by CW Browning
He shifted his gaze to the entrance of the wharf and the makeshift checkpoint. She was headed straight for it. Was she going to try to get out of Norway by getting on a ship? Or did she already have an extraction set up?
Leaning against the corner of the alley, Mikhail partially hid the inanimate form on the ground behind him from view, and reached into his coat to pull out his cigarettes. There would be nothing unusual in the sight of a working man taking a break to smoke in the mouth of an alley. He lit a cigarette, never taking his eyes from the woman reaching the end of the street and crossing to the checkpoint. He would wait to see what happened. If she remained in Namsos, he would do as Lyakhov had ordered. How he would convince her that he could get her safely to Sweden was another matter entirely, but he would find a way. He always did.
When she was led past the barriers a few minutes later and shown into a small hut on the quayside, Mikhail dropped his cigarette butt and put it out with his boot. Turning his head, he looked down at Eisenjager dispassionately. The man was still out cold, but he would come around shortly. When he did, he would find his target out of reach and no sign of his assailant.
Bending down, Mikhail picked up the extinguished cigarette butt and palmed it before moving out of the alley and turning to walk up the street. It was time to contact Comrade Lyakhov and return to Oslo. The British agent was safe in the hands of her own people.
His work here was finished.
Evelyn looked up, startled, when the door to the small hut opened without warning. She had been sitting near the wood stove for over an hour now, alternating between dozing and fretting over whether or not the Lt. Commander had already weighed anchor and was gone. The thought of going back out there and trying to find another way home filled her with hopeless despair, and so she continued to sit in the little hut, hoping that HMS Cardiff was still there.
Now, as she stared up at an officer of medium height with black hair graying at the temples, she knew her wait was over. He looked at her briefly, then closed the door to the hut before crossing over to stand in front of the desk.
“Miss Masters?” he asked. “Miss Jenny Masters?”
Evelyn nodded, relief rolling through her. The name on the passport she had handed the guard was Laura Masters. Jenny was never mentioned on the papers, but was the codename that went with the identification. The only way this man could possibly know that name was if MI6 had told him.
“Yes.”
His face relaxed into a smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you. I’m Lieutenant Commander Wheeler. You’ve had us on pins and needles all morning, wondering if you were going to make it in time.”
“I’m terribly sorry about that,” she said with a small smile. “I lost my radio operator, you see. I had no way of contacting London.”
A shadow crossed his face and his eyes met hers, surprisingly kindly for a complete stranger.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Well, at least you’re here now. You’ve come just in the nick of time, as well. The captain’s ready to give the order to weigh anchor. I’m to get you aboard without delay. He’s anxious to be underway, as I’m sure you are as well.”
She nodded tiredly. “Yes, indeed, thank you. There is just one thing, a small matter of my rifle. I believe it’s being held at the gate.”
Wheeler was betrayed into a grin.
“Ah yes, the infamous rifle. I’m told you walked up with it slung over your shoulder. Gave the boys at the entrance quite a turn.”
“I’m afraid I look a fright,” Evelyn admitted with a laugh. “I don’t blame them for being leery of me. I’ve been walking through the mountains for four and a half days. Fashion took second place to practicality, you see.”
The Lt. Commander stared at her. “Four and a half days?” he repeated, stunned. “There’s four feet of snow out there!”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m well aware.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Oslo.”
“Oslo! But they took Oslo on Tuesday!”
“Yes. I left a few hours before they arrived in the city. I’ve been moving ever since.”
“How on earth did you do it? The Nazis are advancing everywhere and have taken control of all the airfields. How did you avoid them?”
“I had a very good guide who knows the terrain well, and I had a companion who knew the importance of getting me here in time to catch your ship.”
Wheeler shook his head and straightened up, bending to pick up her suitcase.
“My dear girl, you may have your rifle back with my compliments. I’ll have Lieutenant Barker ensure it is delivered to the ship immediately. You’ve earned the right to carry whatever weapon you desire as far as I’m concerned.”
He smiled down at her and, despite herself, Evelyn felt her eyes fill with tears at his kind tone that reminded her so forcibly of Bill and her father.
“Come. Let’s get you aboard ship and settled,” he said gently, seeing the tears shimmering in her eyes. “It’s time to go home.”
Bialystok, Poland
Vladimir looked up when a knock fell on his door and a sealed telegram slid under the gap along the floor. Raising his eyebrow, he crossed the room to pick it up. There was no noise in the corridor, but he opened the door and looked out anyway. He was just in time to see a hotel uniform disappear around the corner at the end of the hall.
Closing the door, he locked it again and turned to carry the telegram over to the desk. He had been pouring over maps of the city, looking for a particular street that had been mentioned during his manhunt. Pushing the maps aside, he tore open the telegram, reading it quickly.
MISSION COMPLETED. SHORES ARE CLEAR. DEPARTING NAMSOS FOR OSLO.
A slow smile curved his lips and he tossed the telegram onto the desk. Evelyn was on her way home. She had made it.
He got up and went to the window, pulling the curtain back and looking out over the dark city below. He’d known Mikhail would find her. Even in the midst of an invasion, the man could find anything, or anyone. Even so, Vladimir was conscious of a feeling of relief. Eisenjager had complicated things, causing some worry, but now it was over, and Robert Ainsworth’s daughter was on her way home.
Now that she was safely away from the Nazi invasion in Norway, his own plans could proceed. He stared out the window, his lips pressed together thoughtfully. The message he’d sent for MI6 to intercept earlier would get the ball rolling. He had no doubt of that. They wouldn’t have a choice, not if they wanted to continue to receive the information he was passing on to them. And, given their present situation with a mole in their midst, they wouldn’t have much basis to argue.
Yes. Things were progressing nicely in that quarter, now that the little hiccup with Evelyn had been resolved.
Vladimir dropped the curtain and turned to return to the desk. It was time to get back to work. The sooner he tracked down his target, the sooner he could leave Poland and focus on the British agent.
The coming months were going to be vital, and he had every intention of using them to his advantage. While this incident in Norway had been unforeseen, it was just possible that it would end up being a key to what was to come.
And a large part of unlocking the enigma that was Evelyn Ainsworth.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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London, England
April 20
Bill got out of the back of the sedan and went up the shallow steps to the glossy black door of the stately home on Brook Street. He carried a bag filled with groceries from the market in one hand and his umbrella in the other. The sky had been overcast all morning, threatening rain that had yet to appear. As he pressed the bell with the handle of his umbrella, he cast a glance to the heavy clouds overhead. It was coming. There was no doubt about it. London was in for deluge.
Wesley had called him at home a few hours ago to tell him that the train bearing Evelyn
from Scotland had arrived at Waterloo station. The fact that his assistant had volunteered to spend his Saturday morning at the train station waiting to ensure that Jian arrived back in London safely was telling. He had been just as concerned as Bill was himself when they hadn’t heard anything from her leading up to her evacuation. It had been with great relief that they received the message from HMS Cardiff that the package was onboard. A rough crossing in the North Sea, complicated by a close shave with a German U-boat, had delayed her arrival in Scapa Flow. Then a violent storm had once again delayed her moving onto the Scottish mainland and beginning the final leg of her journey back to England.
But now she was home, and Bill had stopped to get her a few provisions on his way over, knowing that the Ainsworth residence in London had been standing empty. This at least would save her having to go out for dinner on her first night back after what must have been, in the end, a harrowing experience.
When the door opened, his ready smile froze on his face and his eyes widened in shock. Evelyn was dressed in wide-legged black trousers and a white blouse with flowing sleeves, but the clothes did nothing to conceal the fact that she had dropped a significant amount of weight in the three weeks that she had been gone. Her hair was pulled back into a chignon at the back of her head, giving him an unimpeded view of an extremely pale face and very deep, dark hollows under her eyes.
“Bill!” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up and a smile spreading across her face. “How lovely! Come in!”
She stepped back so that he could enter the house, closing the door behind him.
“Welcome back, Evie, my dear,” he said with a smile, recovering his composure quickly. “I’ve brought you a few things to help tide you over until you can get to the shops.”
“Thank you! All I’ve got in the larder is tea.” She moved to take the bag from him but he shook his head and pulled it away.
“I’ll carry it in for you,” he told her. “You must be exhausted.”
“Not so exhausted I can’t carry a few groceries,” she replied with a laugh. “Very well. Let me take your hat and coat, at least.”
Bill handed her his umbrella and hat and shrugged out of his top coat.
“How was the train down?”
“It was very uneventful, which I appreciated very much,” she said, turning to hang his coat in a closet inside the door. “I came on the Flying Scotsman, which was a first for me.”
She closed the closet door and turned to lead the way down the hall to the kitchen in the back of the house.
“Well, you’ve had enough starts and stops over the past few days, haven’t you?” he asked, following her into the large kitchen. “You deserved a non-stop trip. How long did it take?”
“A little over seven hours.” She turned to take the bag of groceries from him and motioned him into a seat at the table. “I slept some of the way. There’s something about trains that always makes me sleepy.”
Bill sat down and crossed his legs, watching as she unpacked the bag on the counter a few feet away. Her movements were much slower than normal and he hadn’t missed the strange gait as she preceded him down the hallway, as if she was nursing a bad foot. She hadn’t limped, precisely, but she definitely wasn’t moving with her usual confident energy.
“It’s the rocking, I expect,” he said. “What time did you get in?”
“Just over an hour ago. I’d just finished unpacking when you came.” Evelyn turned with a packet of sausages in her hand. “This is wonderful! Thank you! And you even bought eggs!”
“I seem to remember that the Norwegians are like the French in that they don’t eat a good breakfast,” he said with a faint smile. “It looks like I made the right choice. You look half starved, my dear.”
She grimaced and turned to put the sausages on the counter while she reached into the bag to pull out the rest of the groceries.
“That’s due more to my flight across Norway than the bread and cheese breakfasts,” she said over her shoulder. “Believe me, when I could get it, that bread and cheese was wonderful!”
“When you could get it?”
“Food was...scarce,” she said, emptying the bag. She turned to reach for the kettle on the stove. “We had to go on foot through the mountains, avoiding the villages and towns where we could have bought food. We weren’t sure where the Germans were, you see. It was safer to avoid them and not risk being caught between the advancing troops. Else, the landlady at the boarding house in Oslo, packed us a basket with bread and cheese when we left in the middle of the night, which was very kind and generous of her. But once we met Erik and the others, it didn’t go very far.”
Bill watched her fill the kettle with water, his eyes narrowing when she swayed slightly and had to grab hold of the edge of the counter to steady herself. He waited until she had finished filling it, then he stood up and took it from her hand.
“I’ll do this,” he said, gently guiding her into a seat at the table. “Sit down. You look as if you’re about to fall over.”
“I just got a little light-headed,” she protested. “It’s nothing.”
“I’m very glad to hear it, but I’d feel better if you sat. I’m quite capable of making a cup of tea, I assure you.” He lit one of the gas burners and set the kettle over the flame, turning to look at her. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I had a few biscuits on the train.”
“I mean a real meal. When was the last time you had something substantial?”
Evelyn thought for a moment. It was a brief moment, but it was too long for him. The fact that she had to think about it brought a frown to his face and he studied her silently for a long moment.
“I had dinner when I arrived in Scapa, but I’m afraid my stomach was upset after the crossing,” she finally said. “Given the horrid weather, I didn’t want to eat before getting on the boat to go across to the mainland. When I reached John o’ Groats, it was mid-morning and I just had time for a scone and some tea before my train left for Inverness.”
“So you’re saying you haven’t had a decent meal since you left Scapa?”
She shrugged and rubbed her temples. “I suppose not. To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought. I’ve felt so...well, it really doesn’t matter, does it? I’m here now, and you’ve brought plenty of food to make a lovely dinner of eggs, sausage and beans. I’ll make up for it.”
“You said you went by foot?” Bill asked. “You mean to tell me you walked all the way from Oslo to Namsos?”
“Not quite all the way. We had a car part of the way until it broke down south of Trondheim. While Peder, that’s the man whose car it was, tried to figure out what was wrong, Anna’s brother Erik came out of the hills. He’s in the Norwegian army, and he had a few of his men with him. They were separated from their battalion when Trondheim fell. He advised leaving the car. By then, Peder had decided it was most likely a crack in the head gasket, so the car was dead anyway. That’s when we started hiking.”
“Who is this Peder?” Bill asked after a moment.
“He was a friend of Anna’s. He went to school with Erik. He was a radio enthusiast, and I’d met him a few days before. He’d agreed to join the network to get information to us, but only if the Germans really did try to invade Norway. When he learned there were ships in the fjord outside Oslo, he went to warn Anna. They came to get me.”
“And it was his radio you were using to contact us?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?” he asked after a moment.
Evelyn was quiet for a moment and he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she spoke, her voice flat and emotionless.
“He was killed outside Steinkjer.”
The kettle began to whistle and Bill turned to look for cups. Finding them behind the second cabinet door he opened, he pulled out two.
“The tea is in that one over there,” Evelyn said, pointing.
He opened the indicated door and pulled out the tea. “And the radio?”
“He gave it to me when...well, when it was clear he couldn’t continue. But I think it must have been damaged when he fell because I couldn’t get it to work.” She watched as he fixed the tea, a silence falling over them. After a moment, she continued. “I kept trying, but it was no use. In the end, Erik took it and said he would contact another friend of his who would be able to get it working. He promised to use it to contact us with information on German activity if the Nazis do end up occupying Norway.”
“And Anna?”
“She will continue building the network we started.”
Bill handed her a steaming cup of tea, frowning when her hands shook as she took it from him.
“How was Peder killed?” he asked gently, taking his seat with the other cup of tea.
“The SS were waiting for us outside Steinkjer.” She sipped her tea, then lifted her eyes to his. “They knew I was there. They knew where I was going.”
He sighed, his face grave.
“Yes, I know. MI5 has been intercepting messages between the spy in London and Berlin. We were only made aware if it after you were already on your way, and by then it was too late to warn you. I notified you as soon as I could.”
“Your message came as we ran into an SS patrol,” she said after a moment. “In a way, it may have saved us. We were already moving when we realized they were there. If we hadn’t received that message when we did, it could have been worse.”
Bill looked at the shadows in her eyes and the hollows in her face and wondered how much worse it could possibly have been. The woman sitting across from him was a stranger, a completely different person from the one he’d sent on her way three weeks before.