Authors: Sara Sheridan
Chapter 28
Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just
.
E
ddie was right about Churchill and the stogies. Smoking cigars was difficult. Mirabelle had seen many men over the years cutting the cap and lighting up, but she’d never done it herself. Upstairs, Caine handed her the box and she took one. Then he handed her the cutter and watched, smiling, as she made a valiant attempt to use it, before offering a lit match. Mirabelle leaned in and puffed. She didn’t want to say she’d been in the room before – when she broke in the other night and had seen Christine Moreau from the window.
‘It’s a lovely house,’ she managed just before the smoke made her cough. It was strong and it caught in her gullet. Caine’s smile widened into a grin as he prepared his own cigar.
‘You’re an unusual woman,’ he said, taking a seat on a leather chair by the fire and reaching for his champagne. ‘Tell me, what did you do during the war?’
Mirabelle sank onto the sofa.
‘I worked in Whitehall. For Jack Duggan. I was only a secretary. I never went into the field, like you.’ She saw Caine register Jack’s name.
‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘How is Jack?’
‘He died. Some years ago. In Brighton, where he lived.’
Caine’s gaze was drawn to the fire. ‘They’re gone, then. Both Jack Duggan and Matthew Bradley?’
She nodded.
‘They seemed indestructible. Almost inhuman. I can’t believe I’m the one who’s left.’
‘You fell out with them, didn’t you? When they came to Longchamp?’
Caine took a deep draw. ‘You better keep puffing on that or it’ll go out.’
Mirabelle drew the cigar to her lips and tried again. ‘I read the medical records,’ she said. ‘You were the one who left them bruised.’
Caine nodded. ‘My mother had died and then I was furious about what had happened to Christine. She was …’
‘Von der Grün’s mistress. I know. I can’t imagine being bereaved like that and then punished anyway once the man you loved was gone.’
‘She’s still in the same little studio. She won’t accept any help. They tried to send her away but she wouldn’t have it. I offered to set her up somewhere else but she turned me down. She looked after me, you know. All those years ago. But she’s a proud woman. Tell me, Miss Bevan, you said earlier that you were a murderer. That you killed someone.’ His gaze fell to the splatter on Mirabelle’s dress. She felt suddenly glad that she hadn’t gone for Albert’s jugular.
‘Yes. It was a Russian agent. He was hurting Evangeline Durand. I came at him from behind.’
‘You shouldn’t think of it as murder. They’re not real people,’ Caine said. ‘Anyone in covert operations. They’re not subject to the same rules or the same rights. Do you understand?’
‘You were a covert operative.’
‘Yes. I was.’
Mirabelle rolled the cigar between her lips. ‘So who did you kill?’ she asked.
Caine sat forward. ‘Very good. That’s excellent. I’m surprised Jack didn’t deploy you in the field. It’s not often old
Duggan missed a trick.’ Mirabelle must have flinched, and Caine laughed. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘So that was you, was it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I knew he was sweet on someone. He never used the story on me, of course. I’d lost the woman I loved, and I didn’t love again until … well, you can see. Elizabeth and I were supposed to quit all of that. Clearly she hasn’t kept her side of that deal. I maintain it doesn’t do to love someone if you’re in the service. But Jack used to say he’d found someone who was worth winning the war for. He’d use the story when he wanted to inspire someone. Some poor idiot who still believed in goodness.’
Mirabelle’s stomach sank. ‘You don’t think he really loved me?’
‘I don’t think anyone knew what Jack Duggan really felt.’
Mirabelle remembered the day Jack had declared his love. He’d insisted that he hadn’t expected it. It had been a bolt from the blue. She’d been his black swan, he said. For years he’d only seen white birds on the water and then suddenly he’d found something he didn’t believe existed and everything had changed.
‘It felt as though he loved me.’
Caine puffed. ‘Maybe he did.’
This was beginning to feel like a game of chess. Mirabelle turned the table. ‘I must say, I admire what you did – leaving Caroline Bland behind. You must have been very committed to the service. Did you succeed in your mission? Did you get what you wanted out of your cousin?’
Caine nodded. ‘I was as inhuman as the best of them. One of Duggan’s finest. Paris fell a good three months earlier than it would have if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘But you never went home?’
Caine spread his arms. ‘This is my home.’
‘Not Pity Me in County Durham? To see your mother’s grave?’
‘Inhuman, aren’t I? They trained me well.’
Mirabelle stood up and walked to the window. ‘I don’t
believe you’re inhuman, Flight Lieutenant. I think you were too upset. I think you’re a man who loved his family so much you couldn’t bear it. But you did your duty.’
‘I hope you aren’t expecting me to break down and tell you everything, Miss Bevan, because I won’t. I worked hard. I’ve seen what I’ve seen. I think I deserve a normal life now.’
‘Your wife doesn’t want to give up, though, does she?’
Caine’s jaw stiffened. ‘I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. We have children to consider.’
‘Perhaps that’s precisely what’s on her mind.’
Caine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, the bigger picture. Contributing to a better world? Yes. I see what you mean. I’m not sure there is a bigger world. I’ll admit it. There. The bigger picture wasn’t worth it. If I’d realised that, my mother would have been alive to meet her grandchildren. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. Dying alone that way, not knowing that I was safe, or even alive. Thinking she had no one any more. She took sleeping pills, did you know? They said it was an accident but my mother was an accurate kind of person and if she took extra sleeping pills it was because she intended to. She didn’t want to go on. My brother was shot down and she thought I was dead. A man feels a duty, you see, to his country and to his family. During the war I had to choose which of those was more important. Life is in the small things, Miss Bevan, and I chose badly. I as good as pulled the trigger on the old lady. If I had honoured what was really important she’d be alive today. And so would my cousin.’
‘You think you killed your cousin?’
‘I know I bloody well did. And on your precious Jack Duggan’s orders. Wilhelm was on to us. It was me or him. Actually it was me and Christine or him. Though I’m not sure Wilhelm would have turned in Christine. He loved her, you see. Perhaps he’d have let her get away. Anyway, I shot him. He died in the street. Coming out of a little bar he liked, only just
up the road. He was alone – no escort. I’m under no illusions. He would have shot me too. Cousin against cousin. That’s what war does to people. That’s family for you. Sometimes agents in the field have to make split-second decisions. Sometimes you find out a lot about yourself in a millisecond. The Germans thought it was the Resistance who killed him, of course – and in a way it was. So they rounded up a hundred men and shot them. I must have killed thousands if you count all that, because I was a very accomplished Nazi-murderer in my day. Covert and inhuman at once – the SOE’s dream. The truth is that of all the men I killed, it’s only Wilhelm’s death I regret. I’ll bear that till the day I die, Miss Bevan – the sight of him lying there in the street, bleeding to death. And look at me now, sitting here, smoking a cigar in our comfortable family home. Are you surprised I couldn’t bear to go back to England and pretend to be a war hero? Our children are asleep upstairs and every night when I check on them I think I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve any of it. If Duggan and Bradley came today to try to take me home, I’d wallop them again. Is that what you came here to find out?’
Caine stubbed out his cigar and checked his watch. He stared past her out of the window.
‘Christine says it’s always the women,’ Mirabelle said.
‘Yes. She’s right. A lot of the time it is.’
‘But you found love again? You made it come right.’
‘Yes. Elizabeth and I.’
‘I’m curious. Would you marry Caroline if you had 1942 to live again?’
Caine’s eyes hardened. ‘And have Jack Duggan court martial me, the bastard? ‘He shook his head. ‘I’d get a message to my mother. I’d make sure Wilhelm didn’t tumble. But who the hell has a real choice? A man could go mad. We did what we had to do.’ He finished the conversation as if a shutter had rolled down. ‘Look, we’d better go back to the study. They’ll be home soon.’
Chapter 29
Keep going come what may
.
T
he American Embassy wasn’t far. The countess slid into the back seat of the car and McGregor followed. She gave the chauffeur instructions in swift French and then turned back to McGregor as if he was her guest at a cocktail party.
‘Have you visited Paris before?’
‘No. It’s my first time.’
‘Well, you must see the sights. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.’
‘I expect it would be best to get Miss Bevan home. She’s had a shock.’
‘Is it the first time she’s faced this kind of situation?’
‘No.’ McGregor surprised himself with the thought that if anything this kind of experience seemed to follow Mirabelle around, and yet, every time, he treated it as if she was the rookie and he knew best. ‘I think perhaps she did something of this nature during the war.’
‘Ah.’ The countess nodded. ‘I see. That’s how my husband and I met, though we didn’t discover our feelings until after the peace. He used to say that fighting the Nazis focused the mind, but I think it was living in fear. Have you ever lived in fear, Superintendent?’
McGregor shifted uncomfortably. During the war he’d worked in Leith, at the dockyard. He’d tried to enlist in the army but he hadn’t passed the medical. Stories of wartime
derring do always left him feeling inadequate. ‘I suppose I haven’t,’ he admitted.
‘Philip is angry,’ the countess continued, oblivious, her attention focused no doubt on the argument that would face her when she got home. ‘After the war we swore never again. Who would have thought that not ten years later the Germans would be our friends and the Russians would be the enemy? They are a formidable enemy, too. Stalin has split Europe just as surely as Hitler did. The Americans call them the Reds.’ The countess pulled the scarf from her purse. ‘Reds, you see. It’s a little joke.’
‘And apart from its colour, what is it about the scarf? Why is it so important?’
The countess pulled the material smoothly between her fingers. ‘I suppose I can tell you. It’s over now, or almost. It’s the pattern. Pretty, isn’t it? The material is delivered to the seamstress, you see, and in one section of the roll the pattern is very slightly different. No one would notice in the normal run of things. People would simply think that the print was misaligned, but it means something if you can read it. The rest of the roll is just cheap frippery for downmarket shops. The seamstress cuts the material into squares, hems them and makes her money on the rest of the scarves, but this one is priceless. They paint the message by hand. It’s this one that contains the code.’
‘What does it say?’
‘I have no idea. I’m not a codebreaker. I’m a mule. I always have been. The thing they’re most concerned about, though, is atomic energy. I read the newspapers. Europe is lining itself up in a series of alliances fuelled by the H-bomb.’
‘And you work for the Americans?’
The countess nodded. ‘They are generous, but they have no sense of humour. None at all.’
‘Do you always deliver the scarf to the Embassy?’
‘Never. I give it to Evangeline at the opera and she meets a man from the Embassy and gives it to him. I don’t know where. Poor Evangeline.’
‘She met him at a bar not far from the opera house.’
‘Ah,’ the countess nodded, ‘I see. Hand to hand. Different places that are difficult to connect.’
‘Well, they have connected them.’
‘All good things come to an end. It’s been almost a year.’
There was a wistful tone in the way she said this. It came to McGregor that there was something feral about the countess despite her tailored dress and immaculate make-up. When she said ‘Poor Evangeline’ she hadn’t really meant it.
‘You’ve enjoyed being back in the game?’
The woman parted her lips. ‘It’s not that I don’t love my husband and my children. But one becomes accustomed to adventure, you know. The war was a golden time. One feels most alive when one is facing death. The thrill of the forbidden, I expect. One looks evil in the face – badness, you might say – and one is never sure of getting away. Do you enjoy forbidden pleasures, Superintendent?’ The countess’s gaze landed on McGregor’s thigh. Then she ran her eyes upwards suggestively and lingered. The superintendent shifted uncomfortably.
‘We must be almost there,’ he said.
‘Yes. At the end of the street and to the right.’
‘I hope Mirabelle is all right.’
‘She is your lover?’
‘No,’ McGregor said quickly. ‘A friend. A good one.’
It occurred to him that he wanted much more than that. Even in a stretched wool dress and men’s slippers, he found Mirabelle far more enticing than any other woman. Her goodness went all the way through.
‘I’m sure Miss Bevan will recover,’ the countess said dismissively, turning her gaze back onto the street outside. ‘A good night’s sleep works wonders.’
McGregor was about to form a question about whether Mirabelle’s killing the man in the safe house was really murder in French law when the chauffeur cried out, the car jerked and they came to a sudden halt. The superintendent was jettisoned from his seat and the countess landed on top of him. As they disentangled themselves he looked out of the window and saw that a car, speeding onto the main road from a side street, had run straight into them. Now a young man had emerged from the other vehicle and was walking towards them.
‘Drive on,’ the countess hissed at the chauffeur. ‘Quickly. Go round him.’
In the front, the man was conscious but clearly concussed. ‘Madame,’ he murmured woozily, pawing at the steering wheel.
McGregor pushed the countess out of the way and scrambled over to the front seat, hauling the chauffeur to one side. He slammed the car into reverse and backed up, ignoring the sound of scraping metal. Then, in the rear-view mirror he saw another car behind them blocking the road. A man had emerged from it and was approaching from the rear. His mind raced. The fellow from the crashed car was straight ahead, and coming closer. Now McGregor could see that the boy was holding a gun.
‘Drive!’ the countess shouted.
The engine was still running, but with no way forward and no way back the superintendent hesitated. The boy had almost reached them now. The muzzle of the weapon clicked against the side window, pointing straight at the countess. ‘Roll down the window and give the scarf to me,’ he said. ‘Now.’
In the mirror McGregor saw her shaking hand reach out to do so. He gritted his teeth. They had come so far and risked so much – Mirabelle had killed a man. He wasn’t going to let her down at the last pass.
In a movement so smooth it surprised him, he reached over and grabbed the scarf from the countess’s hand while at the
same time opening the driver’s door. He hit the pavement and began to run. With the car between him and the assassin he reckoned he must have at least a second or two’s grace. He cleared the other vehicle just as the first shot rang out. The end of the street and to the right, she’d said. He kept going. The men must be following but he couldn’t hear the clatter of their feet, only the pounding of his heart. He had almost made the corner when he heard the second gunshot. This time he felt it – a sharp stab in his shoulder, but not enough to stop him. If the men were shooting at him, he reckoned, at least they must have left the countess alone. If she’d any gumption she’d get herself and the chauffeur out of there. He swerved right just as another shot rang out. This time he couldn’t say for sure if it had hit him. If anything it gave him a burst of energy and he ran faster. If they kill me I’ll never hold her again. I’ll never kiss her again.
Around the corner, like a smack in the face, he realised Paris was on a scale so much larger than Brighton or Edinburgh. He gulped in a breath, taking in the avenue Gabriel as he sprinted. A huge park ran along the street and the wide road was curved. The embassy must be here somewhere, but there seemed to be a dearth of buildings. Everything was just open space. Behind him another shot rang out and then he heard a siren. Somewhere nearby a police car was coming, alerted by the gunshots. For the first time in his life, he realised, he didn’t want the police to arrive. Anything that tied him to these men potentially also tied Mirabelle to the agent she’d killed. One of the cars rounded the corner and he heard another shot. It didn’t slow him. Then he heard the sound of metal on metal. The car must have crashed, he thought. He pushed himself harder, and at last he saw a guard box and the corner of an American flag. He made straight for it, stumbling. A man caught him as he went over.
‘The Reds,’ he gasped. ‘They mustn’t get it.’ He fumbled the
scarf into the soldier’s hand. Then from the ground he saw the wheels of a car pull up and a flash of purple fabric. His shoulder stung and he felt his body shaking. The air was suddenly unbearably cold.
‘Quickly.’ The countess’s voice was insistent. ‘We have to get him inside.’
‘She’s not my wife,’ he said out of nowhere.
And then everything faded to black.