A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (14 page)

Mayfield turned on his heels.  “Well, that’s good news.”

They were allowed into the large conference room and took their positions standing against the near wall.  Roosevelt and Churchill sat at a long meeting table.  Aides to the President, Averill Harriman and Harry Hopkins, were present.  Also in the room were several British officers serving as aides to the Prime Minister.

Molotov stood at the end of the table, holding his hat in his hands.  He had wasted little time in beginning the discussion.  “Our intelligence group has monitored a situation for several months telling us German Intelligence as parachuted a forward group into Iran in March.  Their purpose was to blend into the city and establish radio contact with Berlin.  We have been intercepting and monitoring their radio transmissions since their arrival.  Two weeks ago, eight separate commando groups were deposited in the mountains around Tehran.  Once they are aware for certain that the president of the United States and the Prime Minister of England has arrived, they will merge on Tehran.”

Churchill shifted in his chair.  “And I suppose Hitler has sent some of his best.”

“Our information tells us many were trained by Skorzeny in the Ukraine . . .”

“Skorzeny?”
  Churchill interrupted.  “Impressive.”

“Many were anti-communist Russians recruited from Wehrmacht prisoner-of-war-camps.” Molotov said.  “They were outfitted with Russian army uniforms to blend into the Soviet security forces here in Tehran.  However, there appears to be a conspiracy within a conspiracy.  Several
of these men were actually loyal communists who have betrayed the plot.  Soviet army command has captured all but six of the men.”

“Do you know the man leading the six?”  Churchill asked.

“German SS Sturmbannfuhrer Paul Heuss.”

Churchill turned to one of his military people.  “Find out everything you can about this Heuss fellow.”

Roosevelt leaned forward.  “What is the name of this German operation?” 

“Operation Long Jump.”

“I rather like that,” the President said with humor.  “The Germans are very good at code names, but they aren’t as entertaining as you are, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“I’m extremely jealous,” Churchill grumbled.

Then Roosevelt turned serious again.  “What do you propose?”

Molotov looked around the room.  “You should move into the Soviet compound where you can be protected.  That way we will have the participants within secure areas.”

Roosevelt angled his chin and looked off into the distance.  “Gentlemen, thank you for your concern.  Now, if you would allow us to discuss this among ourselves for a moment.”

Once the Russians left the room, the mood shifted.  Harriman stepped forward.  “I don’t like it, Mr. President.  I don’t like it one bit.”

Averell Harriman was often counted on by Roosevelt as the one who could represent him faithfully as an emissary to Churchill or Stalin.   A past chairman of the board of Union Pacific Railroad, recognized link between the New Deal and American business, the converted Republican was known for his cautiousness.

“And why is that, Averell?”  Roosevelt asked lightly.

“We don’t know yet how, but I think the Russians are attempting to use this situation to their advantage.”

The President asked, “And what do our British friends think of the arrangement?  Major Mayfield?”

“By moving into Soviet territory you will have to make certain every conversation is guarded,” Mayfield said.  “But perhaps the most dramatic effect would be, sir, that it practically eliminates you and the Prime Minister having any private conversations during the conference.”

Roosevelt stared at Mayfield for a long moment, considering the suggestion.  “Harry?”

Harry Hopkins was the president’s closest wartime adviser.  Since Pearl Harbor he had moved into the White House, never for the next four years to be more than a few steps away when Roosevelt needed him.  Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Hopkins had headed up the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.  Surgery on stomach cancer three years before had left him severely weakened and gaunt.  His frayed suit hung around a sagging, bony frame.

“We may be attempting to read too much into the Soviet suggestion,” Hopkins said.  “I think it may only show how seriously they take your security, Mr. President.  And—the desperate hours Hitler now lives in.”

“Mr. Prime Minister?”

“If nothing else,” Churchill grumbled quickly, ‘”I am genuinely touched by Stalin’s concern for your safety, Mr. President.  I simply don’t share this anxiety toward the matter.”

Roosevelt lit a cigarette as if posing for one of his famous photographs.  “I think we shall take up the Soviet’s offer of hospitality.”

----

Dismissed, Salinger and Mayfield moments later were back on the front steps of the Embassy.  Mayfield stopped at the edge of the steps, one hand jammed in a coat pocket.  “Well, what can we take away from all that?”

“It’s possible Stalin is honestly concerned about the president’s safety.” Salinger said.  “After all, it was Stalin’s idea the conference be held in Iran.  Anything happens to the president; it would come across as his fault.  What’s interesting is Soviet intelligence has been aware of the plot for such a long time—apparently over two months—and hasn’t let us in on it.  That means our Soviet friends, including Shepilov, could be of more value to us than first believed.”

“And Goli Faqiri,” Mayfield said thickly.

“Yes.  And Goli,” Salinger said.

----

The forest sixty kilometers north of Berlin.

It had taken the messenger two hours from the city on the snowy, treacherous roads to reach the hunting party.

Richter sat at a table beneath a large canvas cover in the midst of a beech tree orchard.  He was seated around a large fire dressed warmly against the cold weather in full hunting gear, enjoying a lunch of beer and sausage.  Since dawn they had been hunting wild boar.  A row of six of the dead animals lay in a line twenty meters away.

The chilled, invigorating weather and his medication had subdued the thumping pain in his chest at least for this morning.  Seated at the table was Frick, several members of their office staff from Berlin, and at the head of the table Hermann Goering who had extended an invitation to Richter to join the hunting party.  It was the only reason that Richter would be away from his office freezing to death killing pigs while events were unfolding in Tehran.

But one simply didn’t decline such an invitation from Goering the avid hunter, the second in command under Hitler.

The only Nazi with a distinguished service record in the First World War, Goering was born in Rosenheim and became one of Hitler’s followers in the early 1920s.  It was Goering who created the secret state police, the Gestapo, in 1933.  It was Goering who had ordered a ‘general solution of the Jewish question’ in 1941.  However, his image had been tarnished once the Luftwaffe, of which he was the Commander-in-Chief, had failed to prevent Allied bombings of German cities.  But he was still a force within the Nazi hierarchy to be dealt with.  He loved extravagant entertainment and delighted in lavish uniforms.

Now the buoyant, theatrical leader sat at the table seemingly oblivious that the world was crashing in around them.  Pig hunting, indeed, Richter thought with disgust. 

A staff car came directly toward them through the open field, stopping at the edge of the trees.  A messenger exited and walked quickly up to the men gathered at the table.  He saluted Richter, and produced an envelope from a leather pouch at his side.

Taking the envelope, Richter stood and walked away from the table.  When he had finished reading, he glanced up to see Frick coming toward him.  His cheeks were flushed red from the cold and the beer, a stare of anticipation in his eyes. 
“Word from Traveler?”

“She appears to be making progress in understanding happenings in Tehran, Frick.  Slowly, she admits, but progress.”

Richter folded the message and placed it in the pocket of his hunting jacket.  He stomped his boots on the frozen ground and rammed his gloved hands in his pockets.  Excitement stirred in his mind.  “It’s rather like her nature to be cautious.  The Americans and British are in a quandary over the Intelligence officer’s death.”

They will eventually make a mistake, won’t they?”

“I certainly hope so, Frick, just as the British officer already has.  To think, the destiny of the world turns on such a small event as an affair in a cheap hotel.”  It was a delightful thought that came to Richter, tantalizing at the least.  Here was the world locked in an enormous struggle, and the balance of power could hinge on one agent in Tehran.  “At times the English amaze me.”

Richter took Frick by the arm and led him to the edge of the woods.  The chilled wind stirred the top of the black trees.  “I have an amazing story to tell you, Frick, one that will clear up matters . . . to a point . . . and explain why Traveler remains in Iran.  A theory I came to a good while ago that causes me great concern.”

Frick’s face changed.

“It unfolded in August of this year.  I flew to Amsterdam when one of our agents phoned and said that he had a matter he would only discuss with me in person.  The only reason I took the matter seriously is that he was one of our better agents in the European theater.  William Ruyter was recruited to infiltrate the SOE’s Dutch resistance after he offered his services to obtain the release of his mistress and younger brother.  Both of whom were members of the Dutch resistance.

“I arrived in Amsterdam on a late August afternoon and driven to Ultecht twenty miles south of the city.  There, I was placed in a boat with one of our agents posing as a grocer delivering his goods to homes along the canal.  In short order, I was dropped off where a walking trail followed the canal.  Thick hedges grew on the other side of the trail blocking anyone’s view from the large homes along the way.  In several minutes Ruyter came along.  He was a large man in his late twenties, well over six feet and two hundred pounds, wearing a cap pulled down on his face, his hands jammed in his pockets.  I fell in alongside him as we continued walking, never looking at one another.  But after a stroll of perhaps five hundred yards, the ‘grocer’ picked me up again and off I went back to Amsterdam, convinced that what the Dutchman had told me was true.”

“And what did he tell you?”

Richter removed a tin from his pocket and lit a cigarette.  He offered one to Frick.  “I believe beyond any doubt British intelligence has broken our military codes.”

“What?  And the Dutch agent convinced you of that?”

Richter said, “You see Ruyter was trusted by the allies as much as he was trusted by us.  He wasn’t a loyal fellow by any means, at least not to our cause.  He only worked for us because we had his lover locked away.  In the past he had worked for the resistance because his lover was a loyal resistance fighter.  Before we bought him, Ruyter had made contact with British Intelligence officers and members of the staff of Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, who now commanded the Dutch Forces of the Interior,” he said.  “Ruyter’s contact with British Intelligence is what he bargained with the day we walked along the canal.”

“But what could one agent have known?”

“What he had done was drawn a conclusion, one that I can now accept as a possibility.  Ruyter was sent by British Intelligence back into Holland to warn Dutch underground resistance leaders not to send downed Allied pilots over an escape line penetrated by our intelligence people.”

Frick’s eyes widened.  “And the only way they would have known we had breached the escape route was if they had broken our code.”

“Not a certainty by any means,” he said.  “Ruyter could have his own personal motives for telling me his suspicions—it did get his lover released by the way—but he had presented a premise I had to consider.” 

Richter flipped the spent cigarette to the ground and smothered it with a thick boot.  “Frick, since that meeting in Amsterdam that day . . . I have operated under the assumption that the British are reading our mail.”

-Fourteen-

The next afternoon, a mild pleasant Sunday, Roosevelt was moved from the American Legation into his temporary villa.  Stalin had handed over the main residence, the only steam-heated building in the city, and moved his party into a smaller villa to accommodate his guest.

Once the President was settled in, Stalin visited.

The Soviet leader was a compact figure, five-foot six and two hundred pounds.  He wore a plain but well-tailored brown uniform with wide red stripes down the sides of his trousers.  A single medal, a gold star hanging from a red and gold ribbon, decorated his wide chest.

A big difference from the Bolshevik tunic worn by the Russian leader the previous day, the basic uniform served the purpose of putting an aristocratic President at ease.  Later Hopkins would write that ‘there was no waste of word, gesture, nor mannerism . . . it was like talking to a perfectly coordinated machine . . . no man could forget the picture of the dictator of Russia.”

Despite Stalin’s hospitality, it was suspected by the President’s security people that the comfortable villa was bugged by hidden microphone.