End of Spies by Alex Gerlis (best free ereader txt) 📗

We won’t find where she or this Hamilton chap are through this address, and there’s no record of her anywhere else.’

‘Harold Hamilton rings a bell,’ said Prince, frowning.

‘Not for me, I’m afraid,’ said Harper.

‘The forger who was arrested in Manchester: didn’t he provide a list of false identities he’d provided and try to have his charges reduced by telling us that one of his clients bore a striking resemblance to Edward Palmer – the Nazi agent code-named Milton?’

‘Good Lord, Prince, you’re quite right. No one believed him at the time, did they? We thought it was just an attempt to curry favour. What was the identity he said he provided for Palmer?’

‘That’s the point, sir – it was Harold Hamilton: the forger said he sold it at a premium.’

It was the time of year when darkness descended in the afternoon with a suddenness that turned day into unexpected night. When Hugh Harper turned on his desk light, all four people in the room looked shocked. They had now established a connection between Edward Palmer, the fugitive Nazi spy who’d worked in the War Office, and a woman associated with the group of Nazi sympathisers apparently helping to fund the Nazi escape line. For a few moments they sat in silence as they absorbed this.

‘We shouldn’t arrest her tomorrow, Bartholomew.’

‘Whatever do you mean, Roly?’ Hugh Harper looked confused.

‘I agree with Sir Roland,’ said Prince. ‘We know that this Myrtle Carter and Edward Palmer are planning on travelling to the Continent with at least two hundred pounds. If we arrest her at the bank, we lose him. If we follow her to wherever they’re living, we might arrest them both but…’

‘…we lose the trail of the Kestrel Line,’ said Pearson. ‘Prince has got it. Bartholomew, you need to have a top team on this, and even then we’re running an enormous risk. We need to keep an eye on her as far as possible, but the priority is to find out exactly when and where they’re crossing the Channel and then follow them to wherever they’re headed. With some luck they’ll take us to Turin – and maybe even Martin Bormann.’

‘And Hanne,’ said Prince, his voice quiet. He was clearly upset. ‘With some luck they’ll lead us to Hanne.’

By the time Prince left MI5 that evening, his journey to Austria was taking shape. He’d be on an RAF flight in the morning to the US Air Force base in Munich, and would travel on to Villach from there.

He was staying at a MI6 safe house in Holland Park, and as it was a dry and not too cold evening, he got off the Underground early at Notting Hill Gate to walk the rest of the way. He wanted to clear his head: he ought to return to Lincoln to see Henry before travelling to find Hanne, but as much as he felt drawn towards his son, he felt he couldn’t risk delaying his search for her by even one day.

He turned into Addison Road, which despite its size felt as quiet and isolated as a country lane. He stepped aside to allow a couple walking their dog to pass, and was annoyed when they slowed down in front of him. He was about to cross the road when a man came alongside and positioned himself between him and the kerb. Prince turned round: another man was close behind him, a hand menacingly inside his coat pocket.

‘Don’t worry, my friend.’ It was the man walking next to him who spoke, his accent foreign. Prince sensed that the couple in front and the man behind were now even closer: it felt like a trap.

‘I have greetings for you from my colleague Iosif in Berlin. He hopes you are well.’

‘I hardly think—’

‘I have limited time, so it will be best served by you listening to me. Iosif assumes you are travelling to Austria to look for Hanne.’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

The man shrugged. He was a big man with a neat beard, a hat pulled low over his face. He kept his head down as he spoke. ‘Please listen. Iosif says to go to Vienna first. He’ll meet you there: don’t worry about finding him, he’ll find you.’

‘I can’t go to Vienna. I have to go south; I have to find Hanne.’

‘That, my friend, is why he wants to meet you in Vienna!’

Chapter 22

Austria, December 1945

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

The man who’d appeared beside him was pointing at the Hofburg Palace as if Prince hadn’t noticed it. Prince had been standing in the drizzle on Heldenplatz in front of the enormous edifice for a few minutes, and had begun to feel thoroughly miserable. He now felt an enormous sense of relief.

‘In what way?’

The man concentrated on finishing his cigarette. ‘You’d do well to find a more impressive symbol of imperialism still standing in Europe, and now it’s under the control of the Soviet Union! So when I said “wonderful”, I meant the irony of us controlling what was once the heart of the Habsburg Empire.’

Prince laughed. ‘But you don’t control it, do you? The centre of Vienna’s an international zone. We control this place as much as you do, and we still have an empire – though by the sounds of it, you’re starting to acquire one!’

Iosif Gurevich laughed, then turned to embrace Prince and told him it was good to see him. ‘I didn’t think you’d get here quite so soon.’

They’d started to walk and were now on Löwelstrasse, the drizzle turning into heavy rain. ‘I was told you might be able to help me find Hanne. You can’t imagine how desperate I am, Iosif.’

‘Is that what they told you?’

Prince recounted what had happened the previous evening in Holland Park.

‘I said not to be so heavy-handed. Four of them behaving like that is ridiculous: it sounds as if they were planning to abduct you! That’s the problem with London station. They have no sense of proportion. You look dreadful, by the