The Spy (5 page)

She entered the Dorothy Cafe, and looked around.

Commander Hamilton was already there. He came over immediately and escorted her to a back booth. “Well now!” the Commander said briskly, after they were seated. “Unfortunately, we all have to eat.” He had skipped breakfast. “You don't suppose they might have bacon and eggs, do you?” He stared forlornly at the card. Sausage and Mash? It was one of two. “Let's see, the fish sounds good....” One left over, from Tuesday.

A nature lover, she could see the fish swimming: “The fish? Yes, that does look good, doesn't it?”

“Supposed to be food for the brain, and all that—” He paused, embarrassed at the platitude.

Valerie waited.

The Commander placed their orders. They chatted awkwardly until the steaming platters arrived. When the waitress had gone, Hamilton said: “The reason for this meeting is too important to be discussed over the telephone. However, before going into it, I wanted to make sure that you have a proper lunch.”

He had come, prepared to deal.

“Thank you, sir.” They could have had a proper lunch at the Gloucester. She poked at her food, searching for some good bits. Hamilton's first priority was the mission. He had to find out if she would go. He looked up. “Now, for the trip I have in mind for you....”

“For me!”

In response to her startled words, he waved her silent.

Customers were looking and he concentrated on his plate. Valerie's fish had turned into a skeleton. A trip? What kind of a trip? Something good? If they were sending her back to the Ferry Pool, they could forget it! The customers were making their way to the door. Hamilton watched them go, thinking how best to phrase it. “Lieutenant Carrington will be out for the rest of the afternoon. This being the case, I have planned to meet with you in his office after lunch. Think we can arrange that?”

“I'll be there,” she said.

The Commander ordered tea. Waiting for it to arrive, he gave her orders, work to do. Finally, he put his cup down, and smiled. “Tell me, Wren Sinclair,” Hamilton said at last. “If your country asked you to do a very special thing, something that nobody else had ever been able to do, and you found out—from me, for example—that you could get an officer's commission in the Royal Navy, just by doing this thing, would you?”

“I don't think so,” she said.

“My thoughts exactly,” observed Hamilton, trying to recover. “Why, indeed, should one give one's life to one's country, unless one's country is willing to give something to one's life?”

“Yes, sir. My thoughts exactly, too,” said Sinclair.

“Well, now,” said Hamilton, “we seem to be getting somewhere. Let me tell you what I have in mind...” As the meal progressed, he lowered the boom...

Oh, blimey!

“What I mean is,” Hamilton said, “is that you certainly wouldn't want to do it...without the glory, would you?”

Sinclair was chomping on a bone. The bait he had offered at the end of his hook was suddenly missing.

“I wouldn't think so,” she said.

Seymour had her right!

She had doubts? He would defuse them. “The reason we sent you to Northwest England,” he stated, “was to acquaint you with basic military procedure.” As Gilbert's secretary, half her time had been spent polishing her nails. “Also, because what we initially had in mind for you, and still do, is of such import and has taken such an inordinate amount of planning that it became essential, early on, to keep you out of harm's way”—he glanced over his shoulder, lowering his voice—“until we were ready, you see, to bring you into it.” Churchill had made him wait. In the British view of war, where the means justified the ends, Hamilton was earning his pay.

She was staring at him, her lips partially open.

“More tea?”

Double whiskey?

“No? Of course, one would still be called upon to volunteer. For security reasons”—she was coming—“we were not able to tell you until now. Naturally, there will be battle pay in it for you. We're terribly sorry, you understand, about that little matter with the Ferry Pilots, but—”

“Say no more, sir!” All was forgiven. Gilbert, forgotten.

Hamilton arched an eyebrow. “Are you all right, Sinclair?”

“Yes, sir. I'm sorry I shouted, sir.”

“Tut.”

They needed her!

“Glad to hear it,' said Hamilton, and he tied his fish to the boat. “Well then, just to bring you up to date, your safety and well-being, as I said, have become of the utmost importance to us. Should you have any problems, any problems at all, you see, I want you to feel absolutely free to share them with me.” He was thinking of Loot.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I will.”

She looked at him. There was something clean about him, something decent. What is more, he had the power to help her. This above all, he had just made clear. From this day forward, she would take him at his word.

“Well, now that I think about it, there
is
something that's been bothering me, sir.” Suspicious, it sprang to the top of her mind. “It's about what happened to me last night....”

“Last night? Indeed!”

“Yes, that's right.” She told him of her encounter with the man in the trench coat, who didn't seem to have a face, and of the mysterious driver: tall man, dark coat. Her decision not to go home, she saved for last, trying to make light of it. The Commander listened intently. She finished, staring into her cup.

“Can't recall his face, you say?”

Sinclair shook her head.

“You mean, you didn't
see
it.”

“No, I mean, he didn't
have
one.”

She was sticking to it.

“Well now,” the Commander observed, “trench coats are not to be taken lightly, especially in the summertime.” She hadn't thought of that. As for the man's face, he concluded, he had probably been backlit, leaving her looking up into a light.
A mask
? Her descriptions, sharp as snapshots, clearly identified the man as foreign. Certainly, not one of his. He thought of Parker. Blackstone up to something? Something he didn't know about? Could that something be a someone? Could that someone be The Spy?

Something had entered into Hamilton's thinking
...

“It's nothing, I'm sure, but...”

Commander Hamilton checked his watch and reached for a cigarette. He clicked the lighter, returned it to his pocket, and said simply, “All precautions for your safety must be taken at once. At
once,”
he emphasized. “I'll assign a man to your flat.” He called for the check. “In fifteen minutes then.”

He walked out of the cafe.

Valerie waited a few moments, then arose and returned to the office. Was she really in for a commission?

Ruddy luck, what!

She crossed the yards, sidestepping cable. The sun was blistering; and she made a note to get some Coppertone. She thought hopefully of Blackpool. Battle pay, he had said. Was she really going to war? A trip, he had said. Was she being transferred to Ireland? Were they sending her—but where
were
they sending her? At least, she gathered, he would follow her to the office in fifteen minutes or so, for security reasons. And then...well, then she would know.

She would get a tan! Sunglasses, too!

During lunch, he had asked her to have the detailed French maps available. These would show them where the Allied units were presently fighting. They were certainly not fighting anywhere near Ireland. She unlocked various cabinets, removing secret scrolls. Maybe he would send her to Africa, or Lisbon. Within minutes, what he had asked for was ready.

Hamilton was coming up the stairs.

He knocked quietly on the door. Upon entering he put his fingers to his lips; then walked to the windows, near to where Valerie stood. He leaned over, and looked out. He closed them. There was no window immediately above or below them. The Commander felt along all the undersides of the desks, the windowsills, and the mantelpiece. Before the war, Carrington's office had been part of a suite of a luxury hotel. Joining her on the far side of the room, where the maps were, and where the two of them could not possibly be seen, he said: “You may wonder why I am taking all these precautions, but believe me, sometimes even walls have ears.”

“I understand, sir.” There were placards all over the place. She walked over and looked down into the wastepaper basket. “Bugs, in this office?” She looked up. “I think it safe to say, sir, that one can trust Lieutenant Carrington.”

“Umm.” Hamilton nodded.

Valerie smiled, she was loyal.

“But one never knows, what? Well, I am going to put the cards on the table and tell you exactly the problems we have in France.”

France?

“Yes, sir.”

He cleared his throat.

“There has been great difficulty keeping in touch with the French Underground—air raids, electronic interference, that sort of thing—and now that we have a slight foothold in the country, the help and knowledge of the French would be invaluable.”

“Yes, of course,” the girl replied.

“In spite of large German forces being held at Calais, the plans found on a dead British officer—we washed up one of our own, you see, on a Spanish beach—indicated the main invasion would come just there, at Calais. To throw off von Rundstedt, hmmm?” He had unrolled the map—“Put that inkwell on it, will you? Thanks. The Germans are piled up here”—he pointed—“consequently, the American, Omar Bradley, and his divisions at Omaha and Utah beaches have not yet been able to move inland and capture Cherbourg”—pointer, sweeping north—“Montgomery, in command of the British and Canadians, had much better luck at these beaches, managed to move inland but they have been stalled near Caen for over two weeks.”

“That's a long time, sir.”

“Indeed! But we had an overlap, you see. During those first six days, ‘the Fairway'—that's the path of entry for the ships—closed at 1630 hours, before dark. Gave our chaps a chance to get home before the nightly U-boat activity. Supply and deployment got bottled up, and they are still trying to sort it out. Monty tells us the Germans are blocking the advance with tanks, artillery, anything that can be mustered.”

“I have been of the opinion that General Montgomery is very cautious,” said Valerie, quoting Carrington, “and will not risk getting his men killed if the odds are too great.”

“That's your observation, is it? You should hear Eisenhower's. Now then, one of the things we need to know—and fast—is how much time do we have? How much longer will the German 15th Army be fooled into thinking our main invasion, under Patton, will come at Calais?”

It was Operation BODYGUARD. She knew that Operation OVERLORD was Normandy. When Hamilton had asked her, she had lied....

“I have no idea,' she murmured.

“Of course not, of course you don't my dear. But these issues must be addressed. Even more important, is to find out where the launching platforms are located for their flying bombs.”

“The V1's, sir?”

“Exactly,” Hamilton said. “We know they intend to go all out with it, to launch against us en masse, in an effort to finally destroy our cities. The V1's are already falling, and you can imagine the uproar, should the public find out that even deadlier ones may be on the way. So you see, we must take care of the matter at once.”

“At once...of course, sir.”

“However, there's a bit more to it than that.” His tone had changed, the room seemed to have grown quiet. Valerie was aware that it was difficult for the Commander to speak. Like all good Operatives, it was hardest for him to share what he most needed to reveal. “We suspect—” he took a deep breath—“a weapon even more ominous—not necessarily this atomic thing that Einstein and his people are tinkering with—but something more immediate, and awesome, in terms of Britain. A weapon that, if deployed, will render us absolutely defenseless against it.”

“You mean, worse than Coventry, sir?”

“Yes, perhaps so.” Hamilton cocked his head. “Yes, if deployed, most certainly...worse than Coventry.”

Fifty thousand homes destroyed, four thousand victims...

Valerie felt her blood run cold.

She looked up at him, as if for assurance, and his eyes were grey and calm. He held death in his mind, where truth was; and she could not know it. By the eve of Coventry, MI.5 had cracked the German Enigma Code. Informed of Berlin's plan to destroy the city, Churchill had opted to sit tight, rather than tip the
Luftwaffe
. Withheld from the public, this “nondisclosure” had been safely filed away with Blackstone at Bletchley Park. Smacking of gingerbread and Gordon and Lewis Carroll—officially, the Government Code and Cypher School, or “Golf Course”—this Victorian estate north of London formed the last refuge for survivors from the world of Palm Beach suits; sexual pariahs who had been flushed out, or reluctantly recruited, by the demands of war: men like Alan Turing, who had deciphered the German Enigma, and James Bridley; delicate and creative men from the fashion, film, and theatrical districts, who were its undisclosed, often embarrassing,
cohabiteurs
.

Bletchley had seen red.

“Why, those ponces are no better than the bloody Indian snakemen down at Blackpool, sir!” Commodore Blackstone had blustered.
Snakemen
. Men with tattoos, he'd meant: Cockneys and concessionaires and that sort. Blackpool, by the sea, favored by shopgirls like Valerie Sinclair, who had delighted in its summers.

“Sir?”

A few seconds had passed. He had been thinking of something. Neither of them had moved. He was describing the monster, made of metal; information so terrible that even as he spoke, he himself could be suspect. Resumes could be rigged, changed..... Then what of hers? “Under pain of death,” Hamilton now reminded her, “you have recently signed the British Official Secret's Act.”