He reached out and turned on the light next to the bed and looked across the room to where she was seated in a large, overstuffed chair, her face buried in her arms.

  “That won’t do any good,” he said softly, after a while.

  She jerked up at the sound of his voice. Her long, light brown hair was disheveled, and her eyes were full. She had been crying for some time. “Why?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

  Why, he asked himself, repeating the question in his mind as he continued to stare at her. He had tried to talk Runkov out of using her for this assignment. His argument had been that she was too young, too green to understand what they would have to do. Too naïve.

  And now that they were here, they could not afford to falter. They would have to move very fast, strike very hard, and then get out.

  Runkov had turned him down. Had turned them both down. She was perfect. Sweet. Innocent. The very qualities that Badim found so dangerous in her, Runkov felt would automatically swing attention away from him.

  “It will be like a magician’s act with cards,” Runkov had explained. “His one hand is kept busy distracting his audience’s attention, leaving his other hand the freedom to do its magic.”

  He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, not answering her question. Instead, his mind drifted to the details of their assignment. A general and a scientist. The actual killings would be relatively simple. The timing would be difficult. Both men had to be eliminated simultaneously, or so very nearly at the same time that the security services would not have the chance to react, throwing a protective barrier around the second target.

  Groves lived and worked here in Washington. Oppenheimer had disappeared months ago from his Berkeley, California, university post to somewhere in the southwest. A secret laboratory, no doubt, at which a large number of scientists were doing their work on the bomb.

  The key, Runkov had explained, would be Groves. Sooner or later the general would have to meet with Oppenheimer. In all likelihood they met on a regular basis. “Follow Groves, and when he and Oppenheimer are together, take them out.”

  Their photographs came into his mind’s eye, sharp and very clear, as did Runkov’s final admonishment: “The NKVD is running the intelligence gathering network with something over three hundred agents. Some of them are good, but most of them are amateurs and will eventually be found out.”

  They were at the airport outside Moscow. Doronkin was waiting in the staff car, and Jada had already boarded the huge TB-7 that would take them up to Murmansk, when Runkov had taken Badim aside.

  “Two things of prime consideration, Aleksandr Petrovich,” he had said softly. “The first assignment takes priority for the moment. And secondly, you must not be identified as Russian. No matter what happens, no matter what you feel you must do to meet those priorities, you will be protected here at home.”

  “The girl won’t understand,” Badim had said.

  Runkov had waved it off. “It is of no consequence. She will keep her head, you will see to it.”

  There was a pressure on the bed, and Badim sensed Jada’s presence. She smelled faintly of soap. She had evidently bathed while he slept. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She was kneeling next to him, her hands on her knees.

  “I asked you a question, Aleksandr,” she said softly.

  “In public we’re Peter and Lara Bradley,” he said.

  Jada brushed a loose strand of hair away from her eyes. “I asked you why. Why did you have to kill that man?” Her voice had lost its British accent during her training, and now was slightly nasal. He could not decide if he liked the change.

  “He could have identified us,” Badim said.

  “As hitchhikers, nothing more. He was willing to take us to Boston. That’s all we wanted.”

  He reached out to touch her, but she shrank back. “You know you are quite pretty,” he said.

  She shook her head in anger. “We are here to assassinate a general and a scientist. I can understand why we must do such a thing, God help me, I can understand it. But that poor man. Why him?”

  Badim looked into her eyes. They were quite lovely. How could he tell her about the submarine exploding? The Coastal Patrol finding the wreckage. Identifying it as German. Then making the connection that a German agent or agents came ashore and killed the man? German agents. Throw the suspicion on the Nazis. Make it abundantly clear that this is a German operation. How?

  “Are you going to murder the hotel clerk downstairs because he can recognize us? Or how about the ticket clerk in Boston? Or the bus driver who brought us here? Or the cab driver? Are you going to murder them as well?”

  Jada’s voice was becoming loud and strident, and Badim sat up and took her forcibly by the shoulders, his face only a few inches from hers.

  “Listen to me very carefully, little girl, because I will not repeat myself,” he said sternly.

  She hiccoughed, but said nothing, her eyes wide, her lips half parted.

  “We have a job to do here, one of supreme importance to our government. We were selected for the task because Marshal Stalin himself thought we could do it. And we will. But nothing, absolutely nothing will get in the way. No matter what we have to do to accomplish this, we will do it. Even if it means forfeiting our own lives. Do you understand that?”

  She nodded, her eyes even wider.

  “Then understand this as well, my little Natasha. I abhor violence.”

  A look of surprise crossed her features, and Badim nodded.

  “Yes, I abhor violence. I have nightmares about the lives I have ended, and about the lives I will end. But make no mistake, I will do what I must. And so will you.”

  He wondered why he had told her that. It was true … there were nights when he would awaken in a cold sweat. And most of the time he felt that he was holding himself in some kind of a straitjacket. It was almost a mental restraint he had to live with. Behind the controls there was … what? Even now he shrank away from delving too far into his own psyche.

  “I’m sorry …” Jada said, but her voice was toneless, and after a long moment she shrugged out of his grasp and got off the bed. She went across the room to the window and looked down at the evening traffic in and around Dunbarton College, which was across the street from their hotel.

  She wore a light-colored robe, with no slippers on her feet, and as Badim stared at her tiny back he felt an almost overwhelming urge to go to her, to hold her, to comfort her, to make love to her.

  How long had it been since he had a woman? Six months? Nine months? A year? It had been in Berlin. Just a whore whose name he had not bothered to learn.

  But with those disturbing thoughts came others. Guilt feelings for the man on the highway he had killed.

  “Harvey Dansig’s the name,” the man had said, looking over his shoulder at Badim in the backseat. “You say your car broke down?”

  “Yes,” Badim said. He was wet and cold, and he was shivering. “Something happened to the steering. We ran off the road just up here a couple of miles. Thought we could walk back up to Provincetown if no one came along.”

  “It’s a good thing I did come along, then,” Dansig said. “Won’t be any other traffic along here till morning, I suspect.” He looked at Jada sitting next to him in the front seat and smiled. “Where you folks heading this time of night?”

  “Boston,” Badim said. “We were up at Provincetown on our honeymoon. I’ve got to be back by morning.”

  “Well, if we can’t get your car fixed, you folks sure are welcome to ride along with me. I’m going all the way up to Boston myself. Be glad for the company.”

  Badim tried to tear his mind away from remembering what had happened after that, but he could not. It was as if he was being forced into watching a horror movie he had seen before.

  They stopped at the side of the road and the man got out of the car, Badim directly behind him. Jada, not knowing what was going to happen, got out as well, and said something to the man, distracting him.

  In that instant Badim jammed his right knee in the man’s back, and with both hands over Dansig’s face jerked backward as hard as he could, snapping the man’s spine.

  Jada screamed and Dansig collapsed without a sound, his legs jerking spasmodically. Within a minute and a half Badim had stuffed the body into the trunk, had helped the stunned Jada back into the passenger seat, and had gotten behind the wheel, the bile rising up sharply in his throat, his stomach churning.

  They had driven the rest of the way to Boston in silence. Badim had parked the car around the corner from the Greyhound Bus Depot, and they had taken the first bus to Washington.

  All through that morning she had not said a word to him, and even avoided looking at him, until now. And her reaction was understandable. He could not blame her.

  He shook his head slowly, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and got up. She turned around to him, the flashing amber light from the hotel bar downstairs throwing her face into harsh shadows.

  “I told you on the submarine I would help you,” she said in a soft voice. “And I will. I’m sorry for my outburst.”

  “Jada,” he said, taking a step toward her. He wanted to explain something to her that even he didn’t understand, but she shrank back against the curtains.

  “Don’t come near me,” she said coldly. “I’ll help you, but don’t come near me.”

  Badim stopped in the middle of the room, staring at her. She was lovely, but frail. He wanted to comfort her. Or was it he who needed comforting?

  “What do you want of me now?” she asked.

  Badim continued staring at her. Runkov was wrong. She had no business being here with him. The events of the next few days would most certainly not be to her liking. And another thought briefly intruded as he watched the expression in her eyes. Another terrible thought occurred to him. If she got in the way … if the assignment hinged on her … what then?

  He turned away, not able to face her. “I’m going out. Stay here,” he said.

  “How long will you be?”

  “An hour. No more. And while I’m gone I want you to cut your hair and do something with it.”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  Badim reached the telephone booth two blocks from the hotel ten minutes later, exactly on schedule. He dropped a nickel in the slot and dialed a number Runkov had given him for their contact.

  After two rings, the phone was answered. “Good evening,” a woman said in an almost singsong voice. “War Department night operator, may I help you?”

  15

  BOSTON

  “Definitely seawater,” the stoop-shouldered little police scientist said, straightening up from his microscope. He fumbled for his thick glasses lying on the cluttered lab table, and when he had them on he focused on Lovelace.

  “Are you sure?”

  The scientist shrugged. “I was sure six hours ago when you brought me the material from the seats. It was still wet. I tasted it. Seawater.”

  “The man sat in the backseat then,” Lovelace asked. He was tired, and his eyes were burning.

  Again the scientist shrugged. “You told me there could have been a man and a woman in addition to the driver. We know the woman sat in the front seat. Long, light brown hair. She’s probably in her late teens or early twenties from the condition of the half-dozen strands we found on the seat back. And the second passenger sat in the rear seat directly behind the driver. They both were wearing wet clothes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They came up from the beach, that’s obvious. You could see that yourself from the sand on the floor mats.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  The scientist chuckled. “Twenty-seven different lifts, of which only six are even remotely usable. Considering the man and his wife, perhaps children, mechanics, friends, you name it, you might be several years tracking them all down.”

  The laboratory door banged open and Lovelace’s friend, Detective Stewart Gillingham, strode across the room to them, a worried expression on his face.

  “You finished here?” he said to Lovelace, ignoring the scientist. He was a large, thin man, with short-cropped hair. His suit was rumpled as if he had slept in it.

  Lovelace nodded. “Let me guess … Captain Kennedy is on the rampage.”

  “Bingo,” Gillingham said grimly. “He’s across the street in the morgue. They’re finishing the autopsy now and he wants to see you.”

  Eight years ago Gillingham had been a junior-grade detective on the Boston Police Force, with a series of unsolved rape-murders on his hands. Lovelace had come down from Samson Army-Air Corps Base in New York on the trail of an AWOL soldier whose psychological profile indicated he could be a sexual deviate. Together they had solved the crimes, and Gillingham had been promoted as a result. Over the ensuing years he and Lovelace had kept in loose contact, each man respecting the other’s abilities.

  Calvin Kennedy, on the other hand, was more of a politician than a good cop, and eight years ago Lovelace had told him so. That statement had not exactly endeared the police chief to him.

  He thanked the scientist, and went with Gillingham out of the lab, up the stairs to the first floor, and then outside. Before they crossed the mall to the morgue, Lovelace stopped his friend.

  “Anything from the bus depot?”

  Gillingham shook his head. “There were seven buses for D.C. today, the first of them leaving at 6 A.M. We’ve managed to track down six of the drivers, but with so little to go on, we didn’t come up with much. Every one of the buses had at least one couple matching your loose description. A man and a long-haired woman.”

  “How about the first bus? That would have been the one they took.”

  “We talked to that driver, but he couldn’t remember anyone unusual. Can’t you tell me what you’re working on?”

  “No,” Lovelace said. “Ticket clerks, baggage handlers?”

  “The same. Nothing conclusive. If we could come up with a more concrete description …”

  “Yeah,” Lovelace said, half to himself, and they headed across the mall.

  It was late, well after eight o’clock, and he was dead tired. It had been a long night and an even longer day. He had sent the P-47 back to Bolling as soon as the pilot had dropped him off here in Boston. Before he had left the airfield, however, he had called Colonel Pearson and explained the unscheduled stop, apologizing for it, and promising that a full written report would be forthcoming.

  He had not called his office, and he was sure that General Groves would be hopping mad by now. But that could not be helped. The general had given him a carte blanche when this assignment had begun, and until now he had not used it.

  Sooner or later, however, he would have to confront the general. Only before that happened, he wanted something more to go on than he had now.

  Captain Kennedy, a bull of a man with a beet red complexion and thick white hair, was waiting in the corridor outside the autopsy laboratory with a man in a long white coat When he spotted Lovelace and Gillingham coming from the elevators, he broke away and came to meet them. He looked furious.

  “I want to know what the hell is going on, and who the hell you think you are, Lovelace, goddammit!” the man bellowed. He looked as if he was on the verge of a stroke.

  Lovelace gazed up at him, and smiled. “Good evening, Captain Kennedy, what brings you downtown so late?”

  It seemed as if the man’s eyes were going to pop out of his head, and his mouth worked but no sounds came out.

  “Have they finished with the autopsy?” Lovelace continued. “I’d like to see the results, and talk with the pathologist.”

  “You’ll see nothing,” Kennedy roared. “I spoke with your commanding general five minutes ago, and he told me that you were to be placed on the first available transportation up to Washington, even if I had to arrest you to do it.”

  Kennedy had made trouble during the murder investigation eight years ago. It had been something about the pride of the force. He hadn’t wanted any army enlisted man coming in and telling his people how to do their jobs.

  Lovelace smiled again. “Evidently General Groves hasn’t been informed. Perhaps we should call him.”

  A hint of doubt crossed the bullish captain’s features. “Informed about what?”

  Lovelace turned to Gillingham. “Could you excuse us just for a moment, Stewart? I’d like to talk to Captain Kennedy alone.”

  “Sure,” Gillingham said, and he walked down the corridor to where the man in the white coat stood waiting.

  When he was out of earshot, Lovelace took Kennedy by the arm and pulled him aside. “You’re aware that I work for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps.”

  Kennedy nodded, but there was mistrust obvious in his eyes. “General Groves told me that. But he was mad. Said he wanted you back in Washington.”

  Lovelace made a show of checking to make certain that Gillingham and the pathologist were far enough away, and then he pulled Kennedy a little closer to the wall. “What I’m about to tell you is classified information. Top secret.”

  Kennedy suddenly looked very uncomfortable, and he tried to back away. “I don’t want any part of anything like that … .”

  Lovelace interrupted him. “You’re already a part of it, captain, and so is your entire police force, by virtue of the fact a man was killed here in your city … or at least his body was found here stuffed in the trunk of a car.”

  “No …” Kennedy sputtered, but Lovelace continued.

  “There is a plot in progress at this very moment to assassinate Roosevelt.”

  The captain paled.

  “That’s right,” Lovelace said. “His assassins are probably in Washington at this very moment. I think they are the ones who killed the poor man you found by the bus depot. And I need your help to find them … . President Roosevelt needs your help.”

  “But General Groves said …” Kennedy started, but again Lovelace cut him off.

  “General Groves does not know you like I do. He told me to use my own discretion in telling you any of this. You can understand the panic that would occur if such a thing got out.” Again Lovelace looked toward Gillingham and the other man. “We’ve got to work fast on this, captain. I’m depending on you not only to help us, but to keep this a secret. As far as anyone is concerned, we’re looking for the murderer of a man. Nothing more.”

 

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