Sleeper Agent (36 page)

“I need a gun, Sven,” Tom said. “How about it?”

Sven pointed to a pile of confiscated guns lying in a corner of the room. “Help yourself,” he said. He gave them a last look. “Take care.” He left.

Tom quickly searched through the stack of weapons. He selected a black-handled pistol. A Walther P-38 9-mm automatic. He was familiar with it. He checked the magazine. It was full. Eight rounds. He stuck it in his belt. He felt whole again.

Rudi felt keyed up, wholly alert, as he hurried down the street toward Frihavnen, the city’s Free Harbor.

The meeting with Wolff had been brief. The undercover agent had been visibly on edge, nervous and resentful at having to be out in the open near the hated Café Tosca and forced to stay operative during this most dangerous period only for Rudi’s sake. He had been eager to return to the safety of the German barracks.

But he had given Rudi new instructions. He was ordered back to Flensburg at once. Alternate exfiltration plans were being activated. He was to report immediately to the German cruiser
Nürnberg
lying in Copenhagen’s Free Harbor. The captain had orders to wait for him. The cruiser would take him to Flensburg, where the ship would join the remaining German fleet under Admiral Doenitz. He was to use the password
Siegerfähre
—Ferry of Victors.

He grinned coldly. Whoever the idiot was who thought up passwords was either hopelessly out of touch or full of gallows humor.

Wolff had addressed Rudi with his cover name, Rudolf Rasmussen. He had not told the undercover agent about his new ID papers.

‘Trust no one,” Bormann had said. He would remember.

Now that his evacuation was imminent, he realized how tense he had been. And he realized it was of paramount importance to get out of Denmark before he was caught in the maelstrom of total surrender, the wholesale roundup of anyone even remotely cross-eyed.

He had already had one close call. It was enough. He was crossing Østergade. He was almost there. He’d make it. The first sudden shots shocked him out of his reveries with a cruel jolt. A volley of small arms fire abruptly rang out from the waterfront ahead.

Rudi hit the ground. Almost at once the rifle fire was answered by savage machine gun fire. Heavies. Rudi rose to one knee, hugging the wall. He peered ahead. The firing intensified. Crouched low, he ran to the corner.

The
Nürnberg
was under attack! A large group of determined Freedom Fighters were attempting to take over the cruiser by force! Their positions on the quay were being raked by heavy machine gun fire from the warship.

Suddenly the deep-throated bark of heavier guns hammered through the clattering staccato machine gun bursts and the sporadic crackle of small arms fire. The cruiser was employing its 20-mm guns. Geysers of broken pavement and shattered brickwork shot into the air from the position of the Danes.

Suddenly, from behind Rudi, came the sharp reports of high-power rifles. Snipers. Shooting from vantage points in buildings on Østergade.

The massive barrels of the
Nürnberg’s
27-mm guns pivoted ponderously in search of the sniper nests. They roared their wrath, belching fire and smoke. In the dust-billowing explosions of masonry and shattered glass from the blasted buildings the snipers fell silent.

Rudi withdrew. He was shaken. With the
Nürnberg
under attack, under siege, his last avenue of escape from the city had been effectively cut off. Things were happening too damned fast!

Hugging the walls, he ran away from the field of battle. He could not afford to become involved. A few streets away he stopped. The firing could still be heard in the distance. Whatever the outcome of the foolhardy attack, the
Nürnberg
could not possibly be of any use to him now. He had to find a way to get to Flensburg by himself. He was on his own.

Quickly he walked away from the harbor area. He looked grim. But he had no doubts he would make it.

Tom looked at his watch. He had performed the identical gesture countless times in the last few minutes. He knew it. It was an obsession. He stared at the telephone. Ring, dammit! Again he glanced at his watch. 1817 hours. Where the hell was Sven?

Tove sat quietly on the big worn sofa, hugging her knees. She was watching Tom with grave concern.

He suddenly jumped as the shrill ring of the telephone knifed through the silence. He snatched up the receiver. “Yes?” he barked.

It was Sven. “We have him,” he said.

Tom felt a wild surge of excitement shoot through him. “Where?” he shouted. “I’m on my way!”

“Hold it,” Sven said quickly. “First listen.”

Tom stood impatiently, coiled for action, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear. “Make it fast!”

“Here it is. Wolff had his meeting with your man Rudi,” Sven said crisply. “He relayed orders to him to report in Flensburg. At once.” He stopped.

“What else?” Tom asked.

“That is all we got,” Sven said. He sounded drained.

“That’s a piece of shit!” Tom flared. “Where is he? I’ll get that bastard to open up!”

“I think not, my friend.” Sven sighed.

“Don’t bet your ass!” Tom retorted fiercely.

“He is dead, Tom.”

Tom took the telephone receiver from his ear. He stared at it. Accusingly. As if the black instrument itself were to blame. He sank down on a chair. Slowly he put the receiver back to his ear. “What the hell happened?” he asked, his voice flat and dull.

“Some BOPA men cornered two
Hipo
snipers,” Sven said. “In the inner city. One was liquidated on the spot. The other took refuge in a doorway. There was a man already hiding there. In the shoot-out he was badly wounded. It was Wolff.”

“Dammit, you could have called me!” Tom said bitterly.

“Understand, my friend,” Sven said quietly, his voice tired and spent. “Wolff knew how badly he was injured. He claimed, he insisted he was an SS major. That ‘Wolff’ was only a cover name. A cover identity. He was German. . . . The BOPA man in charge of the group had had a sister tortured by the Gestapo. She died. He counted over seventy cigarette burns crushed into her breasts. She was nineteen. He was in no hurry to summon help for the man who claimed to be SS. You must understand. Wolff screamed at him about his rights under the Geneva Convention, and the BOPA man gave him back the callous sophism
he
had been given when he’d tried to help his sister: To hell with the Geneva Convention! The Third Reich is too great to be hamstrung by a mere piece of paper. By the time they realized that Wolff was the man I was looking for, by the time I got there, Tom, he was half dead. It is a wonder he could say anything at all.” He fell silent.

For a moment Tom sat quietly. He felt utterly defeated. “Okay, Sven,” he said finally. “Did he say anything else? Think! Where is the Sleeper?”

“A few hours ago he was still in the city.”

“Under what name? What cover?”

“Wolff referred to him as Rasmussen.”

“Anything else? Papers?”

“No. Nothing. Only routine papers in the name of Wolff.”

For a few seconds Tom sat in silence, his thoughts bleak. Rudi A-27 was probably still in town. He had known that. Rudi A-27 was probably still using the Rasmussen cover. It was utterly immaterial. Rudi A-27 had been ordered to Flensburg. That was new information. But how in hell did it help?

“Sven,” he said, “thanks. I know you did what you could.”

“We have his address, Tom,” Sven said dispiritedly. “Wolff’s address. We can make a search. Perhaps—”

“Give it to me,” Tom said. He listened. He jotted the address down. “Go through the place, Sven,” he said. “Unless I come up with something else, I’ll meet you there.” He hung up. He stared at the silent telephone, not seeing it.

It was useless. A man like Wolff would not keep incriminating information in his rooms. Certainly nothing that could possibly lead to the capture of Rudi A-27, with whom his involvement had only been very recent and very limited. The odds of finding anything of value at Wolff’s place were simply nonexistent. Sven had known that too.

He stared glumly into space. Into a dead end.

Tove uncoiled herself from the sofa. She came over to stand by him. “Sven did not find out anything, did he?” she asked softly.

He shrugged. “Rudi has been ordered to Flensburg,” he said. “At once. That’s all.”

She frowned. “Tom,” she asked, “how will he get there?”

He looked up at her sharply, suddenly shocked into keen alertness. “Yeah!” he said. “That’s one hell of a question.
How?”
He stood up. He began to pace the room. “He sure as hell can’t wait and be evacuated with the regular German troops,” he thought aloud. “That might be days. Weeks. His orders said, At once. There’d be screenings. Checks. He could not afford that”

“KorsØr,” Tove said suddenly.

He gave her a quick questioning look.

“KorsØr! It is the town from which the ferry leaves, Tom. The ferry that connects with the trains to Flensburg.”

“Why would he go by train? Why not by car?”

“Too risky, Tom. Most cars are commandeered by fee resistance. The Freedom Fighters. You have seen them in the streets.”

“You’re right!” he said. “You are goddamned right! He
can’t
take that risk. He
can’t
let himself be checked out!” He took her by the shoulders. “The trains, Tove? They still run?”

“Yes. From Hovedbanegaarden—the main railroad station.”

The huge central portico of the main railroad station was somewhat less crowded than other public places in Copenhagen.

Tove went straight to one of the ticket windows. For a few moments she spoke earnestly with the ticket seller, a rotund man with a ruddy plump face and sparse, carefully husbanded hair.

Presently she hurried over to the waiting Tom. “The trains are still running,” she said quickly. “But the schedules have been badly disrupted. Because of the shooting. There has been heavy fighting at the engineers’ barracks near SvanemØllen and other places.”

“What about trains to that ferry town you mentioned?”

“KorsØr. Nothing has left since just after two o’clock.”

Tom frowned. “Right on the damned borderline,” he said. “He
could
have made it. Or he could still be in town. Waiting.
if
he decided to go by train.”

Automatically he looked around, searching the faces in the station. The face on the little photograph in Mrs. Rasmussen’s locket was indelibly stamped on his mind. He was certain he would recognize Rudi A-27. If he showed up.

“When is the next train to KorsØr?” he asked.

“No one knows,” she said. “They are posting new timetables at the gates.”

“Let’s take a look,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Before the revised timetables tacked up on a makeshift bulletin board next to the closed and locked KorsØr gate, half a dozen travelers stood studying the notices. Other passengers were hurrying by, carrying suitcases and packages.

As Tom and Tove drew near, a large heavy-set man in a rumpled tan raincoat standing at the outer edge of the group at the bulletin board turned away with a gesture of angry disgust.

Tom stopped dead in his tracks. The man in the rain-cost had revealed someone else standing in front of him. A smaller man in a blue suit. The pants seemed to bag in the rear. The loose jacket was too big in the shoulders. As the raincoated man stalked off, the stranger in the blue suit quickly glanced after him, a cautious gesture of awareness, before returning his attention to the bulletin board.

To Tom, his brief glimpse of the man’s face, like a bolt of lightning burned in afterimage on the retina, seemed etched everlastingly on the fabric of time itself.

It was the face from the locket.
It was Rudi A-27.

“Stay here!” he whispered hoarsely to Tove.

“But—”

“
Do it!”
he snarled savagely. He put his hand under his coat, grasped the gun and eased it from his belt, holding it under his jacket.

He began to walk toward the KorsØr gate with just the right amount of purpose—not too fast, not too slow.

Two of the people before the bulletin board walked away. Another joined the group. An elderly lady.

Dammit! Tom thought. He wanted as few bystanders as possible. He knew what he had to do. He walked up behind the man in the blue suit. He stopped two feet from him. He could feel the man in front of him become aware of his presence, waiting a couple of beats before turning to check him out.

He took the gun from under his jacket, locked it tightly against his abdomen, and pointed it straight at the man’s back, his finger firm on the trigger. He spoke in a low, sharp voice. “Rudi,” he said. “Don’t move!”

The man was good. Damned good. There was only the slightest twitch of the hairline. An almost imperceptible tensing of the shoulder muscles under the ill-fitting blue jacket He did not turn around. Instead he unconcernedly brought up his hand to scratch his nose pensively, seemingly engrossed in studying the timetables.

For a chilling instant Tom had a sinking feeling. Had he made a mistake? No. Had he spoken too softly? Had he not been heard?

He took one more step toward the man in front of him, his locked gun arm relaxing as he moved. He opened his mouth to speak.

Suddenly, explosively, without the slightest warning, the man before him whirled and twisted around. In the same split instant his right hand swung back in a vicious chop, striking Tom’s gun-hand wrist a numbing blow.

Tom’s reaction was instantaneous. A shot rang out, reverberating thunderously through the huge portico. The bullet ripped through the loose blue jacket and crashed into the emergency timetables at the exact moment the gun was knocked from his grip. It clattered to the floor, skittered across to slide under the locked gate—out of reach.

For the flash of a split second the eyes of the two men locked. Tom stared into the face of his foe. It was the cold, flat face of controlled violence. Of fanatical ruthless-ness and invincible determination. It was the face of Rudi A-27. The face of KOKON.

In the same twisting motion, Rudi shot his knee viciously into Tom’s groin. It was an instinctive action—instinctively anticipated and parried. Tom caught the brunt of the kick on his hip. The force brought him to his knees.