Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

"Same thing as before, Alfred. She led the watchers on a merry chase for three hours and then headed back to her flat."

"Nonsense, Harry. She's meeting another agent, or she's making a dead drop somewhere."

"If she did, then we missed it. Again."

"Damn!" Vicary used the stub of his cigarette to light another. He was disgusted with himself. Smoking cigarettes was bad enough. Using one to light the next was intolerable. It was just the tension of the operation. It had entered its third week. He had allowed Catherine Blake to photograph four batches of Kettledrum documents. Four times she had led the watchers on long chases around London. And four times they had failed to detect how she was getting the material out. Vicary was getting edgy. The longer the operation continued in this manner, the greater the chances of a mistake. The watchers were exhausted, and Peter Jordan was ready to revolt.

Vicary said, "Perhaps we're just going about this the wrong way."

"What do you mean?"

"We're following her, hoping we can detect her drop. What if we changed our tactics and started looking for the agent who's making the pickup?"

"But how? We don't know who he is or what he looks like."

"Actually, we might. Every time Catherine goes out we go with her. And so does Ginger Bradshaw. He's taken dozens and dozens of photographs. Our man is bound to be in a couple of them."

"It's possible, certainly worth a try."

Harry returned ten minutes later with a stack of photographs a foot high. "One hundred and fifty photographs to be exact, Alfred."

Vicary sat down at his desk and put on his half-moon reading glasses. He picked up the photographs one at a time and scanned the images for faces, clothing, suspicious looks-anything. Cursed with a near photographic memory, Vicary stored each of the images in his mind and moved on to the next. Harry drank tea and paced quietly in the shadows.

Two hours later, Vicary thought he had a match.

"Look, Harry, here he is in Leicester Square. And here he is again outside Euston Station. Could be coincidence, could be two different people. But I doubt it."

"Well, I'll be damned!" Harry studied the figure in the photographs: small, dark-haired, with square shoulders and conventional clothing. Nothing about his appearance called attention to him-perfect for pavement work.

Vicary gathered up the remaining photographs and divided them in half.

"Start looking for him, Harry. Just him. No one else."

Half an hour later Harry picked him out of a photograph taken on Trafalgar Square, which proved to be the best one yet.

"He needs a code name," Vicary said.

"He looks like a Rudolf."

"All right," Vicary said. "Rudolf it is."

At that moment, Horst Neumann was pedaling his bicycle from Dogherty's cottage toward the village. He wore his heavy rollneck sweater, a reefer coat, and trousers tucked inside Wellington boots. It was a bright clear day. Plump white clouds, driven by the strong northerly winds, drifted across a sky of deep blue. Their shadows raced across the meadows and the hillsides and disappeared over the beach. It was the last decent day they would see for a while. Heavy weather was forecast for the entire east coast of the country, beginning midday tomorrow and lasting several days. Neumann wanted to get out of the cottage for a few hours while he had the chance. He needed to think. The wind gusted, making it nearly impossible to keep the bicycle upright on the pitted single-lane track. Neumann put his head down and pedaled harder. He turned and looked over his shoulder. Dogherty had given up. He had climbed off his bicycle and was pushing it morosely along the path.

Neumann pretended not to notice and continued toward the village. He leaned forward over the handlebars, elbows thrust out, and cycled furiously up a small hill. He reached the top and coasted down the other side. The track was hard with the previous night's freeze, and the bicycle rattled along the deep ruts so viciously Neumann feared the front tire might break loose. The wind eased and the village appeared. Neumann pedaled across the bridge over the sea creek and stopped on the other side. He laid the bicycle in the deep grass at the edge of the track and sat down next to it. He lifted his face toward the sun. It felt warm, despite the crisp air. A squadron of gulls circled silently overhead. He closed his eyes and listened to the beating of the sea. He was struck by an absurd notion-he would miss this little village when it was time to leave.

He opened his eyes and spotted Dogherty atop the hill. Dogherty removed his cap, wiped his brow, and waved. Neumann called, "Take your time, Sean." Then he gestured at the sun to explain why he was in no hurry to move. Dogherty climbed back onto the bicycle and coasted down.

Neumann watched Dogherty; then he turned and looked at the sea. The message he had received from Vogel early that morning troubled him. He had avoided thinking about it but he could avoid it no longer. The wireless operator in Hamburg had transmitted a code phrase that meant Neumann was to conduct countersurveillance on Catherine Blake in London. Countersurveillance, in the lexicon of the trade, meant he was supposed to follow Catherine to make certain she wasn't being followed by the opposition. The request could mean anything. It could mean that Vogel just wanted to make certain the information Catherine was receiving was good. Or it could mean he suspected she was being manipulated by the other side. If that was the case, Neumann might be walking straight into a very dangerous situation. If Catherine was under surveillance and he followed her too, he would be walking side by side with MI5 officers trained to recognize countersurveillance. He would be walking right into a trap. He thought, Damn you, Vogel. What are you playing at?

And what if she was being followed by the other side? Neumann had two choices. If possible, he was to contact Vogel by wireless and request authorization to extract Catherine Blake from England. If there was no time, he had Vogel's permission to act on his own.

Dogherty coasted across the bridge and stopped next to Neumann. A large cloud passed before the sun. Neumann shivered in the cold. He stood up and walked with Dogherty toward the village, each man pushing his bicycle. The wind gusted, whistling through the crooked headstones in the graveyard. Neumann turned up the collar of his coat.

"Listen, Sean, there's a chance I may need to be leaving soon, in a hurry."

Dogherty looked at Neumann, his face blank, then looked forward again.

Neumann said, "Tell me about the boat."

"Early in the war I was instructed by Berlin to create an escape route along the Lincolnshire coast, a way for an agent to get to a U-boat ten miles offshore. His name is Jack Kincaid. He has a small fishing boat in the town of Cleethorpes, at the mouth of the River Humber. I've seen the boat. It's a bit of a wreck-otherwise, it would have been seized by the Royal Navy-but it will do the trick."

"And Kincaid? What does he know?"

"He thinks I'm involved in the black market. Kincaid's into a lot of shady things, but I suspect he'd draw the line at working for the Abwehr. I paid him a hundred pounds and told him to be ready to do the job on short notice-anytime, day or night."

"Contact him today," Neumann said. "Tell him we might be coming soon."

Dogherty nodded.

Neumann said, "I'm not supposed to make you this offer, but I'm going to anyway. I want you and Mary to consider coming out with me when I leave."

Dogherty laughed to himself. "And what am I supposed to do in bloody Berlin?"