Chapter Fourteen

Outside 54 Broadway, close to St. James’s Park Tube station, a blind man in a rumpled suit sold boxes of wooden matches. Martens dropped a few coins in his tin cup, then loped on. He looked up, past the taped windows of the building, to admire the magnificent mansard roof, bristling with a thicket of radio antennae. A discreet brass plaque at the sandbagged entry identified the building as the Minimax Fire Extinguisher Company. But Martens ignored the main entrance. Instead, he strode to the rear, at 21 Queen Anne’s Gate, where there was another, smaller door.

Inside the building sat a receptionist, haggard and stoop-shouldered, but with a noble jaw, one of the legions of retired soldiers and sailors working as doormen and messengers all over London. He looked over Martens’s identity papers and then nodded the Master of Deception through.

The building was a dingy, shabby labyrinth of wooden partitions and frosted-glass windows. Martens took the ancient lift to the fourth floor. At the end of a gloomy corridor, he climbed a short staircase, turning to find the image of his face distorted in a great fish-eye mirror. He started.

“May I help you?” came the shrill tones of a secretary. She was large and muscular, with beady eyes and an officious air.

“I’m here to see Colonel George Bishop.”

“And you are?”

“Colonel Henrik Martens. My secretary telephoned this morning. I have an appointment.”

She frowned. “Go in, then.” He did.

The head of MI-6’s French Intelligence Section was standing at one of the long taped windows, staring down at the street below, hands clasped behind his back. As he turned, a tiny sparrow on the sill flitted off. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said in a flat, nasal tone. “Follow me.” He opened a narrow door that led to a flight of even narrower stairs. Martens climbed behind the colonel until they reached the roof, home to a pigeon loft.

“Homing pigeons,” Bishop said by way of explanation. “Neither Menzies nor I trust radio transmissions.”

The two men walked to the edge and looked down, over the emerald expanse of St. James’s Park. Martens had done his research on Bishop. Code-named V, Bishop was in his sixties, born into an aristocratic family in London, one of nine children. Educated at Wellington College, he joined the British Army at the age of twenty, serving in South Africa during the Boer War, making his way up the military ranks and befriending a young Winston Churchill. After the war, Bishop worked as a full-time agent for MI-6 in Italy, spying on Mussolini’s Fascists. In 1939, concerned about the growing shadow of Nazi Germany, Bishop returned to London and was asked by Menzies to head MI-6’s French covert intelligence operations.

“Actually, I’m here to see you because of that.”

“Pigeons?”

“Radio transmissions.”

“Ah.” He didn’t sound surprised.

“As part of settling in to my new position, one of the first things I did was start to read through SOE agents’ back traffic. I haven’t even gotten that far, and there are some troubling aspects to the messages from both N-Section and F-Section.”

Bishop continued to look out over London. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

“On some of the decrypts, the agents’ security checks were missing. They were stamped as such by Station 53a—but no one at SOE followed up.”

“Hmmm.”

“I just spoke with Colonel Gaskell for SOE’s French Section, whom you know.”

Bishop made an even more ambiguous-sounding “Hmmm.”

“And I asked him why no one has followed up on the agents’ lack of security checks. That is, beyond chastising the agent and reminding her to remember for the next transmission. The thing is, he didn’t seem at all surprised. And then he told me he knew about the situation and that SOE’s completely on top of it. He assured me I had nothing to worry about.”

Bishop was preternaturally still.

“I pressed him on a particular agent, a woman named Calvert. Her coding, after a certain point during her tenure in France, became flawless. Which is, frankly, impossible. And yet none of these perfect messages have security checks.”

“Erica Calvert is the agent with the sand samples from the Normandy beaches,” Bishop remarked, surveying the cityscape.

“Yes, sir.” Martens realized he hadn’t told the older officer the agent’s first name.

“Whom we are in the process of extricating.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bishop turned. “Do you believe this woman has been compromised?”

Both men knew what this admission would mean. “Yes, sir,” Martens replied. “I do.”

“SOE is Winston’s special pet project,” Bishop explained. “A start-up. Raging amateurs. For those of us who have spent our professional lives operating in the shadows, those idiots are a liability.”

“Sir?”

“SOE and MI-Six agents often end up working at cross-purposes.” He took a monogrammed silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket, opened it, and offered a Player’s to Martens, who demurred. “They’re a mob of second-raters, disorganized and dangerous. And they jeopardize my own agents and their missions abroad.”

He took a cigarette for himself and pulled out a lighter. “They lack professionalism. And the grave mistakes they’ve already made should have been enough to eradicate the entire operation.” He lit the cigarette and inhaled, pausing to pick a stray flake of tobacco leaf from his tongue. “But SOE is Churchill’s brainchild—he won’t let it be disbanded.” Bishop let a stream of smoke pass through his nostrils. “I have long suspected the SOE agents in the Netherlands have been compromised and are operating under German control. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Gestapo in France may be taking a page from their book.”

Martens cleared his throat. “To the best of your knowledge, sir, have any SOE agents been captured and their radios turned?”

“No,” Bishop answered. “Not officially, at least.”

“Would SOE ever admit if their agents were caught?”

“That, my boy, is why you’ll need hard evidence.” Bishop looked at his watch. “Keep me informed on what you find out. You were right to come to me.” He trained his eyes on the skyline. “But for the sake of God and country—don’t put any of this in writing.”

At Avenue Foch, Hugh was seated in front of his radio. Professor Fischer and Obersturmbannführer von Waltz were facing him, gazing at the Englishman almost fondly, as though he were an extremely intelligent dog about to perform a wonderful trick. Hugh had been cleaned up, the cuts on his face bandaged. He was wearing fresh clothes. But his eyes were dull, unseeing.

“Now then,” said the Obersturmbannführer. “Let’s begin, Mr. Thompson.”

Mechanically, Hugh raised his hands; his fingers hovered above the keyboard.

“Let’s see, what should we have him say?” von Waltz asked the professor. “How about a request for more agents? Let’s build our little ‘orchestra,’ shall we?” He chortled. “Well, what are you waiting for? Start your message!” He leaned down to Hugh. “And be damn sure to include your security checks!”

Hugh began.

The F-Section agent code-named Clothilde was one of the few clandestine radio operators in Paris; they didn’t tend to last long. Six weeks was the usual length of time before undercover agents were discovered by the Germans. “We have the shelf life of yogurt,” they’d joke. But the German detection vans, listening for transmitted radio messages, were always circling, trying to zero in on transmission locations, which was why time on the air had to be kept as short as possible.

Clothilde was petite and young-looking, with heavy bangs shading bright brown eyes. Her radio set was open in front of her in Voltaire’s kitchen, power from the six-volt dry-cell battery on. “All right.” She cracked her knuckles, the antenna pointed out the window, rubber-coated aerial wires held up by tree branches while Voltaire kept watch for German vehicles. “What’s the message you want me to send?” Although her voice was steady, her hands shook slightly.

Reiner had prepared the dispatch, coded in five-letter blocks. He handed over the scrap of paper. She nodded and put on her headphones, twisting the dial, listening for her call sign—GJW. When she heard it, she began to transmit, tapping on the key for dots and dashes, inserting her security check as she’d been trained.

The message read:

RAOUL SEEN ENTERING 84 AVE FOCH. STOP. PLEASE ADVISE. OVER.

Her eyes widened at the message’s contents, but she didn’t stop or question the two men.

Typing finished, Clothilde waited as her “godmother” in England confirmed the message had been received. She switched off the radio.

As she removed the headphones, rolled up the wires, and closed the set, Voltaire poured them all small glasses of wine that smelled faintly of vinegar. “Á votre santé,” he said as they clinked glasses. To your health.

They looked at each other, aware how dangerous making the transmission was, how there could be a traitor in their midst. “Á votre santé.”

L’heure entre chien et loup was the French phrase that drifted through Maggie’s mind as she made her way back to the Ritz in the blue-painted streetlight of the blackout. It was the expression for that uncertain moment at twilight when one couldn’t tell the difference between a dog and a wolf—or friend and foe. “The gloaming,” they’d called it in Scotland.

In the blackout and the silence of the curfew, Paris felt like a ghost town. An alley cat’s yowl, a car’s backfire, a random shout—together seemed menacing. Maggie reached a brick wall daubed with reflective paint that glowed, even in the darkness: a caricature of a Fagin-like face with wispy beard, bearing the legend SAXON + JEW + TARTAR = THE BEAST. She turned her face away.

Maggie entered the Ritz through the Place Vendôme entrance. Buoyed by her meeting with her half sister, she wasn’t the least bit fatigued by her long day and travels. She smiled up at the man at the front desk, working the late shift. “Any messages for Paige Kelly, André?”

“Nothing this evening, mademoiselle.”

Still, the feeling there was something for her, something she needed to receive, nagged at her. “Packages?”

He bent to peer under the shelf and arose with a package in hand, wrapped in brown paper. “For you, mademoiselle!”

“Thank you,” she said, taking it. I was right!

She walked to a deserted section of the lobby to open the box. Inside the brown paper was a long, flat box. She opened it and pulled apart the filmy tissue paper. Within was a pair of gloves. White gloves with pearl buttons—gloves exactly like the ones she’d used to help stop the bleeding of the injured German soldier.

There was also a thick, embossed card with the name crossed out, bearing the handwritten message:

To Mlle. Kelly,

With my sincere thanks,

Christian

P.S. I hope to see you at the masked ball tonight.

She walked back to the desk. “May I take the wrapping for you, mademoiselle?” André asked.

“Oh, thank you,” Maggie said distractedly. Her immediate impulse was to throw the gloves away, but one couldn’t do that in public. Instead, she slipped the pair into her handbag. “You’re sure there’s nothing else?”

As she asked, Chanel walked into the lobby, wearing a chic black straw hat with a scarlet quill feather in the band that matched her lipstick exactly.

“No, I’m afraid not, mademoiselle.”

Maggie moved her lips into a glassy smile. “Thank you, anyway,” she told André, turning to go. “À bientôt. J’espère!” I’ll see you later. And as a reflex: I hope.

She’d wanted to avoid Chanel, but the couturiere had spotted her. “Mademoiselle Kelly!” she called before Maggie could make it to the elevator.

The younger woman stopped and forced a smile. “Hello, mademoiselle. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

Chanel’s face indicated skepticism. “And how is trousseau shopping?”

“I went to Nina Ricci today.” The morning seemed an eternity ago.

“Oh, how was it? Did you see anything?”

“I liked the red especially, but someone with my coloring really can’t wear that color.”

Chanel mused, “Yes, I heard there was a lot of red—and sable. And the wedding dress?”

Maggie remembered it in all its glorious detail. “Beautiful. But it might be a bit much for me. Perhaps an ivory silk suit might be better for these times.”

“Nonsense! We must embrace excess—especially these days! We’re dancing on the edge of a volcano, after all…” The couturiere peeled off her gloves. “I expect to see you at the masked ball tomorrow evening.” It wasn’t a question.

“Oh,” Maggie said, “I’m hardly prepared…”

“A young woman like you?”

Maggie remembered she was supposed to be a society girl. “I—I don’t have a mask.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Chanel quirked an eyebrow. “Still…come to my room tomorrow morning and I’ll find you something. I’m a woman of many masks myself—and don’t mind sharing.”