Comes the War

by Ed Ruggero

  Then the big Dodge staff car smashed into the driver’s side door, sending Sinnott flying across the front seat, bouncing his head on the passenger side window hard enough to break the glass. The sedan had tumbled into the roadside ditch, rested there at a steep angle.

  “What the fuck?”

  Still conscious, Sinnott scrambled to get clear of the car through the passenger door, pulling his rifle out behind him. He stood, swiped at a veil of blood running over his eyes, shouldered his weapon and began firing, working the bolt action rapidly and putting three rounds into the driver’s side door of the other car, which was open.

  Sinnott squatted down to reload, pulling a five-round stripper clip from his breast pocket. He shoved the ammunition into the rifle and pushed the bolt forward, then crawled on elbows and knees toward the back of his car. He wanted to get an angle on whoever had rammed him. He was low to the ground when someone started shooting; he heard the bullets plinking into his smashed vehicle.

  He rolled to his left—they thought he was cowering behind his car—and got a glimpse under the other vehicle, spotted someone’s feet, and started shooting. The big .30-06 rounds would, he knew, punch through even the heavy steel body of the American sedan. He thought he saw someone fall, then realized there was a second shooter on the far side of the staff car. Two rounds sang over his head, much too high. He emptied the magazine, reloaded. Waited in sudden quiet.

  Sinnott looked over his shoulder, toward the school. The children had all scattered and he could no longer see any adults in front of the headmaster’s cottage, but he heard someone, possibly two people, hurrying through the woods toward him. He would take the staff car that had rammed him.

  He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and walked around the Dodge. The back end was riddled with bullet holes, but he was sure it would still run. On the far side he found Harkins’ driver crouching over a man sprawled on his back, both her hands pressing an ugly wound in the man’s gut. As Sinnott drew closer, he realized the man was dressed in the uniform of a Soviet colonel. The man’s one good eye rolled toward Sinnott, who said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  * * *

  The straight-line distance from the headmaster’s cottage to the gate was less than a hundred yards, but Harkins and Tallent kept to the trees as they moved toward the sound of the gunfight. At one point, Harkins patted his belt for the Russian pistol, but it was gone.

  “Shit!”

  Tallent ran into him, the two of them stumbled. He turned to see the kid picking himself up, lip bloody where he’d broken his fall with his face. The MP’s eyes were big as dinner plates. “You with me?” Harkins asked.

  “Yes, sir!”

  Up ahead, the shooting had stopped. Harkins slowed, trying to see through the trees, get a picture of what was happening. He moved in a crouch, spotted Lowell’s staff car, its front end buried in the side of a smaller black sedan. He slid to his left, behind Lowell’s car, looking for an angle that would let him see the other side, and that’s when Sinnott, visible for just a second over the hood of the sedan, shot him.

  Harkins felt something pluck at his shirt, then the worst bee sting of his life along his right shoulder blade where the bullet grazed him. He dove forward and rolled to his left, came up with his pistol leveled at the car, but no target.

  “Sinnott!” he yelled. “There’s no getting out of here. I know about Batcheller. I know about you and the Soviets. It’s time to give up.”

  Harkins looked left and right. There was no sign of Tallent. He looked at the sedan over his gunsight, maybe fifty feet away.

  “Sinnott!” he yelled again.

  Harkins shot at the rear wheels of the sedan, kept shooting until he saw the car list to the right where he’d hit at least one of the tires.

  “We disabled your jeep, too,” Harkins called. “There’s no way out.”

  Harkins had lost count of how many rounds he had fired. There was still a bullet in the chamber, because the slide was in place. But was it his last round? He reached to his belt and the canvas ammunition pouch there. It was empty. His spare magazine had fallen out somewhere.

  “Shit!”

  He rolled onto his back, his wounded right shoulder feeling like he’d landed on hot coals.

  He ejected the magazine from the pistol. It was empty. He had one shot.

  “Harkins!” Sinnott called.

  Harkins turned onto his stomach. Incredibly, Sinnott came out from behind the cover of the sedan, walking toward him. Harkins’ first thought was that he was going to surrender, but he still carried the rifle, butt tucked into his shoulder in a firing position. He was smiling.

  “Is that your magazine in your hand?” he asked, still advancing. “You’re out of ammo? You dumb mick!”

  Sinnott raised the rifle to his shoulder and Harkins lifted his weapon, with its last round. It was a long shot for a pistol, but Harkins—out of options—aimed for center of Sinnott’s chest, and that’s when the right side of Sinnott’s head ballooned outward in a wet spray. Private First Class Tallent moved toward his target, pistol steady, but Sinnott was dead.

  Harkins lowered his face into the dirt.

  “You okay, Lieutenant?” Tallent called, voice high pitched.

  “Yeah,” Harkins said. “I’m okay.”

  “I had to shoot him, didn’t I? I mean, he was coming right at you with that rifle in a firing position. You saw it, right?”

  Harkins pushed himself up to all fours. He felt strangely calm, though he had pissed himself at some point.

  “It was a clean shoot, Tallent. You saved my life,” Harkins said.

  Tallent pulled Sinnott’s rifle away from the corpse as Harkins circled the sedan. He found Colonel Novikov on the far side, bleeding from a massive wound in his stomach. Pamela Lowell knelt beside him, her car’s tiny first-aid kit open beside her. Her hands were shaking as she unwrapped a gauze that was much too small to do anything for the Soviet officer, who was clearly dying.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I ran out of ammunition,” she said. Her voice was steady, though tears cut tracks through forest-floor dirt on her face.

  “I did, too,” Harkins said.

  Tallent came up beside them, Sinnott’s rifle in his hand, his own pistol holstered again.

  Harkins knelt beside Novikov, whose one eye was glassy.

  “Batcheller threatened to reveal the names of Sechin’s assets,” Novikov whispered.

  “I figured,” Harkins said. “Thanks for coming out to warn me.”

  He took Novikov’s hand.

  “The pilot you arrested is innocent.”

  “I’ll see that he’s cleared,” Harkins said.

  Novikov seemed to relax. Lowell pressed the tiny gauze into the bloody mess of his midsection. She was still crying, but her hands had stopped shaking.

  Harkins leaned close to Novikov. “Who are the other assets in the U.S. mission?” he asked.

  Harkins couldn’t be sure, since they sat in only the dim, reflected light from the buildings below, but he thought Novikov smiled.

  “Oh, Lieutenant,” he said. “I am still a patriot.”

  Then he died.

  Harkins stood, helped Lowell to her feet.

  “Harkins!”

  It was Annie Stowe, walking up the hill, one hand under the right arm of the wounded Soviet spymaster, Sechin. The older man held a blood-soaked rag to his neck with his left hand. His shirt front was a dark blotch.

  “I have a first-aid kit here,” Lowell said.

  “I told you to leave me a gun!” Stowe, clearly angry, shouted at Harkins.

  “I think we’re okay now,” Harkins answered.

  “Almost,” Stowe said. She pushed Sechin hard, and the big man, weak from blood loss, stumbled, landing in a sitting position. Stowe snatched the rifle from Tallent, yanked the bolt back and shoved it forward, then aimed it at Sechin’s forehead from a foot away.

  The colonel leaned back, and in a tone that sounded part statement, part question, he said,
“Rodya,” just before she pulled the trigger.

  34

  4 May 1944

  1300 hours

  Eddie Harkins brought Stowe back to OSS headquarters in handcuffs and under arrest for the murder of a Soviet colonel. When he saw her again a day later, heading into a conference room with Colonel Haskell, she was decidedly not anyone’s prisoner. In fact, Harkins, who was waiting in the hallway for a chance to talk to Haskell, heard the head of OSS London greet her by her first name. She was in there for almost an hour while Harkins sat outside, flipping through his well-worn notebooks.

  He had found Wickman dazed but finally unharmed, right where Sinnott had abandoned him on the school grounds. The doc said he and the poisoned MPs would be fine with some rest.

  It had taken a little longer to find Kerr, who was walking at dawn along one of the country roads near the Berkhamsted School when Tallent and another MP picked him up. Exhausted, wet, and hungry from an unaccustomed night outdoors, he had, Tallent said, climbed into the jeep happily, like he’d been rescued from a shipwreck. Harkins got the diplomat some breakfast and dry clothes, then questioned him for several hours about the meeting with Sechin.

  Stowe, on the other hand, had been hustled off by Haskell to some unknown location, until Harkins was summoned to Haskell’s office and his first meeting with Annie since the shooting.

  “Harkins.”

  Harkins looked up from his notes to see the young colonel. He stood. “Sir.”

  Haskell looked like he hadn’t slept since the last time Harkins saw him, which made Harkins wonder how many other officers—especially the planning staffs—would go into the invasion already worn out.

  “You’ve done some good work here,” Haskell said, shaking Harkins’ hand. The motion made Harkins’ wounded right shoulder bark in pain.

  “I appreciate all your efforts, and I can see why Colonel Meigs was so keen to recommend you to us.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Harkins said, not at all grateful.

  “I’m afraid that, from here on out, this case isn’t going to be as straightforward as you might expect.”

  Harkins had no idea what that meant, so he simply said, “Okay.”

  “I’m going to give you thirty minutes with her,” Haskell said. “But I wanted to let you know, before you go in, that I’m completely satisfied with her explanations and with the outcome of this case.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “Now, what’s happening with this Major Cushing?”

  “Major Adams, he’s with SHAEF JAG, got the charges dropped. Even the ridiculous one about mishandling secret documents.”

  “Good,” Haskell said. “I’m glad to hear it. That poor guy has been through a lot. I hope he comes out all right in the end.”

  Harkins thought about Cushing, about the airmen he’d met out in East Anglia. Who among them would ever be all right again?

  “Anyway,” Haskell said, motioning with his hand to the open office door. “Thirty minutes. Then I need her.” He turned as if to walk away, then thought of something and turned back.

  “By the way, the navy put you in for an award. A Silver Star, actually. They wrote up a nice citation about you rescuing a bunch of sailors who were trapped when that LST started to go down. Sounded like things got pretty lively out there.”

  Harkins pictured the ensign named Cedrick, who abandoned ship and never lost his eyeglasses. He thought about the sailor who now had a stump where his leg had been, about the men he’d helped save and all those bodies lined up in the morgue. He thought about Staff Sergeant Jesus Cortizo, whom Harkins had helped drown. He wondered if, someday, he’d be able to look back on this and think it was all worth it, but he was not hopeful.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Trouble is, that whole fiasco is hush-hush. No reports on it are going out, at least not yet. So, obviously, we can’t give you a medal for something that never happened. I’ll make sure you get the write-up they did. The sensitive stuff will be redacted, but you might like it for your scrapbook. Too bad, really. A Silver Star would have gotten you home quicker after the war, I imagine.”

  “Somebody told me it’s bad luck to think too much about what happens after the war.”

  Haskell grunted. “Hunh.” Then he turned and walked away, stooped as an old man.

  Harkins pushed the door open and stepped into the big room. Stowe sat in a chair, an elbow resting on one of the conference tables arranged along the walls. There was a chair just in front of her, which she pushed toward him with her foot. “Have a seat.”

  “How you doing, Annie?”

  “Pretty good, all things considered.”

  Harkins sat in the offered chair.

  “This is not how I saw this interview going,” Harkins said.

  “I imagine your chat with Kerr was a little more—what’s the word? Adversarial?”

  At least the dynamics were out in the open. He had no power, no leverage. Harkins was here, he surmised, because Haskell thought he should be allowed to satisfy his curiosity.

  “Kerr told me that he didn’t set up that meeting with Sechin,” Harkins said. “You did.”

  Stowe’s tiny smile reminded Harkins of the Mona Lisa. She offered nothing.

  “He was just your stooge. You were behind almost everything that happened. In fact, everything you did was to point us at Kerr and away from you. You sent me out to meet that navy lieutenant, Payne, because you knew he didn’t like Kerr and would most likely talk bad about him.”

  Stowe leaned forward, reached for an ashtray on the table and dragged it toward her. She pulled a cigarette from a pack on the table, held the package out to Harkins.

  “No, thanks.”

  She took her time lighting it, then inhaled a long drag and let blue smoke drift from her mouth.

  “I suppose I should thank you,” she said. “If it wasn’t for you, I never would have found out who killed my Helen.”

  Harkins sat, completely still.

  “I loved her, you know.”

  He nodded. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “It was never about that report, was it?”

  “Never,” she said. “Helen was an idealist at heart. All that stuff with the Katyn Forest, all the other shit the Soviets did, it really made her angry.”

  “So she threatened to expose Soviet moles in the embassy, in the OSS?” Harkins asked.

  “Only once, when she was in her cups,” Stowe said. “Trouble is, the only one she knew of for sure was Kerr. She didn’t know about Sinnott.”

  “She didn’t know about you,” Harkins said. “That you were Rodya.”

  Stowe nodded. “She had no idea, but once word got back to Sechin that she was a threat to his operation, to this mysterious Rodya whose real identity he didn’t know, well, that’s when he put things in motion. Had her killed.”

  The door opened, and an American sergeant and a woman in civilian clothes stepped inside, kissing and giggling until they saw Harkins and Stowe. The man hid his face, but the woman said, “Sorry.” A British accent. Then the pair scooted back into the hallway.

  “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Stowe said. “If Rodya—if I—hadn’t been Sechin’s most important asset, nothing would have happened to Helen.”

  “Kerr wasn’t important enough for him to worry about?”

  She shook her head. “Not even close.”

  “What happens now?” Harkins asked.

  Stowe was staring at the burning end of the cigarette held in her fingers.

  “It’s up to Haskell,” she said. She looked up, met Harkins’ eyes. “I have some ideas, but finally it’s up to him.”

  35

  4 May 1944

  1730 hours

  Harkins found Wickman in Sinnott’s former office. He had moved out of his broom closet and into the bigger space without asking anyone’s permission, and he now wore the silver bars of a captain.

  “Your promotion came through?”

  “The real McCoy this time,” Wickman said.<
br />
  “Feel like a walk?” Harkins asked. “It’s finally a sunny day.”

  “Sure,” Wickman said. The two officers left Grosvenor Street, headed east and a bit south toward Trafalgar Square. The sidewalks were full of men and women in uniform, drawn outside by the spring temperatures and the unfamiliar golden disc in the sky.

  “Funny,” Wickman said, “but I miss L.A. more on these rare sunny days than on the rainy ones.”

  They paused where Pall Mall reached the National Gallery, which had been emptied of its most valuable pieces years before when a German invasion seemed imminent. The four giant lions reclined in their places, unperturbed, while the base of Nelson’s column was wrapped in a banner exhorting Londoners to BUY NATIONAL WAR BONDS.

  They found a bench in a sunny spot on the side of the museum, and Harkins filled Wickman in on his interviews with Stowe and Haskell.

  “What do you think she meant by that?” Wickman asked. “That it’s up to Haskell?”

  “Looks to me like she’s back at her old job.”

  “So she got a pass on all that crap with the Soviets? No charges for working with them as Rodya? For whatever favors she did for them before all this blew up? No charges for killing that Soviet colonel?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Harkins said. “If I had to guess, I’d say she’s become even more valuable to the Allies. I think she’s a double agent. The new Soviet spymaster is already in London, and as far as anyone can tell, he trusts the information she—Rodya—passes along. Which is, of course, only what the OSS wants her to pass along. The Soviets think she’s helping them break American and British codes.”

  “I figured her for a code-breaker, given the math background,” Wickman said. He shook his head in disbelief. “How about that, huh?”

  “The Soviet Embassy made some inquiries about their two missing colonels and the bodyguard, but Haskell made sure all evidence of them being at the Berkhamsted School just disappeared.”

  “He looks like a stand-up guy, like a boy scout with a little bit of gray hair,” Wickman said. “Turns out he’s a sneaky SOB.”