The Spy (28 page)

He accepted death in war.

Lord Louis was wanting to wrap it up. The younger man rose to thank him, but Mountbatten waved him aside. “You have it, old boy. Get to work. However”—he pointed to the large clock on the wall,—“if I were you, I'd hurry. Your Captain Grimes is waiting downstairs...the basement. Lift's to your right.”

“By the way, sir,” Hamilton thought to ask, picking up his case. “I understand that Bridley came in with you. Is he about?”

“He did, indeed. We sent him over to Truro.” Lord Louis smiled.
No one would be able to reach him
. “I expect James will keep the Overseas Security Group on their toes, what?”

The two men shook hands. Lord Louis walked him to the door, his thoughts centering in Friday's phone calls. “If we're wrong, David, they'll have your head.”

It was Hamilton's first kindness of the day.

He caught the lift to the basement, and found Arnold Grimes in the middle of Emily Blackstone's call to her husband: something about not enough credit to the Rubinstein woman. Hamilton waved him off, some things were personal. The Commander questioned him for late information, and Grimes handed him the weather charts. He leafed through them. “If Commodore Blackstone calls you on the bloody carpet, play dumb,” the Commander advised him, and Grimes grinned.

A cold fish, Hamilton decided, pleased.

Light rain met him at the bridge, and a lowering sky. He was still ninety miles from The Red Lion. Smythe and Longchamps—Valerie and Pierre—would be checking out, records proving they were never there. Hamilton tested the air. It was coming, all right. According to the latest, the storm should be hitting Polperro just about now.

Toward the East, he saw the wall of darkness forming. Feeling chilled, he asked the driver to turn on the blower. He leaned back. It had been a long day, and he had won. Rain, coming faster, swept before them on the dusty road, peppering the windshield.

In the skies beyond, lightning flashed.

It began to pour.

Click
!

Practically all the Operatives, in MI.5, appeared to be somebody else. They could think what they wanted, of course, but wasn't she wasting her film? Photographs of ghost men, she had captured them as pictures of their shadows.
Was Hamilton really Hamilton
? She listened. Distant thunder was rumbling. If she was to see the town, she had best get on with it.

Sundays were not her favorite.

She remained on the veranda for a few minutes, trying to figure it, enjoying the feel of the wind. Just last night, Hamilton said, if she were left alone—! In France, he'd meant, by Pierre. Dunkirk reared in her mind: dunes of blood, salt water and screaming; Pierre, clawing through the corpses to the boats, already shot, his body bleeding...

His comrades slain.

It was the Frenchman's face now, locked in her mind, handsome and strong. She could have done worse. She rested comfortably in the thought that he would kill for her, even if Hamilton had put a tail on both of them for security reasons.

Security reasons
!

Sinclair arose and stepped to the edge of the veranda. Beyond that sea, lay France. “
Valerie Marchaud
,” she said. Fist gripping the rail, dress cleaving to her legs, she stared out over the bay. Boats jerked at chains and the town waited within the cradle of its weather. On all sides, from the wild cliffs above, through the vast crater of stone, narrow and nervous streets cascaded down precipitous stairwells, leveling off onto platforms before depositing themselves, at last, at the foot of the wider avenue that ran along the seawall. Sinclair sniffed the air. The humid charm of Cornwall, thick with waves of heat, smote her senses with the lush, provocative perfume of flowers—invitation to the host of insects, gossips on wings, bearing down in angry clouds of silver from the blind and troubled sky—as if bringing messages of wickedness. She thought of the couple next door; their bed, night after night, thumping against the walls in tawdry joy. A place where men came with other men's wives, Polperro was the perfect hideaway for spies. Was that why Hamilton had selected it? Valerie, lugging her chair, walked back inside, slamming the French doors. She placed the chair in front of the mirror and sat down.

“
Let's talk
,” she said.

A dichotomy had come between herself and Marchaud. It wasn't the child's fault. Having entered into the body of a French girl, she was having difficulty finding room for her own. She was also having difficulty in finding the girl. Sinclair did not have all day. Supporting this was an ultimate argument: it was the last day she had.

By this time tomorrow, she could be dead
.

Before the mirror, Sinclair told Marchaud:

“We are going to France on the most dangerous mission of the war.” She waited, to get her eye. When she had it, she said: “We are a one-girl team.”

Comment
?

“A one-girl team. I am Valerie Sinclair. You, my other, are Valerie Marchaud.”

“
Oui
?”

The French girl smiled shyly, glad to know her name. Lights of chalister blue haunted their faces. Hadn't Valerie seen her before in a dream? A memory intruded, elusive...
Brittany
...but she couldn't seem to get her hands on it. The room was still where Sinclair spoke but she could not hear her own voice. Now, beneath an orchid-colored sky, hidden from adults by the wisdom of children,
she
had come. Marchaud's pale hands were reaching out towards the mirror, her thin dress tattered. The English girl moved closer, wanting to help her. Marchaud did likewise, wanting to care...each girl passing through, exchanging catalytically with, and into, the identity of the other.
They were running
...a tunnel, shrill of a nightbird, flatlands in moonlight, the smell of the dunes.

The entrance flew towards them!

Something was calling her; someone was there
...

She opened her eyes.

“—que faire de mes cheveux?” spoke her other, pointing with uncertainty. The Camera Shop, turning the CLOSED sign around, had allowed her to enter. “Oui,” said Sinclair, busy. Her bobbed hair, shaved high at the neck like a bird's, shimmered blue-black in the light of the lamp. Sand clung to the clothes of the girl. Marchaud looked frightened. Behind her, spilling into the sea, Valerie could see the cliffs of the vicarage. Shrouded in fog, negatives were turning the color of blood.

She must not have taken her camera—!

Traveling on the current that lay somewhere between them, they had met in the foyer of time. They shook hands. Immediately, the woman made room for the child, who was just about her size.

“
Il faut se dépêcher?
”

“Of course!” Valerie was having trouble with her English. She listened. The grounds were empty, and dark with dreams. Bells were singing. Voices, more beautiful than bells themselves, echoed ringing in the yard.

Behind her, a door was opening.

Something shimmered, moving through the trees
.

“Now, here's the Plan....”

Massive thunderbanks rolled out of the sky, dimming the daylight along the shore. The storm was coming, the wind racing before it. She walked to the windows, pulling the curtains. Returning, she sat on the bed.

An hour passed.

Within that time, a casual passerby would have heard two girls conversing, the younger in French. As for the passerby, Hamilton's Security Team was making sure there weren't any. The conversation in the room continued and the tone became friendlier. Ultimately, there came sounds of agreement, then silence.

At four o'clock, Valerie gathered up her raincoat and left the hotel. Storm or no storm, it was time for her walk. In Polperro, that could have limits. She headed towards the beach, turning south, and away from the marina. She walked down the stairwell which led to the sand and stopped at the balustrade. A beam of light was shining on it.

Sitting down, she looked up:

“Get me God,” she said.

Was it
him
had sent The Spy? Churchill had talked about God. Sometimes, Hitler. The Pope, too. How could he have so many partners? Until a few years ago, certainly, she would have expected him to take care of it personally. Did he have an address? God, it seemed, was in the credit business: He sent cheques. World leaders prayed to him, for loans. Afterwards, they sent him the bills. While it was not her place to speak for Higher Powers, as was obvious to any thinking person, she and Marchaud knew what
they
would do! She wondered where God was. When there was a war, he left town.

Smart chap.

Valerie prayed:

On her cheeks, glowed the roses of hope. Her heart felt full of sunshine, her life was full of joy. Running through her prints, she saw they were snapshots of flowers; but The Spy was holding them, too, and they were the snapshots of dreams. Valerie Sinclair closed her eyes. She imagined a happy day. She concentrated. As she bent her head, she heard a sound—!

Something good?

SPLAT!

Raindrops, big as shillings, splattered on the stone.

She jumped! Thunder rolled in the distance. The sky was growing black.
Some prayer
! If he didn't want to hear it, he should have said so. Valerie hurried from the quay and turned down a side street. Following her, the storm was throwing rain. It caught up with her, dropping down, overtaking the buildings...encompassing the streets.

A giant hand had hit her on the head!

Where was her pillbox hat? She'd left it in the hotel. Valerie ducked under an awning. It had a hole in it. She turned up the collar of her raincoat, it made a funnel. Water poured into her clothes. A drenched tomcat cut in front of her, running across the street, tail straight up. Was it a message—from BEYOND? There had been so few of them, she'd best not take a chance. She ran after the cat, who turned the comer. Valerie did the same. The cat turned again and ran up onto the porch of a house.

It meowed, voice like a bell.

Valerie walked by, adjusting the hat she wasn't wearing. Blinking a couple of blinks, she took a picture of the house. It did not seem to have an address. The door opened and the tomcat walked inside. In those few seconds, from a doorway of the room within, she could see blue sparks cascading, as though from an arc welder. The cat, who had stopped, turned and looked back at her, the door closing as mysteriously as it had opened. What kind of town was this? Working, on Sunday? Valerie looked:

Ahead of her was the entrance to The Red Lion.

She was back!

About to mount the steps, she happened to glance to her right. There, two comers away, she saw a man wearing a trench coat!
The Spy
! His chauffeur was opening the door of a limousine...

It was them
!

She moved around the stairwell, peeking out. The sleek silver and black juggernaut stood silently in the rain, as though waiting for ghostly passengers. Somehow, from its entrance into Hamilton's watertight security, she knew this graceful machine must be centered in laws and actions created by men who had proceeded to this small town, in this terrible raging weather, at a risk she could not imagine.

Through the windy air, through pouring rain, she observed they were preparing to leave. The Spy had entered the back seat, saying something to his driver. Sinclair looked. The limousine accelerated, moving swiftly away towards the Falmouth Road.

Valerie ran up the steps, into the hotel.

Why did she keep seeing him
?

“—what?” she said, distracted: it was her own voice.

The cheerful brogue of the Porter: “It's going to be a nasty night, wi' the look of it. See now, your friends have left you to get all wet, have they? You're drenched!” His hands drummed nervously on the folded newspaper.

Valerie stared at him, trying to listen.

“—calls for a hot bath and a toddy of warm rum. A few years before
you'll
know it though”—her legal age, he meant—“strong drinks are not for the likes o' young girls like you.”

“I suppose you're right,” said Valerie, and she looked over her shoulder. He removed the gun from behind his newspaper, slipping it into a drawer. “Parents staying in the hotel, are they?” She waited impatiently for her key.

“...yes,” she said.

Her stockings and legs were very wet. She moved, feeling a fool, up the stairs to her room. Locking the door behind her, she turned on the taps. It was her second bath of the day. It could also be her last. She undressed and got into the tub. She didn't much work at it, and toweled off quickly. She put on the pillbox hat, wishing she could take it with her. Picking up her sopping clothes, she threw them into the corner—to hell with them! She draped her raincoat over the chair. Weren't there dryer things in the closet? Opening the wardrobe, she looked in to see what they were...

Forget it
!

Valerie sighed and retrieved the drenched gob from the corner, spreading it out on the floor underneath the Casablanca fan which was threatening to explode at any moment. Did they want that thing up there to fall on her head?
Where was the fan man
? She picked up her bra and underwear, clutching them in her teeth; then carried the chair, heavy with raincoat, into the middle of the room. Hanging her brassiere on one end of it, she arranged her panties on the other. She glanced at the walls, staring into the mirror. They had done an incredible job.