No Dawn for Men (17 page)

“So this walled meadow was never searched.”

“No.”

“You have not sinned, Father.”

“I would like you to hear my confession,” said Father William.

“That’s why I interrupted your day.”

“I . . .”

“That’s the excuse I gave the guard at your door.”

“Ah, yes.”

Coming through the window they now heard the chanting of the fourteen-hundred-year-old service that marked the beginning of vespers, the evening prayer.

Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. Alleluia.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me . . .

In the good weather, the chapel doors, two stories below them, were swung open to make it easier for God and all of the angels, archangels, and saints in heaven to hear the evening prayer, a prayer of supplication and gratitude for the day that was coming to an end. In recent years, seeing what Hitler and his madmen were doing, Father Wilfrid had sometimes despaired that God was listening to any of his prayers. He hoped He was listening now.

The priests looked up at the glowing window and listened for a moment, then turned to face each other. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Father William.

35.

The Oder River

October 8, 1938, 7:00 p.m.

“Can it be?” the passenger in the Aero A14, whose name was Vaclav, but who called himself, deprecatingly, King Number One, said. He had lowered his binoculars to yell at the pilot in the open cockpit in front of him over the roar of the ancient bi-plane’s engine.

“Can it be
what
?” the pilot, a nineteen-year-old aristocrat who had learned to fly at a rich man’s flying club at a private airfield outside Prague, yelled back.

“At three o’clock,” said Vaclav, “I saw something flashing a few miles up a tributary. Then I saw people in a clearing. I think the small ones had beards.”

The boy pilot banked and descended. They had been cruising at two-thousand feet and would soon be at an altitude of only five hundred feet, close enough for the old bi-plane’s Fairchild K19 aerial recon camera bolted to its belly—a gift from Vaclav’s British friends—to take amazingly clear photographs. They were heading away from the setting sun, with a clear view of the earth below, but they saw nothing but the surprisingly wide tributary of the Oder as it glistened a dark green-brown in the last slanting light of the day. That and thick forest on either side.

“There was more than one small one?” the pilot said.

“Yes.”

“This tributary is not on the map,” the pilot said.

“It’s an old map.”

“Yes, or a new tributary.”

“There, at one o’clock,” Vaclav said, “There they are.”

“I see nothing but water and trees.”

 “I’ll be leaving you,” Vaclav said, reaching to the floor at his feet for his parachute.

“What?”

“Crisscross this area taking pictures,” Vaclav said. “Note your position. Tell Frantisek to expect to hear from me.”

“Have you jumped before?”

“No, but it doesn’t seem difficult.”

“I will ascend first.”

King Number One, age thirty-four, and with less than four years left to live, was already halfway out of his seat. After putting on his parachute, he reached to the floor again and pulled up the bulky rucksack containing a two-way radio similar to the one MI-6 had given Ian Fleming. This he strapped to his chest.

“Go at my signal,” the young pilot said, holding his right thumb up and then closing it back into his fist. “I will level off. Count to three, then pull the cord.”

As the plane rose they both looked below. There was no sign of the two professors and the red-bearded dwarf they had been instructed to be on the lookout for. Nor of any clearing. Neither spoke of the forest of tall trees that spanned the earth below as far as the eye could see. Only bad things, the least of which might be broken limbs, could happen from landing in one of them.

When the pilot gave him the thumbs up, Vaclav, who now had one leg out of his co-pilot’s seat, smiled, returned the gesture, stepped out onto the bi-plane’s lower wing, and leapt. He was carrying two CZ 27 semi-automatic pistols on his service belt and twenty extra clips in the pockets of his leather flight jacket. Although he had been in airplanes many times, he had never jumped out of one. His two partners in the unit they called the Three Kings had been to jump school, but he had been traveling around Germany at the time as a ball bearing manufacturer’s representative and had had to give that training a miss. No need to go into all that with the pilot.

In open space, watching the light-blue painted plane banking away, Vaclav continued smiling. He counted quickly to three and pulled the cord on his parachute. When the chute was open and he was drifting to earth, he gripped the radio to his chest, freed one hand, and waved goodbye to the young boy who he was fairly certain he would never see again.

36.

Metten Abbey

October 8, 1938, 7:00 p.m.

“You are lucky you weren’t shot,” said Kurt Bauer.

“I don’t understand, Kurt,” Billie Shroeder replied. “I am worried about my father. This was a logical place to look. I expected to find you here. I
hoped
to find you here, actually. Is my father here?”

“No, he is not,” the young lieutenant replied.

Ian Fleming looked at Bauer’s face, at his cold blue eyes, at the thin line of his mouth.
He wants her to call him lieutenant,
he thought.
And lover as well, I’ll bet.

He and Billie were standing in the abbey’s vaulted entry hall. The Waffen corporal who had, at Billie’s fierce insistence, called from the front gate to tell Bauer that Fraulein Lillian Shroeder, his old college chum, was asking to be admitted, stood off to the side. Two Waffen privates, machine guns unslung, stood on either side of them. Bauer, in a Waffen SS black waist jacket, his Walther P38 in a leather case on his web belt, faced them. In his officer’s jodhpurs and shiny black boots, the lieutenant looked to Fleming every bit the iconic image of the German menace that would soon be unleashed on Europe: young, humorless, fanatic, soulless, eager to kill. If
these
warriors, these
creatures
, could be raised from the dead, then in a few years, all of Europe, and perhaps the world, would be on its knees before Adolph Hitler.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fleming saw a door open and a tonsured priest in a simple brown habit come out. He was relieved to have something else to think about. Whose side was this priest on?

“May I be of assistance?” the priest said, joining them, “I am the abbot here.”

“You said the SS would not be involved,” Billie said to Bauer, ignoring the priest. “There were troops at the front gate.”

“They are here to help me search. Tolkien is missing as well. I believe they are . . .”

“They are
what
, Kurt?” Billie said. “My father is a German citizen, not a criminal.”

Bauer looked from face to face, then said to the two guards, “You are dismissed.”

When the guards were gone, Father Wilfrid introduced himself to Fleming and Billie, shaking Fleming’s hand and nodding in deference to the beautiful Lillian Shroeder. “Can I offer you food or drink?” he said. “Or beds for the night?”

“No, you cannot,” said Bauer. Then to Billie, “Where are you staying?”

“At the Hilltop Inn,” Billie answered. “Just outside Deggendorf.”

“In separate rooms, of course,” said Fleming, his eyes twinkling. “By the way, Bauer, you don’t happen to have a cigarette handy by any chance, do you? Terrible habit.”

The young German officer looked at Fleming like he was insane.

“Father?” Fleming said.

“No, Mr. Fleming, I’m afraid not.”

“Any chance you can hear my confession?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, couldn’t be more serious.”

“Lieutenant?”

“No. Absolutely not. He and Miss Shroeder are leaving.”

“You can go to St. Peter’s in Deggendorf,” Father Wilfrid said. “Father Schneider hears confessions every Saturday night until seven-thirty. I will call him and tell him you are coming.”

“Thank you, Father. You are very kind.”

* * *

“Are you really going to confession?” Billie said. They were in the car on the way back to Deggendorf. Fleming was driving.

“Yes,” he replied. Then, handing her a small piece of paper folded in half, he said, “Here, look at this.” Billie took the two-inch by two-inch piece of lined notepaper, the kind a schoolboy might use, unfolded it, and read what was written there.

“What does it say?”

“It says,
we need to talk
. Where . . . ?”

“Did I get it?”

“Yes. Who . . .”

“Father Wilfrid.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, when we shook hands.”

“He was taking an awful chance. What if you had been searched?”

“Nothing to it. I carry those little notes around all the time.”

Billie smiled. “Are you even Catholic?” she asked.

“Tonight I am.”

“But . . . Is that why you asked to have your confession heard?”

“Yes, course. He’s a quick thinker, our Abbot Wilfrid. He will relay his message to Father Schneider. Perhaps our abbot has a bit of the spy in him. We shall see. By the way, old girl, Dowling said he saw you in town this morning, bright and early.”

“
Did
he.”

“Yes.”

“He can be difficult, no? He was quite opposed to us visiting the abbey.”

“I think he’s got a crush on you.”

“Are you jealous?”

“A little.”

“First Kurt and now Dowling. But it’s you I love. Do you love me?”

“I do.”

“Even if I went into town this morning against your wishes?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Your reason for going.”

“For this,” Billie said, smiling. She had pulled a slender box, tied with a red ribbon, out of her purse.

“What is it? A pen?”

“Shall I open it?”

“Please.”

Billie undid the ribbon, opened the box, and, using thumb and forefinger, took out a tortoiseshell cigarette holder. She smiled a wide, beautiful smile, a smile that men would cross oceans to see if it were meant for them.

“I bought you some cigarettes, too,” she said. “A special blend. I know how you like to smoke after . . .”

“Yes,” Fleming said, smiling. “I do. Thank you, my dear Billie.”

37.

Berlin

October 8, 1938, 10:00 p.m.

Reinhard Heydrich stood at the tall window behind his desk in his large and airy office at Gestapo Headquarters on Albrechtstrasse. There was no view here, just the building across the street where a hundred clerical drones worked to create the records necessary to keep track of his secret police’s doings. All of its windows were ablaze. In his right hand were three such documents. Behind him spread out on his desk was a topographical map of Germany. He had read the documents and now slowly read them again. The first was a telegram from Lazarus, received at 8:00 a.m. today. It simply said in plain text: HILLTOP INN DEGGENDORF. The second was from Lieutenant Bauer, a coded telex from Metten Abbey, decoded by his staff: MISS SHROEDER AND FLEMING IN DEGGENDORF WHAT ORDERS NO SIGN OF QUARRY. The last was the most intriguing. It was another coded telex, from another mole, the one who went regularly to Goering’s absurd parties in the Brandenburg Forest:

CHAOTIC SCENE HERE WHEN SMOKE BOMB (?) SET OFF LAST NIGHT. MANY SICK PARTY MEMBERS. RUMOR THAT TWO OF HG’S PET DWARFS ESCAPED. ALSO RUMOR THAT TWO FAMOUS PROFESSORS AND THEIR DWARF VALET WERE HERE AND ARE MISSING. TONIGHT’S PARTY CANCELLED. RETURNING BERLIN.

 
Heydrich turned and bent over the map, where Carinhall was marked with a red pin and Metten Abbey with a green pin. The distance between them, some five hundred kilometers, he had calculated earlier. His traced his index finger between the two pins and asked himself again, why north? Then he spotted the gentle curve in blue ink of the Oder River and followed it first with his eyes and then with the same index finger.
Could they?
He thought.
Is it possible?

38.

The Oder River

October 8, 1938, 10:00 p.m.