Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  “What is it?” Kenny asked.

  “The Distinguished Civilian Service Award. It’s awarded to civilians who make an extraordinary sacrifice or contribution to the operations of the Navy, and you, Kenny, did both. Your efforts to help us at the Automat and the harm you suffered as a result showed exceptional loyalty to your country and personal bravery. I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this honor.”

  “Oh my gosh,” he whispered. “Can I take it out?”

  “A’course,” I said.

  He cradled it in his palm and proudly showed it to his parents. His mother ran her finger along the bas relief of the Navy’s insignia, an eagle spreading his wings across an anchor.

  “Oh honey, it’s beautiful,” she said.

  “It’s really just for me?” he exclaimed. Lyle, Georgette, and I all smiled.

  “You better believe it, Kenny,” I said. “Now, I do have to take it back today because we want to confer it on you at a ceremony at the Navy Building in two weeks. The Chief of Naval Operations will be there, and a lotta other brass too, and you’ll get to have your picture taken with them all after the medal is pinned on you. How’s that sound?”

  “That sounds great!”

  “Here’s the announcement with the details—this makes it official.” I pulled the embossed envelope from my jacket pocket and handed it to Lyle, who carefully broke the seal and removed the embossed placard.

  “Look at that,” he murmured, handing the card to Kenny, who read it eagerly.

  “Listen to this, Mom! It says I ‘provided indispensable aid to a crucial intelligence mission, demonstrating valor, bravery, and devotion to the United States of America.’ Wow!”

  “We’re proud of you, son,” she answered as her husband nodded and patted him on the back.

  Commander Paslett, knowing what had happened to Kenny, had eagerly agreed with me that Kenny deserved the award. Waking up the Chief of Naval Operations to get his immediate approval had caused quite a stir, especially since the commendation could only make vague reference to the mission, but Paslett had worked it all out the night before, even calling in a favor to get a temporary “loan” of one of the medals, which were stored in a safe.

  “Can I tell my friends about this?” Kenny asked me.

  “It’s better to wait until after the ceremony, okay? But you can hang on to the medal til I have to go.” His head bobbed excitedly as I caught Lyle’s eye and asked, “May I speak to you and your wife for a moment?”

  Lyle nodded and the three of us stood. I followed the Newhursts into the kitchen, where the breakfast plates were still on the table.

  “I just have a few more things to tell you,” I said. “First, it goes without saying that the Navy will pay all your son’s medical expenses. Have the bills sent to me, Lieutenant junior grade Ellis Voigt, O.N.I., at the Navy Building, and I’ll make sure they’re promptly and fully paid.”

  “We will,” Lyle said firmly.

  Now I looked straight at Georgette. “Missus Newhurst, I again want to apologize for misrepresenting myself when I came to your home looking for your son. There’s no excuse for my actions.”

  She didn’t answer, and her return gaze was hard to read. Suspicion still in her eyes, yes, but was there also relief? Anxiety? Anger? Maybe all this and more—who was I to know or even try to guess what she was feeling? Lyle was right: I’d almost gotten their son killed and no medal, however distinguished, could erase the anguish, pain, and distress I’d caused them.

  I cleared my throat. “Lastly, I want to say again how sorry I am for the trouble I’ve caused you and Kenny.”

  Georgette looked away, still silent.

  Lyle paused. “We appreciate you coming here,” he finally said.

  “Thank you for hearing me out.” I extended my hand and he shook it.

  “What about the man who shot Kenny?” he blurted out. “When will he be arrested?”

  I carefully considered my response. “Yes, he must be punished,” I decided to say. “Would you like me to make sure this happens?”

  “Yes, I would,” Lyle answered immediately.

  I looked at Georgette. She nodded firmly.

  “Then I make this promise to you: The man who shot your son will pay for what he did.”

  They will come after you. So the Professor had warned me after I thrashed his goons. What would I do when Shovel-face came for his revenge? The N.K.V.D. wouldn’t let me get away with killing him. Was there a way to make him suffer the pain he’d caused Kenny as well as me? At that moment, standing in the Newhursts’ kitchen and studying their grim, resolute expressions, I had no answers to these questions. But this promise I would keep, somehow, I knew that.

  TERRANCE WAS OUT WHEN I RETURNED TO THE NAVY BUILDING. I TOOK advantage of his absence from our shared office to surreptitiously draft and backdate a memorandum detailing how I knew what questions the N.K.V.D. asked its American espionage recruits, including the one Mason Adams Brode had challenged me with: Are you ready to say good-bye to your family forever? I kept the document simple, making sure the information provided was incomplete and couched in hearsay and conditional phrasing. Suspect claimed Soviets asked … May also be the case Soviets ask … Suspect said he was told … The “suspect” was a naval provost guard who had, in fact, clumsily entangled himself in a communist cell and was now serving ten years in the brig for letting his Red pals sneak into the Navy Yard one night to steal a prototype for a new periscope. I misfiled the forgery but made sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find during a thorough search.

  It was almost noon when I finished. Still no Terrance, so I wrote him a note before I went out for lunch: Hey, what say you and me visit Margie’s sometime soon? Your vacation from my winning charm and wit is now at an end and you can expect to see my mug every day now. Least I can do to soften the blow is to buy you a modestly priced dinner and some cold beers.

  Margie’s was an ancient saloon that served superb breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches and never ran out of Schlitz. During better times together, Terrance and I had spent many hours there talking over cases. I hoped he’d see the invitation for what it really was, a peace offering. It was, though it was also something else: the second-to-last task I needed to complete to make my life normal again and see my wretched scheme to a close.

  CHAPTER 44

  BEFORE MY LAST TASK, A VISIT TO A PAWNSHOP, I TOOK LUNCH AT A hash joint close to the Navy Building. I’d skipped breakfast, so I went with three eggs over hash with a stack of toast on the side and washed it down with too many cups of coffee. Scanning the headlines was like starting a novel—the names, places, and events seemed strange. TRUMAN, CHURCHILL TOUR BERLIN AFTER MEETING INFORMALLY AT POTSDAM CASTLE … EQUAL RIGHTS BATTLE FLARES IN CONGRESS … But not all of the headlines were unfamiliar: PACIFIC WAR TOUGHER, SAYS EUROPE VET. He wasn’t exaggerating. After fighting in Italy and Germany, he was now serving in the Forty-first Infantry Division, which had the unenviable task of flushing Japs out of scattered bases in remote areas of the Philippines. The heat, jungle, and malaria were just as deadly as the Japs. Hang on, buddy, I thought. Salvation is on its way.

  The counterman collected my dirty plates and topped off my coffee. I refolded the Post and lit up. How long would it take to deliver the bombs to a forward base? Figure a week or so to ready the weapons for delivery, then another week to ship them, probably on a light or heavy cruiser. Faster to fly, of course, but risky, too—what if the aircraft went down? Once the bombs arrived, a few days or more would be needed to finalize the mission and crew and wait for the right weather. I reopened the paper, found an events calendar, studied the days. If my estimates were accurate, the bombs would start falling in early August, unless the Japs surrendered first. But if the hard, bloody slog of the Forty-first Infantry was any measure, they weren’t about to quit.

  As I walked to the pawnshop, I marveled at the secret I carried with me. All passersby—men, women, and children; young and old; military and civilian; Negro and
white—knew the war would soon end, but they had no idea how. And even when they learned what the bomb was, they’d never know, for real, what it could do. Yes, there would be lots of photographs of the leveled, blackened plains that had been cities, and there would be descriptions of the bomb’s tremendously destructive power; but no account, however detailed, could even begin to capture what it felt like to witness the bomb’s blossoming.

  The pawnshop clerk, a middle-aged, paunchy man in an untucked shirt, took my stub without comment. He came back from the caged storage area and set my item down on the counter unceremoniously. It was a cheap mantel clock in need of refurbishment. The veneer was chipped, the face numbers tarnished. No one with sense would buy this clock. The key was missing, and I’d hammered the main spring to break the works. Better, more attractive clocks could be purchased for half the price of a repair. But what was hidden behind the works was priceless to the knowledgeable owner.

  “Eight bucks,” the clerk grunted.

  I counted the cash, he swept it up, and the bills promptly disappeared into an unseen drawer.

  “Got a box?” I asked.

  “I don’t got.”

  I shot him a look. “Eight bucks and you can’t spare a box?”

  “This ain’t Safeway,” he grumbled, but my glare wore him down. He shuffled into the back. I opened the hatch in the back of the clock, groped for the folded piece of paper, and slipped it into my pocket before he returned with a shallow fruit crate.

  I spared him the trouble of responding to thanks, put the clock in the crate, and padded it with my newspaper. A clock and watch repair shop was just a few blocks away. The proprietor looked at me with pity when I asked him how much it would cost to repair my clock.

  “Gee pal, hope you didn’t pay much for this,” he said. He was a thin man with a perfectly bald head, a crease around his right eye from clenching a loupe all day.

  “Eight bucks, from A-Straight Pawn Brokers,” I answered.

  He snorted. “You got had, bad. See here”—he turned the clock over and pointed at the mangled works—“someone’s pounded the hell outta it. You’d need a new works, and for something as run-of-the-mill as this, it’s not worth it.”

  “Sonofabitch,” I said. “So it’s worthless?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I checked my watch. “Dammit, I gotta get back. Think you could throw it away for me?”

  “Sure. Now look,” gesturing at the shelves of clocks around him, “we got lotsa nice pieces for sale here, if you’re interested.”

  “Maybe another time. Thanks for the appraisal.” I knocked twice on the counter, said good-bye, and left.

  Had anyone tailed me? I hadn’t noticed anything suspicious, but I wasn’t taking any chances, not with the F.B.I. determined to nail me and the Russians likely watching me out of habit. If anyone traced my steps, the pawnbroker and the clock fixer would independently tell a true story: I was a guy with a broken clock.

  As for the paper I’d removed from the clock, I took care of that on my walk back to the Navy Building. Hand in pocket, I slowly, tediously ripped it up, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be. When I had a handful of confetti, I paused to tie my shoe over a storm drain, dropped the shreds through the grate, and watched the dirty current carry them away.

  And with that, the diagram of the bomb that Mason Adams Brode had delivered in May to Henry Himmel, the Soviet agent I’d killed, disappeared. The N.K.V.D. would keep looking for Himmel, but now that they had a replacement diagram, one they believed was authentic, the search would lose urgency. And the Soviets would soon commit untold resources and manpower to building the bomb the wrong way.

  I knew they’d eventually succeed. My scheme would set them back, but they’d learn from their mistakes and find a way to their own gadget. I also reminded myself not to celebrate my double cross with abandon. The N.K.V.D. had agreed to let me go dormant, but they’d be back; I still needed to devise a way to permanently detach myself without ever exposing my past deeds. Agent Clayton Slater and the F.B.I. remained a pressing problem. How would I get them off my back? Finally, obstructing the Russians from getting the bomb wasn’t complete absolution for my past treason. So how would I continue to make amends? Was being a loyal officer duty enough? Trouble still trailed me, even if I’d shed much of its weight. Still, I entered the Navy Building feeling better than I had in months. Goddamn, I did it, I allowed myself to think. I sure felt a lot more secure than I had in a long, long time.

  Which is why I didn’t think there was anything unusual about the summons from Paslett on my desk, ordering me to the conference room.

  CHAPTER 45

  SHE WAS SEATED FACING THE DOOR. HER GINGER HAIR WAS PINNED beneath an olive drab cap with a brass eagle badge that reflected the overhead light. A mosaic of service ribbons brightened her tunic, and a tan tie was perfectly knotted between the collar points of a matching shirt. She looked right at me when I opened the door. Her expression was neutral, uninterested, as if I was a delivery boy bringing in lunch. But I’d seen her smile, many times; I’d caressed her smoothly planed cheeks; I’d thrilled at the wet crush of her lips on mine; I’d gazed into her eyes studying me at my flat and at a bar in Santa Fe. I clenched the doorknob to steady myself as my legs went weak. I felt dizzy, stomach churning. I tried to set my face to match her detached expression, let go of the knob, and entered.

  The woman I knew as Mara—the beauty I’d bedded the very night we’d met; who had tried to dope me for the N.K.V.D; who had traveled to New Mexico to watch me for the Russians; who had endured and walked away from a grueling interrogation after our encounter in Santa Fe—was not a fellow traveler, not a Party member, not a Soviet spy: she was an Army captain.

  I’d been played but good. All the cues I’d misread rushed back into my head. The setup at the bar the night we’d met, her ability to put on accents, the ease with which she’d found me in New Mexico, and the fact she’d weathered that interrogation were all evidence of her experience, training, and talent—not as a fellow traveler or Russian agent but as an officer in the U.S. armed services.

  I felt sick but somehow snapped off a salute. Paslett put me at ease and motioned at an empty chair. I sat, now facing him and Mara. Next to her was a brigadier general, his stout frame swelling the buttons on his uniform, his fleshy neck edging over his collar. What remained of his hair was slicked and combed over a scalp that looked like worn leather, wrinkled and piebald. He watched me through heavily lidded eyes. To say he looked like a toad was an insult to toads. His cheeks bulged, his nose was crooked, and his lower lip drooped, exposing the dark recesses of mottled gums slick with saliva. But the features I took special note of were the black Mont Blanc pen lying on the table in front of him and the pinky ring with a nugget of a diamond. Am I ugly? So what—I’m richer than you’ll ever be, the pen and ring said.

  “Brigadier General Matthew Wilburton, Captain Gail Quincy,” Paslett told me.

  I nodded numbly. Does she know …

  “General Wilburton is Deputy Director of the Strategic Services Operations for the O.S.S. He’s been directing Captain Quincy in an undercover operation for some time.” … that I’m a double agent?

  Paslett paused, turned his head toward me. His look was an iceberg. “Captain Quincy infiltrated the same N.K.V.D. cell you did, Voigt. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Yessir,” I said hoarsely. “I know Captain Quincy as Mara.” What has she told them? What if—

  “Just Mara?”

  “And Elizabeth. In Santa Fe, she called herself Elizabeth.”—the Russians told her how long I’ve been on their string? I swallowed bile, kept my lips pressed tight.

  “Just so happens the captain was telling us about her time in New Mexico when you knocked.”

  Jesus, am I finished? For an instant, a torrent of dread images blackened my consciousness. Being arrested, in this very room; being dragged from the building in handcuffs; a windowless cell, tasteless food o
n a metal tray, endless hours of interrogation; the shame, shock, and humiliation on my parents’ faces; the dangling straps on the chair in the chamber. But a vision of the bomb’s brilliant, blinding light saved me. If Mara had suspicions, if she’d shared them, nothing I said or did now could save me. But if I went weak, if I squirmed and stammered like a man with something to hide, I’d sure as hell look suspicious. So what would an innocent man do?

  Paslett started to say something, but I cut him off.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I shouted at her, jabbing a finger toward her. “Look what those bastards did,” yelling now at the general. I yanked at my collar to expose the electrocution scar. “They tortured me, they shot a boy! He almost died, for fuck’s sake!” I shot to my feet, my chair toppled over. “The front I put up to the Russians was hard enough without having to play her as a Red!”

  Wilburton’s surprise caused his mouth to sag further. Mara—Gail—didn’t react at all to my outburst.

  “Pick up your chair and sit down, Lieutenant,” Paslett ordered me.

  I complied and took a deep breath. “Look sir, I’m sorry—”

  “Zip it, Lieutenant.”

  I shut up.

  “She didn’t know about you either, Voigt,” Paslett said.

  “What?” My eyes darted to Gail, who nodded slowly.

  Wilburton cleared his throat. “When the O.N.I. operation came to our attention, I proposed to General Groves and Commander Paslett that we withhold your”—he gestured at Gail, then me—“true identities from one another in order to ensure the fidelity of our separate operations.”

  “You knew, sir?” I asked Paslett. He was part of the deception all along? All this time, I believed I was master of the maze, playing dual roles; and all this time, Paslett, Groves, and this Wilburton were running their own double game. Paslett’s response to my question about the O.S.S. last night suddenly took on added meaning: I’d forget about it if I were you, Voigt. I also remembered what he had said the night before I gave myself over to the Russians: I’ll get Groves to say yes. Was that how Paslett had clinched Groves’s cooperation, by telling him about the O.S.S. operation, or had Groves been in on the fix from the get-go? Either way, Paslett’s complaints about the O.S.S. had been feints all along.