The Unlikely Spy

 

"I still can't believe Heinrich Himmler actually set foot in this house," Trude said, her voice flat, as though she were speaking to herself. She was standing before a weak fire in their bedroom, ramrod straight, arms folded. In the dim light Vogel could see her face was damp and her body was trembling. "When I first saw that face I thought I was dreaming. Then I thought we were all under arrest. And then it dawned on me--Heinrich Himmler was in my parents' house because he needed to confer with my husband."

 

She turned from the fire and looked at him. "Why is that, Kurt? Tell me you don't work for him. Tell me you're not one of Himmler's henchmen. Tell me, even if it's a lie."

 

"I don't work for Heinrich Himmler."

 

"Who was that other man?"

 

"His name is Walter Schellenberg."

 

"What does he do?"

 

Vogel told her.

 

"What do you do? And don't tell me you're just Canaris's lawyer."

 

"Before the war I looked for very special people. I trained them and sent them to England to be spies."

 

Trude absorbed this information as if part of her had suspected it for a long time.

 

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

 

"I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, not even you. I deceived you in order to protect you. I had no other reason."

 

"Where were you today?"

 

It was no use lying to her any longer. "I was at Berchtesgaden for a meeting with the Fuhrer."

 

"God Almighty," she muttered, shaking her head. "What else have you lied to me about, Kurt Vogel?"

 

"I've lied to you about nothing else, only my work."

 

The look on her face said she didn't believe him.

 

"Heinrich Himmler, in this house. What happened to you, Kurt? You were going to be a great lawyer. You were going to be the next Herman Heller, maybe even sit on the Supreme Court. You loved the law."

 

"There is no law in Germany, Trude. There is only Hitler."

 

"What did Himmler want? Why did he come here so late at night?"

 

"He wants me to help him kill a friend."

 

"I hope you said you won't help him."

 

Vogel looked up at her.

 

"If I don't help him, he'll kill me. And then he'll kill you and he'll kill the girls. He'll kill us all, Trude."

 

 

 

 

 

PART FOUR

 

 

 

 

 

43

 

 

LONDON: FEBRUARY 1944

 

 

 

 

 

"Same thing as before, Alfred. She led the watchers on a merry chase for three hours and then headed back to her flat."

 

"Nonsense, Harry. She's meeting another agent, or she's making a dead drop somewhere."

 

"If she did, then we missed it. Again."

 

"Damn!" Vicary used the stub of his cigarette to light another. He was disgusted with himself. Smoking cigarettes was bad enough. Using one to light the next was intolerable. It was just the tension of the operation. It had entered its third week. He had allowed Catherine Blake to photograph four batches of Kettledrum documents. Four times she had led the watchers on long chases around London. And four times they had failed to detect how she was getting the material out. Vicary was getting edgy. The longer the operation continued in this manner, the greater the chances of a mistake. The watchers were exhausted, and Peter Jordan was ready to revolt.

 

Vicary said, "Perhaps we're just going about this the wrong way."

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"We're following her, hoping we can detect her drop. What if we changed our tactics and started looking for the agent who's making the pickup?"

 

"But how? We don't know who he is or what he looks like."

 

"Actually, we might. Every time Catherine goes out we go with her. And so does Ginger Bradshaw. He's taken dozens and dozens of photographs. Our man is bound to be in a couple of them."

 

"It's possible, certainly worth a try."

 

Harry returned ten minutes later with a stack of photographs a foot high. "One hundred and fifty photographs to be exact, Alfred."

 

Vicary sat down at his desk and put on his half-moon reading glasses. He picked up the photographs one at a time and scanned the images for faces, clothing, suspicious looks--anything. Cursed with a near photographic memory, Vicary stored each of the images in his mind and moved on to the next. Harry drank tea and paced quietly in the shadows.

 

Two hours later, Vicary thought he had a match.

 

"Look, Harry, here he is in Leicester Square. And here he is again outside Euston Station. Could be coincidence, could be two different people. But I doubt it."

 

"Well, I'll be damned!" Harry studied the figure in the photographs: small, dark-haired, with square shoulders and conventional clothing. Nothing about his appearance called attention to him--perfect for pavement work.

 

Vicary gathered up the remaining photographs and divided them in half.

 

"Start looking for him, Harry. Just him. No one else."

 

Half an hour later Harry picked him out of a photograph taken on Trafalgar Square, which proved to be the best one yet.

 

"He needs a code name," Vicary said.

 

"He looks like a Rudolf."

 

"All right," Vicary said. "Rudolf it is."

 

 

 

 

 

44

 

 

HAMPTON SANDS, NORFOLK

 

 

 

Daniel Silva's books