by Bonnie Toews
ENTIRE STOCK OF HEAVY WATER TO BE SHIPPED IN 15 DAYS … STOP … ESTIMATE SHIPMENT WILL SATISFY ALL CURRENT PRODUCTION DEMANDS …STOP … ADVISE ABORT FIREBUG … STOP … NEED CORVINE BULLSHIT.
“What does the last sentence mean?” she asked.
Sir Fletcher swore and turned away from everyone.
At a light rap on the door, Lee stood and opened it. Sir Fletcher’s cryptographer stood in the doorway. Quinn beckoned the young man in and swiveled his chair back to face them.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I just received a report contained in a microdot reduction brought back to Amanita by secret courier from the Danish Resistance.”
“Let’s hear it.”
The cryptographer looked down at his message pad and read: “Dr. Nielsen refused our offer to arrange his escape. He says he feels responsible for the Jewish scientists still permitted to work on his project. If he goes, he fears he will be abandoning them to certain death. As yet, he claims he has discovered no practical way to test his theories and cannot offer London any immediate help with their atomic program. He warns the Germans are looking for more plutonium and heavy water to produce atomic bombs. He asks if you can do anything about this.”
Quinn threw the pencil he was holding into the air and swore.
Lee mumbled something incomprehensible, and Grace quietly asked, “What shall I radio Hawk?”
Quinn took command.
“Send him … BULLSHIT BAFFLES BRAINS … and sign it CORVINE,” he instructed.
Sir Fletcher nodded in agreement.
Lee saw the frustration on Grace’s face and complained, “We still don’t know what bullshit means, Quinn.”
“Our explosive horse manure. Rolf wants me to bring in the plastique and my commando team. That message you’re sending tells him we’re on our way.”
TWENTY-THREE
Friday, April 9th, 1943
The journey began deep in the Kjolen range of Norway’s mountains, near Rjukan, in a valley so deep and foreboding that, in winter, the sun could not reach its depths. The workers in the Norsk hydro complex had to be transported by cable car up to the top of the mountain for their daily requirement of sunlight. The Nazis loaded more than five thousand pounds of heavy water, the result of nearly six months of production, on a freight train that chugged through the Norwegian mountains down to the seaport. There, the railroad cars carrying the secret cargo were uncoupled on a barge to be pulled across the sea by ferry to Copenhagen, Denmark.
From a plateau overlooking a narrow inlet flanked by high banks, the sea was so smooth the port of Kristiansand looked like an architect’s model glued to tinted glass. Its sun-bleached buildings lay clustered in three groups, which hooked together in a loop. Between them, a fleet of torpedo boats bobbed. It was the German naval base.
Quinn carefully studied it through his binoculars.
For four days, Quinn and his men had hidden in the small mountain cabin behind him. Tiny tree shoots sprouted from its turf roof like eagle feathers on an Indian headdress. The isolation of the farmsteads dappling the hills protected them from discovery, while they prepared for today’s mission.
Out of sight of the clapboard hut, in front of the bank barn, the farmer hitched his prize Westland pony to the back of the hay wagon. Tears veined his weathered face as he stroked the beautiful cream-colored creature with the distinctive black stripe flashing down his mane and tail, and the zebra markings along his legs. The pony gently nuzzled his master’s cheek and neck, and nibbled at his pant legs before his quivering nose undertook the playful search for the carrot sticking out of the farmer’s hip pocket.
In winter, the farmers set their Westlands free on the highest slopes where they were known to be as nimble-footed as any goat, but in early spring, they would bring them back to work the regions too difficult for a tractor. The farmer lifted the pony’s head by his halter to look squarely into his sensitive brown eyes. “You must prance with your head held high as I have taught you,” he told him in Norwegian. “The Germans must feel as proud to have you as a gift as I have been to own you.” He let go of the halter.
“I will miss you,” he added with a heavy heart, gradually turning his back to allow the Westland to find the carrot dangling from his pocket. The pony tugged at the carrot greens and bit-by-bit pulled the whole thing out of its hiding place. He shook it with triumph. When the Westland started munching the greens, the long fat carrot quickly vanished inside his mouth. Once gone, he furled his upper lip and whinnied for more.
“Good, eh?” The farmer patted the pony’s thick muscled neck. “It was the largest and the sweetest I could find.”
Quinn appeared on the shallow rise between the house and the barn. As if on cue, his three commandos emerged from the cabin’s back door. One carried double bales of hay bundled together. He dumped them on top of the straw dripping over the sides of the wagon. Slung over his shoulder was a 9-mm. Browning FN rifle. The other two carried out three backpacks, one Mark V.303 rifle, a Browning automatic rifle and a portable transmission radio. Their pockets bulged with boxes of ammunition. Like the farmer, they were dressed in heavy winter gear.
“It’s time to go,” Quinn told the farmer in English.
The Norwegian nodded and strapped to his back the 50-lb. pack he had dropped by his knees earlier, while talking to his pony. He was responsible for guiding the special commando team across the mountains to Sweden, thus he carried their food rations and utensils.
Quinn clasped the farmer’s callused hands in his own. “It’s unfortunate wars cause men to decide the fate of others, even of their loved ones.”
“I understand.” The farmer shifted the weight of his backpack more comfortably.
“I have talked to the Westland. He will cooperate. Remember how I showed you to drive the wagon. The draught horse has a sensitive mouth. He needs slight urging to do what you want. He knows his job.”
“Better than I do.”
Quinn turned to his three men. “Good luck, men. Stick close to your guide here. He knows the route as well as any mountain goat, or Westland, roaming these hills.”
He swung his attention back to the farmer. “The SS will be looking for you, so I want you to fly out with my men. You can join a small band of Norwegians training in Scotland. I’m sure they will welcome your help.”
The Norwegian nodded. “Go with God,” he added with the simple faith of the country folk.
He teared up as he took one last look around the farmstead, then turned and started trudging toward the mountain trail.
Each commando shook Quinn’s hand and followed the farmer. The third one pulling up the rear didn’t let go of his grip. “You shouldn’t be going in alone, sir. One of us can stay back with you… in case you need help.”
“If that happens, the mission is scrubbed anyway,” Quinn reminded him. “One man alone is harmless. Two are a threat.”
“Yes, sir.” He turned and followed the others trekking in tandem up the difficult slope.
Quinn watched until they were a good quarter mile away before he rushed up the porch steps and disappeared inside the deserted farmhouse.
Raising the lid of his scuffed suitcase, he deftly adjusted the antenna lying across the miniaturized radio set contained within. Concealed inside the side pocket was a quartz crystal. He took it out and inserted it. The radio came alive. At once, he pulled on his headset and tapped out a short signal. Immediately Morse chattering buzzed in his ear. He sent his coded message and signed off, folded up the aerial and the ground wire, removed the quartz crystal and disconnected the headphones.
Next, he ran a reed-thin roll of plastic explosive under the bottom rim of the suitcase, all the way around, and affixed a friction-sensitive blasting cap to the grip’s catch. Very gently, he shut the lid and slowly, soundlessly, eased the spring bolt back into place, fastening the latch. The next person to open his suitcase would be blown to smithereens.
He breathed in slowly and braced himse
lf before he removed a crude single-shot pistol from his inside zipper pocket. It was a special wartime design of .45 revolver, which the Office for Strategic Services used for assassinations. He carefully loaded the weapon nicknamed the Liberator and stuffed the gun into his sheepskin jacket pocket, yanked the farmer’s forage cap low over his brow, gathered up a satchel of clothing along with the booby-trapped suitcase and headed out the door.
Outside, the draught horse harnessed to the hay wagon lazily chewed on his bit, while the Westland pony hitched behind it swished his tail impatiently. Quinn lifted the suitcase onto the back of the wagon and meticulously cushioned the satchel under the loose hay, hiding them from casual inspection. Giving the pony a pat, he pleaded with the Westland, “Stick close.”
The cream pony’s ears twitched forward, fully alert. Then he walked around to the front, eyed the huge draught horse, sighed, looked heavenward for help and climbed up into the driver’s seat.
If not now, WHEN? He asked himself the phrase he had learned from Lee. The nerves in his stomach steadied. “I’m ready.”
He flicked the reins and yelled, “Giddy-up!”
TWENTY-FOUR
Friday, April 9th, 1943
On Quinn’s way to the German dockyards, he jogged the team through the main street of Kristiansand. Hearing the clip-clop of the horses’ shoes against the cobblestone route made many Norwegians pause. They were visibly stirred and pointed at the sturdy Westland proudly prancing behind the wagon. Shuffled steps lightened. Drooped heads lifted. Faded eyes brightened.
Quinn sensed rather than saw the shift in the spirit of the passersby and shared in their pride until the clack-clack of storm troopers goose-stepping up the street shattered the moment of private triumph. Several platoons marched by. Cold sweat slithered down Quinn’s spine.
At the Town Square, he passed a giant rock covered by a bevy of noisy seagulls. They remained unruffled by the mix of military and civilian traffic milling about. Salty whiffs of seawater drifted inland on the prevailing breezes fluttering the parade of Nazi flags raised in front of the town hall. Further west, Quinn noticed cooing pigeons and shrilling seagulls cloistered like a nun’s wimple over the stone statue of a Norse Sea god. The smells of the sea and the sounds of the birds carried him back to the quays along the River Liffey in Dublin, where he spent his teen and college years.
Born at the turn of the century, Quinn only had to think of the year to know how old he was. His mother, a spare statuesque Catholic, stern in her beliefs, ruled her household like Queen Victoria. Words of praise never passed her lips, but she was single-mindedly proud of her son’s russet-colored hair. Often, she told him his dark red mane was a sign from God. “You will be a leader among men,” she promised him.
In one week, on the sixteenth of April, he would turn forty-three. May his dear mother in heaven be proud of him, for although he was at an age most men dreaded, the beginning of their physical decline, he had developed into a leader among men. Quinn felt stronger, leaner, faster and smarter, and more vital, than ever before. His dedication to physical training, yoga and karate supported his belief he could achieve anything he set out to do, and he had lived this belief since he started guerrilla training with the Irish Republican Army.
At sixteen, when other boys were exploring their libidos, Quinn was discovering his lust for freedom and Ireland’s passion for self-rule. Two men influenced him: Eamon De Valero and Michael Collins. The former led the Sinn Fein, which in Gaelic meant “ourselves alone,” an apt name for Ireland’s separatist movement. The latter inspired young Irish rebels to reclaim their national pride in the 1916 Easter Rising, a battle they expected to lose in one day. But, once the Irish Republican Brotherhood occupied Dublin’s General Post Office, the Easter Rising actually lasted one week.
Afterward, the British executed seventeen of the separatists’ leaders. Quinn evaded arrest and went on to Trinity College, by day, and struck lone attacks against the British for Collins, at night. He hid his ‘summons to his flag’ and his ‘allegiance to his comrades-in-arms’ from his family.
By 1921, the British were willing to engage in peace talks. As a civilian observer, Quinn accompanied Michael Collins to London and watched him sign a treaty, which surrendered the Northern province of Ulster to British rule, while granting independence to Southern Ireland, which they renamed Eire, or the republic.
Feeling betrayed, Quinn returned to Dublin and offered his services to De Valera, leader of the IRA. Civil war broke out, and Collins’ Irish National Army defeated the IRA, forcing the ‘Irregulars,’as he called them, out of Ulster and underground. Quinn fled to the mountains of County Cork in Eire, and from there, he achieved Collins’ execution. His operation was so secret that, to this day, no one in Ireland ever knew who had killed the Irish patriot.
Being an enigma became Quinn’s trademark. He took pride in the success of his ‘silent’ partnership with De Valera because it gave him autonomy over his own destiny. At the same time, IRA terror tactics were gaining attention in Europe, and Quinn decided to market his special trade to the highest bidder. The funds he earned he planned to channel back to De Valera and the IRA movement.
Sir Fletcher learned of his unusual ‘skills’ from an associate at Trinity College and recruited Quinn for two reasons: he was IRA-trained, and the British didn’t know him. Two attributes he needed in the man he chose to run Churchill’s clandestine organization in pre-war England.
In the bigger picture, Quinn’s Irish cause paled under the shadow of Hitler’s greater threat to world freedom. The Spanish Civil War demonstrated to Quinn the Nazis’ superior technological power and the West’s reluctance to intervene. As a result, he advised de Valera to keep Eire neutral should Britain and Germany go to war.
De Valera not only took his advice, but when war came, he also refused to allow Britain or the United States to use Eire’s main ports to protect Atlantic convoys. He also rejected offering Jewish refugees asylum from Nazi persecution in Europe. Both of De Valera’s policies enraged Churchill, and Quinn had a tough time convincing him not to use the British Navy to seize the ports. What eventually mollified Britain’s prime minister was Northern Ireland’s crucial protection of the northern sea routes. For Quinn, settling the differences between his two bosses was just one more juggling act.
Everything was simple except for Lee. After he recruited her for Churchill’s operation, she forced him to re-examine everything he believed in. For the first time, he had to share himself with someone else, and while working with her, he found he enjoyed their companionship. Every time he used her to seduce information from a Nazi official, he ached. He had moments when his own ruthlessness didn’t sustain him, and he was never able to order her into his targets’ beds. Still, he couldn’t admit to himself the reason he didn’t use her for full scale ‘patriotic prostitution,’as she called it, was because she had claimed his soul in a way no one else had. The irony for him was that she was a Jew. He had been taught to hate Jews. Jews were “money mongers.” Lee’s mother fit that stereotype. Not Lee. In Poland and Russia, where they lived to survive more than they existed to spy, he missed her every time they were apart, but he shrank from crossing the bridge to a more intimate commitment. His mother’s cold disapproval haunted him and provided enough inner conflict that he feared he would lose himself.
To complete his mission, he needed a clear mind. As long as his relationship with Lee remained platonic, he retained control. He didn’t have to deal with the anxiety of whether she alone could satisfy him, or wonder how other Irish brothers would view their relationship, or even accept it.
Once they were rejoined at Amanita, however, he couldn’t handle the conflict of his desires. Neither did he dare let Sir Fletcher suspect his feelings for Lee. So, he had pushed her right into Haukelid’s arms. The pain of doing this still stung. He felt miserable and empty.
Such feelings lured him away from his purpose, he reminded himself, as the whitewashed houses with brightly painted
flower boxes and quaint street lamps came to an end. Beyond, he could see the bleak gray expanse of the German naval base.
“Whoa!”
Quinn pulled up the horses in front of the base gate. A serious young SS guard examined the waybill Quinn presented to him. It marked the paid delivery of a prize Westland pony to the Fuhrer’s private estate in Bavaria and was stamped with Hitler’s personal seal, a first-rate forgery produced by Project Amanita.
“Which horse?” demanded the sentry.
Quinn suppressed a twinkle. This pride of the SS was definitely not a country lad. He pointed to the cream-colored pony with the characteristic eel stripe streaking through his mane and tail and zebra-lined stockings. The German’s icy features melted.
“It is a rare animal, Ja?” he clucked.
Quinn nodded proudly. “Ja, Ja. Very special.”
The SS guard opened the shipping orders attached to the sealed delivery paper and carefully read them before handing them back to Quinn. “The train ferry loads at Pier Sixteen,” he directed. “When you pass through the gates, go to your left, to the end of the boat sheds. The loading ramp for Pier Sixteen is there.”
Quinn thanked him and snapped the reins. He had just passed the biggest hurdle to the mission and was safely inside the German base.
The unexpected sight of a horse-drawn wagon clip clopping over the concrete dock aroused the interest of workmen inside the huge open sheds. The reek of tar, hot metal and primer paint cloyed the air. It was so heavy it made Quinn nauseous. Through the gaping half moons of light, he could see sparks from welding torches and hear jabbering riveters. Beyond, tied in clusters up to the quay, swayed the flotilla of S-Boats he had seen through his binoculars. These were the Kriegmarine’s rugged torpedo boats. Quinn counted fifteen.
Armed with two single 21-inch torpedo tubes and twin 20mm. guns and outfitted with a Daimler-Benz lightweight diesel engine, they were fierce and fast warriors on the sea. During the Dunkirk evacuation, they sunk the British destroyer, Wakeful, and two French destroyers, Jaguar and Sirocco. In the southern North Sea, they were disrupting British convoys and had already sunk the destroyers Exmoor, Eskdale, Penylan and Vortigern along the east coast of England. These, Quinn surmised, were probably assigned to protect the Germans’ supply line back and forth across the Skagerrak and in and out of the Kettegat south to Germany’s Baltic ports.