The Tristan Betrayal Read online

  “Excuse me?” the Gestapo colonel said, a change in his tone abruptly evident. His air of arrogant command had vanished; now he sounded simply worried.

  “Dummkopf!” Metcalfe snapped. “Who the hell ordered the Brit to be killed? Was it you?”

  “Sir?”

  “This is absolutely intolerable. I gave express orders that the Brit was to be taken alive and interrogated. You incompetent fool! Show me some ID, you idiot. I’m going to launch an investigation. This entire thing has been botched.”

  A series of expressions passed over the Gestapo man’s face, from confusion to concern to abject fear. He whipped out his wallet and displayed his Gestapo identity card.

  “ ‘Zimmerman,’ ” Metcalfe read off the card as if memorizing it. “You, Herr Standartenführer Zimmerman, are to be held directly responsible for this botch! Did you order the death of this British agent?”

  “No, sir, I did not,” the Gestapo man replied, cowed by Metcalfe’s onslaught. “I was told only that the American had showed up here, sir, and I thought, mistakenly, that it was you. It was a reasonable assumption.”

  “Disgraceful! And what took you so long to get here? I’ve been waiting here fifteen minutes. This is simply intolerable!”

  Metcalfe reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes he’d taken from one of the Gestapo agents at the Librairie. It was a pack of Astras, a common Nazi brand. He pulled one out, pointedly not offering one to the colonel, and lit it from a pack of windproof Sturmstreichhölzer matches. The signals were subtle, unspoken: Metcalfe was a fellow German officer.

  Expelling the harsh smoke through his nostrils, Metcalfe said, “Now get this body out of here at once.” He stooped to pick up his pistol, shaking his head in silent disgust, then continued toward the door.

  “Pardon me,” the German said suddenly. There was another change in his tone, one that Metcalfe found worrying.

  Metcalfe turned around sullenly and saw a perplexed look in the Gestapo man’s face. The German was gesturing at Metcalfe’s right leg.

  Metcalfe looked down and saw what the German was pointing at. His pant leg was soaked in blood. It was the wound he had sustained earlier: though minor, it had bled profusely.

  Metcalfe’s momentary confusion emboldened the colonel’s suspicion. Something is not right here, the Gestapo man seemed to be thinking as his facial expression changed to one of wariness.

  “Sir, I have the right to inspect your papers as well,” the German said. “I want to make sure you are indeed—”

  Metcalfe did not wait. He drew his weapon and fired. The round penetrated the man’s chest, and the German sank to the floor. Metcalfe fired a second time, aiming precisely for the same spot, and now he was certain that the Nazi was dead.

  Yes, the man was dead, but now everything had changed. The Gestapo was looking for him, whether they knew his true name or not. That meant he couldn’t risk showing up at the train station. He couldn’t take the train from Paris, couldn’t follow Corky’s prescribed route, which was now far too hazardous. Plans would have to be altered, and Corky would have to be notified.

  Metcalfe knew he was now a marked man. He could no longer walk the streets freely.

  He approached the dead German slowly, felt for a pulse at the man’s throat. There was none. He saw the two small-bore bullet holes at the center of the man’s chest. Though the bullets had penetrated the tunic, the holes were in fact small and concealable.

  Moving swiftly, he removed the Gestapo colonel’s uniform. He stripped off his own clothes, transferring his wallet, papers, keys, and passport to the Gestapo uniform. Wadding up his discarded clothing, he shoved them into a nearby china cabinet, then he donned the Gestapo uniform. The fit was not too bad, though it felt peculiar: highly starched, stiff, scratchy. He adjusted the black tie so that it covered the bullet holes, keeping it in place with the Nazi Party pin that the agent had used as a tie tack.

  He took the colonel’s papers and weapon, any of which could come in handy. In Derek’s medicine cabinet he found some gauze, adhesive tape, and Merthiolate. Then, after quickly binding the wound in his thigh, he rushed out of Derek’s apartment in search of the one man who could get him out of Paris quickly.

  “Jesus Christ almighty!” Chip Nolan exclaimed. “They’re all dead?”

  “Everyone but . . . the man you know as James,” Corky replied, a stricken look on his face. He had just entered the modest flat in the Eighth Arrondissement that the Bureau kept as one of several Paris safe-house locations.

  “My God!” Nolan cried, his voice breaking. “Who was it? Who were the bastards who did it?”

  Corcoran approached the window, staring apprehensively out at the street. “That’s what I need your help on. One was shot, but two of them were garroted.”

  “Garroted?”

  “In exactly the same way as the Belgian librarian last week—also a member of my organization. I speculate the responsible party is the Sicherheitsdienst, and one assassin in particular. But I need verification—a complete forensic workup, the sort of thing the Bureau does so well.”

  Nolan nodded. “It’s risky, but I’ll do it for you. The bastards.”

  Corcoran turned back from the window, shaking his head slowly. “This is a grievous setback to our efforts.”

  “Setback? My God, Corky, I don’t know how you do it. You treat the world as if it’s one big board game. For God’s sake, these are human beings we’re talking about! They had mothers and fathers, maybe brothers and sisters. They had names. Doesn’t the loss of human lives mean anything to you?”

  “Absolutely,” snapped Corcoran. “The loss of human lives all across Europe and the U.S. I don’t have time to get sentimental over the fate of a handful of anonymous men who knew full well what the risks were when they signed up. I’m concerned with the survival of freedom on this planet. The individual must always be subordinate to the greater good.”

  “You could have taken those words right out of Joe Stalin’s mouth,” said Nolan. “That’s the way dictators talk. Boy, you really piss ice water, don’t you? You can really be a heartless bastard.”

  “Only when my job requires it.”

  “And when is that?”

  “All the time, my good fellow. All the time.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Spanish diplomat was enraged.

  José Félix Antonio María di Liguori y Ortiz, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the military junta of Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, had come to Paris for a series of secret meetings with Admiral Jean-François Darlan, leader of the armed forces of Vichy France. His private plane was scheduled to depart from Orly Airport in a quarter of an hour, and yet his limousine was stuck on Auto-route du Sud halfway between the Porte d’Orléans and Orly Airport.

  And not just stalled on the highway, but in the middle of a tunnel! The gleaming black Citroën Traction Avant 11N limousine just sat there, its engine block ticking, the hood up, while the driver hunched over the engine trying to bring it back to life.

  The minister glanced at his watch and nervously touched his extravagantly curled, waxed mostacho. “Madre de Dios!” he exclaimed. “Caray! What the hell is going on?”

  “My apologies, Your Excellency!” the driver shouted. “It seems to be the transmission. I am doing all I can!”

  “My plane is scheduled to leave in fifteen minutes!” the Spaniard retorted. “Make it quick!”

  “Yes, sir, of course,” the driver said. In a lower voice he muttered to himself in French, “The goddamned plane’s not going to leave without him, for Christ’s sake.” There were three others in the Spaniard’s delegation, and they were stuck in the car immediately behind. So they were all going to be late. Big deal.

  The driver, whose name was Henri Corbier, cursed the imperious Spanish fascist, with his ridiculous mustache. Ever since Ortiz had arrived in Paris, two days earlier, he’d been ordering everyone around. He was truly insufferable.

  T
oday, the driver had been forced to sit for eight hours in the cold in front of some damned government building while Ortiz met with some assholes from the Vichy government and a bunch of Nazi generals. The Spaniard wouldn’t even allow him to go to a café. No, he had to sit there in the cold, waiting. And with petrol so scarce, he couldn’t even keep the engine running!

  So when a friend of his, who shared his contempt for the Boches and the way they’d ruined Paris, asked Henri to do a minor favor, he wasn’t just willing, he was downright ecstatic. “Nothing illegal,” Henri was assured. “Just stall the limousine on the way to the airport. Make the goddamned Spanish fascist nice and late for his scheduled departure. That way our friends at Orly will have the time to do what needs to be done to the fascist’s Junkers Ju-52; never you mind what that means. Ignorance is your best protection. No one will ever be able to prove that the car didn’t have engine trouble.”

  Henri would have done his part for free, but when they offered him a nice fat Christmas ham if he did his patriotic duty, he was thrilled. Nothing like getting paid in the most valuable commodity of all—scarce ham—for doing something you want to do anyway.

  “What’s taking you so long?” the minister shouted.

  Henri toyed with the engine, pretending to adjust one of the cylinders. “Soon!” he shouted back. “I think I have it figured out.” Under his breath, he added: “Putain de merde!”

  The old Renault Juvaquatre barreled up to the sentry booth that blocked the access road to Orly Field. Two German military policemen snapped to attention.

  Metcalfe, still dressed in the stolen Gestapo uniform, rolled down the window. “Heil Hitler!” he called out, his face a mask of bland authority as he flashed the Gestapo badge.

  The MP saluted, replied, “Heil Hitler!” and waved the vehicle through.

  It was as Metcalfe had expected. The badge was not inspected, no questions asked. No MP was going to risk his job, or his neck, harassing a high-ranking Gestapo officer who was obviously there on business.

  “Well done,” said the car’s other passenger, who was also its owner. Roger “Scoop” Martin was a tall, rangy man with curly red hair, prematurely receding—at twenty-eight, he was barely older than Metcalfe—and a sallow complexion, his cheeks pitted with acne scars. Martin was an ace RAF pilot who’d just been assigned to the SOE, Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the sabotage and subversion agency formed by Winston Churchill just a few months earlier. Martin lived in Paris; as his cover, he worked as a médecin-chef for Le Foyer du Soldat, helping feed and treat prisoners of war, visiting wounded men in hospitals. In this capacity he was one of the few Parisians allowed to operate a private car.

  “That was the easy part,” Metcalfe said. His eyes roamed the asphalt-paved parking lot. Ever since taking over France, the Nazis had turned Orly Field from a commercial airport into a military base. The only flights into and out of Orly now were military or the occasional government dignitary. Wehrmacht soldiers patrolled the area with MG-34 light machine guns, Schmeisser 9mm pistols, or MP-38 submachine guns; the field was crowded with troop transport vehicles, Skoda and Steyr trucks, three-ton Opel Blitz trucks.

  “There it is,” Roger said, pointing at a gate built into the chain-link fence that protected the runways and aircraft hangars.

  Metcalfe nodded as he turned the wheel. “Awfully good of you to do this for me, Scoop,” he said.

  “Like I had a bloody choice,” Martin grumbled. “Corcoran gets on the blower to Sir Frank, and next thing I know I’m to fly to goddamned bloody Silesia.”

  “Oh, you’d have done it for me anyway,” Metcalfe said with a sly smile. Roger had used his SOE channels to convey Metcalfe’s urgent message to Alfred Corcoran about the nightmarish carnage at the Cave, as well as to inform him about an alteration in his plans. Corky would have to make arrangements in Moscow for one more visitor.

  “Hmph. There’s a limit to friendship,” the pilot replied morosely.

  Metcalfe knew well his friend’s bone-dry sense of humor. Roger Martin often played at being the martyr, complained about his lot in life, but it was all attitude. In truth, Roger was about as loyal a friend as there was, and he loved what he did. He played poker the same way, moaning about his lousy hand right up until he played a royal flush.

  Roger was born and educated in Cognac, of a French mother and an Irish father, and his ancestors had been cognac makers in France since the eighteenth century. He had dual citizenship, spoke French like a native, but considered himself British. Ever since he’d first seen a biplane soaring above the skies over Nord-Pas-de-Calais, he’d dreamed of flying. Uninterested in the family business, he’d become a pilot for Air France, then served with the French Air Force in Syria, where, after the Nazis moved into France, he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and, after a course of training, became a Special Duties pilot with the RAF’s “Moon Squadrons.” Based in Tangmere, on the south coast of England, he flew a “Lizzie,” a tiny single-engine Westland Lysander, during the evacuation of Dunkirk, dropping supplies to embattled troops defending Calais. Plenty of Lysanders were lost, but not Scoop’s. He’d racked up thousands of hours flying perilous nighttime clandestine missions into Europe, dropping and extracting British agents. No one was better than Roger Martin at taking off and landing on rough, muddy French farm fields under the nose of the enemy, illuminated only by torchlight. But Scoop was typically modest about his famous skills. “Any bloody fool can drop Joes over France,” he’d once told Metcalfe. “Though scooping them out of there can be a bit hairy.” Roger became known for accomplishing the impossible, for executing pickups on the most difficult terrain. His wing commander had dubbed him Scoop, and the moniker had stuck.

  “I don’t know how the hell you plan to pull this off,” Scoop groaned as they got out of the Renault. Painted on the outside of the car was the insignia of Le Foyer du Soldat and the Red Cross emblem.

  “All you have to do is keep your mouth shut,” Metcalfe said. “You can do that, mon vieux.”

  Scoop grunted.

  “You’re my pilot. I’ll handle the rest.”

  They approached the next checkpoint, an MP who stood at attention beside the gate. He saluted when he saw Metcalfe, nodded as Metcalfe flashed the badge, and pulled the gate open for the men.

  “Which hangar are we going to?” Metcalfe muttered under his breath.

  “Damned if I know,” Scoop replied. “We know the tail number of the craft, the scheduled time of departure, and that’s about it.” He fell silent as they approached another checkpoint. This time Metcalfe simply gave a brisk salute and the MPs did the same.

  Once they had passed and were crossing a grassy field next to the paved runway, Scoop continued: “I suggest we stop at the first hangar we come to and ask. As far as anyone knows, I’m an ill-informed pilot reporting for duty.”

  His voice dropped as they passed a knot of German officers who were smoking and laughing heartily. They were admiring several risqué French postcards, fanned in the pudgy hands of a round-faced SS Gruppenführer. Metcalfe froze when he recognized the SS man. It was one of his many Nazi acquaintances, the portly Brigadier General Johannes Koller.

  Quickly Metcalfe turned his face away, pretending to be deep in whispered conversation with Scoop. He realized it was only a matter of time before he saw someone he knew—but not now, not here!

  Scoop noticed the distress in Metcalfe’s face. He looked puzzled but said nothing.

  It was likely that the Gruppenführer, busy showing off his postcards, had not noticed Metcalfe. Even if he had gotten a look at Metcalfe’s face, the Gestapo uniform would have surely confused him; the uncertainty would keep him quiet.

  Finally they reached the last security checkpoint, which was more elaborate: an open booth on the edge of the tarmac, manned by two MPs. Once they were past it, Metcalfe and Scoop had only to locate the correct hangar. Metcalfe tensed. If the MPs asked to examine his stolen badge or papers, it was all over. The photogr
aphs of the dead Gestapo agent did not resemble him at all.

  But the military policeman who was clearly the one in charge simply gave a salute and waved the men through. Metcalfe let out his breath noiselessly just as he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Koller, walking quickly toward him, the other officers following close behind.

  Metcalfe quickened his own stride. “Go,” he whispered to Scoop.

  “What?”

  “Run ahead. You’re a pilot who’s late for his assigned flight. I can’t run—it’ll look suspicious.”

  “You’re mad—”

  “Just do as I say. I’ll catch up to you.”

  Scoop shrugged, shook his head in perplexity, and broke into a half-run, half-walk, the hurried movement of a man who was late. Metcalfe, meanwhile, kept up his steady, determined pace.

  “Excuse me! Excuse me!”

  Metcalfe turned, saw the MP who had just waved him through. Next to him stood Koller, pointing at Metcalfe.

  Metcalfe shrugged, looked perplexed, and didn’t move. He bowed his head as he pretended to fish something out of his pocket. Must keep my face as concealed as possible! Metcalfe glanced over his shoulder, saw Scoop entering one of the hangars, and again considered running. But there was no point to that; he and Scoop would simply be caught. In any case, it was too late. Koller and the MP were advancing toward him. “I know this man!” the Gruppenführer said. “He is an impostor!”

  “Sir,” the MP said. “Come here, please. May I see your papers?”

  “This is a joke of some sort?” Metcalfe replied in a loud, strong voice. “Come now. I have important business.”

  The two men came beside him. “Yes, that is Eigen! Daniel Eigen! I knew it was him!”

  “Your papers, sir,” the MP repeated.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing, Eigen?” Koller said, staring at him. “Your criminal actions are—”