"Usual routine. Ran the watchers all over the West End for about an hour and a half. She finally went into a cafe and gave us a break for a half hour. Then to Leicester Square. She made one pass across the square and headed back to Earl's Court."
"No contact with anyone?"
"None that we observed."
"What about on Leicester Square?"
"The watchers didn't see anything."
"The letter box on Bayswater Road?"
"We confiscated the contents. We found an unmarked empty envelope on top of the pile. It was just a ploy to check her tail."
"Dammit, but she's good."
"She's a pro."
Vicary made a church steeple of his fingers. "I don't believe she's out there running around because she likes fresh air, Harry. She either made a dead drop somewhere or she met an agent."
"Must have been the train," Harry said.
"Could have been bloody anywhere," Vicary said. He thumped his arm on the side of the chair. "Dammit!"
"We just have to keep following her. Eventually, she'll make a mistake."
"I wouldn't count on that, Harry. And the longer we keep her under tight surveillance, the greater the chances are that she'll spot the tail. And if she spots the tail--"
"We're dead," Harry said, finishing Vicary's thought for him.
"That's right, Harry. We're dead."
Vicary tore down his church steeple to free his hands to smother a long yawn. "Did you talk to Grace?"
"Yeah. She ran the names every way she could think of. She came up with nothing."
"What about Broome?"
"Same thing. It's not a code name for any operation or agent." Harry looked at Vicary for a long moment. "Would you like to explain to me now why you asked Grace to run those names?"
Vicary looked up and met Harry's gaze. "If I did, you'd have me committed. It's nothing, just my eyes playing tricks on me." Vicary looked at his wristwatch and yawned again. "I have to brief Boothby and collect the next batch of Kettledrum material."
"We're moving forward then?"
"Unless Boothby says otherwise, we're moving forward."
"What are you planning for tonight?"
Vicary struggled to his feet and pulled on his mackintosh. "I thought some dinner and dancing at the Four Hundred Club would be a nice change of pace. I'll need someone on the inside to keep an eye on them. Why don't you ask Grace to join you? Have a nice evening at the department's expense."
42
BERCHTESGADEN
"I'd feel better if those bastards were in front of us instead of behind us," Wilhelm Canaris said morosely as the staff Mercedes sped along the white concrete autobahn toward the tiny sixteenth-century village of Berchtesgaden. Vogel turned and glanced through the rear window. Behind them, in a second staff car, were Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler and Brigadefuhrer Walter Schellenberg.
Vogel turned away and looked out his own window. Snow drifted gently over the picturesque village. In his foul mood he thought it made the place look like a cheap postcard: Come to beautiful Berchtesgaden! Home of the Fuhrer! He was annoyed at being dragged so far from Tirpitz Ufer at such a critical time. He thought, Why can't he stay in Berlin like the rest of us? He's either buried in his Wolfschanze in Rastenburg or atop his Adlersnest in Bavaria.
Vogel had decided to make something good out of the trip; he planned to have dinner and spend the night with Gertrude and the girls. They were staying with Trude's mother in a village a two-hour drive from Berchtesgaden. God, how long had it been? One day at Christmas; two days in October before that. She had promised him a dinner of pork roast, potatoes, and cabbage and, in that playful voice of hers, promised to do wonderful things to his body in front of the fire when the children and her parents had gone off to bed. Trude always liked to make love that way, somewhere insecure where they might be caught. Something about it always made it more exciting for her, the way it had been twenty years ago when he was a student at Leipzig. For Vogel the excitement had gone out of it long ago. She had done it--done it intentionally--as punishment for sending her to England.
Watch me and remember this the next time you're with your wife.