by John Dalmas
When they were done, they went back upstairs, both of them quiet.
30
Surprise in Albion
The next morning he was told to pack, that they'd leave at 1000 hours. Packing took only a few minutes, then both he and Anna were called to Landgraf's office for a final briefing. Afterward they were driven to the military transportation office at the railyard in Kempten, where they were met by an SS 1st lieutenant. His orders identified them as an intelligence team enroute to England; he was to accompany them, get them to the submarine base at Saint-Nazaire through any difficulties that might arise. In these times one could expect difficulties.
Theirs was an army train, mostly freight cars, but with a flak car, three troopcars, and a sleeper car for officers. Macurdy, Anna, and the lieutenant were assigned to the sleeper, along with the several officers of coast artillery replacements.
In peacetime the 650-mile trip would have taken a day. It took them nearly four, partly because other, strategically more urgent trains were given the right of way, leaving them on sidings for as long as an hour at a time. Mostly, however, the problem was bomb damage. The bridge at Breisach had been knocked out the night before, so they'd detoured south, and crossed the Rhine on the newly repaired bridge at Mullheim. At numerous locations, railyards had been heavily bombed, and damage, debris, and ongoing repairwork seriously reduced the rate at which traffic could be moved through, causing long delays. In other places, temporary bypasses and hasty repairs meant reduced speeds.
The first day, Macurdy wondered what night would bring. Berta had said Anna had the hots for him, but he'd brushed it off as petulance. Certainly he'd seen no indication of it, even auric. He was interested despite himself, and that troubled him. In the army he'd had opportunities for sex from Little Rock to England, and had avoided it because he was married. Then there' been Berta, and a great deal of Rillissa, and having sex with them seemed to have weakened his resistance. He vowed not to have sex with Anna.
The railroad car had blackout curtains, of course, and at twilight they were drawn. At nine o'clock the corridor lights were dimmed. The lieutenant appraised Anna. "Fraulein, for security it is necessary that you share a compartment with one of us." He gestured at Kurt Montag. "Which one do you prefer?" He had no doubt, of course. Her companion looked like a peasant, limped, and wore a suit of ill-fitting tweed that looked distinctly British.
She saw through him of course. "I will share this one with Herr Montag," she said. "We are old friends."
The lieutenant locked his jaw without answering, telling himself she was thinner than he liked anyway, and nodding curtly, went to the next compartment.
Anna set the bolt, drew the compartment curtains, and took pajamas and a robe from her bag. Her aura showed only light sexuality: awareness, not desire. In fact, she put on her robe, turned her Lack to him, changed clothes beneath it, removed the robe and went to bed, pulling the cover over her. Physically he felt disappointed; mentally relieved.
"Anna," he said, "I have no robe. But if you would turn your back…"
She did, and he removed his outer garments. Then, after opening the compartment curtain just a bit to let in some of the corridor light, he turned off the night light and went to bed. Anna watched him in the dimness.
"I had wondered if there would be a problem between us," she said. "Thank you for your good behavior."
He focused on her aura. Her sexual energy had increased but was still unfocused. "I have a wife," he answered. "A very good wife, whom I love. I owe her my loyalty."
Her auric response equated to raised eyebrows. "Oh? And what about Berta? She would wait for you very much aroused, and return sated." She paused. "But then, Berta is much sexier than me, much more tempting."
"That wasn't it. I wanted to snoop around the schloss, but I was afraid I'd be caught and perhaps shot. With Berta, I had a good excuse: If we were caught, I could say we were looking for a place to make love. We would have been punished, but hardly executed."
"Ah. And how many nights did it take to complete your snooping?"
"One. But by then she had learned things about me. So when she asked me to be with her again, it seemed best not to offend her."
Anna smiled, not cynically. "And besides, it was such fun, nicht wahr?"
"She was good. I can't deny it."
"And what was it she learned about you that you wanted to safeguard?"
"You already know: that I am not a Schwachsinniger" "All right. And how did you manage to move around in the building without being caught? Even slipping down the corridor to the reading room or dining room would have been dangerous." He said nothing. Undoubtedly she was reading his feelings, analyzing them.
"I must tell you," she said, "that for a time I supposed you were a spy, put here by some office that disapproved of the Bureau. I could see no other explanation for your ability to move around at night."
It seemed to him he could sense her mind perching at the edge of his, watching for a crack, a chink. Still said nothing. "Well, I can understand your silence, and I will let these questions lie for now. You have shown me respect; I will do the same for you. Good night, Kurt Montag, and pleasant dreams."
Saint-Nazaire had been a small city; now it was an expanse of rubble. But the submarine pens-heavily reinforced tunnelsstill operated. The railyard was closed, had been heavily bombed again, and the two psychics rode the 35 miles from Nantes in a command car, over a road heavily and hastily patched.
After leaving their SS lieutenant at the harbormaster's office, they were taken aboard a submarine in midafternoon, and assigned quarters. Though his was in a crowded crew compartment, Macurdy was privileged: He didn't alternate in his narrow fold-down bunk with someone on a different watch, as the seamen did; it was his full-time. Anna was even more privileged: She occupied the tiny cabin normally used by the 1st officer, who would double up with the captain while she was aboard.
The craft stayed in its cavern till after dark; a submarine moving down the channel in daylight was at serious risk. One never knew when American or British planes might visit.
Eventually the vessel began to move, its throbbing diesels pushing it out of the pen, into the estuary. Despite himself, Macurdy sweated a bit, and raised a brief prayer, less to God than to allied destroyers and planes, that he might arrive safely in England. Not that I wish you guys bad luck or anything, he murmured inwardly, but my mother didn't raise me to drown in some Nazi Unterseeboot.
The seamen were calm enough though, and before long he slept, despite the strange sounds and smells.
For the sake of speed and the batteries, the vessel ran on the surface till dawn, then the humming electrics were cut in, and the diesels shut off. Then bells jangled. Without pausing, the submarine tilted downward slightly and submerged.
The rubber boat was low enough that any chop would have soaked and any real seas upended them. But the sea was relatively calm, its low smooth swells the aftereffect of some distant storm, perhaps off the west coast of Jutland. Neither Montag nor Anna spoke, even in a whisper. They'd been warned not to, before they'd climbed out the conning tower.
Now he could see the beach ahead, low and sandy in the starlight, the swooshing of the low surf as regular as a heartbeat. The sub was well out of sight behind them, and Macurdy wondered if crewmen, off in a rubber boat, ever had trouble finding it at night.
Then the surf gripped them, drove the boat onto the beach and left it grounded. Anna's mobility was hampered by the heavy wool, knee-length coat she wore, and hoisting her over a shoulder, Macurdy stepped out, a petty officer leading, hurrying a few paces to avoid the next wave. Once on dry sand, he put her down. They had no baggage, only Anna's purse and Macurdy's wallet, neither with anything incriminating except their skillfully counterfeited papers and English money.
"Everything is all right?" the petty officer asked Anna. He'd been told she was in charge.
"Yes."
"Well then, good luck." The man took time to shake th
eir hands, then with the other seamen, pushed the boat back into the cold surf, and paddled out of sight in the darkness. Mac felt faintly guilty watching them leave, for wishing them a safe arrival, to their ship if not their port. This war, he told himself, needs to be over, and wished he could make it so.
Then the two spies crossed the sand to the thick bank of heath shrubs behind it. Beach contact, they knew, was the most uncertain point in such landings. The beaches were pa trolled, or said to be, and their would-be pickup team might have to lay back, might even have been captured. Another possibility was that the captain had miscalculated, and put them ashore on the wrong beach.
Anna looked at her English watch. "it is about two hours till dawn," she said. "You might as well sleep. I'll stay awake and watch for our contacts. If I get too sleepy, I'll wake you and we will change places."
Macurdy lay down on the sand, protected from the damp chill by the Web of the World, and a heavy sweater with a Scottish label.
He fell asleep almost at once, and in that sleep dreamed: He was aboard the liner Queen Elizabeth, with the men he'd served with at Camp Robinson, at Benning, in the 509th, the 505th. Shuddering, he remembered dreaming this before, and had let it get away. The liner became a landing craft, one of many, but he was the only man on his, as if it were some derelict caught up unintended in the assault. Shells rumbled, warbled, roared. The craft staggered in the surf, then grounded. The ramp dropped, and he rushed off into chest-deep water, waves lifted him, set him down, and he was on the beach, no longer alone, one of thousands that packed the sand.
From between two dunes came giants, 50-foot redheaded monsters carrying great chains, anchor chains, wielding them like fly swatters, beating the beach with them. With each blow, dozens of men died. There were shrieks. A chain smashed the sand in front of him, jerked upward thick with blood and flesh, started back down… and he awoke, panting.
The beach had no crushed bodies. There was only Anna standing watch a few yards away, looking at him. He wondered if he'd cried out in his sleep. Shivering not with cold, he got to his feet, thinking of the Voitik sorcerers scheduled to meet the invasion army with spells and monsters. To the east, a band of faint silver lay on the horizon, and already he could see farther than before. Soon it would be daylight, and they had not been picked up. Anna had a decision to make.
Anna still watching, he began to do side-straddle hops to activate his body. When he'd finished, she said "let's go," and they began walking along the beach until they came to a path leading inland through the heath. They took it.
Macurdy's attention was not on where they were. It was on the dream beach where monsters tramped among GI's, crushing them beneath great clawed feet, smashing them with bloody chains. He hadn't dreamt it idly, he told himself. It was a reminder of duty, a duty he'd only now recognized.
They hiked through heath for much of a mile, while the dawnlight strengthened. Then the heath ended. Ahead was what had been a farm cottage, now a home guard outpost, with two jeeps parked outside and a uniformed sentry by the door. Anna headed straight for it, Macurdy following, wondering.
At fifteen yards, the middle-aged sentry pointed his rifle at them. "Stop right there," he said, and they did. "Who are you, and what's your business here?"
"My name is Anna Hofstetter," Anna replied in upper-class English. "We were just put ashore by a German submarine, and wish to report our mission to the authorities."
For a moment both the sentry and Macurdy gawped, then Macurdy added, "I'm Lieutenant Curtis Macurdy. We're an OSS mission-the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. Army. I need to get in touch with our superiors, at once."
The sentry gathered his wits. "Sergeant!" he shouted, forgetting protocol. "Come out here right away"
Anna's stunned gaze didn't leave Macurdy till the sergeant arrived. They repeated their identities for him, then he ushered them inside and phoned his superiors. That done, he gave the phone to Macurdy, who reached Grosvenor Square by the confidential number he'd memorized. Afterward the home guard fed them porridge, bread and jam, cheese, coffee-even bacon!
A jeep from MI5 arrived from London in about an hour, in the charge of a green 2nd lieutenant, to take them into custody. Macurdy fended them off with obstinacy and lies, insisting that he was a 1st lieutenant, and not about to be ordered by a junior officer. Minutes later an OSS jeep arrived with an American captain, and took them away, leaving the unhappy lieutenant behind.
What stuck in Macurdy's mind, though, riding off down the road to London, wasn't his small victory over MI5, or even how quickly things had developed. It was that he'd never suspected Anna's disloyalty to the Nazis. Apparently she'd lived so long in secrecy that her aura had adjusted!
31
"Should Auld Acquaintance…"
Before the day was over they'd both been debriefed, which took until evening because the OSS wanted everything. Among other things, he emphasized that it was Anna who led them to the British Home Guard station and turned them in.
Normally his mission officer would have debriefed him, but the man was away, and a young lieutenant did it. Handling it professionally, even the description of the Voitar and their ears, and the drills Macurdy had done-until Macurdy told about his visit to Hithmearc. The lieutenant got nervous then; it showed in his eyes, and conspicuously in his aura. He's afraid of me, Macurdy realized. He thinks I'm crazy.
Awakening spontaneously the next morning, Macurdy went to breakfast and found Anna there. Someone had arranged for MI5, the British counter-espionage service, to pick her up. "And Curtis, I'm afraid," she said. "I feel threatened by them. I was, after all, born here to an English mother, and they may consider me a traitor."
Her aura told him she really did feel threatened, though he couldn't imagine the threat being real.
"I'll see if I can do something about it," he said.
When the MI5 man arrived-a lieutenant less green- Macurdy was with her, and explained that she was a German national, working with him. "We've got a mission," he lied. "We'll be leaving before noon."
"Sorry, chap," the Englishman said, "but I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else. She's our responsibility now." Scowling, Macurdy stepped close, pushing his broken nose in the man's startled face. "Look, shit-for-brains, she and I have been working together for months. She may have been born in England, but you people never even heard of her until yesterday. So hear this, and hear it well. The only way you take her with you is to whip my ass first, and you don't have a chance in hell of doing that."
The man didn't flinch, only grimaced, as if he found such language and behavior offensive. "Your superiors shall hear of this," he said stiffly, and turning, stalked away.
They probably will, Macurdy thought ruefully, then turned and grinned at Anna. "Let's you and me go get a mission officer assigned to us right away," he said. "We need to find our Abwehr contacts and get them rounded up. Okay?"
She cocked her head at him. "Lieutenant Macurdy, you are a never-ending source of surprises. And yes I think we should." She paused thoughtfully. "Right now you're the only friend I have here, actually the only friend I have anywhere:"
That sobered Macurdy. With Anna in tow, he went to Personnel to see if Vonnie Von Lutzow was around; Vonnie knew the ropes there a lot better than he did.
He was around, now wearing a major's oak leaves on his collar. Macurdy got through to him by feeding a WAC secretary a cock-and-bull story. Von Lutzow had just returned from France again, and had spent the day before at Bushy Park, Eisenhower's new headquarters, reporting to the commander's G-2 on a mission he'd carried out in France. He seemed to have enjoyed his day with the high brass, as if the experience had been invigorating.
Macurdy sketched out his and Anna's situation, and Von Lutzow promised to get back to them that morning if possible, but just then he had a meeting to run to. He left them in his office, ordering his secretary to forget they were there. While waiting, Macurdy asked Anna if she knew anyone or anything that might be useful.
She smiled ruefully. "My spinster aunt Agnes," she said, "a rather dear soul, in her way, but an intransigent fascist." Anna explained that when she'd been a little girl in England, her mother's older sister, Agnes, had been her favorite aunt. Agnes had always been kind to her, and after they'd moved to Germany, their English vacations had been based on Agnes's flat.
When the war began, of course, all that had ended. Agnes had promptly and publicly renounced her fascist loyalties, and denounced those who didn't, including Anna's mother for abandoning England and taking German citizenship. But that had been a cover. Dear Aunt Agnes still did things for the Abwehr from time to time, unless she'd been found out since then.
When Anna had finished her story, Macurdy knew what he wanted to try.
When Von Lutzow returned, General Donovan's office had already called him, but he delayed calling back. When Macurdy told him what he had in mind, the major said he'd set it up. Then he took the two into an office whose occupant was on mission, and left them there. An hour later he was back with hastily drafted mission orders for Macurdy, and a temporary appointment for Anna as an agent, described as a German national. Which legally she was. As mission orders went, these were sketchy. They had to be; MI5 had already complained to Donovan's office, insisting that Anna was a British subject accused of treason. They also wanted Macurdy disciplined. Donovan's deputy had agreed to drag his feet, but the general was trying to cool the usual friction with MI5, so it was important that Anna be gotten out of sight.
The mission was risky, Von Lutzow pointed out. The local Abwehr apparatus would have known they were expected, and where, because on the night before the landing, the Abwehr would have been contacted by the submarine via radio. The message would have been no more than a code word, but when related to a previous and much more detailed message, it would have indicated when they'd land-namely the night after the code word was received-and on which of several candidate beaches.