Russian Front (15)
He seemed exhausted himself. Something told Sally that he had not slept in days. ‘Will you be joining us?’ she asked. She had a soft spot for weary men. ‘I’d love to, but I’ve far too much to do here. What with events in North Africa and our ambitious friend Eichmann, things have been rather hectic of late. Lesley will see to it that you are fed and watered and put to bed in another flat of ours. The one you were in before has been put on the open market – we don’t think Eichmann managed to communicate the address to anyone else, but of course we mustn’t take the chance.’ He stood up to see her out. ‘You have been, if I may say so, most brave and resourceful. I am going to write to your CO in Egypt recommending you for a decoration on your return.’ So she was going back to Egypt. ‘I’m not sure how much weight my word carries, of course,’ he continued. ‘Would you believe I can pick up that phone and speak to some of the most powerful men in the land, including the Prime Minister, but hardly anyone knows this department exists. And, of course, it would be more than my life is worth to blab about it.’ * * * * * * Dinner with Lesley had been pleasant. They had fish and a bottle of Portuguese wine in a crowded, smoky, basement with whitewashed walls and small tables. Lesley and Sally sat in an alcove. A three-piece band played on a tiny stage. They had finished their meal and were lingering over coffee. Sally had been looking at the guitar player’s fingers. She thought she would buy a guitar when she got back to Egypt. She yawned slightly, put her hand over her mouth, and looked across the table at Lesley. Lesley had been watching her with those knowing, slightly mocking brown eyes, blowing smoke slowly out from her mouth. ‘So,’ she murmured. ‘Would you say you were in love with Hugh?’ Oh God, thought Sally. Here it comes. She didn’t mind lesbians as such, but she had been pestered by a drunken ATS Captain at a dance in Egypt. This was the time to tell a lie, to put Lesley off, to say that she was mad about Hugh and dreamed nightly of his hard, tanned body. But she found herself telling the truth. ‘Not at all. I don’t fall in love just like that. I do like him. It would be nice to see him again. I don’t know when that might be.’ ‘You made a beeline for his parents,’ Lesley observed. ‘That suggests more than a passing interest to me.’ There was no denying that. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Sally said. ‘We’ll see when he gets back from wherever the bloody hell he is. If he gets back. There’s a war on. You just can’t make plans.’ ‘In that case …’ Lesley began, leaning forward on her elbows, searching Sally’s eyes, less certain of herself now. ‘You see, when he gets back, he will be debriefed in our department before a spot of leave. The truth is, I think he’s rather a dish. Unless you object violently, I’m going to, you know, take him back to my flat for supper, dim the lights and curl up in his lap.’ Sally looked at her. Well, you live and learn, she thought. She raised her coffee cup. ‘Best of British luck. Give him one for me.’ * * * * * * Sally was thinking about her dinner with Lesley as she lay awake in the comfortable, silent flat at three in the morning on the nineteenth of November. She had fallen asleep earlier, but there was a nightmare – Eichmann, somehow transmuted into the form of a huge dog, coming after her. She sighed and got out of bed, naked and shivering. She went to the window and pulled back the blackout curtain. The moon was setting over to the East. Was Hugh over there somewhere, fighting for his life? What she had said to Lesley was mainly bravado. She did care about him, but she didn’t care if Lesley tried to seduce him. Men were men and usually took sex if it was put on a plate in front of them. But somehow she felt certain that Hugh wouldn’t be interested in Lesley. She closed the curtain, went back to the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. She got back into bed, wrapped herself in the eiderdown against the cold, and began to write to Helen Swayne. Less than five miles away, as Sally began to doze over her notepaper, Eichmann was sitting alone in a cell in Wandsworth Prison. It had taken him a while to realize, and then more time to accept, that Bruckner had betrayed him, but the men who had interrogated him had been able to tell him so many things about himself - not least his real name - that could only have come from Bruckner. Eichmann grimaced in the dark and twisted a strip of his bed sheet, waxy with inadequate laundering, in both hands. If he could only get his hands on the treacherous bastard. But he was probably cozily asleep with that Irish tart of his. Eichmann hadn’t been beaten up since his arrest, which surprised him. They had bandaged his cut hands and even fed him at the police station in Somerset. Nobody had been aggressive and nobody had talked to him. By some strange alchemy, this combination had begun to undermine his confidence. He had been kept in a police cell under a ludicrously heavy guard overnight, and then brought to London in the back of a lorry. He had waited for violence, abuse and other nameless humiliations that simply didn’t happen. His interrogation had started two days after returning to London. The experience was almost a relief after the silence and isolation of his cell. The elder of the two men who had talked to him spoke perfect German, which was another almost-welcome development after the day-to-day strain of trying to speak English with a Dublin accent. There was an open packet of cigarettes on the table in the green-painted interrogation room. After some preliminary fencing, it soon became apparent to Eichmann’s quick mind that some sort of a deal was in the air. It was made clear to him that if he agreed to work for them by broadcasting false information to Berlin, he might save his life. ‘The police constable you shot is seriously hurt, but is expected to live,’ the older man had said, offering Eichmann yet another cigarette. ‘Under the terms of the Geneva Convention we can try you as a spy and, if you are found guilty, you will face execution by hanging. However, if you tell us where your radio transmitter is and agree to work for us, you can spare your own life. We’ll give you time to think about it.’ ‘Didn’t that bastard Bruckner tell you?’ Eichmann asked bitterly. ‘I didn’t bring a radio transmitter. I don’t trust the things.’ There was a pause. The atmosphere in the room changed. The MI5 man looked almost shocked. ‘You didn’t bring a radio transmitter? Your, ah, colleagues invariably do.’ ‘No. I was in a hurry,’ said Eichmann sucking on his cigarette. ‘Besides, I don’t like them. I prefer to operate without contacts of any kind. I don’t need other people.’ ‘So you had no means of contacting either Dublin or Berlin?’ asked the MI5 man, his tone pensive. ‘No radio, no one-time pad, no book code, no agreed phrases on a postcard … nothing?’ ‘No. I didn’t mean to be here very long. I was going to find out what Swayne was up to and then fuck off back to Dublin.’ The MI5 man thought about this for a few moments longer and then looked at Eichmann, really looked at him, with a small smile of polite regret. He pushed the half-empty packet of Gold Flake towards Eichmann with his index finger. His manner was almost sympathetic. ‘I think that’s all for today,’ he said, and got up. The younger man followed him out. Eichmann felt surprised as the warders took him back to his cell. The interrogation had seemed to end rather abruptly. Outside the prison, the two MI5 men got into their car in Heathfield Road and began to drive back to Whitehall. The younger man was driving, but as they began to discuss the interrogation it became apparent that he was the senior in terms of rank. ‘Did I understand him?’ he glanced across at his passenger. ‘He doesn’t possess any means of communicating with his side?’ ‘That is correct,’ said the older man, sighing and wishing he were back in his rooms at Oxford. ‘He’s rather an arrogant type. He has an exaggerated belief in his own ability to manipulate people and events.’ ‘He thinks he’s invincible, in other words,’ said the younger man. ‘Well,’ he continued as he turned a corner and accelerated on to Wandsworth Bridge. ‘He’s no use to us if he can’t tell Berlin what we want them to hear.’ ‘So …?’ inquired the older man diffidently. ‘So we hang him,’ said the driver, changing gear. ‘He’s a tough character,’ mused the older man. ‘He’ll make a good end. Nazi salutes and Heil Hitlering to the end, I shouldn’t wonder.’ The driver smiled. ‘That’s if we hang him as a spy. But we’re not going to hang him for that. He’s been very clever while he’s been over here but he made one very stupid mistake, and we’re going to make the most of it. Waste not, want not.’ The car sped past a poster urging the populace to dig for victory. * * * * * Later that afternoon Eichmann was in his cell smoking the last of the English cigarettes when the cell door opened. In walked two men in suits and raincoats. They looked to Eichmann like ordinary plainclothes detectives, not secret police. And he was right. ‘Hans-Günter Eichmann?’ said one, reading from a piece of paper. Eichmann just stared at him. The CID man met his look for a second and carried on. ‘Hans-Günter Eichmann, alias Pat Ryan, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of Violet Edna Jenkins in Bristol on or about the first of November 1942. You do not have to say anything but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you. Do you have anything to say?’ ‘How can you arrest me if I’m already in prison?’ Eichmann asked. The copper couldn’t care less. ‘You will be taken before a magistrate and formally charged tomorrow.’ They made to go out. The second one paused and shook his head at Eichmann in mock sympathy. ‘You should have dumped the Webley in the river, Fritz, you really should.’ the detectives made to leave. ‘We’ve got a perfect match with the slug we cut out of that tart. And - leaving your prints all over her flat!’ ‘Proves that not all the wankers are on our side, I suppose,’ muttered the first one. Eichmann had started to say something about his name not being Fritz, but they were already out of the door, which was shut with a bang and noisily locked. For the first time since his arrival in London he felt a cold, sick feeling in his stomach which he recognized as fear. All through the evening he tried to concentrate on his situation. But the more his cunning mind looked for ways out, deals that could be struck, moves that could be made, the sheer finality of his position became clear to him. He was trapped. The detectives had said, or implied, that laboratory tests on the gun linked him indisputably with the whore he had shot. They might, of course, be lying to trick a confession out of him. But what about fingerprints? He couldn’t remember what he might have touched in her hovel. Nothing in his background or training had prepared him to deal with forensic science. Neither the Abwehr nor the Gestapo was interested in that kind of evidence, so it hadn’t occurred to him to wipe doorknobs or get rid of the gun. He had anticipated the remote possibility of being picked up as a spy, but not for killing a street prostitute. He couldn’t understand why they had gone to such trouble over one common whore. After all, weren’t there too many of them on the streets? Later that night, he stood on his stool and tried to look out of the high, barred window. All he could see were the slate roofs of some houses, washed with silver under a moon that was low in the sky. He found himself longing to be able to slip through the bars. It was the first time in his life that he had ever felt sorry for himself. Even if by some miracle he managed to escape the death penalty for murder, there was always the fact that he had been caught as a spy. He realized now that he had said too much when he had boasted of being able to operate completely on his own and out of touch in enemy territory. He might have been able to string them along if he’d played his hand differently, but it was too late now. Sitting on the hard bed in the dark he began the strangely domestic business of plaiting strips of his bedsheet together into a short, strong rope with which to hang himself. He had been good at knots in the Hitler Youth. Chapter Twelve
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