A Game of Spies

by John Altman

  His depression deepened.

  It was not too late. He was still free. He had passed the message to Eva. Now he could only hope that she would be able to shake her surveillance and reach Gothmund, and that he would be there to meet her.

  As the sun sank lower in the sky, the choice of what to do with the Talta was taken away from him: The car ran out of petrol.

  When he realized what was happening, Hobbs immediately coaxed the car off the road. He pointed it at a stand of linden and oak, twenty feet distant, and then watched apprehensively as it rolled forward. Yet another brilliant maneuver, he thought. He had become so caught up in his own thoughts that he’d neglected to pay attention to the most obvious factor of all: an empty gas tank.

  Mercifully, the Talta rolled all the way into the stand of trees before failing. He pressed the brake and then sat, listening to the tick of the cooling engine.

  It was time, he supposed, to take a walk.

  But he didn’t move. He stayed behind the wheel, looking out at the trees surrounding him. It was a better hiding place than he might have expected. From the road he would be all but invisible. Perhaps he would do better to spend the night here. They would be looking for him, once they realized that the Gehls’ car was missing. But they would never suspect that he had simply pulled off the road so close to Berlin. Perhaps the search would pass him by.

  Simplicity is effective.

  In the morning he would cut a walking stick from one of the saplings, then head back to the road and try to catch a ride. And if anyone was trusting enough to give him one, that would be their misfortune. There was no cover story in the world, after all, that could explain him. So he would need to kill the driver—with his bare hands, he supposed—and take the car.

  If anyone was trusting enough to pull over.

  The air was growing cold. The lack of a rear windshield left the interior of the car open to the weather. But he would survive.

  In the morning, he thought. He would figure something out in the morning.

  He ate the rest of his bread, drank some of the water, then lit a cigarette and leaned back in the seat, trying to get comfortable—and failing.

  He had doomed her, with his sloppy contact. And she had been an innocent.

  He finished the cigarette and closed his eyes. Sleep came in choppy waves. With the sleep, his defenses went down; and with the defenses down came the guilty memories.

  Some time later, he sat up with a jolt.

  Still in the Talta; still night. He had pulled himself out of sleep, he realized, with an act of will. He had been back in his East End garret, suggesting to Eva that she come onto Oldfield’s payroll. It seemed that his mind was determined to make him relive the moment over and over again.

  He squirmed in the seat. One leg was asleep—the wounded leg. When he changed position, it began to tingle with pins and needles. At least he could still feel it.

  He found himself looking at his own reflection in the windshield. He looked pale, unshaven, and haggard. This would be the death of him, he thought suddenly. He would never make it back to England alive.

  What in the name of God was he doing here?

  He had come for Eva, of course. Because he had finally grown up. A man could drift from cause to cause, and from woman to woman, for only so long. Eventually he reached a point when he was ready for more. And more, as he understood it, meant settling down. A wife. A family.

  There were other reasons as well, he supposed. His nights spent with the BUF had convinced him that Fascism was a fool’s cause, a crutch for the weak-minded—and a dangerous one, for there were many in the world even more weak-minded than Hobbs himself. But he could not quite convince himself that King and Country were his primary motivations in coming to Germany. Those who risked their lives for any ideology—be it Fascism, Bolshevism, or the glory of the Crown—were fooling themselves if they thought that they were acting for reasons other than personal.

  So it was for Eva. This was not the first time Hobbs had found himself spending a night alone, without a proper roof; but he was determined that it would be one of the last.

  Had he known when he had first seen her that she would be any different from the others? The idea was tempting—love at first sight, a comforting thought—but unfortunately it hadn’t been the case. It had been just a straight recruitment to Hobbs, one in a string of similar recruitments. He had been paying a visit to his old mates in Guildford in an effort to keep up local connections; his value to Oldfield had been dependent on keeping up such old ties, on maintaining the trust of his various ne’er-do-well acquaintances. He had been sitting in the Royal Oak pub with Roland Lewis and Art Moore when he had seen the pretty redheaded girl go walking by the window—according to the barmaid, a governess for the Carmody children, who had been in England at that point for only two weeks.

  He had approached her on some slim pretext that he couldn’t even recall. As the months had passed, and they had evolved from acquaintances to friends to lovers, her possible value had become increasingly clear—Eva was a German, after all, and a smart one, with a passion for integrity. When her position in Guildford had ended, she had decided to stay on in London, at Hobbs’ urging, for another year. Finally had come the recruitment itself, that night in his flat in the East End. But even then he hadn’t realized how much he had come to care for her. It was only after she had gone …

  He winced. His goddamned leg. Now the pins and needles were passing, and it was beginning to throb again.

  He settled back into the seat. Dawn was still a long way away. But he couldn’t stand the thought of returning to the dream, returning to the memory.

  He kept his eyes open long after they’d begun to ache, staring at the whispering leaves around the car.

  6

  THE FINCH PUB, WHITEHALL

  Arthur Deacon sat alone in a booth, staring into his pint of Guinness. An ashtray near his hand contained the butts of six cigarettes. A seventh burned between his fingers, forgotten.

  He remembered the cigarette only when the ember scorched his knuckles. Then he swore, ground it out among the remains of the others, tossed his dark hair back from his forehead, and knuckled briefly at his brown eyes. He checked his watch. Only five minutes remained before his appointment with Oldfield, and he still had not made up his mind.

  He lit another cigarette, tossed back his hair again—Mary was always nagging him to get it cut, but somehow he could never find the time—then returned to staring into his pint.

  His reverie was broken when Margery Lewis slid into the booth across from him. Margery looked a few pounds heavier than the last time Deacon had seen her, as if the rationing had skipped her altogether. But her lipstick was as bright and tarty as ever, her face as wide and round and homely. He wondered, in that first moment, what he had ever seen in her. Then she leaned forward so he could light her cigarette; her dress scooped down in front to reveal her ample bosom, and he remembered.

  “Arthur,” she said. “Look at you, so deep in thought.”

  He nodded. “Margery,” he said.

  “Sitting here frowning like a funeral director.” She dragged on her cigarette, exhaled around a dry smile. “I dare say marriage doesn’t agree with you.”

  “Bugger off,” he said pleasantly.

  “I’d be glad to, love. But I might need a hand. Is that an offer?”

  “You said it yourself, Margery—I’m married now.”

  “Happily?”

  “Very much so. Thank you.”

  “Then why the long face?”

  He shrugged, sipped his pint, and tapped an ash into the ashtray.

  “I hear you’ve got a son,” she said. “I suppose I should say congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Should say. Not will say.”

  “Gracious as ever. Dear heart.”

  “Let’s slip out back, into the alley. For old time’s sake.”

  “Margery, love—I’ve got to go. Take care.”
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  He stood. She looked after him as he shrugged into his coat, tipped an imaginary hat, and went.

  Once outside Deacon cupped his hand over his nose and blew into it. The beer was still on his breath. Oldfield would not approve. He dug through his pockets, found a sprig of spearmint, and popped it into his mouth.

  Before taking the short stroll to Leconfield House, he stood for a moment, chewing on the spearmint and thinking. He had told Oldfield he would have his decision by today. Yet Deacon felt no closer to making the decision than he had a week before, when Oldfield had first approached him about the mission.

  He found himself looking at his hands. They were open, turned up to face the muttering sky. A fine metaphor for his predicament, he thought—six in the one hand, half a dozen in the other.

  On the first hand were responsibility, common sense, and prudence. He had never met William Hobbs in person, but the man’s reputation had preceded him. If Hobbs was half the lout that most of the men around Whitehall believed him to be, then undertaking the mission would be tantamount to committing suicide. For Hobbs, according to the conventional wisdom around MI6, was working for the Nazis. He had been dodgy even before he had gone over there; and since his arrival, much to Oldfield’s chagrin, he had fallen off schedule. Even if he was still loyal, he lacked something in steadiness. By trying to take such a man out of Germany, Deacon might well be handing the Nazis a prototype aircraft, not to mention an experienced RAF pilot. His wife and son would be left without a father.

  That was on the one hand.

  But Deacon had never been renowned for his prudence. And on the other hand were the nobler virtues: justice, courage, loyalty, and honor. Assuming that Hobbs was not working for the Nazis—that he had a lion’s heart beating somewhere under his con man’s façade, and that he had successfully completed his own operation in Germany—then he would need to be evacuated. As would the Bernhardt girl, who might possibly be in possession of intelligence that could help them to win the war.

  On the one hand: responsibility, common sense, and prudence. On the other: justice, courage, loyalty, and honor.

  It was really no contest at all.

  He spat out the spearmint and went to keep his meeting.

  The old-fashioned lift carried him to the fifth floor with its ancient gears creaking loudly; Deacon operated the lever himself.

  He had not set foot inside Leconfield House for several months, since before the start of the war—but little around the War Office, he thought, seemed to have changed. The teak-inlaid halls still smelled musty and close. The men and women sitting behind their heavy black typewriters still looked weary and distracted. The crossword puzzle of that morning’s Times was in evidence, in various stages of completion, on the corner of nearly every desk.

  He marched down the corridor and then paused before a door at the end: the Director General’s office. He knocked twice, waited for the light above the door to flash green, and then stepped into an airy chamber dominated by a long polished conference table, with heavy red sashes framing a tall, rain-streaked window.

  Cecil Oldfield was bent over a map on the conference table. He beckoned Deacon closer without looking up.

  “Three hundred feet exactly,” Oldfield said, pointing to a spot on the map. “I’m afraid it doesn’t leave much room for error.”

  Deacon joined him as the door closed softly behind them.

  The map represented the town of Gothmund, huddled against the Trave River on the outskirts of Lübeck. The three hundred feet to which Oldfield had referred represented the field in which Deacon would be landing his prototype Lysander—or trying to land it, as the case may be.

  “As far as we know, the field’s empty,” Oldfield said. “Too marshy for farming. But of course, we haven’t had any trustworthy firsthand reports for too long now.”

  Deacon leaned down, looking closer. “Marshy,” he repeated.

  “Don’t worry; the thaw hasn’t taken yet. You shouldn’t get stuck in any mud. We hope.”

  “Hm.”

  “So. Have you reached a decision?”

  Deacon’s mouth felt suddenly dry. When he spoke, however, his voice was clear. “I’m game,” he said.

  “Good,” Oldfield said smoothly. He hardly sounded surprised. “If all goes well, you’ll be on the ground for less than a minute. The girl should be waiting there with Hobbs. There may be others with them: perhaps the fisherman, Brandt, perhaps even the OKW clerk.” He looked up, into Deacon’s eyes from a distance of about six inches. Oldfield was a gallows-thin man with muttonchop sideburns and a ruddy complexion. From this close distance, he smelled vigorously of tobacco. “Or perhaps a division or two of Hitler’s finest,” he said sourly.

  Deacon nodded briefly.

  “Now here”—Oldfield’s finger moved over the map—“is Brandt’s home, along a road called the Fischerweg, which runs in front of a row of little cottages. If things go wrong—terribly wrong—you might want to make a try for it. It’s less than a quarter mile from the landing zone. I’ll give you some information concerning the remnants of our underground network in Germany, such as it is. If worse comes to worst, you’ll take the girl into hiding. Then try to get over the border with her, wherever you can manage it. Although if it comes to that …”

  Deacon nodded again. He straightened, suddenly feeling considerably older than his twenty-six years. “When do I go?” he asked.

  “Three days. Try to get some rest before then, hm? You’ll want your eyes as sharp as possible for this one.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Remember,” Oldfield said. “No repercussions if you come back empty-handed.”

  Deacon smiled to himself. These strange times, he thought, had even taken a toll on an old bulldog such as Oldfield.

  “Uncle Cecil,” he said. “I do believe you’re getting soft, in your old age.”

  On the way back to Bayswater, Deacon found his mind roaming.

  He thought for a time of his wife and his newborn son. Thinking of them was a luxury; he allowed himself exactly three minutes. Then he harrumphed, rearranging himself in the backseat of the Bentley, and forced his mind in a new direction. If he thought of his family for too long, he might find an excuse to change his mind about accepting the mission. And that would not do.

  He looked at the balding crown on the back of his driver’s head, thinking for a few empty seconds of nothing in particular; then his mind turned to the upcoming operation.

  If it had been a suicide mission, he would not have accepted it. He had responsibilities now, as his wife was so keen on pointing out. But it was not a suicide mission. Just damned close.

  He remembered his first meeting with Oldfield on the subject, a week before. His uncle had given it to him straight, as they had stood inside the swaying army surplus tent and inspected the prototype Lysander Mark III.

  “Lately,” Oldfield said, “I’ve been thinking I was wrong in the head to work with Hobbs in the first place. But while I had him in my sight, I felt right enough about him. He has a way of putting people at ease. A skill he learned on the street, no doubt. Now that he’s gone, however, I’ve been wondering. He might be rotten to the core; and even if he’s not, he may prove incapable of doing what we need done.”

  Deacon had been looking over the plane as Oldfield had spoken. The Lysander had been modified with an external fuel tank holding 150 gallons, providing an endurance of eight hours’ flying time. A ladder had been fitted to the fuselage to allow quick access to and from the ground. All in all, the prototype had turned out brilliantly. Oldfield had mentioned that they would be doing up more of the little planes in this fashion, in case the war dragged on.

  “This is an important one,” Oldfield continued. “Our intelligence on the Wehrmacht’s plans is sketchy at best. I’ve got a memo from Deuxième Bureau on my desk predicting a mid-March offensive against the Netherlands and Belgium, to be accompanied by air attacks on London and Paris. Then another correcting the in
formation: no offensive against Belgium, but a certain attack on the Netherlands. Then another warning of an attack at the Maginot Line, with no movement in Belgium or the Netherlands. The truth is, it’s a big bloody mess.”

  They’d strolled leisurely back across Heathrow airfield following the brief inspection. Heathrow had been the perfect site for their meeting: modest to the point of humility, featuring no permanent buildings, let alone a runway. Nearby Heston and Hanworth Park were the places that came to mind when one thought of an airfield. And so those were the places that the Fifth Columnists might be watching. Heathrow itself was below suspicion.

  Before leaving Oldfield, that day, Deacon had paused to look back at the single army tent that concealed the prototype Lysander. A drizzle had started, tossing the tails of his Burberry coat.

  “Think it through,” Oldfield said. “Talk it over with the wife. See what you decide.”

  In retrospect, Deacon realized that Oldfield had known him better than he had known himself. He had been counting on Deacon’s pride. Pilots did not turn away from dangerous missions; they lived for them.

  Deacon suffered no shortage of pride. Not only was he the best pilot he knew in the RAF, but he was one of the few, in this Phony War, with any combat experience. He had been a part of the confetti campaign, dropping propaganda leaflets onto Germany. Not that everybody would have considered that combat experience, of course. A joke had been making the rounds lately, summing up the peculiar lot of the confetti campaign pilots. An airman, the joke went, found himself in serious trouble after dropping a bundle of leaflets without separating them first. The brick of pamphlets had plummeted straight down onto Berlin like a paper bomb. Good God, the airman’s superior said in chastising him, You might have killed someone!