A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (11 page)

She walked back through her office and went up a narrow set of stairs hidden behind the bookcases, and up to a cramped room, from which a small window overlooked the garden.  She pulled a light cord hanging in the center of the room and sat in front of a radio set.

She switched on the power button on the 301B Type 3 Mark V radio.  SOE issue, British engineering.  What a wonderful irony, she thought.

Taking a sip of wine, Goli placed the headset over her ears, began adjusting the band wave knob.  Static crackled over the headset, as she patiently swept the knob first right and then left.  Voices came alive, and then faded away.  In his own way, Shepilov underestimated her.  He, along with others, couldn’t understand just how much she really knew.

For Goli had learned patience in the mountains after her husband’s death.  She had gone to the Kurdish tribal leader, a friend of her husband, and there she had stayed for two months.   Adar, one of the best fighters, with piercing green eyes and coffee-colored skin, whose name meant ‘noble’, had taught her how to live off the land, how to kill one’s enemy, and yes, finally had taught her that love can come again even to a broken heart.  Adar’s lesson on patience came later, when he told her that anything of value comes with those who set the trap and wait. 

How true, dear Adar, you taught me well.  Patience was a virtue in the game she was playing.  Goli smiled to herself.  Patience and irony.

NOVEMBER 27.  SATURDAY

-Ten-

Tehran.

Early Saturday morning, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt and their respective parties departed Cairo, a five-hour flight that took them directly over Jerusalem and Baghdad.  Stalin waited for them having already arrived in Tehran two days before. 

With the arrival of the three most important leaders of the modern world converging on the city, security was a huge concern.  Churchill himself had arrived among much fanfare, landing in Tehran met by the British Minister and driven from the airfield to the British Legation.   As the party approached the city, Churchill was shocked to see that the road was lined with Persian cavalrymen making it obvious that an important person was passing through.

However, after landing at Gale Morgbe, an obscure airport five miles out of the city, Roosevelt’s approach by armored car went mostly unnoticed through an unpredictable route to the American Legation.  It was then that the true concern of security for the conference became completely evident.

The British Legation and its vast garden lay adjourning to the Soviet Embassy meaning Churchill could walk over to the meetings in a short time.  But the American Legation, guarded by United States forces, was more than half mile away creating a security nightmare as the President traveled along the narrow Tehran streets.

----

As Graham Mayfield was driven through the city later that same afternoon, there were no Persian cavalry or throngs staring through the car windows.  Just the major carrying out a mission as important as any he had undertaken since the war began.

Mayfield had been a soldier for thirty-eight years; years filled with wars, without wars, with enemies, and without enemies.  Then along came Hitler with his gang of thugs and villains as the new adversary, a role the Nazis had certainly filled with glaring adequacy over the last four years.

As a young boy, Mayfield remembered the day his father carried him on his wide shoulders to that open and dark mine entrance not far from his childhood village.  They nibbled on walnuts from his father’s pocket and waited until the miners, a line of exhausted grime-faced men, exited from the mine.  It was an image that would stay with Mayfield forever.  As the drawn line of workers passed, he and his father sat among chalk rocks scattered like giant mushrooms in the grass.  ‘You’re a smart boy, Graham so don’t end up here.  Don’t stay in the mountains.  Do something . . . anything else.  Make a career of the military service maybe; there are worse things in life than fighting wars for your country.’

Two years later his father had gone down into the mine one morning and never came out.  When he was old enough, Mayfield joined in the business of fighting wars and had never looked back. 

He had lost his son, Kirk, fighting with the Eighth Army in North Africa among the sand dunes of some far-off place he couldn’t remember the name of, or didn’t care to.  But he would always remember his smiling, sun-blonde haired Kirk with Monty, chasing Rommel back across the desert.  For Mayfield there would always be a hole in his soul, knowing he would never see his
boy again, but he finally come to the realization that sacrifice was necessary because it was a solemn certainty that death sometimes comes to soldiers.

Maggie’s death was entirely another matter.  Losing her had taken something different out of Mayfield because wives weren’t supposed to die in war.  At least in wars fought in the past before that maniac Goring had sent his bombers over London in the second year of the fighting.  To keep his sanity, Mayfield reasoned it was fate placing Maggie in the wrong place when one of Hitler’s random armed robots fell from the sky and took her.

To get through the tragedy he had turned strangely to the satisfaction of German engineering—the V-2 was a silent weapon, unlike its predecessor the V-1, nicknamed the ‘Buzz Bomb’ because of the noise it made falling from the sky.  Maggie had never heard the robot, he had prayed, and had no idea that death approached.

Now, as the conflict appeared to have turned against Hitler, a fear grew in Mayfield concerning when this war would be over.  What was a soldier of fifty-six to do then?  Sell stocks and bonds?  Or suddenly find himself sitting in a chair on the front porch of a rest home in Surrey, overlooking the ocean, and tell stories about how gallant his life had been at one time?
             

As the streets of Tehran slipped by his window, Mayfield stared into the darkness of an unknown future—this awful desert, these awful people . . . but he was no longer that little boy waiting outside the mine for his Father . . . he was MI6—Special Forces—exactly where he wanted to be at this moment.  On another of his great adventures.

----

The British Legation.

In a side hallway, a leather-skinned, drawn shouldered butler, greeted Mayfield without a word, and then led him through a wide hallway.  His breathing was a struggle, a gasping noise forced through large nostrils, reminding Mayfield of a sickly Indian elephant approaching death in the jungle outside Jabalpur.

He followed the butler through the hallway, flanked on either side with polished mirrors and low tables with pots of fresh flowers.  He was led past several closed doorways.  A Royal Marine orderly stood smartly at the double doors.  He saluted as Mayfield approached, returned the salute, and then was ushered past the guard where he was left alone.  He found the room cozy; green wood cracking like popcorn behind the fireplace’s iron grate.  The fire logs gave off a sweet smell, reminding him of a cottage outside Colchester where he and Maggie always visited in the early spring, when the winds were damp and a fire warmed them after an afternoon walk.

Book lined shelves along two walls, and a circular table with fresh flowers.  A single chair was at the table, and a copy of The Times slightly disturbed at the table’s edge.

A door opened.  The Major straightened his stance as Churchill came through the side door.  “Ah, Major Mayfield.”

“I don’t think you’ll enjoy the news I have to convey, sir.”

The Prime Minister’s face turned stern.  “Is it worse than we suspected?”

In another thirty minutes, Mayfield had informed Churchill of the situation, as he understood it.  He told him his opinion on just how dangerous the approaching threat could be.  Then he informed the Prime Minister that Booth Salinger had completed his investigation in Cairo and had arrived in Tehran in the afternoon.

Churchill informed him, rather empathically, to utilize all resources necessary.

----

Mayfield exited the British Legation over an hour later.  He sat in the rear seat of his staff car and gave the driver an address.  The Humber pulled away and passed through an ivy-covered brick gate, then passed onto the street, and sped down a tree-lined boulevard.

He turned away from the fogged window.  “You’ve turned into a hopeless old man, Graham Mayfield,” his half-whispered breath became a small white circle on the glass.  But then after a moment of fleeting guilt, the major could only ponder the glorious opportunity afforded him.  Yes.  One glorious opportunity concerning a German spy codenamed Traveler. 

----

In contrast to the southern part of the city, Tehran’s northern section with broad roads and avenues, one-and two-story houses resembled a rural European town.

The staff car pulled up to the address on Kakh Street, an elegant section near Khayaban Pahlevi.  Mayfield got out and walked up to a house overlooking the street.  Across the top floor was a wooden screen, a closed-in gallery so women could gaze outside without being seen by passersby.  He stood there for a long time, aware that she was hidden, peering out from behind the screen.  Finally, a window opened and the woman stared down at him as if she were expecting him.

“It’s time we talked,” he said simply and waited.

“I’ll be down in a moment,” Julia Salinger said.  And then she closed the window.

-Eleven-

Tehran.  The Palace Hotel.

Salinger arrived back at his hotel shortly after nine, collected his key from the front desk and went upstairs.  All he wanted at this hour was a hot bath, a drink, and time to process what he had learned in the Cairo office and during his visit with the Iranian police chief.

He unlocked the door.  Julia sat in a winged chair beneath a lamp’s gray glow that shone like a hospital light.  Her legs were tucked beneath her.  “I had to come see you, Booth,” she said, sitting very still.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

What was he supposed to say?  He hadn’t seen his wife for months, and had long ago resigned himself he would never see her again.  “Have you waited long?  If I had known you were here . . .”

“That’s okay,” Julia said.  “I enjoyed sitting here waiting among your things.  It gave me time to think about what I was going to say.  For some reason I wanted you to know I was aware that you were back.  Sorry if that bothers you.”

Salinger walked to the bar and poured two scotches.  He supposed that was still her favorite.  He came over, handed her the drink, and then sat in the opposite chair.

They talked in low voices as if everything they said were new secrets.  They discussed small things, mutual friends they had known, small, insignificant events passing through one’s life over the months of being apart, until finally the words seemed to die away.

Her father was William Darwin, a British officer in the First World War, who had defended the
Khuzistan oilfields against rebel Quashqai tribes led by German agents.  He had also considered himself an adequate amateur archaeologist passing his time with his daughter in the surrounding sites outside of Tehran.  Julia’s mother died when she was young, and was rarely discussed.  Her father died of old battle wounds the following year, but not before he expressed his last wish was she study art in London and expand her artistic gift.  Julia had been teaching for two years at Oxford when she left on sabbatical to Cairo where she and Salinger met again.

For Salinger the time had melted away so quickly.  Was it that long ago he stood in the morning air in front of the Naderi Café with his father?  How old was he?  Fourteen?  A loaded Ford ‘camel’, a truck overloaded with luggage and boxes, ‘University Museum’ stenciled across the door, parked at the curb.  His father and a tall red faced man discussed the upcoming trip into the desert.  Though his father was anxious for them to go, Salinger really wasn’t that interested.

Until he saw the two girls coming across the street.

One was absolutely beautiful even at the age of fourteen.  But the other girl—there was something about her—stirring emotions deeply in young Salinger. 

The girls were holding hands, laughing, and skipping across the street.  The man talking to his father introduced them when the girls walked sheepishly up to the men.  It was the first time Salinger ever set eyes upon Julia and Goli.

Adventure filled the next three weeks.  Conveys of trucks making its way through the pass of
Firuzkuh into the Elburz Mountains.  Julia and he having their first kiss just beyond the light of the campfire the fourth night of the trip.  The mysteries of the desert and of first love became a marvelous new world for him.  It began a friendship between the three of them lasting six years until Salinger’s father was reassigned to the States.