with the controls all printed in English to try and disguise it. The disguise might have fooled a civilian but not someone who was in the trade. Back in the States, just possessing a sender/receiver was enough to get you the electric chair.
On the table in front of the radio was a little Walther PPK automatic. It seemed to make clear that Elena meant business. If it really was her gun. The masculine scent in the room suggested she had another confederate besides Major Reichleitner. I picked up the pistol. Turning it upside down, I ejected the magazine from the plastic grip. The gun was loaded, not that I had expected otherwise. I shoved the magazine back into the handle and laid it down on the table.
I tiptoed back to the top of the stone stairs for a moment to check that my dirty little mission was still a secret. And it was about then that I had the sudden sensation I was being watched. I remained standing there for several minutes before concluding I had imagined it, and returned to the secret radio room.
I sat on the chair, reached underneath the table, and drew a metallic wastepaper bin toward me. It was full of paper. I placed it between my naked thighs and began to examine the contents. It showed a great want of vigilance not to have set alight the cellophane sheets intended to help burn any plaintext messages sent or received. Abwehr agents, even the ones from Long Island, were usually not so careless. Perhaps the secret room itself had lulled Elena into a false sense of security about normal spycraft. Or perhaps the lack of a window.
I fished a message out of the bin, spread the paper flat on the table, glanced over it, and then folded it up so that I could read it later. I was about to return the wastepaper bin to its place underneath the table when something else caught my eye.
It was an empty package of Kools. Kools were a mentholated American brand of cigarettes that neither I nor Elena smoked. Smoking Kools was like smoking a stick of chewing gum. Even more interesting was what I found crushed up inside the empty packet. It was a matchbook with only one match left. It was from the Hamilton Hotel in Washington. The Hamilton Hotel overlooked Franklin Park, where Thornton Cole’s body had been found. Finding this matchbook in the same room as an SE100 radio was all the evidence I needed to know that the man who had killed Cole, and very likely Ted Schmidt, too, had occupied the very chair I was sitting in.
All I had to do now was tell Reilly, and then he could arrange with the British to have the place staked out until the German agent showed up again. I snatched up the evidence-the plaintext message, the empty package of Kools, the Hamilton Hotel matchbook-and went out of the radio room. I knew I could hardly catch the spy without condemning Elena as well.
I turned out the light, closed the bookcase door, and returned to the bedroom. Seeing her stir under the single sheet, I pretended to fetch a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting up.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Go back to sleep.”
I closed the bathroom door, sat down on the toilet, and unfolded the plaintext message headed OPERATION WURF. In German, wurf was the verb “to throw,” but, figuratively speaking, it also meant “success,” “a hit,” “a stroke of luck,” and even, “a decisive action.” The message, addressed to someone called Brutus, was short, and everything about it supported the idea of some kind of decisive action. I read the message several times before folding it carefully and sliding it inside my own cigarette packet, alongside the matchbook from the Hamilton Hotel. Then I stood up, flushed the toilet, and went back to bed.
There wasn’t much chance of my sleeping again-not now that I had read the plaintext message from the Abwehr. And as dawn broke, I was still repeating the message in my head. Brutus to proceed with the assassination of Wotan. Good luck.
It was a while since I had seen an opera by Wagner, but I remembered that Wotan was one of the gods in Das Rheingold. This seemed to suggest that Brutus, whoever he was, planned to kill just one of the Big Three. But surely not Roosevelt or Churchill. Neither of them appeared to match up to Wotan. No, there was only one of the Big Three who seemed to fit the bill, and that was Joseph Stalin.
Elena awoke for a few minutes and kissed me fondly before going back to sleep. I really did think she cared for me. I knew I cared for her. And I knew I wasn’t prepared to send her over, no matter who or what she was. I tried to sleep a little in the hope that when I awoke I would know the right thing to do. But the sleep never came. And after a while I could think of no other way forward than the one I had first thought of. I slipped out of bed and, before leaving her bedroom, took the photograph of Elena and Major Reichleitner from her album, to make sure that I would be believed.
Reichleitner was still eating breakfast when Lance Corporal Armfield brought me to his cell. The major greeted me coolly. At first I was inclined to ascribe this display of indifference to the fact that his breakfast was not yet over. But as I lit a cigarette and waited for him to look me in the eye, I realized that something had happened. And that was when, looking around the cell, I saw Donovan’s Bride transcripts piled neatly on the table, the task of rendering them into plaintext now complete.
“Everything is clear to me now,” said Reichleitner. He was wearing a superior smile I found annoying, after all that I had done for him.
“Why haven’t you tried to tell someone?”
“Don’t think I won’t. But, no, I wanted to speak to you first. To tell you what I require for my silence.”
“And what might that be?” I smiled, half enjoying his little show.
“Your help to escape.”
This time I laughed. “I think you’re being a little premature, Major. After all, I need to see what you think you know and how you think that you know it. Cards on the table. Then perhaps we can make a deal.”
“All right. If you want to play it that way.” Reichleitner shrugged and fetched the papers off the table. “The Russians call this ‘open packing,’” he said. “Even though it’s deciphered, the use of certain code words still makes it hard for the layman to understand. How to read what ought to be plain, but is not. You will note the date of this particular message, please. October eighth. The message concerns a meeting that took place in London.
I nodded, more or less certain now I knew the meeting to which he was referring.
“LEO reports in his last LUGGAGE that he had BREAKFAST in GLADSTONE with a 26 who we now know was formerly a NOVATOR for SPARTA in TROY during the year 1937. Codenamed CROESUS. VERSAILLES suggests watching brief minimum, since CROESUS now works for ORVILLE and STAMP in a special capacity, and might provide future KNAPSACK. At any subsequent BREAKFAST you should stress the desperation of the situation in SPARTA and, if all else fails, you should tell him that we may have to weigh the question of his 43.”
Reichleitner smiled. “LEO is the name of an agent,” he said. “And BREAKFAST is a meeting, of course. GLADSTONE is London. A number 26 is a potential recruit for the NKVD. A NOVATOR is an existing NKVD agent. SPARTA means Soviet Russia, and TROY refers to Nazi Germany. CROESUS is you, I suspect, since you work for both ORVILLE-that’s Donovan, I imagine-and STAMP-that’s Roosevelt, I know. KNAPSACK is information that might develop into something more important. Number 43 means last will and testament.”
“Well, that part about the last will and testament ought to tell you something, Major.”
“Not as much as the fact that you were once a NOVATOR for SPARTA.”
“‘Once’ being the critical word. For example, I imagine you’re no longer the enthusiastic Nazi you were back in 1933. Well, in 1938 I was a lecturer at the University of Berlin and occasionally came into contact with Dr. Goebbels. I decided that the best way I had of opposing Nazism was to pass on any information that came my way to the Russians. Only all that ended when I left Germany to return to the United States.
“Then, a few weeks ago, when I was in London researching a report for the president on the Katyn Forest massacre, I ran into someone I’d known back in Vienna. An Englishman who had been a fellow Communist and who now works for British intelligence. And, it would seem, from what you’ve just told me, Russian intelligence, too. We talked about old times and that was it. Or so I thought, until General Donovan mentioned these intercepts and codebooks. Naturally I wanted to know if I should expect the NKVD to try to reestablish contact. I suspect that the only reason they haven’t is because I’ve been away from Washington since November twelfth. I doubt that they’ve had time.
“All the same, I can’t deny that all of this would be embarrassing for me if Donovan and the president got to know about it. Embarrassing and perhaps even compromising. I would probably have to resign from the service. But I don’t think I’d go to the electric chair for something I did before the United States was at war with Germany. I don’t think I’d even go to prison for it. So, no, I’m not going to help you to escape. I’ll take my chances.”
I smiled nonchalantly. I actually felt better now that I knew what the Bride material contained.
