At the Kramer house, Eva was in the master bedroom combing her hair and getting dressed. She was a short woman with a dark complexion and had her brown hair rolled and curled.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Hanne was busy collecting her things and preparing to leave the house. The nanny Wilhelma was feeding five-year-old Heidi in the kitchen. Hanne left the kitchen and went to the foot of the stairs.
“Frau Kramer, I am off. See you Thursday.”
Eva appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Sehr gut, Hanne. Don’t forget to pick up the caraway seeds at the market for Karl-Heinz’s sauerkraut.”
“Yes, madam. Bye now.”
Hanne left the house and hurried down the road to the bus stop. A gardener was weeding a rosebush near the road. He looked up and waved at her.
“Guess what my code name is going to be?” Elsa asked.
“A code name... maybe Mata Hari,” Hanne said with a smirk. Bridget and Elsa burst out laughing.
“Hanne, you are being ridiculous. I am Frau E. Isn’t that right, Bridget?”
Bridget nodded.
They were sitting on the sunny terrace of a restaurant in the old town with their shopping bags. A waiter brought them their drinks. Elsa and Hanne were drinking white Mosel wine, while Bridget was having a gin and tonic. With war raging across Europe, there were fewer and fewer customers.
“What would be my code name, Bridget?” Hanne asked.
“Mata Hanne,” Elsa said with a smile.
The women burst out laughing as Hanne started to wiggle about in her chair, snapping her fingers to an exotic Eastern musical theme.
“Mata Hanne! I love it. I will show my navel in public and seduce all the men in the room,” Hanne said as she stood up and started dancing to an exotic air.
“MATA HANNE, THAT’S ME.”
As Elsa and Hanne carried on, Bridget looked around warily, finishing her drink. She leaned forward and whispered to Hanne.
“I must get back. Will you think about it?”
“I am ready, Bridget,” Hanne said. “I hate the Kramers. They are Nazi pigs.”
“The important thing is access, Hanne,” Bridget said. “The question is how would you do it and what are your chances of success?”
“Please, I have thought about it for some time now. I know their daily routine and Frau Kramer trusts me.”
“I am not sure that I understand your feelings about Frau Kramer. If she trusts you, she can’t be all that bad,” Bridget inquired, well aware that Peter would want an answer to this question.
“Yes, Hanne, tell Bridget what you told me,” Elsa said, looking at her friend.
“Eva is Jewish, Bridget. She looks Jewish with her dark hair. I know her secret. I came across pictures of her parents hidden in her bedroom while I was cleaning.”
“And she is married to an Aryan God with blue eyes,” Elsa said impatiently.
“You have seen Karl-Heinz,” Hanne said. “He is a very handsome man, so you see, Eva must compensate.”
“She says nasty things, does she?” Bridget asked.
“I’m Jewish and proud of my family. At first, it didn’t bother me, but now it is just too much to bear. The dust in the corner, the dirt on the carpet, and the bath ring are caused by the dirty Jews. It is crazy how she carries on sometimes.”
“Tell her your plan,” Elsa demanded.
Hanne smiled as she talked in a low voice to Bridget.
“Herr Kramer takes a bath every day at 6:45 p.m., always at the same time. He spends thirty minutes in the bath before getting dressed for dinner. It is the same routine every day, like clockwork. The other day I was dusting in the hallway and entered the bedroom briefly. The keys for the desk drawer were on the dresser.”
Elsa and Bridget looked at each other, excited by the prospects of Hanne’s plan.
At the Consular Services office, Peter crossed the barrier and found Bridget typing a document at her desk.
“Well, Bridget, how did it go?”
“Very well. I think she will do it.”
“Will she?”
“Hanne is very keen. Ready to start whenever you want.”
Peter looked surprised.
“Would you like to meet her?”
“No, not yet. Are you sure she’s ready?”
“Of course, I just said she is.”
“This is quite a mission we’re undertaking, and it has potentially dangerous consequences for Hanne.”
“You think I don’t know that, Peter?”
“I know you do, but the target is not some third-rate Nazi spy. He’s the Abwehr’s star performer.”
“I know the danger, Peter. This is not the first time in this office that we use civilians to collect information.”
Peter took off his hat and was thinking about the mission when Bridget said irritably: “Well, if you’re not sure, then we’ll just call the bloody thing off.”
She stood up and went to the window, looking out at the garden.
“Look, Bridget, I don’t doubt your opinion.”
“Of course you do, you doubt my opinion,” she said in an angry tone. “I’m just the bloody secretary in this office. I don’t know a damn thing.”
Peter was stunned by Bridget’s sudden rebuff as he sat down at his desk. Bridget lit a cigarette and watched the Swedish gardener trimming the rose bushes in the garden below.
Bridget had always been told by the men in her life that emotions were to be hidden. Her father had taught her to hide her feelings, and her English upbringing certainly did not reward expressions of exuberance and passion. Passion was something you hid behind a wall of placid indifference. A career in the diplomatic service had impressed on her the importance of being cold and rational with the facts.
Bridget looked at Peter, who was going through the files that had accumulated on his desk. He was like all the men in her life. He disapproved of women who let their emotions get away from them. But it was sometimes too much for a spirited young woman like Bridget, who needed to explode from time to time with a great show of elation or anger.
“I’m sorry, Bridget. I didn’t mean to...”
“Yes, you did,” Bridget said. “You’re the man in the room. You don’t need to make excuses.”
Bridget put out her cigarette and came over to Peter’s desk with a mischievous smile.
“I like Hanne. She’s a remarkable person, very lively and quite brilliant. I would never put her life in danger on a whim.”
“So?”
“Hanne is determined to do anything she can to compromise K. She hates the family with reason.”
“You seem to be very convinced. Why are you so sure she wants to help us?”
“The wife Eva is a Jew, Peter. You’ve seen the husband.”
“Of course, K looks like a pin-up for the Aryan race.”
“So with her dark hair and looks, Eva struggles with the fact that Hanne is a lovely blonde Jewess from Vienna. To put her down, she constantly says horrible things about the Jews in front of Hanne.”
“I see,” Peter said, “so this is a personal vendetta for her.”
“Yes and no, I think she sincerely wants to help us. She hates the Germans.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“‘K’ takes a bath every day at 6:45 PM and leaves his keys on the dresser. He spends thirty minutes in the bath before getting dressed for dinner. It is the same thing every day, like clockwork. So Hanne thinks she can get the keys to the drawer in the study when K takes his bath. It would give her a 30-minute window to make a copy of the key.”
“Not a bad plan at all, Bridget.”
“You’ll like her. She’s tough and determined.”
“I will talk to Tennant’s people.”
“Fortune favours the bold, Peter,” Bridget said, smiling.
“Yes, it does. Audentes fortuna iuvat, that’s from Virgil. I was a schoolmaster, remember?”
“Yes, I know.”
Bernie Dixon was busy producing travel documents in the Legation basement as Michael and Peter entered the room. A red light spilled from the nearby darkroom.
“I think you know Dixon,” Michael said.
“Yes, hello Bernie,” Peter said.
“Morning, guv. No more late nights?”
“No, I’ve given up on late nights, at least for the moment.”
Bernie laughed at this.
“I talked to Bernie about the key,” Michael said. “We can make any key we like with our equipment, but we need the original, or at least an imprint.”
“I doubt we can get our hands on the original for more than half an hour,” Peter said.
“Then an imprint would be the way to go,” Bernie said.
“What about photographing documents?”
“It can be done quickly enough with the right equipment. Are you thinking of nicking some papers from that fancy house in Stora Essingen?”
“Yes, that’s the idea, Bernie.”
“Me days of smash and grab are over, guv,” Bernie said with a laugh, “so you’ll have to find another dogsbody to nick the stuff from the inside.”
“Bernie could park a van near the house,” Michael said, “to do the copying.”
“I reckon a shed or a lockup nearby would be best,” Bernie said. “A van would be too easy to spot on the street.”
“How much time will Bernie have?” Tennant asked.
“I would think an hour or two at the most.”
“It will have to be a two-man operation,” Bernie insisted. ”One fella doing the pickup and another the copying. The tricky part will be getting the documents in and out of the house.”