A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (13 page)

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Oh, never mind,” Miles said glancing down at the file.  “The place is classified,” his mood darkened.  “I’m afraid everything I’ve told you may have been wasted.  You’d have to obtain a high level of clearance to get anywhere near the place.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that even an embassy officer’s wife can’t go there.”

Fields’s notes came to her.  Classified?  And when was Churchill arriving in Tehran?  Yes, dear Benjamin you’ve given me a dear, dear present, haven’t you?  She went and kissed Miles on the cheek.  He blushed instantly.  “Thank you, Allen.  Do the authorities have any idea who killed him?  Or why?”

“I wouldn’t have privilege to that information, Leni.  God knows I wouldn’t want to be involved in a murder investigation.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t,” she said.  Then she was at the door.  “Thank you, Allan.  His sister and I owe you a big favor.”

----

Leni had lied to Allen Miles.

Over the last months, she had made it her business to attempt to know everything going on around Tehran.  An embassy officer’s wife on an early morning drive in her convertible drew attention—but it didn’t draw suspicion.  Three weeks ago on a drive out into the countryside, she noted construction ongoing in the area close to where Miles had described, having filed away the site in the back of her mind.  Now, she could use it to her advantage and find out more about Benjamin Fields.

Two miles out of Tehran, she pulled over on the side of the road and lowered the Chevrolet’s convertible roof.  When she continued, the radiating sun fell on her face; the wind blew through her hair.  This morning, with the excitement of the secured site, Leni was able to push into the back of her mind the sadness of missing her son.  This morning her personal sacrifices for the fatherland suddenly seemed worth it.

Another five miles and the outline of the oasis appeared on the horizon.  She slowed and pulled over on the roadside.  A tomb tower loomed against the pale blue sky.  To the left was a high, ancient wall, and beneath a ditch, bordered by a row of fir trees, ran along between the wall and the tower.  Off to the right beyond the wall was a gathering of brown tents.  The encampment.  This puzzled Leni.  Why would a military camp of any significance be located so far out of the city?

She searched the landscape for another long moment, had just decided on venturing closer, when a voice boomed out behind her, “And where would you be going?”

She turned quickly.

A British solider, automatic weapon slung menacingly across his chest, stood by the door.  Leni’s first impulse was that he was much too young to be a soldier.  “I . . . I seemed to be lost,” she said, nervously running her fingers through her hair.

“Wrong place to be lost, I can tell you that,” he said sternly.

“I’m terribly sorry.  I certainly don’t want to interfere with the military.” 

“You should leave this area immediately m’um, or I’ll have to detain you.”

She attempted to appear frightened.  “I don’t want that.  I’ll just go up to that hill and turn around.”

“Hold it.”   There was a heavy thud as he let the barrel fall across the door.  “You’ll have to turn around right here.”

“But . . . the road is so narrow.  I might have an accident.”  She tried smiling.  “I’m not very good at driving machines.”

He pulled the weapon up.  “Well, we’ll just do our best, won’t we?  Come on—I won’t let you go into the ditch.”

“But—”

“Sorry.” 

Leni hesitated, realizing this could be her only chance to get this close.  Flirting, or arguing with a soldier who took his position seriously would do her absolutely no good.  Deciding to try another approach Leni said, “Young man, this automobile is a gift from my husband who happens to be a very important man in the British Embassy.  Now—you can see that the road is wider twenty meters ahead.  I will attempt to turn around there . . . or you can explain any damage to the automobile if I attempt to turn around here.”

The soldier stared at her thinking over the threat.  Finally, he cradled the weapon in his arm and pointed up the road.  “No farther than the rise, and remember, I have orders to shoot.”

Leni shifted the gear.  “I certainly wouldn’t want you to do that.”

The tires cracked on the rock road as she drove to the rise.  A hundred meters from the wall and the ditch, she swung into the wider part of the road.  She pulled the Chevrolet back and forth several times, acting out her awkwardness in handling the automobile, before finally backing as close to the ditch as she dared.

Then Leni leaned back, one arm on the top of the seat, glancing back as if watching the edge of the ditch now perilously close to the back tires.  Instead, she was studying the horizon.

Shifting the knob into first gear, Leni headed back down at the road, gunning the motor.  The Chevrolet roared by the young soldier.  She waved and smiled.  The solider stared.

When Leni reached the main road, she turned toward Tehran, her heart racing in her chest.  The additional twenty meters had done the trick—it had given her a brief glance into the encampment confirming what she suspected since the night she killed Major Fields and read his notes.  He was involved in some sort of special operations timed to coordinate with the arrival of Churchill and Roosevelt.  She would have to design a plan to uncover what the facts meant, but for now she was certain she was following clues that would lead her to something worthy of passing on to Berlin.

Because what she had seen—hidden among the fir trees lining the wall—was a row of radio antennas.

----

It was almost an hour later when Leni drove into the archaeological site.  The sun was well up in the sky and a sweltering heat danced over the desert sands. 

She got out and walked past the tents and the supply building and found Hance leaning over, hands on knees, staring through a piece of transit survey equipment.  He wore white trousers and a darker blousy shirt and his large cloth hat.  A young worker held an umbrella over his head. 
On the next small hill just beyond, workers worked with shovels methodically skimming dirt from the surface and tossing it aside.

Directly in front of Hance, two workers worked at the bottom of a trench, brushing away dirt from around a half-buried piece of broken pottery.  “Careful,” he warned Leni pointing with a digging tool in his left hand toward the trench.  “There are relics all along the bottom of this trench.”

“Oh, William, I’m always careful around your silly site.”

“What are you—?”

“Doing here in the middle of the day?  Again?”  She walked up to him.  The young worker held the umbrella over her as she leaned closer.  “I have something important to tell you.”

“Well, go ahead,” Hance said nodding toward the boy.  “Speak German.  He won’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“You’re relics may be important, William, but not nearly as valuable as what we have.”

Hance took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped at his neck.  “What do you mean?”

“Information, William . . . once hidden within British Intelligence, but now within our grasp.”

“What information?”

She placed a hand on his shoulder.  “I haven’t figured it all out yet, but trust me when I tell you it’s important,” she told him with seriousness, “We must get a message to Berlin.”

His face turned to one of bewilderment. 
“But the rules?”

“Blast the rules, William,” Leni said.  “I’ve just driven from south of Tehran where Major Fields was assigned to a highly-guarded encampment.”  She leaned closer. 
“An encampment with sophisticated communications equipment.”

“How do you know this?”

“Radio antennas fifty feet high, hidden among fir trees.  Guarded by a special detachment of British soldiers?  How important does that appear to you, William?”

Hance stared at her.  The digging tool fell from his hand, thudding on the clay floor of the trench. 
“Codes.”

“Exactly,” she said.  For a moment there was an awkward silence.  “Now—do we break the rules and send that message or not?”

Hance didn’t answer, turning on his heels and headed toward his tent.  Leni followed closely behind beneath the shimmering sun.

-Thirteen-

Winston Churchill arrived in Tehran distrusting the Soviets more than President Roosevelt.  Born in Blenheim Palace, his family’s ancestral seat in Oxfordshire on November 30, 1874, young Winston appeared destined for greatness.  Of the three leaders gathered in Tehran, he possessed a desire for intelligence work as a way to effectively fight wars, and it was his strong belief that wars could be won as much on the backstreets of a European city as on a battlefield in North Africa.  He was a brilliant orator, a strength that had led the English people through the worst of German bombings of their cities. 

But Churchill had another side, a dark side—‘the black dog’ as he referred to the overwhelming depression he suffered through in long bouts.  His varying moods could strike at any time.  In his letters he referred to this distressing ‘dog’ as a person . . . ‘he seems quite away from me now . . . it is such a relief when all the colors come back in the picture.’ 

To add to his mood, Churchill caught a cold in Cairo and would be sick for most of the conference.

Franklin Roosevelt came to the conference with the goal of winning over Stalin.  The Russian leader insisted on an Allied invasion of Europe, the opening of a second front to the war relieving his armies in the east.  The American president had promised just such an action, one that had never taken place.  And because of that lack of a second front, the President felt it was his goal to gain confidence from Stalin. 

Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882, the only child of James and Sara Delano Roosevelt.  His family was one of old mercantile class involved in commerce, banking, and railroads.  As Britain fought against the Axis nations, Roosevelt provided aid to Churchill and the British war effort.  When Pearl Harbor was attacked everything changed.

The Premier of Russia, Joseph Stalin, was from Georgia, a province in southern Russia, the son of a shoemaker.  Stalin entered theological seminary, but at age 19, after joining the Socialist-Democratic Party, he was expelled.  When the party split into two factions in 1903, Stalin joined the Bolshevik faction, casting his destiny.  As leader of Russia, he signed a pact with Hitler in September 1939, which Hitler broke soon after with the invasion of Russia.  In July 1941 Stalin took over as Commissariat of Defense.  He arrived at the Tehran conference frustrated that there had not been the second front.  He went to Tehran determined to court Roosevelt, without Churchill present, to attempt to accomplish just that. 

----

At six-twenty on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, Mayfield sent a message to Salinger’s hotel that he was sending a car at the top of the hour to pick him up.  When Salinger asked where he was being taken, Mayfield calmly told him ‘the British Embassy to see Churchill.  Something has come up’.

----

Mayfield waited at the top of the stairs when Salinger arrived at the entrance and pulled him aside.  “It appears Soviet intelligence has uncovered something big . . .  a German assassination plot unfolding around the conference,” he told him.

“You think Fields’s murder could be linked to this plot?”

“There are several options that came to mind,” Mayfield said, “the first being that Fields stumbled upon something that looked suspicious to him.  What is beyond me is why he didn’t report it.”

A black sedan pulled up at the steps.

“It’s why we’re here, Booth.  Both Roosevelt and Churchill want us to hear what the Soviets have to say.”

The back door opened and a man short in statue, but with dark powerful eyes stepped out.  He wore round glasses and had a thick mustache and moved quickly through the door.  “Stalin’s right hand man,” Mayfield said quietly.  ‘Molotov.”

Vyacheslav Molotov was an old-line Bolshevik born 1890 in the village of
Kukarka the son of a shop clerk.  Sent to be educated in Kazan, he was introduced to the works of Karl Marx and joined the party in 1906.  His rise to power began in the 1920s as a protégé of Joseph Stalin and rose to the position of Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, which he held for eleven years.  In May 1939 he was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs when he negotiated the pact with the Germans, which made possible the Nazi invasion of Poland.  Following the invasion of Russia by Hitler’s armies, Molotov conducted urgent negotiations with Britain, and later the United States for wartime alliances.  The Russian’s abrupt manner had earned him the nickname ‘The Hammer.’ 

After Molotov passed, “If the two events are linked . . .” Salinger mentally sorted through the information, “Fields’s murder and a German plot against one of our leaders . . . then the plot has an agent deeply planted within the circle of influence in Tehran.”