The Hunt aka 27 (51 page)

To make matters worse, for the length of this new mission he was under the command of
Die Sechs Füchse,
an intelligence unit of the
Schutzsta
ffel
Leiger hated the SS and the Gestapo with a passion, as did most military men in Germany. He considered Hitler and his cronies thugs, psychopaths. This professor, Wilhelm Vierhaus, was to him one of the worst. Although they had only met once, Leiger had taken an instant dislike to the crippled intelligence chief, an arrogant man so thirsty for victory that he had lost all sense of honor.

Leiger pored over his charts with a pair of dividers, measuring the distance to his destination, the eastern coast of Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas. His ship had a surface speed of about seventeen knots, seven underwater, and if necessary could dive comfortably to a depth of 120 meters. They could stay underwater for up to twenty-two hours at a “creep” speed of four knots.

Calculating his distance, Leiger figured if he traveled at maximum surface speed during the night, underwater during the day to avoid detection, and the weather held up, the trip from his position southeast of Greenland to Grand Bahama would take about seventeen days. He had three weeks to make the journey.

“Verda
mm
t!”
he said, angry that he had been ordered away from the action for some stupid “intelligence” mission.

In Bromley, New Hampshire, which had less than 2,500 residents, an old man struggled through the lobby of the only hotel in town. His hair was a white wisp, his face prune-wrinkled. His clothes, though neat and clean, were a site too big and sagged on a body obviously shrunken with age. His back was bowed and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He used a cane to support his right leg, which appeared to have been weakened by a stroke.

“Good morning, Mr. Hempstead,” the desk clerk said.

“Hello, Harry,” Hempstead answered in a shaky voice. “Any mail today?”

Harry checked the mail slot, knowing it would be empty. Hempstead had been at the hotel for almost a month now. Every day he looked for a letter from his son but in the time he had been at the hotel he had received no mail.

“Sorry,” Harry told him.

The old man shuffled out the door, went toward the diner as he always did. On the way, he stopped at a newsstand and picked up
The New York Times.
As he walked on, 27 felt very proud of himself. The disguise was perfect. The wrinkles on his face hid the three gouges in his cheek. It was unlikely that whoever was after him would look for a seventy-year-old man in southern New Hampshire. He settled in a corner booth of the diner, ordered sausage and rolls and coffee, and turned to the Personals section of the paper.

The code was known as
Schlussel Drei,
the Three Code. The base message was a fake, identified by a series of numbers within that message. The actual message was then derived by adding three to the first number, subtracting three from the second, adding three to the third and subtracting three from the fourth. Reading through the personals, he stopped suddenly. His heart began to race. There, in the third column halfway down the page, was the message he had been waiting six years to read.

Charles: Have 8 seats for the show on the 14th. Will meet you at 9 P.M. at the 86th Street station. Elizabeth.

Twenty-seven decoded it as 5, 17, 1800 (6 P.M.) and 89. 5.17.1889—Hitler’s birthday.

“My God,” he said, smiling to himself, unable to conceal his excitement. “The mission has been activated.”

Eighteen days later, in the last week of October, the U-17 slipped around the eastern shore of Grand Bahama Island and found a suitable hiding place among the brush on its eastern tip, hopefully hidden from the prying eyes of U.S. Navy PBYs, which patrolled the entire area. With lookouts liberally posted, Leiger decided to permit his men the luxury of swimming, fresh fish and fruit and eggs, which they could buy on cautious visits to the villages a few miles away. He had been advised that he would have to remain in these waters for almost a month, so his plan was to move every three or four days, waiting until dark, then seeking out a new and sheltered cove or inlet in which to hide.

Leiger was to wait for a relayed signal from a mother ship farther out at sea before opening his second set of sealed orders. But now that he was safely alee on Grand Bahama, he could wait no longer. He locked the door to his cabin, opened the safe, removed the envelope and tore it open.

He read the instructions slowly, drumming his fingers on the desktop as he scanned the orders. When he was finished, he slid the sheaf of papers back in the envelope and returned it to the safe. Only then did he sit back and mentally digest what he had just read.

“Mein Go
tt
,
“he said half aloud. A daring plan. Insane really. And yet.
. .
it might just work.

The drop was a safe deposit box at the Manhattan National Bank to which both 27 and a courier in New York had access. The courier would leave a message in the box which 27 would then pick up and answer the same day, or vice versa.

Twenty-seven had taken a bus to New York and checked into a modest midtown hotel. He decided to stay in character, although he wore a properly fitting suit. He projected the image of a well-to-do seventy-year-old lawyer or banker when he presented himself to the guard at the deposit box safe. His key to the box had been one of his most closely guarded possessions.

“Box 23476,” he said.

“Name?”

“Swan.” It had been almost six years since he had used that name. This would be the last time.

“Yes, Mr. Swan. Sign the card, please.”

He sat in the small cubbyhole provided for box holders and examined the contents of the small steel container. There was a single eleven-by-fourteen brown envelope inside containing a passport, a driver’s license, a leather packet of business cards and a birth certificate, all identifying him as John Ward Allenbee III. Born: 1895 in Chicago, Ill.; an import broker with an office in San Francisco.

He opened a hand-printed note that accompanied the documents.

“You are John Ward Allenbee III,” it read. “You are a conservative, very proper American import broker, born in Chicago and operating out of San Francisco. You have an office on High Street (cards enclosed) and accounts in two banks with deposits of $20,000 and $30,000, bank books enclosed. You also have an account at the Manhattan National with $50,000 on deposit. You have been traveling all over the world off and on for the past year-and-a-half. Allenbee is quite wealthy, very refined, dresses in the height of fashion. You must sign the enclosed bank signature cards. There is also a new safe deposit box. The key is here and the necessary signature card. Do this upon leaving. This box is no longer active. Get a new passport photo made and leave a copy of it in the new box. If you need a wardrobe you might try Balaban’s on Fifty-third near Park. You will be contacted with further details.”

Twenty-seven immediately vetoed the idea of leaving a photograph of himself in the box. He would turn it around, order the contact to leave his picture, which he would use to identify the contact. He dropped a note back in the box:

“No photograph. Leave yours. Assignment, please.”

He quickly decided that once he learned the nature of the assignment, he would kill the contact. He would not risk being identified by anyone. He signed the new signature card, left it with the guard and went back to the hotel. He took out his makeup box and his blue business suit. He would steam it out in the shower that night.

He removed his makeup and wig and cleaned his face with cold cream, then washed it off and stared at himself in the mirror for several minutes. The bear scars on his face were still quite visible. The scabs were gone; they were now three thin red lines down the right side of his face. Studying that face, he decided what John Allenbee should look like.

Using scissors, he cut his hair back in a sharp widow’s peak then, lathering his shaving brush, he began shaving the widow’s peak clean. He opened the makeup case and took out black and gray hair dye, spirit gum, material for whiskers and pale blue contact lenses. Then he went to work.

The next day, Ward Allenbee, as he decided he would be called, went back to First Manhattan and checked the new box. There was a single slip of paper in it. On it was printed a sentence:

Das Gespenst ist frei.

Was this how the contact would identify himself? With the phrase: “The ghost is free?”

He folded the sheet, put it in his pocket and put the box back. Then he went upstairs and introduced himself to the vice president of the bank, Raymond Denton, a sallow, nervous man in his mid-thirties and a fawner, Allenbee did not like to be fawned over, but it was necessary as he began assuming and establishing his new identity.

Lady Penelope Traynor had just cashed a check when she looked across the marble lobby of the bank and saw the handsome man in Raymond Denton’s office. He was obviously just concluding business with the bank officer. Quite attractive, she thought. And the way Denton was fawning over him, obviously important. As they got up to leave the office she strolled across the bank toward Denton’s office.

Denton saw her and beamed.
Such a little sycophant,
she thought as she smiled back.

“Raymond,” she said, extending her hand.

“Lady Penelope, how delightful. Lady Penelope Traynor, this is Ward Allenbee. Mr. Allenbee is a new customer of the bank and we’re quite pleased to have him aboard.”

When they left Denton, they strolled toward the entrance together, making small talk.

She smiled up at him. “Are you living in New York?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve taken an apartment at the Pierre.”

“How lovely. My father and I have adjoining suites at the Waldorf. What do you do, Mr. Allenbee?”

“I’m in importing,” he told her.

“Really?” she said. “Art?”

“Antiques.”

“How interesting.”

“It can be at times. Are you over for long? I assume you’re from England.”

“We have a country house just outside London but we travel quite a bit so we keep a base of operations here, too. Actually I work as a researcher for my father. He writes a syndicated column. Sir Colin Willoughby? The ‘Willow Report?’”

“Of course. I’ve read his articles. Quite perceptive. You were in the Orient recently.”

“Yes.”

“Interesting observation about the political situation in Japan. Does he really think we can avoid war with them?”

“Well, you certainly should try. The situation over there is quite desperate, you know. The emperor doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on. Actually the country is under the control of Tojo and the right-wing military faction. The army and air force are quite strong and they have a very powerful navy.”

Allenbee smiled. It was refreshing to meet a woman as intelligent and perceptive as she was.

“I have my car,” she said. “May we drop you somewhere?”

“May I be presumptuous and offer you a drink? The new bar at the Empire State Building is right up the street. I hear it’s quite exquisite.”

She hedged a bit, looked at her watch, then finally shrugged.

“Sounds charming,” she said. “But I only have an hour.”

The car was a chauffeur-driven Packard. Obviously, Sir Colin did rather well with his column. The bar was brass and enamel, its style
ultra deco
. They sat in a corner booth and sipped martinis. She studied him carefully. Ward Allenbee was a handsome man with pale blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. His thin black hair was graying and archly widow- peaked and he wore a meticulously trimmed Prince Albert beard. His clothes were expensive and stylish, his speech perfect, his voice resonant. And he was intelligent and well informed. Quite interesting, she thought.

Twenty-seven saw a woman in her late thirties, handsome, well groomed, yet oddly cold and detached. Her posture was a little too correct, her classic features a little too perfect, from the angular nose and pale green eyes to the petulant mouth, her red hair a little too tightly combed, her eyes a little too cold and suspicious. A snob who covered priggishness with a veneer of sophistication. She was awesomely well informed and outrageously opinionated and she was a casual name dropper. Some men might have found her intimidating. Twenty-seven saw in her a frustrated and repressed woman of high caste, ripe for the picking, a widow whose husband had been dead for years. A wonderful diversion while he awaited the next step in the mission.

One drink became two drinks and then a third. The first hour passed and they were deep into the second when he suggested dinner at Delmonico’s. She eyed him momentarily, her eyes softened by vermouth and gin, then she smiled.

“Why not,” she said. “But we must stop by my place, first. I really must change clothes.”

She had an ample one-bedroom suite adjoining her father’s larger quarters in the Waldorf North Tower. It was pleasantly furnished but hotel furniture was hotel furniture no matter what one did with it.

“I won’t take long, I promise,” she said. “I’ll make you a drink before I change.” She went to the bar in the corner and stirred him another martini.

He sipped the drink and nodded emphatically.

“Excellent,” he said. “You are really something. You’re a walking journal of events, you’re quite beautiful and you make a great martini. You’re full of surprises, Lady Penelope.”

He reached out, very lightly stroked her hair, then her throat. Stepping closer, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth. She responded hungrily, a woman who had been chaste, untrusting of men, for years.

She wanted him desperately, feeling he was a safe port in her otherwise stormy life. But that could wait. As he wrapped his arms around her, she buried her face in his neck, then raising her lips slightly, she whispered in his ear:

“Das Gespenst
ist
frei
.”