by John Dalmas
That much Anna and Macurdy already knew. But now they'd show up two days late, which by itself was grounds for suspicion. And the Abwehr, of necessity, was not only paranoid, but ruthless with those they considered traitors.
On the other hand there were grounds for optimism, Von Lutzow went on. Spy missions were notorious for screwups. The Abwehr was well aware of that, expected it, and to some degree allowed for it. And a few days earlier, the Abwehr station chief and two of his key people had been picked up by MI5, undoubtedly leaving the local apparatus confused and temporarily leaderless. In fact, it was possible they'd never received the radio signal.
Presumably a new station chief was in place by now, but in an apparatus organized into cells, with restricted communication between cells, a lot of information could have been lost. And Anna could make their connection through Aunt Agnes, who almost certainly wouldn't know when or if a code-word had been received. Nor, presumably, would she have any reason to question Anna's story.
Finally, Anna read minds and Macurdy auras, and Anna would carry a 6.35mm Beretta pistol.
Meanwhile MI5 just might have a tap on her aunt's phone. Anna should keep the possibility in mind when she called. All in all it didn't look too sticky.
The next morning before daylight, a sergeant drove the two to a village in Essex, where shortly after dawn, Anna dialed her aunt on a public phone. After several rings, a voice answered: "This is Agnes Henderson."
"Aunt Agnes, I realize this is terribly early, and I hope it isn't too great a shock, but I'm your niece, Anna."
"Anna Really! What a nice surprise to hear from you! How is your dear mother?"
"I'm afraid I haven't seen her for months. I've been away on confidential business, to do with the war effort actually, and been hard to reach. The reason I'm calling is that I'm stranded here in Essex, in East Dunsford, and desperately need transportation to London. For myself and my husband It's quite urgent, I'm afraid. We have important business to transact there for our employer, and I do hope you can help me. "
"I see. Well." Anna could imagine the wheels turning in her Aunt's mind, and wished she could tune in telepathically at distances like that. "Let's see. It is now-6:12. Where can you be picked up?"
"I'm in the lobby of the Dunsford Inn. It's in the center of the village, easily found."
"I won't be able to pick you up myself, my dear, but someone will be along later today. I'm not sure when. How are they to recognize yon? I haven't seen you for years, you know."
"I'm still small, which doesn't surprise you, I'm sure. My husband is large he looks rather like a docker, actually-and limps from a war wound. Both of us are unkempt just now-almost as if we'd spent the night walking about the heath-but we'll take the opportunity to tidy up a bit."
"How may we recognize the person you're sending?"
"I don't know yet who it will be. I need to phone around. But he'll wear-let's see. Something in his cap. A small flag perhaps, or a sprig of something."
She paused. "This call is costing you or your employer money, my dear, so unless there is something else that must be said, I'll hang up."
"No, I think not. It was so nice speaking with you, and so good of you to help. We're registered here as Mr. and Mrs. Monday. And thank you again."
Anna hung up and turned to Macurdy. "And now, Mr. Monday, it is time to register. I hope they have a room with a private bath. I could use one, and then a nap." She lowered her voice. "Can I trust you?"
Macurdy laughed, and answered softly: "Colonel Landgraf trusted me, and you know how that turned out. But yes, you can trust me, and I'll trust you."
Macurdy was still napping when their pickup arrived. Anna had been waiting in the lobby with the Times, and leaving the man there, went up to et her "husband."
She wakened him with a sake. "He's here," she said quietly. "Our ride. He's Irish. He even has a sprig of shamrock in his cap! With his connections that's idiotic during wartime(Let's go before he draws attention."
Macurdy got up and put on his sweater, the only outer garment he had. "And remember not to talk," she reminded him. "It's best if he thinks you speak only German-I'm sure the station chief does-but the innkeeper knows you're a Yank."
He'd do better than simply not talk, he decided. Once out of the inn, he'd reinstate fully his persona of Montag the retarded, Montag the handicapped.
In the lobby, the Irishman hardly glanced at him. His aura reflected a low level of curiosity and a simmering discontent. He'd taken the shamrock from his cap though, as if he'd only worn it for Anna's recognition.
Also, he'd brought along a small bag from Alice, with travel odds and ends for Anna. Seemingly she suspected her niece had arrived by submarine, a reasonable supposition.
Despite his dourness, the Irishman drove wisely, observing the speed limits all the way to London. It was dusk when they got there. Macurdy had wondered if they'd be delivered to Agnes, but instead they were taken to a tenement in a working class neighborhood, where their driver led them up two flights of stairs and knocked at an apartment door.
"Who is it?"
Macurdy couldn't identify the accent.
"It's Wicklow, come to ask after my spectacles."
The door was thin; Macurdy could hear someone moving around inside. Then it opened, and a smallish balding man looked out at them questioningly through thick glasses. The Irishman fished a small-folded paper from his watch pocket and handed it to him. The baldheaded man unfolded it and read, then looked up. "Come in. Come in."
"Not I," the Irishman muttered, "I've things to do," then turning, slouched toward the stairs.
Anna stepped inside, Macurdy following, the bald man closing the door behind them. He looked them up and down without speaking, then led them into the kitchen, and after gesturing them to sit, sat down himself. "What language shall we use?" he asked in English.
"Deutsch," Anna answered in German. "You were no doubt given erroneous names for us. I am Anna Hofstetter, and he is Kurt Montag. He speaks only German."
The man's eyebrows arched. "Only German?" he said. "It is strange to send someone here who speaks only German." He turned to Macurdy. "How did you come here? Under the circumstances."
"We came in an Unterseeboot!" Macurdy's pride and pleasure sounded childish. "All the way from"-he paused as if groping for the place name-"Saint-Nazaire. That is in France."
Their host's eyebrows had jumped again, not at what Montag had said, but at his dialect. "You are Baltic German!"
"Jawohl."
"It is good to hear baltisches Deutsch after so long. Where are you from? East Prussia I think."
Their host proved talkative, soon addressing himself more to Anna than to Montag, because she seemed much the more intelligent. He was an ethnic German from Lithuania, from Memel, where his father had worked in a shipyard, when there was work to be had. Times had been hard. As a child, he himself had gotten involved in the underworld, and later inpolitical issues. "Here," he said, "I pass as a Litvak, a Jew," and chuckled sourly. "I am known as Israel Geltman. At ten I was a runner for a criminal syndicate, and the fences to whom I carried messages were mostly Jews. I got on their good side by learning Yiddish. In Memel there weren't enough Germans, the Yiddish wasn't too different from German anyway."
Then he asked more about Kurt Montag-where he'd grown up, what he'd done. Not primarily out of curiosity; he was examining the two, watching for signs of deceit. Macurdy was considerably protected by his mentally dull persona, and at length Geltman asked, "Fraulein Hoftetter, what is it that Herr Montag does, that he has been sent here?"
"He has certain-abilities, Herr Geltman, which I am not free to talk about, and you are better off not to know. Be content that he is not here to handle cargo on the docks, as he did before he was-discovered."
Geltman looked at Macurdy thoughtfully; he had no idea what she was talking about. "Excuse me, Fraulein. I did not realize…"
"Of course. One would not realize. That is another virtue of Herr
Montag's: People look at him and do not realize."
She paused. "I presume you will be notifying someone that we are here?"
He nodded and stood up. "Please excuse me. I must make a phone call." He went into his living room, and they could hear him speaking Yiddish on the phone. When he was done, he came back in. "It will be awhile before someone arrives. When did you last eat?"
"At noon."
"Ah. I suppose I must offer you super." He took boiled potatoes an boiled beef from the ice ox, heated them, and put out unleavened bread and margarine. "I eat and live like a real Jew," he said. "Ironic, is it not? I have even been circumcised! But I do not go to the synagogue. Fortunately, it is enough to be a secular Jew. Otherwise I'd have had to spend years learning all their verdammte rules." He shrugged, then smiled. "Actually it is not a bad life. I make eyeglasses. Not very many; enough to serve as cover."
When they'd eaten, he took two narrow mattresses from a cupboard. To Macurdy they looked like those on army cots, right down to the blue stripes. "You might as well sleep," Geltman said. "We can't know when you'll be sent for, and I must leave. I have contacts of my own to see to."
Macurdy awoke to dawn light filtering through sooty unwashed windows. Anna still slept. His watch read 6:14, Greenwich Daylight Time; he wondered when they'd be picked up, or whether someone would come there to examine them. Geltman hadn't returned, so he poked among the man's books. Most were in English, but some were in Hebrew script, Yiddish, Macurdy supposed, and wondered if Geltman could actually read them. If in fact Geltman read any of them; his life history didn't suggest someone who read much. After a while, Macurdy settled on one, a stout volume entitled-History of England from the Accession of James the Second, by Thomas Babington Macaulay. He didn't, he realized, know much about English history, so sitting on a sooty windowsill beside the bookcase, he browsed the book for quite a while, returning it to the shelf whenever he heard feet in the hall.
While he browsed, Anna got up and disappeared into the bathroom, to emerge muttering that the tub wasn't fit for swine. She was poking around the small kitchen when Macurdy heard voices in the corridor and popped the book into its slot again. One of the voices was Geltman's, followed a moment later by a key rattling in the lock. While donning his Montag persona, Macurdy made a mental note to check Macaulay out of the Nehtaka County Library someday. Fritzi would like it too.
Geltman brought with him a long, rawboned man with quick nervous movements and a Cockney accent. Dispensing with introductions, which was understandable, Geltman told his guests they were leaving right away. "To breakfast," he added.
A taxi was parked at the curb. The Cockney got in behind the wheel, Geltman beside him, Anna and Montag in back, and drove off. The two men in front talked the whole trip in Yiddish, which surprised Macurdy: It hadn't occurred to him there were Jewish cockneys. He understood snatches of it from its kinship to German and its sprinkling of English. They were talking about the war, and rationing.
About two miles from Geltman's, the driver let them out. Geltman paid him presumably the cabby had to account for his gas if not his time-and led them into a Chinese restaurant. It was nearly empty of customers at that hour, and so quiet, it seemed to Macurdy that sound was somehow suppressed there. The Chinese host even walked soundlessly. Geltman asked for a private room, "Just large enough for four or five." Nodding, the Chinese led them to one, smiled, presented them with small, dog-eared menus, and left.
Geltman spoke quietly to Anna in English. "We will meet someone here," he said, then gave his attention to the menu. Shortly a waitress arrived with tea, and following Geltman's lead, Anna and Montag ordered the "Assorted Chinese Favorites." They had no idea whether Geltman was familiar with the plate or not.
Before the food arrived, the man they were waiting for came in, sitting down without asking, his cool gaze appraising Anna and Montag. Macurdy evaded it, while Anna returned it calmly, no doubt reading the man's thoughts. Finally their visitor spoke to her, quietly and in very proper, public school English, with a hint of accent that Macurdy guessed was Scandinavian.
"Are you familiar with Professor Gebhardt? Personally or by reputation?"
"I've never heard of him," Anna replied. "What of Friedrich Krohn?"
"He's well enough known. He publishes the Volkischer Beobachter, or did at one time."`
"Anything else?"
"Not insofar as I'm aware."
"Colonel Sanne?"
"I'm not free to speak of Colonel Sanne; I was assigned elsewhere, previous to my present activity"
The man paused to digest that for a few seconds. "And what of Aktion Hess?"
She snorted, as if impatient with the questions. "Many people knew of that, though most not by name. It was talked about openly where I was previously assigned."
Her answers opened Macurdy's eyes; Anna was more than simply a psychic recruited for the Voitik Project. He began to see why MI5, and perhaps more, the SIS would be interested in her.
The visitor nodded as if satisfied, and stood up. "Thank you for an interesting conversation, Miss Hofstetter," he said, and nodding, left.
Macurdy would have liked to ask her questions of his own, but there sat Geltman, so they simply waited till their meal was brought to them. Then they ate and left.
A different cab sat at the curb, its flag down. When the driver saw them come out, he reached over and raised it. "Cab!" Geltman called, and the driver, getting out, opened the back. They climbed in, and a moment later the driver pulled away from the curb without asking their destination or being given one. Geltman said nothing; obviously their transportation had been prearranged, perhaps with the help of the Yiddish-speaking Cockney or Anna's Scandinavian questioner.
For several minutes the cabby followed a seemingly random course, as if watching for a possible tail, then drove west for a mile or more toward the city's heart, as always passing through or around bomb-shattered blocks and burned-out neighborhoods, the damage put to order, but awaiting less demanding times to be rebuilt.
Turning north, they entered a residential district and stopped in front of a flat, then went to the entrance, where the driver, not Geltman, pressed one of the buttons by the door. A round speaker grid sounded, the voice electronic, female, and British. "Who is it?"
"Miss Henderson," the driver said, an obvious reference to Aunt Agnes. If there'd been any doubt before, Macurdy told himself, this killed it: Theirs was not an ordinary cabby. "Just a moment. Someone will be down."
They waited. In perhaps two minutes the door was opened by an oriental male. This one had curly, hair: part Chinese and part something else. The man also reminded him a bit of Roy Klaplanahoo-shorter, perhaps five feet nine, and even burlier, but giving a similar sense of physical strength.
The eyes were different though-slanted, hooded, suspicious. "Come in," he said after a moment, his voice surly. Macurdy found himself surprised the man had actually spoken. Geltman and the cabby stayed behind, no doubt to leave in the cab, and Anna and Montag followed the oriental up flights of stairs, through the smell of old carpet, mildew and disinfectant, to the third floor flat, where he let them into a small foyer, then a sitting room. There they were met by an attractive young woman with wire-rimmed glasses.
"You are Anna Hofstetter?" she asked.
"I am. Though the cabby announced me as Miss Henderson." The woman ignored the comment, and did not give her own name. Without looking at him she asked, "I take it then that this is Mr. Monday."
"That's right."
"When did you arrive?"
Macurdy's guts grabbed. This was a moment of threat.
"I might better ask why you didn't," Anna replied. "We were put ashore three nights back and spent several hours freezing on the beach while we waited. When dawn came and your people hadn't, we walked to a road, caught a ride, took a room and slept."
She paused, staring critically at her questioner. "The next night we walked back to the beach, which was not an easy task for Mr. Monday, w
ith his war wounds. Hopefully you can appreciate the risk, going about like that so near the coast, with Mr. Monday speaking only German! No one came that night, either, so we returned to East Dunsford and called my Aunt. We'd have been quite stranded if it weren't for her."
The young woman had stiffened. "You must recognize the strain on operations here," she countered. "Captain Streicher and two others were arrested last Wednesday, and operations were totally disrupted. We'd expected you some time, but didn't know on what night. We never received the signal."
Anna nodded. "Quite understandable. And I suppose one never knows if the-transportation-will get through the naval and aerial patrols."
"Of course."
It felt to Macurdy as if the two women had worked out a needed basis of mutual respect. For a moment he'd been prepared to cast a shock wave at the Oriental, if there were trouble. For at that moment he realized what had been missing in his lessons at the schloss: To cast an emotion effectively, he, at least, needed to feel emotion.
"You've eaten, I presume," the woman said.
"Within the hour. After your Scandinavian questioned us."
"Well then. You'll have another bit of a wait, but it shouldn't be extreme. Meanwhile I've work to do." She gestured at the oriental. "Bahn will look after you. You'll find magazines and newspapers. Don't believe the news from the war fronts. It's all lies."
"Naturally."
The woman turned away, then paused and looked back. "By the way," she said, "my name is Alice," then left the room. Anna caught Macurdy's displeasure at the prospect of sitting around for an indeterminate time with nothing he could safely do, so she translated aloud to him from the paper, from articles on the war. Pausing several times to repeat in German, "You see now, Kurt, why it is so important to the Fatherland that you are here. When it is all over, you will be a very great hero."
The wait was shorter than he'd expected. The buzzer sounded three short blasts in rapid succession, startlingly loud and harsh.