The Spy Who Never Was

by Tom Savage

  “You think you are so righteous!” Carla had shouted in French just before she threw the dog at her and reached for the gun. “Your precious Edgar Cole set you on the Russians three years ago, and now he sends you to me. You think he’s getting rid of the bad people, but he isn’t! He’s merely getting rid of his competition—and he’s using you as his muscle, you stupid woman! Where do you think all his money comes from? Edgar Cole is the biggest importer of us all!”

  The moment she’d heard the accusation, Julie had known that the woman was telling her the truth. She’d submitted her report to Cole and Amanda in Paris, then she’d gone back to her home at the time, in London, and thought it all through, with Yuri at her side. She came to the conclusion that nearly half of the ops she’d completed for Edgar Cole had been bogus, not honorable hits but merely ways for Mr. Cole to expand his own trafficking empire. She’d become so upset about it that she’d fainted for the first time in her life, waking up in an emergency room, where a grinning doctor had told her she was pregnant.

  That happy news had changed everything. She and Yuri were married two days after Christmas, in a ceremony in a judge’s chambers attended only by her uncle Dan and the judge’s clerk, who was the second witness. They vacated their rented flat in Chelsea and slipped out of the country, to Italy. They spent a week in a rented room in Florence while Julie combed the Internet looking for nursing work in the most obscure place she could find.

  She’d applied for the head nurse position at the Brandt Clinic, explaining to the director, Dr. Kringelein, that her employment history was in her maiden name. Dr. Kringelein was won over by her excellent credentials and his own desperation to find a new Oberschwester willing to relocate to the remote mountain village—not an easy task. In the second week of the new year, Boris and Julie Wäldchen arrived in Alpenberg.

  “That’s when I realized how much things had changed,” Julie told Nora now. “I saw this pretty village and that beautiful clinic, and I liked the people I met immediately. These are communities, people who know and like and support one another. Yuri and I had always lived in shadows, on the periphery of society, and it wasn’t a life at all. Yuri likes this place because his sister is down there in Lucerne; he hoped to be able to see her and her children—and you’ve made that possible! And I’m pregnant: I suppose it took the life inside me to make me appreciate the life I see everywhere. I decided it was time for Rose to retire. I know the importance of the work I did, but I’ve lost my taste for it. I can no longer be Chris Waverly.”

  Nora said, “Why is Edgar Cole coming after you now? Why didn’t he just let you walk away?”

  Julie sighed. “He’s been after me since I vanished. He’s had a team in Paris looking for me, headed by the delightful Amanda Morris. I couldn’t live like that anymore, always afraid that someone would arrive in Alpenberg, so two weeks ago I sent an untraceable email to him at Langley. I told him what Carla Clement had told me. I said I knew all about his trafficking enterprise, and I warned him to stop hunting for me or I’d expose him. He didn’t reply, but then you arrived in Paris.”

  “How did you and Yuri learn about me?” Nora asked. “Yuri was waiting for me at the airport Sunday night.”

  “We saw the rumors about Chris Waverly coming to Paris as soon as they were posted. We may be out of the game, but we can’t afford to stop following it. Yuri and I keep close watch on all international activity, especially the groups that concern us. When we saw that I would be in Paris, we were curious, to say the least. I knew it was probably Edgar Cole, but not necessarily. I’ve made many enemies in my time, and Yuri has made even more. We know people are out to get us, but we can never be sure who they are.

  “I couldn’t leave the clinic on such short notice, so Yuri went to Paris. He wasn’t surprised to find Bernard Clement looking for me in Paris, too. And he met Uncle Dan there as well—he’d rushed down from London to help Yuri find out what was going on, why his niece who was hiding out in Switzerland was suddenly coming to Paris from New York.

  “They saw you with Amanda, and we were sure you worked for Edgar. But then you did these interesting things. Yuri staked out the back door of your hotel, and he followed you. You were in contact with at least three retired French agents without Edgar Cole’s knowledge, and instead of returning to New York yesterday morning, you came here, to Sonya, and then to me, and you hadn’t told Edgar or Amanda where you were going. By that time I’d learned about your excellent activities for the Company in England and France and Venice, and I couldn’t tell if you were friend or foe. I was hoping you were my friend, but I had to be sure. I didn’t want to kill someone who might be trying to help me, but I was ready to kill an enemy.”

  Hans arrived with the entrées, temporarily interrupting her story. The Wiener Schnitzel was delicious. The two women dined in silence for a while, and then Nora said, “Soon there will be three of us. Your husband asked me to tell you that.”

  “Yes.” Julie smiled. “It’s what Yuri said when they told me I was pregnant. He seems to be taken with the idea.”

  “He’s a good deal more than that,” Nora said. “When I last saw him, he was fighting to stay alive for it. I think he’s going to be a good father.”

  “And I hope to be a good mother,” Julie said. “That’s why I must ask a favor of you, Nora.”

  The first drops of rain fell at that moment, pattering on the umbrella above their heads and splashing down on the cobblestones. Nora sipped her white wine, waiting. She could see that Julie Campbell was reluctant to come out with whatever she was about to say, but she knew that the woman had to make her own decision, so she remained silent. A soft downpour was pelting the umbrella when Julie finally spoke again.

  “I want you to help me tonight. I want you to be Chris Waverly one last time.”

  “Of course,” Nora said. “I’ll help you when they come.”

  Julie shook her head and leaned forward to whisper. “They are already here.”

  Chapter 42

  The rain was still a soft drizzle. Nora paid the bill for the excellent meal with Marianne Lanier’s Visa card, then pulled her Totes umbrella from her bag and followed Julie over to the side of Gasthof Kleiss a few yards away. Julie’s phone buzzed; she answered and spoke briefly before ending the call. They stood close to the building under Nora’s balcony, peering up the road beyond the little bridge. Nora wasn’t particularly surprised when Hall Kleiss and Lars Weber came out of the restaurant and joined them in their vigil.

  The four of them watched as the bus from the clinic came around the bend, across the bridge, and down the road past where they stood to the turnoff into the village. The bus made the turn and moved up the hill beyond the town square, heading for the parish hall where Bingo Nacht would be in full swing. Nine patients, five spouses, and most of the medical night staff would spend the rest of this evening in the warmth of the village gathering.

  As soon as the bus was safely inside the village, Julie turned to the two men.

  “You know what to do, right?” she asked them.

  “Yes, Sister,” Hall Kleiss assured her. “We’ll be in place. You just be careful up there.”

  Julie nodded to him, then led Nora away across the square and into the alley between buildings where Nora had first seen her appear this evening. They came out at the side of the square, where there was a well-worn footpath leading uphill. The two women walked single file, clutching their umbrellas, up the muddy tract to the paved road. This led past the parish hall, where the clinic crowd would now be joining the locals. The church was next, and then they passed two sleeping cottages and arrived at a third one farther up the road, at the top of a hill. This last building was their destination.

  Nora paused at the gate in the picket fence, gazing up at the white stone cottage with a wooden porch and a pretty shingled roof. Two rocking chairs stood side by side on the porch beside the front door, and Nora smiled at the sight of them, imagining an aging couple in love sitting there at the end
of a long day. She turned around to look out at the view from here. The town square was below them; she was looking down at the top of the umbrella at the table where they’d just dined. Beyond and below the square and the main road were the lake meadow, the forest, and the wide vista of city, towns, Lake Lucerne, Reuss River, and the Alps, all slightly blurred by the misty drizzle. On her left, Pilatus was particularly dramatic from this perspective.

  The church, parish hall, barns, and homes that made up Alpenberg were all around, behind, and above the cottage, with warm yellow lights glowing from curtained windows here and there. The distant rush of the stream to the east of the village could just be heard, but the weather made it impossible to see the water from here. Nora looked up, above the cottage roof; the highest cottages were at the edge of the upper forest, which stretched up into the darkness toward the summit.

  Perfect, she thought; a perfect home for this odd family, these retired assassins and their baby. Nobody liked to think about them and what they did, and no one cared what happened to them afterward. Nora couldn’t speak for Yuri Kerensky, but she knew that Julie Campbell and her parents had always acted for the good of their respective countries. And now Julie was back to her other profession, the polar opposite of her CIA job: the curing of the ill and the comfort of the dying. Julie deserved those rocking chairs.

  “Come,” the former assassin said now, and she led Nora into the house. Plain, simple, spotless: Nora’s first impression of the rooms was of warmth and comfort. A living room, a kitchen, and a parlor with a fireplace were downstairs, and the upper floor had two bedrooms. Julie took her to the kitchen.

  “We’ll need some things,” Julie said, kneeling to unlock a lower cabinet with a key and reaching inside. She pulled out two miniature handguns, a box of ammunition, and three small gray objects that looked like candles. These were round tubes, about eight inches long and two inches in diameter, with two-inch wicks attached at one end. She handed the three tubes to Nora.

  “You’re in charge of these,” she said. “A small bang, a big flash, and lots of smoke. Thirty-second fuses. They’re tricky in the rain; don’t get them wet. Do you have matches?”

  Nora fished in her bag and came up with a disposable lighter. “I have this.”

  “Perfect.” As Nora watched, Julie loaded the magazines of both weapons and inserted them, handed one to Nora, and slipped the other into the pocket of her trench coat. “That’s a Walther TPH twenty-two LR semi, six rounds, simple blowback. It looks like a toy, but it isn’t. I assume you’ve handled bigger ones? Well, it’s the same, only smaller.”

  Nora nodded, checking that the safety was on. It was. “Okay.” There was a plain wooden table with two chairs in the center of the kitchen. Nora sank into a chair. “What’s going on?”

  Julie sat across from Nora. “Here’s the story: Just after you and Frau Leydon drove away this afternoon, I saw a black van with blue lettering on the side drive out of the tunnel and past the entrance to the clinic, going fast—too fast for these hills.”

  Nora remembered the van from the tunnel, the blinding headlights whizzing by her in the dark. “Yes, it passed us. I thought it was a delivery truck like the grocery truck I saw earlier.”

  “No. What we have up here are three groups—two villages and the clinic. They all get regular deliveries, mostly food and goods for the clinic, the guesthouses, and the general stores, and they get the occasional utility people for phones and Internet and cable TV. They get logging trucks three times a year that go up to Gans, which is basically a woodcutting community. They get the odd doctor, ambulance, fire engines, hikers, or lost tourists, and they sometimes get the forestry people working in the woods—there’s a station right above the clinic.”

  “Yes, I saw it,” Nora said.

  “Well, so did Amanda Morris,” Julie announced. “She was in the van with a muscular young man with curly dark hair.”

  “His name is Luc,” Nora said. “How do you know all this?”

  Julie shrugged. “I make it my business to know everything about my surroundings at all times. It’s kept me alive for ten years, ever since I started this new profession. When Yuri and I first came here in January, we met with Hall Kleiss and Lars Weber and read them in on our histories. I also fired the Mickey Mouse security firm they had at the clinic and replaced it with a better one—people who know who I am and what I do. Oskar and Bruno are former Swiss Guards, and the two younger guys were French Marines.”

  Nora said, “So, the remaining patients at the clinic are well guarded.”

  “Oh, yes. There are five of them, including Frau Strasser. The others are bedridden, so they couldn’t go into town tonight. They’re all in one location, the infirmary, with Oskar and Bruno and a nurse. The younger men are my sentinels—they’re watching the ranger station. Amanda and Luc are in there. All four security men are in the clinic; I’ve instructed them not to leave it, so they will not be assisting us tonight. I want to take these bastards myself—with your help, of course. You and I are the injured parties here, and Amanda Morris and her lackey won’t soon forget us.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Nora said. “But what’s going to stop them from storming the clinic? They could be doing that now, this minute.”

  “No,” Julie said, and the decisiveness in her tone made Nora believe her. “Even if they managed to get their hands on the layout of the clinic, they wouldn’t simply march in there. Amanda will assume—correctly—that I’ve changed the security and added features. She’d be at a disadvantage, and no good operative will allow that. She’s not on the Company payroll at the moment, but she started out there, so she’s thoroughly trained. She’ll watch and wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Nora asked.

  Julie Campbell smiled. “Me. But she’s in for a surprise. Amanda Morris has one weakness, and I know what it is. Now, I want you to take off that wig. Then go over to the sink and wash that stuff off your face.”

  Without a word, Nora complied. She used cold cream and soap to scrub away Marianne Lanier, and Julie handed her a towel. Now that Nora’s hair was free once more, she noted how close it was in color and length to Julie’s. She dropped Marianne’s wig in her bag.

  Julie left the room for a few moments, returning with two bulky gray objects. She handed one to Nora. “Put this on.”

  Nora removed her trench coat and jacket, then slipped on the Kevlar vest over her turtleneck and fastened it as her husband had taught her. Julie did the same, and they put on their jackets and coats. Nora smiled when she saw the effect of the bulky vests: Now they both looked pregnant. They looked like two copies of the same original design.

  Julie said, “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 43

  A dark gray Audi sedan was parked beside the cottage. They ran through the light rain and got inside. Julie started the car and drove down the hill past the church and parish hall.

  When they arrived at the main road, Nora said, “How did you know Amanda was in the black van?”

  As they turned right and crossed the little bridge, Julie explained. She’d still been in her disguise when she’d spotted the van going by on the road. As Nora had just alerted her to the possibility of a visit from Edgar Cole’s people, she was immediately suspicious. She figured that a van with lettering was a tradesman, not a tourist, so it would be easy to find out what it was doing on the mountain. She set one of the young security men to monitor the road all afternoon. She also made plans for Bingo Night. The clinic’s mobile patients frequently went into Alpenberg on Thursday nights for the Bingo, so it was easy to clear out most of the patients and night staff that way. The others would be covered in the infirmary.

  By the time Nora had called and invited her to dinner, Julie had ascertained that the black van hadn’t returned from up the road. She called the constable in Gans, who hadn’t had any black van there all day. She sent her sentinel into the forest, where he followed the road toward Gans until he spotted the van parked in among the trees abou
t a hundred yards beyond the entrance to the clinic, around the mountainside from it. He saw a woman and a man standing near the van, both armed, both in dark clothing. He waited and watched. The woman and man went off uphill through the woods, toward the ranger station. The sentinel slashed the van’s tires and returned to the clinic.

  Still in her old-lady disguise, Julie drove her Audi out of the clinic to Alpenberg. She went home, took off the wig, makeup, and padding that concealed her pregnancy, and joined Nora for dinner in the square. By then she’d been informed that Amanda and Luc were inside the ranger station, watching the clinic below through binoculars.

  At eight-ten, the mobile patients and night staff went out to the bus and drove into town. At eight-fifteen, the night receptionist at the clinic received a call from an unidentified woman who asked in French if Sister Wäldchen was there. The receptionist said no, Sister Wäldchen was out but would return to the clinic at nine o’clock, and the woman hung up. The receptionist called Julie and reported—that had been the call she’d received just before they’d watched the bus go by.

  “So now Amanda’s waiting for me to arrive at nine o’clock,” Julie said, “which is in exactly eight minutes. But we are not going into the clinic. We won’t even enter the grounds—I don’t want the clinic involved in this at all. Here’s what I want you to do.”

  Nora listened. Her part of the plan seemed simple and straightforward enough; she thought she could handle it. But she noticed that Julie was keeping her on the fringe of the action, so she asked the obvious question.

  “And what are you going to be doing? You’re in your second trimester, Julie. Couldn’t we just let Hall Kleiss and—”