‘Up to now,’ said Wilby, ‘even if Russian intelligence had known about your assignment with Dasch, it wouldn’t have been a major concern for them. They’re much more interested in stealing military secrets, or finding out which ones of theirs we’ve got our hands on. The currency you found has changed all that, since it poses a more serious threat than a whole battery of missiles. Your life, and Dasch’s too, won’t be worth much if they find out. That’s why we went to Thesinger. He’s one of my contacts, not one of the agency’s. I kept him off the books in case something like this ever happened.’
‘So what do I do now?’ asked Carter.
‘Stay close to Dasch,’ said Wilby. ‘The sooner you can get him to confide in you, the quicker you can find out what the hell is going on.’
Carter knew that learning secrets, on its own, was not enough. Every criminal organisation he had ever infiltrated required the perfection of three different lies. The first lie was to merge seamlessly into his surroundings. It was possible to be unknown, at least in the beginning, and yet still not be taken for a stranger. The art was to look and sound and move like he belonged. This lie formed the surface of his shape-shifting world. Beneath this lay the second lie◦– the earning of trust, which demanded only the relentless following of orders; or at least the appearance of it, since a man did not need to be liked in order to be trusted. The third lie was to become a friend, and this was the most difficult of all because it could not be cobbled into existence, like the armour of outward appearance, or engineered, as trust could be. It could only be given away. Once this had been achieved, the fate of his opponents was sealed.
…
When Major Wharton stepped in out of the rattling hail that had begun to fall on Rocherath, hissing and bouncing and stinging the knuckles of the men who darted through the muddy streets, he found Lieutenant Carter sitting in the front room of the house. ‘Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?’ asked Wharton, irritated to find this cop from New Jersey making himself comfortable in his chair.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that the stolen fuel truck was spotted heading down the road to Wahlerscheid?’
Wharton removed his helmet and placed it on the table. He smoothed the hair back on his head. Then he removed his leather gloves and tossed them into the bucket of the upturned helmet. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Is it true or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ snapped Wharton. ‘Trucks come through here all the time.’
‘But they don’t all vanish into the forest in the direction of the German border.’ Carter stood suddenly, his chair skidding back across the floor. ‘You didn’t think that it might be relevant?’ he asked, struggling to contain his anger.
‘Look,’ said Wharton, ‘there are three divisions strung out along this section of the Ardennes: the 1st, the 2nd and the 99th, as well as a tank destroyer battalion and support personnel from all over the damned place. One thing you learn pretty quickly out here is that anything short of a total logistical nightmare is the absolute best you can hope for. If I tried to chase down where that truck came from and where it was headed, it would have taken me a week of phone calls. Make the calls yourself. Be my guest. Just try it and you’ll see.’
‘Why didn’t you at least tell me about it?’
‘Because I didn’t want to have the conversation we are having right now. And I knew that we would, if I told you.’
At that moment, their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming just outside the house.
‘What the hell…’ muttered Wharton.
Both men walked out into the hailstorm to see what was causing the commotion.
Four soldiers stood in the street. One of them was German. He was young◦– sixteen or seventeen at the most. He looked exhausted, his eyelids rimmed with reddened flesh. He wore a dirty grey-green tunic made of poor-quality wool, worn through at the elbows and cuffs. On the left side of his collar was a plain black rectangle of wool and on the right, two crooked lightning bolts. Stitched to his left sleeve at the level of his bicep was a small spread-winged eagle in greyish-silver thread on a black background. His baggy wool trousers were tucked into canvas gaiters and his ankle boots were slick with grease. He wore no belt or cap and the forelock of his dirty blond hair hung down over one eye. He was bleeding out of one of his ears and more blood had splashed from his nose, which had just been broken with a rifle butt whose imprint was still clear on his cheek. The boy seemed terrified and, looking at the soldiers who surrounded him, Carter thought he had good reason to be frightened.
In front of them, a woman was picking herself up from the ground, her dress plastered with half-frozen mud. Seeing Wharton, she pointed at one of the American infantrymen and began to shout, gasping and crying as she made her accusation.
Carter had no idea if the woman was speaking French or German. It sounded like a mixture of the two.
‘How did she end up on the ground?’ demanded Wharton.
‘I put her there,’ said the soldier who was out in front, with no trace of regret in his voice.
‘And why did you do that?’ asked Wharton.
‘Because she spat on me.’
The woman continued to rant at the Americans, clawing at the air with her fingers, teeth bared as she cursed.
‘I can’t understand you!’ said Wharton. Then he turned to the soldiers. ‘Can anybody tell me what she is saying?’
It was the German who answered. ‘She is asking for the soldiers not to kill me, because that’s what she thinks they will do.’
‘You’re SS,’ said the soldier. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t we?’
‘Shut up,’ barked Wharton. Then he turned to the boy. ‘Where did you come from?’ he asked.
The boy pointed back towards the forest.
‘We found him walking down the middle of the road,’ said one of the soldiers.
‘Was he armed?’ asked Wharton.
‘No, sir,’ replied the soldier. ‘Looked like he was trying to surrender. He had his hands up and everything.’
‘Is that right?’ Wharton asked the boy. ‘Were you giving yourself up?’
‘I came to warn you,’ said the boy.
…
The sun had not yet risen above the fractured rooftops of Cologne when Carter left his apartment, treading carefully on the rotted wooden staircase that brought him down to ground level. His meeting with Sergeant Galton was scheduled for noon and he needed to make an early start.
Carter headed to a cafe across the street, hoping to find some breakfast. It was a tiny place with only three tables and, after a moment of squinting around for a menu, he arrived at the conclusion that the only things they served were coffee and sausages cooked in wrappings of dough. A woman sat behind the zinc-topped counter, wearing a grey dress with a navy blue apron which matched the colours of the restaurant decor. She had a wide, smooth forehead, shallow-set eyes and thin, unsmiling lips. Even though the cafe had only just opened, she appeared already to have lapsed into the trance-like state Carter remembered from the long summer afternoons of washing dishes at the diner, when he would stare in quiet desperation at the hands on the wall clock as if to nudge time forward by force of will alone.
He ordered a sausage roll and a mug of hot brown liquid, which he realised from its smell was not real coffee at all, but what they called ‘Ersatzkaffee’, made from ground acorns and chicory root. He sipped at it as he made his way over to a table. The drink left a papery, liquorice taste in his mouth. It didn’t taste so bad, but it didn’t taste like coffee, either.
Sitting at a table near the back, Carter swept away some crumbs left by a previous customer and was turning the plate around, examining the sausage roll and wondering whether he should eat it with his hands or with a knife and fork, when a man walked in and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter.