The Unlikely Spy(124)
A plate of food and a glass of wine awaited him downstairs. Trude had eaten hours ago, so she just sat next to him and talked while he devoured the roast pork and potatoes. He was surprisingly hungry. He finished the first plate and she filled a second, which he forced himself to eat more slowly. Trude talked about her parents and the girls and how the Wehrmacht had come to the village and taken the remaining men and the schoolboys. She thanked God they had been given two daughters and no sons. She asked no questions about his trip, and he volunteered no details.
He finished eating. Trude cleared away the dishes. She had made a pot of ersatz coffee and was standing at the stove, pouring him a cup, when there was a very faint tapping at the door. She crossed the room and opened the door, staring in disbelief at the figure, dressed all in black, standing before her.
"Oh, my God," she murmured as the cup and saucer fell from her grasp and shattered at her feet.
"I still can't believe Heinrich Himmler actually set foot in this house," Trude said, her voice flat, as though she were speaking to herself. She was standing before a weak fire in their bedroom, ramrod straight, arms folded. In the dim light Vogel could see her face was damp and her body was trembling. "When I first saw that face I thought I was dreaming. Then I thought we were all under arrest. And then it dawned on me--Heinrich Himmler was in my parents' house because he needed to confer with my husband."
She turned from the fire and looked at him. "Why is that, Kurt? Tell me you don't work for him. Tell me you're not one of Himmler's henchmen. Tell me, even if it's a lie."
"I don't work for Heinrich Himmler."
"Who was that other man?"
"His name is Walter Schellenberg."
"What does he do?"
Vogel told her.
"What do you do? And don't tell me you're just Canaris's lawyer."
"Before the war I looked for very special people. I trained them and sent them to England to be spies."
Trude absorbed this information as if part of her had suspected it for a long time.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, not even you. I deceived you in order to protect you. I had no other reason."
"Where were you today?"
It was no use lying to her any longer. "I was at Berchtesgaden for a meeting with the Fuhrer."
"God Almighty," she muttered, shaking her head. "What else have you lied to me about, Kurt Vogel?"
"I've lied to you about nothing else, only my work."
The look on her face said she didn't believe him.
"Heinrich Himmler, in this house. What happened to you, Kurt? You were going to be a great lawyer. You were going to be the next Herman Heller, maybe even sit on the Supreme Court. You loved the law."
"There is no law in Germany, Trude. There is only Hitler."
"What did Himmler want? Why did he come here so late at night?"
"He wants me to help him kill a friend."
"I hope you said you won't help him."
Vogel looked up at her.
"If I don't help him, he'll kill me. And then he'll kill you and he'll kill the girls. He'll kill us all, Trude."
PART FOUR
43
LONDON: FEBRUARY 1944
"Same thing as before, Alfred. She led the watchers on a merry chase for three hours and then headed back to her flat."
"Nonsense, Harry. She's meeting another agent, or she's making a dead drop somewhere."
"If she did, then we missed it. Again."
"Damn!" Vicary used the stub of his cigarette to light another. He was disgusted with himself. Smoking cigarettes was bad enough. Using one to light the next was intolerable. It was just the tension of the operation. It had entered its third week. He had allowed Catherine Blake to photograph four batches of Kettledrum documents. Four times she had led the watchers on long chases around London. And four times they had failed to detect how she was getting the material out. Vicary was getting edgy. The longer the operation continued in this manner, the greater the chances of a mistake. The watchers were exhausted, and Peter Jordan was ready to revolt.
Vicary said, "Perhaps we're just going about this the wrong way."
"What do you mean?"
"We're following her, hoping we can detect her drop. What if we changed our tactics and started looking for the agent who's making the pickup?"
"But how? We don't know who he is or what he looks like."
"Actually, we might. Every time Catherine goes out we go with her. And so does Ginger Bradshaw. He's taken dozens and dozens of photographs. Our man is bound to be in a couple of them."
"It's possible, certainly worth a try."
Harry returned ten minutes later with a stack of photographs a foot high. "One hundred and fifty photographs to be exact, Alfred."
Vicary sat down at his desk and put on his half-moon reading glasses. He picked up the photographs one at a time and scanned the images for faces, clothing, suspicious looks--anything. Cursed with a near photographic memory, Vicary stored each of the images in his mind and moved on to the next. Harry drank tea and paced quietly in the shadows.