They sat in silence, waiting for a reply. The hiss of the radio mingled with the sound of waves crashing on the beach. In the starlight they could see the stiff breeze making whitecaps beyond the sandbar.
No reply came.
"Why don't I send it again," Charlie suggested. He picked up the transmitter key and tapped out the message.
Less then a minute after he finished, the radio began to beep.
Charlie flipped on the dome light and scrambled to write down the series of dots and dashes. They ended almost as soon as they had begun.
He opened his Boy Scout Handbook and transcribed the Morse code into letters.
"This can't be right," he muttered, showing Johanna and Eve what he had written—
KFOODPYFIRHCKFOHRIUFPUGOVIDYUHJPNUYIKIUYDPLDKKJMIOHNJUGY
"Oh wait. I forgot." He pulled out the code sheet they had used to encode the message. "Of course."
Charlie set himself to writing the letters below the series of numbers on the code sheet. He counted on his fingers as he decoded the string of letters. Johanna and Eve urged him to hurry.
"Got it." He held up the page of German text in the light so Johanna could translate.
"It says 'Message received'," she read. "'Be ready to receive in two hours. Frequency 5.1 Mhz.'"
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."
"Oh, come on. Give me a tough one. That's Shelley, Ozymandias," Eve answered.
"You're literature, I'm history," Charlie replied. "Why don't we give up on 'Name that Verse' and switch to 'Name that Date in History' or 'Name that Treaty'?"
"Because 'Name That Verse' is a tradition in this family, 'Name That Decrepit Antiquity' is not."
Johanna suppressed a giggle. Being back with the Dalys, things were feeling normal. Except that they were sitting in the car of a dead Nazi spy waiting for a message from yet another Nazi spy.
Eve checked her watch. "It's almost time."
Johanna slid the dial to 5.1 Mhz. The faint sound of music came over the air. It faded in and out, with a man's voice occasionally speaking over it. The man was definitely not speaking English, but they couldn't make out what language he was speaking. Charlie readied himself with pencil and notebook.
The strong signal of Morse code broke in. Charlie wrote down the dots and dashes of the new message, longer than the first. The beeps stopped and the faint music faded back in. He repeated the process of converting the Morse code to letters and then decoding the letters.
"385614N0745811W Sunday 6am," Johanna translated.
"Hmm, maybe I didn't decode it right," Charlie said.
"No, wait," Eve interrupted. "Read those numbers again, Johanna. Charlie, write them down as she reads them."
Johanna repeated the message. Charlie held up what he had written:
385614N 0745811W Sunday 6am
"No, that's not right, give it to me," Eve said.
She wrote for a moment and showed them.
38 56 14N 074 58 11W Sunday 6am
Charlie and Johanna both shook their heads, uncomprehending.
"It's latitude and longitude. See," she pointed. "Thirty-eight degrees, fifty-six minutes, fourteen seconds and so on."
Charlie gave her a wry look.
"Hey, Mr. Boy Scout, don't get grumpy that an old lit professor figured it out before you," Eve retorted.
Charlie pretended to ignore her.
"Let me see those maps of Hagen's. Did they have longitude and latitude on them?"
They did, but not with enough detail. Charlie was able to find thirty-eight degrees, but the minutes were in increments of five and the seconds not shown at all.
"Thirty eight degrees and fifty-five minutes by…seventy-four degrees sixty minutes looks like Cape May Point, New Jersey." He handed the map to Eve, who double checked.
"I think you're right," she said, "but that's still an awfully big place to meet someone. If the seconds are supposed to tell us the precise location where they want to meet, we're not going to know where to be."
Johanna thought about it for a moment.
"The beach. Where else could it be? What other reason could they have to pick that location? Unless that's where the Nazis have a radio station, but I can't believe they would have a stationary transmitter. I mean, look at the lengths they've gone to make a mobile transmitter with this car. It has to be someone traveling to Cape May that wants to meet me there. It has to be."
Charlie checked his watch.
"It's ten o'clock now. That gives us just enough time to get back to the house and grab a few things before we leave. We may be able to check into a motel and get a couple of hours of sleep." He looked at the map. "There's no easy way to get there – we have to go all the way up to Philly and down to Cape May."
Johanna turned the headlights on and put the car into gear.
"Just point me in the right direction," she said.
Back at the Dalys' house, Eve packed some food while Charlie searched for a motel near Cape May Point.
"Found one," he announced from his study. He came out with a travel guide and picked up the phone to dial the number. "Let me see if they're open."
Johanna leaned against the doorway, feeling her eyelids grow heavy. She tried to add up how much sleep she had gotten in the last two weeks, but her thinking was getting wooly and the numbers swam in her head.
"I think someone else had better drive," she mumbled.
"Don't worry," Eve replied. "We'll take care of it."
She pulled out two mugs and spooned out some instant coffee.
"The May Motel is open and has vacancies," Charlie announced, hanging up the phone. He looked over to see Eve fill the mugs with hot tap water and stir the coffee. "What in the name of God are you doing, woman?"
"Shut up and drink it," Eve said. "This is about expediency, not quality."
Charlie made a face as he gulped the lukewarm drink.
"This is why she is never allowed to cook," he told Johanna.
Mearah cringed as he knocked on Stephenson's door. It was almost eleven o'clock, but he could see the sliver of light below his door.
"What?" Stephenson barked.
Mearah opened the door and stuck his head in.
"Sorry to bother you, sir. It looks like the tap on the Dalys' phone has paid off. Professor Daly just placed a call to a May Motel in New Jersey asking about vacancies for tonight."
Stephenson gave him a blank look. "And?"
"Well, I thought November was a strange time to be making reservations at the beach," Mearah paused for effect. "Plus, he asked about room for three."
"In the future, please spare me your attempts at dramatics and get to the point, will you?" He glanced at his watch. "You and Alexander had better get going, hadn't you?"
Mearah nodded a little too quickly. "Yes, sir." He pulled back into the hallway.
"And Mearah?"
"Yes?"
"If you lose her again, you needn't bother coming back."
Johanna dozed in the back seat while Charlie and Eve switched off behind the wheel. The scene from the night before replayed in her dreams. Viersing shot Hagen again and again, while Johanna was unable to move or speak from her hiding spot.
You race traitor, the dream Viersing spat at Hagen with each shot. You and that bitch Oster.
In her dream, Johanna tried to run to stop Viersing, but her feet slipped on the floor gaining no traction. She fell to her knees and tried to pull herself along the floor with her hands, but could find no purchase. Just as she felt her body move across the concrete, the scene flashed backward and began again. She tried to save Hagen once more, but couldn't move or speak. Viersing killed him over and over.
The jolt of the car hitting a pothole startled her out of her sleep. Eve was driving while Charlie navigated. They were talking about her. Johanna closed her eyes and listened, pretending to still be asleep.
"It simply does not make
any sense to me that Hitler or one of his subordinate would be extending the olive branch to us right now," Charlie was saying. "Even if that was what Hagen was doing, it still doesn't explain the elaborate plan with Johanna."
"On the contrary, I think it fits in with the Nazis' modus operandi perfectly," Eve replied. "They say one thing, full of bluster or conciliation as the situation warrants, while they pursue their true aims in secret. Look at Munich and Czechoslovakia. Look at Austria. Look at Russia. And do you really believe that nonsense about the SS plotting to kill Lindbergh and frame Communists for it? First, Viersing would be found out as a German agent and not a Communist in about five minutes. Second, are they really that daft to think we would dump the British and join Germany against the Russians?"
"Yes, yes. Point taken. So you're suggesting that the Nazi high command recognizes that Germany is on a course for war against the United States and that Hagen was sent on a mission of goodwill to prevent it?"
"Perhaps."
"Yes, perhaps. Or perhaps he was sent on a deceptive mission of goodwill to lull us into a false sense of security, setting us up for a sneak attack."
"That's a possibility, I admit," Eve conceded. "There's a third option: there is a schism among the Nazis that fears a war with us while they are fighting the British and the Russians. This rogue band of Nazis is genuinely seeking a rapprochement with America out of a pragmatic sense of avoiding a multi-front war against Great Britain, Russia and the United States."
"Hmm….maybe. They grab Johanna and force her into being an observer of Hagen's activities, expecting that she'll be received as an unimpeachable witness. They probably engineered the assassination attempt on Lindbergh just so that Hagen could foil it and seem like the hero. Viersing is sacrificed; Johanna sees what they want her to see. She tells General Donovan, or whomever, that she saw a Nazi intervene to save Lindbergh. How that's supposed to persuade President Roosevelt to reverse his position of aiding the British, and now the Russians, against the Germans is beyond me, but I've given up trying to understand those people."
"I'm with you," Eve responded. "But the more important question is: how is Johanna going to come out of all this? It sounds to me like she believes the image of Hagen as the hero, sent to save us all from disaster. I'm worried that she's been brainwashed into seeing what the Nazis want her to see."
"I've been thinking the same thing," Charlie sighed. "Part of me wants her to solve the mystery just so that she can see the truth of it, not the illusion that's been created for her."
Johanna had heard enough. She stretched and let out a loud yawn.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"Not far," Charlie said, turning in his seat. He smiled. "Less than an hour. How're you doing?"
"Just fine," she replied icily and looked out the window, pretending to look at the scenery. Nobody is going to fool me. Whether Hagen is more than he seems or is indeed a Nazi intriguer, I'll be the one to find out. The man hasn't been born who can brainwash me.
Cape May Point, like ChesapeakeBeach, looked like a town waiting for the return of summer. Picnic tables by the beach were turned on their sides and souvenir shops had their windows shuttered. The May Motel was shaped like a horseshoe, an empty pool in the middle. As they pulled into the deserted parking lot, their headlights shone on a forlorn ball floating in the rainwater in a corner of the pool.
Eve parked in front of the office. But for the crooked Open sign on the door, Johanna would have thought the place closed.
"Be right back," Charlie said as he got out of the car.
Johanna saw that Eve was trying to make eye contact with her in the rearview mirror, but she avoided her gaze. She was still feeling angry about the Dalys thinking she was falling for a Nazi trick. She didn't say a word as Charlie came back, a room key dangling from his hand.
In a room decorated with a ship in a bottle and watercolors of beach scenes, Johanna flopped down on one of the two beds. She turned over on her side and closed her eyes.
"Wake me up at five thirty, please."
43
Mearah tapped his fingers to Jimmy Dorsey's 'Green Eyes.' He reached over to turn down the radio's volume when he saw Alexander come out of the motel office.
"And?" he asked when Alexander got back into the car.
"The clerk says that an older couple checked out not more than fifteen minutes ago. Says they didn't use the room for more than two hours. Gave their names as Mr. and Mrs. Rackham, but it was the Dalys all right – the clerk said he saw a young woman in the car."
Mearah slapped the steering wheel.
"Did he notice where they were headed?" he asked.
"Said the man asked for directions to the beach," Alexander replied. Mearah was surprised to see that he was actually smiling as he held up a piece of paper. "These same directions I have here."
Mearah slammed the car into reverse and spun around in the parking lot. He sent up a rooster tail of gravel and dirt as he pulled out onto the road toward the beach.
Johanna stacked Hagen's suitcases on the sand and sat on them, peering into the darkness. To her left the sky was lightening, but all around her was still black. Charlie was sitting in the car with the shortwave radio on, listening.
Eve looked out to sea while Johanna watched the beach road.
Johanna was convinced that an Abwehr agent was going to meet her personally – it was close enough to New York and the many agents she knew to be there. She thought the most likely scenario would have her going back to New York or to Washington with the Abwehr agent to meet with some American authority. She would tell what she had seen, thus completing Hagen's mission. It would be over in a day or two.
Then, she and the Dalys and COI could work to answer the biggest question: What was the point of all this?
Johanna cinched the belt of her overcoat against the cold ocean breeze. She thought of Hagen as he had first appeared in the DAI offices in Stuttgart. Tall and austere looking in his Wehrmacht uniform, he looked every bit the Nazi's ideal superman. The past two weeks were such a blur to her now, but she could still see Hagen's murder clearly in her mind.
She remembered the hatred that had been on Viersing's face as he shot him over and over. She remembered Viersing calling him a 'race traitor' and accusing him of being a part of someone's circle. What did that mean?
A flash of light illuminated the sand by her feet. She looked up, thinking that Charlie had turned on the car's headlights. But the car was to her left and the light had come from in front of her.
It had come from the water.
She jumped up and ran over to the car. Eve had seen it too and was running to meet her.
"It came from out there," Eve shouted, pointing.
"What? What did?" Charlie asked. He had been fishing in his pockets for cigarettes.
"A light flashed from the water," Johanna replied. "Turn the car's lights on, just for a moment."
Charlie pulled the headlight knob and quickly pushed it back in.
They watched and waited.
"Maybe it was Morse code," Charlie offered. "How many flashes was it?"
"I only saw one," Eve answered.
"Should I do it again?" he asked. He flicked his lighter on and pulled on a cigarette. "Damn, this is exciting."
They waited, but nothing happened. No more lights, and the only sound was that of the waves coming ashore. The sky was going from black to dark blue, hiding all but a few stars. Johanna could just make out the line where the beach met the water.
Something caught her eye and she squinted, trying to focus in the dim light. It was a black smudge on the water. She couldn't make out what it was, but it was getting closer.
"Do you see that?" she asked.
"I see," Eve replied. "Can you tell what it is?"
"No."
"What? What is it?" Charlie asked. He turned off the car and got out. "God damn it, what do you see?" Johanna pointed.
The smudge was getting bigger, with a ring of white froth
in front.
It was a boat.
"I'll be damned," Charlie exhaled.
The sky had brightened just enough for Johanna to make out the rubber dingy and the two men paddling it to shore. She looked past them but couldn't see where they had come from.
"Wait here," she said, and walked down to meet them.
Fifth Column Page 28