So much for not making a scene.
Stepping very close, she leaned inside his personal space. Her low voice, pitched for his ears alone, swept away the illusion of shyness as soon as she spoke.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she purred. “It’s been hours since my last confession. May I join you?”
Hendriksen was a professional. He hid his surprise, beyond a slight firming of the lips. The honeyed tone that the young woman employed suggested that she might be in genuine need of a confession, but her bright eyes lacked any corresponding hint of shame.
Every moment that he kept her standing increased his own visibility, and a collared Anglican priest drinking in a pub was already curious enough.
“Please,” he replied, gesturing to the second chair. With an effort he even made the offer seem genial. “Though this is hardly the place for a confession, Miss—?”
“Culpepper,” she answered, smiling. “A half would be lovely, Father.”
So, clearly not a confession, unless the Anglican church had become even more liberal since his last visit.
Hendriksen signaled the bartender while the young girl with a woman’s eyes opened her purse and browsed quietly in that mysterious way that women will.
He watched as she settled herself and opened a compact, peering at the small mirror inside. She carefully patted a few windblown locks into place before closing the case with a satisfied snap. She glanced upwards and her shyness was reborn as the barkeep approached. Despite her suddenly demure manner as she accepted the lager, Hendriksen could tell that this was no waif.
She noted his speculation and smiled.
He studied her openly now. The entire package was pretty spectacular. Her brilliant eyes were an unreal shade of hazel, nearly gold against the perfect unlined skin of her face. A slow, deep pulse of desire bloomed in Hendriksen’s gut as she held his gaze. With an effort, he fought the unexpected emotion, preserving his cover and, with it, his life.
Anglican clerics weren’t the celibates that Catholics priests were in his native Germany, but even the clergy of the Church of England weren’t supposed to ogle schoolgirls.
No matter how perfect their legs may be.
“My child,” he said, concealing the effort it required to speak normally, let alone deliver the words in a perfect English accent. “How can I help you?”
“He does prattle on, doesn’t he?” the girl said, inclining her head towards the radio speaker as Haw-Haw sonorously described the previous night’s bombing on London.
“Perhaps you can tell me your business,” Hendriksen insisted quietly. Deliberately, the agent summoned his will and looked away from her eyes.
Still watching him closely, the girl—woman—awarded him a smirk.
And the wave of lust receded as rapidly as it had begun.
MI6, Scotland Yard, even possible “friendly” interference—Hendriksen’s premission briefing had mentioned a variety of possible threats, but none of them included incendiary sexuality. He knew himself as well as any man.
The wash of lust had to be…unnatural.
“Colour me curious,” she replied, sipping her beer as though nothing had occurred. “Don’t you wonder why Haw-Haw chose to turn his coat? He’s a son of England, after all.”
“Miss Culpepper…” Hendriksen began as though he was offended by the notion of Haw-Haw as a fellow Briton, and then continued in a measured way. “He’s a Yank, and before that, a benighted Irishman. He’s no son of…”
“Oh, call me Kate.” Her perfect cupid’s bow smile sharpened a trifle before she lowered her voice and added huskily, “No need for such formality or such sincere protests. I feel quite at home with you…Erich.”
She breathed his first name as though it was a weapon. Given the way she spoke it, perhaps it was.
Hendriksen deflected another wave of desire and flogged his brain into productivity. He wasn’t in Coventry under his own name. There was no reason for this seeming teenager to know that he was anyone but the Right Reverend William Bickel, newly arrived from the south coast where he’d tended a dedicated flock of parishioners.
Another player had entered the game.
But that much was already obvious.
Hendriksen had been trained by the best, so he scanned the room for her partner without moving his head. He took the added precaution of sliding a hand into his jacket pocket before looking back to his tablemate.
Culpepper’s smile deepened as Hendriksen touched the grip of the pistol.
“No need for that either, Father,” she said, keeping her eyes on his. “Neither of us wants to create a scene and I’m here to help you. And you can help me in return.”
“Indeed, the time is nigh!” Haw-Haw’s voice was suddenly much louder than his previous droning and the key warning phrase arrested Hendriksen’s attention. He listened for the next message hidden in the propaganda. It would double as both the mission trigger and the pickup recognition code. “It is time for the English people to decide if they seek the punishment of the Old Testament!”
His eyes never left Culpepper’s face, so he saw her smile shift from coy to vulpine, even as Haw-Haw delivered the final words.
She knew.
“Who sent you?” asked Hendriksen, keeping his voice low and his hand in his pocket. “Who’re you working for?”
“Someone who wants to make sure that you succeed tonight,” Culpepper replied, crossing her legs with a whisper of silk. “Someone who can help you get out. Someone who can ensure that you won’t get out unless I help.”
“I don’t need help,” Hendriksen husked, “and I don’t respond favorably to threats.”
“Oh, don’t be so boring,” she answered, her lips curving upwards. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…”
With that, she inclined her head so that an observer might suppose she had become suddenly skeptical. The movement lifted her hair, exposing a closely fitted circlet that adorned her neck. Hendriksen noted the stylized sigil of a raven on the finely wrought silver.
His eyes widened.
Hers just sparkled.
✧ ✧ ✧
Though the air war against England was only a few months old, the Blitz had already broadened, focusing on military targets, factories and even the English people themselves. However, historical curiosities lacked any relevance to the conflict and neither the Germans nor the Allies had intentionally wasted a bomb on museums and old buildings. Then, quite suddenly, the English had dropped several planeloads of high explosive near the center of old Munich, damaging some of the architecture dating to the eleventh century.
This had generated an even bigger response in the German High Command than the August bombing of Berlin. Personally, Hendriksen believed the RAF Pathfinders has been victims of bad navigation, but for whatever reason, the orders for a new contingency had come straight from the top, or somewhere near it.
At that point, Hendriksen was pulled off his research on the Cairo collection and a new mission was planned. He’d been personally, if hurriedly, briefed by the chief of Germany’s military intelligence before being hustled off to the airfield for nighttime flight to the coast of France. Then the agent had infiltrated England in a damp and smelly fishing smack, eventually working his way not to militarily and politically critical London, but instead into central England.
To Coventry, to be precise.
Every night since he had been alerted to the impending mission, Hendriksen had awaited the signal hidden in the nightly broadcast. He’d moved around, trying to avoid a pattern. Two nights ago he’d heard the warning order buried in Haw-Haw’s script. It meant that he was to remain within reach of his target, but outside the drop area for the Luftwaffe’s bombs.
The German Air Force had previously bombed the factories around the city’s perimeter, but so far, the historic quarter in the city center, dating to the Middle Ages, had been spared. In the middle of the quarter lay the largest and oldest of these, the Coventry Cathed
ral, dedicated to St. Michael.
Admiral Canaris, the German spymaster and Abwehr chief, had lectured the agent without aides or witnesses present.
His superior had outlined the mission with the sketchiest of details while opening a leather satchel, working around the open pair of handcuffs dangling from the handle. A very brief glimpse of the velvet-lined interior was all that Hendriksen had managed. Specially fitted slots held strange devices next to humdrum everyday items. While Canaris carefully withdrew a few items, handling them like spun glass, he explained their relevance to the mission before passing them to the agent.
Hendriksen had memorized what he could before getting on the boat, leaving the notes with his armed escort. The Cathedral was being specifically targeted by the Luftwaffe. And in the center of the Cathedral lay his objective. Not only was he to confirm the destruction of the Cathedral proper and return with proof, but he was also to be alert for certain signs and marks.
Some of the symbols meant danger and some represented allies. A few were to be respected at all costs, even to the point of failing his mission.
Culpepper’s silver raven fell unequivocally in the latter category. The sight of the sigil belonging to one of the Unaligned had shaken him. Hendriksen realized that while he had to shed himself of this new complication—and fast—he had to do it politely.
So, rather than immediately abandon the woman, he’d stayed seated, nursing his beer.
Despite Culpepper’s pout and her pointed look at his wrist, he’d declined to show her the sigil that lay next to his skin, etched into the case of Canaris’s wristwatch. Hendriksen might not be perfectly immune to her blandishments, but he’d accumulated his share of scars and not all of them were displayed on his well-used hide.
When the air raid sirens sounded, he quirked an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t seem disposed to flee.
As the other patrons relocated to a nearby shelter, he’d slipped a tenner to the owner who shrugged and left them to their table before slipping out the back himself.
Together, the unlikely pair waited out the bombing. Even from kilometers away, the concussions were palpable. Periodically, Hendriksen would study the young woman, but in between occasional glances at her compact, she successfully outblanded him throughout the black night, ignoring even those bombs that fell closer, shaking their building.
Hendriksen kept one eye on his unwanted tablemate, but returned to brooding, something that came naturally. By training, he was an intelligence analyst for the Abwehr’s arcane legendarium. If he was caught, they wouldn’t shoot him for being an accomplished archaeologist.
Of course, but they sure as hell would shoot him as a spy.
He snorted, earning a sidelong glance from Culpepper.
Hendriksen’s family had returned to a Germany that had rediscovered pride. The rise of nationalism had felt good at first. Pride led to a renewed interest in German history. His father had introduced him to the Thule Society, which had developed a genuine antiquities program, albeit one tinged with an uncomfortable amount of mysticism.
A college-age Hendriksen had been skeptical of the supernatural but had loved the study of historical artifacts.
He’d ignored the politics too, for a time. Hitler seemed almost too good to be true, standing in opposition to the hereditary aristocracy of England and the titans that monopolized American industry—and he had been, for Germany and for Hendriksen’s family. First they’d lost their belongings, then he’d lost his parents. His younger sibling had embraced the National Socialist movement and its supremacist ideology.
So he’d lost his brother.
Sitting quietly in the dark, with a beautiful stranger, as his own countrymen dropped bombs around his ears, Hendriksen felt as alone as he’d ever been.
He shook it off, angry at himself for indulging in melancholy, and on a mission at that.
The all clear sounded just before dawn, as the asynchronous thrum of Heinkels faded slowly to the east.
After they donned their coats, Hendriksen escorted Culpepper into the pall of smoke that hung over the city and quickly permeated their clothes. Civilians remained scarce, though overworked firefighters were visible, laboring to knock down dangerous wreckage and quench the fires. The smell of burning wood and oil, and the sharp chemical reek of German incendiaries blanketed everything.
Once clear of the pub, Hendriksen implemented his plan to shake the uninvited woman without directly offering any insult. He accelerated, counting upon his long stride to leave the shorter and slightly built Culpepper behind.
His idea failed. The lithe teen effortlessly matched him, step for step.
Some streets ran with water draining away from the firefighting efforts and soaking the hem of his swirling cassock. The wetness made Hendriksen thankful for the boots hidden under the long garment. If the damp or the smell bothered Culpepper, it wasn’t evident.
Mercifully, the heavy stone construction of the old quarter had reduced the amount of fuel for the fires, but broken chunks of that same masonry were strewn everywhere. The streets remained completely blocked to vehicles, but in between the waves of bombers, firefighters had cleared narrow lanes, allowing them to respond to new conflagrations.
The lanes also turned an impossible walk into a merely hazardous, time-consuming scramble. Hendriksen restrained himself from checking his timepiece more than once, even as the sky lightened.
The familiar landmarks he’d relied upon during earlier reconnoiters were changed by the bomb raid, and only the hollowed-out bell tower identified the wreckage of Coventry less than a football pitch away. Relief at finding the target tangled with Hendriksen’s impatience. He had to get in and out before full daylight brought the authorities.
Canaris had explained that any bit of the altar or adjoining structure would suffice as proof of Coventry’s destruction, so long as it lit the dial of his watch when close by. Hendriksen had no desire to reveal this to Culpepper, so he needed her gone before he started waving his bare forearm about the wreckage.
Ahead lay the smoking ruin.
He spun on his heel to address her. Without witnesses, he could abandon the priestly speech of the last week.
“There it is,” he said. “Even a dame like you can see that the place is a wreck. You tell your boss that I respected the forms and leave me to get on with it, right?”
The teenager stepped past him without pausing.
“It was precious how you thought you could simply walk away from me, Erich,” said Culpepper, effortlessly threading her way between the piles of shattered masonry. “I thought that…”
She paused.
“Hmm,” she said, one foot daintily poised above a detached and dented tailfin of a German fragmentation bomb. “I can’t Feel Him.”
She waited a moment longer, her head cocked to one side as if listening intently.
“What?” asked Hendriksen, suppressing his irritation. “You can’t feel who?”
“We’re more than close enough by now that I should Feel Coventry, even if the centrum is shattered,” she answered tartly. “And I don’t. There’s just this…buzzing.”
She shot Hendriksen a meaningful look which left him as uninformed as he had been a moment before. He shook his head, but dropped the matter. Instead, he focused on the job and scanned ahead, seeking a way in. Overhead the sky was brightening further, and they had to be gone before someone inquired why they were rooting about in the ruins of a cathedral.
“When the timbers burned, the roof collapsed,” he stated, considering the way ahead. “The nave is completely blocked but I…we need to reach the sanctuary.”
The entire roof of the cathedral was missing, though the stout granite walls and the gothic window arches appeared to remain intact. Dull orange flames guttered in the morning breeze, improving visibility enough to show that the cathedral floor was utterly covered by uneven mounds of broken rubble. The firefighter lane led around the rear, where they could see an open door only partially fill
ed with charred wreckage.
Culpepper skipped from one clear patch to the next and easily navigated the door. Hendriksen followed closely behind her. Inside, thick smoke eddied, and the seemingly young woman darted ahead but then halted so suddenly that the German agent, looking downwards to avoid stumbling on a bits of rubble, actually bumped into her shapely backside.
Before he could apologize, two figures loomed in the smoke, pawing at an object tangled in what remained of the sacristy.
“Jackals,” hissed Culpepper, crouching as though she meant to spring.
The dark-suited men turned in unison, and as they straightened, Hendriksen saw that there was something deeply wrong with their faces. Shadowed by the fedoras they wore, their features were smeared and blurred. Unnaturally indistinct, their faces resembled those of cheaply made dolls. The dark smudges of their eyes fixed first on the woman, then himself.
One produced a long-barreled revolver. Hendriksen spared the gun a glance. It appeared to be an antique, chambered in .44 Russian, and the huge bore yawned wider than an open grave. His own pistol was a little light for serious work, but so was any pistol caliber for that matter, unless you had a bullet hose like the Schmeisser. Unfortunately for Hendriksen, even his priestly disguise wouldn’t extend to toting along the iconic German submachine gun.
He’d make do with his Walther.
At social distances like this, Hendriksen was confident that he could strike each man twice in the chest within the first second of any exchange. His bullets might be smaller than the monstrous wadcutters in the Russian pistol but Hendriksen was confident in his skill.
It was all about placing the bullets just so.
To one side of the gunman, the second figure clutched at a twisted bit of iron wreckage that it had withdrawn from the heap at their feet. The fire-heated artifact was visibly singeing the man’s hands, and his suit smoldered where the iron pressed against his waist. Indifferent to the searing heat, the man moved slightly behind his armed companion.
“Avaunt, demons!” Culpepper said, her voice ringing inside the ruined walls. She stalked forward empty-handed, utterly unimpressed with these possible competitors. “You have no place here. Begone or feel the wrath of the White Keep!”
Noir Fatale Page 25
