“Certainly, sir.”
“Concerning any private aircraft landing at the airport.”
Hesitation. “Oh, I don’t know about that, sir. Some of the information—”
“Gamal, listen to me carefully,” Salinger said firmly. “I work with the American military. The information I’m asking for could be vital to assuring the safety of some very important people. I don’t have time to come down there.”
“But without proper authorization . . .”
“I can assure you that we don’t have time for that.”
Salinger heard Gamal’s breathing on the other end. Finally, “how may I assist you, Mr. Salinger?”
“I need information on any private aircraft that landed at the airport within the last eighteen hours.”
“A private plane, sir?”
“Yes, recently.”
“A moment, please.” There was the rustling of papers. Low voices. “Our records do not show a private plane during that period.”
Salinger doubted himself. “Any aircraft other than military?”
“Another moment.” Sounds in the distance and then he was back. “A supply plane was rerouted to Cairo with minor trouble earlier tonight. The engine was repaired by the pilot.”
“Type of plane?”
The ruffling of papers. “A Weaver Twin Engine.”
“Anything about the pilot you would remember?”
“Ah, of course, sir . . . one could not forget her. A beautiful woman who paid handsomely for overnight storage in one of the available hangers, and full preparation for scheduled departure.”
“When is she scheduled to fly out of Cairo?”
“Eleven tonight, sir.”
If Gamal said anything else, Salinger didn’t hear him because he had darted out the lobby, the telephone hanging from the edge of the front desk. He ran out the door and toward his car. The night air was dry and the wind at burned his face. Where was Mayfield? Yes, he had gone with Churchill and the others.
By the time he reached his car and started the motor, Salinger had placed each item neatly in its place. The last tumbler of the puzzle. As impossible as it sounded, Salinger admitted it to himself that both he and Mayfield had been blind to the truth . . . for their own reasons.
Goli was Traveler!
-Thirty-Five-
Salinger remembered the layout around the Great Sphinx from the night of their wedding when he and Julia had taken a romantic walk through the ancient ruins. If the procession—and Goli—had followed the highway north of the Sphinx then he would never get there in time.
There was only one possible action to stop the madness.
He slammed the sedan across the ditch and cut across the desert south of the temple knowing he had to eliminate time to catch up. Moments later, he slid up in the sand, south of the Valley Temple of Khafu. He calculated how much time and distance separated him from when Churchill’s procession had left the hotel.
Five minutes? Ten minutes?
Roosevelt was confined to his movements because of his handicap, so they had to stay close to the automobiles. Another thought struck him—Churchill had taken the President to see the Great Sphinx, but had they driven straight there? Or had they detoured to look at other sights?
Salinger pulled up to the causeway and killed the motor. He began to run toward the walkway. To the right was the Old Sphinx Temple.
Straight ahead—glowing under vivid lights—was the Sphinx. His strange, ancient face staring down on the unfolding danger.
----
Goli sat in the delivery truck off the highway and in the sand north of the Khafre’s Causeway. At the wheels, ran a two-foot high wall and beyond there was only sand between herself and her target. She took the rifle from the seat and stood outside. It was a balmy night. A breeze murmured against an indigo sky. Even at this late hour tourists stirred about—people who always sought to be close to the mysteries of the world.
Goli drew the weapon close to her chest, and checked the mechanism.
What a stroke of fate it was, because just as she had pulled up at the hotel the caravan of sedans was pulling away. At first she feared they were returning to the villas where security would be much tighter. Then she had followed them here, realizing their destination . . . and her opportunity . . .
. . . at the Great Sphinx Winston Churchill would die.
----
Salinger raced toward the causeway running parallel west to the Sphinx. His heart pounded in his throat as the dread of being too late clouded at his mind.
The thought of Goli’s betraying his feelings and succeeding in her plot was more than he could bear to think. She had deceived him—he had been fooled . . . she had used them all like pawns in her game since he had returned to Tehran.
He reached the causeway—cut across—and ran toward the highway.
----
Goli followed the highway toward the Sphinx.
She had gone forty meters to a rise in the sand when she suddenly froze. Voices in the distance, slipping through the night air.
Drawing the rifle to her, she hugged it against her heaving chest. Voices that came much clearer now.
Finally.
A pale moon showed through a gap in the clouds, gleaming off the top of three sedans parked in front of the Sphinx. What luck! She ran back to the truck knowing now that revenge was within her grasp.
----
Salinger was half way between the causeway and the Sphinx when the delivery truck flew by in the darkness, descending upon the group of sedans. Salinger sprinted across the opening as he saw a shadow move around the rear of the truck. Headlights exposed a surprised President glaring out the sedan’s back window. Churchill was perhaps fifteen yards away leaning on a walking cane. The security men had walked ahead several yards.
The shadow came around the back of the truck and knelt.
Goli!
She hesitated at the rear of the vehicle, and then lifted herself onto the open tailgate. Salinger’s heart sank when he realized that he would never reach her in time.
----
To the right of Churchill, a large man lunged in front, a frantic move attempting to shield the Prime Minister. Goli’s first shot ripped away the man’s lower jaw, spinning him around. Her second shot caught him in the side, and he dropped.
The diversion had given Salinger time.
Desperately, he aimed his revolver at the truck on the run and fired an impractical shot, if only to freeze her for a moment. Then he fired off another round in full stride. Almost unbelievably he saw her drop back to the ground.
Salinger knew he hadn’t hit her, but had accomplished what he wanted for the moment. It had caused her to hesitate. The next shot must count. Mayfield came from around the last sedan, his revolver drawn.
Salinger was perhaps thirty yards away. Then ten. Then he was at the sedan.
Goli jumped out of the rear of the truck, aiming the rifle at him.
Mayfield was instantly in front of him, pushing him out of the line of fire. There was a dull thud, and the major spun awkwardly away from him.
Salinger saw Goli, half hidden at the rear of the truck, as she twirled toward the sedans.
“Get down!” Salinger yelled.
She would get off her shot and Churchill was in her sights.
Salinger brought his revolver up and squeezed off another desperate shot. The weapon lurched in hands. Two shots reported. The security men were running back down the hill toward Churchill.
Churchill lay face down in the sand.
Salinger looked back at Goli. She froze for an instant . . . and then danced comically on one leg. She regained her balance for an instant, attempting to get off another shot. His second shot hit her directly in the chest. Her body lunged backward onto the ground.
Salinger waited for a long moment and spun around searching for Mayfield, finding him curled in the sand. He went and stood by an officer near him. Kneeling, Salinger quickly realized how badly wounde
d he was. Shot in the chest. Salinger placed his hand over the wound and thick blood covered his hand.
Suddenly it was oddly quiet. Salinger trembled. Too much had happened too quickly. The death, the destruction, the speed in which it all unfolded amazed him, and he knelt there, overwhelmed.
A movement flashed to his right. Salinger spun around.
One of the security men stopped suddenly, his pistol falling to his side. He knelt beside Salinger.
“Is the Prime Minister hit?”
“A near miss by inches. The Major?”
“He’s bad,” Salinger whispered.
Mayfield’s eyes were gray and lost. He asked, “Salinger? Is that you Salinger?”
“I’m here, Major.”
“I . . . I . . . I don’t understand.”
Finally it all made sense. “Goli was Traveler, Major.”
Mayfield’s blanched face cracked with a smile. The security man took off his coat, rolled it up, and placed it beneath Mayfield’s head.
“She fooled us all, Salinger.” His voice was dry like leaves. “Goli was Traveler . . . what a brilliant woman . . . what a magnificent piece of spying . . . we must admire her for that, don’t you think?”
“Try to lay still, Major. We have help on the way.”
Salinger walked over to where Goli lay. Blood drained from her chest. Her eyes, narrow and lifeless, stared. Her black hair fanned out on the ground around her head, and she seemed so out of place. He was discomfited that he thought even in death, how beautiful she was.
He heard whispering and walked back to Mayfield. His voice was low, drained.
“To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler’s call.”
“Some sort of poem, isn’t it, sir?” The security man asked as a Buick bounced across the sand and slid to an abrupt stop feet from them.
“Yes,” Salinger said. “Just a poem.”
“. . . and how the silence surged softly backward,
when the plunging hoofs were gone.”
Mayfield’s voice died away.
“We need to go.”
“The hospital?”
“Yes, the Major—”
Salinger’s eyes burned and he rubbed them with the back of his hand. The revolver was still in his hand.
Several men were helping the Prime Minister up from the sand. The President sat in the automobile, his face wide and confused in the window illuminated by the Buick’s headlights cutting across the sand.
Salinger’s mind flashed back, relived the images unfolding of him sprinted up to the sedans. Goli at the rear of the truck. The danger so close . . . then Churchill alone, walking ahead . . . his security men had moved on . . .
Churchill exposed . . . as though a decoy. Salinger was sure of that now.
-Thirty-Six-
The Abwehr knew by 2 December that Operation Long Jump had failed.
Himmler, of course, had never really believed in the success of the operation, so the news didn’t particularly upset him. He was much more interested in the political maneuvering that lay ahead for Germany. He was increasingly certain that Hitler would be removed and the British and Americans would accept him as a negotiator for Germany.
There were some within Canaris’s sphere of influence who thought the Big Three would surely meet again, and this would present another excellent opportunity to strike. But Canaris understood that the Fuhrer was fed up with the failure of his secret services.
For Hitler, the safe way to look at the operation was that it never happened.
----
Within the next several days, the New York Times would publish an account of the incident, which the Nazis called a ‘fantastic invention in the true Hollywood style’.
----
A forest north of Berlin.
When Richter hadn’t heard from Traveler on the second day he began to fear the worst.
He walked along the road canvassed by large pines and firs leading to the villa. Here, he felt more complete than anywhere else, maybe because he was miles away from the political labyrinth absorbing the fatherland. Richter could spend hours walking along the road, reflecting back on his childhood, to a time when the world was a much simpler and safer place.
But this morning disappointment weighted heavily on him. There had been the appointment with his physician last evening before departing Berlin. The fever had returned the evening before. After examining him, the doctor informed him the disease was progressing rapidly; even the medicines wouldn’t fight off the fever or the increasing pain. How long? Richter had asked. Perhaps three months he was told.
And now . . . he was so deeply moved with the defeat of his operation in Tehran that even approaching death had lost its sting . . . he had come so close to success . . .
He reached the main road and turned back.
Traveler? What had she almost uncovered? An unanswered question that would haunt him until the end of his days, he was certain. Still—she had come so close. He imagined her secret would have turned the tide of the war. Now they would never know.
Richter reached the cobbled stone driveway when the black sedan pulled up behind him. Frick stepped out, gloved hands curled in front of his face. Richter’s two dogs leaped out of the back seat and darted toward him. He reached down, petted them for a moment, then they were off running in the woods.
“We just received a communiqué,” Frick said. “The plane never left Cairo.”
Richter turned and started down the road, Frick falling in step with him.
“Should I understand what has happened during last twenty-four hours?” Frick asked.
Richter turned and smiled. “I am sorry, Frick, that I didn’t trust even you.”
“Then Leni Capek wasn’t your Traveler?”
“Simply a decoy.”
“The Iranian woman—this Goli—”
“With no loyalty toward us at all, driven only by revenge for the death of her husband,” Richter told him. “If we had ordered her husband’s assassination, then she would have been an allied spy.”
“Amazing,” Frick whispered.
“And it almost worked.”
They had walked another twenty meters when a hint of regret ticked at Richter’s mind. He allowed himself one more memory of Leni. She had been simply brave and beautiful, but only a pawn. Goli on the other hand, was special. She was not expendable—an agent deeply buried within Soviet intelligence at the most opportune time—and now she was lost.
When they reached the sedan, Frick opened the door. Richter waved him away. The soft golden light glowing from the villa’s interior through the thick windows beckoned him into the warm fireplace. But right now he wanted to be cold. “Let’s walk on, if you don’t mind.” Frick fell in again with him as they left the sedan. The dogs broke out of the birch trees, racing toward him.
It had begun to snow as they headed toward the villa. Perhaps the last snow of the year.
In the spring his nieces would take the elektrische Zug out to the country and visit. The two girls loved to take the twenty-mile ride on the electric train out to see their uncle. It was the only two weeks of the year in which he truly allowed himself to rest when enemies became but shadows. In the spring the apples, the blackcurrant, and the gooseberries would be growing again, and the girls would certainly want to sail toy boats on the lake across the way. It would all mean a sign of new things to come. Rebirth. If the physician’s timetable was correct, it would also mean the end. Perhaps Richter should make certain he enjoyed the last spring with his nieces, because if the disease didn’t kill him, then there would be the Gestapo.
By now they had reached the glazed veranda.
“What do we do now?” Frick asked.
Something deeply sacred had died in the German spymaster over the recent hours, a fire,
a passion that would never be replaced. But for the moment, he couldn’t help himself. He was still a soldier. “We find another Goli,” he said lowly. “And we begin again to fight.”
-Thirty-Seven-
Cairo.
Mayfield died shortly before dawn. Salinger was there, standing back in the shadows of the narrow hospital room as the old soldier took his last breath. Churchill sent a courier with his condolences . . . something about ‘gallant men acting bravely in desperate times’.
Later, Salinger walked out into the street where the air was dry. Tehran and Julia were but a distant dream . . . and it felt good for the moment they were so far away.
----
At midmorning Salinger was driven out to the airport where a British official and an Egyptian security guard escorted him to a hanger at the far end of the tarmac. When they slid back the two large hanger doors, the Weaver supply plane sat like a ghost in the cool interior of the vast building. The two officials waited at the door as Salinger went in. He climbed up and opened the airplane door. Behind the seat, he found the valise.
----
Salinger knew he wouldn’t go back to Tehran, at least not right away. Instead, the next morning he checked into a room at the Shepheard Hotel. He phoned Julia and told her that Mayfield was dead, and he had several matters to deal with before returning to the city. Then he would like to come see her.
After an awkward silence, she told him she’d be waiting for him.
That night Salinger went down to the hotel bar. He sat at a table with a group of soldiers who had fought in Italy. They laughed and drank until one soldier began to tell about the hell they had lived through on a mountain when the Germans counterattacked with their best troops and captured the ridge. He told about how their friends had died in the mud fighting and how they finally retook the hill one day when the Germans simply walked away.
Then the bar fell silent, and something left all of them.
----
The second day Salinger stopped drinking, showered and went downstairs. He took a long walk in the Cairo streets beneath a hot sun and that somehow reconnected him with the world. When he came back to the hotel, he realized he was hungry, had dinner alone and at nine o’clock went up to his room.
A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) Page 25