Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

Swift sipped at his cigarette and then exhaled in two grey jets through his chapped nostrils. ‘I think he will follow his conscience, whatever Stalin has to say about it.’

‘I’m sure a good number of men and women in this country have followed their conscience, and I dare say it bought them a ticket to Siberia, if they even made it that far.’

‘It’s different with Pekkala,’ remarked Swift. ‘Stalin seems to take a perverse pleasure in being stood up to by this Finn. Even though he has the power to make Pekkala disappear from the face of the earth with nothing so much as a phone call to Lubyanka, he won’t do it.’

‘And why is that, do you suppose?’

‘If I had to guess, I’d say it is because he knows Pekkala doesn’t care. He’s not afraid and there’s nothing Stalin can do about it. If you want my opinion, the only thing keeping Pekkala alive is the very fact that he has placed less value on his life than on his work.’

‘And that work is what they have in common,’ added Hansard.

‘The only thing, I’d say, but it’s enough.’

‘So he will help us?’ Hansard asked again.

‘I think he might,’ answered Swift, ‘for the sake of the woman.’

Hansard sat back heavily, vanishing again into the shadows. ‘But it’s been years since he last set eyes upon her. Surely, he has moved on by now. Any practical person would have done so.’

Swift laughed quietly.

‘Did I say something funny?’ snapped the station chief.

‘Well, yes sir, I think you did. Has there never been someone you loved, from whom you were kept apart by fate and circumstance?’

Hansard paused, sucking at his yellow teeth. ‘In practical terms . . .’

‘And that’s where you really are being funny, sir,’ interrupted Professor Swift.

‘Well, I’m glad to have kept you so amused,’ growled Hansard.

‘What I mean, sir, is that practicality has nothing to do with this. Neither has time itself. Once a love like that has been kindled, nothing can extinguish it. It remains suspended, like an insect trapped in amber. Time cannot alter it. Words cannot undo it.’

Hansard sighed and rose up from his chair. He walked out into the middle of the room. Although he had on a grey suit, and a black and white checked tie, he wore no socks or shoes and his pale feet glowed with a sickly pallor. ‘Highly impractical,’ he muttered.

‘As you say, sir,’ answered Swift, stubbing out his cigarette in a peach-coloured onyx ashtray on the desk, ‘but the world would be a poorer place without people who believed in such things. And besides, in this case, you will admit, it serves our purpose well.’

He gave an exasperated sigh.

The station chief glanced up. ‘Something on your mind, Swift?’

‘Actually, sir, there is. Pekkala asked me how this woman ended up working for us.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I guessed and said she volunteered. The fact is I have no idea.’

‘Nevertheless,’ replied Hansard, ‘you stumbled into the truth.’

‘But what is her story, sir?’

‘I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you now,’ said Hansard. ‘She was first approached by the French Security Service, the Deuxieme Bureau, when she was living in Paris back in 1938. At the time, she was a teacher at some small private school in Paris. The Deuxieme had been keeping their eye on her for some time. They knew she was Russian, of course, and that her parents had been murdered by the Bolsheviks back in the early 1920s. At the time, the Deuxieme were concerned that the entire French government had become riddled with Soviet spies.’

‘And had it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ replied Hansard. ‘Their fears were entirely justified. That’s why they needed someone who could speak Russian, but with enough hatred for Stalin that they could, perhaps, be put to use in ferreting out these infiltrators.’

‘And what did she say to that?’

‘Apparently, she told them she would rather be a school teacher than some kind of glamorous spy.’

‘And yet they persuaded her somehow.’

‘Not until the war broke out,’ said Hansard. ‘As the Germans began their invasion of France, and it became clear that the French army was about to collapse, the Bureau approached her again. This time, it was with an offer to get her out of the country, along with a number of others whom, they believed, might prove useful as agents in carrying on the war effort even after France had fallen. And with France about to fall, the only way they could do that was by delivering those agents to us.’

‘How did they come to choose Simonova? After all, she had no training and she had already turned them down once.’

‘But that’s precisely why they did choose her,’ explained Hansard. ‘The Bureau suspected that lists of its active agents might already have fallen into the hands of German intelligence, so they chose people who had not become operational, or whose identities might have failed to make their way on to the Bureau’s roster.’

‘But that can’t have been the only reason they chose her.’

‘It wasn’t,’ answered Hansard. ‘You see, in addition to French and Russian, she also spoke fluent German. Her father, Gustav Seimann, had been a riding instructor for the Grand Duke of Hesse, a close relative of Tsar Nicholas II’s wife, Alexandra. When Alexandra, who was herself a German, married Nicholas, she brought in a number of people from her native country to play various roles in her new life among the Russians. The tutor of her children, for example, was an Englishman named Gibbes. There was also a Frenchman named Doctor Gilliard, whom she put on her household staff. And when it came time to teach her children how to ride, she brought in the Grand Duke’s riding instructor. Gustav Seimann settled down in Petersburg and made a new life for himself. He even changed his name to Simonov.’

‘That shows a lot of faith,’ remarked Swift.

‘They were faithful,’ agreed Hansard. ‘Some of these foreigners turned out to be the most loyal members of her retinue. Simonov himself was said to have been killed when he rode out by himself to confront a band of roving Cossacks who had made their way on to the grounds of the Tsarskoye Selo estate. That act of bravery cost him his life, but it shows how he remained loyal right up to the end, and I’m told there are many who didn’t.’

‘I suppose the Deuxieme Bureau were hoping for the same kind of commitment from his daughter.’

‘Nothing less would do,’ replied Hansard. ‘By the time they got to her, the situation in Paris had become critical. The place had been declared an open city, and most of those who could flee did precisely that. Given the situation, this time the woman agreed.’

‘How did they get her out?’

‘They drove her straight to Le Bourget airfield, just outside of Paris, loaded her aboard one of those lumbering Lysander planes, the kind with the big wheels that can land on just about anything, and two hours later she was in England. They trained her at our Special Operations camp at Arisaig up in Scotland. From there, she went to Beaulieu, Lord Montagu’s place over in the New Forest. Less than a month later, they sent her back to France, this time on a fishing boat we modified to transport agents to and from the Continent, operating out of the Helford River estuary. She was put ashore somewhere near Boulogne and made her way to Paris.’

‘And nobody became suspicious that she’d been gone all that time?’ asked Swift.

‘So many people had left the city after the Germans broke through the French lines at Sedan that her absence was not considered unusual. The school had closed, temporarily, and the students had all been sent home. People were scattered all over the country. When things settled down a bit and life in Paris began to return to normal, or as normal as it could ever be under occupation, those who had fled began to return. Simonova simply joined the tide of refugees making their way back into the city. The little school where she worked reopened and, after registering with the German authorities, she simply resumed her work as a teacher.’