Chapter 19

Mid – late January 1969

My stomach flipped and my body backed away from the danger. As always, Mrs Henderson’s gaze sapped me of value. As the shock passed, my anger rose.

Those eyes maintained their unwavering, superior gaze. “Nothing to say for yourself, Colette? That’s unusual.” The statement was barbed, aimed to goad and reinforce her superiority.

I suppressed my desire to lash out. Our eyes stayed locked.

“You’ve done well.” The same sardonic tone and her face remained hard, giving the lie to any approval. “I had not expected you to rise so well to the challenges that you faced.”

What did she know?

I shook myself, struggling to hold my focus as her cutting scrutiny fanned my anger; I wanted a single thing from her. “Tell me where William Johnstone is.”

Her head cocked to one side as she leant on her furled umbrella. “But it seems your manners have not improved.”

I knew she was goading me, but I could not prevent my fingers from curling into fists at my side. “What you’ve done to me ... us ... has erased all niceties.” I swallowed, struggling to hold myself in check. “Where can I find him?”

A gust of wind fidgeted her hat and she reached up to steady it. “I don’t carry such trivial details in my head.” Her eyes remained fixed on mine, revealing nothing. “Come with me. We may have that information.” She stopped, a deliberate pause. “Or maybe not.”

After a moment, she walked past me, her swinging umbrella tapping out alternate steps as she headed towards the MI6 building. She walked with her nearly imperceptible limp, her gaze fixed firmly forwards. I hated she was in control again – still – but swallowed my fury and followed. I had no other choice.

She was at the traffic lights, waiting to cross the road. I stood beside her, but she didn’t acknowledge me, walking across the road and up the steps into the MI6 building without a sideways glance. I followed her, but stopped as she walked across the foyer to a security gate. She spoke for a second with a guard and then disappeared into the building.

The guard beckoned me over. “Take a seat, please, Miss. Someone will come for you shortly.” He pointed at a bench seat.

I walked towards the bench and stood. The exit beckoned – an escape from Mrs Henderson’s pitiless gaze. But if I did that, I wouldn’t learn how to find Willi. I walked to the bench and sat, clutching my handbag as I tried to contain the froth of anger, fear, hatred and hope swirling inside me.

This was classic Mrs Henderson, to make me feel yet more insignificant. After about ten minutes, the fight to contain myself was slipping from my control. A balding man in a suit came through the security gate. The guards pointed me out and he walked across.

“Miss Miller? Would you come with me, please? I’m Mr Pritchard.”

I stood, wary of anyone associated with Mrs Henderson. He shepherded me through the security gate and into the building. After riding up several floors in a lift and down a corridor, he showed me into a room containing a table with chairs on either side.

“Please take a seat.”

I walked towards the table and heard the door click shut as he slipped out behind me. When I tried the doorhandle, the door was locked – of course. The phone on the table was dead when I picked it up – no dial tone and no response to a jiggled cradle.

The wretched woman was imprisoning me again –as she did when Mutti and I first arrived in England.

With nothing else to do, I pulled out a chair and sat where I could watch the door. Another ten minutes passed, but it could have been longer. I was deciding I should buy a wristwatch when the door opened and Mrs Henderson walked in, closing the door behind her. She walked across to the table, placed a thick file on the table and stood looking down at me.

My file – or was it Willi’s? Surely, his wouldn’t be that thick?

I tried to read the name upside down – but it had a file number, no name.

The chair scraped across the floor and she sat, one hand resting on the file.

“You want to know where your friend is.”

A statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

Mrs Henderson sat, unmoving, her eyes slicing through my tiny store of anger-bolstered confidence, peeling away the puny defences I possessed.

“What do you have to trade for that information?” Her eyes were unwavering.

“What?” My brain reeled.

She raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Manners, Colette.” The admonishment was flat and hard.

We sat, her eyes conducting an assay of my value. “You want information. You’ve been involved in this for long enough to know that everything has a price. What can you offer in exchange?”

I swallowed my confusion as best I could. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple, Colette. You want something from me. I want something in return.”

This was crazy. “Do you know where Willi is?”

“Perhaps.” Mrs Henderson’s face gave nothing away.

I gritted my teeth in frustration. “But I don’t have anything to give you.” A thought occurred to me and my eyes narrowed. “You want me to give you ... money?”

“I’m aware of your recently acquired wealth.” Mrs Henderson’s lips curved, but her voice held no warmth. “No. Money is not what I’m after.” A finger moved on the file, tapping it once. “And now you’ve tried to bribe a public servant.”

I sat there. She’d reduced me to nothing – again. My shoulders slumped in defeat and my eyes fell to my hands, limp in my lap. “Please tell me what you want.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

There was silence from across the table and I dragged my eyes up to hers.

Had she heard me?

The eyes were waiting – judging, dismissive, devoid of empathy. The silence stretched. Mrs Henderson pulled the file towards her, leaning it against the table’s edge, denying me any view. She turned pages before stopping at one. “Your language skills have flourished in Australia.” She was speaking in French.

Now what?

“English, French, German, Polish and Russian.” She flipped another page. “What are you going to do with those languages?” She mused, then looked up, holding my eyes for a second, before leafing on through the file again. “Then there’s everything you learned from your mother while you worked for Mr Franks.” Her eyes rose to mine, lingered and then returned to the file.

I sat, stunned.

She knew I’d been working for Mr Franks. She knew they trained Mutti as a spy.

Her eyes lifted from the file, hard and uncompromising. “With the collapse of east Germany, all sorts of interesting information became available from the Stasi files.” She smiled wryly. “Those colonials in Australia never realised the resource they had in your mother.” She sniffed. “But then, neither did we. Your mother dissembled with admirable skill during her interrogation. Our contacts in east Germany gave us no hint she was not what she said – a simple translator.”

The file closed with a snap. “But that’s all water under the bridge.” She came upright in her chair. “Work for me and you’ll get to read our file on William Johnstone.”

“What?”

Mrs Henderson’s gaze was unchanged. It stripped the years from me and again I sat before her as in Lancaster, a naïve and powerless child.

“You have skills I would find useful.”

Confusion suppressed my ability to think. “You want ... me ... to come and work for you?”

She sat, unmoving.

Another question surfaced in my whirling brain. “Doing what?”

Those eyes lingered on me. “What you were doing in Australia – watching out for potential dissidents.”

I was dazed. “Here in London? How would I do that?”

Mrs Henderson’s eyes narrowed and I wilted under her disdain. “Of course, not here. In Germany – in your hometown of Leipzig, at least at first.”

My mouth dried at the thought of having, again, to live a lie. My tongue sought some saliva and I swallowed before I could speak. “You’ll let me read Willi’s file if I do that?”

“Eventually.” Her unblinking eyes held mine and her voice drew out the word.

“What does that mean?”

Mrs Henderson watched me for several breaths. “Once we have established mutual trust and understanding.”

“Mutual trust and understanding...” I almost spat out the words; anger and fear were bubbling in a dangerous cocktail close to the surface. “You expect me to work for you in the hope that, one day, you’ll tell me what I want to know?” My voice was rising with the anger. “You want me to trust you?”

Mrs Henderson’s face was unmoving.

I knew she would pull any trick to get what she wants.

A thought bubbled through the emotional turmoil. “Is he alive?” The words came out in a horrified gasp.

She sat motionless in unblinking silence and the room compressed around me – trapped with this hateful, manipulative woman.

“Your father is alive ... somewhere.”

She was threatening me again.

The chair crashed against the wall as I stood.

“Let me go.” I almost shouted it.

Mrs Henderson’s eyes remained on me as she raised the phone, speaking a single word. “Now.” Without taking her eyes off me, she replaced the handset.

The burst of anger that had got me to my feet faded and I stood, feeling foolish under the gaze of this puppet master. The door opened and Jennifer, my original interrogator, walked in. She handed Mrs Henderson a fat package, gave me the briefest acknowledgment with a glance and left.

Mrs Henderson placed the package on top of the file. “Sit down, Colette.”

Not sitting was the one thing I controlled. I remained standing.

Was that a hint of a frustrated sigh from Mrs Henderson?

Mrs Henderson opened the package and pulled out the Matryoshka, the Russian doll my mother gave me after a trip to Russia and ... my old diary. They had taken both items from me when we defected. I’d thought them lost forever.

With surgical precision, Mrs Henderson eviscerated the Russian doll, revealing the next smaller one. That precise disassembly continued until she had all six dolls lined up in front of her. Her eyes returned to mine with a simple message: to her I was less than the least of the dolls. Without looking down, she slid the diary across in front of where I had been sitting.

“Consider this as a gesture of goodwill.” But her eyes held no hint of any such thing. She pushed herself up from the chair, tucked the file under her arm and walked to the door. Placing her hand on the doorknob, she spoke without turning. “Contact me when you’re ready to start.”

She was that certain I would submit.

The door opened revealing a waiting Jennifer, who stood aside to let her superior leave. Jennifer’s face remained blank as she walked across and reassembled the doll. She held it out to me. “Come with me.” I picked up my diary and squeezed that and the doll into my handbag.

Jennifer’s eyes held something unexpected.

Sadness? Pity?

A few minutes later, I was again on the bridge, watching the river slip away beneath me as frustration and disappointment warred with fruitless anger. There must be a way to get the information I needed. Living the lies Mrs Henderson would require of me was a price I couldn’t pay.

I trudged through London to my flat, isolated and lost. I set my Matryoshka on the mantelpiece, pulled my diary from my handbag and dropped them both on a chair.

Trying to make some sort of personal connection, I wrote a long letter to Mutti, telling her about my encounter with Mrs Henderson, asking for her advice. I’d picked up some postcards earlier and tried to write a cheerful one to Lizzie. After staring at a card showing Tower Bridge, I managed a few words, telling her about my flat and inviting her to come and stay. Willi’s small portrait reminded me to write to the Nowaks, giving them my address and phone number.

That evening, I was sitting, not watching some drama on the TV, when the story caught my attention: a character was hiring a private investigator. A few minutes with the telephone directory showed London had quite a few. I did not know how to choose between them and selected one at random.

In the morning, I ran as usual in Hyde Park before heading out to meet the private investigator. But my resolve started to waiver.

What could an investigator do in the face of MI6? Should I tell him about MI6?

I found a café and had a coffee to settle myself. Sitting there, I racked my brain trying to think of some other way to find Willi. An hour later, I walked up the stairs beside a greengrocer in Wood Green. Several office doors lead off the landing; one proclaimed itself to be “Wallis Investigations”.

I knocked – without reply, but the door opened when I tried it. I found a desk with a typewriter and another door, through which I could hear an indistinct voice.

Someone on the phone?

A minute later the door opened to reveal a fair-haired man with an open and innocent face. He was in his early thirties.

He blinked. “Ah – right.” He waved at the desk and typewriter. “Let’s see if you can do better than the last one.”

I gave him a blank look. “Sorry?”

“You’re here about the secretary job – although I asked for an older woman, not some wet-behind-the-ears dolly bird.” He sniffed. “Well, sit down and I’ll give you some dictation.”

I smiled at him. “Mr Wallis, I think we are at cross-purposes. I’m not looking for a job.”

He blinked. “You’re not?”

“No, I’m not.” I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m thinking of hiring you to do some work for me.”

He blinked again, his fair complexion showing a faint blush. “Er ... sorry.” He gestured to his open office door. “Um ... please come in.”

He directed me to one of a pair of chairs beside a low table. “How can I help you ... er, Miss?”

“Miss Miller. I’m trying to find someone I’ve lost touch with.”

He reached round to his desk, grabbing a spiral notebook and biro off the blotter. “Go on.”

“He’s a young man, my age and probably studying physics at university somewhere in England, but we’ve been out of touch for several years.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve been in Australia.”

“I see. Please go on.”

“Before we go further, I need to find out if you can do this sort of work.

He gave me a confused look.

“Please tell me about your organisation.” I looked towards the empty outer office.

He looked at me for a few seconds. “It’s only me at present – but as you know, I’m trying to hire a secretary.” An embarrassed smile flitted across his face.

“How much experience do you have?”

“Oh – I have lots of investigative experience ... with the Met.”

“The Met?”

“The Metropolitan Police. I left them last month to set up my business.”

This sounded fishy.

“When you say left, were you sacked?”

Mr Wallis frowned. “No, absolutely not. I still have excellent contacts in the Met.” He gave me a thoughtful gaze. “The job ... frustrated me.”

He considered what to tell me.

“You see, there’s an increasing number of young people running away from home and turning up in London – and the Met can do little for the parents looking for them unless they’re in danger. The Met can’t help those, so I will – for a fee.”

I smiled at him. “How much are your fees?”

“They’re one pound ten shillings an hour.” He paused for a second and added. “Plus expenses.”

“Umm ... how many hours do you think it would take to find my friend?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Tell me more about him and I’ll do some research.”

“How much will that cost?”

He smiled at me. “Pay me twenty pounds as an advance and I’ll start. When it runs out, I’ll let you know.”

I pulled my handbag up from the floor beside me and he stood up.

“Where are you going?”

He sat down. “Umm ... I thought you were about to walk out.”

I opened my bag and pulled four five-pound notes out of my purse. “Here you are.”

Mr Wallis’ eyes widened in surprise. “You’re hiring me?”

I waved the notes at him. “What does this look like?” I softened the words with a smile.

He reached across and took the notes. “Umm ... thank you.” He folded the money and stuffed it into a trouser pocket. He seemed dazed.

“Aren’t you going to give me a receipt?”

“Umm ... right.” He went behind the desk and rummaged in the drawers, returning with a receipt book. He slipped the carbon paper behind the first page and started writing. “Miss Miller, is it?”

“Karlota Miller.”

He finished writing and tore out my copy, handing it to me. “You’d better tell me about this young man you want me to find.”

Over the next ten minutes, I gave him a carefully edited background for Willi, leaving out all references to MI6.

He looked down at his notes. “Er ... what school did he go to?”

“I’ve tried there – but they won’t give information about students unless you’re a relative.”

“But tell me anyway, for completeness.”

Now what do I do?

He picked up my hesitation. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“You can’t tell anyone this, but I contacted one of Willi’s teachers, who passed Willi’s information on to me. But it must have got jumbled up as the address doesn’t actually exist, nor does the university course they said he was studying.”

Mr Wallis gave me a lengthy look. “Okay – one last question. Why do you call him Willi? Johnstone isn’t a German name.”

I smiled. “No – he’s not German, though he speaks German fluently. It’s me that’s German – on my mother’s side.”

The fluent half-truths keep coming...

Mr Wallis looked through the notes he’d made.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I search for him, starting with births, deaths and marriages.”

He picked up my stifled reaction, awarding me a considered look. “What now?”

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