Dicky Dobbs had never actually killed anyone before. Sure, he had broken his share of bones, ruined his share of faces. He'd even crippled one bloke who refused to cough up protection money. But he had never actually taken a human life. I should enjoy killing the bitch. She had murdered Vernon and Vivie. She had given him the slip so many times he had lost count. And God knows what she was doing with the American officer. The taxi turned onto the darkened street. Dicky gently turned the key, igniting the van's engine. He opened the throttle a bit, feeding fuel to the motor. Then he placed his hand on the gearshift and waited. The taxi drove off. The woman started across the street. Dicky dropped the van into gear and opened the throttle full.
A soft, warm darkness surrounded her. She was aware of nothing, only a distant ringing in her ears. She tried to open her eyes but could not. She tried to breathe but could not. She thought of her father and mother. She thought of Maria and she dreamed she was in Spain again, lying on a warm rock beside the stream. There had never been a war; Kurt Vogel had never entered her life. Then, slowly, she became aware of a sharp pain at the back of her head and a great weight pressing down on her body. Her lungs cried out for oxygen. Her body retched but she still could not breathe. She saw bright lights, like comets, shooting across a vast black emptiness. Something was shaking her. Someone was calling her name. And quite suddenly she realized she was not dead after all. The retching stopped and she was finally able to draw a breath. Then she opened her eyes and saw Peter Jordan's face. Catherine, can you hear me, darling? Are you all right? Jesus Christ, I think he was trying to kill you! Catherine, can you hear me?
Neither of them felt much like eating. Both of them wanted something to drink. Jordan had a briefcase chained to his wrist--it was the first time he had brought one home with him like that. He went to the study and unlocked it. Catherine heard him working the combination of the safe, pulling open the heavy door, then closing it again. He came out and went into the drawing room. He poured two very large glasses of brandy and carried them upstairs to the bedroom.
They undressed slowly while they drank the brandy. Catherine was having trouble holding on to her glass. Her hands shook, her heart was pounding inside her chest, she felt as if she were about to be sick. She forced herself to drink some of the brandy. The warmth of it took hold of her, and she felt herself begin to relax.
She had made a terrible miscalculation. She should never have gone to the Popes. She should have thought of some other way. But she had made one other mistake. She should have killed Robert Pope and Dicky Dobbs too, when she had the chance.
Jordan sat down on the bed next to her. "I don't know how you can be so calm about this," he said. "After all, you were almost killed just now. You're allowed to show some emotion."
Another mistake. She should be acting more frightened. She should be asking him to hold her and tell her everything was all right. She should be thanking him for saving her life. She was no longer thinking clearly. It was spinning out of control, she could feel it. Rose Morely . . . the Popes. . . . She thought of the briefcase Jordan just locked away in his safe. She thought about the contents. She thought about the fact that he had brought it home chained to his wrist. The most important secret of the war--the secret of the invasion--might very well be within her grasp. And if it was really there? If she could really steal it? She wanted to come out. She no longer felt safe. No longer capable of living the double life she had lived for six years. No longer capable of carrying on this affair with Peter Jordan. No longer capable of giving him her body each night and then sneaking into his study. One assignment, then out. Vogel had promised. She would hold him to it.
Catherine finished undressing and lay down on the bed. Jordan was still sitting on the edge, drinking his brandy, staring into the darkness.
"It's called English reserve," she said. "We're not allowed to show our emotions, even when we're nearly run over in the blackout."
"When are you allowed to show your emotions?" he said, still staring away.
"You could have been killed tonight too, Peter," she said. "Why did you do it?"
"Because I realized something when I saw that damned idiot bearing down on you. I realized that I was desperately, madly, completely in love with you. I have been since the moment you walked into my life. I never thought anyone would ever make me happy again. But you have, Catherine. And I'm terrified of its all going away again."
"Peter," she said softly. His back was to her. She reached up and took hold of his shoulder to pull him down, but his body had gone rigid.
"I always wondered where I was the exact moment she died, what I was doing. I know it sounds morbid, but I was obsessed with it for the longest time. It was because I wasn't there for her. It was because my wife died alone in a rainstorm on a Long Island highway. I always wondered if there wasn't something I could have done. And standing there tonight I saw the whole thing happening all over again. But this time I could do something--something to stop it. So I did."
"Thank you very much for saving my life, Peter Jordan."
"Believe me, the reasons were purely selfish. I waited a very long time to find you, Catherine Blake, and I don't ever want to be without you again."
"Do you mean that?"
"I mean it with all my heart."
She reached for him again, and this time he came to her. She kissed him again and again and said, "God, I love you so much, Peter." She was surprised by how easily the lie came to her lips. He suddenly wanted her very badly. She lay down on her back and opened her legs to him, and when he entered her Catherine felt her body rising toward his. She arched her back to him and felt him deep inside her. It happened so suddenly it made her gasp. When it was over she found she was laughing helplessly.
He laid his head on her breasts. "What's so damned funny?"
"You just make me very happy, Peter--so very happy."
Alfred Vicary maintained a restless vigil at St. James's Street. At nine o'clock he took the stairs to the canteen for something to eat. The fare was atrocious as usual, potato soup and some steamed whitefish that tasted as though it came from the river. But he discovered he was ravenously hungry and actually had a second helping. Another officer--a former barrister who looked chronically hungover--asked Vicary for a game of chess. Vicary played poorly and without enthusiasm but managed to pull out the game with a series of rather brilliant moves at the end. He hoped it was an allegory for the way the case would turn out.
Grace Clarendon passed him in the stairwell. She was clutching a batch of files in her arms like a schoolgirl carrying books. She shot Vicary a malevolent glance and clattered downward toward the dungeon of Registry.
Back in his office he tried to work--the Becker network was demanding attention--but it was no good.
Why haven't you told us this before?
I told Boothby.
Harry checked in for the first time--nothing.
He needed an hour of sleep. The clatter of the teleprinters next door, once so pacifying, sounded like jack-hammers. His tiny camp bed, once his deliverance from insomnia, became a symbol of all that was wrong with his life. For thirty minutes he moved it around his office, placing it first against one wall, then another, then in the center of the room. Mrs. Blanchard, the supervisor of the night typists, poked her head in Vicary's door, alarmed by the racket. She poured Vicary an enormous glass of whisky, ordered him to drink it, and returned the cot to its usual place.
Harry called again--nothing.
He picked up the telephone and dialed Helen's number. An annoyed man answered. Hello. . . . Hello. . . . Dammit, who's there? Vicary quietly replaced the receiver.
Harry checked in for the third time--still nothing.
Vicary, dejected, drafted a letter of resignation.
Ever read Vogel's file?
No.
He tore the letter to shreds and placed the shreds in his burn bag. He lay on his bed, the desk lamp shining on his face, and stared at the ceiling.
He
wondered why she had become involved with the Popes. Were they operating in complicity with her, involved in espionage as well as black marketeering and protection rackets? Unlikely, he thought. Perhaps she went to them because of services they could provide: black market petrol, weapons, men to mount a surveillance operation. Vicary could never be certain until he apprehended and questioned Robert Pope. Even then he planned to put the Pope operation under a microscope. If he saw anything he didn't like he would charge the lot of them with spying for Germany and throw them in prison for a very long time. And what about Rose Morely? Was it possible the whole thing was a dreadful coincidence? That Rose had recognized Anna Steiner and had paid for that with her life? Very possible, Vicary thought. But he would assume the worst-case scenario--that Rose Morely actually was an agent too. He would conduct a thorough investigation of her background before closing the book on her murder.
He looked at his wristwatch: one o'clock in the morning. He picked up the telephone and dialed the number once more. This time it was Helen's voice on the other end of the line. It was the first time he had heard it in twenty-five years. Hello. . . . Hello. . . . Who is this, please? Vicary wanted to speak but could not. Oh, bloody hell! And the connection was broken.
Catherine unlocked the study door, went inside, and closed it softly behind her. She switched on the desk lamp. From her handbag she removed her camera and her Mauser pistol. She laid the pistol on the desk carefully, the butt facing her, so she could swing it up rapidly into the firing position if necessary. She knelt in front of the safe and rotated the dial back and forth. She turned the latch and the door was open. Inside was the briefcase--locked. She unlocked it with her own key, opened it, and looked inside.
A black bound book with the words TOP SECRET--BIGOT ONLY on the cover.
She felt her heart begin to beat faster.
Catherine took the book to the desk, laid it down, and photographed the cover.
She opened it and read the first page:
PHOENIX PROJECT
1. design specifications
2. construction schedule
3. deployment
Catherine thought, My God. I've actually done it!
She photographed that page and turned another.
Page after page of designs--she photographed all of them.
A page labeled CREW REQUIREMENTS--she photographed it.
Another page labeled TOWING REQUIREMENTS--she photographed it.
She ran out of film. She removed the spent film and reloaded the camera. She photographed two more pages.
Then she heard the noise upstairs--Jordan, getting out of bed.
She turned another page and photographed it.
Catherine heard him walking across the floor.
She turned another page and photographed it.
She heard water running in the bathroom.
She photographed two more pages. She would never have access to this document again, that she knew. If it truly contained the secret of the invasion, she had to keep working. While she photographed, she thought what she would do if he walked in on her. Kill him with the Mauser. No one would hear it because of the silencer. She could finish photographing the documents, leave, go to Hampton Sands, find Neumann, and signal the submarine. Keep working. . . . And what would happen when SHAEF counterintelligence found the body of an officer who knew the secret of the invasion? They would launch an immediate investigation. They would discover he had been seen with a woman. They would look for the woman and, unable to locate her, conclude she was an agent. They would conclude the documents in his safe had been photographed, that the secret of the invasion had been compromised. She thought, Don't come in here, Peter Jordan. For your sake and mine.
She heard the sound of the toilet flushing.
Just a few more pages. She photographed them quickly. Done! She closed the binder, returned it to the briefcase, and placed the briefcase back in the safe. She closed the door quietly and spun the lock. She picked up the Mauser, pulled the slide into the firing position, and turned out the light. She opened the door and crept out into the hall. Jordan was still upstairs.
Think quickly, Catherine!
She walked down the hallway and pushed back the door of the drawing room. She put the Mauser in the handbag and the handbag on the floor. She turned on the light and walked to the drinks trolley. Calm down. Take a deep breath. She picked up a glass and was pouring herself a brandy when Peter Jordan walked in.
Harry Dalton was waiting outside the Popes' warehouse in a department surveillance van. He had two men with him, Detective-Sergeant Meadows from the Metropolitan Police and a watcher named Clive Roach. Harry was in the front passenger seat, Roach behind the wheel. Meadows was getting a few minutes of sleep in the back.
It was dawn. It had been a long and dreadfully boring night. Harry was exhausted, but each time he tried to sleep he saw one of two disparate visions: Rose Morely lying dead in Hyde Park or Grace Clarendon's face as they made love. He wanted to climb into her bed and sleep around the clock. He wanted to hold her in his arms and never let go. He was under her spell again.
The visions of Grace were broken by the sound of a van drawing up in front of the warehouse. A tall, thick man climbed out of the driver's-side door. Harry could make him out in the weak morning light.
"Know him?" Clive Roach asked.
Harry said, "Yeah. His name is Dicky Dobbs."
"Looks like trouble."
"He's Pope's main muscle boy and enforcer."
"If I was on the run I think I'd want that one around for protection."
"You're right," Harry said. "Wake up Sleeping Beauty back there."
Dobbs unlocked the judas gale and went inside the warehouse. A moment later the main door was pulled upward. Dobbs emerged and climbed back inside the van.
Roach started the engine as Meadows sat up.
Dobbs pulled the van inside the warehouse.
Roach opened the throttle and gunned the motor, nosing the van inside the warehouse before Dobbs could close the door.
Harry jumped out of the van.
Dobbs yelled, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Meadows said, "Turn around, put your fucking hands in the air, and shut the fuck up!"
Harry stepped forward and threw open the rear door of the van. Robert Pope was sitting on the floor. He looked up, smiled, and said, "Well, if it isn't my old friend Harry Dalton."
Catherine Blake took a taxi to her flat. It was early, just after dawn, the sky a flat mother-of-pearl gray. She had six hours until she was to meet Horst Neumann on Hampstead Heath. She washed her face and neck and changed out of her clothes into a nightgown and a bathrobe. She desperately needed a few hours of sleep, but she had something to do first.
It had been too close tonight. If Jordan had come downstairs a few seconds earlier she would have been forced to kill him. She told him she had been unable to sleep--she was upset about nearly being killed and thought a glass of brandy would help to calm her nerves. He seemed to accept her excuse for leaving his bed in the middle of the night, but she doubted he would buy it twice.
She went into the sitting room and sat down at the writing table. She opened the drawer and removed a single sheet of paper and a pen. On the paper she wrote four words: Get me out now! She placed the piece of paper on the desk and adjusted the lamp so the light was at the proper angle. She removed her camera from her handbag and held it to her eye. She placed her left hand next to the paper. Vogel would recognize it; there was a scar across the thumb where she had been cut during one of his damned silent killing classes. She photographed her hand and the note twice, then burned the note in the bathroom sink.
36
LONDON
Harry Dalton thought, One more minute of this bullshit and I'm going to handcuff Pope to a chair and beat his face bloody. They were in a small glass-enclosed office on the warehouse floor, Pope seated on an uncomfortable wooden chair, Harry pacing like a caged jungle cat. Vicary had s
ettled himself quietly in the shadows and seemed to be listening to different music. Harry and Vicary had not revealed their true affiliation; to Pope they were just a pair of Metropolitan Police officers. For one hour Pope had denied any knowledge of the woman whose photograph Harry kept waving in front of him. Pope's face remained bored, placid, and insolent, the look of a man who had broken the law his entire life and never seen the inside of a prison cell. Harry thought, I'm not getting to him. He's beating me.
Harry said, "All right, let's try this one more time."
Pope looked at his watch. "Not again, Harry. I've business to attend to."
Harry felt himself losing control. "You've never seen this woman before?"
"I've told you a hundred times. No!"
"I've got a witness who says this woman entered your warehouse the day your brother was murdered."
"Then your witness is wrong. Let me talk to him. I'm sure I could make him see the error of his ways."
"I'm sure you could! Where were you when your brother was killed?"
"At one of my clubs. I've got a hundred witnesses that will tell you that."
"Why have you been avoiding the police?"
"I haven't been avoiding the police. You blokes managed to find me." Pope looked over at Vicary, who was looking down at his hands. "That one ever speak?"
"Shut up and look at me, Pope. You have been avoiding the police, because you know who killed Vernon and you want to pay them back your own way."
"You're talking nonsense, Harry."
"There's a very nice lady in Islington who says you broke into her boardinghouse two hours after Vernon's murder, looking for a woman."
"Your very nice lady in Islington is obviously mistaken."
"Don't bullshit me, Pope!"
"Temper, temper, Harry."
"You've been looking for her for days and you haven't been able to find her. Do you ever wonder why she was able to elude you and your thugs?"