Hoods and Bots: Part Sixteen by Irena Szirtes

credit: Canva/Irena Szirtes

 “Mia, have you heard of...  Garbo?” Roland sipped hot coffee, while Gyp sat beside the chair, nudging his free hand for caresses now the working day was done.

“Greta Garbo, the twentieth century film star?” 

“No, just... Garbo. He was Hitler’s...  spymaster. Hitler trusted him absolutely, but he was working...  for the allies, for people like your ancestors... all the time.”

I took my attention from the other collie, Mac, who’d settled on the sofa beside me, and looked up Garbo on my device. Juan Pujol Garcia, codename Garbo, Spanish; learned to hate extremism through the Spanish Civil War; created a false identity as a pro-Nazi official; operated first from Lisbon, then from Britain, a double agent posing as Hitler’s Spymaster. 

“I didn’t know about him.”

“Garbo was my... role model. I wanted to do what... he did.”

“You mean, what Victor said - you really were Mars, and trusted by Benson Parry?”

“Completely... until Kellerman.” 

“And you were his Spymaster, but all the time serving the Resistance?”

He shrugged. “I tried.” 

“So the locket was... ”

“Just a double-agent’s tool. You transmit...  false information.”

“Were you a double agent for long?”

He nodded. “But it got... complicated. No, I got... complicated.”

He shook his head slowly; darkness settled on him, and I let him be for a while, until he said, “I thought I’d tell you some... truth.” 

“So – Victor,” I went on, the whole confusing muddle coming back to me. Victor’s staring eyes, the manipulating of his long beautifully  muscled limbs into that body bag, his still-living scent in the jacket Roland gave me, vied with the recurring  image of the dead guard on the railway bank. I felt unclean, even though rape hadn’t happened, even though it hadn’t  been me who wielded the smart gun. 

“So, did Victor know?”

“If he’d known I was a... double agent, if he’d known for sure I was...  informing the Resistance, he'd have killed us... both.”

I still couldn’t get my head round Victor being in the pay of the Regime.

“So, you knew he was working for Parry?”

“Not really.  It was a split-second...  realisation, a calculated guess. When he said he was Sully...”   

That made little sense to me. Sully had been Radical, an ambusher of Bots. 

“You didn’t know he was Sully?”

“No one did. All we knew was... Sully murdered Bots.  But I’d noticed something - that’s a spy’s job -  many  of Sully’s victims had... fallen from favour with...  Parry – failed on a mission... bungled an arrest... used the black market.  It was too much... coincidence. I took a gamble, listened to instinct,  if you will. Being Radical was the perfect... cover, but Parry must have paid him handsomely.  If I’d been wrong...”

 He didn’t need spell it out. I shuddered to think anyone could be an instinct away from certain death. 

“So, Benson Parry paid Victor to kill you?”

“To kill me if I failed... the test. To kill me if I pleaded to Sully I was... double agent.  Kellerman had suspected me... for a while, but Parry trusted me,  wouldn’t...  hear it. But Parry is nothing if not... paranoid.  Victor was paid to set the trap, carry out sentence if Kellerman proved... right.” 

“So you took a gamble. But what if Victor had really been Radical?”

“I’d be dead, but you’d have been...  safe.” 

“You thought about that?”

“I thought about everything in those...  few seconds.”

“Was it because of Kellerman you came to us when you did?”

“Resistance pulled me out, cut my old chip away with Bot... credentials. Kellerman was one reason, yes.”

“One reason?”

He looked away, and dropped his head. The sight of him on the bench with Frank flashed across my mind.

“Does Frank know? Another reason, I mean?”

He nodded, but would say no more.