The Unlikely Spy(44)
She thought, God, but I almost can't remember my real name.
She decided she would make the rendezvous.
She walked along the edge of the Serpentine, watching a fleet of ducks fishing the gaps in the ice. She followed the pathway toward the trees. The last light had faded; the sky was a mat of winking stars. One nice thing about the blackout, she thought: you could see the stars at night, even in the heart of the West End.
She reached inside her handbag and felt for the butt of her silenced pistol, a Mauser 6.35 automatic. It was there. If anything appeared out of the ordinary she would use it. She had made one vow--that she would never allow herself to be arrested. The thought of being locked up in some stinking British jail made her physically sick. She had nightmares about her own execution. She could see their laughing English faces before the hangman placed the black hood over her head and the rope around her neck. She would use her suicide pill or she would die fighting, but she would never let them touch her.
An American soldier passed in the other direction. A prostitute clung to his shoulder, was rubbing his cock and sticking her tongue in his ear. It was a common sight. The girls worked Piccadilly. Few wasted time or money on hotel rooms. Wall jobs, the soldiers called them. The girls just took their customers into alleyways or parks and raised their skirts. Some of the more naive girls thought f*cking standing up would keep them from getting pregnant.
Catherine thought, Stupid English girls.
She entered the trees and waited for Vogel's agent to show.
The afternoon train from Hunstanton arrived at Liverpool Street Station a half hour late. Horst Neumann collected his small leather grip from the luggage rack and joined the line of passengers spilling onto the platform. The station was chaos. Knots of weary travelers wandered the terminus like victims of a natural disaster, faces blank, waiting for hopelessly delayed trains. Soldiers slept wherever they liked, heads pillowed on kit bags. A few uniformed railway policemen meandered about, trying to keep order. All the porters were women. Neumann stepped onto the platform. Small, agile, bright-eyed, he sliced his way through the dense crowd.
The men at the exit had AUTHORITY written all over them. They wore rumpled suits and bowler hats. He wondered if they were looking for him. There was no way they could have a description. Instinctively, he reached inside his jacket and felt for the butt of his pistol. It was there, tucked in the waistband of his trousers. He also felt for his billfold in his breast pocket. The name on his identity card read James Porter. His cover was a traveling pharmaceutical salesman. He brushed past the two men and joined the crowd jostling along Bishopsgate Road.
The journey, except for the inevitable delay, had gone smoothly. He had shared a compartment with a group of young soldiers. For a time they had eyed him malevolently while he read his newspapers. Neumann guessed any healthy-looking young man not in uniform would be subjected to a certain amount of contempt. He told them he had been wounded at Dunkirk and brought back to England half dead aboard an oceangoing tug--one of the "little ships." The soldiers asked Neumann to join them in a game of cards, and he beat the pants off them.
The street was pitch dark, the only light provided by the shaded headlamps of the evening traffic working its way along the road and the pale blackout torches carried by many of the pedestrians. He felt as if he were in the midst of a child's game, trying to perform a ridiculously simple task while blindfolded. Twice he smashed straight into a pedestrian coming in the opposite direction. Once he collided with something cold and hard and started to apologize before noticing it was a lamppost.
He had to laugh. London certainly had changed since his last visit.
He was born Nigel Fox in London in 1919 to a German mother and an English father. When his father died in 1927, his mother returned to Germany and settled in Dusseldorf. A year later she remarried--a wealthy manufacturer named Erich Neumann, a stern disciplinarian who wasn't about to have a stepson named Nigel who spoke German with an English accent. He immediately changed the boy's name to Horst, allowed him to take his family name, and enrolled him in one of the toughest military schools in the country. Horst was miserable. The other boys teased him because of his poor German. Small, easily bullied, he came home most weekends with blackened eyes and split lips. His mother grew worried; Horst had become quiet and withdrawn. Erich thought it was good for him.
But when Horst turned fourteen his life changed. At an all-comers track meet he entered the 1,500 meters in his school shorts and no shoes. He finished well under five minutes, stunning for a boy with no training. A coach from the national federation had watched the race. He encouraged Horst to train and convinced his school to make special provisions for the boy.
Horst came alive. Freed from the drudgery of the school's physical education classes, he spent afternoons running through the countryside and the mountains. He loved being alone, away from the other boys. He was never happier. He quickly became one of the best junior track athletes in the country and a source of pride for the school. He joined the Hitler Jugend--the Hitler Youth. Boys who had picked on him years earlier suddenly were vying for his attention. In 1936, he was invited to attend the Olympic Games in Berlin. He watched the American Jesse Owens stun the world by winning four gold medals. He met Adolf Hitler at a reception for Hitler Youth and even shook his hand. He was so excited he telephoned home to tell his mother. Erich was immensely proud. Sitting in the grandstand Horst dreamed of 1944, when he would be old enough and fast enough to compete for Germany.