted, she was equally sure that there was a spy in their midst.

  Who was he? Or she?

  That was Task number Three.

  Was it Matthew?

  It seemed quite possible.

  And, if it was Matthew, would she have the resolve to ignore her heart, and put a bullet in his beautiful head?

  12

  They had a handful of days
just to themselves. It was magnificent. It was like a romantic film lovingly churned out by Hollywood.

  They went for strolls in the countryside surrounding Fiona’s vast mansion, traipsing hand in hand across lush fields, with the heart-stopping sweep of valleys and mountains in the gorgeous Scottish background.

  It was like a movie starring any two out of Ronald Coleman, Jean Arthur, Vivien Leigh and Cary Grant.

  They played silly games, chasing after each other like innocent children, and then, when they’d caught up with each other, playfully grabbed each other and rolled about on the soft earth, not quite like innocent children.

  They went for picnics together, the war totally forgotten, and Fiona’s past dismissed from her mind. Picnics which were dutifully prepared by James, the butler, and Molly, the cook.

  They lay side by side on a cloth laid out on the grass below a tree, and spoke of silly things. They gazed up at the heavens, and felt assured of their place in the scheme of things. And they kissed now and then, he leaning over her as she lay there, removing a blade of grass from his mouth, and joining his lips to hers.

  Of course, it couldn’t last.

  Fiona finally experienced that youthful, overwhelming romance she had dreamt of, where she could lose herself in a world of gushing silliness.

  And, despite her prudish intentions and moralizing, of course they made love again. A couple of times. The kissing and petting morphed smoothly and naturally into something else, so, on the ruffled cloth on the ground, and with breadcrumbs sticking to her limbs, she experienced that sweet, restrained explosion of her body beneath her lovely, tender young man. Somehow embarrassed by being out in the open, she consciously suppressed the abandon of her orgasm, keeping her lips tight so that she didn’t yell out, but gave out something like a series of frog-in-the-throat chokes.

  This was how she had imagined it. Lying back, looking up at the heavens, her outstretched limbs naked to the cooling breeze, her beautiful young man gazing down upon her, and their childish, little post-coital kisses, all summed up her joyous fulfilment.

  Those fantasies she had kept bottled up inside her had burst out and been realized. Not in a dirty, squalid way, but in the way she had always hoped. For once, she had been blessed.

  But it couldn’t last.

  It’s not that his lovemaking was unblemished. Far from it. She felt he could have delayed the ecstatic culmination of their jockeying and grinding a little longer, and she was aware that she was both reacting to his movements, and controlling them at times. She had to temper his enthusiasm, channel it more diffusely, maybe imaginatively, even while she was in the grip of her bodily mania.

  She realized again that her long history of lying under poor Freddie, her eyes fixed on the clock wall, wishing the minute-hand Godspeed on its click-clocking journey, had not been wasted. His writhing and thrusting, which had seemed an invasive outrage committed upon her body, had taught her how to guide and respond to Matthew. Basically, she knew the moves. They hadn’t worked on her when Freddie had made them. Now, remembering them, she was able to put them to good use with Matthew. She only wished she had paid a bit more attention to Freddie, so that she could have picked up a few more tips. As it was, instead of being an eager pupil, she had spent most of the time at the back of the class, disinterested, doodling nonsense on the cover of her exercise-book.

  She was a young woman again. She knew it was ridiculous, and couldn’t last. But it was wonderful. She was finally with her glorious, young man. And the fact that she was thirty-eight? Well, she would deal with that later.

  Then, one day, Matthew left a message by phone with the butler that he had been called to London for a meeting, and would call round the next day.

  A bit strange, she thought.

  Of course, pilots were expected to attend the occasional meeting or course. Stuff on leadership qualities and requirements, the latest design of Focke-Wulf 290, recent developments in tactics…

  But this was a bit short notice. Either that, or Matthew just hadn’t bothered to tell her until the last minute.

  It was strange, and Fiona hated the idea that she wouldn’t see him for a whole twenty-four hours. She wouldn’t be able to hold him, keep his living, breathing body by her all day, just for herself, and gaze wantonly into his deep, blue eyes. It just wasn’t fair.

  But she had already known it couldn’t last.

  And it didn’t.

  The problem was that it was all a pretence. At least, on her part. And probably on his, too.

  They both had secrets.

  Matthew’s secrets were what she had long known. What was his involvement in Freddie’s murder? And was he a spy? Basically, who the hell was he?

  Her secrets were a bit more than her long-suppressed sexual and romantic fantasies. They had been part of it, of course, and were now gloriously liberated from their mental prison and allowed to roam, like Matthew and her, within the undulating fields of Scotland.

  But the other secret was still firmly locked within her mind. She still kept that part of herself hidden. Because she couldn’t imagine how it could ever be allowed out.

  And the relationship between her and her lovely, young man could never be complete—or more than a fleeting dream—when there remained such a barrier between them. They were like a couple of swordsmen circling each other, prodding and fencing with their rapiers, testing this spot here, retreating from that spot there, and never able to penetrate fully into the other’s space. Never able to fully unite.

  Lies, subterfuge, and suspicions would keep them apart.

  And they could never talk about it because, once they did, they would probably be broken asunder. That wonderful dream would have vanished as quickly as it had materialized into reality. And not just that. There would be danger for both of them. Physical danger.

  You see, whenever Fiona wondered whether Matthew was the spy within their midst, she wasn’t fearing that he was a German spy, but that he worked for British Intelligence. She feared that he was a British spy.

  Because, you see, Fiona was a German spy.

  She’d been a German agent for a number of years now. Partly down to all that travelling she had done in the late twenties and the early thirties, and partly down to some of her contacts in her posh ‘set’.

  A few of her acquaintances knew people who knew people high up in the Nazi hierarchy, and, without particularly planning it, introductions had been made, meetings arranged, and follow-up meetings pencilled in.

  She had never been particularly political. In elections, she had always voted for the Conservatives, the run-of-the-mill right-wing party in Britain. A few friends did have links with the far right, the ‘set’ centred around Nancy Mitford, and the British leader of the Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley. But she had never met them.

  It had been suggested to her that she might like to keep the Nazis informed of opinion in Britain. She was told many others sympathetic to what the Nazis were doing—and it couldn’t be denied that they had rejuvenated their country—were passing on information. She would be doing a service to both countries, keeping Germany abreast of developments, making sure there would be no major and dangerous misunderstandings.

  She agreed.

  She was provided with a wireless transmitter.

  It was a time of her life when she was quite vulnerable. A loveless and childless marriage, and the heartache each birth of a child to one of her sisters brought her, left a void in her life which needed filling.

  She had never thought she was doing anything treacherous or evil. She was a person who mixed with the right people, had her ear to the ground, so to speak, and could send reports of the state of play in Britain to a country for whom such knowledge might be useful.

  She had never anticipated that Germany and Britain might end up fighting a war against each other. If anything, her ‘spying’ on Britain, she considered a means of preventing such an outcome. It was a way of helping to keep the two countries friendly. Knowledge pre
vented misunderstanding, and the suspicions which could lead to belligerent actions.

  Her sympathies were for the maintenance of the old order, that was true. She had led a life of privilege, and wanted to keep it that way. She had no sympathy for those who wanted to overthrow the system, and as such saw the Nazis as a necessary bulwark against Soviet Russia and the spread of Communism.

  She had become close to panic-stricken in the late thirties as the international order appeared to be on the verge of breaking down, and Britain and Germany seemed destined to descend once more into the horrors of war. The diplomatic see-saw of events in 1938, when it seemed Britain was going to go to war over Germany’s designs on Czechoslovakia, caused her great torment, and she was overjoyed when the Munich Agreement seemed to have settled the issue.

  But the slide towards war became inexorable. She became resigned to it. She didn’t stop sending reports to her handlers in Germany on public sentiment in her local area; she even continued passing on whatever snippets of information she gained on military morale and preparation from her RAF connections.

  She persevered with the role she had chosen.

  She hadn’t told Freddie anything about it. Anyway, he wasn’t the sort of person you could talk to about such concerns; he was too busy up to his filthy tricks in houses of ill-repute.

  She had got used to harbouring secrets in her head. Keeping things to herself. Deciding on something, and not changing her mind, and not telling anyone about it.

  That inner world of unfulfilled romantic dreams had space in it for other secrets. They had no need to jostle for space in that huge, empty area where a viable personal life should have found room.

  Then, when Germany seemed to carry all before it, occupying and defeating a host of countries in turn—Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France—it seemed the right thing to do all she could to hasten the end of the war by helping the side which was certain to win anyway. She had a role, however small, in doing what she could to bring an end to the suffering and the killing. If Germany was going to win, let them win quickly and painlessly.