The Spy (32 page)

“Blimey,
no
..!” She whacked him.

His foot hit the gas.

Valerie, fighting for the big picture, was seeing it.

There had been a dream—or was it?—the face of de Beck emerging out of it. Another's, too! Had Marchaud been there?
It was night, they had come rushing out of a tunnel
...Certainly they had! Now, as if arriving from the future, other photographs were coming into focus: falling and fluttering through the night.

Valerie grabbed at them, she was remembering:

Thursday afternoon, on their way to Polperro in the Rolls, she had noted the thickness of the Frenchman's neck, his insistence on details. His arrogance at the dance, insensitivity to her pain at Achnacarry, and flawless American accent—had not Hamilton
himself
remarked on it?—had all been pointing to the obvious, to the singular photograph of a German agent:

Teeth flashing in the sun
...

The Spy had called her at The Red Lion.

Coming closer to her ideal—she was still wearing that damned Rubinstein bra!—he was also the one to whom they were going; but it was his call to her in the Manager's office, thwarting the British Override, that had forced her to decide. Trees were rushing past, eerie outposts of the dangers all around them. Valerie clung to the strap. Now, staring through the glass, catapulting through the darkness, she was witnessing the world of The Spy.

Ryan said it: She could expect him in France.

“Will there be a
mission
then?”

The driver thought that there would. Of course, it could be delayed for a few days: until General Eisenhower returned from Normandy.
Would she be going
? “That's not for me to say,” Ryan said. “Why don't you just relax?” The Spy was leaving England, they would protect her son.

“Got it.”

Ryan had heard something, he was watching the heavens. Valerie leaned forward, she looked through the windshield:
Ursa Major
stood before them.

It was upside down.

With polarized light for the central girders, otherwise known as
stars
, their floor of work had become the
other
part of the physical tunnel of time...reaching all the way into France. Slowed to twenty-nine miles per hour, Ryan held them steady.

Valerie started blinking
...

Ursa Major turned right side up.

Click
!

Ryan shifted gears, the Camera Shop was open.

Night closed over the Channel, strong winds running north. Prints of the
Alternate Route
, taken as living pictures, they were developing on the submarine:

The Captain appeared
.

The whole place smelled of carbide!

Sounds and great, deep rumblings
...

The submarine was ascending.

She could feel it in the change of pressure and in the quiet sway of bulkheads, along passageways devoid of men. It was Blackstone's voice, addressing the ship:

A woman on a man-o-war
!

Step by step, Hamilton was hurting. His refraction of this basic law, necessitated by the undisciplined nature of men, had led him to the isle of the leper. With a will of iron, he was leading her, the untouchable, by the hand.

Step lively now
, he could hear himself saying,
come along this way, child, this way
, they were at a ladder,
careful now—

The submarine surfaced.

Hamilton and de Beck climbed through the conning tower and down the rungs onto the deck. The Captain and several of his crew, working forward, were preparing to launch a small rubber raft.

It was the Carley float
.

Hamilton moved forward to the bow. His eyes searched the skies, as if looking for the approach of her plane. The rains had stopped. Waves sloshed gently against the hull.

De Beck studied the shoreline, where fog was forming. It was not a clear sea, but that would be in his favor. Binoculars swept the beach. “Seems clear,” the Skipper said, his face shadowed. “Yes, Sparks, what is it?” The radioman had approached, he stood at the Captain's side. The men were proceeding with the raft. Silently, Pierre joined them. Hamilton was observing.

“Commander Hamilton?”

Hamilton turned. The Captain handed him the radiogram, it was deciphered. From Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten; Mountbatten of Burma:

Beaulieu
...

Hamilton read it, he glanced at the sky. Dieppe came to mind. He remembered her, the way she had looked.
Strapped into a parachute, she had just had her teeth cleaned. He had bought her a drink, at Leed's...Mary Gladstone, Number Fifteen
. The radiogram had released him from his chains, defining Number Sixteen, Sinclair's, question:
If neither she nor de Beck made it, what would happen to England
?

Hamilton pocketed the paper. He motioned the Captain aside, away from de Beck; and they had a quiet conversation. The Captain nodded, he said something to his men: the Carley float was being pulled back aboard. Pierre had seen it:

Something wasn't right
!

Hamilton was looking at him. The Commander's eyes were hard, like stars. De Beck wheeled, he was staring at the beach; his mind punctured, as though by injections of ether...

What has happened to GOLDILOCKS
?

She is smiling shyly. Softly, she was singing: a lullaby in French, her child's voice melding with the mourning of the owls.

She was there! Ahead of him! In his future!

Behind that tree—and
there
—from the black draconian tunnel, emerging out of blue light into Brittany, two girls had hurried to be ready. Through the physical tunnel of time, one of them is carried home to England.
The other
remains, waiting to welcome him. She stands, in reception, shadowless in the white heat of the moon. Behind her, swastikas, bobbing in torchlight, and the final dreams of children. Her arm reached out, she was waving to him! Pierre was wild, they had pulled him to the deck.

Valerie! Nous le tenons
!

Hands, bearing handcuffs, had taken hold of him; he was beyond help. God was singing. Her song was Justice. Holding high a torch, she was coming for him: for what he had done, for who he was; for the unspeakable thing he had become:

Le Partenaire, n'est ce pas?

De Beck was screaming.

Back ablaze by moonlight, he was seeing it before: glancing over his shoulder, in darkness, on last night's rutted road. Sweet as the sting of a black, black rose with its single thorn of death...calling his name from the shores of France:

Stood the girl he had left behind!

Sinclair sorted through the photographs.

The prints of her friend, standing on the beach in France, would become her favorite. Valerie tapped Ryan on the shoulder. He turned. She handed him his lighter. He had wondered where it was. The limousine was accelerating. She looked out the window: the stars were blue. Having geared herself for raindrops, here they were, speeding through surprises.

Was it because of the weather!

Along the windy reaches of the road, and spinning behind them, projections of her past had become mirror images. Faces on prints, emerged out of time, they were the pictures of
the people of the secrets
. Sent by an English shopgirl who had photographed their motives, and who wasn't as dumb as she looked, Valerie had forwarded the proofs.

They had been delivered to the secret place of The Spy, along deserted comers of counterespionage, somewhere up ahead. There, balancing a flashlight, he would be looking at them:

Hamilton
, loyal Welshman, yet in the dark following Blackstone's orders; taking Pierre to France without her; his grey eyes searching the skies for a plane.

De Beck
, teeth flashing in the sun, spying for—

The black glove turned another
...

—von Schroeder
, Commandant of
Abwehr
: a position allowing the Nazi banker to steal the Bomb from his own people. Summer days in snapshots: Berlin. London. Marley Square, home of
Abwehr
; home of bankers, of apple strudel and cinnamon; and handcuffs and black chains, and years of trust:

Mary Gladstone
.

Mountbatten
, studio pose, who in ordering the arrest of de Beck had blocked von Schroeder's transfer of atomic secrets; preventing the completion by the Gestapo of the murder of Valerie Marchaud...

The flip side
.

Saving Sinclair.

In Blackstone's reverse shot, a
montage
, Mountbatten is perceived as having become irresponsible to the real purposes of GOLDILOCKS. Parker takes credit. Full control of the mission, reverted to Blackstone, would ensure the successful return of the German data by de Beck.

Black glove, finger missing, turned the prints
...

Churchill
, a glossy, shown later in his published works, will leave the Waterfall, carrier for the first nuclear bomb, unnamed; an oversight that will prompt MI.5, on the first anniversary of the fire at the Hotel Ritz, to bum their card catalogues. What will
not
bum, passionately protected and held in
Egalité
by General LeClerc of the Free French, will be the biological transcripts of the two Valeries, Sinclair and Marchaud:

Who were separate, if equal; and often on the run.

Meanwhile, The Spy, entering once again into the life of Valerie Sinclair, and in a personal way, had fitted his movements to hers, like a hand to a glove. Having made the arrangements with Ryan to escort the British photographer to her mysterious rendezvous, hadn't he overlooked something?

Valerie fished through her prints.

The London Financial District?

Protected by Bletchley Park, yet dealing from the Top to steal nuclear technology for his partners, Blackstone's Blackmail List had come back to haunt him—leaving Mountbatten a hero, stuck with Bull Durham; and with Sinclair in the Middle:

Which is no place for a Lady to be.

Mouse in a hole and plugged by the Override Code; seemingly, with no way of escape, The Spy had appeared and belled the cat for Valerie Sinclair, freeing her from the grip of the British Lion.

The snout of the car was gulping at the fog.

It was the mist, curling across the blinded fields pierced by the chilling lamps of the car. Valerie snuggled deeper into her coat. The motor throbbed, devouring the miles. “What are your hobbies?” She was asking Ryan.

He thought about it. “Welding, maybe.”

“Was it
you
then, in Polperro, at the tomcat's house!”

Ryan wouldn't say that it wasn't. He was talking.

He spun them over a bridge. It led to Bernstein. Hearing from the Boffin, James Bridley, that his best bet to get to the girl would probably be The Spy, Bernstein had immediately forced Bridley into a comer. Returning his call, and being low on chips, James Bridley had cashed his last one, lifted from Parker; and
dealt the Override to Bernstein
. Armed with the Code, whose parts were now in order, thanks to Bridley, in debt to Alan Turing; the lawyer had cut a deal with the Boffin for Ryan's unlisted telephone number, courtesy of the El Flamingo. After various negotiations, the lawyer buying the drinks, Ryan had put him in touch with his employer. Receiving
the Override
from Bernstein, The Spy had used it to call Sinclair; by-passing Hamilton, while duping his Security Team into thinking it from Churchill.

Seems Bridley and The Spy had once worked together on the same motion picture; Bridley, on behalf of the Baker Street Irregulars, having used the occasion to get the goods on actor Herbert Marshall—politically suspect at the time—background information he hoped to peddle to the War Office. Tossing a few after work at their favorite bar—farewell drinks prior to Bridley's departure to join Mountbatten—The Spy had suggested that Bridley try wiring the urinal downstairs, since Marshal was in the habit of talking to himself while using it, a consequence of faulty zippers in the flys of his suits, picked up dirt cheap from that British assistant of Madame Roc's. Unquestionably upset by it, Marshall had been drinking more than he ought; an unfortunate fact which had furthered his problem, in the El Flamingo, around the corner from Harrod's and just up the street from the back room of Bobby Blake's.

Well sir!

Never one to let a zipper stand in his way, Bridley
would
have wired that urinal too, had it not been for the intervention of that Irishman, Ryan, waiting to spirit The Spy up to Scotland. Ryan, the first to check the call from Bernstein, had also been the first to read the letter from Ike: carried in the lawyers'briefcase, from Southwick. Checking the signature, he had transferred it immediately to The Spy; who was glad to hear that Bridley was still alive.

Agreeing that the girl held the key to the bankers' acquisition of the Bomb, and seeing the bases loaded, the lawyer and The Spy had proceeded to clear them. Lest Lord Louis succeed in cutting Ike off at home plate, they had to move quickly. Bridley, who had called the play, had been thrown out. As for de Beck's long throw to Blackstone, via von Schroeder, Mountbatten was certain to hear it from
somebody
!

Could that somebody be The Spy?

Captain Bernstein, in a later brief circulated among the Bletchley barristers, expressed it about as well as anyone in a cryptic statement that could have come straight from the bench of the First Judicial District of New York: “So! What did you think, Tex? Dwight Eisenhower is a
Putz
?”

With De Gaulle emerging at the Top—looking good in that blazing green Rolls—the Brits, who had been caught red-handed, finding themselves at the Bottom, were trying to get back to the Middle:

A place they had vacated, now occupied by the girl.

Employing the Authority which had overridden the codes, her pursuer had become THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE. But he himself was being pursued, was he not? And if not, why not? Without knowing why, yet knowing she would, Sinclair had begun to suspect that she might have to protect him. As was obvious to any thinking person: