The Rhinemann Exchange (8 page)

“Yes.”

Swanson looked over at Vandamm. “In light of this, Mr. Undersecretary, there’s no other course but to alter immediate priorities. Or at least the projections. We can’t meet the logistics.”

“Unacceptable, General Swanson. We have to meet them.”

Swanson stared at the old man. Each knew precisely what the other referred to.

Overlord.
The invasion of Europe.

“We must postpone, sir.”

“Impossible. That’s the word, general.”

Swanson looked at the three men around the table.

The enemy.

“We’ll be in touch, gentlemen,” he said.

David Spaulding waited in the shadows of the thick, gnarled tree on the rocky slope above the ravine. It was Basque country and the air was damp and cold. The late afternoon sun washed over the hills; his back was to it. He had years ago—it seemed a millennium but it wasn’t—learned the advantage of catching the reflections of the sun off the steel of small weapons. His own rifle was dulled with burnt, crushed cork.

Four.

Strange, but the number
four
kept coming to mind as he scanned the distance.

Four.

Four years and four days ago exactly. And this afternoon’s contract was scheduled for precisely four o’clock in the afternoon.

Four years and four days ago he had first seen the creased brown uniforms behind the thick glass partition in the radio studio in New York. Four years and four days ago since he had walked toward that glass wall to pick up his raincoat off the back of a chair and realized that the eyes of the older officer were looking at him. Steadily. Coldly. The younger man avoided him, as if guilty of intrusion, but not his superior, not the lieutenant colonel.

The lieutenant colonel had been studying him.

That was the beginning.

He wondered now—as he watched the ravine for signs of movement—when it would end. Would he be alive to see it end?

He intended to be.

He had called it a treadmill once. Over a drink at the Mayflower in Washington. Fairfax had
been
a treadmill; still, he had not known at the time how completely accurate that word would continue to be: a racing treadmill that never stopped.

It slowed down occasionally. The physical and mental pressures demanded deceleration at certain recognizable times—recognizable to him. Times when he realized he was getting careless … or too sure of himself. Or too absolute with regard to decisions that took human life.

Or might take his.

They were often too easily arrived at. And sometimes that frightened him. Profoundly.

During such times he would take himself away. He would travel south along the Portuguese coast where the enclaves of the temporarily inconvenienced rich denied the existence of war. Or he would stay in Costa del Santiago—with his perplexed parents. Or he would remain within the confines of the embassy in Lisbon and engross himself in the meaningless chores of neutral diplomacy. A minor military attaché who did not wear a uniform. It was not expected in the streets; it was inside the “territory.” He did not wear one, however; no one cared. He was not liked very much. He socialized too frequently, had too many prewar friends. By and large, he was ignored … with a certain disdain.

At such times he rested. Forced his mind to go blank; to recharge itself.

Four years and four days ago such thoughts would have been inconceivable.

Now they consumed him. When he had the time for such thoughts.

Which he did not have now.

There was still no movement in the ravine. Something was wrong. He checked his watch; the team from San Sebastián was too far behind schedule. It was an abnormal delay. Only six hours ago the French underground had radioed that everything was secure; there were no complications, the team had started out.

The runners from San Sebastián were bringing out photographs of the German airfield installations north of Mont-de-Marsan. The strategists in London had been
screaming for them for months. Those photographs had cost the lives of four … again, that goddamned number … four underground agents.

If anything, the team should have been early; the runners should have been waiting for the man from Lisbon.

Then he saw it in the distance; perhaps a half a mile away, it was difficult to tell. Over the ravine, beyond the opposite slope, from one of the miniature hills. A flashing.

An intermittent but rhythmic flashing. The measured spacing was a mark of intent, not accident.

They were being signaled.
He
was being signaled by someone who knew his methods of operation well; perhaps someone he had trained. It was a warning.

Spaulding slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled the strap taut, then tighter still so that it became a fixed but flexible appendage to his upper body. He felt the hasp of his belt holster; it was in place, the weapon secure. He pushed himself away from the trunk of the old tree and, in a crouching position, scrambled up the remainder of the rock-hewn slope.

On the ridge he ran to his left, into the tall grass toward the remains of a dying pear orchard. Two men in mudcaked clothes, rifles at their sides, were sitting on the ground playing trick knife, passing the time in silence. They snapped their heads up, their hands reaching for their guns.

Spaulding gestured to them to remain on the ground. He approached and spoke quietly in Spanish.

“Do either of you know who’s on the team coming in?”

“Bergeron, I think,” said the man on the right. “And probably Chivier. That old man has a way with patrols; forty years he’s peddled across the border.”

“Then it’s Bergeron,” said Spaulding.

“What is?” asked the second man.

“We’re being signaled. They’re late and someone is using what’s left of the sun to get our attention.”

“Perhaps to tell you they’re on their way.” The first man put the knife back in his scabbard as he spoke.

“Possible but not likely. We wouldn’t go anywhere. Not for a couple of hours yet.” Spaulding raised himself partially off the ground and looked eastward. “Come on! We’ll head down past the rim of the orchard. We can get a cross view there.”

The three men in single file, separated but within hearing of each other, raced across the field below the high ground for nearly four hundred yards. Spaulding positioned himself behind a low rock that jutted over the edge of the ravine. He waited for the other two. The waters below were about a hundred feet straight down, he judged. The team from San Sebastián would cross them approximately two hundred yards west, through the shallow, narrow passage they always used.

The two other men arrived within seconds of each other.

“The old tree where you stood was the mark, wasn’t it?” asked the first man.

“Yes,” answered Spaulding, removing his binoculars from a case opposite his belt holster. They were powerful, with Zeiss Ikon lenses, the best Germany produced. Taken from a dead German at the Tejo River.

“Then why come down here? If there’s a problem, your line of vision was best where you were. It’s more direct.”

“If there’s a problem, they’ll know that. They’ll flank to their left. East. To the west the ravine heads
away
from the mark. Maybe it’s nothing. Perhaps you were right; they just want us to know they’re coming.”

A little more than two hundred yards away, just west of the shallow passage, two men came into view. The Spaniard who knelt on Spaulding’s left touched the American’s shoulder.

“It’s Bergeron and Chivier,” he said quietly.

Spaulding held up his hand for silence and scanned the area with the binoculars. Abruptly he fixed them in one position. With his left hand he directed the attention of his subordinates to the spot.

Below them, perhaps fifty yards, four soldiers in Wehrmacht uniforms were struggling with the foliage, approaching the waters of the ravine.

Spaulding moved his binoculars back to the two Frenchmen, now crossing the water. He held the glasses steady against the rock until he could see in the woods behind the two men what he knew was there.

A fifth German, an officer, was half concealed in the tangled mass of weeds and low branches. He held a rifle on the two Frenchmen crossing the ravine.

Spaulding passed the binoculars quickly to the first Spaniard. He whispered, “Behind Chivier.”

The man looked, then gave the glasses to his countryman.

Each knew what had to be done; even the methods were clear. It was merely a question of timing, precision. From a scabbard behind his right hip, Spaulding withdrew a short carbine bayonet, shortened further by grinding. His two associates did the same. Each peered over the rock at the Wehrmacht men below.

The four Germans, faced with waters waist high and a current—though not excessively strong, nevertheless considerable—strapped their rifles across their shoulders laterally and separated in a downstream column. The lead man started across, testing the depths as he did so.

Spaulding and the two Spaniards came from behind the rock swiftly and slid down the incline, concealed by the foliage, their sounds muffled by the rushing water. In less than half a minute they were within thirty feet of the Wehrmacht men, hidden by fallen tree limbs and overgrowth. David entered the water, hugging the embankment. He was relieved to see that the fourth man—now only fifteen feet in front of him—was having the most difficulty keeping his balance on the slippery rocks. The other three, spaced about ten yards apart, were concentrating on the Frenchmen upstream. Concentrating intently.

The Nazi saw him; the fear, the bewilderment was in the German’s eyes. The split second he took to assimilate the shock was the time David needed. Covered by the sounds of the water, Spaulding leaped on the man, his knife penetrating the Wehrmacht throat, the head pushed violently under the surface, the blood mingling with the rushing stream.

There was no time, no second to waste. David released the lifeless form and saw that the two Spaniards were parallel with him on the embankment. The first man, crouched and hidden, gestured toward the lead soldier; the second nodded his head toward the next man. And David knew that the third Wehrmacht soldier was his.

It took no more than the time necessary for Bergeron and Chivier to reach the south bank. The three soldiers were dispatched, their blood-soaked bodies floating downstream,
careening off rocks, filling the waters with streaks of magenta.

Spaulding signaled the Spaniards to cross the water to the north embankment. The first man pulled himself up beside David, his right hand bloodied from a deep cut across his palm.

“Are you all right?” whispered Spaulding.

“The blade slipped. I lost my knife.” The man swore.

“Get out of the area,” said David. “Get the wound dressed at the Valdero farm.”

“I can put on a tight bandage. I’ll be fine.”

The second Spaniard joined them. He winced at the sight of his countryman’s hand, an action Spaulding thought inconsistent for a guerrilla who had just minutes ago plunged a blade into the neck of a man, slicing most of his head off.

“That looks bad,” he said.

“You can’t function,” added Spaulding, “and we don’t have time to argue.”

“I can.…”

“You
can’t.
” David spoke peremptorily. “Go back to Valdero’s. I’ll see you in a week or two. Get going and stay out of sight!”

“Very well.” The Spaniard was upset but it was apparent that he would not, could not, disobey the American’s commands. He started to crawl into the woods to the east.

Spaulding called quietly, just above the rush of the water. “Thank you. Fine work today.”

The Spaniard grinned and raced into the forest, holding his wrist.

Just as swiftly, David touched the arm of the second man, beckoning him to follow. They sidestepped their way along the bank upstream. Spaulding stopped by a fallen tree whose trunk dipped down into the ravine waters. He turned and crouched, ordering the Spaniard to do the same. He spoke quietly.

“I want him alive. I want to question him.”

“I’ll get him.”

“No, I will. I just don’t want you to fire. There could be a backup patrol.” Spaulding realized as he whispered that the man couldn’t help but smile. He knew why: his Spanish had the soft lilt of Castilian, a foreigner’s Castilian at that. It was out of place in Basque country.

As he was out of place, really.

“As you wish, good friend,” said the man. “Shall I cross farther back and reach Bergeron? He’s probably sick to his stomach by now.”

“No, not yet. Wait’ll we’re secure over here. He and the old man will just keep walking.” David raised his head over the fallen tree trunk and estimated distances. The German officer was about sixty yards away, hidden in the woods. “I’ll head in there, get behind him. I’ll see if I can spot any signs of another patrol. If I do, I’ll come back and we’ll get out. If not, I’ll try to grab him.… If anything goes wrong, if he hears me, he’ll probably head for the water. Take him.”

The Spaniard nodded. Spaulding checked the tautness of his rifle strap, giving it a last-second hitch. He gave his subordinate a tentative smile and saw that the man’s hands—huge, calloused—were spread on the ground like claws. If the Wehrmacht officer headed this way, he’d never get by those hands, thought David.

He crept swiftly, silently into the woods, his arms and feet working like a primitive hunter’s, warding off branches, sidestepping rocks and tangled foliage.

In less than three minutes he had gone thirty yards behind the German on the Nazi’s left flank. He stood immobile and withdrew his binoculars. He scanned the forest and the trail. There were no other patrols. He doubled back cautiously, blending every movement of his body with his surroundings.

When he was within ten feet of the German, who was kneeling on the ground, David silently unlatched his holster and withdrew his pistol. He spoke sharply, though not impolitely, in German.

“Stay where you are or I’ll blow your head off.”

The Nazi whipped around and awkwardly fumbled for his weapon. Spaulding took several rapid steps and kicked it out of his hands. The man started to rise, and David brought his heavy leather boot up into the side of the German’s head. The officer’s visor hat fell to the ground; blood poured out of the man’s temple, spreading throughout the hairline, streaking down across his face. He was unconscious.