A Game of Spies (23 page)

But his vengeance would be softer, subtler, more honorable. The Germans, on that night in October 1915, had pummeled their enemies with a clenched fist of fire. Now he would find retribution with a glove of silk. He would peck them a stolen kiss in the night, and at the same time would sweep their plans for world domination right out from under their goose-stepping heels.

The Lysander felt good under his touch—responsive, but not overeager. The plane had not originally been built with this purpose in mind. It had been built for observation, and the occasional “army cooperation”: snagging messages with a dangling hook, strafing ground targets with one of its twin Browning machine guns. But now, thanks to a few simple modifications, it was an entirely different beast. It could sneak into enemy territory, land on a field the size of a large postage stamp, and take off again from rough terrain. A quick kiss in the night. But one that would change the course of history.

Lofty thoughts. But then, he'd always had a flair for drama.

Besides, beneath the adrenaline was something else. A constant undertow of fear that threatened to sweep him away, to drag him under. If lofty thoughts kept that at bay, then so be it.

So be it,
he thought.

He nudged the controls in his hands, and the sea beneath him turned to land.

GOTHMUND

Hagen found the men clustered in a group, their nerves crackling.

“Report,” he said.

The Gestapo man who stepped forward had uneven eyes, a nose reddened from too much drink, and fingers stained brown from too much tobacco.

“The girl is sitting on the edge of the field. Just waiting, it seems. The fisherman left her alone several hours ago. Braun—spyglass.”

The spyglass was handed to the Gestapo man, then to Hagen. He raised it to his eyes and immediately found the girl, sitting on a log, looking as if she were waiting for a bus.

He kept watching as the man talked on.

“We have two agents posted on the far side of the lake. Two others in the bushes along the western perimeter of the field. Two others along the eastern. And ourselves.”

Hagen handed the spyglass back. “No sign of the Engländer?”

“None,
Herr Obersturmführer.”

Hagen wondered how the man had chosen that rank for him. He considered correcting him, then decided against it. If they believed he was Gestapo instead of SD, they would be more willing to take his orders without complaint.

“Is the fisherman still under observation?”

“No,
Herr Obersturmführer.
We needed the manpower here. Besides, he's done his work already.”

“He should be arrested,” Hagen said.

“When it's finished,
Herr Obersturmführer,
I'll see to it myself.”

“The girl is not to be interfered with. She must believe that she has thrown off any pursuit. If Hobbs does appear, he must be apprehended silently.”

“The men have their orders, sir. No gunfire.”

“Let me have the glass again.”

He trained the spyglass back on the Bernhardt girl. Such an ordinary-looking girl, he thought. Such a fragile shell, for such a vital operation. But that was the stroke of genius. No one would suspect that she had been part of a brilliant deception. She did not even suspect it herself.

It might even have been worth losing Frick,
he thought then.
It might have been worth losing a dozen men, or a hundred, or a thousand, to get the girl safely onto that plane.

There would be other pupils, other protégés. Besides, there had always been something slightly
off
about Frick, hadn't there? His eagerness to volunteer for duty on the front in Poland. His peculiar way of being in a room and not being there at the same time. And something in his eyes—something unnatural.

He handed the spyglass back again.

Hobbs would not make it, he thought. He may have found unexpected resources within himself, but a man was what a man was. And Hobbs, in Hagen's opinion, was not much of a man.

He looked up at the sky. The night was brilliantly clear, with the heavens sprawled in all their glory. The dark clouds were very high, so high that they seemed to brush against the stars themselves. He could not have wished for better weather. The operation would be a success.

There was nothing he liked better than a successful operation.

Soon now,
he thought.

Soon.

Hobbs could live without the leg.

Exhibit A, he thought; the fact that he was still moving.

The leg was still attached to his body, but it was useless—beyond useless; an encumbrance. And yet he continued moving, leaning on the rifle in one hand and an improvised walking stick in the other. He was approaching the extraction site, and he had done it without the leg. So life would go on. He and Eva would return to England and live in the country, in a beautiful house, and life would go on. They would have many children. The children would bring him the things he needed without his having to stand. He would take up cribbage. And he would cheat.

But first, he would need to get on that plane with Eva.

He would manage it.

Behind him the town of Gothmund lay slumbering. He had circled it, deciding instead to head directly to the field. He didn't know what day it was, but it must have been late. And if he had guessed correctly, they would have had the fisherman under surveillance in any case. But if he had guessed correctly, they would also allow Eva to get aboard the plane. She would be allowed to reach the field. So the field it was.

The guess had been welling in his mind for the past few feverish hours. It had come from nowhere, from his subconscious—yet he knew, somehow, that it was correct. It explained the reason Hagen left him under the poor oversight of Borg, the reason he had been sent to Berlin after his months at Lake Wannsee instead of being executed right then.

Eva was not the bait—the OKW clerk had been the bait. And the switch was the intelligence he would give her, the strategy to be followed by the Wehrmacht. Whatever the clerk had told Eva would be exactly wrong. The Allies would expect the Nazis to follow one course of action. They would follow the opposite—and Europe would be theirs.

If he could get aboard that plane, however, then he would frustrate Hagen even at this late stage in the game. He would show the man that he could not out-con a con man. If he could just get on that plane …

He had left the satchel behind. The sole remaining magazine for the Enfield was jammed into his belt, prodding into his hip with each lurching step. There were five bullets in the magazine. That would be five dead Nazis—for Hagen would doubtless have Eva under close watch.

The fever was unfortunate. But he would manage.

The smell of standing water reached his nose. A moment later, he saw the small lake. The surface was perfectly still, covered with a thin sheet of algae. Two silhouetted figures stood on the near bank. They were evidence, he thought, that his guess had been correct. Every move made by Eva was being watched, confirmed, and no doubt relayed back to Hagen.

Hobbs concealed himself behind a wide-reaching oak, then peeked out warily.

The men were facing away from him, looking off at the field on the other side of the water.

After looking for a moment, he turned his eyes up to the tree. From the ground, he couldn't see the field clearly enough. There must have been other men posted around. If he simply walked out into the open, he might manage to kill one or two—but the remainder would gun him down like a dog. If he knew all of their positions, however, he could make every bullet count.

Five bullets. Would it be enough?

A low-hanging branch was within reach. But he felt dizzy again. If he tried to climb the tree, he might well catch the men's attention. Even worse, he might lose his grip and come crashing back down.

But perhaps he could climb the side of the oak facing away from the field. Perhaps he could do it quietly, and set himself up in the branches without being noticed. If only he could still feel his leg …

Nothing ventured,
he thought,
nothing gained.

He strapped the Enfield over his shoulder and reached for the low-hanging branch.

Eva was hungry.

Her stomach growled—loud enough to embarrass her, although there was nobody there to hear it. She thought of the meal she would have once she arrived back in England. The food in England was terrible. Just thinking about it made her appetite shrivel.

She looked out across the dark field, at the gentle motion of the grass in the wind, at the lake on the far end. The lake smelled of rich, ripe decay. She would not enjoy sitting here for very much longer. But who knew when the plane would arrive? She might have a day, or even two, to spend sitting on this log. If it came to that, perhaps she would go back to the fisherman's house after all. A meal, a bed.

She immediately changed her mind. The solitude was agreeable. She would rather sit here, hungry and cold but alone, than go back to the little house on the Fischerweg.

She pictured Hobbs at that moment: probably cuddled up with some German girl in a warm room, in a warm bed. Probably drunk on schnapps or whiskey. Had he tried to honor his rendezvous at the fisherman's house, and simply lost his resolve? It seemed likely. That was the Hobbs she knew—quick to accept a challenge, but slow to follow through. Perhaps something else had happened. Perhaps he'd truly been unable to make it to Gothmund. But she doubted it.

For a time, she distracted herself with a fantasy of what her new husband might look like. He would be British, she guessed. Circumstances would require that. But some of the British were not so bad. They would have a little house in the country, and she would have her family. Not
Kinder, Kirche, Küche
—her mother's philosophy—because that would be paralyzingly dull. But a family nevertheless. She would work on the farm, riding horses. At night she would tuck in her little girl and read her bedtime stories. Fairy tales; Mother Goose.
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet.

She brought one hand to her mouth, to stifle a yawn. It was late. She was still hungry. Even the thought of curds and whey was suddenly, obscenely appealing.

Along came a spider, and sat down beside her …

A spider, she thought.

She felt a flash of déjà vu. A dream of a memory … a memory of a dream. A spider, slipping into her mouth and tickling her tongue. Thirteen legs on that spider.

Her brow wrinkled.

It
had
been a dream, hadn't it? A recent one, not far obscured by the passage of time. And the spider had not been a spider. It had been a hand. A hand with thirteen fingers.

Klinger's hand, pushing something into her throat.
Take your medicine.

She made a small, confused sound:
Hrm.

Was there some significance to the dream? It seemed that there must be. A dream, as they said, was never just a dream. And it was almost reachable, almost on the tip of her mental tongue.

Klinger, sitting by her bed, feeding her medicine. But there was something wrong with his hand. She remembered a sense of horror and revulsion. She did not want to swallow the medicine. But swallow it she had; for he had forced her.

The medicine represented something, she thought. In the odd, skewed logic of dreams, it represented something from reality.

The medicine …

She caught the distant buzz of an insect. An ear-tricking buzz, both small and large. Gaining volume.

She stood up; the case on her lap spilled to the ground. She didn't notice. Her eyes were searching the sky.

There—coming in under a dark reef of high clouds. The plane.

She felt herself smiling. She had made it. In one more minute, she would be safely aboard. Then back to England.

In one more minute, if nothing went wrong …

Then she heard another sound. From the direction of the path that led to town. She turned her head.

A man was climbing the path.

17

“Look there,” Braun whispered.

Hagen looked. He felt a sudden flare of dismay. Hobbs was coming up the path—and the two agents on that side of the field had let him come too far. The girl had already seen him. He was surrounded by incompetents.

Then he realized that the man was not Hobbs at all; perhaps that was why the agents had let him pass. It was an older man, bent almost double.

“The fisherman,” Braun said. “Brandt.”

“What's he doing here?” asked the man with the uneven eyes.

“Look,” Braun said again, pointing in another direction now.

Hagen turned his eyes. The plane was there, coming in low.

“Herr Obersturmführer.
What should we do?”

Hagen hesitated.

Brandt saw the girl and the plane at the same time.

He came to a stop. Nothing to worry about, after all. The extraction was proceeding. His secret was safe.

But there was a feeling: in his blood, in his bones. A premonition. All was not right.

He turned his head, looking for a sign of life in the brush. His eyes were not dependable these days. And the forest was full of mysteries, of insects and birds and trees that concealed things behind their undulating leaves.

Then his eyes moved to the stagnant lake. If there were secrets to be told, perhaps the water would share them with him. The water had been a part of his family's blood for generations upon generations. They were attuned to each other, he and the water, with an intimacy that he would never share with land.

But the lake was still; it told him nothing.

He thought that he saw something on the far bank. A dark shape, or maybe two, among all the other dark shapes near the ground. But he couldn't be certain.

Then his eyes ticked higher. He had seen a glint: in a tree just beyond the edge of the lake. He saw it again, a flash of starlight off metal. A figure with a rifle, aiming it at the field.

Gestapo,
he thought.