The Officer and the Spy, page 7
M.M:
You don’t agree?
#17:
I’m not sure.
[Silence]
M.M:
Are you feeling unwell? Would you like to rest?
#17:
No, no. I was simply thinking. You see, perhaps I’m a cynic, but I find it just a shade too… tidy, too [searches for word] coincidental, that one should discover one’s real love, a love that can truly last a lifetime, in one’s first infatuation.
M.M:
You really believe that?
#17:
Yes.
M.M:
Truly?
#17:
Have I not just said so?
M.M:
You have. I apologise.
#17:
You don’t sound at all sorry.
M.M:
No?
#17:
No. And you look as though there’s something else you want to say.
M.M:
Do I?
#17:
Yes, so please do say it.
M.M:
Can I be blunt?
#17:
I would much rather you were. As I’ve mentioned, I have little time, and even less energy, for interpreting subtext.
M.M:
I am sorry about that.
#17:
Yes, yes. And, so?
M.M:
Well, you can be very compelling. Very convincing.
#17:
I suppose so.
M.M:
You’ve told me yourself that you’ve fooled many people.
#17:
Yes…
M.M:
I can’t help wondering if this time, with regard to the validity of first love, if… Well…
#17:
Well?
M.M:
Well, to be blunt, if it’s yourself that you’re trying to fool. To assuage your guilt.
[Prolonged silence]
#17:
That really was very blunt.
London, 1940
Chapter Five
St James’s Park, November 1940
‘I say, do you by chance have change for a shilling?’
The question broke into Eleni’s reverie as she sat on her usual bench beside the lake, the remnants of her lunchtime sandwiches on her lap. She glanced up to see the man who’d spoken, eyes streaming in the instant at the glare of the low winter sun spraying across the water behind him. She had a stinking cold. Too many nights trying to sleep in the damp Anderson shelter with Helen and Esther. She couldn’t remember the last time the siren hadn’t had them scrambling from their beds, on a blind dash through the blackout for the shelter. What it felt like to wake from a full night of sleep. A warm one…
And oh, she was going to sneeze again. Hastily, she yanked her kerchief from her sleeve, containing first one eruption, then another, the third, a charm. And, the fourth…? No.
No fourth.
Shuddering, she put her kerchief away.
‘Bless you,’ came the man’s voice.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and thought of Esther, with her funny beliefs. You’ll kill a fairy. ‘Here… ’ She reached for her purse. ‘I’m sure I have something. Oh, hang on.’ She dropped her purse, reclaimed her kerchief. The fourth sneeze, after all. ‘Sorry.’ She wiped her nose, pressed the backs of her wrists to her eyes. ‘I think that was the last.’
‘You poor thing.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look like you should be sitting beside a fire, with a bowl of soup, not on a cold park bench.’ The man gestured at the ducks on the bankside, hungrily eyeing her crusts. ‘Even they’re shivering.’
She laughed.
He did too, expelling a puff of ice.
He wasn’t shivering. He was dressed snugly for the frozen November day, in a smart raglan overcoat, trilby hat, leather gloves and scarf. He was in his thirties, she guessed, now her vision had cleared and she could see him properly; clean shaven, and refined. If she hadn’t been so bunged up, she was sure she’d have been able to smell an expensive cologne – the kind that came in a crystal decanter and lingered in the stuffy, stale air of the Cabinet War Rooms on King Charles Street. She’d been working down there since the start of the war. A typist, after all. (Her grandma in Sutton would have been so proud, had the pair of them still been on speaking terms.) Really, this man struck her as being cut from just the same cloth as the politicians and generals who paced the subterranean corridors there. He had the same assured smile, the perfectly polished shoes. He was even wearing a signet ring. She spotted the tell tale impression beneath his leather glove, and, habitually playing the game she amused Esther with, sitting at her first-floor window, sketched in his background: school at Harrow or Eton, university at Oxford or Cambridge. And a year travelling around Europe after graduation. (A lot of them in the War Rooms had travelled; they loved to chat to her in their schoolboy Greek.) He’d have a house in the country, a family flat here in town that his politician father used too, and would be called Rupert, or Edward, or Hector, or some such. Frankly, it disappointed her that he didn’t have the correct change.
He was the sort that should.
‘A shilling, yes?’ she said, reclaiming her purse, opening the clasp.
‘If it’s no trouble.’
‘Not at all. You’re in luck.’ She fished out sixpence and some loose pennies, proffered them in the flat of her own gloved hand. ‘Will this do?’
‘Perfect.’ He dropped his shilling into her palm, extracted the coins from hers. ‘You know—’ he closed his leathered fist around the pennies ‘—your face is most awfully familiar.’
‘Is it?’
‘It is.’ His smile grew. ‘We’ve met.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sure not.’
‘I’m sure of it. Have you been to any parties recently? The Callaghans’?’
‘No.’
‘Tony Hicks’s, then?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘Leighton’s?’
‘Leighton?’ She blinked her sore eyes, feigning recognition. ‘Angus Leighton?’
‘Yes… ’
‘No.’ She laughed, wiped her nose again. ‘I don’t know an Angus Leighton.’
‘How very odd that I do.’
He certainly was smooth. ‘Isn’t it just?’
‘Ha—’ he raised his fist ‘—I’ve got it now.’ She was sure he didn’t. ‘You were at the Café Royal on Friday.’
‘Was I?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ she repeated. ‘But aren’t you social?’
‘Hmmm,’ he said, appearing to consider it. ‘What were you doing on Friday?’
‘I was at the pictures,’ she lied, since what did it matter to him?
‘Seeing what?’
‘Gone with the Wind.’ Her nose tingled. Her eyes gushed again. She drew breath, braced for another sneeze…
None came.
She hated it when that happened.
‘Did you like it?’
‘What?’
‘Gone with the Wind?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You must be the exception.’
‘Nothing wrong with that.’
She smiled, politely, and reached for her handbag, deciding it was time to make a move. Talking to strange men who professed to know you was hardly encouraged at King Charles Street (careless talk may give away vital secrets), and whilst she honestly doubted this man was a fifth columnist trying to charm her into betraying state information – truly, he was Eton to a T – she was starting to suspect he could well be interested in charming her into something else, and she was hardly in the mood for that either.
‘I’d better run,’ she said, scattering her crusts to the ducks, rendering them hysterical. ‘I only have a few minutes left of my lunch break.’
‘Well, now, that’s a fib.’
She stopped short. ‘Excuse me?’
He met her stare, calm and steady. ‘I said you fibbed, Miss Adams. Miss Carter isn’t expecting you back at King Charles Street for another—’ he consulted his watch ‘—twenty-eight minutes. And you weren’t at the pictures on Friday. You were at home, with Esther and your landlady.’
She said nothing, stilled by shock.
He didn’t speak either. Just appraised her.
For a few disorientated moments, it was as though everything around her retreated – the frenzied ducks, the steely barrage balloons in the sky, the traffic in the distance – and there was just her and this man, with his polished shoes, polished voice, and strange knowledge.
Then she breathed, coming back to herself.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Hector Herbert.’
Hector. It gave her no satisfaction that she’d been right about his name. Or at least, very little satisfaction. She was far too uneasy to be smug.
She couldn’t think what was happening.
‘You’re a very believable liar,’ he went on, unsettling her more.
‘I might say the same to you,’ she somehow managed to riposte.
He narrowed his eyes, then laughed, shortly.
‘I was sceptical,’ he said. ‘I really was. I’m old-fashioned, I admit. But I can see it.’
‘See what, exactly?’
He didn’t reply. He stepped back, letting a woman with a perambulator go by.
A wind gusted across the water, lifting his scarf, stinging Eleni’s stuffy nose, her flushed cheeks.
‘I think it’s worth us talking more,’ Hector said, once the woman had passed, still not answering Eleni’s question. ‘Shall we walk?’ He gestured at the wet, glinting footpath, in the opposite direction to where the woman had headed.
Eleni didn’t move.
‘Miss Adams?’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until you tell me what it is you see, how you know when my lunch hour ends, or what I was doing on Friday. Or, for that matter, why you’ve just been pretending you don’t know who I am.’
‘I was simply drawing an impression. Weighing up whether there was any point in us proceeding.’
‘You were testing me?’
‘I still am.’
‘Oh, wonderful.’ She was growing angrier the more confused she became. She very nearly told him as much, and that she had no interest in being tested by him, or anyone, any further. Then she realized that if she did that, she might well never discover what any of this was about. It would simply become a strange thing that had once happened. She was far too curious to allow that.
Besides, he spoke first. ‘Are you afraid, Miss Adams?’
‘Do you want me to be?’
‘No, I assure you. And you’re quite safe. I’m not your enemy. I… ’ He broke off, glanced briefly around them, hazel eyes alert beneath his trilby, then brought his attention back to her. ‘I must remind you, now, that you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act.’
That made her look at him twice. ‘I’m aware.’
‘Everything I say from this point on is bound by that.’
She frowned. ‘Who are you?’ she asked again.
‘Have you heard, Miss Adams, down in your hallowed chambers, of an organisation called the Special Operations Executive?’
She stared.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I see you have. So, please—’ he gestured at the footpath again ‘—let’s walk.’
She didn’t return to her typewriter that afternoon.
They did call by King Charles Street. Eleni insisted, despite Hector’s assurances that her superior, Miss Carter, had been told not to be alarmed if she didn’t reappear, wanting to be certain all was above board. ‘Forgive me, Mr Herbert, if I’m not completely inclined to take you at your word.’
‘Are you inclined now?’ he enquired drily, when after a brief, to-the-point conversation with Miss Carter, she reappeared at ground level.
‘I’m becoming that way.’
‘I’m so pleased.’ He set off, along the busy Westminster pavements, compelling her to follow. ‘We’ve started off as liars, Miss Adams. Let’s see if we can learn to trust. Might I call you Eleni?’
‘You might, Hector. Just as soon as you tell me what’s going on.’
‘Yes, yes.’ He turned for the road, looked left at the buses, right at the taxicabs, preparing to cross. ‘We need to go somewhere quieter first. Walls have ears, especially around here.’
‘Where are we going?’
He darted off. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Baker Street?’ she persisted, running to catch up. It seemed as good a guess as any. The offices of the Special Operations Executive had recently moved there. She’d typed up several dossiers now on the covert organisation’s growing number, their activity in occupied France.
‘A pub actually.’ He raised his voice above the clang of an approaching fire engine’s bell. There was always somewhere burning in London at the moment. ‘We’ll get you a hot toddy.’
She didn’t not like the sound of that.
The pub was in Vauxhall. It took them a half-hour to reach it, along the chill London streets. Whilst they walked, Hector remained tight-lipped about why he’d approached Eleni, enlightening her instead on the myriad disconcerting things he knew about her, presenting her with each fact of her life much as though he were a magician, revealing his hand of cards.
In the shadows of Westminster Abbey, he listed her school certificate scores, which had been respectable, then the names of all her old headmistresses, her house mistresses, a select few of her classmates. As they passed Victoria Tower Gardens (stopping briefly for Eleni to succumb to another sneezing fit), he moved from her school days, to her secretarial diploma, then her first agency post, with the Greek shipping company, Lemos & Pateras Ltd, in 1937, and her second, at Lloyds Bank, in 1938. He informed her that both employers had supplied him with character references, as had several staff at the War Rooms, all of which he professed himself satisfied with, as indeed he was with her final qualification, in conversational German, which she’d studied for at the same time as her diploma, learning to speak it quite passably.
‘Sehr gut,’ he said, speaking it too.
Strangely, he didn’t ask her what had motivated her to take such a course.
For the time being, he asked her nothing at all.
They reached the river, where the bank’s mud had frozen solid, and he kept talking, detailing how she’d turned twenty-three on 24 September, and had celebrated over lunch with her fellow typists, eating cake in St James’s Park, but not with her father, because he, now a Vice Admiral with the navy, had been off sailing somewhere in the Atlantic, ever since she’d turned twenty-two.
‘And do you know how I celebrated that birthday?’ she asked, with a raised brow.
‘No. No one mentioned that detail in their references.’
‘A hole, Hector.’ She tsked, blew her nose. ‘How lax of you.’
She teased, not because she found it funny that he’d investigated her so thoroughly, but because she felt quite violated, shaken by how oblivious she’d been to it going on, and didn’t want him to guess as much. He might perceive it as weakness, possibly use it as a mark against her in his test. She didn’t want that either.
She wanted to pass his test.
She’d started to suspect what it might be for.
She’d been silently picking it over while they’d been walking, racking her stuffy mind for any plausible reason that he, an agent of the SOE, whose entire raison d’être was running covert operations behind enemy lines, might be interested in her, a secretary. Whichever way she looked at it, she could only find one reason. A reason that felt at once ridiculous, yet heart-quickeningly possible. A reason she was almost afraid to acknowledge, in case she was wrong.
Except, maybe she wasn’t wrong.
He’d been so pleased she knew German.
Sehr gut.
And when they reached the pub in Vauxhall – a small, shabby affair with criss-crossed tape on its windows, and jars of pickled eggs on the bar – he ordered their drinks, led her to a small, private backroom, and commented on what a world away it must all feel from the tavernas of Crete.
‘Yes,’ she said. Oh my God. ‘Quite a world.’
‘You must miss it,’ he said, gesturing for her to sit at the room’s only table, beside a stuttering, coal-rationed fire. ‘It’s been such a long time since you were there.’
‘You know that too, do you?’
‘I do.’
Fighting to stay calm, her pulse not really cooperating, she sat, as directed, sipped her hot toddy, shivered at the tingling warmth of rum, lemon and spices coating her sore throat, then set her glass down.
‘I don’t think I need you to tell me what’s going on,’ she said, deciding as she spoke that if she was right about it, he should know she’d worked it out. Surely it would count as a tick in her favour. ‘I think I might have guessed.’
‘Really?’ He leant back in his chair, peeling off his gloves, studying her.
She waited for him to say something else.
He didn’t.
‘I know what the SOE does,’ she said, filling the silence. She didn’t go into more detail. She hardly needed to familiarise him with the work of his own people, fluent in French, who were dropped into occupied France to aid the resistance. ‘What I also know is that, at this very moment, whilst you’re weighing up whether you’re wasting your time with me, Italy is attacking the Greek mainland, and it probably won’t be long before Germany arrives to support them.’ That much had been all over the papers since the end of October, when Metaxas had rejected Mussolini’s ultimatum to be allowed free passage for his troops through Greece, and Mussolini had invaded. Eleni had been combing the broadsheets morning and night, hungry for details of Greek counter-offensives, torturing herself with images of bombs dropping in Athens, jackboots marching into Crete. But, for now, she buried her panic, kept her fear from her face. No weakness. ‘What I also feel sure of,’ she continued, ‘is that you’re aware my mother was Greek.’
