Vandam thought: How does she do this to me? She kept him always off balance, with her teasing and her insight, her innocent face and her long brown limbs. He said: “Catching spies can be very satisfying work, but I don’t love it.” “What happens to them when you’ve caught them?” “Then hang, usually.” “Oh.” He had managed to throw her off balance for a change. She shivered. He said: “Losers generally die in wartime.” “Is that why you don’t love it-because they hang?” “No. I don’t love it because I don’t always catch them.” “Are you proud of being so hardhearted?” “I don’t think I’m hardhearted. We’re trying to kill more of them than they can kill us.” He thought: How did I come to be defending myself? She got up to pour him another drink. He watched her walk across the room. She moved gracefully-like a cat, he thought; no, like a kitten. He looked at her back as she stooped to pick up the cocktail shaker, and he wondered what she was wearing beneath the yellow dress. He noticed her hands as she poured the drink: they were slender and strong. She did not give herself another martini. He wondered what background she came from. He said: “Are your parents alive?” “No,” she said abruptly. “I’m sorry,” he said. He knew she was lying. “Why did you ask me that?” “Idle curiosity. Please forgive me.” She leaned over and touched his arm lightly, brushing his skin with her fingertips, a caress as gentle as a breeze. “You apologize too -nuch.” She looked away from him, as if hesitating; and then, seeming to yield to an impulse, she began to tell him of her background. She had been the eldest of five children in a desperately poor family. Her parents were cultured and loving people”My father taught me English and my mother taught me to wear clean clothes,” she said-but the father, a tailor, was ultraorthodox and had estranged himself from the rest of the Jewish community in Alexandria after a doctrinal dispute with the ritual slaughterer. When Elene was fifteen years old her father began to go blind. He could no longer work as a 106 Ken Follett
tailor-but he would neither ask nor accept help from the “back-sliding” Alexandrian Jews. Elene went as a live-in maid to a British home and sent her wages to her family. From that point on, her story was one which had been repeated, Vandain knew, time and again over the last hundred years in the homes of the British ruling class: she fell in love with the son of the house, and he seduced her. She had been fortunate in that they had been found out before she became pregnant. The son was sent away to university and Elene was paid off. She was terrified to return home to tell her father she had been fired for fornication-and with a gentile. She lived on her payoff, continuing to send home the same amount of cash each week, until the money ran out. Then a lecherous businessman whom she had met at the house had set her up in a flat, and she was embarked upon her life’s work. Soon afterward her father had been told how she was living, and he made the family sit shiva for her. “What is shivaT’Vandam asked. “Mourning.” Since then she had not heard from them, except for a message from a friend to tell her that her mother had died. Vandam said: “Do you hate your father?” She shrugged. “I think it turned out rather well.” She spread her arms to indicate the apartment. “But are you happy?” She looked at him. Twice she seemed about to speak and then said nothing. Finally she looked away. Vandam felt she was regretting the impulse that had made her tell him her life story. She changed the subject. “What brings you here tonight, Major?” Vandam collected his thoughts. He had been so interested in her-watching her hands and her eyes as she spoke of her past-that be had forgotten for a while his purpose. “I’m still looking for Alex Wolff,” he began. “I haven’t found him, but I’ve found his grocer.” “How did you do that?” He decided not to tell her. Better that nobody outside Intelligence should know that German spies were betrayed by their forged money. “That’s a long story,” he said. “The important thing is, I want to put someone inside the shop in case he comes back.” THE KEY TO REBECCA 107 “Me.” “That’s what I had in mind.” “Then, when he comes in, I hit him over the head with a bag of sugar and guard the unconscious body until you come along.” Vandam laughed. “I believe you would,” he said. “I can just see you leaping over the counter.” He realized how much he was relaxing, and resolved to pull himself together before he made a fool of himself. “Seriously, what do I have to do?” she said. “Seriously, you have to discover where he lives.” “How?” “I’m not sure.” Vandam hesitated. “I thought perhaps you might befriend him. You’re a very attractive woman-1 imagine it would he easy for you.” “What do you mean by ‘befriend’?” “That’s up to you. Just as long as you get his address.” “I see.” Suddenly her mood had changed, and there was bitterness in her voice. The switch astonished Vandam: she was too quick for him to follow her. Surely a woman like Elene would not be offended by this suggestion? She said: “Why don’t you just have one of your soldiers follow him home?” “I may have to do that, if you fail to win his confidence. The trouble is, he might realize he was being followed and shake off the tail- -then he would never go back to the grocer’s, and we would have lost our advantage. But if you can persuade him, say, to invite you to his house for dinner, then we’ll get the information we need without tipping mir hand. Of course, it might not work. Both alternatives are risky. But I prefer the subtle approach.” “I understand that.” Of course she understood, Vandam thought; the whole thing was as plain as day. What the devil was the matter with her? She was a strange woman: at one moment he was quite enchanted by her, and at the next he was infuriated. For the first time it crossed his mind that she might refuse to do what he was asking. Nervously he said: “Will you help me?” She got up and filled his glass again, and this time she took another drink herself. She was very tense, but it was clear she was not willing to tell him why. He always felt very annoyed 108 Ken Follett