The Spy (23 page)

Roc was radiant.

The conversion of her hair was next.

“First, cham-poo,” instructed the Madame, “then cut heem, n'treem.” The hands of the assistant flew through Valerie's hair like birds. The hair was cleansed. Again, into the barber's chair for the flashings of razor and scissors. From the laboratories at Bletchley Park, a secret rinse was applied which turned the coarser hair of the adult into the softer sheen of childhood. Following closely on the heels of staccato instructions, Marie deftly completed the first part of MI.5's latest stratagem:

The Construction, and Care, of the Military Creature
.

“It's nice baby, no?” Madame Roc smiled broadly, and patted Sinclair rapidly on the cheek, which stung. She then had her undress and lie flat on a brown massage table draped with an enormous towel. 'Allo? Madame Roc had come to the phone number, written on the girl's leg. She bent her head, to read it. Hmmm. Had the Commander already wired her? She poked. “Theese 'phon nombre, what ees?”

“Oh,
that
?” Valerie raised up. “Just a phone number...from a friend.”

“Get reed of this nombre,” Roc said to Marie.

Valerie panicked! She had not yet recorded it.

“Lay down, you!” Marie poured some liquid on it, then dabbed it with a cloth. Roc directed. Sergeant Blumensteel was gone! The French Resistance had rubbed him out. “Ees from boyfren', no?” These two were not interested in boys. Both women now worked fiercely. From foul-smelling pots, Valerie's body was quickly covered with the waterproof makeup. The eyes of the assistant shone like a blackbird. The girl was then hoisted upright, and great attention was given to her hands and face. Because of Roc's genius, it was already in the process of accelerated healing. The Intelligence community, sequestered in their windowless rooms, had first dibs on advanced procedures and medicines. Outside these secret enclaves, the public might get them later. “The smell and the itch, she will go. Get op!”

“Get dressed!” said Marie.

“He wan' child,” the older woman observed, hard voice soft, “he
get
child.”

They had laid out the French clothes, she would wear them in France. Sinclair put them on. Marie picked up the telephone and Madame Roc walked the girl, whose face was throbbing, over to the full-length mirror. “
Nous nous regardons
,” she clucked. Valerie peered into the glass:

“Oh my
god
!”

She wasn't in the room; she was in the mirror. What she was staring at, lips slightly parted, was the likeness of another. The face, trapped in time, aflame from surgery, was colored like oils, running in a fire. Her hair, dyed black, had been cut into a pageboy bob, shaved high at the nape, Catholic convent style. Her eyebrows were thickened; and her brown eyes seemed ten years in the past. The darker skin, accompanying, had taken her just this side of puberty. This is what she was seeing, but it was not what others would see. As the mirror obverses, so would the woman: for no spy has ever seen her own face. Framed in the glass, a part of the living picture, was a door like the ones in the movie posters. As though from another time, it burst open; and Hamilton and Pierre walked quickly into the room.

She turned around...

There, where the woman had stood, now stood THE WEAPON, as child; a very dangerous child. Petite, clownlike, a child of the trapeze, Churchill's answer to Werner von Braun had tears in its eyes.

Valerie Sinclair had utterly vanished
!

Valerie Marchaud had taken her place.

Roc handed her a handkerchief and slapped her on the butt. “What you think, Com-man-dair?”

It was the opinion of MI.5 that mattered.

Hamilton did not immediately answer.
Bruises covered, were they
! Hands behind his back, he walked around his protégée observing her from various angles. With a mused look, her tears stopped, Valerie's eyes followed him. At last, his face lit in a broad grin of recognition: “I do believe, gentlemen, we are looking at what the Americans call ‘jailbait.' ” He turned to Madame Roc. “Well, done, sir!”

Madame Roc beamed: it was high praise.

As for the glasses, de Beck was trying to make up his mind. An ass-bandit, staring at her bodice, his assessment was direct: he liked them young, not flat.

Seeing the Frenchman perplexed, Hamilton said, “I thought glasses would make her look more ordinary, more studious. Doesn't it fit the picture? She can discard them if you think...”

Pierre shook his head.

Valerie walked over to the mirror. She fussed with her blouse. “I look the blimey kid I did in Malta,” she told them, her voice sounding a little cracked. Reacting like a father, Hamilton cleared his throat. He threw her a glance: that British attitude would have to go.

Hers, not his.

Pierre perked up. “You lived in Malta?”

“Why yes, my mother is part Maltese.”

“Mine's French,” Pierre said. He was having trouble in appearing not to notice. Damned if hers wasn't, too! “You're gorgeous, Marchaud.”

Valerie blinked.

“Excellent!” said Hamilton. “Well now, Lieutenant, if you will, they have some clothes for you...girl clothes, you know. Leave what you're wearing with Madame. Bring your uniform along. Pierre? Why don't we wait outside?”

The men left.

They gave her some odds and ends to wear, befitting her age. She stripped, and got into them, wearing the new bra. Following Hamilton's instructions, Marie packed up her uniform. Sinclair was looking about for a cigarette. Roc told her to help herself. The half-empty pack was there on the counter, tangled in ribbons and scissors. Valerie pulled one out. It was French, black tobacco, a Gauloise. She sniffed it, putting it in her pocket. The assistant was tossing in some belts into a bag; a pillbox hat, light blue; junk jewelry. Madame Roc looked up. She was at the sink, drying her hands. “
T'en fais pas!
” The Frenchwoman shouted. “Com' back, eh?” They had other clients, waiting.

“
Si tout va bien
...”

The assistant handed her the bag, opened the door.

“See you,” chirped Marie.

Dusk was falling and de Beck drove them back to Waterloo Station. The Commander and the girl would train to Polperro. Commissary had packed them a box lunch, for supper. It rode on top of the bag. Stashed up front, Pierre had his own.

Along the way, Hamilton gave him instructions.

Pierre would meet him at the The Red Lion later tonight, at 2400 hours, and drive him to Portsmouth. Hamilton had a full day tomorrow scheduled with Seymour. De Beck would drop the car off at Free French Headquarters, Castor, making his own way back on Sunday.

They would not see him again, until the marina.

The Commander also had instructions for Valerie but felt it prudent to wait until they were alone. His first opportunity came after Pierre dropped them at the terminal, before they boarded for Falmouth. “Now, I realize, my dear, that while looking like a child is one thing,
being
one may prove quite a different matter. The older, the more experienced the adults you encounter, the greater their likelihood of spotting you. Believe me, the Germans
know
the difference, and we're calling upon you to outsmart them. You can best do this by doing what you do best. Do what a child would do. Do it the way that a child would do it. Be the child, in their eyes, that they want you to be.”

The girl with the scalded face looked up.

“What's important is that no one suspect you. You may count it as a certainty, they will try to entrap you. If you can, divert their attention. If they offer to bribe you—with food, for example—shake your head. If you must,
put the guilt on somebody else
.” He stressed this. “After all, who is the finger going to point to, you—or him? Adults will also be looking for good manners, you see, upbringing, that sort of thing.” He patted her head. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

Rushing through the busy terminal Hamilton and the girl ran the last few yards, jumping aboard the Falmouth Express with seconds to spare.

Unfortunately, the train was crowded and they had to share the compartment with an older couple. The husband was snoozing, but the wife kept peering over her magazine:

Something odd about that child
...

With the rails clacking beneath them, the Commander sat as quiet as the summer wind, browsing through
The Times
, clearing his throat occasionally, and helping the girl sort through some item or other in her bag. The woman across from him could not help but notice, he had caught her look. She was thinking he was traveling with his daughter.

Something the matter with her face?

Hamilton wet his thumb, and turned the page.

Valerie, scattering things in her bag, smiled up at her:
she healed quickly from cuts
. Alarmed, the woman looked. Valerie was clutching the box lunch, staring at it mournfully, as though it were not for her.

“Hungry, are we?” Hamilton noted, intent upon his article.

“No, sir.” Valerie said quietly. She dabbed at her eyes.

“Would you like a biscuit, dear?” the woman asked, concerned.

Valerie shook her head. When Hamilton wasn't looking, she touched gingerly at her face. Getting the woman's eye, the sweet little girl jerked her head to the child-beater sitting next to her, who, as the woman could plainly see, was hiding his guilt behind his newspaper. The eyes of the woman narrowed. She nodded slowly, letting the desperate girl know that she understood.

The Commander sat sternly.

When the train pulled into Falmouth, the woman woke up her husband, pulling him quickly to the door. There, she turned to the Commander, who was looking about for the box lunch. He was unprepared then, when the woman screamed at him:

“
Beast!
”

“I beg your pardon?” Sinclair handed him the lunch, afraid to hold it.

So
!

Valerie, having moved to sit behind him, out of danger as it were, tapped her temple and made a spiraling motion with her finger:
it's his brain injury
, she informed the woman, who was reading her lips; and who had become so flushed with outrage, she could hardly contain herself.

Hamilton jumped up.

“The fact that you have a brain injury, sir, is no excuse to visit its horrid consequences upon this Innocent!”

Her husband grabbed her. The door slammed. The train had stopped. “What in the
hell
is going on?” Hamilton demanded. Valerie shrugged. “Let's get out of here,” and he picked up the sack into which she was still stuffing the rest of her things.

Valerie followed the sack.

“That's what I mean,” he explained over his shoulder, as he hurried them down the aisle. “This war makes people crazy.”

“Mum's the word, sir.”

“Necessary to stay ahead of it, you see, constantly alert.”

“You can count on me, sir.”

Disembarking, they connected to the local for Polperro where the Commander immediately secured them an empty compartment. Unnerved by the deranged passenger, he tested the lock on the door. Valerie wished their schedule had allowed time for a few rounds at Trelissick House, famous for its bar. She sat down, sighed, and crossed her legs. Settled in, and with the train moving, the Commander doused the lights and raised the blackout shade.

They had dinner, the miles slipping past them.

Hamilton wasn't hungry and the girl ate most of it.

It was a clear horizon, soft with moonlight and sharp with stars, and with the River Fal behind them, flowing to the sea. Trees were bending in the wind. Finished with eating, she was stowing the garbage.

Hamilton, who had been observing the onrushing scenery, handed her his newspaper and leaned back, comparing their present location to his home in Northern Wales. As in a background, she could hear the great Welsh voices; see, in eyrie green-veined sunlight, the mouldering dark-eyed castles. Cardiff reared in her mind, and cities of pain, where blood turned to coal and where the salt-brined sea made prisoners of those who joined it.

They had been on the train for some time now. It had not seemed that long coming in. Maybe it was because of what had happened today and because it was Saturday. To the Commander, picturing the child Marchaud across from him, the flashing night in this setting of sea and sand was as pretty as a postcard. To Valerie, his voice seemed trapped in time, cloaked with curtains, somewhere in a darkroom.

Prints were emerging: the family album in her head.

As he talked, her photographic memory took her back to the days before the war. Her hair was long. Her parents had brought her here, to Falmouth, for a holiday; with some Egyptian friends of her father's. They had attended a concert together in the second-story hall of the old Conservatory. It was ten years ago, and the temperature was 79°. She knew, because one of the Egyptians, who was five feet seven and a half inches tall, asked her why she had blinked her eyes. The vicar, not wishing to hear his daughter described as
a camera
, explained it as a nervous twitch.

She had been looking into the sun
.

The Programme that Tuesday night was Dvorak's String Quartet in F-major,
The American
. She recalled the composer had also written
Humoresque
, one of her favorites; that the boy next to her had a gold tooth; that his mother, wearing fuchsia lipstick, had also worn a dead corsage and that she had reeked of
Lady Esther
, splashed on a lavender dress.

“Beautiful night,” Hamilton noted.

She mentioned the Conservatory. Did he know it? He did. For security reasons, it was closed for the duration. Enemy agents, posing as patrons, might use it to signal. Situated on a hill, the cobalt-blue windows stared darkened at the sea:

Sunglasses worn by The Spy
...

In her mind, a periscope had surfaced: