Elena sat on the train, still shaking with cold and staring out of the window into the night. She could see nothing beyond the dark glass. She could have been anywhere. She strained her eyes to make out the name of the station as the train slid in and stopped, but there were no signs in her line of sight.
Rain streaked the windows and blurred everything. It was a small place, with few lights. She thought she heard the doors open and close, but no one came into her compartment. Walter was sitting opposite her, but he seemed to be asleep. Why did anyone run trains for so few people? Probably so the passengers could pick up commuters in the morning. She envied them the sheer ordinariness of it, just for a moment. But perhaps they were tired and worried as well? France had suffered appallingly in the war. They would be no more recovered than England. Soon she would be going north again, toward Flanders and the battlefields whose names lay heavy on her heart: Verdun, Ypres, the Somme, the Marne, Passchendaele.
Did poppies grow there again, come July and August? Was that a reminder of life, and the infinite value of it? Or of death?
She watched the platform go by as the train started to move again, knowing that she must stay awake. At the next station they had to get off and find a train going north, into Germany, preferably to Berlin itself. They still had to buy tickets, and she had to reach the British Embassy by the end of the day. In fact, by the end of the afternoon, because she could give the message only to Cordell. Ian had specified it had to be Cordell. There was no time to stop at a hotel, have a hot bath, and change into something better than the crumpled dress she had on, indelibly stained with Ian’s blood.
He had died trying to prevent the assassination of this man Scharnhorst. The least she could do was stop sniveling in self-pity and get on with the job! Being tired, shaking with cold and stunned with grief, was unimportant. She could hear Mike’s voice in her head. Come on, kiddo! There’s a job to be done. You can’t let the side down. Soldiers probably had been cold, wet, and exhausted most of the time, and certainly overwhelmed with grief if they would allow themselves to be. Every day they had seen friends killed. Toward the end, the average life expectancy was about ten to fourteen days! What kind of a gutless woman was she to complain? She was alive and well, and she had a job to do.
Thank God Walter had stepped in to help her. Without him, would she have been any use at all?
He stirred uncomfortably, then opened his eyes. He seemed to take a moment or two to remember where he was, then smiled at her, concern in his face. “Are you all right?” he asked, only just loudly enough to be heard over the rattle of the wheels, although there was no one else with them in the carriage.
“Yes. Thank you. Why are you doing all this? Where were you going…without…?” She shrugged very slightly.
“To a job in Hamburg. But there’s no hurry,” he answered.
“Where do you live?”
“London. But I move around quite a lot.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” He smiled again. It lit his face, making him look far younger. “What did you expect me to do? Leave you there, alone and in trouble? It could as easily have been me! We’ll get out of this. Just don’t draw attention to yourself.”
She nodded and tried to smile back.
The next station came quickly. Elena got up, collected her remaining small case with the precious camera inside.
They climbed off the train and stood on the almost-deserted platform together. The sky was lightening in the east already.
There were very few people around, and they all seemed to be hurrying somewhere. Elena and Walter approached a man in working clothes. He looked weary and half asleep. Walter asked him, in French, if he could direct them to the right platform for the next train north.
The man considered it for several moments, then asked where they wanted to end up.
“Berlin,” Walter said without hesitation. The man might hate Germans, he might have lost family in the war…who in France had not? He might mistake them for Germans, but it was a chance they had to take.
The man grunted and looked at Walter with disfavor.
“Please?” Elena said quietly. “We need to get to the British Embassy there. We have a friend who’s in trouble.” Something of a distortion of the truth, but it hardly mattered now, and it could do the man no harm.
“You English?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“In a hurry?”
“Yes…please.”
“If you are quick, you’ll get the first train off platform four. It’ll get you to Hamburg. It’s a long journey, but there should be lots of trains from Hamburg to Berlin.”
“Thank you very much,” Elena said, looking where his finger pointed to the bridge over the track.
“You’d best hurry!” he called after her.
“Thank you,” she said over her shoulder, as Walter led the way. Her legs were stiff and she felt as if there was no strength left in them. She was exhausted. Twice she nearly missed her step, stumbling, and only Walter’s grip on her arm prevented her from falling. Her bag was not really heavy, but it weighed like lead right now.
She hung on to him on the way down the far side. If she fell, that would be the end of her whole purpose. She could imagine slipping and breaking an ankle, crippling not only her leg, but the whole mission of stopping the assassination.
From the little she had read of Scharnhorst, the world would be a great deal better off without him. Whoever made that choice, she sympathized with them. Normally she would have cheered them on, but if Britain was going to be blamed and an international incident ensued, that was different.
She reached the bottom of the steps and could see the light of the oncoming train far along the track.
“Come on!” Walter urged, and ran, half dragging her over the platform and through the arch of platform four. She looked one way for the sign to tell her what train was next. There was nothing in either direction, except the single light of the oncoming train growing rapidly larger until it came to a grinding halt.
Was there someone they could ask? There were no porters, no stationmaster. Panic welled up inside her. They had to catch it! But what if it was going somewhere else entirely? What if she ended up in Switzerland? Or Austria?
Walter opened the nearest carriage door just as an elderly man filled the opening carrying a small case in his hand. “Pardon!” he said with surprise.
“Sorry, monsieur,” Walter said. “Is this train going north? I can’t see anything that says so.”
“To Hamburg, monsieur. And will you please stand aside and allow me off? I have no wish to be in Hamburg.”
“Of course. Pardon!” Walter stood aside for him. As soon as the man was on the platform, Walter climbed up the steep steps, holding tightly onto his case with one hand, and Elena with the other. At the top they turned and walked into the corridor, looking for an empty compartment. They found one near the end, and were inside, putting their cases on the rack above them, when the whistle blew. Elena nearly lost her balance as the train jerked sharply into movement again.
Walter caught her and eased her into the seat, his face filled with concern.
“I’m all right,” she said quickly, annoyed with herself. Have some guts, woman, she told herself.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Really. Thank you.” She would make it true.
He stared at her for a moment and then sat down beside her.
She was obliged to keep her coat on and fastened, to hide the blood still on her dress. At least it was only damp now, not really sodden. Her head ached and her eyes felt as if they were full of grit. Perhaps they were? Railway stations could make anyone dirty in a matter of minutes. She had been on one train or another for so long that Amalfi, its warmth and sunshine, the wonderful time she’d had there, seemed like a distant world she had seen in her dreams.
If only this were a dream, and she would wake and find herself warm and dry, Ian opposite her, kindly laughing at her awkwardness, perhaps with a cup of tea in his hand. She had fallen asleep while he was fetching it, and they were still in the rich, sunlit Italian countryside.
But it was now very early morning, France, and she was heading north in the pallid, pre-sunrise light. It was Walter Mann, not Ian, sitting beside her in an otherwise empty carriage.
“Are you sure about this, Elena?” he asked gently.
She gave him her attention. “About what?”
“Going to Berlin? Everything’s changed since you made that decision.”
She drew in breath to tell him that actually the opposite was true. It was because of Ian’s death that she was going to Germany, instead of home. But Ian had said he was MI6, Military Intelligence. Secret. He had trusted her to fulfill the mission that he could not. Someone had killed him so that he could not.
“Thank you. That is considerate of you. But I shall be perfectly all right. And I definitely intend to go to Berlin.” She forced herself to smile very slightly.
He looked worried. “Are you sure? You could very easily send a message to whoever is expecting you…”
“Yes, I know. But no thank you. Perhaps I can sleep a bit on the next part of the journey. We’ve got a…a lot of time yet…”
“You need a hot bath and a bed, not falling asleep sideways on a railway seat.” His smile was rueful now. “And we left so many of your personal things on the other train. You haven’t even got a change of clothes…”
“I know. But I have enough money to buy such things. Please don’t try to argue me out of it. I must. That’s all there is to it.”
He must have heard the determination in her voice. He was silent for several minutes, but she felt him still looking at her.
“It’s a promise to Newton, isn’t it?” he said at last.
How did he know? Then it was obvious. She had left early with Ian. She had changed her earlier plans because of him. Now he was dead and she was changing them again. You didn’t have to be very clever to work that out. She’d had a ticket to Paris, not Berlin. She didn’t have any personal connection to Berlin. It had to be because of Ian.
“He’s dead,” she said, and even in those two words her voice shook a little.
“And you made a promise of some sort to him?” he asked, going on before she could answer, or lie to him. “And because he’s dead, you have to keep it?”
“A lot of people are dead, and a lot of promises have been broken,” she replied. “Especially by people who didn’t have to keep them.”
“Like the man in the hotel linen cupboard?” he asked.
She felt suddenly even colder, but before she could answer he went on: “Ian knew him, you know that, don’t you?”
Should she lie? Walter was asking questions she did not want to think of. “I don’t know…” She wasn’t going to deny it. It would be awkward and very obviously defensive. “Why?”
“He was murdered, you know?”
“Yes, of course I know. You don’t fall over and break your neck in a hotel linen cupboard. What has that got to do with it? Are you saying that whoever killed him killed Ian, too?” Now she was getting angry enough to look at him squarely. “And you think my going to Berlin has anything to do with that?”
“I have no idea.” He put his hand on her wrist. It was gentle, not at all intrusive. “But two people were murdered. I want you to be safe, and not only from the police, but from whomever is doing this. It has to matter a lot for this much violence, in a bustling hotel and a train full of passengers.”
It was true. And Ian had lied about the man in the cupboard at first. “Ian couldn’t have killed the man in the cupboard, because he was with me all afternoon. And he certainly didn’t kill himself!” She nearly choked on the words. Then she wondered why she had said them. Walter had not suggested he had.
“Of course he didn’t kill himself,” Walter said firmly, tightening his hold on her arm a little. “And do you know when the man in the cupboard was killed?”
She realized her mistake. “No…I suppose he could have been there since the morning…since the last time anyone had used the cupboard. I know there’s something unpleasant—”
“Unpleasant! Yes, very unpleasant, and dangerous. Elena, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into! No one has a right to ask this of you. You don’t even know what it is, do you?”
Yes, she did. All she had to do was deliver a message to Cordell in Berlin. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know him, or any of the embassy staff. She had lived there, for heaven’s sake! “It is a very small thing, and I’m going to do it,” she said perfectly steadily. “Please don’t treat me as if I were a child, or…or incompetent. I was very upset when Ian was killed. But I am perfectly capable of carrying on.” She took a long, steady breath. “But I am grateful for your help.”
He sighed and leaned back in his seat, a look of resignation on his face, and a wry smile, as if he might even admire her.
Elena drifted off to sleep, then woke with a start when the carriage door opened with a loud clang. She looked up and saw a tall guard staring at her.
She had slipped sideways and as she straightened up her coat parted at the front. Was it her legs, too much exposed, that the guard was staring at? Or the bloodstain indelible in the fabric of her dress? She felt the color hot in her face and reached to pull the coat closed.
The guard asked to see their passports. He looked at them carefully, then slowly raised his eyes to her face.
“Fräulein Standish?” he said, frowning.
“Yes.” He could not know of Ian’s death yet. Or suspect her!
“Why are you traveling to Germany, fräulein?” He looked at her steadily, challengingly. She was very conscious of the bloodstains over the rest of her dress. Would he demand to see under her coat?
“She’s my fiancée,” Walter said smoothly. “She will meet some members of my family for the first time. It is a little…nerve-racking, you understand?”
The guard smiled. “Oh, yes! I remember that!” He gave a slight shrug. “Good luck, fräulein. I’m sure they will be delighted.” He gave the passports back and continued along the train.
“Thank you,” Elena whispered, her throat tight. She was shaking, and the passport almost slid out of her hand.
“See? It wasn’t so difficult. Just don’t forget, when you get to Berlin. Will you be all right there?”
“Yes. Thank you. They’ll help me at the embassy.”
“Get you a new passport? It would be wise. When they find Newton’s body, which they will have by now, there will be a search for the woman who was with him. Bound to be.”
“Yes, I know. And the guards at the Italian border might remember me. But the embassy will help me. My father used to be the ambassador there. I’ll be all right. Thank you.”
She should sleep again, if she possibly could. It was not an express train, or it would hardly have stopped at the small station just behind them, but Hamburg was the end of the line, so she would have to get off there. And she needed to be awake then, strong and clear-minded. At least she had money, and she knew Berlin well enough to find the embassy easily. She just needed to be there before Cordell left for the day. That was about eleven hours from now.
She curled up on the seat, resting her head on her handbag and using her coat as a blanket. Walter straightened it and tucked it in for her. The rhythm of the wheels over the track was soothing, almost like a live thing keeping her company.
She did sleep—exhaustion forced it on her, but it could not keep the dreams at bay. She woke many times, trying to find a more comfortable position; lying along three seats was at least a luxury she was grateful for. Sleep where you can. Mike had told her that often, when he spoke about what it was like at the front. He told her more than he did anyone else. Partly it was a matter of not burdening them. He did not want to think it was on their minds every time they looked at him. Then he would not be able to forget, when he needed to.
“But why me?” she had asked.
She could remember the wry, funny look on his face, as if it had been only hours ago. “Because I need to have somebody understand me,” he had said. “When it’s all over, people will want to forget. But those of us who were there never will, not completely. I need someone to forgive me when I do daft things.” Then he had laughed. “Never mind, kiddo, just be there, eh?”
She had promised she would.
It was Mike who was gone.
She woke up with a start to find the train not moving, and Walter standing in front of her, shaking her shoulder gently.
“Oh! Thank you.” She scrambled to her feet, put her coat on, and looked out of the window. The large sign said HAMBURG, and she grasped her case and handbag and went to the door, Walter on her heels. It was crowded with other people getting off.
She heard the familiar sounds of German being spoken around her and easily fell into the pattern herself. It did not take Walter long to make the appropriate inquiries for the fastest train to Berlin, and to change some money into German currency.
They caught the train and found seats with only a few minutes to spare. Were the trains scheduled to coincide, or was it just good luck? She had heard rumors that Adolf Hitler managed to get many things improved, and the Germans had always taken a natural pride in order. Perhaps it was by design. When things worked as they should, it created ease. Trust. Even hope.
The train drew into Berlin a few minutes early. If the taxis were still in the same place, she would have no trouble finding one, and every driver had to know where the main embassies were.
The whole station seemed to be as she remembered it. There was no time now to look for small changes, new restaurants or shops. She had just under an hour to get to the embassy before five o’clock. It should be easy, but one always had to allow for traffic jams, a queue somewhere, an official who needed to be persuaded or was in too much of a hurry to listen.
She turned to Walter. “I can never thank you enough for all that you have done, but I need to go alone from here.”
“I understand. Or…I don’t…but I believe you. Take care of yourself, Elena Standish!” He smiled and bent forward, kissing her lightly on the forehead, then turned and walked away, elegantly, easily.
Within minutes he was lost in the crowd, but she had no time to miss him.
She was both hungry and thirsty, but refreshments would have to wait. If she got to the embassy in time there would be a cloakroom where she could try to tidy her appearance a bit more.
There were half a dozen people waiting for taxis when she reached the stand. Only four taxis were in sight. How long might she have to wait? Did it matter if she asked anyone if they were going near the British Embassy? She could wait here long enough to be late! The big rally where Scharnhorst would appear was tomorrow at midday. If she missed Cordell tonight, she might not catch him at all. Tomorrow was Tuesday; he could be anywhere then. But should she draw attention to herself? At the head of the queue was a man in a drab business suit. Everyone looked tired, more than ready to go home. What on earth did embarrassment matter?
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” she said very clearly. “I have an appointment for which I am late, at the British Embassy. Is anyone going in that direction? I will be happy to pay the whole fare, I just dare not miss my…meeting, please?”
They all looked a little startled. There was panic in her voice. She had heard it herself, and she sounded distraught. Please heaven, one of them must find money more important than time?
The silence seemed to stretch endlessly, but it was probably less than a minute. Then one of the women, the third in the queue, nodded her head.
“I’m going that way. If you take me there, and pay the taxi, you can get the driver to take you the rest of the way in a few minutes.”
“Thank you!” Elena was flooded with gratitude. “Thank you,” she said again, adding the German courtesy of “gnädige Frau.”
The taxi ride seemed long, although in fact it was less than twenty-five minutes. Elena remembered the streets well enough. The driver followed exactly the same route she would have expected, first to the address the woman had given him, then from there to the British Embassy.
There were lots of people out, shoppers, talking to one another, on foot and moving quickly. Many walked with heads down, as if not wanting to catch anyone’s attention. One old man, white-bearded, stepped aside into the gutter to allow a group of brown-shirted men in semi-uniform to go past. He kept his face averted, but moved even farther into the street to avoid being bumped by them. They took no notice of him at all.
Two women stopped talking to each other and moved quickly in the opposite direction.
The taxi driver muttered something under his breath, but assuming he might be speaking to her, Elena asked him to repeat it. He shook his head and drove faster.
Outside the embassy, he stopped. She paid him what he asked and added the usual tip.
“Thank you,” she said, and alighted quickly.
He drove off without answering, leaving her on the pavement in her bloodstained dress, her one small suitcase containing her camera at her feet.