Angel in Jeopardy_The thrilling sequel to Angel of Vengeance

by Christopher Nicole

  While she . . . Back in 1939, when she had willingly been ‘turned’ by Clive Bartley, it had been in a mood of outrage at what had been done to her, and her family, by the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, the most secret force in all secrecy-bound Nazi Germany. Then she had had to accept the British claim, which had seemed entirely without foundation, that they would win in the end. Now she no longer had any doubts. Last year’s victories of Midway and Alamein, not to mention the Russian triumph at Stalingrad, and now the surrender of the entire German army in North Africa, were disasters from which there could be no recovery.

  Now she also worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the most secret of American counter-espionage departments, even if, after more than a year, they had not yet called on her services. Clive Bartley, MI6, had agreed to share her even before America had entered the war in December 1941. So she had not yet discovered exactly what they had had in mind. Her visit to America almost seemed like another existence. Had she really lain naked in Joe Andrews’s arms, feeling utter peace and contentment? Could she admit to herself that she had found Joe even more satisfying than Clive Bartley? Or had that all been part of the American ambience, that feeling of total security which everyone over there seemed to assume was theirs by right, but which she had never known, at least after the age of seventeen.

  But Clive was the man who had rescued her from the hell into which she had been sucked by the SD. He was the man who had promised her eventual salvation. He was the man to whom she had given her all, including her very life much less her body. Life without Clive was not conceivable. And she had seen neither him nor Joe for nearly two years.

  Thus she did not know if either of them was aware how much her entire existence had changed since Heydrich’s death. Heydrich had supervised her education and training as an SD agent, and although he also had enjoyed the use of her body, he had never allowed that to divert him from his reason for employing her in the first place. If she had proved her worth as a spy, she had proved even more valuable as an assassin, and he had never hesitated to use her in that role, certain that by holding her family in secure but not harsh confinement he held her obedience just as firmly. She suspected he had always known she hated both him and the regime he represented – although once, in a moment of weakness, he had actually proposed marriage – but he had never doubted that he held all the high cards.

  Himmler, who had actually taken her over before his sidekick’s death, when Heydrich had been sent to Prague as Reich-Protector, was an entirely different man, and because she had always been a sexual object to every man she had met, she could not figure him out at all. He appeared to enjoy her company. He certainly liked to look at her, sometimes when she was naked. But his touch was always perfunctory.

  Of course, he suspected, on some fairly substantial evidence, that she was a lesbian, quite unsuspecting that the woman with whom she had been reported to be intimate had been another British agent to whom she had been conveying information in the only safe way, lips to ear while they had shared a bed. But in addition, for all the omnipotent and apparently ruthless power he wielded as head of both the Gestapo and the SS, and therefore the SD, the apparent careless disregard for human life embodied in his orders and directives, he was essentially both timid and of limited intellectual powers. In her powers of decision and lethal determination he saw an alter ego he wished he himself possessed. That she was a beautiful woman and he actually did possess her, as he supposed, was a bonus, but not one he would ever have risked losing, or even tarnishing, by seeking to discover what might lie beneath the cold beauty and the sexuality.

  Which suited her well enough. She dreaded the thought that one day his so far sublimated desire for her might get the better of him, and she be exposed to that so white flesh and feelingless fingers. But he had certainly changed her life over the past year; he had refused to let her leave Berlin, after she had spent the previous four years travelling, seducing, and killing, for the Reich. But that had been when she had been Heydrich’s to command.

  Himmler was keeping her as his own private . . . what? From the point of view of MI6 she was better placed than ever before. As both the Reichsführer’s Personal Assistant and his confidante in so many things she had access to so many secrets, of both the Party and its strategy, military and political, and these she faithfully remitted to London via her Berlin contact. She had no idea what London did with the information, whether they shared any of it with the Americans. But being no longer required to travel, she had been unable to make physical contact with either Clive or Joe. Thus her sense of loneliness, of isolation, was growing. She did not even know if either of them was alive or dead, healthy or ill.

  *

  She realized that she had been so lost in thought she had covered the five blocks from the gymnasium without realizing it. Her apartment building was in front of her . . . and there was a man walking at her elbow. She stopped, and turned towards him, not the least apprehensive. Whether he was City Police, State Police, Abwehr, Gestapo or even SS, as a member of the SD and of Himmler’s personal staff, she was inviolate. ‘Are you following me?’ she inquired, quietly.

  He licked his lips. He was a tall, heavy-set man, with bland features and yellow hair. The perfect Aryan, she thought. ‘Forgive me, Countess.’

  ‘I don’t know that I should. I dislike being followed. Especially when I am not properly dressed.’

  ‘I only wished to have a word. My card.’

  Anna took the cardboard rectangle. ‘Lars Johannsson, Stockholm Gazette. Are all Swedes named Johannsson?’

  ‘Well, no, of course not. Ah . . .’

  ‘Just my little joke. And does the Stockholm Gazette really exist?’

  ‘It does indeed.’ Johannsson looked up and down the street. ‘Do you think we could have a talk?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we are doing?’

  ‘I meant, in private.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Herr Johannsson. I never give interviews to the press.’

  ‘Not even if I were to tell you that my middle name is Joe?’

  Anna studied him even as she felt her stomach muscles contract. But she had to accept that he had just given her the OSS identification code. Yet to be contacted like this, after so long . . . ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I might be able to make an exception.’

  ‘Thank you. In your apartment?’

  ‘That would definitely not be a good idea. The building is owned by the SD and is bugged. You can buy me a cup of coffee. Over there.’ She led him across the street to the coffee shop that was just opening and at which she was a regular customer.

  ‘Good morning, Franz,’ she said to the waiter. ‘Two coffees, please.’

  ‘Right away, Countess.’ He glanced at Johannsson and hurried off.

  ‘You understand that I can have no secrets from my employers, certainly as regards anything I do in public,’ Anna said. ‘Therefore I must inform them of this meeting.’ She smiled at his expression. ‘But not necessarily the true contents of our conversation. However, as you are supposed to be interviewing me, and Franz may well be asked about it, I suggest you produce a notebook and make notes.’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ He took out his book and a pencil.

  Franz served the coffee and left the chit.

  ‘Now remember,’ Anna said. ‘Be confident, casual and concise.’

  Johannsson sipped his coffee and grimaced.

  ‘I know,’ Anna said. ‘It is dreadful stuff. It is made from chicory. But real coffee is unobtainable here in Germany. Do write something.’

  Johnnsson doodled. ‘There is a man we wish you to see. Friedrich von Steinberg.’

  Anna put down her cup.

  ‘I imagine you already know him,’ Johannsson said.

  ‘He is a Foreign Office official. You mean, you know him?’

  ‘We have met, yes. We regard him as potentially useful.’

  ‘And you have told him about me?’

  ‘Does that bother yo
u?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Anna snapped, keeping her voice down with an effort.

  ‘I have said, we believe that he may be of use to us.’

  ‘You have still placed my life in his hands.’

  ‘He knows nothing of you, save that I have told him you may be sympathetic towards a project he is trying to get going. Believe me, he was even more alarmed than you when I suggested you get together. You have quite a reputation.’

  ‘Thank you for those kind words.’

  ‘Countess, all I am asking you to do is meet with him and listen to what he has to say. If you think it is impractical, walk away.’

  ‘Herr Johannsson, I hate to be rude, but you do not appear to understand anything of this business. If Count von Steinberg is prepared to work for you, then by definition he is working against the Nazi Party. That means he is a traitor to the Reich. That means anyone who knows his secret is a threat, and anyone who knows of his secret and does not go along with him is a terminal threat. Who sent you to me?’

  ‘Colonel Donovan.’

  Anna leaned back in her chair. When she had met the so-called ‘Wild Bill’ in New York, two years previously, and been recruited by him, she had liked him enormously, although even then she had never doubted his ruthlessness, whatever his charm. But this . . . ‘Is MI6 involved?’

  If they were they had certainly not informed Bartoli. But then, Clive, like her, did not entirely trust Bartoli.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ Johannsson said.

  But they would have to be, and sooner rather than later; MI6 was her principal, no matter what Wild Bill Donovan, or Joe Andrews, might choose to believe. ‘So when is this meeting to take place?’

  ‘Your call. But it should be soon. It must be soon.’

  ‘I know. Everything is urgent. Is it to be accidental?’

  ‘That would be best.’

  Anna considered. She needed time to contact London and see if they knew of this highly dangerous turn of events. ‘I sometimes go jogging in the park. Before I go to work, as I must now do, as soon as I have changed my clothes.’

  ‘You work in Reichsführer Himmler’s office?’

  ‘That is correct. So let us make it a week, Tuesday, 10 August. I shall jog in the park next Tuesday at six. I am always finished by half past.’

  ‘A whole week? Not until then?’

  ‘Not until then, Herr Johannsson. I have other commitments.’

  He hesitated, but her tone had not suggested that she was open to either argument or persuasion. ‘I will inform Count von Steinberg.’

  ‘Now tell me what this meeting will involve.’

  ‘I am not in a position to do that.’

  ‘Do you mean that you do not know, or that you are refusing to confide in me?’

  ‘I am obeying orders, Countess.’

  Anna regarded him for several seconds. If he was setting her up . . . but she had no doubt that she could convince Himmler that she was going along with him, and Steinberg, merely to find out what they were up to; her boss had always accepted everything she had told him in the past. As for being dumped in the middle of some anti-Nazi plot . . . Clive Bartley had warned her that the Americans were difficult people to work for because of their pragmatism: only the end result mattered. ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘Regrettably, I am returning to Stockholm as soon as I have spoken with Count von Steinberg.’

  ‘Well, then . . .’ Anna stood up. ‘I won’t say this has been a pleasure, but thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘And you will be in the park next Tuesday morning at six.’

  ‘That is what I agreed, Herr Johannsson. Good morning, Franz.’ She smiled at the waiter, and left the coffee shop.

  *

  Anna crossed the street, smiled at the concierge behind the desk in the lobby of her apartment building – as it was owned by the SD and he was in its employ he was required to note all non-resident comings and goings, which was the main reason she had not brought Johannsson inside – and took the lift to the sixth floor.

  Over the years she had carefully trained herself to take each day, and each problem, as it arrived and, most importantly, never to overreact; any other approach to her precarious life might have involved a mental breakdown. But this . . . The trouble was, she supposed, that over the past five years, working for Heydrich and now Himmler, while they were both absolutely vile, bloodthirsty monsters, as she had been thinking just before the appearance of Johannsson, she had always felt they cared about her survival. Even when sending her to Moscow to assassinate Stalin, Heydrich had provided her with an out. It hadn’t worked, of course. It had never been going to work, even had she not been betrayed before she had reached her target. But she had always felt he had hoped it would. He wanted her back, not because he had the least genuine affection for her – she did not suppose he had ever had the least genuine affection for anyone save perhaps his daughter – but because he knew her value.

  MI6 had always provided her with an even greater sense of underlying security, thanks to Clive Bartley. Four years ago she had seduced him in a mood of angry rebellion against her employers and her fate, and discovered that he was the first man she had ever met of whom she could be genuinely fond, because he was the first man she had ever met whom she felt she could trust, absolutely. More than that she was reluctant to consider, at this time. She had been trained to seduce men, to learn their secrets, and then, if required, to destroy them. Never to love them. But Clive was her future, and thus the future of her family as well. Yet even he had been unable to prevent his superiors from giving her the task of overseeing the assassination of Heydrich. Through Bartoli she had learned that they had been very pleased with the outcome of that coup, even if all their agents had been taken or killed. All except her. And London did not know that it was she who had completed the job, despite their instructions not to become personally involved.

  She could not feel that the Americans had any personal interest in her survival. Even Joe Andrews. He had once saved her life, but that was because Clive had sought his aid. And when she had repaid him, in her fashion, he had said he loved her. But after the business in Washington, when she had had to shoot her way out of an NKVD trap, leaving six bodies scattered about the place, she had been given the choice between working for the American Secret Service or spending the rest of her life in prison even if she managed to escape the electric chair. Then he had been required to hand her over to his boss in the OSS and the situation had changed. Wild Bill Donovan had clearly been as smitten by her looks and her charm and lethal potentiality as any man, but he had made it clear that he intended to use her, regardless of any personal risk to herself, when the occasion arose. Then this long silence. But now she had a nasty suspicion that the occasion had arisen.

  The lift stopped, and she crossed the lobby, opened the door to her apartment, stepped into the inner lobby and closed the door behind her, then leaned against it for a moment. Home! She adored this apartment. She had been brought up in Vienna in comfortable but never luxurious surroundings; her father had been a liberal newspaper editor always at odds with the various right-wing Austrian governments even before the Anschluss. And when she had been commandeered by the SS she had assumed even that comfortable existence was gone for ever. Instead she had wound up here, in the very lap of luxury, from the thick-pile rugs on the parquet floor, the expensive drapes, the hardly less expensive prints on the walls, to the superb ensuite master bedroom . . . None of it was hers, of course, any more than the priceless jewellery waiting on her dressing table or the expensive clothes hanging in her closet. Like the entire building, it and they belonged to the SD, who had given it to her to match the image they wanted her to project – that of a hugely wealthy socialite. She recalled with some amusement how astonished Donovan, with his typically money-oriented American point of view, had been to discover that she received no salary, merely had her bank account topped up by the SD accountants as and when they felt she needed it. He was
now paying her a large salary, the money being deposited in a bank in the States. She wondered if she would ever be in a position to claim any of it.

  The inner door opened, and Birgit, her maid, emerged, looking anxious. A small, dark-haired woman with pert features, only a few years older than Anna herself, Birgit always looked anxious. She had now been with Anna for three years, and if she had never actually shared in any of the several traumatic events of those three years, had been close enough to them to know that her mistress often lived on a knife-edge. But she also knew that Anna worked for the SD, and that where that most secret organization was concerned, the one mistake one could make was to ask questions. And this last year, since their return from Prague, had been quiescent, at least for her. But now she was definitely agitated. ‘Countess,’ she whispered. ‘There is someone here to see you.’

  ‘Who?’ Anna asked. After the disturbing sudden appearance of Johannsson she was in no mood for another crisis.

  ‘She says . . .’ Birgit drew a deep breath. ‘She says she is your sister.’

  ‘What?’ Anna demanded, and stepped past the maid to throw open the door to her lounge and regard the young woman who had been sitting on the settee, but had risen to her feet. She might almost have been looking at herself, a few years ago. Almost. Katherine Fehrbach was a couple of inches shorter, and somewhat more solidly built. Her hair, if worn equally long, was a darker share of gold. Her features, although very handsome, just failed to match Anna’s poignant beauty, though at this moment they wore an attractive mixture of defiance and apprehension. . But . . . she should have been in the prison camp along with her mother and father. ‘What are you doing here?’ Anna demanded.

  ‘You could at least say hello,’ Katherine suggested.

  ‘What has happened to Mama and Papa?’

  ‘Nothing, so far as I know.’

  ‘But you are out.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Colour crept into Katherine’s cheeks. ‘I volunteered. To be like you.’