The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)(48)
“Ah, Miss Lynd,” Gaskell amended in a milder tone on seeing her. “What do you have there?”
“Another decrypt from Agent Calvert, Colonel. She’s missed the security check yet again, and one of our girls at 53a caught it. The message says she’s in Paris now and that Bar Lorraine is still operational.”
“Good, good.” Gaskell ran his hands through what was left of his hair.
“Sir, she left off her security check.”
“She’s probably hurrying to use the radio and sign off.”
Lynd spoke carefully as she handed him the decrypt. “But, sir, we’ve already admonished her a number of times—”
Gaskell looked it over, gnawing on his left index finger. “Miss Lynd, do I need to explain yet again the realities of being an agent? It’s nothing like the classroom. Who thinks about a security check when the Nazis are in hot pursuit?”
Lynd bit her tongue. She knew Colonel Gaskell had gotten his job through the old boy network, because he was an Eton alumnus. She felt he was woefully underprepared for the responsibility.
“Don’t think too much, Miss Lynd!” She heard the unspoken words: I still haven’t signed off on those papers you need.
“Yes, sir.”
“What about Calvert’s package?”
“She didn’t mention it, sir.”
“I received word from the top brass that package is more urgent than ever. We must recall her—now. Have Raoul give her word and get her back on the next Lysander. Let’s see, the next full moon, that’s—?”
“In a week, sir.”
“So, let’s get on with it then. Get her and her package back to Blighty posthaste.”
“Sir, if her radio is indeed compromised and if we send them a message about the package, that may alert them to something she might have hidden—”
“Zounds, woman, stop your fussing!” Gaskell pounded a fist on his desk for emphasis. “Get Calvert on that plane! That’s an order!”
—
Lynd wrote out a message to be sent to Raoul—code name for Jean-George Dubois, Air Movements Officer for SOE, known in France as Jacques Lebeau.
But she did so reluctantly, with a growing feeling of dread. What had happened to Agent Calvert? Not acknowledging even the possibility that an agent could have been compromised and captured was a horrible mistake, heading toward an even more tragic end.
Still, Lynd followed her orders. She had to. She didn’t think Colonel Gaskell was stupid, not exactly. Unburdened by brains was how she thought of him and men of his ilk in the privacy of her own mind. And yet, Gaskell held total power over her.
She had lived a luxurious life in Bucharest. Raised by English nannies, she’d been brought up speaking French, English, and German, in addition to Romanian. But by the 1930s, Fascism had risen to power, and the ultranationalist anti-Semitic movement, the Iron Guard, seized control of the government. In 1937, Miriam Rose Horowitz, age thirty-three, had fled to England—and then, on September 3, 1939, England declared war. By the end of that year, Romania had become an ally of Nazi Germany, and Miriam Horowitz, now known as Diana Lynd, was a citizen of Romania—what Britain now considered a “hostile territory.” To avoid being sent to an internment camp, she hid the country of her birth.
One of the few people who knew Lynd’s true identity was Harold Gaskell. She needed the colonel to keep her secret safe. She needed him for protection. And, as she was in the process of applying for British citizenship, she needed his support of her petition. And so her hands were tied. If Gaskell lost faith in her, she could easily lose the opportunity for British citizenship—and face imprisonment in an enemy internment camp.
And if the situation wasn’t fraught enough, Lynd had even more incentive not to question Colonel Gaskell, for she had, illegally, contacted high-ranking German authorities at the beginning of the war. While she and her mother had escaped to London in ’37, their Jewish cousins, trapped in Romania, were in grave danger. Lynd had intervened on their behalf, making an extraordinary venture to Holland a year later, when she heard they’d been threatened with deportation to a concentration camp. She had traveled alone through Nazi-occupied Holland and into Belgium to bargain for their freedom. A large amount of money had changed hands, and they were saved from the camp.
While she had had absolutely no contact with the Germans afterward, that one incident, if exposed, would have landed her in grave trouble. And Colonel Gaskell knew about her dealings with the Nazis, too. He knew everything. And so she said nothing to challenge his authority. Even against her better judgment.
Looking down at her delicate gold watch for the time, she noticed it had stopped. She took it off and began to wind it, relieved when she could hear its gentle ticking again.
—
Leaving the Rue Cambon side of the Ritz, Sarah pulled a scarf over her hair and tied it under her chin. She put on sunglasses, then took the Métro—doubling back three times—to the Marché aux Fleurs, a flower market by the Quai de la Corse on the ?le de la Cité in the shadow of the twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral. It was the best place she could think of to lose a tail. The market consisted of rows of cast-iron Art Nouveau pavilions, near to bursting with cascades of cut blooms, flowering tree branches, fresh greenery, surrounded by tree-lined walkways. The air was filled with the fresh fragrance.