The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent

Elisabeth Hobbes

One More Chapter

a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Elisabeth Hobbes 2020

Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Elisabeth Hobbes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008400132

Ebook Edition © November 2020 ISBN: 9780008400125

Version: 2020-10-29

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Author’s Note

Thank You for Reading…

You Will Also Love…

About the Author

One More Chapter...

About the Publisher

For J, A1 & A2 for putting up with my ‘writer’s head’ at much closer quarters than usual during Lockdown and for riding the elephant with me in Nantes.

Chapter One

An Unknown Location

1944

‘My name is Sylvie Duchene, and I am a dancer.’

‘Liar.’

The voice cut through Sylvie’s protestations with the violence of a whip.

‘Tell me the truth! Tell me your mission!’

Sylvie licked her dry lips and swallowed before answering, hoping the small delay would give her time to keep her voice even.

‘I’ve already told you this’ – she craned her head in the direction she believed the voice was coming from – ‘I am Sylvie Duchene.’

She heard footsteps and sensed the man come closer. When he spoke, his mouth was close to her ear. The sensation of his breath on her neck made her hair stand on end and her skin crawl.

‘You are a liar,’ he said, his voice lower and harsher. ‘We’ve been watching you for weeks. You are working with the Allied forces. You are a member of the Resistance. Admit the truth.’

A hand slammed onto the table Sylvie was seated at. She jumped in alarm, but her hands were securely cuffed behind her and the chair was pushed close, giving her little room to move.

‘Admit it. We know who recruited you.’

Another thump on the table. From the change in tone, it sounded like a fist now rather than an open-palmed slap. Sylvie wondered how soon it would be before the next thing to be on the receiving end of that hand would be Sylvie herself. She’d already been slapped harshly when she had fought against the two soldiers who had dragged her from her bed. They’d cuffed her and put a heavy cloth bag put over her head then carried her kicking and screaming from the building. She had been thrown into the back of a car and driven for what felt like miles to wherever she had been brought, dragged into a cell and commanded to stand under blindingly fierce lighting while she was bellowed at repeatedly. After an hour or more, her legs threatened to give way. When she had been taken from that cell and shoved roughly onto the wooden chair, it had almost come as a relief.

‘What you say is not true,’ she said as firmly as she could manage.

Silence.

Sylvie tensed, holding her breath.

The next voice to speak was new. Also male, but higher than the first and with a much more pronounced German accent to his French. Sylvie imagined him to be younger than his colleague.

‘Your whole network has been captured. Even now your associates are admitting the truth under interrogation. Tell the truth and your life might be spared.’

‘There is no network,’ Sylvie insisted. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just a dancer.’

‘You are a liar and a whore, fräulein. Your circuit was betrayed. Perhaps you were the one responsible?’

The second voice was quieter now, but more menacing for it. Sylvie almost denied she would ever do such a thing, but caught herself. Protesting she was not a traitor would be tantamount to admitting there was someone to betray. Another chill raced up her back. That had been too close, but she was becoming too disoriented to think straight. She shivered, partially from fear but also because wherever she had been taken was close to freezing, and she was still dressed in her nightgown.

She flattened her bare foot against the floorboard, grounding herself with the sensation of the wood knots against her toes. She had been dragged from her bed without any idea of what time it was, but her sleep had felt so unusually deep, she wondered if she had been drugged.

She tried to remember everything her training had covered about arrest and interrogation.

Admit nothing. Deny all knowledge.

‘Tell us what you know of Icarus,’ the first voice commanded.

‘Is that a nightclub?’ Sylvie asked. ‘Not one I’ve ever danced at.’

Her reward for the deliberately insolent answer was a ringing slap across her cheek and she gasped with shock and pain. Despite her determination not to show emotion before her interrogators, she felt tears swimming in her eyes. She was grateful they were quickly soaked up by the blindfold she wore before they could make their way down her cheeks.

‘Icarus is a network of British agents working with the French Resistance. Your cell is part of that network. Tell me the names of your contacts. Who is the courier? Who operates the wireless? Which résistants are you working with?’

‘I’m telling you everything I can,’ Sylvie said, her voice trembling. She doubted that slight tremor would be enough to soften her captors’ hearts, but she would try anything.

‘I am just a dancer. I grew up in Rennes in Brittany. I don’t know of any Icarus. I don’t know any Resistance cells.’

The cover story was easy to remember. It was her own life or that which it should have been had her mother not died when Sylvie was thirteen.

‘We checked your past. There is a gap in your whereabouts from the age of thirteen. Where did you go?’

‘I was living in a convent,’ Sylvie said.

‘Why?’ the second voice asked. ‘A cheap little slut like you hardly seems the type to consider a life under the veil.’

This was where Sylvie’s cover story and the truth parted company, but the memorised and rehearsed lies slipped off her tongue with ease.

‘I became pregnant,’ she said, hanging her head to demonstrate shame. ‘My mother sent me to the convent so I did not disgrace her, and our neighbours would not find out. I had the baby, but my mother refused to take me back, so I had nowhere else to go. Then I moved from place to place, trying to find work. It is not my fault the records were destroyed in the bombing.’

She gave a small groan, an idea coming to her.

‘I may be with child again now. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt my child.’

If her hands were free, she would have cradled them over her belly for emphasis. The cuffs ground into her wrists whenever she tried adjusting the position of her arms. She began to sob loudly in great, dry heaves. She conjured everything from her past that had ever caused her sadness; the death of her mother, the real reason for her absence from French records, her disastrous love affairs. She forced tears to her eyes, this time hoping they would fall down her cheeks below the blindfold, where they might be seen as evidence she was telling the truth. Finally, she let her outburst subside to the occasional sniffle. The men had been silent while she sobbed, but without her sight, she could not guess what affect her performance was having on them.

‘You think you are pregnant but you are unmarried.’ The voice sneered. She hadn’t helped herself with that story, only lowered their opinion of her. ‘You are a fond of men, are you, fräulein?’

A hand fell heavily on her knee, fingers pointing towards her inner thigh. Sylvie bit back a cry of revulsion as the warmth of the man’s hand spread through the thin cotton nightdress.

‘Would you like to get to know me? I wonder what I could make you tell me if I was inside you.’

Sylvie bit the inside of her lip and remained still. Don’t let them think rape was the key to loosening her tongue. For the first time, her fear was replaced with contempt; men were men, and they would try to use sex as a weapon. The hand moved beneath the hem onto the flesh of her thigh, squeezing lightly, then abruptly lifted.

There was silence again, then the second voice spoke.

‘Do you smoke, fräulein?’

Sylvie licked her lips, relieved that they had decided, for the moment at least, that an assault was not the best course of action.

‘Occasionally,’ she admitted. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘So you smoke and you fuck. No doubt you drink too?’

Sylvie nodded, wishing she had a large tumbler of whisky to hand. There was the scrape of a match and then the smell of tobacco. One of the men – she couldn’t tell which – took an audible drag and blew smoke in her face. The smell was sickening, and she retched. Then she felt a bright spot of heat grow close to her cheek, dancing over her skin. Panic flared brighter than the tip of the cigarette and coursed through her veins.

‘How much do you think it would hurt if I ground this into your eye? Unless you tell me what we need to know, that’s what I will do.’

Sylvie pulled her head as far back as she could, straining against the back of the chair.

‘Where is Icarus? This is your final chance before I pass you to the Abwehr so they can loosen your tongue. They will not be as tolerant as we have been.’

Sylvie grew cold. The rumoured methods of interrogation used by the German military intelligence service would be the real test of how strong she was. Through the panic and coldness, the stiff joints and pain, she marshalled one piece of advice her instructors had told her during training.

Think of your family and loved ones. Keep their faces in mind. They are the ones you are protecting throughout your interrogation.

As hard as she tried, Sylvie couldn’t bring anyone to mind. Who mattered enough to her, and who did she matter to? The recruits had been warned that they should try to hold out for twenty-four hours to give other members of the cell time to close down operations and escape. Radio equipment could be hidden. Other lives could be saved. Men and women could continue to sabotage and disrupt and strive towards freeing France.

France. The word was a beacon. Her beloved country no longer ground beneath jackbooted heels. That was what she had joined the Special Operations Executive for. She lifted her head and sat as straight as she could. In the steadiest voice she could muster, she spoke.

‘I have nothing to tell you. My name is Sylvie Duchene and I’m a dancer.’

The heat from the cigarette danced closer and then without warning it vanished. The hand went to her face again, causing her to recoil, but instead of pain, the blindfold was lifted. A light shone so brightly that Sylvie had to screw her eyes shut again, and when she opened them she was looking into daylight.

‘Thank you, Miss Crichton.’

The voice spoke in English, and the Scottish accent was instantly recognisable. Sylvie looked into the corner of the room where it had come from and gave a small gasp of surprise. Donald Ashton, one of the SOE trainers in interrogation techniques, had been the older voice that had been questioning her.

‘I expect you would like some cocoa,’ Ashton said, stepping forwards. Sylvie nodded and promptly burst into tears. The other man, dressed in an SS uniform, produced a key and unlocked Sylvie’s handcuffs.

‘Well done, Miss Crichton,’ he said warmly as he helped her to stand up. ‘I’m so sorry for your treatment.’

He was nobody Sylvie recognised, but he had spoken in German to Ashton and had interrogated Sylvie in fluent French. Sylvie wondered if he was either of those nationalities or British. As he helped her from her chair, he placed a hand in the small of her back but removed it immediately as she tensed. Had he been the one who had grasped her knee and slid his hand far too close to her crotch? She wondered if he had enjoyed that part of the play acting. She tried not to think about it as she put her hand on the crook of his elbow. Her legs shook and needed the support or else she might faint, and she was determined that would not happen in front of the men she had held out against for so long.

Ten minutes later, Sylvie was sitting in a comfortable armchair in front of the fireplace in a small sitting room. She had discovered her own dressing gown and slippers waiting for her. On the card table beside her was a mug of watery cocoa, two slices of toast with a generous scraping of butter, and a very small dish of plum and carrot jam. A wireless played quietly in the background. It was so English that Sylvie could scarcely believe this was the true reality and the horrific interrogation room had been the pretence.

‘How are you feeling now, Miss Crichton?’ asked the middle-aged man sitting opposite her in the second armchair. He spoke in French flawlessly, despite Sylvie knowing for certain that he was English through and through, with a line of ancestors stretching back to the seventeenth century.

He didn’t wait for her to answer, but filled in her response himself.

‘You’ll be disoriented, I expect. Weary. Sore and possibly a little bruised.’

Anthony Carmichael often did this, Sylvie had noticed; supplying the answer he wanted to hear in clipped, telegram-like sentences, and assuming it was the right one. It would take a strong person to contradict him. In this case, there was no need because he summed up Sylvie’s emotional and physical state perfectly.

Sylvie nodded. She put her hand to her left cheek where she had been slapped. ‘I’m tired,’ she admitted. She took another piece of toast and ate it enthusiastically. ‘It felt so real,’ she explained between mouthfuls. She shivered and pulled the red-and-green tartan rug a little higher over her knees. Carmichael helped himself to a piece of toast. And the last of the jam, Sylvie noted indignantly.

‘It’s supposed to feel real. Before you commit to working for SOE, we need to know how you will bear up. More crucially, you need to know what you might face. We obviously stop short of inflicting real or significant lasting pain. If you are captured by the SS or Gestapo, they will not be as considerate. They will use whatever methods necessary to wring the information from you.’ Carmichael sat back and looked at Sylvie with a grave expression on his face.

‘It’s not only your life that will be at stake if you are sent to France, Miss Crichton. Any weakness could put in jeopardy the lives of your fellow agents. Allies in the French Resistance. British airmen and soldiers. Can you handle that responsibility?’

Sylvie reached for her cocoa and drank half the mug while she digested Carmichael’s words. How much more would it have taken before she broke and admitted to anything the interrogators had wanted to hear? Icarus was a fiction: one of the invented networks that SOE used to train the potential field agents who would be sent out to work in genuine networks all over France. The next network she might be asked to betray would be real.

‘Good. Don’t answer yet,’ Carmichael said. ‘Additionally, you are under orders not to breathe a word of what has occurred this morning to anyone.’

The other potential agents would be faced with the same assessment and would have to believe, as Sylvie had, that their ordeal was real. In all probability, some of the women had done so already and were under the same restriction. If a woman couldn’t keep secrets, she would be utterly useless as an agent. Sylvie wondered how the women she had grown closest to would bear up to the ordeal. She wondered how she had done herself.

‘Of course I won’t tell anyone,’ she answered.

Carmichael nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll debrief with Mr Ashton and we’ll speak to you again. Go to bed. You’re off duty until three this afternoon.’

‘To bed?’ Sylvie wrinkled her brow and glanced around, not sure whether she was expected to curl up in the armchair.

Carmichael gave Sylvie one of his rare smiles. ‘Your room is in the north wing, I believe.’

Sylvie looked around the room once more, this time with curiosity. Carmichael pulled back the thick velvet curtains and Sylvie looked out onto the familiar front lawn with the ornamental fountain and low box hedges. Despite her aching body and extreme weariness, she laughed. She hadn’t even left the stately home that had been taken over by SOE for training. Her bedroom was almost directly overhead, two floors up. She drained the last of the cocoa and stood. Her legs felt more solid now. As she made her way to the door, Carmichael called after her.

‘There is one delicate matter of your interrogation I would like to clear up before we proceed any further, Miss Crichton. You were in a relationship before you joined us. Is there any likelihood you are really pregnant?’

Sylvie gave him a brittle smile. The term relationship lent far too much dignity to the pitiful affair she had walked away from. Nevertheless, it was a fair question. Some of the other recruits she was training with had left husbands and children to do their part in the war effort. That was acceptable, but no department would knowingly send an expectant mother into occupied lands. Enough time had elapsed since she had left Dennis’s bed for the final time for her to be completely sure.

‘None whatsoever.’

She left without waiting for an acknowledgement and made her way to her room. The corridors were empty, which she was glad of. Everyone else would be engaged in training of one sort or another somewhere in the grounds or house. She didn’t have any urge to discuss what she had gone through, but wasn’t sure she would be able to hide that something had happened.

Her room had been left in a state of disarray when she had been taken. The bedclothes had been trailed across the rug as they’d tangled between her feet. She dimly remembered grasping for a vase containing dog daisies and trying to dash it across one of her attacker’s heads. Water had gone everywhere. Now everything was as neat as it always was, and her bed had been made.

Sylvie slumped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. She had done well, surely? She had not given in, even when threatened with violation or burning. She wrinkled her nose, knowing it would be a long time before she was able to smell a cigarette without imagining singed flesh. Wearing the nightgown that carried the lingering smell of the interrogation room any longer was unbearable. She stripped it off and threw it into the corner of the room, resolving to buy pyjamas to wear from now on, and clambered into bed naked. The mattress was lumpy and had seen better days, but Sylvie was asleep within minutes of pulling the covers over her head.

Chapter Two

Two weeks after her fake interrogation, Sylvie sat in the SOE’s flat in Baker Street to finally learn where she was to be sent. She had been interviewed in this same room when she first applied to join SOE, back before she had really understood what it entailed.

No one had given her a grade for her performance in the interrogation room, but she got the impression that she had done well. Not all the women had proven to be as resilient to the threat of torture and had surrendered information. Those who had not succeeded had been taken from the training house without a chance to say farewell. Sylvie had no idea where they were now.

Two people sat on the opposite side of the desk to Sylvie. Vera Atkins, who was the personal assistant of Major Maurice Buckmaster, the head of SOE’s French operation, and Major Swift, better known to Sylvie as Uncle Max.

‘Why do you want to go to France, Sylvia?’ Uncle Max asked.

‘Sylvie,’ Sylvie corrected automatically.

Her father had insisted on changing her name to the more English-sounding Sylvia when he had brought her from France to England as a child. She still bristled on hearing it. Maybe more so now she was being asked to justify why she wanted to serve in France.

‘Why do you want to go to France, Sylvie?’ Uncle Max asked.

He looked over the top of his spectacles. His hooded eyes and beaked nose made Sylvie feel like a mouse being scrutinised by a hawk. She held his gaze. If she couldn’t even hold her nerve when speaking to the man she had known for almost a decade, she wouldn’t do very well under interrogation.

Sylvie smoothed the khaki serge skirt of her FANY uniform. Recruitment into the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry corps was the starting point for all female candidates for SOE. She had answered all these questions when she applied, but now she was reaching the end of her training and her superiors were sizing her up for a role. She could work as a wireless operator, in encryption, drive cars, work as a personal assistant. All important roles, but all behind the lines. Even now she might be deemed inadequate and shunted into a desk role, receiving ‘skeds’ – the scheduled messages from agents abroad – or translating codes to be sent back.

‘France is my home and I have not been there for her.’

‘England is your home too, Miss Crichton,’ Miss Atkins said. ‘There are many roles in which you could serve France and Britain without leaving these shores and putting yourself in danger.’

Sylvie drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. The surname was a minor irritation, but here it was again. This was a new line of questioning, however.