She stopped walking and turned around.

"And what might that be?"

"I wonder if you might have a drink with me sometime."

She hesitated, then said, "I'm not sure I want to drink with a frightful American who insists on walking the streets of London without a torch. But I suppose you look harmless enough. So the answer is yes."

She walked away again.

"Wait, come back. I don't even know your name."

"It's Catherine," she called. "Catherine Blake."

"I need your telephone number," Jordan said helplessly.

But she had melted into the darkness and was gone.

When Peter Jordan arrived home he went into his study, picked up the telephone, and dialed. He identified himself, and a pleasant female voice instructed him to remain on the line. A moment later he heard the English-accented voice of the man he knew only as Broome.

24.

KENT, ENGLAND.

Alfred Vicary was being stretched to the breaking point. Despite the intense pressure to capture the spies, Vicary had kept his old caseload--the Becker network. He had considered asking to be relieved of it until after the spies had been arrested, but he quickly rejected the idea. He was the genius behind the Becker network; it was his masterpiece. It had taken countless hours to build and countless more to sustain. He would keep control of it and try to capture the spies at the same time. It was a brutal assignment. His right eye was beginning to twitch the way it did during final examinations at Cambridge, and he recognized the early symptoms of nervous exhaustion.

Partridge was the code name of a degenerate lorry driver whose routes happened to take him into restricted military zones in Suffolk, Kent, and East Sussex. He subscribed to the beliefs of Sir Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist, and he used the money he made from spying to buy whores. Sometimes he brought the girls along on his trips so they could give him sex while he drove. He liked Karl Becker because Becker always had a young girl stashed away and he was always willing to share--even with the likes of Partridge.

But Partridge existed only in Vicary's imagination, on the airwaves, and in the minds of his German control officers in Hamburg. Luftwaffe surveillance photos had detected new activity in southeast England, and Berlin had asked Becker to assess the enemy activity and report back within one week. Becker had given the assignment to Partridge--or, rather, Vicary had done it for him. It was the opportunity Vicary had been waiting for, an invitation from the Abwehr to transmit false intelligence about the ersatz First United States Army Group being assembled in southeast England.

Partridge--according to Vicary's concocted scenario--had driven through the Kent countryside at midday. In fact, Vicary had journeyed the same route that morning in the back of a department Rover. From his perch on the leather seat, wrapped in a traveling rug, Vicary imagined the signs of a military buildup an agent like Partridge might see. He might see more military lorries on the road. He might spot a group of American officers at the pub where he ate lunch. At the garage where he stopped for petrol, he might hear rumors that nearby roads were being widened. The information was trivial, the clues small, but totally consistent with Partridge's cover. Vicary couldn't allow him to discover something extraordinary like General Patton's field headquarters; his Abwehr controllers would never believe an agent like Partridge was capable of that. But Partridge's small clues, when incorporated into the rest of the deception scheme, would help paint the picture British Intelligence wanted the Germans to see--a massive Allied force waiting to strike across the Channel at Calais.

Vicary composed Partridge's message as he rode back into London. The report would be encoded into an Abwehr cipher and Karl Becker would transmit it to Hamburg late that evening from his cell. Vicary envisioned another night with little or no rest. When he finished the message, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window, wadding his mackintosh into a ball for a pillow. The swaying of the Rover and the low rumble of its engine lulled him into a light fitful sleep. He dreamed of France again, except this time it was Boothby--not Brendan Evans--who came to him in the field hospital. A thousand men are dead, Alfred, and it's all your fault! If you had captured the spies they'd be alive today! A thousand men are dead, Alfred, and it's all your fault! If you had captured the spies they'd be alive today! Vicary forced open his eyes and caught a glimpse of the passing countryside before drifting off again. Vicary forced open his eyes and caught a glimpse of the passing countryside before drifting off again.

This time he is lying in bed on a fine spring morning twenty-five years ago, the morning he made love to Helen for the first time. He is spending the weekend at the sprawling estate owned by Helen's father. Through his bedroom window, Vicary can see the morning sun gradually casting a pink light over the hillsides. It is the day they plan to inform Helen's father of their plans to marry. He hears the gentle knock at the door--in his dream it sounds exactly the same--and turns his head just in time to spot Helen, beautiful and fresh from sleep, slipping into his room wearing nothing but a white nightgown. She climbs into bed next to him and kisses him on the mouth. I've been thinking about you all morning, Alfred darling. I've been thinking about you all morning, Alfred darling. She reaches beneath the blanket, unties his pajamas, and touches him lightly with her long, beautiful fingers. She reaches beneath the blanket, unties his pajamas, and touches him lightly with her long, beautiful fingers. Helen, I thought you wanted to wait until we Helen, I thought you wanted to wait until we were--She quiets him by kissing his lips. were--She quiets him by kissing his lips. I don't want to discuss it anymore. We have to hurry, though. If Daddy finds out he'll kill us both. I don't want to discuss it anymore. We have to hurry, though. If Daddy finds out he'll kill us both. She straddles his hips, carefully, so she doesn't hurt his knee. She lifts her nightgown and guides him with her hands. There is a moment of resistance. Helen presses down harder, utters a short gasp of pain, and he is inside her. She draws his hands to her breasts. He has touched them before but only through her clothing and stiff underwear. Now they are free within her gown and they feel soft and wonderful. He tries to unbutton her gown but she won't let him. She straddles his hips, carefully, so she doesn't hurt his knee. She lifts her nightgown and guides him with her hands. There is a moment of resistance. Helen presses down harder, utters a short gasp of pain, and he is inside her. She draws his hands to her breasts. He has touched them before but only through her clothing and stiff underwear. Now they are free within her gown and they feel soft and wonderful. He tries to unbutton her gown but she won't let him. Quickly, darling, quickly. Quickly, darling, quickly. When it is over he wants her to stay--to hold her and do it all over again--but she quickly straightens her nightgown, kisses him, and hurries back to her room. When it is over he wants her to stay--to hold her and do it all over again--but she quickly straightens her nightgown, kisses him, and hurries back to her room.

Vicary awakened in the eastern suburbs of London, a slight smile on his face. He had not found the first time with Helen disappointing, it was just different different from what he expected. The sex of his youthful fantasies always involved women with enormous breasts who screamed and cried with ecstasy. But with Helen it had been slow and gentle, and instead of screaming she smiled and kissed him tenderly. It was not passionate but it was perfect. And it was perfect because he loved her desperately. from what he expected. The sex of his youthful fantasies always involved women with enormous breasts who screamed and cried with ecstasy. But with Helen it had been slow and gentle, and instead of screaming she smiled and kissed him tenderly. It was not passionate but it was perfect. And it was perfect because he loved her desperately.

It was that way with Alice Simpson too, but for other reasons. Vicary was fond of her; he even supposed he might be in love with her, whatever that meant. More than anything else he enjoyed her company. She was intelligent and witty and, like Helen, a touch irreverent. She taught literature at a minor school for girls and wrote mediocre plays about rich people who always seemed to have cathartic, life-altering discourse while sipping pale sherry and Earl Grey tea in a handsomely furnished drawing room. She also wrote romantic novels under a pseudonym, which Vicary, while not a fan of the genre, thought were rather good. Once Lillian Walford, his secretary at University College, caught him reading one of Alice Simpson's books. The next day she brought him a stack of Barbara Cartland novels. Vicary was mortified. The characters in Alice's novels, when they made love, all heard waves crashing and felt the heavens raining down on them. In real life she was shy and tender and somewhat ticklish, and she always insisted on making love in the dark. More than once Vicary closed his eyes and saw the image of Helen in her white nightgown bathed in morning sunlight.

His relationship with Alice Simpson had lapsed with the war. They still spoke at least once a week. She had lost her flat early in the blitz and stayed in Vicary's house in Chelsea for a time. They saw each other occasionally for dinner, but it had been months since they had made love. He realized suddenly that this was the first time Alice Simpson had entered his thoughts since Edward Kenton, walking across the drive of Matilda's cottage, had spoken Helen's name.

HAM COMMON, SURREY.

The large, rather ugly three-story Victorian mansion was surrounded by a pair of perimeter fences and a picket to shield it from view from the outside world. Nissen huts had been erected around the ten-acre grounds to house most of the staff. Once it had been known as Latchmere House, an asylum and recuperation center for victims of shellshock during the First War. But in 1939 it was converted into MI5's main interrogation and incarceration center and assigned the military designation Camp 020.

The room into which Vicary was shown smelled of mildew, disinfectant, and vaguely of boiled cabbage. There was no place to hang his coat--the Intelligence Corps guards went to great lengths to guard against suicide--so he kept it on. Besides, the place was like a medieval dungeon: cold, damp, a breeding ground for bronchial infection. The room had one feature that made it highly functional--a tiny arrow slit of a window through which an aerial had been strung. Vicary opened the lid on the Abwehr-issue suitcase radio he had brought with him, the very one he had seized from Becker in 1940. He attached the aerial and switched on the power. The lights glowed yellow as Vicary selected the proper frequency.

He yawned and stretched. It was eleven forty-five p.m. Becker was scheduled to send his message at midnight. He thought, Damn, why does the Abwehr always choose such god-awful hours for their agents to send messages?

Karl Becker was a liar, a thief, and a sexual deviant--a man without morals or loyalty. Yet he could be charming and intelligent, and over the years Becker and Vicary had developed something approaching a professional friendship. He came into the room, sandwiched between a pair of hulking guards, hands cuffed. The guards removed the cuffs and wordlessly went out. Becker smiled and stuck out his hand. Vicary shook it; it was cool as cellar limestone.

There was a small table of rough-hewn wood and a pair of haltered old chairs. Vicary and Becker sat down on opposite sides of the table, as if facing off for a game of chess. The edges of the table had been burned black by unattended cigarettes. Vicary handed Becker a small package and, like a child, he opened it right away. In it were a half dozen packets of cigarettes and a box of Swiss chocolates.

Becker looked at the things, then at Vicary. "Cigarettes and chocolate--you're not here to seduce me, are you, Alfred?" Becker managed a small chuckle but prison life had changed him. His lustrous French suits had been replaced with a dour gray overall, neatly pressed and surprisingly well fitted through the shoulders. Officially he was on a suicide watch--which Vicary thought was absurd--and he wore flimsy canvas slippers with no laces. His skin, once deeply tanned, had faded to a dungeon white. His taut little body had assumed a sudden discipline imposed by small places; gone were the flailing arms and abandoned laughter that Vicary had seen in the old surveillance photographs. He sat ramrod straight, as though someone were holding a gun to his back, and arranged the chocolate, cigarettes, and matches as if he were laying down a boundary across which Vicary was not to venture.

Becker opened a packet of cigarettes and tapped out two of them, giving one to Vicary and keeping one for himself. He struck a match and held it out to Vicary before lighting his own cigarette. They sat in silence for a while, each studying his own spot on the cell wall--old chums who have told every story they know and now are content just to be in each other's presence. Becker savored his cigarette, rolling the smoke on his tongue like an excellent Bordeaux before blowing it in a slender stream at the low stone ceiling. In the tiny chamber, smoke gathered overhead like storm clouds.

"Please send my love to Harry," Becker finally said.

"I will."

"He's a good man--a bit on the dogged side, like all policemen. But he's not a bad sort."

"I'd be lost without him."

"And how's brother Boothby?"

Vicary let out a long breath. "As ever."

"We all have our Nazis, Alfred."

"We're thinking of sending him over to the other side."

Becker, laughing, used the stub of his cigarette to light another. "I see you've brought my radio," he said. "What heroic deed have I done for the Third Reich now?"

"You've broken into Number Ten and stolen all the prime minister's private papers."

Becker threw his head back and emitted a short, brutal burst of laughter. "I hope I'm demanding more money from those cheap bastards! And not the counterfeit that got me into trouble last time."

"Of course."

Becker looked at the radio, then at Vicary. "In the good old days you would have left a revolver on the table and let me do the deed myself. Now you bring a radio made by some fine, upstanding German company and let me kill myself a dot and a dash at a time."

"It is a terrible world in which we live, Karl. But no one forced you to become a spy."

"Better than the Wehrmacht," Becker said. "I'm an old man, like you, Alfred. I would be conscripted and sent off to the East to fight the fucking Ivans. No, thank you. I'll wait out the war right here in my pleasant little English sanitarium."

Vicary glanced at his watch--ten minutes until Becker was scheduled to go on the air. He reached inside his pocket and withdrew the coded message Becker was to send. Then he took out the photograph taken from the passport of the Dutch woman named Christa Kunst. A look of distant recollection flashed across Becker's face, then dissipated.

"You know who she is, don't you, Karl?"

"You've found Anna," he said, smiling. "Well done, Alfred. Well done indeed. Bravo!"

Vicary sat like a man straining to hear distant music, hands folded on the table, making no notes. He knew it was best to ask as few questions as possible, best to allow Becker to lead him where he wanted. Like a deer stalker, Vicary made no movements, stayed downwind. His cigarette, untouched, burned to gray dust in the metal ashtray at his elbow. Through the arrow-slit window he could hear an evening rainstorm smacking on the exercise yard. As always Becker started the story somewhere in the middle and with himself. He held his body with a regimental stillness for a time, but as the story built he began waving his arms and using his precise little fingers to weave a tapestry before Vicary's eyes. Like all Becker monologues there were blind alleys and detours for accounts of bravery, moneymaking, and sexual conquest. At times he would lapse into a long speculative silence; at other times he would tell it so quickly he would be overcome with a fit of coughing. "It's the goddamned damp in my cell," he said by way of explanation. "That's one thing you English do very well.

"People like me, they get almost no training," he said. "Oh, sure, a few lectures by some idiots in Berlin who've never seen England except on a map. This is how you estimate the size of an army, they tell you. This is how you use your radio. This is how you bite into your suicide capsule in the highly unlikely event that MI-Five kicks down your door. Then they send you off to England in a boat or a plane to win the war for the Fuhrer."

He paused to light another cigarette and open the box of chocolates. "I was lucky. I was posing as a legal. I came by plane with a Swiss passport. You know what they did to another fellow? Put him ashore in Sussex in a rubber raft. But the U-boat left France without special unmarked Abwehr rafts. They had to use one of the U-boat's life rafts with a Kriegsmarine insignia on it. Can you believe such a thing?"

Vicary could believe it; the Abwehr was horrendously slipshod with the way it prepared and inserted its agents into England. He remembered the boy he pulled off the Cornish beach in September 1940. The Special Branch men who searched him found in his pocket a packet of matches from a popular Berlin nightclub. Then there was the case of Gosta Caroli, a Swedish citizen who parachuted into Northamptonshire near the village of Denton. He was discovered by an Irish farmhand named Paddy Daly, sleeping beneath a hedge. He wore a decent suit of gray flannel and a tie knotted continental style. Caroli admitted he had parachuted into England and handed over his automatic pistol and three hundred pounds in cash. The local authorities passed him on to MI5 and he was promptly taken to Camp 020.

Becker popped one of the chocolates into his mouth and held the box out to Vicary. "You British took the espionage business more seriously than we Germans. You had to because you were weak. You had to use deception and trickery to mask your frailty. But now you've got the Abwehr by the balls."

"But there were others they took more care with," Vicary said.

"Yes, there were others."

"Different kinds of agents."

"Absolutely," Becker said as he dug out another chocolate. "These are delicious, Alfred. Are you sure you won't have one?"

Becker was a surprisingly precise keyer--precise and very fast. Vicary attributed this to the fact that he was a classically trained violinist before his life took whatever unfortunate turn it was that landed him where he was now. Vicary listened on a spare pair of headphones as Becker identified himself and waited for the confirmation signal from the operator in Hamburg. As always it gave Vicary a brief chill. He took enormous pleasure from the fact that he was deceiving the enemy--lying to him so skillfully. He enjoyed the intimate contact: being able to hear the enemy's voice, even if it was just an electronic bleep amid a vapor of atmospheric hiss. Vicary imagined how appalled he would feel if he he were the one being deceived. For some reason he found himself thinking of Helen. were the one being deceived. For some reason he found himself thinking of Helen.

The Hamburg operator ordered Becker to proceed. Becker looked down at Vicary's message and quickly tapped it out. When he was finished he waited for Hamburg to confirm, then signed off. Vicary slipped off his headphones and shut off the radio. Becker would sulk for a while--he always did after sending one of Vicary's Double Cross messages--like a man who feels the hot flash of guilt after copulating with his mistress and wishes to be alone with his troubled thoughts. Vicary always suspected Becker was ashamed of betraying his own service--that his rantings about Abwehr bumbling and incompetence were just an attempt to conceal his own guilt over being a failure and a coward. Not that he had much of a choice; the first time Becker refused to send one of Vicary's messages he would be marched off to Wandsworth Prison for an appointment with the hangman.

Vicary feared he had lost him. Becker smoked, and he ate a few more chocolates without offering any to Vicary. Vicary slowly packed away the radio.

"I saw her once in Berlin," Becker said suddenly. "She was immediately separated from the rest of us mere mortals. I don't want you to quote me on this, Alfred--I'm just going to tell you what I heard. The rumors, the talk. If it doesn't turn out to be totally accurate I don't want Stephens to come in here and start throwing me off the fucking walls."

Vicary nodded sympathetically. Stephens was Colonel R.W.G. Stephens, the commandant of Camp 020, better known as Tin-Eye. A former Indian Army officer, Stephens was monocled, maniacal, and always dressed immaculately in a forage cap and uniform of the Peshawar Rifles. He was half German and spoke the language fluently. He was also detested by the prisoners and MI5 staff alike. Once he had given Vicary a thorough public dressing-down because he arrived five minutes late for an interrogation. Even senior staff like Boothby were not immune to his tirades and fits of vile temper.

"You have my word, Karl," Vicary said, taking his place at the table again.

"They said her name was Anna Steiner--that her father was some sort of aristocrat. Prussian, rich bastard, dueling scar on the cheek, dabbled in diplomacy. You know the type, don't you?" Becker didn't wait for an answer. "Christ, she was beautiful. Tall as hell. Spoke perfectly accented British English. The rumors said she had an English mother. That she was living in Spain the summer of 'thirty-six, fucking some Spanish Fascist bastard named Romero. Turns out Senor Romero was a talent spotter for the Abwehr. He calls Berlin, collects a finder's fee, and hands her over. The Abwehr puts the screws to her. They tell lovely Anna that her Fatherland needs her; if she doesn't cooperate, Papa von Steiner gets shipped off to a concentration camp."

"Who was her control officer?"

"I don't know his name. Sour-looking bastard. Smart, like you, only ruthless."

"Was his name Vogel?"

"I don't know--could be."

"You never saw her again?"

"No, just that once."

"So what happened to her?"

Becker was overcome by another fit of coughing that a fresh cigarette seemed to cure.

"I'm telling you what I heard, heard, not what I not what I know. know. You understand the difference?" You understand the difference?"

"I understand the difference."

"We heard there was a camp, somewhere in the mountains south of Munich. Very isolated, all surrounding roads closed. Hell for the locals. According to the rumors it was a place where they sent a few special agents--the ones they planned to bury deep."

"She was one of those agents?"

"Yes, Alfred. We've covered that ground already. Stay with me, please." Becker was digging through the chocolates again. "It was as if an English village had dropped from the sky and landed in the middle of Bavaria. There was a pub, a small hotel, cottages, even an Anglican church. Each agent was assigned to a cottage for a minimum stay of six months. In the morning they read London newspapers at the cafe over tea and buns. They did their shopping in English and listened to popular radio programs of the day on the BBC. Me, I never heard It's That Man Again It's That Man Again until I came to London." until I came to London."

"Go on."

"They had special codes and special rendezvous procedures. They were given more weapons training. Silent killing. At night they even sent the boys English-speaking whores so they could fuck in English."

"And what about the woman?"

"They say she was fucking her control officer--what did you say his name was, Vogel? Again, it was only a rumor."

"Did you ever meet her in Britain?"

"No."

"I want the truth, Karl!" Vicary snapped, so loudly that one of the guards stuck his head inside the door to make sure there was no problem.

"I'm telling you the truth! Jesus Christ, you're Alfred Vicary one minute and Heinrich Himmler the next. I never saw her again."

Vicary switched to German. He didn't want the guards eavesdropping on the conversation.