“A lifeguard, huh?” Butchart sounded worried. “You volunteered?”
“Sure.”
“And went through all the training?”
“Well…”
“Well what?”
“I was kinda filling in. All the regulars had enlisted, so there really wasn’t time for me to take the courses.”
“Sorta like with your bombing mission?”
“I guess.”
Parker went meek and quiet again, as if we’d just exposed him as a fraud.
“Can I ask you guys something?”
“Sure.” Butchart said.
“What’s this all about? I mean. I know you mentioned something about a job. But what kind of job?”
“A onetime deal. A mission, provided you qualify. You’d be sent home on a prisoner exchange. But you’d have to memorize some information for us to pass along to the generals once you got back to the States. Facts and figures, maybe a lot of them.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I’ll bet. And in return you’d get a free trip home. Not bad, huh?”
He smiled at that, then frowned, as if realizing it sounded too good to be true.
“But why me? There are plenty of other guys who’ve earned it more.”
“Do you always look a gift horse in the mouth? Did you turn down the lifeguard job?”
“No, but…”
“But what?”
“I dunno. Something seems kinda funny about the whole thing.”
I tried to put him at ease.
“Look, you’re a navigator, which means you probably have a head for numbers and memorization. So there you go. You said it yourself, you’d be good at it.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
Butchart spent the next few minutes going over the preparation that would be required. He also described the likely route home—up through occupied France in the company of German escorts from the SS. Parker’s eyes got a little wide during that part, and Butchart nodded at me in approval.
“So let’s say you get caught, Parker. Let’s say that halfway through this nice little train ride to Paris, one of those Krauts gets suspicious and takes you off at the next stop for a little questioning. What do you do then?”
“You mean if I’m captured?”
“No, dumb ass. You’re already captured. That’s why you’re part of an exchange. But let’s say they decide to check you out, grill you a little. What you gonna tell ’em?”
“Name, rank, and serial number?”
“Yeah, sure. But what else?”
“Well, nothing, I hope.”
Butchart got in his face like a drill sergeant.
“You hope?”
“Okay, I know. Or know I’ll try.”
“C’mon, Parker, you can level with us. You really think you could handle some Gestapo thug getting all over you? What would you tell him?”
“I like to think I wouldn’t say a damn thing.”
“You mean like if they try this?”
Butchart slid a knife from his belt. Then he grabbed Parker by a shank of hair and pulled back his head. Before the kid even realized what was happening, Butchart had put the flat of the blade against the white of Parker’s neck—steel on skin, as if he were about to peel him like a piece of fruit.
Parker swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. For a moment I thought he was going to cry.
“Whadda you doin’?”
“Checkin’ you out.”
Butchart yanked Parker’s head lower while holding the blade steady. Sweat beaded at Parker’s temples, and his eyes bulged. When he next spoke his voice was an octave higher.
“I’m not the enemy, okay?”
“Oh, yeah? How do we know that for sure?”
Another tug on his hair, this time eliciting a sharp squeal of pain.
“You coulda been a plant, put on that train to fool us. Or to infiltrate all our other boys and steal their secrets. Air routes, evasion tendencies, stuff about the new bombsight. How come nobody in your compartment acted like they knew you?”
“I’m new!” he said shrilly. “Nobody talks to replacements!”
Butchart abruptly released him and put away the knife. Parker sat up and tried to collect himself, but it was no good. His skin was pale gooseflesh, and he was swallowing so fast that his throat was working like a piston. He touched the spot where Butchart had held the blade. There were still red marks from Butchart’s knuckles. A little cruel, no doubt, but I guess it was necessary.
Butchart turned toward me and nodded, and I knew without a word that it was his confirmation signal.
“I’ll tell Colonel Gill,” he said, rising from his chair.
“You mean I’m out?”
It wasn’t clear if Parker was relieved or disappointed, which for us only enhanced his suitability.
“No,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “You’re in. You passed with flying colors.”
“You’ll start your training tomorrow,” Butchart said. “Tobin here will go over the timetable.”
We had two weeks to bring him up to speed on all the garbage information Colonel Gill wanted drilled into his head. Figuring that his taskmaster needed to be just as committed to the “facts” as his clueless student, the colonel assigned a sergeant from his staff named Wesley Flagg to handle the learning sessions.
Flagg was the perfect choice—pleasant, good-hearted, and as sincere as they come. Flagg’s earnestness drove Butchart crazy, enough that he assigned me to keep tabs on the lessons. But as far as Colonel Gill was concerned, Flagg’s greatest attribute was that he never questioned orders. Even if Flagg were to suspect that the information was flawed, there was virtually no chance he would have raised a fuss. He would simply assume that his superiors knew best.
Parker was a fast learner. Every time I asked Flagg for an update, he gushed about his pupil’s ability to handle a heavy workload. But for all his boasting I sensed an unspoken uneasiness about Parker’s fitness for the job. Flagg dared to bring it up only once, asking, “Are you sure Colonel Gill has signed off on this guy? I mean, Parker’s great with the material, but, well…”
“Well what? He’s the colonel’s top choice.”
“Nothing, then.”
He never brought it up again.
The night before the exchange was to take place, Butchart asked me to take Parker his consignment of cigarettes. All four of the airmen were getting several cartons to help them spread goodwill along the way. They also might need to bribe some petty bureaucrat, even though the SS would be their official escorts.
Parker was billeted at a small hotel in the center of Bern. Conveniently—as far as we were concerned—it was just down the block from an apartment rented by a pair of Gestapo officers. Presumably they had passed him in the streets by now. He still wore his uniform from time to time, and they would have wondered right away what he was up to.
OSS operatives who worked for Dulles were taught that when meeting contacts it was best to disguise their comings and goings and to rendezvous on neutral ground. In Parker’s case I was instructed not to bother, even though it put a knot in my stomach simply to walk into the hotel’s small lobby and ask for him by name. A man was seated in the lobby on a couch. I didn’t know his name or nationality, and I didn’t ask.
Parker was restless, as anyone might have been on the eve of such an undertaking. But somehow he was not quite the same as the fellow I remembered from a few weeks earlier. Was my imagination playing tricks on me, or had he lost some of his callowness as he settled into his new role?
He finished packing in almost no time, so I asked if I could treat him to a beer.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I probably won’t be able to sleep much either way, so I might as well try to do it with a clear
head. But there is one favor you can do me.”
“Sure.”
“Tell me, is there something funny about this operation? Something that, well, maybe no one has mentioned?”
I made it a point to look him straight in the eye, as much for myself as for him.
“There are always aspects of operations that aren’t disclosed to the operatives. It’s for their own protection.”
“That’s all you’re allowed to say?”
As he asked it, his face was like that of the catcher in my son’s Little League game—vulnerable yet determined, timid yet willing to go forward, come what may. For a moment I was tempted to tell him everything.
But I didn’t, if only because the advice I had just imparted was true. It was in his best interests not to know. For one thing, the truth would have devastated him. For another, the Germans would have read his intentions immediately. And while it’s one thing to have the enemy catch you functioning as a secret courier, it’s quite another to be caught operating as an agent of deception. Setting Parker up for that fate would have been tantamount to marching him before a firing squad.
So I tried offering an oblique word of advice, hoping that when the right time came he would recall my words and put them to good use.
“Look, if for some unforeseen reason push does come to shove, just keep in mind that it’s you who will be out there taking the blows, not us. So go with your own instincts.”
It only seemed to puzzle him. Finally, he smiled.
“Maybe I should take you up on that beer, after all.”
“Good enough.”
He drank three, as it turned out, the first time in his life he had downed more than one at a sitting, and it showed in his wobble as I escorted him back to the room. He turned out his light just as I was leaving.
The actual exchange at the border was almost anticlimactic.
Oh, the SS man showed up, all right, just as he had for the previous swap engineered by Dulles. I suppose he was appropriately sinister with his swagger stick and stiff Prussian walk, and certainly for the way he snapped his heels and offered a crisp Nazi salute along with the obligatory “Heil Hitler.”
It definitely got Parker’s attention, but I don’t recall it striking much fear into me. Or maybe I’ve rewritten the scene in my memory, having watched countless Hollywood versions that have turned the officer’s dark gestures into costumed parody, complete with cheesy accent. I suppose I’ve always wanted to regard him as a harmless stereotype, not some genuine menace who still had a war to fight and enemies to kill.
Whatever the case, Parker offered me a wan smile over his shoulder as he lined up with his three fellow airmen and stepped aboard the train. They were all a bit nervous, but to a man they were also excited about the prospect of returning home.
I got back to Bern late that night. A taxi dropped me at the legation so I could report that all had gone well. But Butchart and Colonel Gill weren’t there, and neither had left word on where to reach them. Only Flagg was waiting, eager to hear how his pupil had fared.
He smiled after I described the scene at the train station.
“I’ll admit that for a while I had my doubts,” he said. “But you know, by the end I was feeling pretty good about it. Parker’s the type who can fool you. Hidden reserves and all that.”
“You really think so?”
“Oh, yes. And he was such a fast learner with the material that I even had time to teach him a few escape and evade tactics. Just in case.”
“Good thinking,” I said weakly.
We said good night, and I walked across the lonely bridge to my apartment. I was exhausted and it was well past midnight, but I don’t remember getting a moment of sleep.
Two days later a French rail worker, one of our contacts with the maquis, reported through the usual channels that Parker had been removed from the train at the third stop, well before Paris. No one in our shop said much about it, especially when there was no further word in the following days.
Soon enough I was busy with new assignments. If Dulles had been testing me through Colonel Gill, then I must have passed, because he began making good right away on his promise to get me out and about.
The extra distractions were welcome, and within a few weeks I was no longer dreaming of Messerschmitts and butchered comrades, although Parker’s guileless face did swim before me from time to time. Then came the day when Hitler shot himself. Flagg popped his question, Butchart supplied the reassuring answer, and from then on I had no more dreams of Parker. I was content to let him reside in my memory as a quirky sidelight of the war years. At least, I was until coming across his folder at the Records Center.
It was a thin file, with only four typewritten pages inside. But what really caught my attention was the Gestapo markings across the sleeve. As I steeled myself to read it in the sunlight of 1958, it occurred to me that soon there would be little need for fellows like Parker. Only months earlier, Sputnik had fallen to earth after its successful voyage. Bigger and better replacements were already on the launchpad, and, if you believed the newspapers, the chatter in intelligence circles was that half the work of spies would soon be obsolete. Both sides would soon be able simply to look down at enemy positions from high in the sky. But in 1944 we had people like Parker, good soldiers who did as they were told, even when they were told very little.
By the second paragraph I learned that Parker had been considered a probable spy almost from the moment he had boarded the train. By the fourth paragraph I learned they had grilled him for twelve hours, off and on. The details were scanty—they always were in these reports when the Gestapo was pulling out all the stops—but I was familiar with enough eyewitness accounts of their usual tactics to fill in the blanks: Force them to stand for hours on end. Let them pee in their pants while they waited. Beat them, perhaps, and, if that didn’t work, beat them harder, or threaten them with a firing squad.
Spy was the word the report kept using, over and over. Twelve hours of this, yet Parker, the veteran of only a single combat mission over Germany, held out. Flagg’s judgment proved correct. He had hidden reserves. In fact, he had done us all one better. Lieutenant Parker had tried to escape.
It happened early on the following morning, the report said, right after the sentry left the room for a smoke. The officer in charge okayed the break because the subject had been at his lowest ebb. And at this point in the report, perhaps to cover his ass, the officer allowed himself the luxury of a detailed description of the subject’s physical state: one eye swollen shut, bruises about the face and chest, shins bleeding, apparent exhaustion due to sleep deprivation. Yet no sooner had the sentry made himself scarce than Parker had somehow managed to overcome the interrogating officer and throw open the door.
He made it about twenty yards before the gunshots caught him. He then survived another two hours before dying of his wounds. The reporting officer seemed resigned to the idea of being reprimanded for his lapse in judgment, which had led to the loss of a potentially valuable prisoner before any useful information had been extracted.
By then my hands were cold, my feet as well. I sighed deeply, shut the folder, and looked up at the clock. It was an hour past our usual closing time, and my assistant was eyeing me curiously from his desk. He was anxious to leave. What I needed was a stiff drink, although this time a pitcher of gimlets wasn’t going to be enough. But first I had one more bit of business here to take care of.
I carried the folder to a table next to my assistant’s desk. For a moment I hovered over the burn box. As I prepared to drop in the report for destruction, I like to believe that I was not guided chiefly by an instinct of self-preservation. I was thinking as well of Parker’s parents, perhaps still on their farm near Emporia. Having a son of my own now. I wondered what it would be like to hear that your only child had died while protecting secrets that he wasn’t supposed to protec
t, that he had failed in his mission by being too brave and too strong.
But I couldn’t bring myself to let go of the folder.
“Sir?” my assistant asked. “Is something wrong?”
“This one belongs with the OSS stuff.”
“Classified?”
I paused, still hovering.
“No. In fact, I’d like it to get some circulation. You go on. I’ll prepare the translation and a distribution list and have it ready for you to send out copies in the morning.”
He was gone within seconds, and I settled back at my desk with the folder still in hand. The list came immediately to mind. Colonel Gill and Butchart, wherever they might be, would receive copies. Dulles, too, down at his big desk in the director’s office of the agency we now called the CIA. Or perhaps each of them already knew, and always had. In that case, they needed to know that others had also found out.
But what about Parker’s parents? I would spare them the gory details, of course, but they at least deserved the gist of the story, beginning with that first meeting aboard the train. The most important part, however, would be the summation, and I already had one in mind: Your son didn’t tell the Germans a word. Not one. In fact, he did exactly as we asked, even if not at all as we had planned. The ball never left his mitt.
CITADEL
STEPHEN HUNTER
ALTHOUGH HE IS BEST KNOWN as a national bestseller for his contemporary thrillers, Stephen Hunter (1946– ) has also written some works of outstanding historical fiction that have been fully researched and bring the authentic sound of someone who has always been comfortable in another era. His novel I, Ripper (2015) was a bestseller that was told in alternating chapters between a newspaperman and the diary of Jack the Ripper. G-Man (2017) featured a Zelig-like federal agent who was at the center of the final days of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, and other major gangsters who met their ends in the 1930s.
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