by Desmond Cory
Author - Critical Acclaim “There is these days a comparatively slender band of first-class writers who are producing thrillers worthy of serious attention — among them authors like Margaret Allingham, John Creasy, Carter Dickenson, David Dodge, Ellery Queen, Simenon, and, of course, Agatha Christie. Among them, too, is Desmond Cory, a man whose ingenuity, imagination and good humour pervade his works with an agreeable excitement and readability.”
Bristol Evening Post, 1960
“A remarkable suspense story. Certainly Cory’s name will be one to reckon with after this.”
The Book Buyer’s Guide, 1965
“As one has come to expect from Cory, colorful action, copious carnage, elaborate intrigue, frequent surprises.”
New York Times Book Review, 1966
“Readers who like their thrillers to complement their intelligence must on no account miss Mr Cory.”
The Times, 1971
THIS TRAITOR, DEATH
BY
DESMOND CORY
FIRST PUBLISHED BY FREDERICK MULLER, LTD IN 1952
© Desmond Cory 1952
Published on Kindle 2011 and 2016
Visit the website: www.desmondcory.com
CHAPTER ONE
ABOUT half-way up St. Bride’s Street, not far from Ludgate Circus, there is a small and undistinguished secondhand bookshop run by a small and undistinguished gentleman named Joseph Thring. Mr. Thring is completely unknown to University students and to collectors of incunabula — unknown, in fact, to all but those inveterate browsers who wander dreamily from shop to shop with no apparent intention of ever buying anything; and even these would not have remembered him unless blessed with extra-sensory perception. In other words, while the name ‘Thring’ was visible in faded white lettering outside the shop, Mr. Thring himself was so small and undistinguished as to be non-existent.
On that particular morning in August 1949, when Mr. Sean Fedora decided to visit this literary backwater, it was occupied by six people. In the shop itself were two elderly browsers, both male, one of them was reading Bulldog Drummond, and the other was dipping into a rather larger volume entitled Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. It would be impossible to say which of them wore the more pessimistic expression. Farther in the shop, a youngish man with a bald head was sitting on a rickety chair, reading the Daily Mirror and smoking a Woodbine. His name, if anybody was interested, was Carrington; he was the shop assistant.
On the floor above were two female secretaries, who were drinking tea and talking about the Russian Ballet in between giggles. In the adjoining office a middle-aged man was sitting on a revolving chair with his feet on the desk; he was reading Hansard and smoking a briar pipe. At intervals he removed the pipe from his mouth and spat ferociously into the wastepaper basket. His name, in which many people all over the world were acutely interested was Holliday; he was the head of one of the smaller branches of British Intelligence.
The telephone on his desk rang at ten fifty-nine a.m. exactly; whereupon Holliday placed his book face downwards on the desk, reached for the receiver and said:
“Yum.”
“Mr. Fedora is here, sir,” said one of the two secretaries. Holliday knew that one was Jean and the other Joan, but he hadn’t yet found out which was which. He’d only been there four years. He said:
“Okay. Send him in.”
After a pause the door opened and Mr. Fedora sidled in. Holliday grinned at him and nodded in the direction of a chair.
“Hullo, Johnny,” he said. “You’re looking brown. How’s Gib.?”
Johnny said: “Very quiet.” He walked over to the desk and sat down lazily on the chair. He looked round the room and did not say anything, possibly because there was nothing in the room to arouse excited comment.
“Um.” Holliday stretched, removed his pipe and spat somewhat inaccurately out of the window. “Yes, your report made it sound that way. So there won’t be any more leakages?”
Johnny said: “I wouldn’t know. There won’t be any more through Inez Capallo.”
“Good,” said Holliday. “That’s good. We’ve got something else for you now.”
Johnny said dreamily: “Well, look, I really just dropped in for a cup of coffee.”
Holliday picked up the telephone and said: “Coffee. Two.” He replaced it. “There you are. We show our gratitude in this department, don’t we? Right, then; where was I? Oh, yes. We’ve got something else for you.” He frowned and tapped on the desk with his fingers. “Ever been to Kamchatka?”
Johnny said: “Kamchatka? I was born there.”
“Well,” said Holliday tersely, “if you fall down on this thing, s’welp me if I don’t send you back there. It’s one of those things.”
Johnny nodded. “Ah, well,” he said. “Dear old Kamchatka. Must be years since I saw dear old Argyrokastro.”
“Yes,” said Holliday, nodding. “That’s in Greece,” he added, waking up. “Shut up, will you? — and listen. Have you ever heard of le rossignol?”
“Opera. By Stravinsky. Not one of my favourites.”
Holliday said: “No, not that one. This one, strangely enough, is French; the real name is Marcelline Gaston. Does that ring a bell?”
Johnny said: “Oh, that one! Yes, I’ve heard all about that one. What about my coffee?”
“What did you hear about her?” said Holliday, ignoring the last remark.
“Traitor, or traitress, whichever you prefer: worked for German Intelligence from 1942 onwards. She got into one of the resistance groups and got Karl Domnau into it; might have blown the whole works if Nobby de Meyrignac hadn’t got him in time. We didn’t tie him up with her until afterwards, though; she went in with the Larue Brigade until they went into the hills.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “She stayed in Paris and gave away the Diamond Group to the Gestapo. Every damn one of them was shot… Then in early ’forty-five we got on to her, and the R.A.F. sent over a Mosquito which blew her to Hades at her home address. That’s all there was to it.”
Holliday said: “Well — you seem fairly well up in this subject. I’m not altogether surprised.”
Johnny smiled faintly. “No?”
“No. I’ve seen her photograph. Oh, boy, oh, boy, as our friend Nobby would probably say.” Holliday unlocked one of the drawers in his desk and took out a thin folder. “Here’s her dossier. You’d better take that home and keep it carefully. It’s got all the stuff you need.”
Johnny said: “All right. What’s the idea?”
“Marcelline’s still alive. She wasn’t a traitress, she was a German agent. And she’s still in Paris.”
Johnny said nothing, but began to whistle softly under his breath.
Holliday said: “Take a look at this list and memorise the names on it. That’s a list of the members of a Nazi I. section that’s gone underground there; you’ll see Hilse von Hettering is on it… Well, that’s the only name on it we know anything about. Take a look at the photographs in your folder.”
Johnny did so without stopping his tuneless whistling. He thought that he now had something to whistle about.
The first photograph was of a slim, fair-headed young woman of breath-taking beauty, dressed in the black uniform of a woman member of the S.S.; the second showed the same girl in a bathing-costume poised on a diving-board.
He said: “Well, well. You said I could keep these?”
“Hilse von Hettering,” said Holliday mirthlessly, “alias Marcelline Gaston, le rossignol to the Maquis. Keep those… and, by way of exchange, get me the original, A. or D.”
Johnny slid the folder into his inside coat-pocket and said: “I thought you didn’t know this dame’s name.”
“Oh, we know her real name,” said Hol
liday, knocking the dottle from his pipe. “But for all the good that is, she might as well be called Eliza Pigwhistle or Minnehaha. She’ll have a fourth alias we don’t know about… Give me one of your fags, will you? I’ve run out.”
Johnny emptied his cigarette-case on the desk without taking his eyes from the photographs before him. He said, slowly: “There’s something rather funny here. That flash on her S.S. cap went out of use in 1937, and they adopted the one they used through the war. How would you account for that one?”
Holliday said: “Thanks. What do you mean — what’s funny? Those photographs were taken in 1936.”
“That’s fine,” said Johnny. “I’ve got to look for a woman agent somewhere in Paris on the strength of a photograph of a pretty girl thirteen years old?”
“Eighteen,” said Holliday. “Born 1918. I must say she looks a well-developed thirteen, but I don’t know much about these things, of course.”
“The photographs, not the girl, ass. Hasn’t it occurred to you that people change in thirteen years? She’ll be an old hag with spectacles and a gammy leg by now. Is this the most recent photograph you can dig up?”
“Most recent?” groaned Holliday. “Those are the only damn two we can get, and we were lucky at that. She won’t have changed all that much; that sort doesn’t. Ah! — the coffee. Thank you, my child.”
Johnny shrugged resignedly as he took the coffee-cup. He said: “Well, okay. But — it’s too easy, this one.”
Holliday sipped at his coffee and said: “It’s not quite as bad as all that. You’ll have something to work on; in fact, the primary reason why I’m sending you to Paris is quite different; or, at least, not obviously connected.”
Johnny said: “Go ahead. Let’s have it.”
“Leakages again,” said Holliday glumly. “From the Headquarters of Western Defence at Paris. That’s how we know that this group’s getting busy.”
He saw that Johnny was studying the list again and waited. Eventually Johnny nodded and handed the list back.
“Got them all?” asked Holliday.
Johnny nodded. He said: “Whoever got that list did quite a job of work.”
“He certainly did. This group’s on the list of those receiving financial support, so that means they’re engaged in actual operations. I haven’t a doubt they’re responsible for this spot of trouble.”
“This Mai Weill — she’s the leader?”
Holliday nodded. “She heads the list, anyway. Then Brunner, then Gorgeous Gertie on the desk. The other four are presumably men. Honestly, Johnny, we don’t know a damned thing about this group, and it’s got the high-ups worried, especially in view of the fact that we’re sending some stuff over there soon in accordance with our part in the Western Union.”
“What sort of stuff?”
Holliday said: “Designs of the new Hamper P.I075 Jet Fighter, to be built under license at the old Loire-et-Olivier works.”
“Um!” said Johnny. “I don’t know much about that sort of thing, you know. I guess it’s on the secret list all right?”
Holliday snorted. He said: “Oh, don’t let’s be modest. If any information about that thing leaks out the whole framework of the Western Union’ll start to do the cachucha. When there were leakages of a far less important type, the Dutch Government started kicking up a fuss and the Communists raised up a yell because they’d been blamed for it and half the staff at the place went on strike and, putting it in a nutshell, we just sat back and wished the war was still on. Which, in a way, it is.”
Johnny said: “I suppose you want me to look after the plans in the best tradition of modem spy fiction, huh?”
Holliday said: “Well, not exactly.”
“Pity,” said Johnny. “As soon as you mentioned le rossignol in a hushed whisper, I thought it was going to be one of those stories. Still — can’t be helped.”
“If you’ll dry up for a minute,” said Holliday patiently, “I’ll tell you what I do want you to do… Thank you. What I’m going to do is to let you play this on your own. The Hamper specifications will be arriving in about a month’s time, and you can bet the von Hettering crowd will do all they can to get hold of them. You hang around in your celebrated stage-door-Johnny way and nip it in the proverbial bud. And if you don’t — Kamchatka. Where men are men and women are non-existent.”
“Cute, ain’t he?” said Johnny to an imaginary audience. “But he’s only kidding.”
“Gawd!” said Holliday, exploding. “Sometimes I wish I ran this outfit on Gestapo lines, shooting the failures at dawn. Still — as I don’t, I’ll have to bear with you, I suppose. Anyway, I want that group broken up somehow, and how you do it is your own concern. I think your best line is through this piece of fluff decorating the desk, but that’s your affair. All I know is that if they get the Hamper stuff without your getting on to them, you’ve slipped and you can go back to cleaning the latrines. I trust I make myself clear?”
Johnny picked up the photographs with care and placed them beside the folder. He said: “Anybody I can use?”
Holliday looked at him. “I’d rather you worked it alone,” he said. “I’ve got three people over there, but I don’t want you to be seen with them. Those three people are all known.”
Johnny said: “An’ you think I’m not?”
Holliday said: “I should think the Nazi I. boys know your pan better than they know Winston Churchill’s. If you go there as you are, I don’t think you’ve got a hope; once they’ve seen you, they’ll be on to you.”
“Then what the hell —?”
Holliday said: “I’d like you to see Sammy this afternoon.”
There was a long silence. Then Johnny said: “Sammy?”
“Yes.”
Johnny got up and walked across the room to where a mirror was bolted to the wall. He looked into it for a long time, rubbing his hand thoughtfully over his face. He said: “Well, that’s okay. It’s a good idea.”
Holliday said: “Sorry. It’s a bit of a jolt, but there you are. It ought to be done, and it’s got to be, for your own good. You’ll still be good-looking, you know; maybe better. After all, you’ve seen the work Sammy does. It’s brilliant.”
Johnny said: “Just the face?”
“That’s all.”
Johnny’s face cleared. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “I didn’t much like the idea of his giving me new fingertips and all that — I’m a pianist of sorts. But a new face is all right. Me, I like a change.”
“Good,” said Holliday, meaning it. “You’ll be paid the usual, of course, though why anyone should pay for what’s really an act of kindness, beats me. Well, that’s all as far as I’m concerned. You know where to find Sammy?”
“Yeah.”
“Three o’clock this afternoon. Take a suit-case with you; it’ll take a good three weeks to heal up. Anything you want?”
Johnny said: “Can I get Nicole on the ’phone here?”
Holliday raised one eyebrow, then picked up the telephone and said: “Get me a private line to the Records Branch, please, Section G. Ask for Mademoiselle Nicole.” Then to Johnny: “What’s the idea?”
Johnny said: “If I’ve got to look for a needle in a haystack, it’ll be a help to know where the haystack was seen last.”
Holliday grimaced into the receiver and handed it over. Johnny said: “Nicole? Hullo — how you doin’? This is Johnny… Feel like doin’ a little research for me?” He winked at Holliday and crushed out his cigarette in the tray. “Yeah? Well, get this — the names and addresses of any surviving members of the Diamond Group. That’s right. Diamond. If there are none at all, give me half a dozen officers of the Larue Brigade. Yeah, I know it’s been disbanded… You haven’t? Hell! Well, you should have! No, no — I’m not cross with you, chérie, how could I be? Just a bit peeved, maybe. Just try the Diamond Group, then.”
He placed his right hand over the mouthpiece and said: “That’s bad. I may have to look over all France even to find so
meone who can recognise this frill.”
Holliday grunted and looked thoughtfully out of the window.
Fedora removed his hand and said: “Sure I’m here. You got — how many? Two? That’s quick, anyway.” He slipped a fountain-pen from his pocket. “Pierre Darreaux, yes — where? Marseilles? Hell!” He wrote furiously on a slip of Holliday’s note paper. “The other’s in Paris? That’s more like it, Sugar. Go on. Antoine… Gervais? Great! Oh, Captain Gervais.” He folded the note and dropped it into his pocket. “Okay. Thanks, Nicole. I’ll be seeing you again one of these days.” He replaced the telephone on the receiver, and said: “Well, that’s all. Apart from the stuff.”
“I’ll send that round later when I’ve got your cover story worked out,” promised Holliday. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll see you again before you go, anyway.”
“Hell!” said Johnny again, getting up. Then he grinned. “You won’t,” he said.
“Um! Nor will I. I’ll have a new agent. How we do enjoy these macabre little jokes,” said Holliday cheerfully. “Ah, well — cheerio, Johnny. Mind how you go.”
CHAPTER TWO
ANTOINE decided while he was drinking his third cognac that there was something peculiar about this party. Just what it was he didn’t know, and because he didn’t know, he felt philosophical about the whole thing. The atmosphere was strained and Antoine, being something of an expert in atmospheres, had noticed the fact; but he didn’t see what he was supposed to do about it.
He was, of course, vaguely surprised. Reunion parties are proverbially boring and Antoine had come to this one expecting to be bored; so much so that he definitely resented the vague telepathic communications that were trying to persuade him that something unusual was afoot. He took another cognac, sat down and relaxed.
He was annoyed to find that after a minute had passed he was again watching the other members of the party as closely as he had once watched the German sentries passing and repassing the wire cage of the concentration camp. The comparison unsettled him slightly and he decided to give up fighting his premonitions. He lit a Gauloise, trickled smoke from his mouth and let his eyes move unostentatiously from one man to another, looking for some concrete reason for his uneasiness.
