Authors: Alan Bricklin
Even before she had pulled the door closed Larry eased the
car forward in first gear, and then accelerated through the remaining gears as
the door latched shut. He turned to look at her. "Are you all right?"
"I don't know. Not only do I not know how I am, but I
don't even know what's happening. I'm caught up in something and I'm completely
ignorant about what that might be. That's not a comfortable position in which
to find oneself."
"I'm sorry."
"Your being sorry doesn't help me any. You said you
didn't know what that woman was trying to do or why she had me kidnapped, but I
think you are keeping information from me."
Larry drove on in silence for several minutes before
replying. "I am keeping things back. It's better not giving you all the
dope."
"Excuse me. Dope? What is this?"
"Dope. It's an expression that means the true
information. The less you know the safer you are."
"I don't agree with that, but there's nothing I can do
about it I guess. Can you at least tell me how you knew that monster of a woman
back there wasn't me?"
"General Schroeder told me about the puncture wounds
when you fell on the pitchfork. I saw the scars when you brushed your hair away
from your neck."
"I see. How come you didn't kill her? You were sure who
the real Maria was."
"I should have. I've been regretting it for the last
twenty kilometers. To be honest, I didn't think you'd have approved."
"Probably not, but why should that matter?"
Larry didn't answer because he couldn't. Why did he care
what this woman thought? Yes, she was beautiful, he admitted, but what else?
There must be more; had to be. Why else would he have let himself be influenced
by what he supposed were the wishes of some civilian, and not killed that viper
outright. It was a mistake he now found troubling.
The night was dark, but fortunately the sky was relatively
clear and Larry was able to get his bearings from the stars, trying to keep his
heading a bit south of east as he maneuvered the unmarked back roads. He had
studied the area thoroughly, the roads as well as the topography, and he was
confident that once it was light he would be able to figure out where they
were. In the meantime he wanted to put distance between themselves and the
barn, satisfied with simply driving in the general direction of Lake Constance
and the primary exit point until he could map out a specific route. Next to
him, Maria was already asleep, the bruises on her face obscured by the night,
her beauty unmarred in the dim light, and as they rumbled down the country road
Larry found himself turning more than once to admire her. After about an hour
he found himself being lulled to sleep himself and thought it best to pull off
the road to get some down time before continuing in the morning. He had to
drive for almost another half hour before finding a spot that offered what he
considered to be sufficient cover —— a small stand of trees
surrounding the crumbling remains of a wooden shack, probably an out building
of one of the farms in the area. It was about twenty-five meters off the road
and he downshifted into second gear, slowly bumping along what seemed like a
path leading to the dilapidated structure. The rough terrain woke Maria, and
she blinked as she looked around. "Why are we stopping? Where are
we?"
"I need to get some rest. We should be safe here until
morning." Pulling behind the shack, he switched off the ignition and
turned to Maria. "Go back to sleep. We need to be up at first light. I'll
wake you before we get under way so you could ... uh ... in case you need to do
anything."
Shit. How stupid did that sound? Why didn't I just say 'so
you could go to the bathroom.'
"Thank you, Lorenz. That is your name isn't it?"
"Well, not exactly. If I were German it would be
'Lorenz,' and it's best you think of me that way."
"I know you're not German, but you speak the language
very well. You look Italian."
"My parents were from Italy."
"My mother was born in Perugia. That's in Umbria."
"I know. My folks were originally from further south,
just outside of Rome." He couldn't think of anything else to say, the
awkward silence of a first date. "Better get some rest now. Good
night."
"Buona notte."
Larry smiled.
* *
Predawn gray shrouded the landscape when Larry's eyes blinked open,
but he could see from the sky that the sun would soon be over the horizon. He
slipped quietly out of the car and crossed to what remained of the small
building, hoping there might be something of use, but all he found were leaves,
dirt and part of a broken bucket. Relieving himself behind one of the larger
trees, he looked along the road in either direction; no sign of anyone stirring
yet. A few stretches and a minute of running in place to get the circulation
going in the cold morning air, and he walked back to the car to find Maria
awake, standing alongside the car, arching her back and extending her arms over
her head and behind her, a lithe body almost feline in appearance. Her coat was
unbuttoned and he could not avoid the sight of her figure, accentuated by the
backward spread of her arms thrusting her breasts forward. He found himself
staring and, with the greatest of efforts, he reluctantly looked away as he
approached, embarrassed that she might know his thoughts.
She smiled at him as he came around the car and said, "I'll
just be a minute and then I'm ready to go. Sleeping in the front seat leaves
you all in knots when you wake up."
"There's some food in the back seat that Maria ...
well, whatever her name is, brought along. We have time for a quick
breakfast."
"Good. First I must, how do you say in English, piss,
then I can eat." She hurried off to the stand of trees, Larry staring
after her in amazement, thinking thoughts he had no business entertaining in
the middle of a mission.
After a quick meal of cheese, cold sausage and bread, they
were on the road again, and for the first time in days the ominous feelings
that had plagued Larry since almost the moment he met Eva receded into the
background, and it seemed that the blueprint for the operation could be
successfully followed.
Man plans and God laughs.
They were twenty minutes outbound when Larry stopped the car
just as it crested a hill, a position that afforded a good view of the
surrounding countryside, and from which he hoped to establish his position and
hence the course he needed to plot for their dash to the border. He stood by
the car and surveyed the area, slowly turning 360 degrees, then closed his eyes
while he conjured up the topographical maps he had studied back in the OSS camp
in Switzerland. Opening his eyes, he focused on the region ahead of them and to
the left, mentally aligning it with the image he held in his head until the
roads, river valleys and peaks that he saw before him coincided with the
features on the map, dropping into place like the final piece in a puzzle.
Larry knew where they were, where he had to go and what route he needed to take
to get there.
The timbre of the Mercedes engine rose to a higher pitch as
he downshifted for the descent from their vantage point. "We should be
able to reach the beginning of our border crossing by nightfall; the timing
couldn't be better."
"Wonderful. I think I will be happy to leave this
country." She watched the landscape roll by outside the window, but her
eyes were unfocused and her thoughts were elsewhere. "It will be good to
see Heinrich again. He has been like a father to me since my parents were
killed. That woman implied that he was killed, but I don't believe her. She
couldn't have had a German general murdered."
They turned onto a larger road, still not a major
thoroughfare, but it was paved and they should, he thought, make better
progress, although a better road brought with it the added risk of encountering
a German patrol. The danger, however, was not to come from the Germans.
Allen Dulles sat in his office shuffling through grainy pictures of
high ranking German officers, some in military uniform and some in civilian
dress, the pictures having been taken without their knowledge, and the various images
culled from files that the OSS maintained on all Nazi commanders that it could
identify. After his recent meeting with Mary, Allen had asked his staff to give
him a list of all Nazi officers that had been in Zurich or Bern in the last
three months, and although several did not at all match the physical
description that she had provided, he nonetheless decided to include their
photographs in the pictorial lineup he was preparing. "Appearances could
always be altered," he thought, his obsessive nature forcing him to
entertain all possibilities, including going back to his staff and modifying
his request to include not only Nazis known to have been in either of the two
cities Bancroft had mentioned, but anywhere in Switzerland. Further, he
expanded the search to include any high officer stationed within 200 miles of
Switzerland who had been absent from their post for more than a day and whose
whereabouts during that time were unknown. Espionage, and intelligence work in
general, consisted largely of gathering information, copious amounts and of all
sorts, to be sorted, evaluated and filed for future use when it might provide
some connection or link between seemingly unrelated events. Tedious and
mundane, but often of critical importance.
A knock on the door and Bill, his aide, opened it
sufficiently to pop his head in and announce, "Mrs. Bancroft is here,
sir."
"Send her in."
Mary strode into the office, all business, still wearing her
coat, unbuttoned, scarf hanging around her neck, and walked up to his desk,
settling herself in one of the chairs that faced it. "What do you
have?" It was not yet time for her routine weekly meeting so she assumed
that her summons to come see him was related to her observations on the
encounter she had had last time outside her hotel.
"Let's go over to the table," he said, placing his
pipe in the large ashtray and scooping up the pictures that were piled in front
of him. Mary stood up, laying her coat and scarf across the chair she had just
vacated, and followed him to the large conference table where he spread out the
photographs in a neat row. "These are all the German officers that have
been in Switzerland recently or might have been without us knowing about it,
and who come anywhere near fitting the description you gave me. I did take some
liberties, though, with your observations, broadening the search a little to
include basically any Nazi officer."
Mary smiled.
That's so like you, Allen.
"Take a look and see if any of these look like your
man."
Bending over she examined each photo, side stepping from one
to the other down the line, passing by Schroeder's picture without even a
glimmer of recognition. "It's one of those two," indicating two sets
of pictures that she had pushed back from the orderly alignment in which they had
been set down. "I want to look at them again."
"Sit. Let me get rid of the others." Dulles
removed all but the two Mary wanted to examine further, then laid those in
front of where she was sitting at the end of the table, along with the files on
each of the officers.
She carefully examined each picture, including a few in the
folders that Dulles had not shown to her originally, angling some to the light
for a better view of the mostly hastily shot images. Before she had finished
looking at the second folder she said with determination, "This one,"
tapping her forefinger on the large picture that he had included in the
original lineup. She read from the file cover, "Gerhard Waldman, General,
SS."
Allen came alongside, looking over her shoulder at the image
of a dapper looking, dark complexioned man, who had just turned to his left to
look at something when his picture had been taken surreptitiously, apparently
in Berlin. He was walking with a small group of generals several paces behind
Hitler and Himmler, and Dulles, sitting down beside Mary, picked up the picture
and held it before him, focusing intently on the General as if, by sheer
concentration, he could glean more information than was conveyed on this print
by the array of silver molecules on photographic paper. Having worked closely
with Bancroft he felt no need to ask if she was sure. "Well, now we know
who he was, but not what he was doing in Bern."
"Do you think he might have been meeting with the
English, or maybe even the Swiss in some sort of unofficial manner?"
"I can check with the English, but as far as the Swiss
go, we're a diplomatic mission and would have no business inquiring about some
German general in civilian clothes on 'holiday' in Switzerland." He put
down the picture, retrieved the one other file and returned to his desk where
he placed the folders in a neat pile to be re-filed by his clerk.
Mary Bancroft sat at the conference table, a look of
concentration on her face as she stared into space, rhythmically tapping her
finger on Waldman's picture.
"Could you bring me his file, please? It's time I learn
what I can about this fellow."
She slipped the picture back into the folder and brought it
to Dulles, gathering up her coat and scarf after depositing the items on his
desk, since she could tell by his tone that she was being dismissed. It was his
game from here on. The great game.
While Mary Bancroft and Allen Dulles were meeting in his
office at number 23 Herrengasse, Julian Templeton was strolling through old
town Bern, oblivious to the charm of this area of the city and unconcerned with
the upscale shops selling what little there were of luxury items to be had in a
country surrounded by a world at war. Down the Marktgasse and along the
Kramgasse, his direction purposeless, but his thoughts focused and clear.
However, so much was still unknown that definitive conclusions were few and of
little operational value. When he reached the Nydegg bridge spanning the river
Aare, which held old Bern nestled in its curves, he paused and sat on one of
the benches that lined the pedestrian walkways, deciding that the time for
information gathering was rapidly nearing an end and he must put into play at
least one or more plans of action. At the time of his last meeting with
Waldman, the field agent had not reached Munich; the general's tell had been
subtle, but Julian was sure it was there. If the operative had been killed or
captured en route, the game was over and could not be replayed; may as well all
go home. Although that was a possibility, it had to be ignored since it was a
null prospect requiring no action on his part except a small bit of "cover
your ass." Therefore, he was forced to assume that Gerhard, by now, either
possessed the plutonium himself or had it under his control, and held the trump
card. Templeton considered several scenarios, the first of which, that Waldman
had the plutonium, a buyer and a safe exit strategy, he dismissed out of hand,
for if that was the case, Julian was pretty much fucked, with nothing to do
except perhaps vengeance and that would serve only to incriminate himself. No
point in developing contingencies for something over which any of the plans he
could devise would have no effect. The other options were all variations of
Gerhard being able to accomplish some, but not all, of what needed to be done
to abscond with the prize, sell it for a shit load of money and escape to South
America or the Middle East. All of these possibilities begged the question of
why any of them would be better than the deal he had offered him, and the only
answer was more money or, less likely, more safety. If this were the case, and
he was trying to cut out Julian, Waldman's goal would be to deliver the
plutonium to the buyer or his agents, and this would entail moving it across
the border. A sale to someone in Germany was extremely unlikely and was another
null prospect engendering no action on Julian's part. Too much over which he
had no control.