Three minutes. Work quickly now, Catherine. She opened the notebook and adjusted the lamp so the light shone directly onto the page. If she did it at the wrong angle, or if the light was too close, the negatives would be ruined. She did it just as Vogel had instructed and started snapping off the photographs. Names, dates, short notes written in his scrawling hand. She photographed a few more pages and then found something very interesting. One page contained crude sketches of a boxlike figure. There were numbers on the page that appeared to represent dimensions. Catherine photographed that page twice to make certain she captured the image.
Four minutes. One more item tonight: the safe. It was bolted to the floor, next to the desk. Vogel had given her a combination that was supposed to unlock it. Catherine knelt and turned the dial. Six digits. When she turned to the last number she felt the tumbler settle into place. She took hold of the latch and applied pressure. The latch snapped into the open position; the combination worked. She pulled open the door and looked inside: two binders filled with papers, several loose-leaf notebooks. It would take hours to photograph everything. She would wait. She aimed the camera at the inside of the safe and took a photograph.
Five minutes. Time to put everything back in its original place. She closed the safe door, returned the latch to the locked position, and spun the dial. She placed the block of clay in her handbag carefully, so as not to damage the imprints. The camera and the Mauser were next. She returned Jordan's appointment book to its place inside his briefcase and locked it. Then she shut off the lights and went out. She closed the door and locked it.
Six minutes. Too long. She carried everything back into the hall and placed the keys, his briefcase, and her handbag back on the table. Done! She needed an excuse: she was thirsty. It was true--her mouth was parched from nerves. She went into the kitchen, took a glass down from the cabinet, and filled it with cold water from the tap. She drank it down immediately, refilled it, and carried the glass upstairs to the bedroom.
Catherine felt relief washing over her and at the same time an amazing sense of power and triumph. Finally, after months of training and years of waiting, she had done something. She realized suddenly that she liked spying--the satisfaction of meticulously planning and executing an operation, the childlike pleasure of knowing a secret, learning something that someone doesn't want you to know. Vogel had been right all alone, of course. She was perfect for it--in every way.
She opened the door and went back into the bedroom.
Peter Jordan was sitting up in bed in the moonlight.
"Where have you been? I was worried about you."
"I was dying of thirst." She couldn't believe the calm, collected voice was really hers.
"I hope you brought me some too," he said.
Oh, thank God. She could breathe again.
"Of course I did."
She handed him the glass of water, and he drank it.
Catherine asked, "What time is it?"
"Five o'clock. I have to be up in an hour for an eight o'clock meeting."
She kissed him. "So we have one hour left."
"Catherine, I couldn't possibly--"
"Oh, I bet you could."
She let the silk gown fall from her shoulders and drew his face to her breasts.
Catherine Blake, later that morning, strode along the Chelsea Embankment as a light, bitterly cold rain drifted across the river. During her preparation Vogel had provided her with a sequence of twenty different rendezvous, each in a different location in central London, each at a slightly different time. He had forced her to commit them to memory, and she assumed he had done the same thing with Horst Neumann before sending him into England. Under the rules it was Catherine who would decide whether the meeting would take place. If she saw anything she didn't like--a suspicious face, men in a parked car--she could call it off and they would try again at the next location on the list at the specified time.
Catherine saw nothing out of the ordinary. She glanced at her wristwatch: two minutes early. She continued walking and, inevitably, thought about what had happened last night. She worried she had taken things with Jordan too far, too fast. She hoped he hadn't been shocked by the things she had done to his body or by the things she had asked him to do to hers. Perhaps a middle-class Englishwoman wouldn't have behaved like that. Too late for second thoughts now, Catherine.