A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (25 page)

Salinger rolled over for a cigarette from the table, lit one, and lay on his back staring at the ceiling.
  He imagined Tehran, soaked copper-colored leaves scattered along the narrow stone-floored sidewalks.  Flowers peddled from quaint homemade wooden stalls.  He remembered how Julia loved Tehran.  A comforting thought. 

But now his life was spinning wildly out of control again.  Fate had betrayed him.

He wondered if there was time to change.

Tiring of thinking of such things, Salinger crossed his arm across his face covering his eyes, and realized he was impressed with the silence of the room, and the enormity of his situation.

NOVEMBER 29.  MONDAY

-Twenty-Five-

Salinger arrived back in the city at midmorning without Goli.  She had remained in Isafahan on business she told him sending him off at the airport, ‘promising to phone him the next day.’  Salinger’s call to Mayfield’s office secured him a car waiting for him at the Tehran airport.  He told Mayfield he was going to see Julia and to meet him there within the hour.

----

The staff car dropped Salinger off in front of Julia’s house.  He waved the driver off, then went upstairs and opened the door.  The lights were off.  He walked through the dark until there was Julia on the couch, legs curled beneath her, a blanket across her lap.  Her head rested in the crook of her arm, hair combed back like a boy’s.  The radio softly played the Harry James song “I’ve Heard That Song Before.”

“Is that you, Booth?  Oh, I hope that’s you.” 
             

“It’s me, Julia.  I came to see how you were.”

“Not too well, I’m afraid.  I have a headache.  The doctor gave some medicine to take for it.”

She smoothed the blanket on her lap with an open hand.  “Did you find your spy who killed Goli’s husband?”

“So you knew?”

“I guessed.”

“We found him.”

“Where?”

“In Isafahan.  He’s dead now.”

“You killed him because he murdered Goli’s husband, is that it, or because he was the enemy?  You justify it by saying people die in war, don’t you?”

“I killed him because this . . . all of this awful mess . . . is tied together.”

In the hallway, a wall clock chimed. 

“When will this all end?  In Tehran I mean?”

“Who knows?”

“No, Booth, you’re good at these things.  That’s your job.”

“A week.
  Maybe longer.”

She rubbed her forehead.  “And there’s nothing to be done, is there?  That’s it?”

“This’ll all be over some day, and once we leave here, we’ll start over,” he said and came and sat by her.  “It’ll be better than before,” he said leaning over and smoothed her hair.  ‘Better than ever.”

“I’ve been having dreams about us,” she said.  “And it’s about starting over . . . sort of . . . well, yes, it’s about starting over for both of us.  But anyway the dream,” she said.  “We don’t live in England or anywhere for a long time after we escape this dreadful place.  Yes, I’ve always hated it, haven’t we? . . .
this place? . . . even when we were young and it was a new world to us.”  She stopped.  “We’ll go to an island,” she said, “just off the Greek coast, a place where old men still haul marble down from the mountains, Booth.  Just like the old days.  Gray, hard slabs tied to mules, and the animals are led down a narrow path with rope halters.  It’s a place where no one has heard of Tehran, or Bern, or maybe even the Nazis, and that way they won’t have any idea how much we suffered.  No idea at all.”  She curled up beside him.  Her skin smelled like talcum powder.

“We’ll live in a white stone cottage,” she said, “beneath the strong sunlight overlooking the coast and we’ll sleep and the cool wind from the mountains will blow in our window each morning to wake us.  Then we’ll get up and lazily sip black coffee at a stone table.  Our days will be long and free and I can write or paint all day, as long as I have my eyes.  Sometimes at night,” she said, “we’ll go into the village and stand in the night shadows and listen to the music and laughter, and to the old men talk about their war.”

She stopped, rubbing her forehead.

“Do you still have the headache?”  Salinger asked.

“Not so much now,” she said and reached out and found his arm.  “Can we live on that island someday, Booth?”

Salinger didn’t answer.  Instead, he went to the bar, mixed a whiskey and soda and sat in the chair beside her.  “Listen, I’m going to have to leave you for a while.”

She seemed puzzled.  “What do you mean . . . leave?”

“Don’t be like that.”

“But I don’t want you to go.  I don’t want you to leave me ever again.”

“This is the last time,” he said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“You’ll never leave me alone again?”

“Never.
  Once this is over, I’ll never leave you again and I’m sure you’ll become sick of me.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  It had been a long time since he had seen her that way. 

“Can I go with you?  I mean just tonight.” she asked as he stood and returned to the bar.  “I don’t want to meet your friends, or find out any secrets.  I don’t want to go with you everywhere,” she said. 

“I don
’t think you going with me is such a good idea.”

“No, it’s a great idea,” she said.  “I want to see the city and I won’t get in the way,” she said.

He was ashamed that he couldn’t confront her with all that he suspected.  Something inside him simply shut out all that he should have challenged her with.  As if she was standing on the edge of a vast abyss, and one more push and she would be gone forever.

Julia was silent for a moment, her small battle won.  She stood in the half-dark room.  “I think I’ll go and take a bath.  Later, will you take me out to eat?  I’ve been so worried I haven’t eaten all day. 
Early.  I want us to eat early before the city is quiet.”

“You tell me when.”

“Maybe I’ll take a bath first.”

“Good.”

“I’ll take a bath and then a nap.  Then we’ll go out and eat.”  She kissed him quickly on the cheek.  “I love you again, Booth.”  Julia reached out for his hand.  “Booth, we should know that we’re at that point where we can trust each other again.”

Then she was gone. 

Down the hallway her outline, like a ghost, moved quietly from the bedroom to the bath.  The door closed.  Waiting several moments, he stepped down the hall and heard the water running in the tub.  How could he not trust her again?

----

Later, as Julia napped, he sat on the screened porch overlooking the street.

He allowed himself to again think about his memories of Bern.  Of the darkness that crowded
his mind in those days, when he had given up on holding himself together.  It was when he thought of those walks with Mrs. Walker, the discussions of ciphers and codes that it all began to come to him.             

----

Mayfield was waiting for him when Salinger came through the gate.  Two of Mayfield’s men leaned against a black sedan across the street.

“How is she, Booth?”

“Some pain, a headache.  She said the doctors don’t think the procedure did any good.”

“I hope things work out for her.”  Mayfield slipped a spent cigarette into the curb.  “I haven’t been totally honest with you.  There is something else—it’s time I told you something I wish I had told you in the beginning.  I’ve misled you in the worse way—and I’ve mislead others,” he said. 

Salinger stepped back as if to distance himself from the dishonesty.  Mayfield looked down the street and waved.  The black staff car pulled down beside them.

“What I allowed capturing Traveler to become,” Mayfield said, “was more important than being truthful . . . more important to me than anything on this earth. You need to go with me.”

“I’m taking Julia to dinner.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have time for that . . . Churchill wants to see us,” Mayfield said getting in the back seat.  “It seems he thinks it’s time he was honest with you also.”

----

The staff car pulled up in front of the British Legation twenty-five minutes later.  Salinger and Mayfield went up the steps past two Iranian guards and through the door into a grand entrance hall.

“Follow me,” a British officer said pointing at the end of the hallway.  They were led through an elegant wooden door case, then at a quick pace through a narrow hallway, then to a staircase.  At the top of the stairs the officer knocked lightly on the door and they entered. 

Churchill sat by the window at his mahogany desk.  He stood to greet them clad in a purple dressing gown, and a gray felt hat. He looked cherubic, his gray eyes tragically vigilant.  “Gentlemen, I’m glad you could join me,” he said gruffly.
“Some tea?”

“Greatly appreciated, sir,” Mayfield said.  

He turned to the officer. “Refreshments for the gentlemen.”

A low fire crackled in the fireplace, though there was a distinctive chill to the room.  A thick carpet centered the floor in front of the fire.

“A seat, gentlemen.”

Salinger and Mayfield each took the white, stuffed chairs on either side of the fireplace.  Churchill sat again.  Before him on the desk, there were several neatly arranged stacks of papers.  On the corner was a thick book, marked throughout with strips of paper.  “Mr. Salinger, I’m going to get right to the point—there in the desert outside Cairo—we invited you to take on a task for us.  In doing so, we weren’t totally truthful with you.”

Salinger stole a quick glance at Mayfield.  “In what way, sir?”             

The prime minister removed his glasses, placing them on the papers in front of him.  “First let me state that you, sir, are at a specific moment in history in which few men will ever find themselves.  You are about to be told the greatest secret of this war, Mr. Salinger.  I hope that you can appreciate that.”

An aide returned carrying a tray, then left the room.

Churchill waited until the door closed, then said, “And—hopefully—after the situation has
been explained you’ll forgive us for not being honest with you from the beginning.”  He glanced at the major.  “Of course Mayfield wanted to tell you everything from the beginning.  It was, however, my decision alone not to do so.”

Mayfield shifted uneasily in his chair.

“I’m going to tell you about an item named Ultra,” Churchill said.  “The term used by our intelligence people to describe information resulting from the decryption of German radio communications.  Much of the German cipher traffic is encrypted on what is referred to as Enigma machines, messages that were broken by our people.  To put it simply we have known—at any moment—what the Germans have been up to through their own messages.  All of them.”

Salinger asked, “How long have we been able to do this?”

“Since the beginning of the war,” Churchill said. 

Salinger tried to process what was being told him.  “And Major Fields was he involved in this Ultra operation?”

“Major Fields was a member of a special force whose responsibility is setting up communications post in the field—Special Liaison Units.  All, so I could have access to my ‘golden eggs’ as I like to refer to them.  As you can imagine it’s valuable that we are able to read the Hun’s codes no matter where I am.”

“You’ve always believed Shahr-e Rey was a clue, Booth,” Mayfield said.  “Well, it was.  Fields was traveling from that city where his romantic tryst took pla
ce and was
on his way from and to the SLU location.”

“The communications center where the three soldiers were killed?”

“Precisely.  Special Liaison Units—SLUs—are part of the British Intelligence Service.  Specifically MI6 using air force officers of proven good judgment and MI6 wireless operators and cipher clerks to handle and route the Ultra intercepts.”

“And Typex?”
  Salinger asked.

Mayfield managed a smile.  “The reason we finally convinced the Prime Minister to bring you in on the complete truth on this matter.  Once we knew you were onto Typex then you were dangerously close to the truth.  Typex is our cipher machine used in the decoding.”
             

“The different wiring in Fields’s offices?”
 

“We had to adapt our Typex machines to work off the French 120-volt electrical system, a problem the SLU officers have faced in every country where we set up SLUs.” Mayfield rested his cup on the small table beside him. “We believe whoever killed Fields possesses enough information in their possession to figure out our secret.  The German agent has the advantage.”

Churchill grumbled.  “One of your American actors gave us a good piece of advice on women I could only wish that Fields had listened to—‘the way to fight a woman is with your hat.  Grab it and run.’  Sadly, I’m afraid one of our best men was drawn in like a moth to the flame.  Now—we have a terrible mess on our hands.”