A Treachery of Spies

by Manda Scott

  ‘You do. We don’t yet have a complete fix on a real name, but the most common one seems to have been Sophie Destivelle.’

  ‘Who was shot this morning. In the context of which, I am sending you an email with the pathology report from the post-mortem of John Lakoff, Conrad’s grandfather. The photographs may be of use. They’re coming through to you now. I’ll wait while you take a look.’

  Her phone sings to incoming mail. She sends the images straight to the wall screen where she can look at them full size. John Lakoff is a small, shrunken prune of a man, with fish-belly skin tinged yellow in the places where the skin creases fold over each other. The gunshot pattern is striking. The cut to his throat might also have been, but it has been stitched shut, and his mouth is closed, so the post-mortem mutilation is all but invisible.

  Picaut wants to ask if Kochanek got clearance to send this, but can’t, and she suspects not. This is the kind of thing that lands you running a retirement home, but once you’re there, what else can they do?

  She hits the button to put the phone call onto speaker so that Eric can listen in. ‘We have a match,’ she says. ‘Whoever shot Sophie used the same pattern. Did you check out Paul Rey’s gun?’

  ‘We did, and that, too, is a match. The interesting thing is that Colonel Rey was lying in an MRI machine at the time of the murder. Any number of security-cleared medical staff will attest to his having been in their facility between noon and eighteen hundred hours, when he returned here. Lakoff’s nurse served him lunch at noon and he was most certainly not dead then. His body was discovered at fifteen thirty. The pathologist put the time of death approximately half an hour before that.’

  ‘That’s convenient.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I am endeavouring to gain access to further records of the time. You’ll understand these are of a sensitive nature.’

  ‘I certainly do.’ Picaut is still staring at the screen. ‘Lakoff has muscular atrophy in his lower limbs, but good definition in his shoulders. Was he in a wheelchair?’

  Kochanek says, ‘He was ninety-six, Captain Picaut. He was infirm, with faecal and urinary incontinence, and virtually blind. Paul Rey was, to all intents and purposes, his eyes and limbs. He wheeled him everywhere, described the world to him, helped him remember his past. They talked of the war, mostly.’

  ‘Lakoff was a veteran?’

  ‘He was a paratrooper who was dropped behind enemy lines. He was captured three weeks after D-Day and released from a living hell in Sachsenhausen concentration camp by the Soviets nearly nine months later. We got him back three months after that. He was something of a hero to our predecessors in the Agency, I believe, but quietly. He went on to serve in the Soviet desk when it was formed.’

  ‘And his son and his grandson continued in his footsteps.’

  ‘So it would seem. There’s a photograph in the file from his younger days that shows all three. Here.’

  And by the wonder of technology, it is here, on Picaut’s phone. An autumnal shot, taken on a lawn, with maples in full, red riot behind. Three men stand in line, three generations from right to left. Two, she knows. The third is lean and sharp-eyed and …

  ‘Is John Lakoff wearing a scarf?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Dark red silk?’

  ‘Yes. It became rather notorious. One of the nurses took it away to wash it and he threatened to have her hanged.’

  ‘Why was it not listed in his personal effects?’ She has them in the pathology file: a full list of his clothing. There is no mention of a scarf.

  For the first time, Kathryn Kochanek is unbalanced. ‘I’ll find out.’

  ‘This is a criminal waste of talent, but thank you. If you can find me anything about John Lakoff’s wartime past, I’d be enormously grateful.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  Picaut cuts the line. Eric is watching her. ‘Do we dance?’

  ‘We dance.’

  They hook arms and swing round, something they haven’t done for years. She laughs, and he laughs with her and, releasing her, gives her shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I deserved it.’

  ‘So what have we learned?’

  ‘I have no idea, but if it’s the same scarf, and it came from there to here, there will be a reason. All we have to do is find it.’

  Picaut hums as she extracts her car from the multi-storey car park and heads back through the evening traffic. She continues to hum as she drives and is onto the third iteration before she realizes the tune is ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.

  Paul Rey. Did they come for you and hit John Lakoff instead? Or was he their target all along? And how – really, how – did he come to be wearing a red silk scarf?

  Picaut takes the images of the scarf with her on her phone. She is on the road back to the studio when a thought makes her indicate left and she drives instead south and east to the Château d’Alençon, where the door guards recognize her.

  ‘Is Strategic Operations Director Lakoff available?’

  ‘He’s giving his speech, Ma’am. If it’s urgent, I may be able to get him a message?’

  The guard is one of those who was standing outside Ducat’s office. ‘No, thank you, I had a question that only— Senator? You’re not attending your son’s talk?’

  ‘He hates me listening.’ Edward Lakoff is paler than she remembers, with blue patches under his eyes. ‘Have you news of my father-in-law?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t. I came to look at the images again, the ones in your museum. I thought …’

  It’s not a concrete idea and even now, she isn’t sure it is worth it, but the senator brightens and sweeps her past the door guards as if this is the answer to his worries. ‘Please, let me show you. I set up the exhibition. It took me two years. Conrad knows nothing about the war, he just pretends he does. If you’ll let me take you round it, I’ll consider it an honour. You just have to tell me when to stop talking.’

  The foyer is all but deserted as they pass through: Conrad Lakoff’s speech has drawn in everyone who is anyone. Upstairs in the museum, the air smells of cigar smoke and Scotch. Edward Lakoff stands near the door and views the array of images and short, succinct histories with a paternal air. ‘You didn’t come to look at all of it, I realize. What can I help you with?’

  ‘We found a silk scarf of uncertain provenance. I wanted to see if Sophie was wearing it in any of the wartime photographs. It’s not obvious in any of the pictures of her that I’ve seen from that era, except possibly under her jacket in the one of the Maquis jumping the wall.’

  ‘You’ve seen that?’ At her nod, he looks wistful. ‘The only one I don’t have a copy of. Paul Rey sent prints out to the old Maquis, but none of them would relinquish theirs, nor even let me copy them. Just asking, I felt like an anthropologist trying to steal the souls of a primitive tribe with my magic lantern.’

  ‘But you do have images of Sophie. Conrad and I looked at some earlier today with the images of the Maquis, but I think there were others, down the right-hand wall.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ He stands back to let her go before him and yes, here are two rows of images mounted on display boards. ‘On the top line is a series of Sophie when she was with Kramme. We were very lucky to get those. The Gehlen Organization kept them in their archives. She was beautiful, don’t you think?’

  She was gamine, wide-eyed, stunning in dark red silk, leaning on the arm of a German in full dress uniform. ‘That’s Max Kramme, the Gestapo officer?’

  ‘It is. There’s a rumour that they were in love; certainly he proposed marriage to her and she accepted. They look good together, I think. If you didn’t know the background, they’d make a fine couple.’

  They do. There is no scarf, though. Picaut is already looking at the rows beneath, at the grainy black-and-white shots that are less grainy than she thinks they ought to be. ‘Did you use image enhancement on these?’

  He gives a wry smile. ‘A little. I tried not to be too obvious
, but the modern eye isn’t used to drawing detail from indistinct blobs the way we were in our youth. Or I was, anyway. She’s wearing a scarf here. And here. And here.’

  And here is a treasure trove of images of Sophie Destivelle. Three of them are taken in a forest in summer. She is scruffy, happy, leaning back against a tree, cleaning a gun. Or sitting on a log raising a glass to the camera. Or lying along a log with one knee up and her head on a man’s thigh. He is stroking her hair. On his face is the dreamy look Picaut has seen once or twice in other men lost to love. ‘Is that Paul Rey?’

  ‘I believe so. Is this the scarf you’re looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know … it would help if I could see it in colour.’

  ‘We have images of her time in the DB. They’re in colour.’ Lakoff moves round to the back of the board. And here is Sophie in early-fifties colour, faded but clear. And yes, the scarf is the same.

  ‘That’s it.’ She shows him the image on her phone. More to herself than to him, she says, ‘So the question is, would she have given it to Elodie Duval? Or was she a guest of Pierre Fayette’s last night before she took his car?’

  ‘Are these two mutually exclusive?’

  ‘Not necessarily. We have DNA that says Elodie wore it. And yet Sophie seems to have kept it through the war and on into the decade after.’

  The senator – who, if Rollo is correct, was once a case officer in the CIA – leans back against a wall and folds his arms. ‘What do you know of the killing squads of Paris, Captain?’

  ‘The équipes de tueurs? Only that they existed. I heard a rumour that Sophie was a member of one.’

  ‘It’s more than a rumour. She had a dozen kills or more before the Gestapo ran her out of town. She escaped to England, was trained by the SOE and sent back into the Maquis de Morez, but even after the war, she never lost her taste for assassination. She joined the DB and as far as I know, she did the same in peacetime as she had in the war. Perhaps more subtly, but still … We live in an odd world. If she had been a civilian, she’d be hunted by people like you. Because she worked for the government, she was a heroine, if only to a small and select group. It’s possible, I imagine, that the scarf was marked with the blood of her kills.’

  People like you. Picaut taps her phone against her teeth. ‘Such a thing would be cherished. Why would she give it to Elodie?’

  ‘Maybe she knew she was going to die?’ Edward Lakoff tilts his head to one side. ‘Has it occurred to you that Sophie was not working alone – that perhaps she never had worked alone – and that she was playing a far more complicated game than we, who are not privy to her past, could possibly know?’

  From the conference, Picaut heads directly to the studio.

  Clinton McKinney has gone, and Martha. Martin Gillard is not in evidence although his Mercedes is still in the car park. Nobody else is around. Sylvie has gone to watch the mechanics take Elodie Duval’s silver Golf apart. Petit-Evard has been sent to gain access to, and then read, the mobile phone transcripts of all those involved, insofar as he can. Rollo has gone off to tap ‘a source’. He hasn’t said who or for what. It will be clandestine and may well involve the institution once known as the DB and now more properly called the Department for External Affairs. By any analysis, Picaut is better off not asking.

  She could go home. Probably she should, but Elodie’s office is open and alluring. The windows look down over the unlit expanse of the shooting lot with its mock-ups of wartime Saint-Cybard, the dry fountain, the train station, the Hôtel Cinqfeuilles. The outlines are familiar from old documentaries, but today, there is a sense of things stirring under the surface that she has not felt before.

  Her phone has synchronized with the white board in the office. She writes a new list on it:

  – Sophie Destivelle: 2nd victim?

  – John Lakoff: 1st victim? (Were they going for him? Or for Paul Rey?)

  – Paul Rey: Are we sure he died of natural causes?

  – Sophie gave her scarf to Elodie? Why?? (And how did John Lakoff get it in the first place? How did it get back to France?)

  – Sophie and Elodie visited Paul Rey, took a flight back to France, ate together then …? Went to Pierre Fayette’s? Why?

  – Where is Elodie?

  – Why did Sophie Destivelle die now?

  – If Sophie is not working alone, who is she working with – and to what end?

  – Did she know she was going to die?

  Too many questions and too few answers. The phone numbers of the runaway Maquisards lie on the desk in front of her, waiting. She watches a stray shard of starlight pierce a cloud and, still watching it, picks up her phone and dials Patrice.

  ‘Hey, sup?’

  ‘When did you forget how to speak human?’

  ‘It’s the world I live in. Everyone talks like this.’ Patrice is smiling, she can feel it. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I have two fresh murders and one eighteen months old in a different jurisdiction that bears the same hallmarks. I have a list of suspects that starts with a CIA assassin of impeccable deniability and moves swiftly on to someone you think I shouldn’t touch. Other than that, I’m fine. How are you getting on with the cipher Elodie left us in her hidden note?’

  ‘Making progress. The poem helped, but I’ve still got a section in the middle that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Does it mention Diem, as in Carpe?’

  ‘Ah.’ She hears him click his fingers. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? I thought Die, then M and couldn’t decide if it was German or English. OK …’ Keys rattle. ‘So the text is “Paul Rey’s son stop Diem’s legacy query”.’

  ‘Is that it?’ She sounds like Clinton McKinney.

  ‘Inès! Getting to this has taken me the best part of—’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. Really. But there were a lot more words than that in the email. I thought it would be telling us something more … substantial.’

  ‘The cipher was based on numbered letters inside each sentence. To be honest, it’s fantastically clever that she managed it at all. Your missing woman is a brilliant cryptographer. Anyway, the question is, who is Paul Rey’s son?

  ‘I have no idea. Paul Rey was a wartime Jedburgh who went on to be one of the founding members of the CIA. He died this morning, a fact which is increasingly ringing alarm bells, although, in the absence of any actual evidence to the contrary, we’re still treating it as a natural death. He leaves behind five wives. He could have a dozen sons, or none. He was almost certainly Sophie Destivelle’s lover. One of them.’

  ‘Want me to look into it?’

  ‘If you can. I’ll see what I can do to find Diem. In the meantime, can you patch me through to a mobile number in a way that can’t be traced?’

  ‘Anything can be traced. First rule of mobiles. I can buy you three minutes max. That’s the magic number.’

  ‘OK.’ She does a swift piece of mental arithmetic. ‘Subtract my father’s date from this.’ She rattles off the number.

  He says, ‘Stay on the line. I’ll patch you across.’

  She stays on the line. A pause, a dial tone, three rings and a click later, and Laurence Vaughan-Thomas says, cautiously, ‘To whom am I speaking?’

  ‘Picaut.’

  ‘Captain!’ It might be relief – his exhalation – or laughter. He is walking on a pavement somewhere. She can hear the length of his stride, and passing traffic. ‘I rather thought we might hear from you. Did you open the music box?’

  ‘I have opened two: yours and Elodie’s.’

  ‘Well done, Captain.’

  ‘Thank you. We have three minutes in which we may be secure, probably less. In which case, the pertinent question is: Who is Diem and what is his legacy?’

  ‘Or hers. We have been asking ourselves that question for many, many decades – some of us. He, or she, betrayed us to Kramme. That is as much as we know.’

  ‘You must have some ideas. Elodie answered it in her cipher.’

  ‘Did she?’ There’s a chang
e in the length of his stride, as if the mention of her name has caused him to stumble. A pace or two on, he says, ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Elodie? We don’t know.’

  ‘Blast.’ The word has more impact than any of the coarser expletives she’s heard so far today. He walks half a block. A car horn sounds. He says, ‘Two things. First: Elodie’s box belonged to my cousin Céline: everything of hers passed to Elodie when she died, including her apartment. That fact may be of use to you at some point. Second – and bearing in mind that this is an open line – can you tell me exactly what Elodie wrote?’

  ‘Henry the Eighth minus one’s son stop Diem’s legacy query. She used the proper name of the man who was not king, obviously.’

  ‘Yes. I understand. Thank you.’

  ‘Who was his son, do you know?’

  ‘I can’t answer that. But I shall work on it. Diem wasn’t me. I can tell you that categorically, but you don’t have to believe me. I believe it wasn’t Sophie, but even now, I am not wholly certain of that and you can’t be, either. In fact, what matters more than anything is that you make your own judgements. We must be near the end of our three minutes, Captain.’

  ‘Fifty-eight seconds to go. I have two further questions.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  The first is something that has nagged at her all day, without any obvious reason. ‘Why did you come to Orléans, all of you? You are English, your war was spent in the Jura mountains. JJ and the others worked for the DB, which is based in Paris. You had nothing to do with Orléans. Why did you all retire here?’

  ‘Exactly because we had nothing to do with it. No residential streets and avenues named in our honour, no men and women whose parents, brothers, sisters, children we saved – or didn’t. The war was uglier than you can ever imagine and bad blood festers. Nobody of our generation escaped without losing friends and making enemies. JJ came here first and we all followed him. We wanted to stay together, obviously – some bonds are not made to be broken – and we thought that here, we would be anonymous. Until Elodie started making her film, it was working.’