SIX

The cottage in Dorset, not far from Lulworth Cove, had been loaned to Martineau by an old friend from Oxford days. It stood in a tiny valley above the cliffs, and the way to the beach was blocked by rusting barbed wire. There had once been a notice warning of mines, not that there were any. That had been the first thing the landlord at the village pub had told Martineau when he’d moved into the area, which explained why he was walking along the shoreline, occasionally throwing stones into the incoming waves, the morning after Dougal Munro’s meeting with Eisenhower at Hayes Lodge.

Harry Martineau was forty-four, of medium height, with good shoulders under the old paratrooper’s camouflaged jump jacket which he wore against the cold. His face was very pale, with the kind of skin that never seemed to tan, and wedge-shaped, the eyes so dark that it was impossible to say what their true color was. The mouth was mobile, with a slight ironic smile permanently in place. The look of a man who had found life more disappointing than he had hoped.

He’d been out of hospital for three months now and things were better than they’d been for a while. He didn’t get the chest pain anymore, except when he overdid things, but the insomnia pattern was terrible. He could seldom sleep at night. The moment he went to bed, his brain seemed to become hyperactive. Still, that was only to be expected. Too many years on the run, of living by night, danger constantly at hand.

He was no use to Munro anymore, the doctors had made that clear. He could have returned to Oxford, but that was no answer. Neither was trying to pick up the threads of the book he’d been working on in 1939. The war had taught him that if nothing else. So, he’d dropped out as thoroughly as a man could. The cottage in Dorset by the sea, books to read, space to find himself in.

“And where the hell have you gone, Harry?” he asked morosely as he started up the cliff path. “Because I’m damned if I can find you.”

The living room of the old cottage was comfortable enough. A Persian carpet on the flagged floor, a dining table and several rush-backed chairs and books everywhere, not only on the shelves but piled in the corner. None of them were his. Nothing in this place was his except for a few clothes.

There was a sofa on each side of the stone fireplace. He put a couple of logs on the embers, poured himself a scotch, drank it quickly and poured another. Then he sat down and picked up the notepad he’d left on the coffee table. There were several lines of poetry written on it and he read them aloud.

The station is ominous at midnight. Hope is a dead letter. He dropped the notepad back on the table with a wry smile. “Admit it, Harry,” he said softly. “You’re a lousy poet.”

Suddenly, he was tired, the feeling coming in a kind of rush, the lack of sleep catching up with him. His chest began to ache a little, the left lung, and that took him back to Lyons, of course, on that final and fatal day. If he’d been a little bit more on the ball it wouldn’t have happened. A case of taking the pitcher to the well too often or perhaps, quite simply, his luck had run out. As he drifted into sleep, it all came back so clearly.

Standartenführer Jurgen Kaufmann, the head of the Gestapo in Lyons, was in civilian clothes that day as he came down the steps of the Town Hall and got into the back of the black Citroen. His driver was also in civilian clothes, for on Thursday afternoons Kaufmann visited his mistress and liked to be discreet about it.

“Take your time, Karl,” he said to his driver, an SS sergeant who’d served with him for two years now. “We’re a little early. I said I wouldn’t be there till three and you know how she hates surprises.”

“As you say, Standartenführer.” Karl smiled as he drove away.

Kaufmann opened a copy of a Berlin newspaper which he had received in the post that morning and settled back to enjoy it. They moved through the outskirts of town into the country. It was really quite beautiful, orchards of apples on either side of the road, and the air was heavy with the smell of them. For some time Karl had noticed a motorcycle behind them, and when they turned into the side road leading to the village of Chaumont, it followed.

He said, “There’s a motorcyclist been on our tail for quite some time, Standartenführer.” He took a Luger from his pocket and laid it on the seat beside him.

Kaufmann turned to look through the rear window and laughed. “You’re losing your touch, Karl. He’s one of ours.”

The motorcyclist drew alongside and waved. He was SS Feldgendarmerie in helmet, heavy uniform raincoat, a Schmeisser machine pistol slung across his chest just below the SS Field Police metal gorget that was only worn when officially on duty. The face was anonymous behind the goggles. He waved a gloved hand again.

“He must have a message for me,” Kaufmann said. “Pull up.”

Karl turned in at the side of the road and braked to a halt and the motorcyclist pulled up in front. He shoved his machine up on the stand and Karl got out. “What can we do for you?”

A hand came out of the raincoat pocket holding a Mauser semiautomatic pistol. He shot Karl once in the heart, hurling him back against the Citroen. He slid down into the road. The SS man turned him over with his boot and shot him again very deliberately between the eyes. Then he opened the rear door.

Kaufmann always went armed, but he’d taken off his overcoat and folded it neatly in the corner. As he got his hand to the Luger in the right pocket and turned, the SS man shot him in the arm. Kaufmann clutched at his sleeve, blood oozing between his fingers.

“Who are you?” he cried wildly. The other man pushed up his goggles and Kaufmann stared into the darkest, coldest eyes he had ever seen in his life.

“My name is Martineau. I’m a major in the British Army serving with SOE.”

“So, you are Martineau.” Kaufmann grimaced with pain. “Your German is excellent. Quite perfect.”

“So it should be. My mother was German,” Martineau told him.

Kaufmann said, “I’d hoped to meet you before long, but under different circumstances.”

“I’m sure you did. I’ve wanted to meet you for quite some time. Since nineteen thirty-eight, in fact. You were a captain at Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin in May of that year. You arrested a young woman called Rosa Bernstein. You probably don’t even remember the name.”

“But I recall her very well,” Kaufmann told him. “She was Jewish and worked for the Socialist Underground.”

“I was told that by the time you’d finished with her she couldn’t even walk to the firing squad.”

“That’s not true. The firing squad never came into it. She was hanged in cellar number three. Standard procedure. What was she to you?”

“I loved her.”Martineau raised his pistol.

Kaufmann cried, “Don’t be a fool. We can do a deal. I can save your life, Martineau, believe me.”

“Is that so?” Harry Martineau said, and shot him between the eyes, killing him instantly.

He pushed the heavy motorcycle off its stand and rode away. He was perfectly in control in spite of what he had just done. No emotion—nothing. The trouble was, it hadn’t brought Rosa Bernstein back, but then, nothing ever could.

He rode through a maze of country lanes for over an hour, working his way steadily westward. Finally, he turned along a narrow country lane, grass growing so tall on either side that it almost touched. The farmhouse in the courtyard at the end of the lane had seen better days, a window broken here and there, a few slates missing. Martineau got off the bike, pushed it up on the stand and crossed to the front door.

“Heh, Pierre, open up!” He tried the latch and hammered with his fist and then the door opened so suddenly that he fell on his knees.

The muzzle of a Walther touched him between the eyes. The man holding it was about forty and dressed like a French farm laborer in beret, corduroy jacket and denim trousers, but his German was impeccable. “Please stand, Major Martineau, and walk inside very slowly.”

He followed Martineau along the corridor into the kitchen. Pierre Duval sat at the table, tied to a chair, a handkerchief in his mouth, eyes wild, blood on his face.

“Hands on the wall and spread,” the German said, and ran his hands expertly over Martineau, relieving him of the Schmeisser and the Mauser.

He moved to the old-fashioned telephone on the wall and gave the operator a number. After a while he said, “Schmidt? He turned up. Yes, Martineau.” He nodded. “All right,fifteen minutes.”

“Friend of yours?” Martineau inquired.

“Not really. I’m Abwehr. Kramer’s the name. That was the Gestapo. I don’t like those swine any more than you do, but we all have a job to do. Take your helmet and raincoat off. Make yourself comfortable.”

Martineau did as he was told. Evening was falling fast outside, the room was getting quite dark. He put the helmet and coat down and stood there in the SS uniform, aware of Pierre on the other side of the table, eyes glaring wildly, leaning back in his chair, his feet coming up.

“What about a drink?”Martineau asked.

“My God, they told me you were a cool one,” Kramer said admiringly.

Pierre lunged with his feet at the edge of the table ramming it into the German’s back. Martineau’s left hand deflected the pistol and he closed, raising his knee. But Kramer turned a thigh, raising stiffened fingers under Martineau’s chin, jerking back his head. Martineau hooked Kramer’s left leg, sending the German crashing to the ground, going down with him, reaching for the wrist of the hand that held the pistol, smashing his fist into the side of Kramer’s neck, aware of the pistol exploding between them.

There was the distinct sound of bone cracking and the German lay still, alive, but moaning softly. Martineau got to his feet feeling suddenly weak and faint, opened the table drawer, spilling its contents on the floor and picked up a breadknife. He moved behind Pierre and sliced the ropes that bound him to the chair. The old Frenchman jumped up, pulling the gag from his mouth.

“My God, Harry, I’ve never seen so much blood.”

Martineau glanced down. The front of the SS blouse was soaked in blood. His own blood and there were three bullet holes that he could see, one of them smoldering slightly from powder burns.

He slumped into the chair. “Never mind that.”

“Did you get him, Harry? Did you get Kaufmann?”

“I got him, Pierre,” Martineau said wearily. “When’s the pickup?”

“The old aero club at Fleurie at seven, just before dark.”

Martineau looked at his watch. “That only gives me half an hour. You’ll have to come too. Nowhere else for you to go now.”

He got to his feet and started for the door, swaying a little, and the Frenchman put an arm around him. “You’ll never make it, Harry.”

“I’d better because about five minutes from now the Gestapo are going to be coming up that road,”Martineau told him and went outside.

He got the bike off the stand and threw a leg across the saddle, then he kicked it into life, feeling curiously as if everything was happening in slow motion. Pierre climbed up behind and put his arms around him and they rode away, out of the yard and along the lane.

As they turned into the road at the end, Martineau was aware of two dark sedans coming up fast on his left. One of them skidded to a halt, almost driving him into the ditch. He swung the motorcycle to the right, wheels spinning as he gunned the motor, was aware of shots, a sudden cry from Pierre, hands loosening their hold as the old Frenchman went backward over the rear wheel.

Martineau roared down the road toward the canal at the far end, swerved onto the towpath, one of the Gestapo cars following close. Two hundred yards away there was a lock, a narrow footbridge for pedestrians crossing to the other side. He rode across with no difficulty. Behind him, the car braked to a halt. The two Gestapo operatives inside jumped out and began to fire wildly, but by then he was long gone.

He could never remember clearly afterward any details of that cross-country ride to Fleurie. In the end, it was all something of an anticlimax anyway. The field had been headquarters of an aero club before the war. Now it lay derelict and forlorn and long disused.

He was aware of the roaring of the Lysander’s engine in the distance as he rode up to the airfield himself. He paused, waiting, and the Lysander came in out of the darkness for a perfect touchdown, turned and taxied toward him. He got off the bike, allowing it to fall to one side. He promptly fell down himself, got up again and lurched forward. The door swung open and the pilot leaned across and shouted, “I wasn’t too sure when I saw the uniform.”

Martineau hauled himself inside. The pilot reached over and closed and locked the door. Martineau coughed suddenly, his mouth and chin red.

The pilot said, “My God, you’re choking on your own blood.”

“I’ve been doing that for at least four years now,” Martineau said.

The pilot had other things on his mind, several vehicles converging on the other end of the runway by the old buildings. Whoever they were, they were too late. The Bristol Perseus engine responded magnificently when fully boosted. The Westland Lysander was capable of taking off from rough ground, fully loaded, in two hundred and forty yards. At Fleurie, that night, they managed it in two hundred, clearing the cars at the end of the runway and climbing up into the gathering darkness.

“Very nice,”Martineau said. “I liked that.” And then he fainted.

“So, he’s in Dorset, is he?” Munro said. “Doing what?”

“Not very much from what I can make out.” Carter hesitated. “He did take two bullets in the left lung, sir, and

“

“No sad songs, Jack, I’ve other things on my mind.”

“You’ve had a look at my ideas on a way of getting him into Jersey? What do you think?”

“Excellent, sir. I would have thought it all pretty foolproof, at least for a few days.”

“And that’s all we need. Now, what else have you got for me?”

“As I understand it from your preliminary plan, sir, what you’re seeking is someone to go in with him to establish his credentials. Someone who knows the island and the people and so on?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s an obvious flaw, of course. How on earth would you explain their presence? You can’t just pop up in the island after four years of occupation without some sort of an explanation.”

“Very true.” Munro nodded. “However, I can tell by the throb in your voice that you’ve already come up with a solution, so let’s get on with it, Jack. What have you got?”

“Sarah Anne Drayton, sir, age nineteen. Born in Jersey. Left the island just before the war to go out to Malaya where her father was a rubber planter. He was a widower apparently. Sent her home a month before the fall of Singapore.”

“Which means she hasn’t been back in Jersey since when?” Munro looked at the file. “Nineteen thirty-eight. Six years. That’s a long time at that age, Jack. Girls change out of all recognition.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mind you, she’s young.”

“We’ve used them as young as this before, sir.”

“Yes, but rarely and only in extremes. Where did you find her?”

“She was put forward for SOE consideration two years ago, mainly because she speaks fluent French with a Breton accent. Her maternal grandmother was Breton. Naturally, she was turned down because of her youth.”

“Where is she now?”

“Probationer nurse here in London at Cromwell Hospital.”

“Excellent, Jack.” Munro stood up and reached for his jacket. “We’ll go and see her. I’m sure she’ll prove to be intensely patriotic.”

That the Luftwaffe had been chased from British skies, the Blitz had long gone, was a tale for the front pages of newspapers only. In the spring of 1944 night attacks were renewed on London, using the JU88S with devastating results. That Sunday was no exception. By eight o’clock the casualty department at Cromwell Hospital was working flat out.

Sarah Drayton had been supposed to come off shift at six. She had now been on duty for fourteen hours without a break, but there were simply not enough nurses or doctors available. She worked on, helping with casualties laid out in the corridors, trying to ignore the crump of bombs falling in the middle distance, the sound of fire engines.

She was a small, intense girl, dark hair pushed up under her cap, her face very determined, the hazel eyes serious. Her gown was filthy, stained with blood, her stockings torn. She knelt to help the matron sedate a panic-stricken young girl who was bleeding badly from shrapnel wounds. They stood up to allow porters to carry the girl away on a stretcher.

Sarah said, “I thought night raids were supposed to be a thing of the past.”

“Tell that to the casualties,” the matron said. “Almost a thousand of them in March. Right, you clear off, Drayton. You’ll be falling down soon from sheer fatigue. No arguments.”

She walked wearily along the corridor, aware that the sound of the bombing now seemed to have moved south of the river. Someone was sweeping up broken glass, and she stepped around them and moved to the reception desk to book out.

The night clerk was talking to two men. She said, “Actually, this is Nurse Drayton coming now.”

Jack Carter said, “Miss Drayton, this is Brigadier Munro and I’m Captain Carter.”

“What can I do for you?” Her voice was rather low and very pleasant.

Munro was much taken with her at once, and Carter said, “Do you recall an interview you had two years ago? An Intelligence matter?”

“With SOE?” She looked surprised. “I was turned down.”

“Yes, well, if you could spare us some time we’d like a word with you.” Carter drew her over to a bench beside the wall, and he and Munro sat on either side of her. “You were born in Jersey, Miss Drayton?”

“That’s right.”

He took out his notebook and opened it. “Your mother’s name was Margaret de Ville. That has a particular interest for us. Do you by any chance know a Mrs. Helen de Ville?”

“I do. My mother’s cousin, although she was always Aunty Helen to me. She was so much older than I was.”

“And Sean Gallagher?”

“The General? Since I was a child.” She looked puzzled. “What’s going on here?”

“In good time, Miss Drayton,” Munro told her. “When did you last see your aunt or General Gallagher?”

“Nineteen thirty-eight. My mother died that year and my father took a job in Malaya. I went out to join him.”

“Yes, we know that,” Carter said.

She frowned at him for a moment, then turned on Munro. “All right, what’s this about?”

“It’s quite simple really,” Dougal Munro said. “I’d like to offer you a job with SOE. I’d like you to go to Jersey for me.”

She stared at him in astonishment, but only for a moment, and then she started to laugh helplessly and the sound of it was close to hysteria. It had, after all, been a long day.

“But, Brigadier,” she said. “I hardly know you.”

“Strange chap, Harry Martineau,” Munro said. “I’ve never known anybody quite like him.”

“From what you tell me, neither have I,” Sarah said.

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 marriage.”

“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. “I’ve been nursing for two years now. I deal with death every day of my life. So Harry Martineau 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 fireplace. 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 Reichsführer 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.

DER REICHSFÜHRER—SS Berlin, 9 November

SS STURMBANNFÜHRER

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, Führer 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. I’ve 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 Standartenführer.” 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 we’ve 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 Granville. 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. You’ve 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.”

In a sense, the flippancy of her remarks was an attempt to control her feelings, and when she turned and moved to the table to pour more tea into her cup, her hand shook slightly. The death of her mother had sent her to live with her father on a plantation deep in the Malayan jungle. A life of discomfort and considerable danger, an extraordinary upbringing for a girl of thirteen, and yet she’d loved every minute of it. In moments of the greatest danger, she seemed to come alive. The hospital by night, the bombing, the casualties who needed her. Once again, she’d loved every minute of it.

And now this. It was not just sexual desire, although she was enough of a woman to know that she wanted Martineau. But that was only part of it. It was what this strange, intense, tortured man offered. The promise of danger, excitement of a kind she had never even dreamed of before.

“Rather interesting? Dear God!” Martineau poured himself a scotch. “Have you read any of the works of Heidegger, Jack?”

“I’m familiar with them.”

“An interesting man. He believed that for authentic living what was necessary was the resolute confrontation of death.”

“That sounds fine by me,” Munro said.

“Really?” Martineau laughed harshly. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s idiots like that who made me give up on philosophy.” He raised his glass and toasted them all. “Here we go then. Berkley Hall next stop.”