by M. L. Huie
“Miss Nash,” Laurel said. He flashed a black wallet. “You’ll need to come with us, ma’am.”
She managed a grin. “What took you so bloody long?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The interrogator sat down and placed the cigarettes on the square metal table. He pried open the cellophane film with a discolored thumbnail, and rapped the pack against his right hand several times until three of the smokes poked out the top. Placing one between his lips, he slowly drew it out. The routine, which seemed choreographed, ended with the flick of a silver Ronson lighter. Flame ignited the tobacco, and he drew the smoke into his lungs.
This American was the second one to question Livy since they’d brought her to this nondescript, flat gray building on the outskirts of the city. Two women had gotten her “checked in.” After taking all her things and issuing a pressed white blouse and cotton skirt, they’d dumped her in this small interview room with a table, two chairs, and overhead fluorescent lights that hummed and compounded the massive headache she’d been nursing.
Then came the man with the horn-rimmed glasses and the pack of Camels.
As Americans went, this one was a lot like the GIs Livy had met in France. Square head, haircut like a freshly trimmed garden, and no sense of humor. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and a black tie that was knotted tight against his thick Adam’s apple. For a moment Livy felt pity for the man. The furrowed expression on his brow gave her the impression he was as uncomfortable in his skin as he appeared to be in his clothes.
Putting the pack down on the table, the interrogator pushed it toward Livy.
“Help yourself.”
“No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t partake.”
The choice of words must have piqued the interrogator’s interest. He studied her through the smoke. His thick lips held the cigarette tight, and his brown eyes narrowed, as if seeing her for the first time. Livy assumed this squinty chap must be another step up, an escalation in the severity of the conversations that took place in this white room with no windows.
Livy glanced around, wondering where the listening devices would be. Crack in the floor? Too obvious even for the FBI. Those bloody buzzing lights? No, the interrogator must’ve brought it in.
“You don’t sound like a regular Brit,” he said, dusting his ashes in a glass tray. Microphone blown into the glass, perhaps? She definitely needed sleep.
“Shall I start quoting Shakespeare, then? That make you more comfortable?” Livy waved the smoke out of her face.
He grunted and opened the black file lying perfectly aligned beside his notebook. “I have a few questions. If you answer them, this will go quickly. Understand? Let’s start with your war record, Miss Nash. In 1940, you joined the—First Aid Nursing Yeomanry?” The words sounded thick on his tongue.
“I told the others all this. Didn’t they take good notes?”
The interrogator punched out his cigarette and removed his glasses.
Here comes the scolding bit.
“Let me be clear. Your situation could not be more serious,” he said. “Treason. Murder. Assaulting a federal officer. So I’m not inclined to laugh at your jokes.”
“Hold on. Assaulting a what?”
“A federal officer. Special Agent Keller.”
Livy would have laughed if her head didn’t feel as if it might split open.
“Tender sort, our Agent Keller, isn’t he? Suit yourself.”
“I want to begin with your service in the war.” The interrogator checked his notes. “Why do you think you were recruited? You’d done nothing really worthy of their attention. Was it luck?”
Livy smiled. “Better. New tactic. Make me defend myself. Keep going.”
The cigarette smoke in the gray room had dissipated. The air between the two sides of the table felt clearer.
“Whatever the reason, they took you anyway. Maybe it was your language skills. Maybe because you were an orphan. No one to really worry if something happened to you in France.” He checked his notes. “The Special Operations Executive. You must’ve served alongside quite a few genuine heroes. Did you want to be a hero, Miss Nash?”
Livy’s head throbbed. She read his every move, and yet the bastard got to her. She’d murder a bottle of vodka now, given half a chance.
“Go on then,” she said. “You’re quite the storyteller.”
“This is your story, ma’am. Let’s see now. You’re captured. Rescued by an Allied patrol from a Gestapo prison. But after the war there’s nothing out there for you. Is there? MI6 won’t have you. It’s back to—what? Regular life? Did you feel that your country had used and then discarded you?
Livy looked away. The cover Fleming cooked up for her was sticking, but good. What would the critics say. “She played the part so well you’d almost believe she’s not acting.”
“Your life after the war must have seemed pretty dull by comparison. Did you come back feeling that your country owed you something?”
“Well, a Christmas card would’ve been nice.”
The interrogator’s expression was as blank as the white walls. “Funny. I hope you realize, though, the only way you’re getting out of this room is by giving me some answers.”
Livy leaned back in her metal chair, which was about as comfortable as the iron maiden, and considered her position. She’d left one prison for an entirely new one. What would they do with her here? God knows, Keller could clear this whole thing up with one sentence. Unless he figured that Kostin really had his hooks into her, and that’s why Livy got violent and then fled the safe house. It made sense in a way. Keller had never taken her seriously as an agent. It wasn’t out of the question that he would interpret her actions as those of a real traitor.
What a mess she’d landed in.
At least she’d made the delivery to the embassy, and with any luck Alice would be deciphering her code, and Margot’s whereabouts would be on its way to London. Livy tried to see a day in the future when she and Margot might even be able to have a laugh about all they’d been through. That day still seemed far way.
“Fine. I’ll answer,” she said finally. “Fire away.”
“You were having a sexual relationship with Yuri Kostin, isn’t that right?”
Livy rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t call it a relationship. I’d call it my job.”
“You previously had a sexual relationship with Kostin in—1945 in London?”
“Been doing your homework, haven’t you?”
The interrogator scribbled something on the pad in front of him.
“You were directed by Agent Keller to cease this operation after the death of Gennady Yakupov. Is that the way you remember it?”
She didn’t answer.
“When you were instructed to end the operation, you then had a physical confrontation with an agent of the Bureau?”
Livy looked away.
“Miss Nash?”
“Where is he anyway? Keller?”
“I’d like you to answer the question.”
“I know you would. So why don’t we make a deal? I’ll answer yours, you answer mine.”
He didn’t flinch. Livy wasn’t sure he was capable. “You’re not really in a position to make demands right now, Miss Nash. If you’d like to move this forward and get out of this room at some point, I suggest you answer.”
“Right, heard you the first time. But what you’re missing is, I had a job too. From my people.”
The interrogator looked up from writing. “Then you disappeared for two days after the cease and desist. Your story is that the Soviets kept you at a house in Maryland?”
“Well, it looked like Maryland.”
“Did you continue your sexual relationship with Kostin there?”
Livy saw where all this was going. The interrogator was building his case against her. Seduced by the big bad Russian, she’d joined their team. Then, she’d killed him in a fit of passion. It would make a great spy novel.
“Sam Keller.
Ask him these questions. He knows what I was doing, why I came here in the first place. I’m done talking to you.”
The interrogator took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired too. “Miss Nash, I have to say that would be very unwise.”
“Get Keller in here, and we’ll all have a chat. How’s that?”
“He is being questioned in a separate facility.”
Livy had to laugh. It just got more absurd. “Questioned? About what?”
The interrogator put on his glasses.
“Did you continue your sexual relationship with Yuri Kostin at the Soviet compound in Maryland?”
She closed her eyes. The overhead light burned right through to the back of her skull. “I’m a British citizen,” she said through clenched teeth. “I want to see someone from my embassy. I will have no further answers for you—sir—until I speak to a representative from the Embassy of the United Kingdom.”
The interrogator put down his pencil, placed his pack of Camels on top of his notebook, and walked away from the table. At the door he turned to her.
“These fluorescent lights are hell if you have a headache, aren’t they?”
He left, closing the door hard. The sound reverberated in Livy’s head and all the way down her spine.
Chapter Thirty
Washington
British Embassy
It had been twenty-eight hours since Eric Dalby had slept. His job as head of station for MI6 in Washington was never relaxing, but since taking the position at the end of the war, life had settled into a certain predictability. He’d made a home in the States, even married an American woman. Their first child would turn two next month.
Then, a folded note in a passport had arrived at the front gate of the embassy. The desk girl, Alice, took it to her boss, and he in turn brought it to Dalby. He didn’t know the code. Nor did he recognize the girl in the picture. Margot Dupont. The code turned out to be a cipher from the war based on a specific page in a specific book. They’d been lucky that Alice had worked codes a few years back. Once she had decoded the writing, Dalby set about verifying the information in it. That prompted the long daily call to headquarters in London.
At the moment, he had sent two of his officers to try to verify the note. One had begun to liaise with the FBI while the other sought to find out what he could on the alleged death of the MGB officer Kostin. Dalby knew if everything in the note was accurate, then his somewhat routine job might very well blow up in his face.
He picked up a spoon and stirred the milk in his third cup of tea before two o’clock. He had two phones on his desk. The black phone for local calls and a green one, which was the new transatlantic line that could be used to scramble to London. They’d made the call to London at noon. No response yet. On his desk lay a copy of the note, its translation, and a passport in the name of Olivia Katherine Nash, as well as the station’s file on Kostin. He studied the Russian’s picture. Handsome. Looked intelligent, but the man had been a holy terror during the war and was set to be head of the MGB Berlin station.
Not a bad one to be rid of.
The green phone rang.
Dalby picked up.
“Connecting you to London, sir. Please wait,” the switchboard operator said. He heard two loud clicks, and the line went silent. The phone had been installed just six months ago and used only once as a test.
Twenty seconds later he heard the voice of Henry Dunbar, faint and muffled, but clear enough. Dalby listened.
“Yes, sir. Yes, we’re trying to verify it all now, sir … I do understand the severity, yes … yes … Sir, if I may, she is a British citizen. We have her passport … right … yes, sir. I understand. Very good, sir.”
The call ended.
Dalby looked across his desk at a picture of his wife on their wedding day. Next to it, a photo of her and their little boy, taken on his first birthday. He could never tell them what he was about to do. If he did, they’d be so ashamed.
* * *
They’d let Livy sleep in what looked like a converted office with two rollaway beds on either side of the room. A couple of metal desks had been pushed together in the center to give the cots some separation. The dark paneling of the walls and the shades pulled down over the windows gave the room a feel of perpetual night. One of the stern secretaries, whom Livy had taken to calling Glasses on account of the thick black spectacles she wore, slept in the other cot while a US Army guard sat on a chair outside the door all night. Livy couldn’t rest. She found it impossible to get comfortable. Her entire body ached.
Dreams plagued her as well. Not the garden variety—“Oh, I was almost killed today”—or visions of Kostin’s body looking like Julius Caesar’s, with so many gaping wounds. No, she dreamed of Fresnes, the Nazi prison where she had been held near the end of the war.
It began with Livy alone walking down a long hallway with many doors on both sides. She heard the screams of women being tortured and killed behind every door. Except the last one. Livy opened it. Two bodies together as one. Margot stood in a clinch with Yuri Kostin. They did not see her, their intimacy unchanged by Livy’s presence. The Russian undressed Margot, his hands moving slowly over her body. Margot was passive to his actions. As her dress slipped to the floor, Margot turned. She held Livy’s gaze for a second. The look betrayed no meaning. They simply saw each other, and then Livy woke up.
After that she lay awake on the cot until Glasses told her to get up. Another day, another prison. Livy obeyed, though her body felt as if a giant had sat on her all night. At Fresnes she’d been beaten. This didn’t feel very different.
The day progressed on a predictable routine. Breakfast. Another round of questioning with the male interrogator and his Camels. Lunch. More questioning. After the last round, they kept her in the interrogation room alone. The fluorescents buzzed. Livy put her head down on the wooden table. They were slowly breaking her with white walls and boredom.
After about half an hour, the door opened, and a man she’d not seen before walked in. He looked about ten years older than Livy. Pointed nose, green eyes, blondish hair receding. Blue suit. School tie.
“Miss Nash, I’m Eric Dalby from the embassy.” His accent sounded Oxbridge, like Fleming’s.
Livy raised her head and sat back in the metal chair. Dalby blanched on seeing the bruising around her neck.
“You should see the other fella,” she said.
“What? Oh yes. As I said I’m the Foreign Office liaison here.”
Meaning MI6, Livy thought.
“I’m here to make sure you are being taken care of.”
“Oh, I am that, Mr. Dalby.”
He steepled his fingers and sighed. “I’m sure the conditions here are less than ideal. The good news is the Americans have made no charges against you as of yet. However, I have to tell you, the circumstances are quite serious.”
“That much has been made very clear to me. But what hasn’t been is why they are keeping me here when I was working with them and for you.”
“Sorry? For me?”
“Our government.”
Dalby put his hands on the table, almost as if steadying himself. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Livy felt the scream deep in her gut. They bloody well wouldn’t do this to her after all she’d been through. She shook her head and pounded her hand against the table.
“Would you like me to spell it out, then? In this room?”
Dalby straightened his tie, cleared his throat. “Miss Nash, what you did—or did not do for that matter—was not authorized by His Majesty’s Government in any way.”
“Is it ever?”
“As far as I know, you’re a journalist and nothing more.”
Livy slumped in the chair. This is it. It was a cock-up and her own people were going to let her take the fall. All nice and deniable on their end. She wished she’d thought to ask Anka how to get out when they keep piling it on your head, deeper and deeper.
“Miss Nash—”
“Henry Dunbar. Right?”
“I’m very sorry I can’t be of more help,” he said, and he sounded sincere. Dalby stood up, buttoned his coat and headed for the door.
Livy stood and held her hand out to him. She wanted to throttle the little messenger boy. “My passport. I’ll have that, if you don’t mind.”
Dalby grimaced. “Of course. Once the Bureau has decided how they wish to handle this matter and you are free to leave, then the embassy will be more than happy to restore your passport.”
“Mr. Dalby,” she said, stopping him as his hand was on the doorknob, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve done my share of dirty work for our government too.”
He hesitated. “I do wish you all the best, Miss Nash.”
Chapter Thirty-One
London
That evening
The Western Union courier was waiting when Ian Fleming returned to his office. He’d been home to collect clothes for work tomorrow, helped himself to a bourbon and branch water, then returned to the office.
A telegram this late at night was rare, even in a business where Kemsley’s correspondents worked in every time zone around the world. Fleming tipped the young man generously and stepped into the dark office to read the message.
It came from Wilson Price, Fleming’s correspondent in Washington, as well as Livy’s editor there. It read: NASH HELD BY FBI STOP PLEASE ADVISE
Fleming slammed the telegram down on Pen Baker’s desk and swore. Damn Henry Dunbar.
He grabbed the receiver on his secretary’s desk and dialed her home number. She answered on the third ring. He could hear a man’s voice in the background. Of course there would be.
“Pen, darling, I need you at work tonight. Yes, frightfully sorry, but we have a bit of a crisis. Yes. It’s Olivia, dear. No, she’s still in Washington, but listen. Before you go, I want you to stop and send a telegram to Price. Yes, tonight. I want him to drop what he’s doing and do whatever it takes to find out anything about Olivia. Tell him to stand on the front steps of the FBI building all day and night if he must. Oh, and send a telegram to Fisher in New York. I want him on the first train to Washington in the morning. Same thing. Yes, my dear, I know. Everything else will just have to wait.”