by Dennis Lynds
Experience a heart-pumping and thrilling tale of suspense!
Originally published in THRILLER (2006),
edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author James Patterson.
In this nostalgic Thriller Short, which is relevant today in both its triumph and tragedy, bestselling author Dennis Lynds shares a highly respected story with a new generation.
Critical data must be obtained within three days or many lives could be lost. It’s up to Captain Paul Hareet and Lieutenant Greta Frank to pose as a husband and wife from America in order to infiltrate the depot housing the vital information. When they arrive in Athens, Greece, they immediately realize they are being watched and that the mission is already in jeopardy. Success will be tough, and it might come at a price.
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Success of a Mission
Dennis Lynds
CONTENTS
Success of a Mission
DENNIS LYNDS
Both a literary and suspense novelist, Dennis Lynds is credited with bringing the detective novel into the modern age then, twenty years later—in the 1980s—introducing literary techniques that propelled the genre into its current dynamic form. An award winner, Lynds wrote under several pseudonyms, publishing some eighty novels and two hundred short stories. His most famous pen name was Michael Collins. Under that label he created fiction’s longest-running detective series, starring the indelible private eye Dan Fortune. The New York Times consistently named Lynds’s mysteries among the nation’s top ten. One year, it listed two of his titles, each written under a different pseudonym, without realizing he was the author of both. His awards include both the Edgar and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement.
Lynds also published literary novels and short stories. Five were honored in Best American Short Stories. Then, in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he pioneered the detective form again, writing books in both third and first person and lacing them with short stories, techniques which today’s writers employ regularly.
“Powerful and memorable, [these works] indicate Collins has embarked on a new course after some 60 books,” wrote critic Richard C. Carpenter in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. “Truly, he is a writer to be reckoned with.” Of his most recent short story collection, Fortune’s World, the Los Angeles Times commented, “To spin tales as intriguing and thought provoking as these for three decades is a remarkable enough achievement. Even more remarkable is the sustained quality…. It takes style to bring that off. Bravery, too, of course.”
Iconoclastic, witty and generous, sadly Lynds died August 19, 2005, at the age of eighty-one. Several of his short stories will be published posthumously, including the one here, Success of a Mission. This story was first published in 1968. Since then, it has been nominated for several awards and anthologized. The story is still relevant today in both its triumph and its tragedy.
SUCCESS OF A MISSION
The minister of defense stood with his back to the room. He faced a large map on the wall of his office.
“They will attack,” the minister said. “If we do not know the locations of their ammunition dumps, supply depots and fuel stores, we cannot stop them.”
The minister turned. He was a small man with a round face that would have been kindly except for the hard gray surface of his eyes. These hard gray eyes studied the faces of the other two people in the room the way a scientist would study a specimen on a microscope slide.
“That data would only be at army headquarters in their capital, Minister,” the tall infantry captain said.
The minister nodded. “Yes. Our man at their headquarters knows that much, has already located exactly where they are in the building.”
“He cannot get the data for us, Minister?” the woman asked.
“No. He cannot get into the building. It would be quite impossible in his disguise, and in any case we need him to remain in his present position. His contacts are too low level, and we have no other reliable agents with the necessary experience at their headquarters for a job of this degree of difficulty, sensitivity and importance. There is no time to place an undercover man in the headquarters now. It will have to be a single swift operation from outside army headquarters. Get in, get the data, bring it back without them being aware that we have it.”
The woman paled under her olive complexion. There and gone, the quick fear, but it had been there. She was little more than a girl, despite her officer’s uniform. Her face was oval, with a small nose, wide and full lips and soft brown eyes. She had been in the army three years, and had killed four men with a knife in the dead of night, but she paled as the minister described what would have to be done at the headquarters of the enemy’s army in the heart of enemy country.
The tall man only nodded. “When do we leave?”
His voice, when he said this, was low, and had a faint trace of an accent different from that of the woman and the minister. There was a long scar on his lean, tanned face. The middle finger of his left hand was missing. His almost-black eyes showed no expression.
“In ten minutes, Captain. All your papers are ready,” the minister said. “You, Captain Hareet, will be an American automobile salesman on a long-planned combined vacation and business trip that could not be canceled despite the crisis. We have picked you for this job because of your experience, your colloquial American English and your command of Arabic. With some darkening of the skin, your features will also pass as Arab, if that becomes necessary. You know their army and their city.”
Captain Hareet nodded. “Yes, sir. I know both only too well to lose a war to them.”
The minister faced the girl. “Lieutenant Frank, you will be his wife. Your home is in Santa Barbara, California. You have lived there, and no special regional accent is required for an educated Californian. Standard American will do. Your Arabic will pass in an emergency, but we hope there will be no need. It is hard for a woman to infiltrate in Arab countries.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Frank said. The shiver in her voice was so faint no one but a man as trained as the minister, or Captain Hareet, would have caught it, and it disappeared as quickly as it had come. The two men looked at each other, nodded, and then smiled at the woman.
“You are lovers?” the minister asked.
&nb
sp; The captain was silent. Lieutenant Frank hesitated for a moment. Then she nodded. “Yes, sir. Paul and I have lived together for over a year. We were lovers before that. We planned to marry soon, but that will have to wait now until after the crisis has passed.”
“I am sorry for that, Lieutenant, but it is good that my information is correct.”
“Is such information necessary?” Captain Hareet asked.
“All information is necessary,” the minister said. “In this case, it might be vital. You will be posing as man and wife under the most careful scrutiny of every foreign national who arrives in their country at this moment. They will expect us to send spies, try to learn what their plans are. Women who are not married tend to act like coy maidens at the wrong moment. They forget. To act like she sleeps regularly with a man, a woman must be sleeping regularly with the man. Men who are not married don’t know how to act with a wife at all.”
“Yes, sir,” Hareet said, and smiled again at the young woman. “I think Greta and I will be able to act the part well enough to pass any inspection.”
“Do we parachute?” Greta asked.
“The sky is too clear. They will be alert. You will fly to Rome, and there you will board a normal commercial carrier. You will be Mr. and Mrs. Rogers of Santa Barbara. Harry and Susan, but he calls her Susy. Your papers are in order. The real Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are in Europe on such a trip with a different order of itinerary caused by a sudden change in plans we managed to arrange, and are being watched by our agents. You look enough like them to pass a cursory inspection.”
The minister turned again to the large map on the wall. “I wish we could allow you some time to prepare. We can’t. You are the only suitable team we have that can act the part on such short notice. I cannot even tell you how to proceed. Only that we must have the data within three days.”
The minister turned once more to look at Hareet and Greta with his hard gray eyes. “In three days, they will attack us.”
* * *
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Rogers of Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A., passed through Rome customs and immigration without any trouble. The Italian officials were most polite, and more than a little appreciative of Mrs. Rogers’s dark beauty. She received all the customary whistles and smiles, and one definite pinch. In the taxi that took them to their hotel, they peered out the windows and exclaimed over everything, as American tourists would.
They checked into the hotel they had booked months ago from the States, showered off the grime of their trip, made love in the ornate Italian bed and went out to see the sights of the Eternal City. They ate in one of the best restaurants in Rome, ordered two bottles of good local white wine, went dancing, threw some coins in the proper fountain and visited the others, and generally had a fine tourist evening in the Italian capital.
The next morning they did not rise early, took the time to have their usual big, leisurely breakfast, then caught a taxi back to the airport for the next leg of their journey. On the jet out of Rome, they had seats just behind the wing. Harry Rogers held a guidebook and pointed out the sights below they had missed on the ground the night before.
“Look, dear,” Captain Hareet said to Greta, the perfect eager American automobile salesman on his first trip to Europe. “There’s St. Peter’s, and the Colosseum, and the Via Veneto. We were standing right down there just last night, honey.”
“Did you remember to send the postcards to the Phelps and the Temples, Harry?” Greta said, her mind clearly at home with her social obligations where a good wife’s mind should be.
“Ouch, I forgot,” Mr. Harry Rogers said, the self-centered American husband. “We’ll send some from Athens when we get there, okay?”
When they arrived at the airport of their next stop, the capital of the enemy country, there was the loud confusion normal to Arab countries. The present political crisis and impending possibility of war only heightened the clamor and chaos. They were inspected thoroughly at customs. With the mighty United States Seventh Fleet cruising pointedly at this end of the Mediterranean, Americans were not in the best standing in Arab countries at the moment.
“You will do well to remain safely within the city,” a customs official told them coldly. “And I suggest you do not enter the less visited and policed areas.”
“We sure won’t, buddy,” Hareet said, his voice clearly nervous.
The official smiled at the intimidated American. Another man who stood off to the right and watched everyone who passed through customs did not smile. The dark shadows of his Levantine eyes stared at Captain Hareet’s left hand. He showed nothing on his face, no particular expression, but his steady gaze followed them as they left.
“He’s interested in your missing finger, Paul,” Greta said through a wifely smile. “They might have a file on you.”
“Possible,” Hareet agreed, smiling down at her. “We must go to the hotel, however. The risk can’t be avoided, our contact will be made there.”
Greta walked ahead of her husband in the American fashion. They took a taxi to their hotel, where she walked in first, left Hareet to pay the cabdriver and run after her.
In their suite of rooms, Hareet remembered to overtip the robed and surly bellman, and Greta remembered to prepare at once for a shower. They were well-taken precautions. Two maids soon arrived to perform some barely necessary tasks.
“We’re being watched, Paul,” Greta said.
Hareet agreed. “The question is, are we being watched as their normally trigger-happy suspicion against all tourists at a time like this, or have we been spotted as something special and possibly dangerous?”
“I would say something special.” Greta thought carefully. “But not yet certain. They are checking on us.”
“So we have some time. A few hours at least. Unless they do have a file on me and have connected it to Harry Rogers.”
“How many will come?” Greta asked.
“If they are sure, a squad of soldiers and a vehicle. If they are still only suspicious, two men.”
“We can’t stay here in the rooms. We wouldn’t look much like American tourists.”
“No. Are you ready?”
They went out and down to the crowded streets that smelled of the masses of humanity and poor sewage disposal. Streets now crowded more than usual with the local inhabitants, the fellahin and the middle class and even the elite upper classes in their Cadillacs and Mercedes. They were all more excited than normal. There was a high tension in the city, a fever of hate and violence building almost by the minute. In the markets, the merchants hawked and sold frantically. In the shops, shutters were being readied for possible mass demonstrations.
The two Americans were watched with barely concealed antagonism.
Hareet took pictures until it was dark. They went to clubs that throbbed with excited patriotism. The belly dancers appeared overcome with ecstasy, danced specifically for the soldiers in uniform who seemed to throng everywhere. Four Americans sat near Hareet and Greta in one popular tourist club.
“I don’t like it,” one American said to them. “Time we got out of here.”
“The sooner the better,” another said.
“It doesn’t look so good,” Hareet acknowledged, his voice nervous again.
“Dave Spatz,” the first American introduced himself. “Where you folks from?”
“Santa Barbara,” Hareet said. “Harry and Susy Rogers.”
“I was in Santa Barbara once for Fiesta. That’s one helluva great town to live in. We’re from Chicago.”
“August is our best month,” Greta said.
The police watched them, listened to them. But the police were watching everyone. They sat through two drinks and three belly dancers, then left and returned to their hotel. The desk clerk was friendly.
“Terrible times,” the clerk said. “Even our thieves are too excited to work.”
“Thieves?” Hareet said.
The clerk smiled and held out Greta’s wedding ring. “Madame fo
rgot her ring after her shower. The maid found it after you had gone out.”
“Oh, my, how careless of me,” Greta exclaimed, and smiled at the clerk.
She reached for the ring with her left hand. The clerk bowed over her hand to put the ring on. When he straightened up, his eyes had subtly changed, clouded, but he continued to smile as if nothing had happened.
Greta and Paul went up to their suite.
“They searched our rooms,” Hareet said. “That’s when they found your wedding ring.”
“It won’t matter,” Greta said. “I made a bad mistake, Paul. Did you see the clerk’s eyes? He saw it.”
“A mistake?”
Greta took off her wedding ring and held up her hand. The ring was a broad gold band. The third finger of her left hand was smooth and unmarked, one single color.
“I’m suntanned, Paul,” Greta said. “There should be a pale ring mark on my finger. The clerk knows I haven’t worn the ring more than a few days.”
“You have a dark complexion.”
“Not that dark. Look under my wristwatch. My sunglasses have left a pale patch on my nose. He saw all that, too, Paul.”
Hareet looked at his watch. “We’ll wait half an hour for the contact.”
The knock came in fifteen minutes.
* * *
Hareet opened the door. Behind him, the shower was running in the bathroom, the noise coming from under the bathroom door.
The two dark-eyed men who came into the suite wore Western clothes. They both glanced toward the sound of the shower, then back at Hareet.
“My wife can’t stand this heat of yours, too muggy,” Hareet said with an apologetic smile. “Back home, our heat isn’t so humid. Dry and not all that hot except when the Santa Anas blow down the canyons, you know?”
“In Santa Barbara, sir?” one man said. “The sundowner winds, yes?”
The other man walked through the rooms, his hand in his pocket. All the rooms except the bathroom. He returned, shook his head to the first man, and stood near the hall door they had left open.
