She smiled up at him, thinking what a charming but impossible dream that was. They were undercover spies in one of the most dangerous places on earth. If they made it through another day alive it would be a miracle.
‘After the war,’ she assured him as she started to unbutton his uniform. ‘We can think about all that after this war is ended and we have won.’
It felt surreal as her hands ran down the grey woollen cloth of his tunic, with the black-and-silver Iron Cross he’d won for bravery reminding her he had belonged to the Third Reich before her, that he still did. She removed the clothes of the enemy to reveal the man she loved inside. Before they knew it, they were undressed and urgently seeking one another, finally able to satisfy the hunger that burned like a raging fire through both of them. Their lovemaking felt all the more exquisite because they could get lost in their pleasure, when so much of their time was preoccupied by their fear and anguish. They made love for hours that first night, indulging in the pure bliss of one another as the weight of the world around them disappeared.
Once she had her new papers, Vivi’s way of life became even more intense than when she was in France with SOE. She’d gone from the relative ease of living in Cornwall again to being in league with a spy, working for and being in love with a man the world saw as a Nazi. Becoming Marcus’s secretary, she wore the Nazi uniform, and each day as she walked through the streets of Paris and approached the building where her enemy waited for her she wondered if that day would be her last, if one misstep would change everything. The only high point for her was she got a chance to see Marcus in his work, every day, and she was in awe, not only of Marcus as a human being, a simple man she was in love with, but at his skill at fooling the Reich and maintaining his calm, calculating demeanour in every situation. Driven by his desire to defeat Hitler, he was meticulous in his deception.
One of his jobs for the Germans was to examine and correlate all the information coming in about the Allies’ movements and brief his commanders. But instead of doing that he would carefully change documents to advance the Allies’ cause. It was a nail-biting roller coaster for her on a daily basis. Also, knowing that back home she was probably being perceived as a traitor broke her heart, especially when she thought of her father and her siblings. The one thing that propelled her forward was the thought of the people she had already let down, who had probably been arrested or, indeed, worse. The brave people she had met who had inspired her. She wanted no more needless deaths because of her. She owed them all her life and service and she believed bringing down the Nazis from within was their greatest hope.
As well as working with Marcus, she tried desperately to find out what had happened to the Renoirs, but even via Marcus’s high-level Resistance contacts, there was no news of her friends.
Some of those early nights, when Marcus was sleeping deeply, she would sob into her pillow, heavy with the guilt. Yvette with her curious eyes and mane of blonde hair, her perfect life as a fashion designer ahead of her, or Monsieur Renoir with his hunched figure and contemplative nature, both fiercely protected by the fiery presence of Maman. She had to do this for them. What was the price of her reputation in comparison to the risks other people had taken to keep her alive?
With her false papers now in order, and with Marcus’s recommendation, it had been easier to slide into a job with the Reich than she’d foreseen. At his office, and with her excellent linguistic skills, it had been easy for Vivi to move into the position of his assistant. Her cover story was that she had been working for the Third Reich from the beginning of the war, even pretending to be a wireless operator for a time to get intelligence on the Parisian underground. Marcus would brandish about her story to other officers and brag about her earlier ‘betrayal’ of SOE groups in France as if it were a tremendous gain for the Third Reich, explaining away the reason she wasn’t still there pretending to work for the British as due to the fact she’d come under suspicion. The higher in command seemed to accept the story, even showing admiration about the fact such a beautiful woman shared Marcus’s office, obviously a perk for a man who had such a distinguished standing in the Nazi Party.
There was only one officer who seemed distrustful of her; he was one of Marcus’s peers, Captain Von Klaus, a squirrel of a man with beady eyes that pierced her with his gaze. They had been at a party when she’d been introduced to him, and he’d taken an automatic dislike to her.
‘You’re German?’ he spat out with a great deal of disbelief in his tone.
Vivi nodded. The cover story she and Marcus had come up with was that she’d been born in Berlin, a place she had stayed many times with her mother during her European trips before the war.
‘How did you meet her, Major Vonstein?’ he demanded, glaring at her sceptically as Marcus sidled up to Vivi’s side. With great irritation, Von Klaus swung around and addressed Marcus. ‘We have to be vigilant, Major Vonstein. Do you know everything about this woman?’ he said in an accusatory way.
‘I can assure you,’ Vivi spat back before Marcus could even answer him, ‘I am most trustworthy. I am here for the Third Reich, and the Führer. I even worked as one of our mighty leader’s secretaries in an office in Berlin, and if the Führer trusts me, I hope you would see fit to do the same.’
The officer was taken aback. Hitler’s name carried a tremendous deal of weight, and no one wished to do anything that would make him look foolish.
He grunted and finished his drink. ‘Well, I hope that you turn out to be all that you appear to be,’ he declared, strutting away briskly.
Marcus gave her a sideward glance. They didn’t speak about it until later that evening when they got home. After he had taken off his uniform, she drew close to him as he stared out the window across the Parisian night sky, awash with a million stars.
‘Do you think he’ll be a problem?’ she enquired.
‘I’m not sure.’
She noted the anguish in his eyes. ‘What is it, Marcus?’
He searched her face. ‘Vivi, when we left Cornwall, all I could think about was getting back here so I could continue the work of SOE. And now I wonder, with my British contact being dead and being so deep undercover, is what I do worth it? And then I look at you and realise I’ve brought you into this, and I feel terrible. I am just not sure how this will turn out, and I am responsible.’
She turned him to look at her. ‘Listen to me, Marcus. This was my choice. I, too, have ideals I’m serving – my conscience, the higher good – and I owe many people in my life. I recognise the danger, and honestly…’ She paused, weighing her words before she admitted, ‘I never expected to return home to Cornwall. And if I did, imagine how I would be perceived. I’m not here officially undercover, I’m not even here with SOE, but I know what we’re doing is right. We have a higher purpose. People may never know what we’ve done or why we’re doing it. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to do it.’
He smiled. ‘How did you become so wise?’
She laughed, slipping her arms around his waist. ‘I don’t feel very wise. I feel small – an insignificant piece of something so much bigger. But I want to do my best. I want to do the right thing for my country. Meeting you and falling in love was a wonderful benefit I could have never foreseen.’