Double Cross Blind

by Joel N. Ross

  “I’m not sure I agree,” she said. “You reviewed the documents? The Japanese fleet moving toward Hawaii?”

  He nodded. “They appear to be sanctioned codes. Assumption is, it was passed from the Hun to your husband.”

  “Precisely. So that is a lead, too. Sondegger has some interest in this microfilm.”

  “Impossible to follow it without Earl. We have no time.”

  “But you’ll notify the Americans?”

  “And tell them what? Unconfirmed information was planted by an enemy spy? It’s absurd—Hawaii? Rudolf Hess is locked in the Tower of London with a better story. My concern is Double-Cross. The Hun passed the microdot for a reason. I’m not going to act until I know what he’s after.”

  “If it’s true, we’ve an obligation to—”

  “I know my obligations, Mrs. Wall. Give the Hun his head, he’ll return the favor.” He sat, as if suddenly exhausted. “You brief our girls, don’t you? Before they drop?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Double-Cross is blown, none of them will be coming home. Did your husband ever mention the name Melville?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Farquhar? O’Brien? Transcriptionists? Stenography?”

  “If it was work-related, I heard nothing from him.”

  “Your husband enjoy the opera?”

  “Earl? Heavens no.”

  He fired dozens of questions at her. Then: “He belong to any clubs?”

  She listed Earl’s clubs.

  “That all?”

  “The Waterfall. He calls it ‘the Rapids.’”

  Highcastle grunted. “Friends there?”

  “He likes the comedians.”

  “The shows?”

  “I presume so.”

  “Takes lovers?”

  She tried to say “No,” but the word wouldn’t emerge.

  “He rents a room,” Highcastle said.

  “Yes.”

  “Has a special friend?”

  “He would hardly have told me.”

  “Collect books?”

  “He rarely even reads them.”

  “Microprint was in a book.”

  “In the spine, yes. Not bound in. Tossed inside, almost haphazardly.” She told him everything she’d seen, then asked, “Did you find the men who attacked Tom? Rugg and Renard?”

  “I’ve a man on it. They’re cunning brutes, but we’ll get them.” He asked what Tom had told her of their attack, asked about Earl’s movements again. Just then there was a tap on the door.

  “Come,” Highcastle called.

  A young woman stuck her head in, said Mr. Wall was at the front desk.

  Harriet’s heart constricted. Earl had finally returned. Then she realized: “Tom.”

  Highcastle snorted. “Bloody toadstool after the rain. Send him in.”

  The young woman nodded and Harriet stared toward the door, looking at nothing. Of course it wasn’t Earl, finally returned. But why not? Where was he? With a woman? Hiding? Dead?

  It wouldn’t be a woman. Earl wouldn’t inconvenience himself so completely for a woman. Could he be dead? No. When Earl died, his passing would not go unnoticed; he would not ease like autumn to winter. Might Earl die young? Certainly. Might he die quietly? Impossible.

  He was hiding, then, but from whom? Why? Earl had always been too fond of shell games on city streets.

  Tom entered and stood in the doorway. He had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, stubble on his face. His hat was under his arm and his eyes were dark and wounded and warm. The bruises on his face had faded. She caught a glimpse of how he might look to a stranger—to a woman.

  “Cozy,” he said, looking from Harriet to Highcastle. “Got a light?”

  Highcastle tossed him a book of matches.

  “You told him?” Tom asked Harriet.

  She said she had. Everything except that she thought Rugg and Renard had visited her father.

  Tom looked to Highcastle. “You’ve seen the print?”

  “Forwarded to my desk this morning.”

  “Some reason, the embassy won’t take my word it’s genuine.” Tom struck a match one-handed. “Can’t think why.”

  “The Hun told you where to find it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You failed to mention that. Slipped your mind?”

  “Wasn’t the only thing.” The match died before Tom brought it to his cigarette, and he threw it at the ashtray and struck another. “My mind was slipping.”

  “What else?”

  “What else did Sondegger say?” He lighted the cigarette and told them the German had known he wasn’t Earl from the start. Had known about the Rapids, about Earl’s room and Tristram Shandy and this potential surprise attack on the United States.

  “Why?” Highcastle said.

  “Why tell me?” Tom asked.

  Highcastle grunted.

  “Because Earl’s evanesced. Because I’m American. I don’t know.”

  Highcastle closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “Me, too.”

  Harriet didn’t understand. She lifted an eyebrow at Tom.

  “A man named Davies-Frank,” he told her. “I wish he were here.”

  She looked from him to Highcastle. They had an affinity. From the moment Tom had entered, it was clear they enjoyed one of those male relationships based not on words or affection. Based on something less and more than friendship. Understanding perhaps.

  “He escaped,” Highcastle said.

  Tom went still as a hunted animal. “Sondegger? No.”

  “Killed three of my men. He’s free.”

  Tom felt the floor shift. He ground his cigarette into the ashtray to steady himself. Sondegger was free.

  “The Twenty Committee . . .” he said.

  “Hanging by a frayed thread.”

  “And Duckblind? No leads from the bomb that killed Rupert?”

  Highcastle shook his head. “We presume he’s gone to ground until transmission.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “Could be an hour, could be a week—though the microdot is heartening. Means he’s not only checking Abwehr agents; he has another initiative running, and—”

  “That’s heartening?” Harriet said.

  Highcastle nodded. “Won’t dare transmit twice. They’ll wait on both initiatives before transmitting. Buys us time, unless the microdot’s only meant to muddy the waters.”

  “You think it’s a diversion?” Tom asked.

  “You think it’s the truth?” Highcastle snorted. “It was written in German and delivered by Sondegger. What odds that it’s true?”

  “The codes check; the information checks. Yeah, the SD are professionals. But why lie about—”

  “Real question is, Why tell the truth?”

  They kicked questions around for twenty minutes. “Maybe a screen for the SD investigation,” Highcastle said. “Internal Nazi politics, to keep the Abwehr off balance.”

  “Elaborate screen,” Harriet said.

  “It’s not a goddamn screen,” Tom said.

  “Hawaii,” Highcastle said. “Why bother? Can’t establish a base there. Japanese negotiators are still in D.C., after they launched an attack force on the eighteenth?”

  “That’s what makes it surprising,” Tom said.

  Highcastle grunted. “My first duty is clear. Save the Twenty.”

  “Your first duty,” Tom said. “Not your only.”

  “Today, we control the Nazi network in England. Tomorrow, whenever Duckblind transmits, the whole thing is blood and rubble. How many lives hang in that balance?”

  “Mr. Highcastle’s right,” Harriet said. “There’s nothing more important. We subverted an enti
re network—it’s extraordinary—it could be the key to Europe.”

  Tom stood at the window and didn’t see the street outside. “You’ll inform the COI about Pearl Harbor, though. You can’t do otherwise.”

  “Inform them what?” Highcastle said. “Six months ago, Rudolph Hess flew himself—”

  “I know the goddamn story, Highcastle. Hess came—and you told the Americans.”

  “Hess wanted an audience with the king, or so he said. To negotiate a treaty against the Soviets, or so he said. You think we took his word for it, drove him to Buckingham Palace? No. Good thing, too, because he’s off his trolley. First we learn what’s going on; then we act.”

  “There’s no time to fuck around.”

  “You want the Hun’s parcel wrapped in a bow? No proof but his good intentions?”

  “There’s no time, Highcastle. There’s no time.”

  “Then go. Find the second microdot. Find proof.”

  OUTSIDE, TOM PAUSED at a telephone box for a tram to pass. “We need proof, so we need Earl. First we check the last place he was seen. The East End.”

  “The East End?” Harriet crossed the road beside him, her pale hand firm on the brim of her dark hat. “You saw Earl in the East End?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “I wasn’t consulting Baedeker.” Past the crowd of shouting firemen, the burned-out draper’s shop. “I’ll recognize it.”

  “When was this, Tommy?”

  “During the raid the other night.”

  “You were in Shepherd Market.”

  “I was, yeah, when it started.”

  “And you went east? Toward the bombs?” Her voice was sharp with disbelief. “You followed the raid.”

  “I didn’t follow it. I happened to be . . .”

  “To be what?”

  “Going that direction?”

  She laughed. He’d forgotten what her laugh sounded like. “You were a little overwrought.”

  “I’m better now,” he said. “I saw him, Harry. I was ten yards away.”

  “You’re certain it was Earl?”

  “You couldn’t mistake anyone for Earl.”

  An unreadable expression clouded her face. “Couldn’t I?”

  “I saw him.”

  “We’ll start at the Rapids. The last location at which he was reliably seen.”

  “‘Reliably’? I’m telling you—”

  “Do you think I want to go? Do you think I’m a fool, I don’t know my own husband? Well, I can bear the sniggers and the coy superior looks. I can bear the presence of his tarts, because I must.” Her jaw was clenched into a sharp, bloodless curve. “My agents are facing such dangers that worrying over a husband’s infidelity would be a welcome relief.”

  He knew Harriet well enough to keep silent. They walked a block, crossed the street. She slipped her arm through his. She was wrong about the Waterfall: It was a dead end. Tom had seen Earl in the East End, had followed him for ten blocks.

  “We’ll go to your house,” he said. “Get a recent photograph and knock on doors. He’s in Stepney or Wapping, maybe the docks—in the warehouses, the bombed-out buildings. . . .”

  She didn’t respond. She fit perfectly on his arm.

  “Once I recognize the neighborhood, we’ll knock on doors,” he said as they threaded through a group of soldiers on the corner. “We’ll talk to boardinghouses.”

  Harriet held him close, didn’t speak.

  “We’ll check evacuated apartments. We’ll talk to food vendors. Even Earl has to eat.”

  Her fine brown hair moved in the breeze of a passing bus.

  “Fine,” he said. “The Waterfall.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  MORNING, DECEMBER 5, 1941

  THE WIRELESS WAS in super condition, safe as houses in Duckblind’s baby blue straw bag with the lemon ribbon curling prettily round it. The transmitter was ready, Mr. Pentham’s house was neat as a pin, and she was breathless from dancing.

  She’d bought a few trifles at a darling this-and-that shop off Threadneedle, and though Mr. Pentham’s gramophone hadn’t seen a great deal of use, it bore up mightily under the strain of “You Can’t Stop Me from Dreaming” and “It’s De-Lovely.” She spun herself giddy as the song ended. She’d found simply the perfect spot from which to transmit. She expected they’d be sending tonight or tomorrow, depending on Bookbinder—and one could always depend on Bookbinder.

  She tucked the straw bag into the wicker pram and checked herself in the mirror, modeling one of Mr. Pentham’s silly old shirts. It cried out for his clunky cuff links, but one of the links had popped from the cuff yesterday. It took her quite another ten minutes to pick a new pair and leave the house.

  The next scheduled drop to contact Bookbinder was Ebury Square. There were days and days of scheduled locations, no two repeated. She took the Tube to Sloane Square, where she found a lovely tea shop. Ebury was hardly a stroll away. After her tea, she came out into a drizzling soft mist and a very handsome old gentleman asked if she wasn’t getting too wet. She flirted happily but with a great deal of decorum. She did enjoy the English. If only they weren’t so stupid! Unwilling to admit the new Reich was rising as their own empire fell.

  Ebury Square had a scattering of benches under leafless thick-limbed trees. In the center was a modest fountain, and the park was surrounded by blocky, tentatively modern buildings. Two women were pushing prams, and a horse clattered by, pulling a cart. Duckblind cleared the area, then checked the fountain.

  The base had been marked! Bookbinder was free. Her heart beat a little faster. He’d been right here.

  She fiddled with her shoe, as if she had a pebble in it, while she checked the mark on the fountain. She sat on the bench indicated and fiddled a bit more. Then she rose and departed, the note safely tucked in the heel of her pump.

  At a distant street corner, she read the letter. His delicate digestion indeed. She laughed. Rosslyn Park, 30, with Knapp, Steel, Ward, Huxley, and Gallaher. She checked the order of the names against the newspaper, deciphered the remainder, and was beyond pleased.

  They would transmit tonight. And her secondary instructions were to keep an eye on Tommy Wall. Well, she’d been eyeing him for some time, since the little man in the waistcoat had passed his name. Oh, but what a very funny place to hide the microfilm. How silly Tommy would feel when she told him.

  AUDREY DUSTED THE FLAT and noticed the furniture needed a good polish. She polished, which brought out the dinginess of the floor, so she swept and mopped, then rolled the rug into a cylinder, hauled it outside, and thrashed it savagely. The room looked better, except the blackout curtains trapped filth terribly. She cleaned the windows, swept the floor again, and ate a tin and a half of Woolworth’s sweet biscuits. She straightened the lamp shade, tidied the kitchen cabinets, scoured the sink and the fridge. Finally, she took up her knitting bag and mangled a bit of yarn.

  The front door sounded and Imogene wafted in and lifted an eyebrow at the spotlessness.

  “Whatever it is,” she said. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Or that good,” Audrey said. She hadn’t seen Imogene since yesterday, and the redhead was glowing with satisfaction. “You look like the cat who—”

  “That canary was delicious. I—” Imogene noticed the knitting bag. “Knitting, too, Vee? Tell me all.”

  “I don’t like living in a rubbish heap.”

  “The new Mr. Wall, I presume?”

  “The rug was filthy. The kitchen was worse.”

  Imogene inspected the misshapen cobweb Audrey had knitted. “What could he possibly have done to deserve this?”

  “Oh, Genie . . .” Audrey told her she’d thrown herself at Tom as brazenly as she knew how, and been rejected. She’d left a message for Harriet Wall, whom Tom loved despi
te everything. She’d finished an entire tin of biscuits. . . .

  Imogene started to interrupt, then stopped herself.

  “What?” Audrey asked.

  “Your Tommy is in the lobby. With a woman who must be his brother’s wife.”

  The biscuits turned to cement in Audrey’s stomach. “Now? I mean—now?”

  “They’re asking after Inch. Russell’s on the door; he was saying Inch would arrive momentarily, if they’d wait.”

  “What sort of looking woman is she?”

  “The sort a man would love for her manners, her mother, or her money.”

  “Truly?”

  “Horse-faced. Utterly Newmarket.”

  Audrey stood and brushed dust from her sloppy joe sweater and turned to Imogene. “How am I?”

  “Disastrous. You’ve a smut on your nose and no lipstick. You can’t think—”

  “I’ll only peep round the door,” she said, rubbing her nose with her sleeve. “She won’t see me.”

  “Pull on your green shirtwaister.”

  “But what if she’s gone?” she wailed. “I’ll only peek.”

  “If you must, Vee, but remember—” Imogene grinned. “Ramrod-straight, and chin up!”

  Audrey laughed shakily and ran down the corridor. She took a slow, calming breath at the door to the lobby. None of the girls but she and Imogene had a flat in the building—because, as she delighted in telling the Three Annes, the management had standards. She exhaled and the door swung open before she could lay a hand on it.

  Tom was there with a posh woman in a floral frock and a fur coat. She was taller than Audrey, and slimmer—a neat, boyish figure—and older. She had a strong face, a good complexion, striking light eyes, and the sort of carriage one is born with, or never attains. Lady Harriet Wall was a graceful swan. Audrey Pritchett was a fat, waddling duck.

  “Aud—Miss Pritchett,” Tom said, and she spared him a glance. He hadn’t even the grace to appear abashed. He looked different, though. No, he looked the same, only more so.

  “Mr. Wall,” she said.