Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

She walked quickly now, trailing the ambulance, and stepped inside. It was bedlam. The emergency room was filled with wounded. They seemed to be everywhere-the floors, the hallways, even the nurses' station. A few cried. Others sat staring, too dazed to comprehend what had happened to them. Dozens of patients had yet to see a doctor or a nurse. More were arriving by the minute.

Catherine felt a hand on her shoulder.

"No time for standing round, Miss Blake."

Catherine turned and saw the stern face of Enid Pritt. Before the war, Enid had been a kind, sometimes confused woman accustomed to dealing with cases of influenza and, occasionally, the loser of a Saturday-night knife fight outside a pub. All that changed with the war. Now she stood ramrod straight and spoke in a clear parade-ground voice, never using more words than needed to make a point. She ran one of the busiest emergency wards in London without a hitch. A year earlier her husband of twenty-eight years had been killed in the blitz. Enid Pritt did not grieve-that could wait until after the Germans were beaten.

"Don't let them see what you're thinking, Miss Blake," Enid Pritt said briskly. "Frightens them even more. Off with your coat and get to work. At least a hundred and fifty wounded in this hospital alone, and the morgue's filling fast. Been told to expect more."

"I haven't seen it this bad since September 1940."

"That's why they need you. Now get to work, young lady, quick as you like."

Enid Pritt moved off across the emergency room like a commander crossing a battlefield. Catherine watched her take a young nurse to task over a sloppy dressing. Enid Pritt didn't play favorites-she was hard on nurses and volunteers alike. Catherine hung up her coat and started making her way down a hallway filled with injured. She began with a small girl clutching a scorched stuffed bear.

"Where does it hurt, little one?"

"My arm."

Catherine rolled up the sleeve of the girl's sweater, revealing an arm that was obviously broken. The child was in shock and unaware of the pain. Catherine kept her talking, trying to keep her mind off the wound.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Ellen."

"Where do you live?"

"Stepney, but our house isn't there anymore." Her voice was calm, emotionless.

"Where are your parents? Are they here with you?"

"The fireman told me they're with God now."

Catherine said nothing, just held the girl's hand. "The doctor will be along to see you soon. Just sit still and try not to move your arm. All right, Ellen?"

"Yes," she said. "You're very pretty."

Catherine smiled. "Thank you. You know what?"

"What?"

"So are you."

Catherine moved up the hallway. An older man with a contusion across the top of his bald head looked up as Catherine examined the wound. "I'm just fine, young lady. There are a lot of people hurt worse than myself. See to them first."

She smoothed his rumpled ring of gray hair and did as he asked. It was a quality she had seen in the English time and time again. Berlin was foolish to resume the blitz. She wished she were allowed to tell them.

Catherine moved down the hall, tending to the wounded, listening to the stories while she worked.

"I was in the kitchen pourin' meself a cup of bleedin' tea when boom! A thousand-pound bomb lands right on me bleedin' doorstep. Next thing I know I'm lyin' flat on me back in what used to be me garden, lookin' up at a pile of rubble that used to be me bleedin' house."

"Watch your mouth, George, there's children present."

"That's not so bad, mate. House across the street from mine took a direct hit. Family of four, good people, wiped out."

A bomb landed nearby; the hospital shook.

A nun, badly injured, blessed herself and began leading the others in the Lord's Prayer.

"It's gonna take more than prayer to knock the Luftwaffe out of the sky tonight, Sister."

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…"

"I lost my wife to the blitz in 1940. I think I may have lost my only daughter tonight."

"… on Earth as it is in Heaven…"

"What a war, Sister, what a bleedin' war."

"… as we forgive those who trespass against us…"

"You know, Mervin, I get the impression Hitler doesn't much like us."

"I've noticed that too."

The emergency room erupted with laughter.

Ten minutes later, when the nun decided that prayer had run its course, the inevitable singing began.

"Roll out the barrel…"

Catherine shook her head.

"We'll have a barrel of fun…"

But after a moment she found herself singing along with the others.

It was eight o'clock the next morning when she let herself into her flat. The morning's post had arrived. Her landlady, Mrs. Hodges, always slipped it beneath the door. Catherine bent down, picked up the letters, and immediately tossed three envelopes into the trash bin in the kitchen. She did not need to read them because she had written them herself and mailed them from different locations around London. Under normal circumstances, Catherine would receive no personal letters, for she had no friends and no family in Britain. But it would be odd for a young, attractive, educated woman never to correspond with anyone-and Mrs. Hodges was a bit of a snoop-so Catherine engaged in an elaborate ruse to make sure she had a steady stream of personal mail.

She went into the bathroom and opened the taps above the tub. The pressure was low, the water trickled from the spigot in a thread, but at least it was hot today. Water was in short supply because of the dry summer and fall, and the government was threatening to ration that too. Filling the tub would take several minutes.

Catherine Blake had been in no position to make demands at the time of her recruitment, but she made one anyway-enough money to live comfortably. She had been raised in large town houses and sprawling country estates-both her parents had come from the upper classes-and spending the war in some hovel of a boardinghouse sharing a bathroom with six other people was out of the question. Her cover was a war widow from a middle-class family of respectable means and her flat matched it to perfection, a modest yet comfortable set of rooms in a Victorian terrace in Earl's Court.

The sitting room was cozy and modestly furnished, though a stranger might have been struck by the complete lack of anything personal. There were no photographs and no mementos. There was a separate bedroom with a comfortable double bed, a kitchen with all modern appliances, and her own bathroom with a large tub.

The flat had other qualities that a normal Englishwoman living alone might not demand. It was on the top floor, where her AFU suitcase radio could receive transmissions from Hamburg with little interference, and the Victorian bay window in the sitting room provided a clear view of the street below.

She went into the kitchen and placed a kettle of water on the stove. The volunteer work was time-consuming and exhausting but it was essential for her cover. Everyone was doing something to help. It wouldn't look right for a healthy young woman with no family to be doing nothing for the war effort. Signing up to work at a munitions factory was risky-her cover might not withstand much of a background check-and joining the Wrens was out of the question. The Women's Voluntary Service was the perfect compromise. They were desperate for people. When Catherine went to sign up in September 1940 she was put to work that same night. She cared for the injured at St. Thomas Hospital and handed out books and biscuits in the underground during the night raids. By all appearances she was the model young Englishwoman doing her bit.

Sometimes she had to laugh.

The kettle screamed. She returned to the kitchen and made tea. Like all Londoners she had become addicted to tea and cigarettes. It seemed the whole country was living on tannin and tobacco, and Catherine was no exception. She had used up her ration of powdered milk and sugar so she drank the tea plain. At moments like these she longed for the strong bitter coffee of home and a piece of sweet Berlin cake.