* * * *
“Morning, Lieutenant. I’m from the American legation in Bern and I have some questions for you. The first thing I need to know is your name.”
The young airman looked suitably intimidated and clutched his escape kit to his chest. But he answered without first asking for my name, which I took as a good sign. Easily cowed by authority I surmised, even though he carried a decent rank of his own.
“Lieutenant Seymour Parker. Emporia, Kansas.”
“Navigator, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“I know a lot of things. Come with me, please. We’ve got some more questions for you.”
“Are you an officer?”
“Like I said, I’m with the legation.”
“But the Swiss officers said ...”
“They’ve been notified. So has your CO. Let’s go.”
He looked around at his seatmates, who shrugged. I got the impression they hadn’t known one another long, or else they would have risen to his defense.
Parker rose awkwardly. A long flight in a Fortress stiffened you up, especially when followed by an uneasy night of sleep on a Swiss cot in an empty schoolhouse. He followed me meekly up the aisle to where Butchart was waiting, just as the train was pulling into Adelboden. We had arranged for the legation to send down a car and driver, which seemed to impress him. Butchart and I sat on either side of him on the backseat of a big Ford.
If I had been in Parker’s shoes, I would have been asking a million questions. He tried one or two, then stopped altogether when Butchart told him brusquely to shut up. If we had been Germans posing as Americans we could have hijacked him every bit as easily. Butchart looked over at me and nodded, as if he was thinking the same thing.
The roads were clear of snow, and we made it to Bern in about an hour. We said little along the way, letting the pressure build, and when we reached the city we took him to an empty back room in one of the legation offices. Seeing the American flag out front and hearing other people speaking English seemed to put him at ease. We shut the door and settled Parker into a stiff-backed chair. The first thing Butchart asked was how many missions he’d flown.
“This, uh, this was my first.”
Perfect, and we both knew it. Enough to get a taste of terror without growing accustomed to it.
“Some of your crewmates looked pretty experienced,” I said.
“They are. I was a replacement.”
“So what happened to you guys up there?” Butchart asked. “You fuck up the charts or something, get everybody lost?”
Parker reddened, and for the first time defiance crept into his voice.
“No, it wasn’t like that at all. We were in the middle of the formation and took some hits. Didn’t even reach the target. We came out below Regensburg with only two engines, and one of those was smoking. Lieutenant Braden, he’s our pilot, asked me to plot a course toward Lake Constance.”
“Well, you did that part okay, I guess.”
Butchart then eased up a bit by asking a few personal questions. He companionably pulled up a chair next to Parker’s and started nodding sympathetically as the kid answered. I say “kid,” but Parker was twenty, the son of a wheat farmer. He was a third-year engineering student at the University of Kansas, which explained how he had qualified for navigator training.
As he spoke it became clear that he was a man of simple, innocent tastes. He liked to read, didn’t smoke, preferred soda over beer, and didn’t have a serious girlfriend. Up to the time of his arrival in England he seemed to have believed that his hometown of Emporia was the center of the universe, and his college town of Lawrence was a veritable Athens. The most important bit of intelligence to come out of this part of our chat was that he had spent the previous summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.
“A lifeguard, huh?” Butchart sounded worried. “You volunteered?”
“Sure.”
“And went through all the training?”
“Well...”
“Well what?”
“I was kinda filling in. All the regulars had enlisted, so there really wasn’t time for me to take the courses.”
“Sorta like with your bombing mission?”
“I guess.”
Parker went meek and quiet again, as if we’d just exposed him as a fraud.
“Can I ask you guys something?”
“Sure,” Butchart said.
“What’s this all about? I mean, I know you mentioned something about a job. But what kind of job?”
“A onetime deal. A mission, provided you qualify. You’d be sent home on a prisoner exchange. But you’d have to memorize some information for us to pass along to the generals once you got back to the States. Facts and figures, maybe a lot of them.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I’ll bet. And in return you’d get a free trip home. Not bad, huh?”
He smiled at that, then frowned, as if realizing it sounded too good to be true.
“But why me? There are plenty of other guys who’ve earned it more.”
“Do you always look a gift horse in the mouth? Did you turn down the lifeguard job?”
“No, but. . . “
“But what?”
“I dunno. Something seems kinda funny about the whole thing.”
I tried to put him at ease.
“Look, you’re a navigator, which means you probably have a head for numbers and memorization. So there you go. You said it yourself, you’d be good at it.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
Butchart spent the next few minutes going over the preparation that would be required. He also described the likely route home—up through occupied France in the company of German escorts from the SS. Parker’s eyes got a little wide during that part, and Butchart nodded at me in approval.
“So let’s say you get caught, Parker. Let’s say that halfway through this nice little train ride to Paris, one of those Krauts gets suspicious and takes you off at the next stop for a little questioning. What do you do then?”
“You mean if I’m captured?”
“No, dumb ass. You’re already captured. That’s why you’re part of an exchange. But let’s say they decide to check you out, grill you a little. What you gonna tell ‘em?”
“Name, rank, and serial number?”
“Yeah, sure. But what else?”
“Well, nothing, I hope.”
Butchart got in his face like a drill sergeant.
“You hope?”
“Okay, I know. Or know I’ll try.”
“C’mon, Parker, you can level with us. You really think you could handle some Gestapo thug getting all over you? What would you tell him?”
“I like to think I wouldn’t say a damn thing.”
“You mean like if they try this?”
Butchart slid a knife from his belt. Then he grabbed Parker by a shank of hair and pulled back his head. Before the kid even realized what was happening, Butchart had put the flat of the blade against the white of Parker’s neck—steel on skin, as if he were about to peel him like a piece of fruit.
Parker swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. For a moment I thought he was going to cry.
“Whadda you doin’?”
“Checkin’ you out.”
Butchart yanked Parker’s head lower while holding the blade steady. Sweat beaded at Parker’s temples, and his eyes bulged. When he next spoke his voice was an octave higher.
“I’m not the enemy, okay?”
“Oh, yeah? How do we know that for sure?”
Another tug on his hair, this time eliciting a sharp squeal of pain.
“You coulda been a plant, put on that train to fool us. Or to infiltrate all our other boys and steal their secrets. Air routes, evasion tendencies, stuff about the new bombsight. How come nobody in your compartment acted like they knew you?”
“I’m new!” he said shrilly. “Nobody talks to replacements!”
; Butchart abruptly released him and put away the knife. Parker sat up and tried to collect himself, but it was no good. His skin was pale gooseflesh, and he was swallowing so fast that his throat was working like a piston. He touched the spot where Butchart had held the blade. There were still red marks from Butchart’s knuckles. A little cruel, no doubt, but I guess it was necessary.
Butchart turned toward me and nodded, and I knew without a word that it was his confirmation signal.
“I’ll tell Colonel Gill,” he said, rising from his chair.
“You mean I’m out?”
It wasn’t clear if Parker was relieved or disappointed, which for us only enhanced his suitability.
“No,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “You’re in. You passed with flying colors.”
“You’ll start your training tomorrow,” Butchart said. “Tobin here will go over the timetable.”
We had two weeks to bring him up to speed on all the garbage information Colonel Gill wanted drilled into his head. Figuring that his taskmaster needed to be just as committed to the “facts” as his clueless student, the colonel assigned a sergeant from his staff named Wesley Flagg to handle the learning sessions.
Flagg was the perfect choice—pleasant, good-hearted, and as sincere as they come. Flagg’s earnestness drove Butchart crazy, enough that he assigned me to keep tabs on the lessons. But as far as Colonel Gill was concerned, Flagg’s greatest attribute was that he never questioned orders. Even if Flagg were to suspect that the information was flawed, there was virtually no chance he would have raised a fuss. He would simply assume that his superiors knew best.
Parker was a fast learner. Every time I asked Flagg for an update, he gushed about his pupil’s ability to handle a heavy workload. But for all his boasting I sensed an unspoken uneasiness about Parker’s fitness for the job. Flagg dared to bring it up only once, asking, “Are you sure Colonel Gill has signed off on this guy? I mean, Parker’s great with the material, but, well. . .”
“Well what? He’s the colonel’s top choice.”
“Nothing, then.”
He never brought it up again.
The night before the exchange was to take place, Butchart asked me to take Parker his consignment of cigarettes. All four of the airmen were getting several cartons to help them spread goodwill along the way. They also might need to bribe some petty bureaucrat, even though the SS would be their official escorts.
Parker was billeted at a small hotel in the center of Bern. Conveniently—as far as we were concerned—it was just down the block from an apartment rented by a pair of Gestapo officers. Presumably they had passed him in the streets by now. He still wore his uniform from time to time, and they would have wondered right away what he was up to.
OSS operatives who worked for Dulles were taught that when meeting contacts it was best to disguise their comings and goings and to rendezvous on neutral ground. In Parker’s case I was instructed not to bother, even though it put a knot in my stomach simply to walk into the hotel’s small lobby and ask for him by name. A man was seated in the lobby on a couch. I didn’t know his name or nationality, and I didn’t ask.
Parker was restless, as anyone might have been on the eve of such an undertaking. But somehow he was not quite the same as the fellow I remembered from a few weeks earlier. Was my imagination playing tricks on me, or had he lost some of his callowness as he settled into his new role?
He finished packing in almost no time, so I asked if I could treat him to a beer.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I probably won t be able to sleep much either way, so I might as well try to do it with a clear head. But there is one favor you can do me.”
“Sure.”
“Tell me, is there something funny about this operation? Something that, well, maybe no one has mentioned?”
I made it a point to look him straight in the eye, as much for myself as for him.
“There are always aspects of operations that aren’t disclosed to the operatives. It’s for their own protection.”
“That’s all you’re allowed to say?”
As he asked it, his face was like that of the catcher in my son’s Little League game—vulnerable yet determined, timid yet willing to go forward, come what may For a moment I was tempted to tell him everything.
But I didn’t, if only because the advice I had just imparted was true. It was in his best interests not to know. For one thing, the truth would have devastated him. For another, the Germans would have read his intentions immediately. And while it’s one thing to have the enemy catch you functioning as a secret courier, it’s quite another to be caught operating as an agent of deception. Setting Parker up for that fate would have been tantamount to marching him before a firing squad.
So I tried offering an oblique word of advice, hoping that when the right time came he would recall my words and put them to good use.
“Look, if for some unforeseen reason push does come to shove, just keep in mind that it’s you who will be out there taking the blows, not us. So go with your own instincts.”
It only seemed to puzzle him. Finally he smiled.
“Maybe I should take you up on that beer, after all.”
“Good enough.”
He drank three, as it turned out, the first time in his life he had downed more than one at a sitting, and it showed in his wobble as I escorted him back to the room. He turned out his light just as I was leaving.
The actual exchange at the border was almost anticlimactic.
Oh, the SS man showed up, all right, just as he had for the previous swap engineered by Dulles. I suppose he was appropriately sinister with his swagger stick and stiff Prussian walk, and certainly for the way he snapped his heels and offered a crisp Nazi salute along with the obligatory “Heil Hitler.”
It definitely got Parker’s attention, but I don’t recall it striking much fear into me. Or maybe I’ve rewritten the scene in my memory, having watched countless Hollywood versions that have turned the officer’s dark gestures into costumed parody, complete with cheesy accent. I suppose I’ve always wanted to regard him as a harmless stereotype, not some genuine menace who still had a war to fight and enemies to kill.
Whatever the case, Parker offered me a wan smile over his shoulder as he lined up with his three fellow airmen and stepped aboard the train. They were all a bit nervous, but to a man they were also excited about the prospect of returning home.
I got back to Bern late that night. A taxi dropped me at the legation so I could report that all had gone well. But Butchart and Colonel Gill weren’t there, and neither had left word on where to reach them. Only Flagg was waiting, eager to hear how his pupil had fared.
He smiled after I described the scene at the train station.
“I’ll admit that for a while I had my doubts,” he said. “But you know, by the end I was feeling pretty good about it. Parker’s the type who can fool you. Hidden reserves and all that.”
“You really think so?”
“Oh, yes. And he was such a fast learner with the material that I even had time to teach him a few escape and evade tactics. Just in case.”
“Good thinking,” I said weakly.
We said good night, and I walked across the lonely bridge to my apartment. I was exhausted and it was well past midnight, but I don’t remember getting a moment of sleep.
Two days later a French rail worker, one of our contacts with the maquis, reported through the usual channels that Parker had been removed from the train at the third stop, well before Paris. No one in our shop said much about it, especially when there was no further word in the following days.
Soon enough I was busy with new assignments. If Dulles had been testing me through Colonel Gill, then I must have passed, because he began making good right away on his promise to get me out and about.
The extra distractions were welcome, and within a few weeks I was no longer dreaming of Messerschmitts and butchered comrades, although Parker’s guileless face did swim before me f
rom time to time. Then came the day when Hitler shot himself. Flagg popped his question, Butchart supplied the reassuring answer, and from then on I had no more dreams of Parker. I was content to let him reside in my memory as a quirky sidelight of the war years. At least, I was until coming across his folder at the Records Center.
It was a thin file, with only four typewritten pages inside. But what really caught my attention was the Gestapo markings across the sleeve. As I steeled myself to read it in the sunlight of 1958, it occurred to me that soon there would be little need for fellows like Parker. Only months earlier, Sputnik had fallen to earth after its successful voyage. Bigger and better replacements were already on the launchpad, and, if you believed the newspapers, the chatter in intelligence circles was that half the work of spies would soon be obsolete. Both sides would soon be able simply to look down at enemy positions from high in the sky But in 1944 we had people like Parker, good soldiers who did as they were told, even when they were told very little.
Agents of Treachery Page 38