Mallory stepped on the brake. “Here! What’s that!” Humes-Talbot said, looking along the cone of the headlights. Three large dogs were standing in the road, the wind ruffling their fur. “My God!” Humes-Talbot took off his glasses, hurriedly wiped the lenses, and put them back on. “I believe those are wolves!”
“Hell, lock the damned doors!” Shackleton hollered.
The Ford slowed to a crawl. As Shackleton’s fist hammered down the lock on his side, the three animals lifted their muzzles to the scent of hot metal and engine oil and vanished into the dark wall of trees on the left. The Ford picked up speed again, Mallory’s age-spotted hands steady on the wheel, and they took a long curve through the forest and emerged onto a driveway paved with fields tones.
And there stood the house of Michael Gallatin.
It looked like a church, made of dark red stones chinked together with white mortar. Shackleton realized that it must have been a church at one time, because it had a narrow tower topped with a white spire and a walkway around it. But the truly amazing thing about the structure was that it had electricity. Light streamed from the windows on the first floor, and up in the church’s tower panes of stained glass gleamed dark blue and crimson. Off to the right was a smaller stone building, possibly a workshed or garage.
The driveway made a circle in front of the house, and Mallory stopped the Ford and pulled up the handbrake. He tapped on the window, and when Humes-Talbot had lowered it, Mallory asked, a little uneasily, “Shall I wait here, sir?”
“Yes, for now.” Humes-Talbot was aware the old chauffeur had been supplied from the secret service’s pool of drivers, but there was no need to let him know more than was absolutely necessary. Mallory nodded, an obedient servant, and cut the engine and headlamps. “Major?” Humes-Talbot motioned toward the house.
The two officers walked from the car through the biting sleet, their shoulders hunched in their overcoats. At the top of three stone steps was a scarred oak door with a green bronze knocker: an animal of some kind, with a bone clenched in its teeth. Humes-Talbot lifted the bone and the beast’s fanged lower jaw rose with it. He knocked against the door and waited, beginning to shiver.
A bolt scraped back. Shackleton felt his gut bubble from the witch’s brew in the Mutton Chop. And then the door opened on oiled hinges, and a dark-haired man stood outlined in light. “Come in,” Michael Gallatin said.
3
The house was warm. It had oiled oak floors, and in a high-roofed, timber-beamed den a fire blazed in a hearth of rough white rock. After Captain Humes-Talbot had given Michael the letter of introduction signed by Colonel Valentine Vivian of the “London Passport Control Office,” Shackleton walked directly to the fireplace to warm his ruddy hands.
“Hell of a time gettin’ here,” Shackleton growled, working his fingers. “You couldn’t have picked a more desolate place, could you?”
“I couldn’t find one,” Michael said quietly, reading the letter. “If I’d wanted to entertain unannounced visitors, I’d have bought a house in London.”
Shackleton got the blood stinging in his hands again and turned to get a better examination of the man he’d come so far to meet.
Michael Gallatin was wearing a black sweater, the sleeves pushed up on his forearms, and faded, well-used khaki trousers. On his feet were scuffed brown loafers. His thick black hair, streaked with gray at the temples, was shorn in a military style, short on the sides and back. On his face was the dark grizzle of perhaps two or three days without a razor’s touch. There was a scar on his left cheek that started just under the eye and continued back into the hairline. A blade scar, Shackleton thought. Close call, too. Well, so Gallatin had had some experience in hand- to-hand combat. So what? Shackleton guessed the man’s height at around six-two, maybe a quarter of an inch more or less, and his weight at around one-ninety or one-ninety-five. Gallatin looked fit, a broad-shouldered athletic type, maybe a football player, or rugby or whatever the limeys called it. There was a quiet power about the man, like a heavy spring that had been crushed down and was on the edge of explosion. Still, that didn’t make him ready for a mission into Nazi-occupied France. Gallatin needed sun; he had the pallor of hibernation about him, probably hadn’t seen a bright sun in six months. Hell, there probably hadn’t been anything but murky gloom in this damned country all winter. But winter was on its last legs now, and the spring equinox-March 21-was only two days away.
“Do you know you’ve got wolves on your land?” Shackleton asked him.
“Yes,” Michael said, and folded the letter up when he’d finished. It had been a long time since he’d had a communication from Colonel Vivian. This must be important.
“I wouldn’t go out walkin’ if I were you,” Shackleton went on. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, brought out a cigar, and cut its end with a small clipper. Then he struck a match on the white stones of the hearth. “Those big bastards like meat.”
“They’re bitches.” Michael slipped the letter into his pocket.
“Whatever.” Shackleton lit the cigar, drew deeply on it, and plumed out blue smoke. “You want to have a little action, you ought to get yourself a rifle and go wolf huntin’. You do know how to use a rifle, don’t-”
He stopped speaking, because suddenly Michael Gallatin was right there in his face, and the man’s pale green eyes froze him to the bone.
Michael’s hand came up, grasped the cigar, and pulled it from between the other man’s teeth. He broke it in half and tossed it into the fire. “Major Shackleton,” he said, with the trace of a Russian accent softened by cool British gentility, “this is my home. You’ll ask my permission to smoke here. And when you ask, I’ll say no. Do we understand each other?”
Shackleton sputtered, his face reddening. “That was… that was a fifty-cent cigar!”
“It puts out half-cent fumes,” Michael told him, stared into the man’s eyes for a few seconds longer to make certain his message was clear, and then turned his attention to the young captain. “I’m retired. That’s my answer.”
“But… sir… you haven’t heard what we came to say yet!”
“I can guess.” Michael walked to the bay windows and looked out at the dark line of the woods. He had smelled his reserve stock of old whiskey wafting from Shackleton’s skin, and smiled slightly, knowing how the American-used to bland liquor-must have reacted. Good for Maureen at the Mutton Chop. “There’s a cooperative venture under way between the alliances. If this wasn’t important to the Americans, the major wouldn’t be here. I’ve been listening to the cross-Channel radio traffic on my shortwave. All those codes, things about flowers for Rudy and violins needing to be tuned. I can’t understand all the messages, but I understand the sounds of the voices: great excitement, and a lot of fear. I say that adds up to an imminent invasion of the Atlantic Wall.” He looked at Humes-Talbot, who hadn’t moved or taken off his wet overcoat. “Within three to four months, I’d guess. When summer smooths the Channel. I’m sure neither Mr. Churchill nor Mr. Roosevelt cares to land an army of seasick soldiers on Hitler’s beaches. So sometime in June or July would be correct. August would be too late; the Americans would have to fight eastward during the worst of the winter. If they take their landing zones in June, they’ll be able to construct their supply lines and dig into their defensive positions on the border of Germany by the first snowfall.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Am I close?”
Shackleton let the breath hiss from between his teeth. “You sure this guy’s on our side?” he asked Humes- Talbot.
“Let me conjecture a bit further,” Michael said, his gaze ticking toward the young captain and then back to Shackle-ton. “To be successful, a cross-Channel invasion would have to be preceded by a disruption of German communications, detonation of ammunition and fuel dumps, and a general atmosphere of hell on earth. But a quiet hell, with cool flames. I expect the networks of partisans will have a busy night blowing up railroad tracks, and maybe there’s a place in the scheme for the Americans, too. A paratroop assault would sow the kind of discord behind the lines that might keep the Germans running in a dozen directions at the same time.” Michael walked to the fireplace, beside the major, and offered his palms to the heat. “I expect that what you want me to do has a bearing on the invasion. Of course I don’t know where it’ll be, or exactly when, and I don’t want that information. Another thing you must realize is that the Nazi high command certainly suspects an invasion attempt within the next five months. With the Soviets fighting in from the east, the Germans know the time is ripe-at least from the alliance point of view-for an attack from the west.” He rubbed his hands together. “I hope my conclusions aren’t too much off the mark?”
