Sentimental Journey (7 page)

“You didn’t tell him.”

“Tell him what, Harrington?” Langdon didn’t move from his spot. A fly was trapped by the closed window and kept batting into the glass, then falling down on the sill, where it buzzed frantically and beat its wings.

“You didn’t tell him about the girl. The memo specifically said that Cassidy was to be apprised of the problem.”

“I didn’t?” Langdon rubbed a finger against his lip, his back to that toadying Harrington, who he knew was only worried about his own ass if HQ found out. “Hmmmm. That’s odd. I thought I did tell him. I was certain I did.” Langdon watched the jeep with Cassidy in it disappear between a maze of old buildings in a cloud of dry dust. He stood there enjoying the moment: Cassidy disappearing.

He smiled to himself for a full minute, before he turned and faced Harrington. “Are you certain I didn’t tell him?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Langdon waited long enough for Cassidy to pack up. Meanwhile he could hear Harrington squirming in his chair. Langdon enjoyed that, so he stood at that window, until all the flies inside the room had died.

He watched the jeep with Cassidy and his camp bag in it drive out through the camp gates and speed off in the direction of the airfield. Langdon turned then and walked back to his chair, where he sat down and lit himself an imported cigar. He puffed on it for a second or two, then watched the smoke curl up toward the ceiling fan and dissipate. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the cigar tip glowing in his right hand. “Are you sure I didn’t tell him?”

“Yes, Colonel. I’m sure,” Harrington said dryly. He’d finally caught on.

“Hmmm, that is a shame. You know I think it’s too late now. He’s already left the base.” Langdon paused, then took a long hit off the cigar. “HQ’s fair-haired Captain Cassidy is just going to have to find out that bit of information
all
by himself.”

“ME
AND
MY SHADOW”

ATLAS MOUNTAINS
,
MOROCCO

The walls around her were made of stone, and when she rubbed her hands over them, fine sand coated her damp palms. She didn’t know where she was, but she knew they had taken her into the mountains. The truck had shifted gears and the turns had been hairpin for the last two hours. The road had turned steep and the air had grown cooler and thinner, the way it did when you rose in altitude. She’d clocked the drive time. She was five hours and twenty-two minutes from the outskirts of
Rabat
.

For Kitty time passed by her heartbeat, by the feel and taste of the air, which changed constantly; it felt different against the sensitive hairs on her skin, tasted different when she breathed it in.

Her cell was a fifteen-by-ten-foot stone room. There was a metal cot against a wall at
nine o’clock
. On the
twelve o’clock
wall was a high, narrow window that she couldn’t reach even when she’d stood on the furniture. A dry sink sat at
three o’clock
, and there was a pot for a toilet that was discreetly placed behind a deeply carved wooden screen.

Each morning her guard—a man she dubbed Adolf—brought her warm wash water, fruit, goat cheese, and flatbread along with a pot of strong African coffee with too much sugar. Around ten A.M. she was taken outside to walk in circles in a courtyard with a stone birdbath in its center—set in gravel that crunched underfoot—and framed with a line of cedar trees that made the air smell like the sweater drawer in her bureau back home.

When she came back to her cell, there were clean towels, a pitcher of fresh water, and the pot had been emptied and disinfected with something that smelled like camphor. In the evenings, Adolf brought her a hot meal of lamb and bulgur that was usually too much for her to eat.

On one occasion, he brought her two extra woolen blankets. It had been shortly after the wind had begun to howl outside and the temperature dropped a good thirty degrees.

For ten long nights and eleven days, that routine had been her existence.

She heard distant footsteps on the stairs.

Heil!
Adolf was coming. But at the wrong time.

He came down a narrow hall that made the sound of his boot heels echo until they stopped abruptly right outside her room. The lock on the door clicked. She felt a wave of cool air when the door opened. There was a moment’s pause.

“You will come with me,
Fraülein
.”

“A late walk, Adolf?”

“I told you my name is not Adolf.”

“But you refuse to tell me your name, so, I must improvise. You don’t like being nicknamed after your
Führer
?”

“What is this . . . ‘nickname’?”

“It’s an endearment like
Liebchen.
If you don’t like Adolf, you might prefer Hermann. Although you don’t seem like a Hermann. Perhaps Heinrich?”

He said nothing, just grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

“What about Karl?” Come.

She let him guide her to the door. She could smell the musty wool of his clothes. “The seasons must be changing. You are wearing a wool uniform today.”

That stopped him for a moment. She liked to confuse him, which wasn’t too difficult. She suspected Adolf’s IQ was equivalent to his belt size.

They had expected her to act hysterical. Once the truck left
Rabat
, she didn’t. Any one of her brothers would tell these men that she seldom did what people expected.

“Come.”

This time she jerked her arm from his grasp and faced him. “Come where?”

“You will not be harmed.” He took her arm again. “Unless you do not cooperate. If you kick me again, I have orders to chain your feet together.”

“I had no plans to kick you,” she lied and held her head up.

They went out the door, his gloved hand tightly gripping her upper arm and his other hand clamped onto her waist.

“Halt.” He grabbed her shoulder to stop her. “The stairs are here.”

She knew there were exactly twenty-seven even footsteps from her room to the staircase. Forty-two small stone steps went down in a circle and passed by five narrow windows that sent cool cedar-scented air into the passageway. She was being held in some kind of old tower.

They reached the bottom and turned right for the usual fifteen steps. She started to turn left.

Adolf pulled her back. “No. Turn right.”

She acted as if it did not bother her that they were going someplace new, but a small amount of perspiration broke out in her hairline.

They went down two more hallways, each about twenty feet long. The second one was carpeted. One left turn and they were in a corridor where fatty-smelling tallow candles burned somewhere above her head.

Ten steps and he stopped. He rapped three times on a door, then opened it, not with the turn of a doorknob, but the hard rasp of an iron latch.

He drew her inside.

“Ah, Miss Kincaid.” The voice belonged to her nemesis, her shadow from the marketplace; it was a voice she had not heard since they’d first brought her here. “You look well this morning.”

It was afternoon, not morning. Close to
three o’clock
, but she chose to keep her knowledge to herself. This man did frighten her. He was no dumb Adolf. “Why am I here? Who are you? And what do you want?”

“Show the
Fraülein
where the chair is,
Leutnant
”

Adolf was a lieutenant? How nice to know the Third Reich had such a high caliber of junior officer.

It was barely five steps to a stiff wooden chair. Kitty sat down easily, her chin up the whole time, facing the man who held her captive. “You haven’t answered my questions.”

“I know.”

“The U.S. State Department made arrangements for me to go home. Kidnapping is illegal, even here, under the
Vichy
. My government will not be happy.”

“Let’s not exchange threats, Miss Kincaid. It’s a waste of our time.”

“Our time? Why, I have plenty of spare time.” She leaned back against the chair and crossed her legs.

The silence dragged on as she could feel him watching her. It was one of those spider-and-the-fly kind of moments. “Who are you?”

“My name is Werner Von Heidelmann, agent for the German Occupancy Department.”

To those in the
Vichy
his title might be that innocuous, but she knew by instinct he was something else altogether. There were rumors of secret police, of Hitler’s special forces and agents whose true agenda was nothing like what their titles implied.

“You have an opportunity to gain your release.”

“And what opportunity might that be?”

“Your father is a very important man.”

Her father’s work, of course. He’d been in
Life
magazine and the topic of countless newspaper articles. She knew he’d been working on some kind of rocket, but no one would find that out from her.

She sat there silently. Let Herr Von Heidelmann make of it what he would.

“Your father has chosen to do nothing to aid in your release.”

Oh, God . . . They’ve contacted Dad.

“It seems, Miss Kincaid, that you, his only daughter, are not terribly important to him.” He paused then, and she could feel him gauging her reaction, so she gave him none.

“You have six brothers, do you not?”

“And your point is?”

“It must be very difficult for a young woman to grow up in a home full of men, one where her own father does not care for her. Where the sons are more important than daughters.”

Kitty knew her father loved her. But she also knew Arnan Kincaid was no traitor, and not even for her safety would he betray his country. Her father was also well aware that she knew where his allegiance was, which Kitty hoped gave him the power to find some alternate method to save her. He must have acted as if he didn’t give a damn about her, which is exactly what she would have done.

“Not so difficult as you believe, Herr Von Heidelmann.” She shrugged. “We women have learned to accept our lesser value in this man’s world.” Her brothers would be rolling on the floor if they’d heard her.

“Perhaps in your country, Miss Kincaid. The
Führer
values the women who work for him. Under the Third Reich, women are equal to men. Whether they are engineers or mothers. It does not matter to us.”

She laughed then. “Are you really asking me to believe that it doesn’t matter to the Third Reich whether, say, a woman designs an airplane that can fly thousands of miles or makes a mean sauerkraut and Wiener schnitzel? You want me to believe that they are equally as important to you?”

“Soldiers must be fed, Miss Kincaid.”

She only laughed.