Code Name Verity (23 page)

And I started wrestling insanely with the iron stub where the porcelain door handle used to be (before I unscrewed it and threw it at Thibaut's head), which is pointless, because of course the door handle and its attendant hardware are purely decorative and all the bolts and bars are fixed to the outside.

‘LIE! LIE TO THEM!'

Oh – I got a result I did not expect. Someone came and pulled open the locks so suddenly that I fell out of the door, and they picked me up and held me blinking in the sudden bright lights, while I tried not to look at the wretched girl.

And there was von Linden, in civilian clothes, cool and smooth as a new frozen curling pond and sitting in a cloud of acrid smoke like Lucifer himself (no one smokes when he is around, I don't know and don't want to know what they were burning). He didn't speak, merely beckoned, and they brought me over to him and threw me to my knees.

He let me cower for a few minutes.

Then:

‘You've advice for your fellow prisoner? I'm not sure she realises you are addressing her. Tell her again.'

I shook my head, not really understanding what the hell he was playing at
this
time.

‘Go to her side, look in her face, speak to her. Speak clearly so we can all hear you.'

I played along. I always play along. It is my weakness, the flaw in my armour.

I put my face alongside hers, as though we were whispering. So close it must have seemed intimate, but too close for us to actually look at each other. I swallowed, then repeated clearly, ‘Save yourself. Lie to them.'

She is the one who used to whistle ‘Scotland the Brave' when I first came here. She couldn't whistle last night, it's a wonder they thought she could even speak, after what they had done to her mouth. But she tried to spit at me anyway.

‘She doesn't think a great deal of your advice,' said von Linden. ‘Tell her again.'

‘LIE!'
I yelled at her.

After a moment she managed to answer me. Hoarse and harsh, her voice grating with pain, so that everyone could hear her. ‘Lie to them?' she croaked. ‘Is that what you do?'

I stood trapped. Perhaps it was a trap he had laid for me on purpose. All was very quiet for a long time (probably not so long as it seemed), and finally von Linden directed with disinterest, ‘Answer her question.'

That was when I lost my senses.

‘You
fucking hypocrite
,' I snarled at von Linden unwisely (he may not have known what the word meant in French, but still, it wasn't a clever thing to say). ‘Don't you ever lie? What the hell
do
you do? What do you tell your daughter? When she asks about your work, what
truth
does the lovely Isolde get out of
you
?'

He was white as paper. Calm though.

‘Carbolic.'

Everyone looked at him uncertainly.

‘She has the filthiest tongue of any woman in France. Burn her mouth clean.'

I fought. They held me down while they argued about the correct dosage because he hadn't made clear whether or not he actually wanted them to kill me with the stuff. The French girl closed her eyes and rested, taking advantage of the shift in attention away from her. They'd got out the bottles and the gloves – the room became a clinic suddenly. The truly frightening thing was that not one of them seemed to know what he was doing.

‘Look at me!' I screeched. ‘
Look at me
, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and
watch this time
! You're not questioning me now, this isn't your work, I'm not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I'm just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde!
Think of Isolde and watch!
'

He stopped them.

He couldn't do it.

I choked with relief, gasping.

‘Tomorrow,' he said. ‘After she's eaten. Fräulein Engel knows how to prepare the phenol.'

‘Coward!
Coward!
' I sobbed in hysterical fury. ‘Do it
now
! Do it
yourself
!'

‘Get her out of here.'

—

There was paper and pencil laid out for me as always this morning, and the drinking water waiting along with the phenol and alcohol, and Fräulein Engel is rapping her fingernails in impatience across the table from me as she always does while she waits for me to pass her something to read. She is waiting eagerly to see what I have written this morning, I know, as it has not been explained to her what I actually
did
last night to warrant such vicious punishment. Von Linden must be asleep (he may be inhuman, but he is not superhuman). Oh God. There isn't much left for me to write. What is he expecting me to finish with? Isn't the end of the story rather obvious? I want to finish it, but I hate to think about it.

Miss E. has managed to scrounge some ice for my water. It will have melted by the time we get around to scouring out the filthiest mouth in France, but it was a nice thought.

—

Now we are back in the air again, suspended over the fields and rivers north of Ormaie and under a serene but not-quite-full moon at its splendid silver height, in a plane that can't be landed. The wireless operator flashes the correct signal to the ground and barely a minute later the flare path appears. It is perfectly familiar, three flickering points of light forming an upside-down L, just like the makeshift runway Maddie made her efficient practice landings on 4 hours ago in England.

Maddie circled once over the field. She didn't know how long the flare path would stay lit and didn't want to waste the light. She began to descend in the oblong flight pattern she'd used earlier. Over her shoulder, through the opening in the bulkhead, her friend watched the faintly illuminated dial on the instrument panel that showed the altitude – they weren't losing much height.

‘Can't
do
it,' Maddie gasped, and the Lysander floated rapidly upward like a helium balloon. She hadn't even added power. ‘I just can't do it! Remember what I told you about the first Lysander I ever landed, how the handwheel for adjusting the tailplane was broken, and the ground crew thought I wouldn't be strong enough to hold the control column forward without trimming it? Only I was able to set it neutral before I got in. Well, it's not neutral now, it's stuck in the climb – for the last
hour
it's taken every ounce of strength I have to stop us climbing – and I'm just not strong enough to hold it far enough forward that we can land. I keep dropping power and it doesn't make any difference. If I turn the engine off and try to dump the dratted thing down in a dead stall I think it'll
still
try to climb. And then it'll fall into a spin and kill us. If I could stall it, that is. It's impossible to stall a Lizzie.'

Queenie didn't answer.

‘Going round,' Maddie grunted. ‘Going to have another go anyway, try a shallower descent. Still have quite a lot of fuel, don't really want to crash and go up in flames.'

They'd soared up to two and a half thousand feet in the time it took Maddie to explain all this. She flexed her wrists and wrestled the control column forward again. ‘Bother. Drat.
Double drat
.' (‘Double drat' is the most fearsome oath Maddie ever swears.)

She was getting tired. She didn't manage to descend as far as she had the first time, and overshot the field. She turned back steeply, lost no height and swore again as the airframe shuddered, automatic flaps clattering alarmingly as the plane tried to decide what speed it was flying.

‘Perhaps not impossible to stall!' Maddie gasped. ‘Jolly well don't want to stall at five hundred feet or we're
dead
. Let me think . . .'

Queenie let her think, watching the altimeter. They were gaining height again.

‘Climbing on purpose now,' Maddie said grimly. ‘I'll take you up to 3000 feet. Don't want to go higher or I'll never get back down. You'll be able to jump safely.'

—

That horrid trio of guards has just come to fetch me somewhere – Engel chatting with them in annoyed tones
just
beyond my range of hearing, outside the door. They did not appear to be gloved, so perhaps they are not here to administer the phenol. Please God. Oh
why
am I so coarse and thoughtless. Whatever it is now, I dread not being able to finish almost more than I dre

 

I have fifteen minutes.

The battered French girl and I were taken together down
through the cellars and out to a little stone courtyard
that must once have been the hotel's laundry. She proud & limping, her pretty bare feet hideous with open wounds and her white face swollen with bruising, ignoring me. We were tied to each other, wrist to wrist. In that small stone space open to the sky they have erected a guillotine. It is the usual way a woman spy is executed in Berlin.

We had to wait while they prepared this and that – threw open
a gate to the lower lane
to shock & entertain passers-by, hoisted the blade & ropes in place, etc. I don't know how the mechanics of it work. It had been used recently, blood still on the blade. We stood tied together mutely, and I thought, They will make me watch. They will kill her first and make me watch. Then they will kill me.

I knew she knew it too, but of course she would not look at me or speak to me, though the backs of our hands were touching.

5 minutes.

I told her my name. She did not answer.

They cut the cords that tied us together. They pulled her forward and I did watch – I did not look away from her face. It was all I could do.

She called out to me just before they pushed her into position on her knees there.

‘My name is Marie.'

—

I cannot believe I am still alive; I have been brought back here to this same table and made to pick up the pencil again. Only it is von Linden who sits across the table from me now, not E. or T. He is watching me, as I requested him to do.

When I rub my eyes, my hands come away from my face with Marie's blood still red and fresh on my knuckles.

I asked v.L. if I could write this down before I continue the day's work. He said I indulge too much in the detail of what happens to me here – an interesting record, but not to the point. He's allowed only 15 min. for this – he's timing it.

I have 1 min. left. I wish I could have told more, done her justice, given her something more meaningful than my worthless name.

After my fiasco last night, I think they killed her for
no reason
other than to scare me into confessing that I have lied to them. It is my fault she is dead – one of my worst fears realised.

But I have not lied.

Von Linden says to me now: ‘Stop.'

—

He leans back, watching me coolly. The phenol is still sitting there where Engel left it, but I do not think they are going to use it. I told him to watch me and he is watching.

‘Write, little Scheherazade,' he says. It is a command. ‘Tell of your last minutes in the air. Finish your tale.'

Marie's blood stains my hands, figuratively and literally. I must finish now.

—

‘You tell me when to go,' Queenie said. ‘Tell me when you're ready.'

‘I will.'

The small hand on Maddie's shoulder didn't let go, all through the climb. Maddie glanced down at the flare path far below, three pinpoints of light beckoning, welcoming, calling – and she made up her mind to try to land. But not with a passenger, not with anyone else's life in her hands – not with anyone she might fail.

‘All right,' Maddie said. ‘You'll be all right here. It's a bit windy, so keep your eye on the lights and try to land on the flare path! They're waiting for you. You know how to get out?'

Queenie squeezed Maddie's shoulder.

‘Better do it quick,' Maddie said. ‘Before the blooming plane goes any higher.'

‘Kiss me, Hardy,' Queenie said.

Maddie gave a sobbed gasp of laughter. She bent her head to the cold hand on her shoulder and kissed it warmly. The small fingers brushed her cheek, gave her shoulder one last squeeze and retreated through the bulkhead.

Maddie heard the rear canopy slide open. She felt the faintest dip in the aircraft's balance as the weight shifted. Then she flew alone.

Ormaie 28.XI.43 JB-S

You know Mary Queen o' Scots (whose grandmother, incidentally, was French, like mine; as was her mother) – Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don't think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.

I have been allowed to use the past three days to re-read all I've written and check it over. It makes sense and it's almost a good story.

Fräulein Engel will be disappointed though that it doesn't have a proper ending. I am sorry. She's seen the pictures too; there's no point in making up something hopeful and defiant if I'm meant to be telling the truth. But be honest yourself, Anna Engel, wouldn't you rather Maddie hit the ground running, as the Yanks say, and made it safely back to England? Because that would be the happy ending, the right ending for a jolly girls' adventure story.

This pile of paper doesn't stack together very well – pages and pages of different widths and lengths and thicknesses. I like the flute music that I had to write on at the end. I was careful with that. Of course I have had to use both sides and write over the music, but I wrote very lightly in pencil between the notes because someone may want to play it again some day. Not Esther Lévi, whose music it was, whose classically biblical Hebrew name is written neatly at the top of each sheet; I'm not stupid enough to think she'll ever see this music again, whoever she is. But perhaps someone else. When the bombing stops.