The Unlikely Spy(144)
"Is this official, Professor Vicary?" she said. "If it's not, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You've caused enough problems for me. If I'm seen talking to you again I'll be lucky to get a job as a bloody blackout warden. Please leave, Professor."
"I need to see a file, Grace."
"You know the procedure, Professor. Fill out a request slip. If your request is approved, you can see the file."
"I won't be given approval to see the file I need to see."
"Then you can't see it." Her voice had taken on the cold efficiency of a headmistress. "Those are the rules."
The first bombs fell, across the river by the feel of it. Then the antiaircraft batteries in the parks opened up. Vicary heard the drone of Heinkel bombers overhead. Grace stopped her filing and looked up. A slick of bombs fell nearby--too damned close, because the whole building shook and files tumbled from the shelves. Grace looked at the mess and said, "Bloody hell."
"I know Boothby is making you do things against your will. I heard you quarreling in his office, and I saw you getting into his car in Northumberland Avenue last night. And don't tell me you're seeing him romantically, because I know you're in love with Harry."
Vicary noticed the shine of tears in her green eyes, and the file in her hand begin to tremble.
"It's your bloody fault!" she snapped. "If you hadn't told him about the Vogel file, I wouldn't be in this mess."
"What is he making you do?"
She hesitated. "Please leave, Professor. Please."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me what Boothby wanted you to do."
"Dammit, Professor Vicary, he wanted me to spy on you! And on Harry!" She forced herself to lower her voice. "Anything Harry told me--in bed or anywhere else--I was supposed to tell him."
"What did you tell him?"
"Anything Harry mentioned to me about the case and the progress of the investigation. I also told him about the Registry search you requested." She pulled a handful of files from her cart and resumed her filing. "I heard Harry was involved in that mess at Earl's Court."
"He was indeed. In fact, he's the man of the hour."
"Was he hurt?"
Vicary nodded. "He's upstairs. The doctors couldn't keep him in bed."
"He probably did something stupid, didn't he? Trying to prove himself. God, he can be such a stupid, stubborn idiot sometimes."
"Grace, I need to see a file. Boothby's going to sack me when this business is over, and I need to know why."
She stared at him, a grave expression on her face. "You're serious, aren't you, Professor?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
She looked at him wordlessly for a moment while the building shuddered with the shock waves of the bombs.
"What's the file?" she asked.
"An operation called Kettledrum."
Grace furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "Isn't that the code name of the operation you're involved in now?"
"Yes."
"Hold on a minute. You want me to risk my neck to show you the file on your own case?"
"Something like that," Vicary said, "except I want you to cross-reference it with a different case officer."
"Who?"
Vicary looked directly into her green eyes and mouthed the initials BB.
She came back five minutes later, an empty file folder in her hand.
"Operation Kettledrum," she said. "Terminated."
"Where are the contents?"
"Either destroyed or with the case officer."
"When was the file opened?" Vicary asked.
Grace looked at the tab on the file, then at Vicary.
"That's funny," she said. "According to this, Operation Kettledrum was initiated in October 1943."
51
CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
By the time Scotland Yard responded to Alfred Vicary's demand for roadblocks, Horst Neumann had left London and was racing northward along the A10. The van had obviously been well maintained. It would do at least sixty miles per hour and the motor ran smoothly. The tires still had a decent amount of tread on them, and they gripped the wet road surprisingly well. And it had one other practical feature--a black van did not stand out from the other commercial vehicles on the road. Since petrol rationing made private motoring all but impossible, anyone driving an automobile that time of night might be stopped by the police and questioned.
The road ran straight across mostly flat terrain. Neumann hunched forward over the steering wheel as he drove, peering into the little pool of light thrown off by the shrouded headlamps. For a moment he considered removing the blackout shades but decided it was too risky. He flashed through villages with funny names--Puckeridge, Buntingford--dark, not a light burning, no one moving about. It was as if the clock had been turned back two thousand years. Neumann would scarcely have been surprised to see a Roman legion encamped along the banks of the River Cam.
More villages--Melbourn, Foxton, Newton, Hauxton. During his preparation at Vogel's farmhouse outside Berlin, Neumann had spent hours studying old Ordnance Survey maps of Britain. He suspected he knew the roads and pathways of East Anglia as well as most Englishmen, perhaps better.