A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (4 page)

Schellenberg stood.  He went to a side table beneath the window and poured coffee into a white porcelain cup.  “I don’t share the enthusiasm that my superior entertains—the plan has serious flaws.  And—I believe the Soviets are already in on our plans.”

“I’ve allowed the Brigadefuhrer that one disagreement,” Kaltenbrunner said.  “It is a matter to consider, I admit.  But one must calculate the fact, that with the war turning so badly against us, this could well be our last opportunity to grasp victory.  I believe it represents a risk we must take.”

Richter certainly couldn’t disagree with Schellenberg’s assessment.  Rommel’s army had been driven out of North Africa.  Hitler’s Russian invasion, confidentially codenamed ‘Operation Barbarossa’, was now whispered about in military headquarters as a disaster, and a combination of American and British forces had established beachheads in southern Italy.  Even in the mind of Adolf Hitler, victory for his beloved Reich must now appear as a dwindling reality.

“That’s why we’ve brought you into our little circle, Richter,” Schellenberg said, “you and your agents in Persia.  Understanding this could be our last opportunity, such schemes must be played out with all options available.  Simply put—we need your ears and eyes.”

Schellenberg was a man whom Richter had grown to admire, a man possessing an independence that was highly unusual within the Nazi hierarchy.  The general did not even consider himself a Nazi.

The son of a piano maker, when he was eight his father moved the family from Saarbrucken to Luxembourg after France occupied the Saar in 1918.  He entered the University of Bonn in 1929 to study medicine and law.  In 1933 he joined the Schutz Staffeinel, the SS.  Impressing Himmler, he moved up quickly becoming active in counter-intelligence including a plot to capture Edward VIII and fighting the Soviet spy ring in Europe, the ‘Rote Kapelle’—the Red Orchestra.

“Understand, Richter, the orders as issued from the Fuhrer are to kill all three but never unless all three’s death can be accomplished.  Anything else—well,” Schellenberg seemed lost in the glory of the moment as if they held the slightest chance of turning the tide of war, “—it’s understood by everyone involved we must somehow deliver a death strike to the Allied cause.”

The room fell into an awkward silence as the gravity of the situation sunk in.  Even for these men, brutal and professional in the business of war, there were no more words to be spoken about a last grasp at victory.

----

Ten minutes later they filed out of the room and into the great hallway.  Frick took Richter by the elbow.  “This way,” he said and led him down a hallway to a comfortable drawing room where the smell of cigars hung heavily.

“So, Frick,” Richter said, “have you brought me here to give me your honest opinion?”

“If you would allow me, sir I find it pure folly,” he said, “an act of utter desperation.”

Richter lit a cigarette and went and sat at a small table.  “I agree, but foolishness we may be able to use to our advantage.”

“In what way?”

“The plot as it’s laid out—provides cover for other operations.  You must remember Frick, Schellenberg and I worked together against the Red Orchestra.  I know how he thinks.”

Strangely, even with all this on his mind, over the last several days Richter had become preoccupied with memories of his childhood.  Perhaps it was because he was aware this was in all probability his last operation.  Memories came rushing to him cinematically, recollections like picture postcards vividly flashing through his mind.  He had marveled at how time had passed—a quickly passing stream of connected events—until finally he was here plotting out the last days of his life.

He fondly recalled bicycling with his mother, English and the niece of the Earl of Wellborn, to the Atlantic coastal town of Saint
Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire River.  He was ten years old then when the family went there on holiday.  There they sat together under a towering umbrella on the straight, sandy beaches facing the waters of Bay of Biscay.  She would read him the poetry of Paul Claudel and the novels of Marcel Proust.

In 1930, his father, a masterful repairer of watches in Stuttgart, became a national socialist, drawing his son into the political movement sweeping across Germany.  Three years later, Richter left his father’s shop and enrolled in graduate work at the University of Heidelberg.  While teaching calculus to promising engineering students, he met Karl
Sommler, a man who served no other purpose in his life than recruiting young Richter into German Intelligence.

Those next years were spent in a shadowed world.  Endless, frustrating days and weeks of tracking down dedicated men whose only fault was that they believed in the other side.  There were killings, necessary because he had always understood what was demanded of an Abwehr agent.  He had never married, his only family in the world now a sister whose husband was a lawyer in Nuremberg.  She had lost a son earlier on in the war in France 1940.  Yes, there had been a woman in Richter’s life, once in Prague.  Handsome Theresa, blonde and pale skinned like a ceramic doll, who claimed she had loved him and spent hours in the shaded parks on
Sunday afternoons at his side watching him play chess with the other officers.  But then later that year after several fainting spells in his office, he was taken to Prague Bulovka Hospital for tests.

What was considered perhaps overwork on his part quickly became something much more serious once his physician informed him how his life would conclude.  One day his heart would simply stop, wasted away by a mass of degenerative tissue.  Until then, he would suffer more and more through the medicine and its side effects.  The methodical explanation of his approaching death had struck Richter rather strangely.  Not because he was dying, because men in his line of work knew about death.  But he had always fancied his passing would come in a violent way . . . in a dark street corner . . . a quick unsuspecting bullet, then the clacking of retreating footsteps on rain-swept pavement.  Now it seemed he was to simply perish sickly in bed and alone.  Theresa, unable to handle the overwhelming situation, had vanished into another part of Prague.  In a way he understood.  Men such as himself should die alone.

When Richter looked up, Frick was staring at him, resting an arm against the mantel over where the fire crackled.  The diagnosis had been shared three months ago with his assistant.  “But there is something else on your mind, Colonel,” Frick said.

“You’ve come to know me well, haven’t you, Frick?  So, yes . . . there is something else on my mind, a matter concerning one of our agents in Tehran.  But not just an agent, Frick.  Black Forest involves my best agent, known only to Admiral Canaris.  And, of course, now you know.”

Frick’s face lifted.  “In Tehran?  The Allied conference, Skorenzy’s assassinations plot in motion—and you have your top agent there?”

“An operation within an operation.” 

“What a wonderful stroke of fortune.”

Richter wagged a finger like a scolding schoolteacher.  “I stopped believing in coincidences years ago, Lieutenant.  One must always prepare one’s self for a moment of opportunity.”

“Still . . .” Frick’s voice faded.

Richter walked to the window overlooking a narrow garden.  A light snow had begun falling.  “And so it is, that with hard work—and yes, some good fortune I’ll admit—Traveler is in the right place at precisely the right moment.”

“Traveler?  Your agent in Tehran?”

“So named by British Intelligence,” Richter said.

“Amazing.  Do I know him?”

Richter turned from the window.  For the first time that day he allowed himself a smile.  He couldn’t help himself really, considering how events had lined up favorably in Persia. 

“My dear Frick, who said Traveler was a man?”

-Four-

Tehran.

Leni sat on the balcony pulling the collar of the thick white robe up around her neck against the morning chill.  Coffee in hand, she stared out over the century-old graveyard where the morning fog hung like cannon smoke among the trees. 

It was such a haunting and curious place, this private world of hers where she loved to come out and be alone, when the world was still.  Bordering the southern edge of a large park courtyard of the British Embassy’s summerhouse in Qolhak, the crosses standing on the tombs and the dates recorded on the gravestones told of the Britons killed in Iran in the previous war.  Now, there were the daily burials of British troops killed in the present war.

“You’re usually working among your flowers by now.”  Colonel Boland’s voice came unexpectedly from behind as he stepped through the French doors.  He kissed on the cheek.  “Are you feeling okay, darling?”

“Not really, not this morning.  My favorite flowers leave me this time of year,” she said.  “And that always makes me so sad.”

Boland walked past her and stood at the rail and looked out.  “Yes, that and that blasted cemetery that seems to haunt you, I can see that.”

Even if he knew everything about her, would he ever be able to understand the dread of dying so far from home that constantly obsessed her?

“Don’t make fun of me,” Leni pouted.  “I’ve seen cemeteries before, but this one is different.  It’s bad enough that those poor soldiers died in a foreign country, but to never have the chance to be buried in their own country.”

Boland came and sat his tea on the table, settled into a chair.  Her hand looked so small, like a fragile bird in his when he took it.  “I’d never make fun of you, dear.  But you come out here every morning staring . . . out there . . . it makes you so melancholy.  I simply wish that you wouldn’t do that.” 

“I’m okay once the day begins.”

“But look at you, you’re so sad.  And, now you don’t have your flowers to occupy you and make you happy again.”

Leni brushed a strand of hair disturbed by a sudden breeze from the corner of her mouth.  “I thought I might drive out to the archeological site after lunch.  The desert air lifts my spirits.”

“I simply don’t what you find so interesting in all those old things?”

“History, dear, important history.”  She smiled at him.  “Professor Hance is really harmless, you know.  He’s an expert archeologist and he’s is my little toy, so can’t I play with him?”

“Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t find a rusty old scientist a threat at all.  It’s just . . . well, isn’t there a better way to occupy your time?  I don’t mind at all you spending your days out at the children’s camp.  Orphans of war are a noble cause,” he said.

“You’re concerned about the rumors, aren’t you?”

“Not at all.  If we believed every rumor about people being German spies, we’d arrest three fourths of the city population.”

“I understand, Robert, I really do” she said.  “You want me to behave like a British official’s wife sitting in some stuffy room with all those other bored, lonely women, drinking my boring tea?  Is that what you want, Robert?  But, I’m not like them at all, and you knew that when you married me.”

Boland cupped his hand under her chin and lifted her face to him, looking into her eyes.  She realized the power she held over him.  “No, I’m very glad you’re different from the others,” he finally said.  “I want you to simply be you, dear Leni.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

He turned toward the door.

“I think I know why,” she said.

He turned back.  “Pardon?”

“The distance between England and this forsaken place is too far,” she said softly.  “It won’t allow for them to be shipped back.  It would have been quite difficult, to arrange their burial at home, that’s it, isn’t it Robert?”

Lingering at the doorway he said, “Yes, Leni, that must be it.”

“Yes, that is it,” Leni said turning back to the cemetery.  “It’s just much too far.”

----

Leni decided to wait before dressing for the day until her husband had departed for the embassy.  At exactly a quarter before nine—he was punctual, as she had found most British to be—a sedan door closed in the courtyard below her window.  Then there was the report of a motor pulling away through the gate.

She ate a breakfast of fruit and juice at the morning table, and then went upstairs to her bedroom.  She locked the door.  From the closet, she laid out on the bed a pair of dark khaki breeches, a lighter khaki shirt and a pith helmet.  From the top closet shelf she took down a white, thin box labeled ‘ribbons’, sat on the bed and opened the box removing Benjamin Fields’s papers.

Poor Ben, she had never wanted to kill him.  It was her mistake that he had found her going through his things.  He was madly in love with her and would have done anything for her, except betray his country, which is why he had to die.

She sorted out the items on the bed.

Several letters from a woman named Elizabeth from Brighton.  Two folders labeled with dates: 28 November 1943.  30 November 1943.  A leather notebook with gold initials ‘B.F.’ stitched in the bottom right corner.  A gift from Elizabeth, Leni guessed.  Inside the notebook were four sheets of paper, outlining the itinerary for a meeting headlined EUREKA.  Each edited with pencil notations.  Then the initials ‘WC’.  Winston Churchill.  And finally the penciled in initials ‘SLU’, a notation that still puzzled her.  She would go through the embassy roster when the opportunity presented itself to see if it matched anyone’s name.  Finally, there was the outline of the conference agenda, including an important topic allied leaders would be discussing—Operation Overlord, the invasion.  Leni was well aware information detailing the invasion had been forwarded to German Intelligence several months ago from agents in Algiers.