Page 29 of Echoes of Betrayal

When they exited the private banking sanctuary and had stepped beneath the arcades, Pemberton turned to Lizzie. ‘What was that all about, do you imagine? Has the chap taken a fancy to you or something? I’ve never been called back for such a minor amendment.’

Lizzie kept her expression deadpan as he ranted about the inconvenience. When he had finished griping, she said, ‘I don’t need to tell you what sticklers for detail the Swiss are. Better to cross the Is and Ts now with a little extra effort than to discover later they voided the contract.’

Pemberton sucked his bottom lip as he contemplated Lizzie’s summary. ‘Yes, you make a good point. I confess I grow impatient with the administrative side of things.’

Lizzie assured her boss that she enjoyed that aspect of the work.

Pemberton continued, ‘Personally, I think the man’s a nitpicker, but what can one do? These Swiss bankers like to do things their own way.’

Lizzie exhaled. Pemberton had bought her version of events and said no more of it. The car dropped her back at the Legation, and he wished her good morning and sped off to his next engagement.

Back in the office, she took advantage of the rare absence of his secretary, who was down with a cold, and she let herself into his office and poked around in his files. After ten minutes, she heard footsteps approaching, and then the door opened slowly. Lizzie had jumped away from the filing cabinet when she heard the footsteps, and now she leaned over the desk. She raised her head and saw one of the junior secretaries in the gap.

‘Sorry,’ the secretary said, her cheeks flushing pink. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘Nothing to apologise for,’ Lizzie assured her. ‘I was just checking the details of some paperwork, but I’m finished now.’

The secretary rested some typed letters on the desk, and Lizzie let herself out.

Something wasn’t right about Pemberton, but she had found nothing incriminating. Wishing she could talk it over with Jack, she shrugged her arms into her coat and put on her hat. Since her lucky yellow scarf was ruined and had to be discarded, she’d taken to wearing a Bordeaux-coloured item of clothing on her missions. Jack teased her, saying she was terribly superstitious, but that there was no harm in it. ‘Anything that helps keep you happy gets my vote,’ he said when she showed him her Bern wardrobe.

Spring had arrived, but it was still cold, and as she stepped outside, the bracing wind rushed into her face. At the café, Ursula served her in her usual good spirits, and Lizzie ate lunch whilst surveying the other patrons. Over to one side of the café, she noticed the same man who had been there when Brunner had left the crossword clues for her. It couldn’t be just coincidence.

She must be under surveillance by several agents, which presented an additional layer of complexity to overcome when she went to collect Brunner’s next package. If someone had indeed followed her into her building, she’d evaded them by the skin of her teeth. How would she manage to collect the package that afternoon without being spotted?

CHAPTER 28

Lizzie turned the problem over in her mind, this way and that, but with no satisfactory solution. On this mission, she was alone with no Jack or Hannah at her side to step in when she needed to outwit a potential shadow. As she translated the latest pile of documents from Pemberton, her thoughts whirred in the background.

She couldn’t leave the package overnight when she knew it would be there this afternoon. That wasn’t fair to Brunner, who had taken the trouble to manufacture a way to get her into his office to confirm the first package was in safe hands and tell her he would leave her another one. He was risking his reputation and even his life by raising his head above the parapet like this, and she must rise to the occasion and have his back.

The man in the café clearly had an agenda, but what was it? And how far would he go in his surveillance? These were the questions that burned into Lizzie’s consciousness as she translated the mundane documents about wartime commerce. She was alert for anything unusual that would confirm her suspicions about Pemberton, but so far nothing substantial backed up her theory. He could be a bit slimy, but Lizzie reasoned that didn’t mean he was corrupt. Her imagination was running away with her again, and she was seeing spies and traitors on every corner. Shaking her head as if to rid her thoughts of the plague of suspicions consuming her, she completed the latest batch of translations and knocked on Pemberton’s door.

‘Just a moment,’ he called out, his voice loud and commanding, stopping Lizzie in her tracks.

She stood there, wondering whether to leave and try again later. There were a few things she needed him to sign off on. Then she heard his voice on the other side of the door. No one had joined him for a meeting, so she assumed he was talking on the phone.

Lizzie glanced around and saw one secretary immersed in typing, facing the other way. The others were not at their desks, so she hovered on the spot, holding the sheaf of papers, and then leaned as close to the door as she could get without obviously eavesdropping if someone saw her.

Some of what he said floated through the door. ‘Don’t worry. I will follow through on our agreement.’

No matter how she strained, she couldn’t hear the next sentence, which came after a brief pause when he must have listened to the response. His words were muted, and she muttered under her breath. ‘Damn it.’

Val’s propensity to curse had rubbed off on her during the years of sharing her office, and Lizzie used language she would never have dreamt of using before the war. Her mother occasionally reprimanded her, but Lizzie noticed even her mother, who was so well-spoken and proper, occasionally used words that she too would not have used before. The war had changed them all—some more than others.

The sound of the receiver slamming onto the cradle jolted Lizzie out of her reverie, and she heard Pemberton call out, ‘Come in if you are still there.’

Lizzie opened the door and approached him with the documents that needed his attention. She wondered what agreement he was following through on. It sounded suspicious, but could quite easily have been innocent. It was part of the Commercial Attaché’s job to make and adhere to agreements, after all.

Pemberton switched into what she recognised as his appeasing mode. ‘The line was so poor that I could barely hear a word. Apologies for the slight delay. This all looks good, though. Wonderful job as always, Elizabeth.’

Lizzie smiled and thanked him as if she had no suspicions whatsoever, but his overcompensating only made her suspect him more. He was being far too complimentary in the circumstances.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of activity, and when Lizzie checked the clock, it showed just after 5 p.m. Her thorny problem was still not resolved. She’d considered popping out earlier. Knowing what she knew of intelligence services, she might still be under intermittent surveillance as a newcomer, but she doubted she was important enough as a lower-level legation employee to warrant round-the-clock eyes on her. If anything, she’d be followed when she left work, but it had been a moot point as she couldn’t get away earlier anyway, and hadn’t even gone out for lunch. Now she was itching to hurry over to the Old Town, but she couldn’t risk it. If she were followed leaving the office, they might spot her retrieving Brunner’s dead-drop. Lizzie had some level of diplomatic cover, but she wasn’t a minister with full diplomatic immunity. She must be cautious, especially as she needed the flow of intelligence from Brunner to be ongoing if she were to get the irrefutable proof for London.

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps Brunner was being watched, too. She wouldn’t put it past Swiss counterintelligence to monitor influential bankers when so much was at stake. If what the Allies suspected was true about the extent of Swiss collaboration with the Nazis, they would be wary about who might expose what they were up to. But she concluded it was unlikely they would suspect Brunner, who had everything to gain financially from the situation. No one was holding the bankers to account in Switzerland as far as Lizzie could understand, and if anything, they were encouraged to launder more ill-gotten gains from the German war chest.

Had Brunner been followed when he left the dead drop for her? Surely his shadow would have taken the package himself. Unless, of course, they were laying a trap for them both and letting them get in so deep they would gather all the evidence they needed for when the time was right to arrest them.