Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

The afternoon light diminished to a frail pink dusk. He was still miles from headquarters. If he were lucky, Vicary might run into someone from his own side who could give him a lift. If he were unlucky he might find himself face-to-face with a patrol of German scouts.

When the last of the twilight had died away, the shelling began. The first shells fell short, landing harmlessly in a field. The next shells soared overhead and thudded against a hillside. The third volley landed on the track directly in front of him.

Vicary never heard the shell that wounded him.

He regained consciousness sometime in the early evening as he lay freezing in a ditch. He looked down and nearly fainted at the sight of his knee, a mess of splintered bone and blood. He forced himself to crawl out of the ditch back up to the path. He found his bike and blacked out beside it.

Vicary came to in a field hospital the next morning. He knew the attack had gone forward because the hospital was overflowing. He lay in his bed all day, head swimming in a drowsy morphine haze, listening to the moaning of the wounded. At twilight the boy in the next bed died. Vicary closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sound of the death rattle, but it was no good.

Brendan Evans-his friend from Cambridge who had helped Vicary deceive his way into the Intelligence Corps-came to see him the next morning. The war had changed him. His boyish good looks were gone. He looked like a hardened, somewhat cruel man. Brendan pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed.

"It's all my fault," Vicary told him. "I knew the Germans were waiting. But my motorbike broke down and I couldn't fix the damned thing. Then the shelling started."

"I know. They found the papers in your saddlebag. No one's blaming you. It was just bloody awful luck, that's all. You probably couldn't have done anything to repair the bike in any case."

Sometimes, Vicary still heard the screams of the dying in his sleep-even now, almost thirty years later. In recent days his dream had taken a new twist-he dreamed it was Basil Boothby who had sabotaged his motorbike.

Ever read Vogel's file?

No.

Liar. Perfect liar.

Vicary had tried to refrain from the inevitable comparisons between then and now, but it was unavoidable. He did not believe in fate, but someone or something had given him another chance-a chance to redeem himself for his failure on that autumn day in 1916.

Vicary thought the party in the pub across the street from MI5 headquarters would help him take his mind off the case. It had not. He had lingered at the fringes, thinking about France, gazing into his beer, watching while other officers flirted with the pretty typists. Nicholas Jago was giving a rather good account of himself at the piano.

He was jolted out of his trance when one of the Registry Queens began singing "I'll Be Seeing You." She was an attractive crimson-lipped blonde named Grace Clarendon. Vicary knew she and Harry had carried on a rather public affair early in the war. Vicary understood the attraction. Grace was bright, witty, and cleverer than the rest of the girls in Registry. But she was also married, and Vicary did not approve. He didn't tell Harry how he felt; it was none of his business. He thought, Besides, who am I to lecture on matters of the heart? He suspected it was Grace who had told Harry about Boothby and the Vogel file.

Harry walked in, bundled in his overcoat. He winked at Grace, then walked over to Vicary and said, "Let's head back to the office. We need to talk."

"Her name was Beatrice Pymm. She lived alone in a cottage outside Ipswich," Harry began, as they walked upstairs to Vicary's office. He had spent several hours in Ipswich that morning, delving into Beatrice Pymm's past. "No friends, no family. Her mother died in 1936. Left her the cottage and a fair amount of money. She didn't have a job. She had no boyfriends, no lovers, not even a cat. The only thing she did was paint."

"Paint?" Vicary asked.

"Yeah, paint. The people I spoke to said she painted almost every day. She left the cottage early in the morning, went into the surrounding countryside, and spent all day painting. A detective from the Ipswich police showed me a couple of her paintings: landscapes. Very nice, actually."

Vicary frowned. "I didn't know you had an eye for art, Harry."

"You think boys from Battersea can't appreciate the finer things? I'll have you know my sainted mother regularly dragged me to the National Gallery."

"I'm sorry, Harry. Please continue."

"Beatrice didn't own a car. She either rode her bicycle or walked or took the bus. She used to paint too long, especially in the summer when the light was good, and miss the last bus back. Her neighbors would spot her arriving home late at night on foot carrying her painting things. They say she spent the night in some god-awful places, just to catch the sunrise."

"What do they think happened to her?"

"The official version of the story-accidental drowning. Her belongings were found on the banks of the Orwell, including an empty bottle of wine. The police think she may have had a little too much to drink, lost her footing, slipped into the water, and drowned. No body was found. They investigated for some time but couldn't find any evidence to support any other theory. They declared her death an accidental drowning and closed the case."

"Sounds like a very plausible story."

"Sure, it could have happened that way. But I doubt it. Beatrice Pymm was very familiar with the area. Why on that particular day did she have a little too much to drink and fall into the river?"

"Theory number two?"

"Theory number two goes as follows: she was picked up by our spy after dark, stabbed in the heart, and her body loaded into a van. Her things were left on the river-bank in order to make it appear like an accidental drowning. In reality, the corpse was driven across the country, mutilated, and buried outside Whitchurch."

They arrived in Vicary's office and sat down, Vicary behind the desk, Harry opposite. Harry leaned back in his chair and propped up his feet.

"Is this all supposition, or do you have facts to support your theory?"

"Half and half, but it all fits your guess that Beatrice Pymm was murdered in order to conceal the spy's entry into the country."

"Let's hear it."

"I'll start with the corpse. The body was discovered in August 1939. I spoke to the Home Office pathologist who examined it. Judging from the decomposition, he estimated it had been in the ground six to nine months. That's consistent with Beatrice Pymm's disappearance, by the way. The bones of the face had been almost completely shattered. There were no teeth to compare dental records. There were no fingerprints to be taken because the hands had badly decomposed. He was unable to fix a cause of death. He did find one interesting clue, though, a nick on the bottom rib of the left side. That nick is consistent with being stabbed in the chest."

"You say the killer may have used a van? What's your evidence?"

"I asked the local police forces for reports on any crimes or disturbances around Whitchurch the night of Beatrice Pymm's murder. Coincidentally, a van was deserted and set deliberately ablaze outside a village called Alderton. They ran a check on the van's identification number."

"And?"

"Stolen in London two days earlier."

Vicary rose and began pacing. "So our spy is in the middle of nowhere with a van blazing on the side of the road. Where does she go now? What does she do?"

"Let's assume she comes back to London. She flags down a passing car or lorry and asks for a lift. Or maybe she walks to the nearest station and takes the first train into London."

"Too risky," Vicary said. "A woman alone in the middle of the countryside late at night would be very unusual. It's November, so it's cold too. She might be spotted by the police. The murder of Beatrice Pymm was perfectly planned and executed. Her killer wouldn't leave her escape to chance."