Chapter Fifteen

28th July, 1940

My Dear Evelyn,

It was wonderful to hear from you. I’m so glad you’re getting some time off at last. Are you enjoying yourself? How are Tante Adele and Auntie Agatha getting along? I think Rob is waiting for word that a second war has broken out in Ainsworth Manor.

We’ve been flying constantly. We were actually scrambled the other day, if you can believe that. Jerry is doing everything he can to stop our convoys, and another of our destroyers, Codrington, was sunk yesterday in Dover. The poor blighters are getting hit hard, despite our best efforts. I feel like we’re very much in the fight now. I just pray that we can hold them off. The convoys are only the start. It’s only a matter of time before they turn to England itself. It’s already started with their sporadic bombings of coastal towns.

Ashmore, our CO, has managed to obtain permission for some twenty-four leaves for us. I’m not sure when, exactly, but we’re told it will be in the next week. The Yank is keen to meet you, and I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing you again myself. Rob will be there as well. Would you be willing and able to meet in London for a night out? I’d love to have dinner and a dance.

I’m off to dispersal now for another long day. What awaits us up in the blue yonder? The sun is shining and the forecast is fair, so I expect it will be quite a busy day.

I hope you’re having a lovely holiday. Say a prayer for us when you have a moment. We can use all the help that we can get.

Always yours,

Flight Lieutenant Miles Lacey

Evelyn looked up from her tea when the front door bell rang. She was seated in the kitchen, flipping through the newspaper while she finished her breakfast. Standing, she wiped her mouth with a napkin, then turned to go out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the front of the house. When she opened the door, a slim young boy whom she recognized as one of Broadway’s couriers stood on the stoop.

He grinned and waved and turned to leap off the step. Evelyn watched as he ducked around a couple strolling along the pavement and hurried away down the street, his errand completed. She smiled and closed the door. The boy had no idea who he worked for, nor did he probably care. He was paid to deliver messages, and that was an end to it. Sometimes she envied that innocence.

Walking into the front drawing room, Evelyn ripped open the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper. The message was coded and she went over to the desk to sit down. Opening the desk drawer, she pulled out the small, nondescript book that contained the standard codes. This was different from the codebooks she took onto the continent. This was a much simpler code, used only to maintain standard security here in England. She reached for a pencil and bent over the message, decoding it. When she was finished, she sat back in the chair thoughtfully.

RADIO MOSCOW BROADCAST THIS MORNING. THERE WILL BE CLEAR SKIES OVER THE RED SQUARE.

Nothing else was in the message. Nothing else needed to be said. The people who monitored international broadcasts had been told to listen for that specific phrase in the broadcasts coming from Moscow. If they heard it, they were to send a message to her immediately, wherever she may be. That was it. That was the extent of their, and MI6’s, involvement.

The Soviet NKVD agent had something for her. They had set up the arrangement during a hasty meeting in Brussels before Hitler unleashed his Blitzkrieg across Europe. Evelyn had then put in place a system where she could contact him in reverse if she had need of him. The system was outside of MI6 control, and that was something she knew both Bill and Jasper were not happy with. She hadn’t actually thought that it would ever come into use, if the truth were known. Yet here was the code from Moscow.

Getting up, Evelyn picked up the message and the codebook and turned to leave the drawing room. She couldn’t waste time. The breakfast things would have to wait. She had to change, and then she had to go out and send a telegram to the Bellevue Palace Hotel.

Hans nodded briskly to the soldier standing guard outside of the cell. He saluted and turned to unlock the iron door, standing aside so that Hans could go into the small, stone-walled room. A minuscule window high up near the ceiling allowed a sliver of light to filter into the gloom below, slicing through the stale air that stank of urine and blood. He stopped just inside the door and studied the man sitting on the floor in the corner.

Yves Michaud was leaning heavily against the stones, his head hanging down over his chest. When Hans entered, he rolled his head back to lean it on the wall, lifting his face towards the door. One eye was completely swollen shut while the other was almost closed, only a slit allowing him to peer up at Voss. His jaw had been broken, causing his face to swell until he was barely recognizable. Blood was caked around his mouth and nose, and his shirt front was covered with more of the same. At first Hans didn’t think the man could see him at all, but then his lips moved.

“You and your grapes!” he exclaimed. “Yes. They are intact, as is your house. You would be better served to be as worried about yourself.”

Yves stared at him through the slit of his one eye. It was doubtful that he would have answered even if he had the energy and his jaw was not broken. After a second, Hans turned to call out the door.

The guard called to another soldier and a moment later the two of them entered the cell.

“Be careful,” Voss told them. “I don’t want his face to undergo any more trauma. Much more and he will never speak again.”

They nodded and moved forward. They each took an arm and hauled the old man to his feet.

“Not that you’re capable, but don’t do anything stupid,” Hans said, switching back to French as they began to drag the man forward. “I’m moving you somewhere more comfortable. If you cooperate, I may even call in a surgeon to look at that jaw bone.”

The soldiers passed through the cell door, hauling Yves along between them. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t even support his own head. Following, Hans reflected that it was as if the men were dragging a rag doll. The human body could only withstand so much before the brain instructed the muscles to cease function. The brain was really a fantastic thing. Self-preservation was its priority. In order to keep Yves alive, and therefore itself, the brain knew that they could not waste energy on simple tasks such as walking or supporting themselves. They had to conserve energy if they were to have any chance at all. Amazing, really. The body could be broken, but the brain would keep it going until it could go no further.

“Take him upstairs. Put him in the back room and have someone clean him up. Ensure that they take care with his face. I don’t want any more damage inflicted,” he instructed, turning to go down a narrow corridor. “Stay with him until I come. If any additional harm comes to his face, I will hold you both personally responsible. Am I clear?”

Hans strode down the narrow corridor until he came to a stairwell. Jogging up the steps, he wondered if Yves would be willing to talk now. Two separate interrogators had been at it for two days, but he hadn’t said a word. Until this morning. Then he’d simply said one: Voss.

If Hans wasn’t so convinced that Yves had been making new papers and identities for the missing members of France’s intelligence network, he never would have bothered with the old man. But Eisenjager, as everyone in the SS knew, did not make mistakes.

Hans had one job in Paris: to locate and apprehend all former intelligence agents. Once that had been accomplished, he was to monitor and arrest any new resistance members that emerged. He had been given a large unit of SS soldiers and Gestapo to help him achieve this lofty goal, and he had every intention of exceeding Standartenführer Dreschler’s expectations. His superior had entrusted Paris, the most coveted assignment, to Voss despite his failure to apprehend the courier who had carried stolen plans through Europe a month before. He would prove to him that the trust was not unfounded.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Hans threw open the door and emerged into a large and brightly lit hallway. They had taken over a police station in the heart of Paris, as well as the large hotel across the street. The police accommodations were more than acceptable, and the hotel was a luxury that Hans was very happy to have. The theatre was not far, and the restaurants were also very close by. They had been closed for the first week they were here, but now they were slowly reopening. The Parisians were beginning to come out from their hiding, and soon they would adjust to the new regime.

He went down the wide hallway towards an office at the end. It would take some time for them to get Yves upstairs, into the more comfortable holding cell, and cleaned up and comfortable. He would review some notes before joining him. If the old man had any sense, he would agree to Voss’s terms. If he didn’t, well, then that would be the end of Yves Michaud.

The bell rang above the door as Evelyn entered the small, neighborhood shop. A woman stood speaking with the man behind the counter while her little boy, dressed in short trousers and a worn jumper, waited beside her. Evelyn looked around and moved over to a stand where the newspapers were stacked neatly in rows. She wasn’t familiar with this particular neighborhood, which was close to the East End of London, but any feeling of discomfort that she might have felt a few years ago was nonexistent now. Her travels had quickly cured her of any feelings of being an outsider.

“Right. Well, careful as you go, Mrs. May,” the man said as the woman gathered her purchases and placed them in her shopping bag. “Give my regards to Gerald.”

The woman took her son’s hand and turned towards the door, casting a curious look at Evelyn. She nodded politely and the woman smiled back before the bell rang again and she and the boy went out.

The man was regarding her with a look of polite inquiry and Evelyn turned from the rack, a newspaper in one hand.

“I haven’t seen you in here before, have I?” he asked, ringing up the newspaper. “Are you new to the neighborhood?”

“Makes it hard to think there’s a war on,” he said, handing her the change.

Evelyn murmured in agreement and took her newspaper, turning towards the door. A moment later she was back on the pavement and she turned to walk up the street to the tea room she’d spied on her way here.

She had contacted the Bellevue Palace Hotel yesterday, and had received a telegram back last night. It had instructed her to come here, to this particular shop, to purchase a particular newspaper, at precisely eleven o’clock. She wasn’t to take the top paper, but the third one down in the stack. That was where the instructions ended. The tea room was her own idea.

It was rather disconcerting, really. She’d been contacted by Shustov and had expected to be given a message in response to her contacting the Hotel in Bern. Instead, she’d been sent to pick up the message, right here in London. Was Shustov here? No. She dismissed that idea as quickly as it came into her head. It wasn’t possible for the Soviet agent to come to London. It was unusual that he was allowed to traverse Europe at all, which spoke volumes of his rank in the NKVD more than anything else. But even that respect would stop short of Moscow allowing him to enter England unofficially and unaccompanied.

But someone must be here in London. Someone had inserted the message into the newspaper.

Coming on the heels of the discovery of the Round Club’s existence, Evelyn admitted to herself, as she sat at a table near a sunny window in the tea room, that she was feeling rather dazed by everything. Each time she came home to England, she felt as if she were returning to safety. Now it appeared that home wasn’t entirely safe either, not for people like herself. Between traitors here in London, and now a Soviet agent, Evelyn was beginning to feel as though she were back on the continent, and perhaps in enemy territory.

The feeling was a disheartening one. After all, if she couldn’t relax and let her guard down in England, then what on earth were they fighting for?

“Good morning, miss!” A cheerful, matronly woman came over to the table with a wide smile. “Lovely day today, isn’t it?”

“A pot of tea, please.” Evelyn glanced at her watch. “Do you have any sandwiches?”

“Yes. I have cucumber, cheese and onion, or cheese and tomato. Which would you like, dear?”

The woman nodded and left her, and Evelyn turned her attention out of the window. Cars and lorries jostled for space on the busy street while women in house dresses and men in suits shared the pavement with workers and military personnel alike. London was bustling as usual, and she found a strange comfort in the busy chaos. While she was taken aback to realize that there were some in London who didn’t share the same feeling of patriotism that others did, she had to believe that they were in a minority. And the men and women hurrying about their daily lives outside the window reminded her that, while some were trying to undermine everything England stood for, others were fighting to preserve it.

The kindly woman was back with a plate of cucumber sandwiches and a pot of tea with cup and saucer. Evelyn started in surprise. She had been staring blindly out of the window for much longer than she’d realized.

The woman left again and Evelyn poured tea into her cup before reaching for the newspaper. It was time to get her head out of the clouds and see why Shustov had contacted her.

As she opened the paper to the classified section, a frown crossed her face. Who did Lyakhov have in London? Was there more than one? Her mind went back to the man in Stockholm, Risto Niva. He had been an NKVD agent, and he had been very confident in the fact that the Soviet Union had spies ensconced in London. In fact, he seemed both surprised and amused when it became obvious that she had no idea of their existence. At the time, it had seemed fantastic. Soviet spies in London? And yet, someone had inserted a message into the newspaper and placed it where she would retrieve it in a small, unassuming corner shop.

Folding the paper back, Evelyn scanned the page of ads and personal requests. She had no idea what she was looking for. The telegram had said simply to turn to the classified ads. Something caught her attention as she was scanning the ads and Evelyn looked closer. Someone had underlined a few words in pencil. Then, as she examined the page more closely, she found that several groups of words and some single letters were underlined. She sucked in her breath and opened her handbag to pull out the little notebook and pencil that she always carried with her. She opened it and began writing down the underlined words in order from the top of the page downwards. When she was finished, she sat back and let out a soft gasp.

ONE OF ROUND CLUB IN CONTACT WITH HANS VOSS. SEEKING INFORMATION ON YOUR WHEREABOUTS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.