The Best of Our Spies (40 page)

By the end of July, Quinn knew that the deception game must be over. From what he could gather from the BBC and what he overheard in the Castle, more than half a million troops had landed in Normandy and now they were breaking out of the region into other parts of France. After a bitter battle, Caen had fallen and that convinced the divided German military that there would be no invasion in the Pas de Calais after all. By the end of July the powerful German Fifteenth Army and its Panzer divisions were moved from the Pas de Calais, but it was too late. The generals – on both sides – could only ponder at what would have happened had these forces moved into Normandy straight after the invasion. The Germans had been well and truly deceived. It was no consolation to Quinn.

On Tuesday, 1 August, he left Dover Castle. Major Edgar came to collect him in a black car very similar to the one in which he had been driven away from St James’s Park on D-Day.

‘Look on this as the first day of the rest of your life, Owen. You seem to have put what happened behind you. Well done for that. There is almost no family in this country that has not suffered during the war. You have lost your wife. Imagine she was killed in a bombing raid, but how old are you now... twenty-six, twenty-seven...?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Well, that’s no age, Quinn. You have years ahead of you. Plenty of time to start a career, find a wife, have a family, nice house somewhere. Mark my words, you will just look back on this whole business as something unpleasant that happened in war. You’ll be in the same boat as thousands of other people.’

‘I doubt it.’

Edgar was gazing out of the window of the car as it sped through the Kent countryside, but was slapping Quinn’s knee in a jolly manner.

‘I know it is of no consolation to you now, Quinn, but you will have played your part in a hugely successful deception operation. Can’t go into too many details, of course Quinn, but all in all we must have saved tens of thousands of Allied lives. Germans have been giving us a hard enough time as it is in Normandy. We’ve picked up over two hundred thousand casualties in the Battle of Normandy. Something like thirty-five thousand of those killed. If we had not helped persuade them to tie up forces round the Pas de Calais, the casualty rate would have been much, much higher – and it is possible that Normandy may even have failed. If that had happened we would not have been able to invade again for years and with all this talk of the Germans getting new weapons... who knows? It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘So the end has justified the means?’

‘If you put it like that, then yes, I am afraid that in your case it has.’

‘And what happens after the war?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘With Nathalie, or whatever her real name is. Will she be arrested? I mean, where is she now?’

Edgar furrowed his brow. The thought of her being arrested had not occurred to him and he hesitated while he contemplated the thought.

‘She disappeared a couple of weeks ago, Quinn. No contact, nothing. Hard to make out what is going on in the Pas de Calais as it is still in German hands, but we do know that the resistance cell that she was with were pulled in by the Gestapo. There has been no contact at all. My guess is that once the Germans realised that there was going to be no invasion through the Pas de Calais she had outlived her use to them. They may have arrested her, who knows. She’s a smart young lady as you know, maybe she just left the area. We just don’t know. Whatever happens, I cannot see her hanging around for when our chaps roll in and come running up to one of our tanks waving the Union Jack and shouting, “Oh, by the way, I was a German spy”, can you?’

Be careful, you are talking about my wife.
‘But what about if she is arrested elsewhere in France, Edgar?’

‘For that to happen, we would have to be very lucky and she would have to be very unlucky. We do not know her real identity, never could crack that. We don’t know where she is from. Owen, we are talking about a country twice the size of this one with a population of forty million. Once the whole country is liberated, it will be chaos over there. We would not know where to start.’

‘But just say she is caught. Then what?’

A long pause from Edgar.

‘Then we shall cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?’

‘And if she turns herself in?’

Edgar laughed. ‘Nazi spies tend not to do that, Quinn.’

‘Sounds me to that it would be rather inconvenient to you if she was caught. Am I right, Edgar?’

Edgar stared out of the window. They were now entering the southern London suburbs.

‘Possibly. But have you thought how you would feel if your wife goes on trial as a Nazi spy? Anyway, I thought you’d pretty much got over it. No signs of you being too bothered while you were down in Dover, I’m told.’

‘Indeed,’ said Owen.

The rest of the journey back to London was taken up with the plans that had been put in for Owen’s life.

‘The Royal Navy are going to look after you.’ They had rented a very nice flat for him behind Marylebone High Street (‘assumed you wouldn’t want to return to the old flat, all the memories and that’). He could live there until the end of the war and then for a few months after until he sorted himself out. He was to be promoted to lieutenant-commander, with a desk job at the Admiralty that he would keep until at least the war ended and longer if he wanted. A generous stipend was to be paid when he did decide to leave. His new flat was a bit further away from work, but it had been chosen carefully: he would have no need to return to Alderney Street or even go anywhere near it. They clearly did not want to risk him getting any more upset than was inevitable. And everyone would agree on an official line regarding his wife: missing in action while on operational duties in France. Not allowed to discuss any details.

“Try and stop feeling so sorry for yourself Quinn” were Edgar’s parting words, delivered with a thin smile.

ooo000ooo

Cognac gave up at the end of July. He could not see the point of carrying on. He had performed miracles by keeping going as long as he had, but the trip to and from Dover had a valedictory air to it. Living on borrowed time, the English phrase was. He had delayed sending his final message to Berlin on the night of 7 June because he had no back up, nowhere else to go in case they managed to trace the transmission to that miserable bedsit in Clapham. So he found a room in a house in Kew and moved in there, making the final transmission to Berlin just before he left Clapham for the last time. Immediately after that last transmission he burned everything incriminating in the hearth. He took the transmitter to Kew, but only briefly. It disappeared into the Thames at high tide one night from a footpath under Kew Bridge. He took a risk throwing it in, but it was a calculated risk of the kind he had been taking every day for the past few years. Once the transmitter sank silently he knew that there was nothing to incriminate him. He had some money left and a decent identity which he had been keeping for this eventuality, which even the Germans were unaware of. But his prize possession was his ability to outwit and out-think the British, an ability which had served him so well up to now.

He would stay in Kew for a few weeks and then he had a plan. But most important of all, he had retired.

ooo000ooo

Owen Quinn behaved in the compliant way that he realised was expected of him that summer. He moved into his very pleasant flat in a neat street between Marylebone High Street and Portland Place. He turned up at work every day at the Admiralty where he found himself in an office full of charts and maps and was fastidious in ensuring he caused no trouble. He was suspicious of everyone, of course. He had no idea whether the charming neighbour in the flat next to his really did work at the Colonial Office or whether he was there to keep an eye on him. The three or four people who worked with him at the Admiralty were all pleasant enough, but whether they were really who they said they were, he had no idea. He always checked whether he was being followed, but was never sure. The truth was that what he did and where he went probably did not matter to anyone now.

He had a plan. Keep your head down, do not cause any trouble and when it is all over, go to France and try to find her.

Sitting on his own in his flat in the evening he would go through the plan, fuelled by his first glass of whisky. He would go the Pas de Calais. He would find people who knew her there. He had the brooch. Somehow, he would trace her. But by the second or third glass, he worried that it might be a fanciful plan. Edgar was right. He would not find her.
Needle in a haystack and all that. It would be impossible
. She had disappeared.

By the fourth glass of whisky he would start thinking about what he would do in the unlikely event of him ever finding her. That depended on whether he ever got onto the fifth glass, but in truth it was never really a question he could begin to answer.

On Saturday, 26 August, Owen went to visit his parents in Surrey for the first time since May. His contact with them had been minimal: he was leaving London for a while, Nathalie was away too. That was all that they needed to know and his father at least knew better than to ask.

It was a glorious weekend. The day before, Paris had been liberated and that was another significant milestone towards the end of the war. He took the train down in the morning and was planning to stay overnight. After lunch they sat in the garden, bathed in the warm sunlight and the still of the afternoon. Conversation during lunch had been easy enough; he just let his mother talk about life in Surrey and the lives of their friends and relations. But there was obviously an unspoken presence and that could not be avoided.

‘So, Owen,’ said his father, trying to be as matter of fact as possible, ‘what have you been up to?’ The question was framed in very much the same way as he when his father came home from work and enquired of Owen’s day at school.

‘Been away for work, told you that in the letters.’

‘And you cannot tell us where?’

‘You know he can’t, Marjorie.’

‘We are your parents, Owen, and we have been worried sick that you may have been in France. We had no idea of what you were doing and what was going on,’ said his mother, close to tears.

‘Well, wherever I’ve been, I’m here and I am safe, so there’s no need to worry now, is there?’

His parents shot worried glances at each other. This attitude was so uncharacteristic of their son. That woman, thought his mother. She has a lot to answer for
.

‘You must have done something right if they have promoted you. We are so proud of that. If only you had let us invite some people round today, we could have had a small celebration.’ Being the mother of a lieutenant-commander would clearly do his mother’s advancement in her social circle no harm whatsoever, if only he would play ball.

‘And this new job, Owen, at the Admiralty. Good prospects?’ said his father.

‘Possibly. Let us see what happens at the end of the war.’

‘Both your mother and I do feel that the Navy has treated you in a splendid way.’

‘Absolutely, father. I could not have been treated better.’

Time now for the other unspoken beast to emerge.

‘And... er... Nathalie. What news there? Is she still away?’

Thank you so much for asking. Everything is fine! Turns out that she is a Nazi spy and the Royal Navy who have treated me so splendidly, as you put it, arranged for her to get together with me so that they could use me as a conduit for her to pass false information on to the Germans. Then she was sent as a British spy – please keep up — to France to work with the resistance, but has now disappeared and I doubt that I will ever see her again. But don’t worry, it’s fine. At least I have a brooch and many people are far worse off than me, or so I am told.

‘No – I mean yes. No, there is no news and yes, she is still away. I think... I think I have to... to tell...’

‘Yes, Owen?’ His mother was leaning forward anxiously.

‘I think I am going to have to ask you not to raise the question of Nathalie again, if you don’t mind. It is very difficult, you see. She was sent back to France on operational work and has... well, she has disappeared.’

A long silence.

‘Owen, how dreadful. I am sorry.’ His father got up and somewhat awkwardly placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. His mother said nothing, unclear how she was meant to react.

‘I mean we just don’t know what has happened and I can really say very little, I hope you appreciate that. I just have to accept the fact that she has gone. Maybe... who knows...’

He struggled to hold in the tears now. Somehow, crying in your childhood home was much easier, having done it there before.

His father plied him with whisky, which was not something he tended to do in the afternoon, and after a long and awkward silence his mother was as tactless as ever.

‘What do we tell everyone?’

‘As little as possible please, mother. Just say she had to go back to France. Just say you cannot discuss matters, which I would rather you didn’t anyway.’

‘I always thought that a foreign marriage would not last.’

‘Marjorie!’ His father’s tone towards his mother was reproachful.

‘Well, I did. Wouldn’t have got into it if I hadn’t thought it would last.’

His mother stood up, smoothing out the front of her dress and adjusting her hair after catching sight of herself in the mirror. ‘At least there are no children. I suppose, Owen, that is one small blessing for which one ought to be grateful.’

And so on. For the first time since Nathalie had gone to France, Owen felt that there was a danger he was losing control in front of other people, even if these other people were his parents. It was out of character. He shouldn’t behave like that. He realised he needed to get a grip. If he carried on like this — the drink, the open displays of emotion — then the only thing that was certain was that he wasn’t going to find Nathalie.

By dinner that evening his parents were taking heed of his request for them not to raise the subject. His mother was back to her inconsequential tales of local life and his father talked about cricket. He suspected that his mother’s over-riding emotion was one of relief. She had never really liked Nathalie and would now no doubt consider that dislike vindicated, not that she would say so in as many words.