The Life That I Have

Chapter 3

When she got back to the attic, there was something different. It was dusk, so the house was quite dark. When she went into the hall, she heard a footstep from the floor above. Anya's mind was racing. Had Rudi tipped someone off? No, he didn't know where she lived. Who was it? Abwehr? Gestapo? Should she run? It might only be one man. She might be able to deal with one man if she caught him by surprise…
  Running up the stairs, Anya threw herself to the end of the landing and hurled into every room until she found the occupied one.
  It was the room directly above the entrance lobby. Huddled in the corner, gun drawn, was a girl of about twenty-five, squatting next to a small case. Any ideas of heroism driven out of her head, Anya threw her hands up in the air.
  "Who are you?" the girl asked icily in perfect French.
  "Yvette Yare," she lied. "Who are you?"
  "That need not concern us now. What are you doing here?"
  Anya's gaze drifted to the case by the girl's feet. At a glance, it looked like a portable typewriter case, but Anya could see that tell-tale pair of bakelite headphones and a thin coil of brown cable, hastily pushed aside. A spy? That was obvious. But for which side?
  Anya took the biggest gamble of her life.
  "I live here. I'm a British agent. Sort of..."
  "How do I know that?" the girl said cooly.
  "I can prove it. Do you speak English?"
  "Maybe, but talking to me in English is no proof. For all I know you could be a collaborator spying on me. And –" she said as an afterthought "–if you are British, what are you doing here? You're not part of area six, I know that." The girl stopped abruptly, realizing she had just as good as admitted that she was a British agent.
  "I ran away from finishing school!" Anya blurted. "And I can prove it! Come with me."
  With the gun sticking in her back, Anya led the girl up the stairs and into the attic.
  "Look in that case," Anya pointed. After being instructed to stand facing the wall with her hands on her head, Anya watched out of the corner of her eye as the girl pull out various items from the suitcase. Agatha Christie novels, the photograph of her mother and father on the beach, her clothes (all with English labels in them, as Anya pointed out), two Chanel lipsticks and, as the girl reached the bottom of the case, assorted newspaper cuttings of Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth and Jane of the Daily Mirror strips were all scattered over the attic floor.
  "Alright, I believe you," the girl said at last, and lowered the gun. "I'm Adele. I trust your name is not really Yvette."
  "No, it's Anya. Anya Devlin," Anya replied, now speaking in English.
  "Polish?"
  "My grandfather was Polish," Anya explained.
  "Tell me how you got here, and I might be able to help you," Adele said.
  "Well, when I was five, my parents left me with an uncle. I haven't seen or heard from them since. My uncle sent me away to boarding school, and then to finishing school, here in France. I hated it so much I ran away. That was a few weeks before the invasion."
  "Didn't your he care that there was a pretty good chance that France would be invaded?" Adele asked.
  Anya shrugged. She didn't know and didn't care. Adele, seeing her discomfort, changed the subject.
  "But why, oh, why are you dressed like that?" she asked, pointing at the evening dress.
  Regaining her composure, Anya said stiffly:
  "I went on a date with a German Gefreiter – to get information," she added quickly after seeing Adele's skeptical glance.
  "How do you eat?"
  "I steal," Anya said flatly.
  "But you don't have any papers! If they catch you you'll be shot!" Adele exclaimed.
  "I know. That is a drawback."

Rudi stared down miserably at his shiny black boots, wishing he was in another country. Preferably England. He hadn't wanted to be a soldier, but he hadn't wanted to be shot as a traitor, either.
  He wasn't in that sort of trouble now, though. He was just being grilled for the third time about 'Yvette'.
  General von Fredrichs was circling him like a hawk.
  "So, tell me again. Where did you meet this girl?"
  "In a café, sir. Yesterday. I never saw her before then. She seemed nice, so as I had no-one else, I asked her if she wanted to come to the dance with me."
  "And then?" the General snapped.
  Rudi sighed. This was going to be a long night.