Angel of Vengeance: The thrilling sequel to Angel in Red (Anna Fehrbach)

by Christopher Nicole

  What had never appeared to cross Ballantine’s mind was why a young girl, beautiful and apparently very rich, should wish to tie herself to a man who was more than twice her age, definitely overweight and not particularly attractive in any event, and completely lacking in any charisma of his own. It had certainly occurred to Clive, but there had been nothing he could do about it. Even if he had had no doubt that she was a Gestapo plant, he had still not been able to deduce the reason. He now knew, because Anna had told him, that for all their apparent confidence the Nazis had been afraid that Chamberlain might not after all have been coming to accept their demands for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, but instead was coming to threaten war after all.

  Ballantine had been able to reassure his glamorous bed mate that war was not on Chamberlain’s agenda, no matter what concessions he might have to make. Then he had discovered blood on the sheet, which had decided things for him, from the point of view of an English gentleman, even if he hadn’t believed that heaven had fallen into his lap.

  Anna had told Clive that her SD masters had known it had fallen into theirs, however horrified she had been at the prospect of becoming an English housewife, even if she would be wealthy and socially in demand. He had been helpless, swept away on a tide of events he had not been able to combat. Even his attempts to convince Baxter that she had to be a spy had fallen on deaf ears. ‘Proof,’ Billy had said, as usual. ‘This woman is top drawer now. I have to have cast-iron proof before the boss will let me put her under surveillance, much less have her openly investigated. You just don’t like the woman.’

  That might even have been true, in October 1938. It could even have still been true in March 1939, but he doubted it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been standing outside her apartment building in Berlin, looking up, wondering if she still maintained it now that she had an English home, and she had walked out of the swing doors and virtually bumped into him. But that had not been the Honourable Mrs Ballantine Bordman. Even less had it been the Countess von Widerstand. It had been a frightened, distressed and utterly vulnerable little girl, who had been all the more beautiful and desirable for that. But she was a little girl who had also been very angry.

  Clive often thought that by stretching her naked across that bar to torture and humiliate her – or disciplining her, as they saw it – the Nazi hierarchy might have signed their own death warrants. He knew of no one, not even Winston Churchill, who was more dedicated to bringing them down, and certainly no one who was better placed to do it – if only his superiors would trust her enough to give her full rein.

  He had known none of this when he had accompanied her upstairs ‘for a cup of coffee’ that fateful morning. He had been fully aware that to seduce this girl, who he had still been certain was a Nazi agent, might be for the good of the state. But he had also been fully aware that to seduce this girl, the wife of a man with whom he was quite friendly, at an obviously low ebb in her life, would be an absolutely caddish thing to do. But as with everyone else who came into contact with Anna, even those who knew her well, he had not really understood the personality he supposed he could dominate, the deadly force and ice-cold determination that lay behind that beautiful mask.

  So before he had known what had hit him, she had seduced him with consummate skill. And when, half an hour later, he had been lying beside her on her bed, utterly sated, both mentally and physically, believing she was too, and the door had opened, he had watched her leave the bed in a long avalanche of naked glory, and destroy an intruder with a single blow to the neck.

  That had been a moment he would never forget to his dying day, even as he realized that if such beauty, such charm, such skill, and such instant, lethal, uncompromising powers of destruction, could be harnessed and controlled, he would possess one of the most potent forces in existence. It had taken time. Anna herself had been willing, even eager, to work towards the destruction of her tormentors. As she had explained, it was necessary for her to keep on working for them to safeguard her family, and this had actually been a bonus, although it was one he had hated to use. Baxter had been less enthusiastic. He had gone along with the idea when Anna had proved how valuable she could be, but he still regarded her as a ticking time bomb that would one day have to explode. As for actually controlling her, for all her apparent subservience, at least when in his company, Clive knew in his heart that despite their intimacy Anna did indeed have an agenda of her own, one that was known only to her.

  But the thought that in another month or so he would be able to hold her in his arms once again . . . He poured the two glasses of scotch.

  ‘So keep your beastly secret,’ Belinda said, forking sausages on to plates. ‘Listen, do you know that next month is my mother’s seventieth birthday?’

  ‘Good lord! Is she all right?’

  ‘Of course she’s all right. But I think we should go and see her. Spend a couple of days with her. You can manage that, can’t you?’

  ‘Ah . . . where exactly would we be going?’

  ‘Perth.’

  The drink he was sipping went down the wrong way and he did some choking, watched without sympathy.

  ‘I am not talking about Australia, idiot,’ she said when he had got his breath back. ‘Scotland.’

  ‘And when exactly does this event take place?’

  ‘Her birthday is twenty-ninth September. That’s a Monday. We could go up on the Sunday, and come back on the Tuesday.’

  ‘Ah . . . I’m afraid I will be away over the end of September.’

  Belinda placed the plates on the table with great care. ‘You told me, when you came back from Moscow two months ago, that you would not be travelling again.’

  ‘I know I did. But the fact is—’

  ‘And the time you went away before that,’ Belinda said in a somewhat sinister monotone, ‘you wound up in hospital for several months.’

  ‘My darling, that wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t flying the plane. I was merely a passenger. I suppose I’m lucky to have survived the crash.’

  Belinda drank some whisky. ‘So where are you going this time?’

  ‘Now, you know I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘It’s to do with that woman, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ah . . .’ One of the great unsolved mysteries of Clive’s life was what had transpired between the two women on the one occasion they had met. But neither would ever tell him. He knew the facts. Anna had been with him in this flat when Belinda had entered unexpectedly. That scenario had been dreadfully reminiscent of what had happened to Elsa Mayers in Berlin, and for one terrible moment he had feared it might happen again in London. But Anna had understood from a glance at his face that this was an embarrassment, not a danger, and in any event, Belinda had left again without a word.

  An hour later, she had been outside Anna’s Mayfair flat. Clive knew, because she had told him, that she had identified the woman as the Honourable Mrs Ballantine Bordman from photos she had seen in the glossies, and had simply gone to her home and waited for her rival to return. Anna had let her in, and the two women had been engaged in conversation when catastrophe had struck.

  Clive would dearly love to discover what they were actually saying. But whatever it was, Hannah Gehrig, Anna’s ‘maid’, who was actually her SD controller in England, returning unexpectedly, had found it sufficiently conspiratorial to require executive action. She had drawn her pistol, and Anna had disposed of her with another of her phenomenal personal attacks, only this time – Hannah Gehrig being a more positive character that Elsa Mayers – she had stopped a bullet that had put her into hospital for several weeks.

  That Anna had so nearly died while saving Belinda’s life had of course earned her eternal gratitude, and as the circumstances and the necessity to hush the whole thing up had involved bringing Belinda into the picture, at least partially, even the fact that Anna had been found in a compromising position with Clive could be explained as perhaps a necessary exchange of secret information. But Belinda now knew that
Clive was Anna’s MI6 controller, and she also knew that the pair had made contact on more than one occasion over the past two years. Gratitude had not been that eternal.

  His hesitation had given him away. Belinda finished her drink, pushed back her chair, and stood up, ignoring the plate of sausages. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I had better bugger off. Actually, on second thoughts, you can bugger off.’

  She slammed the door behind her.

  Chapter Four – Lovers

  Joseph Andrews looked up from his desk as the office door opened. ‘Mr Fisher is here, Mr Andrews,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Oh. Right. Show him in.’

  Andrews stood up. He was a tall, underweight man – he kept his figure under careful control – with thinning hair and a long, somewhat lugubrious face, although his smile could be charming. He was smiling now. ‘Larry! How’s the Bureau standing up?’

  ‘Without you, hardly at all.’ Lawrence Fisher, short and tubby, shook hands and sank into the chair before the desk. ‘What’s it like, working for Wild Bill?’

  ‘One could say exciting. Although we haven’t really got off the ground yet. The department was only founded a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Yeah. And Hoover is already wondering how the hell he allowed you to be seconded.’

  ‘Two reasons, I guess. Donovan is a hard man to refuse, and our business is mainly Europe. That’s why he wanted me. It’s a part of the world I happen to know.’

  ‘Doing what, exactly? I mean, Office of Strategic Studies. What the hell is that?’

  ‘That is whatever you wish to make of it.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘Now, that, you will have to ask Wild Bill. I think he’s in the building. Shall I get Margaret to see if he’s free?’

  ‘Screw that. Listen, as you say, you know Europe. So maybe you can help us. That’s actually why I’m here.’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘Well, we were wondering if the name Countess von Widerstand might mean anything to you?’

  Andrews had been leaning back in his chair, comfortably relaxed. Now he slowly sat up. ‘Say again?’

  ‘Yeah, I know it’s a goddamned mouthful. And I’m told it don’t mean a shitting thing, either. Something like “Countess of Resistance”. But the fact is, this chick is one hell of a classy broad. And she really is a chick. According to her passport, she’s only twenty-one, but . . . Say, you all right?’

  ‘I am waiting,’ Andrews said, speaking very slowly, ‘for you to tell me what this is about.’ Christ, he thought. If something has happened to Anna . . .

  ‘We don’t know what it’s about,’ Fisher confessed, ‘or if it’s about anything. It’s just that this dame landed in New York last week, on passage from Naples, Italy, on her way to join the German Embassy here in Washington. No big deal about that, except that she’s a knock out, which ain’t illegal. But, you know how it is, the entry was passed on to us as a matter of course, foreign nationals and all that stuff, and Harry Brice – you remember Harry?’

  ‘I remember Harry,’ Andrews said, with an effort keeping himself from grasping his friend by the lapels and shaking him. ‘Are you saying that Anna . . . the Countess von Widerstand, is here in America, right this moment?’

  ‘I reckon she’s just about five blocks away, right this moment. The point is that Harry Brice says he knows this bit, and it ain’t good news. Harry was in the UK a couple of years ago, remember? And he remembers a scandal about this dame – she was apparently calling herself the Honourable Mrs Bordman then – who turned out to be a German spy and fled the country just before being rounded up by the Special Branch or whatever. It caused quite a rumpus because no one knows how she did it – I mean, got away with it – and the intelligence boys aren’t saying. Well, as it was clearly their fuck-up to let her slip through their fingers, you can’t blame them. But you were in England around then, weren’t you? You remember anything about it?’

  ‘Is it that important?’ Andrews asked while he tried to think.

  ‘Well, do we really need any slinky Nazi femme fatale wandering around over here? J. Edgar ain’t seen this yet, but I reckon he’s gonna do his nut when he does.’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t show it to him.’

  ‘Are you kidding? It’s my ass on the line.’

  ‘Well, then, when you do, ask him to lay off, at least for a while.’

  ‘You’ll have to explain that, old buddy. You saying you do know the dame?’

  ‘Yes. I knew of her, in London, and I actually met her, when I was in Moscow.’

  ‘And you took a shine to her.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘Even if she’s a Kraut spy?’

  ‘You need to reserve judgement until you meet her. The important point is, why is she here?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s exactly the question J. Edgar is gonna ask. And he’s gonna want answers, too.’

  ‘I can give you those answers.’

  Fisher raised his eyebrows. ‘You been holding out on us?’

  ‘I said I took a shine to her. What matters is that she took a shine to me. I was . . . able to do her a favour.’

  Was he telling the truth, or just airing an impossible dream? He remembered having dinner with Anna on the banks of the Moscow River or walking with her in Gorky Park . . . But those memories were overlaid with others, of that naked, crumpled but compelling figure standing against the wall of her Lubianka cell, and even more, of the flaming angel of vengeance she had suddenly become when Chalyapov had tried to overrule Beria’s orders and prevent her leaving the prison. Two sides of the same coin perhaps. But where one side had been the purest vulnerable femininity, the other had been more deadly purpose than he had ever seen in any other human being, male or female. He had no doubt that she had been grateful to him for saving her from an unthinkable fate. But could he seriously doubt that if he got in her way she would blow him away like, according to Clive Bartley, she had blown away more than a dozen other people, men and women, as and when she had considered it necessary?

  But the thought of seeing her again, of perhaps even being allowed to touch that velvet flesh . . . He flushed as he realized that Fisher was staring at him. ‘What I am saying is that I reckon I may be able to get through to her, find out what you want to know, whereas if you try to muscle in she might just clam right up.’

  Fisher grinned. ‘It might be fun to have her in one of our interrogation rooms and see what she’s made of.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ Andrews said, and hastily added, ‘I mean, if she has been posted here as a member of the German Embassy staff, she has diplomatic immunity.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fisher agreed, regretfully. ‘But I don’t think the old boy will go for letting you have first crack of the whip. He’s still brooding on the way you upped and left the Bureau.’ He held up his hand as Andrews would have spoken. ‘OK, OK. I know you had no choice in that matter. Whatever Donovan wants for this new super-department of his, Donovan gets, and he wanted you. But it rankles with J. Edgar. He’ll get over it. But right now, cooperation is the last word in his dictionary. The lady is our territory, and she’s gonna stay that way. Until we have everything we want or can get. Then maybe we’ll let you have a go.’ He got up. ‘I’ll give her your regards.’

  *

  Andrews remained staring at the closed door for several seconds. He had given Clive Bartley his word that he would never reveal to a soul that Anna was a double agent. But keeping her out of the clutches of the FBI had to override that word, whether she was here for the Germans, or actually for MI6. And either way, he had to find out why she was here. What Fisher, and therefore Hoover, did not know was that Anna was less a spy than an assassin.

  He pressed his intercom and Margaret came in. ‘Mr Donovan in the building?’

  ‘I believe so, sir. I’ll just check.’

  ‘If he is in, I want to have a meeting, now. Tell his secretary it is a matter of the utmost u
rgency.’

  Margaret raised her eyebrows, but hurried off, and fifteen minutes later Andrews was seated in a leather armchair before the large walnut desk.

  ‘Your girl said it was urgent,’ Donovan remarked. ‘Our first problem? I hadn’t expected it to come up quite so soon.’

  Bill Donovan was a big man with deceptively peaceful features and a quiet manner. But he had earned his soubriquet of Wild by his ability suddenly to produce bouts of almost demonic energy and purpose – not unlike Anna herself, Andrews supposed. Just as he also supposed it was that quality that had made President Roosevelt select him to form and head this newest and most secret of departments.

  ‘Neither had I, sir,’ Andrews agreed. ‘May I assume that anything I say to you will never be repeated to a living soul?’

  Donovan regarded him for several seconds. ‘That is a damned odd thing to say to me, Joe.’

  ‘I apologize, sir. But this is a matter of the utmost urgency, and also of life and death.’

  Donovan stroked his chin. ‘I had got the idea it was a domestic matter. Personal.’

  ‘It is, and it isn’t.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, you’d better put it on the line. This conversation is becoming a little convoluted for so early in the day.’

  Andrews took a deep breath, and began to speak. Donovan listened in silence, hardly moving. When Andrews had finished, he said, ‘You’re a guy with a formidable background, Joe. Far more formidable than I ever suspected. Let me just get this straight in my mind. This young woman is not actually a countess, or even a German. She is a half-Austrian, half-Irish knock out named Anna Fehrbach who happens to be a genius as well as a glamour girl as well as a professional murderess. Sounds great. So she works for the SD, killing people whenever told to do so. But she does this with the blessing of MI6, for whom she also works. It seems to me that our prime requirement is to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt just which of those is the one that matters.’