Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

Think quickly, Catherine!

She walked down the hallway and pushed back the door of the drawing room. She put the Mauser in the handbag and the handbag on the floor. She turned on the light and walked to the drinks trolley. Calm down. Take a deep breath. She picked up a glass and was pouring herself a brandy when Peter Jordan walked in.

Harry Dalton was waiting outside the Popes' warehouse in a department surveillance van. He had two men with him, Detective-Sergeant Meadows from the Metropolitan Police and a watcher named Clive Roach. Harry was in the front passenger seat, Roach behind the wheel. Meadows was getting a few minutes of sleep in the back.

It was dawn. It had been a long and dreadfully boring night. Harry was exhausted, but each time he tried to sleep he saw one of two disparate visions: Rose Morely lying dead in Hyde Park or Grace Clarendon's face as they made love. He wanted to climb into her bed and sleep around the clock. He wanted to hold her in his arms and never let go. He was under her spell again.

The visions of Grace were broken by the sound of a van drawing up in front of the warehouse. A tall, thick man climbed out of the driver's-side door. Harry could make him out in the weak morning light.

"Know him?" Clive Roach asked.

Harry said, "Yeah. His name is Dicky Dobbs."

"Looks like trouble."

"He's Pope's main muscle boy and enforcer."

"If I was on the run I think I'd want that one around for protection."

"You're right," Harry said. "Wake up Sleeping Beauty back there."

Dobbs unlocked the judas gale and went inside the warehouse. A moment later the main door was pulled upward. Dobbs emerged and climbed back inside the van.

Roach started the engine as Meadows sat up.

Dobbs pulled the van inside the warehouse.

Roach opened the throttle and gunned the motor, nosing the van inside the warehouse before Dobbs could close the door.

Harry jumped out of the van.

Dobbs yelled, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Meadows said, "Turn around, put your fucking hands in the air, and shut the fuck up!"

Harry stepped forward and threw open the rear door of the van. Robert Pope was sitting on the floor. He looked up, smiled, and said, "Well, if it isn't my old friend Harry Dalton."

Catherine Blake took a taxi to her flat. It was early, just after dawn, the sky a flat mother-of-pearl gray. She had six hours until she was to meet Horst Neumann on Hampstead Heath. She washed her face and neck and changed out of her clothes into a nightgown and a bathrobe. She desperately needed a few hours of sleep, but she had something to do first.

It had been too close tonight. If Jordan had come downstairs a few seconds earlier she would have been forced to kill him. She told him she had been unable to sleep-she was upset about nearly being killed and thought a glass of brandy would help to calm her nerves. He seemed to accept her excuse for leaving his bed in the middle of the night, but she doubted he would buy it twice.

She went into the sitting room and sat down at the writing table. She opened the drawer and removed a single sheet of paper and a pen. On the paper she wrote four words: Get me out now! She placed the piece of paper on the desk and adjusted the lamp so the light was at the proper angle. She removed her camera from her handbag and held it to her eye. She placed her left hand next to the paper. Vogel would recognize it; there was a scar across the thumb where she had been cut during one of his damned silent killing classes. She photographed her hand and the note twice, then burned the note in the bathroom sink.

Harry Dalton thought, One more minute of this bullshit and I'm going to handcuff Pope to a chair and beat his face bloody. They were in a small glass-enclosed office on the warehouse floor, Pope seated on an uncomfortable wooden chair, Harry pacing like a caged jungle cat. Vicary had settled himself quietly in the shadows and seemed to be listening to different music. Harry and Vicary had not revealed their true affiliation; to Pope they were just a pair of Metropolitan Police officers. For one hour Pope had denied any knowledge of the woman whose photograph Harry kept waving in front of him. Pope's face remained bored, placid, and insolent, the look of a man who had broken the law his entire life and never seen the inside of a prison cell. Harry thought, I'm not getting to him. He's beating me.

Harry said, "All right, let's try this one more time."

Pope looked at his watch. "Not again, Harry. I've business to attend to."

Harry felt himself losing control. "You've never seen this woman before?"

"I've told you a hundred times. No!"

"I've got a witness who says this woman entered your warehouse the day your brother was murdered."

"Then your witness is wrong. Let me talk to him. I'm sure I could make him see the error of his ways."

"I'm sure you could! Where were you when your brother was killed?"

"At one of my clubs. I've got a hundred witnesses that will tell you that."

"Why have you been avoiding the police?"

"I haven't been avoiding the police. You blokes managed to find me." Pope looked over at Vicary, who was looking down at his hands. "That one ever speak?"

"Shut up and look at me, Pope. You have been avoiding the police, because you know who killed Vernon and you want to pay them back your own way."

"You're talking nonsense, Harry."

"There's a very nice lady in Islington who says you broke into her boardinghouse two hours after Vernon's murder, looking for a woman."

"Your very nice lady in Islington is obviously mistaken."

"Don't bullshit me, Pope!"

"Temper, temper, Harry."

"You've been looking for her for days and you haven't been able to find her. Do you ever wonder why she was able to elude you and your thugs?"

"No, I never wondered that because I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"Do you ever wonder why you were never able to find out where she lives?"

"I never tried because I never met the woman!"

Harry noticed a sheen of perspiration on Pope's face. He thought, I'm finally getting to him.

Vicary must have noticed it too, because he chose that moment to speak for the first time. "You're not being honest with us, Mr. Pope," he said politely, still studying his hands. Then he looked up and said, "But then, we haven't been exactly honest with you, have we, Harry?"

Harry thought, Perfect timing, Alfred. Well done. He said, "No, Alfred, we haven't been completely honest with Mr. Pope here."

Pope looked thoroughly confused. "What the fuck are you two talking about?"

"We're connected with the War Office. We deal in security."

A shadow passed over Pope's face. "What does my brother's murder have to do with the war?" His voice had lost conviction.

"I'm going to be honest with you. We know this woman is a German spy. And we know she came to you for help. And if you don't start talking we're going to be forced to take some rather drastic action."

Pope turned to Harry, as if Harry had been appointed his lawyer. "I can't tell him what he wants to know because I don't know anything. I've never seen that woman in my life."

Vicary seemed disappointed. "Well, then, you're under arrest, Mr. Pope."

"On what bloody charges?"

"Espionage."

"Espionage! You can't do that! You have no evidence!"

"I have enough evidence and enough power to lock you away and throw away the fucking key." Vicary's voice had taken on a menacing edge. "Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a filthy, stinking jail, I suggest you start talking now !"

Pope blinked rapidly, looking first at Vicary, then at Harry. He was defeated.