The small man said, “That’s a good one, isn’t it?”
“Do you know who my husband is?” Leni challenged.
The small man laughed. “I don’t think that really matters right now.”
“It should.”
The tall man stepped closer. “Come on, show us your identification.”
Leni rammed her hands into her shorts pockets and felt for the knife, thought ahead of the possibilities, how the odds were against her. “It’s in my automobile, sergeant.”
“And I suppose that’s your automobile parked on the road with a flat?”
“A flat? Will you gentlemen help me?”
“Oh, sure,” the small man laughed. “Just before we take you in and get to the bottom of your curiosity.”
Leni’s heart raced heavily against the inside of her chest. All three men were much larger. She would have to use the element of surprise to have any chance. There would be no way to talk her way out of this with Robert.
“No excuses,” the tall man said firmly. “Come with us.”
Leni stepped toward the tall man until he was within reach. The best position possible, Leni reasoned. Then, she had the knife open in her hand, deep in the pocket. Her mind clicked like a machine.
Leni lunged for the quiet one first, spun him around, and was behind him before any of the others could react. The knife cut across his throat in one rapid motion, and with a sudden jerk the neck snapped. His body dropped, staggering Leni under the instant dead weight. The man gave a sickening gurgle, and released his grip on the weapon as he slumped to the ground. Leni grabbed the rifle.
The first shot hit the small man squarely in the chest. He squeezed off one shot that flew harmlessly over Leni’s head, before he fell to the ground screaming. Leni sprang toward the tall one, who was trying desperately to unbutton his side holster. Leni hissed and struck at him with the knife. But he sidestepped her blow, the knife blade catching him in the cheek, cutting flesh. Blood splattered over Leni’s face.
Enraged, the man spun, caught Leni in the small of the ribs. The air exited her lungs. Defensively, she rolled onto the ground, came up swinging the knife in a wide circle, cutting only air.
The man’s face was a mass of blood. Leni attacked again before he could gather himself, lunging straight ahead with the knife. Her head burst, filled suddenly with a sharp, bright light as an elbow caught her in the side of the head.
Staggered momentarily, Leni stiffened against another attack.
Blood flooded from the man’s mouth, a wide, crazy smile exposing his teeth. He sidestepped again as Leni lunged toward him. But this time she anticipated his action and caught him squarely in the ribs with the knife. The man grunted in pain, staggered momentarily, his eyes wide with surprise. He charged.
Leni drove him to the ground with a forceful elbow to the back. Then she was on him, straddling him before he could get up. With both hands on the grip she drove the knife between the ribs, piercing the heart. Waiting until she was certain the man was dead, Leni rolled off his body, knelt and vomited. The young guard lay in the mud whimpering like a small child.
“Your officer died bravely,” she told him as she staggered over him, “this is more than I can say for you.” Leni reached down, grabbed hair, pulling his head back. Then he cut his throat.
Later the rain came, slowly at first, and then it grew into a sheet of gray, an insistent tapping on the desert floor. The dead men lay in the middle of the creek bed. Burying them in the approaching nightfall was not an option. A sinking feeling swept over her.
Three dead men discovered at the military site changed everything. The Allies in Tehran would be on full alert now. She wouldn’t be able to move about undetected. Leni sat on her haunches, arms locked around her knees, knapsack pulled in close to her. She was trembling badly. Bitter bile rose in her throat.
Then gradually, the desert slowly transformed into dull shadows. Leni felt her pulse slow as the rain washed the blood from her face.
----
After arriving at the Soviet Headquarters on Syroos Street, Goli entered the back door and was led upstairs to an open, wide office on the second floor. A ceiling fan stirred warm air swept in from the streets through casement windows.
Shepilov leaned against the desk. His black hair was wet and combed back as if he had just taken a shower. Goli could hardly contain her excitement. How long had she waited for this moment? “Is he here?”
The Russian picked up a single sheet of Teletype paper from the desk. “He’s not being very cooperative.”
“He hasn’t told you anything?”
Shepilov shook his head. “Heuss appeared surprised when instead of interrogating him about the present operation we began questioning him about your husband’s death. He has admitted that he was assigned to an operation in the mountains only several miles from where your husband was that fateful morning. I don’t think he saw any harm in telling us that. Almost relieved you might say.”
“I want to talk to him,” she said.
Shepilov placed the paper on the desk. He stared at Goli for an extra moment. Then he righted himself, arms crossed and walked to the door. “This way.”
----
Goli followed him down a long hall to a set of back stairs leading to a basement. They came to the end of another hall where a door was and a wooden desk companioned with a single chair where a soldier sat and stared at him. Shepilov nodded.
The guard unlocked the door and they entered a small, square room. A lingering medicinal smell caught in the back of Goli’s throat as their steps clicked on the smooth gray floor. A single light bulb hung down from a cord in the middle of the room, and beneath sat Heuss in a wooden chair. He was a small-framed man and it surprised Goli when she noticed him wearing a wrinkled gray suit and a blue shirt instead of his German uniform. He held a cup of coffee in his hands tied together with white rope.
A thick, short man stood against the wall behind him. Against the other wall were two chairs with a board stretched between them.
“Are you feeling better, Captain?” Shepilov asked.
“I could do with another smoke,” Heuss said.
“Give him a cigarette,” Shepilov ordered in Russian.
He was handed a cigarette. Shadows danced on the man’s thin face, then an unexpected hint of recognition as Goli stepped beneath the light. He slowly turned to Shepilov. “Just thought I’d let you know I don’t speak Russian very well.”
“Not true. You speak it fluently,” he said. “So, we’d like information on an operation in the mountains last year.”
The German kneaded his forehead with his thumbs. ‘I don’t have a very good memory.”
Shepilov snapped his fingers and the large man moved from the wall and sat a valise on the table. The Russian made a good show out of laying out papers, notebooks, and copies of papers out onto the table. “Now,” Shepilov said, “. . . we begin again this time with seriousness and urgency, Captain. We have some work to finish this afternoon and we don’t have much time.”
Shepilov took the tin of French cigarettes from the chair. He lit another, letting the smoke burn his lungs. “The operation we desire information on took place outside Isafahan.”
“There were a lot of operations in the mountains,” he said.
“We’re interested in one operation in particular.” Shepilov waved to Goli. She came closer.
“Do you remember me?” She asked sternly. “You killed my husband that day.”
“I have no idea of what you’re talking about.”
Displeasure pinched Shepilov’s face. “Don’t be a burden, captain. We don’t have time for all that. Your country’s long, bleeding venture into Iran precedes you. And, we have worked hard at placing you there at that time and at that place.” When Heuss started to speak, Shepilov interrupted him with an open hand. “We are here to learn the truth. It’s that simple.”
Heuss said, “I’m a soldier.”
The Russian stood and a
pproached, his eyes settled directly on the German. “I want to know who ordered the assassination of Bozorg Faqiri.”
Heuss dropped the cigarette at his feet. “Like I told you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Goli jumped at him and slapped him across the face. She went and stood against the wall, trembling. “You are a liar, Captain Heuss. My friend here has assured me you will tell everything to us tonight.”
The room fell silent.
Then Shepilov nodded to the large man. “His name is Nikolai Dobyrin, Captain Heuss. And trust me when I tell you that he is blessed with a cold heart and brute strength. The white scar above his left eye is when he once let down his guard while questioning a Polish agent. A mistake I assure you he will always remember. He has taken care of your accommodations for the night. Or longer if need be. But I don’t think you’ll last out the night. Dobyrin is very effective with his tasks.”
Heuss sat up straight. Goli watched as a shadow of doubt on his face betrayed him. He knew everything, and she wouldn’t feel sorry for what he was about to suffer.
----
By seven-thirty that night not even Heuss’s mother would have realized the German’s swollen, tortured face.
Goli stood in the corner of the bare room, the stench of blood, sweat, and human fear overwhelming. Dobyrin was at the table wiping his face with a towel, his shirtsleeves rolled up exposing powerful forearms.
In the center of the room the soldier’s body drooped awkwardly in a position Dobyrin callously referred to as ‘the cracker’. Two chairs positioned two feet apart with a bar braced between. The German hung upside down, the bar running beneath his knees, with his hands bound to his lower legs. The position placed an extreme burden on the entire body, the head hanging at an odd angle and the back arched in a tense pose.
Before it began Shepilov had explained to her how he had witnessed men suffer in this way, men who considered themselves very brave and quite capable of keeping their secrets to themselves. Within an hour in this position they usually broke, confessing and begging, screaming from the pain. The German, however, had proven to be very difficult and stubborn. It had taken a brutal beating with a rubber hose around the neck and face before he began to talk. Not a good death for a soldier of the Reich as he choked on his own blood.
Dobyrin’s flushed face shone with sweat as he rolled his shirtsleeves down to the wrist and buttoned them. “He was tough one.”
Goli’s stomach burned.
Dobyrin asked, “What do I do with him?”
“Throw him in the river,” Shepilov said, “a brutal beating of a German agent, that and nothing more.” Goli walked out into the hall and down the stairs and outside. She was glad to be in the fresh air.
----
Upstairs, Goli stood at the window of Shepilov’s office and watched the lights of the city sparkling in the darkness. She stood there for a long time imagining that she was actually at the end of the earth. How else could she explain how she felt at being so close to the men who had betrayed her husband? Then she went and sat in a chair. A single floor lamp on a table glowed as yellow haze on the room.
“A single name,” she whispered. “Will you take me to this man?”
Seated on the couch, Shepilov leaned forward into that light. “It’s all being arranged. What do you know about him?”
Goli walked to the table and found a package of cigarettes. She lit one and walked back to the window. “Aly Abbosi. I’ve suspected him all along,” she whispered. “The brother of Yousef Abbosi, the opposition leader against what my husband and Reza Shah were trying to accomplish with the Soviet alliance. Don’t misunderstand, Josef, it had nothing to do with siding with your people or the Germans . . . it had everything to do with what was best for Iran. But Abbosi and others wouldn’t listen.”
She felt his eyes on her as she stared out the window for a long moment, then her told her, “I’ll secure a truck and pick you up before dawn.”
She shrugged. “I would suggest that you bring Dobyrin, Josef . . . he seems to be very good at getting people to discuss matters.”
-Seventeen-
Berlin. On the Unter den Linden, opposite Brandenburg Gate.
The Hotel Adlon, one of the most famous hotels in Europe with its classic-conservative gray walls, was located in the heart of the government quarter only blocks from the Chancellery. Built in 1907 by Lorenz Adlon, a successful wine merchant, it had played the role of significant host between the two world wars. Before the second war the Adlon was known as ‘little Switzerland’ because so many diplomats conducted their business at the grand hotel. Charlie Chapin and Josephine Baker had stayed at the Adlon. Herbert Hoover, ex-president of the United States, insisted the hotel be his home during his visit in Berlin. It was also where SS Brigadefuhrer Schellenberg handled his tryst with Reinhard Heydrich’s widow. So, it was natural that if the Gestapo were following him, which was beginning to happen more often these days, if by chance Schellenberg appeared in his Audi on a rainy afternoon then the secret police would consider it nothing more than another rendezvous with the tall blonde.
At precisely three o’clock on the afternoon of 30 November, Theodor Richter knocked on the door of room 323. He had arrived back at his apartment from the hunting trip in the forest the night before. Shortly after he had received a phone call to make himself available for a meeting with the SS Brigadefuhrer.
“Enter.”
Richter opened the door finding Schellenberg sitting in an armchair in front of a writing desk by the window. He was strangely absent his uniform, dressed in a dark blue Savile Row suit, white starched shirt, and an oyster blue tie. In front of him was a glass-topped table with a chilled bottle and an assortment of glasses. Behind him on a side table, sat an arrangement of yellow roses. His legs were crossed at the knees and he was holding a glass of champagne. “You were followed by the Gestapo; I thought I’d tell you that. For reasons I won’t go into they won’t tie our arrivals to the hotel together, however. If—you are ever asked—you and I never had any discussions today. Understood?”
“Understood, General.”
“Would you like a drink?”
“No thank you.”
“Then, let’s get directly to the reason I’ve asked you here,” Schellenberg began, leaning over and handed him a piece of paper. “This will explain everything.” Richter walked to the window where the light was better. Beyond the busy boulevard was the Brandenburg Gate. He held the note up to the window. It read: ‘WE ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE.’
“Received at Havelinstitu yesterday morning,” Schellenberg said, “transmitted from our men in Tehran to the SS radio center at Wannsee.”
“The operation is blown?”
“The plan always contained a weakness,” he said. “One of which you are aware.”
When Schellenberg hesitated, Richter asked, “And that would be?”
“Skorzeny.”
“A disadvantage?”
“While it’s obvious that he would be a good man to run an operation like this, I’ve simply never trusted Skorzeny. The man is too hard to control. And besides, the Luftwaffe trust him even less,” he told Richter. “Think back on the rescue of Mussolini. A glowing rescue, right? Of the dozen glider pilots who landed on that peak in the Italian mountains, all had been killed or captured. Of the 108 SS parachutists who went in with Skorzeny, just three men flew off that mountain. Mussolini, Skorzeny, and his pilot. Hitler awarded him the Knight’s Cross, but it would have been more of a success leaving Mussolini to his fate than to lose those brave men.”
Richter, while listening to Schellenberg express his dislike for the famed commando, tried to figure out exactly why this conversation was taking place. “Then the operation will be terminated?”
The general managed an unusual smile. “Of course not. That will never happen because you must remember the Fuhrer personally approved this plan. No, it will go on as planned, and you and I will attempt to use that to our advantage.
Hopefully—unlike the rescue at Abruzzi—we won’t get a lot of brave men killed for nothing
“Which brings us really to the main point of our discussion.” He looked up from his champagne glass and directly at Richter. “It is up to you and I, Colonel, to remain focused in Tehran and to make some good result comes out of this. Perhaps another purpose.”
“What purpose would that be?
“Your original reason for placing Traveler in Tehran in the first place,” he said. “I know you had important reasons to place your best spy there.”
“Use a failed operation to protect Traveler?”
‘Exactly, Colonel. And don’t be concerned, your secret will remain between us,” he said.
It was a dangerous game of chess German Intelligence was playing within its own ranks, and the man sitting in the room was one of the best. And one of the most ruthless, Richter reminded himself. He would have to be cautious moving forward, he reasoned, reviewing his options while the general patiently waited, slipping his champagne. Finally it came to him. For the time being, he would allow Schellenberg to believe he had checkmated him. Let him believe that he knew everything going on in the shadows of Tehran. Which, of course, he didn’t.
Richter came from the window and sat at the table with Schellenberg. “I think I’ll have that drink now, General.”
----
Dustan Tappeh.
The airfield was mostly abandoned except for one remaining building of children scheduled to depart by train in several days. A line of canvas trucks faced the gate, the departing children were being loaded for the trip to Bandar Shahpour on the Persian Gulf.
Julia stood at the office barracks window, her arms crossed in front of her. A dying sun brushed a scarlet hue across the sand as she watched the children being led onto the trucks. She had been assured by the officers in charge that transporting the children in the night was the safest decision.
Julia noticed Goli paid a lot of attention to several of the children as they were being loaded onto the trucks.
But, strangely, it was Leni Boland had spent the most time with Penina. The little girl had gained some weight since arriving in the camp several months ago. But she still looked so thin, her legs in white stockings, a checkered dress that hung on her frame, and the little pastel hat. She stood in front of the bus a bag in one hand and a leather case in the other. Everything she owned in her little hands. It was enough to make Julia want to cry.
A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) Page 13