The Unlikely Spy Page 2

  The hand reached the bottom of her ribs and probed the soft flesh at the top of her abdomen. It went no farther. One finger remained pressed against the spot. Beatrice heard a sharp click.

  An instant of excruciating pain, a burst of brilliant white light.

  Then, a benevolent darkness.

  The killer had trained endlessly for this night, but it was the first time. The killer removed the gloved hand from the victim's mouth, turned, and was violently sick. There was no time for sentiment. The killer was a soldier--a major in the secret service--and Beatrice Pymm soon would be the enemy. Her death, while unfortunate, was necessary.

  The killer wiped away the vomit from the lips of the mask and set to work, taking hold of the stiletto and pulling. The wound sucked hard but the killer pulled harder, and the stiletto slipped out.

  An excellent kill, clean, very little blood.

  Vogel would be proud.

  The killer wiped the blood from the stiletto, snapped the blade back into place, and put it in the pocket of the overall. Then the killer grasped the body beneath the arms, dragged it to the rear of the van, and dumped it on the crumbling edge of the tarmac.

  The killer opened the rear doors. The body convulsed.

  It was a struggle to lift the body into the back of the van, but after a moment it was done. The engine hesitated, then fired. Then the van was on the move again, flashing through the darkened village and turning onto the deserted roadway.

  The killer, composed despite the presence of the body, quietly sang a song from childhood to help pass the time. It was a long drive, four hours at least. During the preparation the killer had driven the route by motorcycle, the same bike that now lay beside Beatrice Pymm. The drive would take much longer in the van. The engine had little power, the brakes were bad, and it pulled hard to the right.

  The killer vowed to steal a better one next time.

  Stab wounds to the heart, as a rule, do not kill instantly. Even if the weapon penetrates a chamber, the heart usually continues to beat for some time until the victim bleeds to death.

  As the van clattered along the roadway, Beatrice Pymm's chest cavity rapidly filled with blood. Her mind approached something close to a coma. She had some sense she was about to die.

  She remembered her mother's warnings about being alone late at night. She felt the wet stickiness of her own blood seeping out of her body into her shirt. She wondered if her painting had been damaged.

  She heard singing. Beautiful singing. It took some time, but she finally discerned that the driver was not singing in English. The song was German, the voice a woman's.

  Then Beatrice Pymm died.

  First stop, ten minutes later, the bank of the River Orwell, the same spot where Beatrice Pymm had been painting that day. The killer left the van's engine running and climbed out. She walked to the passenger side of the van, opened the door, and removed the easel, the canvas, and the rucksack.

  The easel was erected very near the slow-moving water, the canvas placed on it. The killer opened the rucksack, removed the paints and palette, and laid them on the damp ground. She glanced at the unfinished painting and thought it was rather good. A shame she couldn't have killed someone with less talent.

  Next, she removed the half-empty bottle of claret, poured the remainder of the wine into the river, and dropped the bottle at the legs of the easel. Poor Beatrice. Too much wine, a careless step, a plunge into frigid water, a slow journey to the open sea.

  Cause of death: presumed drowned, presumed accidental.

  Case closed.

  Six hours later, the van passed through the West Midlands village of Whitchurch and turned onto a rough track skirting the edge of a barley field. The grave had been dug the previous night--deep enough to conceal a corpse but not so deep that it might never be found.

  She dragged Beatrice Pymm's body from the back of the van and stripped away the bloody clothing. She took hold of the naked corpse by the feet and dragged it closer to the grave. Then the killer walked back to the van and removed three items: an iron mallet, a red brick, and a small spade.

  This was the part she dreaded most, for some reason worse than the murder itself. She dropped the three items next to the body and steadied herself. Fighting off another wave of nausea she took the mallet in her gloved hand, raised it, and crushed Beatrice Pymm's nose.

  When it was over she could barely look at what was left of Beatrice Pymm's face. Using first the mallet, then the brick, she had pounded it into a mass of blood, tissue, smashed bone, and shattered teeth.

  She had achieved the intended effect--the features had been erased, the face rendered unrecognizable.

  She had done everything they had ordered her to do. She was to be different. She had trained at a special camp for many months, much longer than the other agents. She would be planted deeper. That was why she had to kill Beatrice Pymm. She wouldn't waste her time doing what other, less gifted agents could do: counting troops, monitoring railways, assessing bomb damage. That was easy. She would be saved for bigger and better things. She would be a time bomb, ticking inside England, waiting to be activated, waiting to go off.

  She put a boot against the ribs and pushed. The corpse tumbled into the grave. She covered the body with earth. She collected the bloodstained clothing and tossed it into the back of the van. From the front seat she took a small handbag containing a Dutch passport and a wallet. The wallet held identification papers, an Amsterdam driver's permit, and photographs of a fat, smiling Dutch family.

  All of it had been forged by the Abwehr in Berlin.

  She threw the bag into the trees at the edge of the barley field, a few yards from the grave. If everything went according to plan, the badly decomposed and mutilated body would be found in a few months, along with the handbag. The police would believe the dead woman to be Christa Kunst, a Dutch tourist who entered the country in October 1938 and whose holiday came to an unfortunate and violent end.

  Before leaving, she took a last look at the grave. She felt a pang of sadness for Beatrice Pymm. In death she had been robbed of her face and her name.

  Something else: the killer had just lost her own identity. For six months she had lived in Holland, for Dutch was one of her languages. She had carefully constructed a past, voted in a local Amsterdam election, even permitted herself a young lover, a boy of nineteen with a huge appetite and a willingness to learn new things. Now Christa Kunst lay in a shallow grave on the edge of an English barley field.

  The killer would assume a new identity in the morning.

  But tonight she was no one.

  She refueled the van and drove for twenty minutes. The village of Alderton, like Beatrice Pymm, had been carefully chosen--a place where a van burning at the roadside in the middle of the night would not be noticed immediately.

  She pulled the motorbike out of the van along a heavy plank of wood, difficult work even for a strong man. She struggled with the bike and gave up when it was three feet from the road. It crashed down with a loud bang, the one mistake she had made all night.

  She lifted the bike and rolled it, engine dead, fifty yards down the road. Then she returned to the van. One of the jerry cans still contained some petrol. She doused the inside of the van, dumping most of the fuel on Beatrice Pymm's blood-soaked clothing.

  By the time the van went up in a fireball she had kicked the bike into life. She watched the van burn for a few seconds, the orange light dancing on the barren field and the line of trees beyond.

  Then she turned the bike south and headed for London.

  2

  OYSTER BAY, NEW YORK: AUGUST 1939

  Dorothy Lauterbach considered her stately fieldstone mansion the most beautiful on the North Shore. Most of her friends agreed, because she was richer and they wanted invitations to the two parties the Lauterbachs threw each summer--a raucous, drunken affair in June and a more reflective occasion in late August, when the summer season ground to a melancholy conclusion.

  The back
of the house looked out over the Sound. There was a pleasant beach of white sand brought by truck from Massachusetts. From the beach a well-fertilized lawn raced toward the back of the house, pausing now and again to skirt the exquisite gardens, the red clay tennis court, the royal blue swimming pool.

  The servants had risen early to prepare for the family's well-deserved day of inactivity, erecting a croquet set and a badminton net that would never be touched, removing the canvas cover from a wooden motorboat that would never be untied from the dock. Once a servant courageously pointed out to Mrs. Lauterbach the folly of this daily ritual. Mrs. Lauterbach had snapped at him, and the practice was never again questioned. The toys were raised each and every morning, only to stand with the sadness of Christmas decorations in May until they were ceremoniously removed at sundown and put away for the night.

  The bottom floor of the house sprawled along the water from sunroom to sitting room, to dining room, and finally to the Florida room, though none of the other Lauterbachs understood why Dorothy insisted on calling it a Florida room when the summer sun on the North Shore could be just as warm.

  The house had been purchased thirty years earlier when the young Lauterbachs assumed they would produce a small army of offspring. Instead they had just two daughters who didn't care much for each other's company--Margaret, a beautiful and immensely popular socialite, and Jane. And so the house became a peaceful place of warm sunshine and soft colors, where most of the noise was made by white curtains snapping in watery breezes and Dorothy Lauterbach's restless pursuit of perfection in all things.

  On that morning--the morning after the Lauterbachs' final party--the curtains hung still and straight in the open windows, waiting for a breeze that would never come. The sun blazed and a shimmering haze hung over the bay. The air was itchy and thick.

  Upstairs in her bedroom, Margaret Lauterbach Jordan pulled off her nightgown and sat in front of her dressing table. She quickly brushed her hair. It was ash blond, streaked by the sun and unfashionably short. But it was comfortable and easy to manage. Besides, she liked the way it framed her face and showed off the long graceful line of her neck.

  She looked at her body in the mirror. She had finally lost the last few stubborn pounds she had gained while pregnant with their first child. The stretch marks had faded and her stomach was tanned a rich brown. Bare midriffs were in that summer, and she liked the way everyone on the North Shore had been surprised by how trim she looked. Only her breasts were different--they were larger, fine with Margaret because she had always been self-conscious about their size. The new bras that summer were smaller and stiffer, designed to achieve a high-bosomed effect. Margaret liked them because Peter liked the way they made her look.

  She pulled on a pair of white cotton slacks, a sleeveless blouse, knotted beneath her breasts, and a pair of flat sandals. She looked at her reflection one last time. She was beautiful--she knew that--but not in an audacious way that turned heads on the streets of Manhattan. Margaret's beauty was timeless and understated, perfect for the layer of society into which she had been born.

  She thought, And soon you're going to be a fat cow again!

  She turned from the mirror and drew open the curtains. Harsh sunlight spilled into the room. The lawn was in chaos. The tent was being lowered, the caterers were packing away the tables and chairs, the dance floor was being lifted panel by panel and carted away. The grass, once green and lush, had been trampled flat. She opened the windows and smelled the sickly sweet scent of spilled champagne. Something about it depressed her. "Hitler may be preparing to conquer Poland, but a glittering time was had by all who attended Bratton and Dorothy Lauterbach's annual August gala Saturday night. . . ." Margaret could almost write the society columns herself by now.

  She switched on the radio on her nightstand and tuned it to WNYC. "I'll Never Smile Again" played softly. Peter stirred, still asleep. In the brilliant sunlight his porcelain skin was barely distinguishable from the white satin sheets. Once she thought all engineers were men with flat-top haircuts, thick black glasses, and lots of pencils in their shirt pockets. Peter was not like that--strong cheekbones, a sharp jawline, soft green eyes, nearly black hair. Lying in bed now, his upper body exposed, he looked, Margaret thought, like a tumbled Michelangelo. He stood out on the North Shore, stood out from the fair-haired boys who had been born to extraordinary wealth and planned to live life from a deck chair. Peter was sharp and ambitious and brisk. He could run circles around the whole crowd. Margaret liked that.

  She glanced at the hazy sky and frowned. Peter detested August weather like this. He would be irritable and cranky all day. There would probably be a thunderstorm to ruin the drive back into the city.

  She thought, Perhaps I should wait to tell him the news.

  "Get up, Peter, or we'll never hear the end of it," Margaret said, poking him with her toe.

  "Five more minutes."

  "We don't have five minutes, darling."

  Peter didn't move. "Coffee," he pleaded.

  The maids had left coffee outside the bedroom door. It was a practice Dorothy Lauterbach loathed; she thought it made the upstairs hallway look like the Plaza Hotel. But it was allowed if it meant that the children would abide by her single rule on weekends--that they come downstairs for breakfast promptly at nine o'clock.

  Margaret poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him.

  Peter rolled onto his elbow and drank some. Then he sat up in bed and looked at Margaret. "How do you manage to look so beautiful two minutes after getting out of bed?"

  Margaret was relieved. "You're certainly in a good mood. I was afraid you'd have a hangover and be perfectly beastly all day."

  "I do have a hangover. Benny Goodman is playing in my head, and my tongue feels like it could use a shave. But I have no intention of acting--" He paused. "What was the word you used?"

  "Beastly." She sat down on the edge of the bed. "There's something we need to discuss, and this seems as fine a time as any."

  "Hmm. Sounds serious, Margaret."

  "That depends." She held him in her playful gaze, then feigned a look of irritation. "But get up and get dressed. Or aren't you capable of dressing and listening at the same time."

  "I'm a highly trained, highly regarded engineer." Peter forced himself out of bed, groaning at the effort. "I can probably manage it."

  "It's about the phone call yesterday afternoon."

  "The one you were so evasive about?"

  "Yes, that one. It was from Dr. Shipman."

  Peter stopped dressing.

  "I'm pregnant again. We're going to have another baby." Margaret looked down and toyed with the knot of her blouse. "I didn't plan for this to happen. It just did. My body has finally recovered from having Billy and--well, nature took its course." She looked up at him. "I've suspected it for some time but I was afraid to tell you."

  "Why on earth would you be afraid to tell me?"

  But Peter knew the answer to his own question. He had told Margaret he didn't want more children until he had realized his life's dream: starting his own engineering firm. At just thirty-three he had earned a reputation as one of the top engineers in the country. After graduating first in his class from the prestigious Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he went to work for the Northeast Bridge Company, the largest bridge construction firm on the East Coast. Five years later he was named chief engineer, made partner, and given a staff of one hundred. The American Society of Civil Engineers named him its engineer of the year for 1938 for his innovative work on a bridge spanning the Hudson River in upstate New York. Scientific American published a profile on Peter describing his as "the most promising engineering mind of his generation." But he wanted more--he wanted his own firm. Bratton Lauterbach had promised to bankroll Peter's company when the time was right, possibly next year. But the threat of war had put a damper on all that. If the United States was dragged into a war, all money for major public works projects would dry up overnight. Peter's new firm would go under be
fore it had a chance to get off the ground.

  He said, "How far along are you?"

  "Almost two months."

  Peter's face broke into a smile.

  Margaret said, "You're not angry with me?"

  "Of course not!"

  "What about your firm and everything you said about waiting to have more children?"

  He kissed her. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters."

  "Ambition is a wonderful thing, but not too much ambition. You have to relax and enjoy yourself sometimes, Peter. Life isn't a dress rehearsal."

  Peter stood and finished dressing. "When are you planning on telling your mother?"

  "In my own good time. You remember how she was when I was pregnant with Billy. She drove me crazy. I have plenty of time to tell her."

  Peter sat down beside her on the bed. "Let's make love before breakfast."

  "Peter, we can't. Mother will kill us if we don't get downstairs."

  He kissed her neck. "What was that you were saying about life not being a dress rehearsal?"

  She closed her eyes, her head rolled back. "That's not fair. You're twisting my words."

  "No, I'm not. I'm kissing you."

  "Yes--"

  "Margaret!" Dorothy Lauterbach's voice echoed up the stairs.

  "We're coming, Mother."

  "I wish," Peter muttered, and followed her downstairs to breakfast.

  Walker Hardegen joined them for lunch by the swimming pool. They sat beneath an umbrella: Bratton and Dorothy, Margaret and Peter, Jane and Hardegen. A damp, fickle breeze blew from the Sound. Hardegen was Bratton Lauterbach's top lieutenant at the bank. He was tall and thick through the chest and shoulders, and most women thought he looked like Tyrone Power. He was a Harvard man, and during his senior year he had scored a touchdown in the Yale game. His football days had left him with a ruined knee and a slight limp that somehow made him even more attractive. He had a lazy New England accent and smiled easily.