by Dan Walsh
That’s when Ben found out about Jim Burton.
But it didn’t matter. Ben knew he had to keep seeing her, so he kept coming back to Woolworth’s every chance he got. He’d found a seat in the diner that let him view the entire store. Over the next several weeks he’d come in for lunch or a cup of coffee and watch her as she went about her various tasks. As he did, his attraction and affection for her continued to intensify. Beyond her physical beauty, which had thoroughly captivated him, Ben was struck by how incredibly kind she was. Bringing water out to a thirsty dog on a hot day was just Claire being Claire. She treated everyone at the store the same way: her boss, co-workers, even grouchy customers.
He did his best to be discreet but whenever he’d see her, he couldn’t help but stare. Once in a while, she’d notice him and smile or wave. Occasionally, they’d even talk, but she’d always keep a respectful distance. He never once felt the green light to ask her out.
A few weeks ago, she’d walked over to where he sat and invited him to join her and “the gang” down the street at McCrory’s. That’s where they hung out, she’d said. He thought it might be the beginning of something positive and instantly said yes.
Nothing came of it, however, except the opportunity to spend more time with Claire. That alone made it worthwhile. But she must have discerned his growing interest; she’d regularly insert little Jim reminders, like she had done that afternoon. But Ben kept seeing little glimmers of hope, like he did that afternoon.
Ben sighed, turned, and started walking down the bridge toward the beachside. He realized Claire would probably stay true to Jim Burton, even if she did have feelings for him. She was that kind of girl. Not just beautiful, not just a delight to be with and talk to. She was a nice girl, an honest girl. The kind of girl who would always do the right thing.
And Ben knew, he was the wrong thing for someone like Claire.
For so many reasons.
Chapter Three
After coming off the bridge, Ben walked the few blocks toward his apartment on Grandview Avenue. It seemed quiet for a Friday night. Few cars had driven by, and few people were out walking, all of them on the opposite side of the road. No more conversations. He turned the corner, saw his two-story apartment building ahead on the left. It was set one block back from the beach, close enough to hear the waves breaking when the wind blew in from the ocean, as it did tonight. A pleasant sound, but he wasn’t quite ready to head down the beach for a night stroll.
Not after what had happened that night.
The memories were so real and terrifying that he was still having nightmares. But something Joe had said at McCrory’s this afternoon forced him to face the fact that he’d have to go back there, to the place where he, Jurgen, and the other two-man team had landed onshore. And he’d have to do it tonight. Go back to the sand dunes, twenty minutes north of here, before the Coast Guard had a chance to get those new teams out patrolling the beaches at night with horses and dogs.
Ben turned off the sidewalk, ready to head up the steps to his apartment building, when he noticed his landlady, Mrs. Arthur, sitting on the top step, smoking a cigarette. Her hair was up in rollers and wrapped in a scarf. Her razor-thin legs stuck out the bottom of her coat, her feet resting two steps below inside thick woolen slippers.
“Evening, Mrs. Arthur. Nice night.”
“Surely is, son. Coming in early for a Friday night, ain’t ya?”
“Actually, I just came back for a moment to get the car. Then I’ll be heading back out.”
“Where you going?”
Mrs. Arthur was so nosy. If she didn’t ask so many questions, he wouldn’t have to add to his stockpile of lies. “A friend needs a ride. I’ve been walking a lot lately, saving up gas coupons. He’s all out.”
“That’s nice of you, sharing yours like that.”
Ben had all the book one ration coupons he’d need for this year and another set of book two coupons for next year. For food, gas, you name it. All counterfeit, but perfectly forged beyond detection.
“You boys going on some hot date?”
He laughed. “Nothing like that. Just giving him a ride to work.” Where did he come up with this stuff? “Well, better get a move on, he’s expecting me to pick him up in fifteen minutes.”
“Drive safe,” she said. “Everyone’s got those dimmers on their headlights now. Hard enough to see at night as it is, without them things.”
“I’ll be careful.” He passed her on the steps, opened the door, and walked into the dark hallway. His apartment was on the first floor, three doors down. Once inside, he flicked on the light switch and locked the door behind him.
He turned and looked at the door.
That lock was a problem. With a little effort, almost anyone could break in here. The dark hallway was another problem. This apartment itself was a problem. It didn’t have nearly enough security. Not after tonight. He paid his rent weekly. He decided he’d pay it one more time but had no plans of staying here another week. He needed his own place, a place he could secure like a vault.
The apartment was just two rooms, a small kitchen/dinette area and a slightly larger bedroom, furnished with a chest of drawers, a stiff upholstered chair, and a lumpy bed. He walked through the kitchen into the bedroom, bent down, and opened the bottom drawer. He pulled out a cigar box, set it on the bed, and sat beside it.
Inside was a pistol, a stack of ration coupons, and a wad of cash, maybe two hundred dollars. Each of the German agents had been issued the gun as part of their training. It was an American Colt 45, standard issue for GIs. Ben was a crack shot with a pistol, first in his class. But that was using the Walther P38, a German pistol slightly bigger than the luger.
He picked up the gun and set the cigar box back in the drawer. As he shoved the .45 in the waistband behind his back, he said a silent prayer to a God he felt sure had stopped listening long ago. Please, keep me from having to use this tonight . . . please.
He reached into his pocket, made sure he still had his keys, turned off the lights, then headed out the door, locking it behind him.
Ben slowed his speed down to thirty-five miles an hour, the new patriotic speed, keeping an eye out on the left for High Bridge Road. The only road out here on this lonely stretch of A1A. Almost nothing to see but sand dunes on either side for the last ten miles. Rolling by on his right, just beyond the dunes, was the Atlantic Ocean.
He was glad to be closing the distance this time by car. That night, he’d walked the ten miles back to Ormond Beach, the nearest town, just north of Daytona. He’d picked High Bridge Road as his marker, so he’d be able to come back here later and find the suitcase he’d buried.
“Fifty by fifty.” He repeated aloud the little phrase he’d memorized that night. Fifty paces south along the highway, then fifty paces west into the dunes.
He’d purchased this car, a black ’35 Ford coupe, for two hundred dollars cash within a few days of coming into town. It already had an “A” sticker on the windshield. That was the basic ration sticker given to average Americans. The attendant at the pump would see the sticker and know to pump only four gallons of gas into the tank. An A-sticker American would hand him a week’s worth of ration coupons. Ben easily overcame this obstacle. He had an unlimited supply of ration coupons so he’d just visit several stations in different parts of town until the tank was full.
The coupe was a nice basic car, nothing flashy. Also part of the training. Make every purchase decision with invisibility in mind. Be middle of the road, do nothing to stand out in a crowd.
The long walk into town that night in August was the reason he had to bury the suitcase. He couldn’t afford someone seeing him walking down A1A carrying something like that. They might mistake him for a GI on leave, stop to offer him a ride. Or worse, a sheriff’s deputy might spot him and pull over, likely with his gun drawn, to see if he was a German spy.
That could easily happen, especially after the fiasco back in June, when the first two teams of
German spies had landed. One team landed south of Jacksonville, the other on Long Island near the village of Amagansett. A band of idiots and imbeciles, the whole lot of them. Not one a trained German soldier or Abwehr agent, they were picked mainly because they spoke English fairly well and had, at one time, lived in America. Their entire regimen of training was less than five weeks.
It was called Operation Pastorius, the brainchild of Walter Kappe, a German who’d lived in America during the 1930s and who tried in vain to create a legitimate Nazi party here from all the Germans who’d fled the Fatherland after World War I. Tens of thousands of them.
Like his parents.
Back in high school, Ben would hear them talk about Kappe, going on and on about his “German-American Bund” and all the wonderful things taking place in Germany now that Adolf Hitler had risen to power. Ben didn’t take it seriously until one day in 1935 when he came home from school to find his parents packing.
“We are going back to the Fatherland, son,” his father had said. “All is well again. Plenty of jobs for everyone. Isn’t it exciting?”
Ben shook his head, trying to jar the memory from his mind. Too many sad thoughts if he got stuck there. His headlights picked the High Bridge Road sign up ahead. Fortunately, there were no cars in either direction. He decided to pull completely off A1A and park off High Bridge Road, as far as he dared without getting stuck in the sand.
He turned off the headlights as soon as he made the turn, pulled the car over, and got out. Good, the shadows from the dunes on either side cast the entire area in total darkness. He opened the trunk and grabbed a shovel.
As he walked toward A1A, headlights from an oncoming car flashed on the road up ahead. He jumped behind a cluster of scrub palms until the car sped by. He was probably being too careful, but that was okay. He remembered something his Abwehr commander had said: “It is good for spies to be a little paranoid; being very paranoid . . . even better.”
It was a lesson those earlier teams back in June should have learned.
He stepped out of the bushes, thinking how ironic it was. Because of the depth of his team’s discipline and training, he despised the arrogant Kappe and his men for their stupidity and incompetence. But because of his intense hatred for the Nazis, he was equally glad they had gotten caught. Ben decided he must exercise all the skill and cunning this third team had received to avoid capture.
And to avoid their fate.
He double-checked to make sure no cars were coming in either direction, then counted off the first fifty paces. He turned right, heading straight into the dunes as he walked out the next fifty.
He stopped and looked around, trying to regain his bearings. It was no use. Whether it had been too dark or he had been too nervous that night, nothing in this gully looked familiar. He was surrounded by the silhouettes of short rolling dunes, covered by scrub palms and sea oats. It all looked the same.
So he started digging. He’d have to hope his steps this time mirrored the ones he’d walked two months ago. Back then, using his bare hands, it had taken over an hour to dig the hole.
Within ten minutes, the shovel hit something solid. He tapped on it a few times; it was definitely not a rock. As he scraped the sand around it, he could tell it was flat and just about the right size. He tossed the shovel aside and laid down near the edge of the hole, cleared away more sand.
Finally, he felt the handle on the side. A few strong pulls and he freed the suitcase from its hold. He lifted it and set it beside the hole. He brushed off more sand then carried it back to the street. He didn’t need to look inside; he and Jurgen had loaded it themselves before boarding the U-boat, and checked off everything inside. And he’d opened it before burying it here two months ago, when he took out some cash and ration coupons, just enough to hold him over till he came up with a better plan. But not enough to draw suspicion if he’d been stopped.
That was his greatest fear now, getting stopped holding this suitcase. There’d be no way to explain its contents. Besides the year’s worth of ration coupons, there was over $175,000 cash. Not counterfeit—real American dollars, in small unmarked bills, compliments of Herr Fuhrer.
He reached the edge of the dunes by the road and stopped, still cloaked in darkness. A car drove by, heading south toward town. He climbed up the dune on his belly and kept low until he broke through. But there were no more cars in either direction. He hurried back, grabbed the suitcase, and ran the final fifty paces toward High Bridge Road, feeling the same rush of fear and panic he had that night two months ago.
A few moments later, with the suitcase safely in his trunk, he hopped in the front seat and checked the rearview mirror. Another car passed on A1A, going north away from town. He sat a few moments more to catch his breath.
As he turned on the ignition, the memory that had haunted his nightmares these past two months floated into his mind. He tried to extinguish it, afraid if he let it play through, he’d relive it again tonight.
He knew why it came to him now. He was less than a hundred yards from another hole he’d dug in the sand dunes that night.
The place where he’d buried Jurgen’s body.
Chapter Four
The tension Ben felt last night had dissipated, sometime between waking up and finishing his breakfast at McCrory’s. He was still nervous about the suitcase in his trunk. He looked at his car through the window of McCrory’s, like he could see his suitcase sitting there, right through the metal. Every few minutes, every time someone walked by on the sidewalk, he looked again. As if they could see it too. At least it was in the trunk; he didn’t have to worry anymore about getting caught retrieving it.
“You want me to freshen that up?”
Ben closed his notebook and looked up at Miss Jane. He had no idea why she wanted to be called that, but she’d made quite a point about it. He pushed his coffee cup in her direction. “That would be great. Do you need me to pay my bill?”
She poured the coffee. “I’m fine, darlin’. I’m here through lunch. You can settle up whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to pay rent for how long I’ve been sitting here, Miss Jane.”
She laughed. “Just take your time.”
“I’ll leave you a nice tip,” he said. “That’s a promise.”
“Won’t argue with you there, Ben.” She walked away.
He opened the notebook again, a little project he’d been working on most of the morning. His cover story—his new cover story, not the one he’d been assigned by the Abwehr. He’d kept one of his Nazi commander’s instructions. When creating your cover, use as much of your personal story as possible. Only lie in the essentials. The idea was, the more truth it contained, the less chance you’d slip up in casual conversation. Or under the hot lights of an FBI interrogation.
Of course, Ben wasn’t too concerned about that now, since he’d abandoned the plan to sabotage American defense plants. Little chance he’d get caught now, especially since Jurgen was dead. Who’d interfere with his plans? The other two agents had left the beach that night, heading north. He hadn’t seen or heard from them since, and didn’t expect to. They’d have their hands full with their own mission.
To avoid what had happened to the earlier teams, the Abwehr commanders had decided the new teams should not even attempt to contact each other for six months. Use the time to settle in, blend in with the populace. Ben had a full four months until that point. But the way he figured, he would never see or hear from either of them ever again.
They didn’t know where he was, had no means of contacting him. When the time was right, the Abwehr plan called for both teams to use a series of coded messages in the classified section of selected newspapers. The other team would run their message four months from now, then look in vain for his. They would try again two weeks later, then two weeks after that. If a team failed to respond, the other team was to assume the worst and carry on with the mission as planned. But under no circumstances were they t
o try to make contact.
The Germans could not afford another embarrassing scandal.
Assume the worst, Ben thought. German efficiency and paranoia had guaranteed his freedom. The danger of getting caught had passed.
His big concern now was creating a cover story that sounded believable to Claire. She’d been asking a lot more questions lately when they talked. Deeper questions, the kind a woman asks when she’s trying to get to know a man. He loved it. Except for the guilt that came later. He wanted so much to talk freely with her, to just be himself, tell her who he was. Including his past, especially the things that had forced him into this double life.
But he couldn’t. It was too much information now, and far too risky.
He would lie to her about certain parts of his story but find a way for her to know the person he truly was inside. He could talk about his hopes and dreams, the things he wanted to do with the rest of his life. With her, if she’d have him. All of those things would be true.
“If you don’t mind me saying, hope she stays true to her young man in Africa . . .”
The voice of the man he’d met on the bridge last night ran through his head. He took a sip of his coffee. Ben had nothing against Claire’s high school sweetheart. He’d never met him. Poor guy was off fighting for his country, doing the honorable thing. And if Ben thought for a minute Claire was genuinely in love with the guy, he’d back off. Because that would be the honorable thing.
But he just didn’t see it.
He took a last sip of his coffee then looked at his watch. He really needed to wrap this up. Claire and “the gang” were going to meet up at the Bandshell over on the beachside and spend the afternoon listening to big band music and maybe going for a walk around the amusement park. He closed his notebook and put his pen in his shirt pocket.
“Sure you don’t want to stick around awhile?” Miss Jane said as he stood up. “About time for lunch.”
