An Unlikely Spy

by Rebecca Starford

  “That’s your man?”

  “Yes.” Julia’s breath was light against Evelyn’s cheek. “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

  “I suppose so. It’s serious, then, between you?”

  “You could say that.”

  “You know, I’m not sure I know his name.”

  Julia was staring down at the man, smiling faintly. “It’s Paul,” she said. “Paul Hancock.”

  Evelyn stared back at her, every one of her nerve endings crackling. “And he’s in the navy, you said?”

  “Not anymore. He’s an engineer, actually. He worked for a time at the plant in Acton.”

  A dark thrill pressed against Evelyn’s chest. “Siemens-Schuckert?”

  Julia’s smile grew wider. “Now, how did you know that?”

  But she hadn’t known. She hadn’t known a thing, and as she watched Julia lean against the banister, one foot tapping in time with the music on the rug, she felt something give inside herself, as if part of her flesh had been torn away. How could she have been so stupid?

  “Paul’s rented a room at the Crofton Hotel in Kensington,” Evelyn heard Julia say from far away; it was as if she had been plunged underwater. “I spend time there whenever I can get away from Curzon Street. In fact we’re driving back to London later tonight. Perhaps you’d like to come around on Friday? We’re entertaining a few other friends, then we might go out. Not the Four Hundred Club, I promise. Room number four, eight o’clock? I’m eager for you to meet him somewhere more private.”

  There was movement on the stairs below them, and Evelyn spied Sally’s blond hair, her dress trailing at her feet. She had the wedding bouquet in her hands. Evelyn turned to Julia.

  “Does Sally know? About Paul?”

  Julia shook her head. “And please don’t tell her, or Hugh. They’d only try to keep me away from him.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “He’s not like them. He’s . . . different.”

  Sally had reached the top of the stairs, looking about. “Evelyn?”

  Her voice was light but constrained by some emotion Evelyn didn’t recognize. She drew up alongside Julia, grasping the white roses so tightly the stems looked ready to snap. At last Sally stepped forward, her arm outstretched. The willowy silk of her dress was already crumpled, like the old wings of a moth. “Won’t you come with me, Evelyn?” she said quietly. “I’m about to throw the bouquet.”

  They went downstairs. The crowd had stopped their dancing. Sally stood on the third step, her arms raised for quiet, and when her audience had complied she made a pivot and launched the bouquet. Evelyn watched Hugh among the revelers, his delight stretched wide across his glowing red face. While today had marked a turning point in Sally’s life, Hugh’s happiness appeared just as absolute. She thought of her own father, and their recent trip to the seaside; how contented he had been with Evelyn and her mother together again. What kind of pain would the truth about Julia inflict on Hugh and the family?

  Across the hall, Evelyn spotted Julia standing beside Hancock, her head bent toward his as he whispered something, and when she met Evelyn’s eye she felt a dreadful thread between them grow taut once more. Then one of the McGregor twins plucked the bouquet from the air and the ballroom broke into maniacal applause.

  Twenty-Two

  WHEN EVELYN ARRIVED back from Shropshire on Sunday afternoon she ran straight up to the flat, had a quick wash at the basin, and changed her dress. Throwing on a teal cardigan and yanking up a fresh pair of woolen tights, it occurred to her that this day, and the decisions she made in it, would probably be the most important of her life. She grabbed her handbag and rushed back downstairs, catching the bus toward Green Park. As she alighted at the Natural History Museum, she realized she had at last moved beyond that place of careful calculation and was now acting purely on instinct.

  Part of this was knowing she had to confront Julia as soon as possible to prize her away from Paul Hancock before she brought ruin on herself and the rest of the Wesley family. It was only a matter of time before Special Branch closed in on the Siemens-Schuckert group. And with Nina Ivanov’s trial scheduled to start next week, Evelyn would soon be forced from the field back to desk work at the Scrubs—and no longer in a position to help Julia.

  There had been no opportunity to speak to Sally or Hugh about what she had learned at the wedding—Sally had left for Loch Lomond immediately after the wedding, and Evelyn had caught the first train back to London before most of the manor had awoken. A bigger problem was White. Failing to report Julia’s involvement with Hancock was risky, but Evelyn had come up with a plan by the time the train arrived at Euston. She would tell White that Julia had discovered her work at MI5 and threatened to blow her cover before the Lion Society trial. The lie was flimsy, but she knew he would be tempted by just how far Julia’s cooperation could extend once she came in to Chemley Court, especially if it meant they had an operative embedded deep inside a new cell of German sympathizers. If Evelyn walked this tightrope, it was just possible that everyone could come away from this untainted.

  The Crofton Hotel was a shabby hostel near Hyde Park. Before going inside, Evelyn stopped on the street to survey the pedestrians and passing cars, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Then she went to the corner phone box and had the operator put her through to the hotel’s concierge. An elderly man answered the call, and Evelyn asked to speak with a guest named Hancock—she needed to make sure Julia was alone in the room. After a few rings, Julia answered, and in a gruff voice Evelyn asked for “Paul.”

  “He’s just gone out,” Julia said. “He’ll be back in half an hour, or I can take down a message . . . ?”

  Evelyn hung up the phone and ran across the road, nodding a quick hello to the concierge and taking the stairs to the first floor. She strode the maroon-carpeted corridor until she found number four and knocked.

  After a moment, Julia opened the door. “Evelyn?” She looked past her, a confused smile on her face. “You know we’re not meeting until Friday. Paul’s just gone out.”

  Evelyn pushed her way inside. The room was small, two single beds with floral-printed sheets jammed together against a mildew-stained wall. The curtains were drawn, casting the place in a reddish light, and an ashtray on the side table smoldered with cigarette ends. Men’s slippers had been tossed beside the bed, a pair of braces hanging from the hook on the back of the door. Two toothbrushes in a glass by the basin, a bra flung over the chair.

  “Evelyn, what’s going on?”

  The room seemed to be shrinking. Evelyn went to the window, peering between the gap in the curtains. The street was busy for the early evening, the lights from passing cars flaring against the smeared glass.

  “We need to talk,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, we do. I was going to wait until Friday, but since you’re here . . .”

  Evelyn turned around. Closing the door with a soft click, Julia crossed the floor toward the chest of drawers. She picked up her packet of cigarettes, lit up, and took a seat on the edge of the bed.

  “Did I ever tell you I was there in ’34 during the Säuberung? Hans took me. I saw Goebbels address the crowds in Bebelplatz. It was terribly thrilling; all the shouting and crying. The students couldn’t throw books onto the bonfires fast enough.” Julia blew out a steady stream of smoke. “That’s what they don’t tell you—that it was the students who began the burning. Or that they didn’t require much encouragement. They wanted to purge the universities of those books.” Julia gazed at her, amber eyes wide and clear.

  Evelyn swallowed. “Why are you saying this?”

  “Because we are alike, that’s why. Two halves of the same coin.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Julia tapped some ash to the carpet. “Because I was in Nina’s flat the first night you visited. I know who you really are.”

  It wasn’t possible. Evelyn put a hand out behind her, clutching at the sill. The floor seemed to pitch and tilt, as if it
were about to crack open beneath her.

  “I’m sure you can imagine my shock when she said you were coming.” Julia chuckled. “Here I was thinking you were a proper little patriot, a real girl guide. But you’ve surprised me, Evelyn. I found something of myself in you. I found a kindred spirit.”

  “Wait a minute . . .” Evelyn grasped for words. None of it made any sense. “How could you have been at the flat?”

  “There’s a door in the corner of Nina’s workshop that appears to be locked up, but it actually leads to a small dressing room with a desk and a chair. I sit in there and listen during those meetings or whenever Nina brings in a new recruit, and later, when everyone’s gone, we talk. Funny, isn’t it, how the biggest things can be right under our noses . . .” Julia flashed a wry smile. “The other women, they never see me either—most of them don’t even know I exist. Your friend, Mrs. Armstrong, has no idea! I suppose we only see what we want to. Nina had you all thinking she was running that tight little ship with her loyal troops marching to Valhalla, but the truth is she was working for me.”

  Watching Julia grind out her cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed, Evelyn thought back to a time, playing fullback at Raheen, when she had been hit in the stomach by a hockey ball. It was the most painful thing she’d ever experienced, like the air had been literally knocked out of her, and she’d curled up on the grass, her vision dim, wondering if her lungs would ever begin working again, as her teammates crowded around her. This felt worse, much worse. Wherever she looked now she saw devastation, as though an earthquake had struck.

  “So when I saw you in St. James’s Park, with the Jewish boy, that was all an act?”

  “Of course!” Julia clapped her hands together. “I had to be sure of you, didn’t I, before Nina invited you to join? But you really did exceed my expectations.”

  “So that’s why you returned from Germany,” Evelyn said, shaking her head. “It wasn’t because you wanted to get away from the regime; it was because you believed it needed to be alive in Britain too.”

  “We’re crying out for our own revolution,” Julia said. “It’s a Darwinian struggle; it always has been. When I knew I was coming back to London, I got in touch with Nina. A mutual friend at the Italian embassy introduced us a few years ago at a party in Berlin, and we began building our network from then. And for a while things looked like they were working for us, didn’t they? We were making real progress. But our work can’t stop because of the arrests. We’re on the cusp of something remarkable here, Evelyn. We can stop Churchill’s ascent to power. We can make a targeted strike.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  But Evelyn did understand, and it started to dawn on her how misguided this intervention had been. She felt sick. She had always thought Julia escaped from Germany untouched by the fever that had gripped the country, but she could see now that she was just as rabid as the rest of the Lion Society. Those conversations about wealth, about poverty, about injustice—Evelyn had read them all wrong. She had believed what she wanted to believe. Julia had condemned the system, but only because she was convinced that she belonged to a superior group of people who would in time crush those with less power and less privilege. How extraordinary to have been betrayed, to feel betrayal, and behind all this was a long, sharp pain at Evelyn’s breast, as if Julia had reached inside and ripped her heart from its chamber.

  “Paul knows the wife of an old colleague from Siemens-Schuckert,” Julia said. “A common sort of girl but sharp as a tack. A few weeks ago, she started working as a shorthand typist at the Ministry of Supply, and she was assigned to the Royal Ordnance Factories’ files. You know what they keep there, don’t you, Evelyn? It’s your department, after all. Consignment lists, transport of artillery, shipments lost at sea. But on Monday she came across something really hot. Oh, Evelyn, you wouldn’t believe what she brought me . . .”

  Evelyn felt her scalp prickle. “What was it?”

  “The coordinates of an RAF black spot on the east coast of England. It’s been made up to look like a genuine military base from the air, but no personnel or weapons have ever been stationed there. It’s the ideal landing point for German parachutists, with a clear run once they’re on the ground . . .”

  “But what are you going to do with them?”

  Julia looked at her, and for the first time since she’d arrived Evelyn saw something like doubt creep into her eyes, but it quickly disappeared.

  “Paul will take the maps to Wilhelm Canaris, the head of German military intelligence. He’s leaving on Friday night. Don’t you see, Evelyn? We can still help the invasion. We can still play our part, because Paul is working for the Germans. He’s a spy.”

  Evelyn looked out the window. Suddenly, she felt calm. There was a way to make sense of it, after all. Julia was enthralled by this Hancock, brainwashed by him, just as she had been by her husband, Hans. It was still possible to make her see reason. But in order to do this, she needed to reveal her own truth. “I have to tell you something, Julia,” she said slowly. “The fact is, I haven’t been entirely honest. I don’t work at the War Office.”

  The room was quiet. Julia gazed at Evelyn, resting her chin in her hand. “All right,” she said. “Who do you work for?”

  Evelyn took a deep breath. If she didn’t get it out now she never would. “In September I was recruited to Military Intelligence, Section 5. To begin with I was stationed at Wormwood Scrubs, doing mostly paperwork and transcription—nothing much of real consequence. To keep this work secret, however, it was recommended I tell everyone, even my family and closest friends, that I had been employed by the War Office. A few months ago I was transferred to counterintelligence to undertake an undercover operation where I posed as a Nazi sympathizer to infiltrate the Lion Society.”

  “I see.” Julia smiled. “Very amusing. And the punchline? Your mother is really Wallis Simpson?”

  “There is no punchline, Julia. I’m not joking. Christ, I wish I was.”

  Julia tapped another cigarette from the pack but set it aside instead of lighting it. Something had changed; she was trying not to show it, but Evelyn could see that she was nervous, and when she spoke again her voice sounded faint. “You really never worked at the War Office?”

  Evelyn shook her head miserably.

  Julia stood up and took a step toward the door, but she continued to stare at Evelyn, her face drained of color. “Are you saying you never believed? Everything you said, the typists, that Jew in the park . . .” She slumped on the edge of the bed again. “What about Mrs. Baden-Marr? You attacked her!”

  “It was part of my cover.”

  “But you came to us. To Nina. She trusted you, and all this time you’ve been spying on her, on us?”

  Julia brought a shaking hand to her mouth. She looked distraught. Despite everything, it was awful to see her like this, and Evelyn found herself walking across the room to place a hand on her back.

  “Listen, Julia, I don’t know what this Hancock fellow has promised you, or what lies he’s spun, but I can help you before it all goes too far. Come with me now. I can protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “We don’t have time . . .”

  Letting out a cry, Julia sat up and shook her fists at Evelyn.

  “You’re not listening! I don’t care what happens to me. Don’t you see? I want something different. I’ve always wanted something different—something new and great for this country; I want its dignity and power restored. I want to be part of that—I must be, I’ve lived my whole life for it. That’s why I’ll never be afraid of you and your spies. I’m not afraid of what you can do to me.”

  “Don’t think that because of who you are, your family’s position, you will somehow be spared,” said Evelyn carefully, as though she were speaking to a child. “They’re interning people with links to the Lion Society. They will charge you with treason. Do you know the penalties for treason? It’s a prison sentence—for years, Julia—or wo
rse.”

  But Julia only laughed, and Evelyn could see there was some new tranquility to her bearing, an exalted sort of acceptance. It made Evelyn’s blood run cold.

  “I was so wrong about you, Evelyn. I always imagined you were like me, but you’re nothing more than a spineless follower, aren’t you?”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t. You’ve always been afraid of your own reflection. And now look at you. Still hiding behind a facade.”

  “You do know what the Nazis are doing to civilians in Europe, don’t you? They’re killing them, Julia! Jews, gypsies—even Poles, I’ve now heard.”

  Julia stared back at her mildly. “Violence is merely restitutional in our struggle,” she said. “It will save our people.”

  “Our people?” Evelyn shook her head in disbelief. “Can you hear what you’re saying? Do you really think this is the best way to save Britain? To side with the enemy? To betray the government?”

  “Your government,” Julia returned with contempt. “Your enemy. What I want is for every man and woman in this country to have the opportunity to realize their full potential and know real freedom. You—you’re just fighting for the status quo. You think because you follow the rules, report to your masters, cross your t’s and dot your i’s, that you’re somehow advancing a better cause?” Her voice had risen in indignation.

  Still breathing heavily, she picked up the cigarette and lit it, then sat for a time smoking.

  Evelyn stared at her, willing some recognition, some understanding, but the chasm felt so wide now, as endless as the sea. She thought back to that moment they had shared outside the chapel at Raheen, the smooth feel of the acorn in her palm, the salty breeze nudging at her brow. She hadn’t imagined it: when Julia had looked at her, Evelyn had sensed a connection, the kind of knowingness between them she had not encountered in many people since. But now Julia might as well have been a stranger.