Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

Catherine looked out the window. She realized she did not know where she was-still on Oxford Street, but where on Oxford Street? She was concentrating so hard on Vogel and Jordan that she had momentarily lost her bearings. The bus crossed Oxford Circus and she relaxed. It was then she noticed the woman watching her. She was seated across the aisle, facing Catherine, and she was staring directly at her. Catherine turned away and pretended to look out the window, but the woman still was staring at her. What's wrong with that damned woman? Why is she looking at me like that? She glanced at the woman's face. Something about it was distantly familiar.

The bus was nearing the next stop. Catherine gathered up her things. She would take no chances. She would get off right away. The bus slowed and pulled to the curbside. Catherine prepared to get to her feet. Then the woman reached across the aisle, touched her arm, and said, "Anna, darling. Is it really you?"

The recurring dream began after she killed Beatrice Pymm. It starts the same way each time. She is playing on the floor of her mother's dressing room. Her mother, seated before her vanity, powders a flawless face. Papa comes into the room. He is wearing a white dinner jacket with medals pinned to his breast. He leans over, kisses her mother's neck, and tells her they must hurry or they will be late. Kurt Vogel arrives next. He is wearing a dark suit, like an undertaker, and he has the face of a wolf. He is holding her things: a beautiful silver stiletto with diamonds and rubies in the shape of a swastika on the grip, a Mauser with a silencer screwed into the barrel, a suitcase with a radio inside. "Hurry," he whispers to her. "We mustn't be late. The Fuhrer is extremely anxious to meet you."

She rides through Berlin in a horse-drawn carriage. Vogel the wolf is loping easily in their wake. The party is like a candlelit cloud. Beautiful women are dancing with beautiful men. Hitler is holding forth at the center of the room. Vogel encourages her to go talk to the Fuhrer. She slips through the shimmering crowd and notices everyone is looking at her. She thinks it is because she is beautiful but after a moment everyone has stopped talking, the band has stopped playing, and everyone is staring at her.

"You're not a little girl! You're a spy for the Abwehr!"

"No, I'm not!"

"Of course you are! That's why you have a stiletto and that radio!"

"No! It's not true!"

Then Hitler says, "You're the one who killed that poor woman in Suffolk-Beatrice Pymm."

"It's not true! It's not true!"

"Arrest her! Hang her!"

Everyone is laughing at her. Suddenly she is naked and they laugh even more. She turns to Vogel for help but he has run away and left her. And then she screams and sits up in bed, bathed in sweat, and tells herself it was only a dream. Just a silly, bloody dream.

Catherine Blake took a taxi to Marble Arch. The episode on the bus had left her badly shaken. She chastised herself for not handling it better. She had rushed off the bus, alarmed, after the woman called her by her real name. She should have stayed in her seat and calmly explained to the woman that she was mistaken. It was a dreadful miscalculation. Several people on the bus had seen her face. It was her worst nightmare.

She used the taxi ride to calm down and think it through. She knew it was always a remote possibility-the possibility that she might run into someone who recognized her. She had lived in London for two years after her mother's death, when her father was assigned to the German embassy here. She had attended an English school for girls but made no close friends. She came to the country one other time after that-with Maria Romero on a brief holiday in 1935. They had stayed with friends of Maria and met many other young, rich people at parties and restaurants and theaters. She'd had a brief affair with a young Englishman whose name she could not remember. Vogel had decided it was an acceptable risk. The chances of actually bumping into someone she knew were remote. If she did she was to have a standard response: I'm sorry, but you must have me confused with someone else. For six years it did not happen. She had grown careless. When it did happen she panicked.

She finally remembered who the woman was. Her name was Rose Morely, and she had been the cook at her father's house in London. Catherine barely remembered her-only that she cooked rather poorly and always served the meat overdone. Catherine had had very little contact with the woman. It was amazing she recognized her.

She had two choices: ignore it and pretend it never happened or investigate and try to determine the extent of the damage.

Catherine chose the second option.

She paid off the driver at Marble Arch and got out. Dusk was fading quickly into the blackout. A number of bus routes converged on Marble Arch, including the bus she had just fled. With luck, Rose Morely would get off here and change for another bus. The bus she was on would turn down Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner. If Rose stayed on the bus, Catherine would try to slip on without her noticing.

The bus approached. Rose Morely was still in the same seat. As the bus slowed she got to her feet. Catherine had guessed right. The bus stopped. Rose disembarked from the rear doorway.

Catherine stepped forward and said, "You're Rose Morely, aren't you?"

The woman's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Yes-and you are Anna. I knew it was you. It had to be. You haven't changed a bit since you were a little girl. But how did you get here so-"

"When I realized it was you, I followed in a taxi," Catherine said, cutting her off. The sound of her real name, spoken in a crowd of people, made her shudder. She took Rose Morely by the arm and headed into the gloom of Hyde Park.

"Let's walk for a while," Catherine said. "It's been so long, Rose."

That evening Catherine typed her report to Vogel. She photographed it, burned it in the bathroom sink, then burned the ribbon, just as Vogel had taught her. She looked up and caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror. She turned away. The sink was black with the ink and the ash. Her fingers were black too, her hands.

Catherine Blake- spy.

She picked up the soap and began working it through her fingers.

It was not a difficult decision. It was worse than she could have imagined. I emigrated to England before the war, she had explained, as they walked along the pathway in the gathering darkness. I couldn't bear the thought of living under Hitler any longer. It was truly horrifying, the things he was doing to the Jews especially.

Catherine Blake- liar.

They must have given you a rough time.

What do you mean?

The authorities, the police. A whisper: Military Intelligence.

No, no, it wasn't difficult at all.

I work for a man named Commander Higgins now. I care for his children. His wife was killed in the blitz, poor dearie. Commander Higgins works for the Admiralty. He says anyone who entered the country before the war was assumed to be a German spy.

Oh, really?

I'm sure Commander Higgins will be interested to know you were not harassed.

There's no need to mention any of this to Commander Higgins, is there, Rose?

But there was no escaping it. The British public was very aware of the threat posed by spies. It was everywhere: the newspapers, on the radio, in the movies. Rose was not a foolish woman. She would mention the encounter to Commander Higgins, and Commander Higgins would telephone MI5, and MI5 would be crawling all over central London looking for her. All the meticulous preparation that went into creating her cover would be blown away because of one chance encounter with a domestic who had read too many spy thrillers.