Authors: Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy (30 page)
But she had melted into the darkness and was gone.
When Peter Jordan arrived home he went into his study, picked up the telephone, and dialed. He identified himself, and a pleasant female voice instructed him to remain on the line. A moment later he heard the English-accented voice of the man he knew only as Broome.
24
KENT, ENGLAND
Alfred Vicary was being stretched to the breaking point. Despite the intense pressure to capture the spies, Vicary had kept his old caseload--the Becker network. He had considered asking to be relieved of it until after the spies had been arrested, but he quickly rejected the idea. He was the genius behind the Becker network; it was his masterpiece. It had taken countless hours to build and countless more to sustain. He would keep control of it and try to capture the spies at the same time. It was a brutal assignment. His right eye was beginning to twitch the way it did during final examinations at Cambridge, and he recognized the early symptoms of nervous exhaustion.
Partridge was the code name of a degenerate lorry driver whose routes happened to take him into restricted military zones in Suffolk, Kent, and East Sussex. He subscribed to the beliefs of Sir Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist, and he used the money he made from spying to buy whores. Sometimes he brought the girls along on his trips so they could give him sex while he drove. He liked Karl Becker because Becker always had a young girl stashed away and he was always willing to share--even with the likes of Partridge.
But Partridge existed only in Vicary's imagination, on the airwaves, and in the minds of his German control officers in Hamburg. Luftwaffe surveillance photos had detected new activity in southeast England, and Berlin had asked Becker to assess the enemy activity and report back within one week. Becker had given the assignment to Partridge--or, rather, Vicary had done it for him. It was the opportunity Vicary had been waiting for, an invitation from the Abwehr to transmit false intelligence about the ersatz First United States Army Group being assembled in southeast England.
Partridge--according to Vicary's concocted scenario--had driven through the Kent countryside at midday. In fact, Vicary had journeyed the same route that morning in the back of a department Rover. From his perch on the leather seat, wrapped in a traveling rug, Vicary imagined the signs of a military buildup an agent like Partridge might see. He might see more military lorries on the road. He might spot a group of American officers at the pub where he ate lunch. At the garage where he stopped for petrol, he might hear rumors that nearby roads were being widened. The information was trivial, the clues small, but totally consistent with Partridge's cover. Vicary couldn't allow him to discover something extraordinary like General Patton's field headquarters; his Abwehr controllers would never believe an agent like Partridge was capable of that. But Partridge's small clues, when incorporated into the rest of the deception scheme, would help paint the picture British Intelligence wanted the Germans to see--a massive Allied force waiting to strike across the Channel at Calais.
Vicary composed Partridge's message as he rode back into London. The report would be encoded into an Abwehr cipher and Karl Becker would transmit it to Hamburg late that evening from his cell. Vicary envisioned another night with little or no rest. When he finished the message, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window, wadding his mackintosh into a ball for a pillow. The swaying of the Rover and the low rumble of its engine lulled him into a light fitful sleep. He dreamed of France again, except this time it was Boothby--not Brendan Evans--who came to him in the field hospital.
A thousand men are dead, Alfred, and it's all your fault! If you had captured the spies they'd be alive today!
Vicary forced open his eyes and caught a glimpse of the passing countryside before drifting off again.
A thousand men are dead, Alfred, and it's all your fault! If you had captured the spies they'd be alive today!
Vicary forced open his eyes and caught a glimpse of the passing countryside before drifting off again.
This time he is lying in bed on a fine spring morning twenty-five years ago, the morning he made love to Helen for the first time. He is spending the weekend at the sprawling estate owned by Helen's father. Through his bedroom window, Vicary can see the morning sun gradually casting a pink light over the hillsides. It is the day they plan to inform Helen's father of their plans to marry. He hears the gentle knock at the door--in his dream it sounds exactly the same--and turns his head just in time to spot Helen, beautiful and fresh from sleep, slipping into his room wearing nothing but a white nightgown. She climbs into bed next to him and kisses him on the mouth.
I've been thinking about you all morning, Alfred darling.
She reaches beneath the blanket, unties his pajamas, and touches him lightly with her long, beautiful fingers.
Helen, I thought you wanted to wait until we
were--She quiets him by kissing his lips.
I don't want to discuss it anymore. We have to hurry, though. If Daddy finds out he'll kill us both.
She straddles his hips, carefully, so she doesn't hurt his knee. She lifts her nightgown and guides him with her hands. There is a moment of resistance. Helen presses down harder, utters a short gasp of pain, and he is inside her. She draws his hands to her breasts. He has touched them before but only through her clothing and stiff underwear. Now they are free within her gown and they feel soft and wonderful. He tries to unbutton her gown but she won't let him.
Quickly, darling, quickly.
When it is over he wants her to stay--to hold her and do it all over again--but she quickly straightens her nightgown, kisses him, and hurries back to her room.
I've been thinking about you all morning, Alfred darling.
She reaches beneath the blanket, unties his pajamas, and touches him lightly with her long, beautiful fingers.
Helen, I thought you wanted to wait until we
were--She quiets him by kissing his lips.
I don't want to discuss it anymore. We have to hurry, though. If Daddy finds out he'll kill us both.
She straddles his hips, carefully, so she doesn't hurt his knee. She lifts her nightgown and guides him with her hands. There is a moment of resistance. Helen presses down harder, utters a short gasp of pain, and he is inside her. She draws his hands to her breasts. He has touched them before but only through her clothing and stiff underwear. Now they are free within her gown and they feel soft and wonderful. He tries to unbutton her gown but she won't let him.
Quickly, darling, quickly.
When it is over he wants her to stay--to hold her and do it all over again--but she quickly straightens her nightgown, kisses him, and hurries back to her room.
Vicary awakened in the eastern suburbs of London, a slight smile on his face. He had not found the first time with Helen disappointing, it was just
different
from what he expected. The sex of his youthful fantasies always involved women with enormous breasts who screamed and cried with ecstasy. But with Helen it had been slow and gentle, and instead of screaming she smiled and kissed him tenderly. It was not passionate but it was perfect. And it was perfect because he loved her desperately.
different
from what he expected. The sex of his youthful fantasies always involved women with enormous breasts who screamed and cried with ecstasy. But with Helen it had been slow and gentle, and instead of screaming she smiled and kissed him tenderly. It was not passionate but it was perfect. And it was perfect because he loved her desperately.
It was that way with Alice Simpson too, but for other reasons. Vicary was fond of her; he even supposed he might be in love with her, whatever that meant. More than anything else he enjoyed her company. She was intelligent and witty and, like Helen, a touch irreverent. She taught literature at a minor school for girls and wrote mediocre plays about rich people who always seemed to have cathartic, life-altering discourse while sipping pale sherry and Earl Grey tea in a handsomely furnished drawing room. She also wrote romantic novels under a pseudonym, which Vicary, while not a fan of the genre, thought were rather good. Once Lillian Walford, his secretary at University College, caught him reading one of Alice Simpson's books. The next day she brought him a stack of Barbara Cartland novels. Vicary was mortified. The characters in Alice's novels, when they made love, all heard waves crashing and felt the heavens raining down on them. In real life she was shy and tender and somewhat ticklish, and she always insisted on making love in the dark. More than once Vicary closed his eyes and saw the image of Helen in her white nightgown bathed in morning sunlight.
His relationship with Alice Simpson had lapsed with the war. They still spoke at least once a week. She had lost her flat early in the blitz and stayed in Vicary's house in Chelsea for a time. They saw each other occasionally for dinner, but it had been months since they had made love. He realized suddenly that this was the first time Alice Simpson had entered his thoughts since Edward Kenton, walking across the drive of Matilda's cottage, had spoken Helen's name.
HAM COMMON, SURREY
The large, rather ugly three-story Victorian mansion was surrounded by a pair of perimeter fences and a picket to shield it from view from the outside world. Nissen huts had been erected around the ten-acre grounds to house most of the staff. Once it had been known as Latchmere House, an asylum and recuperation center for victims of shellshock during the First War. But in 1939 it was converted into MI5's main interrogation and incarceration center and assigned the military designation Camp 020.
The room into which Vicary was shown smelled of mildew, disinfectant, and vaguely of boiled cabbage. There was no place to hang his coat--the Intelligence Corps guards went to great lengths to guard against suicide--so he kept it on. Besides, the place was like a medieval dungeon: cold, damp, a breeding ground for bronchial infection. The room had one feature that made it highly functional--a tiny arrow slit of a window through which an aerial had been strung. Vicary opened the lid on the Abwehr-issue suitcase radio he had brought with him, the very one he had seized from Becker in 1940. He attached the aerial and switched on the power. The lights glowed yellow as Vicary selected the proper frequency.
He yawned and stretched. It was eleven forty-five p.m. Becker was scheduled to send his message at midnight. He thought, Damn, why does the Abwehr always choose such god-awful hours for their agents to send messages?
Karl Becker was a liar, a thief, and a sexual deviant--a man without morals or loyalty. Yet he could be charming and intelligent, and over the years Becker and Vicary had developed something approaching a professional friendship. He came into the room, sandwiched between a pair of hulking guards, hands cuffed. The guards removed the cuffs and wordlessly went out. Becker smiled and stuck out his hand. Vicary shook it; it was cool as cellar limestone.
There was a small table of rough-hewn wood and a pair of haltered old chairs. Vicary and Becker sat down on opposite sides of the table, as if facing off for a game of chess. The edges of the table had been burned black by unattended cigarettes. Vicary handed Becker a small package and, like a child, he opened it right away. In it were a half dozen packets of cigarettes and a box of Swiss chocolates.
Becker looked at the things, then at Vicary. "Cigarettes and chocolate--you're not here to seduce me, are you, Alfred?" Becker managed a small chuckle but prison life had changed him. His lustrous French suits had been replaced with a dour gray overall, neatly pressed and surprisingly well fitted through the shoulders. Officially he was on a suicide watch--which Vicary thought was absurd--and he wore flimsy canvas slippers with no laces. His skin, once deeply tanned, had faded to a dungeon white. His taut little body had assumed a sudden discipline imposed by small places; gone were the flailing arms and abandoned laughter that Vicary had seen in the old surveillance photographs. He sat ramrod straight, as though someone were holding a gun to his back, and arranged the chocolate, cigarettes, and matches as if he were laying down a boundary across which Vicary was not to venture.
Becker opened a packet of cigarettes and tapped out two of them, giving one to Vicary and keeping one for himself. He struck a match and held it out to Vicary before lighting his own cigarette. They sat in silence for a while, each studying his own spot on the cell wall--old chums who have told every story they know and now are content just to be in each other's presence. Becker savored his cigarette, rolling the smoke on his tongue like an excellent Bordeaux before blowing it in a slender stream at the low stone ceiling. In the tiny chamber, smoke gathered overhead like storm clouds.
"Please send my love to Harry," Becker finally said.
"I will."
"He's a good man--a bit on the dogged side, like all policemen. But he's not a bad sort."
"I'd be lost without him."
"And how's brother Boothby?"
Vicary let out a long breath. "As ever."
"We all have our Nazis, Alfred."
"We're thinking of sending him over to the other side."
Becker, laughing, used the stub of his cigarette to light another. "I see you've brought my radio," he said. "What heroic deed have I done for the Third Reich now?"
"You've broken into Number Ten and stolen all the prime minister's private papers."
Becker threw his head back and emitted a short, brutal burst of laughter. "I hope I'm demanding more money from those cheap bastards! And not the counterfeit that got me into trouble last time."
"Of course."
Becker looked at the radio, then at Vicary. "In the good old days you would have left a revolver on the table and let me do the deed myself. Now you bring a radio made by some fine, upstanding German company and let me kill myself a dot and a dash at a time."
"It is a terrible world in which we live, Karl. But no one forced you to become a spy."
"Better than the Wehrmacht," Becker said. "I'm an old man, like you, Alfred. I would be conscripted and sent off to the East to fight the fucking Ivans. No, thank you. I'll wait out the war right here in my pleasant little English sanitarium."
Vicary glanced at his watch--ten minutes until Becker was scheduled to go on the air. He reached inside his pocket and withdrew the coded message Becker was to send. Then he took out the photograph taken from the passport of the Dutch woman named Christa Kunst. A look of distant recollection flashed across Becker's face, then dissipated.
"You know who she is, don't you, Karl?"
"You've found Anna," he said, smiling. "Well done, Alfred. Well done indeed. Bravo!"
Vicary sat like a man straining to hear distant music, hands folded on the table, making no notes. He knew it was best to ask as few questions as possible, best to allow Becker to lead him where he wanted. Like a deer stalker, Vicary made no movements, stayed downwind. His cigarette, untouched, burned to gray dust in the metal ashtray at his elbow. Through the arrow-slit window he could hear an evening rainstorm smacking on the exercise yard. As always Becker started the story somewhere in the middle and with himself. He held his body with a regimental stillness for a time, but as the story built he began waving his arms and using his precise little fingers to weave a tapestry before Vicary's eyes. Like all Becker monologues there were blind alleys and detours for accounts of bravery, moneymaking, and sexual conquest. At times he would lapse into a long speculative silence; at other times he would tell it so quickly he would be overcome with a fit of coughing. "It's the goddamned damp in my cell," he said by way of explanation. "That's one thing you English do very well.
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