Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

"Horst Neumann."

"You're a soldier. At least you used to be one. What's your rank?"

"I'm a lieutenant."

She smiled. "I outrank you, by the way."

"Yes, I know- Major. "

"What's your cover name?"

"James Porter."

"Let me see your identification."

He handed it across. She examined it carefully. It was an excellent forgery. She gave it back to him. "It's good," she said. "But show it only if it is absolutely necessary. What's your cover?"

"I was wounded at Dunkirk and invalided out of the army. I'm a traveling salesman now."

"Where are you staying?"

"The Norfolk coast-a village called Hampton Sands. Vogel has an agent there named Sean Dogherty. He's an IRA sympathizer who runs a small farm."

"How did you enter the country?"

"Parachute."

"Very impressive," she said genuinely. "And Dogherty took you in? He was waiting for you?"

"Yes."

"Vogel contacted him by radio?"

"I assume so, yes."

"That means MI-Five is looking for you."

"I think I spotted two of their men at Liverpool Street."

"It makes sense. They'd certainly be watching the stations." She lit a cigarette. "Your English is excellent. Where did you learn it?"

While he told her the story Catherine looked at him carefully for the first time. He was small and sparingly built; he might have been an athlete once, a tennis player or a runner. His hair was dark, his eyes a penetrating blue. He was obviously intelligent-not like some of the imbeciles she had seen at the Abwehr spy school in Berlin. She doubted he had been behind enemy lines before as an agent, yet he showed no sign of nerves. She had a few more questions before she would listen to what he had to say.

"How did you end up in this line of work?"

Neumann told her the story: that he had been a member of the Fallschirmjager, that he had seen action in more places than he could remember. He told her about Paris. About his transfer to the Funkabwehr eavesdropping unit in northern France. And about his eventual recruitment by Kurt Vogel.

"Our Kurt is very good at finding work for the restless," Catherine said, when he had finished. "So what does Vogel have in mind for me? "

"One assignment, then out. Back to Germany."

The kettle screamed. Neumann went into the kitchen and busied himself with the tea. One assignment, then out. Back to Germany. And with a highly capable former paratrooper to help her make her escape. She was impressed. She had always assumed the worst: when the war ended she would be abandoned in Britain and forced to fend for herself. The British and the Americans-when the inevitable victory came-would pore over captured Abwehr files. They would find her name, realize she had never been arrested, and come after her. That was the other reason she had withheld so much information from Vogel; she didn't want to leave a trail in Berlin for her enemies to follow. But Vogel obviously wanted her back in Germany, and he had taken steps to make sure that happened.

Neumann came back into the drawing room with a pot of tea and two mugs. He placed the things on a table and sat down again.

Catherine said, "What's your job, besides briefing me on my assignment?"

"Whatever you need, basically. I'm your courier, your support agent, and your radio operator. Vogel wants you to continue to stay off the air. He's convinced it's not safe. The only time you're to use your radio is if you need me. You contact Vogel with a prearranged signal, and Vogel will contact me."

She nodded, then said, "And when it's all over? How are we supposed to get out of Britain? And please don't say something heroic like steal a boat and sail back to France. Because it's not possible."

"Of course not. Vogel has arranged first-class passage for you aboard a U-boat."

"Which one?"

"U-509."

"Where?"

"The North Sea."

"It's big. Where in the North Sea?"

"Spurn Head, off the Lincolnshire coast."

"I've lived here for five years, Lieutenant Neumann. I know where Spurn Head is. How are we supposed to get to the U-boat?"

"Vogel has a boat and a skipper waiting at a dock along the River Humber. When it's time to leave I contact him and he takes us out to the submarine."

She thought, So Vogel has a built-in escape hatch he's never told me about.

Catherine sipped her tea, inspecting Neumann over the brim of the mug. It was remotely possible he was an MI5 man posing as a German agent. She could play silly games-like testing his German or asking him about some little-known Berlin cafe-but if he truly was MI5 he would be smart enough to avoid an obvious trap. He knew the patter, he knew a great deal about Vogel, and his story seemed credible. She decided to let it continue. As Neumann was about to resume speaking, the air raid sirens wailed.

"Do we need to take this seriously?" Neumann asked.

"Did you see the building behind this one?"

Neumann had seen it, a pile of broken brick and smashed timber. "Where's the nearest shelter?"

"Around the corner." She smiled at him. "Welcome back to London, Lieutenant Neumann."

It was early evening the following day when Neumann's train drew into Hunstanton Station. Sean Dogherty was smoking anxiously on the platform as he stepped off the train.

"How did it go?" Dogherty asked, as they walked to his truck.

"Went off without a hitch."

Dogherty drove uncomfortably fast over the rolling, crumbling, single-lane track. It was a rattletrap van, badly in need of an overhaul by the sound of it. Blackout shades shrouded the headlamps. A dribble of pale yellow light tried vainly to illuminate the roadway. Neumann had the sensation of walking through a strange darkened house with only a match for light. They passed through bleak darkened villages-Holme, Thornham, Titchwell-no lights burning, shops and cottages tightly shuttered, no sign of human habitation. Dogherty was telling him about his day, but Neumann gradually tuned him out, thinking about last night.

They had rushed to a tube station like everyone else and waited three hours on the dank platform for the all clear to sound. She slept for a time, allowing her head to fall against his shoulder. He wondered if it was the first time she had felt safe in six years. He stared at her in the darkness. A remarkably beautiful woman but there was a distant sadness-a childhood wound, perhaps, inflicted by a careless adult. She stirred in her sleep, troubled by dreams. He touched the pile of curls that lay spread across his shoulder. When the all clear sounded she awoke like all soldiers in enemy territory-quickly, eyes suddenly wide, hand reaching for the nearest weapon. In her case it was the handbag, where Neumann assumed she kept a gun or a knife.

They talked until dawn. Actually, he had talked and she had listened. She never spoke except to correct him when he had made a mistake or contradicted something he had said hours earlier. She obviously had a powerful mind, capable of storing immense amounts of information. No wonder Vogel had so much respect for her abilities.

A gray dawn was spreading over London when Neumann slipped out of her flat. He had moved like a man leaving his mistress, sneaking small glances over his shoulder, searching the faces of passersby for traces of suspicion. For three hours he weaved through London in a cold drizzle, making sudden course changes, getting on and off buses, looking at reflections in windows. He decided he was not being followed and started back to Liverpool Street Station.

On the train he pillowed his head on his hands and tried to sleep. Don't fall under her spell, Vogel had playfully warned on their last day together at the farm. Keep to a safe distance. She has dark places where you don't want to go.

Neumann pictured her in her flat, listening in the faint light as he told her of Peter Jordan and what she was expected to do. It was the unnerving stillness about her that struck him most, the way the hands lay folded in the lap, the way the head and shoulders never seemed to move. Only the eyes, casting around the room, back and forth across his face, up and down his body. Like searchlights. For a moment he allowed himself to entertain a fantasy that she desired him. But now, as Hampton Sands vanished into the gloom behind them and the Dogherty cottage appeared before them, Neumann came to a disturbing conclusion. Catherine was not looking at him that way because she found him attractive, she was deciding how best to kill him if she ever needed to.