Authors: Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy (40 page)
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.
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.
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.
assassin.
Catherine Blake--
murderer.
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.
Harry noticed Vicary standing there silently and came over to him. They stood side by side for a long moment, neither speaking, like mourners at a graveside, Vicary softly beating his pockets for his half-moon reading glasses.
"It could be a coincidence," Harry said, "but I really don't believe in them. Especially when it involves a dead woman with a bullet through the eye." Harry paused, finally showing emotion. "Christ, I've never seen anyone do it like that. Street thugs don't shoot people in the face. Only professionals do."
"Who found the body?"
"A passerby. They've questioned him. His story seems to check out."
"How long has she been dead?"
"Just a few hours. Which means she would have been killed in the late afternoon or early evening."
"And no one heard the shot?"
"No."
"Perhaps the weapon was silenced?"
"Could have been."
The superintendent came over.
"Well, if it isn't Harry Dalton, the man who cracked the Spencer Thomas case." The superintendent glanced at Vicary; then his gaze returned to Harry. "I'd heard you were working for the irregulars now."
Harry managed a weak smile. "Hello, guv."
Vicary said, "I'm declaring this a security matter as of now. You'll have the necessary paperwork on your desk in the morning. I want Harry to coordinate the investigation. Everything should go through him. Harry will draft a statement in your name. I want this described as a robbery that went wrong. Describe the wound accurately. Don't play around with the details of the crime scene. I want the statement to say the police are searching for a pair of refugees of undetermined origin seen in the park around the time of the murder. And I want your men to proceed with discretion. Thank you, Superintendent. Harry, I'll see you first thing in the morning."
Harry and the superintendent watched Vicary limp down the hill and vanish into the soggy blackness. The superintendent turned to Harry. "Jesus Christ, what's his bloody problem?"
Harry stayed in Hyde Park until the body was taken away. It was after midnight. He hitched a lift from one of the police officers. He could have called for a department car but he didn't want the department to know where he was going. He got out of the car a short distance from Grace Clarendon's flat and walked the rest of the way. She had given him his old key back, and he let himself inside without knocking. Grace always slept like a child--on her stomach, arms and legs sprawled, a pale foot poking from beneath the covers. Harry undressed quietly in the dark and tried to slip into bed without waking her. The bedsprings groaned beneath his weight. She stirred, rolled over, and kissed him.
"I thought you'd left me again, Harry."
"No, just a very long, very dirty night."
She leaned on one elbow. "What happened?"
Harry told her. Harry told her everything.
"It's possible she was killed by the agent we're looking for."
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"It was bad. She was shot in the face. It's hard to forget something like that, Grace."
"Can I make you forget?"
He had just wanted to sleep. He was exhausted, and being around a body always made him feel dirty. But she began to kiss him, very slowly at first, and softly. Then she was begging him to help her out of her flowered flannel nightshirt, and the madness began. She always made love to him as if she were possessed, clawing and scratching at his body, pulling at him as if trying to draw venom from a wound. And when he entered her she wept and pleaded with him never to leave her again. And afterward, as she lay next to him sleeping, Harry was struck by the most awful thought of his life. He found himself hoping her husband would never come back from the war.
34
LONDON
They gathered around a large model of a Mulberry harbor the following afternoon in a secret room at 47 Grosvenor Square: senior American and British officers assigned to the project; Churchill's personal chief of staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay; and a pair of generals from Eisenhower's staff who sat so still they might have been statues.
The meeting began cordially enough, but after a few minutes tempers flared. There were charges and countercharges, accusations of foot-dragging and distortion, even a few quickly regretted personal insults.
The British construction estimates were too rosy! You Americans are being too impatient,
too--well,
too bloody American!
It was the pressure, they all agreed, and they started over at the beginning.
The British construction estimates were too rosy! You Americans are being too impatient,
too--well,
too bloody American!
It was the pressure, they all agreed, and they started over at the beginning.
With little more than three months remaining until D-Day, the Mulberry project was falling hopelessly behind schedule.
It's the bloody Phoenixes,
drawled an English officer who happened to be assigned to one of Mulberry's more successful components.
It's the bloody Phoenixes,
drawled an English officer who happened to be assigned to one of Mulberry's more successful components.
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