by Kay Kenyon
Julian had to grant the point. “She does get the bit between her teeth.”
In the ensuing silence, the subject ripened.
Perhaps the SIS chief, like Julian, was thinking of services rendered by Kim in the not-too-distant past. How she had foiled the notorious Dutchman on a murder spree that had panicked the country. And the Storm Way operation that could have brought war—and defeat—to British soil, had it not been for his daughter following her exquisite instincts.
But now that Vansittart was involved, there was the political aspect to consider.
E fixed him with a let’s wrap it up stare. “What do you recommend?”
“Urge her to tread carefully, but let her follow through. It’s rather hard to direct things from London.” She reported to him through the Berlin station, and it was best to keep it that way. “I suspect she’s got intel that she didn’t have time to share.”
“So she used her initiative.” The way E said it, it was not a compliment.
“It cuts both ways, chief.” Initiative did. His Majesty’s Government had never approved of initiative, but in the secret service, with communications suppressed for the sake of covert operations, one sometimes had to use best judgment.
“You don’t suppose she’s letting the Jewish problem influence her, do you?”
“No reason to think so. She’s got ahold of this Monarch code word and believes it’s worth pursuing.”
“Are we hearing Monarch from any of our people?”
“No.” Julian had to admit they had not, but he was still waiting for answers to the questionnaire he’d sent to their agents in the field. “Still, it might be our target military op. It’s her job to listen for such things.”
“And not go chasing after Jewish refugees.”
Julian wished he had not brought up what people too easily called “the Jewish problem.” The comment smacked of anti-Semitism. He’d heard worse among his class, of course, but it was unworthy of his boss.
That aside, it would indeed be like Kim to step in for the underdog. He had urged her not to be led by her heart. Logic and instinct, but not sentiment. He supposed she had rather resented the advice, but there it was, and she had better conform.
With a soft thunk, a log shifted in the fireplace.
“All right,” E said, “she goes forward.” He reached for his folder, signaling the meeting was over. “I trust the FO undersecretary will be hearing no more of Sparrow.”
Vansittart knew her as “Sparrow,” her code name in the files, in the reports. He was already more than aware of her; the service had polished the reports until she shone. But the fact was, Sparrow could be impulsive.
Whitehall hated that. Except when it worked.
WERTHEIM’S DEPARTMENT STORE, BERLIN
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1. In the women’s lavatory on the fourth floor, Kim checked her watch: 10:21 AM. She paced the empty room, wondering how Berlin station had managed to close the women’s restroom on this floor of Germany’s biggest department store. A uniformed janitor—doubtless working for Berlin station—manned a mop and pail just outside the closed door. When she’d arrived, he’d nodded at her, letting her pass. He’d make sure the public didn’t come in.
She reapplied her lipstick. Checked her Helbros watch again. 10:24.
The door opened and Duncan entered. The same dark wool coat and the homburg in his hand. He gazed at her for a moment. “No worse for the wear? Your little run-in at Café Unten?”
A surprise that he knew. “I was going to tell you about it, but I see someone has saved me the trouble.”
“Phipps put a report in the diplomatic bag.”
God. Straight to the Foreign Office. So this was Alex’s idea of getting along. The conniving bastard. “Well, he wasn’t there, so I can’t imagine what sort of report it was.”
“Let’s see. A nightclub owned by Menachem Garran, a Jew. The Gestapo showed up as they sometimes do, and you were outside the club. Instead of identifying yourself as the wife of a diplomat, you ran. Drew fire. Hid near the Nollendorfplatz for a couple hours and shook them off.”
She was going to explain the redeeming details—surely there were some—when he said, “I’m glad you got yourself clear on that one.”
A pause while she adjusted her attitude. Not the lecture she had expected. “Yes. Thank you.” She went on. “There’s another development. I had an interview of sorts with the SS Tuesday night.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Captain Rikard Nagel.”
The door of the lavatory rattled. A murmured conversation, retreating steps.
Without taking note of the interruption, Duncan said, “Nagel is one of Göring’s bodyguards.”
“Is he? Well, my friend Rachel Flynn of the Chicago Daily News and I were at the Die Toskana in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district when I left without her and ended up having to accept Nagel’s offer of a ride home.” She went on to explain his strange fixation on her supposed relationship with his wife and his attempt to rattle her.
Duncan mulled this over. “Why is he sniffing around you?”
“Trying to shake something loose?”
“Elaine. The head office wants you to use the utmost discretion.” That would be Julian and whoever he reported to. “You do understand.”
“I do.” She paused. “Without sacrificing opportunities.”
The statement simmered between them for a few moments. He saw that she meant to push against constraints. Push against him, if need be. Poor fellow. He not only had a new agent to break in, but it was a woman. She was sure it galled him.
“Everyone has their limits,” he said, repeating something he had said before.
“I suppose. But I’ve always found most people quit too soon.” And wasn’t it true? Hadn’t Owen Cherwell backed away from the breach? Hadn’t the Philadelphia Inquirer lost courage when her investigative journalism crossed the wrong people? And hadn’t the brass at the head of SIS let a peer of the realm lengthen his killing spree last summer when they feared the king’s displeasure?
He moved on. “What happened with Nagel, then?”
She explained how she felt he had spilled the word monarch to her, the same word that Hannah Linz had offered intelligence on. His life in service to the monarch. How Nagel denied using the term, perhaps very strongly chagrined that he had.
“Well, watch out for that one. We’ve suspected for some time that he’s a hypercognition Talent.”
That was interesting. A man who did not forget details. Who could draw conclusions based on seemingly unrelated facts. It did fit with some of the things he had said that night. Kim had to wonder if it had driven him mad, to always question if his version of things had any connection to reality. Because she did think him mentally unbalanced.
“So,” Duncan summarized, “you want to drop your cover and debrief Linz.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t offer her asylum.”
“If she’s able to convince us she has worthwhile intel, perhaps something can be on offer.”
“You’re moving fast.” He looked pasty in the fluorescent lighting, as though he spent most of his time at a desk without natural light. His bright eyes, the only lively aspect of him, watching her, evaluating. His two-fingered left hand grasping his homburg.
“I want to follow up. There’s no point in waiting.”
He nodded. “All right.”
A beat. That was it, then. Alex hadn’t been able to sandbag her after all.
Duncan asked, “How will they contact you?”
“I was at Café Unten to put my card at a drop, a signal to proceed.”
He paused a moment, considering. “If you get caught, you’ve got a plausible story. The Linz woman went to the embassy, and having been turned down for extraction, she went to the wife. You took pity and agreed to hear her tale. Poor judgment, husband will be furious, that sort of thing.” He shrugged. “If she blows your cover under interrogation, the embassy has deniability. Yo
u were meddling, etcetera. Deny everything, of course.”
She thought Rikard Nagel would easily see through such an act, but she smiled at Duncan, going along with it.
“One thing, Duncan. Who got the house on the Tiergartenstrasse for us?”
“The embassy handles placements.”
“It belonged to a Jewish family who were driven out.”
“That’s not our problem, is it?”
Kim shook her head in exasperation. “What is going on in this country?”
“They’re going to extremes. It’ll settle down. Anyway. Going forward, I want you to be careful. Remember: flowers in the window if you need it.”
He went to the lavatory door, then turned. “You’re certainly keen on your job. Why?”
It was an obvious question. Wasn’t he keen on his? Was it worth doing or wasn’t it? He gazed steadily at her, waiting.
“Because it matters.”
Still the appraising stare.
“Because I hear things.” Oh yes. Little pings from the deeper world, the world we didn’t know much about. That inner world that people hid, but that followed them everywhere like a shadow following a skater under the ice. “I hear things,” she repeated.
A rueful smile, as though he pitied her. “I suppose you do.” Duncan wasn’t used to an agent with the spill, an agent who had to rely on intuition when dealing with spills. He was a bit at sea with handling her, that was obvious.
He slipped out the door.
She reapplied her lipstick—God, what would a female spy do without lipstick?—and waited ten minutes until a woman entered with a pram and a toddler in tow.
Kim smiled at the family and went shopping.
PART II
A TASTE FOR BLOOD
15
A SILVER SMITH ON THE KURFÜRSTENDAMM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6. On the boulevard Kurfürstendamm, Kim entered the small shop specializing in silver and bronze. It was 11:15 AM. She spent a few minutes examining engraved tureens and antique tea trays. At 11:20, as instructed, she went out the back door. Here, a quiet side street with ornate villas. Skeletons of street trees poked through the fog.
A car approached, stopped. Someone leaned over from the inside and pushed open the door.
“Mrs. Reed. Hannah sent me.”
She entered, settling herself next to a man—really little more than a boy—with a patchy goatee. His suit, a size too large for his thin frame. As she closed the door behind her, the driver slipped into the stream of traffic.
“If you would sit on the floor?”
She did. Next to her, now at eye level on the seat, was a brimmed hat and dusty-smelling scarf.
They drove in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, at last entering a cramped neighborhood of tenement buildings, visible from her perspective from the car floor. A stew of noises reached her: children shouting, peddlers calling out wares, goats bleating.
“Put on the hat and scarf. Then sit up, please.”
They came to a stop, and she was ushered out of the car and across the pavement. She had time to see food markets, an outdoor café with bicycles stacked against ancient brick walls, a wooden wagon pulled by draft horses, delivery men unloading barrels from it. They passed through a narrow, arched entryway into a courtyard surrounded by leaning five-story tenements. The square yard, though stuffed with a wintry fog, was crowded with children, women hanging wash, old men smoking, and the sound of pigs groveling and snorting for food. It was a Berlin she hadn’t seen before—more like a Pittsburgh slum than the shining rival to Vienna and Paris or, in Berlin, the Mitte district, or the Kurfürstendamm. She doubted the sun ever hit the paving stones here, even when there was sun.
The young man with the goatee led her to a blistered door. They entered. Inside, the smell of pipe tobacco and boiled onions. Somewhere, a baby wailed.
They passed doors behind which she heard the sounds of a sewing machine, loud voices, pots clattering. At the end of the corridor, a door led to another hall, giving the impression that one could travel around the courtyard through the various buildings without having to go outside, a warren where one could escape in case of denunciation or dragnet.
At one of the doors, her escort knocked once and twice more, then gestured her through. She found herself in a darkened room, smelling of floor wax and machine oil. A man sat behind a small table as though ready to conduct an employment interview. Her guide took up a position by the door.
The man she faced gestured her to a chair. “I am Franz,” he said in English. Dark curly hair, a homespun sweater. “And I call you?”
“Elaine.” She removed her hat and scarf, setting them aside.
“So, on first-name terms already.” His sarcasm barely under control.
He tapped out a cigarette, offering her one. She declined and he struck a match, lighting his own. Blowing out a stream of smoke, he leaned over to pick up a babushka-size scarf from the table. He tossed it to her. “Wear this over your head when you leave.”
“Am I leaving?”
“Eventually.”
She settled the scarf in her lap. “I was told I would be meeting Hannah Linz.”
“And I was told I would be meeting Mr. Reed.”
“My husband isn’t interested. So you’re left with me.”
He watched her for a few moments. “Why should we wish to speak to Mr. Reed’s wife?”
She looked toward the door. “Could your associate leave us for a moment?”
Franz smirked, perhaps at her use of the word associate. He nodded the boy out of the room.
When he had gone she said, “You will want to speak to me because I work for Britain’s intelligence service.”
Franz snorted. “They are all spies at the embassy.” He was not a man to easily admit there were things he didn’t already know.
“Actually, the embassy prefers to keep its hands clean.”
“And you are offering asylum? Without that, the meeting is over.” He leaned back in his chair with a measure of grace, an almost aristocratic air.
“To get Hannah out, I need something to convince my superiors that this operation that Hannah mentioned, Monarch, is of interest. What it is. Why it might be important to my country.”
“So you have given up your cover for something that may have no value?”
Exactly her gamble. She plunged on. “I’ve heard the word monarch again from an SS officer whom my husband and I know socially.” She took a moment to be sure she had his complete attention. “I have the Talent of the spill.”
He sat back as though afraid he would himself be the victim of her Talent. “Do you now? What is your rating?”
“6.”
“Exactly 6?”
“It’s the British scale. We leave the finer calibrations to you Germans.”
A long pause as he digested this. “You seem to know a bit about Talents.”
“Well, I would, wouldn’t I? But if we’re done sparring, kindly tell me whether you are going to trust me or not. I’ve risked my cover, so I’d like to know.”
A long drag on his cigarette as he regarded her. Then he went to the door. She heard: “Bringen Sie Hannah hier runter.”
So she had passed muster. She had not expected a gatekeeper and wondered at how much they protected Hannah.
Outside, the clang of a trolley car. In the distance, an organ grinder. She had no idea where she was. Perhaps Prenzlauer Berg. But she did not feel uneasy. Franz looked more like a university student than a revolutionary, one who had been chased and harried, maybe jailed. The existence of the Oberman Group was reassuring. Someone was organizing against the Nazis. The Office had not briefed her on the group or mentioned the possibility that there were partisan organizations, nor that one of them was run by Jews. Perhaps they were Communists as well—something that Alex had hinted at—an aspect that was likely to cause the service to dismiss them. HMG was far more alarmed by the Soviets than the Nazis.
At a sound, she turned to find Hannah
Linz standing at the door.
“For the past year we’ve been intercepting foreign Talents who come into Germany.” Hannah sat backward on the chair, leaning on the high back. She looked much younger without lipstick and the shiny dress. In fact, Kim guessed her to be not far past twenty. Her hair lay matted against her head, a fiery cap.
“These Talents,” Hannah went on, “they are recruits for the Nazis.”
Kim was disappointed. “We are all recruiting.” In Britain’s case, haphazardly, it was true.
“But you are not recruiting like the Nazis. We have a friend inside. In the SS. He knows who is coming through Berlin to join this operation, which I have told you is called Monarch. They are highly rated Talents. Suggestion, attraction, trauma view, precognition, hyperempathy, darkening, and so on. All rated at least 7.”
Kim remained silent, hoping there was more.
Hannah flicked a look at Franz. He nodded. So he was the one in charge.
“What I was going to tell your husband is that the cadre of Talents is just the first stage. Every country has Talents, yes. But every country does not have Irina.”
“Irina?”
“Irina Dimitrievna Annakova,” Franz interjected. “She has a major gift that will change everything.” He had been leaning against the table, and now he went to the room’s only window, parting the curtains just enough. He turned back to her. “She can optimize people.”
Kim didn’t like where this was going, not at all. “Go on.”
Hannah lowered her voice. “She is one who can remove barriers to reinforce a Talent. The Nazi doctors, they think that all Talents lie within a range of dormancy, buried at different levels in individuals. All have potential to be great. This is what Irina Annakova proves when she enables purification. As they call it.”
A deeper quiet fell upon the room. Kim tried to absorb this unwelcome news. “Your man in the SS is risking everything to work with you. Who is he?”
Franz and Hannah exchanged looks. She answered, “We call him Tannhäuser.”
“How highly placed is he?”
