by M. L. Huie
Despite all that, she was relaxed. She felt like running after the car and tracking the bastard down right now. Gone was the self-pity and shame that had been her constant companion. This was her lot in life.
Fine. Round one to Bad Breath. She’d retreat to her corner, regroup, and be ready for more.
Chapter Nine
The morning after the French Embassy party, Livy sat in the outer office of Kemsley News patiently waiting for an audience with Fleming. She wore one of her new outfits, a particularly spiffy utility suit with a vaguely nautical look. She hoped her ensemble might distract from the big white bandage taped to her right temple to cover the gash caused by Bad Breath’s pistol.
Livy felt quite different on this, her second, trip to Fleming’s office. The first time she’d blundered in, slightly soused and several hours late. Now she sat in the outer office after taking one for the team.
The young blonde woman, who introduced herself to Livy as Miss Baker, sat at her desk typing a long correspondence on letterhead with an air of mannered nonchalance. When she finished, Miss Baker carefully folded the typed letter and sealed it into a thick vellum envelope. Then the routine began again.
She’d met Livy at the door with a polite smile. Told her Mr. Fleming was in a meeting and would be with her shortly. She never mentioned the obvious bandage on Livy’s temple or so much as glanced at it. Livy wondered if some of Fleming’s other “reporters” showed up in a similar condition.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” Livy asked.
“Tired of what?” Miss Baker’s voice fit her like the narrow skirt she wore. She sounded smart, educated, and smooth.
“All that typing. Back at the P&J, they have rows of girls typing all day. Like machines. Just hammering away at those keys. After a few months they start to lose it a bit.”
Miss Baker pivoted in her chair and took a cigarette holder from the top drawer of her desk. She made the act of placing the cigarette and lighting it seem as elegant as a tango.
“I suppose,” she said, letting the smoke exhale out of the side of her small, red lips, “that would depend on what one is typing.”
Livy nodded, glancing toward Fleming’s office before realizing Miss Baker was still looking at her.
“You’ll want to watch out for that one.”
Livy tilted her head toward the closed door and said, “What? Him?”
“Of course. Don’t tell me he hasn’t made a pass at you yet.” The blonde spoke quickly, her voice hushed.
“No, I’m just here for the work.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Livy was still trying to figure out what Miss Baker meant as the blonde took a pull on her cigarette holder.
Finally, she said, “Have family from up your way. Preston. Know it?”
“Best bookshop in Lancashire’s there,” Livy said. “Used to beg me da to visit. Football club’s rubbish, but you can’t have it all.”
Miss Baker’s icy demeanor transformed into a dazzling white smile. She held out her right hand. “I’m Pen.”
“Olivia, but my friends call me Livy.”
“So, I’ll call you—Olivia, then?”
“Too right,” Livy said, grinning, taking Pen’s hand.
As if a whistle had sounded to end the moment, Pen spun away from Livy and inserted a clean sheet of foolscap into the typewriter. Her carefully manicured nails attacked the first keys. The seal on the inner office door opened with a smooth whoosh and Fleming walked out with another man.
Livy sized him up almost instantly as an American, before even hearing his voice. He had a certain quality in the way he walked. It was a bit bouncy. Most of the American men she knew had that sort of buoyancy to them, like they were warming up for a baseball game or something.
“Well, I certainly hope you’ll keep me in mind, Mr. Fleming,” he said. Long vowels. Hard r’s. Definitely a Yank.
“Oh, to be sure,” Fleming said, with more than a trace of weariness.
“Good to meet you, sir,” the American said, nodding at Pen and then picking up his fedora from the coatrack. Just before he left, his eyes darted over to Livy for an instant. Well-dressed and spit-polished, the Yank smiled at Livy. Not the glamorous Miss Penelope Baker, but Livy.
Good-looking. Nice suit. A face made for the cinema. Livy caught herself returning the smile when she heard her own name.
“Olivia,” Fleming said. “Pen, make sure we aren’t disturbed.”
“Of course,” she replied, with a sideways look at Livy.
Inside the office, the door sealed shut. Fleming took a seat at his desk. The lights across Europe, North America, and Asia glowed on the map behind him.
“I hear the French throw a nice party,” he said, taking a sip of coffee from a plain black mug.
“It was quite the do.”
“Too much champagne, perhaps?” Fleming said, indicating Livy’s bandage.
“I did have a bit of difficulty with my ride home.”
Fleming considered this and lit a cigarette. “And the microfilm?”
Livy’s mouth felt dry. “I had it. But a man with a gun wanted it, too.”
Fleming blew out smoke, his wide mouth curling down. “I assume you put up some sort of resistance?”
“Well, I didn’t cut meself shaving,” she said, touching her cheek.
“What was he like, this man?” Fleming anxiously tapped his middle finger on the cluttered desk. “You got a good look, I suppose.”
“Foreign. Big mustache. Smoked foul-smelling cigarettes. Broken nose. Not an amateur.”
“Nationality?”
“I’d say Eastern Europe. Maybe Russian.”
“And now he has the microfilm?”
“As I said, he had the gun.”
“Quite, quite.” Fleming mashed out his cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and gave Livy a look like that made her feel like a misbehaving child. “Nevertheless, an inauspicious beginning.”
Livy had no intention of accepting the rebuke without pleading her case. “I went to that party blind. No clue who the contact was and no idea what the microfilm might even be. Maybe if I’d known, the ending might’ve been different.”
Fleming looked ready to end it all right now. “My dear Miss Nash, I had to find out if I could trust you. Quite out of the blue, our people receive a message requesting you—of all people—to negotiate the sale of the Mephisto list. Not only was I testing the veracity of the other side, but I also wanted to see whose side you were on. The Mephisto list will have many suitors. I sent you in blind, as you say, precisely because we do not know each other and I couldn’t trust that you wouldn’t disappear with that microfilm.”
She knew he was right. In the war, agents had rarely known every piece of the puzzle in case of capture and subsequent torture. Livy wondered if she might have to crawl back to the P&J and hope for Mr. O’Toole’s mercy. Not just yet.
“He gave me a message, though,” she said. “The contact.”
Fleming spread his hands as if to say, And?
“He said the microfilm was a demonstration of the contact’s trust, and we’re to meet her tomorrow at a theater in Paris. The Grand Guignol.”
“And the chap who gave you that cut didn’t overhear?”
“No, that was private.”
Fleming spun around in his chair and stared at the map of the world. Livy wondered if he was looking at the dimmed bulb over Paris.
“Well, then, at this point we may have no other choice,” he said.
Livy wondered if she should respond. She chose silence. Finally, after what seemed minutes, Fleming turned to face her again. His mouth a straight line.
“Despite your bungling of last night, you are still the person they asked for. You have a better chance than anyone of getting that microfilm back and bringing us Valentine. That is, if you have the stomach to continue.”
Bungling? Livy wanted to dispute that particular claim. But she held back and said, “I give as good as I get,
Mr. Fleming.”
“We shall see about that, won’t we?”
The bastard gave no quarter. But at least Livy didn’t have to grovel at O’Toole’s heel just yet.
“I’ve had two weeks of Mrs. Sherbourne and her drama school, and I think it’s high time you tell me exactly what it is you want me to do—and while we’re at it, what exactly was on that film?”
Fleming lit another cigarette, studying her as he did. Then he said, “Would you care for a drink?”
“I’d like a double. But I think I’d prefer a clear head right now,” she said, sitting back in the leather armchair.
“Let me take your last question first,” Fleming said. “The microfilm, this apparent symbol of trust, contained the names of half the agents in the Mephisto network.”
Livy sighed. No wonder Fleming was treating her like a stupid little girl.
“I imagine the fellow who gave you that bruise was with the state security arm of the Soviet MGB.”
“How could they have known?”
Fleming gave her a small, painful grin. “They’re spies, dear. It’s what they do.”
Not for the first time in this office, Livy felt far out of her element.
Fleming went on. “I told you earlier about the one informant we had in Mephisto. A fellow from Nice, who we picked up in Vienna, of all places. We were keeping him in protective custody in a small jail near Marseille. This morning he was found dead in his cell. His throat had been cut and his tongue cut out. We suspect the guard was bribed, but the other prisoners in the same small jail aren’t talking.”
“Can’t say I blame them.”
Fleming pushed a file across his desk toward her. “This is what the poor chap had to say while he still could.”
Excerpts from Interrogation of Claude D regarding MEPHISTO network. Conducted 26–4–46. Vienna, AU. Some passages have been edited for clarity and content.
I was working on the docks in Nice back then, in ’38. Offloading the ships that came in. It was hard work, you know? Long hours. The pay was no good, but you take what you can get. You know, a lot of ships come in at the docks. Who knows who might be stowed away on one?
I think maybe that’s why they wanted me. I could tell them what was coming in, going out.
But it started when me and some of my friends took a trip to Paris. It was the Easter holiday, and—well—we were all young then and none of us married, and we didn’t really care for church, so we went to Paris. For Easter.
It was four of us, but my friend Charles and I were closest. You have to understand, Charles liked women very much, you know. He was from Paris and he knew so many girls there, and he promised we would all have a girl that Easter weekend.
He said, “There will be even more to pick from, because all the priests are working.” Charles said some very funny things then.
He said, “We are all going to Chez Moune in the Pigalle. You have never been anywhere like this, Claude,” he said. “It’s only for girls. Girls who like other girls. You won’t believe it.”
Our other two friends, Jean and Hugo, they were not interested. Andre always talked too much. He said, “Why do I want to see freaks?” Idiot.
Anyway, we went to Chez Moune that night. See, it was only for gouine (TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH—“LESBIAN”), you know, but Charles knew one of the men who ran the club and he let us in. And he was right. You wouldn’t believe it. Like a dream, you know. (EDITED)
So there was one girl that I met there. Nathalie. And she liked girls but she liked men, too. So Nathalie and I started talking while Charles was in the chambre rouge. I didn’t know who she was then, or that she was a spy. I talked to her because she was so beautiful. Perfect. She had blue eyes that looked right through you, and her mouth … she would sip her drink and the wetness on her lips would drive me wild, you know.
So I didn’t help them because of Germany or Hitler. It wasn’t that. I didn’t care about that. It was money. Yes? Just money. And her. Nathalie. And her eyes and that mouth. You see, she had this girlfriend there, and the chambre rouge was off-limits … for some. But not for us, you know. (EDITED)
Yes, yes, but Nathalie told me about him. The magician. One of Hitler’s favorites, she said. You see, Hitler liked all of this black magic, witchy stuff, you know. Weird things. He thought there were dark powers on Earth. Powers people didn’t understand. So, this magician was good enough to play in Berlin, and that’s where Hitler saw him.
Nathalie said all I’d have to do was get information and pass it along to the magician or one of his people. Or her. Yes, she said that. But I never saw her again. Not after that one night.
Ca pute! (TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH—“THAT WHORE.”)
Nathalie told me to go back to work on the docks and to watch the newspaper for when Mephisto, the magician, would play a show in Nice. That’s when they would give me the signal and get me started.
So I waited, and maybe three or four months later I saw the advert for the magician. He was playing at a club in the city. So I bought a ticket for the show, which cost me almost fifty francs. So I went, watched the show, and then after I met one of his people. A fat man. Bald. He had been in the show, too. I don’t remember his name, but he spoke French.
So this fat man gave me a thick envelope and told me I had to give it to another man before he boarded a certain ship. I think the ship was called the St. Anne or something. I said, why can’t you give it to him yourself? The fat man laughed at me. “Delivery boys deliver,” he said. “The man who gets this envelope and I are in management.” He told me if I did this job without a mistake, then I would be given more jobs. Jobs that paid well. They needed eyes on the ships and the docks. So I said fine, I’d be his errand boy this time, but how would I know this man? He says, “Don’t worry, he’ll find you.”
Hmmph. Of course. He said if I did this one simple thing, the man would have something for me. And that I could make lots of money this way.
So I made sure to get a shift the night this boat pulled out. Maybe an hour before it was scheduled to leave, I went down to the gangplank and waited. They were casting off the first lines when a man finally approached me. He wore a long coat and a big hat pulled way down on his face, but I could tell it was him. Mephisto. The magician.
So I give him the envelope, and he opened it in front of me. It was filled with money, Reichsmarks. He counted it all. Took his time. Maybe he didn’t trust me, I don’t know. Finally, he smiled and said, “You’ve done well.”
Then he pulls something out of his coat pocket. One of those push-button knives, you know. He didn’t point it at me or anything, he just held it.
He said, “You could be a great help to me. Working here in the dockyards. I’ll bet you see and hear so many things.”
Then he gives me another envelope. “Go ahead. Look inside,” he said. And it was filled with francs. Not as much money as the thick one I gave him, but enough.
“If you tell me, or my associates, what you see and hear when you’re down here, then there will be much more of that. But if you tell other people, then maybe I’ll visit you again.” And the whole time he’s saying this, the knife is in his hand.
“Do you understand me?” he said.
I nodded, and he left.
That’s the way it worked, you see. I reported to them what I saw. If someone moved weapons or materials or explosives to another country, I would let them know. I kept notes.
Usually I talked to his associate, the fat one. I never learned any names.
So, his magic show came to Nice every few months. We were occupied by the Italians there, but all over Vichy and the occupied zone near Paris, Mephisto still played the circuit. I don’t know, but maybe that’s how they did it. Maybe he had people like me everywhere he played, and in each city he gathered information.
I don’t know, though, because I never met anyone else who worked for him.
But I did. All through the war.
Then after the invas
ion in ’44, it practically stopped. I saw Fatty maybe twice after that. Just him. I’d see him standing at the dock, smoking or something, and when I had a break we’d talk. Same thing. I’d tell him what was happening, and he’d give me an envelope full of francs.
I never went back to Paris. And I never saw Nathalie again. Maybe she was the reason I did it, you know? Her … and the money too.
Livy closed the file. “So who’s the fat man?”
“No idea. As poor Claude says there, they used no names.”
Fleming pushed aside a pile of newspapers and unfolded a small map of Western Europe on his desk, facing Livy. “The red dots represent cities where Mephisto’s magic show played more than four times from 1938 to the end of the war. Blue dots represent less than four.”
The map looked like a child had been let loose with red and blue pens. The dots covered most of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and every country west of the Soviet Bloc.
“That must be more than a hundred agents,” she said.
“One hundred twenty-two.”
Livy thought about Luc the mechanic. All this time she’d seen him as a dirty little bastard who had sold Peter and his unit out to the Germans for money. If Fleming was right, then Luc’s betrayal went much deeper.
“It’s clear from Claude’s story that the agents don’t know one another. If this is true, then they are still out there. In place. Waiting.”
Livy’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. “And the microfilm?”
Fleming nodded. “The microfilm, and the message you received, came from someone at the top of the network. Someone who wants out. She’s our best chance of getting the complete list.”
“Who is she?”
“The woman who recruited Claude.” Fleming pulled a brown folder from a stack at his elbow. A white paper band sealed the folder from top to bottom. With a slight flourish, he produced a sterling silver knife from his desk and deftly sliced the band. Inside Livy saw two sheets of foolscap and a small black-and-white photo. Fleming held the small picture, studying it with a grin as cigarette smoke curled around his face. “Nathalie Billerant. I see why Claude was so taken with her. Quite beautiful. But then, they often are.” Fleming placed the photo in front of Livy.
