The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

  “Is it important?” said Hemingway.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  The next document was also from the Eastern Front.

  “Translation?” said Hemingway. “I mean, I can read some German… ‘Leningrad Front—Top Command Net’? But what are the numbers? Kilohertz means radio frequencies, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “It looks like recent German radio reconnaissance of Soviet communications nets. This is a network marked K300a broadcasting on 3,000 kilohertz. The Germans are mapping a station with the call letters ed that seems to belong to the Russian Eighth Army. This other network designated L001 broadcasts at 2,550 kilohertz. The diagram shows who communicated with whom between the rear stations, front staff, and advanced front staff battle post. I think the battle post is this nexus marked ‘8L’. The notes down here at the right seem to suggest stations belonging to both the Soviet Fifty-fifth Army and what they call ‘2.St.A’, which I think stands for what the Soviets call their Second Shock Army.”

  “Who’s this going to?” asked Hemingway.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Would U.S. intelligence want to know this stuff about the Soviets? They’re our allies, after all.”

  “I don’t know if American military intelligence would want this,” I said truthfully. “Probably. Intelligence gathering becomes a goal of its own after a while. It matters less who we spy on than the fact that we can spy.”

  Hemingway scratched sand out of his short beard. “You’re cynical for an agent, Lucas.”

  “That’s redundant,” I said. “Look, this photostat looks like it’s from the Crimea.”

  “Reconnoitered Enemy Batteries,” read Hemingway.

  “Last November,” I said. “That’s probably during the fighting south of Sevastopol.”

  “This is German intelligence of Soviet positions from that battle?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “I think this is what’s called a sound-and-light-ranging battery map. They’ve numbered all of the Russian gun and battery positions including this one here, noted by a cartoon of a ship. It looks like they’re counterbombarding this one position.”

  “Except for the Frenchman Bay U-boat chart, this is all information about the Soviets,” said Hemingway.

  I lifted another document out of its watertight pouch and showed it to the writer.

  “This isn’t a photostat,” I said. “It’s a page ripped out of someone’s notebook.”

  “So?”

  “So this is raw Abwehr intelligence data.”

  “What does it mean?”

  I looked at the script for a moment. “I think it’s just a list of marks put on tanks by different Soviet factories. It’s probably a way the Abwehr is estimating Russian tank production.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “I don’t know if the data is,” I said, “but how it’s presented is.”

  “What do you mean, Lucas?” Suddenly the writer looked over his shoulder at the ridgeline under the tree. There had been a sound. “The land crabs are back in force,” he said, settling back onto the sandy slope. “What do you mean the way it’s presented is important?”

  “It’s raw, original Abwehr intelligence,” I said. “This would tell U.S. or British intelligence more about how the German military intelligence goes about its job than about the Russian tanks.”

  Hemingway nodded. “So it’s not just someone peddling information on the Russians. German sources are being betrayed.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And if you think that it’s only intelligence from the Eastern Front, look at this.”

  The next document showed notes from a German aerial reconnaissance mission over North Africa. The battle in the desert east of Ben Gardan had been in the news less than six weeks before.

  The sun was fierce now. The smell of death was almost overpowering. It reminded me of what these scrawls on a map had led to—British and German corpses rotting in the desert sun.

  “I can read this,” said Hemingway. “Fifty tanks south of Ben Gardan.

  A hundred vehicles parked on the west side of town. A hundred Allied vehicles traveling in both directions on the road east of the city and six hundred moving on the road west of it. But what use is a two-month-old situation map?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “Then what about this one?” Hemingway handed me a carbon copy of a typewritten page.

  “Shit,” I said. I did understand the significance of this form. “This is an FBI or U.S. Army or Navy Intelligence intercept of a German spy station radioing Hamburg,” I said. “April five. It’s a basic Abwehr book code, being transmitted on 14,560 kilocycles. The Abwehr listening station is responding at 14,385 kilocycles. See where the agent transmitting made a mistake about halfway down and keyed a series of dots… E’s here… to indicate his error? Then he transmitted the correct group following it.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you say ‘Shit’?” Hemingway was frowning at me in the strong morning light.

  “The only reason this would be in the packet is to show… whoever they were delivering this to… that the Abwehr has a source inside the FBI or inside U.S. military intelligence,” I said. “This carbon was stolen or purchased directly from an American source.”

  “Shit,” said Hemingway.

  Precisely, I thought. April five of this year was during the time that Inga Arvad was having her fling with young Naval Intelligence Ensign Jack Kennedy in Charleston and just before the Southern Cross had sailed. The son of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. “Shit indeed,” I said, wiping sweat and sand out of my eyes. “What is it?” I said.

  Hemingway was chuckling as he looked at a thick sheaf of typed papers. I could see the German Fraktur on the letterhead and even make out the double-lightningbolt keystroke that Third Reich typewriters used for the SS.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Hemingway, still chuckling. “Just a carefully typed, absolutely complete list of the postings and personnel distribution of every branch of the Hamburg Abwehr post, dated 1 April, 1942. Want to know how many counterintelligence case officers they have there? Twenty-six. Four enlisted men. Fifteen civilian employees. One radio maintenance man hired on a contract basis. Twenty radiomen. Seventy-two radio clerks. One photographer. One noncommissioned officer for transportation… I presume that’s a chauffeur. Two bicyclists… Jesus Christ, Lucas.”

  I nodded. “Stuff it all back in. We’ll take it with us.”

  “You’re goddamned right we’ll take it with us. We’re going to get this back to Ambassador Braden and the others as soon as possible… tonight, if we can.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “We won’t.”

  Hemingway looked at me.

  “We’ll get the camera,” I said. “We have to photograph the two dead men, the junk around them, and the bullet. Then we have to dig up their raft and photograph it. Then we have to bury it again. And then we have to bury them.”

  “We have to bring back the Naval Intelligence people,” said Hemingway.

  “No,” I said again. “We won’t.”

  Hemingway did not argue. He waited. For a second the wind died and the stench from the hilltop was almost overwhelming.

  “I’ll tell you when we get the Lorraine out to sea,” I said.

  Hemingway just bobbed his head once and went off to get the camera and the other entrenching tool.

  25

  THE PILAR WAS SAFELY at anchor and most of the crew and the kids were finishing a late breakfast around a campfire when Hemingway and I put into Cayo Confites.

  We had almost broken the back of the beautiful Lorraine during our wave-pounding return trip to the key. Staying up on plane the entire way, spray flying, kicking up a rooster tail, it seemed that we were trying to outrun Satan. Tom Shevlin’s beautiful speedboat drank all of its own fuel and was deep into the gasoline drum reserves before we raised the island. When I pointed out the fuel consumption to Hemingway, he said only
, “Fuck it… the Cubans have more for us at Confites.”

  The writer let me take the wheel during the return trip. As we slowly left Enseñada Herradura, passed through a gap in the reef with great care, and watched Point Roma recede as we brought the little craft up to speed, Hemingway sat on the leather rear bench and held the loaded BAR across his knees and our bag of fragmentation grenades next to him. I did not ask him, but I suspected that he was hoping the previous night’s submarine might appear out of the Gulf blue like a sea monster rising from the cold depths. That image was the crux of my view of Hemingway that summer—the tired and bearded knight hoping for his dragon to appear.

  We sighted no submarine during our breakneck return trip.

  The boys and the men greeted us around the morning campfire.

  “How was your trip, Papa?” asked Patrick.

  “Did you find a refueling base?” said Gregory.

  “Did you see any submarines?” asked Guest.

  “We saw some flying fish but no Germans,” said Gregory.

  “Did you and Lucas find anything important?” said Ibarlucia.

  “We’re glad you’re back, Papa,” said Gregory.

  Hemingway sat on a log, took a metal cup of steaming coffee from Guest, and said, “Nothing interesting, boys. Lucas and I poked around in the channel behind Cayo Sabinal and explored a few dead-end creeks. Slept on a beach last night. A lot of bugs.”

  “Where’s Maria?” I said.

  Ibarlucia pointed to the Pilar where it was anchored sixty feet from the beach. “Don Saxon got really sick last night. Vomiting, diarrhea, the whole enchilada. He wanted to stay by the radio, but finally Gregorio tucked him in the big bunk in the forward compartment and Maria stayed with him last night.” The jai alai player shot me a glance. “I mean, taking care of him. He was really sick.”

  “How is he this morning?” I asked.

  “Sleeping,” said Winston Guest. “Gregorio and Maria brought the Tin Kid in a couple of hours ago to have breakfast with us. She went back out by herself to check on Saxon.” The sportsman shook his head in appreciation. “That little girl is terrified of the water, but she handled that little boat like a trooper. If I get sick, I want her as my nurse.”

  “I think I’ll go say good morning to her,” I said.

  “She should be bringing the dinghy in pretty soon,” said Patrick. “We were going to show her the reef where we were spearfishing yesterday.”

  I nodded, walked to the beach, shed my gritty shirt, trousers, and sneakers, and waded in wearing only my undershorts. The lagoon water was already warm, but it felt good after the heat, blood, sand, and sweat of the long night and morning. I swam out to the Pilar.

  Maria was surprised to see me standing there almost naked and dripping water. “José!” She set down her cup of coffee, jumped up the last step from the galley, and threw her arms around me. Then she blushed, stepped back, cast one shy glance down at my clinging underpants, looked over her shoulder toward the forward compartment, and said, “Señor Saxon is sleeping, José, and the little boat is tied up here, if you—”

  I patted her hair. “I came out to invite you on a picnic, Maria.”

  Her eyes grew as wide and excited as a young girl’s. “A picnic, José? But we just finished breakfast and…”

  I smiled. “That’s okay. It’ll take a while to get to the place I want to show you. We’ll have an early lunch there. Get some things together in the galley and I’ll find my duffel and get dressed.” She smiled and hugged me again, and I patted her on the rump as she scrambled back to the galley.

  In the small compartment where we stored our bags, I pulled on clean shorts, a threadbare denim shirt, and my one extra pair of canvas boat shoes. Then I went into the big forward compartment and shook the snoring Marine awake. “Feel any better?” I said.

  “I… feel… terrible,” said Saxon, squinting at me and smacking his dry lips. “Hung over. Headache.”

  “Maria took care of you last night?”

  “Yeah, she—” The big radioman stopped and squinted up at me. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Lucas. I was puking my guts out. Hardly knew where I was. All she did was—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Did you pick up any coded transmissions during the patrol yesterday?”

  “Uh-uh,” said the Marine, holding his head in his two huge hands. “But one came in after we put in last night. Late. Must have been almost midnight.”

  “And you managed to catch it even though you were so sick?”

  “Yeah. I was on the floor in the head with a bucket between my knees and the earphones on. Hemingway kept repeating how important it was that I keep monitoring last night.”

  “Did you write it down?”

  Saxon squinted at me. “Sure I did. It’s the only entry on page twenty-six of the radio log. Couldn’t understand it, of course. That fucking new code.”

  I patted him on the shoulder and went into the tiny radio shack. The “radio log”—a grubby spiral notebook—ended with notes on an exchange between a British destroyer east of Bimini and a Panamanian cargo ship. Page twenty-six was missing. I went back in and shook Saxon awake again.

  “Are you sure you wrote it down? Page twenty-six isn’t there.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. I mean, I think I did… I remember getting some stuff on the notebook when I was sick, but I didn’t tear out that page. I don’t think. Damn.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You don’t remember any of the groups, do you?”

  Saxon slowly shook his head. His scalp was badly sunburned beneath his tight crewcut. “Just that it was in five-letter groups. Twelve or thirteen groups, I think. Not much repetition.”

  “Okay. By the way, there’s no carrier tone on the receiver.”

  “Damn and hell,” said Saxon. “The motherfucking, ass-licking, cocksucking turd of a piece of cornholing pisswad nigger junk was going out the entire pigfucking day on me yesterday. Piece of goddamn cockpuss farthole Navy surplus bubbleshit junk.”

  “All right,” I said, and thought, Never try to talk to a Marine with a hangover.

  Maria was still packing a picnic basket when I took the Tin Kid in to the beach and had Fuentes ferry me out to the Lorraine. The Cubans helped us refuel the auxiliary drums, and Maria was waiting when I rumbled back to the Pilar.

  “Señor Saxon is sleeping,” she said as she carefully stepped over the gunwales of the speedboat and carried the picnic basket to the center of the rear couch. She was wearing a clean, blue-checked dress.

  “Good,” I said, pushing off from Hemingway’s bigger boat and steering toward the break in the reef. Patrick and Gregory were shouting from the beach, obviously upset to see Maria leaving, but I just waved at the boys.

  “Can we really do this, José?” said the young woman. “Just leave everyone on such a day?”

  I held out my hand and she came up to the passenger seat to hold it. “Yep,” I said, “we can. I told Señor Hemingway that I was taking the day off. I’ve earned it. Besides, the Pilar’s not leaving until much later today. We’ll be back in plenty of time.” She continued to hold my hand as I brought the Lorraine out into open sea and opened the throttles to within two grand of the red line on the tach.

  Maria still acted nervous in the small boat, but she seemed to relax after half an hour or so. Even with a bright red scarf tied over her head, her dark hair whipped back in the strong breeze of our passage and droplets of spray caught in the fine hairs on her right arm where it rested on the gunwale. It was a beautiful day as the sun climbed toward mid-morning and we continued to pound our way east through the slight chop.

  “Are we going so far, then, for our picnic?” said Maria, peering toward the southern horizon, where the mainland was little more than a suggestion of low haze.

  “Not so far,” I said, throttling back. This was a place of dangerous reefs even though we were only an hour or so away from high tide. “There,” I said, pointing to the northeast.

  The l
ittle island was only about twenty feet across and ten inches or so out of the water, with waves from the Gulf rolling up on the gravel.

  Maria looked at me as if I was going to announce the joke as I brought the speedboat in carefully, tossing the bow anchor out just twenty feet or so from the beach. “José, it is so low and rough… so many rocks in the sand.”

  “It’s just the top of a reef that gets exposed at low tide,” I said. “It’ll be gone in…” I checked my watch. “About an hour. We’d better get our picnic stuff over there and eat fast.”

  Maria pouted, obviously disappointed. “I would rather eat in the boat, José, if you do not mind. The water there makes me very nervous. I do not swim well, you know.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever you want, kid.”

  She brought out thick roast beef sandwiches with plenty of horseradish—one of my favorites—and cold potato salad, along with several bottles of beer. The beer was wrapped in wet towels to keep it cool. She had even packed tall glasses and poured our beer with some ceremony.

  I lifted the glass in salute to her, set it carefully on the tablecloth she had spread on the engine compartment behind us—I did not want to leave a ring on Shevlin’s mahogany—and said softly in German, “What did you give Saxon last night to make him sick?”

  Maria looked at me uncomprehendingly. In Spanish, she said, “What did you say, José? I understood Señor Saxon’s name but… why did you speak to me like that? Is that German?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, still auf Deutsch. “I don’t suppose you kept the page of the radio log?”

  She stared at me, obviously concerned but seemingly only that I was prattling at her in a language she did not understand. Then she suddenly smiled broadly. “You tease me, José,” she said in soft Spanish. “Are you saying sweet things?”

  I smiled and switched to English. “I’m saying that I will probably have to kill you if you don’t start talking to me, bitch. I may kill you anyway for what you did to little Santiago, but your only chance is if you drop the shit and talk. Did you transmit a message this morning before you disabled the radio?”