by Gregg Loomis
Gurt brought him a scotch, tinkling ice cubes in its crystal glass.
He looked up at her from the chair in front of the computer screen. “Those men in the car may come back. Might be better if we shut the house down while I’m gone.”
“And Manfred’s school?”
Lang sighed. “He can make it up.”
“It is a lot to ask of someone his age. We will stay here. I can take care of those men should they come back.”
Of that, Lang had ample experience.
“And you,” Gurt continued. “You will go back to England?”
“Only to see what Jacob has found. Should be in and out, no hassle.”
27.
Tongue of the Ocean
Bahamas
June 12, 1941
O1:26 Local Time
Yeoman Radioman Ted Willard, United States Navy, forgot the mug of coffee cooling in its holder beside the ASV (airborne surface vessel) radar. There was a hump in the green line moving across his screen where no ship should be.
The Tongue of the Ocean was basically a deep water dead end. Open to the south, it stretched between New Providence and Andros Islands, ending at the shallows of the Little Bahamas Bank. Twenty miles wide, one hundred fifty long with some of the deepest waters in the Atlantic, waters that could provide the depth a submarine needed to operate.
But only if that submarine was going to operate in a very confined area where the surface traffic consisted of small craft, those well under a hundred tons, carrying cooking fuel and consumer goods from Nassau to three shallow water ports on Andros, returning with local fruits and vegetables.
Hardly priority targets.
But there had been reports of submarine activity, reports by frightened local fishermen who cast their nets at night, mariners on the Nassau-Andros freighters and a few others. None completely reliable.
That was why the Rubber Duck was here. The PBY Catalina flying boat with the child’s toy painted just under the pilot’s side window made a perfect platform for searching for subs. With a cruise speed that could be reduced to under a hundred while its radar probed the water’s surface only a thousand feet below.
The PBY was hardly graceful. A thick wing across the top of the bulky fuselage bearing two Pratt & Whitney “Wasp” radial engines. But it was equally at home taking off and landing on its tricycle gear on land or its nautically designed hull on water. With a range of 2500 miles plus a comfortable reserve, it could (and did) scan the entire Bahamas chain by night and return to base at Key West at dawn.
These patrols had begun by order of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) within days of the declaration of war by England and France upon Germany on in September, 1939. A series of United States Neutrality Acts had declared operations in US waters by belligerents would be treated as acts hostile to America. Just how these proclamations might be enforced was not specified. And as far as Radioman Willard was concerned, he was watching one of those ‘hostile acts’ right now. Or damn close. They were, after all, over the waters of a British colony right off the US coast.
The Lieutenant’s bored voice crackled through Willard’s head set, interrupting The Jack Benny Show. Completely contrary to naval regs to wire into a civilian broadcast on patrol but with the boring nature of the work, violations drew more of a wink than a reprimand. Rochester had just made a funny remark about Jack’s legendary stinginess and the audience was laughing.
“Anyone see anything?”
Normally, the question would have been almost rhetorical. The PBY was unarmed, meaning observers replaced the gunners in the two side and one forward gun blisters but exactly what were they supposed to see at night?
Radar, though, didn’t care what time it was.
“Uh, Skipper, I think I got something,” Willard said.
There was a moment of silence before Lieutenant Jimmy Watts appeared in the dim red light of the aircraft’s interior. Willard hoped that meant the lieutenant j.g. was at the controls. The PBY’s auto pilot was little more than a wing leveler.
The lieutenant set a fresh cup of coffee on the radar console.
The PBY had a galley generous for military aircraft: A small ice box for Coca-Colas and sandwiches and a one ring electrical burner presently occupied by the coffee pot.
Although discipline was maintained at all times, the aviators, the brown-shoe navy, had a more relaxed command structure than their black-shoe counterparts. “Figured the one you had had gone cold by now.”
Since the Lieutenant had had to leave his earphones in the cockpit, Willard had to shout. “Thank you, sir!”
He had a hard time imagining a junior officer on the destroyer on which he had briefly and unhappily served bringing him fresh coffee. Hell, he had been so sea sick most of the time on board, he had been unable to drink anything. Thankfully, he didn’t get air sick.
“OK, Willard, what do you see?”
With the fresh cup of coffee in one hand, he pointed with the other, again shouting. “Just popped up, sir. A surface ship would have appeared differently.”
“So, you think we’re looking at a U-boat?”
“That’s my guess.”
“What the hell,” the lieutenant asked no one in particular, “do you suppose a sub is doing out here? Not like there are an abundance of targets.”
As if to answer the question, a second hump bent the line.
“What the hell. . .?”
“I’d say a second sub, Lieutenant.”
“Now we have two U-boats where there are no targets.”
Willard could think of nothing to say.
The lieutenant turned, on his way back to the cockpit. “Not our problem: We just turn the info over to CNO. Let them unravel it.”
That was fine with Willard.
28.
85 Albert Embankment
London
The Present
The calabash seemed to whistle as Alred James sucked on the empty pipe, imagining he could taste the residue of the rich Turkish tobacco he had favored before the bloody Health Police had banned smoking in the building.
Across the teak, definitely-not-government–issue desk, Nigel Smythe sat, pretending the noise wasn’t both annoying and disgusting. The damn pipes James toyed with were no less than some sort of adult oral pacifier, same thing Smith’s newest, four month old, grand sucked on if in a somewhat more different configuration.
As though sensing his subordinate’s thoughts, James carefully returned the calabash to its place in the two level pipe rack that shared the window sill behind the desk with a half-dozen framed snaps of wife and family. MI6 encouraged pictures like those. A man (or, more recently, a woman) who had a family. Such a person was more likely to think twice before taking undue risks or, for that matter, succumbing to the temptations access to state secrets and the price they could bring.
That latter part didn’t present quite the bother it once had. The Russians had paid competitively well. If you consider the five hundred rubles--less than twenty pounds in today’s money--a month, a private apartment and constant KGB guard Kim Philby and his lot received when they defected in the early ‘60’s. At least he became A Hero of the Soviet Union when he died in ’88. Probably because the Ivans no longer had to worry he would defect back to England.
The current enemy, the Jihadists, paid nothing unless you considered a somewhat suspect promise of seventy-odd virgins a reward and they didn’t even pay that. Allah did. The reward they delivered more often than not was a speedy trip to collect said virgins
Smythe never quite understood how a people who so fervently believed Allah’s will would prevail throughout the world were so damn certain He needed their help. Small wonder, he supposed. Take a look at Little Cairo, the Marble Ach section of Edgeware Road. The damn Wogs had left the Medieval mentality, poverty, violence and sectarian hatreds of Egypt, Lebanon and half a dozen other Moslem countries to import a Medieval mentality, poverty, violence and sectarian hatred to right here in London.
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This was the progress the pro-immigration people spoke of?
Smythe was suddenly aware James was speaking to him.
“. . . information?”
James was aware Smythe was off wool gathering, something the man was wont to do and repeated himself. “Any word from our man in Nassau?”
Rather than admit he had not been paying attention, Smythe asked, “Which man? We had a pair of SAS toughies who got badly mauled by the American. . .”
“Lang Reilly, formerly of the Agency.”
“We’ll deal with him later. And we had another, an academic type, who was supposed to review that bloody collection that idiot woman put on display.”
“That’s the one. What did he conclude?” James wanted to know.
“Conclude? Very little, I fear. He looked at the letters, the correspondence. The woman, the Duchess, apparently had little to do but complain to her mother and her friends back in the States. She hated the Bahamas in general and Nassau in particular. She kept some copies of her own correspondence.”
“Not uncommon if a bit old fashioned, keeping copies of one’s own letters. We didn’t hire him to pry into some woman’s private letters, at least not to her personal acquaintances,” James growled. “There’s more?”
“Well, I suppose you could say ‘yes’.”
Alred James snapped forward in his chair, slapping both hands palm down on the desk with enough violence to make his visitor wince. “Yes or no? I’m not in the mood for games, man!”
Smythe ran a hand across the lower part of his face as though wiping his chin. “There are copies of a series of letters
to a man named Axel Wenner Gren, a Swede ex-pat in Nassau at the time.”
“Letters? What kind of letters? Was she. . .?”
Symthe smiled. “No, nothing like that. At least as far as we can tell. Still, the series is quite strange. They contain the sort of information Gren would have known: The weather, local social events, things of that sort.”
“Why the bloody hell would she write about things he already knew?”
“A code, perhaps?”
James snorted his doubts. “Code? They saw each other almost daily as did every other white person on New Providence Island back then. Why would she communicate in code?”
Symthe sighed heavily. Being in this business warped the mind, made you think in circles. “Perhaps the letters weren’t intended for Gren but someone else.”
“Who?”
Smythe shook his head. “If we knew that, we might have a better idea of what we’re up against. I mean, we don’t have an idea. It’s truly aggro.”
The other man sat back in his chair, his hands settling into his lap. “And there’s more?”
“Afraid so. She wrote Gren or whoever on the first and fifteenth of each month up until sometime in 1943 and he replied. At least one in the series of Gren’s letters is missing. Either that or he didn’t write in January, 1942.”
“The American woman at the exhibit.”
A statement, not a question.
“Perhaps. But our chaps searched her room, her clothes, her luggage. Nothing.”
“Doesn’t mean there wasn’t some sort of balls up,” James observed. “We can’t risk it. This Reilly fellow must be stopped.”
Smythe voiced the doubt that had been hiding in the back of his mind for some time. “But is it worth it? I mean, risking exposing the Society as well as ourselves?”
It was as if someone had lit a fuse. James was on his feet, his voice the steady quiet of a man about to explode with rage. “’Worth it’ you ask? Remember your oath when you joined St George. ‘unwavering loyalty to country and monarch,’ you swore. That’s why we had to do something about Dianna before she humiliated the Crown further.”
“But, this business in Nassau, that was nearly seventy years ago. . .”
“Seventy or a hundred, what does it matter? Are you willing to stand by with your thumb up your bloomin’ arse while a bunch of Yanks expose the strong likelihood the queen’s own uncle was a traitor? Doesn’t seem like unwavering loyalty to me.”
Smythe stood. “You’re right.”
“And?”
“And we’ve had one of the MQ-1 Predators on Annulewitz since he left his house this morning.”
“And Reilly?” A little less sophisticated equipment but we’re tracking him, too, just in case the two aren’t headed to the same place.”
James nodded. “Cavanaugh House?”
“As certain as anything can be in this business. I don’t think it was idle curiosity that had Isaacs asking questions around the shop. Good thing we monitor all phone traffic in and out.”
“I’d favor taking care of Reilly and Annulewitz separately from Issacs. Something unfortunate happens to Isaacs at the same time as the other two, someone is going to start asking questions.”
29.
Norfork County, East Anglia
England
12:42 Local Time
Two Days Later
“Please exit the roundabout at the second exit,” the British-accented woman’s voice of the Audi’s GPS said.
The politely phrased request amounted to going straight although Lang Reilly would describe a semicircle to remain on the B 1155. Instead of stop signs at intersections, the British employed circles, roundabouts, with anywhere from three to five exits.
So far so good. Well, mostly. Driving on the left side of the road had presented little or no problems on the multi-lane M 3. This winding country road, barely two lanes wide, was another matter. Left-hand driving was downright unnatural. Like the designated hitter rule.
He had reserved an economy model, a Mini or Peugeot Junior. Not because of price but because the smaller vehicle would be easier to operate. The swarthy man at Gatwick’s Hertz center had informed him there were no GPS’s on economy cars, a fact directly contradicting the information he had from the car company’s international rental center. So, Lang had wound up with a silver Audi A-4, now missing the passenger side mirror, left along with someone else’s driver’s side on some narrow street in Norwich where cars parked on both sides of the street.
Damn Jacob anyway. Lang had suggested making this trip together but his friend had declined on the grounds separate travel would make surveillance both more difficult and more obvious. Lang had reminded him that, given what had happened with the two thugs in Nassau, being followed around by the local constabulary wasn’t all bad. Jacob’s reply had been to the effect that unless he, Lang, could distinguish between what Jacob described as “mere coppers and some bloody bad blokes,” he would be wise to remain as invisible as possible. Lang’s friend refused to explain until they met in person.
He had been unable to tell if British hospitality had provided the usual tail such as the one that he had ditched in London earlier in the month. But here in the open country of East Anglia one would have been as obvious as a beached whale. He had seen nothing but the occasional tractor and small cars impatient to pass the shoulder-hugging Audi.
The GulfStream had been out of service for regular maintenance, so Lang had trusted his body if not soul to Delta. The fully reclining seats for all international business class passengers had helped. Even though seat/bed settings brought no more sleep than the GulfStream’s bed, multiple scotches and two glasses of a modest Cabernet with seriously overdone roast beef had reduced him to a state that, if not really slumber, was at least semi-consciousness.
He must have been only semiconscious to have agreed to accept the Audi, he thought as he wrenched the car to the left to make room for a truck. He was rewarded with the sound of branches scraping the car’s side. He jerked the wheel back toward the undefined middle of the road just in time to note a sign announcing Burnham Market was three-and-a-half miles ahead.
The town didn’t begin with scattered buildings getting closer and closer together. He was amid pasture-like fields and the next second, structures were crowding the road.
This was no typica
l British small town. Although a number of the buildings could well have dated back to the seventeenth century, many housed upscale clothiers, men’s and women’s, a tea shop, wine and spirits, home furnishings. In this area, Lang had expected a local pub, perhaps an apothecary, stores selling goods more adapted to the rural life. But Burnham Market was only a few miles from the sandy beaches of North Norfolk, a draw to what must be an unusually affluent crowd.
The thought was reinforced as Lang fell in behind a pair of Porsches at the point the street divided with a green space in the middle. On the right, the largest building in town, The Hoste Arms. In front, four umbrella shaded tables hosted a dozen or so guests taking their afternoon tea in malt form. The check-in was on the side off a small parking lot filled with expensive machinery displaying prestige three letter tags.
Inside a very modern, glassed in room, Lang surrendered his passport for inspection and was given a key.
“If you can wait, I’ll have someone take your bag,” the cherub faced girl behind the counter promised.
Retrieving his passport, Lang picked up his small suitcase. “Just give me directions and I’ll be fine.’
Directions, it seemed, were not exactly simple.
Many small English country inns started in the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Centuries as taverns, giving succor to travelers in the form of food, drink and a communal bed while the horses were stabled and fed. With the advent of the railroad, trade increased a dozen fold as those who had never been outside their home county became tourists. A century later, the automobile made tourism an industry. Stables, no longer needed, became additional space for ever increasing numbers of guests as did adjacent buildings, meaning new rooms were located where possible, often not off any particular hallway or on any specific floor since the passageways rose a step here, two or three down there, each with the frequently posted notice to ‘mind your head’ in reference to low crossing beams. Guests’ height had increased over the years as had their number.
