please,’ and beckoned with a pair of leather driving gloves.
On a wider street at a right angle to the lane, parked alongside a wall in the sun, was a gleaming automobile with whitewall tyres. A Humber, Richard had said. Bowler Hat Man opened the back door, and she stooped to climb in, lifting her case in front of her.
‘Mrs Eleanor Emerson?’
Inside, a man was offering his hand. Pinkish face, waxed moustache, and a tepid smile that said fair play. A folded Times on his lap. Tailored chalk-stripe suit, brown suede shoes, and carnation boutonniere. Definitely. Not. Evans.
‘Where is he?’ she said.
A small, surprised laugh. ‘My name’s Channing. Evans asked me to meet you.’
‘Why?’
The man raised his eyebrows.
‘If you must know,’ he said, moving the newspaper to the seat beside him and brushing a pastry crumb from a fold in his trousers, ‘he now works in another department.’
‘Evans was moved?’
The man continued to smile with patience. ‘Yes. Now then, I believe you have with you something that-’
Eleanor glared at him. ‘Will I see you at Biarritz this season?’
A momentary flicker in the eyes, enough to tell her of his bewilderment. ‘I hardly think-’ He stopped.
‘You know, uh, Mr Chilling, I think I’ve left my purse in the bank…’ She reached for the door handle and pulled down.
‘Just one minute-’
‘Won’t be long.’
She got out quickly, case first, and pulled the valise after her just as he made an ungentlemanly lunge for it.
Bowler Hat Man turned in the driver’s seat behind the glass partition, but the car was parked against the wall. He lurched across the front seat to the passenger door.
Eleanor ran for it-back down the narrow lane she’d come from, where the car couldn’t follow. Behind her a car door slammed and footsteps came after her-in a real sprint. The valise and case didn’t seem so light anymore. Only a few yards ahead: the corner of the lane. She reached it, hearing the driver’s breath behind her, turned the corner, and saw the busy street at the end. She saw a red double-decker and a policeman go past on a bicycle. She didn’t stop running until she reached the kerb.
A pillar with a golden flame was straight ahead of her. Streetcars whirred past. One stopped to let people off, the clippie calling ‘Monument,’ and she hopped on, sweating and cursing. Looking back to the entrance of Idol Lane, she saw Bowler Hat Man standing still, looking at the tram, trying to find her in the window.
Moments later she got off near London Bridge and hailed a cab.
‘Croydon Airfield’ she said, collapsing low onto the backseat. ‘And quickly, please.’
For a long while she had her face buried in her hands. That wasn’t my fault. After a time she found herself staring at the cookie-cutter houses passing on the Brighton Road, gardens neat and colourful, and she marvelled at the twists her life had taken.
An hour and a half later she climbed the steps into the Imperial Airways de Havilland Express to Berlin. She opened the valise on the empty seat beside her as the propellers began to turn, took out the diplomatic bag with the cash, and crammed into it the genuine, complete, bona fide List Dossier.
T he Hotel Mertens was a three-storey white box with a glassed-over patio restaurant to one side. In its front two poplar trees had curved with a prevailing wind to point west, like index fingers. Like a warning to turn back, Denham thought. A gravel forecourt opened directly onto the main road into Venhoven. The only other building nearby was a large filling station where a line of heavy goods trucks waited to refuel as they entered or left Germany. From there the road led straight up to the frontier, where they could see the wooden Dutch customs house with its smoking chimney, and behind that the German border crossing with a black-, red-, and white-striped barrier and damp flags fluttering.
A yawning girl showed them upstairs to their rooms, which were spartan and worn, with a smell of rain and manure blowing in through open windows. Denham told Friedl he was going to get a few hours’ sleep. Then he turned back to the girl, who was about to descend the stairs.
‘Does the hotel have a safe?’
She showed him an ancient strongbox in the cupboard of a small, shabby office next to the restaurant. Quickly he checked the satchel’s contents before depositing it:?50 in sterling in a large wad, and nearly 400 Dutch guilders for any expenses; his passport, vehicle documents, return ferry tickets, and finally Willi Greiser’s Sippenbuch, his honorary SS identification. Along with the engraved pocket watch Eleanor had found this item in one of Denham’s jackets on the floor of his ransacked apartment.
He looked again at the languid mug shot-the slightly hooded eyes, the duelling scar down one cheek-and his lips turned up in a half smile. It wasn’t an item he had any use for, and he wasn’t sure why he’d even brought it. But somehow, having it with him signified, preserved, his upper hand.
From outside came the low growl of a motorbike, and moments later the girl was handing him a parcel from London. With perfect timing, the bogus dossier had arrived.
Chapter Forty-five
‘Just imagine,’ Martha said with a smirk, ‘having to explain the affairs of my poor heart to Washington, who naturally suspect Bolshevik infiltration.’ She linked her arm in Eleanor’s. ‘No, Daddy wasn’t best pleased. Mother’s putting her brave face on it, though.’
She was wearing a smart dun-coloured hat with a long feather poking from the top, which, when she turned her head, occasionally caught Eleanor right under the nose. They were watching Martha’s fiance proffering a peanut to a Barbary sheep.
‘Isn’t he divine?’ She had barely contained the squeal in her voice since meeting Eleanor at the airport.
‘He’s certainly outgoing,’ Eleanor said with a sporting nod of her head.
The sheep turned its nose away and scampered up the crag to join the rest of its ginger flock.
‘I hear all what you say,’ the man said, turning to them and popping the peanut into his mouth. He was tall, brown-haired, and boyish, with Tartar eyes, broad cheeks faintly pitted, and a gap-tooth smile that had a certain charm. He wore a suit of some indeterminate fabric.
‘I’m also Boris’s English teacher,’ Martha said, pinching him.
‘Yes, and when are you going to Moscow for learning Russian? Then I am teaching you lesson.’ He gave a loud laugh and put an arm around both of them. Eleanor caught a sweet hint of alcohol on his breath.
‘Have you set a date?’ she asked.
Martha’s smile wavered. ‘Actually, Boris still needs Stalin’s permission to marry… We’re waiting. Oh, here’s the lions’ house. I wonder what time they’re fed.’
Boris whispered something in her ear, and she slapped him playfully across the chin. Eleanor looked at them with a pang of concern. Somehow, she saw some of her own past mistakes foreshadowed in Martha’s little adventure. I hope you know what you’re doing, she thought.
It was the first of May, and the day was warm and muggy. The cottonwoods and acacias of the zoo, filled with the screams of tropical birds, made her feel they were strolling through some lush estate in New Orleans. The place was quiet, near closing time. Nannies pushing prams; a few soldiers on leave taking photographs; couples walking dogs.
‘If you think we’re being shadowed, we are,’ Martha said with an amused savoir faire. ‘But at least we can talk freely here. Daddy has all his important conversations at the zoo. You’ll have to be careful what you say at the party later.’
Ambassador Dodd had told Eleanor, in a loud stage whisper during her last visit, that the house and embassy were wired by the SD-along with every other ambassador’s residence-with listening devices in the telephones and light switches.
