by Bonnie Toews
The next evening, the room in Churchill’s London Bunker was unlit save for the stark film being shown. Frozen on screen was an aerial shot of the Gestapo building and the convent burning in the Copenhagen air raid. The quiet voice of Morgan Saunders reported the full implications of the still picture.
“The Gestapo files on Denmark’s anti-Nazi movement were totally destroyed. Unfortunately, the price for our success was heavy: ten allied airmen, eighty-seven children and twenty-seven nuns. In addition to these casualties, there were scores of injured.”
“And the prisoners?” Churchill demanded.
“Thirty of the forty Danish leaders survived.”
“Thirty! I never believed anyone would survive that fool plan.”
“You can always give God the credit.” Saunders slipped in the dry remark with a side glance at Churchill to watch his reaction.
“What about Lady Grace and the Talbot woman?”
“They’re safe, sir, in Malmo, Sweden.”
“Another miracle, Morgan?”
“I believe so, sir.”
Churchill fell into thoughtful silence. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. “Eighty-seven children, twenty-seven nuns and ten allied airmen, you say.”
“That’s correct.”
He sighed.
“Our gratitude seems so little when they have paid so much.”
FORTY-FIVE
Thursday, August 9th, 1945
Quinn Bergin disobeyed Sir Fletcher’s orders to return to London and stayed with Lee in Sweden, in Malmo’s Roman Catholic hospital. He never left her side after the doctors told her she was carrying a baby. To his surprise, she never asked for an abortion.
He read that as a hopeful sign and immediately formed plans to marry her. After so many years of living on the edge of danger, he was unprepared for the rush of feelings he felt toward Lee. He wanted to give her and her baby a home, to protect her from prying busy-bodies, to shower her with gifts with anything she wanted and to be a father to her baby, to have a family, their family—that the child was sired by a Nazi never fazed him. Creating a state of normalcy mattered more.
Yet, she not only resisted his comfort, she withdrew from everyone. Once she heard Grace would survive and was being flown back to Scotland, she seemed to give up.
The tenacity, which had sustained Quinn through the war, served to carry him through her prolonged period of self-pity. Close to her due date, however, his patience wore thin. She didn’t seem to understand how much he needed her to need him. He decided to draw her out of the shadowed corner of her private room where she persisted in staying whenever he visited.
“The war is over, Lee. You’re going to have a baby soon. You have to think of the wee life inside you.”
He hoisted himself up on her bed, while he talked to her dim shape in the dark corner. Ever since she had revealed her face in the ambulance, she had refused to expose herself again. Frequently, she sat in the corner for long hours rocking in silence, completely unresponsive, no matter what he talked about. Lately, he had been saying the same thing over and over again, hoping to drum down the barricades she had raised in her mind.
“It’s time to move on. I want to take care of you, you and your baby, if you’ll let me.”
Silence blanketed the corner where she sat. Was this going to be another of their one-sided sessions? He waited, letting her think about what he said. The rocker scraped against the terrazzo floor, but he couldn’t see whether she had stood up or was beginning her rocking.
“By some miracle,” came her disembodied voice, “we survived the bombing of Guernica together… you and I. Remember?”
He couldn’t make out if she was talking to him or the wall behind her, but he nodded, hoping she was looking at him. It was the first encouraging effort she had made.
“I had never opened up to anyone, but I did to you. I tried to show you my love, but every time I did, you withdrew.”
Quinn bowed his head in regret.
“Things are different now. I’m free to love you. I want to take care of you and your baby.”
“Instead you recruited me,” she droned on as if he had never spoken. “The bodies of the children … It was so easy, wasn’t it? I wanted to please you, and I hated Hitler.”
“We were at war. I had no choice. Neither did you.”
“I even let you use me as your hostess to attract those vile men just so you could collect information. The only way I could live with myself was to believe that someday you would love me.”
His heart quickened.
“If there had been any other way …”
“And at Amanita,” she continued, “it was business as usual. You still could not show me any love. Do you know how dirty that made me feel?”
“I explained …”
She plunged on, not listening to him.
“Except for Rolf. For one brief wonderful time, he took away the emptiness.”
Quinn squirmed and clenched his jaw. He didn’t like the direction she was taking, but at least she was talking.
“I could dream about a normal life and feel loved, honestly loved. If this baby were his, how happy I would be!”
He heard the scraping sound again.
“I loved Rolf Haukelid. I’m going to find the place where the SS executed him and put up a memorial. If he has any family, I’m going to find them too.”
“I’ll help you,” Quinn said.
“NO!” Lee spat out the word. Her anger startled him.
“I don’t want your help. And I sure don’t want your pity!”
“I tried to protect you, Lee. You have to believe that.”
He heard her coarse dry outburst of laughter.
“You survived, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, I survived.”
Ugly bitterness crept into her tone.
And d’ya know what? Ketmann didn’t rape me. He filled his emptiness with me. And I lived for it. I was his sexual slave.”
Lee wanted to strike at Quinn with her lie. Only she knew Ketmann had ravaged her with his torture but never raped her. She would never tell anyone about Tobias Baldur-Meyer. Their time together was their secret, and it would die with her. If Ketmann had not seized them, she would have stayed Baldur-Meyer’s concubine without being chained for the duration of the war. It was easier than thinking, easier than longing for Rolf, easier than hurting and dying. In his strange way, Baldur-Meyer loved her. He just didn’t know how to admit it to himself.
“You survived,” said Quinn. “That’s all that matters.”
“No, Quinn, that’s not all that matters.”
She pushed herself to her feet.
“In his mad way, Ketmann claimed me. That’s why he destroyed my looks. So no other man could want me.”
“Lee, I don’t care how you look! I love you.”
“Do you?”
She shuffled towards him from the shadows, taunting him.
“Look at me and tell me you love me.”
He stared at her and swallowed. She could picture what he saw in her mind. Her cheeks were covered in hideous scabs or open sores that refused to heal. Pock marks lined her brows. She cupped her enlarged belly with her hands and stepped closer to him.
When she saw his deep down revulsion and pain, she pitied him and knew she could not live with his oppressive sense of debt and guilt. More than anything she wanted to tackle life on her own terms. Honestly and equally. She needed someone like Rolf, whom she knew would have accepted her imperfections no matter what they were. He loved the person, not the face, and not the body.
“Go, Quinn. Go. I don’t need you.”
She turned away and retreated back into the shadows of the corner. The rocker scraped the floor and creaked as she settled her swollen body back into the seat. She began her rocking again, slow and steady, like an incantation that numbed her senses.
She spoke from the shadows.
“There is one thing you can do, Quinn. For
Grace and me. And Rolf. Find out if Sir Fletcher betrayed Amanita.”
“Sir Fletcher? What are you talking about?”
“Ketmann found the code name of the London traitor in the Abwehr’s files. LEON. He said it was LEON.”
“Is that the information you’ve been keeping from Saunders?”
“Yes. I wanted to interrogate Sir Fletcher myself. I wanted him to look into my face and tell me the truth, but I’m not going back to London. Saunders is sending me to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Will you do it?”
Quinn didn’t answer.
“If he betrayed us, terminate him, Quinn. I want him dead.”
He stared back at her through the darkness.
“Can you do that for us?”
His eyes were empty, his face a blank.
“If what you say is true, he’s a dead man.”
He turned away, paused, and then looked back at her. His jaw clenched. The gray color of his eyes hardened with resolve.
“No matter what you think or what you say, it’s not over for us, you know. We’re a team. We’re a good team.”
When she added nothing further, he slipped off her bed.
“You’ll see. You need me as much as I need you.”
He waited a moment longer, peering back through the inky gloom at her.
Still she said nothing.
He shrugged. “Look me up when you come to your senses,” he said finally and left the room.
With tears streaming down her face, she watched him leave. The squeak of his shoes on the linoleum followed him down the hospital corridor. Once again, she felt utterly alone, abandoned. She was so tired of it. Except for Baldur-Meyer’s life inside her, she would have gladly given up with one bullet to the brain.
FORTY-SIX
Wednesday, August 15th, 1945
Asummer breeze offered the first relief in two days of clammy weather. It rustled the swag curtains draping the open French doors of the library filled with its priceless antiques and collection of rare books stacking the shelves. Light from the reading lamp pooled over the imperial Brussels carpet as Quinn rose from the arm chair angled towards the fireplace and tied the cord of his satin lounging robe. He stepped up to the open French doors and breathed in. The sticky night air was heavy with the scent of lavender and English woodland primrose.
Sir Fletcher glanced up from the papers he was reading at his desk and paused, fascinated. In the doorway, the dark of night spread beyond the threshold like black silk across the patio, as if creating an artist’s backdrop for the silver cast of Quinn’s profile in the reflected moonlight. The angular structure of his face made the features seem strong, like stone, but cold and inflexible. Quinn stood still, in thought. At moments like these, Sir Fletcher wondered where the Irishman’s mind went.
As if reading the spymaster’s thoughts, Quinn turned and walked over to the library’s well-stocked bar. He looked over the bottles and finally chose Regal Scotch.
Opening it, he asked, “Can I pour you one?”
“Aye.”
With his back to Sir Fletcher, Quinn poured the Scotch three fingers high into two brandy glasses.
“Have you ever loved anyone, Quinn?” Sir Fletcher asked him.
“Yes,” Quinn admitted, while inconspicuously slipping a cyanide capsule out from the breast pocket of his robe. He broke the capsule’s contents into Sir Fletcher’s drink before carefully stirring it.
“A woman.”
“A woman! That’s difficult to believe. What was it like?”
“I can’t answer that. We’ve never slept together.”
Quinn dropped two ice cubes into each drink and stirred them again.
Sir Fletcher eyed him with renewed interest.
“Why not? It would look better in your records if you were married … and protect us.”
Quinn smiled as he slowly turned around carrying both glasses in his hands and started towards Sir Fletcher.
“I agree. I’ve already proposed.”
“Well, laddie, congratulations.”
“You’re somewhat premature. She turned me down.”
Sir Fletcher looked genuinely surprised.
“You don’t say.”
“More to the point, she doesn’t trust me. She doesn’t trust any man. And I can’t convince her I would make a good father for her baby.”
“Good grief!” Sir Fletcher exclaimed. “You can’t mean Lee! You would marry her and father that Nazi bastard she’s carrying?”
“If she would let me, yes.”
As Quinn passed Sir Fletcher’s drink over to him, he said, “Tell me … I’ve wondered about this for some time… Churchill code-named you LEON because you looked like the cartoon character he enjoyed. A walrus. Why did you name me CORVINE?”
Sir Fletcher’s eyes narrowed.
“A Corvine is a scavenger, which relentlessly steals other birds’ eggs and chicks.” He smiled slyly. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“More than you know.”
Locking gazes with him, Quinn held up his glass and said, “Here’s to you.”
“How long have we been together?”
“Ten years.”
“Aye, ten dedicated years. That’s a long time.”
Quinn nodded. “A very long time.”
While he sipped on his own drink, he sat down in the club chair facing the desk. He watched Sir Fletcher take a swig of his Scotch.
“With the war over, our civilian intelligence agencies are being disbanded, and the old boys are sniffing out our closets.”
Sir Fletcher took a bigger mouthful of his Scotch.
“Now laddie, you’ve got no worries there.”
Quinn smiled.
“I know. I pulled your blackmail file on me years ago.”
“What do you mean?” Sir Fletcher demanded in surprise, while trying to massage his throat. He belted down the rest of the Scotch and extended the empty glass to Quinn.
“How about another …”
His glass fell to the carpet. He clutched his throat. Horrible rattling sprang forth. His eyes bulged in disbelief.
Quinn sat unmoved, watching him.
“You thought you recruited me, but it was I who recruited you. We knew what you were. And you have served us well. Better than I intended.”
He savored a mouthful of his drink. “Fine Scotch. Very fine.”
Quinn went on.
“Lee says Ketmann told her LEON betrayed both sides to the Reds. She thinks that’s you.”
Sir Fletcher, aware he was dying, weakly shook his head in denial.
Quinn rose from the club chair and stood over him.
“I promised Lee I would take care of you.”
He leaned down and whispered in Sir Fletcher’s ear, “And I am.”
Again he stood upright and laughed cynically.
“So many fools played into my hands. Especially Nielsen.”
He indulged in some more self-satisfaction.
“After you got him out, did you know he sent all his secret notes to an associate, a physicist, in Moscow? He has probably helped advance Russian atomic research ten years.”
Sir Fletcher gagged on his spit. His head dropped sideways on the desk and his shoulders caved forward.
Ignoring him, Quinn answered his own question.
“Of course you didn’t. We were too clever for you Imperialists.”
He looked down on Sir Fletcher, whose eyes stared into nothingness. His mouth gaped open. Froth leaked out one side.
“Yes, Sir Fletcher. I, like my brethren, the Baques, continue our fight for independent rule. You and your ilk think you are so superior. England betrayed the Republicans in Spain, England betrayed the Poles, England betrayed Stalin and let the Russians carry the weight of Hitler’s oppressive war. And you? You let Lee fall into the hands of the Gestapo after you promised me you would protect her. Grace was never worth her sacrifice. Never. Now that Hitler and the Third Reich have been destroyed, I promise you England will face
a different enemy in Northern Ireland when I return home a stronger and wiser leader of the Irish Republican Army. This time, because of what you and Stalin have taught me, we will win our right to be free of British Imperialism.”
Quinn raised his glass in a toast. “To victory!” he cried.
Having slipped out of rigid control, he let the smug smile loose, before tinkling chuckles bubbled from his lips and burst into a flood of laughter.
Hidden in the bushes outside the French doors, Ludwig Ketmann used this moment to sneak away. He had spotted Bergin in London and followed him to Sir Fletcher’s, expecting he would lead him to his prey. He had, but the traitor had not been Sir Fletcher. It was Quinn Bergin.
He could have executed him immediately. He fingered the silencer on the Luger. No one would have heard. It would have been so easy for him to make a clean break and escape to Argentina as he originally planned. There, plastic surgeons could alter his face and remove the bulbous scar splitting his cheek. His secret account in Switzerland made him very rich. He could do anything he chose. There was poetic justice in that, but it wasn’t enough. He needed more.
The police would treat Bergin and Sir Fletcher’s deaths as a bizarre murder/suicide, while the only one who knew Bergin was the actual traitor was Ketmann. He wanted the Irishman’s treachery exposed, especially to Lee. She had to know how pointless enduring torture and resisting him had been. So, for now, he had the advantage. Bergin didn’t know his cover had been unmasked. Beyond that, Ketmann understood a rabid mind. He and Bergin were evenly matched.
FORTY-SEVEN
Friday, August 17th, 1945
The screech of the wounded bomber chased her. The convent. She had to save the children. She ran faster, and harder. The roar of the plane swallowed her up. Not the children! Not the children! And then dreadful silence and the explosion.
