“So…?”
Was he lucky or what, getting the only Englishman in the country without a sense of humor. Jake frowned. “So, nothing else to report. Contact’s been made. Mary Snider doesn’t care for Jews. Not exactly grounds for prosecution, is it? You’d have to hang half the planet. Oh, and who’s the dick in the fedora?”
“I’m not amused, Agent Bernstein. We’re keeping the motor coach under surveillance in the event you need help.”
So it was MI5’s surveillance team. Jake had thought as much. Didn’t they think he could remain impartial, get close to the girl and her grandmother and still probe the old American lady for evidence? Or was the major just being overly cautious? Did they know something he didn’t? The third alternative disturbed him the most.
“What, in case Granny tries to kick-box me in the balls? Don’t you trust me to get the job done? You don’t think I’d turn in a fellow American even if I found out she was a Nazi spy and killed thousands of people?”
The major was silent.
Well, fuck you!
“Just a precaution, ol’ boy.”
With a sudden rise of temper, Jake snarled, “Tell your people I spotted them. Next time, lose the rubber boots and fedora. Is there something I should know, Major, that you haven’t told me?”
A long pause, then, “No, not really.”
I’ll bet. Jake didn’t believe him for an instant. The major was holding something back. Tamping down his resentment, he said, “Goodnight, Major!” and hung up. Something else was going on and he suspected he wasn’t going to like it one damned bit.
Chapter Nine
Jake rolled over and glanced over at his watch, checking the local time. 6 a.m., his digital, glow-in-the-dark watch told him. He groaned loudly. His body was wide-awake, especially his groin. Too bad his mind was slogging behind.
Breakfast in the hotel dining room was to be served at 7 a.m.. Next stop: Cardiff, the capital of Wales, then their ferry ride to Ireland. He’d finally looked over the itinerary. The motor coach would be leaving that afternoon, after a tour and lunch in Bath. A quick perusal of the day’s agenda showed him they had the afternoon free to wander around Bath and do some shopping. Maybe he could invite Meg and her grandmother to spend some time with him.
Still drowsy with sleep, he looked over at the pillow next to his. Visualizing Meg lying there, her lush hair with all its variegated blonde hues fanned out, stirred him. The erection he’d awakened with grew harder; not surprising, he thought, considering his celibacy of late. Strictly his choice, despite the offers tossed his way.
The opportunities had been there and he’d ignored them, stubborn man that he was. Even late last night, when the two New Jersey sisters had called and invited him to a private party in Hank’s room. He’d declined tactfully.
At thirty-two years old, he found himself holding out for more.
Stupid fool, he scolded himself. Or as the Brits would say, sodding wanker! Or something to that effect. He should learn to take it when it was offered to him on a platter, free of charge. All he had to do was be nice to a girl for a few hours, promise to call her, and then…
Ah, but as Grandpa Nate would say, “nussing is free in dis vorld”.
Dreams of Meg had plagued him—rather entertained him—all night. Even now, recalling how her small, plump breasts bounced up and down while she ran alongside him, how her long ponytail swung back and forth, filled him with unbridled lust. The one time they’d stopped at the Roman ruins, they’d let their arms brush together. Neither had pulled away. Just that light touch had flooded his insides with longing. She appeared to feel the same. She’d flushed to the roots of her hair and after that, had touched him in some small way every chance she got. Each touch was electric, sizzling!
What he liked about her was her total lack of coyness or flirtatiousness. Meg was straightforward, without guile; she wasn’t playing games. He could read the honesty in her face when she told him about her breakup with the ex-fiancé and her distrust of men and their empty promises and vows. All lies, she’d mused with just a hint of bitterness. She’d finally come to accept the reality of men.
Or some men, she’d amended, adding quickly that she’d apologize if she was offending him. No, he’d said; I agree with you. Most men lie through their teeth. It’s a guy thing.
That admission had elicited a small, rueful laugh from both of them. And she’d let her arm brush his again, as if to reassure him. He was different, she was saying.
No, I’m not, he’d wanted to say. I’m a liar, an impostor. And you’re going to hate me when this is all over.
Another time, as they stopped at a Starbucks for coffee, they’d circled around the same theme.
“Why do people lie?” Meg asked.
“I suppose they lie when they want something and they know the truth isn’t going to get it for them.”
“Hmm. I think people need one person in this world they can count on to always tell them the truth.” She smiled. “Like my grandmother. She’s brutally honest, always has been.”
He said nothing for a long moment. “You’re right about that. Finding that one person is…well, I sometimes wonder if it’s possible.”
That was the bald-faced truth, Jake now realized, even though he still puzzled over it. He was wildly drawn to Meghan Larsen, more so than he’d ever been to any woman before—so much, he almost couldn’t believe it. Normally, as suspicious as he’d grown of women since his marriage to Barbara had crashed and burned four years before, it took him a while to warm up to women, to trust them.
Now he felt as if he carried a bubble of air inside his chest.
His nerve endings felt on fire, crackly with synaptic firings.
Rationally, there was nothing Jake could base this feeling on except his delight in her beauty and her pleasing personality, plus his own instincts about her basic decency and integrity. More than that, he’d sensed in her a deep capacity to love. And a deep desire to be loved, truly and honestly. Beyond that, he’d felt a deep kinship, an intense connection, a sense he could trust her with his life. There was a basic decency there, a desire to help people and give purpose to her life. She didn’t just want a man; she wanted a purposeful life. A meaningful life.
Jake could understand that. It was why he’d chosen law enforcement as a career. Why he was a patriot.
From their conversation, Meg was still a little gun-shy with men. This came after breaking off her engagement to a lying, cheating jerk the year before. As a result, she distrusted men, liars in particular.
Which, of course, didn’t bode well for Jake. Deception, after all, was the basis of their budding friendship.
Which made him face the fact he’d have to give her up before he could have her.
The pain was sharp, like a dagger to the gut. Pangs of guilt stabbed through him. Remorse for having to deceive her. But what could he do? It was his job.
He switched off his circular thinking. No point to it, after all. What was the time difference between England and California? Seven hours? Nine?
His personal, international four-band cell phone took but a moment before he heard the phone ring. Then a gruff male voice. Sounding annoyed at the interruption.
“Pop, it’s Jake. I’m calling from…” Where the hell was he? “…Bath, England.”
“Bath? You’re taking a bath?”
His father was hard-of-hearing, took off his hearing aids late at night while reading in bed. A rustle over the line and then Jake tried again.
“Oh, Bath, as in England?” his father said, apparently after popping them in. “On assignment, you say? Wish the machers at the university would send me to Europe. I’m lucky to write off my annual American Chemical Society conference. So, Jacob, you called to kvetch?”
Jake’s father was a Reform Jew but still liked to throw in some Yiddish every now and then. He observed once that America had diluted the Bernsteins’ devotion to their religion, but he’d said this without rancor. He also said hal
f-jokingly that God was a scientist. A member of the next generation, Jake had come to regard himself and his father as secular humanists by temperament, Jews by heritage. Which suited him fine.
“Just called to shoot the breeze, Pop. How’s the family? Mom, David, Isaac? Oma?”
Within a minute, he’d gotten his father’s thumbnail update. Jake’s mother had grown tired of portraits and was now doing seascapes. David had been promoted to bank manager and his wife was expecting their second child any day now. Isaac was finishing law school and wanted Jake to come out to California for his graduation party. Oma, Grandpa Nate’s widow, was doing well after her cataract surgery.
Then Jake got down to the real point of his call.
“Pop, you said you fell in love with Mom at first sight, right?”
Jake knew his father would gleefully relate the familiar tale. He supposed hearing it again might confirm the possibility of such an unlikely miracle.
“True, Jacob. I was a T.A. for Chem 10. Bonehead chemistry for non-science majors, the bane of all graduate students. I was quizzing the prof’s students for a midterm exam. Your mother sat in the front row. I knew her name but had never spoken to her. Of course, I wanted to. She dazzled me. Absolutely dazzled me. So I called on her, asked her what element on the Periodic Chart B represented. Without blinking or hesitating, she said Bernsteinium. The class laughed. So did I. After class, I called her up to the front and asked her out. I was just the T.A. at the time, so it was allowed. Anyway, she said yes, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“So you believe in love at first sight? Or love right away?”
“Oh, yes. You just know deep inside, this person is The One. This person is…good for you. Or right for you.” A pause. “You’ve met someone, Jacob?”
“Yeah, but it’s unbelievably complicated. If it goes the way I think—or hope it goes, things might work out. If it doesn’t, well, she may end up despising me.”
“As your Grandpa Nate would say, Yakov…mitzvah, be brave. Go after her. Love’s not for the faint of heart. So mazel tov, son.”
Jake smiled, hearing Grandpa Nate’s German accent, rendered so perfectly by his father. It made the dear old man come alive for a moment. After listening to more family gossip, he rang off.
Checking his watch, he figured he had thirty minutes before the scheduled tour group breakfast. He took out the printouts of the decrypted, declassified MI5 material sent to Jake’s FBI computer. Declassified didn’t mean open to public scrutiny, of course, so Jake kept the files in a locked, hidden compartment of the aluminum suitcase he sometimes brought along on undercover assignments. He’d transferred the files, which he’d perused on his transatlantic flight, into the carryon, but locked them away once he’d landed at Heathrow.
For the moment, he decided to forego a second reading of the transcripts of Mike McCoy’s interviews and notes from the man’s investigation of his cousin. He’d review them again once they arrived in Ireland, since that was where Mike McCoy’s investigation took place. It might make more sense once he hit the ground. Sensing that one of the keys to unlocking the mystery of Mary McCoy Snider rested in information on Mary’s life during the war, Jake decided to concentrate on the Brits’ War Department files. How and where she lived, as well as her professional life as an SIS translator-transcriber, which to Jake amounted to the same thing.
Fluent in German and Hebrew—thanks to Grandpa Nate’s insistence on Hebrew school—Jake was often used as the Bureau’s liaison to Mossad bureaucrats and agents in place. The State Department often used him in delicate dealings with Israel’s Knesset. Sometimes he was an oral translator, helping to facilitate high-level discussions or briefing sessions; other times, he’d be asked to translate classified documents in Hebrew from the Mossad. For him, it was always easier to translate documents than do on-the-spot oral translating, which required a native’s up-to-date knowledge of idioms. Although he regularly read Israel’s weekly news magazine, he also spent a month in Israel every two or three years to stay up-to-date in idioms and slang. Language was fluid, constantly changing. Still, by American standards he was considered fluent.
Which was why if he ever heard Mary Snider speak German, he’d know right away by her accent and her use of idioms whether she was a native speaker or not, whether she was current in the language, or whether her knowledge of idioms and slang was dated—as in World War II dated. Getting her to speak German—how was he going to manage that?
It appeared, looking over the old SIS dossiers that had been scanned into MI5’s databank, that their clerical support staff had received periodic reviews and evaluations. Mary McCoy was no exception. Pulling out a personnel review, dated July 15, 1942, Jake read closely. Evidently, the staff was kept under spotty surveillance—randomly checked or followed, their patterns of behavior and transit dutifully recorded. Using a map of London, Jake could picture a very correct Englishman in a homburg and carrying a walking cane trailing a young, pretty Mary McCoy after she emerged from Churchill’s subterranean offices near Clive Steps and crossed the street to St. James Park. Or maybe following her up Whitehall past Charing Cross to her Ladies’ Boarding House on Henrietta Street near Covent Garden. Then waiting around to witness and record any gentlemen friends who came to visit her in the evenings.
Yes, he could picture it all. Or the tail might’ve been a young chap in dungarees cycling behind her through St. James Park on her days off, duly noting any persons of interest Mary might have stopped to speak with. Surely, the young Mary McCoy would’ve been forewarned to expect such scrutiny. It came with the job. If innocent of spying, she would’ve shrugged off such surveillance but would’ve been discreet in her associations with strangers. By training, however, a Nazi mole would’ve taken great care to avoid contact with known Nazi sympathizers. The Brits had complete records of the Fifth Column, as these Nazi sympathizers had been called.
That didn’t preclude using that favorite tactic of all spies the world over, the dead drop. Wearing a certain colored scarf or hat through the park or into a certain pub on a prearranged day could’ve signaled that a dead drop was to be made at the signal site. A secret note or communication could be hidden in a discarded sandwich bag or fish ’n chips wrapper, thrown into a refuse container, to be fished out later. Even expert surveillance could reveal only so much. A cautious, clever spy would know when she was followed. If the spy didn’t have that sixth sense, that special instinct of caution and survival, he or she wouldn’t last long.
The fact that these two women—Hummingbird and Black Widow—had never been caught testified to their extraordinary survival instincts.
These two women were master spies. And very, very lucky.
Like many Nazi spies, she—whoever Hummingbird or Black Widow was—may have had a wireless radio. According to this 1942 report, Mary McCoy and another SIS translator had lived at the same boarding house on Henrietta Street. Mary lived on the top floor, the fourth, in a room by herself, the other woman was on the same floor but in a room across the hall. Mary liked to play records in the evening and was partial to American jazz, swing and big-band dance music. Jake knew that wireless radios during the Second World War had better reception close to the rooftops.
German Heinkels—the Luftwaffe’s heavy bombers—regularly flew overhead and received messages at certain secret military frequencies. According to Major Temple’s files, radio operators in Hamburg had powerful enough transceivers that could send and receive coded messages up to 500 miles away. A prearranged day and time would have been set. Say, on Sunday evenings at 9 p.m. A spy couldn’t risk detection, so she’d limit her radio time to five or ten minutes. Messages would be sent in code. The music in the evening would’ve masked the transmission sounds from her wireless radio.
The Brits, like the Germans, had radio intercept monitors that could detect enemy shortwave frequencies, so Hummingbird and Black Widow would’ve had to keep their coded transmissions very short and to the point. Staying on an enemy f
requency longer than necessary was a surefire way to get caught, which meant a quick trip to the gallows. During wartime, justice was swift and cruel.
Jake looked up, his mind wandering. Imagine, old lady Mary Snider swinging from a hangman’s noose somewhere in a dungeon in today’s London. No, impossible. Meg and her family would hire a slew of lawyers to keep that from happening. They’d fight extradition for years—the ensuing scandal no doubt harming American-Anglo relations in the process. No wonder MI5 and the FBI chose him, a stickler for thorough intel analysis. He wouldn’t jump to conclusions right off the bat.
Helluva lot at stake here. The very fact sent a shiver down the back of Jake’s skull. This assignment could be a career maker or breaker.
Jake sucked in a mouthful of air.
Back to the MI5 dossier: In all fairness, Mary McCoy had been a prodigious reader and knitter, loaned out books to the other single women in the house and made wool sweaters for everyone, including the boarding house’s owner, a war widow. She had few close friends but was cordial with all the women in the house.
Jake made a small harrumph. Mary Snider, cordial? Well, why not? Sixty years could change a person’s character and personality. Couldn’t it?
On her free days, Mary had liked to cycle through the various London parks and along the Strand, although St. James appeared to have been her favorite park. She never once in her four years in London returned home to Killarney, Ireland. When asked why, Mary explained that her parents’ death in April of 1940—a bizarre drowning on the lake in Killarney’s Ross Park—was too recent; going home was too painful.
The boarding house owner, a Mrs. Watson, had confirmed Mary’s quiet, respectful ways; her few gentlemen callers, Mary had entertained in the downstairs parlor. Entertaining in the girls’ rooms was, of course, forbidden, considering the era. There was one Scotsman, a Royal Air Force captain—a Captain Ferguson—who pursued her, took her out to dinner and dancing at the various clubs and ballrooms in the city. He was killed in ’44 during a bombing run over Germany, a month after D-Day—the Allied invasion of Europe.
A Bodyguard of Lies Page 8