Mary McCoy’s life in London during the war must’ve been a very lonely existence for a pretty, young Irish girl, Jake imagined; he wondered how deep her relationship with this Captain Ferguson had been. There were few other men. Several young women in the house confirmed Mary’s correspondence with the Killarney parish priest, Father Dillon, and a male cousin named Thomas McCoy. Or a man Mrs. Watson—who noted all the mail going out and coming in—assumed was her male cousin. They shared the same last name.
Jake paused. Thomas McCoy?
Not Mike McCoy, the old man who’d visited Mary Snider in her Dallas suburb home…when? Ten years ago, according to the first page of an impressive eighty-four page long compilation of notes by Mike McCoy. Tenacious old coot!
From the surveillance officer’s five reports, dated 1940, 1941, 1942, updated again in 1943 and for the last time in 1944, those were the only two people Mary McCoy corresponded with during those war years. Father Dillon and Thomas McCoy. The letters from both men were postmarked from Ireland, beginning in mid 1940; Father Dillon’s correspondence continued through the end of 1944.
Jake double-checked the date on the abrupt end of Thomas McCoy’s letters. One letter from Ireland dated in July, 1944. That was the last one.
Evidently, Mrs. Watson was asked to keep diligent track of Mary McCoy and the other SIS translator and her notes were included in the dossier. This was a common practice in Great Britain at the time. Every British subject was asked to report any suspicious activity or any strangers in town to the local constable, whose duty it was to investigate. Many spies and Nazi sympathizers and “unfriendly aliens” were rooted out in that manner. A kind of nationwide Neighborhood Watch program. Highly successful, too, considering the large percentage of Third Reich spies found in the British Isles and either turned into double agents or hanged.
So who was this Thomas McCoy? An asterisk added in pen by Major Temple, and explained in the footnote, confirmed that Mary McCoy had no cousin by that name. Could this man have been an acquaintance of Mary’s from her school days, have the same last name but be no relation to her? That was possible. Jake wondered if Major Temple had checked out Mary McCoy’s neighbors in Killarney or the roster of her school chums in both Killarney and Dublin.
He made a note on a separate yellow pad to ask Major Temple about this. It might be important; Mary didn’t write to her cousin Mike, but did write to Thomas, no relation to her. ’Course, Jake had a few cousins from his mother’s side whom he wouldn’t correspond with either, not if his life depended on it.
The surveillance report was signed by the tracking officer and also by Mary’s evaluator and supervisor at SIS/MI5, Herbert Arthur. In his opinion, her work habits were faultless: Always punctual, modest and discreet in her demeanor. Worked overtime without complaint, spoke and wrote flawless French…and although she spoke passable German with a heavy Irish-English accent, her transcription skills in German were better. Her knowledge of idiomatic German was rudimentary at best. That of a third or fourth year student of German. Which could mean that Mary had studied German while at Trinity College in Dublin.
Jake added that tidbit of information to his notes and underscored it. A Nazi mole would be fluent in German and have no accent if she were German-born, herself. Of course, a mole might want to hide that fluency, too. Part of her cover—the pretense of being an Irish girl with no previous visits to Germany? And just a book knowledge of the language.
His head began to swim. His stomach growled. Damn, he was hungry! Ten minutes to go before breakfast was served.
Back to the report: Mary McCoy was a fastidious worker. There was no hint of a security breach or even criticism of her linguistic skills, except that her German was limited. It appeared not to be a problem or concern for her supervisor; other translators, English subjects who’d studied or worked in Germany for years, were available. Those staff translators in German had the task of monitoring German radio intercepts, writing them down in a kind of shorthand before transcribing them verbatim into English.
Elsewhere, such as Bletchley Park—the famous code-cracking campus in the countryside—code breakers applied their skills to the transcripts. Since German military ciphers were changed all the time, this was an ongoing challenge.
Mary McCoy did the same—monitored radio intercepts—but only in French, and in this her work was considered remarkable. It sounded, if Jake was correct in reading between the lines, as if Herbert Arthur was half in love with the young, lovely, Irish miss. Perhaps the married man’s crush had colored his evaluation reports, even though the reports appeared thorough. Of course, Jake was trained to be skeptical of everything. Suspend belief until the evidence proved otherwise.
So far, the evidence indicated no suspicious activity on Mary McCoy’s part. She had done her job for the SIS well enough and led a quiet, discreet personal life while in London. Her social life consisted of dates with British airmen and the occasional American soldier. By January of 1945, she was dating exclusively Army Air Corps Lieutenant John Snider, soon to be Captain Snider.
Jake’s mantra: Follow the evidence.
His discomfort suddenly spiked as his thoughts circled back upon themselves. Would someone later make the same observation about his investigation of Mary McCoy Snider? That his lust for her pretty granddaughter made him look the other way and ignore the plain facts of the case? The possibility made his stomach churn with bile.
That won’t happen.
He checked his watch. Time for breakfast.
About time!
Chapter Ten
The hotel dining room, noisy with the motor coach travelers and other tourists, was warm with bodies and hot food. The party-size coffee urns beckoned him like an oasis in the desert. Slowly, his stomach-grumblings subsided as the aromas drifted over him. On his way to the coffee table, he nodded to the Canadian, Hank Philemon, once again sitting with the two sisters from New Jersey. The man’d been vague about what he did—some kind of freelance writer for sports magazines. The sisters were both nurses on holiday. Swinging sisters. Bet Hank was having fun.
They motioned him over but he just smiled and continued on.
He poured himself a cup of black coffee, hoping all the while it was brewed thick and strong, the way he liked it. Yeah, good, it was. The rich aroma gave him a heady pleasure.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meg approach. Schooling himself to keep his cool around her, keep it friendly and keep his pulse rate under control, Jake turned to face her.
Her broad smile warmed his heart. Sent his pulse skipping.
“Good morning, Jake. Come and join us over there. We’re sitting with the French-Canadian couple from Montreal.” Her eyes sparkled, her dimples showed.
Boy, was she a charmer. She knew he was hooked, Jake mused. That should’ve worried him but it didn’t. To her, he was just another male conquest. Another guy to add to her male fan club. Maybe.
Which suited his cover just fine. It would explain why he was spending so much time with Mary Snider and her granddaughter. Nodding his assent, he followed her to their table set for five.
Meg was wearing her hair in a long ponytail, revealing a long, lean neck. He found himself staring at the back of her neck, the nape where a few, short blonde tendrils curled. His stare continued downward, taking in her tight jeans and cropped sweater top. Her body was perfect, Jake decided; curvy in the right places, lean in the others. He had the crazy urge to wrap his arms around her waist.
His attention snapped to the friendly older couple who greeted him in French-accented English. Even Mary Snider smiled in greeting although the smile never reached her eyes. Apparently finished with her breakfast, Meg moved over to make room for him. He set down his coffee, pulled up a chair next to Meg’s, then went back to forage at the buffet tables.
Ten minutes later, Jake was halfway finished with his breakfast, a typically large English breakfast, enough to make your belly bulge: Blood sausage, bangers made from God-knew-what, scram
bled eggs, poached tomatoes, fried potatoes, and damn…even pork ’n beans. Another day of this calorie-laden food and he’d have to add a couple of miles to his daily run.
He’d been idly listening to the French Canadians speaking rapid-fire French with Meg and her grandmother, noting Mary Snider’s total lack of an accent. In fact, he’d swear her French pronunciation—though he didn’t speak French, he’d heard the various accents all over France—was Parisian. It had the clipped inflection and nasal tonality of the Parisians. Naturally, Meg the French teacher was fluent.
Strange, Jake thought, for Mary, a woman who supposedly had never been outside Ireland and Britain before the war. He caught himself; her French teacher at the university in Dublin might’ve been a Parisian. Students tend to learn accents from their foreign language teacher. And, of course, Mary could’ve visited Paris after the war. Even Meg spoke French without a trace of an English accent. Of course, she probably spoke it every day at the high school but it was apparent she’d spent some time in France. Probably with her grandmother.
He washed down a forkful of eggs with a long sip of strong, Italian roast coffee and sighed with pleasure.
“You and your grandmother speak French with no accent,” he observed to Meg. “It’s a remarkable gift, to have such an ear for languages. I’m fluent but I speak German and Hebrew with a heavy American accent. As soon as I open my mouth, they can tell I’m a Yank.”
“Jake, we’re mimics. Parrots, Grandma says, but with understanding. We can hear a foreign phrase spoken and repeat it with perfect pitch and tone. It’s why I became a foreign-language teacher. I can teach my students as if I were a native-born Spaniard or Frenchman. It’s my only talent, I’m afraid,” she added ruefully.
Jake doubted that, but didn’t say what immediately sprang to mind.
“You and your grandmother’ve been to France, it sounds like.”
Meg smiled. “Oh yes, many times. I’m sorry, it’s rude to leave you out of the conversation. Please, pas de francais maintenant.” No more French.
She smiled a half-pleading, half-apologetic smile at the French Canadian couple. When her dimples creased, who could refuse her? Jake caught himself staring at her beauty. The only makeup she wore was a little rose-red lipstick, and maybe a smidgen of mascara. God had been good to her—she didn’t need anything else to enhance her natural beauty.
“But of course!” exclaimed the husband. “We apologize. It is just so nice to hear our mother language. And Mary and Meg’s French is formidable.”
Jake held up a hand, palm outward. “No need to apologize.” He smiled at Meg in gratitude. Here was his opening—might as well blunder ahead.
“You’re learning German, you told me. Does your grandmother speak German, too?”
“Yes, I heard her speak German when we were in France and met some German tourists. What about it, Grandma? How’s your German?”
In mid-chew, Mary Snider paused, glanced over at him and then smiled at her granddaughter. The elderly woman drank from her glass of orange juice, all the while fixing Jake with a cool look.
“You’re right, Meggie, we’re forgetting our manners. Mr. Bernstein, you’ve met Pierre and Madeleine Le Blanc, haven’t you?”
Jake noted that the elderly woman had completely ignored his question. He nodded at both French Canadians. The couple was oddly matched, he thought; she was tall, pretty and dark-complected to her husband’s short, pale and homely baldness. Both looked in their sixties and appeared well-heeled in their clothes and jewelry. Pierre’s Rolex watch sported three rows of multi-colored diamonds; Marguerite wore a sporty, belted jacket of sable mink. Retired and rich. What a way to go!
“To answer your question, Mr. Bernstein, yes,” Mary Snider offered proudly, “I speak German fluently—hocht Deutsch—the way it should be spoken. I was a French and German translator during the war.”
Had Mary Snider just admitted that her German was fluent? Or was she exaggerating—preening and boasting—to impress the wealthy French Canadian couple? Jake needed to test her.
“Oh, yes. You worked for British intelligence, right?” he asked, switching immediately into the Berliner German he’d learned initially from his grandfather…but for this occasion, haltingly and with a third-grader’s vocabulary. “Please, Frau Snider, ask our friends here to pardon us while we speak a little in German. To give me practice. And Meg, too, a chance to practice.”
Mary Snider did so in French, and when the couple nodded and Meg leaned his way, obviously captivated by the opportunity to speak her fledgling German, Jake continued.
“Sehr gut, I need the practice. Meg, join us. Jump in whenever you like.” He looked over at Mary. “I speak a Berliner dialect, which my grandfather taught me. He often said that we should never forget the country and heritage of our forefathers. That included the language as well. He was proud of being German born.”
Mary’s chin lifted a little. “Naturlich, Herr Bernstein. We must always be proud of our heritage.” Jake listened intently as the elderly woman expounded upon the merits of maintaining pride in one’s country no matter what mistakes the government makes. The people continue on and the struggle to keep one’s country pure and homogenous must continue as well. It was a shame how England was losing the purity of its race, how diluted it was becoming with immigrants from all over the third world…
Jake sat there, listening intently. Inside, his heartbeat revved up. He could barely contain his excitement. He finally had something noteworthy to report to Major Temple.
For the next minute, Mary Snider spoke in unaccented, perfect German, about a few topics, most of which sounded uncomfortably like the speaking points of a right-wing political group. She’d chosen her words carefully; they were highly educated terms for eugenics, racial purity, homogeneous populations, and economic protectionism. She definitely abhorred globalization. All of these no doubt were meant to swamp Jake’s comprehension level and leave him drowning linguistically.
Her accent, he noted also, was northern Germany but he couldn’t place exactly where. Hamburg…Hanover…maybe somewhere in Lower Saxony. Her accent was Niedersachsen, he thought, but couldn’t be sure.
When he had an opening, he spoke of the inevitability of globalization. Again, he spoke with a child’s vocabulary, hoping that his limited vocabulary would encourage her to let down her guard. It seemed to be working. Meanwhile, his head was buzzing with the significance of what he was hearing—and he was barely through his second cup of coffee.
Jake was stunned. Mary Snider was either German-born or she’d learned German—fluently, somehow—from a northern German. What would’ve been her motive, then, for lying to the SIS? Pretending that her German was limited? Why, during wartime, did she pretend to speak passable German with a heavy English accent? What had she been afraid of? Afraid that no one would believe she could be so fluent, an Irish girl who’d never been to Germany?
Jake waited for a sign from Mary that conveyed something…some emotion. There was nothing, no effect at all. No passion. It was as if she were reciting from a right-wing propaganda handbook. Interrupting her grandmother, Meg spoke up in English. Apparently, her grandmother’s monologue had left her confused.
“I think I understood one-fourth of what you said, Grandma. You too, Jake. You’re both too good for me to follow. And here, I thought you were joking or exaggerating, Jake. Your German sounds great.”
He basked for a moment under her warm, affectionate gaze. Her attraction to him seemed genuine. Again, unbidden, he visualized her lying next to him in his bed. Damn, but she belonged there.
If only that were possible…
“I generally say what I mean, Meg. And mean what I say.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely true—certainly not when he was undercover. Still, he smiled back at Meg, basking under her open look of admiration. He struggled to conceal his longing for her but a surge of sudden heat deepened within him. This was more than lust. What it was, he wasn’t sure, but it w
as more than lust. With difficulty, he pried himself loose. Switched gears and looked at Mary Snider.
“Mrs. Snider, where did you learn to speak such fluent German?”
Mary hesitated but a brief moment. “In Dublin. I had an excellent German teacher.”
“Grandma, didn’t you have a German boyfriend in Dublin? A student who had to return to serve his country when the war with Germany broke out?”
“Yes,” Mary said quietly. Jake thought he saw her wince slightly at the mention of this young man.
“You see, I told you, Jake.” Meg smiled proudly. “Grandma and I are both parrots. Born mimics. You learned your German from your grandfather? The film editor?”
“Partly. I also studied it in high school, college. Spent some time in Germany during my Navy days.”
“Really?” Mary Snider queried, one whitish-blonde eyebrow cocked. “The U.S. Navy’s in Germany? I’m not aware of any Navy bases there.”
“Pentagon liaison work with Mannheim Air Force Base. It was strictly administrative stuff. Nothing exciting, I’m afraid.” Turning his full attention to Meg, he smiled. “So, Meg, anytime you care to practice with me, I’m ready. Y’know, use it or lose it.”
“We’ll speak German while we jog in the evening, okay? That’ll be fun, Jake.”
He nodded and returned Meg’s stare. The sparks between him and Meg got a rise out of her grandmother. Her face like a stone mask, Mary Snider let flow a stream of rapid German, all directed at him.
“My granddaughter is quite taken with you, young man, and her feelings are important to me. She must not be hurt again. You’re too good-looking, too smooth, too glib. I think you have a wife and family in Virginia, and she is just…a plaything to you.”
Jake coughed in surprise. “No, there’s no wife,” Jake said in German, “no kids. I’m divorced, been single for four years. I just want to be Meg’s friend.”
The elderly woman pondered his admission—a lie, actually, since he wanted so much more from the woman’s granddaughter—while Meg looked like she’d understood a little of what he’d said. She was now blushing at her grandmother’s effrontery. Being spoken about in your presence like a child was not very flattering.
A Bodyguard of Lies Page 9