Fifteen minutes later.
“She’s blonde and beautiful,” Mayfield insisted to the ticket clerk. The Iranian only stared at him.
“He thinks you’re asking for the time,” Salinger told him. “He says it’s four-twenty.”
Mayfield’s face lost some of its composure. “Now, why would he think that?”
The crowd was at their shoulder, pushing forward, not happy the two men had forced their way to the front of the line.
“You try, Booth. Go ahead. We’ve got to get him to understand us.”
Salinger had turned back to the clerk, when a tall man with an authoritative air walked up. His black eyes locked on Salinger for the briefest moment, as if to determine his worthiness. He smiled. “Is there a problem?”
“We’re looking for someone.”
The officer scanned the room. “And who would that be?”
“A woman,” Mayfield told him. “Easy to spot, I would imagine. Tall. Blonde. There would be a man with her. Tanned and thin.”
His eyes lifted, telling his secret; he had seen her.
“When was she here?” Salinger pushed.
“Not half hour ago. Is she in some sort of trouble?”
“It’s important we detain her.”
“And who are you?”
Mayfield’s back stiffened. “I work for the British government.”
“And?”
“She’s German. It’s a political matter.”
The Iranian stood stone faced. He stared at them for a moment, then turned on his heels and walked away, stopping at one of the ticket windows where a smaller man sat on a stool. The official leaned down and whispered. They exchanged softly spoken words. “If he doesn’t hurry up I’ll have him arrested,” Mayfield said harshly.
“We don’t have much time,” Salinger said glancing up a blackboard schedule above the window listed destinations and departure times, all neatly printed out. “It’s almost four-thirty. Three trains leave within the next five minutes.”
The Iranian official walked back to them. “My clerk assisted her within the last half hour. She told the clerk a much different story than the one you are telling me.”
“And what would that be?” Mayfield asked impatiently.
“She informed him that she was to receive a telegram sent here explaining where she was to go to meet her sick sister. And, she was in need of purchasing a ticket to travel there.”
“She’s lying,” Mayfield said sternly.
“I see it as her word against yours.”
Mayfield reached into his breast pocket—his face angry now—and he produced his pocketbook. He flipped it open so the official could see the identification card. “British intelligence. Now you, sir, have exactly one minute to produce everything you know about that woman, or I will begin a process which I promise will not be pleasant for you in the end.”
Confidence melted from the official’s face. His eyes once steady with arrogance, now shifted nervously between Salinger and Mayfield.
“She did receive a telegram, the clerk confirmed that matter. But he has no idea what it stated.”
“What about your telegraph operator. Could he repeat it?”
“I’m afraid the telegraph was received before lunch. The operator who received it has left his duties at one o’clock.”
“Wouldn’t be time to track him down,” Mayfield admitted. “What about the tickets?”
“Ah, yes. She purchased them shortly after reading the telegrams. It was tickets to two different cities—Chalus and Tabriz.”
Mayfield hesitated. “Both on the coast, I would imagine.”
“No. Chalus is on the Caspian Sea. The other city lies northwest near Lake Urmia.”
Mayfield looked at Salinger, the blood drained from his face.
----
Leni sat wearily in her train compartment staring out the window, begging the train to move. Hance sat beside her, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. Taking her travel bag from its position at the door, she sat it on the seat beside her. Unlatching the leather straps, she lifted the top exposing neatly folded clothes. Beneath were the two books.
She leaned against the window and found the glass cool to her skin. For the first time, Leni realized just how tired she was, but she couldn’t let her guard down now. Mayfield. Wasn’t that the British officer’s name? She was well aware that he would do anything in his power to stop her.
Anything.
She leaned over to Hance. “It’s almost time, William.”
----
Salinger and Mayfield positioned themselves on the loading station between the two trains, only yards apart. The Englishman’s face was tight with consternation. Salinger knew there was a decision—or a guess was more like it—to be made that in all probability would determine whether Leni Boland escaped or not.
There was the sliding of steel against steel as the large wheels began to spin on the rails, trying to gather traction. Bellowing clouds of white steam hissed from beneath the train engine at loading station two.
“That’s Chalus departing,” Salinger said.
Mayfield’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not certain. That bit about two tickets was certainly a crafty trick.”
“Which one, Major? We don’t have much time.” Salinger watched his face, his gray eyes shifting from one train to the other; first the train pulling away for Tabriz, then the other which would be leaving for Chalus at any moment.
“There’s just no way to tell. How should I know?” Mayfield took a cautious step toward the Chalus train.
Several more steps. Quicker this time. Mayfield stopped just as the train began to pick up speed. He tossed aside his cigarette. Then, he began to run, his coat open at the chest and flapping behind him.
Salinger took off after him shouting. “Are you certain?”
“It’s Chalus,” he said between short, rapid breaths.
“Are you sure?” Salinger’s younger legs had drawn him up beside Mayfield as the last train car drew even with them, then pulled just ahead.
“It’s Chalus! Get on!”
Mayfield was awkward, stumbling along the ramp as he reached out with his long arms for the rail.
----
Salinger stood at the tracks. Confused.
Mayfield had at the last moment let both trains slip by them on the tracks, hesitating until the last car was passed—jumped the tracks and ran toward the street ahead of them.
Salinger ran after him. How did he know she had left the train?
“The Spanish Embassy is two blocks over!” Mayfield shouted back over his shoulder.
“She’s going for the embassy?” Salinger yelled as a chill swept over him. If she reached there—
----
Leni stood at the corner. To her left was the high stonewall along the street. The black iron gate was eighty meters away, two embassy guards posted just inside the wall. All laid out as she had remembered.
Trees past the gate obscured her view, but she knew the street turned away into a sharp curve. Leni, at this point, had to suspect that the British officer would figure out any of her movements. He would guess, try to anticipate her chances came down to two: the embassy, which was so close but a dangerous approach. Or that she would somehow attempt to make it to a ship two hundred miles away on the Caspian Sea.
She tried to think like the British official. He would know that the safety of the Spanish embassy was her natural retreat. So—she waited. In his mind, with all the resources at his disposal, the odds of her making it out of Tehran were staggering. What he wouldn’t know was that the embassy was simply the last diversion. If the British officer did buy off on that . . . she would be in Berlin by tomorrow night.
----
The sidewalk was mostly abandoned, only a scattering of pedestrians walked by on the sidewalk, perhaps workers making their way home, a woman strolling by. Two young boys running, playing. A man in a light suit, eyes straight ahead.
Leni watched from
behind the stonewall. As planned she and Hance exited the train and split up. She was to watch from here while Hance retrieved his sedan.
Hance drove up to the gate. His last purpose was to draw attention away from her because the Americans and British knew Hance. He was an obvious choice, a willing part of the trap, giving Leni her chance.
The sedan door flew open.
The man in the light suit, whom had moments ago casually strolled down the sidewalk, lunged for Hance. The German drew back sharply.
“Here he is!”
Hance fell back in the seat reaching frantically for his gun.
The officer grasped Hance by the arm, trying his best to draw him into a bear hug. Hance kicked at him, surprisingly landing a sharp blow on his shoulder. His grip loosened.
“Over here!”
Then the derringer was in Hance’s hand, and he aimed it at him. His face froze in disbelief. Hance fired, and he fell back out onto the sidewalk.
--
Salinger heard the gunshot, and looked over the wall just as Mayfield’s man staggered back, his hands covered his face, blood gushing between his fingers. He cried out in a muffled voice, stumbled to the curb, then fell to the ground and lay still.
Hance’s excited face was framed in the sedan window. Eyes wide. Determined, as the sedan lurched forward.
Salinger had to make a decision. Mayfield had placed him at the fence to stop any movement from getting across there. Now it was obvious that Hance plan was to rush the gate.
He ran behind the fence. The sedan sped forward, not thirty yards from the gate when Salinger ran up to the sidewall running along the driveway and cut him off. Where was Mayfield? Salinger pulled the pistol from his coat pocket, and leapt over the wall, landing in the driveway. He ran toward the street.
Salinger managed to get of three shots before the sedan swerved wildly, striking the front of a parked sedan.
Mayfield rushed forward to the middle of the street, firing at Hance.
Salinger ran toward the sedan, and got off two more shots. Then—too late—the sedan came across the other side and aimed at him. The driver had a derringer leveled at him outside the window.
Salinger heard the shot and fell to the sidewalk, the bullet flying overhead like an angry wasp.
The sedan came around the corner. Mayfield dodged it as it slipped by him. He stumbled awkwardly, then fell with a heavy thud in the street.
Then Salinger was up . . . one last shot cracked the windshield. The sedan swerved, missing the gate—slamming into the stonewall.
Quickly Salinger was at the door. When he swung it open, Hance tumbled out onto the curb.
Mayfield glared into the back window, pistol ready. “Where is she?”
Opening the back door, Salinger’s heart sank as he leaned against the fender. “She’s not here.”
Mayfield stood in the street stunned. Blood ran down his face. “She could have come to the embassy earlier and there’s nothing we could have done to stop her. Why did she go to the train station and then try to come . . . this has all been a charade.” Mayfield grabbed Salinger’s coat. “She’s fooled us, Booth! Back to the train station!”
“But the trains . . . they’re gone,” Salinger said reloading his revolver.
Mayfield stared back over the fence at the train station. “The children’s train,” he whispered. “That’s it. Her final try,” he was yelling now. “. . . Go, man . . . I can’t keep up . . . go!”
Salinger was at the stonewall, leapt over and was quickly out of Mayfield’s sight.
-Thirty-
Berlin.
The snow had turned to freezing rain as Richter watched it fall on the black Mercedes parked beneath the street lamp’s obscured light. He was standing at a randomly selected public telephone on the Kurfurstendamm directly across from Tiergarten Park.
He glanced at his watch. 2:58. Two minutes until he was to receive a call from Schellenberg, as per instructions delivered by personal messenger over an hour ago. In all probability the general would be speaking from another random phone just like this one within the city. Richter contemplated the confusing labyrinth containing what the general knew, and what he couldn’t possibly know. Unless—
The telephone rang.
“Richter.”
“Colonel,” the general’s voice was thick. Guarded. “And so we reach the end of our adventure. I apologize for getting you out on an afternoon such as this, but we have to be discrete with our discussions. What is the latest from Persia?”
“Traveler is on the move, sir. Whatever she had uncovered demands that she leave Iran with it personally.”
“No radio communications?”
“None.”
“That makes it very sensitive matter, Richter.”
“And rewarding. All possible because we were able to conceal her movements within Long Jump,” Richter said. “That and the sacrifice of some good men like Paul Heuss.”
“The blood of those men sacrificed isn’t on our hands, Richter. Himmler and Skorzeny can answer for that at some point,” Schellenberg hesitated. “I want you to be aware that all records—which are few—concerning the operation have been destroyed,” he said. “I wanted to take such actions no matter the outcome of your adventure in Tehran. Records destroyed before either the Allies or Gestapo arrives. In my office no one will find anything more incriminating than the telephone directory.”
Richter remained guarded. “Discretions appreciated, general.”
There was only the general’s breathing on the other end. “Our chances—how do they appear to you at this hour?”
Richter knew anything he told Schellenberg would simply be a presumption. It was all out of his hands now. Every pawn in place. The game board arranged. Still that wasn’t what the general wanted to hear. “We will know by tomorrow night, general.”
Another silence. “Very well, then. Richter, I know you’ve tried your finest, and that’s the best I could ask of you. An admirable scheme that you set up.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And Richter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We have done all of this for the fatherland. Any other causes are a myth.”
The line went dead.
Richter stepped out of the phone box onto the street and watched the snow and the traffic. He turned his coat collar up and shivered.
Suddenly he was very cold.
----
Leni could hear the children’s laughter echoing as she sprinted toward the train. Tears welled in her eyes.
The Tehran children.
The final piece of her deception—the last ruse to divert her enemy from her escape. The last act playing out that even poor William didn’t know about. In a way it wasn’t fair to Hance after all he had sacrificed. Why he had even given up his beloved Simca Cinq . . . and finally his life for the Cause. But in the end Leni had decided the papers too valuable that she would have trusted anyone in these moments of escape.
She was twenty meters away when the train crept forward.
One last burst of speed and she grabbed the rail. Several of the larger children took her arm, tugged at her, helping her onboard. They laughed, squeezing in around Leni as she hugged them.
She looked back toward the embassy. The sight took her breath away.
A lone man was running toward the train.
----
Everything happened so quickly. A rapid distortion of time.
Salinger ran toward the train. He saw Leni as she came around the back of the train, leaning over the rail. Her face was one of disbelief as she stood in the crowd of children staring back at him.
A burning sense of failure flooded him. She was going to get away.
With all the energy he could gather, Salinger made an all-out sprint at the back of the train. His lungs felt like they were going to burst. Legs stinging. But still he ran.
If only . . .
The train lunged and slowed to maneuver the sharp turn out of
the station allowing Salinger to draw within yards.
A woman came out of the train car and looked at Leni and she returned her smile. Then the woman began to gather the children and herd them into the doorway back into the train car. Leni stared back at him over her shoulder.
The children turned to follow her in. Leni made certain to stay in the middle using them as human shields. Except for one.
A small girl, leaning dangerously close to the rail.
She stumbled.
In that instant, Leni lunged for the girl, grabbed her by the collar and dragged her back from the rail.
A clear shot.
Salinger stopped on the tracks. He took his time . . . breathing in deeply, his lungs surging for air . . . time for one shot . . . she was at the rail . . . no children close . . . when he squeezed the trigger.
Leni Boland froze for an instant, stiffened. . . and fell against the closed doorway. After a long moment, she spun away from the wall . . . her back against the rear rail . . . then fell onto the tracks and out of Salinger’s sight.
For a long moment Salinger stood suspended in time. He was in no particular place at all . . . but . . . in a dream, surreal wind blowing on his face.
Another train approached from the other direction coming into the station and it was between them. Precious seconds became an eternity as Salinger waited for the train to get pass.
At last.
Salinger ran around the rear of the train to try and gain seconds, then back toward where he saw her fall.
Nothing. Children yelled from the back of the train as it drifted away in the distance.
She was gone. But how?
Salinger ran toward the streets.
Mayfield’s men—two of them—stood outside a sedan parked haphazardly on the sidewalk. One of the men cleared his pistol from his waistband, stepped onto the sidewalk and blocked the sidewalk.
----
Leni turned toward the street and saw the two men staring at her from the Chevrolet. She only had one option, the alleyway. Suddenly she spun and fired. One of Mayfield’s men fell. The other agent returned fire, the bullets tearing at the brick above Leni’s head.
She disappeared into the alleyway.
----
Salinger ran up to the corner leading into the alleyway.
A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) Page 22