At eight p.m., Catherine Blake hurried across Westminster Bridge. Fires burned across the East End and the docks; tracer fire and searchlights crisscrossed the night sky. Catherine could hear the dull thump-thump of antiaircraft fire from the batteries in Hyde Park and along the Embankment and taste the acrid bite of smoke from the fires. She knew she was in for a long, busy night.
She turned into Lambeth Palace Road and was struck by an absurd thought--she was absolutely famished. Food was in shorter supply than ever. The dry autumn and bitter cold winter had combined to eliminate almost all green vegetables from the country. Potatoes and brussels sprouts were delicacies. Only turnips and swedes were in plentiful supply. She thought, If I have to eat one more turnip, I'll shoot myself. Still, she suspected things were much worse in Berlin.
A policeman--a short chubby man who looked too old to get into the army--stood watch at the entrance to Lambeth Palace Road. He raised his hand and, shouting over the wail of the air raid sirens, asked for her identification.
As always, Catherine's heart seemed to miss a beat.
She handed over a badge identifying her as a member of the Women's Voluntary Service. The policeman glanced at it, then at her face. She touched the policeman's shoulder and leaned close to his ear so that when she spoke he could feel her breath on his ear. It was a technique she had used to neutralize men for years.
Catherine said, "I'm a volunteer nurse at St. Thomas Hospital."
The police officer looked up. By the expression on his face Catherine could see he was no longer a threat to her. He was grinning stupidly, gazing at her as if he had just fallen in love. The reaction was nothing new to Catherine. She was strikingly beautiful, and she had used her looks as a weapon her entire life.
The policeman handed back her identification.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"Bad. Be careful and keep your head down."
London's need for ambulances had far exceeded the supply. The authorities grabbed anything suitable they could lay their hands on--delivery vans, milk trucks--anything with four wheels, a motor, and room in the back for the injured and a medic. Catherine noticed a red cross painted over the faded name of a popular local bakery on one of the ambulances pouring into the hospital's emergency entrance.
She walked quickly now, trailing the ambulance, and stepped inside. It was bedlam. The emergency room was filled with wounded. They seemed to be everywhere--the floors, the hallways, even the nurses' station. A few cried. Others sat staring, too dazed to comprehend what had happened to them. Dozens of patients had yet to see a doctor or a nurse. More were arriving by the minute.
Catherine felt a hand on her shoulder.
"No time for standing round, Miss Blake."
Catherine turned and saw the stern face of Enid Pritt. Before the war, Enid had been a kind, sometimes confused woman accustomed to dealing with cases of influenza and, occasionally, the loser of a Saturday-night knife fight outside a pub. All that changed with the war. Now she stood ramrod straight and spoke in a clear parade-ground voice, never using more words than needed to make a point. She ran one of the busiest emergency wards in London without a hitch. A year earlier her husband of twenty-eight years had been killed in the blitz. Enid Pritt did not grieve--that could wait until after the Germans were beaten.
"Don't let them see what you're thinking, Miss Blake," Enid Pritt said briskly. "Frightens them even more. Off with your coat and get to work. At least a hundred and fifty wounded in this hospital alone, and the morgue's filling fast. Been told to expect more."
"I haven't seen it this bad since September 1940."
"That's why they need you. Now get to work, young lady, quick as you like."
Enid Pritt moved off across the emergency room like a commander crossing a battlefield. Catherine watched her take a young nurse to task over a sloppy dressing. Enid Pritt didn't play favorites--she was hard on nurses and volunteers alike. Catherine hung up her coat and started making her way down a hallway filled with injured. She began with a small girl clutching a scorched stuffed bear.
"Where does it hurt, little one?"
"My arm."
Catherine rolled up the sleeve of the girl's sweater, revealing an arm that was obviously broken. The child was in shock and unaware of the pain. Catherine kept her talking, trying to keep her mind off the wound.
"What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Ellen."
"Where do you live?"
"Stepney, but our house isn't there anymore." Her voice was calm, emotionless.
"Where are your parents? Are they here with you?"
"The fireman told me they're with God now."
Catherine said nothing, just held the girl's hand. "The doctor will be along to see you soon. Just sit still and try not to move your arm. All right, Ellen?"
"Yes," she said. "You're very pretty."
Catherine smiled. "Thank you. You know what?"
"What?"
"So are you."
Catherine moved up the hallway. An older man with a contusion across the top of his bald head looked up as Catherine examined the wound. "I'm just fine, young lady. There are a lot of people hurt worse than myself. See to them first."
She smoothed his rumpled ring of gray hair and did as he asked. It was a quality she had seen in the English time and time again. Berlin was foolish to resume the blitz. She wished she were allowed to tell them.
Catherine moved down the hall, tending to the wounded, listening to the stories while she worked.
"I was in the kitchen pourin' meself a cup of bleedin' tea when boom! A thousand-pound bomb lands right on me bleedin' doorstep. Next thing I know I'm lyin' flat on me back in what used to be me garden, lookin' up at a pile of rubble that used to be me bleedin' house."
"Watch your mouth, George, there's children present."
"That's not so bad, mate. House across the street from mine took a direct hit. Family of four, good people, wiped out."
A bomb landed nearby; the hospital shook.
A nun, badly injured, blessed herself and began leading the others in the Lord's Prayer.
"It's gonna take more than prayer to knock the Luftwaffe out of the sky tonight, Sister."
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done . . ."
"I lost my wife to the blitz in 1940. I think I may have lost my only daughter tonight."
". . . on Earth as it is in Heaven. . . ."
"What a war, Sister, what a bleedin' war."
". . . as we forgive those who trespass against us. . . ."
"You know, Mervin, I get the impression Hitler doesn't much like us."
"I've noticed that too."
The emergency room erupted with laughter.
Ten minutes later, when the nun decided that prayer had run its course, the inevitable singing began.
"Roll out the barrel . . ."
Catherine shook her head.
"We'll have a barrel of fun. . . ."
But after a moment she found herself singing along with the others.
It was eight o'clock the next morning when she let herself into her flat. The morning's post had arrived. Her landlady, Mrs. Hodges, always slipped it beneath the door. Catherine bent down, picked up the letters, and immediately tossed three envelopes into the trash bin in the kitchen. She did not need to read them because she had written them herself and mailed them from different locations around London. Under normal circumstances, Catherine would receive no personal letters, for she had no friends and no family in Britain. But it would be odd for a young, attractive, educated woman never to correspond with anyone--and Mrs. Hodges was a bit of a snoop--so Catherine engaged in an elaborate ruse to make sure she had a steady stream of personal mail.
She went into the bathroom and opened the taps above the tub. The pressure was low, the water trickled from the spigot in a thread, but at least it was hot today. Water was in short supply because of the dry summer and fall, and the government was threatening to ration that too. Filling the tub
would take several minutes.
Catherine Blake had been in no position to make demands at the time of her recruitment, but she made one anyway--enough money to live comfortably. She had been raised in large town houses and sprawling country estates--both her parents had come from the upper classes--and spending the war in some hovel of a boardinghouse sharing a bathroom with six other people was out of the question. Her cover was a war widow from a middle-class family of respectable means and her flat matched it to perfection, a modest yet comfortable set of rooms in a Victorian terrace in Earl's Court.
The sitting room was cozy and modestly furnished, though a stranger might have been struck by the complete lack of anything personal. There were no photographs and no mementos. There was a separate bedroom with a comfortable double bed, a kitchen with all modern appliances, and her own bathroom with a large tub.
The flat had other qualities that a normal Englishwoman living alone might not demand. It was on the top floor, where her AFU suitcase radio could receive transmissions from Hamburg with little interference, and the Victorian bay window in the sitting room provided a clear view of the street below.
She went into the kitchen and placed a kettle of water on the stove. The volunteer work was time-consuming and exhausting but it was essential for her cover. Everyone was doing something to help. It wouldn't look right for a healthy young woman with no family to be doing nothing for the war effort. Signing up to work at a munitions factory was risky--her cover might not withstand much of a background check--and joining the Wrens was out of the question. The Women's Voluntary Service was the perfect compromise. They were desperate for people. When Catherine went to sign up in September 1940 she was put to work that same night. She cared for the injured at St. Thomas Hospital and handed out books and biscuits in the underground during the night raids. By all appearances she was the model young Englishwoman doing her bit.
Sometimes she had to laugh.
The kettle screamed. She returned to the kitchen and made tea. Like all Londoners she had become addicted to tea and cigarettes. It seemed the whole country was living on tannin and tobacco, and Catherine was no exception. She had used up her ration of powdered milk and sugar so she drank the tea plain. At moments like these she longed for the strong bitter coffee of home and a piece of sweet Berlin cake.
She finished the first cup and poured a second. She wanted to take a bath, crawl into bed, and sleep round the clock, but she had work to do, and she needed to stay awake. She would have been home an hour earlier if she moved around London like a normal woman. She would have taken the underground straight across London to Earl's Court. But Catherine did not move around London like a normal woman. She had taken a train, then a bus, then a taxi, then another bus. She had stepped off the bus early and walked the final quarter mile to her flat, constantly checking to make certain she was not being followed. When she finally arrived home she was soaked by the rain but confident she was alone. After more than five years, some agents might be tempted to become complacent. Catherine would never become complacent. It was one of the reasons she survived when others had been arrested and hanged.
She went into the bathroom and undressed in front of the mirror. She was tall and fit; years of heavy riding and hunting had made her much stronger than most women and many men. She was broad through the front of her shoulders, and her arms were smooth and firm as a statue's. Her breasts were rounded and heavy and perfectly shaped, her stomach hard and flat. Like almost everyone she was thinner than before the war. She undid the clasp that held her hair in a discreet nurse's bun, and it tumbled about her neck and shoulders, framing her face. Her eyes were ice blue--the color of a Prussian lake, her father had always said--and the cheekbones were wide and prominent, more German than English. The nose was long and graceful, the mouth generous, with a pair of sensuous lips.
She thought, All in all, you're still a very attractive woman, Catherine Blake.
She climbed into the tub, feeling suddenly very alone. Vogel had warned her about the loneliness. She never imagined it could be so intense. Sometimes it was actually worse than the fear. She thought it would be better if she were completely alone--isolated on a deserted island or mountaintop--than to be surrounded by people she could not touch.
She had not allowed herself a lover since the boy in Holland. She missed men and she missed sex but she could live without both. Desire, like all her emotions, was something she could turn on and off like a light switch. Besides, having a man was difficult in her line of work. Men tended to become obsessive about her. The last thing she needed now was a lovesick man looking into her past.
Catherine finished her bath and got out. She combed her wet hair quickly and put on her robe. She went to the kitchen and opened the door to the pantry. The shelves were barren. The suitcase radio was on the top shelf. She brought it down and took it into the sitting room near the window, where the reception was the best. She opened the lid and switched it on.
There was another reason why she had never been caught: Catherine stayed off the airwaves. Each week she switched on the radio for a period of ten minutes. If Berlin had orders for her they would send them then.
For five years there had been nothing, only the hiss of the atmosphere.
She had communicated with Berlin just once, the night after she murdered the woman in Suffolk and assumed her new identity. Beatrice Pymm. She thought of the woman now, feeling no remorse. Catherine was a soldier, and during wartime soldiers were forced to kill. Besides, the murder was not gratuitous. It was absolutely necessary.
There were two ways for an agent to slip into Britain: clandestinely, by parachute or small boat, or openly, by passenger ship or airplane. Each method had drawbacks. Attempting to slip into the country undetected from the air or by small boat was risky. The agent might be spotted or injured in the jump; simply learning how to parachute would have added months to Catherine's already interminable training. The second method--coming by legal means--carried its own danger. The agent would have to go through passport control. A record would be made of the date and port of entry. When war broke out, MI5 would surely rely on those records to help track down spies. If a foreigner entered the country and never left, MI5 could safely assume that person was a German agent. Vogel devised a solution: enter Britain safely by boat, then erase the record of the entry by erasing the actual person. Simple, except for one thing--it required a body. Beatrice Pymm, in death, became Christa Kunst. MI5 had never discovered Catherine because they had never looked. Christa Kunst's entry and departure were both accounted for. They had no hint Catherine ever existed.
Catherine poured another cup of tea, slipped on her earphones, and waited.
She nearly spilled it on herself when, five minutes later, the radio crackled into life.
The operator in Hamburg tapped out a burst of code.
German keyers had the reputation of being the most precise in the world. Also the fastest. Catherine struggled to keep up. When the Hamburg operator finished, she asked him to repeat the message.
He did, more slowly.
Catherine acknowledged and signed off.
It took several minutes to find her codebook and several more to decode the message. When she was finished she stared at it in disbelief.
EXECUTE RENDEZVOUS ALPHA.
Kurt Vogel finally wanted her to meet with another agent.
8
HAMPTON SANDS, NORFOLK
Rain drifted across the Norfolk coast as Sean Dogherty, done in by five pints of watery ale, tried to mount his bicycle outside the Hampton Arms. He succeeded on his third attempt and set out for home. Dogherty, cycling steadily, barely noticed the village: a dreary place really--a cluster of cottages along the single street, the village store, the Hampton Arms pub. The sign hadn't been painted since 1938; paint, like nearly everything else, was rationed. St. John's Church rose over the east end. The graveyard lay at the edge of the village. Dogherty unconsciously blessed himself as he passed the lych-gate and pe
daled over the wooden bridge spanning the sea creek. A moment later the village disappeared behind him.
Darkness gathered; Dogherty struggled to keep the bicycle upright on the pitted lane. He was a small man of fifty, green eyes set too deeply in his skull, a derelict gray beard. His nose, twisted and off center, had been broken more times than he cared to remember, once during a brief career as a welterweight in Dublin and a few more times in drunken street fights. He wore an oilskin coat and a woolen cap. The cold air clawed at the exposed skin of his face: North Sea air, knife edged, scented with the arctic ice fields and Norwegian fjords it had passed before assaulting the Norfolk coast.
The curtain of rain parted and the terrain came into view--broad emerald fields, endless gray mudflats, salt marshes deep with reeds and grass. To his left a wide, seemingly endless beach ran down to the water's edge. To his right, in the middle distance, green hills blended into low cloud.
A pair of Brent geese--down from Siberia for the winter--rose out of the marsh and banked out over the water, wings pumping gently. A perfect habitat for many species of birds, the Norfolk coast once was a popular tourist destination. But the war had made bird-watching all but impossible. Much of Norfolk was a restricted military zone, and petrol rationing left few citizens with the means to travel to such an isolated corner of the country. If they had, they would have found it difficult to find their way around. In the spring of 1940, with invasion fever running high, the government took down all the road signs.