The car taking them down to Lulworth Cove was a huge Austin, a glass partition separating them from the driver. Munro and Jack Carter were in the rear, side by side, and Sarah Drayton sat on the jump seat opposite. She wore a tweed suit with pleated skirt, tan stockings and black brogues with half-heels, blouse in cream satin with a black string tie at her neck. She looked very attractive, cheeks flushed, eyes flickering everywhere. She also looked extremely young.
"It was his birthday the week before last," Carter told her.
She was immediately interested. "How old was he?"
"Forty-four."
"What they call a child of the century, my dear," Munro told her. "Born on the seventh of April, nineteen hundred. That must seem terribly old to you."
"Aries," she said.
Munro smiled. "That's right. Before the advent of our so-called enlightened times astrology was a science. Did you know that?"
"Not really."
"The ancient Egyptians always chose their generals from Leos, for example."
"I'm a Leo," she said. "July twenty-seventh."
"Then you are in for a complicated life. Something of a hobby of mine. Take Harry, for instance. Very gifted, brilliant analytical mind. A professor in the greatest university in the world at thirty-eight. Then look at what he became in middle life."
"How do you explain that?" she demanded.
"Astrology explains it for us. Aries is a warrior sign, but very commonly those born around the same time as Harry are one thing on the surface, something else underneath. Mars decanate in Gemini, you see, and Gemini is the sign of the twins."
"So?"
"People like that can be very schizophrenic. On one level, you're Harry Martineau, scholar, philosopher, poet, full of sweet reason, but on the dark side..." He shrugged. "A cold and ruthless killer. Yes, there's a curious lack of emotion to him, wouldn't you agree, Jack? Of course, all this has been extremely useful in the job he's been doing for the past four years. Suppose that's what's kept him alive when most of the others have died."
Carter said, "Just in case you're getting a rather bad impression of Harry Martineau, two things, Sarah. Although his mother was born in the States, she was of German parentage, and Harry spent a lot of time with them in Dresden and Heidelberg as he grew up. His grandfather, a professor of surgery, was an active Socialist. He died in a fall from the balcony of his apartment. A nasty accident."
"Aided by two Gestapo thugs taking an arm and a leg each to help him on his way," Munro put in.
"And then there was a Jewish girl named Rosa Bernstein."
"Yes," Sarah put in. "I was beginning to wonder whether females had ever entered into his life. No mention of mar-riage."
"He met Rosa Bernstein when she did a year at an Oxford College, St. Hugh's, in nineteen thirty-two. He was spending increasing time in Europe by then. Both his parents were dead. His father had left him reasonably well off, and as an only child, he had no close relatives."
"But he and Rosa never married?"
"No," Munro said, and added bluntly: "You'll often find prejudice on both sides of the fence, my dear. Rosa's parents were Orthodox Jews, and they didn't like the idea of their daughter marrying a Gentile. She and Harry pursued what you might term a vigorous affair for some years. I knew them both well. I was at Oxford myself in those days."
"What happened?"
It was Carter who answered her. "She was active in the Socialist underground. Went backward and forward from England to Germany as a courier. In May, nineteen thirty-eight, she was apprehended, taken to Gestapo Headquarters at Prince Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. A good address for a very bad place. There, she was interrogated with extreme brutality and, according to our information, executed."
There was a long silence. She seemed abstracted, staring out of the window into the distance. Munro said, "You don't seem shocked? I find that strange in one so young."
She shook her head. "IVe been nursing for two years now. I deal with death every day of my life. So Harry Mar-tineau doesn't particularly care for Germans?"
"No," Carter said. "He doesn't like Nazis. There's a difference."
"Yes, I can see that."
She stared out of the window again, feeling restless, on edge, and it was all to do with Martineau, this man she had never met. He filled her mind. Would not go away.
Carter said, "One thing we didn't ask. I hope you don't mind my being personal, but is there anyone in your life at the moment? Anyone who would miss you?"
"A man?" She laughed harshly. "Good heavens, no! I never work less than a twelve-hour daily shift at the Cromwell. That leaves one just about enough time to have a bath and a meal before falling into bed." She shook her head. "No time for men. My father's in a Japanese prison camp. I Ve an old aunt in Sussex, his elder sister, and that's about it. No one to miss me at all. I'm all yours, gentlemen."
She delivered the speech with an air of bravado and an illusion of calm sophistication that in one so young was strangely moving.
Munro, unusually for him, felt uncomfortable. "This is important, believe me." He leaned forward, put a hand on her arm. "We wouldn't ask you if it wasn't."
She nodded. "I know, Brigadier. I know " She turned and stared out of the window again at the passing scenery, thinking about Martineau.
He awoke with a dull ache just behind the right eye and his mouth tasted foul. Only one answer to that. He pulled on an old tracksuit and grabbed a towel, left by the front door and ran down to the sea.
He stripped and ran out through the shallows, plunging through the waves. It wasn't even a nice morning, the sky the color of slate gray, and there was rain on the wind. Yet quite suddenly, he experienced one of those special moments. Sea and sky seemed to become one. For a little while all sounds faded as he battled his way through the waves. Nothing mattered. Not the past or the future. Only this present moment. As he turned on his back, a herring gull fled overhead and it started to rain.
A voice called out, "Enjoying yourself, Harry?"
Martineau turned toward the shore and found Munro standing there in old tweed coat and battered hat, holding an umbrella over his head. "My God," he said. "Not you, Dougal?"
"As ever was, Harry. Come on up to the cottage. There's someone I'd like you to meet."
He turned and walked back across the beach without another word. Martineau floated there for a while, thinking about it. Dougal Munro wasn't just paying a social call, that was for sure, not all the way from London. Excitement surged through him and he waded out of the water, toweled himself briskly, pulled on the old tracksuit and ran across the beach and up the cliff path. Jack Carter was standing on the porch, watching the rain and smoking a cigarette.
"What, you too, Jack?" Martineau smiled with real pleasure and took the other man's hand. "Does the old sod want me to go back to work?"
"Something like that." Carter hesitated, then said, "Harry, I think you've done enough."
"No such word in the vocabulary, Jack, not until they nail down the lid and put you six feet under." Martineau brushed past Carter and went inside.
Munro was sitting by the fire, reading the notepad he'd found on the table. "Still writing bad poetry?"
"Always did." Martineau took the pad from him, tore off the top sheet, crumpled it up and tossed it into the flreplace. It was then that he became aware of Sarah Drayton standing in the kitchen doorway.
"I'm making tea for everyone. I hope that's all right, Colonel Martineau. I'm Sarah Drayton."
She didn't bother holding out her hand, for it would have trembled too much. She was aware that she was close to tears and her stomach was hollow with excitement, throat dry. Coup defoudre, the French called it. The thunderclap. The best kind of love of all. Instant and quite irrevocable.
And at first, he responded, brushing a lock of black hair back from the white forehead, his face illuminated by a smile of great natural charm, and then the smile faded and he turned on Munro, anger in his voice, as if seeing everything.
"My God, what a bastard you are, Dougal. So now we're using schoolgirls?"
Hugh Kelso's adventures did not take long in the telling, but when he was finished, Munro carried on.
"The other month we knocked off a man called Braun in Paris. Jack has the details. I think you'll find it interesting."
"What was he, Gestapo?" Martineau asked.
"No, SD." Carter turned to Sarah Drayton sitting on the other side of the fire. "That's the Secret Intelligence Department of the SS, responsible only to Himmler himself. More powerful than any other organization in Germany today."
"Go on about Braun," Martineau said.
"Well, according to his papers, he was RFSS." Carter turned again to Sarah. "That means Reichsfuhrer SS. It's a cuff title that members of Himmler's personal staff wear on their uniform sleeve." He took a paper from the file he was holding and offered it to Martineau. "It seems Braun was a kind of roving ambassador, empowered to make his own investigations wherever he pleased."
"With supreme authority over everyone he came into contact with," Munro said. "Read that letter."
Martineau took it from its envelope and unfolded it.
It was on excellent paper, the heading embossed in black.
DERREICHSFUHRER-SS Berlin, 9 November 1943
88-STURMBANNFttHRER BRAUN ERWIN, SS-NR 107863
This officer acts under my personal orders on business of the utmost importance to the Reich. All personnel, military and civil, without distinction of rank, must assist him in any way he sees fit.
H. HIMMLER
A remarkable document in itself. Even more astonishing was that it was countersigned across the bottom: Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer und Reichskanzler.
"He obviously had a certain amount of influence," Martineau said dryly, handing it back to Carter.
Munro said, "Well the bastard's dead now, but our Paris people got some useful information out of him before he left."
"I bet they did," Martineau said, and lit a cigarette.
"He has a dozen or so of these special envoys floating around Europe, putting the fear of God into everyone wherever they turn up. All highly secret. Nobody knows who they are. IVe got our forgery department preparing a complete set of papers for you. SD identity card and a copy of that letter and whatever else you need. Name of Max Vogel. We thought we'd give you a little rank, just to help the ship along, so it's Standartenfuhrer." He turned to Sarah, "Colonel to you."
"I get the picture," Martineau said. "I arrive on Jersey's fair shore and frighten the hell out of everyone."
"You know as well as I, dear boy, that there's nothing more frightening than a schoolmaster in a leather overcoat turned revolutionary. Lenin for a start. And you must admit, you do a very good Nazi, Harry."
"And the child?" Martineau inquired. "Where does she fit in?"
"You need someone with you to establish your credentials with Mrs. de Ville and this chap Gallagher. Sarah is related to one and knows the other. Another thing, she was last in Jersey six years ago, aged thirteen-all plaits and ankle socks, I shouldn't wonder. Still herself enough for Helen de Ville and Gallagher to recognize, but different enough to pass as a stranger with other people, especially when weVe finished with her."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, there's a fair trade in ladies of the night between France and Jersey."
"You mean whores? You're not suggesting she play one of those?"
"Most senior German officers in France have French girlfriends. Why should you be any different? To start off, Sarah speaks excellent French with a Breton accent because that's what her grandmother was. By the time our people at Berkley Hall have finished with her, changed her hair color, got her into the right clothes-"
"You mean, turned her into a little French tart?" Martineau interrupted.
"Something like that. Perfect cover for her."
"And when are we supposed to go in?"
"Day after tomorrow. A Lysander drop near Granvllle. Two-hour flight, Harry. Piece of cake. Sophie Cresson will meet you. Afterward, you use your authority to cross to Jersey on one of the night boats from Granville. Once over there, you make it up as you go along. YouVe got till Sunday at the outside."
"And what if it's impossible to get him out? What then?"
"Up to you."
"I see. I play executioner for you again?" He turned on Sarah. "What do you think about all this?"
He was angry, the face whiter than ever, the eyes very dark. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "It sounds as if it could be rather interesting."
