Neumann was a few feet away. Catherine had placed the rolls in a small envelope. She withdrew the envelope and prepared to slip it into Neumann's hand and keep walking. But Neumann stopped in front of her, took the envelope, and handed her a slip of paper.
"Message from our friend," he said, and melted into the crowd.
She read the message from Vogel while drinking weak coffee in a cafe in Leicester Square. She read it again to make certain she understood it. When she finished she folded the note and placed it in her handbag. She would burn it back at her flat. She left change on the table and went out.
Vogel began the message with a commendation for the work Catherine had done so far. But he said more specific information was required. He also wanted a written report on every step she had taken thus far: how she made her approach, how she gained entry to Jordan's private papers, everything he had said to her. Catherine thought she knew what that meant. She was delivering high-grade intelligence, and Vogel wanted to make certain the source was not compromised.
She walked north up Charing Cross Road. She paused now and again to gaze into shop windows and check to see if she was being followed. She turned onto Oxford Street and joined a bus queue. The bus came right away and she climbed on board and took a seat upstairs near the rear.
She had suspected the material Jordan brought home would not paint a complete picture of his work. It made sense. Based on the watch report given to her by the Popes, Jordan moved between a pair of offices during the day, one at the SHAEF headquarters on Grosvenor Square and another smaller office nearby. Whenever he carried material between the two offices it was hand-cuffed to his wrist.
Catherine needed to see that material.
But how?
She considered a second bump, a chance meeting on Grosvenor Square. She could entice him back to his house for an afternoon in bed together. It was fraught with risk. Jordan might become suspicious about another coincidental encounter. There was no guarantee he would go home with her. And even if he did it would be almost impossible to sneak out of bed in the middle of the afternoon and photograph the contents of the briefcase. Catherine remembered something Vogel said to her during her training: When desk officers grow careless, field agents die. She decided she would be patient and wait. If she continued to enjoy Peter Jordan's trust, eventually the secret of his work would appear in his briefcase. She would give Vogel his written report, but she would not change her tactics for now.
Catherine looked out the window. She realized she did not know where she was--still on Oxford Street, but where on Oxford Street? She was concentrating so hard on Vogel and Jordan that she had momentarily lost her bearings. The bus crossed Oxford Circus and she relaxed. It was then she noticed the woman watching her. She was seated across the aisle, facing Catherine, and she was staring directly at her. Catherine turned away and pretended to look out the window, but the woman still was staring at her. What's wrong with that damned woman? Why is she looking at me like that? She glanced at the woman's face. Something about it was distantly familiar.
The bus was nearing the next stop. Catherine gathered up her things. She would take no chances. She would get off right away. The bus slowed and pulled to the curbside. Catherine prepared to get to her feet. Then the woman reached across the aisle, touched her arm, and said, "Anna, darling. Is it really you?"
The recurring dream began after she killed Beatrice Pymm. It starts the same way each time. She is playing on the floor of her mother's dressing room. Her mother, seated before her vanity, powders a flawless face. Papa comes into the room. He is wearing a white dinner jacket with medals pinned to his breast. He leans over, kisses her mother's neck, and tells her they must hurry or they will be late. Kurt Vogel arrives next. He is wearing a dark suit, like an undertaker, and he has the face of a wolf. He is holding her things: a beautiful silver stiletto with diamonds and rubies in the shape of a swastika on the grip, a Mauser with a silencer screwed into the barrel, a suitcase with a radio inside. "Hurry," he whispers to her. "We mustn't be late. The Fuhrer is extremely anxious to meet you."
She rides through Berlin in a horse-drawn carriage. Vogel the wolf is loping easily in their wake. The party is like a candlelit cloud. Beautiful women are dancing with beautiful men. Hitler is holding forth at the center of the room. Vogel encourages her to go talk to the Fuhrer. She slips through the shimmering crowd and notices everyone is looking at her. She thinks it is because she is beautiful but after a moment everyone has stopped talking, the band has stopped playing, and everyone is staring at her.
"You're not a little girl! You're a spy for the Abwehr!"
"No, I'm not!"
"Of course you are! That's why you have a stiletto and that radio!"
"No! It's not true!"
Then Hitler says, "You're the one who killed that poor woman in Suffolk--Beatrice Pymm."
"It's not true! It's not true!"
"Arrest her! Hang her!"
Everyone is laughing at her. Suddenly she is naked and they laugh even more. She turns to Vogel for help but he has run away and left her. And then she screams and sits up in bed, bathed in sweat, and tells herself it was only a dream. Just a silly, bloody dream.
Catherine Blake took a taxi to Marble Arch. The episode on the bus had left her badly shaken. She chastised herself for not handling it better. She had rushed off the bus, alarmed, after the woman called her by her real name. She should have stayed in her seat and calmly explained to the woman that she was mistaken. It was a dreadful miscalculation. Several people on the bus had seen her face. It was her worst nightmare.
She used the taxi ride to calm down and think it through. She knew it was always a remote possibility--the possibility that she might run into someone who recognized her. She had lived in London for two years after her mother's death, when her father was assigned to the German embassy here. She had attended an English school for girls but made no close friends. She came to the country one other time after that--with Maria Romero on a brief holiday in 1935. They had stayed with friends of Maria and met many other young, rich people at parties and restaurants and theaters. She'd had a brief affair with a young Englishman whose name she could not remember. Vogel had decided it was an acceptable risk. The chances of actually bumping into someone she knew were remote. If she did she was to have a standard response: I'm sorry, but you must have me confused with someone else. For six years it did not happen. She had grown careless. When it did happen she panicked.
She finally remembered who the woman was. Her name was Rose Morely, and she had been the cook at her father's house in London. Catherine barely remembered her--only that she cooked rather poorly and always served the meat overdone. Catherine had had very little contact with the woman. It was amazing she recognized her.
She had two choices: ignore it and pretend it never happened or investigate and try to determine the extent of the damage.
Catherine chose the second option.
She paid off the driver at Marble Arch and got out. Dusk was fading quickly into the blackout. A number of bus routes converged on Marble Arch, including the bus she had just fled. With luck, Rose Morely would get off here and change for another bus. The bus she was on would turn down Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner. If Rose stayed on the bus, Catherine would try to slip on without her noticing.
The bus approached. Rose Morely was still in the same seat. As the bus slowed she got to her feet. Catherine had guessed right. The bus stopped. Rose disembarked from the rear doorway.
Catherine stepped forward and said, "You're Rose Morely, aren't you?"
The woman's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Yes--and you are Anna. I knew it was you. It had to be. You haven't changed a bit since you were a little girl. But how did you get here so--"
"When I realized it was you, I followed in a taxi," Catherine said, cutting her off. The sound of her real name, spoken in a crowd of people, made her shudder. She took Rose Morely by the arm and headed into the gloom of Hyde Park.
&nbs
p; "Let's walk for a while," Catherine said. "It's been so long, Rose."
That evening Catherine typed her report to Vogel. She photographed it, burned it in the bathroom sink, then burned the ribbon, just as Vogel had taught her. She looked up and caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror. She turned away. The sink was black with the ink and the ash. Her fingers were black too, her hands.
Catherine Blake--spy.
She picked up the soap and began working it through her fingers.
It was not a difficult decision. It was worse than she could have imagined. I emigrated to England before the war, she had explained, as they walked along the pathway in the gathering darkness. I couldn't bear the thought of living under Hitler any longer. It was truly horrifying, the things he was doing to the Jews especially.
Catherine Blake--liar.
They must have given you a rough time.
What do you mean?
The authorities, the police. A whisper: Military Intelligence.
No, no, it wasn't difficult at all.
I work for a man named Commander Higgins now. I care for his children. His wife was killed in the blitz, poor dearie. Commander Higgins works for the Admiralty. He says anyone who entered the country before the war was assumed to be a German spy.
Oh, really?
I'm sure Commander Higgins will be interested to know you were not harassed.
There's no need to mention any of this to Commander Higgins, is there, Rose?
But there was no escaping it. The British public was very aware of the threat posed by spies. It was everywhere: the newspapers, on the radio, in the movies. Rose was not a foolish woman. She would mention the encounter to Commander Higgins, and Commander Higgins would telephone MI5, and MI5 would be crawling all over central London looking for her. All the meticulous preparation that went into creating her cover would be blown away because of one chance encounter with a domestic who had read too many spy thrillers.
Hyde Park in the blackout. It might have been Sherwood Forest if not for the distant drone of traffic on Bayswater Road. They had switched on their blackout torches, two pencils of fragile yellow light. Rose carried her shopping in her other hand. Goodness, try feeding children on four ounces of meat a week. I'm afraid they're going to be stunted. A grove of trees loomed ahead of them, a shapeless black blob against the last light in the western sky. I have to be going now, Anna. So nice to see you. They walk a little farther. Do it here, in the trees. No one will see. The police will blame it on some ruffian or refugee. Everyone knows street crime has reached alarming levels in the West End with the war. Take her food and her money. Make it look like a robbery that went wrong. It was lovely seeing you after all these years, Rose.
They parted in the trees, Rose walked north, Catherine south. Then Catherine turned around and walked after her. She reached into her handbag and withdrew the Mauser. She needed a very quick kill. Rose, I forgot something. Rose stopped and turned around. Catherine raised the Mauser and before Rose could utter a sound shot her through the eye.
The damned ink wouldn't come off. She lathered her hands once more and scrubbed them with a brush until they were raw. She wondered why she hadn't become sick this time. Vogel said it would be easier after a while. The brush took the ink away. She looked up in the mirror again, but this time she held her own gaze. Catherine Blake--assassin.
Catherine Blake--murderer.
33
LONDON
Alfred Vicary felt an evening at home might do him some good. He wanted to walk so he left the office an hour before sunset, enough time for him to make it into Chelsea before becoming stranded in the blackout. It was a fine afternoon, cold but no rain and scarcely a wind. Puffy gray clouds, their bellies pink from the setting sun, drifted over the West End. London was alive. He watched the crowds in Parliament Square, marveled at the antiaircraft guns on Birdcage Walk, drifted through the silent Georgian canyons of Belgravia. The wintry air felt wonderful in his lungs, and he forced himself not to smoke. He had developed a dry hacking cough--like the one he had during final exams at Cambridge--and he vowed to give the damn things up when the war was over.
He crossed Belgrave Square and walked toward Sloane Square. The spell was broken; the case was in his thoughts again. It never really left him. Sometimes he was able to push it slightly farther away than others. January had turned to February. Soon spring would come, then the invasion. And whether it would succeed or fail might be resting squarely on Vicary's shoulders.
He thought about the latest decoded message sent to him by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. The message was sent the previous night to an agent operating inside Britain. The message contained no code name but Vicary assumed it was one of the spies he was pursuing. It said the information received thus far had been good but more was needed. It also asked for a report on how the agent had contacted the source. Vicary looked for a silver lining. If Berlin needed more intelligence, it did not have a complete picture. If it did not have a complete picture, there still was time for Vicary to plug the leak. Such was the bleak nature of the case that he took heart from logic like that.
He crossed Sloane Square and drifted into Chelsea. He thought of evenings like this a long time ago--before the war, before the bloody blackout--when he would walk home from University College with a briefcase bulging with books and papers. His worries had been much simpler then. Did I put my students to sleep with my lecture today? Will I finish my next book before deadline?
Something else occurred to him as he walked. He was a damned good intelligence officer, no matter what Boothby might say. He was also well suited to it by nature. He was without vanity. He didn't require public praise or accolades. He was perfectly content to toil in secret and keep his victories to himself. He liked the fact that no one knew what he really did. He was secretive and private by nature, and being an intelligence officer only reinforced that.
He thought of Boothby. Why did he pull Vogel's file and lie about it? Why did he refuse to forward Vicary's warning to Eisenhower and Churchill? Why did he interrogate Karl Becker but not pass on the evidence of a separate German network? Vicary could think of no logical explanation for his actions. They were like notes that Vicary could not arrange into a pleasing melody.
He arrived at his home in Draycott Place. He pushed back the door and waded through several days of unanswered post into his darkened drawing room. He considered inviting Alice Simpson to dinner but decided he didn't have the strength for polite conversation. He filled the bath with hot water and soaked his body while listening to sentimental music on the wireless. He drank a glass of whisky and read the newspapers. Since his induction into the secret world he no longer believed a word in them. Then the telephone started ringing. It had to be the office; no one else ever bothered to call him any longer. He struggled out of the bath and covered himself in a robe. The telephone was in the study. He picked up the receiver and said, "Yes, Harry?"
"Your conversation with Karl Becker gave me an idea," Harry said without preamble.
Vicary was dripping bathwater on the papers scattered over his desk. The cleaning lady knew it was verboten even to consider entering his study. As a result it was an island of academic clutter in his otherwise sterile and immaculate home.
"Anna Steiner lived in London with her diplomat father for two years in the early twenties. Rich foreign diplomats have servants: cooks, butlers, maids."
"All true, Harry. I hope this is leading somewhere."
"For three days I've been checking with every agency in town, trying to find the names of the people who worked in that household."
"Good idea."
"I've got a few. Most are dead; the others are old as the hills. There was one promising name, though: Rose Morely. As a young woman she worked as a cook in the Steiner house. Today I discovered she works for a Commander Higgins of the Admiralty at his house in Marylebone."
"Good work, Harry. Set up an appointment first thing in the morning."
"I planned to, but someone just shot her through the eye and left her body in the middle of Hyde Park."
"I'll be dressed in five minutes."
"There's a car waiting outside your house."
Five minutes later Vicary let himself out and locked the door behind him. He realized at that moment that he had completely forgotten about his lunch date with Helen.
The driver was an attractive young Wren who didn't make a sound during the short journey. She took him as close to the scene as she could--about two hundred yards away, at the bottom of a gentle rise. The rain had started up again, and he borrowed her umbrella. He climbed out and softly closed the door, as though arriving at a cemetery for a burial. Ahead of him he saw several long beams of white light bouncing back and forth, like miniature searchlights trying to pick a Heinkel bomber out of the night sky. One of the beams caught his approach, and he had to shade his eyes from the glare. The walk was longer than he estimated; the gentle rise was more like a small hill. The grass was long and very damp. His trousers were soaked from the knee down, as though he had just forded a stream. The torch beams were lowered like swords at his approach. A Detective Chief Superintendent Something-or-Other took him gently by the elbow and walked him the rest of the way. He had the good sense not to speak Vicary's name.
A tarpaulin had been hastily erected over the body. The rain pooled in the center and spilled over one edge like a tiny waterfall. Harry was squatting next to the ruined skull. Harry in his element, Vicary thought. He looked so casual and relaxed hovering over the corpse, he might as well have been resting in the shade on a warm summer's day. Vicary surveyed the scene. The body had fallen backward and landed with its arms and legs spread wide, like a child making angels in snow. The earth around the head was black with blood. One hand still clung to a cloth shopping bag, and inside the bag Vicary saw tins of vegetables and some kind of meat wrapped in butcher's paper. The paper was leaking blood. The contents of a handbag were strewn about the feet. Vicary saw no money among the things.