The Double Agent, page 14
“I believe that will complete the uniform,” he said.
“And no decorations on the private soldier tunic,” the tailor said.
“None,” Alexsi replied.
“Your uniforms will be altered and completed in two days, sir,” the tailor said.
“Thank you,” Alexsi said. “Now … I’m sorry, I don’t know the expression in English. Wallet, wristwatch, et cetera.”
“I believe ‘pocket litter’ is the current term of choice, sir,” said the tailor.
The storeskeeper, roused to efficiency now, produced a Swiss Silvana wristwatch with the German Army DH stamp. A worn wallet and coin purse, and, to go in them, the special Reichsmark notes and coins that were only to be used by the Wehrmacht.
Alexsi’s eyes fell on a fine Busch compass, and he had to have it.
Finally, he said, “Is this the correct location to inquire about arms?”
The storeskeeper stepped to the fore now. “What type?”
“Sidearms.”
The storeskeeper led them across the warehouse and unlocked a metal door. He snapped on a light switch, and the smaller room was revealed to be lined with racks of weapons. Mauser rifles, MP 40 submachine guns, MG 34 machine guns. The storeskeeper opened a cabinet with pistols hung up on pegs like tools in a workshop.
Alexsi regretfully passed up his favorite Belgian Browning and chose a Walther P38.
“You’re the first bloke who didn’t pick a Luger,” the storeskeeper said sardonically.
“Officers take the Lugers for themselves,” said Alexsi. “Lowly enlisted men carry the P38. Besides, it is the better pistol. Though not as attractive, I admit.”
The storeskeeper brought out a dark brown leather holster that, though well worn, would look acceptable with some polish. Two magazines, and a box of Parabellum ammunition. Alexsi opened the box and checked the stamp on every cartridge to be sure that no one had slipped in any British 9mm ammunition.
“You’re a careful fellow,” the tailor observed.
“The small details add up to life and death,” Alexsi replied. He replaced the cover on the cardboard box. “I think we are finished, gentlemen. Thank you for your help.”
“Good luck, sir,” said the tailor. “The private soldier tunic will be sent along to the person preparing your documents.”
The storeskeeper had no well-wishes to pass along.
* * *
“You must be special,” the forger said.
“I have always thought so,” Alexsi replied. “Even if others have not.”
The forger grinned at that. A tiny bald man with a quiet shy voice and a Middle European accent. A Jew, which explained the tailor calling him “a person.” Alexsi never understood Jew hatred. He had been in Berlin during Kristallnacht, and watched the final Jews being deported east in early 1943.
“I mean that I rarely see my clients,” the forger said. “I am given the photographs and produce the documents without ever meeting them.”
“Which do you prefer?” Alexsi asked.
The forger shrugged. “I was told of your special needs. I appreciate the challenge.” He swept a hand over his desk. Open on it were several German Army paybooks, the Soldbuchen. For reference.
The room was exactly as Alexsi would have expected. The writing desk, and another drafting desk, ink stained. Cups brimming with pens and pencils and brushes. Blotters of all types. Shelves of stamps in racks, along with stacks of ink pads and bottles of ink in every conceivable shade.
“I have a few blank paybooks that were captured in Tunisia,” the forger explained. “Very few. So we must have all the details absolutely correct before I begin work.”
“I agree,” said Alexsi.
The forger led him into the next room and sat him down in a chair. Examining him closely, he took a comb and some pomade and plastered Alexsi’s hair down at the sides, then fluffed it up a bit on top. Looking in a mirror, Alexsi had to admit it was an adolescent German boy’s hair.
“I shall make your face a bit thinner in the photographs,” the forger said. “Younger.”
Alexsi was glad he didn’t have to tell this fellow his business.
The forger put him in the private soldier uniform tunic and stood him up against first a blown-up photograph of a stone wall, then a wooden barracks one. The German Army identity photographs were done on an assembly line basis.
The forger snapped him with a 35mm camera on a tripod, pausing only to change the hair combing slightly halfway through. “I have some real German film,” he murmured, almost to himself. “It should look marvelous.”
That completed, they returned to his desk, Alexsi trying to keep his hands off his hair. He hated pomade.
The forger rubbed his own hands together vigorously, and took up the pen. “Now, the particulars. I have your personal description, of course, so no worries there.”
“Name: Peter Bauer,” Alexsi said. It was an utterly common Bavarian name. There were probably thousands of Peter Bauers in the German Army, which was why he chose it. “Entered service Munich, January 1939. Army signal school Halle-Dölau.” He borrowed the pen and wrote down the specialty codes for wireless operator, wireless repair, and Enigma cipher clerk. Passing the pen back, he said, “Army signal school instructor, December 1939.” The best students were often poached as instructors for a time. “November 1940, joined Twelfth Panzer Division.” He had served with the Second Infantry in Czechoslovakia, which was converted into the Second Mechanized and then the Twelfth Panzer. He knew the officers. “Radio company, divisional signals. Campaigns: Army Group North, Kursk 1943. Field hospital, Estonia. Then reserve hospital, Munich. Leave, Munich.”
He fell silent, leaving only the sound of the forger’s pen scratching paper. Munich because he had lived in Munich with his “Uncle Hans.” Berlin was too touchy.
Alexsi knew the name of the street he grew up on, the schools he attended, and the name of his sweetheart, all ready to trip off his tongue. It was the only way to be convincing. Russia because he knew the Soviet Union and, having spied for the Soviet Union in the German Army, knew all about the war there from the reports on the German side. In London he had studied the German newspapers the British captured or obtained from neutral but pro-Fascist Spain, to be up-to-date on events from the time he had been away from Germany. Not too much, though. Soldiers at the front received their news mainly from letters from home, if at all.
“A wounded wireless man,” the forger almost whispered. “Marvelous. I have already been told: Iron Cross Second Class, wound badge, Eastern Front medal.”
“Can you do a Wehrmacht-Führerschein?” Alexsi asked, testing him.
“Army driving permit,” the forger replied. “Easily. Now, if you would, please, open your mouth.”
Alexsi complied, and the forger made notes on his dental condition, which was another page in the paybook.
The forger set down his pen. “That should do it. It will take me at least a week, perhaps more. Including properly aging the documents. Have you done your parachute training?”
“No.” Alexsi had, but with the Germans. That was more information than he wished to spread about. The kind of information a Soviet agent looking for him would latch on to.
“Your papers will be completed by the time you finish. They send them all to Ringway Airport. You’ll like Manchester.”
“Will I?” said Alexsi.
“No, probably not. You’ll leave soon after that, so it won’t be much of a farewell.”
Later, Alexsi reflected that he would have known the forger was not English even without the accent. The man never wished him good luck.
PART THREE
In the house of the hanged man, they mention not the rope.
—RUSSIAN PROVERB
23
1944
OVER THE TYRRHENIAN SEA
Alexsi was so sick of the British he almost didn’t mind parachuting out into the darkness. After spending what felt like a third of his life flying from England to Algeria, another third passed by flying from Algiers to Italy. The Halifax bomber shook as if it would fall apart at any moment. The navigator waved him away angrily whenever he tried to get a look at his map to see where they were. And each time he fell asleep the gunner would shake him awake and hand him a mug of tea. Quite a contrast between the German air crew who dropped him into Iran and this “special duties” flight. It made Alexsi think that the Germans would never lose a war if only they didn’t persist in fighting the entire world every time. Just as this last month had made him think that the only possible explanation for the British Empire was the quality of the opposition.
The gunner weaved his way back through the narrow passage from the front of the aircraft, and Alexsi seriously considered stabbing him if there was another cup of tea involved.
Instead the gunner shouted, “Fifteen minutes!”
Fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes’ warning to jump into enemy territory? Wonderful. Alexsi picked up the X-type parachute he had carefully set out of the way and inspected it with the battery torch from his padded jumpsuit. Everything looked all right. He slipped it over his back and snapped the two leg and two shoulder harness keepers into the metal quick-release “bang box” in the center of his chest. Typical British. Brown-and-green camouflaged jumpsuit, brown parachute bag, and yet a cream-white webbing harness encircling his body. Why bother trying to conceal yourself? He might as well land waving a lit flare in his hand.
Clapping the padded cloth helmet that looked like a turban onto his head and buckling the chin strap, Alexsi waddled back to the rear of the aircraft, where the gunners had already opened the jump hole in the floor. Again, what kind of idiots would decide that it was better to parachute down through a hole in the floor of an airplane rather than out through a door in the side? The jump light was burning red for standby. The way things had gone thus far, Alexsi hoped they were at least over land.
One of the gunners plucked the static line from the pocket on the back of the parachute and hooked the V-ring to a clip overhead. Alexsi grabbed a handful of the webbing and pulled hard to make sure it was secure.
They had made him do twelve training jumps. Why, he had no earthly idea. After all, he was only going to parachute for them once—and all he needed was to know how a British parachute operated. It had been what he would call a characteristic British discussion. After the first jump he had said: All right, you can see I know what I am doing, let’s move on. Their reply: You need to do twelve jumps for your certificate. Him: I don’t need a certificate, why do I need to do twelve jumps? The British: You need to do twelve jumps.
After all that nonsense, Alexsi had a good idea how he would do it when there was no one to tell him what to do. Pulling the celluloid goggles down over his eyes, he sat on the floor of the bomber and braced his feet against the edge of the hole, one hand ready to guide himself out on each side.
One of the gunners shouted at him, “That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it!”
Alexsi responded by giving him the V-for-victory two-fingered sign, but in this case with the back of the hand facing the recipient it meant something entirely different. A convenient shorthand he had learned from the English.
The light flashed green and he went out, his hands pushing him through on both sides to keep from leaving his teeth, nose, or forehead on the metal.
The slipstream caught him, and he felt it blow him sideways. A sharp yank to the shoulders and groin told him the parachute had deployed. He grasped the risers and looked up to a full canopy. Which was reassuring, since like the Germans the British jumped with only a single parachute. If it didn’t open you’d make a quick end to a long journey.
At least the British packed the parachute in a bag so the opening shock was a bit more gentle. The German parachute deploying was enough to knock your eyeballs out of their sockets.
Alexsi looked below him. Nothing but darkness. The moon was supposed to be up, to give him some light, but it was behind clouds. He looked out ahead, trying to find the horizon to judge his height. What looked like broken hills. He was supposed to be dropped in open fields. They had shown him the aerial photographs, which had been helpful, but the way things had gone he thought the only way he’d hit it was by accident.
Of course they hadn’t told him the jump height, but the ground should be coming up very soon. Alexsi clamped his feet together and bent his knees slightly. The horizon disappeared, so he braced himself. No impact. This was not good—he was below the hills with no way to guess the distance to the ground.
After what seemed like forever his feet hit earth. Hard. Alexsi began to roll in the direction of the fall but it turned out he was on the side of a slope and immediately fell backward and downhill. His ankle twisted and he let out a yelp of pain. He fell onto his back and hit hard. A large rock struck him between his shoulder blades, and it was bad enough even with the thick padding supplied by the parachute backpack. His helmet hit the ground, his head bounced along with it, and immediately the parachute was pulling him headfirst down the hill.
He was being raked by bushes. Alexsi’s hand went for the metal quick-release bang box at the center of his chest. He twisted the mounting hard to unlock it, then struck it with the palm of his hand. The shoulder and leg straps came undone, as advertised, and he rolled to get himself out of the rest of the harness before he was torn to ribbons on the rocks and scrub.
Then he was free. He lay there panting, looking up at the overcast night sky, blank of stars, head still pointing downhill. He twisted about so he wasn’t upside down, his right ankle stabbing him at each movement.
He couldn’t lie there all night, even though the air was cool but mild and there was a pleasant smell of dry grass and sage to the hillside. Alexsi reached into the pocket on the left sleeve of his jumpsuit for the gravity knife. He pressed the button and the blade slid out and locked. Ironically, it was nearly identical to the knife German paratroopers used. He cut the laces of his jump boots and pulled them off. His ankle was tender to the touch, and swelling, but he couldn’t feel any broken bones. The jumpsuit had pockets throughout for all the equipment a spy would need if he or she wasn’t met on the ground. His German marching boots were rolled up in one of them, and he pulled them on before the ankle swelled up too badly. He didn’t bother binding the ankle first. If a German medic came to be examining it, he did not want to be wearing a British bandage. But he did take two pain pills from the medical kit, and the flat canteen of water. He would be still hurting come morning, and might need to move quickly.
He had been wrong. That white parachute harness did come in handy. Even in the darkness he could see it lying just down the hill. The parachute must have snagged on something. Alexsi just snorted through his nose. If he had kept it on it would have dragged him to the bottom of the hill. But once he got it off it just stopped.
Grimacing from the pain in his ankle, he dragged the whole parachute back up. There was a folding shovel in the left thigh pocket of the jumpsuit. A large rock jutted out from the hillside a few meters to his left, and he began digging at the base of it.
It took an hour to make a hole big enough for the parachute and jumpsuit. Stuffing the parachute in first, he grasped the double zippers of the jumpsuit, which ran from the neck all the way down both legs. To let you easily step right out of it once you hit the ground, and walk away in whatever you were dressed in underneath as if you were strolling down the road. Or in his case roll out of. Before he folded it up and threw it into the hole, Alexsi plundered one of the pockets for his silk map and wad of Italian lira. He shoveled dirt into the hole and, just before it was filled, placed the shovel and canteen onto it and used his hands to complete the job. Now everything he was wearing was German.
Strangely enough, he felt better than he had in quite some time. At least now he was the master of his own fate. And it wasn’t freezing cold and raining every day.
He took stock, and rather than frightening him the first life-or-death decision energized him. Alexsi decided to stay right where he was until first light. He might be sitting on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere, or he might be sitting in the middle of an Italian village that would come alive come morning. No matter which was the case, his ankle was in no shape for him to be wandering around fruitlessly in the darkness. His watch was still working, at least. Just after four o’clock in the morning. He wouldn’t have long to wait.
Alexsi lay back and passed the time thinking of good cover stories to tell anyone who came across him at dawn. The secret to lying fluently was being prepared to lie.
24
1944
SOMEWHERE IN ITALY
There was no false dawn in terrain like this. It remained half-light for sometimes an agonizingly long time, the light increasing in intensity only gradually, until the sun finally rose high enough to make a full appearance over the tops of the hills. Even low two-hundred-meter hills like these.
Eyes fixed on the east, Alexsi could not see much for the foliage below him. Before he scrambled up the hill to get a better view, he broke a branch off a bush and swept away the signs from where he had buried his parachute. He went slowly, favoring his twisted ankle.
At the top of the hill it all became clear. It was impossible to miss the jagged pile of limestone thrusting up from the valley below. Monte Soratte. The headquarters of the German Army in Italy.
Alexsi was not terribly surprised to find that he had been dropped clear on the other side of the mountain from his planned landing site. Well, at least he was in Italy, and the right part of it.
Just to be certain of his location, he took out his silk map and German compass. There were plenty of peaks along the length of Soratte to take a bearing on. Subtracting 180 degrees from each bearing produced a line from each peak down. All three lines intersected on a spot on the map that was his current location.
