by Alan Hardy
“I thought you didn’t want a squalid affair, Fiona?” he remarked, giggling.
“Well, with my loathsome husband’s return, I might as well embrace the role of insatiable adulteress,” she remarked, running her tongue along his neck, and finishing off with a cheeky bite. “But, Matthew, seriously, with Freddie back, what are we—”
“Ssh!” he commanded, straining to listen, as Fiona turned to look to their right, disturbed by a rustle in the undergrowth. A stirring in the dark, deep wood.
A crack rang out from the other side of the road, and an echoing crack from their right, and a snap, as of a branch snapping, and then the rustling of its falling.s
Fiona, still held in his arms, sensed Matthew’s body stiffen.
“What the—”
“Get down!” he hissed.
He was shoving her roughly down, forcing her to squat awkwardly by him.
“C’mon!” he said, grabbing her arm, and forcing her to scuttle along the ground with him, as they headed off into the dark outline of the wood, and its obscure safety.
There was another crack, making them both shudder.
Fiona’s breathing came fast, as did Matthew’s right beside her.
As they fumbled and disentangled their way through the ever-increasing undergrowth, they slowly, gradually, raised themselves from their ungainly scuttling positions, becoming more and more upright—like those charts on school walls detailing the ascent of human beings from scurrying chimps to full homo sapiens—until they gratefully planted themselves, upright and clinging to each other, behind an oak tree.
“My God, Matthew!” she exclaimed.
“Ssh!” he hissed, shaking as much as her.
“Can’t you shoot back?” she whispered.
“What?”
“Haven’t you got a gun?”
“For God’s sake, Fiona, this is the Scottish Highlands, not Chicago!”
“There is a war on, you know!
“Don’t we know it…”
They stayed there, panting and trembling, straining to hear anything, and twitching at every perceived sound of fauna, flora or human in the scary blackness of night.
There was the grating noise of a car starting up, startling them into ever closer union of their bodies. The lights of the car parked up the road flashed on, fingering through the darkness, and it laboriously made a wide arc, creaking its way along earth, stone and road, as it turned round and, to Fiona’s and Matthew’s relief, made off in the direction it had come.
“Thank God!”
“Ssh!”
“Let’s get out of here quick, Matthew!”
She found herself being man-handled deeper and deeper into the wood, leaving their cars further and further behind.
“What the—”
“Ssh!”
She kept looking behind her, wistfully picturing the safety and comfort of her Bentley to herself, as she stumbled over tree roots, brambles and assorted sticks and twigs of all shapes and sizes.
After a few minutes, Matthew stopped, still holding Fiona’s hand, both of them breathing heavily, and bending down slightly.
“What’s the game, Matthew?” she asked, between breaths.
“If we press on this way, we’ll get to the Mansion, won’t we?”
“But that’s still more than two miles!”
“It’s not certain, Fiona, but it’s quite likely they left someone there waiting. Waiting for us to return to our cars, so they could pick us off. Not worth taking the chance.”
“Hardly heroic, Matthew? Better to run, you mean?”
“Or they might have planned to return. Or they could be circling around us now. We’d better press on.”
“Yes,” she concurred, starting to scramble along as quickly as she could.
“For me, Fiona, it’s a question of survival.”
“I know.”
“It’s like in a dogfight,” said Matthew, rushing along with Fiona by his side, clasping her hand, and their bodies hitting into each other. “Amidst all those swirling planes, criss-crossing this way and that, I watch my back, and my sides, and above, and below… I keep out of trouble…and, when it’s all over, and there are any pickings in that suddenly near-empty blue sky, and I’m safe, and they can’t see me, I take them out…”
“I know, Matthew,” she said, gazing at him. “We’re so alike, you and I.”
“Are we?”
She stopped for a moment, standing still to look him fully in the face.
“I hope so,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him on his sweet lips.
They quickly, nervously carried on scrambling and scurrying through the wood.
“If we had handcuffs on, Matthew, we’d be like Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll in that film which came out just before the war, you remember?”
“Yes. What’s his name, now? Hitchcock, I think. Yes, that’s it. The Thirty-Nine Steps, it was called.”
Fiona stood still, turning to look at Matthew, still holding his hand.
“How old were you when that film was doing the rounds, Matthew? Barely starting university?”
“Just about to get recruited into MI5,” he answered, nodding. “About a couple of years or so after you’d just been recruited…”
He gave her a pointed, not unpleasant stare, and she bowed her head, feeling awkward. If he hadn’t been clasping her left hand, she’d have started on one of her manic, fiddly tics, if not alternating between both of them.
They resumed their brisk walk through the wood. He gave her hand a little squeeze.
“Fiona, when we get to the Mansion, I think we’d better resume our parlour game. Don’t you?”
“Yes, I do, Matthew.”
“I think it’s your turn to come clean.”
She stepped in front of him. His body came up against her. She kissed him gently, and then a few more times before she would allow him to carry on walking.
“Were you the last guest to leave, Fiona?”
“I was,” she replied. “What does that mean? That car… It must have been Squadron Leader Jackson, or Belinda, or both of them, trying to kill us? They followed me when I left?”
“It could have been anyone.”
“The others had all left, Matthew.”
“They could have been waiting nearby, some vantage-point where they could see you leaving…”
“Of course… Who were they trying to kill? Me? You? Both of us?”
“Who knows…”
Fiona shuddered, instinctively drawing in her breath at Matthew’s reassuring squeeze of her hand. She clung to him even more tightly.
“And Fiona,” he said, “that Luger you keep in your dressing-table…”
“Yes?”
“You’d better start keeping it in your handbag.”
16
Once more they faced each other in the study, Matthew relaxing back in an armchair, Fiona perched on the edge of the sofa, hands clasped together on her lap.
She talked through with Matthew what she had gone through in her mind so often recently: the whys and wherefores of her recruitment into German Intelligence.
Matthew listened patiently, and didn’t seemed surprised by anything he heard.
When her nervous, tearful narrative had concluded, Matthew still kept his counsel, sitting back, impassive and motionless.
“Well, say something, Matthew!” she burst out, wiping those damned tears from her left eye, and pressing her knees tightly together.
“How beautiful you are, Fiona!” he finally murmured.
His almost manic glare was focused on her seated figure, in her smart, blue frock, shaking hands fiddling with its hem about her knees.
She gave a cry of relief, jumping up and holding out her arms.
“Don’t get too excited, Fiona,” he quickly advised, holding up a hand. “I’m not stupid. I know your faults and failings well enough. You were spoilt both by your parents and your privileged position and lifestyle. You thought you had a rig
ht to everything, happiness, a wonderful romance, and as many children as you wanted. When it didn’t turn out the way you wanted, you turned in on yourself, and created a secret world in your head which compensated for your disappointments. You ended up feeling so sorry for yourself that you hit out at the whole world, including your husband and your country. You—”
“Have you finished?” demanded Fiona, stepping menacingly towards him, her face venomous and vindictive.
“The Germans targeted you because of your social position, and because you were the wife of a RAF officer. Useful information could come to them via both channels. Fiona, sometimes I think your decision to betray your country was something of an act of revenge on poor Freddie, a conscious decision to act against the country whose armed forces he was a member of. The reason? Because you saw Freddie as the embodiment, let alone cause of everything wrong in your life. The destruction of all your fantasies. The non-realization of your romantic dreams. Your childless torment. Everything.”
“Seems like you’ve memorized the report you must be writing on me for your masters,” said Fiona with a vicious snarl. “Have you handed it in yet? How did it score?”
“I haven’t actually finished writing it yet,” he stated calmly.
“And what does that mean?”
“Don’t forget, Fiona, that what happens to you will depend on me.”
“Whether I live or die?”
She looked at him with something approaching animosity.
“And what happens to me might well depend on you,” he added.
“What does that mean?”
“It means, Fiona,” he said, standing up, advancing towards her, and taking her hands, “that what happens to us will depend on the two of us. Even whether we live or die.”
As of one mind, they sat down on the sofa, side by side, Matthew holding her hands tightly on her lap.
“I told you a few days back that we suspect there are three spy cells here, each cell no larger than one or two individuals, maybe even three separate cells constituting one individual in each.”
“Wentworth, myself…and…one other…” said Fiona soberly and calmly.
She had him in the palm of her hand. He was hers. She was convinced. Her anger at his rudeness had vanished. They were making plans for her survival. Her and his survival together. He was hers. For the moment. There were great dangers to be faced, but there was hope.
“But there are suspicions against Freddie,” Matthew pointed out. “The powers-that-be might be considering that the three spies are Wentworth, Freddie…and…”
“One other?”
“Yes.”
“Matthew, I doubt that you’re going to frame Freddie, get him hanged, and me off the hook, are you?”
“Well, for the moment, it suits us to keep Freddie languishing in his safe house, under interrogation and suspicion,” he answered. “And for me to be here pursuing my enquiries.”
“But how long can we keep that going?” she asked. “It’s a bit selfish of us, and—”
“A bit unfair on Freddie?”
“Well…” murmured Fiona unsympathetically.
“Remember to make sure the wireless transmitter is in a place Freddie would use as a hiding-place, as I said. And keep it well wiped.”
“Well, nobody has ever come to search the house…”
“Who says they haven’t?” responded Matthew enigmatically.
Fiona threw him a suspicious glance.
“Poor Freddie…” she intoned pitilessly.
“Let’s leave Freddie for now,” said Matthew, as heartlessly as Fiona. “There are more than ten German spies here in Britain whose covers have been blown, Fiona. Most of them have been turned, and are now double agents, sending information back to Germany which has been prepared and vetted by the British authorities.”
“And those who couldn’t be turned?”
“Liquidated.”
“As you liquidated poor Wentworth?”
He didn’t answer.
“How was he uncovered?”
“Intercepted messages, observation, third-party evidence.”
“You mean Paula?” Fiona immediately suggested. “She sent her husband to his death?”
“She was doing her patriotic duty…for the right price,” Matthew said coldly.
“Have you ever slept with her?” Fiona asked. “She was more or less suggesting you had.”
“Fiona, you have to trust me. Otherwise we won’t come out of this in one shape.”
She nodded, gritting her teeth.
“She’s that sort of woman, though,” she said, with disgust. “A slut.”
“Let’s forget her for the moment,” said Matthew, looking exasperated. “So, we’ve won ourselves time. Granted, we can’t keep Freddie under wraps for the rest of our lives together, but we’ve got a few weeks. In those few weeks, we’ll have to find the third spy, or cell, and you’ll also be revealed to British Intelligence to be a spy, who has been turned, and is now willing to work for our side, sending false information to the Nazis. You’ll agree to that, won’t you?”
“Of course, if it keeps my neck out of the noose.”
“You’ll be a double agent. All right?”
She nodded.
“Recruited by the Germans first, but then by us.”
“Of course.”
“And so, as long as we win the war, you’ll be fine.”
“And if the Germans win, Matthew?”
“Well, you’ll have to convince them that you remained faithful to them, and that you were never a double agent, but were merely deceiving the British.”
“So, I might survive in that scenario, too?”
“You might. And I hope you would then put in a good word for me?”
“Of course, my darling.”
They kissed passionately, excited, feeling enticingly naughty.
“So, Matthew,” she continued, caressing his face, “who’s the third spy?”
“Were you ever given any contacts here?”
“No. I had no idea there were others in my midst.”
“As I said before, Scapa Flow is so important to Britain’s war effort that they put in three cells, each independent of the other, in the hope at least one, or even two, wouldn’t get exposed. You see, there are no links between them, so, when one is cracked, the other two are untouched, and can’t be compromised.”
“So, it could be Paula,” she said quickly. “She was in MI5’s pay, shopped her husband, and is now above suspicion.”
“Pretty unlikely a husband and wife would both be German spies and each would be ignorant of what their spouse was up to.”
“Why? Sounds plausible to me,” said Fiona. “Well, what about Mary Wilkinson? Have you slept with her, too?”
“Fiona,” said Matthew wearily, “this isn’t just a question of accusing a woman of being a spy because you’re jealous of them.”
“She has family connections with Lord Mendelson, remember, and he was very pro-Nazi before the war. And she seems very fond of him. And is she really so sweet? Didn’t you notice how—”
“Yes, she can be quite crafty,” he cut in. “I noticed that too at dinner.”
“I thought you would!” she exclaimed gushingly. “She’s not quite what she makes herself out to be.”
“Fiona, this from a woman who’s admitted to being a German agent, and has the occasional moment of emotional instability…”
She felt angry again, pouting at the pointed, incredulous expression on his face.
“Group Captain Jenkins is another candidate. He’s a complete blabbermouth, and can’t keep a secret…” she put forward.
“That’s true…”
“And he’s a totally repulsive character…”
“Well… And Belinda? From what she was saying, she had pro-Nazi contacts before the war, and was even the indirect means by which you were introduced to the Germans.”
“Yes, I noticed you found that very interesting.”
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“That just leaves Squadron Leader Jackson, and George Turnbill… I’ve never heard anything suspicious about Jackson.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“And Flight Lieutenant Turnbill?”
“George?” Fiona said pensively. “I don’t think he’s as bad as he seems, you know. He can be quite decent. Though, what he sees in that ghastly woman, Paula…”
“Well, he’s not the only one,” remarked Matthew.
“No?” responded Fiona, eyeing him suspiciously.
He smiled.
“Of course, before today it was possible to think the third spy could be hiding away at Headquarters somewhere, and not here in the Front Line, so to speak, but—”
“But those two shots tonight suggest it’s somebody very, very local,” interrupted Fiona.
“Yes.”
“And why do they want to kill us, or one of us?”
“I’m not sure,” answered Matthew pensively. “Remember, the third cell, or spy, assumes Freddie is probably one of the other two spies. Why else would he be being held, if not for interrogation? And it suits us for them to think that.”
“Why?”
“Because, with Freddie, and they themselves, that accounts for two cells, or spies. Remember, they don’t know you’re the third spy. If they can point the finger of suspicion at another person, then they’re in the clear.”
“You mean, if they can persuade British Intelligence that I, for example, am the third spy—which I am, but they don’t know it—then British Intelligence will have me, Freddie—who’s not actually a spy, but they don’t know that, either—and Wentworth. So, British Intelligence will think it’s got its three spies, ease up on the investigations, and leave the uncovered spy or cell to get on with their job unmolested, and able to create havoc here at Scapa Flow when the important, hush-hush meeting takes place.”
“That’s right.”
“Ironic if they try to persuade British Intelligence I’m the third spy, when, in fact, I am!”
They laughed.
“But why did they try to shoot me? Or us? How does that show I’m a spy?”
“I’m not sure yet,” answered Matthew. “But what makes you think they would try to trick MI5 into believing you were the third spy?”
