In any event, she could do nothing without instructions from London. She entered the opulent showroom of the boutique, which was quite busy; Himmler might be despairing of Germany’s prospects, but the average well-to-do Berliner was still prepared to accept the official word that victory was just around the corner, and thus intended to enjoy life to the maximum allowed by the RAF.
A smartly dressed young woman hurried forward. ‘May I be of assistance, Fräulein?’
She had assessed the secretarial uniform and also spotted the absence of a wedding ring, but she was not someone Anna had ever seen before, and clearly had no idea who she was. ‘I wish a word with Signor Bartoli,’ she said.
‘Ah . . . do you have an appointment? He is very busy.’
‘I do not have an appointment,’ Anna said. ‘Just inform him that the Countess von Widerstand wishes to see him. I will wait in his office.’
She walked towards the inner door, and the girl scurried beside her. ‘You can’t go in there, Fräulein. Oh, Frau Bartoli,’ she gasped in relief. ‘This lady—’
‘Good morning, Edda,’ Anna said. ‘This young woman appears to be confused. Will you tell Luigi I wish to see him, urgently.’
‘Ah . . .’ Edda Bartoli hesitated. She was a slim, somewhat hard-faced woman, who wore her dark hair long as she wore her husband’s elegant clothes with panache and ruled her husband’s staff mercilessly, but who was always uncertain in the presence of Anna. As the couturier’s wife, she had had to be included in the network, though Bartoli had promised that she knew nothing about their real purpose; he had told her they were actually working for Mussolini – a man she apparently worshipped – just to keep an eye and a finger on the Nazi pulse. Anna had never trusted her, had in fact more than once begged London to do something about the set-up, but as London had no other contact so well placed in the German capital, and did not wish her to be personally involved in the sending and receiving of messages, they had not yet responded.
‘It is urgent,’ Anna repeated, opening the office door and then closing it behind her, before sitting down and crossing her knees.
She did not have long to wait before the door opened and Luigi Bartoli bustled in. Short and stout, with a balding head and a little moustache, he had long got over the initial sexual euphoria of three years before, when he had been presented, as he had supposed, by London with an utterly beautiful and delightfully young agent to control. But not only had his advances been firmly rejected, the young lady had proved quite impossible to control. ‘You come charging in here,’ he complained, ‘without an appointment . . . I was with an important client.’
‘I am sorry, Luigi,’ Anna said equably. ‘This is urgent.’
‘It is always urgent.’ He sat behind his desk and shot his cuffs. ‘Well?’
‘I wish you to get a message off to Basle immediately.’
‘Very well. It will go tonight. What is it?’
‘Luigi, I said immediately. That means now.’
‘You are being absurd. You know I do not use the radio during the day. That is far too risky. You will endanger us all.’
‘There is nothing incriminating in the message, even if anyone here manages to decode it. You will just say, Belinda will be at the Hotel Gustav, Geneva, tonight, using the name Anna O’Brien. Personal contact is urgently needed. Tonight only.’
‘You are going to Geneva?’
‘Your perception never fails to fascinate me.’
He ignored her sarcasm. ‘On urgent business. What is this urgent business? And under the name of Anna O’Brien? What sort of a name is that?’
‘It is an Irish name, Luigi, as I am half Irish, as I believe you know.’
‘And you think you can get out of Germany using a false name?’
‘I know I can get out of Germany using a false name, because I am doing so with the blessing of Reichsführer Himmler.’
‘You are travelling on his business?’
‘Again, your powers of deduction amaze me.’
‘So tell me what it is.’
‘It is what I am going to tell whoever meets me. If London decides you should know of it, they will inform you.’
He leaned back in his chair. ‘This is absolutely impossible. I am your controller. Yet you continually send messages which I do not comprehend. Suppose I refuse to accept this situation any longer?’
‘Then you should complain to London. But if I am not met in Geneva tonight, I will complain to London, and I would not care to estimate what they will do about it.’
He glared at her, but he had never been able to determine how much clout she had in London – he knew nothing of her American connection – and equally, he had never been sure just how much clout she had with the SS: he knew she was Himmler’s PA.
So she smiled at him. ‘I will see you when I come back. Ciao.’
*
Birgit was dusting and polishing enthusiastically, but paused to point at a window. ‘Look at the crack, Countess. One of those bombs must have been closer than we thought.’
‘Well, tell Rudolf to get hold of a glazier, if he has not already done so; I’m sure we cannot be the only apartment with a broken window. Now, I am going away for tonight.’
‘Oooh, Countess! Am I coming with you?’
‘No, you are not. You are staying here to attend to the window. I will be back tomorrow night, but it may be late. So listen. There is a man coming to see me tomorrow afternoon, only as I will not be here, you will have to receive him and tell him that I have been called away, but I will contact him when I return.’ She was suddenly overtaken by her wicked sense of humour. ‘The gentleman – his name is Stefan – is actually coming here to photograph me. But if you like, you can let him photograph you, instead.’
‘Oooh. May I? I have never been photographed.’
‘Then I suggest you try it. You might enjoy it. You understand that he will wish you to be in the nude?’
‘You mean, with nothing on? Oh, Countess, I couldn’t do that.’
Anna reflected that although her maid knew all about her various lovers – well, nearly all – the only romantic attachment she had ever revealed was for Marlene Gehrig, the young woman who had attempted betrayal and had had to be disposed of. But that had been two years ago. ‘Who knows?’ she suggested, ‘– you might enjoy that also. Now I must hurry.’
She went into her bedroom, had another shower as it promised to be a long day, and put on clean clothes, a severe black calf-length dress. To this she added a black cloche, tucking her hair out of sight. She knew that she could not prevent herself from attracting admiring glances, but she could make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Then she packed a complete change of dress and underwear, stockings and her make-up in a large shoulder bag, added a Luger nine-millimetre pistol, a spare clip, and her silencer, surveyed herself in the mirror, and returned to the lounge to sit on the settee, remaining absolutely still, staring in front of herself, the black attaché case resting against her leg. Birgit knew better than to interrupt this routine, which she had observed her mistress following on previous occasions, without the least understanding of the reason for it.
Anna was concentrating, so that she could present to the world a picture of a slightly inconsequential young woman, going about her obviously inconsequential business, while actually being totally prepared for what she had to do and, more importantly, for what she might have to do, to carry out her task and return safely. The most important distracting thought was how London would respond to her message, and who would contact her in Geneva, because, perhaps . . . But of course it could not possibly be Clive: there simply wasn’t time. She was dreaming, and her business had no room for dreams. But it was essential that contact was made, both from the Himmler point of view, and to find out what the Americans were up to, supposing London knew.
The doorbell rang. Anna looked at her watch. Quarter to twelve on the button. But that was how the SS, and even more the SD, worked. She got up. ‘I will see
you tomorrow night, Birgit,’ she called, and went to the door. ‘Good morning, Colonel.’
Hellmuth Essermann clicked his heels; as always he was handsomely immaculate in his black uniform, with his yellow hair and perfectly Aryan features. Anna had known him for close on two years, and if she had never been able to like him, or fully trust him – he was a dedicated Nazi – she could never forget that he had saved her from the horrors of ‘interrogation’ at the hands of the Gestapo, albeit at Himmler’s command, following Heydrich’s death. But she also knew that he would like to get closer to her, as he had revealed on several previous occasions, and again now. ‘You are as beautiful as ever, Countess.’
‘Why, Colonel, you say the sweetest things.’
He eyed the attaché case. ‘That looks very heavy. May I carry it for you?’
‘Thank you, no. I can manage.’
Again he clicked his heels, and escorted her downstairs to the waiting car. They were at the station a few minutes later, and he accompanied her on to the platform. ‘I am told that I must meet the late train from Geneva tomorrow evening. I assume you will be on it?’
‘That is my intention.’ She looked along the platform at the two trench-coated men, standing together and watching her.
‘Gestapo,’ Essermann remarked. ‘They oversee every foreign departure, or arrival.’
‘In your company, I am sure they will not interfere with me.’ It was no business of the Gestapo to become involved with the SS, much less the SD.
‘But you will not have my company on the train. Would you like me to have a word with them, warn them off.’
‘Do you think they know who I am?’
‘Every Gestapo agent knows who you are, Countess. And every Gestapo agent dreams of one day being able to pin something on you which will get you into their torture cells.’
‘Because of Feutlanger?’
‘Feutlanger in Prague, Groener in Moscow . . . They still hold you responsible for the collapse of their London operation three years ago.’
Even if neither they nor you know the truth of any of those events, Anna thought. ‘How nice to be hated,’ she commented. ‘Is Feutlanger still around?’
‘Very much so. You will be passing quite close to him when you cross the border. He may have failed to get his hands on you after the Prague disaster, but no disciplinarian action was ever taken against him, although one could say that his upwards career has been arrested. He now commands the Munich office.’
‘I shall remember that. But I don’t think I will need your protection on this trip, Colonel, although I appreciate the offer. I shall say auf Wiedersehen. Until tomorrow.’
She boarded the train, and was shown to her reserved seat. The attaché case she placed beside her, resting her arm on it; it would have to accompany her to the dining car for lunch in any event. She was joined in the compartment by a man and a woman, whom she assumed were husband and wife, smiled at them, looked out of the window at Essermann, fluttered her fingers, and then leaned back and relaxed.
Feutlanger, she thought. The very name made her skin crawl. As Essermann had reminded her, they had first met in Prague in 1940, after that disastrous shoot-out in which she had inadvertently shot and killed two British agents. It was that example of supreme skill and Nazi dedication, as was supposed by her superiors, that had earned her reputation as the SD’s most accomplished assassin. But Feutlanger, in charge of security at the Hradcany Castle and, in that capacity eagerly taking over the investigation into what had happened, had been outraged to discover that he was outranked by a twenty-year-old girl, as she had then been. When she had returned to the Czech capital, two years later, her brief the destruction of Heydrich, he had still been there, his hackles again raised at the sight of her. And on Heydrich’s death, so clearly the result of a conspiracy, he had thought he had his chance . . . even if he had had no proof. But he had had, momentarily, the power. She could still feel his hands sliding over her flesh as he had told her what he was going to do to her, his fury when Essermann had turned up with the order from Himmler that she was to be released into his custody.
But her feelings towards him had not weakened, either.
*
‘Despatch from Basle,’ Amy Barstow announced standing before Clive Bartley’s desk and leaning across it to place both the original and the decoded version before her boss, and then straightening with a quizzical expression. ‘It’s very early, but there seems to be a flap on. It’s from her.’
She sighed as Bartley almost snatched at the paper. She had now worked with him for three years, and had the highest regard for him, both as a man and as a superior. This was partly because of his reputation as one of the most successful MI6 field agents, which he had earned long before she had come into the service, and also as a man. In this he represented her ideal, being over six feet tall, powerfully built, ruggedly good-looking . . . and quite beyond her reach. This, she felt sure, was less because she was the hired help or even because she knew she was overweight and had unremarkable features, than because he was already apparently committed, here at home to a high-powered fashion editor, even if their relationship was somewhat on and off, but more importantly with the agent he regarded as his private property. Amy had never met the Countess von Widerstand, although she had seen press photographs of her published in the glossies when she had been living in England as the Honourable Mrs Ballantyne Bordman. She could not deny that the beastly woman was a knockout. What she resented was the way her hard-boiled boss sprang up like a puppy offered a bone whenever she deigned to communicate with him.
Now he scanned the transcript and stood up. ‘I’ll be upstairs.’
‘Arranging a visit to Geneva?’ Amy asked acidly. ‘There simply isn’t time, sir.’
‘There is always time, Amy,’ Clive Bartley said.
*
William J. Baxter studied the transcript in turn. In the strongest contrast to his senior assistant, Billy Baxter was a small and untidy man, who invariably looked harassed. Clive could sympathize with him; his job consisted of trying to control a batch of field agents who were congenitally uncontrollable, otherwise they wouldn’t have been field agents in the first place. And of them all, the one who gave him most grey hairs was Anna Fehrbach. He had been reluctant to take her on at all, even when she had been ‘turned’ by Clive in the course of a furious love affair. He accepted that, positioned as she was in the heart of the Nazi establishment and that by the Nazis themselves, she was the most valuable of his people, but her propensity for sudden, extreme and often lethal violence kept him in a constant state of apprehension as to who was next going to cross her path and live to regret it . . . only living did not often come into it. ‘So she’s got her knickers in a twist,’ he remarked. ‘But then, she’s always getting her knickers in a twist about something or other.’
Clive sat before the desk. ‘If Anna says it is urgent, then it is urgent. You know that, Billy.’
‘But she can’t tell us what it is.’
‘She doesn’t feel she can use Bartoli to tell us what it is. She doesn’t trust him. And neither do I. When are we going to replace him?’
Baxter started to fill his pipe, a sure sign that he was unhappy with the situation. ‘When we can locate an adequate replacement, and when we can get rid of him without blowing the entire system apart. Anna wants him replaced simply because she doesn’t like him. She has never supplied us with any concrete evidence that he cannot be trusted. All right, keep your shirt on.’ He struck a match, puffed contentedly, and obviously felt better. ‘I agree this may be important. If Anna is paying a brief visit to Geneva it is obviously on the instructions of her SD employers. And when Anna goes visiting out of Germany somebody generally drops dead. Get a message off to Basle. I assume they already have someone on the ground in Geneva. They can contact him, or her, and tell him to check out this Hotel Gustav, after nine o’clock tonight.’
‘Then you are likely to have another corpse lying about, and it w
ill be one of ours.’
‘He’d use the Belinda code.’
‘That would depend on how quickly he could get it out, and how lethal a mood Anna is in when he makes his play. She has a hang-up about being betrayed.’
‘Tell me about it. God, what a fuck-up. How the hell I ever allowed you to foist this walking reincarnation of Lucretia Borgia on me I shall never understand.’
‘Because she is the goods, and she’s ours, body and soul.’
‘You mean she’s yours, body and soul. You hope.’
The opening he had been waiting for: ‘She is mine,’ Clive said. ‘That is the point I am making. She trusts me, and only me.’
Slowly Baxter took the pipe from his mouth. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Anyway, you could not possibly do it.’ He looked at his watch, and then at the transcript. ‘It is now ten thirty. Anna is spending one night at this place. God knows how many people she is planning to eliminate in that time. But there is no way you can get there for tonight.’
‘Billy, it is only nine thirty in Germany. Or Switzerland. And you can get me there. You got me to Moscow in two days two years ago.’
‘To rescue Anna. You are both becoming an expensive luxury. Do you seriously expect me to go to the boss and ask him to persuade Fighter Command to let us once again have the use of a Mosquito?’
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
‘They have their own duties, you know. I happen to know that something very big is in the wind, which is going to require the services of every available RAF aircraft.’
Angel in Jeopardy: The thrilling sequel to Angel of Vengeance (Anna Fehrbach Book 4) Page 4
