Angel of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  ANGEL OF DARKNESS

  Christopher Nicole

  © Christopher Nicole 2009

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2009 by Severn House Publishers Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

  T. S. Eliot

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  THE ENCOUNTER

  THE LAST ASSIGNMENT

  INCIDENT ON A BEACH

  LEAVING PARADISE

  THE WATCHERS

  THE ROAD TO HELL

  INCIDENT IN SURREY

  WANTED BUT MISSING

  IN TRANSIT

  THE PRISONER

  INCIDENT IN MOSCOW

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  ‘On a day like today,’ Anna said, ‘It is good to be alive.’

  We lay together on two sun beds, shaded by enormous beach umbrellas, listening to the soughing of the wind in the pine trees higher up the slopes of Montgo, the mountain that overlooks the resort town of Javea, on the Costa Blanca. Anna Bartley, née Fehrbach, once infamous as the Countess von Widerstand, the most feared woman in the world, loved to feel the breeze caressing her naked body, although she took great care to protect her skin from excessive sun. Even at the age of eighty-nine, it retained much of the creamy texture of her youth; any freckles, and there were a few, had been the result of the exigencies of her professional life, now long behind her.

  That a matriarch of so great an age should still enjoy displaying herself, if only in carefully selected company, might have struck some as distasteful, perhaps even obscene. But words such as taste or obscenity were puerile where Anna Fehrbach was concerned. In her youth she had been called the most beautiful – as well as the most deadly – woman in the world. Her beauty, indeed, had always been one of her most formidable weapons, filling just as important a part in her armoury as her lightning speed of thought and reaction, her unerring accuracy with a pistol or a knife, the amazing power that could be projected through those slender arms, those exquisite hands. Too many men, and women, had hesitated for just a moment when confronted by such a vision – and to hesitate for just a moment when confronted by Anna Fehrbach was to die, if that was her purpose.

  And age, accompanied by years of constant exercise and careful diet, had done no more than nibble at the superb whole. True, her hair was now white and cut short, whereas once it had seemed a shawl of golden silk that brushed her thighs. But the flawless, slightly aquiline bone structure of her face was unchanged, even if the skin was perhaps nowadays a little taut and there were crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes. But those eyes, so blue, so deep, so utterly compelling, whether smiling or – even more compellingly – turned, as they could so suddenly be, into the coldest of sapphires, had, I surmised, changed not a jot, despite all the traumatic events on which they had looked over the years.

  As for her figure, Anna was five foot eleven inches tall – certainly in her heyday, in the 1940s, a considerable height for a woman. Always carefully slender – with legs to die for, as so many had, and breasts on which to rest one’s head was to enter paradise – her body remained as compelling as it had ever been, with hardly a sag to be discerned. I had never enjoyed that paradise, had indeed only felt it against me during the odd embrace. And yet I lay here, naked beside her, content to look at her and listen to that soft, caressing voice, which, like her eyes, could so suddenly turn to steel. There was no way I was ever going to risk offending Anna.

  That I should be with her at all still retained the quality of a dream. It had begun as a job of work, a personal quest for something that had for so long been so tantalizingly just beyond my grasp. I had come across her name while researching a book on the German secret services during the Hitler war. Even in memoirs published some years after 1945, the references to her had been nebulous, written almost in fear, because no one knew for sure if she had died, as she was supposed to have done, in the collapse of the Third Reich. Or, indeed, whether she had actually ever lived at all, or had just been a shadowy phantom conjured up by Heinrich Himmler and his demonic henchman Reinhard Heydrich and enhanced by Josef Goebbels’ propaganda machine. Or if she was actually alive, still treading the path of deadly vengeance.

  And I had rapidly discovered that she had certainly existed. There had been a reference to her marriage in 1938 – on Himmler’s orders – to the British diplomat, Ballantine Bordman. The wedding had taken place in Germany and any trace of it had vanished, along with so many town hall records destroyed by Allied bombing. Their marriage had also been a short-lived affair, before the fact that she was a German spy had been discovered and she was forced to flee England to avoid arrest. But, accepting that it had happened, hunting through back issues of glossy magazines for 1938 and 1939, I had come across a copy of The Tatler, featuring photographs of various celebrities attending the Cheltenham Festival. And there was one of the Honourable Ballantine Bordman accompanied by his ‘beautiful new wife’, chatting with a couple of other racing enthusiasts. The print was, of course, very old. Also, the photograph had been taken from a distance, in black and white, and Anna had been half turned away from the camera. Yet the image was unforgettable – the tall slender body, the long straight golden hair dropping down her back from beneath the sable hat, the sable coat that had been her stock in trade, the endlessly promising ankles, the classic profile.

  *

  Thus armed, and aware that after seventy years the photo might be meaningless, I had begun my quest and pursued it in almost every moment I could spare from earning a living. And at last my search had brought me to this lonely villa perched high on the slopes of Montgo, with magnificent views of the Jalon Valley to my right, and of Javea and the Mediterranean in front of me.

  When I pressed the bell on the wrought-iron gates, I had known that I could well be taking my life in my hands. For by the time I arrived at those gates I had pieced together sufficient of Anna’s background to know that she had been, and no doubt still was, the most highly trained and lethal assassin who had ever walked this earth. The SS had come across this remarkable seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, half-Austrian and half-Irish (she still spoke English with a soft brogue) when Nazi Germany invaded Austria in March 1938 – and their senior officers had immediately recognized that if such an unusual talent could be harnessed and put to use, the benefits for her employers would be potentially enormous. Apart from her looks, which were already striking, she had been head girl at her convent, was a superb athlete, and possessed an IQ of 173.

  That she had also been utterly innocent had been irrelevant; they had soon changed that. The Schutzstaffel themselves did not employ women agents, but they had presented her to their senior and even more sinister organization, the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, the most secret inner circle of all the many secret circles that composed the Third Reich. The SD had converted her – or so they supposed – into an amoral killer whose loyalty had been secured by the simple expedient of arresting her parents and her sister, placing them in secure but not too rigorous captivity and making her understand that as long as she served the Reich faithfully and well she and they would survive, and even prosper; if she did not, or failed in her various assignments, then they would perish most miserably.

  Anna told me of the utter horror with which she had contemplated her fate. But the SD, with typical Nazi insensitivity, entirely failed to understand the nature of the beast they had captured and thought they now controlled. It never occurred to them that a brain as acute as Anna’s, allied to such physical asset
s, would necessarily operate at its own level, far beyond the reach, or indeed the comprehension, of ordinary humans. All they had actually done was to create a monster of destruction, whose prime aim was their own destruction, provided it could be accomplished without endangering her family. Anna’s three prime characteristics – and perhaps her greatest strengths apart from her physical abilities – had been an unwavering, almost careless, courage and determination, a deadly patience that enabled her to wait and endure anything to achieve her goal, and an equally unwavering pragmatism that allowed her to employ any and all means, regardless of moral or ethical considerations, to carry her to that goal.

  Thus, within a year of going to work for the SD she had defected to MI6 and become a double agent, without arousing the slightest suspicion in her masters. And only two years later, while rising to become Himmler’s most trusted associate and Adolf Hitler’s occasional mistress, she was also working for the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, to carve a bloodstained swathe across three continents. But, unlike Cardinal Richelieu on his death bed, she could not say for certain that she no longer had any enemies because she had killed them all. Anna’s enemies were legion, many of them people she had never laid eyes on, employed by those with long memories. Particularly in Moscow, where again nothing had been known of her true activities and the salient fact was that, acting for the SD and in her own defence, she had once attempted the life of Josef Stalin and since disposed of a considerable number of NKVD agents, so that she was regarded as the greatest of the war criminals who had somehow managed to slip through the net of Allied vengeance. She could claim that in all probability she had outlived them all; but she couldn’t even be certain of that, and so even in this remote hideaway she regarded humanity with suspicion and was prepared to confront any sinister intruder with consummate force, as evidenced by the little pistol that lay on the table beside her, and literally never left her side – for when she was dressed, she wore it next to her skin.

  Beside the gun, on the table, there waited her jewellery – a perpetual reminder of her overwhelming femininity – which she also put on whenever she got dressed. It was dominated by small gold bar earrings, attached by clips, for she had never had her ears pierced, and the huge ruby solitaire that she wore on the forefinger of her right hand. Oddly, although I knew that she had been married twice, she no longer wore a wedding ring. This jewellery had been part of her equipment as an SD agent – so, strictly, was on loan from her employers – and she would reflect with a girlish glee that her erstwhile masters were now all dead . . . but she still had the jewellery.

  The gold chain with a crucifix suspended from it, nestling between her breasts, never left her neck, and was a reminder of her Catholic youth and upbringing, just as the gold Rolex on her left wrist was indicative of her present wealth.

  But, offsetting these splendours, there was the blue stain that remained on her so-white skin, over her lower right rib cage, still reminding her, after seventy years, how close Hannah Gehrig’s bullet had brought her to death, and indeed of the ever-present dangers that had always accompanied her profession.

  And yet, despite all these memories of past glories and perhaps present dangers, I had been welcomed. This was partly because it had taken her only a few minutes to evaluate me as what I was – a writer who had not the slightest firsthand acquaintance with any of the events of her youth (which in any event had happened before he was born) and who was also deeply in love with the image he had created of her in his mind . . . and who was prepared to be equally in love with the reality. And Anna was, above all else, a woman.

  Besides, for all her continued remarkable health, she had been aware that the days were drawing in. However shadowy her role, she had played an important part in some enormous historical events. The thought of disappearing for ever and leaving not the slightest trace behind her, or being viewed as just a shadow, an illusion, a might-have-been, had been becoming almost an obsession. And here was a writer suddenly appearing, desperate to tell her story.

  Out of that first meeting had grown this remarkable intimacy, this admission of me into the embracing warmth of a unique personality, whether one looked on her as a monster or, as she preferred to picture herself, as an outstanding fighter pilot who had been scrambled into action on numerous occasions and had always destroyed her adversary. As she would point out, with a twinkle in her eye, had she been flying for the RAF in the War and had been able to paint more than a hundred enemy kills on the fuselage of her aircraft, she would no doubt have been awarded the Victoria Cross.

  But now her tale was surely told – except for the ending. So I asked her, ‘After the hurricane, and the destruction of the Mafiosi hired to finish you off, did it all seem sort of flat?’

  Anna glanced at me. ‘Flat? I was about to be married.’

  ‘Of course. That was unforgivable of me.’

  She blew me a kiss. ‘I know. Things like marriage sort of get lost in the vortex of my life.’

  ‘But you did get married. And I assume lived happily ever after, as in all the best fairy tales?’

  She brooded on this suggestion. ‘Have you ever known a fairy tale that bore the slightest resemblance to reality?’

  ‘Oh, my God! Don’t tell me . . .’

  ‘Clive and I were very happy together,’ she said carefully. ‘After all, we had been lovers for a long time, through the entire War, whenever we could get together. But there were problems. We were both still working. Oh, he managed to spend as much time as possible with me, but MI6 still had a job for him to do and he was very loyal to them . . . at least, as long as they allowed him to be. He also felt that as one of their senior operatives he could protect his wife from any adverse reaction to my continued existence on the part of the ever-changing British governments, veering as they did wildly between left and right. This was important at the time because I had to remain committed to the CIA, at least for a while. Quite apart from the interest Moscow had in me. But of course, his protection counted for nothing when the chips really went down.’

  ‘But I don’t understand how Moscow could still hope to find you. When that boat sank, Beria lost all trace of you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Lavrenty Beria,’ Anna said, ‘never lost all trace of anyone. And that went for his boss, Josef Stalin, as well. Those two gentlemen hated me more than the rest of the world put together. At least . . .’ She brooded again.

  ‘But still, after that boat was destroyed, with everyone on board, they had no idea where you were, surely?’

  ‘They knew I used the Bahamas. But you know, they still would never have found me. Until I did a very silly thing.’

  ‘You, Anna? I find that hard to believe.’

  Anna actually blushed. ‘I was careless. Really, for the first time in my life. I had just completed an exhausting and, as it turned out, highly dangerous assignment.’

  ‘Weren’t all your assignments highly dangerous?’

  She made one of her enchanting moues. ‘This was more so than usual. So, as I said, I was exhausted, and feeling the delicious relaxation of being nearly home. And there were, well, circumstances. I will tell you of them. The important thing is that I failed to take a potential enemy seriously. In fact, I was attracted to him. Never seriously, and in fact with some suspicion, but as it turned out not enough. It was the very last time in my life that I allowed myself to be attracted to any man save my husband.’ She reached across to squeeze my hand, an unforgettable gesture. ‘Until you, Christopher.’

  ‘And this person . . .?’

  ‘Well, I am still alive. Although it was the nearest damn thing in my life,’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘And Beria and Stalin are both dead. Tell me, did you actually ever meet Beria?’

  Anna Fehrbach smiled.

  THE ENCOUNTER

  Mark Hamilton thought there could be no more pleasant way to spend an hour before lunch than to sit on the terrace of the Royal Victoria Hotel in Nassau, sipping a Planter’s Punch, en
joying the breeze that alleviated the heat and savouring the view over the famous gardens surrounding the swimming pool nestling beneath the swaying trees – which was currently filled with young people, several of them extremely attractive girls – and then out past the gardens and the ancient prison (now the library) to the scintillating blue waters of the harbour, beyond Bay Street, and the docks at the foot of the hill. His relaxed mood was only occasionally distracted, but enjoyably so, by the arrival of a taxi in the forecourt immediately beneath him, discharging happy tourists, come to enjoy the luxury and freedom of the Bahamas. February was the height of the tourist season

  It was difficult to reconcile this ambience with work. But it was even more difficult to accept that he was working, and that this assignment was about to come to an end. After three months, his employers had concluded that his mission had been a failure.

  Actually, they had themselves warned him that the assignment might take time, because the one thing he must not do was act hastily or be obvious. Too many people had made that mistake over the past dozen years, and none of them were still around. His brief was to observe, locate and inform. Nothing more. Certainly he must not ask any questions or reveal any interest in his quarry until she had wandered into his sights. But neither they nor he had supposed the assignment could take three months, with still no result.

  He had been told that everyone who was anyone in the Bahamas eventually turned up at the Royal Victoria Hotel, whether to stay or for lunch in such delightful surroundings, or for the starlit dinner dances out here on the terrace, or merely for a drink on a hot day. Thus he had taken up residence and spent an hour or two every day with various real estate agents, looking at property, apparently without yet finding exactly what he wanted. He could do nothing more than this, because his employers did not know what name she was currently using; they were only certain that it would not be Fehrbach.