* * *
Her name was Anna Berge, and she was wearing – well, a wedding ring, Ben noticed, also baggy trousers with plimsolls and a sweater, despite which she looked – again, incredibly – like Marlene Dietrich on one of her better days. Actually, terrific. Blonde hair rather long, now she’d removed her oilskin cap and let it all fall loose. Hughes asking her a few minutes later, over coffee in the wardroom the other two Norwegians she and Vidlin had brought with them were berthing in the Ekhorn for the time being – ‘You’re the agent here, then – of SIS?’
‘My father, hereabouts, is coordinator of resistance. I was in Oslo – doing those things, yes, also teaching – but the Germans trapped my husband, and—’
Pausing, looking not at any of them now but only into her coffee mug. Ben recognising and sympathising with an aversion to talking about it much, at any rate to strangers – something like that – and cutting it short by murmuring, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes.’ Looking at him, then, and brightening. ‘Although I can say I was very lucky. And my father was alone here, so I came to join him. I don’t think they’re looking for me – they can’t be, didn’t know my… background. I have to tell you, though’ – telling Hughes – ‘these two who escaped from Ulven prison camp not long ago, my father’s gone for them, but how long’ – shaking her blonde head – ‘because they were being moved from place to place, you see—’
‘Roughly how long – would you guess?’
‘A few days.’ Sipping coffee. ‘Maybe a week. If he should have to – you know, hole-up some place – Gestapo are searching, you see – they don’t like it, people escape before they can murder them. Could be a week.’
‘I suppose we could wait that long.’ Hughes had said that to Ben; explained then to the girl, ‘There’s a slight problem with the Ekhorn – can’t really leave her on her own. The boy Iversen brought along as – well, his back-up – he’s a nice lad, but—’
‘Sven was telling me. Might the answer be for Sven to go with him? Then you could leave – and they follow with the others when we have them?’
‘Well—’
Ben told her, ‘We’d more or less decided I’d move over. And I think Mike here needs Sven to get him out of this place. Which I could not do. Whereas in the Ekhorn there’s at least one man with local knowledge – who brought her in, guided Jarl in. Nils was unconscious a lot of the time. But I’m a navigator, you see, so once we’re out of pilotage water I can be with Jarl in that capacity but – you know, keep an eye on things in general.’
Hughes confirmed to Vidlin, ‘I would be happier to have you stay with me.’
There were exchanges in Norwegian then, which Anna interpreted eventually as, ‘He says OK with him.’
‘He’s a very good fellow, tell him.’ She did so, Vidlin stood up and bowed, and they all laughed. Hughes told her, ‘There’s another thing. I have a cargo of Sten guns, ammunition and explosives – with fuse and detonators, all that. Oh, and R-type mines. Under the plan as it was I’d have transferred it all into Ekhorn before Nils pushed off – since he’d have been going up-fjord, wouldn’t he? You’d need at least three or four trips in Sven’s boat, though.’
‘I think we should move the Ekhorn in any case. After – that is, if you sail tomorrow night—’
‘Move her higher up the fjord?’
‘Close to where I’m living with my father. With the camouflage she’ll be as safe there as here. Safer – they’ve learned that you prefer the mouths of fjords, don’t like to go far up. And if that’s agreed, if you like – this was to Ben – ‘I can be your pilot. I grew up around here, all the time in boats.’
He smiled at her. ‘Be great.’
He thought, Be bloody marvellous…
Hughes was saying, ‘That’s it, then. Tomorrow we’ll tranship the cargo into Ekhorn. And you, Anna – if you and Ben are going to shift her up-fjord as soon as I shove off – soon as it’s dark tomorrow – today now – about eleven, eleven-thirty say—’
‘If you’ve a hole for me somewhere to curl up, I’ll stay with you. You could put Sven’s boat back on board then, if you wanted to.’
‘You can use my cabin. It’s small, but—’
‘Oh, how kind!’
Some smile, she had. Truly did. Like the sun coming out. And imagine – outdoor girl, with a brain in her head and the guts to be coping with this sort of life, and – crikey, looking like that…
Chapter 16
‘What do you have to do with propaganda? And these things – what for?’ Lifting her handcuffed wrists towards him, jangling the chain. She’d allowed herself to sound slightly hysterical: up to this point having kept her mouth shut, only letting him see bewilderment and shock; but she was alone with him now, in this large room with its high ceiling and ornate chimney-piece, disparate assembly of furniture. The SS goon had been dismissed and the Frenchman, addressed by Clausen as Dubarque, had deferentially placed her papers as well as the handcuffs’ key on the desk in front of Clausen.
Modern desk – plain and solid, incongruously so. The oval table in the middle of the room was probably Louis-Seize – rosewood, she thought – with chairs around it of similar vintage and elegance. The carpet was not only huge but beautiful, and there was a crystal chandelier above the table. Not lit: light came from oil-lamps on a timber filing-cabinet near the door, on the mantel and on Clausen’s desk.
No pictures on the walls. You could see where they had been. Crated-up and removed to Berlin, she guessed. She was taking overt interest in the room and its furnishings while getting her wits together and assessing him – attitude and intentions. Jacqui’s lover, or SD hatchet-man? Rolled-up shirtsleeves, loosened tie, shirt open at the neck; he was smoking a cigar as he glanced through her papers. Hadn’t looked up yet; his only reaction to her outburst had been to growl, ‘Sit down. Wait.’ Looking up now though, putting the papers aside – grim-faced, no genial-host act this evening – telling her, ‘You’re here to answer my questions, not to ask your own. The answer to your first one however is – nothing. My kind of work benefits from peace and quiet, and these rooms were available. As it happens, most of the building’s empty now. So—’
An inch of ash fell off his cigar; he blew it away. She broke in, ‘Are you going to tell me why I’ve been dragged here?’
‘As I said – to answer questions – which I’ll preface with a warning: you may imagine that my having entertained you to lunch and discussed Jacqueline’s predicament with you might put you at some advantage. It does not. It was Jacqui who invited you – on the face of it, in point of fact you pushed her into doing so. Like many others she’s facing problems, which you and she discussed and in respect of which you made certain proposals. Resulting from… from certain peculiarities in the way you went about it, I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours checking on your background; and this is the outcome of it.’
‘What am I supposed to have done?’
‘I may as well add that my inquiries – to Berlin, by telephone – were started on Saturday evening after Jacqueline told me she’d seen you – twice – and you were coming next day. By that time – Sunday midday, when we had the pleasure of your company – answers had begun to come in, and now, of course’ – he patted the file – ‘it’s all here. More than enough, I may say. And I must point out to you that my having requested the information and being supplied with it is itself now on the record; which means I have no latitude in how I deal with you, I can only go by the book. D’you understand?’
‘Your superiors know you’ve got me here, do they?’
‘As I said, I ask the questions!’
‘Perhaps I might ask this one, though – if I’m to be “disposed of”, what happens to Jacqui when you leave?’
‘I think I can ensure her safety. Yes – I can. Your idea was a good one.’
‘You’ll do it that way, then. Except for the farm, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you confident th
at the FFI will swallow the story – mightn’t know enough about her to dismiss it as a hoax?’
‘As long as we can see to it that you have no further communication with them – yes.’
‘You think I’d rat on her?’
‘I can ensure you’re not in a position to. I don’t have to – trust, or risk…’
‘So on no account can I expect to be released.’
He dropped the stub of his cigar into a brass shellcase ashtray, and tapped the file. ‘In view of what’s in this, I doubt I could justify a decision to release you. In fact even to hold you – as an alternative to putting you on a train to Germany.’
‘Hold me where?’
Shake of the head. ‘Your proper destination – on the basis of what is known – that’s to say, no interrogation being actually required—’
‘No torture. Just dear old Ravensbrück.’
‘You were on your way there not long ago, weren’t you? You’re an extremely resourceful agent, I grant you that. But I can guarantee you won’t escape a second time – if that’s the decision I’m forced to make.’
‘Entirely up to you, is it?’
‘Yes. As matters stand, at this time. Incidentally, do you think you were wise to return to France with the field-name you were using a year ago – which you must have known would be on your file?’
‘There’d have been problems if I’d turned up with any other. To Jacqui especially – or in Rouen, Estelle. The name they both knew me by – thought I was.’
‘Certainly made it easy for me. The very first inquiry to records in Berlin – at once, the connection’s made!’
‘You’d have traced me anyway.’
‘Not as easily or instantly. But’ – hands flat on the desk – ‘you understand your position now.’
‘As you’ve explained it – yes.’
‘Beyond that, however, another aspect is that in your background – in here’ – the file – ‘some of it is, anyway – there are areas in which I have personal interest. A lot might hang on your giving full and truthful answers to some further questions. All right, you could refuse – you’re in it up to the neck, so—’
‘Ravensbrück.’
‘Well – I have explained—’
‘While maintaining that this isn’t an interrogation, that you don’t need one.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Threat of death as alternative to torture.’
‘No. These questions are – supplementary. Your record as it stands would justify several death sentences.’
‘Difficult to carry out more than one, though.’ She shrugged. ‘Must be galling.’
‘Your flippancy is – really, out of place. Ravensbrück is hardly a joke. Be quiet now and listen.’ He pulled the file closer, extracted a sheet of foolscap. ‘These are my own notes – memoranda. All right – Jacqui introduced you to me in her apartment in Rouen, late July last year. I was there only briefly. I’d come to see her, had no interest in you, in fact I had no duties in Rouen then, was only packing up. But I remember her telling me that you were trying to sell perfume on behalf of Maison Cazalet and having a hard time of it; she was trying to give you a start but was not optimistic for your chances. She was sorry for you, you were a sweet girl, short of money, widowed, had a child you couldn’t afford to have with you – et cetera. That’s how it was when I left Rouen – on recall to Berlin, as it happens. But it’s on the record that this same sweet girl with all her problems was arrested a few days later near Bellencombre, at a Lysander rendezvous, spent a day or two under interrogation but then in somewhat peculiar circumstances escaped – I have my own theory about that—’
‘So do I. Tell you, if you like.’
‘It’s not important. Oh, having escaped, you killed a man, a captain in the SS – which makes for one death sentence. I only call it unimportant in relation to what I’m putting to you now. The essence is that you were – and are – an agent of SOE, and you’d made yourself known to Jacqui because she was at that time the paramour of the German officer organising construction of rocket sites in the Pas de Calais. This accurate, so far?’
‘I was trying to make friends with Jacqui for that reason, yes.’
‘Did she know that was what you were after?’
‘Of course not. My aim was to establish a close friendship, and then try to recruit her. I didn’t get that far, though, didn’t have time. I’d arranged for an agent code-named Romeo to be picked up by Lysander – oh, and for a couple of parachutages – but I’d only been there – what, a week or ten days maybe – and of course Jacqui was away every weekend in Amiens. I hadn’t had anything like enough time before I was arrested. And tortured, by the way.’
A silence. Staring at each other. Rosie knowing she had to put Jacqui in the clear: otherwise she’d be on the skids and bang would go whatever leverage she, Rosie, might still have.
Might. Also by now might not. Cling to it, though…
‘You’re telling me that Jacqui had no reason to suspect you were a British agent?’
‘I certainly gave her no reason to suspect I might be. I’m not a complete idiot, and even then I wasn’t inexperienced as an agent. One doesn’t approach someone one barely knows – and who has links to Germans, for God’s sake!’
‘But you would have at some later stage.’
‘When I knew her better, and if by that time I thought I could take the chance – yes.’
‘So when you arrived on our doorstep last Friday, from wherever – Rouen, did you say?’
‘Yes. I’d gone there hoping to see her, was told she was in Paris and got her address.’
‘Which wasn’t easy to believe. The young man had sworn on his mother’s grave he wouldn’t give the address to anyone. His job depended on it, and he’s well paid, so—’
‘He didn’t give it to me.’
‘Estelle, then?’
‘Can this be off the record?’ He nodded. She thought it was probably off any official record anyway. This was Clausen’s personal investigation of his lover’s probity, politics, loyalty to him. She admitted, ‘I took her to supper, and persuaded her. Told her Jacqui was in danger from the Resistance and all that – and if I got to her I could save her life.’
‘Estelle is a dimwit, of course.’
‘She’s very fond of Jacqui. What I told her was the truth, in any case. Don’t you accept it? Incidentally, I promised that no one would know she’d told me. I told you and Jacqui I’d got it from – Joao, is his name? – for that reason, and because anyway I didn’t like him.’
‘All right. Recapitulating now, though: you went to Rouen last year with the intention of subverting Jacqui, but you were arrested before you were ready to make your move. Consequently she could not have been responsible for leaks of intelligence concerning the rocket sites.’
‘I didn’t say that. If there were leaks – well, I know nothing about any, I wasn’t there.’
‘So you think Jacqui might have—’
‘Might – I suppose. But so might anyone. You might have, the colonel of engineers might have. Or nobody might have – I wasn’t in any position—’
‘But you did’ – selecting another document from the file – ‘did persuade résistants in that and surrounding areas to investigate any construction work that might be for rocket sites, and report on it.’
She nodded, smiling ruefully at her own poor memory and/or at the conclusion he might draw.
‘So?’
‘I was dealing with those country people mainly over parachutages. Getting their requirements and passing those to London, and in some cases setting up the drops at very short notice. In the course of all that I did, certainly, ask for their help in our rocket researches too.’
‘To whom would they have passed any such information?’
‘To me, of course!’
‘But in your absence?’
‘I had every intention of staying in touch with all of them. I wasn’t expecting to be
arrested – if that’s what you’re—’
‘Surely an experienced agent – such as you admit you were – is conscious every minute of the day and night that such a thing may occur, and especially on such an important issue would have made alternative arrangements?’
‘I wonder if I could get you to understand – well, two things. One, I had a good cover-story and papers to match. I didn’t know that the creature representing himself as my Chef de Réseau was actually an officer of the SS, that the man he was impersonating had been tortured to death in Lyon, this impostor passing on anything I told him to – to your people, I suppose. Or Gestapo – there was a change-over in progress at just that time – in Rouen, I mean. The other thing is that my job would have been taken over – eventually – by whoever they sent out from London to replace me, and he or she would quickly have re-established contact with those people.’
‘Whereas if you’d been able to recruit Jacqui, she might have acted as your post office?’
‘You mean those sons of the soil might have trekked in from the wilds, visiting the beautiful Jacqueline Clermont in her salon?’
‘Or sent wives or daughters?’
‘Well – one hadn’t thought of any such thing. Christ, I hadn’t got around to approaching her about her colonel, even!’
‘I was only speculating. SOE do make use of such “post offices”, don’t they?’
‘Some might. I never have. Aren’t you going a bit far now – in this effort to work up some utterly spurious case against poor Jacqui?’
‘Very much the opposite. To establish absolutely the opposite.’
‘But you introduced her to the colonel in Amiens, acting – excuse me, I don’t know how else to put this – as her pimp?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Well – I’ll beg yours, if you like, but didn’t you introduce them?’
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