Trinity factor, p.14
Trinity Factor, page 14
The District of Columbia police had been alerted because it was believed that the killers may have come to Washington.
But it was not the facts in the article that had disturbed Badim; rather, it was what the article had not reported that had him worried.
No mention had been made of the German submarine. In fact, nowhere in the Washington, Boston, or New York newspapers was there mention of a submarine exploding off the coast of Cape Cod.
Had the fuse worked? Had the submarine exploded? Had its wreckage been discovered? And had a connection been made between the sub and Dansig’s murder? Or had none of that happened?
Badim had an odd, gut feeling about this. The Americans were not stupid. And if they had made the connection, why hadn’t the newspapers gotten hold of it? GERMAN SPIES SOUGHT IN WASHINGTON AREA. Those should have been the headlines.
The porch light came on again, and he stiffened. The front door opened and Groves came down the walk to his car. But he was dressed in a robe and slippers.
For a long moment the general stood by his car, looking up the street, his right hand in his pocket, but then he locked his car doors and trudged back up to the house. A moment later he went in and closed the door, and the porch light went out.
Groves was not leaving tonight. Probably first thing in the morning, Badim thought. But he would wait just a little longer to make absolutely sure.
Ten minutes later, the upstairs light went out, and a few minutes after that the lights in another house down the street went out, and the neighborhood settled down for the night.
Badim sighed deeply, then turned and slipped through the shadows to the corner, where he got in his car, started it, and headed back to the hotel.
If there was no new information from their contact, he and Jada would come back here at about four in the morning and wait for the general to leave.
The hotel room was dark. Jada sat in a straight-backed chair in the corner facing the door. In her lap was a German pistol with a bulbous silencer screwed on its barrel.
She had been sitting like that ever since she had hurried back from the phone booth, alternately cursing her stupidity and wishing for Alek to return.
She had been flustered on the telephone, and she had blurted out their location. It was incredibly stupid. The man had said there was trouble, and she had led him here, when she should have been leading him in the opposite direction. They had covered situations like this in their training. Set up a dummy location, from which your contact can be directed to a series of fail-safes. Now she remembered it all. But she had forgotten it on the telephone.
There was a knock at the door, and her heart seemed to stop beating for an instant. She snatched the gun from her lap, and fumbled with the safety catch. “It’s open,” she said softly.
The knock came again, more insistently.
“It’s open,” she said louder. “Come in.”
The door swung slowly inward, and a short man with gray hair and a huge, red nose stood framed in the doorway by the light from the corridor. He took a step inside and then stopped, obviously unable to see Jada.
“All the way in, and close the door,” Jada said, pointing the gun at him with shaking hands.
The man jerked at the sound of her voice, but he complied, softly closing the door behind him.
“Is Peter back yet?” the man asked. It was the same guttural voice from the phone.
“I’m pointing a gun at you. I want you to go to the bed and sit down.”
“Where is Peter?” the man asked, raising his voice.
This is going all wrong. Alek, Jada screamed silently. She could not shoot this man. She could not!
Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Sit down on the bed or I will kill you,” she said, almost choking on the words.
The man walked carefully across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I was fired from my job,” he said into the darkness. “I think they suspect me.”
Christ, Jada thought. “Suspect you of what?”
“Of working for you and Peter.”
And she had led him here. Dear god, what had she done? “How do you know that?” She would have to keep her head.
“I don’t know … for sure,” the man said, shaking his head. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair, then sat forward on the bed, obviously still not able to see Jada very well in the dark corner. “They caught me up in Groves’ office. Asked me what I was doing there. I told them I wanted to talk to the general about his car. But they kicked me out, and a couple of hours later my super came down and said I was through. Told me to get out.”
Jada tried to make her brain work, tried to think of what she had learned from her training. “Were you followed here?”
The man reacted almost as if he had been slapped. “Followed?” he squeaked.
“Yes, were you followed? Did you take precautions?”
“I don’t know,” the man said, his voice on the verge of cracking. And Jada suddenly could smell liquor. The man had been drinking.
What to do? They’d have to get out of here. Now! If only Alek would return.
“But I found out something,” the man was saying, his voice almost pleading. “General Groves has tickets for the ten o’clock Limited out of New York. For tomorrow morning. He’s going to Chicago.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw the tickets on his secretary’s desk. He’s leaving in the morning. Peter has to be …”
Badim burst into the room, and he instantly took in the situation, his gun appearing suddenly in his right hand as he gently kicked the door shut behind him with his heel. The color drained from the man’s face.
“Who is this man?” Badim snapped.
Jada had jumped up from her chair, her stomach fluttering again, but relief washing over her. “Our contact.”
“There are a pair of military policemen downstairs looking for him. Gasoline black market How did he get here?”
“I gave him our address. He was fired tonight,” Jada said.
The man had recovered from his momentary shock, and he jumped up from the bed. “I got the information for you, Peter,” he blurted. “General Groves is leaving on the ten o’clock Limited from New York.”
“We’ve got to leave, now,” Badim said to Jada.
“What about me?” the man squeaked, and Badim shot him in the chest. The silenced gun made only a dull plopping sound, but the man was violently slammed backward, spread-eagled on the bed.
“Alek!” Jada cried, taking a step forward. The smell of gunpowder was strong in the small room.
“Get our things together and go to the car. It’s parked around back. Two minutes!” Badim snapped, and he turned and went out of the room as the bile rose up in Jada’s throat, and she vomited on the floor.
When Runkov had told them there were fools within the NKVD’s agent network here, he had not been exaggerating. But Jada’s performance tonight had been totally inexcusable, and it made him sick to think about it.
He hurried down the corridor, his mind working at top speed. The only person who had really gotten a good look at them in this hotel was the night clerk on duty, at this moment talking with the military police.
Both he and Jada had managed to avoid close contact with any of the other hotel personnel, checking in the first day after 6 P.M.
He took the stairs down to the first floor, two at a time, stuffing the gun in his jacket pocket. His hand curled over the grip, his finger on the trigger, the safety off.
When he had come in he had seen the MPs talking with the clerk in the otherwise deserted lobby, and he only hoped now for just a little bit of luck. Once they got out of here he was going to make sure the rest of the assignment was carried out with less sloppiness. Far less.
He pushed through the door and took the short corridor to the lobby, where the two cops were still behind the counter with the clerk, looking through the registration book. No one else was around, and they all looked up as Badim rushed to the counter.
“Mr. Bradley …” the clerk started to say, but the words died on his lips, as he saw the expression of deep fright on Badim’s face.
“My god, it’s terrible,” Badim babbled. “I saw him with a dead man. He was dragging him down into the basement.”
“What?” one of the cops demanded.
“A little man with white hair. He killed the other man! Just now!”
The cops and the clerk came around the counter and headed in a dead run toward the stairwell door, Badim right behind them.
Still no one had come into the lobby, and as he reached the door he withdrew his pistol.
The three men were halfway down the stairs when Badim closed the door behind him and leaned over the stairwell railing. “Hey,” he shouted.
The three of them looked up as Badim fired four shots, the first hitting the clerk in the head, the second hitting one of the cops in the throat, blowing away most of his Adam’s apple, and the third and fourth shots hitting the other cop, who was starting to pull out his gun, in the chest and cheek.
Calmly. Badim pocketed his gun and went back to the still deserted lobby. Behind the counter he found the page in the registration book with his and Jada’s names, tore it out and stuffed it in his pocket, then hurried out of the hotel’s back door.
17
PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Lovelace drove as fast as Detective Gillingham’s car could possibly go. The road wound its way through the lovely rolling hills of northeastern Massachusetts, past picturesque dairy farms and through storybook towns. From time to time he caught glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean out his right window, the afternoon sun sparkling on the water, and he wondered about the Allied soldiers pounding their way through the French countryside toward Paris. But he also wondered about the Germans being pushed back to their homeland.
Were they even now stepping up their research on the atomic bomb? A team of intelligence agents was at this very moment scouring the Italian and French countrysides for nuclear installations. Project ALSOS, it was called, but so far nothing significant had been found.
North of Newburyport, he was forced to slow down by a tractor-driven farm wagon filled with manure, but shortly before the New Hampshire border the farmer pulled off onto a side road, waving as Lovelace roared past him.
At any other time he would have enjoyed this drive through the rustic countryside, but this afternoon he was tired … mentally worn-out. He thought about General Groves, who was so certain that this was nothing but a wild goose chase. And about Colonel Lansdale, the head of CIC, who had agreed, privately advising Lovelace to drop it.
He also wondered what he would do if and when Groves ordered him point-blank to drop this investigation. So far that had not happened, although when he had returned from Boston after commandeering the P-47, and after upsetting the entire Boston police force, he had come perilously close to being fired.
But his argument to the general then, and now, had been the same.
“What if this man and woman are here to interfere with the project?”
“A very remote possibility, Lovelace—even you have to admit it,” the general had snapped. “But assuming you’re right for just a moment, why did they kill that fellow from North Truro and leave his body in his car by the bus depot in Boston? It was damned near a full-page newspaper ad telling us they had come to Washington.”
“I can’t answer that, general,” Lovelace had admitted. “Yet. But it bothers me, too. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does,” Groves said. “If they are spies, they’re amateurs. I think we can handle it.”
“Are you pulling me off this?” Lovelace had asked.
The general stared at him for a long moment, then smiled, wanly. “If I do you’ll continue anyway, won’t you?”
Lovelace nodded.
The general thought a moment. “One week, captain. Seven days. If nothing turns up by then, you’ll drop it.”
“I’ll need your backing.”
“You’ve got it,” Groves said. “Now get out of here. I have a lot of work to do.”
It was shortly past two o’clock when Lovelace drove into Fort Constitution, which was the access point for the Portsmouth harbor facilities. Yesterday afternoon he had learned that a relatively intact section of the German submarine that had exploded off Cape Cod had been recovered and was being towed to the Portsmouth Navy Yard. Groves had telephoned the commander here and requested his cooperation. As a result Lovelace’s reception was very crisp.
From the main gate he was immediately escorted across the Piscataqua River to the naval yard itself, which occupied two islands in the harbor. From there he was ushered into the administration building, and to the office of Lieutenant Commander Roland Gannt, Chief, Facility Security, a man in his late thirties with a broad smile. There was a chief petty officer there as well, but Lovelace never caught his name.
“Did you drive up from Boston?” Gannt asked. He indicated a chair for Lovelace.
“Yes, I did,” Lovelace said. He remained standing. “Has the submarine arrived?”
“Actually, it came in last night. The weather was good and the tugs made better time than we had first hoped for,” Gannt said. “It’s a lovely drive up the coast road, isn’t it?”
“Have you determined what caused the submarine to explode yet?”
Gannt smiled. “We’ve got a yard crew on it now, but I haven’t seen a report so far. Would you like to go down and have a look-see?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Heavens, no trouble at all,” Gannt said, and he came around his desk. “Be back in two shakes,” he said to the chief petty officer, and he escorted Lovelace out of the building to a gray jeep with navy markings parked at the rear.
The Portsmouth Navy Yard, which had been established in 1800, now specialized in the construction, maintenance, and repair of submarines. Everywhere on both islands there was the din and apparent confusion of any shipyard. In many of the slips, two and even three vessels lay tied up, ready for departure, and in several dry docks, boats in various stages of construction or retrofitting were being worked on. “Around the clock, seven days a week,” Gannt told Lovelace proudly.
He drove them across the yard to a huge, dark-gray metal building, at least as large as an aircraft hangar, from which a wide set of railroad tracks led down into the water. The building, and what appeared to be a scrap pile of twisted metal, was separated from the rest of the base by a tall, wire-mesh fence. Two armed guards were on duty at the gate, and they came over to the jeep when Gannt pulled up.
“Good afternoon, commander,” one of them said, saluting.
Gannt returned the salute. “This is Captain Lovelace, Army CIC. He’s come down from Washington to take a look at our latest find.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. He saluted again, and the other man swung the gate open, allowing Gannt to proceed.
“Any captured enemy submarine or piece thereof ends up here sooner or later for study,” Gannt said, and he drove through the gate and parked at a side entrance to the huge building.
“Do you get much business?” Lovelace asked.
Gannt shrugged. “We had most of the pieces of a Jap submarine here a couple of weeks ago. Had to ship it to us by rail all the way from California, then put it on barges across the bay. Quite a project, actually.”
They got out of the jeep, but before they went inside, Lovelace pointed to the scrap pile at the south end of the building. “What’s all that?”
Gannt looked that way. “That’s what’s left after de-manufacturing.” He turned back and smiled. “We don’t put them back together, you know.”
Lovelace was about to ask what he meant by “de-manufacturing,” but Gannt evidently read the puzzled expression on his face.
“I’ll explain everything inside,” he said, and he came around the jeep and opened the door that was posted with an UNAUTHORIZED ENTRANCE PROHIBITED sign.
Pneumatic chisels, electric drills and hammers reverberated in the cavernous interior of the building. Set up on huge skids and surrounded by scaffolding was a barely recognizable section of submarine, most of its outer hull peeled away, and much of its inner hull gone as well, exposing a maze of piping and wiring.
Gannt had to shout close to Lovelace’s ear to be heard. “This is a piece of the boat, from the bow planes aft to the vicinity of the forward batteries, including a section of the officers’ quarters. In here we reverse the process of construction by pulling out every bolt, rivet, plate, and tube. When we’re done we know what makes the boat run. The leftovers get tossed on our scrap pile.”
At least a dozen men in greasy coveralls had swarmed in and around the section of the sub that was illuminated by strong spotlights. One of them broke away from a group of three who were removing something from the area of the torpedo room, and came across to where Lovelace and Gannt were standing by the door.
He was a large man, with a stub of a dead cigar clenched firmly in his teeth. He was wiping his hands off on a greasy rag.
“This your boy from Washington?” he bellowed.
He was probably Irish, Lovelace thought. His freckled complexion was red, and the short-cropped hair visible beneath his cap was carrot-colored.
Gannt nodded effusively. “Captain Michael Lovelace, Army CIC.”
“Lieutenant Kowalski,” the large man said, sticking out his greasy hand.
Lovelace shook it without hesitation, then nodded toward the door. “Can we go outside and talk?” he shouted.
Kowalski nodded, and the three of them went outside, the relative quiet a blessing.
“Did you say Kowalski?” Lovelace asked.
Kowalski laughed. “My old man was a Polack, my mother a Colleen, and I’m a Heinz 57,” he bellowed. “But you didn’t come up here from Washington to discuss my heritage.”
Lovelace liked the man. “What have you found so far?”
“Plenty,” Kowalski said, and he turned to Gannt. “Is this guy cleared for the top?”
