A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (2 page)

-Two-

Cairo.  Two days later.

It was Sayed, the trusted Egyptian cab driver, who drove the American agent out of the city at dusk.  He had a dark, serious face, a man regrettably burdened with supporting a wife and five children.  But he considered himself most fortunate that he had made it on the list of reliable drivers to be employed, with substantial pay, to transport British and American officers arriving in great number in Cairo over the last two months.

The taxi bumped along the road leading to the great pyramid of Cheops, a column of dust trailing behind as they passed through a village of mud huts shaped like beehives.  Sayed glanced into the mirror.  This one, he had noticed before, this American sitting in the back seat reading a newspaper in the fading afternoon sunlight.  Black hair combed back from a handsome face.  Medium height, thick shouldered a boxer once perhaps, only thinner now.  The stress of war pinched his features, but that wasn’t a surprise to Sayed who considered himself an excellent judge of men.  He had learned long ago these Americans took it upon themselves to save the world.  Sayed looked in the mirror again just as the American glanced up from his paper and stared out the window.  The sadness was obvious.  Who really knew the reason why?

----

Booth Salinger was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1913.  When he was fourteen, his father had been transferred to a strange land named Iran where
Riza Shah, the leader, had introduced a program to modernize his country.  Salinger’s father was sent over as an executive with Anglo-Persian Oil Company and served as a technical advisor.  Salinger’s mother took a position at the newly founded University of Tehran.

Young Booth, over the next six years would learn many things about the strange country, which would be an advantage later in his military career.  It was also in Persia that he met his future wife. 

There had been an older brother, Warren, the athlete in the family, killed in a car accident on the highway south of Tehran the year after they arrived.  It was Salinger’s older brother who was his father’s favorite, and after his death his father was never quite the same.  Booth swore someday he would find something to do in life that would impress his father. 

In 1929 his father was reassigned to the corporate office in Boston and they left Iran.  As a boy of sixteen his heart was broken.  Julia, the daughter of a British officer, had to be left behind, and he was certain he would never see her again.  In time, the pain of leaving her drifted away.  Salinger graduated from high school and focused on what he would do with his life.  He was drawn to the newly formed Army Intelligence group when they set up a recruiting station on career day at the university he was attending.

His mother and father were gone now.  Father first when he died suddenly of a heart attack during a business trip to Europe where he was attending a meeting in Prague.  Then mother passed away, as quietly as she had lived, in her sleep.  They had died within eight months of each other, which should have taught Salinger something about love.

Salinger joined the Army Intelligence in June after graduation, and quickly rose to the top of his class.  War was imminent and America suddenly found itself lacking an intelligence organization.  Chosen to be among the first recruits trained by British Intelligence, he was sent to a school established in Canada.  There he went through rigorous training, instructed in the many talents demanded by his work; Morse code and radio transmitter repair; killing silently with garrote, knife or bare hands; and parachuting into and surviving in almost any kind of terrain.

Salinger’s first assignment was Madrid in the summer of 1941 where agents were needed in Spain to sort out information and determine if that country would stay officially neutral.  His invaluable reports impressed Bill Donovan head of President Roosevelt’s newly formed Intelligence organization.  When the Office of Strategic Services was structured by presidential order in June 1942, Salinger’s major assignment came three months later, involving an operation in Tehran.  He was sent to Iran to set up clandestine radio stations and to support Soviet operations in the mountains.

Salinger and another agent pulled off one of the most daring rescues of the early Iranian operation.  A chief pilot of French Morocco was hiding in Tabriz.  Salinger and the agent drove to the city in northern Iran in an old Ford, hid the pilot in the trunk covering him with an oriental rug, and promptly delivered him to the British Embassy in Tehran.  From there, the pilot was flown to Gibraltar and then to London with his crucial mountain terrain maps.

It was in between these missions, while in Cairo for some rest that he and Julia met by accident, rekindled an old relationship, and married two months later.

All of this impressively accomplished by the time Salinger was twenty-eight.  But his downfall lay just ahead. 

In the late spring of 1942, Salinger became involved in an ill-fated design in the mountains south of Tehran when the Germans uncovered the operation.

On the road to Hamadan, the Germans set an ambush while Salinger was delivering an Iranian officer to Tehran where he was to testify about subversive pro-German activities.  The ambush had been swift and precise, what they should have expected from the German partisans.  Later, Salinger learned that three of his men were dead on a Hamadan street outside a safe house where other informers were being kept. 

Pulled out of Tehran deeply rattled, and deemed beyond useful by his superiors Salinger was sent to Bern; a city of mountainous charm, which given time he was assured, would cure his maladies.  He had taken a room at the Baur au Lac Hotel at the southern end of the Bahnhofstrasse, a grand place overlooking the lake, where in the summer businessmen would eat lunch in the pavilion among the thick gardens.  It was a good place to sit and remember.  

Salinger had waited at the hotel on the lake for three days before he dialed a number in London.  They informed him they were sending someone to pull him out.  The next morning he waited in a rented Renault parked along the
Bahnhofplatz in front of the Schweizerhof Hotel.  He watched patiently as people queued before the mirror-like wall of Bern’s main railway station as a heavy snow fell.

After a while, the passenger door opened and Goli Hemmati sat in the seat, having arrived on the Geneva-Zurich Express as Salinger had been told.  He thought then how strange it was she had been sent to take care of him, Julia’s childhood friend, now working for the British.  She wore a gray raincoat and smelled damp, but she was still very beautiful.  She informed Salinger it was all over for him, and that she was to take him away from the war.

Four months later he was determined fit for duty again.  Stationed in Cairo, he was told there was much work to do concerning the elimination of an immense German spy network once Rommel was defeated.  For Salinger this meant mainly desk duty, the daily shuffling of papers, and attending to logistic matters.  To put it bluntly, he was being protected, and he was bored.

This, he thought, made it even stranger as to why he was being driven on this late afternoon to a meeting with British Intelligence on the outskirts of Cairo.

----

Salinger looked up from the newspaper as the taxi passed the Mena House Hotel.  Gleaming towers and domes set among palms, an oasis of luxury in the desert landscape with gardens bursting full of bougainvillea and jasmine.  It all represented another time in Salinger’s life . . . when life was fresh back then even though the clouds of war surrounded him and his new wife.  It was there at the Mena, among the jasmine-scented gardens, beneath the shadows of the Pyramid of Cheops, he and Julia were married.

He allowed himself the fleeting luxury of remembering, and then pushed it all away realizing he had become very good at doing that—shutting away those happier times.

The taxi driver pumped the brakes as they reached where the asphalt road ended.

Off to the right was a group of villas among groves of tamarind and eucalyptus trees.  The driver pulled off to the left away from the villas where an Arab leaned over an irrigation wheel and sipped water from cupped hands.  Just beyond, a group of men sat cross-legged beside squatting camels.

The sedan bounced to an abrupt halt at a roadblock some twenty yards short of the oasis.  The driver got out, opened the door for Salinger and pointed.  ‘There, sir.”  Salinger offered to pay the fare but the driver waved away his money and pointed beneath the trees.  “He has already paid, sir.”

Salinger turned, shielding his eyes against the setting sun.

Major Graham Mayfield stood at the tree line.

----

The British intelligence officer at forty-nine looked more the part of a college professor peering from behind rimless glasses.  Head of British Intelligence operations in Persia, Mayfield was certainly no stranger to the intrigues swirling through Cairo.  It was rumored that he could walk
through the terrace bar of the Shepheard Hotel and point out every spy present whether they were British, American, or German.

Mayfield walked out of the shadows toward Salinger, his coat draped over his arm, his pearl-white shirt plastered to his damp chest.  “Well, Booth, you’re looking healthy again.  Thank God for that.”  They shook hands.  “How long has it been?  Have we talked since you were stationed in Cairo?”

“It was before I was sent to Bern,” Salinger told him.

Mayfield took him by the elbow.  “Yes, Bern is such a beautiful city and just the place for one to heal.  A bad business that you went through back then, didn’t you?  I would hope you’ve been able to put that all behind you.”

When Salinger didn’t answer— “You don’t still blame yourself for those men dying?” Mayfield asked.

For the briefest of moments, there was between them an illusion that at one time they were actually above all of this.

“I wish I could blame someone else,” Salinger said.

You could blame the Germans.”

Salinger stared out over the desert.  “I’ve tried that, Major.”

Mayfield let a respectful moment pass.  “Well, I would imagine you’ll want to know why I asked you to meet me here.  Some serious business has come up in Tehran.  Rather quickly as these sorts of things tend to do.”

“You have an operation for me?”

Mayfield grinned. 
“Exactly.  I thought it was time we got you out of that office, and besides who knows Tehran better than yourself.”  He stopped.  “Booth, because Iran is your playing field I wouldn’t suggest sending anyone else there to address this situation.”  He pointed to a Buick sedan parked behind the trees.  “There are several men here who also agree with me you’re the man for the job.  Let’s not keep them waiting.”

As they approached the Buick, a shadow moved out from the front of the sedan.

Winston Churchill wore a white duck suit, a white panama hat and white shoes.  He carried a gold-topped ebony cane and looked more like a butterfly hunter than the leader of England.  “So, this is our man, Major?”

“Yes, sir, Booth Salinger.”

Churchill extended his hand, staring straight at Salinger as if to instantly read into his soul.  “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Salinger.  Sorry about all the melodrama concerning meeting you out here in the desert.  But I know you’ll appreciate the secrecy once you’ve been made aware of the situation.” 

Meeting the Prime Minister of England in the middle of the Egyptian desert?  Salinger instantly appreciated the urgency of the meeting.

“We have a circumstance,” Churchill began, “which demands immediate and swift attention.  Mayfield assures me there is no other man he would rather have working on it than you because of your keen awareness of the workings of Persian intelligence operations.”

“The major has always had a vivid imagination,” Salinger said.

“That may well be, but I’ve grown to trust his judgment,” Churchill said, pointing a thick finger at Salinger.  “We need you to work with us . . . and before you ask, yes we’ve received permission to approach you to work with British Intelligence.”  Churchill, cigar clinched between his teeth, turned and made his way toward the sedan.  “Walk with me, Mr. Salinger.”

After several yards they stood at the Buick.  Churchill opened the back door.  President Franklin Roosevelt leaned over.  “Good evening, Mr. Salinger.  Would you like to take a seat?”

----

Salinger sat beside the President who was wearing a dark business suit.  His large head was thrown back as seen in newspaper photographs hundreds of times, with a broad smile on his pear-shaped face and the gleaming pince-nez cocked on his nose.  Churchill and Mayfield sat opposite. 

“I knew your father very well . . . a good man,” Roosevelt said.  “Were you aware he was conducting some work for us in Europe at the time of his death?”

“My father was working for the government?”

“He was invaluable to us,” the President said.  “Europe was quickly being closed off by Hitler and the only men who had access to information were businessmen traveling there.  We asked your father to keep his ears and eyes open to what was happening behind the curtain.  He was quite useful; he was the one who recommended you to Army Intelligence by the way.”  He smiled, “with some assistance from friends in high places.”

“You—”

“Anything for an old friend, and, I can see from Major Mayfield’s recommendation it was a smart decision.”