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Authors: Daniel Silva

BOOK: The Unlikely Spy
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17
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND
"Congratulations, Alfred. Come inside. I'm sorry it had to happen this way, but you've just become a rather wealthy man." Edward Kenton thrust out his hand as if he were waiting for Vicary to impale himself on it. Vicary took the hand and shook it weakly before brushing past Kenton into the drawing room of his aunt's cottage. "Damned cold outside," Kenton was saying as Vicary surveyed the room. He hadn't been here since the war, but nothing had changed. "I hope you don't mind, but I've made a fire. The place was like an icebox when I arrived. There's tea as well. And
real
milk. I don't suppose you see much of that in London these days."
Vicary removed his coat while Kenton went into the kitchen. It wasn't really a cottage--that was what Matilda had insisted on calling it. It was a rather large home of Cotswold limestone, with spectacular gardens surrounded by a high wall. She died of a massive stroke the night Boothby assigned him the case. Vicary had planned to attend the funeral but he was summoned by Churchill that morning, after Bletchley Park decoded the German radio signals. He felt horrible about missing the services. Matilda had virtually raised Vicary after his own mother died when he was just twelve. They had remained the best of friends. She was the only person he had told about his assignment to MI5.
What do you do exactly, Alfred?
I catch German spies, Aunt Matilda.
Oh, good for you, Alfred!
French doors overlooked the gardens, dead with winter. Sometimes I catch spies, Aunt Matilda, he thought. Sometimes they get the better of me.
That morning Bletchley Park had forwarded Vicary a decoded message from an agent in Britain. It said the rendezvous had been successful and the agent had accepted the assignment. Vicary was growing discouraged about his chances of catching the spies. Things had worsened that morning. Two men were observed meeting in Leicester Square and brought in for questioning. The older of the two turned out to be a senior Home Office clerk; the younger man was his lover. Boothby had blown a fuse.
"How was the drive?" Kenton asked from the kitchen over the tinkle of china and running water.
"Fine," Vicary said. Boothby had reluctantly permitted him to have a Rover and a driver from Transport.
"I can't remember the last time I took a relaxing drive through the country," Kenton said. "But I suppose petrol and motorcars are some of the fringe benefits of your new job."
Kenton came into the room with a tray of tea. He was tall--as tall as Boothby--but with none of the bulk or physical agility. He wore round spectacles, too small for his face, and a thin mustache that looked as though it had been put there with a woman's eyebrow pencil. He set the tea down on the table in front of the couch, poured milk into the cups as though it were liquid gold, then added the tea.
"My goodness, Alfred, how long has it been?"
Twenty-five years, Vicary thought. Edward Kenton had been friends with Helen. They had even dated a few times after Helen broke off the relationship with Vicary. By coincidence he became Matilda's solicitor ten years earlier. Vicary and Kenton had spoken by telephone several times over the past few years as Matilda grew too old to manage alone, but it was the first time they had seen each other face-to-face. Vicary wished he could conclude his dead aunt's affairs without the specter of Helen hanging over the proceedings.
Kenton said, "You've been assigned to the War Office, I hear."
"That's right," Vicary said and swallowed half his cup of tea. It was delicious--much better than the swill they served in the canteen.
"What do you do exactly?"
"Oh, I work for a very dull department doing this and that." Vicary sat down. "I'm sorry, Edward. I hate to rush things along, but I really have to be heading back to London."
Kenton sat down opposite Vicary and fished a batch of papers from his black leather briefcase. Licking the tip of his slender forefinger, he guardedly turned to a suitable page. "Ah, here we are. I drew up this will myself five years ago," he said. "She spread some money and other properties among your cousins, but she left the bulk of her estate to you."
"I had no idea."
"She's left you the house and quite a large amount of money. She was frugal. She spent carefully and invested wisely." Kenton turned the papers around so Vicary could read them. "Here's what's coming to you."
Vicary was stunned; he had no idea. Missing her funeral over a couple of German spies seemed even more obscene. Something must have shown on his face because Kenton said, "It's a shame you couldn't make it to the funeral, Alfred. It really was a lovely service. Half the county was there."
"I wanted to be here but something came up."
"I have a few papers for you to sign to take possession of the cottage and the money. If you'll give me an account number in London, I can move the money and close her bank accounts."
Vicary spent the next few minutes silently signing his name to a pile of legal and financial documents. At the last one Kenton looked up and said, "Done."
"Is the telephone still working?"
"Yes. I used it myself before you arrived."
The telephone was on Matilda's writing table in the drawing room. Vicary picked up the receiver and looked at Kenton. "Edward, if you wouldn't mind, it's official."
Kenton forced a smile. "Say no more. I'll clear away the dishes."
Something about the exchange warmed the vindictive corners of Vicary's heart. The operator came on the line, and he gave her the number of MI5 headquarters in London. It took a few moments to get through. A department operator answered and connected Vicary to Harry Dalton.
Harry answered, his mouth full of food.
"What's the fare today?" Vicary asked.
"They claim it's vegetable stew."
"Any news?"
"I think so, actually."
Vicary's heart leapt.
"I've been going over the immigration lists one more time, just to see if we missed anything." The immigration lists were the meat and potatoes of MI5's contest with Germany's spies. In September 1939, while Vicary was still on the faculty at University College, MI5 had used immigration and passport records as the primary tool in a massive roundup of spies and Nazi sympathizers. Aliens were classified in three categories: Category C aliens were allowed complete freedom; Category B aliens were subject to certain restrictions--some weren't allowed to own automobiles or boats and limits were placed on their movement within the country; Category A aliens, those deemed to be a threat to security, were interned. Anyone who had entered the country before the war and could not be accounted for was assumed to be a spy and hunted down. Germany's espionage networks were rolled up and smashed, virtually overnight.
"A Dutch woman named Christa Kunst entered the country in November 1938 at Dover," Harry continued. "A year later her body was discovered in a shallow grave in a field near a village called Whitchurch."
"What's unusual about that?"
"The thing just doesn't
feel
right to me. The body was badly decomposed when it was pulled out of the ground. The face and skull had been crushed. All the teeth were missing. They used the passport to make the identification; it was conveniently buried with the body. It sounds too neat to me."
"Where's the passport now?"
"The Home Office has it. I've sent a courier up to collect it. It has a photograph. They say it got roughed up a bit while it was in the ground, but it's probably worth looking at."
"Good, Harry. I'm not sure this woman's death has anything to do with the case, but at least it's a lead."
"Right. How did the meeting go with the lawyer, by the way?"
"Oh, just a few papers to sign," Vicary lied. He felt suddenly awkward about his newfound financial independence. "I'm leaving now. I should be back in the office late this afternoon."
Vicary rang off as Kenton came back into the drawing room. "Well, I think that about does it." He handed Vicary a large brown envelope. "All the papers are there as well as the keys. I've included the name of the gardener and his address. He'll be happy to serve as caretaker."
They put on their coats, locked up the cottage, and went outside. Vicary's car was in the drive.
"Can I drop you anywhere, Edward?"
Vicary was relieved when he declined the offer.
"I spoke to Helen the other day," Kenton said suddenly.
Vicary thought: Oh, good heavens.
"She says she sees you from time to time in Chelsea."
Vicary wondered whether Helen had told Kenton about the afternoon in 1940 when he had stared into her passing car like some silly schoolboy. Mortified, Vicary opened the door of the car, absently beating his pockets for his half-moon glasses.
"She asked me to say hello, so I'm saying it.
Hello.
"
"Thank you." Vicary got inside.
"She also says she'd like to see you sometime. Do some catching up."
"That would be lovely," Vicary said, lying.
"Well, marvelous. She's coming to London next week. She'd love to have lunch with you."
Vicary felt his stomach tighten.
"One o'clock at the Connaught, a week from tomorrow," Kenton said. "I'm supposed to speak with her later today. Shall I tell her you'll be there?"
The back of the Rover was cold as a meat locker. Vicary sat on the big leather seat, legs covered in a traveling rug, watching the countryside of Gloucestershire sweep past his window. A red fox crossed the road, then darted back into the hedge. Drowsy fat pheasants pulled at the cropped remains of a snowy cornfield, feather coats puffed out against the cold. Bare tree limbs scratched at the clear sky. A small valley opened before him. Fields stretched like a rumpled patchwork quilt into the distance. The sun was sinking into a sky splashed with watercolor shades of purple and orange.
He was angry with Helen. His spiteful half wanted to believe his job with British Intelligence somehow made him more interesting to her. His rational half told him he and Helen had managed to part as friends and a quiet lunch might be very pleasant. At the very least it would be a welcome diversion from the pressure of the case. He thought, What are you so afraid of? That you might remember you were actually happy for the two years she was part of your life?
He pushed Helen from his mind. Harry's news intrigued him. By instinct he attacked it like a problem of history. His area of expertise was nineteenth-century Europe--he won critical acclaim for his book on the collapse of the balance of power after the Congress of Vienna--but Vicary had a secret passion for the history and myth of ancient Greece. He was intrigued by the fact that much scholarship on the age had to be based on guesswork and conjecture; the immense passage of time and lack of a clear historical record made that necessary. Why, for example, did Pericles launch the Peloponnesian War with Sparta that eventually led to the destruction of Athens? Why not accept the demands of his more powerful rival and revoke the Megarian decree? Was he driven by fear of the superior armies of Sparta? Did he believe war was inevitable? Did he embark on a disastrous foreign adventure to relieve pressure at home?
Now Vicary asked similar questions about his rival in Berlin. Kurt Vogel.
What was Vogel's goal? Vicary believed Vogel's goal was to build a network of elite sleeper agents at the outset of the war and leave them in place until the climactic moment of the confrontation. In order to succeed, great care would have to be given to the way the agent was inserted into the country. Obviously, Vogel had done this; the mere fact that MI5 had no knowledge of the agent until now confirmed it. Vogel would have to assume immigration and passport-control records would be used to find his agents; Vicary would certainly assume that if the roles were reversed. But what if the person who entered the country was dead? There would be no search. It was brilliant. But there was one problem--it required a body. Was it possible they actually murdered someone to trade places with Christa Kunst?
Germany's spies, as a rule, were not killers. Most were money-grubbers, adventurers, and petty Fascists, poorly trained and financed. But if Kurt Vogel had established a network of elite agents, they would be better motivated, more disciplined, and almost certainly more ruthless. Was it possible one of those highly trained and ruthless agents was a woman? Vicary had handled only one case involving a woman--a young German girl who managed to get a job as a maid in the home of a British admiral.
"Stop in the next village," Vicary said to the Wren driving the car. "I need to use the telephone."
The next village was called Aston Magna--a hamlet really, no shops, just a clump of cottages bisected by a pair of narrow lanes. An old man was standing along the roadway with his dog.
Vicary wound down the window and said, "Hello."
"Hello." The man wore Wellington boots and a lumpy tweed coat that looked at least a hundred years old. The dog had three legs.
"Is there a telephone in the village?" Vicary asked.

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