A Treachery of Spies Read online

  She hunts through the file – Donaldson, Dupries, Danailov – until she finds a name that might be French: Sophie Destivelle.

  Four identical photographs are fastened to it with tiny paper clips. The face is familiar, framed in a lop of dark hair, the features cat-shaped, pale, too-big eyes—

  She turns back, holding it up by her own face, as to a miniature mirror. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘I can see that. Why?’

  His pipe has gone out. He lays it on the floor and leans back, hands linked behind his head. ‘Amélie, think. If the Boche got hold of these files, would you rather they read glowing reports of agents we had sent into the field? Or reports of miserable failures who have been packed off into obscurity?’ He tilts his head. She thinks he may be laughing at her. ‘If any of what’s on the first card were true, you would never have got this far. Trust us. We are neither blind nor irretrievably stupid.’

  She has never thought that. Still, something is not right. He is watching her too closely, testing. She has passed all of their tests. She will pass this one. She has to.

  He says, ‘Everyone is given a cover name when they go into France. The owner of this one no longer has a use for it.’

  A dribble of sweat slides down her spine. ‘Who was she?’

  ‘A Frenchman, like you. She ran an escape network down south, running out of Marseilles. When it was burned, she got out over the Pyrenees.’

  His voice is edged in black, like a telegram. We regret to inform you …

  Thinly: ‘How did she die?’

  He has to think before he answers, sift through his words as if language is a forest with too many trees and not quite enough wood. ‘She went through the same training as you, but earlier: she finished around the time you were sprinting up the hills out the back there, carrying big lumps of wood. She was good. She got as far as Ringwood and the parachuting. You’ll remember, I imagine, how excessively careful the ground staff were about packing the chutes, to make sure none of them candled?’

  Before her eyes, his hands make the actions: right hand high, fingers folded together, plummeting, and then pouf, left hand at floor level, fingers all spread open, for the impact.

  ‘No.’ She slides the file back into the cabinet, slides the drawer shut and makes for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ He catches her as she grasps the handle. He is fast and strong, but he has left his gun by the chair, and she may have made elementary mistakes with her breaking and entering, but her unarmed combat is exemplary.

  She does throw her elbow to his throat this time, leans against his grip, all her weight down until he stumbles, off balance, choking.

  She’s kept herself between him and the door. With her free hand, she reaches again for the handle.

  ‘Don’t!’ Quickly, he says, ‘You know if you leave, you’re finished?’ His voice is muffled by the floor.

  ‘I got out of France. I can get back in again.’ It wasn’t the original plan, but just now she’s angry enough to do it, and deal with the consequences after.

  She eases the knife from her pack. Breathless, he says, ‘Amélie! Don’t be a fool. There are three men outside the door. You’re good, but not that good. If you kill me, you’re dead. Is that what you want?’

  Fuck you all.

  She lets go of the knife. She still has his arm rocked across his back in a grip framed to cripple. She leans on it, harder. ‘I don’t work with liars.’

  He doesn’t scream yet, but she hears the change in his breath. Tightly: ‘Every soul in this whole bloody war is a liar to themselves or somebody else.’

  ‘Why did you kill Sophie Destivelle?’

  ‘Why would you kill someone who wanted to work with you?’

  That’s easy. Why did she ever kill anyone? ‘She was selling you to the Boche.’

  She feels him nod. His breathing is becoming wetter. Hoarsely, he says, ‘If we’re going to talk, may I be allowed to sit up?’

  He is slow to rise, rubbing his elbow and wrist. Back at his chair, he has the sense not to pick up his weapon. He does refill and relight his pipe. His hands are steadier than they have any right to be, steadier than hers.

  Smoke blurs the space between them. She waits.

  He says, ‘Hitler is desperate to discover the date of the Allied invasion. If you had the Führer breathing down your neck demanding answers, what would you do?’

  ‘Burn a line. Catch the organizers, turn one of them, and send him back as if he, himself, were escaping.’

  ‘Exactly. Sophie Destivelle’s line was burned. There was a shootout. She was the only one who escaped.’

  Something sinks in her stomach. ‘Like me.’ Her throat is dry. Her hands are wet.

  ‘Exactly so.’ His gaze rests on her face. She keeps it still. She has played against more dangerous men than Laurence Vaughan-Thomas. ‘And as we have recently established, nobody expects a girl.’

  The silence stretches. When it is clear he is not going to break it, she says, ‘At Ringwood, when we jumped, my parachute didn’t candle.’

  ‘It didn’t, did it?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We are making you an offer. Work for us, Amélie. Actually work for us. Let it be true.’

  What is truth? A pack of cigarettes lies on the desk. Without asking permission, she takes one, lights it, and blows a hazy smoke ring.

  The taste unlocks her throat. Her hands are steady now. She is better than him at this. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  He gives a small, short laugh. ‘Go back to Kramme, of course. What else?’

  No! Thin, hot vomit hits the back of her throat. She swallows it down, burning, tastes the sour fat of the mutton, retches again. ‘I can’t go back to Paris. I can’t.’ She’s not playing now.

  ‘He’s not in Paris any more. He’s been posted to Saint-Cybard, in the Jura mountains.’ She has never heard of it. He says, ‘The trains come through it to and from Germany on their way to Paris and down to Lyon, or they used to. The local Maquis are proving quite effective at stopping them.’

  ‘Maquis?’ This is a new word. She frowns at him.

  ‘The rural Resistance. The Boche started rounding up men to send to the slave factories in the east. In the cities, there was nothing they could do. In the villages, they took to the hills and lived off the land. They’re making themselves useful, derailing trains and so forth.’

  A handful of peasants hiding in the woods blow up the occasional bit of railway track and a Boche officer – this Boche officer – has been sent to torment them? There’s only one reason that could happen. ‘You are sending them weapons. They will hit the Boche in the back when you invade.’

  ‘Well done. Very well done.’ He smiles round the stem of his pipe, as if she has produced the proof of a knotty equation. ‘Saint-Cybard may yet prove to be one of the most strategically important locations on the map. And Sturmbannführer Maximilian Kramme, as you know, is a past master at identifying those who hate him most and then bending them to his will. We are concerned that he may try to turn one of the Maquis. We would rather he believed he didn’t have to, which he will if he thinks he has someone in place already. You would fill that role rather nicely.’

  His words press themselves into the soft tissues of her liver. Her nails cut grooves into the flesh of her palms. ‘How long have you known?’

  He takes a long, long drag on his pipe. Then, sadly: ‘We didn’t. Until just now.’

  Fuck!

  He lays his pipe on the desk. ‘I’m sorry. You really are very good. We had … uncertainties. We had to test them. If you had never come; if you had failed to break in; if you had not been so obviously good. But each has happened.’

  Has he waited here every night since she arrived? Her mind is fractured. She seeks things to hold on to. ‘Did Sophie Destivelle ever exist?’

  ‘She wasn’t called that, but the rest was accurate. I made the name up this morning. It would make a good alias for y
ou to take back into France, don’t you think?’

  He is endeavouring to distract her and it doesn’t work. She stabs a finger at him. ‘You killed an innocent woman.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He meets her gaze. She reads no regret. ‘Our information is never wholly accurate. We knew Kramme had sent a woman up one of the escape lines but we did not know which woman or which line. It was possible there was more than one. When we met you, we thought … sometimes an opportunity arises to make a genuine difference. And you are so resourceful.’

  He leans back and blows smoke at the ceiling. ‘I’m sorry, but we need to know … what did he have on you? Everything we understand – every test, every measure of your heart rate, your blood pressure, your answers, your evident enthusiasm when it comes to killing anything in a grey uniform … leads us to believe that you hate the Boche. How did Kramme turn you?’

  ‘Elodie.’ In that one word is a bright flash of smile, a sweet sweep of innocence in a world of undiluted evil. ‘They threatened her.’

  ‘Elodie Monin?’ That sad smile again. ‘Alexandre’s younger sister?’ He stands, slowly. ‘May I?’ There is an envelope on the desk. He slides it to within her reach and sits again. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He’s always sorry. She cannot open it: will not. He says, ‘If you don’t see, you will never truly believe us. And we need you to do that really quite badly. Please look. Rather a lot hinges on your doing so.’

  Nobody told her, but over the past six months, if she has learned one thing about the English it is this: the more polite they become, the more serious they are, and the less likely to bend.

  She opens the envelope and draws out the photographs inside.

  And now she is sick, physically, on the floor, away from her feet and his. The smell hits them both.

  Again, he says, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Why? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. This is nothing to do with us, I promise you. But we thought she might be central to his hold over you, and so we took the risk of finding—’

  ‘Tomas and Juliette? Her parents?’

  ‘Both shot at the same time she was. And your mother’s cousin, although, to be fair, she brought it on herself. On the evening you left, she stood in the town square cursing Hitler and the Reich. They had little choice. She was drawing their attention deliberately, I think.’

  Yes, that was her way. And she couldn’t know that nobody would ever have turned a machine gun on that particular dinghy as it rowed out from the shore.

  So there is nobody left to be hurt. Nobody whose life hangs on her behaviour. She is free. She feels light, as if her bones have grown hollow. But still. She says, ‘Kramme will kill me.’

  ‘Only if he knows you’re working for us. Which he won’t unless you tell him.’

  ‘You don’t understand. He’s—’ How to explain? Kramme is the stoat, she the rabbit; he the snake, she the small, lost thing, frozen. She thought she had buried this part of herself, but it is here now, quivering, and it has eaten her courage.

  ‘We know how he is. He is ruthless, and he is driven. He inflicts pain for the sheer joy of it, and he plays games with the lives of others. But we play too, and you are our wild card, our chance to end his games for ever.’

  ‘You are sending me back to kill him?’

  Does he read the hope in her eyes, the desperate, driving need? Certainly, he laughs aloud, and it is a rusty sound, as if that gate has not been opened for many years. He pats the air with both hands, conciliating. ‘Absolutely: for what he has done, and for the damage he may yet do, we want you to kill him. But not yet. That’s the thing, Amélie. Not. Yet.’

  ‘When?’ Hope is dangerous. She swallows it.

  ‘We don’t know, only that there will come a time when his death may change the course of things.’ The Englishman leans forward, bony elbows on bonier knees. ‘Kramme is good; possibly the best. He runs a network of agents that stretches from Brittany to Belarus. He has moles in Stalin’s cabinet. He has men among the French communists who, even now, are working to ensure that France will not veer violently to the left if – dare we say, when – the war goes against the Boche. He is a fulcrum around which many things turn and we can envisage a time when his death could change the whole course of the war.’

  ‘You think I care about the course of the war?’

  ‘I think you want to kill Kramme more than anything else in the world. But I also think you want to live long enough to enjoy having done so. You are impetuous, we know that. You are not controllable; we know that, too – you could not be useful to us if you were.’ He waits to let that sink in. His gaze scours her: eyes, mouth, soul. He says, ‘Agents lead difficult lives. Double agents lead lives that are not just twice as difficult, but orders of magnitude more so. There will be times when you will forget who you work for, forget where your loyalties lie. You will hoard information to give yourself power. All of this is true, and we expect it.’

  ‘Then how can I be useful?’

  ‘We do not want information from you. We just want this one thing: that you get close enough to Kramme that you can kill him.’

  ‘When you give the order.’

  ‘Exactly so.’ He leans forward, pokes the air with the stem of his pipe. ‘You will be tempted before that. There may be times when you have the perfect opportunity to kill him. There may be times when he has tortured to death someone for whom, Alexandre Monin notwithstanding, you have come to care. But I tell you this: if you act too early, you will waste your life for no reason. If you wait for the right time, we may be able to help, possibly even get you out alive. Without our help, the Boche will kill you and everyone you care for. They know no restraint. You know this.’

  She wants to say, I care for no one. I cared once, and look what happened. I shall not make that mistake again.

  What she actually says is, ‘You wish that I should hide like a slug beneath a stone and hope he does not recognize me?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He stands, paces to the door and back. In his own way, he is as agitated as she is. ‘He will know you the moment he sees you. And you, of course, will know him, although you must each pretend this is not the case, at least in public. You will be a Maquis girl pretending to be a nurse, so you will be afraid of him but trying to hide it. In private – and he will make sure you have private time together – you will become his agent amongst the Maquis.’

  Her tongue curls over. This is what hope tastes like and it is bitter-bright. Cautious, she says, ‘I will have to give him things.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Information about my training.’

  ‘Tell him about the faked report cards. He’ll like those. They’re his style. It will also not do him any good. He could send someone to steal them all and how would he know which ones were real?’

  ‘Names. I will have to give him names.’ Real people, who will die real – and slow – deaths.

  Laurence Vaughan-Thomas’s pale gaze meets hers. ‘Then choose those you give with care and do not grieve. This is war. A few must die that the many may survive. Two things he wants above all else, and must not have. The first is the date of the invasion. The second is the identity of the Patron of the Maquisards in Saint-Cybard. If you give him either of those …’ He makes the folding shape with his fingers again. ‘In the mountains, they have no équipes de tueurs. Instead, they have men who make Kramme look kind and each of them loves the Patron as a father. I would advise you not to risk their wrath.’

  So this is their deal: walk a knife-edge for us, dance along a tightrope with death on either side, and we offer you a chance – a small chance: she is not stupid – to kill Kramme. Renege on our deal and we will see you skinned alive over a week by your own countrymen.

  He is watching her. ‘Can you do this, Sophie Destivelle? Will you?’

  Can I lie to my countrymen, deceive them, pretend to be what I am not? Of course.

  Can I betray those same countrymen for the chance to kill Maximilian
Kramme? Really, you have to ask?

  She finds that she is smiling, and he is not. ‘I can,’ she says. ‘I will.’

  With all of her heart, she believes this to be true.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ORLÉANS

  Sunday, 18 March 2018

  09.00

  THE RAIN HAS cleared by the time Picaut parks her car in the expansive lot outside the film studio and presents herself to the door guard.

  That this place merits a door guard is the first revelation. Passing through the soundless electronic doors and into the foyer, she finds herself in a whole new world.

  The ground floor is an open-plan office, based on the model of every successful Californian start-up, designed to make the stakeholders – not ‘employees’ – feel valued, cheerful, productive, creative! All around are tall, toned and slender twenty-somethings, alive with early morning zeal that leaves Picaut feeling big and stolidly built, when she is neither of these things.

  Already, the air is bright with the scents of green tea and citrus fruits. The decor is all clean lines, tinted in pastels, gold and sky blue over a floor of buffed naked wood.

  Most of the desks are Walkstations, separated from the more traditional seated variety by a chest-high wall of zigzagging aquariums, wherein neon-blue gouramis soar through weed forests behind crystal-clean glass, and breakout areas at the margins of the room offer table tennis, table football, running machines …

  Balancing these – so that nobody feels as if the sedentary are being judged – an array of computer consoles clusters behind a barricade of dragon trees. Here, a dozen youths barely out of their teens fight with silent, earphoned intensity.

  Picaut taps the nearest on the shoulder. ‘How would I find Elodie Duval?’

  He shakes his head and shrugs, all in one fluid movement. Picaut hasn’t flashed her card at anyone in far too long. She pulls it now, and holds it in his line of sight. With a sigh, he looks up.

  ‘Elodie,’ she says, ‘Elodie Duval.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Would you expect to?’