The English Agent

by Clare Harvey

  Really, things were dragging on a bit. She checked her watch discreetly below the edge of the desk as Mr Brown made some more marks in the margins of her form. It was time to draw things to a conclusion. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Brown, but I promised to meet Hump for luncheon at his club. Would you mind if I borrowed your telephone to call his secretary to ask to reschedule?’

  Mr Brown looked up. ‘Not at all, Miss Atkins, but I believe we’re almost finished here. What time is your appointment?’

  ‘It’s quite all right, dear boy. I’m sure Hump will understand your need to be thorough.’ She reached for the phone. Let Mr Brown worry about upsetting Hump and disrupting his day. Let him worry about being thought an officious little oik.

  ‘No, really, I think we’re just about done,’ Mr Brown said just as Vera began to lift the receiver.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble for not doing your job properly.’ She caught up the receiver in her left hand and reached out her right forefinger towards the dial.

  ‘Not at all. Don’t let me ruin your luncheon. I think I have everything I need here. And give Mr Humphries my regards, will you?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Brown. It will be my pleasure,’ she said, replacing the receiver in the cradle with a chiming click. ‘If you’re quite sure?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Brown, tapping the pile of papers into a neat sheaf. ‘Everything appears to be in order, here.’

  Gerhardt

  Kieffer’s knee was almost touching the prisoner’s as he leant forward to speak. Gerhardt noticed how she pulled her limbs into herself. She was pale as moonshine, her breath coming in rapid bursts. ‘He wants to know if you’d like an English cigarette,’ Gerhardt translated, but she didn’t appear to hear him. He repeated the question, but she shook her head, clamping her jaws tight shut. He heard the office door open and one of the typists brought a tray of tea things and placed it on the table in front of them. The cups and saucers were made of porcelain so fine it was almost translucent in the late-afternoon light.

  Kieffer patted her thigh. She jumped as if stung. ‘You are well,’ he said in heavily accented English. It was more of a statement than a question. Then he began talking in German again, pausing so that Gerhardt could translate, and pouring the tea. He said what a pleasure it was to have her back in avenue Foch, and how nice it would be if she decided they could finally do business together. Gerhardt looked at the girl’s face as he translated. Her eyes looked glassy. Blue, he noticed now, as the light caught her: her eyes are china blue. But her pupils were huge and unfocused. Without asking, Kieffer poured milk and put two lumps of sugar into her teacup, using the little silver tongs. Someone must have told him that was how all English took their tea. The brown liquid streamed into the cup, and Kieffer handed it to her. She reached out to take it, but her hands were shaking so much that the cup rattled and tea splashed a puddle in the saucer.

  ‘Let me help,’ Gerhardt said. He held the saucer for her as she lifted the cup to her lips and drank greedily. His mother drank her tea like that, in the English way, with milk and sugar, Gerhardt remembered; she said it tasted of childhood.

  Kieffer lit a cigar. The smoke snagged round them. Gerhardt looked at the girl’s hand holding the cup as she gulped down the tea. Her fingernails were bitten right down to the quick. Just like mine, Gerhardt thought; she bites her nails just like me. When she put the cup back on the saucer, she thanked Gerhardt, and he placed it down on the polished table. Kieffer blew out another plume of smoke and checked his watch. There was the sound of a vehicle slowing down outside. ‘That will be them, now,’ Kieffer said. ‘Tell her to look out of the window.’

  Gerhardt told her. She was still shivering so violently that he had to help her out of the chair and over to the window. The lowering winter sun had already cast the garden into deep shadows, but occasional beams of light cut through the rooftops and sliced into the office, highlighting the edge of her shoulder, and turning a streak of her still-damp hair golden-amber. He watched her expression as the black van pulled up in the driveway and two figures were pulled out of the back seat at gunpoint. He saw her eyes narrow. When they were pushed into the middle of the little patch of grass, it was clear that the tall man was limping. They were both blindfolded.

  ‘They can’t see you. So don’t worry, they don’t know you’re here,’ Gerhardt translated for Kieffer, all the while scrutinising the girl’s face, seeing the effort it took for her to try to maintain a blank expression.

  ‘I don’t know these people,’ she said, and Gerhardt translated.

  ‘What does she mean? She told you about them, about the room above the Lucas Carton,’ Kieffer said. Gerhardt paused, unwilling to translate. It felt like a betrayal. But he’d done the right thing in telling Kieffer about the rendezvous point, about her colleagues.

  ‘Th-they were picked up this lunchtime,’ Gerhardt translated, unable to control his stammer. ‘They are colleagues of y-yours.’

  ‘I don’t know them,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘These people are nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Really?’ said Kieffer. ‘If they’re nothing to do with you, then you won’t mind if I have them shot?’ Gerhardt translated. He’d expected the girl to look scared, but instead she looked confused. Gerhardt was aware of Kieffer watching her carefully. ‘But you could save them, if you wanted,’ he added. ‘All we need is your security check, and a little support for Dr Goetz, too.’

  But the girl said nothing. ‘Fine,’ said Kieffer turning to Gerhardt. ‘Tell her you’re going down to the garden to shoot the terrorists, then.’ Gerhardt did as he was told. The girl still did not respond. ‘Use my pistol; it’s in my desk,’ Kieffer said. Gerhardt walked over to the polished walnut desk that sat below the photograph of the Führer. Surely Kieffer didn’t mean him to actually kill them, right there in front of her? The drawer slid out and inside there was an Astra 400, sleek and grey, with the textured coppery handle. ‘It’s loaded,’ Kieffer said, as Gerhardt picked it up. ‘Go down now, but wait for my command before opening fire.’

  The weapon felt smooth-heavy in his left hand as Gerhardt went out of Kieffer’s office and down the stairs to the front door, heart pounding like a kettle-drum. You’re doing your duty to the Reich, he told himself as his boots thudded on the steps. You are obeying an order, that’s all. His throat constricted. His mouth felt dry as dust.

  There was a click as he released the safety catch. He looked up at the window, where Kieffer stood with the girl, but it was hard to see them properly: the sunshine caused spidery reflections of tree branches against the glass. Behind him the unit who’d brought in the saboteurs stood watching, waiting. Why hadn’t Kieffer asked them to do this? Gerhardt wondered. Was it some kind of test?

  It was cold outside, and he had no coat. His fingers were already white-numb over the trigger. It was all he could do not to shiver. He lifted the weapon and looked down the barrel at the saboteurs. Only two – there’d been three in that room, he remembered. He wondered if one of them had escaped. The woman was dressed in black, her dark curly hair escaping above the folded blue cloth they’d used to blindfold her. The man was taller: grey suit and wine-red scarf, thick brown hair ruffled out of place.

  Gerhardt’s breath was loud, sawing up his throat. His weapon arm was shaking. He tensed his muscles, lifting the pistol a fraction higher to shoulder height, waiting for Kieffer’s signal.

  He saw the man’s handcuffed fingers reaching blindly towards the woman. One of the men from the unit shouted at them. Gerhardt lowered his weapon briefly as a couple of the team ran onto the grass and shoved the prisoners further apart, so they could no longer have any contact.

  Gerhardt cleared his throat and looked up at the window again. With the sunshine reflecting on the glass it was hard to see, but it looked as if Kieffer was whispering in the girl’s ear. Gerhardt’s jaw tensed. He lifted the pistol back up and took aim again, staring through the sights at the figures in the centre of the garden: stil
l as bronze statues in the fading light.

  He waited for Kieffer’s command, trying to keep his arm steady. If Kieffer told him to shoot, which one should he shoot first? The woman? He moved the muzzle to the right, centring on her chest. The buttons of her coat appeared to tremble with her breath. But would it take more than one shot to kill her? What if he missed?

  Gerhardt wanted to cough, but gulped spit to salve it. His arm had started to ache. He looked again at the window, and as he did so a couple of sparrows landed on the lawn near by, making him jump, curl his trigger finger in surprise. That was close – a negligent discharge would be embarrassingly dangerous, here in the little garden, with all eyes on him.

  He took a deep breath and trained his aim on the man. He was the same man he’d seen walking past the restaurant with her in the rain, on that first day. Where had they been going, he wondered? Were they just colleagues, or more than that – lovers, perhaps? He saw the man’s hands clenching and unclenching, heard the handcuffs make tiny clinking sounds. He’d shoot the man first, Gerhardt decided, in the chest, and then the woman. Yes, that would do it.

  His weapon arm was killing him, the muscles burning up with the strain. The sunlight hardened as a cloud passed, and the two figures turned from gold-brown to charcoal at a stroke. There was a sound from the building and Gerhardt turned his head, keeping his pistol arm still trained on the terrorists.

  Kieffer was opening his office window. It must be time. Gerhardt steadied his arm, waiting for the command. There was a sudden rush of heat to his face. He swallowed. It wasn’t murder if he was obeying an order, was it?

  ‘Lower your weapon and come back upstairs,’ Kieffer called, his voice cheery as a mother calling her children in for tea.

  Gerhardt’s arm dropped. His numb fingers fumbled to get the safety catch on. He walked towards the front door without looking back at the unit or the figures standing on the patch of grass.

  It felt as if he’d just finished a hundred-metre sprint. Mouth parched, chest heaving, he pushed open the front door and began to climb the stairs back up to the English girl.

  Edie

  The heat battened down her exhaustion. But it felt as if she could have been at home in the drawing room, with the crackle of logs on the fire and the late-winter sunlight slanting in the window. There was a rug at the hearth and the BBC Radio Londres buzzed on the wireless in the corner. If she closed her eyes she could imagine herself back there, with Mummy entering invitations into the daybook, her fountain pen scratching on the thick paper. Perhaps that flapping at the window was the doves from the dovecote, not scrawny Parisian pigeons. Her lids drew down. Any minute now she’d smell a gust of Dior as Mummy swept past to make a telephone call. There’d be hot chocolate on the table. The sunshine caressed her shut lids and she felt herself begin to slide into a doze. Someone touched her shoulder. It would be Mummy, suggesting a hack – such a glorious day, and the horses needed the exercise after a winter cooped up in the stables. There would be snowdrops clumped round the tree roots in Windsor Great Park. But she was so very tired. She didn’t feel like riding today. ‘Actually, Mummy, I think I ought to go back to bed. I feel a little unwell. I’m going to give it a miss, if it’s all the same with you.’ That’s what she said, but no sound came out. And Mummy was nudging her again, poking her hard in the shoulder.

  ‘Fräulein,’ Mummy said. Why was Mummy speaking German? The air was so warm. It felt as if her lids were gummed together – glue-eye, that’s what Dr Marchant called it.

  ‘Mummy, I think I may have glue-eye,’ she said, but again the sound didn’t come from her lips, and her cheek lolled against the wing of the chair.

  ‘Fräulein, wake up, it’s your scheduled time,’ said Mummy, poking her again. Edie’s head jerked up briefly, but her eyes remained fast shut and she smelled the wood smoke and felt the beckoning comfort of sleep. ‘Fräulein!’ A shout, and a swift slap to her cheek. Edie opened her eyes. In the place where Mummy’s armchair should have been there was an empty space. The window was in the wrong place. And why was there an open suitcase on the table?

  The present assaulted her in a rush. She was in Paris, in the Sicherheitsdienst headquarters in avenue Foch. And she’d just agreed to commit treason.

  She saw Dr Goetz shifting from foot to foot, stroking his right hand as if the slap had hurt him more than her. ‘Fräulein, it’s time for your transmission,’ he said, pointing at two large black-rimmed clocks above the fireplace. They looked like a giant’s pair of spectacles, Edie thought, with the hearth a downturned mouth below. Under one clock was printed Berlin and under the other London.

  The suitcase on the table was her wireless transmission set, aerial ribboning out of the window to where pigeons strutted and puffed on the grey slates. The sky was a small trapezium of pale blue. Edie remembered those two Molyneux dresses: sky-blue and dove-grey: not too showy, perfect for a young girl, Mummy had said. Afterwards they’d gone to buy her first proper handbag. Her lids began to flutter down again, like wings.

  ‘Come now, Fräulein, Herr Kieffer wants alles in Ordnung,’ said Dr Goetz.

  ‘Everything in order,’ came another voice from further across the room, translating. It was the interpreter. He’d been with her in that place. She remembered the water: in her mouth, in her lungs. Edie looked across the room and saw the interpreter standing beyond the fireplace, where shadows played. As she looked at him, he looked away. It was impossible to make out his expression. She remembered his voice in that place, throughout it all. His soft, strange accent.

  Dr Goetz said something in German, his grey eyes like rain-washed pebbles, spittle flicking the corners of his mouth. His face was suddenly very close to hers. His pink fingertips jabbed at the piece of paper on the table next to the wireless set. The interpreter cleared his throat and explained that the questions were for Baker Street.

  Edie stared down at the paper. The black type writhed like a row of ants in her over-tired gaze. ‘Fräulein, it’s time,’ said Dr Goetz, at her shoulder.

  Edie thought about Felix and Claude, and the tenderness between them. She thought about Justine, knitting socks for her husband in the labour camp. She thought about the little child she had glimpsed, looking wide-eyed from an upstairs window, the night she’d arrived. And then she remembered Bea, fallen on the railway track, and the little baby girl she’d left behind. That had been Edie’s fault, hadn’t it? She couldn’t save Bea. But she could save Justine. She could save that one family, even if it meant working for the enemy.

  She nodded at Dr Goetz and picked up the metal contact on the wireless set. Every dot and dash of Morse burned and stabbed, a reminder of her treachery. She asked all their questions, all their requests for names, grid references, Lysander drops and equipment. She used her correct code. She included the security check.

  The fire had died down, the pigeons had flown away, and the sun swung behind the rooftops by the time she finished. Dr Goetz had stood behind her the whole time, his breath wet as seaside spray against her cheek as she worked. When she stopped, she drew breath and leant back in the chair.

  ‘Fertig?’ said Dr Goetz. ‘Alles in Ordnung?’

  ‘He wants to know if you’ve finished,’ said the interpreter, his voice still far away. Edie nodded and shivered. Someone’s just walked over your grave, girl – that’s what Bea would have said – a chill prickle right up her spine. She exhaled as if ridding herself of a nasty smell.

  ‘Yes,’ Edie said, ‘it’s done. Alles in Ordnung.’

  Chapter 10

  Gerhardt

  ‘What did you think?’ Gerhardt said. They had just seen Die Grosse Liebe with Zarah Leander playing the lead role. Norbert shrugged and pulled his cigarettes from the pocket of his long overcoat. Above them the white pillars of the Soldatenkino toppled like an over-iced cake, neon lettering flashing out into the dulling evening, and Gerhardt was reminded briefly of his little brother’s birthday cake, frosted and studded with shards of glass after the nigh
t of the fatal raid on his home town.

  It started to drizzle, cold drops percolating through the darkening skies. ‘Did nothing for me, mate,’ said Josef, holding out a hand for one of Norbert’s cigarettes. ‘Don’t get me wrong, the Leander woman is lush, but I’m not really into that romance stuff.’

  Gerhardt thought Zarah Leander was a little like the English prisoner – something about her eyes – but he didn’t say that. Instead, he asked what the plan for the night was. It was his first proper night out in the city. Last time had been scuppered by the English girl’s capture, but tonight they were all off together: he, Josef and Norbert. Josef had promised to show him the sights, and made it quite clear he wasn’t talking about the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame Cathedral.

  Josef winked at Norbert. Norbert checked his watch and shook his head. Gerhardt stared past them both into the damp wall of drizzle, where the painted streetlamps glowed like pale blue puffballs and black cars splashed intermittently through puddles. Other cinema-goers were spilling out into the street.

  Gerhardt noticed a few civil service girls carrying their grey coats over their heads to protect their perms from frizzing. ‘We could go where they’re going,’ Gerhardt said. He hadn’t noticed whether or not the girls were pretty, but they were chatting and giggling as they scurried out into the evening.

  They reminded him of some of the girls from Hitler Youth he’d been hiking with last year, before he joined up.

  He remembered the hot sunshine, and the high green hills, and pitching their tents by a clear stream. On the last night of the trip they’d all visited a beer cellar, and Lisel had let him kiss her, outside in the warm summer dark. He remembered pushing her up against the rough stone wall as the others walked ahead. Her breath had been hot and sweet and she’d let him undo the buttons of her blouse, gasped as he’d cupped her swelling breasts in his hands. He’d thought she was going to let him carry on, but at the last minute she’d said no, I mustn’t, I’m so sorry, broken free and run off to join her friends. And he’d been left breathless, hard, frustrated. He couldn’t hate her for it. He hated himself for not being more daring, not trying again with another girl, a girl who didn’t care so much about God, marriage and parents. The problem was that the other girls weren’t Lisel. He’d confided as much to Josef, just after he’d arrived, and Josef had laughed and said not to worry, Paris would make a man of him. Why suffer that kind of humiliation, Josef said, French girls were cheap. At that, Josef had rubbed his fingers together, as if chinking small change.