The Rhinemann Exchange (20 page)

The aircraft had been severed!

David knew instantly that he had only one chance of survival. The fuel tanks were filled to capacity for the long Atlantic flight; they’d go up in seconds. He reached for the buckle at his waist and ripped at it with all his strength. It was locked; the hurling fall had caused the strap to bunch and crowd the housing with cloth. He tugged and twisted, the snap sprung and he was free.

The plane—what was left of it—began a series of thundering convulsions signifying the final struggle to come to a halt on the rushing, hilly ground beyond the runway. David crashed backward, crawling as best he could toward the rear. Once he was forced to stop and hug the deck, his face covered by his arms, a jagged piece of metal piercing the back of his right shoulder.

The cargo hatch was blown open; the air force sergeant lay half out of the steel frame, dead, his chest ripped open from throat to rib cage.

David judged the distance to the ground as best his panic would allow and hurled himself out of the plane, coiling as he did so for the impact of the fall and the necessary roll away from the onrushing tail assembly.

The earth was hard and filled with rocks, but he was
free.
He kept rolling, rolling, crawling, digging, gripping his bloodied hands into the dry, hard soil until the breath in his lungs was exhausted.

He lay on the ground and heard the screaming sirens far in the distance.

And then the explosion that filled the air and shook the earth.

Priority high-frequency radio messages were sent back and forth between the operations room of Lajes Airfield and Field Division, Fairfax.

David Spaulding was to be airlifted out of Terceira on the next flight to Newfoundland, leaving in less than an hour. At Newfoundland he would be met by a pursuit fighter plane at the air force base and flown directly to Mitchell Field, New York. In light of the fact that Lieutenant
Colonel Spaulding had suffered no major physical disability, there would be no change in the orders delivered to him.

The cause of the B-17 explosions and resultant killings was, without question, sabotage. Timed out of Lisbon or set during the refueling process at Lajes. An intensive investigation was implemented immediately.

Hollander and Ballantyne had been with David when he was examined and treated by the British army doctor. Bandages around the sutures in his right shoulder, the cuts on his hands and forearms cleaned, Spaulding pronounced himself shaken but operable. The doctor left after administering an intravenous sedative that would make it possible for David to rest thoroughly on the final legs of his trip to New York.

“I’m sure it will be quite acceptable for you to take a leave for a week or so,” said Hollander. “My God, you’re lucky to be among us!”

“
Alive
is the word,” added Ballantyne.

“Am I a mark?” asked Spaulding. “Was it connected with me?”

“Fairfax doesn’t think so,” answered the balding Hollander. “They think it’s coincidental sabotage.”

Spaulding watched the Az-Am agent as he spoke. It seemed to David that Hollander hesitated, as if concealing something.

“Narrow coincidence, isn’t it? I
was
the only passenger.”

“If the enemy can eliminate a large aircraft and a pilot in the bargain, well, I imagine he considers that progress. And Lisbon security
is
rotten.”

“Not where I’ve been. Not generally.”

“Well, perhaps here at Terceira, then.… I’m only telling you what Fairfax thinks.”

There was a knock on the dispensary door and Ballantyne opened it. A first lieutenant stood erect and spoke gently, addressing David, obviously aware that Spaulding had come very close to death.

“It’s preparation time, sir. We should be airborne in twenty minutes. Can I help you with anything?”

“I haven’t
got
anything, lieutenant. Whatever I had is in that mass of burnt rubble in the south forty.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Better it than me.… I’ll be right with you.”
David turned to Ballantyne and Hollander, shaking their hands.

As he said his last good-bye to Hollander, he saw it in the agent’s eyes.

Hollander
was
hiding something.

The British naval commander opened the screen door of the gazebo and walked in. Paul Hollander rose from the deck chair.

“Did you bring it?” he asked the officer.

“Yes.” The commander placed his attaché case on the single wrought iron table and snapped up the hasps. He took out an envelope and handed it to the American. “The photo lab did a rather fine job. Well lighted, front and rear views. Almost as good as having the real item.”

Hollander unwound the string on the envelope’s flap and removed a photograph. It was an enlargement of a small medallion, a star with six points.

It was the Star of David.

In the center of the face was the scrolled flow of a Hebrew inscription. On the back was the bas-relief of a knife with a streak of lightning intersecting the blade.

“The Hebrew spells out the name of a prophet named Haggai; he’s the symbol of an organization of Jewish fanatics operating out of Palestine. They call themselves the Haganah. Their business, they claim, is vengeance—two thousand years’ worth. We anticipate quite a bit of trouble from them in the years to come; they’ve made that clear, I’m afraid.”

“But you say it was welded to the bottom main strut of the rear cabin.”

“In such a way as to escape damage from all but a direct explosion. Your aircraft was blown up by the Haganah.”

Hollander sat down, staring at the photograph. He looked up at the British commander. “Why? For God’s sake,
why?
”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Neither can Fairfax. I don’t think they even want to acknowledge it. They want it buried.”

When the words came over his intercom in the soft, compensating voice of the WAC lieutenant who was his secretary, Swanson knew it was no routine communication.

“Fairfax on line one, sir. It’s Colonel Pace. He says to interrupt you.”

Since delivering David Spaulding’s file, the Fairfax commander had been reluctant to call personally. He hadn’t spoken of his reluctance, he simply relegated messages to subordinates. And since they all concerned the progress of getting Spaulding out of Portugal, Pace’s point was clear: he would expedite but not personally acknowledge his participation.

Edmund Pace was still not satisfied with the murky “highest priority” explanations regarding his man in Lisbon. He would follow orders once-removed.

“General, there’s a radio emergency from Lajes Field in Terceira,” said Pace urgently.

“What the hell does that mean?
Where
?”

“Azores. The B-17 carrier with Spaulding on it was sabotaged. Blown up on takeoff.”

“Jesus!”

“May I suggest you come out here, sir?”

“Is Spaulding dead?”

“Preliminary reports indicate negative, but I don’t want to guarantee anything. Everything’s unclear. I wanted to wait till I had further confirmations but I can’t now. An unexpected development. Please, come out, general.”

“On my way. Get the information on Spaulding!”

Swanson gathered the papers on his desk—the information from Kendall—that had to be clipped together, sealed in a thin metal box and locked in a file cabinet with two combinations and a key.

If there was ever a reason for total security, it was symbolized by those papers.

He spun the two combination wheels, turned the key and then thought for a second that he might reverse the process and take the papers with him.… No, that was unsound. They were safer in the cabinet. A file cabinet riveted to the floor was better than a cloth pocket on a man who walked in the street and drove in automobiles. A file cabinet could not have accidents; was not subject to the frailties of a tired, fifty-three-year-old brigadier.

He saluted the guard on duty at the entrance and walked rapidly down the steps to the curb. His driver was waiting, alerted by the WAC secretary, whose efficiency overcame her continuous attempts to be more than an efficient secretary to him. He knew that one day when the pressures became too much, he’d ask her in, lock the door and hump the ass off her on the brown leather couch.

Why was he thinking about his secretary? He didn’t give a goddamn about the WAC lieutenant who sat so protectively outside his office door.

He sat back in the seat and removed his hat. He knew why he thought about his secretary: it gave him momentary relief. It postponed thoughts about the complications that may or may not have exploded on a runway in the Azores.

Oh
Christ!
The thought of rebuilding what he’d managed to put together was abhorrent to him. To go back, to reconstruct, to research for the right man was impossible. It was difficult enough for him to go over the details as they now stood.

The details supplied by the sewer rat.

Kendall.

An enigma. An unattractive puzzle even G-2 couldn’t piece together. Swanson had run a routine check on him, based on the fact that the accountant was privy to Meridian’s aircraft contracts; the Intelligence boys and Hoover’s tight-lipped maniacs had returned virtually nothing but names and dates. They’d been instructed
not
to interview Meridian personnel or anyone connected with ATCO or
Packard; orders that apparently made their task close to impossible.

Kendall was forty-six, severely asthmatic and a CPA. He was unmarried, had few if any friends and lived two blocks from his firm, which he solely owned, in mid-Manhattan.

The personal evaluations were fairly uniform: Kendall was a disagreeable, antisocial individualist who happened to be a brilliant statistician.

The dossier might have told a desolate story—paternal abandonment, lack of privilege, the usual—but it didn’t. There was no indication of poverty, no record of deprivation or hardship anywhere near that suffered by millions, especially during the Depression years.

No records of depth on anything, for that matter.

An enigma.

But there was nothing enigmatic about Walter Kendall’s “details” for Buenos Aires. They were clarity itself. Kendall’s sense of manipulation had been triggered; the challenge stimulated his already primed instincts for maneuvering. It was as if he had found the ultimate “deal”—and indeed, thought Swanson, he had.

The operation was divided into three isolated exercises: the arrival and inspection of the diamond shipment; the simultaneous analysis of the gyroscopic blueprints, as they, too, arrived; and the submarine transfer. The crates of bortz and carbonado from the Koening mines would be secretly cordoned off in a warehouse in the Dársena Norte district of the Puerto Nuevo. The Germans assigned to the warehouse would report only to Erich Rhinemann.

The aerophysicist, Eugene Lyons, would be billeted in a guarded apartment in the San Telmo district, an area roughly equivalent to New York’s Gramercy Park—rich, secluded, ideal for surveillance. As the step-blueprints were delivered, he would report to Spaulding.

Spaulding would precede Lyons to Buenos Aires and be attached to the embassy on whatever pretext Swanson thought feasible. His assignment—as
Spaulding
thought it to be—was to coordinate the purchase of the gyroscopic designs, and if their authenticity was confirmed, authorize payment. This authorization would be made by a code radioed to Washington that supposedly cleared a transfer of funds to Rhinemann in Switzerland.

Spaulding would then stand by at a mutually agreedupon
airfield, prepared to be flown out of Argentina. He would be given airborne clearance when Rhinemann received word that “payment” had been made.

In reality, the code sent by Spaulding was to be a signal for the German submarine to surface at a prearranged destination at sea and make rendezvous with a small craft carrying the shipment of diamonds. Ocean and air patrols would be kept out of the area; if the order was questioned—and it was unlikely—the cover story of the underground defectors would be employed.

When the transfer at sea was made, the submarine would radio confirmation—Rhinemann’s “payment.” It would dive and start its journey back to Germany. Spaulding would then be cleared for takeoff to the United States.

These safeguards were the best either side could expect. Kendall was convinced he could sell the operation to Erich Rhinemann. He and Rhinemann possessed a certain objectivity lacking in the others.

Swanson did not dispute the similarity; it was another viable reason for Kendall’s death.

The accountant would fly to Buenos Aires in a week and make the final arrangements with the German expatriate. Rhinemann would be made to understand that Spaulding was acting as an experienced courier, a custodian for the eccentric Eugene Lyons—a position Kendall admitted was desirable. But Spaulding was nothing else. He was not part of the diamond transfer; he knew nothing of the submarine. He would provide the codes necessary for the transfer, but he’d never know it. There was no way he could learn of it.

Airtight, ironclad: acceptable.

Swanson had read and reread Kendall’s “details”; he could not fault them. The ferret-like accountant had reduced an enormously complicated negotiation to a series of simple procedures and separate motives. In a way Kendall had created an extraordinary deception. Each step had a checkpoint, each move a countermove.

And Swanson would add the last deceit: David Spaulding would kill Erich Rhinemann.

Origin of command: instructions from Allied Central Intelligence. By the nature of Rhinemann’s involvement, he was too great a liability to the German underground. The former man in Lisbon could employ whatever methods he
thought best. Hire the killers, do it himself; whatever the situation called for. Just make sure it was done.

Spaulding would understand. The shadow world of agents and double agents had been his life for the past several years. David Spaulding—if his dossier was to be believed—would accept the order for what it was: a reasonable, professional solution.