The Talbot Odyssey (21 page)

“I see. And my credentials, my bona fides, are in order?”

“I have never sent a man or woman on a job unless their cover was perfect.”

Abrams knew, as O’Brien knew, that the only perfect cover was the one in your bed that you pulled over your head as a child to make the bad things go away.

O’Brien, as was his habit, made one of his abrupt changes of topic. “I’d like you to stay at the town house tonight. Katherine will call on you tomorrow morning, and you’ll go to the office. There’s a records room there, and you can give her a hand looking for a few things. Wear your gun.”

Abrams looked at him.

“She may be in danger. You’ll watch after her, won’t you?”

This particular shift from the prosaic to the intriguing caught him off guard. “Yes, I’ll look after her.”

O’Brien took two cordials from a passing waiter and handed one to Abrams. He said, “We’d like you to join the firm.”

Abrams stared at him. “I’m flattered.” He recalled very vividly how he felt when he’d been asked to join the Red Devils, and this was not a totally irrelevant thought. He remembered being both flattered
and
frightened.

O’Brien said, “As you must have surmised by now, the OSS has never really disbanded. And, I assure you, we are not conspiratorial paranoiacs. We don’t promote secrecy for its own sake, like many clandestine societies. There are no secret handshakes, oaths, membership cards, symbols, ranks, or uniforms. It is more a feeling of the heart and mind than an actual organization.”

Abrams lit a cigarette and flipped the match into an ashtray. He realized he was hearing things that, once heard, would put him in a compromising position. He considered leaving, but didn’t.

For the next ten minutes O’Brien described the nature and substance of his group. When he was done, Abrams looked at O’Brien and their eyes met. Abrams said, “Why me?”

O’Brien said, “You understand crime. Find us the murderer or kidnapper of Randolph Carbury, and the things we are interested in will start to fall into place.”

Abrams didn’t reply.

O’Brien looked at his watch, then stood. “There would be a good deal of personal danger. If you want to discuss this further, we can join the others in a private room at the other end of the armory. The room itself is quite interesting. May I show it to you?”

Abrams sat for a long time, then said, “Can I have more time to think about it?”

“You can go home and sleep on it. But I suspect you won’t sleep very well.”

Abrams took a long sip of his cordial and stood. “Let’s see the room.”

Abrams followed Patrick O’Brien into a huge columned chamber that was vaguely reminiscent of an Egyptian throne room. Around the upper perimeter of the walls was a running frieze depicting warriors from different periods of history. The ceiling was black, crisscrossed with beams inlaid with silver. Classical statuary stood at intervals around the dimly lit room.

Abrams’ eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw a large fireplace made of blue cobalt-glazed tile. In the center of the room was a thick Persian rug, and sitting in the center of the rug was a large ornate table that looked somewhat like a sacrificial altar. Stainedglass windows let in a diffused light from the street.

Two red-coated busboys were in the dimly lit room, arranging chairs around the fireplace. A waiter wheeled in a coffee service. The three men left silently.

James Allerton sat facing the fireplace. Katherine sat opposite him, with Thorpe and West to her left. O’Brien waved Abrams into a chair near the hearth and took the remaining chair beside him.

Abrams was surprised that it was West who spoke first and greeted him. West said, “I’m glad you’ve decided to join us for coffee.”

Abrams said, “I never turn down coffee.” He suspected that the state of the art of saying one thing and meaning another was very high with these people.

West spoke again. “I know you were reluctant, and I was too. But I’ve never regretted my decision. We’re all sort of like amateur armchair detectives.” He patted the arms of his chair for emphasis. “Think-tankers,” he added. “Dollar-a-year volunteers, like during the war. Whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

Abrams thought that West was either understating the facts or was himself not fully aware of the scope of the group. He realized then, in a moment of insight, that if he stayed with them for the rest of his life, he’d never know more than a small part of the whole. Moreover, he might never know or even feel that he belonged to anything more sinister than a coffee klatch. Unless, of course, they asked him to do something like blowing someone’s brains out.

Abrams regarded James Allerton, who seemed slightly unhappy. Katherine passed him a quick smile. Abrams looked across at Thorpe, who was staring openly at him, as though trying to think of the best way to dispose of his body.

Patrick O’Brien spoke. “Let’s begin. We need a bit of background. Nick?”

West tapped the Wingate letter lying on his lap. “This seems to fit the facts as we know them. First, there were three filed reports on Henry Kimberly’s death, and no two of them agree.”

West looked at Katherine. “I haven’t ever told you all of this. Ann knows. . . . Anyway, the last and official version is that Major Kimberly was in Berlin leading an advance party of OSS officers a day after the city had fallen to the Russians. That would be May 3, 1945.”

West paused, out of the historian’s habit, Abrams imagined, of ending a thought with a date. West continued, “Major Kimberly’s cover was that of a quartermaster officer in search of accommodations for the coming American occupying staff. In fact, he was there to retrieve about a dozen agents he’d had parachuted into the Berlin area. He was concerned about their welfare, especially in regard to the Russians.”

Patrick O’Brien nodded and added, “It was a dangerous mission. Berlin had fallen, but the surrender of Germany hadn’t been signed, and there were still roaming bands of SS fanatics plying their murderous trade along the highways and among the ruins. There was also the possibility, as we were discovering, of being detained by our Red Army allies.” O’Brien stared into the fire for some time, then said, “I told Henry to be careful. I mean, my God, we knew the war had less than a week to run. No one wanted the distinction of being the last casualty. I suggested the quartermaster cover. No use waving the OSS insignia in front of the Russians’ noses. Henry, too, was wary of the Russians.”

James Allerton spoke for the first time. “In that respect, he was not so naive as many of us in those days, myself included.” He looked at Katherine. “But he felt a deep obligation to his agents . . . hence the fateful mission to Berlin.” Allerton nodded to West.

Nicholas West continued, “There was, according to the mission report on file, one agent in particular whom Major Kimberly wanted to recover—Karl Roth, a German Jewish refugee and a Communist who was working for the OSS. Another agent had radioed that Roth had been picked up by the Russians, then released. When Roth was queried by radio, he explained his release by saying he convinced the Russians he was a Communist. Roth’s radio apparently was still under his control. His message went on to say that the Russians had asked him to work for them as a double within the OSS. He agreed, he said, in order to get out of their clutches.”

O’Brien interjected, “This was not the first indication we had that the Russians were trying to turn our agents who had Communist backgrounds. Henry thought this was ominous in regard to any postwar intelligence service we might establish.”

West finished his coffee and said, “There is one last radio message on file from Karl Roth. In it he reports that he’s sick and starving. He asks, ‘When are you coming?’ He gave his location—a railroad shed near Hennigsdorf. Roth had been assigned to the Alsos mission. He said he’d located two German scientists but needed help in bringing them out. Roth had two strikes against his credibility by this time: his Communist background and the fact that he had failed to report his contact with the Russians and had to be queried about it. On the other hand, he
had
reported that the Russians tried to turn him, but that’s something he’d expect the OSS to assume anyway.”

O’Brien interjected, “No one in OSS London felt confident in deciding Roth’s fate: come to his aid or cut him loose? We radioed all the details to Henry and told him to make the decision but to proceed with caution.”

Abrams listened as West and O’Brien continued the background briefing. Already he could see where it was leading. It was leading to the here and now. It was a story rooted in a turbulent past, a time when the world was in shambles, a time when forces were set in motion that would culminate in a final Armageddon that these people obviously felt was close at hand.

West said, “Karl Roth was not heard from after that message, until he surfaced again in 1948. He reported to the American occupation forces in Berlin stating he’d been rearrested by the Russians and held prisoner for three years. He claimed his back pay and benefits, but his original hiring contract with the OSS had been lost, and no one knew quite what to do with him. His bona fides were established by ex-OSS men, and he was given some money. He was never properly debriefed, however, and his three-year disappearance was never satisfactorily explained.”

Abrams glanced slowly around the room again, which he had come to think of as some sort of celestial chamber. His eyes passed from Allerton to O’Brien and he was reminded of two ancient priests guarding the nearly forgotten secrets of an arcane religion.

West added, “Roth applied for intelligence work with the American and British occupation authorities in their respective zones, but was turned down. Roth then went to England, found his war bride—a girl he’d married when he lived in London running a green grocer business—and eventually was allowed to emigrate to America, again claiming this was promised to him by the OSS.”

Thorpe smiled. “And now Karl Roth is assistant to the President on matters of nuclear strategy.”

West look around the darkened room, then glanced at O’Brien and Allerton. He said, “As it turns out”—he looked at Thorpe—“Roth and his wife own a delicatessen on Long Island.”

Thorpe smiled again. “Well, that’s not exactly what I thought you were leading up to, Nick.” Thorpe reflected a moment. “Maybe he would be interested in my section. Sort of a shaky and shady background, though. . . .”

Katherine said, “This man should be debriefed.”

O’Brien poured himself more coffee. “I’ll see to it.” He plucked absently at his black bow tie, then said, “The Alsos mission had some successes, but the Russian equivalent of Alsos was doing even better. They seemed to be one step ahead of us in locating and snatching German nuclear physicists. If you consider that most of these scientists were trying to reach us and not them, then it’s odd that the Russians were doing so well. And since Alsos had the absolute highest priority and security, Henry and I, and others, concluded that someone—perhaps more than one person—very highly placed either in Eisenhower’s headquarters, in Alsos itself, or in the OSS, was telling the Russians what, where, when, how, and who.” O’Brien leaned forward. “Eventually we became fairly certain that the main leak was in the OSS. It was one of us. Someone we saw every day, with whom we ate and drank. . . .”

Allerton seemed to come out of a deep reverie. “Yes . . . that was when we came up with the fanciful code name for this double agent: Talbot. Lawrence Talbot—you know, the fellow who turned into a werewolf by the light of the moon . . . . Popular movie at that time.” Allerton smiled. “For the intellectuals among us,
talbot
is also the old Anglo-Saxon word for a ravaging wolf. So, then, we began an operation to expose him and . . . eliminate him. We called it Silver Bullet—”

O’Brien cleared his throat. “Actually, it was called Wolfbane.”

“Yes, that was it, Patrick.” Allerton stroked his long nose. “Time dims things that seemed so important once.”

“Silver Bullet,” said O’Brien, “was the joint British/American name for the termination of the operation.” O’Brien took something from his pocket. “One of our more flamboyant officers had this fashioned by a London silversmith.” He held up a gleaming .45-caliber silver bullet. “This was to be fired into Talbot’s brain.”

No one spoke for some time, then O’Brien added, “Talbot was the worst sort of traitor. He didn’t confine his treachery to stealing and passing on secrets like the majority of traitors. He actively sent men and women to their deaths. I picture him sometimes on an airstrip in England, striding around the tarmac at dusk, patting agents on the back, embracing the women, adjusting parachute harnesses, wishing them luck . . . and all the while knowing . . .” O’Brien looked at Allerton.

James Allerton said softly, “You would think a man like that . . . a man who had lost his soul . . . could be easily spotted . . . his eyes should reveal the corruption in his heart.”

Abrams listened. He had become to them as unobtrusive as a trusted servant; they knew he was listening, but they didn’t expect him to talk back until they addressed him. It was, he thought, not unlike a detective’s brainstorming session. He glanced at Katherine, wondering if the mention of her father was painful.

West picked up the story again. “Henry Kimberly reported in by radio twice a day for a week, then radioed what was to be his next to last encoded message, which is still in the file. It said”—West recited with no hesitation—“‘Most important: Re Alsos: Have made contact with grocer’—that was Karl Roth—‘Grocer has reported the location of two pixies’—that was the atomic scientists. ‘Will recover same.’” West paused, then said, “Henry Kimberly’s last message, a day later, reported that he’d established contact with the Russian authorities for the purpose of searching Gestapo files and interrogating captured Gestapo officers who might have information about missing OSS agents. The last lines of his message read, ‘Red Army helpful. Gestapo has revealed the arrest and execution of most of our mission. Names to follow. Trace and locate bodies of them. Will continue recovery operation.’” West looked at Allerton. “Do you remember that, sir?”