The Spy (33 page)

The Spy was on the lam.

In reconstituting
Marchaud
, England's Ultimate Female Weapon will prove an unqualified success. Within days, GOLDILOCKS will be rejoined; and the new mission pushed forward. With the German launch date just three weeks away, the Waterfall, its shadow falling across England, would have to be immediately located and destroyed. As for Valerie's position, it would be decided. She could be in serious trouble. Snapping at her heels were men without smiles; and powerful forces were converging on her life. Instructed to put the guilt on somebody else, the girl from Newton Swyre had put it where it belonged. Hidden in darkness, measuring her motives, The Spy had followed her progress. Satisfied that international bankers were using her for their own purposes, yet seeing a real future for her in the Free World, once she owned up to it, The Spy had called her, presenting her with the facts, while at the same time giving her an opportunity to do something about them. Safe in the speeding limo, Valerie Sinclair, who was putting on her lipstick, was busy mulling this over while observing the world of night:

At the moment, it was where her life was.

In that other world, the New World Order, where the megaphonic money was printed—magic act of the Tattooer's Art—arms of the Indian Snakemen, rippling in the Blackpool sun, had reached out to her, preventing her from falling. In running from them, she had brought the negative with her, a picture that could not be erased. Photographed in the secret streets and alleyways of Cockney confidence, hung on clothespins in the lawful interfaces between the Top and the Bottom; it was The Official Portrait of the Seventeen Merchant Bankers, who were the owners of the American Federal Reserve. Clipping coupons, selling occasional arms, and giving each other discounts, they were looking through the lens; holding out their hands in trust and understanding to the producers of the world, to a great and tired people, who had accepted their beneficence like the sun.

Yet Valerie wasn't fooled.

In her honest heart, she knew the picture was just a print; and that it had been retouched, long before the Camera came. Owned by Bankers, it had belonged to the man whose name was #4. Before the negative could be exposed, he had turned it over in the rain one night, at the funeral of a great man—who had betrayed his country. Loyal to banks, afflicted with vanity and self-pride, the deceased had been split down the middle.

Did you ever
...? Valerie commented, shocked.

The scrim, or backdrop of the shot, Washington D.C., was strange to her; the film having been developed before the age of recorded sound. A note, in russet India ink, on the back and in one of the comers used for mounting, had been initialed by the Photographer. Setting the timer, had he hurried to join the group? But where was he? Where was the Photographer?

Valerie looked, he wasn't there.

Elusive as the wine of Castile, and trading heavily in Spanish Futures; something new, with camera, had entered into banking. Shy, secretive, and with shadowy countenance; by 1924, he was making his mark. Sponsored by Brown Bros. Harriman, he had been elected to the Jekyll Island Club. They had given him a ring, secret to their members; and he couldn't get it off his finger. Sharing brass rails and wicker chairs, in Georgia, with Mellon, Vanderbilt, and Loeb, his name was #2.

File missing, from Blackstone's desk
.

It was winter and the voiceless streets were draped with black. Limbs of the cherry trees glazed with ice; faces were blue. Two men stood. From glove of Spanish leather to brown-pocked glove of camel, a small round box had slipped to greatcoat pocket trimmed with velvet. Inside were six tablets, shimmering like jewels: pale blue, like the light found in space. Something had passed, beneath the umbrellas, and into the hands of #4. Receiving what he valued more, for what he valued most, the other had forced him to wait: the extended handshake, unacceptable.

IN GOD WE TRUST
, was on the money; but a nation had been stolen; and the trusted god was gone. The extended hand of the German had not moved:
the fait accompli
. Beneath Spanish glove, a part of his finger, the other could feel their ring: a brand he would carry for life. How would he get it off? Well, there were ways. Now, crackling with fury, the dark sidereal rays of sounds, the antique warning...the voice, in the German head, hissing an ice-song along the glide of an alien wall. Appendage of betrayal, the hand of Warburg had trembled and dropped. Something had been thrown at his feet! Tinged with gold, glistening on frozen spikes of grass, a club card lay. It had been the privilege, of #2.

“
Nein
!”

The Spy looked up.

Tears had fallen then, like rain: numb, oppressive tears that had blotted out the sunshine of their days. In the world without witnesses, retribution would come quietly. For the one, a widebrimmed hat, destruction of his past, and exile. Costing him dearly, he would need tools. Science would come naturally to him, and truth would be his friend. He would enter discovery, and from that day on, the night would own him. He looked at Warburg, at his memories: trapped, in the small round box of the future. Forgiven, #4 had turned away: from eyes that followed him until he'd joined the funeral throng, a sea of derbies bobbing in the grey; and there, above the stairs, beyond the icy stone, he'd paused, and thought he'd seen a man without a face.

Ghostly in lamplight, Lincoln looked out into the night.

The Receipt was in the hands of The Spy.

“Rain's over,” Ryan said. The storms had stopped. She had packed away the photographs—camera too!—and was sitting up straight in her seat. Stars were blinking, windows dark.

Sunday
—! she'd heard him say.

Valerie looked. They were in some new place. Having been left out, she could feel it. Was it love? Was it in the air? Was it
him
then, had set her heart to racing? Something good was coming her way:

It was a golf ball.

Shot by a slow pro, it had landed in her lap one rainy Sunday afternoon on her way back to Blackstone's hotel. It was outside the door of the darkroom where tomcats foraged; and where she had lifted the lid, photographing its contents. There, where The Spy had left it, still stood the trash can that contained the box, that had contained the film:

That was on its way to Southwick.

Valerie, having left Hamilton's money on the dresser, and endeavouring to remember what was best about him, could see it: her photogravure of
the Secret Agent
: his hooded eyes, measuring the dark waters: tramp steamers, come from other places, black with barnacles and smelling of orange paint; their high decks, far above her and late at night, where hawsers, tin cones protecting against rats, trailed away into fog. Footsteps echoed there, under street lights; men without histories, hat brims pulled against the rain; glancing over their shoulders, and pausing sometimes, to look up at you, with eyes of steel illumed in the sudden flare of a match.

Sinclair had photographed it, the portable model of British Intelligence, from the poster of Orson Welles. Holding a cigar, and obligingly nailing her with the look of God, he had seemed to be nodding his approval. A curious position, in view of the fact that he had refused to work for them; some flap or other about Rockefeller having pulled
Citizen Kane
from its World Premier at Radio City Music Hall on a complaint by Hearst that the popular film portrayed an interlocutory relative of Dwight Eisenhower's personal lawyer. She remembered it now because Lieutenant Seymour had once confided to her, having got it from Bridley, that Orson Welles sometimes looked a little cross-eyed, as she did—a consequence of having been secretly zapped by Martians. Checking it out, photographing his motives as it were, she had come up with two prints. The first was of Seymour, who had hoped to take her to bed. The second, that of Welles himself, who'd had to settle for the El Flamingo; since the Germans, in Paris, had taken over Harry's Bar.

Unfortunately for Martin Seymour, who liked whiskey, he wouldn't be able to go there. Following his promotion, he would be too busy running the Southampton Office; when Hamilton—his Requisition for sea-duty rubber-stamped by a thoroughly blackmailed Blackstone—would join his ship, after a few days in Brighton, taking John Carrington with him:

Leaving Loot, in Manchester.

In Berlin, within months, flames would race through bunkers; bringing an end to the New World Order. Hitler, ignoring his phone bill; gobbling chocolates and unable to locate Albert Speer, would lose his credit with Schroeder; who would get a
disconnect notice
, from a man whose name was #9, from an office in the London Financial District:

Where something had entered
...

Bells were ringing; they were ringing in the fields of England. It would be years yet, but Valerie could already hear them. They were ringing for the Allies. If GOLDILOCKS was good enough for The Supreme Allied Commander, that was good enough for her! The stars were approaching midnight. The limousine was slowing. They were somewhere in Kent.

“Here's the airstrip,” Ryan said.

Cutting his lights, he pulled right, passing through gates that others didn't know about. Mist curled along the runway. She could see the plane, silhouetted against the lighter dark; and he drove out to it. He parked, opened the door for her, and she got out.

There were two men. They were part of the night.

The first, a Captain Bernstein, stepped forward and introduced himself. In dress jacket and tan slacks, sharp crease, Ike's lawyer sized her up. Technically, the Brits could press for a charge of defection, but he doubted it. The Royal Navy was in no position to take on Bull Durham again. She stood in front of him, and he seemed to be looking at a child. He had never seen anyone like her; and he was aware of her eyes: large, liquid, and overwrought with light. “Is that what they gave you to wear?” She nodded. “Turn around,” he said. She spun on her heel. Bernstein grinned, he was looking at a music box.

“Valerie, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Morris,” he advised her.

“Yes, sir, Morris.”

“And, of course, this is—” But she knew who he was and she felt that the breeze might have started to blow. At the end of the runway, leaves rustling overhead, the man without a face turned around. His features hidden by the wide brim of his hat, she was looking at shadow. High above them, clouds were moving, closing ranks against the stars. It was as though the world had suddenly shifted, to protect him.

Remember me
?

From a window of a train, the Conservatory, lights blinking in the night: “—remember me?”

“Yes,” Valerie said. It was him. “So nice to...
see
you again,” she managed. In the doorway:
he had raised his hand
. Now, he was offering it, and she accepted it, remembering the way it was: strewn about through the canvas and the familiar shelves of the Camera Shop, looking upwards at the giant tripods, and peering outwards through the night: the beaches of blood in Brittany; the flight through the rock; the photograph of Mary Gladstone; von Schroeder and Pierre; the long stretches of voices that wouldn't help her, screaming through corridors of sleep devoured by distance, and spilling out onto the rutted road, the girl at her side.

The Spy, seeing she was back and with no hard feelings, thought he might appreciate her better and he liked her grip. Having observed in her the makings of a true professional, something that he looked for in a woman, and in the same voice he'd used on the telephone, he told her the following:

“I trust my driver, Ryan, whom you have met. I trust myself—Captain Bernstein here, of course—and this same trust is extended to you. The purpose of your mission—without the knowledge of the Allies—was to obtain the secret of a new weapon. The men who trained you, were in turn trained by these men. Among these men were those who would have used it to enslave the world, and your life would have been forfeit.” He looked at her. “It is called the
Atom Bomb
.”

She had wondered what they were going to call it.

“In fleeing Germany,” The Spy explained, “Albert Einstein had to leave certain parts of it behind.”

She could understand that.

“For security reasons, sir?”

“Mum is the word, Sinclair?”

“Yes, sir. I couldn't have said it better myself, sir.”

“Excuse me—?” It was Bernstein, he had a question. The man in the trench coat listened.

“Get to work,” he said.

The Spy was considering his next move.

“We'll take care of the Royal Navy for you,” he resumed. Bernstein made a note, figuring punitive damages. “For now, I wouldn't expect them to be sending you any bills. Once they sort it out, they will probably give you a medal. Indeed, the entire Free World owes you a vote of thanks!”

“It is you, sir,” she countered, “whom they will thank. If you hadn't of called me—”

A frog croaked.

“But my dear Sinclair,” intoned The Spy, “that was to my best interest.”

She had wondered who he worked for.

Valerie looked up, the stars hung like diamonds. She still hadn't seen his face. It was not as if she
couldn't
see it—others had, hadn't they?—just that she had not been able to photograph it. A Traveler, circumspect about British Agents who wanted to take his picture, The Spy had kept her memory at bay—and a good thing, too! If she remembered what he looked like, so could others, who might try to put him in a file, marked KEEP or DESTROY. While there was little doubt that Valerie Sinclair had photographed his
motives
; what she had
not
been able to photograph, was his conscience:

Not having had one herself, until now.

Some minor fault of the lens, a blind spot as it were, she would need to polish it up. “A moment,” said The Spy. He was talking to Bernstein. The lawyer would meet her at the plane. Looking towards Ryan, The Spy nodded that they must leave.