That doesn't explain whey Hagen had it, why he was carrying it around with him or why he thought it was so important that he struggled to give it to me before he died.
Johanna sat back on her heels and tapped the pencil on the nightstand, thinking. None of the answers were forthcoming as she'd hoped. She needed help. The only place she could think of turning for help was the Dalys.
If she went to them with her story, could she trust them to keep it a secret until they figured it out together? Or would their responsibility to COI trump their personal feelings for her?
Maybe if she was able to convince them that it had to be kept from COI until they knew the full scope of Hagen's mission. That would be the only way she could be sure to trust them.
This plan seemed shaky at best, but she couldn't think of anything else.
Once again, she packed everything into the trunk of Hagen's car. She paid her bill at the motel office and got some dimes for the payphone at the gas station across the street.
The Dalys were finishing their breakfast when the phone rang.
Charlie pushed back his chair and answered it, leaning back to reach the phone on the stand in the hallway.
He struggled to keep his balance on the teetering chair when he heard the voice on the other end of the line.
"Oh my God!" he exclaimed.
"Now what?" Eve asked. Charlie waved his hand at her.
"OK, absolutely, yes," he said before hanging up.
Wide-eyed, he hung up the phone and gave Eve a crooked grin.
"Goddamn it, don't sit there with that silly look on your face. Who was it?"
"It was Johanna. She said she's fine and that whatever we've heard about her, it's not true. She said she needs our help and that she's coming to D.C. to see us."
Eve slapped her knee.
"That's our girl! Did she say when she'll be here?"
"Well, that was the strange thing. She said probably tonight, but that if we think there's anyone watching our house, we should leave the front door open with the hall light on."
Allen Dulles was puffing so hard on his pipe that Wexler could see the orange glow reflecting off the man's glasses.
Wexler was sitting in Dulles' office at COI with B.E. Sackett, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Bureau. Sackett was in the middle of haranguing Dulles and Wexler was enjoying every minute of it.
"…and not a single FBI background check on any of your people? I never said a word, nor did the Director, but now your oddball outfit has gotten people killed."
"Now, hold on a minute," Dulles protested.
"No, you hold on a minute," Sackett replied. He was getting red in the face and leaned forward, putting his hands on the edge of Dulles' enormous desk. "I've got two dead FBI agents – one of which had three kids and another on the way – two dead Nazi spies, a dead Bundist, a probable spy in Lindbergh that we had to let go, and a Nazi double agent running around New York."
"First," Dulles replied. "I'm sure that Miss Falck had nothing to do with any of those deaths, as regrettable as they all are. Second, I'm equally sure that she is not a double agent."
"I don't care what you're sure of. The Director is hopping mad, as am I, and he's going to bring it up to the President just what a disaster your outfit has caused."
"I can promise you the COI's full cooperation in any investigation," Dulles offered.
"Right. Somehow I don't think you'd be fully forthcoming with any information as to Johanna Falck's whereabouts if you knew them."
"No, no, no," Dulles said, "You'll have our total cooperation. I can assure you that everyone in COI, up to and including General Donovan himself has been informed of the situation."
Sackett appeared unconvinced. He crossed his arms and cocked his head.
"Uh huh. And is there anyone from COI that you think might be in contact with Miss Falck or might be helping her?"
"No. If there were, I'd know about it."
42
The early autumn darkness and the unfamiliar streets of Washington's Georgetown neighborhood conspired to make finding the Daly house difficult. Johanna took two wrong turns off Rhode Island Avenue before finding their street.
She squinted in the dim light, trying to read the house numbers. Afraid to draw attention to herself by slowing down, she made a quick pass down the street and turned to go around the block once more.
There it was – 2340. The front door was closed, with only the porch light on. She found an open spot along the curb and parked.
Five minutes passed as Johanna waited and watched.
As best she could see, none of the other cars that lined the street had anyone in them. That didn't mean that no one was watching the Daly house, but it was a hopeful sign.
It also didn't mean that there wasn't already someone from COI or the FBI in the Dalys' house waiting for her. It all came down to whether she could still trust Charlie and Eve. Johanna hesitated, her hand on the door handle. She decided she had no other choice and got out of the car.
She grabbed Hagen's cases out of the trunk and walked up to the Dalys' front door.
Before she could lift the knocker, the door flew open. Charlie stood in the doorway, struggling to keep a serious look on his face.
He broke into laugher and gathered Johanna up into a bear hug. With a suitcase in each hand and one under her arm, she could only stand there and be squeezed. Over her shoulder she saw Eve standing in the foyer, beaming.
They hustled her inside and brought her straight to the kitchen table. Charlie had pans warming on the stove and the table was set for dinner.
Eve sat Johanna down and poured her a glass of wine. She topped off her own glass and took her seat at the table.
"What in the world have you been up to?" she asked.
Johanna tasted the wine, took a deep breath and told them everything that had happened since she saw them last. She told them about Stuttgart and working at the German Foreign Institute. She told them about the day that Erich Hagen kidnapped her and her voyage in the U-Boat. Charlie and Eve listened silently, rapt.
By the time she had reached the present, they had finished dinner and Charlie was serving coffee.
"I don't understand what the point of Hagen's mission was," Eve admitted.
Charlie nodded.
"If it's true that this is all some… peace offering on the part of Hitler or one of his deputies, it seems like a pointless waste of time." He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. "Unless they're stepping things up after the Hess overture. Maybe they're thinking that if Hess was unsuccessful in negotiating with the British they should take another tack with the U.S."
Eve made a noncommittal face.
Charlie shook his head.
"No, that still doesn't make sense. Things have gone too far. Now with the Germans sinking one of our ships, I just don't see us turning back. Whether it's Hitler putting out peace feelers or another one of his lackeys making moves behind his back, it still just seems pointless. What do they think they're going to accomplish?"
"What about General Donovan's passport?" Johanna asked. "How do you think that fits in?"
"Well," Charlie replied. "It seems authentic, although I'm sure the German Abwehr has some pretty good forgers on staff. Maybe they're hoping to make contact with Bill? Did this Hagen mention to you that you had been selected by Abwehr to be their witness specifically because of your connection to COI?"
Johanna shook her head.
"I see." He chewed on his thumbnail, thinking. "I'd suggest we ask Bill himself, but he's in London."
Eve flipped through the blood-stained booklet.
"The latest visa I see here is entry to Bulgaria in March of last year."
"That would suggest that whoever got their hands on it did so in Bulgaria, otherwise it would have an exit visa stamp, wouldn't it?" Johanna asked.
Eve and Charlie agreed.
"In any event," Charlie continued. "All of this is an interesting
intellectual exercise, but it doesn't get us any closer to an answer. We can ask Bill Donovan what he thinks when he gets back. In the meantime, we should bring this to the British and get their take."
"No," Johanna interrupted. "I don't want to tell anyone. Not yet. I want to figure this out before I tell anyone else at COI or the British."
"Why do you say that?" Eve asked.
"I don't know. What if there's more to it? I don't have anything concrete to go on, but Hagen didn't seem like your stereotypical Nazi. There was something about him that I can't quite put my finger on."
She looked down at her hands while Eve and Charlie shared a confused look.
"I guess I'd like to find out where this goes before we let the whole world in," she explained in a quiet voice.
Johanna looked up to see the Dalys' at a loss for words, puzzled expressions on their faces. She was about to elaborate when she had a thought that made her laugh out loud.
"I can't believe I didn't think of it!" She chuckled and shook her head. "Why don't I just ask the Nazis?"
"Sorry?" Charlie asked. "I don't follow."
She reminded him about the shortwave radio hidden in Hagen's car.
"In one of his notebooks is a list that looks like radio frequencies. Why don't we send them a message? Whoever he was communicating with must know what it's all about. I have his codebook and everything. I can tell them what happened and ask what they want me to do. I'll tell them that I intend to complete Hagen's mission, that I'll be their witness. Maybe they'll tell me where to go and we can see where it ends.
"Do either of you know Morse code?" she asked.
"No….," Charlie replied, "but I don't think that's a very good idea."
"What's the harm in talking?" she asked. "Can we at least agree that I'm not going to be divulging any sensitive information by telling them what happened to Hagen?"
Charlie shrugged.
"When we find out what it is they want me to do, we can decide then."
Charlie looked at Eve. She nodded.
"Alright," he sighed. "I'm sure I have a book somewhere with Morse code in it."
Johanna pulled Hagen's codebook out and they figured out how to use it. It was a simple one-time pad – a grid with strings of random numbers written every other line. Charlie explained how it worked: write the message to be encoded below the lines of numbers, which represented how many positions in the alphabet to shift. If 'A' was the letter to be encoded and the number above it was 4, count over four positions in the alphabet and the 'A' is encoded as 'E.' Charlie used the first line of Hagen's code sheet to show how his own name would be encoded as 'HDKOEDL.' He explained that the recipient of the message would have the same code sheet for that day, enabling them to decode the message. It was an unbreakable cipher.
They composed a short message relating what had happened to Hagen and requesting further instruction. Johanna translated it into German, writing in the grid of the code sheet.
Charlie encoded the message, giving it to Eve to check his math when he was done.
"Whoever we're hoping to contact with this message, don't they have to be expecting our call?" Eve asked. "Johanna, Hagen told you he was transmitting to a station somewhere that was forwarding it to Berlin, didn't he?"
Johanna nodded.
"Yes. And it was obvious that he had set times that he was supposed to send them." She pulled out one of Hagen's notebooks. "See these pages? They're full of what look like radio frequencies. But there aren't any dates or times associated with them."
They took another look at each item in Hagen's cases, but didn't find any kind of schedule for sending messages. Johanna pushed back from the table and stood up.
"If this is all we have, it's all we have," she said, packing everything back in the cases. "We have nothing to lose by transmitting the message and hoping it's received. Let's go."
"Go where?" Eve asked. "You said the car is out in the street. Why don't we just transmit from there?"
Johanna shook her head.
"Hagen always drove to the shore somewhere. Maybe he was transmitting to a ship, I don't know, but I think we ought to do the same."
The phone rang. Charlie answered and listened for a moment. He held his hand over the mouthpiece, whispering "Allen Dulles."
"Yes, I've heard," he said. "I certainly hope no one's giving any credence to the idea that she's doubled….Mmm hmm….Yes, I'll call if I hear from her."
He hung up the phone.
"What did he say?" Eve asked.
"It looks like the FBI is going to use this to make life difficult for COI, if not to try to shut us down entirely. Allen said it's bad enough that the War Department and the Office of Naval Intelligence are constantly carping to the President about us, now he's worried that we've given them enough rope to hang us with. General Donovan has already been informed. He's in London working with the Brits to set up a COI branch there."
Charlie and Eve shared a look.
"Johanna," Charlie said at last. "I don't think we can keep the rest of COI in the dark any longer. We have to tell Allen Dulles the truth."
"We will," she replied. "Just give me a couple of days. Please."
Johanna knew that telling Dulles was the right thing to do, but she still wanted to figure the mystery out first. It didn't help matters that she didn't have a good reason to justify it, just her feeling that she had to do it this way.
"I'm sorry that I can't give you a better explanation," she continued. "I just feel it's something I have to do. I…I just feel like there's more to this than meets the eye. I wouldn't have brought you into it if I didn't need your help."
Charlie looked at her for a moment in silence.
Eve reached over to squeeze Johanna's shoulder.
"Let's see where this goes," she said to Charlie. "Then we'll tell everyone."
After a long pause, he nodded.
"Alright." He grabbed his coat off a hook by the door. "Why don't we go to ChesapeakeBeach? We spent a weekend there this summer, so I know how to get there. It's only the Bay, it's not on the ocean, but it should be good enough."
"OK," Eve agreed. "Don't forget your Morse code book, dear."
Just over an hour later, they arrived at ChesapeakeBeach. Johanna drove while Charlie directed her to the shore.
The summer resort town was deserted. The seaside boardwalk was empty and the souvenir shops and hotels were boarded up. A few lights shone in windows of the houses in town, identifying the locals waiting out the winter for another season.
They pulled into a windswept parking lot by the beach. Johanna turned off the headlights and checked that they were alone.
"OK, so where is this radio?" Charlie asked.
"Do you have a pocketknife?" she replied. He produced one from his jacket pocket.
Johanna used the blade to pry at the chrome molding around the instrument panel as she remembered Hagen doing.
Eve slid forward in the back seat to watch as Johanna gently pulled at the gauges until they were hanging by wires over the steering column.
Charlie craned his neck to see into the hole that Johanna had opened in the dashboard.
"I'll be damned," he exclaimed, seeing the soft glow of the shortwave radio's dial.
Johanna asked Eve to hand her the notebook with the list of frequencies.
"See, the dial is still at 4.3 Mhz," she pointed. "That's probably the last frequency he used. I don't remember seeing him change it after transmitting."
She flipped through the pages of Hagen's notebook.
"Here it is: 4.3," she said, showing it to Eve and Charlie. "It's the third number down on the first page. He sent three messages, so I think we can assume that this next number, 2.4, is the frequency we should use."
She reached through the steering wheel and turned the dial to 2.4 Mhz. Eve handed her the transmitting key and Johanna plugged it into the jack.
"OK, Charlie. Are you ready with the Morse code?" she asked.
"Ready as I'll
ever be." Charlie took the key by its wooden knob and opened his copy of the Boy Scouts Handbook.
He held the book and the encoded message in one hand while he tapped the knob with the other. He hummed softly to himself until he was finished.
"I think I've got it," he said. "If they respond 'What the hell was that, schweinhunde?’ I'll try again."
Fifth Column Page 27
