From the train, Boothby walked through the downpour, protected by his oilskin coat, heavy boots and nor’easter, striped Trinity scarf at his throat. He unchained his bicycle, waiting where he’d left it at the fence, and started off, struggling to keep upright in the punishing wind on the pitted and potholed roads.
He was an ordinary-looking man of about thirty—light hair, light eyes, average height and weight, clean-shaven. His nose was ordinary as well; it had once been patrician, but he’d broken it in a fight with the communist Reds when he’d been a follower of Oswald Mosley and a Fascist at Cambridge, and now the bridge was just slightly flattened and off-center. He was a chameleon, adept at blending into any environment, including as wounded veteran and grieving husband and father.
The brackish cold air assaulted his face as he rode, turning it mottled and red, his breath coming in short bursts.
As he pedaled, chain clanking, the rains abated. Cresting the top of the low-rising hill, Boothby could see the brown fields, the mudflats, the salt marshes with their tall feathery dying reeds, adapted to live in either fresh or salt water. Beyond the salt marshes was the gray-green ocean, waves roaring faintly upon the rocky shore in the distance.
From his vista he could see the cottage. It was small and dilapidated, but it was his, along with the battered van alongside it. He turned off the main road, onto a side one, and then into the gravel drive, getting off the bicycle and walking it to a protected space under the eaves. Stamping his boots on the mat, he reached into his oilskin’s coat pocket and drew out a heavy brass key. Then he let himself in. “Audrey?” he called into the shadows with his clipped accent. “Audrey, are you there?”
It hadn’t been hard for the Nazis to convince Audrey Moreau to work for them. After they’d invaded Paris, she’d been harassed by groups of German soldiers as she went to and from her job at a local café. There, German officers would order pastries and coffee, talking and laughing. Audrey would clear the dishes of half-eaten palmiers, chausson aux pommes, and iced mille-feuille and take them back to the kitchen, where she and the rest of the staff would fall on them, famished, not caring that there were bite marks or that cigarettes had been crushed out in the custard.
When one of the officers, a young man with shocking white-blond hair and a cleft chin, had begun to harass her, she kept her eyes down and stayed silent. Day after day she endured his assaults, patting her derrière, pinching her cheek, asking her if she liked it on her back or on all fours, while his fellow officers egged him on and laughed.
The next week, his commanding officer, Otto Graf, appeared. He was closer to fifty than forty, with black hair and green eyes. When the cleft-chinned boy began his antics with Audrey, Graf strode across the room and slapped him across the face, hard, with his black leather glove.
“I’m sorry, Commandant,” the boy said.
“Don’t apologize to me,” Graf said, in a soft voice, “apologize to her. We are guests in her country.”
He did, turning red and stammering.
“Now leave,” Graf said. As the boy made his way out the door, Graf said, “And you have my apologies as well, Fräulein. Why don’t you sit down with us and have some coffee?”
Audrey looked over to the owner, her boss, a bald middle-aged man with a shiny pate. He nodded. Whatever the Germans wanted, the Germans got.
Graf patted the empty chair, and she sat down. “Now, tell me about yourself, Liebchen.”
Of course they became lovers. One night, in bed at his suite at the Ritz, when he learned she had relatives in England, he was thrilled. “It would be so easy,” he said, rubbing her cold hands with his, to warm them. “Your cousin married an English woman—who’s a cook for the British King and Queen, no less—let me see what I can do.”
A few weeks later, Audrey arrived in Windsor, feigning gratitude that her cousin was able to get her out. She knew who was already in place, and she awaited further instructions. Commandant Graf had no worries about Audrey’s cooperation—he knew very well where her parents and brother and sister lived. And he’d made it clear what would happen to them if she didn’t oblige.
In the cottage, Boothby called out again, “Audrey?” He fumbled for a lantern.
“I’m here,” she responded from the shadows.
“Good. Let’s go over the plan again.”
Chapter Twenty-two
During preparations for the three-day Red, White, and Blue Christmas weekend, excitement buzzed through the castle like a shot of adrenaline, which was a good thing, as the days were getting shorter and darker. Marquetry floors were waxed, silver polished, carpets taken out of storage and beaten, chandeliers washed and rehung, guest rooms aired. The enormous kitchen was filled with aromas of bread and cakes and roasts, and servants picked bouquets of flowers from the greenhouse to arrange and display throughout the State Apartments.