Sentimental Journey

by Jill Barnett

  “That’s the one,” Lt. Col. Harrington piped in.

  J.R. just looked at him. Harrington was an annoying weasel, like the one in that nursery rhyme, the one who popped his head up from a bush every few minutes. Harrington did it just to make sure you remembered he was there.

  “Rumor has it Kincaid’s working for the government.” J.R. aimed his comment to Langdon just to piss off Harrington. “But as far as I can tell, no one wants to confirm that information.”

  “Consider it confirmed.” Harrington’s voice was smug in the way of those who liked it when they knew things others didn’t. He was a surefire security risk, the kind of man whose ego wouldn’t let him keep his mouth shut.

  Langdon shot Harrington a sharp look, then turned back to J.R. “Kincaid is working on a top secret project. But he’s not the problem.”

  “What is?”

  “Not what. Who.” Langdon crossed back over to the desk and sat down. “Kincaid has a daughter. Kathryn. She disappeared almost two weeks ago.” The colonel held out a hand toward Harrington, who flipped open a briefcase, riffled through some papers, then handed him a photograph.

  Langdon slid it in front of J.R.

  The woman who stared back at him from that eight-by-ten was one helluva dish. She had flawless features and fine bones, a square but soft jaw line, a broad smile with perfectly straight teeth and full lips that bowed in the center. Her skin looked pale in the gray tones of the photo. She had a long, elegant neck strung with a single strand of perfectly graduated pearls, the kind debs wore for their coming out balls. Her dark hair was thick, parted on one side, and waved down along her face in that sexy, starlet way, before it curled under at her shoulders.

  Her head was tilted slightly, as if she were thinking. Thick, dark lashes framed her eyes. Her eyebrows looked natural, thickly winged with a slight arch, instead of tweezed off and drawn on with thin pencil like so many girls did nowadays. He never understood the theory behind that style. It made them look continually surprised . . . and a little stupid.

  This babe looked anything but stupid.

  “The last time she was seen, she was heading for the marketplace in Rabat.”

  J.R. looked up. “Rabat? What the hell was she doing in North Africa?”

  “She’s been there for a long time, since thirty-nine.”

  “Doesn’t she know there’s a war on?”

  “According to Kincaid, she made up her mind to go to work with the family of a college friend. He said she had something important to prove.”

  Prove? What? That she was stupid? J.R. wasn’t sure who was more foolish. The girl for staying there or the father for not dragging her sweet butt home, where she belonged. He stared at the gorgeous image in the photo a moment longer. Foolish, but a real looker. “It always amazes me when civilians do nothing to get out of harm’s way.” He dropped the photo back on the colonel’s desk and leaned back in his chair. “Why was she there in the first place?”

  “That’s not your problem, Captain,” Langdon said sharply.

  Ah, J.R. thought. He doesn’t know either. “Then just what is my problem, Colonel?”

  Langdon’s expression grew grim. “I’m not certain I agree with HQ, Captain. You don’t seem to me to be the kind of man for this assignment.”

  Harrington popped up again, neck straining. “But, sir—”

  Langdon cut Harrington off with the quick raise of his hand. This assignment was eating at Langdon. HQ had ordered Langdon, J.R.’s superior officer, to give him this assignment, and it was driving the bastard nuts.

  Good.

  “The name ‘Cassidy’ seems to be like ‘God’ around HQ.” Langdon looked at him.

  J.R. didn’t respond.

  But the colonel was waiting with an officious smile, as if he thought J.R. was stupid and hot-tempered enough to fall for that crap.

  Harrington coughed in the silence, then cleared his throat.

  Langdon continued, “Her friend’s family obtained their exit papers a few months ago. Kincaid was supposed to fly back to the States. But Petain signed the armistice with Germany. The borders closed quickly. She was caught and unable to get the papers she needed to leave. Her father has been putting pressure on his friends in high places. Someone in the State Department had just made a deal with the Vichy to get her out. She disappeared the day before she was scheduled to leave.”

  “How convenient.” J.R. glanced at the photograph again.

  “Kincaid was contacted last Sunday night by an operative near his home in California. His daughter’s now in the hands of the German Occupancy officials.”

  “Another bogus name for one of Hitler’s agencies,” Harrington added as if J.R. had been born yesterday.

  “She’s now their leverage against Kincaid. They want him to cooperate, to give them information in exchange for her continued safety. He was savvy enough to have a close friend contact the State Department immediately.”

  Langdon reached over, pulled a packet from Harrington’s briefcase, and added the photo, along with some files from his desktop. He came around the desk and stood in front of J.R. He handed him the packet, then glanced at his wristwatch. “You’re flying out for Gibraltar at fourteen hundred.”

  “That’s only two hours.” J.R. paused. “Sir.”

  “I know.”

  “The airfield is almost two hours from here.” J.R. looked at Langdon.

  “Then I suggest you leave right away, Captain.”

  J.R. had opened the envelope and quickly scanned the information. “According to this, she’s being held outside Ouarzazate. In Tizi.” They had confirmed she was in an old medieval Kasbah-type fortress that dominated one of the sheer crags almost six thousand feet up in the Atlas Mountains. It was one of those places ingeniously built hundreds of years before and a hundred years from now would still be difficult to infiltrate.

  “That’s right, Captain.” Langdon leaned casually back against his desk and gave J.R. a snide look that said he liked this part of it. “And it’s your job to get her out of there.”

  “THE BIRTH OF THE BLUES”

  Less than five minutes later U.S. Army Colonel Robert Langdon, Commander, Camp Endicott, stood at the west window of his office and watched Cassidy drive off in the direction of the base officers’ quarters, hoping he would never see him again, and then . . . neither would Adele.

  “You didn’t tell him.”

  “Tell him what, Harrington?” Langdon didn’t move from his spot. A fly was trapped by the closed window and kept batting into the glass, then falling down on the sill, where it buzzed frantically and beat its wings.

  “You didn’t tell him about the girl. The memo specifically said that Cassidy was to be apprised of the problem.”

  “I didn’t?” Langdon rubbed a finger against his lip, his back to that toadying Harrington, who he knew was only worried about his own ass if HQ found out. “Hmmmm. That’s odd. I thought I did tell him. I was certain I did.” Langdon watched the jeep with Cassidy in it disappear between a maze of old buildings in a cloud of dry dust. He stood there enjoying the moment: Cassidy disappearing.

  He smiled to himself for a full minute, before he turned and faced Harrington. “Are you certain I didn’t tell him?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Langdon waited long enough for Cassidy to pack up. Meanwhile he could hear Harrington squirming in his chair. Langdon enjoyed that, so he stood at that window, until all the flies inside the room had died.

  He watched the jeep with Cassidy and his camp bag in it drive out through the camp gates and speed off in the direction of the airfield. Langdon turned then and walked back to his chair, where he sat down and lit himself an imported cigar. He puffed on it for a second or two, then watched the smoke curl up toward the ceiling fan and dissipate. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the cigar tip glowing in his right hand. “Are you sure I didn’t tell him?”

  “Yes, Colonel. I’m sure,” Harrington said dryly. He’d finally caught
on.

  “Hmmm, that is a shame. You know I think it’s too late now. He’s already left the base.” Langdon paused, then took a long hit off the cigar. “HQ’s fair-haired Captain Cassidy is just going to have to find out that bit of information all by himself.”

  “ME AND MY SHADOW”

  ATLAS MOUNTAINS, MOROCCO

  The walls around her were made of stone, and when she rubbed her hands over them, fine sand coated her damp palms. She didn’t know where she was, but she knew they had taken her into the mountains. The truck had shifted gears and the turns had been hairpin for the last two hours. The road had turned steep and the air had grown cooler and thinner, the way it did when you rose in altitude. She’d clocked the drive time. She was five hours and twenty-two minutes from the outskirts of Rabat.

  For Kitty time passed by her heartbeat, by the feel and taste of the air, which changed constantly; it felt different against the sensitive hairs on her skin, tasted different when she breathed it in.

  Her cell was a fifteen-by-ten-foot stone room. There was a metal cot against a wall at nine o’clock. On the twelve o’clock wall was a high, narrow window that she couldn’t reach even when she’d stood on the furniture. A dry sink sat at three o’clock, and there was a pot for a toilet that was discreetly placed behind a deeply carved wooden screen.

  Each morning her guard—a man she dubbed Adolf—brought her warm wash water, fruit, goat cheese, and flatbread along with a pot of strong African coffee with too much sugar. Around ten A.M. she was taken outside to walk in circles in a courtyard with a stone birdbath in its center—set in gravel that crunched underfoot—and framed with a line of cedar trees that made the air smell like the sweater drawer in her bureau back home.

  When she came back to her cell, there were clean towels, a pitcher of fresh water, and the pot had been emptied and disinfected with something that smelled like camphor. In the evenings, Adolf brought her a hot meal of lamb and bulgur that was usually too much for her to eat.

  On one occasion, he brought her two extra woolen blankets. It had been shortly after the wind had begun to howl outside and the temperature dropped a good thirty degrees.

  For ten long nights and eleven days, that routine had been her existence.

  She heard distant footsteps on the stairs.

  Heil! Adolf was coming. But at the wrong time.

  He came down a narrow hall that made the sound of his boot heels echo until they stopped abruptly right outside her room. The lock on the door clicked. She felt a wave of cool air when the door opened. There was a moment’s pause.

  “You will come with me, Fraülein.”

  “A late walk, Adolf?”

  “I told you my name is not Adolf.”

  “But you refuse to tell me your name, so, I must improvise. You don’t like being nicknamed after your Führer?”

  “What is this . . . ‘nickname’?”

  “It’s an endearment like Liebchen. If you don’t like Adolf, you might prefer Hermann. Although you don’t seem like a Hermann. Perhaps Heinrich?”

  He said nothing, just grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

  “What about Karl?” Come.

  She let him guide her to the door. She could smell the musty wool of his clothes. “The seasons must be changing. You are wearing a wool uniform today.”

  That stopped him for a moment. She liked to confuse him, which wasn’t too difficult. She suspected Adolf’s IQ was equivalent to his belt size.

  They had expected her to act hysterical. Once the truck left Rabat, she didn’t. Any one of her brothers would tell these men that she seldom did what people expected.

  “Come.”

  This time she jerked her arm from his grasp and faced him. “Come where?”

  “You will not be harmed.” He took her arm again. “Unless you do not cooperate. If you kick me again, I have orders to chain your feet together.”

  “I had no plans to kick you,” she lied and held her head up.

  They went out the door, his gloved hand tightly gripping her upper arm and his other hand clamped onto her waist.

  “Halt.” He grabbed her shoulder to stop her. “The stairs are here.”

  She knew there were exactly twenty-seven even footsteps from her room to the staircase. Forty-two small stone steps went down in a circle and passed by five narrow windows that sent cool cedar-scented air into the passageway. She was being held in some kind of old tower.

  They reached the bottom and turned right for the usual fifteen steps. She started to turn left.

  Adolf pulled her back. “No. Turn right.”

  She acted as if it did not bother her that they were going someplace new, but a small amount of perspiration broke out in her hairline.

  They went down two more hallways, each about twenty feet long. The second one was carpeted. One left turn and they were in a corridor where fatty-smelling tallow candles burned somewhere above her head.

  Ten steps and he stopped. He rapped three times on a door, then opened it, not with the turn of a doorknob, but the hard rasp of an iron latch.

  He drew her inside.

  “Ah, Miss Kincaid.” The voice belonged to her nemesis, her shadow from the marketplace; it was a voice she had not heard since they’d first brought her here. “You look well this morning.”

  It was afternoon, not morning. Close to three o’clock, but she chose to keep her knowledge to herself. This man did frighten her. He was no dumb Adolf. “Why am I here? Who are you? And what do you want?”

  “Show the Fraülein where the chair is, Leutnant”

  Adolf was a lieutenant? How nice to know the Third Reich had such a high caliber of junior officer.

  It was barely five steps to a stiff wooden chair. Kitty sat down easily, her chin up the whole time, facing the man who held her captive. “You haven’t answered my questions.”

  “I know.”

  “The U.S. State Department made arrangements for me to go home. Kidnapping is illegal, even here, under the Vichy. My government will not be happy.”

  “Let’s not exchange threats, Miss Kincaid. It’s a waste of our time.”

  “Our time? Why, I have plenty of spare time.” She leaned back against the chair and crossed her legs.

  The silence dragged on as she could feel him watching her. It was one of those spider-and-the-fly kind of moments. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Werner Von Heidelmann, agent for the German Occupancy Department.”

  To those in the Vichy his title might be that innocuous, but she knew by instinct he was something else altogether. There were rumors of secret police, of Hitler’s special forces and agents whose true agenda was nothing like what their titles implied.

  “You have an opportunity to gain your release.”

  “And what opportunity might that be?”

  “Your father is a very important man.”

  Her father’s work, of course. He’d been in Life magazine and the topic of countless newspaper articles. She knew he’d been working on some kind of rocket, but no one would find that out from her.

  She sat there silently. Let Herr Von Heidelmann make of it what he would.

  “Your father has chosen to do nothing to aid in your release.”

  Oh, God . . . They’ve contacted Dad.

  “It seems, Miss Kincaid, that you, his only daughter, are not terribly important to him.” He paused then, and she could feel him gauging her reaction, so she gave him none.

  “You have six brothers, do you not?”

  “And your point is?”

  “It must be very difficult for a young woman to grow up in a home full of men, one where her own father does not care for her. Where the sons are more important than daughters.”

  Kitty knew her father loved her. But she also knew Arnan Kincaid was no traitor, and not even for her safety would he betray his country. Her father was also well aware that she knew where his allegiance was, which Kitty hoped gave him the power to find some alternate method to save her.
He must have acted as if he didn’t give a damn about her, which is exactly what she would have done.

  “Not so difficult as you believe, Herr Von Heidelmann.” She shrugged. “We women have learned to accept our lesser value in this man’s world.” Her brothers would be rolling on the floor if they’d heard her.

  “Perhaps in your country, Miss Kincaid. The Führer values the women who work for him. Under the Third Reich, women are equal to men. Whether they are engineers or mothers. It does not matter to us.”

  She laughed then. “Are you really asking me to believe that it doesn’t matter to the Third Reich whether, say, a woman designs an airplane that can fly thousands of miles or makes a mean sauerkraut and Wiener schnitzel? You want me to believe that they are equally as important to you?”

  “Soldiers must be fed, Miss Kincaid.”

  She only laughed.

  “Women are vital to the Third Reich. They are its backbone. We have women working in every facet of our government. There are women who are respected and given many opportunities that your government keeps strictly for men. It is a man’s world only in the United States.”

  “Do you honestly believe if your Führer had a daughter that he would care more about her than about, say . . . Poland?”

  “You equate the importance of your father’s research with our occupation of Poland? Poland will be much stronger under German Occupation.

  “Tell us what your father is working on and then you may choose to go home or to work in a high position of the Third Reich. We can offer you the opportunity to be part of the future. Unlike in the United States, you will be important in Germany.”

  “No, thank you. I know nothing about what my father is doing. I’ve not been home for over two years. “

  There was a long moment of silence.

  She sat there, unmoving.

  “My advice is that you should think about this. If you choose to cooperate, you will have the chance to be on the winning side of this war.

  “I have nothing to tell you. I don’t know anything about my father’s work. You can keep me locked up here until your Führer has gray hair.” She stood up. “Now you are wasting my time and your own.”