“Any place is better without war,” Salinger told him, a simple code recited.
When the old man leaned across the table, the morning sun came through the trees and fell across his face. He smelled of garlic. “You have papers proving who you are?”
Salinger produced several folded sheets from his suit pocket, and handed them over. After studying the documents for a long moment, the man handed them back with his good hand. “So it is. They tell me that you are thinking of some sightseeing.”
“I’m to meet a friend.”
The old man turned and watched two boys laughing as they crossed the narrow street in front of them. Their footsteps clicked on the stone street until they were gone and the street fell silent again. “Do you have an American cigarette?”
“I have French cigarettes,” Salinger said, producing the tin from his coat pocket.
“Even better.” The old man lit the cigarette. “And you have a motorcar?”
Salinger pointed to the black Fiat parked just down the street.
“Good, then drive perhaps two kilometers south of the city. On the right side of the road is a grove of trees. Across the railway tracks is a hotel. I think there you will meet interesting people.”
The old man limped down the street.
Goli came back and sat. “So?”
“He told me where Bredow is. I’ll go there within the hour.”
She asked, “Tell me about the man, this German.”
“Walter Bredow.” Salinger remembered. “A German assassin picked up by British Intelligence in Madrid in late 1941. Two years later he killed two ex-Gestapo officers in Lyons to prove himself, then he was put on ice until his services were needed. He was sent to Prague. That was the last I knew of him.”
“Why a German?”
“For no reason other than he had dirty hands and he was an expert. He operated freely in Iran,” Salinger explained, “That’s the way it was done then.”
Salinger finished his coffee, and they walked to the Fiat. As the old man instructed, Salinger alone headed on the main road.
----
A hotel across from the railway station.
When Salinger entered the room on the third floor, there was the woman and he hadn’t counted on that.
Salinger had known Eva Vermeer when she had worked in Allied intelligence as a runner. She was almost thirty now with dark hair and a short, slim body. She had a round white face with pewter eyes that flickered when she was nervous. She stood at the doorway wearing a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, elbow in hand smoking a cigarette.
Eva said, “Walter’s to come straight over from the station.”
“Where is he arriving from?”
“He travels a lot, Booth. He’s nervous about all this and about why you wanted to see him.”
“Of course he’s nervous, he’s a German,” Salinger said when he’d had time to think about it. “But he knows why I’m here. If he said he didn’t, then he’s lying.”
“He’s good to me, I want you know that.”
“That makes me feel better,” Salinger said.
Eva smiled, and came closer and put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the chair arm. Salinger could smell her sweet skin.
“Everything will be all right, Eva. Just you wait,” he told her, though he couldn’t figure why she had taken up with a fellow like Bredow. “I’ll get what I want from Walter, then I’m out of your life.”
“I believe you, Booth, I always have.” Then she disappeared down the hallway.
Salinger looked at his watch, and then leaned, glancing out the window at the train station. Bredow was late.
The scurrying outside the door froze Salinger’s heart. He cleared the pistol from his coat pocket, listened to the rattling of keys. Bredow came in and stood inside the door. The German stepped to the table and set down a shopping bag and a folded newspaper. Then he came to the chair across the small table. He had stocky shoulders, thick eyebrows that ran across a wide, leathery face. Gray eyes stared over coffee-colored pouches. “Well, now that you’ve found me,” Bredow said finally, “what would you like to discuss?”
“Let’s try the truth.”
Bredow grunted. “Yes, who can you and I trust anymore? It’s obvious that you can’t trust me, can you?”
“I could have at one time. A gentleman’s agreement, I believe you told me back then. You performed well beyond what was expected.”
“And this is how you repay me? Coming to my house and demanding more?”
Salinger leaned forward. “You became involved in something you should have avoided.”
“And what is that?”
“The assassination of Bozorg Faqiri.”
Bredow stared at him, his face very pale. “Yes, I’m sorry about that if he was your friend. And, I’ll tell you that I’m sick of all this. I’ve been sick of it all for a long time.”
“Who ordered it?”
“I don’t know. You must believe that. A phone call late at night as most of these things happen.”
“Was it a voice you would have recognized?”
“The conversation was very brief. The operation issued by a coded telegram delivered to my hotel room. I was paid to inform them when the operation had been completed, and that was that.”
“And you never thought that was wrong?”
“They paid me, Salinger. The only reason I’ve ever done anything in this business is for the money. I’ve never possessed loyalty to anything . . . country or man . . . only a deep devotion to live as I like.”
Salinger asked again, “who paid you? The Soviets?”
“I don’t know.”
Bredow certainly wasn’t beyond bargaining with information. Salinger had the safe house in Italy to bargain with, that had been arranged. But the contempt on the German’s face told him it wasn’t time for that yet.
“What about Yousef Abbosi? He and Faqiri were political enemies.”
“Political foes don’t always shoot each other, Salinger.”
“If it meant more than just politics,” Salinger said. “Could he tell us?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“I think I will.” Salinger stood.
The German glanced over his shoulder. “You didn’t know about Eva, did you? And—you’re wondering why she would take up with me, don’t you?”
“It’s none of my business.” Salinger stood. “Believe me I hate this because of Eva. But think about this for a moment—whoever ordered the hit on Faqiri, once they know I’m in Isafahan looking into the matter, your life becomes nothing.”
“I thought about that the moment I saw you sitting there,” the German said.
“That’s very smart of you, Walter.”
Salinger walked to the door. Eva stood in the shadows of the narrow hallway, her face washed white with everything that had been spoken.
----
For over an hour Salinger waited across the street outside of the hotel. Finally Bredow came out and walked along the street congested with pedestrians, past several fruit stands and toward the station. It was a low profile, dark and unfriendly building, and at the entrance were two guards flanking the double bank of glass doors.
A large number of passengers hurriedly exited the train. One brushed rudely against the German and Bredow backed against a near wall to avoid the flow of departing passengers. The arriving train stopped on the inside track, its black frame crackling, gray steam floating from underneath. Bredow waited as another wave of passengers departed through the doorways, and then he stepped onto the metal steps and into the carriage car.
Salinger edged closer ready to jump on. Was the German going to make a run for it?
But Bredow stepped out of the train and headed toward the exit and onto the crowded street.
Salinger followed. A small boy scurried alongside the German. Inquisitive eyes turned upward, a sheathed notebook under his arm. A pencil curled protectively in his small hand.
----
&
nbsp; The man in the brown suit was no longer standing under the theater marquee where he had watched Salinger enter the hotel. Instead, he was now several blocks away, in the dark shade of a drugstore entrance away from the awful sun. Leaning against the cool wall, he could feel his shirt soaked in sweat underneath his coat.
Finally, he saw Salinger exit from the train station. The German and a boy were fifteen meters ahead of him. He watched as they crossed the street, and as a cautionary measure glanced back to see if the black sedan was still parked across the street.
He flicked the cigarette ashes from his brown lapel, then reached for the keys in his trouser pocket.
----
Goli had left him telling him she would return later that night.
Later, Salinger went downstairs sat in the hotel bar and ordered a drink. He listened to a conversation at a table between a Swiss businessman and two Iranians. They wore suits and drank wine. Later Salinger went for a long walk to clear his head. Turning at the river, he headed back to the hotel. Overhead, zinc-colored clouds filled the night with rain.
At first Salinger didn’t notice her standing along the wall and away from the light. Eva stepped out of the shadows wearing a belted camel hair coat. She pulled the hood away from her face and ran her fingers through her cropped hair.
“I had to come,” she said and took another step, the light revealing her pale face and that gave her away. She held out a package. A diplomatic pouch. “Walter lied to you and I can’t stand that.”
“You don’t have to do this, Eva.”
“It’s not what he said when you and he were discussing things, but what he didn’t tell you,” she said. Salinger took the pouch, put his arm around her. “The pouch is from the hotel room,” she said. “Walter’s gone.”
“We shouldn’t go back there,” Salinger said. “We’ll go up to my room.”
They entered the hotel room, and Eva sat on the couch. Salinger sat under the lamp at the end of the couch. He noticed the seals had been broken as he opened the pouch and read the letters. Then he replaced the documents.
“You were right.”
“I thought so,” she said. “Are you going to tell me?”
“It would put you in danger,” he said. “You’ve done enough just by coming here tonight. We should put this back before your husband returns.”
“Being in danger doesn’t matter,” she said.
“It may matter because of the boy. I followed Bredow to the station and saw the him. He looks like his mother, Eva.”
“But I have to know why you came back.”
“I’m working for Mayfield again.” How much to let her know?
With that Eva seemed satisfied, picked up her coat and placed the pouch in the pocket. She came to the couch and sat beside him, and placed her head on his shoulder. She was silent for a moment. She started to say something and then caught herself.
“Where is he?”
“Who? Yousef?”
“You’ve always been the smart one, Eva.”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
Her eyes glinted. “You don’t remember, do you? Or is it that you just refused to remember? I wasn’t ten feet away in the shadows that night when the Germans broke into the apartment. I should have been arrested that night also if not for the twenty seconds it took me to get down the stairs. Twenty seconds the others didn’t have. Twenty seconds between life and death. Because of that night, danger doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
“I understand,” Salinger said.
“I realize how important this is to you, Booth,” she said. “Enough so that you would return to a place where there are only bad memories for you.”
She stood, walked to the door. “Walter will tell me where Yousef is. He won’t tell you because he doesn’t owe you that—but he’ll tell me. But this is the easy part, Booth . . . my helping you and telling you everything I know,” she said. “They’ll try to stop you, and that will be hard on you.”
“Listen, Eva, about tonight, it stays here.”
“I think my son would appreciate that.” She left quietly. Salinger pulled aside the curtains at the window and watched below in the street as Eva walked away along the bank, then disappeared in the cloak of river fog.
----
“Who is she?”
Salinger had told Goli about the conversation with Bredow and about Eva being there. “We lost good friends the night the Germans came. Eva Vermeer was a Dutch journalist. After being trained by the British, she was sent into Persia.” He told her all of this remembering that Eva was not a beautiful woman, but there was a unique intelligence in her face, no discussion beyond her grasp, and her strength was analyzing situations rapidly.
“The night the Germans came I was supposed to be with her. But I was sent for, something about an American pilot shot down. Eva had a transceiver set up in an apartment. She listened to bulletins from the French-language service coded with messages for field agents. Then she would type them up, and several runners would get the information to the partisan camps. It was just luck that she had stepped out for some fresh air.
“When I returned at dawn, Eva met me in the streets and told me everything. The others had been dragged out into the streets and thrown into a sedan. Eva was hysterical, told me that she found the transceiver splintered into pieces on the floor. The tubes were still warm, meaning they had bravely sat there sending messages until the last.”
“Do you know what happened to them?” Goli asked.
“The Germans have effective ways of making people disappear.”
-Twenty-Two-
Bandar Shahpour. On the Persian Gulf.
The port was a saucer-shaped railhead consisting of a few warehouses and the terminus of a railroad that crisscrossed Iran from the Persian Gulf. Surrounded by an embankment that kept high tides from flooding the buildings and the train tracks, the port consisted of two berths and a jetty. It was here cargo was unloaded directly onto railroad cars for shipment to the Caspian Sea.
At 4:36 in the afternoon, a truck convey from Tehran arrived with a different cargo than the men were familiar with unloading . . . the Tehran Children.
----
David Goode, dutiful employee of British Intelligence, sat at a small table facing the port under the shade, and dreamed of the overcast coal-gray Dublin streets and those days when he kept a watchful eye on the good boys of Sinn Fein; of the end of those workdays when he was relieved of his duties and he could visit his mother. Sometimes he could still smell his mother’s breakfast. But that wasn’t the case now, was it David, old boy? Because he was hopelessly stuck in such a desolate place.
When Goode had first arrived in Bandar Shahpour the men hadn’t warned him about the vodka he purchased from the Iranian stevedores. He should have listened because he almost died from the poisonous mess. Finally, Goode found a bountiful supply of good whiskey when an American ordinance company opened a bar in the mess hall. That had probably saved his life.
During the next two days, once he felt better, he began his assigned task that of trailing suspects as they crossed through Bandar Shahpour. And there were plenty of shady characters to deal with.
It was on the third day when he received instructions directly from Operational Headquarters in Cairo that he realized the importance of him being assigned to the port. It all impressed even an old veteran like Goode.
Beside him two Iranian men sat on benches and smoked water-cooled pipes. Across the street a scribe sat at his ‘office’ on the sidewalk, which consisted of a wooden table and chair. Their income was derived from writing letters and other documents for people unable to write. Goode knew him as Jamshid. He also knew he was a German agent.
----
Goode didn’t have to wait long.
From down the street, several men led the children who had departed from the trucks, taking them to a building where they would be sheltered until the cargo was unloaded. Goode was aware later tonig
ht they would be loaded onto the freighter Dunera destined for Karachi, Pakistan. From there they would sail around the Arabian Peninsula and through the Red Sea to the Egyptian city of Suez.
As the children came closer, Goode removed a piece of paper from his coat pocket, the description of his target scrawled out. A small girl with bags in each hand, a checkered dress and white stockings. Jamshid, the German agent, should lead him right to her.
Goode looked across the street, nodding to a thick-chested man leaning against a lamppost. Jack was his name. A good man to have one’s back covered in a matter such as this. Then the crowd of children was between Goode and Jamshid, who had stood from his office chair and ventured close to street. There she was third from the end. The checkered dress and white stockings. The white hat hid her face.
Jamshid moved out into the children patting them on the head. He bent down and whispered to the girl, and she looked up at him from beneath her hat.
Goode took several quick strides toward them. Jamshid glanced up, and produced a knife from under his coat. Goode froze and Jamshid swirled the knife in air.
From behind, Jack leaped at the Iranian, pinning his arms at his side and the knife fell into the mud. “That’s enough of that,” Jack ordered. Jamshid growled out and then finally lowered his head. Moments later he was led away by Goode’s confederate.
The children stood frozen in the middle of the street.
“It’s over boys and girls,” Goode told them. He leaned over the girl. “Is your name Penina?”
She stared at him for a long moment with large brown eyes. “It is,” she said softly.
Goode held out a bag of candy. “Well, Penina, I’m to give you this for the envelope the lady back in camp gave you?”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes I’m sure, Penina.”
The little girl methodically sat the leather case down, reached in her pocket and handed him the envelope.
Goode handed her the candy, turned and walked away. Once he was some distance from the street, he removed the envelope, held the unrolled film up to the light studying the images.
A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) Page 17