A Gathering of Spies (34 page)

Ruth. Ruth.

He turned her face up with his hands.

Kissed her.

Weeping himself now, and still kissing her; she was so parched, so thin, so angular, half starved; and now her tears were coming, finally. Ruth, in his arms, Ruth …

“Oh, my God,” she said again. “Oh, my God, Harry. Oh, my—”

He kissed her again.

They were forced apart by rough hands.

At first, Winterbotham tried to ignore the hands. Then one of them punched him in the temple; another closed around his throat, pushing him to the floor.

He heard the sound of a bolt being drawn back. A momentary reflection, near his temple, as the gun came around.

A jackboot flashed, connected with his ribs, cracking them.

Then they were all around him, a half dozen men. Kicking, grunting, breathing jerkily. Every time he tried to raise his head it was beaten down again.

He lost a tooth. He spat. A string of bloody sputum connected his mouth to the floor. Somebody was laughing, hoarse and harsh. Something hard crashed on the base of his skull, and he lost consciousness. Regained it, curled on his side, trying not to breathe because breathing hurt.

Another kick. A steel-tipped boot stabbed his kidney. The pain was bright and clear.

“Enough,” somebody said.

He was dragged to his feet. Blinking, unable to see. Pushed out into the hall, supported between two SS men. Lights had been turned on. There was a man there, short, effulgent in black. Winterbotham was held in front of the man until his vision began to clear.

He blinked.

The man was Heinrich Himmler.

Himmler looked at him for a moment with disdain.

“Downstairs,” he said. “The wife, too.”

Winterbotham went for him. But four steely hands closed around his biceps, pulling him back.

Then he was being dragged down the hallway, trying to walk, unable to keep his feet beneath himself. He looked left and then right, feeling as if he were in a dream. The man on his left was Beck. Beck looked less dapper than usual; his blond forelock was hanging in sweaty disarray. A smudge of blood was near one corner of his pretty mouth.

He turned his head slowly, underwater, to look at the man on his right. He recognized this one also. Dietrich, who had quizzed him about Hurricanes and Piper Cubs. Dietrich also had blood on him—smeared on his tunic in the shape of a semicolon.

They moved down the corridor, half dragging, until they reached the staircase. Blinding lights had been turned on all through the mansion. Two SS men stood by the top of the stairs. They snapped salutes.

“
Sieg Heil
!”

“
SiegHeil
!”

Now they were pulling him down the stairs. Winterbotham moaned. A rib was broken and it was poking around inside, hurting. Bullet still in his leg. Now they were coming off the stairs, Dietrich moving toward the front of the mansion, Beck deeper into the bowels. For an instant, Winterbotham was tugged between them like a wishbone.

“This way,” Beck said. “
Herr Reichsleiter
wants him downstairs.”

“Bring him outside,” Dietrich said. “We are transferring him.”

“Are you deaf?
Herr Reichsleiter
said …”

Dietrich let go of Winterbotham's arm, drew his Luger, and aimed it at Beck's face.

He fired.

A Mercedes was waiting by the front porch.

Winterbotham was pushed into the backseat, not gently. Dietrich bent down, folded Winterbotham's legs into the car, straightened, looked behind himself. He pounded on the window with one fist.

“Go!” he said.

As they pulled away, Winterbotham saw two black-suited SS emerging from the mansion onto the porch. He saw Dietrich turn to face them.

“Professor,” somebody was saying.

Winterbotham, blinking, tore his eyes away from Cecilienhof. He looked around the interior of the car, trying to find the source of the voice. The Mercedes was sinking into the night; he could hardly see a thing.

They turned onto the main road with squealing tires, then accelerated.

“Professor.”

In the front seat, he realized. Beside the driver. A man, craning around to face him.

Canaris.

“Can you hear me?” Canaris asked.

Winterbotham nodded.

“We are putting you on a plane. You will be in England by sunrise.”

“My … wife.”

“She will meet us at the airport. I anticipated that you would not leave Potsdam without her. Now, listen carefully—”

“They're following us,” the driver said.

Winterbotham looked through the rear window again. He saw pursuit—two distant eyes of light. One car, or motorcycles?

As he watched, one eye winked out.

Canaris was talking.

“Hitler's time is finished. We will remove him ourselves if the prime minister agrees to our terms. Are you listening, Professor?”

“Yes … yes.”

“We are prepared to remove Hitler in exchange for an immediate armistice, an immediate suspension of Allied bombing. But we do not offer unconditional surrender. We shall withdraw in the West. In the East, our countries shall fight together. Germany will hold a line between the mouth of the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, the River Vistula, and Memel. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“We require Churchill's personal guarantee before we can take further action. Tell him that the resistance is strong: myself, Rommel, Beck, Goerdeler, Lauschner. Impress upon him that Germany is not guilty.
Hitler
is guilty. Germany is not Hitler. We have a common enemy: the Bolsheviks.”

Winterbotham looked behind them again. The second eye had vanished.

“If Churchill agrees with our terms,” Canaris said, “he must notify us before the tenth of August. He will notify us by having the BBC play the same song twice in a row on any midnight between today and the tenth. The absence of such a broadcast will be taken as a rejection. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“We have taken a considerable risk to deliver this message to him, Professor. If he does not agree with our terms, we cannot promise further negotiation. The war will continue; many more lives will be lost. On both sides. You must impress upon him—”

“I'll try.”

“Convince him,” Canaris said.

When they turned into the airport, Winterbotham saw, in the harsh artificial light, bodies sprawled on the outskirts of the runway. Standing over the corpses were three soldiers, machine guns in hand. The plane itself, a tiny Focke-Wulf, was idling on the tarmac.

Winterbotham got out carefully, helped by a hand on his elbow.

“Go aboard,” Canaris said.

“Not until my wife arrives.”

Their eyes locked.

From somewhere very far away came a muffled explosion. Canaris reached into his overcoat, removed a vial of pills, and put two in his mouth.

They waited.

The hum of an engine? No, still the wind. Winterbotham swallowed. He leaned against the plane to support himself, woozily.

“It is possible that they did not make it,” Canaris said. “I beg you, Professor, go aboard.”

Winterbotham shook his head.

The hum grew louder. A car, after all, coming down the road, invisible in the black night. The three soldiers raised their guns, setting their jaws.

A Mercedes pulled onto the airfield, rolled across the tarmac, drifted to a stop. Winterbotham pushed himself off the fuselage, which had been supporting him. He stepped forward, reaching out as the door opened.

Ruth came out of the car.

He took her in his arms.

“For God's sake,” Canaris said. “Hurry.”

Winterbotham and his wife climbed into the plane, arm in arm.

23

THE WAR OFFICE, WHITEHALL

AUGUST 1943

Once again, Taylor was on the phone when Winterbotham was shown into his office.

“He's just arrived,” Taylor said. He waved at the chair in front of his desk. “No, Mr. Prime Minister, I'll have to get back to you. Yes, sir.” He glanced up at Winterbotham, who still hadn't taken the chair. “Yes,” he said, and waved again. “Yes, Mr. Prime Minister. Of course. Thank you.”

He hung up, then looked at Winterbotham pointedly.

Winterbotham sat, favoring his good leg. He took out his pipe.

The window in the office was open; through it came the sounds of children playing in the park. Winterbotham prepared his pipe and lit it. His eyes followed the smoke as it drifted out the window.

“Happen to listen to your radio last night?” Taylor asked. “Around midnight?”

Winterbotham looked at him. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “yes.”

“They played ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo' twice in a row.”

“I noticed.”

“One of my favorites,” Taylor said.

He opened his desk drawer, removed a folder, set it on the desktop, and pushed it to Winterbotham.

Winterbotham reached forward, picked up the folder, and opened it. Inside was a letter from the office of Andrew Taylor to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It recommended that leniency be shown in the case of Professor Harris Winterbotham. By forsaking the right to prosecute, the letter suggested, England showed her appreciation for Winterbotham's successful penetration of the Nazi intelligence organization, the
Abwehr
.

Winterbotham closed the folder.

“Churchill has already agreed,” Taylor said. “You're off the hook, Harry.”

“It would seem so.”

“Aren't you going to thank me?”

Winterbotham took a drag from his pipe. “Why?” he asked.

“Because I've saved your—”

“I mean, why did you do it?”

“Because you've rendered a service to England, old chap, whether you meant to or not. Now we wait and see if the admiral is able to hold up his end of the bargain. Besides, if this works out and they get rid of Hitler for us … and then it slips out that we hanged the agent who made the deal possible … Well, you can imagine.”

Winterbotham smoked thoughtfully.

“Also,” Taylor said, “it makes us even.”

“Even?”

“When you were in Germany, we sent a message telling the Nazis that you were a double agent.” He paused. “We recommended your immediate execution.”

Winterbotham pursed his lips.

“To minimize the risk to Double Cross, you understand.”

“Yes.”

“We had no way of knowing whether you planned to—”

“I understand, Andrew.”

“So, we're even.”

Winterbotham said nothing. Taylor lit a cigarette.

“That's all?” Winterbotham asked.

“Assuming you've told us everything you have to say about your time spent behind enemy lines—”

“I have.”

“How is Ruth, Harry?”

Winterbotham hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Alive,” he said.

“And?”

“Grateful to be out of there.”

“Of course.”

“But she won't talk about it. Or even, I believe, think about it. She's pretending it never happened.”

Taylor nodded. “I like the sound of that—pretending nothing ever happened.”

“Do you?”

“All's well that ends well, Harry. You've got Ruth; I've got intelligence about the Gestapo and the
Abwehr;
and Churchill's got Canaris. And, I'm glad to say, we don't believe that Katarina Heinrich was able to deliver her intelligence to Berlin.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If she'd tried to wire it, we would have caught the signal—there's far too much data for her to send quickly. If she tries to send it in a letter, well, now that the censors know what to look out for …”

“And if she brings it there in person?”

Taylor smiled crookedly. “A young lady named Jane Moore was found on Jermyn Street, Harry, two days ago. Her face was bludgeoned beyond recognition. But her mother was able to identify a mole—”

“Yes?”

“The strange part of it,” Taylor said, “is that fifteen days ago a Jane Moore booked passage on the
S.S. Europa
. She arrived in New York City yesterday.”

“America?”

Taylor nodded.

“Why would she return to America?”

“We were hoping you could shed some light on that. Having seen her face-to-face.”

Winterbotham shook his head. “I wouldn't know.”

“Perhaps she sickened of the game again—just as she did ten years ago. Perhaps she wants to vanish, return to a normal life, hm?”

“I wouldn't know, Andrew.”

He stood up. Taylor promptly stood up opposite him and offered his hand across the desk.

“Harry,” he said, “let's put it behind ourselves. What do you say?”

Winterbotham looked at the hand for a moment. He reached out and shook it.

“Let's seal it with a drink,” Taylor said. “Say, tonight at the Savoy? We'll have a game, drink a bottle of Dom, and discuss—”

“Sorry, Andrew. I've got plans.”

“Of course,” Taylor said. “Perhaps later in the week? Or—”

“I'll let you know,” Winterbotham said.

NEW YORK CITY

AUGUST 1945

Katarina heard the news as she was dressing for her date.

Her date was a young man named Ted Ridgeway, a veteran of D-Day, missing two fingers on his left hand, who now laid pipe in Brooklyn. They had met when he had come into the restaurant and ordered a sandwich with a cup of coffee. Tonight would be their fourth date—and, although Ted didn't know it yet, their last. She had met another young man at the restaurant, one who had all his fingers and beautiful eyes to boot.

She was applying the finishing touches to her lipstick, listening with half an ear to the song on the radio, when the announcer burst in.

“We interrupt this broadcast for a special announcement from Washington. President Truman has issued the following statement: ‘At seven-fifteen
P.M.,
Washington time, a bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. It was to spare the Japanese from utter destruction that the ultimatum of—'”