A Game of Spies (11 page)

“Very much so. Thank you.”

“Then why the long face?”

He shrugged, sipped his pint, and tapped an ash into the ashtray.

“I hear you've got a son,” she said. “I suppose I should say congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Should
say. Not
will
say.”

“Gracious as ever. Dear heart.”

“Let's slip out back, into the alley. For old time's sake.”

“Margery, love—I've got to go. Take care.”

He stood. She looked after him as he shrugged into his coat, tipped an imaginary hat, and went.

Once outside Deacon cupped his hand over his nose and blew into it. The beer was still on his breath. Oldfield would not approve. He dug through his pockets, found a sprig of spearmint, and popped it into his mouth.

Before taking the short stroll to Leconfield House, he stood for a moment, chewing on the spearmint and thinking. He had told Oldfield he would have his decision by today. Yet Deacon felt no closer to making the decision than he had a week before, when Oldfield had first approached him about the mission.

He found himself looking at his hands. They were open, turned up to face the muttering sky. A fine metaphor for his predicament, he thought—six in the one hand, half a dozen in the other.

On the first hand were responsibility, common sense, and prudence. He had never met William Hobbs in person, but the man's reputation had preceded him. If Hobbs was half the lout that most of the men around Whitehall believed him to be, then undertaking the mission would be tantamount to committing suicide. For Hobbs, according to the conventional wisdom around MI6, was working for the Nazis. He had been dodgy even before he had gone over there; and since his arrival, much to Oldfield's chagrin, he had fallen off schedule. Even if he
was
still loyal, he lacked something in steadiness. By trying to take such a man out of Germany, Deacon might well be handing the Nazis a prototype aircraft, not to mention an experienced RAF pilot. His wife and son would be left without a father.

That was on the one hand.

But Deacon had never been renowned for his prudence. And on the other hand were the nobler virtues: justice, courage, loyalty, and honor. Assuming that Hobbs was not working for the Nazis—that he had a lion's heart beating somewhere under his con man's façade, and that he had successfully completed his own operation in Germany—then he would need to be evacuated. As would the Bernhardt girl, who might possibly be in possession of intelligence that could help them to win the war.

On the one hand: responsibility, common sense, and prudence. On the other: justice, courage, loyalty, and honor.

It was really no contest at all.

He spat out the spearmint and went to keep his meeting.

The old-fashioned lift carried him to the fifth floor with its ancient gears creaking loudly; Deacon operated the lever himself.

He had not set foot inside Leconfield House for several months, since before the start of the war—but little around the War Office, he thought, seemed to have changed. The teak-inlaid halls still smelled musty and close. The men and women sitting behind their heavy black typewriters still looked weary and distracted. The crossword puzzle of that morning's
Times
was in evidence, in various stages of completion, on the corner of nearly every desk.

He marched down the corridor and then paused before a door at the end: the Director General's office. He knocked twice, waited for the light above the door to flash green, and then stepped into an airy chamber dominated by a long polished conference table, with heavy red sashes framing a tall, rain-streaked window.

Cecil Oldfield was bent over a map on the conference table. He beckoned Deacon closer without looking up.

“Three hundred feet exactly,” Oldfield said, pointing to a spot on the map. “I'm afraid it doesn't leave much room for error.”

Deacon joined him as the door closed softly behind them.

The map represented the town of Gothmund, huddled against the Trave River on the outskirts of Lübeck. The three hundred feet to which Oldfield had referred represented the field in which Deacon would be landing his prototype Lysander—or trying to land it, as the case may be.

“As far as we know, the field's empty,” Oldfield said. “Too marshy for farming. But of course, we haven't had any trustworthy firsthand reports for too long now.”

Deacon leaned down, looking closer. “Marshy,” he repeated.

“Don't worry; the thaw hasn't taken yet. You shouldn't get stuck in any mud. We hope.”

“Hm.”

“So. Have you reached a decision?”

Deacon's mouth felt suddenly dry. When he spoke, however, his voice was clear. “I'm game,” he said.

“Good,” Oldfield said smoothly. He hardly sounded surprised. “If all goes well, you'll be on the ground for less than a minute. The girl should be waiting there with Hobbs. There may be others with them: perhaps the fisherman, Brandt, perhaps even the OKW clerk.” He looked up, into Deacon's eyes from a distance of about six inches. Oldfield was a gallows-thin man with muttonchop sideburns and a ruddy complexion. From this close distance, he smelled vigorously of tobacco. “Or perhaps a division or two of Hitler's finest,” he said sourly.

Deacon nodded briefly.

“Now here”—Oldfield's finger moved over the map—“is Brandt's home, along a road called the Fischerweg, which runs in front of a row of little cottages. If things go wrong—terribly wrong—you might want to make a try for it. It's less than a quarter mile from the landing zone. I'll give you some information concerning the remnants of our underground network in Germany, such as it is. If worse comes to worst, you'll take the girl into hiding. Then try to get over the border with her, wherever you can manage it. Although if it comes to that …”

Deacon nodded again. He straightened, suddenly feeling considerably older than his twenty-six years. “When do I go?” he asked.

“Three days. Try to get some rest before then, hm? You'll want your eyes as sharp as possible for this one.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Remember,” Oldfield said. “No repercussions if you come back empty-handed.”

Deacon smiled to himself. These strange times, he thought, had even taken a toll on an old bulldog such as Oldfield.

“Uncle Cecil,” he said. “I do believe you're getting soft, in your old age.”

On the way back to Bayswater, Deacon found his mind roaming.

He thought for a time of his wife and his newborn son. Thinking of them was a luxury; he allowed himself exactly three minutes. Then he harrumphed, rearranging himself in the backseat of the Bentley, and forced his mind in a new direction. If he thought of his family for too long, he might find an excuse to change his mind about accepting the mission. And that would not do.

He looked at the balding crown on the back of his driver's head, thinking for a few empty seconds of nothing in particular; then his mind turned to the upcoming operation.

If it had been a suicide mission, he would not have accepted it. He had responsibilities now, as his wife was so keen on pointing out. But it was not a suicide mission. Just damned close.

He remembered his first meeting with Oldfield on the subject, a week before. His uncle had given it to him straight, as they had stood inside the swaying army surplus tent and inspected the prototype Lysander Mark III.

“Lately,” Oldfield said, “I've been thinking I was wrong in the head to work with Hobbs in the first place. But while I had him in my sight, I felt right enough about him. He has a way of putting people at ease. A skill he learned on the street, no doubt. Now that he's gone, however, I've been wondering. He might be rotten to the core; and even if he's not, he may prove incapable of doing what we need done.”

Deacon had been looking over the plane as Oldfield had spoken. The Lysander had been modified with an external fuel tank holding 150 gallons, providing an endurance of eight hours' flying time. A ladder had been fitted to the fuselage to allow quick access to and from the ground. All in all, the prototype had turned out brilliantly. Oldfield had mentioned that they would be doing up more of the little planes in this fashion, in case the war dragged on.

“This is an important one,” Oldfield continued. “Our intelligence on the Wehrmacht's plans is sketchy at best. I've got a memo from Deuxième Bureau on my desk predicting a mid-March offensive against the Netherlands and Belgium, to be accompanied by air attacks on London and Paris. Then another correcting the information: no offensive against Belgium, but a certain attack on the Netherlands. Then another warning of an attack at the Maginot Line, with no movement in Belgium
or
the Netherlands. The truth is, it's a big bloody mess.”

They'd strolled leisurely back across Heathrow airfield following the brief inspection. Heathrow had been the perfect site for their meeting: modest to the point of humility, featuring no permanent buildings, let alone a runway. Nearby Heston and Hanworth Park were the places that came to mind when one thought of an airfield. And so those were the places that the Fifth Columnists might be watching. Heathrow itself was below suspicion.

Before leaving Oldfield, that day, Deacon had paused to look back at the single army tent that concealed the prototype Lysander. A drizzle had started, tossing the tails of his Burberry coat.

“Think it through,” Oldfield said. “Talk it over with the wife. See what you decide.”

In retrospect, Deacon realized that Oldfield had known him better than he had known himself. He had been counting on Deacon's pride. Pilots did not turn away from dangerous missions; they lived for them.

Deacon suffered no shortage of pride. Not only was he the best pilot he knew in the RAF, but he was one of the few, in this Phony War, with any combat experience. He had been a part of the confetti campaign, dropping propaganda leaflets onto Germany. Not that everybody would have considered that
combat experience,
of course. A joke had been making the rounds lately, summing up the peculiar lot of the confetti campaign pilots. An airman, the joke went, found himself in serious trouble after dropping a bundle of leaflets without separating them first. The brick of pamphlets had plummeted straight down onto Berlin like a paper bomb.
Good God,
the airman's superior said in chastising him,
You might have killed someone!

Deacon smiled, very slightly, in the back of the Bentley.

It was important to keep one's sense of humor, in strange times such as these.

PART TWO

7

PRINZ ALBRECHT STRASSE

“Herr Inspektor
?” a voice said.

The voice belonged to Hauptmann, standing in the doorway with his russet hair slightly disheveled, a small spot of blood staining the lapel of his otherwise spotless uniform.

“Herr Hauptmann,” Frick said. “The interrogation is finished?”

“Frau Gehl has left this world,
Herr Inspektor.
But her husband is still with us.”

“And?”

“He has admitted to sheltering the Engländer, and to providing him with supplies. And he has confirmed that Hobbs moved on very shortly before our arrival yesterday. He has only the car, some food, and some water. According to Herr Gehl, the man is unarmed.”

“His destination?”

A wrinkle of frustration creased Hauptmann's forehead. “Gehl claims ignorance. When I mention the radio transmitter, he denies ever having seen it.”

“But it was found in his home.”

“The man is stubborn,
Herr Inspektor.
Surprisingly so.”

“Is he aware of the fate of his wife?”

“He is. And since her death, he has become even more obstinate. Perhaps it was a miscalculation on my part …”

“Do not concern yourself,” Frick said. “I will pay a visit to the man myself as soon as I've finished here.”

“Thank you,
Herr Inspektor
.”

When Hauptmann had gone, Frick turned his attention back to the file on his desk. It was a description of Salon Kitty, the premier brothel in Berlin. Salon Kitty was a favorite haunt of top-ranking Gestapo agents and visiting diplomats. But according to the file, the brothel might also serve a more nefarious purpose. The author of the report put forth the theory that in reality Salon Kitty was a pet project of Reinhard Heydrich's, and a front for the SD. If one were to look behind the walls, the report posited, one might possibly find a network of hidden microphones and tape recorders. Heydrich might be bolstering his secret security files on the Gestapo by collecting ammunition for blackmail.

It was, Frick knew, completely true. And this was one reason that Hagen had placed him in the Gestapo, so that he could intercept material like this file before it garnered too much attention. He reached for a pen and scratched a note in the margin of the report:
Speculative.
After thinking for a few seconds, he added a postscript.
This type of report fosters suspicion between the security organs of the Reich. In all future …

He finished writing his note in the margin, and then pushed back and went to pay a visit to Herr Gehl.

The infamous “house prison” of Number 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse consisted of thirty-nine cells in the building's cellar: damp concrete chambers smelling of niter, frightened sweat, and human excrement. Frick came off the staircase, paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the crepuscular gloom, conferred briefly with a guard, and was escorted to the cell containing Ernst Gehl.

Gehl was strapped to a steel table, held fast by leather restraints. Beside the table was a single chair. Beside the chair was a medical tray lined with implements. In the cell's corner, obscured by shadows, stood a piece of equipment—rubber-clad cables, an electrical transformer, metal clips smeared with clotting blood.

Frick nodded at the guard, put a hand on the chair, pulled it to the edge of the steel table, and sat.