The Iron Storm

by CW Browning

  Chapter Six

  Evelyn walked towards the main entrance of the train station, scanning the faces of the people milling around outside. Men and women hurried in and out of the busy station, creating a chaotic stream of constant human traffic. She’d wondered at the timing of her meeting with Lars when Bill said four o’clock precisely, but now she understood. The sheer number of people thronging the entrance made the possibility of anyone noticing two strangers meeting very low. In fact, she wondered if she would even be able to find the Dutch agent in the crowds of people. Aside from the fact that he would be wearing a red scarf and carrying an umbrella, she didn’t have the faintest idea what he looked like. She didn’t know if she was looking for a tall man, a short man, or even a man at all!

  She bit her bottom lip at that thought. There was no reason that Lars couldn’t be a codename for a woman, after all, and in that case, her possibilities just doubled. Evelyn exhaled and looked at her watch. It was almost four o’clock, and Bill had been adamant about precise timing. She had to locate Lars and approach him at exactly the right moment. She lifted her eyes again as she moved with the flow of pedestrians towards the entrance. A flash of red caught her attention, but she shifted her gaze away from a red beret, losing interest. It was a scarf she needed, not a hat.

  A woman toting two large bags bumped into her, turning to apologize profusely. As she did so, one of the bags slipped and fell open, spilling children’s toys onto the pavement. Evelyn smiled and bent down as the woman exclaimed, picking up a wooden car and a doll before the car could roll away. The woman was speaking quickly in what Evelyn could only imagine was Dutch, and as she straightened up with the toys in her hands, she smiled helplessly.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch,” she said in French, handing the woman the toys.

  The woman looked startled, then broke into a wide smile.

  “I speak a little French,” she announced, shoving the toys back into her bag. “Thank you very much. So kind of you.”

  “Not at all,” Evelyn assured her with a smile. “Is that everything?”

  “Yes, I think so. Thank you!”

  The woman turned to continue hurrying towards the entrance. Evelyn couldn’t stop the chuckle when the hapless woman bumped into yet another person, apologizing profusely once again. Turning her head, Evelyn caught sight of a dark red scarf to her left and she inhaled sharply. A tall, lean man was leaning against the side of the building smoking. He had an umbrella in his left hand, and the blood red scarf hung carelessly around his neck. Dark hair fell in thick waves almost to his shoulders, giving him a distinctly bohemian look. Dressed in varying shades of grey and brown, she would have missed him entirely if it hadn’t been for the flash of color.

  Her heart thumped in her chest and Evelyn looked at his face, startled to find dark gray eyes watching her with an unnerving intensity. She swallowed and moved through the crowds towards him, reaching into her purse to pull out a cigarette case. She pulled her eyes away from his face, glancing around her as she walked. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the man smoking, and she felt her shoulders relax. She extracted a cigarette from her case and slid the case back into her purse, making a show of searching through her purse for something. Finally, she looked up and walked towards him, a cigarette between her long fingers.

  “Forgive me, but would you have a match? I seem to have mislaid mine,” she said in French, stopping before him.

  The man straightened up from the wall and pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, his dark eyes never leaving hers. They betrayed no emotion or surprise, only polite curiosity.

  “Of course, mademoiselle,” he said, lighting a match. “Are you catching the train to Brussels?”

  “Yes.” Evelyn bent her head towards the flame. “Merci.”

  He waited until she had lit her cigarette, then blew out the match. “You’re not what I was expecting,” he said in a low voice.

  “No? What were you expecting?”

  Lars looked amused at the faint edge to her voice. “Someone infinitely less attractive,” he replied.

  Evelyn was betrayed into a smile, and she met his gaze again with a small laugh.

  “Perhaps next time I will wear a false nose and some spectacles.”

  “That would be a pity,” he said with a flash of even teeth. “I’m Lars. You must be Marie. If you like, I will show you the way to the platform. I’m sure you’re anxious to catch your train.”

  Evelyn smiled and turned to walk with him towards the entrance. “Thank you again.”

  They were silent as they went into the crowded train station. Once inside, he steered her through the crowds, placing a hand on her elbow.

  “The package is quite large. Where will you conceal it?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I have a large pocket sewn into the lining of my coat. It will be safe there.”

  “Good.” He was quiet for a moment, then he glanced down at her. “I’ve heard that the Luftwaffe sank two destroyers off the coast of Norway. The Afridi and Bison. They were part of an evacuation at Namsos.”

  “When was this?” she asked, glancing at him sharply.

  “A few days ago. The rest of the ships escaped harm. It’s only a matter of time before you will have to withdraw from Norway. The soldiers will be needed to defend France.”

  “I know.” Evelyn thought of Anna and Erik and felt her stomach clench. “Have you heard anything else about Norway?”

  “Only that the Germans have complete control of the south and are pushing north. Some say arrests are already being made of people who are believed to be part of a fledgling resistance.” Lars glanced down at her. “Do you know people in Norway?”

  “I...yes.”

  His eyes met hers and were surprisingly gentle. “Then may God be with them.”

  She swallowed again, and smiled briskly. “I’m sure He will be,” she said. “What have you heard regarding France?”

  He shook his head. “Not as much as I would like,” he admitted. “The Germans will move, but I haven’t heard when or where. Perhaps in the next few days, I’ll know more. Of course, perhaps so will you.”

  Lars paused outside the entrance to a platform in the midst of a large crowd of waiting passengers. Turning to face her, he slid a hand into his inside coat pocket.

  “This is it,” he said with a smile, pulling a rather large, oil-skin wrapped parcel out of his coat. “Take great care of this. At least one man has died to get that out of Germany, and probably more.”

  Evelyn took the parcel and slid it into her coat smoothly. The entire transaction was completed in an instant, and he nodded in approval.

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “Inside are photographs of the Daimler plant in Stuttgart,” he said in a low voice. “There are also top-secret blueprints for two underground munitions factories. According to the plans, they will be impervious to bombing raids. It’s those plans that the Germans don’t want out in the open. Be very careful. We know they already have agents looking for the package. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “I won’t,” she assured him. “They’ll be safe with me.”

  Lars hesitated for a moment, then held out his hand. “I wish you speed and safe passage.”

  Evelyn grasped his hand and nodded, and then he was gone, disappearing into the crowds. Waiting until he was out of sight, she turned and moved away from the platform, moving towards another exit. She would not leave the station the same way she had come, but take a longer route back to the hotel. Not that she had any reason to suppose that she’d been followed, but she supposed it was better to be safe than sorry. If nothing else, she was learning that caution was the better part of valor these days.

  She made her way through the crowds easily, heading towards the exit on the other side of the large station. A man had died getting the heavy package that rested against her side out of Germany. How? Had he been captured by the Gestapo? And how did Lars know? She supposed someone in the line of
couriers had passed along the information with the package, but the thought made her blood run cold. It was one thing to know that people were dying trying to get information out, but it was quite another to physically be in possession of one of those packages. The very thought that someone who had handled the oil-skin wrapped parcel was now dead made Evelyn feel a heavy sense of uneasiness.

  She shook her head impatiently. There was no point in being maudlin over it. Her task was to get the package back to Bill, not grieve over the lives that had been lost because of it. Even so, she couldn’t shake the disquiet that had taken hold deep in her gut. If the Germans already had agents looking for the package, then they would be watching the networks not only in Belgium, but also in France. Bill had cautioned her to trust no one, and now Lars had just reiterated the same warning. They didn’t know who was friend and who was foe in the new network stretching across the continent.

  Evelyn’s lips curved faintly. It didn’t matter how many agents the Germans had watching the networks in France. She wasn’t passing the package onto them. She would be taking it directly to London, something Lars didn’t know. He thought she was just another courier.

  And that just might be the thing that would allow her to get the package back to England safely.

  Evelyn turned the corner and tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat. A brisk wind streaked down the street, snatching at tendrils of blonde hair that had escaped her hat, and she took a deep breath, enjoying the breeze on her face. She had left the train station behind and was walking towards the hotel, but she was in no rush to return. While she was tired and hungry, Evelyn was enjoying the fresh air after being cooped up in trains all day. Pausing outside a shop, she looked in the window at the selection of women’s gloves displayed, her eyes drawn to a dove gray pair in the corner. She hesitated, then turned to continue walking. She had a pair very similar at Ainsworth Manor, and she wasn’t in Antwerp to shop. In fact, she realized with a start, she didn’t really have any desire to shop.

  Her lips curved in amusement. If only her mother could see her now. She would think she was ill. There had never been a time when Evelyn wasn’t interested in shopping for new accessories. The smile faded as she walked. A lot of things were changing about her, and soon she felt as though her mother wouldn’t recognize her at all. Giving herself a mental shake, Evelyn reminded herself that when she was in England, she could live her life as she always had. But while she was on the continent working for MI6, she had to be a different person. That didn’t mean that she was changing who she was, it only meant that she was learning to separate the socialite from the spy. And shopping for gloves when she had a parcel that had been smuggled out of Germany in her coat was not part of the spy.

  Pausing at the next corner, Evelyn glanced over her shoulder before running lightly across the narrow side street. It was a little unnerving how comfortable she was becoming with navigating around foreign cities, she reflected. Then again, after fleeing across Norway in the snow, this seemed like a vacation. The weather was beautiful, the city was stunning, and everything was going perfectly to plan. She had the package, and tomorrow she’d go to Brussels to meet with Vladimir, right on time. This was turning out to be one of the easier assignments to date, even though it was also one of the most dangerous.

  There was no way she could convince herself that meeting with a Soviet agent was in any way not dangerous. Despite the fact that he had seemed pleasant enough in Oslo in November, the fact still remained that he was a Soviet spy, and as such, she had to be prepared for anything. However, if she were completely honest with herself, if anything was going to go wrong, she would have thought it would have been during the meeting with Lars. Hopefully, the entire trip would continue to be smooth and uneventful, and she would be able to make arrangements with Shustov that would be amenable to them both.

  Evelyn was just crossing the street a few moments later when a strange chill went down her spine. It was a familiar feeling, one she’d felt before when she was in a strange city. She glanced behind her and her breath caught in her throat. There, half a block behind her, was a man in a long brown coat. The same man had been there the past three times she had looked behind her before crossing a side street. That in itself wasn’t unusual. She was on a very busy thoroughfare cutting through the heart of the city. What had the hair on the back of her neck standing up in warning was the fact that he was the same exact distance behind her as he had been for the past ten minutes. He was neither gaining ground nor falling behind.

  Pressing her lips together, Evelyn pulled her hands out of her pockets and moved her purse to her other shoulder, freeing up her dominant hand. She knew for a fact that she hadn’t been walking at a steady pace for ten minutes. Lost in thought, she’d been looking in shop windows and weaving around other pedestrians. The man, if he really was just another pedestrian, would surely have closed the distance between them. Yet he had not. There was only one reason she could think of for that, and it wasn’t a pleasant one.

  She was being followed.

  Who was he? And how on earth did he even know who she was? It was impossible! Even Henry couldn’t have found out where she was this quickly, and even if she’d been spotted at the station when she arrived earlier, they certainly wouldn't have expected her to go back to the station within an hour of her arrival. There was no way that anyone could possibly know she’d be walking from the station to the hotel.

  Her heart pounding, she increased her pace, moving through the light crowds on the pavements quickly. Lars!

  The thought came suddenly and Evelyn sucked in her breath. They must have been watching Lars. That was the only reasonable explanation. Had they seen her take the package? Or was she simply being watched because of her apparent association with a Dutch agent? Did they know who she was? Evelyn had no way of knowing if her likeness had been circulated outside of the SD. If he was a German agent, he may very well have recognized her. If he wasn’t, then she was in a much better situation. But either way, she was going to have to lose him, and the sooner the better.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to calm down and think. She would go back to the hotel, she decided. There was a certain amount of safety in the expensive hotel, and she had to retrieve her bag from her room. She would be safer there than on the unfamiliar streets of Antwerp. She would lead the man back there, collect her bag, and then disappear. If she was very careful, it would be easy enough to slip out without him seeing.

  Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten, and Evelyn sighed tiredly. It would be a few hours now before she could remedy that, thanks to her uninvited guest. There was no help for it. She had to ensure that the package in her coat remained safe and secure, and she could only do that by getting out of the city as soon as possible. There was no time for dinner. Not now.

  Evelyn paused next to the glass window of a shop selling hats, examining the display. She looked out of the corner of her eye, gauging the distance between her and the man in the brown coat. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, the brim of his hat pulled over his forehead to cast his face into shadows. She got the impression of a narrow, pointed face, but that was all. Nothing that would allow her to recognize him without the brown coat and hat.

  Turning, she continued walking, her lips in a thin line. The coat and hat weren’t German; of that she was certain. Nor were they French. If she had to venture a guess, she’d say that he was a local man. But how did a local man know about Lars? Did he know about the stolen packet in her coat?

  Another chill streaked down her spine and Evelyn’s hands grew cold in her gloves as she considered one other possibility. Had Eisenjager found her?

  The German assassin was a ghost. She had no idea what he looked like because no one knew what he looked like. Bill had given her all the information they had on the assassin-turned-spy, and it wasn’t much at all. Could the man be Eisenjager? The man was a master of blending in. He would dress in the clothes of the
country he was in to avoid unwanted attention. Could the man following her be the mysterious ghost who had chased her across Norway?

  No sooner had she considered the possibility than she dismissed it. They may not know much about the elusive assassin, but they knew he was skilled enough not to be spotted by his target. If he was following her, she was fairly certain that she would know nothing about it. Besides that, how could he possibly know where she was? And what were the chances of him being in Antwerp at the same time? No. It had to be someone who had been watching Lars. Perhaps he’d even followed the Dutch agent from Holland. But then why hadn’t he continued to follow Lars? Why follow her instead?

  He must have seen her take the package. If he knew she had the package, he wouldn’t let her out of his sight until he could get it from her. She had to get away from him and get out of the city without delay.

  Evelyn crossed the last street before the hotel. Her pounding heart was settling down into a steady rhythm now, and she was growing calmer with each step closer to the hotel. She had a plan. The man didn’t realize she’d seen him, and that was all to her advantage. Glancing at her watch, she tightened her grasp on her purse strap. She just had time to make it to her room to get her bag, and then slip out of the hotel without him seeing.

  Then she just had to hope and pray that the train schedule was on her side.

  Chapter Seven

  The manager who had checked her in earlier was still behind the desk when Evelyn crossed the lobby floor. He smiled pleasantly as she approached.

  “Good evening, Mademoiselle Fournier. I trust your room is satisfactory?”

  “Yes, thank you. It’s lovely.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it. How can I help you this evening?”

  “Do you know if there is another train to Brussels tonight?” Evelyn asked.