“God, man, it’s an odd time to get squeamish. Didn’t you just propose bombing four concentration camps with no warning at all?”
Stern felt a strange hesitancy. He
“You mentioned other objectives, Brigadier?”
Smith was watching him carefully. “Right. After the garrison is neutralized, you’ll move into the gas factory. First and foremost, we need a sample of Soman, their newest and most toxic gas. Second, we need photographs of the production apparatus. Nerve agents are extremely difficult to mass produce. A lot could be learned by studying photos of the German equipment.”
“Brigadier, I’m no scientist,” Stern objected. “I can operate a camera, but I wouldn’t know a poison gas factory from a herring cannery.”
“Don’t worry about that. Your job is neutralizing the camp. Someone else will give you technical directions regarding the gas.”
“Who?”
“An American. He’s the foremost expert on poison gases outside Nazi Germany. Not only that, he speaks fluent German.”
“I thought you said the Americans were against this mission.”
“They are. But this man’s a civilian. Perfect for the job.”
Stern’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like you’re trying to sell him to me.”
“I’m afraid
“A pacifist! I don’t want him.”
“You’ll take him, though,” Smith said harshly. “You’ll do whatever I bloody tell you to do. And the first thing you’re going to do is help me sell him on this mission. Lay on the sob stuff about the plight of the Jews. Moral duty, all that rot.”
Stern’s voice communicated his disgust. “You want me to help you convince a pacifist to murder defenseless prisoners?”
A wicked smile touched the corners of Brigadier Smith’s mouth. “Nobody needs to say anything about killing anybody. This is a sales job. And the first rule of sales is, know your mark. In this case, that advice can be taken quite literally.”
“What do you mean? Who
Brigadier Smith leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. “Mark McConnell, M.D. And I can tell you right now, Stern, you’re going to hate him.”
Two hours later, in a forest deep in northern Germany, a black Volkswagen skidded to a stop beneath a thick stand of fir trees. Two figures — one male, one female — climbed out and hurried into the wood. The woman wore a heavy wool coat over a white nurse’s uniform, and a fur hat over her blond hair. The man wore a ragged buttonless jacket to cover his gray shirt, which was lined with prison stripes.
The man stopped at the edge of a clearing and stood guard. The woman moved forward and called out a few words in Polish. Two men materialized out of the trees and stepped into the moonlight. One was huge, almost a giant, with a thick black beard. He carried a Sten submachine gun in one hand and wore a meat cleaver on his belt. The young man beside him weighed only half what his comrade did, and carried only a suitcase. With his long thin arms and delicate fingers, he looked like a refugee from a paupers’ symphony.
“You’re late, Anna,” said the giant. “We already took down the antenna.”
“Then put it back up,” she said. “We almost didn’t get here at all.”
The giant grinned, then said something to his comrade in Polish. The thin man opened up the suitcase and pulled out a coil of wire. The giant tied one end to his belt and scrambled up the nearest fir tree.
The woman called Anna took a small notebook from her coat and knelt on the ground beside the suitcase. The simplicity of the concept fascinated her. Transmitter, receiver, battery, antenna — all in one battered leather suitcase. This wireless set had been hand-built by Polish partisans, but it worked almost as well as the factory- made German set where she worked. She patted the young man on the arm while he dialed in a frequency.
“Do you think we’re too late, Miklos?” she asked.
He looked up at her with hollow eyes and smiled. “My brother likes to tease you, Anna. London is always waiting.” He took a codebook from his pocket, opened it, then looked up toward the dark branches. “Ready, Stan?”
“Fire away!” called the giant. “Just keep it short.”
Miklos rubbed his hands together for warmth, then did a musical dexterity exercise to limber his fingers. The blond woman opened her notebook to a marked page and handed it to him.
“This is it?” Miklos asked, scanning the nearly blank sheet. “Can it be worth all this trouble?”
Anna shrugged. “That’s what they asked for.”
Sixty miles from London, on the site of a former Roman encampment, stood a horrid Victorian pile known as Bletchley Park. Since the beginning of the war the mansion had served as the nerve center of Britain’s covert battle against the Nazis. Radio aerials sheltered in the trees gathered hurried transmissions from across Occupied Europe, then routed them to former ships’ radio operators on duty inside the mansion, who finally passed the decoded signals to the synod of dons and scholars responsible for piecing together a picture of what was happening in the darkness that lay across the Continent.
Tonight Brigadier Duff Smith had driven his Bentley at alarming speeds to reach Bletchley. He could have phoned, but he wanted to be there when — or if — the message he awaited came in. Smith had stood at the shoulder of a young rating from Newcastle for an hour, watching a silent radio receiver until nervous tension got the better of him. He was about to give up and drive back to London when a staccato of Morse dots and dashes filled the tiny room.
“That’s him, sir,” said the rating with controlled excitement. “PLATO. I don’t even need to hear his identifying group. I know his fist like Ellington’s piano.”
Brigadier Smith watched the young man copy down the groups as they came through. They came in three short sets. When the radio fell silent, the rating looked up with a puzzled expression.
“That’s it, sir?”
“I won’t know until you decode it. How long were they on the air, Clapham?”
“I’d say about fifty-five seconds, sir. Plays that Morse key like a musician, PLATO does. A bloody artist.”
Smith looked at his watch. “I make it fifty-eight seconds. Good show. The Poles are the best at this game, bar none. Decode that lot right now.”
“Right, sir.”
One minute later, the rating tore off a sheet of notepaper and handed it to the SOE chief. Smith read what he had written:
Brigadier Smith laid the notepaper on a table and pulled a different sheet from his pocket. He consulted some figures that had been scrawled there earlier in the week by a brilliant British engineer. The rating saw the brigadier’s hand stiffen, then crumple the sheet of paper in his hand.
“By God, it could work,” Smith said softly. “That woman is gold in the bank. It could
