by Joel N. Ross
Three warders advanced. He slid a knife sharpener—the narrow gritty rod and the comfortable handle—into his sleeve and stepped into the cupboard until the footsteps sounded up the stairs. Another bullet fired.
He ran outside, waving distraught arms, playing the part of a panicked transcriptionist for an audience of one. Yet the warder was well trained, and as Sondegger closed, he raised his sidearm.
Sondegger pushed the knife sharpener into the man’s eye.
The third movement of the requiem introduced the baritone, pleading to God—as he drove across the English countryside, Sondegger’s voice swelled within the confines of the car he’d stolen. At the Gough Square drop, he found money and a message from Duckblind: The Abwehr agent known as Digby was at liberty. His loyalty was still in doubt. Thomas Wall would likely be found at the following locations. . . .
Sondegger smiled. Superlative work. He expected no less, but still—he was proud. He tendered her a message in return. Duckblind should secure the proof of Digby’s loyalty while he evaluated the other two Abwehr agents, Kruh and Gerring.
First, Gerring. He was a barrister, employed in London and instructed to report on the public shelters. Sondegger wore an officious expression and a Metropolitan Water Board armlet, and visited the shelters of the legal district. He asked intrusive questions. Hours passed. Then he had a stroke of luck; he found Gerring.
As evening shaded to night, he identified Gerring’s British control. Gerring was now in the employ of British Military Intelligence. He was a traitor.
Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit. And ye now have sorrow.
Sondegger vanished into the city. One Abwehr agent, Gerring, had turned traitorous. One—Digby—was in Duckblind’s capable hands. Kruh, he had yet to investigate. If there was treachery, all who had been touched by the Abwehr would be destroyed.
Establishing the loyalty of the Abwehr agents was simple, an uncomplicated entr’acte before the curtain rose. But now that he was free, the show would begin. The spotlight would shine on Thomas Wall.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
EVENING, DECEMBER 3, 1941
TOM HELD HIS BREATH as the door cracked and light fanned across the carpet. The brass lamp was heavy and cold in his hand. A head moved inside the room, wavy dark hair parted in the center.
Renard?
Tom’s lips moved into a frozen grin as he swung, and a bare shoulder followed the head. Tom jerked up his arm, and the lamp crashed against the wall.
“Sweet lord!” Audrey said. “Tommy?”
He turned on the overhead light.
“If you want to be alone,” she said, “you need only say.”
Ten minutes later, he was sitting in the chair and the girl was curled on the bed, saying, “Two weeks ago, I ran into Miss Boyd at the market. She’s a neighbor, from when Da was alive. She asked after me, very polite. The evil cow. You know the sort.”
“Sure,” Tom said, having no idea.
“I told her I was working as an ecdysiast. Inch taught me the word. I expect—I expect you think I’m ashamed of what I do.”
“Are you?” He had the idea Audrey was leading somewhere.
“Da wouldn’t approve. Oh, he’d not disapprove. He’d say I was my mum’s little girl. He’d say that, but he’d think what you think.”
“I don’t know what I think.”
She fixed him with an arch stare. Her neck was ivory. “I do,” she said. “Da would blame himself. He took responsibility for things beyond his control. Mum, for example. Poor man, he’d rather die than see me—well, he did die, didn’t he?”
Her eyes were downcast. Her hair was piled high. One hopeful black curl twined down her neck. She breathed deeply, at the edge of some emotion, and her breasts rose and fell. He stood and looked down at her body, curled catlike on the bed.
She reached smooth white arms behind her head and unpinned her hair. There was a spray of freckles on the inside of her right arm. “Even with me in tow, my mum accidentally captivated men—fiddling with the strap of her shoe on the street, she’d break three hearts.” Audrey placed her hairpins on the bedside table, one at a time. “They wrote odes to her eyebrows when she was young, to her ankles—she saved the silliest.”
Tom sat on the bed. The mattress shifted, and her thigh moved against his hip. Maybe she wasn’t leading somewhere. Maybe she was drunk. She didn’t look drunk. She looked eager and afraid.
“She’d tell Da she could’ve married a gentleman who likened her earlobes to pink pearls. She had no regrets. She never had a single regret.”
“Life treated her softly, then.”
“She lost her family, Tommy, after she married Da. She lost two children before me. She grieved like a Sicilian. Then she finished grieving, and no regrets.”
“Just like that.”
“It’s not so simple. You try it.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Start,” she said, “here.” Her hand was hot on the back of his neck. She drew him close. They kissed.
He thought, Harriet. He gently disengaged.
She watched his face and weighed what she saw there. “My mum wore bobbed hair and fringed skirts and Peter Pan collars. One night, she drank too much and fell in a fountain. Da saw, and escorted her home. He disapproved of her plucked eyebrows and her lipstick, her drinking and smoking. He was decent and upright and too perfectly dull—or so she informed him, at drunken length.”
He nodded. Whatever Audrey had been moving toward, she’d nearly arrived.
“Now listen, Tommy. The next day, she knew she loved him. You think it’s silly, but she knew. No questions, no regrets. She spent two weeks finding him, two more seducing him. She told me once. She said, ‘You’ll know. Not from here’”—her hand on Tom’s heart—“‘nor there’”—her eyes flicked downward—“‘but here.’” Her hand was hot on his stomach. “‘In your tum. You’ll know,’ she said. And I do.”
“I don’t know your middle name, Audrey. I don’t even know the color of your eyes.”
“Liar.”
Midnight blue. “Hortense?”
“Elizabeth. And I know, Tommy.”
“You know Earl.”
“You’re very like him—hush, you are. But you’re not him, and I . . . I’m trying to seduce you.” She laughed again, but there was a sad note in it. “I expected it to be easier.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“I can’t.”
“Because of your brother’s wife.”
“What do you— What about her?”
“Earl,” she said, “is not the most discreet of husbands.”
His skin pricked for no reason. “You didn’t—”
“I didn’t. Winnie told Anne. Imogene told me. I didn’t. I haven’t.” She raised her chin. “I never have.”
“But you . . . you don’t mean—”
She said, “I never knew before,” and turned her face away.
He said, “The first time I saw her was at a dinner party. She was wearing a white dress. I don’t think knowing is silly, Audrey. By the time she reached for her soup spoon, I knew. She likes chocolate in the morning. She’s plain. You’re far more beautiful. She never—”
“Shut up, Tommy. Please do.”
She cried and he stroked her hair. He lay beside her, the weight of her head in the crook of his arm.
Eventually, she slept. He listened to the ticking of the clock. An ache gripped his elbow, his arm cramping under the weight of her head. He rolled to his side. There was a dark freckle on the nape of her neck. She made a noise in her throat, like a purr. His arm draped over her hip.
Tom dozed.
Hands tugged at his neck and he opened one eye. The girl was working the knot of his tie with her clever fingers. Her lower lip was caught
between her teeth. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was a glossy black halo in the lamplight.
“Lift your head,” she said, and slid his tie from his collar.
He closed his eye and felt her lips against his forehead.
“Sleep, Tommy.”
He said, “Harriet.” And slept.
“WOTCHER, MATE,” Renard said, smiling with all his teeth at the doorman in the Waterfall lobby. “I’ve a message for one Mr. Thomas Wall. He in residence?”
The doorman said he’d see the message was delivered.
“Personal delivery,” Renard said. “This Mr. Wall, he below?”
The doorman said he couldn’t say.
Rugg knew it was fookin’ wrong, chatting at the pinstripe doorman. Still, a muscle in the man’s eye twitched, maybe toward the stairs roped behind a fancy brass chain. Rugg tugged on his little finger until the knuckle popped.
The doorman greeted a couple toffs with a groveling welcome. He lifted the cream blue phone and murmured words, and told the toffs if they’d proceed downstairs, they’d find everything in readiness.
“I’m just an honest bloke doing an honest job,” Renard said as the toffs punted off. “Like yourself.”
The man licked a finger and opened his book, and a corn-haired bird came from nowhere. The doorman told her to be quick. She waved past, saying, “ta.”
“Hard for an honest man, these days.” Renard slid one of Chilton’s notes across the doorman’s desk. “You’ll be doing me a favor. Doing Mr. Wall a favor.”
The corn-haired bird missed a step at the words, batted her lashes at Renard before she pushed out the front door.
“Doing your own self a favor,” Renard said.
The doorman said thank you kindly, if that was all, but no sir.
Rugg wrung his hat and shoved off. It was cold outside, and not yet dark. The corn-haired bird was crossing the square. A quarter of the way down the street, he laid a hand on her arm, stopped and spun her.
“I’ll scream,” she said, cool as sweat. “Leave off.”
He bowed his head and said, “’Pologies, miss.”
“Naff off my arm.” She tried to jerk away.
What’d the pinstripe call her? “Don’t mean nothing, Miss Anne.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You overheard.”
“Mr. Wall told me,” he said.
The bird didn’t miss a step this time. Her face softened. “Earl?”
“He told me.” Rugg’s grip was loose on her arm. They were almost alone. “He said, ‘Fetch Miss Anne. Tell her.’”
“Earl said that? Tell Miss Anne what?”
He pulled her between the building and the brick. “Tell Miss Anne to sing.”
She started to scream, so he knocked her in the stomach, held her while she retched, then cuffed her proper.
“I know fuck all,” she finally said. “Fucking Earl.”
“Ever run a stick against bricks? Scrape it on concrete?”
She didn’t say a bleedin’ thing.
“Carves wood right off.” He pressed her face against the wall, blond hair falling everywhere. “Pretty bird like you.”
She sobbed it all: her fookin’ hopes and dreams, and Earl Wall. Our Mr. Wall’s brother. Some slag, name of Venus, was paying on a room for the Yank upstairs, the bleedin’ Pugilist Room. Wasn’t there now, the corn-haired bird thought. She didn’t know, but he should be back later. Please. Please, no.
THE TICKING OF THE CLOCK woke Tom. The bedside lamp cast a dim glow like dawn, but with the blackout curtains closed, it could be any time. Didn’t matter. The pressure was gone from his temples. It was a new day.
He’d finally slept.
There was a book under the lamp, with a folded note obscuring its cover and five half-smoked cigarette butts in a semicircle at its base. Groping for the note, he put his weight on his bad hand and swore. It was more sensitive than ever, dipped in acid and throbbing.
He’d slept and was still half-sleeping, could barely read the neat, looping hand:
Dearest T—
Another offering. This one I insist you accept.
(The fags were the jobber’s idea. I tucked a pack of Players in your jacket pocket, if his aren’t to your taste.)
I remain,
Always yours
The book was leather-bound, the title printed in gold: Tristram Shandy. Tom turned it over in his hand. He couldn’t believe it. He’d slept, and the book had appeared. When had Audrey found the jobber? Finally, he’d caught a break—
A club struck him in the back of the head. A light flashed and the room upended and he was facedown on the carpet.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
MORNING, DECEMBER 4, 1941
DUCKBLIND FOLLOWED MR. DIGBY, the Abwehr agent whose loyalty was in question, to the most darling café, a hop and a skip from Broadcasting House. It was tucked under a too-lovely striped awning and had the cutest patterned tablecloths. Had he truly defected?
Even if he hadn’t, it was cruel of Digby to take his warm and woolly ease while she stood glum-faced at the motor-bus stop, pretending to wait for the 53a or the 88, whichever didn’t come. It had sprinkled early that morning, and the rain wetted the city like an old-time cyprian damping her skirts. But now, at half past eight, the streets stank of people, too much cologne and too little soap.
An ugly man walked toward Digby and sat two tables away. He was joined by an ugly woman and they ate an ugly breakfast. Digby ate alone. There wasn’t any indication of his disloyalty, but it was early yet and—oh. Oh!
She wasn’t the only person with an eye on Digby.
Digby raised his napkin mockingly toward an older man in a careful blue suit. The older man ignored him. Poorly done! If he didn’t want to be associated with Digby, he should have pretended confusion. Ignoring the gesture was terribly bad tradecraft.
After breakfast, Duckblind followed Blue Suit as he followed Digby—not to Broadcasting House, Digby’s ostensible workplace, but to a bland brick building. She sucked the knuckle of her thumb. So Blue Suit was Digby’s British minder? He had turned traitor. Schmetterling indeed. Flighty and frivolous and only a WT operator, yet she’d uncovered the traitor!
She must learn the whole story. She must confirm that mocking wave hadn’t been merely a gesture to a coworker, and the bland brick building not simply a reassignment.
She returned to Mr. Pentham’s house and changed clothes. She applied a touch of rouge to her cheeks and kohl to her eyes. She wore silly wedge sandals—utterly wrong for the season but cute as a caterpillar. She strapped Mr. Pentham’s oversized watch on her wrist—deliciously outré—and her disguise was complete.
The family next door had a darling curly-haired dog, and she put it on a leash and returned to Digby’s building. She entered directly, chattering to the dog, whom she called “Loochie.” He was a scruffy thing of uncertain parentage, but full of pride. He stuck his nose in the air and strutted around her ankles.
The lobby was bare and institutional. Governmental. Her heels echoed, and her voice—pitched high and fussy—echoed, as well. She told Loochie not to get underfoot, and to please attend Mummy, or she’d take a tumble, and then where would little Loochie be?
A man with stubby black shoes asked if she were lost. There were two businessmen waiting at the lift, and another stubby black shoe man at a desk. Both the men in black shoes were armed. It was a secure building, and she had confirmed Digby’s treachery!
She flittered and flustered and said, “Me? I? Lost?”
He said yes. Could he please see her identification?
She tossed her hair. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous! I’ve been coming once a week for months! Where’s Albert?”
She dropped the leash and gave Loochie a swift kick in his fuzzy little tum. Loochie yelped and dashed away. S
he shrieked for help in catching him, and almost fell out of her dress chasing the beast. She lunged, Loochie fled, and the men attempted assistance. It was dreadfully comic. Finally, after she’d committed the layout of the building to memory, one of the men cornered the ravening hound behind a drooping potted plant.
She gave him a firm scolding. The dog, of course, not the man! Him she gave a vacuous smile and a barrage of gushing gratitude. There were four basic approaches. Most agents relied on stealth and all sorts of surreptitious sneakiness. But stealth was tedious, and nobody expected an agent to call the greatest-possible amount of attention to herself. Nobody suspected a scatterbrained young lady making a spectacle, especially after Loochie pooped in the lobby.
The first man ignored the odiferous offering and said he suspected she had the wrong building, and she said, “Yes, of course,” and launched into a flustery explanation as she clattered back outside. She waved to the men and escorted Loochie on a long and aimless stroll to ensure she wasn’t being followed.
She was soon back at Mr. Pentham’s street. She gave the dog a peck on the muzz and returned him to his garden. So Digby was a traitor. She had caught him, though, and all his double-dealing would come crumbling down. She hoped he took a long time hanging.
She retrieved her transmitter for maintenance and tests. She’d notify Bookbinder at the next letter drop: The Abwehr network—one agent at least—was compromised. Bookbinder would investigate the other two agents, and they’d transmit the information to the SD. Shouldn’t be long now.
TOM WAS FACEDOWN on the carpet. He rolled to his side and touched the back of his aching head. Kong and Teeth—Rugg and Renard—were standing over him. Renard was wearing a too-bright plaid coat, Rugg a shapeless raincoat.
Tom said, “Swell.”
“Heavy sleeper, yobbo,” Renard said.
“I’m out of practice.” Tom winced as his fingers found a tender spot.
“You’ve something we want.”
“My boyish good looks.”
“Bollocks,” Rugg said, his high-pitched voice not unfriendly. He extended an oak burl of a hand. Tom took it and the big man hoisted him back onto the bed.
