A Gathering of Spies (18 page)

The photograph showed an exceptionally pretty girl of perhaps nineteen or twenty, smiling winsomely at the camera. The girl had long blond hair, sharp cheekbones, a long neck, intelligent eyes. She was pixilated with enlargement; he could see the elbows and shoulders of the women who had stood beside her, posing for this office portrait more than ten years before.

The girl was Katarina Heinrich. Taylor had received the photograph, sent by the OSS, earlier that day.

Where was
she
spending the night? In another man's bed, having gotten all she could from Clive Everett? Or was she out in the rain, huddled somewhere, freezing?

The photograph, he thought, was a blessing. Although it had been in Taylor's hands for only eight hours, copies already were on their way to every military policeman, every bobby, every special agent, home guard, and CID in England. Taylor had strung his web; now their task was to sit back and wait for one of the threads to quiver.

Taylor's men were capable. They would surely capture the woman before the
treff
.

But what if they didn't?

She had killed eight agents. Would he able to handle her by himself when the time came?

He shook his head slightly in the loneliness of his study, and smiled a bitter smile.

“Bollocks,” he said aloud, and then raised his glass and drank deep.

HAM COMMON, SURREY

Taylor finished writing and looked up triumphantly, first at Schroeder and then at Winterbotham.

Schroeder was giving him a sycophantic smile. Winterbotham, suddenly busy packing his pipe, was focusing elsewhere.

Taylor removed his headphones and looked at the pad before him. “‘Rendezvous four,'” he read, “‘with all urgency.'”

“Whitley Bay,” Schroeder said promptly. “The beach across from the Highland Pub. Three to five on Sunday mornings. Flash a light twice, then wait to be picked up.”

“Highland Pub,” Taylor repeated, making a note on his pad. “So we've got her.”

Schroeder kept giving him the same sycophantic smile. Winterbotham kept working on his pipe, eyes downcast.

“We won't make the same mistake as last time,” Taylor said. “This time we'll be prepared. No chance she'll get away again.”

“Surely not,” Schroeder said, “eh, Professor?”

“No chance,” Winterbotham agreed without looking up.

9

ESSEX

Katarina, frowning, stared out her window.

The passing landscape consisted mostly of pastures and fens. Here and there, a low green hill, sometimes featuring a small farmhouse, rose from the shallow water. Farther off toward the horizon she could see a tangle of briar, a scatter of beechwoods. The sky overhead was a vibrant, steely blue.

He recognized me
, she thought.

Impossible.

Well, not
impossible
, exactly. But extremely improbable. During the past ten years, she had disposed of every photograph of herself, or so she believed. She had learned to cover her tracks as a matter of course.

But the way the man in the train station had looked at her …

She felt nervous.

After gazing out the window for a time, she turned her head and took the measure of her compartment mates. An older man beside her, deeply suntanned on his face and arms, was dozing. His head banged against the oak paneling in time with the train chugging across railroad ties. Two children and a young mother sat across the way, reading from a book of Mother Goose. A thickly set man with black hair, squeezed awkwardly beside one of the children, was browsing through a copy of the
Illustrated London News
. He was handsome, muscular, a bit on the short side.

He caught her looking at him.

He smiled.

She smiled back, demurely, and turned to look out the window again.

At Northampton, the young mother and her brood left the compartment. For a few moments, Katarina thought that she and the black-haired man would be left alone. Then an elderly man entered, followed by a well-fed young woman wearing an oversized anorak.

The train began to move again, chugging slowly at first, then gaining speed.

If the man in London truly
had
recognized her … But no, they wouldn't have been able to reach Northampton before the train, would they? It would take time to find transportation, to find available agents.

Unless, of course, they'd already had some men at Northampton.

The nervousness was beginning to curdle into panic.

She looked at the man across from her again.

They shared another smile.

Katarina crossed her legs, and the cotton dress inched up on her thigh.

The conductor came up to the two men standing between cars. Both men were holding tightly on to whatever handholds they could find, feet spread, trying to maintain their balance as the train rocked along.

“Gentlemen,” the conductor said, “if all compartments are occupied, then make some space in the corridor; but you can't stand here.”

One of the men flashed his ID. “Knox,” he said. “Boyle. Military Intelligence.”

The second man held up a photograph. “Seen this woman on the train?”

The conductor leaned forward. He peered at the picture, scowling because Boyle was not doing a very good job of holding it still as the train lurched around.

“A pretty little bird,” Boyle said, “around thirty. Traveling alone. Her hair may be dark now, just above shoulder-length. She would have gotten on at Liverpool Station. Ticket to Leicester.”

“Yes,” the conductor said. “She's on the train, in the next car. Shall I show you?”

Knox and Boyle exchanged a glance.

Knox shook his head. “She's dangerous, mate—more dangerous than you'd imagine. We're just here to keep an eye on her until we reach Leicester.”

“Let us know if she goes anywhere,” Boyle said. “And for God's sake, man, don't let on that she's caught your interest.”

“Right, sir. I understand.”

“Good,” Knox said, and nodded to Boyle. “We've got her now,” he said.

Katarina was on the verge of addressing the thickly set young man—she would compliment his youthful appearance and wonder aloud why he was not in the service—when she noticed the conductor staring at her.

He was making a pretense of moving down the corridor outside her compartment, picking his way carefully over the scattered kit bags. But his eyes were locked directly on her face. When Katarina glanced up, he looked away quickly, flushing, and hurried past.

A chill ran through her. She stood, stepped over the elderly man's legs, and reached for the compartment door.

“Leaving us?” the thickly set man asked brightly.

She smiled back at him. “Just for a moment,” she said.

She stepped out into the narrow corridor, walked calmly to the end, and pushed open the door leading to the space between cars. There was nobody standing in the drafty chamber; only hot air and the stink of burning coal. A loud
chuff-chuff-chuff
filled her ears as she stepped onto the swaying, precarious tongue of metal that served as a floor.

She looked around. The vestibule was flimsy, so that it could flex as the train went around a turn, with a door set on either side. Both doors were secured with padlocks. Katarina raised her hand and hammered it down onto the handle of the door on her right. The lock held. She repeated the motion, and the lock sprung open with a tiny
pop
. She hit the handle once more, and the door swung open and she found herself staring at watery green earth rushing past at thirty miles per hour.

It would ruin the dress, no doubt about that.

But beggars couldn't be choosers. She drew a breath and then jumped, tucking and rolling as she came out of the train, pinwheeling over the rushing earth.

Knox was whistling “South of the Border.”

Boyle, who had heard Knox whistle “South of the Border” more times than he cared to count, was trying to ignore him. He lit a cigarette, looking out the foggy window at the passing landscape. He saw—or thought he saw—some kind of colorful tumbleweed moving past the train.

He blinked, staring. That was exactly what it had looked like: a tumbleweed, straight out of a Gene Autry flick, except that this one had been an unnaturally lively yellow.

“Did you see that?” he asked after a moment.

“What?”

“It looked like …” He kept staring out the window. “Bollocks,” he said. “I think my eyes are going in my old age.”

“I wouldn't doubt it,” Knox said. “Give me one of those fags.”

Boyle gave him a cigarette.

“I'm going to stroll down to the other end of the car,” Knox said, tucking the cigarette behind one ear. “Take a peek and make sure our bird's still in her nest.”

Boyle watched as Knox opened the door, stepped over the threshold, and began to make his way down the corridor. The train was coming out of a turn; Knox kept one hand pressed against the wall as he moved, to maintain his balance. He passed the first compartment, then the second, then the third. At the end of the car, he turned around and started to come back.

Boyle frowned. The fool was going to give them away, he thought, if he kept walking back and forth past the compartment. And not only was he walking past the compartment again, he was gazing into it, directly into it, without even trying to conceal his interest.

Now he was opening the door. He was saying something to whoever was inside.

Boyle swore, pushed his way into the car, and went to join him.

“Don't tell me,” he said.

Knox looked at him, tight-lipped, and drew his gun.

10

HUNTINGDON, SUFFOLK

Katarina invested five minutes by a shallow pond, stripping off her dress, soaking it, then spreading it on a rock to catch the sun while she soaked and scrubbed herself.

She would have liked to dawdle a bit by the cool water in the late-afternoon sun, but of course she could not afford the delay. She struck off again, heading in a direction that she considered to be north-northeast, walking through fields of heather, keeping her eyes and her ears open, wondering how many men were looking for her and whether they had dogs, whether she might find a weapon or food or shelter in the near future, whether she had any realistic chance of staying free to see the nightfall.

In a peculiar way, she felt wonderful.

She was tired and she was hungry; her nerves were on edge, and she was, or at least she should have been, afraid. But she was also alive, engaged in a mighty challenge, dependent once again on nothing but her own resources. She was bringing the secret of atomic fire to her people, who would value it and celebrate her for her accomplishment. She was on a mission to change the course of history. Chance was against her, but she had known that when she started on this—she had already gotten farther than she had ever expected.

And as an added bonus, Richard would never touch her again.

She had been walking for more than an hour when she saw a man standing at the edge of a field. The man, several hundred yards away, was facing the opposite direction, looking out across the waist-high grass. Katarina moved quickly but calmly into a shadowed copse of pale-blossomed trees. Then she stood and watched for nearly thirty minutes, stock-still, as the man made his slow and methodical way across the field.

When he had disappeared from view, she waited another five minutes and then recommenced walking.

As she walked, she pondered the significance of the man in the field. He had been heading in the direction from which she had come. It was a squeeze, then. And she had just slipped through it. She would be able to continue in her direction, now, and remain unmolested—unless they had set up a second perimeter farther out.

She wondered if a description of her had been circulated to the locals. It could prove a crucial question. After all, she could not walk all the way to the arranged place of rendezvous. Even if she made it in time, which she doubted was possible, she would remain too exposed in the open countryside, for too long. No, she required transportation. Perhaps if she could change her appearance again, she could board another train. Or perhaps she would be forced to settle for a stolen car, or even a bicycle. Whichever; the priority was getting off her feet, getting out of this immediate area, and getting through the second perimeter, if there was such a thing.

She kept walking. When the sun was just beginning to sink behind the horizon, she spied a scatter of low houses less than a mile away.

She turned toward them.

Taylor spread the map on the hood of the Bentley. The men clustered around in the dimming light to follow the cigarette in his hand as he pointed with it.

“She left the train here,” Taylor said, stabbing at the map, “or somewhere near it. She's heading to Whitley Bay—here. Unfortunately, we've no guarantee she'll go directly from point A to point B.”

He used the cigarette to describe a circle in the air above the map.

“She seems to have evaded our squeeze, gentlemen, but she doesn't know about the second perimeter set up by Special Forces. So our task is simple. We must find her, and eliminate her, before she stumbles into that perimeter. We can't have SF taking credit for catching our bird, now, can we?”

Several men snickered.

“We have two dozen agents at our disposal. The area within the second perimeter is approximately ten miles in diameter. That means every group of two men will cover a space of less than one square mile. Each third team will have a bloodhound. We have a strong scent from the luggage she left on the train. The odds are fantastically in our favor, gentlemen. I will brook no excuses for failure.”

A rustle moved through the men. The dogs, straining at their leashes, whimpered quietly.

“You will notice that quadrant one is mostly farmland; quadrant two is a lovely stretch of countryside consisting almost entirely of bogs; quadrant three contains the oil refinery and the railroad tracks; and quadrant four contains A Three-eighty, the edge of the forest, and a few holiday houses. Shoot to kill. Any questions?”