The Spy (10 page)

The cock was red-faced and furious. He was hurt now, and dangerous. “I'll bust ‘er bloody arse!” they heard him yell. His head snapped back with blood spewing from the ferocity of her fists! Strong arms grabbed his, and hers. She kicked—and shrieked and bit!—at whoever it was who was holding her.

It was Hamilton.

The soldier, his face a sponge, was in the grip of the Trainer.

There was a warm round of applause, and much spitting of tobacco juice. Bets were paid. Water was splashed. The sun was setting. But the Commander, with arms of iron, kept her locked.

“Jolly good. Well then, come along my dear,” said Hamilton, aware of teeth marks in his hand, “and let us have a nice relaxing dinner together. Perhaps I can talk you into a drink, hmmm? You certainly deserve one.”

He released her, and she spun round to face him.

Delivered with rage, humiliation, and white-hot tears, Valerie Sinclair's answer, exploding in Hamilton's face, echoed away across the dying fields:

“You rotten son-of-a-bitch!” she howled.

Two hours into darkness, and with the shades pulled, the light in the window was still burning. It was in the officer's briefing room, where Hamilton had finally got her calm enough to listen. It had taken some doing. When she did, she understood. The Commander had left strict instructions for them not to be disturbed.

Hamilton said, “We are going down to Cornwall. For security reasons, we will travel separately. Lieutenant Seymour will coordinate. Our launch rendezvous is a hotel called The Red Lion, in Polperro. I want you to take the night sleeper, from Inverness to London, Euston Station. From there, go by tube to the main line station at Waterloo. You'll be able to catch the afternoon express to Falmouth, where I'll meet you. Well motor to Polperro.”

The Red Lion
...

“Got it.”

Her photographic memory snapped a picture of his instructions, of the complex military directions. The Camera Shop, damaged in the fight, had opened again.

The Commander was off the hook.

“I'll pick you up in ten minutes then.”

A cold breeze was blowing. Nightbirds cut dark arches against the scarp of the hills. She waited, shivering on the porch of her billet, with her gear. Above a black and jutting Scotland, a silver moon rode low in the Mars sky.

A horn honked.

She hurried to the car and Hamilton hoisted her gear. Pierre had left earlier, booked for London. There would be just the two of them. Sinclair got in and closed her eyes. Through the gates of the ancient castle grounds the woman who was not supposed to be here was leaving as quietly as she had come. She thought back to that first night following her arrival. The Spy had looked in on her. She had tried to take his picture, but couldn't. Why couldn't she? The Commander, having checked with the man he'd assigned to her flat, and been informed of nothing unusual, had concluded that The Spy had left town.

Sinclair would settle for being alive.

After Achnacarry, which was now a permanent part of her dossier, Valerie was grateful to be going to Cornwall. Of what she had just accomplished she was not yet sure, nor did she feel in any condition to evaluate its use in the future. For now, there was no future: just fatigue.

Hamilton drove her to Inverness, where he handed her an envelope of tickets and travel cash. He reached over and opened the door and she stepped out.

“See you in Falmouth.” He saluted her with his finger, she returned it, and he drove away. Shouldering her gear, Valerie walked into the terminal.

Beneath the blue lights, dimmed from the cathedral ceiling, she stood and watched it approaching. Headlight hooded, the locomotive passed the platform, and slowed. The train braked. She boarded and found her sleeper. She undressed, and instantly fell asleep.

Blacked-out countryside thundered past and the cars swayed. She was awakened by the screeching of rails—or, perhaps, by fitful dreams of guns exploding—just in time to have breakfast. The train, its pipes hissing steam, jolted into Euston Station.

There she changed to the fast-moving tube.

She got off at Waterloo, grabbed a quick lunch in the shelter, and connected with the afternoon express to Falmouth. Adept adjustment of the Enigma Code, false information intercepted by the Germans, had gradually steered the deployment of the V1s away from metropolitan London and into the outlying countryside—but it wasn't enough.

Several had fallen last night near the area in which she now found herself. Mountains of rubble, Home Guard barriers, and emergency trucks clogged the passageways, the hastily posted detour signs causing confusion. The machine-gun sound of jackhammers, amplified in the vast tunnels and mixing with the clouds of dust, were discharging out onto the walkways. Wherever passengers were going, they were going in a hurry. Plywood short-cuts led into concrete walls. Men wearing armbands and Dunkirk helmets were directing passengers, up one corridor and down another, to their respective platforms.

Sinclair boarded the train.

A three-hour trip: she would have a compartment to herself.

As they pulled out of London, she realized why Hamilton had booked her to Falmouth, which was beyond Polperro, instead of to the Addison Street Station, which was reserved for military and where she could have connected directly to Devon. Intelligence strategy, darkly hidden, her tickets to Cornwall concealed the real purpose of the trip.

The train was gathering speed...

Some previous passenger had left a copy of the morning's paper along with an underwear catalogue jammed into the side of the seat. Published in Liverpool and dedicated to the Male Animal, it had been shipped in a plain brown wrapper.

Satisfaction guaranteed.

One glance was sufficient. Could that passenger, lurking about the train station, be a pervert? Could that pervert be
The Spy
? Apprehensive since that night in Weymouth, Valerie stared straight ahead, as if watching an invisible man on the seat across from her peering over his paper. Smiling demurely, eyelids fluttering, she zeroed in on his fly.

Spies wore underwear, didn't they?

When it came to education, she certainly didn't want to be left out! Her schedule had not allowed her much time for serious reading. Perhaps this was meant to be. Tossing the newspaper aside, she picked up the catalogue. Checking the aisle, she examined it with interest.

The color-photo section opened up on three middle-aged gentlemen, military types, enjoying whiskeys at their Club. Perched on stools, they were admiring each other's underwear. An arrow, sweeping across the page, was pointing to one gentleman's crotch: “Tastefully tailored in Madagascar Blue.” A yellow oval sticker, patterned by the catalogue's art department to resemble a banana, had been thoughtfully pasted over the place—or person, as it were—to whom the arrow was pointing. “Also available in Tropical Tan,” the oval announced.

She licked her thumb, and turned the page.

Spotlight on their new Mandrake line: “For those Magic Moments,” the advert read, “when your Lothar draws the bath.” Something to slip into, if a man dare, when the servant is out of the room. The gentleman in the photograph, a big game hunter type, had a leopard skin over his shoulder and was staring approvingly into a mirror. The hunter's underwear was in Bengal Buff. A leopard was clutching a pair of black drawers in its teeth. A more serious Sinclair sat up on her seat. Things this good usually didn't come her way.

The catalogue was vibrating.

The train, pawing like a leopard, thundered up the singing tracks and over gullies thick with jumbled railroad ties hiding barrels bound round by rusting hoops and blackbirds. The long pull of a whistle acknowledged the British Rail System to be on time. In its wake, clacking all together, the birds relanded in squawking rituals; safe once more, behind their thick protectorate of trees, within the secret Britain of the animals.

Sinclair flipped the page.

The Wildebeest Waistline. Against a background of stampeding wildebeests, thin-legged models in knee-length underwear stood stiffly against fake Roman columns or lounged backwards along the rim-seats of fountains, arms straight with hands flat behind them on the stone, a pose that more closely resembled a group of women confiding things of tremendous importance to each other. Sinclair, who didn't get it, turned the page.

One of the models, forwarded from the fountain, had the next advert all to himself. Crotch cradled in Plato Pink, standing with his open palm thrusting forth like Apollo, blazing blond hair carefully crimped, he was reading a book. Unseen by this Greek god, a unicorn was galloping towards him, head down with horn pointing straight at his Plato.

“Classic Hit,” the caption read.

Long underwear followed.

“Snow-jobs in Satin,” it began. Sinclair didn't wait. She jumped straight ahead, bypassing the explorer who was showing off his shorts in Igloo White to a roaring polar bear, not stopping until she reached the accessories section near the rear of the catalogue. Bedecked with wall plaques, it was appropriately entitled “Athletic Supporters of the Crown.”

While the jock straps from their latest Safari line, in limited lots of Lavender Lizard and Casablanca Crimson certainly
seemed
practical—attached as they were to those billybags in Badger Blue and Rhinoceros Red—it was the two-page spread at the end, The Tarzan, in which no expense had been spared, that was causing her consternation.

Suffragette, she didn't have to take it!

It was the same model who had flopped on the fountain, who had survived the unicorn, and who was now wearing a wig. Just because three bull elephants were turning up their noses at his Jade de Jane undies didn't give him any right to swing across that pond of crocodiles, using a python for a vine, while grabbing by the throat that poor defenseless lady chimp—who up to that time had obviously been cackling contentedly, and understandably so, in her own pair of Junior Jungle Jim Jockies, the poor dear having done her best to decide between these and the Daring Dan Diapers, in Small, Medium, and Large at manufacturer's close-out prices.

While supplies lasted.

Valerie was calculating on her fingers: a dozen assorted, less discount? She would have to place her order soon. Satisfied with her figures, finished with the catalogue, and rolling it up, Valerie leaned forward and stuffed it into the side of the seat across from her. She was feeling new zip in her thoughts. Her heart thumped with mystery, in tune with the bouncing of the train. Having memorized prices and stock numbers, she had photographed the address: Loincloths of Liverpool.

Why not? Mr. Loincloth's creations couldn't look any worse on her than those issued by her own government, the representative of whom would be meeting her train in Falmouth. Valerie Sinclair got up and went to the ladies' room, returning to enter into a series of energetic push-ups, pitting herself against the movements of the floor. The floor winning, she curled back up into the seat, resigned to her comer and staring out the window.

The girl browsed through the paper, then snoozed for awhile. The express, having pulled out of Bournemouth, was soon flying down the tracks again, fighting its way across the glorious countryside of Poole. Weymouth Harbor had passed behind her to her left. The channel, refracting light, was coming up. Awakened by the banging of the cars, Valerie glanced out the window, looked at her watch, and yawned. Ahead of her, the sun was running forward on the line, and she could see the locomotive. The train was slowing. She opened her compact to do her face.
Bruises
... Gathering her gear, she opened the door and entered the aisle.

FALMOUTH.

The Commander was waiting downtrain when Sinclair stepped out onto the platform. Back from Downing Street, she suspected, he appeared to be trim and rested. She recalled the part played by Leslie Howard, whom she adored, and those famous lines from
The Scarlet Pimpernel
: “Is he in heaven, or is he in hell, that damned elusive Pimpernel?”

She hastened to meet him.

Hamilton stepped out into the sun. “Well now Sinclair, had a good journey, did we?” As her superior officer, Commander Hamilton was about as romantic as yesterday's newspaper—
The Daily Telegraph
, she had left it on the train. He gave her the once-over, making notes. She was looking better since the beating: her face was powdered, and her lipstick bright.

Lips a bit puffed.

Outside the station a car pulled up. The driver, in Free French military blue, walked across the tracks to greet them. Pierre was feeling good. He had just got laid. Valerie was happy to see it was Captain de Beck.

“Lieutenant! What's going on? You look so charming.” Smiles flashed in the sun. “I realize I may have asked you before, but may I call you Valerie?” He grinned, indicating the girl with the shake of his head. “Valerie Sinclair, right?” It was addressed to Hamilton.

“Try Valerie
Marchaud
,” he said.

Her cover had arrived.

Valerie brightened. “Marchaud?”

The call from General LeClerc's headquarters at SOE had come from the Missions Research Officer, a Major Guy Farvillant, who had determined the name from records: a twelve-year old French circus performer reputedly killed by the Gestapo in the earliest days of the war. Blessed with an exceptional memory, the French child had expressed a grace far beyond her years: a normal attribute with children of the trapeze. Fascinated by her uncanny physical resemblance to Sinclair, Farvillant, genius in genealogy, had continued to follow her, eagerly exhuming dusty histories, until Valerie Marchaud had disappeared. Something odd, about the death certificate—dates left open, witnesses shot instead of the victim. Could she still be alive? Sharing this with Hamilton, the Commander had assured him it wouldn't matter. After all this time, would she still be twelve? Farvillant had to agree. Following further talks with Seymour, the French officer had turned this background, complete with its mysteries, into the girl Valerie Sinclair would become. A man whom she had never met had just renamed her, assigning her to history in the world of yet-to-be.