The Unlikely Spy

"Went off without a hitch."

 

Dogherty drove uncomfortably fast over the rolling, crumbling, single-lane track. It was a rattletrap van, badly in need of an overhaul by the sound of it. Blackout shades shrouded the headlamps. A dribble of pale yellow light tried vainly to illuminate the roadway. Neumann had the sensation of walking through a strange darkened house with only a match for light. They passed through bleak darkened villages--Holme, Thornham, Titchwell--no lights burning, shops and cottages tightly shuttered, no sign of human habitation. Dogherty was telling him about his day, but Neumann gradually tuned him out, thinking about last night.

 

They had rushed to a tube station like everyone else and waited three hours on the dank platform for the all clear to sound. She slept for a time, allowing her head to fall against his shoulder. He wondered if it was the first time she had felt safe in six years. He stared at her in the darkness. A remarkably beautiful woman but there was a distant sadness--a childhood wound, perhaps, inflicted by a careless adult. She stirred in her sleep, troubled by dreams. He touched the pile of curls that lay spread across his shoulder. When the all clear sounded she awoke like all soldiers in enemy territory--quickly, eyes suddenly wide, hand reaching for the nearest weapon. In her case it was the handbag, where Neumann assumed she kept a gun or a knife.

 

They talked until dawn. Actually, he had talked and she had listened. She never spoke except to correct him when he had made a mistake or contradicted something he had said hours earlier. She obviously had a powerful mind, capable of storing immense amounts of information. No wonder Vogel had so much respect for her abilities.

 

A gray dawn was spreading over London when Neumann slipped out of her flat. He had moved like a man leaving his mistress, sneaking small glances over his shoulder, searching the faces of passersby for traces of suspicion. For three hours he weaved through London in a cold drizzle, making sudden course changes, getting on and off buses, looking at reflections in windows. He decided he was not being followed and started back to Liverpool Street Station.

 

On the train he pillowed his head on his hands and tried to sleep. Don't fall under her spell, Vogel had playfully warned on their last day together at the farm. Keep to a safe distance. She has dark places where you don't want to go.

 

Neumann pictured her in her flat, listening in the faint light as he told her of Peter Jordan and what she was expected to do. It was the unnerving stillness about her that struck him most, the way the hands lay folded in the lap, the way the head and shoulders never seemed to move. Only the eyes, casting around the room, back and forth across his face, up and down his body. Like searchlights. For a moment he allowed himself to entertain a fantasy that she desired him. But now, as Hampton Sands vanished into the gloom behind them and the Dogherty cottage appeared before them, Neumann came to a disturbing conclusion. Catherine was not looking at him that way because she found him attractive, she was deciding how best to kill him if she ever needed to.

 

 

 

 

 

Neumann had given her the letter as he left that morning. She had placed it aside, too terrified to read it. Now she opened it, hands trembling, and read it as she lay in bed.

 

 

 

 

 

My dearest Anna,

 

I am relieved to hear you are well and safe. Since you have left me all light has gone from my life. I pray that this war will end soon so we can be together again. Good night, sweet dreams, little one.

 

 

 

 

 

Your adoring Father

 

 

 

 

 

When she finished reading it she carried the letter into the kitchen, touched it to the gas flame, and tossed it into the sink. It flared a moment, then quickly died away. She ran the tap and washed the black ashes down the drain. She suspected it was a forgery--that Vogel had concocted it in order to keep her in line. Her father, she feared, was dead. She went back to bed, lying awake in the soft gray light of morning, listening to the rain drumming against her window. Thinking of her father, thinking of Vogel.

 

 

 

 

 

17

 

 

GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND

 

 

 

 

 

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