The Unlikely Spy

  "Horst Neumann."

  "You're a soldier. At least you used to be one. What's your rank?"

  "I'm a lieutenant."

  She smiled. "I outrank you, by the way."

  "Yes, I know--Major."

  "What's your cover name?"

  "James Porter."

  "Let me see your identification."

  He handed it across. She examined it carefully. It was an excellent forgery. She gave it back to him. "It's good," she said. "But show it only if it is absolutely necessary. What's your cover?"

  "I was wounded at Dunkirk and invalided out of the army. I'm a traveling salesman now."

  "Where are you staying?"

  "The Norfolk coast--a village called Hampton Sands. Vogel has an agent there named Sean Dogherty. He's an IRA sympathizer who runs a small farm."

  "How did you enter the country?"

  "Parachute."

  "Very impressive," she said genuinely. "And Dogherty took you in? He was waiting for you?"

  "Yes."

  "Vogel contacted him by radio?"

  "I assume so, yes."

  "That means MI-Five is looking for you."

  "I think I spotted two of their men at Liverpool Street."

  "It makes sense. They'd certainly be watching the stations." She lit a cigarette. "Your English is excellent. Where did you learn it?"

  While he told her the story Catherine looked at him carefully for the first time. He was small and sparingly built; he might have been an athlete once, a tennis player or a runner. His hair was dark, his eyes a penetrating blue. He was obviously intelligent--not like some of the imbeciles she had seen at the Abwehr spy school in Berlin. She doubted he had been behind enemy lines before as an agent, yet he showed no sign of nerves. She had a few more questions before she would listen to what he had to say.

  "How did you end up in this line of work?"

  Neumann told her the story: that he had been a member of the Fallschirmjager, that he had seen action in more places than he could remember. He told her about Paris. About his transfer to the Funkabwehr eavesdropping unit in northern France. And about his eventual recruitment by Kurt Vogel.

  "Our Kurt is very good at finding work for the restless," Catherine said, when he had finished. "So what does Vogel have in mind for me?"

  "One assignment, then out. Back to Germany."

  The kettle screamed. Neumann went into the kitchen and busied himself with the tea. One assignment, then out. Back to Germany. And with a highly capable former paratrooper to help her make her escape. She was impressed. She had always assumed the worst: when the war ended she would be abandoned in Britain and forced to fend for herself. The British and the Americans--when the inevitable victory came--would pore over captured Abwehr files. They would find her name, realize she had never been arrested, and come after her. That was the other reason she had withheld so much information from Vogel; she didn't want to leave a trail in Berlin for her enemies to follow. But Vogel obviously wanted her back in Germany, and he had taken steps to make sure that happened.

  Neumann came back into the drawing room with a pot of tea and two mugs. He placed the things on a table and sat down again.

  Catherine said, "What's your job, besides briefing me on my assignment?"

  "Whatever you need, basically. I'm your courier, your support agent, and your radio operator. Vogel wants you to continue to stay off the air. He's convinced it's not safe. The only time you're to use your radio is if you need me. You contact Vogel with a prearranged signal, and Vogel will contact me."

  She nodded, then said, "And when it's all over? How are we supposed to get out of Britain? And please don't say something heroic like steal a boat and sail back to France. Because it's not possible."

  "Of course not. Vogel has arranged first-class passage for you aboard a U-boat."

  "Which one?"

  "U-509."

  "Where?"

  "The North Sea."

  "It's big. Where in the North Sea?"

  "Spurn Head, off the Lincolnshire coast."

  "I've lived here for five years, Lieutenant Neumann. I know where Spurn Head is. How are we supposed to get to the U-boat?"

  "Vogel has a boat and a skipper waiting at a dock along the River Humber. When it's time to leave I contact him and he takes us out to the submarine."

  She thought, So Vogel has a built-in escape hatch he's never told me about.

  Catherine sipped her tea, inspecting Neumann over the brim of the mug. It was remotely possible he was an MI5 man posing as a German agent. She could play silly games--like testing his German or asking him about some little-known Berlin cafe--but if he truly was MI5 he would be smart enough to avoid an obvious trap. He knew the patter, he knew a great deal about Vogel, and his story seemed credible. She decided to let it continue. As Neumann was about to resume speaking, the air raid sirens wailed.

  "Do we need to take this seriously?" Neumann asked.

  "Did you see the building behind this one?"

  Neumann had seen it, a pile of broken brick and smashed timber. "Where's the nearest shelter?"

  "Around the corner." She smiled at him. "Welcome back to London, Lieutenant Neumann."

  It was early evening the following day when Neumann's train drew into Hunstanton Station. Sean Dogherty was smoking anxiously on the platform as he stepped off the train.

  "How did it go?" Dogherty asked, as they walked to his truck.

  "Went off without a hitch."

  Dogherty drove uncomfortably fast over the rolling, crumbling, single-lane track. It was a rattletrap van, badly in need of an overhaul by the sound of it. Blackout shades shrouded the headlamps. A dribble of pale yellow light tried vainly to illuminate the roadway. Neumann had the sensation of walking through a strange darkened house with only a match for light. They passed through bleak darkened villages--Holme, Thornham, Titchwell--no lights burning, shops and cottages tightly shuttered, no sign of human habitation. Dogherty was telling him about his day, but Neumann gradually tuned him out, thinking about last night.

  They had rushed to a tube station like everyone else and waited three hours on the dank platform for the all clear to sound. She slept for a time, allowing her head to fall against his shoulder. He wondered if it was the first time she had felt safe in six years. He stared at her in the darkness. A remarkably beautiful woman but there was a distant sadness--a childhood wound, perhaps, inflicted by a careless adult. She stirred in her sleep, troubled by dreams. He touched the pile of curls that lay spread across his shoulder. When the all clear sounded she awoke like all soldiers in enemy territory--quickly, eyes suddenly wide, hand reaching for the nearest weapon. In her case it was the handbag, where Neumann assumed she kept a gun or a knife.

  They talked until dawn. Actually, he had talked and she had listened. She never spoke except to correct him when he had made a mistake or contradicted something he had said hours earlier. She obviously had a powerful mind, capable of storing immense amounts of information. No wonder Vogel had so much respect for her abilities.

  A gray dawn was spreading over London when Neumann slipped out of her flat. He had moved like a man leaving his mistress, sneaking small glances over his shoulder, searching the faces of passersby for traces of suspicion. For three hours he weaved through London in a cold drizzle, making sudden course changes, getting on and off buses, looking at reflections in windows. He decided he was not being followed and started back to Liverpool Street Station.

  On the train he pillowed his head on his hands and tried to sleep. Don't fall under her spell, Vogel had playfully warned on their last day together at the farm. Keep to a safe distance. She has dark places where you don't want to go.

  Neumann pictured her in her flat, listening in the faint light as he told her of Peter Jordan and what she was expected to do. It was the unnerving stillness about her that struck him most, the way the hands lay folded in the lap, the way the head and shoulders never seemed to move. Only the eyes, casting around the room, b
ack and forth across his face, up and down his body. Like searchlights. For a moment he allowed himself to entertain a fantasy that she desired him. But now, as Hampton Sands vanished into the gloom behind them and the Dogherty cottage appeared before them, Neumann came to a disturbing conclusion. Catherine was not looking at him that way because she found him attractive, she was deciding how best to kill him if she ever needed to.

  Neumann had given her the letter as he left that morning. She had placed it aside, too terrified to read it. Now she opened it, hands trembling, and read it as she lay in bed.

  My dearest Anna,

  I am relieved to hear you are well and safe. Since you have left me all light has gone from my life. I pray that this war will end soon so we can be together again. Good night, sweet dreams, little one.

  Your adoring Father

  When she finished reading it she carried the letter into the kitchen, touched it to the gas flame, and tossed it into the sink. It flared a moment, then quickly died away. She ran the tap and washed the black ashes down the drain. She suspected it was a forgery--that Vogel had concocted it in order to keep her in line. Her father, she feared, was dead. She went back to bed, lying awake in the soft gray light of morning, listening to the rain drumming against her window. Thinking of her father, thinking of Vogel.

  17

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND

  "Congratulations, Alfred. Come inside. I'm sorry it had to happen this way, but you've just become a rather wealthy man." Edward Kenton thrust out his hand as if he were waiting for Vicary to impale himself on it. Vicary took the hand and shook it weakly before brushing past Kenton into the drawing room of his aunt's cottage. "Damned cold outside," Kenton was saying as Vicary surveyed the room. He hadn't been here since the war, but nothing had changed. "I hope you don't mind, but I've made a fire. The place was like an icebox when I arrived. There's tea as well. And real milk. I don't suppose you see much of that in London these days."

  Vicary removed his coat while Kenton went into the kitchen. It wasn't really a cottage--that was what Matilda had insisted on calling it. It was a rather large home of Cotswold limestone, with spectacular gardens surrounded by a high wall. She died of a massive stroke the night Boothby assigned him the case. Vicary had planned to attend the funeral but he was summoned by Churchill that morning, after Bletchley Park decoded the German radio signals. He felt horrible about missing the services. Matilda had virtually raised Vicary after his own mother died when he was just twelve. They had remained the best of friends. She was the only person he had told about his assignment to MI5. What do you do exactly, Alfred? I catch German spies, Aunt Matilda. Oh, good for you, Alfred!

  French doors overlooked the gardens, dead with winter. Sometimes I catch spies, Aunt Matilda, he thought. Sometimes they get the better of me.

  That morning Bletchley Park had forwarded Vicary a decoded message from an agent in Britain. It said the rendezvous had been successful and the agent had accepted the assignment. Vicary was growing discouraged about his chances of catching the spies. Things had worsened that morning. Two men were observed meeting in Leicester Square and brought in for questioning. The older of the two turned out to be a senior Home Office clerk; the younger man was his lover. Boothby had blown a fuse.

  "How was the drive?" Kenton asked from the kitchen over the tinkle of china and running water.

  "Fine," Vicary said. Boothby had reluctantly permitted him to have a Rover and a driver from Transport.

  "I can't remember the last time I took a relaxing drive through the country," Kenton said. "But I suppose petrol and motorcars are some of the fringe benefits of your new job."

  Kenton came into the room with a tray of tea. He was tall--as tall as Boothby--but with none of the bulk or physical agility. He wore round spectacles, too small for his face, and a thin mustache that looked as though it had been put there with a woman's eyebrow pencil. He set the tea down on the table in front of the couch, poured milk into the cups as though it were liquid gold, then added the tea.

  "My goodness, Alfred, how long has it been?"

  Twenty-five years, Vicary thought. Edward Kenton had been friends with Helen. They had even dated a few times after Helen broke off the relationship with Vicary. By coincidence he became Matilda's solicitor ten years earlier. Vicary and Kenton had spoken by telephone several times over the past few years as Matilda grew too old to manage alone, but it was the first time they had seen each other face-to-face. Vicary wished he could conclude his dead aunt's affairs without the specter of Helen hanging over the proceedings.

  Kenton said, "You've been assigned to the War Office, I hear."

  "That's right," Vicary said and swallowed half his cup of tea. It was delicious--much better than the swill they served in the canteen.

  "What do you do exactly?"

  "Oh, I work for a very dull department doing this and that." Vicary sat down. "I'm sorry, Edward. I hate to rush things along, but I really have to be heading back to London."

  Kenton sat down opposite Vicary and fished a batch of papers from his black leather briefcase. Licking the tip of his slender forefinger, he guardedly turned to a suitable page. "Ah, here we are. I drew up this will myself five years ago," he said. "She spread some money and other properties among your cousins, but she left the bulk of her estate to you."

  "I had no idea."

  "She's left you the house and quite a large amount of money. She was frugal. She spent carefully and invested wisely." Kenton turned the papers around so Vicary could read them. "Here's what's coming to you."

  Vicary was stunned; he had no idea. Missing her funeral over a couple of German spies seemed even more obscene. Something must have shown on his face because Kenton said, "It's a shame you couldn't make it to the funeral, Alfred. It really was a lovely service. Half the county was there."

  "I wanted to be here but something came up."

  "I have a few papers for you to sign to take possession of the cottage and the money. If you'll give me an account number in London, I can move the money and close her bank accounts."

  Vicary spent the next few minutes silently signing his name to a pile of legal and financial documents. At the last one Kenton looked up and said, "Done."

  "Is the telephone still working?"

  "Yes. I used it myself before you arrived."

  The telephone was on Matilda's writing table in the drawing room. Vicary picked up the receiver and looked at Kenton. "Edward, if you wouldn't mind, it's official."

  Kenton forced a smile. "Say no more. I'll clear away the dishes."

  Something about the exchange warmed the vindictive corners of Vicary's heart. The operator came on the line, and he gave her the number of MI5 headquarters in London. It took a few moments to get through. A department operator answered and connected Vicary to Harry Dalton.

  Harry answered, his mouth full of food.

  "What's the fare today?" Vicary asked.

  "They claim it's vegetable stew."

  "Any news?"

  "I think so, actually."

  Vicary's heart leapt.

  "I've been going over the immigration lists one more time, just to see if we missed anything." The immigration lists were the meat and potatoes of MI5's contest with Germany's spies. In September 1939, while Vicary was still on the faculty at University College, MI5 had used immigration and passport records as the primary tool in a massive roundup of spies and Nazi sympathizers. Aliens were classified in three categories: Category C aliens were allowed complete freedom; Category B aliens were subject to certain restrictions--some weren't allowed to own automobiles or boats and limits were placed on their movement within the country; Category A aliens, those deemed to be a threat to security, were interned. Anyone who had entered the country before the war and could not be accounted for was assumed to be a spy and hunted down. Germany's espionage networks were rolled up and smashed, virtually overnight.

  "A Dutch woman named Christa Kunst entered the country in November 1938 at Dover,
" Harry continued. "A year later her body was discovered in a shallow grave in a field near a village called Whitchurch."

  "What's unusual about that?"

  "The thing just doesn't feel right to me. The body was badly decomposed when it was pulled out of the ground. The face and skull had been crushed. All the teeth were missing. They used the passport to make the identification; it was conveniently buried with the body. It sounds too neat to me."

  "Where's the passport now?"

  "The Home Office has it. I've sent a courier up to collect it. It has a photograph. They say it got roughed up a bit while it was in the ground, but it's probably worth looking at."

  "Good, Harry. I'm not sure this woman's death has anything to do with the case, but at least it's a lead."

  "Right. How did the meeting go with the lawyer, by the way?"

  "Oh, just a few papers to sign," Vicary lied. He felt suddenly awkward about his newfound financial independence. "I'm leaving now. I should be back in the office late this afternoon."

  Vicary rang off as Kenton came back into the drawing room. "Well, I think that about does it." He handed Vicary a large brown envelope. "All the papers are there as well as the keys. I've included the name of the gardener and his address. He'll be happy to serve as caretaker."

  They put on their coats, locked up the cottage, and went outside. Vicary's car was in the drive.

  "Can I drop you anywhere, Edward?"

  Vicary was relieved when he declined the offer.

  "I spoke to Helen the other day," Kenton said suddenly.

  Vicary thought: Oh, good heavens.

  "She says she sees you from time to time in Chelsea."

  Vicary wondered whether Helen had told Kenton about the afternoon in 1940 when he had stared into her passing car like some silly schoolboy. Mortified, Vicary opened the door of the car, absently beating his pockets for his half-moon glasses.

  "She asked me to say hello, so I'm saying it. Hello."

  "Thank you." Vicary got inside.

  "She also says she'd like to see you sometime. Do some catching up."