The Company of Strangers. Robert Thomas Wilson

say, but you must make him your friend. Sutherland and Rose are running the Lisbon station of the British Secret Intelligence Service, you will be talking to them directly, procedure is in the brief. There are some documents here which you should look at and memorize before you go and a letter which contains important information on microdot. You will use this information to open negotiations with the British. You must show them that we can be trusted, that our intentions are honourable and that the reverse is true of the Russians.’

      ‘I’m not sure how the latter will be possible. I understand there is no Soviet legation in Lisbon.’

      ‘That’s true. Salazar won’t allow them in. No atheists on Catholic Portuguese soil – which reminds me, we must make sure the Portuguese don’t deny him a visa.’

      The man seemed to laugh for no particular reason, or perhaps it was a wheeze that became a cough. He lit a cigarette.

      ‘It is possible that Olivier Mesnel will lead you somewhere. He must be going to Lisbon for a purpose which I don’t think, given his political beliefs, will be to take a ship to the United States.’

      ‘At the Casablanca Conference it was decided that our surrender would have to be unconditional. We will have to offer something extraordinary for the British and the Americans to even consider breaking with the Russians.’

      A long silence. Smoke rising from the chair drifted towards the lamp behind.

      ‘Believe me, the Americans will be looking for any reason they can to cut themselves away from Stalin at the first opportunity, especially after the Russians have invaded Europe. At the Teheran Conference Stalin said that up to a hundred thousand German officers would have to be executed and he would need four million German slaves – that was his word – to rebuild Russia. This kind of talk is unacceptable to men of humanity such as Churchill and Roosevelt. If we can provide a catalyst…’ he paused, struggled in his chair as if suddenly cramped, ‘…the Führer’s death, I think, would be sufficient.’

      Voss shivered even though it was warm in the room. The water he was easing himself into now felt deep and cold.

      ‘Is that a planned action?’

      ‘One of many,’ said the man, as tired as if he’d planned them all. Voss wanted to get away from contemplating the enormity of the statement.

      ‘I’ve lost track of the development of our atomic programme. That could be important to the Allies. They’ve seen that we have the potential…can we put their minds at rest?’

      ‘It’s all in the documents.’

      ‘How much time have we got?’

      ‘We hope to make progress…like all things, in the spring, but by the end of the summer at the latest we must have results. The Russians have retaken Zhitomir and have crossed the Polish border – they’re no more than a thousand kilometres from Berlin. We are being bombed to rubble by the Allies. The city is a ruin, the arms and munitions factories working at barely fifty per cent. The air force can’t reach the new Russian arms factories on the other side of the Urals. The bear gets stronger and the eagle weaker and more short-sighted.’

      There didn’t seem to be any need of more questions after that and Voss was gestured towards the table where three fat files awaited him. He sat down and reached for the lamp. A hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed it in the same way that his father’s used to – reassuring, giving strength.

      ‘You are very important to us,’ said the voice. ‘You understand what is written in these files better than anybody, but we have chosen you for other reasons too. I can only ask you, please, when you are in Lisbon, do not make the same mistake you made with Mademoiselle Larache. This is too important. This is about the survival of a nation.’

      The hand released him. The man and his pressurized voice left the room. Voss worked until 6.00 a.m. going through the files on the atomic programme and the V1 and V2 rocket programmes.

      

      On 20th January 1944 Olivier Mesnel was issued with an exit visa to travel to Spain. On the 22nd January Voss boarded the same night train as Mesnel, which left the Gare de Lyon heading south to Lyon and Perpignan, crossing the border at Port Bou and then on to Barcelona and Madrid. Mesnel rarely left his compartment. In Madrid the Frenchman stayed in a cheap pension for two nights and then took another train to Lisbon on the night of 25th January.

      They arrived in Santa Apolónia station in Lisbon late the following afternoon. It was raining and Mesnel in his oversized coat and hat walked at funereal pace from the station to the massive square of the Terreiro do Paço, which Voss was surprised to see sandbagged and guarded in a neutral country. He followed the Frenchman through the Baixa and up the Avenida da Liberdade to the Praça Marquês de Pombal where Mesnel, dragging his feet, seemingly weak with hunger, entered a small pensão on the Rua Braancamp. Voss was relieved to take a taxi to the German Legation on the Rua do Pau de Bandeira in Lapa, a smart quarter on the outskirts of the city. SS Colonel Reinhardt Wolters had been expecting him two days earlier but welcomed him all the same.

      On 13th February the Chief of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, was escorted out of the Maibach II complex by officers sent from the Reich’s Main Security Office by Kaltenbrunner. He was taken to the house within the grounds where he packed and was then driven to his own home in Schlachtensee. On 18th February the Abwehr was dissolved and brought under Kaltenbrunner’s direct control. The rain was clattering against the windows of the German Legation in Lapa when Wolters came into Voss’s office to deliver the good news. As the SS man left the room, Voss was overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness, a man out on a limb at the westernmost tip of Europe with only the enemy to talk to.

       Chapter 6

       10th July 1944, Orlando Road, Clapham, London.

      Andrea Aspinall collapsed on her bed in her room with the windows open, just back from another trip to the air-raid shelter – the doodlebugs a menace, flying over at all times of day, not like the good old predictable nights of endless bombing raids in the Blitz. Sometimes she toyed with the idea of not going to the shelter – listen for the low drone of the diesel-powered rocket, wait for its engine to cut out, take pot luck under its silent falling, test her boredom threshold.

      She went to sit on the window ledge, her room at the top, old servants’ quarters. She looked over the back garden through the lime trees to Macaulay Road, four houses along, direct hit from a doodlebug, not much left, blackened beams, piled rubble but nobody home at the time. She caught sight of herself, only her head in the bottom corner of the mirror on the dressing table across the room. Long black hair, dark, nearly olive skin, twenty-year-old brown eyes wanting to be older.

      She opened a packet of Woodbines, rested the filterless cigarette on her lower lip, let it stick. She struck a match on the outside wall, warm brick. Her hand came into the frame, she turned her face and accepted the light. She flicked her head back, unstuck the cigarette, let out a long stream of smoke and came back to herself in the mirror with her tongue on her top lip – being sophisticated. She shook her head at herself, looked out of the window – still a silly girl playing romantic games in the mirror. Not a spy.

      She’d spent most of her life at the Sacred Heart Convent in Devizes where she’d been sent at seven years old when her great aunt had died and there’d been no one to look after her while her mother worked. That was why the piano teacher and his wife, who’d been bombed in their home during the Blitz, had been so important to her, they’d become family, looking after her through school holidays. The piano teacher was her father. She’d never known her own, the one who’d died of cholera before she was born.

      They knew about discipline and religion at the Sacred Heart and not much else, but it hadn’t prevented her from getting a place at St Anne’s, Oxford to read maths. She’d done nearly two years of her degree when her tutor invited her to a party at St John’s. At the party a large quantity of drink was served