Code Name Verity(102)

Anna hit the back of her hand lightly against the railing for emphasis and demonstrated with her cigarette, holding it as though it were a pen.

‘In the palm of my own hand I wrote: 72 B4 CdB.’

She took a drag on the cigarette-pen, steadying herself.

‘She was the only one who could see it. Before the ink dried I closed my fingers and smeared the figures to an illegible blur. I picked up the pages she’d finished with and shuffled them together.

‘“That’s mine,” she said.

‘I knew she wasn’t talking about the pile of loose paper and card I was stacking. She was talking about the archive reference I’d written in my hand.

‘“What use is it to you?” I asked.

‘“No use,” she answered. “Not any more. But if I could . . .”

‘“What would you do with it?” I asked quietly. “What should I do with it?”

‘She narrowed her eyes like a cornered rat. “Set fire to it and blow this place to blazes. That would be the best thing to do with it.”

‘I held her stack of paper tight against my chest. Her instructions. She looked up at me with that challenging, accusing squint, you know?

‘“Anna the Avenging Angel,” she said, and then she laughed at me. She laughed. She said, “Well, it’s your problem now.”’

Anna threw her finished cigarette into the Poitou and lit another.

‘You should go home, K?the,’ she said suddenly. ‘This English girl who sells motorbikes to Jews, this Maddie Brodatt – she’ll get you in trouble. You should go home to Alsace tomorrow, if you can, and let Maddie take her own chances.’

Get K?the out of the picture before anything happens – that makes sense. It’ll be far safer for the Thibauts. Although I hate to go back into hiding. Tomorrow night I’ll be back in the barn loft, and it’s even colder there now than it was in October.

‘What about you?’ I asked.

‘I’m going back to Berlin. I applied for a transfer weeks ago, when we started interrogating her and that pathetic French kid. God.’ She shuddered, smoking furiously. ‘What shitty jobs they give me. Ravensbrück and Ormaie. At least when I used to requisition pharmaceuticals for Natzweiler I didn’t have to see what they did with them. Anyway I’m only here till Christmas now.’

‘You might be safer here. We’re bombing Berlin,’ I said. ‘We’ve been bombing it for nearly two weeks.’

‘Ja, I know,’ she said. ‘We listen to the BBC too. The Berlin Blitz. Well, we probably deserve it.’

‘I don’t think anyone deserves it really.’

She turned suddenly and gave me a hard look with those pale, glass-green eyes. ‘Except the Castle of Butchers, right?’

‘What do you think?’ I challenged angrily.

She shrugged and turned to head back to the Place des Hirondelles. She was out of time.

You know who she reminded me of – this is crazy. She reminded me of Eva Seiler.

Not of Julie normally, not really, but of Julie when she was angry. Made me think of her telling me the story of her mock interrogation under SOE training, in flat violation of the Official Secrets Act – the only time I can ever remember her chain-smoking the way Engel does, and swearing like a dockworker. ‘And six hours later I knew I couldn’t take it any more but I was just damned if I’d give in and say my name. So I pretended to faint and they all panicked and went running for a doctor. Bloody f*cking bastards.’

Engel and I didn’t say much on the way back. She offered me another cigarette, and I had a moment of rebellion.

‘You never gave any to Julie.’

‘Never gave any to Julie!’ Engel gave an astonished bark of laughter. ‘I damn well gave her half my salary in cigarettes, greedy little Scottish savage! She nearly bankrupted me. Smoked her way through all five years of your pilot’s career!’

‘She never said! She never even hinted! Not once!’

‘What do you think would have happened to her,’ Engel said coolly, ‘if she had written this down? What would have happened to me?’

She held out the offered cigarette.

I took it.

We walked quietly for a while – two chums having a smoke together. Aye, right, miss.

‘How did you get Julie’s story?’ I asked suddenly.

‘Von Linden’s landlady did it for me. He had it at the desk in his room and while he was out she dropped the whole thing into a bag of linens to be washed. Told him she’d used it to light the kitchen fire – it does look like a pile of rubbish, all those damned recipe cards and the scratched-out forms.’