This was the first message of any real substance. The first she had really been able to act upon. Frau Schmidt and husband, Stephan, were unrepentant Nazis. He was SS, operational in Latvia presumably. That would make him part of Einsatzgruppe A. Of interest to War Crimes. And to Harry Hirsch.
Dori opened the front of the Aga and watched the papers burn. Then she went up to the hall, to the telephone. It would take forever, if ever, to contact Harry through Mil. Gov. Bulldog in Bad Oeufhausen would be her best bet.
‘War Crimes?’ A distant voice crackled on the line.
‘Oh, hello. I’m trying to contact Alex Drummond …’
There was a shout: ‘Bulldog! Bird on the blower for you.’
‘Drummond here.’
‘Hello, darling. It’s Dori.’ She paused to listen. ‘Edging closer but I’m not calling about that. You couldn’t find me a number for Harry Hirsch, could you?’ Dori waited, twisting the cord round her finger. ‘I’ll just find a pencil.’ She wrote the number down on the back of an envelope. ‘Thank you, darling. Is she? Perhaps she can speed things up for me. This weekend? Tell her I’ll meet her. Usual place. Saturday. Around four? Cheerio!’
She cut the call. Keep it short and snappy. Bright and chirpy. Better to pass information on to Vera in person over a gin and tonic at the club at the weekend. Dori listened to the dial tone on her phone for a moment. There had been some worrying clicks lately. She’d begun to not quite trust the telephone. She replaced the receiver and tore the envelope into very small pieces. She’d give Harry a call from the club.
She put on her coat, adjusted the angle of her hat in the hall mirror. She had a small bag with her, going to Lewes to follow up on an old SOE pal who might have news of the missing girls. He was a survivor who had been in Natzweiler, among other hideous places. At first, he’d been unable to recall any women being there. Like many of the men who had been in the camps, his memory had fragmented under the weight of the horrors he’d seen. Then a scene, a face, a voice would surface. Now, he didn’t just recall the women, he could describe their arrival in vivid detail. He’d made sketches. Dori’s hand shook slightly as she applied her lipstick. She looked forward to and at the same time dreaded being able to identify them. These women had been her friends. There was always the tiniest gleam of hope as long as they were missing: whereabouts unknown.
A figure cast a shadow through the glass of the door. Anton Szulc back from his morning constitutional. She opened the door for him.
‘Thank you, Countess,’ he said in Polish. He was the only one who ever called her that.
He came in shaking drops of rain from his umbrella. Anton was a tall man, rather stooped, with a narrow, hawkish face. He removed his hat, smoothing back his pale hair in the hall mirror. More white than blond now, he wore it combed back, held perfectly in place by lavender-scented pomade. His overcoat was threadbare down the front edge and around the cuffs but always carefully brushed, never a trace of dandruff or dust; his shirts had worn soft but were kept spotless, laundered by the lady round the corner. In his own way, he was as immaculate as Tibor, with his white silk muffler and his black homburg set just so.
‘Anything?’ Dori asked in Polish
‘Umm …’ Anton made a seesaw motion with his hands. ‘Could be something. Could be nothing … I’ll keep watch.’
Not much escaped his still-sharp blue eyes. Anton spent a lot of his day in the Square. He knew all the regulars: the mothers, the nannies with the children, the men, like him, with nothing to do. When he wasn’t in the square, he was in his little room above the hall with a perfect view from the window.
He paid no rent for the room. He had no money and, besides, he was useful. Not just keeping watch. In other ways. He might look a frail old man but looks were deceptive. He was as tough as they came. He’d been an agent, a hard man in the toughest arena of all, Nazi Germany before the war. He’d stayed in post for months after war was declared, been picked up by the Gestapo, sent to a camp, escaped to Denmark and then Britain. He was a tough bird, all right, tough and resourceful.
Dori gave him ten bob for his trouble.
‘Thank you Countess.’ He glanced down at her bag. ‘I’ll keep an eye on things until you get back.’
He took out a worn wallet and carefully tucked the note inside, adjusted his hat in the hall mirror, straightened his muffler and went back outside. He turned right, narrow shoulders hunched against the raw cold of the afternoon. He would be going to the Polish Club in Princes Gate to eat wiejska, drink vodka and dream of returning to the home country. It would not be soon. The Soviets were in control and Anton hated them almost as much as the Nazis. If he went back, he’d be a dead man.
‘I will not go back until my country is free,’ he would say, his face bleak with the knowledge that it might not be in his lifetime.
He held a position in the Polish Government in Exile which operated, unacknowledged and unrecognized, out of the President-in-Exile’s private residence in Eaton Square. They kept the archives there and the spirit of resistance alive as they prepared for their return as the government of a Free Poland. They might as well be preparing for the Second Coming, Dori thought, as she watched him march off with his stiff-legged, straight-backed military gait.