by Ed Ruggero
“You got your man,” Sinnott said, a little exasperated. “You should be happy with that. At least this investigation cleared; that’s better than you did last year in Sicily.”
Harkins didn’t take the bait. Sicily was ancient history.
“We’re talking about a court-martial that could send a man to the gallows,” Harkins said. “Certainly could send him to prison for life. I think we should be careful, take our time.”
“All that will be up to the court-martial board,” Sinnott said. “There’ll be competent senior officers sitting in judgment. Unless you think you’re the only one who is capable of finding out the truth.”
Harkins’ mind had already moved on to consider how he could derail the trial.
“I’ve got another bit of news for you, Harkins,” Sinnott said. “I’ve put you in for promotion to captain.”
Sinnott reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the twin silver bars.
“Your work at OSS really calls for captain’s rank. And you wrapped this case very quickly. You’ve impressed a lot of people.”
Sinnott stepped closer and reached for the first lieutenant’s bar on Harkins’ right collar point. Harkins looked over Sinnott’s shoulder, where Wickman drew his eyebrows in tight and shook his head just a tiny bit.
“There’s a big jump in pay,” Sinnott said as he unhooked the clasp on Harkins’ insignia. “The paperwork will take a couple of weeks, but you can pin on the rank now. And it’s time for you to move on to other things, let Eighth Air Force take over from here.”
Harkins reached up and covered his single silver bar with his left hand.
“No thanks, sir,” he said.
Sinnott stopped, surprised, standing so close Harkins could smell his aftershave, could smell the alcohol working its way through his pores. Harkins was careful not to look at Wickman, but held Sinnott’s eyes instead. The promotion was a bribe, and Harkins wasn’t on the take.
“What’s this? Somebody getting promoted?” someone said.
Wickman popped to attention, and Harkins saw Colonel Haskell, the OSS station commander, over Sinnott’s shoulder.
“Almost, sir,” Harkins said, smiling. “I’m afraid my orders got a bit mixed up with my transfer from Italy. Turns out I’m not eligible yet. I jumped the gun a little bit.”
“Well, that’s okay,” Haskell said. He clapped Sinnott on the shoulder. “We’ll want to have a proper ceremony when the time comes, maybe a little celebration, right, Major?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Sinnott said. He slipped the captain’s bars back into his pocket.
“The tradition in the Regulars is that the officer getting promoted spends half of his first monthly pay raise on a party,” Haskell said. “Of course, things are a little different these days, what with everyone running around hell-bent-for-leather. But I think it’s worth preserving some of those customs, don’t you, Harkins?”
“I’ll be happy to host a party when the time comes, sir,” Harkins said.
Haskell nodded to Wickman, then turned to Lowell.
“Who are you?” he asked, friendly.
Lowell, already at attention, drew herself up a bit taller.
“Private Lowell, sir. I’ve been helping Lieutenant Harkins get around while he conducts the investigation.”
“Ah, yes, the murder investigation,” Haskell said, turning back to Harkins. “How’s that going?”
“Well, sir, Major Sinnott and I were just discussing that. We think that Eighth Air Force is being a little hasty, scheduling a court-martial before I’ve had a chance to really wrap things up.”
Haskell turned to Sinnott. “Tell me more.”
“Uh, yes, well,” Sinnott said, stumbling. “Lieutenant Harkins is more familiar with the case, Colonel. I’ll let him fill you in.”
“I haven’t yet filed a written report, sir, so I don’t see where the court is going to get the pertinent information.”
“Why are they in such a hurry?” Haskell asked.
Harkins wanted to say that he thought Gefner, the lawyer, was a hatchet man for somebody higher up in Eighth Air Force, but he knew that might make him sound like a nut job, like some private spinning conspiracy theories while peeling potatoes on KP.
“I couldn’t say, sir,” Harkins said. “I just need a bit more time to figure out the connection between Major Cushing and Helen Batcheller, some time to talk to a few people she didn’t get along with.”
“Well,” Haskell said. “Cushing is locked up, right? He isn’t going anywhere, so what’s the hurry? We want to make sure we do a thorough job of investigating before we accuse him of this awful crime.”
Haskell looked at Sinnott again. “Can you ask Eighth Air Force to tap the brakes a bit, Major? You and Harkins can tell them why, right?”
“Of course, sir,” Sinnott said, the only answer available to him.
“If you need me to weigh in, let me know. I have a few West Point classmates over there I can call.”
“Will do, sir,” Sinnott said.
“Thank you, sir,” Harkins said.
“Good,” Haskell said. “Carry on, everyone.”
The four of them—Sinnott, Wickman, Harkins, and Lowell—stood in the hallway for an awkward few seconds. Sinnott drew a sharp breath through his nose.
“Would you excuse us, please?” he said to Wickman. He pointed at Lowell and said, “And take this one with you.”
When Harkins and Sinnott were alone, the major smiled and said, “One can be a bit too clever for one’s own good, sometimes, Lieutenant.”
When Harkins didn’t respond, Sinnott said, “Did you tell your little driver to bring up the investigation because you knew Haskell would ask you about it? That you’d get the chance to make your case for more time?”
“No, sir, I did not,” Harkins said. But I’ll certainly thank her.
“Look, Harkins. I’m not the enemy here. I want you to do a thorough job investigating, but the fact is that we don’t control the timeline. The folks over at Eighth Air Force are in charge of this court-martial. You seem to think that someone over there has it in for Major Cushing. But they’re not making up the crime. Helen Batcheller was murdered; you saw the goddamn body. If Major Cushing didn’t do it, we have to have some faith in the system. He’ll be acquitted.”
“No, sir,” Harkins said. “That’s not the way it works. You don’t just throw someone into court to face a murder charge and hope that things get sorted out. First, the investigators have to persuade the prosecutor that we have the right guy. Then the prosecutor has to convince the commander. Then a board of officers hears the evidence, and they have to be convinced, too. All those steps act as safeguards. For some reason Captain Gefner, or someone higher up at Eighth Air Force, is ready to skip some critical parts.”
“Okay, Harkins,” Sinnott said. “So what’s your next move?”
“I’m not sure yet, sir, but I’ll be sure to keep you updated.”
Sinnott looked at him for a long few seconds.
“Don’t ever set me up like that again in front of my boss,” Sinnott said. “Is that clear?”
“Crystal, sir.”
Harkins thought the interview was finished, but Sinnott did not move, kept looking in Harkins’ eyes.
“I know you think your little trouble-maker persona is cute, or brave, or will get you laid or give you some good war stories to tell when all this is over with,” Sinnott said. “And you may be right. But maybe you heard what happened to the last people who fucked with me.”
Sinnott was talking about the Resistance turncoats he shot. Harkins kept his mouth shut.
“Don’t try my patience, Harkins,” Sinnott said. “I want a daily briefing on what you’ve accomplished.”
“And you’re going to call over there to Eighth headquarters, get them to—what did Colonel Haskell call it?”
“Get them to tap the brakes,” Sinnott said. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, sir. Thanks
very much.”
* * *
When Sinnott was gone, Wickman stuck his head around the corner at the end of the hall.
“All clear?”
“All clear,” Harkins said.
“The promotion was fake,” Wickman said as he approached.
“That’s what I guessed,” Harkins said. “Yours, too?”
“Mine, too. My pay raise hadn’t come through, so I went over to the finance office this morning to ask about it. Sinnott never submitted any paperwork about a promotion. It was a sham.”
“You’re still wearing your bars,” Harkins said, indicating the captain’s insignia on Wickman’s collar.
“Haven’t figured out how to break the news. No telling what his reaction will be.”
“I hear you. The more I learn about him the stranger he gets,” Harkins said. “You figure he was trying to buy your loyalty?”
“I guess,” Wickman said. “Pretty ham-handed, if you ask me. It’s not like I was never going to notice that I didn’t get a pay raise. Though I do feel like a bit of a dunce, falling for it like that.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Harkins said.
“Maybe he doesn’t want me looking too closely at what happens to the money I find for him.”
“And it’s pretty clear that he wants me to let that prick Gefner and the Eighth Air Force chew up Cushing.”
“So there’s no way he asks Eighth Air Force to back off.”
“Right,” Harkins said. “If we want them to tap the brakes, we’re going to have to find someone else to help us.”
“You got somebody in mind?”
“I do. A captain I worked with in Sicily. Guy named Adams. Pretty sure he’s in London, but I have to find him.”
“Well, in the meantime, you’re quite in demand,” Wickman said.
“How’s that?”
“I ran into some paratroopers in Grosvenor Square this afternoon. Easy to pick them out with those fancy boots. I asked if any of them knew a chaplain named Harkins, and two of the guys were from his regiment. Said he rode the train into London with them this morning, a couple chaplains traveling together, maybe going on a tour of Saint Paul’s.”
“Today?” Harkins asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon, I think,” Wickman said. “These guys were on a three-day pass, but he didn’t know how long the chaplains would be around.”
Harkins looked at his watch. It was almost half past six. He wanted to talk to a few more people in the embassy about Kerr and Batcheller, and he wanted to go back to Batcheller’s boss to see what he might learn about the mysterious report that Cushing said had to get to Ike. He also knew he’d be going back out to East Anglia to talk to Cushing. Plus he’d just picked a fight with his boss by claiming that the investigation was urgent. And he’d suggested to Beverly that they have dinner together. There was no way he could make time tomorrow to look for Patrick.
“I have to try to find him,” Harkins said.
“Don’t you want to hear the other messages?” Wickman asked.
“Oh, right,” Harkins said.
“Tomorrow night there’s a little gathering, a little memorial for Batcheller at a pub near here. I heard there might be some of her friends from the Soviet mission.”
“She didn’t like the Soviets,” Harkins said.
“It’s probably just some low-level flunkies. Maybe she didn’t burn all her bridges.”
“Okay,” Harkins said. “Might be worth going.”
“One more thing,” Wickman said, motioning him into the conference room, closing the door.
“A Soviet lieutenant named Gorodetsky approached me in Grosvenor Square. Said he worked for a Colonel Novikov, who has some information on Helen Batcheller.”
“He used her name?”
“He knew her name and he knew your name, too.”
“That’s a little unnerving,” Harkins said.
“Novikov wants to meet you. Tonight. Gorodetsky said you should be in front of the Royal Albert Hall at twenty-one hundred.”
“What do you think?” Harkins asked.
“Now it sounds like some real spy stuff,” Wickman said. “You told me Cushing thinks the data for the report he had, the one Batcheller wrote, came from the Soviets, or a Soviet, right? Maybe this is the guy.”
“Or maybe this guy is looking for the other guy, the one who cooperated with Batcheller,” Harkins said.
“You want me to come with you?” Wickman asked.
“Nah,” Harkins said. “We’re allies, right? What could go wrong?”
“You going to tell Sinnott?”
“Hell, no,” Harkins said. “But if I wind up like Helen Batcheller, make sure you tell him it was my idea to go alone.”
14
22 April 1944
2050 hours
Harkins crossed the bridge over the lake called the Serpentine seven minutes before nine o’clock. He’d changed his mind and had asked Wickman and Lowell to come along, though they’d hang back while he met with the Russian. He tried telephoning Beverly about dinner, but the lines in her neighborhood were out.
“Follow this to the intersection,” Lowell said. “The Royal Albert Hall will be on your right.”
Harkins turned to Wickman, who wore the single silver bar of a first lieutenant again.
“You demoted yourself?” Harkins asked.
“Just putting things in order.”
“Okay. Give me an hour. If I’m not back, just take a stroll over there. Try not to make it too obvious that you’re looking for someone.”
“And if we don’t find you?” Wickman asked.
“Go back to headquarters. I’ll show up eventually.”
“If you call for help, we’ll come straight away,” Lowell said.
Harkins couldn’t help but smile.
“Yes,” he said. “Please do.”
He looked at his watch, an Army-issue model with a luminous dial. It was five minutes to nine. Just over fifty hours since he examined the crime scene, fifty hours in which the investigation had branched out in completely unexpected, seemingly random directions.
“Okay,” Harkins said. “Here goes nothing.”
“Wait,” Lowell said. She reached out in the dark, shook his hand firmly.
“Be careful, sir,” she said.
“Don’t worry, Lowell,” Harkins said. “I won’t let anything happen to me that would put you out of a job.”
He walked toward the dark hulks of buildings on the south side of Kensington Gardens, then trotted across the street. He passed the Royal Geographical Society, where some of the world’s most famous explorers found supporters and told stories about their travels. The entrance to Albert Hall here on the north side was close to the road, under a wide arch that offered a bit of shelter. Even in the dark he could see the columns, two or three stories up, that flanked what was probably a window, now boarded up. A few figures hurried by, and only then he realized he had no prearranged signal for recognizing his contact.
Need to work on my field-craft, Harkins thought. He resisted the temptation to look at his watch again, and just leaned against the wall, arms folded.
A figure separated itself from the gloom and approached.
“Excuse me,” the man said in heavily accented English. “Do you have the time?”
There were so many foreigners in London that Harkins wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell a Russian accent from a Polish accent from another eastern European accent.
“Yeah,” Harkins said. “It’s straight up nine o’clock.”
“Thank you,” the man said before turning away, back toward Kensington Gardens.
Harkins was facing the park when someone came up behind him.
“Lieutenant Harkins,” the figure said.
Startled, Harkins flinched. “Yes.”
“I am Colonel Novikov, Sergei Novikov. Thank you for coming.”
“You have information on Helen Batcheller’s murder?” Harkins asked.
The
colonel chuckled. “I heard you Americans like to get to the point,” he said. “Let us walk a bit, shall we?”
Novikov headed west, toward Queen’s Gate. No hurry. Harkins fell in step beside him.
“You have people with you?” Novikov asked.
“Sir?” Harkins said, stalling.
“You have people watching over our meeting? In case something goes wrong.”
“I, uh, yes. I do.”
“I expected so,” Novikov said. “It is only prudent. We will travel just one block. They should be able to keep up.”
Novikov turned to Harkins, and even though Harkins couldn’t see his face in the darkness, he thought the other man was smiling.
Which is probably what they do right before they kill you, Harkins thought.
“Your English is very good,” Harkins said.
“My mother was a professor of languages. I was fortunate to travel when I was a child.”
The Soviet officer entered a narrow-front building and Harkins followed, pushing through the blackout curtain into a dimly lit front parlor.
“What’s this place?”
“A house we rent for our staff,” Novikov said. “You live in a rented flat, is that correct?”
“How did you know that?” Harkins asked.
Novikov laughed out loud this time. “I did not know; I guessed. Since there are thousands of American officers in London and there are no barracks, it stands to reason that you live in a rented room. Just logic, that is all.”
Novikov was a bit taller than Harkins, maybe six feet, with dark hair and a patch over his left eye, like a comic book pirate. Square-jawed, broad shouldered, and relaxed, his right arm at his side, his empty left sleeve pinned to the front of his coat.
“I have not been spying on you,” Novikov said. “Not yet.”
He seemed to be joking, and Harkins managed to smile back.
“Let’s sit, shall we?” Novikov said.
“Who else is here?” Harkins asked, looking around before taking a chair at a small table. A cheap glass ashtray held a dozen cigarette butts.
“No one. We will not be disturbed,” Novikov said. “How is the investigation coming?”
“You first, Colonel,” Harkins said. “What was your connection to Helen Batcheller?”
