Item. On the surface Hoover had been and continued to be highly cooperative with Lovelace’s requests to see any and all files on known or suspected German agents operating in this country. Yet the FBI director refused to allow Lovelace to sit in on interrogation sessions.

  Item. Secretary of War Stimson and everyone else in the department refused to discuss any aspect of the project with Lovelace, always referring him back to Groves, who had become too busy to discuss anything with him.

  “You’ve got a job to do,” the general snapped. “Do it, and make sure I have a weekly report on my desk.”

  Item. President Roosevelt was scheduled to meet with Churchill in Quebec later this summer to discuss a scientific exchange program. If the President agreed, it would mean British scientists would be added to the project. Stalin had not been invited to participate in the conference, and that meant potential trouble from the Russians.

  Lovelace shook his head, looked at his cigarette, and stubbed it out in an overflowing ashtray on his littered desk, then got to his feet, stretching tiredly.

  Over the years he had built up a network of friends in the various police forces around the country, including the FBI. They were detectives or operations men with whom he had worked from time to time, and with whom he had built a rapport. It was a network of mutual respect that knew no chains of command.

  Item. The most disturbing item of all. The operational reports his friend Marvin Willis, an agent with the FBI, was sending him were somewhat different—usually more complete—than the ones that came over routinely from Hoover himself. Why? And what else was Hoover holding back?

  He reached for his coat and went around his desk to the door as he pulled it on. Before he went out he stopped to look at the photos pinned up on the walls. All of them were known or suspected German agents operating in this country whose movements were being monitored by the FBI or some other governmental security agency. But none of them had so far approached Oak Ridge or Hanford or Los Alamos, nor had any of them made any attempt to make contact with General Groves.

  Not even his old-boy network in and around Washington had given him any indication that Groves was in danger from these people. Which meant one of two things. Either Groves was being set up for an assassination by someone no one knew about, which was an admittedly valid possibility, or such an attempt was not being planned, in which case Lovelace was wasting his time.

  He opened the door and stepped out into the darkened corridor just as his telephone rang, the strident noise jerking him out of his contemplations.

  He reached it on the second ring. “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you know who this is?” a voice Lovelace instantly recognized as Willis asked.

  “Yes, I do. What have you got?”

  “Maybe nothing, but listen up … I’ve only got a moment. A German submarine exploded a couple of hours ago sixty-five miles off the northern end of Cape Cod.”

  “Any survivors?”

  “No,” Willis said softly. “But this is an odd one, which is why I called you. A Mrs. Margaret Owens, she’s a great-aunt of one of our staffers, called earlier this evening with a wild story about a Nazi invasion. She lives in North Truro, which is a little town a few miles south of Provincetown on the Cape. We relayed the information to the Coast Guard, and they were the ones who intercepted the sub. Only before they could drop charges on the boat, she ran, and a few minutes later exploded.”

  Lovelace tried to think. “Anything else?”

  “Plenty,” Willis said. “Mrs. Owens also told us that a landing party had come ashore, and just a few minutes ago the old man himself called and told us to keep this one under wraps. Said he didn’t want to start a panic. A couple of our people from the Boston office are going out to see the woman later this morning.”

  “They haven’t left yet?”

  “No,” Willis said softly. “But even if you disconnect most of her story as hysteria, there was a submarine, and there may have been a landing party. Maybe the person you’re looking for.”

  “Thanks,” Lovelace said, a part of his brain already trying to figure out how he could get up there before the FBI arrived. “It’s probably a long shot, but I’ll check it out.”

  “Good hunting,” Willis said, and the line went dead.

  He hung up the phone, then unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a thin booklet marked AAA Priority Materiel/Services, and opened it to the section on transportation, not really knowing why he was doing it. At the beginning of this assignment Groves had handed him the list with the admonishment that it should only be used in a genuine emergency, when all other methods failed. This situation hardly could be classified an emergency, but he was glad for the chance to be doing something … anything.

  He dialed a number halfway down the list, and after five rings a sleepy, gruff voice answered.

  “What is it?”

  “Colonel Pearson, this is Captain Michael Lovelace, Counter Intelligence Corps.”

  “You work for Groves, don’t you?” the man said, his voice suddenly awake.

  “Yes, sir. I need some quick transportation this morning up to Provincetown on Cape Cod.”

  “Hold on a moment, captain,” Pearson said.

  While he was waiting Lovelace removed a cigar box from the open desk drawer, and from inside it selected a thin leather wallet from among several and stuffed it in his pocket. When he had replaced the cigar box in the drawer, Colonel Pearson was on the line again.

  “A P-47 will be waiting for you at Bolling, Base Ops. Will you be needing return transportation?”

  “Yes, sir, probably,” Lovelace said, and as he talked he took his .38 Police Special with its sawn-off barrel out of the drawer and stuffed it in his pocket with the ID wallet.

  “The aircraft and pilot will have to be back here by noon. I’m assuming you are declaring this an emergency.”

  “Yes, sir, I am,” Lovelace said.

  “Then I’ll expect a written report when you get back. Countersigned by General Groves, of course.”

  “Of course, sir, and thanks,” Lovelace said, and he hung up the phone. He closed and relocked his desk drawer, shut off the office lights, and hurried down the corridor to the stairs, which would take him to his car in the basement.

  It was a long shot as far as he was concerned—he had been honest with Willis. But he had built innumerable cases on even thinner leads before, and he had a gut feeling about this one.

  It was nearly 5 A.M. by the time Lovelace had made it across town, over the Anacostia River Bridge, down to Bolling Air Corps Base, and had signed in at Base Ops. A Republic P-47 Thunderbolt with British Air Force markings was parked on the ramp, its engine turning over slowly. One of the ground crew helped him climb up on the wing and struggle into the cockpit next to the pilot, a freckle-faced young man who looked to be no more than fifteen or sixteen.

  As soon as Lovelace was strapped in, the pilot gave the ground crew the thumbs-up sign, the chocks were removed from the wheels, and they were moving down the north-south runway. Any talk was impossible over the powerful engine sound.

  Lovelace sat back, his head against the seat rest, and closed his eyes, glad for the chance of an hour’s rest before he had to get to work.

  What would he find, if anything? The woman’s story about invasion forces had to be discounted, of course, although her call had resulted in the interception of the submarine. He was probably on a wild goose chase. But maybe, just maybe there was something to this, after all. Chasing after this story was better than what he had been doing these past months, in any case.

  It was shortly after 6 A.M., and the sun was coming up brilliantly over the ocean by the time they touched down at the small airfield outside Provincetown. And it was nearly 7:30 A.M. by the time he had talked the local Coast Guard station commander into the loan of a gray staff car for the morning.

  The day was warm and pleasant, and as Lovelace drove he forgot for a time the doubts that had been gnawing at him lately about his value to the project. Once again he had become nothing more than a glorified paper shuffler. He was sure that even General Groves was having second thoughts about him.

  So far the only thing he had accomplished was to convince Groves to hire an effective second in command, and to carry a pistol wherever he went. Beyond that the general refused to go, spurning Lovelace’s repeated suggestion that he be accompanied by bodyguards.

  It took less than fifteen minutes to drive the short distance down from Provincetown to North Truro, which was a tiny village just off Highway 6, where he received directions from a service station attendant on how to get to Mrs. Owens’ home on the beach.

  Her house, a large, ramshackle, clapboard Colonial, complete with banging shutters and an iron-railed Widows’ Walk on the roof, was situated in a stand of scrub pines on a slight rise overlooking Cape Cod Bay. When he parked the car out front, an elderly lady in a dirty white housecoat, floppy slippers, and wool stockings rolled down around her ankles came out onto the large front porch.

  “You from the Coast Guard or the Bureau?” she shouted as he got out of the car and came up to the porch.

  “The FBI, Washington,” Lovelace said, showing her his ID.

  “About time you showed up, young man,” she said, glancing at the identification. She pointed south toward an area where the sand beach gave way to a stretch of rocky shoreline. “They came in down there about ten-thirty or so.”

  Lovelace looked that way as the woman came down off the porch. She pointed up to a second-story window.

  “I watched the whole thing from up there,” she said. “When I saw what was happening I hurried downstairs, called my nephew, and then went into the fruit cellar with my shotgun.”

  It was a wild goose chase, after all, and Lovelace was disappointed. He turned to the woman and smiled pleasantly. “Were there many ships?” he asked, just to be polite.

  The woman looked at him, an incredulous expression on her face. “Hell, no!” she roared. “Just the one submarine, and a single landing party. Leastways, that’s all I stuck around to see.”

  Lovelace’s stomach fluttered. “You reported that?”

  “Damn right,” the woman said lustily. “There were just two of them in a little rubber raft. A man and a woman. I lost them when they came around the point, but they must have come ashore less than a mile from here.”

  Careful to keep his voice neutral, although his heart was pounding, Lovelace asked, “How do you know it was a man and a woman?”

  “I saw them through my binoculars.”

  “Can you give me a description?”

  The woman frowned and shook her head. “The light was bad and they were too far away. The man was large and the woman was small … . I could tell it was a woman because of her long hair.”

  “But you couldn’t see their faces?”

  “I already told you …”

  Lovelace interrupted her. “What else did you see? Clothing? Equipment? Weapons?”

  “They were both wearing some kind of dark outfits, but I didn’t see if they were carrying anything.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Owens,” Lovelace said, his heart hammering even harder. “Thank you very much.” He turned and hurried back to the car.

  “Say hello to my nephew,” the woman called after him, and he waved as he took off back toward the highway, his tires spinning on the loose sand.

  Just because a German submarine dropped off a man and a woman here didn’t mean they were agents come to interfere with the bomb project. That was stretching things too far, even for Lovelace. But it also did not mean they weren’t here for just that purpose.

  Hell, he told himself, pounding one hand on the steering wheel, all he was doing was making a plausible assumption. What if these people had indeed come to assassinate Groves? What if?

  He could hear the general now. “I didn’t hire you to play cops and robbers, Lovelace. Unless we get a positive indication from the Bureau that these supposed agents are here to interfere with the project, you will stay out of the investigation. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, general,” Lovelace said to himself. But first he would have to be in the general’s presence to hear those orders.

  He stopped at the same service station where he had received directions to the woman’s house, and asked the attendant, an old man, if North Truro had a police force. The man seemed indignant at such a question, and assured Lovelace that the town had a very able police force in the person of Constable Wally Smith. His office was in the town hall on the square.

  There were two possibilities. The man and the woman would have made it up to the highway around eleven o’clock or so, and were either met by someone, or flagged down a passing motorist. In any event, by now they could very well be in Washington, if that was their destination.

  With luck, Lovelace told himself, he might be able to find that out from Wally Smith. There could not be much traffic on that highway that time of night. And what little traffic there was, the local cop should know about.

  He parked in front of the courthouse on the square, raced up the walk, and hurried inside. A woman was sitting at a switchboard behind a counter doing her knitting. When Lovelace barged in, she looked up in surprise.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Wally Smith, is he around this morning?”

  The woman’s eyes strayed toward the corridor. “Yes, sir, but he’s with someone now.”

  Without waiting to hear any more, Lovelace walked down the hall, and at a frosted glass door with the legend, N. Truro Police Department, he knocked once and went inside.

  A fat man with thinning white hair was seated behind a broad desk, and was facing a youngish woman in tears.

  “Here … what’s this …” the man sputtered, getting to his feet.

  “Constable Smith?” Lovelace demanded. He reached in his pocket and brought out the FBI identification and held it out for the cop, who swallowed hard once and nodded.

  The woman had seen the ID as well, and she jumped up, grabbing Lovelace by the arm. “You’re here about my husband?” she wailed.

  “I’m sorry, no, ma’am …” Lovelace started to say as he tried to disengage his arm from her grasp.

  “The Germans from the submarine got him,” she screamed. “I know that’s what happened. I know it!”

  “Now … now, Liz, you know that just isn’t so,” Constable Smith said, starting around the desk to her, but Lovelace was staring at the woman.

  “What about the people from the submarine?” he asked, and the woman looked up at him in tears. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. She obviously had been crying for several hours.

  “Maggie called and told me about it. I got worried so I called Harvey’s hotel in Boston to have him phone me as soon as he got in this morning. But he didn’t call. He should have been there by three at the latest. But he didn’t call, and the hotel this morning said he never showed up. They’ve got him. I know it!”

  “Your husband was on the highway around eleven o’clock last night?”

  “Midnight,” the constable said. “And it’s true, he hasn’t shown up at his hotel.”

  “What kind of a car does he drive?” Lovelace asked.

  “A Chevy,” the woman said.

  “A ’38 Chevy, dark green … I’ve got the license,” the constable said helpfully. He seemed to be enjoying this.

  Lovelace tried to think it out. It was possible, just possible, that the woman was right. The man and woman from the raft could have flagged her husband down and ridden with him up to Boston. From there they could have taken a bus or train to Washington. But they would not have harmed the man unless something had gone wrong. They would not have wanted to call attention to themselves that way.

  He looked at the constable. And then he decided—he was going to follow through with this, goddammit. Groves would scream and howl, and so would Colonel Pearson when he didn’t show up with the plane. But he could not let it go. He felt close. So damned close.

  “I need your help this morning, Smith,” he said, and the constable licked his lips.

  “Anything for the Bureau,” he said with relish.

  “First, what’s her husband’s name?”

  “Harvey Dansig,” Smith replied.

  “Okay,” said Lovelace. Grabbing a pad of paper and pencil from the desk, he wrote down a name, and then handed it to the man. “I want you to call this person immediately. He’s a friend of mine on the Boston Police Force. Tell him Lovelace needs a favor.”

  “Yes, sir,” the constable said eagerly.

  “Give him the description of the car, including its license number, and tell them to put out an APB on it. Right away, this morning.”

  “Boston is a big city …” the constable started to say, but Lovelace cut him off.

  “Tell him to check at the bus depot, train station, and airport. Tell him to instruct his people not to touch a thing, and that I’m on my way up. Can you do all that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the constable said. “Right away.”

  “Good,” Lovelace said briskly, and he turned to leave, but the distraught woman grabbed his arm again.

  “They’ve killed my husband,” she cried.

  Smith came around the desk and led the woman back to her chair. “I’ll take care of everything,” he said, looking up.

  “Thanks,” Lovelace replied, and he went out the door, down the corridor, past the woman with the knitting, and out to his car. The gut feeling that he was on to something was very strong.

  14

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  It was already dark when Badim woke up. For just an instant he had no recollection of where he was, but then he opened his eyes, and through the window he could see an amber light flashing on and off, slowly, in an soothing rhythm. And from across the room he could hear Jada crying softly, the sobs low and muffled.

 

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