A Single Spy

by William Christie

  The pickets were looking for danger in the other direction. But he’d marked out where they’d positioned themselves and slowly and quietly slipped through the rocks, taking the same route the horsemen did when they left camp to scout out the area. He guessed that was how Hoessein would bring the horses.

  As he approached the rendezvous Alexsi heard the faint sound of whinnying. But no sense rushing in.

  He climbed up a little higher and circled around very quietly. From his higher vantage point he could see Hoessein standing in the bowl with the horses. And in that first light of the moon he could also see a tribesman tucked into the rocks, with his rifle propped up on one and aimed down into the bowl. That would be Hoessein’s brother Shapour.

  Shrewd. The hero Hoessein shooting the foreigner trying to escape. Gain the gold and keep the horses. Which probably belonged to Shapour. And the finger of suspicion would never fall on him, unlike if Alexsi made a successful escape.

  Alexsi set his shoulder bag and blanket roll gently on the ground. Then slipped his boots and stockings off and tucked them into the back of his belt for even quieter movement. He picked his way through the rocks a centimeter at a time. He saw the narrow sandy path Shapour had taken into his firing position and slipped down onto it for a silent approach. Feeling the ground ahead carefully with his toes before putting his full weight down, he advanced just one or two steps a minute.

  Shapour was fidgeting. That was good—let him make his own noise. The moon was to Alexsi’s front, so he knew he wouldn’t cast a shadow. He came around a rock and was within two meters of Shapour.

  You could come right up on a sleeping man. But an alert one, especially a tribesman, would usually sense something even if he heard nothing. Shapour tensed up and began to turn.

  Alexsi took two long strides forward and smashed the stone in his hand into the side of Shapour’s skull. As Shapour collapsed Alexsi pinned him against the rock with his weight, grabbing the rifle with his left hand to keep it from clattering down. With a firm grip on the rifle, he eased the body to the sand.

  Once Shapour was settled Alexsi poked his head up. The rock hitting Shapour’s head had sounded like an explosion to him, but Hoessein had heard nothing. He was still standing there with the horses.

  Alexsi took Shapour’s knife and ammunition bandoliers. He had his own Iranian Army–issued Czech Mauser carbine slung over his back.

  More than one helper and Hoessein would be afraid they’d band together and kill him for the money, brother or not. Still, it paid to be careful. Alexsi put his boots back on and completed the full circle to satisfy himself. And retrieved his shoulder bag once he was finished.

  He slipped down from the rocks onto the sandy bowl and let his boots scrape. Hoessein jumped and whirled about. He made the horses nervous, and they whinnied loudly.

  “Sling your rifle,” Alexsi said. His Belgian Browning pistol was in his hand, and cocked. “Are we not friends?”

  Hoessein hesitated a moment, then put his Mauser up behind his back. “We are. Do you have the money?”

  Alexsi let the pistol’s hammer down gently, and tucked it back into his holster. He watched Hoessein relax. He didn’t acknowledge the question. He just began checking the horses. They all had sacking tied over their hooves to muffle the sound of their movement. Very thorough. He felt them all over in the darkness. They weren’t Thoroughbreds, but at least they weren’t cripples. Bread and grain in the saddlebags. Water skins filled. Very good.

  “The gold?” Hoessein demanded impatiently.

  Alexsi could hear the tension come through in his voice. “Sewn inside my belt. Now you know why it’s so wide.”

  Hoessein ran his hand extravagantly through his hair.

  Alexsi smiled and just kept checking the horses. He’d moved around the string, putting his hands on each one, and now had made his way back around to the lead mare, whose bridle Hoessein was holding.

  Hoessein ran his hand through his hair again. And again. Practically waving.

  Now Alexsi was right beside him. “You look like a man who is expecting something to happen.”

  Hoessein turned toward him, fear on his face. Alexsi drove the brother’s knife into his throat.

  A gagging sound from Hoessein. Alexsi pushed him to the ground, pinning his head down. He yanked the blade from Hoessein’s throat and plunged it into the gap in the skull behind his ear. Hoessein’s body spasmed beneath him, and it was all over. Quicker than waiting for him to bleed out.

  Alexsi left Shapour’s knife in Hoessein’s brain. Let the Lur puzzle over it when they found the two corpses.

  The horses had barely stirred while all this had been going on. Perhaps they were used to knife play.

  Alexsi took up the bridle and led the horses out to the trail through the far gap in the rocks. He’d walk them until they were well out of earshot of the camp, then take the sacking off their hooves. No sense becoming careless now.

  48

  1941 Western Iran

  Alexsi ruined two horses reaching the high passes of the Zagros Mountains. He felt much worse about them than the people, regretfully cutting their throats so no one following would be able to use them once they recovered.

  Now as the two remaining animals drank from a pool of water at the base of a rock wall, he steadied his binoculars on an outcropping and glassed the area he’d already passed through.

  Exactly what he’d been afraid of. The Lur weren’t about to let their prize slip through their fingers, or their dead—deservedly or not—go unavenged. They were doing exactly what he was, sacrificing horses to catch up with him.

  They were just tiny dots in the distance. Alexsi did some quick calculations. Run or fight? There were four of them, with more horses than he.

  Well, why not run and fight? Back up the trail there had been a gap in the rocks only wide enough for a single horse to walk through. This was not one of the well-traveled routes over the mountains to Iraq. Not a road but a path, made not by men with tools but worn down by animals over untold years. He’d listened to the Lur talking, asked a few innocent questions, and carefully marked it on his map. He’d been worried, but once you found it all you had to do was follow the signs other travelers had left. Unfortunately there were a few forks that dead-ended into abandoned campsites, which required backtracking. Which was why the Lur following him were a bit nearer than they would have been otherwise.

  Alexsi let the horses keep drinking, retrieving his shoulder bag and walking back up the trail.

  Careful to make as few of his own footprints as possible, he laid his cape on the sand and used his knife to dig two small but deep holes across the trail.

  He had two short twenty-centimeter sections of pipe loaded with explosives. Leftovers from that unfortunate British ambush. He carefully placed them in the holes vertically.

  He had no pipe threaders or caps, so he’d bent one end and carved wood stoppers that he could hammer into the other. He’d planned to use them as something like hand grenades in a pinch, but now they would serve as land mines.

  Alexsi had no blasting caps left. But he did have a little wooden box in his kit filled with glass vials of sulfuric acid packed in cotton wool. He balanced two of the vials on the open metal edge of each pipe, then set the wood stopper lightly atop them. Sulfuric acid reacted very violently with potassium chlorate mixed with sugar and oil.

  Alexsi ripped the front and back covers from one of his books. The poems of Yeats, which he had been reading out loud to himself to improve his English. Fine fellow, Yeats. The Irish were as good as the Persians, in poetry. Alexsi placed the covers very carefully atop the wooden stoppers to both shield them and give his apparatus a bit more surface area. With everything balanced precariously, he gingerly scattered sand to conceal his two land mines, ready to bolt at the faintest tinkle of broken glass. How ironic to come this far and blow himself up.

  Finished, he stepped back and surveyed his work. The mines were hidden belowground but the area didn
’t look right. Too clean. Tribesmen didn’t miss a thing while tracking, and they wouldn’t miss this. He sat down and thought it over. He didn’t have a spare horseshoe to put tracks across the top of the mine holes. And he certainly wouldn’t walk his horses back over it.

  He was very tired, and he couldn’t think of anything. He picked up his cape with the leftover dirt from the holes, and used the edge to feather his footprints away as he backed up.

  His horses were fully watered and enjoying the rest. Alexsi was about to tie his bag back on the saddle when he looked down and received an inspiration. He scooped up a fresh pile of horse shit in each hand and walked back down the trail, setting the turds very gently atop the two mines. After a little careful sculpting, they looked as if they’d fallen on their own.

  This was even better. Either one of the Lur horses would step on them, or a tribesman would climb down to put a hand on the shit to determine how long ago it had been dropped. Either way the pressure would force down the book cover and wooden stopper, cracking the glass to release the acid. Alexsi brushed away his tracks again and cleaned his hands in the dregs of the pool.

  Four hours later the faint echo of a bang rolled across the peaks. Well, it had actually worked. The Lur weren’t used to booby traps. If that didn’t spook the survivors and send them home, at least now they would be creeping down the trail, panicking at every pile of horse shit.

  * * *

  ALEXSI RODE for three days and three nights. The horses were close to staggering, and he was nearly blind from fatigue. He didn’t notice a thing until the two Kurds stepped out from the rocks with rifles leveled.

  Alexsi reined in. Trapped like a fool with his rifle slung across his back. Well, at least they hadn’t shot him already. “As-salamu alaykuma, friends,” he said, greeting them in Farsi.

  No response from the Kurds. Without waiting to see what might happen next, Alexsi rushed headlong into his sales proposal. “I am German, escaping from the English. Guide me to Kirkuk and I will make you rich.”

  This was not what the Kurds were expecting to hear. “Speak words in German,” the older, more grizzled one of the pair demanded.

  “What do you wish me to say in German?” Alexsi said in German.

  The older one thought that over. No discussion between them. The younger one just kept his finger curled around his rifle trigger.

  The older one made another demand. “You have money?”

  Alexsi knew it would be the vultures stripping his carcass if he admitted to that. “My countrymen in Kirkuk will pay you gold.”

  Alexsi watched the older one’s eyes as he thought it over. No, he was going with the bird in the hand, and the rifle and two horses, rather than the uncertainty of a long trip to Kirkuk.

  Then he surprised Alexsi by saying, “Is that gold?”

  Pointing to the brass-cased compass dangling around Alexsi’s neck.

  Alexsi seized on the opportunity. “No, my friend. It is a brass compass. Very handy. Let me show you.”

  Before they could say anything, he swung down from the saddle. And with his back to them reached into the front of his cape and eased out his pistol.

  As he touched ground and turned, he shot the nearest Kurd, the older one, square in the chest. The Kurd fired his rifle at the same time, and Alexsi literally felt the bullet fly by. The two shots were so close together they sounded like one report. As soon as he fired Alexsi jerked the reins, and his horse reared forward. The younger Kurd fired his rifle, hitting Alexsi’s horse instead of him. The horse screamed and fell on its side, and Alexsi leaped back to keep from being pinned underneath. He landed flat on his ass while the young Kurd was frantically working his bolt to get another bullet into the chamber. Still sitting there in the dirt, Alexsi leveled the pistol and shot rapid fire. The Kurd was hit, but he still slammed the bolt home. Alexsi kept shooting. The Kurd finally dropped, and as he did he fired his rifle into the ground.

  Alexsi sprang back up on his feet. And only then noticed that he was still squeezing the trigger even though his pistol was out of ammunition. Shaking, he removed the empty magazine and dug a fresh one out of his pocket. As he slammed the slide home the older Kurd was weakly trying to reach out for his rifle. Alexsi walked up and shot him in the head. The younger Kurd was already dead, but Alexsi put a bullet in his skull, too, for good measure.

  His horse was on the ground, struggling to get up. A fine horse, too. Alexsi patted her gently and put the pistol to her head to end her misery.

  He calmed his other horse and transferred the saddle to him. Then, holding his reins securely, followed the Kurds’ footprints back to where they had tied their own two mounts. Well, one horse lost but two gained. There could have been a higher price for his carelessness. When the only way was a Wild West shoot-out, you knew you’d been particularly stupid.

  Alexsi hunted around in his bag for the tin tube of Benzedrine. Unscrewing the cap, he shook two tablets out into his palm. The German soldier’s friend. He’d wanted to be careful, but he needed them now. Finally heading downhill into Iraq, he’d been trying to find a good hiding place, perhaps with some scrub the horses could graze on, and sleep for a few hours. Now he’d have to worry about the Kurds’ friends or relatives finding them and coming after him. Even if he covered the bodies with rock, the vultures would still smell death and circle.

  The Benzedrine was beginning to work on him now. He tied the Kurds’ horses to his and thought about what to do with his rifle. Considering the problems the Kurds had had with rapid fire in a tight spot, he decided to leave it slung across his back and keep his pistol in hand.

  Another day and a night, and fifty hard kilometers, and he was at the end of his strength. At one point he’d been convinced it was snowing. And only after failing to feel any wetness realized it was a hallucination. He had to stop, Benzedrine or not. He led the horses off the trail and made a wide circle, so anyone following him would have to pass in front of him as they tracked, giving him time to run. He had intended to camouflage himself with his cape, but as soon as he hobbled the horses he collapsed onto the sand and was dead asleep.

  It was dark when he awoke. He was freezing cold. Alexsi knew he was lucky not to be waking up to a knife at his throat. His head ached and his stomach was jumping about from the Benzedrine. No question of lighting a fire, so he walked to try to warm up, eating the last of his Lur bread. His water was ice, but he knew he had to drink. It was really only then that his mind cleared enough to remember the Kurds’ saddles, which were still on their horses. He dumped them in the rocks after looting the bread and dried mutton and fodder.

  Since he was awake now, Alexsi resolved to travel by night and sleep by day. He couldn’t keep going the way he had. He would just blunder into another ambush. And sensible thieves didn’t sit by trails at night when they could be sleeping, because travelers didn’t ride at night.

  The next evening he came up over a little rise, and the wide expanse of the Iraqi plain appeared below him in the moonlight. In the distance were the clustered lights of a good-sized town. Alexsi shot a compass bearing and read the number off the luminous dial. That had to be Kirkuk. After five days of the most brutal travel he had ever done. Perhaps another day and a half to get there. But Kirkuk was safety. With a Swiss passport in his pocket and gold sovereigns in his belt. A hotel and a banquet for him, treats for his horses.

  From Kirkuk a slow and comfortable journey north to Mosul. Where the Trans-Baghdad railroad went all the way to Istanbul.

  Alexsi finally allowed himself to think of the future rather than surviving the present. If he went back to Russia they would pin a medal on him for all his fine work and then throw him in front of the advancing German tanks. Neutral Turkey was a pleasant idea, but it was the playground of Soviet intelligence and he’d never survive long there without their leave. Switzerland was even more of a spy circus, not to mention smaller and harder to hide in. South America? The NKVD had killed Trotsky there, and he rather imagined himself as
less of a challenge. Even if his ship wasn’t sunk by a German U-boat first.

  It was crazy enough to twist his stomach into a knot, but the safest place for him was probably Germany. At least they would be pleased about all the British soldiers he’d blown up.

  PART IV

  Operation Long Jump

  49

  1943 Berlin, Germany

  It wasn’t hard to tell you were being followed if they were in an automobile and you were on foot. It was a rainy morning, and as Alexsi stepped out of his uncle’s house in the diplomatic quarter, there was that vehicle parked down the street. With three men wearing hats inside. Could they be any more obvious?

  They shadowed him as he walked down Tiergarten toward Abwehr headquarters. Then finally the automobile raced up and squealed to a stop ahead of him, nearly running up over the curb. Two of the men wearing overcoats spilled out. The driver kept the engine running.

  “Captain Walter Shultz,” one of them said. No question, there.

  All the Germans in the vicinity were like turtles yanking their heads back into their shells. Looking in every direction except his. They saw nothing.

  “And you are?” Alexsi asked calmly.

  The one who’d spoken reached into his open coat and pulled the watch chain from his waistcoat pocket. But no watch. Attached to the end of the chain was a Gestapo warrant disc. A simple stamped oval piece of steel that read secret state police and the agent’s number. It was all the identification they were required to present.

  “What’s this all about?” Alexsi asked, still calmly.

  “Come with us,” the agent ordered.

  Alexsi stood his ground and looked at them with an annoyed expression. Just long enough for them to get nervous. The second agent’s gun hand began creeping into his coat.