The Sleeper

by J. Robert Janes

  Through the open windows of the flat, a breeze stirred the curtains, bringing the sounds of Bremen’s commerce. It was midafternoon and warm. Christina spread her fingers, and rising up on her knees a little, pressed her hands flatly down on Werner’s stomach. He would see how her eyes quickened at some wicked thought, but quite suddenly the pressure from her hands would cease. Idly she would tease his pubic hairs and settle back on her haunches, would drive him deeply into her now. ‘So, I don’t know when we shall see each other again,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve missed me.’

  Her nipples brushed against his chest as she kissed him, she hungrily, he less so, and when he turned aside, she heard him ask, ‘How was it, then, you and Ashby?’

  And jealous, so good, yes good, thought Christina, leaning back to playfully touch the tip of his nose. ‘Pleasant when one is the doer, mein Liebling. Ach, I had to seduce him, and that took time, I must admit, but when he came, he revealed how much he had missed me, but … but does the news upset you?’

  ‘Why should it?’ he said, his expression grim.

  ‘Werner, mein Schatz, it meant nothing! It was necessary and … and I did it because I had to.’

  My treasure.

  ‘Admit that you enjoyed having him in you. A triumph.’

  He was really angry about it. Even his Schwanz had gone limp and would have to be reawakened, but when she kissed him, he bit her on the lips and she slapped his face hard.

  Stunned, he lay pinned beneath her straddling knees. Gingerly exploring her lips for blood, she sucked in a breath, her breasts rising, he looking at them now, she at last clasping herself by the buttocks.

  ‘You bitch,’ he said, and meant it too. ‘You were followed, you unthinking Schlampe. Right to the house of that father of yours and then to headquarters here and also, I suspect, to this flat. Two men, Christina, both all the way from Dover.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  He would infuriate her more because she needed that, would shrug and say, ‘I don’t know. Burghardt does.’

  ‘That bastard! Why didn’t he say so and have done with it?’

  Another shrug would help. ‘I wasn’t told of the meeting today with you and your father, nor anything of the attempt to take Karen from that girl.’

  ‘But has Osier made contact since?’

  Anger tightened her skin, flushing the nipples and flattening her middle.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded.

  He could take her now and get the better of her, or he could tell her how it really was. ‘Not by wireless, not that I know of. The Kapitän’s keeping things far too close. I can’t do much. Ach, I saw to directing those two vessels to Britain that he let you know of and have a call on whatever I need to get Karen when you and Osier have finally freed her. The Thule Sólarsteinn is ready to sail, but I must wait until he gives me the order.’

  They were dependent on Burghardt. ‘Could you find out who Osier is and where I can get in touch with him?’

  She had lost all interest in having sex. Running his eyes over her did no good, Christina simply gazing off towards the windows, until he said what she wanted, ‘The Kapitän will have that in the safe.’

  ‘Then we must get it.’

  And fiercely said at that. ‘Liebling, for me to do what you ask, I must break all the rules and am in enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘A coward I do not need.’

  Beck grabbed her as she bounced off the bed, but she pulled her arm free and, backhanding him, turned away to stand calming herself, spoiled, rich, still quivering with rage yet beautiful and, he asked himself, dangerous?

  When she reached for her step-ins, he said, ‘All right, you win. Now come back to bed and let us settle this business that husband of yours has placed between us.’

  Still she refused to face him, her shoulders squared, her back straight, the cheeks of her ass taut.

  ‘Karen saved the life of that girl, Werner. She didn’t run when they came over the top of that hill and that … that meant that they couldn’t shoot the bitch and now … now I don’t even know if one of those two really was Osier.’

  ‘Ach, come and forget it for a while. The girl will soon be taken care of and I’ll bring Karen back to you, I promise.’

  Mechanically her hands went out to him and she took his cock and began to put a little life into it, was still far too distracted.

  ‘Karen is beginning to like the girl, Werner. This could be a problem even Burghardt hasn’t realized.’

  Beck sat up to clasp her breasts. They kissed but she drew away and said, ‘I want Karen, Werner. Mein Gott, that attempt was such a futile effort. Osier, if it really was him, had everything yet failed.’

  Tenderly kissing her lips, she resisting still, he brushed his own across each eyelid. ‘But was it really Osier, Christina?’

  ‘I … I think one of them must have been. Why else would the girl have fired at them? I thought they would keep coming at her, but Karen … Karen ruined the attempt and when they fled, Karen held her tightly, Werner. Tightly.’

  Running his hands over her hips, Beck kissed each breast and then her throat. ‘Could there have been anyone else watching that hill?’

  She pulled away to look searchingly at him. ‘I didn’t see anyone. I would have known.’

  Maybe yes, and maybe no, thought Beck, but he had best not remind her that she’d been followed on return. When he asked about the Bowker-Brown girl, whatever interest Christina might have had in their having sex vanished.

  ‘It’s not just that she’s pretty, Werner. She’s very French-looking­, very alluring when seen sitting in the dark at a table beside a fishpond and facing Brigadier Charles Edward Gordon who was secretly, I am sure, captivated by her, though he would have been with any beautiful woman.’

  Herself? wondered Beck, letting his eyes drift over her nakedness but thinking, A failed attempt and then herself being followed back to the Reich. Had Gordon set the whole thing up? ‘He’s a falconer, mein Schatz,’ said Beck. ‘His first love is the merlin. Though he prefers to hunt the Yorkshire moors, he also has an estate in Kent near that girl’s Clarington Hall. Be good to him. Get as close as possible. Ach, I think that is what the Kapitän must now want you to do.’

  ‘And the Bridgwater wireless? Am I to use that butcher, Ernst Reiss, at Davidson’s Pork, Beef and Poultry in spite of Herr Reiss’s objections?’

  She must have gone there and would have broken their security by so doing, yet the Kapitän hadn’t said a thing of it, thought Beck, which could only mean he had best go carefully. ‘Liebling, I’ll try to find out.’

  ‘You had better.’

  Later, although AST-X Bremen never slept, the house on the Böttcherstrasse was all but deserted. While Christina watched the street below, Beck knelt in the darkness, the safe set into the wall below the shelves on which the Kapitän kept the AST-X Bremen logbooks.

  Never one to leave anything to chance when in a hurry over important matters, Burghardt had written the combination on a slip he always inserted into the first of the logbooks but Scheisse, the dial was already set at the last number, a zero, the door opening so easily he had to wonder if the Kapitän hadn’t left it that way on purpose.

  There were rolls of microfilm, code books, forged passports and travel documents, four bundles of used English one- and five-pound notes, assorted bundles of other currencies and a Danish M1910/21 pistol with a box of 9mm cartridges. A heavy gun, with six-, eight- and ten-round magazines.

  The pistol had been placed on top of the banknotes and Beck knew then that not only had Burghardt left the safe all but open for him, but that this subordinate of his must now say absolutely nothing of his having done so to Christina von Hoffmann.

  Dossiers, passed back to her, gave details of Colonel Buntington Hacker, an earlier photo showing him in uniform with cap, Sam Browne belt and s
wagger stick, but even then, thought Christina, he had worn a moustache, just as had his Mr. Harris Blackburn of the Rose and Thorn in East Quantoxhead.

  A circled news item concerned the young Chinese wife of a gunrunner. Not only had her wrists been bound behind her back and her ankles, too, she had been stripped, tortured, violated and then had her throat cut.

  The dossier on Brigadier Gordon yielded only loose snapshots recently taken of two men, and when Christina saw them, she sucked in a breath and bit the knuckles of her right hand. ‘That one,’ she said, not liking it at all, ‘tried to take Karen and failed when the girl shot him.’

  ‘And the other?’ asked Werner. ‘Bitte, mein Liebling, you had best tell me.’

  ‘The younger one was with him on that hill.’

  Others having followed her here, Gordon having got what he wanted, thought Beck. ‘Keep the photos. Memorize their faces, then destroy them. The Kapitän has several duplicates and won’t have counted them.’

  But would he have? wondered Christina, sickened by the thought of never knowing exactly what was going on, but hadn’t the Kapitän said Osier was highly positioned, that he had nothing but the greatest trust in him, and that he was very close to this office, to AST-X Bremen, Karen’s escape having now been assigned a Priority One? And hadn’t that file on Gordon, for obvious reasons of security, been deliberately emptied of all but those photos? It would be just like Burghardt to have done a thing like that! ‘Now the file on Osier, Werner. Please hand it to me.’

  There was nothing but a single sheet of paper and on it nothing but the number 07392.

  ‘Would he have the identity elsewhere?’ she asked.

  ‘Not likely.’

  Uneasy about what they had just discovered, Christina retreated to the windows to watch the street and try to think what best to do, and when Werner, having closed the safe, came to stand behind her, she leaned back against him and he put his arms about her.

  Later, they walked along the quays in silence. There were ships in the harbour, lights from them, yet still she had no answers, only questions. But the order of the things in that safe had to have meaning. ‘Seeing as that file on Osier must have been under his dossier, Werner, is Brigadier Gordon Burghardt’s 07392?’

  It was now or never, thought Beck, and he had to tell her what the Kapitän must have wanted him to say. ‘I think so, but all I really know is that Canaris thinks him very special.’

  *The Junkers 52, the backbone of air travel in the 1930s and, later, throughout World War II, Tante Ju (Auntie Ju) being used for military transport.

  * This network of licenced amateur wireless operators soon became of inestimable value.

  7

  It was raining when Hilary got up to London on Friday, 10 June, and where the water guttered over the faded gilding at Spurgeon’s, it made her think of fortunes lost. Soft on the pungent air, her uncertain ‘I’m looking for Sir John Masterson’ fled to the far end of the shop where a young man on a stepladder was taking stock. ‘Sir John?’ she said. ‘He’s expecting me. I rang him and we did agree that today, at just before noon, would suit.’

  ‘Give me half a mo’, miss. I won’t be a tick.’

  Climbing down from the ladder, he disappeared through a door at the back, Hilary turning to look out at the street. People hurried by, motorcars honked, lorries made deliveries, it all seemed so day-to-day. She had tried her best not to be followed, had hoped the man she had wounded was all right and that the younger one was not out there on the street. Colonel Hacker had offered absolutely no protection, nor indeed anything else, even to where he would be or how she might get in touch, but with her father’s visit, Karen and she had come a lot closer. When she had awakened in the morning to find herself still beside Ashby, he had asked how she had slept and she had seen the warmth, the concern, the interest in those smashing grey eyes of his and had said, ‘Too well, I think,’ and known their relationship had also changed.

  ‘Miss?’ called out the stock boy. ‘He says you’re to meet him upstairs in the tasting room.’

  Letting herself in, Hilary pulled off her mackintosh and thought to drape it over one of the stools, then thought better of this and hung it from a nail. She had split a seam in her left shoe, fashion being something the months without high heels in Cornwall had made painful, and she would get dressed up! Carefully removing the shoes, muttering to herself as she drained each, she said, ‘These people will be useless to us, worse still a danger.’

  Masterson saw her open the leather handbag and take out, not a compact to touch up the lipstick and rouge, but the Webley service revolver she had brought along for company. Deliberately the girl checked the safety, then as an added precaution, the empty chamber she had let the hammer rest on. She had a good figure, the well-tailored linen suit having a nutmeg shade to complement the colour of her eyes and hair, and when she straightened a stocking, he saw that she had nice legs, but more than this, that she was intuitively French in every gesture.

  There were no bracelets, only the watch she continually glanced at with growing irritation, and when she went over to the windows at the far end of the room, she scanned the street below with a care that impressed, for she stood all but to one side and not boldly out.

  Hurrying along the corridor and in the door, he said, ‘Don’t pay the shop much mind, Miss Bowker-Brown. It’s merely a front. If war comes, which I daresay it will, Göring’s Luftwaffe will no doubt put paid to it and the legacy my dear pater left me.’

  ‘What’s in the van?’

  ‘Tea, spice, and two wireless sets and other listening gear. When I’m not here, I’m in the field trying to nail clandestine transmitters, so …’

  Glad we’ve got that out of the way, are we? he wondered, taking in the big brown eyes that were still giving him the once-over.

  ‘You’re not exactly what I expected,’ she said.

  ‘But you look as though you could do with a good feed. Come along then. My treat. It’s …why, I guess it’s on the house. Why, yes, it is.’

  Struggling to get into her shoes, and nearly falling off balance, she said, ‘This one leaks.’

  ‘Know just the place,’ he said cheerily. ‘We’ll stop by on the way.’

  And they did. A positively super job was done by a little man in Kingly Street who even gave the seams several wipes with waterproofing compound. ‘A shameful rain, miss,’ said the man. ‘I shouldn’t want to catch a cold if I were you. Spoils the fun, now doesn’t it, a runny nose?’

  ‘He’s not my lover.’

  ‘Now I didn’t say that he was, did I?’ he asked.

  Masterson held the door for her and beamed at the compliment. ‘Our Thomas is given to overstatement, Miss Bowker-Brown. Not to mind, eh? Bunny been in lately to have those brogues of his reshod?’ he asked the shoemaker.

  They were out the door before an answer could be given. Crossing over, ducking between two lorries and in under the awnings, Sir John paused to give the street his perusal.

  Satisfied, he again held a door open for her, and when they had found a table and had settled in, he said, ‘They do a nice set of chops here,’ she demurely swinging her knees away from his and placing her hands before her, he continuing with, ‘The fish and chips are rather good, but so, too, is the Welsh rarebit. They’ve nothing like Cornish pasties, though, or likky pie, but will, if you wish it, offer a rather pleasant shenagrum.’

  Beer, nutmeg, brown sugar, lemon and rum. ‘The leek pie is a favourite, Sir John, but let’s just get this meeting over.’

  ‘Of course, but glad to have you aboard. Bunny sends his compliments and praises, and let me tell you those are very rare indeed. I gather you shoot extremely well and that your reaction time suggests you let instinct govern when pressed.’

  Just what were they expecting, that she work with Colonel Hacker and back him up? ‘I did wound one of them. Have you checke
d the hospitals and doctors?’

  Looking up at a waiter, Masterson ordered two pints of half-and-half. ‘And give the lady the lobster tails, Arthur, the Salisbury steak, medium rare, one baked potato and a side order of coleslaw. I’ll have the usual. That suit?’ he asked her.

  Pleased that he had ordered but wondering why he had avoided answering, Hilary nodded, but he didn’t give her a chance to ask. Hunching forwards, elbows on the table, he said, ‘When will you be going down to Cornwall?’

  ‘On … on Sunday, I guess.’

  ‘Make it tomorrow early. Bunny will look after you, not to worry. I’ve given him a free hand with this, Miss Bowker-Brown. Just go about whatever you do down there. Give the girl her lessons, go for walks—be seen in Saint Ives and out on that moor. Rest assured we will let the opposition know when and only when we judge it appropriate.’

  The Abwehr. ‘Won’t this sleeper suspect a trap?’

  And ever cautious. ‘It all depends, now doesn’t it?’

  ‘I … I’m afraid I don’t understand?’

  Reaching for his pint, indicating that she should also, he said, ‘Exactly how certain are you that those two you met on that hill were really from the Abwehr?’

  ‘I … I wouldn’t be here if I …’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘If I didn’t believe they would try again. I saw them, Sir John. I hit one of them and I gave that Colonel Hacker of yours a very detailed description of him. Did you not even bother to check the hospitals and doctors?’

  ‘My dear, there are simply far too many, and others who are not even registered, but please, these two chaps of yours shouted to each other.’

  ‘Yes, but … but I didn’t hear what they said.’