The Spy (3 page)

Holding against the wind, they crossed over.

...With the doors unlocked, the curtains pulled, and the lights on, the Lieutenant came up with her files. Hamilton had loosened his tie, and pulled a chair. “So then, how did our Wren Sinclair stack up as a candidate?”

At the moment, no other question mattered.

The Lieutenant grinned and made a circle with his forefinger and thumb. “Better than expected on the cross-country, sir. Since she has the appearance of a girl men would want to protect, it's unlikely that anyone suspected her of being an agent.”

Hamilton made a note, it was why they'd selected her.

In the cross-country, starting out from New Forest in Hampshire, candidates for Intelligence traveled hundreds of miles across Britain: without money, and with the police looking for them, as though they were actual criminals.

“Had she been caught,” said Hamilton, “she knew the password. The local authorities, of course, would have taken care of it, but she would have been disqualified.”

In a class of six, Sinclair had been the first to arrive at the rendezvous in Cornwall. The police, put on high alert, arrested four of them right off; Sinclair had beaten her remaining competition, a trained male agent, hands down. Cycling furiously ahead of her, he had been run off the road by a speeding car, an antique Lea Francis.

Stolen from two R.A.F. pilots who had picked her up when she stopped to adjust her stocking, she had used the car to get to Bournemouth Central Station, where she had conned a member of the Home Guard out of lunch before catching the Express to Penzance while avoiding the ticket inspector. The runner-up, lucky to be alive, had escaped by diving head-foremost into a ditch.

Hamilton appeared pleased. “I've often thought that this is one of the most useful and rewarding exercises. After all, if candidates cannot cope on their home ground, how can we expect them to fare in occupied territory?”

Seymour agreed.

“Right-o. Well then, her family matters in order, are they?” Her background was already known to them. In any event, Hamilton would go over it personally with her if he decided to send her.

Seymour said, “As you know, sir, her parents have taken charge of her son—name's Brian. I'd say it's relieved her mind. Her husband was killed in action and she is still hoping he was picked up in the North Sea. You remember his destroyer, The
Glowworm
?”

Hamilton nodded. “It took on a cruiser, then rammed the battleship
Hipper
and sank straightaway. Blackstone wrote up the report himself, said it reminded him of the days of Drake and Frobisher.”

The Commodore, a banker who was not in favor of female agents, had spent the day doing battle with the Free French until—bending them to his will while at the same time giving them what they wanted—several names from the Dieppe Professionals, survivors of that disaster, had been rigorously pursued. In Bletchley Park, behind steel-trapped doors that contained the brain cells of British Intelligence; specifically, in Blackstone's office, the lights were out and negotiations were over for the day.

“Bring that lamp over here, will you Seymour? That's it. Can't do business in a bloody blackout.”

The mission clock was ticking. It was time to work.

The Lieutenant's job, aside from training the agents, was to double-check the double-checking, making sure that the parts fit. Standing at his desk, he showed Hamilton the Clearances, they went over them together.

“Bridley in, is he?”

“Bridley?”

One of the Boffins, or “back-room boys,” the civilian arm of counterespionage, Bridley and his signature were necessary links in the chain-of-command spy business, enabling MI. 5 to get on with it. Flamboyant deal-maker and a friend to Noel Coward—in war-restrictive England where homosexuality was practically a State crime—James Bridley flowed in and out of the citadels of power as smoothly as silk. Civilian assigned to Blackstone, he had just been borrowed by Seymour. The Lieutenant, who kept him on his personal Blackmail List, said that he hadn't signed yet, but that he would.

“Very good! Well, Seymour, I couldn't be more pleased.”

“About her commission, sir?” Special Operations Executive, SOE, was a joint venture between the British and the Free French. Employing
Egalité
—a political military principle of exact equality—the French would supply their own combat officer as Sinclair's partner for the mission, providing the British assured them an officer of equal rank. John Blackstone, in his deal with General LeClerc, would be expected to rubber-stamp it. LeClerc, heading up the Free French, represented De Gaulle. “The Prime Minister will issue the Crown License then—is that right? I'll have to file it by tomorrow, midnight.”

“Relax, Seymour.” Hamilton had it figured. “We have already waived her examination. Prior to the honor, the Admiralty will bounce her to Third Officer via the War Office.”

What part of the War Office? Seymour wondered.

Hamilton said: “Normally, a commission like this would be escrowed until she returned from the mission, presuming she's selected, of course.” Churchill himself would code-name the mission. Her uniform was already being issued.

A bold play. “Two rings, is that right, sir?” Female Lieutenant, line officer—it was unprecedented. Commander Hamilton would certainly get a King's Medal for this one.

“Good show, sir.”

The Commander reached for a cigarette. “Seymour, you may consider this mission as good as signed, sealed, and delivered—just as soon as we clear it with His Nibs.” Winston Churchill, expected to approve the final commission, would do so quietly.

“Commodore Blackstone, sir? Any special instructions that...?”

“I wouldn't think so, Seymour. I have absolute confidence in your abilities. Still, one never knows when the higher-ups may decide to pull a fast one.” Blackstone, he meant. “If it should come to that, you have Grimes' number.” Hamilton was considering Grimes, of the Royal Marines, for special security. A petard that might blow away Parker, and divert Blackstone should they muck about in his business at the wrong moment, Mountbatten could help him there: Grimes worked for him. Hamilton wouldn't care for Blackstone to get wind of it.

Blackstone, who was probably tapping his phone
...

“I'll take care of Bletchley Park, sir.”

“Yes, well, you know where the bodies are buried.”

Seymour didn't, but nodded. “Speaking of bodies, sir.” It was about Valerie Sinclair's husband, left unattended. “Could the poor devil still be alive? She seems to think—”

“Don't they all, Seymour? No. He wasn't picked up with the known survivors. It would be a miracle if anyone survived for more than a few minutes in that icy water.”

Seymour closed the file. He dropped it in the drawer.

“So much for the husband,” Hamilton concluded. “Let's get on with the widow.”

“Yes, sir.” Seymour read: “Two years ago, sir. The Royal Hotel. That report from Duncan—?”

“Ah yes.” The Prime Minister, enthralled, had been quick to see the possibilities, routinely channeling it to Blackstone. Hamilton had discovered it through Bridley.

“You pretty well know the rest, sir. We sent her up north... to the Ferry Pool. Her superior was Captain Gilbert. Her husband came from that area.”

Hamilton got up. He walked over, and glanced through the blackout curtains. A light rain was falling. The dockyard cranes loomed dreary in the distance.

Seymour waited.

Hamilton returned to the desk. Tray go ahead, Seymour.”

“Yes, sir. Captain Gilbert spoke highly of her. Says it seems to come natural to her to be discreet. He's of the opinion that she is absolutely trustworthy.”

“Gilbert?” Hamilton laughed. “Wonder what he's hiding?”

“Well, a little personal item I found: Geoffrey de Haviland was very much attracted to her—”

“Surely, not Sir Geoffrey!”

“Of course not, sir, his son. They hold the same name.”

“Yes...so they do.”

“She accepted his invitation to dinner. You remember, before he left...the Lord Beaverbrook matter?” Hamilton nodded, he squashed out his cigarette. “When Gilbert told her what a hero young Geoffrey was, she fell all over herself to go out with him, relaxing her code, as it were.”

Hamilton grinned. “Impressed by that sort of thing, is she?”

“Yes, sir. Though a number of pilots tried to date her, it appears that none of them had what it takes. If I may say so, sir, she left all of them waiting for Matilda—on the runway of broken hearts.”

“How very poetic of you, Seymour. Is that how you wrote it up in the report?”

“No, sir.” His cheeks were turning pink. “I just thought I would...throw it in.”

“I see. Well, throw it out. What else?”

“She tries very hard to excel. She seems to have a great deal of endurance, sir.”

“Essential,” said Hamilton. “Tell me, how did she do in the self-defense and offensive action?”

“A bit shy, sir.” Seymour ticked off the negatives. “Hasn't made up her mind yet whether or not she wants to kill. I think she would, sir, but—well, she's a bit of a rum one, if you know what I mean.”

“Unpredictable, Seymour?”

“Yes, sir.” On an impulse, Seymour had asked her to load his revolver. Within seconds, he had sensed she could use it: she was pointing it at him....

“Go on, Lieutenant.”

“Well, sir, under actual conditions, Wren Sinclair could stand up to the best of them. In that case, we made it absolutely clear to her that one chance is all she might get.”

“Quite right,” murmured Hamilton, who loved nothing better than a victory. He would need one, in France. “What about her French?”

Seymour was reading her bio, rife with mysteries. “Fluent.” The Lieutenant had found the page. “From all reports—”

“—yet SOE was not able to validate any schooling for it.”

“No need for it, sir. The vicar taught her. Perhaps he was suspicious of British standards. Being part Egyptian, I would say his actions were understandable.”

“A logical deduction, Seymour.” Egyptians were not normally acceptable to Westminster Abbey. “His heritage part of the Church Record, is it?”

“Family secret, sir. Edward Crewe, her father, is the son of a British officer...Egyptian mother. Happened during the Cairo Uprising.”

“What about the girl's mother?”

“English and Maltese, sir.”

“Hmmm. Interesting. Well, of course, the question is not how well their daughter speaks French, but whether she'll pass muster while doing so, against the agents of the Gestapo in Brittany.”

“Yes, sir, I agree.”

“Churchill,” Hamilton said, “is of the opinion that our last fifteen agents were doomed to death before they left England, under the assumption that training—memory, habit, and clever acting ability—constitutes an agent's reasonable bet. It does not. For example,” the Commander revealed, “the back-room boys have determined the Germans are advanced in the detection of accents.
Abwehr
may recognize immediately a British woman trying to appear French, or even a French woman trained in Britain. Certain attitudes and patterns of behavior, Seymour—mannerisms of speech and conduct—simply cannot be faked.”

“Yes, sir,” Seymour acknowledged. “I can see that.”

“If you can see it, so can the Germans.” Hamilton's first loyalty was to himself, a fact pleasing to Churchill, who was of the same cut. If mistakes had been made, he was not going to repeat them. “‘What one man can invent another can discover,'“recited Hamilton to Seymour, quoting Doyle for Holmes.

The Baker Street Irregulars, one of myriad civilian agencies, named tongue-in-cheek for their address at 221½ Baker Street, made famous by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, had been taken over by the Boffins, the shadow men of counterespionage. Occasionally, thanks to Bridley, the Southampton office had been known to raid them.

“By the way,” Seymour asked him, “where is Bridley?” He would need him by tomorrow night for the signature. Neither man knew. Hamilton told him he might check with Lieutenant Parker.

Conrad Parker: Keeper of the Codes.

The Lieutenant's brown eyes flashed with hard recognition. His own recommendations had disappeared into the shuffle on Parker's desk. From now on, Hamilton assured him, this mission would stay their mission, and free of red tape. Requiring an agent of a different stripe, it brought them back to Valerie Sinclair.

“I've never met anyone quite like her, sir,” the Lieutenant had been trying to put his finger on it, “but I'd say it's the way she thinks. If I may say so, sir, her logic is definitely...
peculiar
.”

“Call her a spy,” Hamilton said.

“Before you make your decision, sir, I think you should see something that came in today.” It was a photograph. “I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid it's Mary Gladstone....”

She had been missing since Christmas.

Sent by
Abwehr
, German Intelligence, and salted with cinnamon, the packet had arrived from a blank address in London. Postmarked Marley Square, a commercial banking district, it had proved impossible to trace according to the rider from Blackstone. The spice, enclosed as an insult, was a reference to the British Tea & Mercantile Company, a firm answerable to the Admiralty.

Hamilton felt his jaws tightening.

“Obviously, she's about to be executed.”

Hamilton looked. An 8 × 10 enlargement of the photo taken by the Gestapo, it was the picture of a creature in pain, of a naked woman, mostly skeletal, with lifeless black hair, and forced into an upright position amid tufts of dead grass. Her wrists and ankles were scarred with lesions from months of chains and handcuffs, and her eyes had retreated into secrets so terrible he could not follow them. The long translucent hand, extended forward and positioned to cover her sexual parts, connected her to a world forsaken through the eye of the Wollensak lens, which had delivered her back into this room. Seconds later, the shot would have rung out. Its sound in his mind was all that was left of the bravest heart he had ever known.