The Best of Our Spies (28 page)

Owen Quinn left his flat in Pimlico just before eleven and set off on the two mile walk to Duke Street in St James’s. When he first began this job, he had been told at his security briefing to vary his route to and from work. It was advice that Quinn happily adhered to. He preferred to walk, the exercise helping his back, though he would take the bus if it was raining. Depending on when he left the flat, he could take the more direct route through the heart of Victoria, across St James’s Park and then over Pall Mall. Or he could take a more roundabout route, heading for the river, down Millbank, past the Houses of Parliament and then down Whitehall. This was the route he was most likely to be stopped on, especially if he tried to cross St James’s Square. Sometimes it would be for a security check, or because the road was closed, but Quinn’s pass usually saw him through. Or he could take a middle route. Or a combination, sometimes doubling back on himself just to be absolutely sure he was not being followed and then occasionally darting into a turning he had never used before just to vary the routine. He was, after all, a navigation expert.

By the time he set off, any doubts caused by the wording of the broadcast had dissipated and there was a spring in his step. Even though it was the same way as he had taken the previous day, Quinn broke the habit of a year and used the same, direct route. That morning he arrived at the office in Lincoln House twenty minutes before midday.

There was no familiar face among the guards on the ground floor of Lincoln House that morning. That was unusual, but not unprecedented. Sometimes they would bring in a new unit, so Quinn thought nothing of it at first. So there was none of the good cheer and bonhomie from the familiar faces, no ‘good morning, Lieutenant, not too much of a cross-wind I hope, sir’, which he would affect to be amused by as if it was the first time he had heard it. Instead the lance-corporal who took his pass handed it straight to a corporal who asked him to ‘wait here a moment if you don’t mind, sir’ and who then disappeared in through the door of the guardroom.

After five minutes, Quinn became mildly irritated. Never before had he had to wait in the reception area of the building where he worked and his enquiry of the lance-corporal if there was any problem was met with a dismissive ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.’

He sat down in the small reception area, the guards managing the feat of keeping an eye on him while avoiding any form of eye contact. They were trained to do that, he told himself. That and handling clipboards. The metal chair was uncomfortable, but he had walked fast and now he was feeling the familiar twinges in his back and a dull ache in his leg.

By the time he had been kept waiting for twenty minutes, his irritation had turned to an ill-concealed exasperation which was studiously ignored by the guards.

Five minutes later, the corporal returned, along with a sergeant wearing the distinctive uniform and red cap of the military police. ‘If you care to come with me, Lieutenant Quinn, we’ll have this sorted in no while. Just a small problem with your pass, sir.’ He was being passed through the ranks.

Quinn followed the sergeant up the stairs, past the first floor, through whose heavy doors he had once heard people talking in German, beyond the second and third floors where he had never seen the doors anything but firmly shut, past the fourth floor which always had a sentry on the stairwell and past the fifth floor where the door was sometimes ajar and through which he had seen a mass of electrical equipment. As they approached his office on the sixth floor, two guards carrying large boxes were coming down the stairs, forcing Quinn and the military policeman to go in single file, pressed against the wall. Quinn found himself ahead of the officer, who had had to step further back to allow the guards more space to descend.

Quinn pushed his way into the entrance to the sixth floor offices, half hearing but ignoring the sergeant’s cry of ‘not in there please, Lieutenant’. By the time the sergeant had caught up with him, he realised why. He was clearly not meant to see this. The large central room, from which three small offices led, was deserted. The walls which twelve hours before had been covered in charts and maps and photographs were bare. The large map table in the centre of the room had been disassembled and was propped against the heavily barred windows. The filing cabinets containing thousands of photographs were gone, as were the boxes of letters, postcards and other documents. There was a box in the centre of the room full of black phones and alongside it were the two large office clocks. One of the clocks had always been on Greenwich Mean Time, the other on Central European Time. One clock had stopped just after three, the other just after four.

‘Please sir, not in here.’

‘But this is my office.’

‘I’m afraid that we need to go up another flight of stairs to get this sorted, sir.’

‘But I don’t understand!’

Quinn had moved into the centre of the large room now, puzzled and determined to see what had become of his own small office. He moved quickly across the scuffed green linoleum floor to escape the attentions of the sergeant who was now at his shoulder, but as he did so he found his way blocked by a familiar figure dressed in a black greatcoat, towering well above his own six foot frame.

‘Captain Edgar!’

The tall man nodded to the sergeant. ‘Leave it to me.’

And then to Quinn. ‘Not happy with you bounding ahead like that, Quinn. Having a bit of a clear-out in here as you can see. Sergeant had instructions to bring you to the top floor. And by the way, it’s Major Edgar now.’

From his very first encounter with Edgar in the hospital two years previously, any dealings with him had an edge of menace to them. Had he been asked to explain that in more detail, Quinn would have struggled. He would have talked about the major’s coldness, about his quiet voice with no discernible accent that nonetheless appeared to dominate the room. He would have remarked on the fact that despite having met the major a number of times, he found it almost impossible to recall in any significant detail any of his physical characteristics, other than his height. But most of all, he would have recalled the near fear that he instilled in Quinn. No threats, certainly no violence but an overwhelming sense that anything the major asked or required was beyond discussion. His effect was almost hypnotic.

By now the major had led Quinn out of the sixth floor suite of offices which had been his life for the past two years and out into the stairwell. The major hesitated, looking up towards the seventh floor, where Quinn had never been.

‘I’ll tell you what, Quinn. Let’s go for a walk.’

Once in Duke Street, the major fixed his familiar trilby to his head in a precise manner, twisting it carefully so it sat just right. He wore it lower than Quinn had observed in other people and the brim of the hat appeared to be wider than usual. The effect was to cast much of the major’s face in shadow.

They headed south, across Pall Mall and The Mall, entering St James’s Park near the bandstand. The walk had been conducted in studied silence, but throughout it Quinn kept thinking of what Captain Archibald had said the previous evening, ‘I may not be around here for a few weeks, but all the very best, Quinn. Whatever happens, remember you’ve played your part
.
’ And now, the abandoned office, along with the BBC announcement of D-Day and the reference to the north west of France. The sense of unease that Quinn had felt when he first heard the BBC broadcast in the flat had returned.

They strolled down to the lake, still silent as they had been since leaving Lincoln House apart from Major Edgar’s occasional cough. And so they stood, their backs to The Mall, facing the lake, silent for a good two minutes.

When the major did start to speak it was in his usual quiet voice. The noise of the city around them obliged Quinn to shuffle closer to Edgar than he felt entirely comfortable with, but he did not want to miss a word.

‘Quinn. I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to say. I don’t expect you will like one word of it and I have no doubt that by the time I have finished speaking you will hate me. But it is important that you listen, take it all in and then forget the last two years and get on with your life.’

Major Edgar paused as two men in bowler hats got up from a bench to their right. As they moved away, Edgar gestured towards the bench and that is where they sat for the next twenty minutes.

During that time, the major spoke in his quiet, commanding tone. Edgar leaned forward for most of the time, his elbows resting on his thighs and looking around him, anywhere other than directly at Quinn. Quinn had to lean forward himself to catch every word. To a passer-by, it may have looked as if an impromptu confession was taking place which was perhaps not too far from the truth.

 ‘You have obviously heard the news, Quinn. The landings?’

Quinn nodded.
Of course.

‘I need to tell you something and from your point of view it’s not going to be very pleasant.’

There was a pause while Edgar carefully straightened his shirt cuffs and adjusted his tie, while at the same time nervously prodding away some gravel with the tip of his highly polished shoe. He coughed and shifted on the bench.

‘How long is it now since you’ve seen your wife, Owen?’

Quinn looked puzzled. This was not what he imagined they had come here to talk about.

‘Six ... seven weeks? Something like that.’

‘And, of course, you only saw her intermittently in the months immeadiately before that?’

‘While she was training, yes.’

‘I expect you miss her.’

Quinn looked unsure. Edgar was the not the kind of person he imagined having a conversation like this with.

‘Well, of course. Naturally.’

‘Have you ... adapted to her not being around?’

‘Well, I cope, if that’s what you mean. But I do miss her an awful lot. Perhaps more than I expected. Look, I’m not sure why you’re asking me these questions.’

‘Owen, I have to tell you that Nathalie is not who you think she is. We do not know her real name, but it is certainly not Nathalie Mercier. What we do know is that she did enter this country in June 1940 with that identity. She is indeed a nurse. There is no easy way of saying this, but I have to tell you that she came here as a German spy ...’

There was silence and no movement from Quinn’s end of the bench. Edgar glanced over at him; he had been expecting more of a reaction than this. The younger man had a puzzled expression on his face, as if he had trouble hearing what Edgar had said. Edgar wondered whether he needed to repeat it. The silence was broken by a pair of ducks waddling noisily in front of them, arguing furiously. Quinn’s brow was starting to furrow now as first disbelief and then anger appeared to take hold. He was shaking his head.

‘No, no – don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Edgar!’ Quinn stood up, then rapidly sat down again, but hesitantly, as if he were about to stand up again.

‘If you think I’ve come here to listen to nonsense like this then …’

‘Listen Quinn – Owen. I know this is hard, but as it is I am telling you more than I should be doing. Just listen. It may the only time you hear it.’ Edgar had adopted a firm tone. He could not afford to leave Quinn in any doubt about what he was saying.

‘We became aware that your wife is a German spy only very recently. Certainly after she was sent to France – goes without saying, of course, that we wouldn’t have sent her over there if we’d known she was a German spy. I cannot tell you much, but I can tell you this: soon after she arrived in France we came across certain intelligence that made us suspect her. You have to trust me, Owen. We checked this intelligence out most carefully. We had to be sure and I am afraid that we are. We’ve been back over her movements since she arrived in this country and I can tell you that there is no doubt about it. We feel pretty bad about it, as I’m sure you do. But at least we’ve found out now, or rather a few weeks ago. If we hadn’t done so then I think the consequences could have been quite dreadful.’

Owen laughed.

‘Oh, I see! And they aren’t “quite dreadful”, as you put it, now?’

Edgar shifted uncomfortably at his end of the bench, holding his hands out in front of him in a conciliatory manner.

‘Of course they are dreadful for you, Quinn. I am sorry. We’re not fools. I don’t want you to think that we are being insensitive to your predicament. We can see that you are going to be absolutely devastated. But it is better to know than not to know, eh?’

Quinn was not so sure. As far as he was concerned, ignorance was bliss, at least it had been up until a few minutes ago. He didn’t know what to make of what Edgar was telling. It sounded so far-fetched as far as he was concerned, but then why would Edgar concoct such a ridiculous story. He was not sure what Edgar meant and he could not even be sure that what he was being told was true.

‘And who was she supposed to be spying on — me?’

‘Quite possibly. Until – if – we get the chance to interrogate her, we simply won’t know. We don’t know if she was spying on you or just trying to get into a position where we recruited her. As I say, we only discovered that she’s a spy a few weeks ago.’

‘And is all this connected to the Normandy business?’

‘What do you mean, Quinn?’

‘Well, the invasion started a few hours ago in Normandy, apparently. Everything I’ve been working on has been on the assumption that the invasion would be in the Pas de Calais. So what’s going on, Edgar? And where is Nathalie, in Normandy or the Pas de Calais?’

Edgar made to speak and then hesitated, as if he had not been expecting this question.

‘She could be anywhere in France, Owen. I can’t tell you any more than that and nor would you expect me to. As to the Pas de Calais, well ... all I can say is that the D-Day operation is barely twelve hours old. It is far too early to say what is going to happen when ... and where.’

More silence from Quinn’s end of the bench. Edgar shot him another glance and noticed that his eyes were moist and he was blinking rapidly. He appeared to be in shock and was tapping his feet on the ground. Quinn pulled a long white handkerchief from his uniform pocket and blew his nose.