The Unlikely Spy (43 page)

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Authors: Daniel Silva

BOOK: The Unlikely Spy
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Think quickly, Catherine!
She walked down the hallway and pushed back the door of the drawing room. She put the Mauser in the handbag and the handbag on the floor. She turned on the light and walked to the drinks trolley.
Calm down. Take a deep breath.
She picked up a glass and was pouring herself a brandy when Peter Jordan walked in.
Harry Dalton was waiting outside the Popes' warehouse in a department surveillance van. He had two men with him, Detective-Sergeant Meadows from the Metropolitan Police and a watcher named Clive Roach. Harry was in the front passenger seat, Roach behind the wheel. Meadows was getting a few minutes of sleep in the back.
It was dawn. It had been a long and dreadfully boring night. Harry was exhausted, but each time he tried to sleep he saw one of two disparate visions: Rose Morely lying dead in Hyde Park or Grace Clarendon's face as they made love. He wanted to climb into her bed and sleep around the clock. He wanted to hold her in his arms and never let go. He was under her spell again.
The visions of Grace were broken by the sound of a van drawing up in front of the warehouse. A tall, thick man climbed out of the driver's-side door. Harry could make him out in the weak morning light.
"Know him?" Clive Roach asked.
Harry said, "Yeah. His name is Dicky Dobbs."
"Looks like trouble."
"He's Pope's main muscle boy and enforcer."
"If I was on the run I think I'd want that one around for protection."
"You're right," Harry said. "Wake up Sleeping Beauty back there."
Dobbs unlocked the judas gale and went inside the warehouse. A moment later the main door was pulled upward. Dobbs emerged and climbed back inside the van.
Roach started the engine as Meadows sat up.
Dobbs pulled the van inside the warehouse.
Roach opened the throttle and gunned the motor, nosing the van inside the warehouse before Dobbs could close the door.
Harry jumped out of the van.
Dobbs yelled, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Meadows said, "Turn around, put your fucking hands in the air, and shut the fuck up!"
Harry stepped forward and threw open the rear door of the van. Robert Pope was sitting on the floor. He looked up, smiled, and said, "Well, if it isn't my old friend Harry Dalton."
Catherine Blake took a taxi to her flat. It was early, just after dawn, the sky a flat mother-of-pearl gray. She had six hours until she was to meet Horst Neumann on Hampstead Heath. She washed her face and neck and changed out of her clothes into a nightgown and a bathrobe. She desperately needed a few hours of sleep, but she had something to do first.
It had been too close tonight. If Jordan had come downstairs a few seconds earlier she would have been forced to kill him. She told him she had been unable to sleep--she was upset about nearly being killed and thought a glass of brandy would help to calm her nerves. He seemed to accept her excuse for leaving his bed in the middle of the night, but she doubted he would buy it twice.
She went into the sitting room and sat down at the writing table. She opened the drawer and removed a single sheet of paper and a pen. On the paper she wrote four words:
Get me out now!
She placed the piece of paper on the desk and adjusted the lamp so the light was at the proper angle. She removed her camera from her handbag and held it to her eye. She placed her left hand next to the paper. Vogel would recognize it; there was a scar across the thumb where she had been cut during one of his damned silent killing classes. She photographed her hand and the note twice, then burned the note in the bathroom sink.
36
LONDON
Harry Dalton thought, One more minute of this bullshit and I'm going to handcuff Pope to a chair and beat his face bloody. They were in a small glass-enclosed office on the warehouse floor, Pope seated on an uncomfortable wooden chair, Harry pacing like a caged jungle cat. Vicary had settled himself quietly in the shadows and seemed to be listening to different music. Harry and Vicary had not revealed their true affiliation; to Pope they were just a pair of Metropolitan Police officers. For one hour Pope had denied any knowledge of the woman whose photograph Harry kept waving in front of him. Pope's face remained bored, placid, and insolent, the look of a man who had broken the law his entire life and never seen the inside of a prison cell. Harry thought, I'm not getting to him. He's beating me.
Harry said, "All right, let's try this one more time."
Pope looked at his watch. "Not again, Harry. I've business to attend to."
Harry felt himself losing control. "You've never seen this woman before?"
"I've told you a hundred times. No!"
"I've got a witness who says this woman entered your warehouse the day your brother was murdered."
"Then your witness is wrong. Let me talk to him. I'm sure I could make him see the error of his ways."
"I'm sure you could! Where were you when your brother was killed?"
"At one of my clubs. I've got a hundred witnesses that will tell you that."
"Why have you been avoiding the police?"
"I haven't been avoiding the police. You blokes managed to find me." Pope looked over at Vicary, who was looking down at his hands. "That one ever speak?"
"Shut up and look at me, Pope. You
have
been avoiding the police, because you know who killed Vernon and you want to pay them back your own way."
"You're talking nonsense, Harry."
"There's a very nice lady in Islington who says you broke into her boardinghouse two hours after Vernon's murder, looking for a woman."
"Your very nice lady in Islington is obviously mistaken."
"Don't bullshit me, Pope!"
"Temper, temper, Harry."
"You've been looking for her for days and you haven't been able to find her. Do you ever wonder why she was able to elude you and your thugs?"
"No, I never wondered that because I don't know what the
fuck
you're talking about."
"Do you ever wonder why you were never able to find out where she lives?"
"I never tried because I never met the woman!"
Harry noticed a sheen of perspiration on Pope's face. He thought, I'm finally getting to him.
Vicary must have noticed it too, because he chose that moment to speak for the first time. "You're not being honest with us, Mr. Pope," he said politely, still studying his hands. Then he looked up and said, "But then, we haven't been exactly honest with you, have we, Harry?"
Harry thought, Perfect timing, Alfred. Well done. He said, "No, Alfred, we haven't been completely honest with Mr. Pope here."
Pope looked thoroughly confused. "What the fuck are you two talking about?"
"We're connected with the War Office. We deal in security."
A shadow passed over Pope's face. "What does my brother's murder have to do with the war?" His voice had lost conviction.
"I'm going to be honest with you. We know this woman is a German spy. And we know she came to you for help. And if you don't start talking we're going to be forced to take some rather drastic action."
Pope turned to Harry, as if Harry had been appointed his lawyer. "I can't tell him what he wants to know because I don't know anything. I've never seen that woman in my life."
Vicary seemed disappointed. "Well, then, you're under arrest, Mr. Pope."
"On what bloody charges?"
"Espionage."
"Espionage! You can't do that! You have no evidence!"
"I have enough evidence and enough power to lock you away and throw away the fucking key." Vicary's voice had taken on a menacing edge. "Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a filthy, stinking jail, I suggest you start talking
now
!"
Pope blinked rapidly, looking first at Vicary, then at Harry. He was defeated.
"I begged Vernon not to take the job but he wouldn't listen," Pope said. "He just wanted to get under her skirt. I always knew there was something wrong with her."
Vicary said, "What did she want from you?"
"She wanted us to follow an American officer. She wanted a complete report on his movements around London. Paid us two hundred quid for it. She's been seeing a lot of him ever since."
"Where?"
"In restaurants. At his house."
"How do you know?"
"We've been following them."
"What does she call herself ?"
"Catherine. No last name."
"And what was the officer's name?"
"Commander Peter Jordan, U.S. Navy."
Vicary immediately detained Robert Pope and Dicky Dobbs. He saw no reason to keep his word to a professional thief and liar. Besides, he couldn't have them running around loose on the street. Vicary made arrangements to have them stored on ice at an MI5 lockup outside London.
Harry Dalton telephoned the Americans at Grosvenor Square and asked whether there was a naval officer named Peter Jordan assigned to SHAEF headquarters. Fifteen minutes later someone else called back and said, "Yeah, who wants to know?" When Harry asked about Jordan's assignment, the American said, "Above your pay grade, fella--yours
and
mine."
Harry told Vicary about the conversation. Vicary felt the blood drain from his face.
For ninety minutes no one could find Basil Boothby. It was still early, and he had not arrived at his office. Vicary rang his home at Cadogan Square, and a testy butler said Sir Basil was no longer there. His secretary professed a guarded ignorance about Sir Basil's whereabouts; she expected him quite soon. Boothby, according to the gossip mill, believed he was stalked by his enemies and was notoriously vague about his personal movements. Finally, shortly after nine o'clock, he arrived at his office looking inordinately pleased with himself. Vicary--who hadn't bathed, slept, or changed his clothes in nearly two days--followed him inside and broke the news.
Boothby walked to his desk and picked up the receiver of his secure telephone. He dialed a number and waited. "Hello, General Betts? This is Boothby calling from Five. I need to run a check on an American naval officer named Peter Jordan."
A pause. Boothby drummed his fingers on the desk, Vicary softly kicked at the pattern in Boothby's Persian rug with the scuffed toe of his shoe.
Boothby said, "Yes, I'm still here. . . . He is? Oh, bloody hell! You'd better find General Eisenhower. I need to see him straightaway. I'll contact the prime minister's office myself. I'm afraid we have a rather serious problem."
Boothby slowly replaced the receiver and looked up at Vicary, his face the color of ash.
Frozen fog hung like gunsmoke over Hampstead Heath. Catherine Blake, sitting on a bench surrounded by beech trees, lit a cigarette. She could see for several hundred yards in every direction. She was confident she was alone. Neumann appeared out of the fog, hands pushed deeply into his coat pockets, walking like a man with somewhere to go. When he was a few feet away Catherine said, "I want to talk to you. It's all right, we're alone." He sat down on the bench next to her and she gave him a cigarette, which he lit with hers.
She handed him an envelope containing the film. "I'm fairly certain this is what they're looking for," she said. "He brought it home with him last night--a book detailing the project he's working on. I photographed the entire thing."
Neumann pocketed the envelope. "Congratulations, Catherine. I'll make sure it gets safely into the hands of our friend from the Portuguese embassy."
"There's something else on that film," she said. "I've asked Vogel to pull us out. Some things have gone wrong. I don't think my cover is going to hold up much longer."
"Would you like to tell me about it?"
"The less you know the better, believe me."
"You're the professional. I'm just the errand boy."
"Just be ready to pull out at a moment's notice."
She stood up and walked away.
"Come in and sit down, Alfred," Boothby said. "I'm afraid we have a Force Twelve disaster on our hands." Boothby gestured toward one of the chairs in front of his desk. He had just walked in the door, and his cashmere overcoat still hung like a cape from his shoulders. He shed the coat and handed it to his secretary, who was eyeing him with the intensity of a retriever, waiting for his next command. "Coffee, please. And no interruptions. Thank you."
Vicary lowered himself into the chair. He was feeling peeved. Sir Basil had been gone three hours. The last time Vicary had seen Boothby he was rushing out the door muttering something about mulberries. The code word meant nothing to Vicary. For all he knew it was a tree that produced sweet fruit. Vicary had spent the entire time pacing his office, wondering how bad the damage really was. But there was something else that bothered him. The case had been his from the beginning, and yet it was Boothby who was briefing Eisenhower and Churchill.

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