Code Name Verity (36 page)

She took a drag on the cigarette-pen, steadying herself.

‘She was the only one who could see it. Before the ink dried I closed my fingers and smeared the figures to an illegible blur. I picked up the pages she'd finished with and shuffled them together.

‘“That's
mine
,” she said.

‘I knew she wasn't talking about the pile of loose paper and card I was stacking. She was talking about the archive reference I'd written in my hand.

‘“What use is it to you?” I asked.

‘“No use,” she answered. “Not any more. But if I could . . .”

‘“What would you do with it?” I asked quietly. “What should
I
do with it?”

‘She narrowed her eyes like a cornered rat. “Set fire to it and blow this place to blazes. That would be the best thing to do with it.”

‘I held her stack of paper tight against my chest. Her instructions. She looked up at me with that challenging, accusing squint, you know?

‘“Anna the Avenging Angel,” she said, and then she laughed at me. She
laughed
. She said, “Well, it's your problem now.”'

Anna threw her finished cigarette into the Poitou and lit another.

‘You should go home, Käthe,' she said suddenly. ‘This English girl who sells motorbikes to Jews, this Maddie Brodatt – she'll get you in trouble. You should go home to Alsace tomorrow, if you can, and let Maddie take her own chances.'

Get Käthe out of the picture before anything happens – that makes sense. It'll be far safer for the Thibauts. Although I hate to go back into hiding. Tomorrow night I'll be back in the barn loft, and it's even colder there now than it was in October.

‘What about you?' I asked.

‘I'm going back to Berlin. I applied for a transfer weeks ago, when we started interrogating her and that pathetic French kid.
God
.' She shuddered, smoking furiously. ‘What shitty jobs they give me. Ravensbrück and Ormaie. At least when I used to requisition pharmaceuticals for Natzweiler I didn't have to see what they did with them. Anyway I'm only here till Christmas now.'

‘You might be safer here. We're bombing Berlin,' I said. ‘We've been bombing it for nearly two weeks.'

‘Ja, I know,' she said. ‘We listen to the BBC too. The Berlin Blitz. Well, we probably deserve it.'

‘I don't think anyone deserves it really.'

She turned suddenly and gave me a hard look with those pale, glass-green eyes. ‘Except the Castle of Butchers, right?'

‘What do
you
think?' I challenged angrily.

She shrugged and turned to head back to the Place des Hirondelles. She was out of time.

You know who she reminded me of – this is crazy. She reminded me of Eva Seiler.

Not of Julie normally, not really, but of Julie when she was angry. Made me think of her telling me the story of her mock interrogation under SOE training, in flat violation of the Official Secrets Act – the only time I can ever remember her chain-smoking the way Engel does, and swearing like a dockworker. ‘And six hours later I knew I couldn't take it any more but I was just
damned
if I'd give in and say my name. So I pretended to faint and they all panicked and went running for a doctor. Bloody fucking
bastards
.'

Engel and I didn't say much on the way back. She offered me another cigarette, and I had a moment of rebellion.

‘You never gave any to Julie.'

‘Never gave any to Julie!' Engel gave an astonished bark of laughter. ‘I damn well gave her half my salary in cigarettes, greedy little Scottish savage! She nearly bankrupted me. Smoked her way through all five years of your pilot's career!'

‘She never said! She never even hinted! Not once!'

‘What do you think would have happened to her,' Engel said coolly, ‘if she had written this down? What would have happened to me?'

She held out the offered cigarette.

I took it.

We walked quietly for a while – two chums having a smoke together. Aye, right, miss.

‘How did you get Julie's story?' I asked suddenly.

‘Von Linden's landlady did it for me. He had it at the desk in his room and while he was out she dropped the whole thing into a bag of linens to be washed. Told him she'd used it to light the kitchen fire – it
does
look like a pile of rubbish, all those damned recipe cards and the scratched-out forms.'

‘He
believed
that?' I asked, astonished.

She shrugged. ‘No choice. She'll suffer for it – milk and eggs cut to a limited supply strictly for her lodgers – the whole family under curfew in their own house, so they can't sit up in the evening, bedtime straight after supper. She has to do all last night's dishes in the morning before she makes breakfast for the guests. The children have all been strapped.'

‘Oh NO!' I burst out.

‘They've got off lightly. The children could have been taken away. Or the woman sent to prison. But von Linden's a bit soft on children.'

I'd left my bicycle in a street leading to the square. Just as I was taking hold of the handlebars Anna put her hand over mine. She pressed something heavy and cold and thin into my palm.

It is a key.

‘They asked me to bring some soap to scrub her up with when she had that interview,' Anna said. ‘Something scented and pretty. I had some I'd got in America, you know how you save things sometimes, and I managed to make a print in it of the key for the service door at the back. This is a new one. I think you have everything you need now.'

I squeezed her hand fiercely.

‘Danke, Anna.'

‘Take care, Käthe.'

At that moment, as though she'd called him up by saying his name, Amadeus von Linden himself turned the corner of the street, walking towards the Place des Hirondelles.

‘Guten Tag, Fräulein Engel,' he said cordially, and she dropped her cigarette and crushed it out with her foot and straightened her back and her coat collar all in a rush of practised panic. I dropped my cigarette too – seemed the right thing to do. She said something to him about me – she linked arms with me quickly, as though we were old chums, and I heard her say Käthe's name, and the Thibauts'. Introducing me, probably. He held out his hand.

I stood there absolutely frozen for about five seconds.

‘Hauptsturmführer von Linden,' Anna prompted gravely.

I put the key in my coat pocket with the architect's drawings and my forged ID.

‘Hauptsturmführer von Linden,' I repeated, and shook hands with him, smiling like a lunatic.

I've never had a ‘mortal enemy'. I've never known what it meant even, something out of Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare. How can my whole being, my whole life up to this point, be matched to one man in deadly combat?

He stood gazing through me, distracted by his own colossal problems. It never occurred to him that I could tell him the secret coordinates of the Moon Squadron's airfield, or give him the names of half a dozen Resistance operatives here in his own city, or that I was planning to send his entire administration up in flames in five days. It never occurred to him I was in every way his enemy, his opponent, I am
everything
he is battling against, I am British and Jewish, in the ATA I am a woman doing a man's work at a man's rate of pay, and my work is to deliver the aircraft that will destroy his regime. It never occurred to him that I knew he'd watched and made notes while my best friend sat tied to a chair in her underwear having holes burnt in her wrists and throat, that I knew he'd commanded it, that I
knew
that in spite of his own misgivings he'd followed orders like a coward and shipped her off to be used as an experimental lab rat until her heart collapsed – it never occurred to him that now he was looking at his master, at the one person in all the world who held his fate right between her palms – me, in patched hand-me-downs and untrimmed hair and idiot smile – and that my hatred for him is pure and black and unforgiving. And that I don't believe in God, but if I did,
if I did
, it would be the God of Moses, angry and demanding and OUT FOR REVENGE, and

—

It doesn't matter whether I feel sorry for him or not. It was Julie's job and now it's mine.

He said something polite to me, his drawn face neutral. I glanced at Anna, who nodded once.

‘Ja, mein Hauptsturmführer,' I said through clenched teeth. Anna gave me a sharp kick in the ankle and leaped in to make an excuse on my behalf. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the crackle of thick paper 70 years old, and the new key weighing heavy in the seam of the threadbare woven wool.

They nodded to me and walked on together. Poor Anna.

I liked her very much.

Käthe's gone back to Alsace and
I'm waiting for the moon again – everything in place and we've had confirmation of a bomber fly-past planned for Sat. night – whether or not Op. Verity is successful they're sending a Lysander for me, at the field I found, on Sunday or Monday – all of it weather permitting and of course assuming we can collect the Rosalie. Jolly difficult to sleep and when I do I just have nightmares about flying burning planes with faulty chokes, being forced to cut Julie's throat with Etienne's pocket knife, etc. If I wake up yelling three times a night there's not much point in trying to hide. I am flying alone.

Burning burning burning burning –

Behead me or hang me

That will never fear me

I'll burn Auchindoon

Ere my life leave me

Ormaie is still on fire in my head. But I am in England.

I am back in England.

You know – perhaps I will be court-martialled. Perhaps I will be tried for murder and hanged. But all I feel is
relief
– relief – as though I've been underwater and breathing through a straw for the last two months, and now I have my head in the air again. Gulping in long, sweet lungfuls of it, cold, damp, December air, smelling of petrol and coal smoke and freedom.

The irony is, I'm not free. I am under house arrest here in The Cottage at the Moon Squadron aerodrome. I am locked in my usual bedroom, the one I used to share with Julie, and I have a guard beneath my window too. Don't care – feels like freedom. If they hang me they will do it cleanly, break my neck instantly, and I will deserve it. They won't make me betray anyone. They won't make me watch it happening to anyone else. They won't incinerate my body and turn it into soap. They'll make sure Granddad knows what happened.

Julie's Bloody Machiavellian Intelligence Officer has been sent for so he can interview me. I trust he will do it without resorting to a soldering iron and ice water and pins. Cups of tea, perhaps. I dread my interrogation for a number of reasons, but I'm not afraid of it.

Can't believe how safe I feel here. Don't care if I
am
a prisoner. Just feel
so safe
.

Incident Report N
^o
2

Successful sabotage and destruction of Gestapo Headquarters, Château de Bordeaux Building, Ormaie, France – 11 Dec. 1943

My reports are so rubbish.

I know the Allied Forces are planning a proper invasion of Occupied Europe with tanks and planes and gliders full of commandos, but when I think of France being liberated I picture an avenging army arriving on bicycles. That is how we all came into Ormaie on Saturday night, all of us from different directions, all with our baskets and panniers crammed with home-made bombs. The sirens didn't go till after curfew and we all did a
lot
of nervous skulking – I bet there was an explosive bicycle behind every single newspaper kiosk in Ormaie – I myself lay underneath a lorry for at least two hours with one of Mitraillette's mates. Thank goodness for Jamie's boots.

We had to blow the back gate open – bit of a risk, but there was no one about once the air raid was under way, and of course we had the key to let ourselves in after that. It was the blasted
dogs
I was dreading coming face to face with more than anything else. Poor old dogs, not really their fault. I needn't have worried, as Mitraillette was merciless.

I feel like I should write in objective detail. But there's not much to report. We were fast and efficient, we knew exactly where to go – we operated in teams of 2 or 3 and each team had its own specific section and assignment – shoot the dogs, unlock the doors, corral the prisoners, unload the bombs. Get the hell out. I'd say we were in and out in half an hour. Certainly no more than three-quarters of an hour – not too many prisoners to release, as it's not technically a prison – 17 in all. No women. But –

I did this on purpose, I assigned myself and my partner to free whoever was in Julie's cell. I hadn't really thought about what it would mean to have to walk through that interrogation room it is attached to –

Thankfully there was no one there, but
oh
– I can hardly bear to think about it.
How it stank
. It makes me retch just remembering. We walked in and it hit us in the face and for a moment I couldn't do anything except gasp and try not to be sick, and the French lad with me staggered a bit and grabbed me to support himself. Of course we were operating by the light of electric torches, so we couldn't really see anything – dim outlines of institutional furniture, steel chairs and tables and a couple of cabinets, nothing obviously sinister, but
oh
, it was the most sick-making, hellish stench I've ever breathed – like a full privy, but also ammonia and rotten meat and burnt hair and vomit and – no, it was
indescribable
and it's making me want to throw up again writing about it. It wasn't till afterwards that I even thought about Julie having to live with that smell for eight weeks – no wonder they scrubbed her up before letting her meet Penn – anyway we didn't think about
anything
but getting out of there as fast as we could without suffocating. Pulled our coats up over our noses and got to work on the door of Julie's cell, and we dragged its bewildered inhabitant out with us through that horrible room and into the corridor.