Michael Ridpath - Shadows of War

Anneliese sat in her cell deep in the heart of Holloway Prison and waited. Waited for British justice to take its course.

It had taken an immense effort of will, but she was calm, and she was determined to stay calm.

She had been all right at first, in the police car with the British bobbies whom she admired so much. They weren’t friendly, far from it, but they were polite and they hadn’t hit her.

It wasn’t far to Holloway Prison, but once the police car had turned off the sunny, civilized English street and stopped in front of the prison’s forbidding battlements, something snapped. She started to scream and to yell in German, and she couldn’t stop. All rational thought was overwhelmed in a flood of terror and hopelessness. Holloway wasn’t exactly like those other places she had been, Moringen or Sachsenhausen or Lichtenburg, but it was an old evil prison, built like a medieval castle, with warders who looked at her with contempt. A German spy.

At the entrance, two large stone dragons perched on top of stone plinths, fangs bared. One of them clutched a great key in its long talons. It terrified her.

They threw her into a holding cell and she lay there sobbing for perhaps half an hour. But somehow, with a great effort of will, she pulled herself together. She had done nothing wrong. They had no doubt arrested her because of her presence at the Russian Tea Rooms. She could explain all that. She would ask to see Major McCaigue; he would release her and she would be home for supper.

Then she was processed: fingerprinted, strip-searched, weighed, given a medical examination and a delousing bath and placed in a proper cell. It was a small room with a table, chair, narrow bed and one fragmented window a foot above her head. The walls were whitewashed and the floors stone. The cell was filthy, the sheets stained and grey with grime, but they gave her cocoa in a mug without a handle embossed with the letters ‘GR’ and a crown. They hadn’t given her cocoa at Sachsenhausen.

She could survive this.

She was calm at her initial interview with two detectives. She had indeed been arrested for her attendance at the Tea Rooms and her friendship with members of the Right Club. It turned out Joan Miller, the model, was working for the authorities. Anneliese was impressed: Joan had been convincing. Anneliese calmly stated that she too had been trying to uncover subversive activities and that Major McCaigue of the secret service would back her up. The detectives didn’t seem to believe her, but they did write it all down. And took her back to her cell.

There was a jangling of keys outside, the metal door opened and a warder appeared. ‘Rosen? Follow me.’

Anneliese followed the warder along corridors lined with cell doors, down two flights of stairs and into the interview room. Waiting for her were the two detectives and a large man with a bald head and florid complexion. Major McCaigue.

Anneliese felt giddy with relief and smiled at the major. He nodded and indicated the chair. The warder stood behind Anneliese.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Anneliese said.

Major McCaigue ignored her. ‘Miss Rosen, I’ve come to urge you to cooperate with the police in this investigation.’ His voice, which had seemed rich and friendly when he had spoken to Conrad and her in the Foreign Office, was now grave, with a hint of menace.

‘Of course,’ said Anneliese, struggling to control a surge of panic. This wasn’t going as she had expected.

‘What we want to know is whether you are working for the Russians or the Germans.’

Anneliese frowned. ‘Neither. I’m working for you.’ She glanced at the older detective, but there was no reassurance there. ‘I told you everything I had discovered at the Tea Rooms. About Henry Alston and Lord Oakford and the Duke of Windsor. You were going to investigate it.’

‘And I have,’ said McCaigue. ‘And there is not a shred of truth to any of it, as you well know.’

‘Of course it’s true!’ said Anneliese. ‘And you must stop it.’

‘We have suspected for a long time that your boyfriend Lieutenant de Lancey is a Soviet spy. He has been trying to undermine the morale of the British people by denigrating the royal family. And you have been helping him.’

Anneliese listened, shocked.

‘My colleagues here will ask you about de Lancey. Whom he works for, what his plans are, what else he intends to do, whether you had help from the Right Club. And you will answer.’

‘I will answer any questions you ask me truthfully,’ Anneliese said, glancing at the detectives. Keep calm. Don’t shout at him. ‘And you are mistaken about Conrad. I am sure that the plot he has uncovered — we have uncovered — is a real one. Sir Henry Alston and his friends want to replace the current government with one that will make peace with Germany. More than that, become Germany’s ally.’

‘You have been arrested under Defence Regulation 18B,’ McCaigue said. ‘This allows for the internment without trial of persons who are members of organizations under foreign control or who sympathize with the system of government of enemy powers. That means you will be incarcerated for the duration of the war. That’s the best you can hope for. But if we find evidence that you have been spying, then you will be tried for espionage, found guilty and hanged.’

McCaigue leaned forward. ‘Luckily for you, the choice as to which will apply is yours. Cooperate and you go to jail. Refuse to tell us everything you know and you go to the gallows.’

Anneliese held McCaigue’s stare. That ‘Regulation 18B’ sounded a lot like the ‘Protective Custody’ dodge that the Gestapo had employed to lock her and her father up in a concentration camp and throw away the key. Cold fingers of panic reached out towards her, clutching at her and threatening to pull her into a deep dark abyss of hopelessness and despair. For a moment she felt she couldn’t go through all this again.

She could. She would. She would do everything she could to persuade the detectives that McCaigue was wrong about Conrad, that there was indeed a plot to end the war involving Alston and others. If she failed, then she would hang, and so be it.

‘I will tell you everything I know,’ she said. ‘You need not worry about that.’

‘Good,’ said McCaigue. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

The detectives followed him out of the door, promising to return soon to continue the interview.

Anneliese watched them go. She wondered what had happened to Conrad. Could he somehow throw off McCaigue’s suspicion and get her freed? Or had they arrested him too? Not for the first time, she felt alone and afraid. But she had survived before; she would survive again.

Paris

It only took Conrad twenty minutes to walk to the Haldemans’ apartment in the eighth arrondissement. Isobel was having supper with her husband.

‘Conrad? It’s lovely to see you but we weren’t expecting you.’

‘No, I’m sure you weren’t. I’m dreadfully sorry for barging in like this.’

Isobel rose to the occasion immediately. ‘Have you eaten? Do join us. Marie was just leaving, but I’m sure she can rustle up something before she goes. An omelette perhaps?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ said Conrad. ‘Thank you.’

‘You remember Conrad de Lancey, Marsh? Veronica’s husband.’ She smiled at Conrad. ‘ Former husband. The one that got away. Veronica is furious.’

Conrad was impressed by Isobel’s ability to make him feel at home so quickly. Marshall Haldeman less so. The American was in his late thirties, with an oversized square jaw. A catch himself, as Veronica had admitted to Conrad in better times.

‘Take a seat, de Lancey,’ he said as Isobel darted into the kitchen. ‘What brings you to Paris? I thought Isobel said you were in the army.’