by Larry Loftis
She slipped into the pew and knelt to pray. Minutes passed and then she heard movement to her right. A man had slipped into her row. A man with a white scarf.
Blacky.
He slid down the pew not far from her and Aline kept her head bowed. When Blacky had settled, she fished the microfilm from her pocket, palming it. Keeping her arm low, she reached out and turned her hand over.
Without moving his head or eyes, Blacky took it.
Moments later Aline was back in Conrad’s car and they were off. She sighed and sat back. She had done it. It was a beautiful day and the summer breeze lifted her hair and her spirits. They lunched at a beach restaurant and Conrad introduced her to chanquetes, a tiny fish fried whole and crisp in batter, and boquerones—baby sardines.
After the bullfight he gave her a tour, strolling through the marble streets around Calle Larios, the gardens, and ending with a magnificent view from the Nautical Club. So as not to initiate a conversation where he would inquire about her job, Aline didn’t inquire about his. But how a twenty-one-year-old came to be the youngest vice-consul ever was puzzling.
She should have asked, as they had much in common. Conrad had also been a coder, it turned out, and could have decoded every one of her OSS cables. It all started when he finished at Yale. Looking for any work he could find, he went to the State Department and announced that he’d like to become a diplomat. He was too young and without credentials for that, so they trained him to be a code clerk. In a heavily guarded room in Washington, Barnaby began working with strips just like the ones Aline was using to code and decode secret messages for the State Department.
He thought the system was ridiculously simple, though, and that the average six-year-old could handle it. He was bored and miserable.
One day, having finished his work early, he decided to sketch his attractive coding colleague, Roberta Cameron. He had studied fine arts in college and could pencil remarkably professional profiles in minutes. As he was finishing, he included in the corner two strips that Roberta was holding. In the top one he inserted letters at random. In the second, he penciled: “You are beautiful.”
He passed it to her and Roberta smiled and put it in her purse. She invited him to dinner that night and afterward they lounged by a roaring fire. They kissed and Barnaby began to rearrange Roberta’s dress when suddenly a light flicked on and a man in a dark suit loomed over them. A second man then appeared behind them, having entered simultaneously through the kitchen door.
“FBI,” said the first man. He saw Roberta’s purse on the table and opened it. “Where is it?”
Roberta looked at the man and her purse. “Where’s what?”
“You know what,” chirped the second man. “The diagram.”
Roberta said she mailed it to her sister in Texas, and the man turned to Barnaby.
“We know it was a chart of the strip code. Exactly what was written on it?
Barnaby held the G-man’s eye and said slowly: “You are beautiful.”
The FBI kept them under surveillance until they retrieved the sketch from Texas and sent it to Washington. The two coders weren’t German or Japanese agents after all, the FBI concluded. Barnaby had had enough, though, and a week later he stopped by the office of the assistant secretary of state, Adolf Berle. Surprisingly, the secretary invited him in and Barnaby gave it his best shot.
“Mr. Secretary, I’m a code clerk and I think I’m too good for my job.”
Berle laughed. “Well, come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you whether you are or not.”
Barnaby did and Berle said: “Mr. Conrad, I agree with you and so does the code room; you are not made of the stuff great code clerks are. How would you like to be a vice-consul in Spain?”
Barnaby was floored. This was a dream come true.
“ ’Course, you’re too young,” Berle said. “At twenty-one you’ll probably be the youngest vice-consul we’ve ever had. But I’ve checked your background and I think you might be an asset in Spain. We’ll get you out on the first boat we can.”
Barnaby thanked him and was headed out but then stopped at the door.
“What does a vice-consul do?”
Berle chuckled. “You’ll find out.”
And so began Barnaby Conrad’s foreign service career.
After dinner Aline and Barnaby decided to call it a night, and he escorted her to where she was staying, the Hotel Miramar.
She checked in and was delighted to find that her balcony and room faced the ocean. It was a fitting and welcome respite. She took a long, hot bath and when she came out, she gasped.
While she had been soaking in the bathroom her room had been searched, and the intruder had not been neat about it. As unsettling as that was, she felt a great sense of relief in another way. Since she’d been able to keep her rendezvous with Blacky, there’d been nothing of value in her room for anyone to find.
* * *
When Aline arrived back in Madrid, Juanito called to remind her that she had promised him dinner. He picked her up at ten and told her that they had reservations at Lhardy. Founded in 1839, it was another Madrid institution. From the outside, the restaurant’s hand-carved, dark wooden façade made the establishment look more like a high-end bookstore than a restaurant.
Juanito said that he’d requested a private dining room, and they went up a narrow staircase to a small entrance enclosed by a red velvet curtain. Inside there was one candlelit table, neatly arranged with a white damask tablecloth and two gleaming place settings.
Aline stood in the doorway, admiring the intimate setting.
Juanito smiled. “These salons were designed for secret love affairs and confidential conversations. These same walls have witnessed many secrets, even conspiracies against the government.”
They ordered and Aline said, “Last weekend in Málaga, I was in jail.”
“I know that.”
Juanito grinned, amused at seeing Aline’s jaw drop. “Do not find that unusual, Aline. I have friends all over Spain.”
“But how? How do you know? Who told you?”
Juanito shrugged. “Shall we say, someone who knows I admire you.”
Aline shook her head. This man was impossible. She hadn’t been tagged going to or from Málaga, at least that she knew of. And the likelihood of Don José calling Juanito out of the blue seemed remote. This was unnerving.
She was supposed to be the trained spy, not him.
* * *
Throughout the month Juanito fought almost every day—in Alicante, Mallorca, Valencia, and Guipúzcoa. Aline didn’t travel to see any of his fights, but she worried about the constant danger. When he returned to Madrid they had dinner again, and she probed further about his line of work.
“Have you ever been badly gored, Juan?”
He nodded. “Many times.”
“How is it you’re not afraid?”
Juanito paused and his eyes softened. “I’m scared to death every time I enter the arena, Aline.”
* * *
One evening when Aline was on call for the night shift of coding, she went in about midnight. After an hour or so of work she left, slipping into the street through the embassy’s garden exit.
As she made her way back to her apartment, she heard them again.
Footsteps.
Continuing her pace, she glanced back but saw no one. In the dim glow of the gaslights, she assured herself that a sereno was making his rounds.
At the corner of Calle de Fortuny and Marqués del Riscal, though, she heard them again. This time she saw him. The shadow of a man, about fifty meters back.
She quickened her steps and the soft patter behind her kept pace.
Clutching her purse, she broke into a sprint.
So did he.
Racing up the walkway, Aline slid between the iron bars of her building’s entrance and bounded up the steps to her apartment. Swinging the door shut, she ran over to the window and peered down.
It was him.
; I. Domingo Ortega, with Manolete, Carlos Arruza, Luis Dominguín, and Belmonte, was one of the most popular matadors of the day.
II. A veronica is a type of pass where the matador stands with his left leg slightly forward and entices the bull with the cape held low. As the bull charges he advances the cape and leads the bull through, pivoting on the balls of his feet. The lower the cape and the slower the movement, the better the veronica.
III. Guzmán would be killed in the ring in 1943 by a Miura bull named Reventón.
CHAPTER 14 THE BOHEMIAN
On August 8 Gregory Thomas called Aline into his office. He told her that Pierre was in Madrid, at the Palace Hotel. He knew that Aline and Pierre had trained together at The Farm, and he had a message he wanted her to pass along to him.
Aline’s heart skipped a beat. She longed to see Pierre but was mystified as to why he would be in Madrid.
Thomas held up a paper. “This cable means that the invasion will take place at Marseille.”
Operation Dragoon wouldn’t be as big or dramatic as the invasion at Normandy, but it was critical to secure the southern part of the country for the push to Paris. With the D-Day troops pushing in from the northwest, Allied soldiers advancing deep into France from the southeast would create a pincer on the Germans, forcing them to retreat into Germany.
“Contact Pierre,” he said. “Tell him his orders are to move his subagents to the Marseille area. They should be in a position to assist our troops when they land. He must act surreptitiously with his own people. Information on the location of the landing is so secret it cannot be leaked, cannot be made known, even to those who have been risking their lives for us these past years.”
Aline nodded. She knew full well the importance of secrecy and security.
What she didn’t know was that Thomas was lying.
* * *
Aline met Pierre that evening in the Palace Hotel bar, thrilled that their rendezvous would be longer and more enjoyable than his previous balcony surprise. When they were seated, he told her he had information she should pass on to Thomas—information he had acquired from Gloria von Fürstenberg.
Aline bristled at the name, wondering how many times Pierre had met with her.
“General Tresckow,” Pierre began, “chief of staff of the Second Army now on the Eastern Front, plans to move the Fourteenth Panzer Corps and the Fourth Panzer Division, if their current attack on the Russian front is successful, to southern France. She said her husband is in the Fourth Panzer Division and that’s how she knows this.”
Aline noted the information and said she, too, had news about Dragoon. Passing along what Thomas had said about Marseille and Pierre’s assignment, she added that he was to look for a black Packard, license plate CD406, the next morning at nine in front of the hotel. From there he would be flown to France.
With business completed, Aline could feel the conversation shifting on a dime before Pierre said another word. He looked at her for several moments and the sensual energy she remembered from The Farm was back. She wasn’t sure if it was his face, his arms, or his thick lashes, but she was still enraptured.
“You do care for me?” he asked.
Aline didn’t know what she felt. Was she smitten? No doubt. In love? No. Intrigued? Unquestionably.
“What about your friendship with Gloria?”
Pierre laughed. He had met her in Paris years before, he said, but that was all. They were just friends. He narrowed his gaze. “You’re the one for me.”
With that Pierre stood. “I’ll be back. And I am going to miss you.”
Aline got up and Pierre held her by the shoulders. “I’ve tried to change—a lot of things. I’ll tell you one day.”
He held her eyes a moment and then turned and walked away.
“Goodbye, Pierre.”
The following day Edmundo passed on intelligence that coincided with Gregory Thomas’s instructions. “Max Sciolitti,” he reported, “the Brazilian vice-consul, told me this afternoon that he had proof that the Germans are evacuating the Spanish frontier and southern France. He expects an Allied force in Marseille at any moment.”
Operation Dragoon was imminent and it seemed everyone on both sides knew an attack would begin soon.
* * *
Aline, meanwhile, couldn’t get Gloria von Fürstenberg off her mind. She had seen Gloria twice with Hans Lazar, and who but a Nazi sympathizer would be admitted into Horcher’s private dining room? Truth be told, Aline was jealous that Pierre seemed to know her well, and she could only wonder if they had been intimate. Aline’s interest in Gloria heightened when she heard that Gloria bought her clothes at Ana de Pombo’s shop. It was Ana de Pombo, she recalled, who had been sitting next to Walter Schellenberg at Juanito’s bullfight.
On her next day off she decided to probe. She had been wanting to buy a new dress for weeks anyway, and what better place to order one than Ana de Pombo’s? If Gloria bought her dresses there, surely Ana had the best selection in town.
Without making an appointment, Aline went to Ana’s store at 14 Calle de Hermosilla. The storefront, she found, was not unlike Hattie Carnegie’s, but the foyer had an eclectic mix of Louis XVI and art deco furniture. A maid greeted her—not a saleswoman, which seemed odd. She would fetch Ana, the woman said, and Aline waited in the empty room. For a successful business, that, too, seemed strange. Where were the other customers?
Moments later a woman with frizzy orange hair appeared. It was the woman Aline had seen at the bullfight, but up close she looked older.
“You want something?” Ana asked in perfect English.
Aline paused. No greeting? No “Hello, I’m Ana de Pombo, welcome to my studio.”?
“Yes, I wanted to order some clothes.” Aline looked around. “Have I come too late? Or too early?”
“Yes—oh—yes. Of course, just a moment.” Ana motioned to a sofa and disappeared to gather some designs.
Aline took a seat and waited. After some time she checked her watch. It had been ten minutes. Since Ana had no other customers, what could she possibly be doing?
Finally, Ana returned with a stack of drawings. “I’m afraid everything from my collection is gone. I have only sketches left. Would you like to see some?”
Aline flipped through the drawings, but this, too, was odd. None of the samples looked remotely like what Gloria wore, and all of them seemed at least two seasons behind the current trends. She gave no response but Ana noticed the lack of interest.
“Maybe you should try Pedro Rodríguez or Flora Villarreal.”
“No, I like these designs.” Aline motioned to a few sketches. “May I see some fabrics?”
Ana seemed taken aback. “Just a moment, please.”
A few minutes later the door opened again, but it was not Ana.
“Why, Aline,” Countess Gloria said, “Ana told me you were here. What a wonderful surprise! How did you find this place? I thought I had it all to myself. Ana dresses me and only a few others—how did you hear of her?”
Aline stifled her surprise. “I can’t remember offhand.”
Gloria joined her on the sofa. “I’m here to be fitted for a dress I intend to wear to the big dinner dance coming up at the Country Club Puerta de Hierro. Are you going?”
“Not that I know of. I’d love to see the dress.”
“I’d much rather surprise you. You’ll certainly be invited.”
Aline nodded, but she was curious why Gloria didn’t want to show it. “Well, I’m waiting to see some fabrics.”
“Ana is unique, a bohemian. She keeps nothing here. She draws her ideas, discusses them with the customer, and only then orders the materials. Her taste is flawless. And frightfully expensive. Take a tip from me and go somewhere else. She takes ages to finish anything.”
Aline paused a moment and then stood. “You’re right. I’m a working girl and I have no time to wait.”
She left without saying goodbye to Ana. It all made sense now. The woman ran no dress shop.
Her salon was a letter box.
* * *
As she made her way back to the apartment, Aline mulled over her discovery. If Ana de Pombo’s was a letter box, then Gloria was probably a messenger. Through her, notes or instructions from Hans Lazar or Walter Schellenberg could be dropped off for later pickup by any number of German spies or informants. She decided not to mention it to Gregory Thomas or anyone at the office, though, since it was still conjecture at this point and she wasn’t actually a field agent. Instead, she’d have one of her local confidants keep an eye on the place, noting who came and went.
What Aline didn’t know was that not only was Ana de Pombo’s store a letter box, it was co-owned by Colonel Ernesto Heymann, the Abwehr officer in charge of all of Spain.
Then there was the little problem of who worked there. Ana had recently hired a young woman, Eva, to manage the showroom. Eva was the future sister-in-law of someone Aline knew extremely well.
Robert Dunev.
CHAPTER 15 THE LADY VANISHES
In mid-August Aline learned that what Gregory Thomas had told her about Operation Dragoon’s planned landing in Marseille was false; it was a story circulated to mislead the enemy. The real invasion, which had commenced on August 15 and was a tremendous success, occurred farther north along the Côte d’Azur, from Saint-Raphaël to Cavalaire-sur-Mer.
Originally conceived as a feint to draw German troops away from Normandy, Operation Dragoon became an actual invasion plan when the Americans suggested an invasion of southern France at the Cairo conference.I At one point the idea was to invade simultaneously with the Normandy landings, but this notion was rejected when German troops were moved to Italy during the Allied invasion at Anzio.