Services for One's Country, in Peace and War Alike

[Phoenix Dace]

Chapter One: Cologne and New York; Novice Mistakes

I was shown unceremoniously into the chair and took my seat with more than a slight hint of uneasiness as the soldier sat down across from me and produced a piece of paper which he kept to himself. His eyes shifted back and forth as he skimmed over it, and I took the time to study him: his uniform was impeccably pressed, his buttons and even his boots shining like the sun. His helmet was too big for him, and his sleeves reached the first knuckle of his thumb. His uniform, all gray, and the lack of any fancy insignia on his lapels led me to believe he was no higher rank than a corporal, at most. He was young, his face boyish, and he had a small nose. I pegged him no older than his early twenties, probably less. His small frame and boyish face made it hard to study him efficiently. I'd been told it wasn't easy, and I was absolutely sure he couldn't read me, but I was still uneasy.

"Your name?" the soldier asked me in Bavarian-accented German.

I responded smoothly and flawlessly, my Dutch accent perfected by a week with a vocal trainer before my departure from New York. "Otto Zeldenthuis." I had chosen the name; it was a small joke of mine. Zeldenthuis means 'seldom at home', and is fitting of this particular job of mine.

He looked at the paper in front of him and then back up at me. He had to push the helmet back up over his eyes as it slipped down thanks to sudden movement in his head and neck. I caught a glimpse of short-cropped blonde hair, and I could see freckles and signs of acne on his cheeks. Evidently he was even younger than I thought. "Your name again, please?" he said.

They taught me to watch for things like that. Even a slip of the tongue in a situation like this can betray someone's true intentions; I learned that in the bizarre training camp they sent me to. Half the time it felt like a university classroom with a dozen other students and the other half it seemed like one man speaking directly to me about how to survive leaping off a train in the middle of night. The young man across from me was betraying benign intentions: his eyebrows were slightly raised, giving me the impression he was less angry and more intrigued; he had asked me my name the second time in a polite way, meaning he respected me for one reason or another. He had said please, which meant that, somewhere in the back of his head, he thought I might be more important than he realized.

"Otto Zeldenthuis," I said again without hesitation.

"You are not on this list, Mr Zeldenthuis," he said. It was an expected sentence, but one I still did not enjoy hearing.

"I know," I responded in Dutch-accented German. That was one of the reasons they had chosen me - I could speak English, German, Russian, and passable French. Apparently, according to Frank, I had a gift for languages, and that was one of the reasons they chose me. My German was not always this good. During the week I spent with the vocalist before I left, I spent most of the time learning to speak fluent German the way a Dutchman would. "I was a late addition because our regular correspondent in Cologne was taken ill. I crossed the border from Rotterdam last night on the overnight train. I believe I still have my ticket; would you like to see it?"

"Please, Mr Zeldenthuis."

I made a show of taking my time to open my briefcase and find the ticket inside, just enough time to make him start getting impatient. Too quickly and it looks as if you prepared it beforehand; too slow and it looks like you're stalling. There is a brief moment of equilibrium in between those two areas, and for the first time in my life I think I hit it perfectly, producing the ticket stub just as he began to tap his foot, impatiently and unintentionally, under the table. It was an authentic ticket. I had, indeed, crossed over from Rotterdam on a train to Essen and then Cologne. Of course, I had arrived in Rotterdam only the night before on an American mail plane, but he had no need to know that. I handed him the ticket and he scrutinized it carefully.

"This appears to be in order, Mr Zeldenthuis."

He furrowed his eyebrows for a moment while staring at the ticket, then handed it back to me and turned the list to face towards me. "Would you please point me to the name of the journalist whose spot you are taking?"

I was prepared for this one as well. I could have fed him some story about being new, but I instead decided to play it safer. He was young, yes, and evidently not the brightest of his group, I could tell that by the amount of time he spent staring at my ticket stub, but he knew how to lay a careful trap. Either that or he genuinely expected me to point to a name.

I didn't even bother looking at the list. "I am sorry, sir, but I have just come off a two-year assignment in Copenhagen and I am not up to date on the names of our correspondents in various German cities." I did my best to adopt a bothered, haughty attitude and tone of voice. He was wasting my time, or at least so he thought. "I was not told his name, merely that he had fallen ill." I checked my watch surreptitiously, but I know he saw. I intended him to.

He frowned and took the list back, taking a look at it as if it offered him some comfort. "Well, Mr Zeldenthuis, everything appears to be in order. I apologize for the inconvenience. Shall I show you out?"

"I can see myself out, thank you." The unspoken words that came next were clear as day to both of us: You've wasted enough of my time already.

"You remember the way?"

"Of course."

I stood, tucked my overcoat over my left arm, and took up my briefcase in the right. Despite it being March in Germany, it was fairly warm today, and I felt certain the short walk back to my hotel would do me no harm.

Once back at my hotel, on the third floor with a window overlooking the front door, I breathed a sigh of relief and threw myself back onto the bed. I had visited Germany once in the early 1920s with my family, to see some old Dutch relatives in some way related to my maternal grandmother who lived in Hamburg. I had been young and I remember little from the trip, but I remember it being very different. Admittedly, all I had seen of the new Germany was a train ride in the dark, a late entry at an expensive hotel, and a morning and afternoon spent getting close enough to the soldiers to get caught.

That thought reminded me, and I flipped open my briefcase and removed the false bottom to pull out my camera. I had no way of seeing the pictures taken, but I knew what they were of: soldiers on the west bank of the Rhine, a clear violation of the Versailles Treaty. It had little to do with me, and I did not adequately understand why I had been sent there at the time. It would become clear later, but at the time it seemed as if American interests were best served elsewhere. Then again, as far as I knew there were a dozen others like me at the various points in the world where I thought I should be sent, and I was here alone because this was unimportant; anyway, I fit the bill, given the languages I could speak: I would have been out of place in Japan or India.

The camera was undamaged and had not been found by the soldiers when they grabbed me. In hindsight, it was stupid what I did. Instead of trying to catch surreptitious pictures, I had sneaked up on the army where they were encamped outside the city, and I had taken pictures of the unit as a whole. Where I went wrong was in not putting myself either inside or outside the perimeter of patrols and sentries. I was caught by one, but managed to pass myself off as a Dutch journalist. He bought it, as far as I can tell, but thanks to protocol had to send me to some military police headquarters inside the city. I've already described how that unfolded.

The list he produced mystified me, though. What was it? Was it a list of all journalists in the city? Perhaps a list of foreign nationals? Maybe, above all else, it was a list of known or suspected intelligence agents in the country, the city, or some other designated region. I suppose, since I foolishly did not even take a glance at it, that I will never know. But regardless it continues to bother me in the back of my head, or at least it did that day, and does now that I think of it again to write this.

I took some more pictures that afternoon as patrols moved through the city, greeted by a few cheers and some excited Germans, but little fanfare. For one occasion I masqueraded as one of the townsfolk and managed to take pictures of the unit insignia patches sewn onto the soldiers' shoulders. That, along with the pictures of the encampment as a whole, was probably quite useful for whoever it was passed off to.

By that evening my job was done. I had filled up three rolls of film in my small camera, and I was due to leave town on the overnight train back to Rotterdam. I checked out of the hotel and made my way to the train station, where I was surprised to see a train full of soldiers unloading and what I presumed to be my train to Rotterdam playing second fiddle to the troop train, catching only the tail end of the station to load and unload its passengers at. I, knowing my job in Cologne was not yet finished, hurried to the train station mens room, where I changed the film in my camera on a toilet seat and then stood on the toilet itself to snap a full roll of pictures out the tiny bathroom window of the soldiers unloading from the troop train. I managed to catch the unit insignia of this unit as well, and noted that it was different from that of the soldiers I had seen earlier in the day. Not knowing the German organizational breakdown, I could not have told you whether they were different divisions, regiments, battalions or companies, but I knew it meant at least two units of some size were being deployed across the Rhine.

I had been dispatched on such short notice I barely had time to read even the newspapers of what was happening in Germany. The German army had moved troops into the Rhineland and thus violated the Treaty of Versailles, I understood that much. From Dutch newspapers I saw as I arrived in Rotterdam the first morning, the French had responded by moving thousands of soldiers to the German border. That was the last I heard of it before I boarded my overnight train in Rotterdam. Now I could see that Germany was not withdrawing but rather moving more troops across the Rhine. Either the situation was escalating and they were preparing to fight the French, who were ready to uphold the treaty at all costs, or the French had backed down.

I boarded the train with slight apprehension in the pit of my stomach. I had not been seen, I knew that much, but it was quite an anticlimactic finish to the two-day trip. I had four rolls of film that would be valuable to whichever agency I worked for, for whatever reason. At a certain point in my life later on, I would grow to appreciate much more the kind of finish to a trip where I could simply sit back in a seat on a train to a neutral nation and read that day's newspaper. It was a rarer and rarer commodity as time progressed.

I left the briefcase in Rotterdam the same way I had found it. There was a mailbox marked with white chalk, in the second-from-the-bottom row of mailboxes for a small apartment building in the city. I opened the mailbox, slid my briefcase inside - it just barely fit - and crossed the white line of chalk with another perpendicular one. Then I hurried away down the street towards the aerodrome, where I would catch another mail flight back to New York.

*

Back in New York I could catch up on what had happened. Despite some tense negotiating and a few nations' fierce protests at the League of Nations, France and Great Britain had not opposed Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland. The French had not mobilized their armies past a deployment to the border, and the British, in the words of then-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, 'lacked the resources to enforce her treaty guarantees'; he also claimed the British public would not be in favour of war anyway. Hitler was smart in that a serious influence on the French decision was that they were in the middle of a general election and thus politically at a disadvantage.

It was a week before I heard from Frank. I was at the cinema to see Chaplin's Modern Times, when I felt two taps on the side of my right shoulder. Knowing it was Frank - it was always Frank - I turned my head slightly and heard the whispered words "Behind the theatre, five minutes," before there was a rustle of movement and he was gone. I shook my head because the picture was just starting and this would probably ruin it for me, but four minutes later I dutifully stood up and made my way out back, to where I found a man in a black overcoat and a bowler hat smoking a cigarette in the alley behind the theatre.

I didn't greet him, but instead stopped a few feet away and pulled out a cigarette of my own. "Hey buddy, got a light?" I asked him in my best Brooklyn accent.

Frank looked up. "Sure," he said, and struck a match against the side of its box three times without success before shrugging and giving up. "Guess it's too wet tonight."

I rolled my eyes and spoke quietly. "Do we have to do that every time?"

He hushed me with a whisper and motioned to the car parked at the other end of the alley. "Get in the passenger side. I'll join you in a minute."

I did as he said, and shortly thereafter he followed me, getting in the driver's door. We sat there in the car, not looking at each other, for a moment of silence, before I broke it. "Frank, do we have to do this every time?"

"What if there was some other guy in a bowler hat and you started telling him all about your trip to Germany taking pictures of unit formations moving against the French border, huh? How do you think that would go over?"

"I take it you've seen my pictures."

"Yeah, they're good." That was Frank for you. He spoke quietly and softly, and although he never paused before speaking I could tell he always chose his words carefully. It seemed as if he ran through his head all the things I could say and made a response for them all before I'd even said them, so he could just pick and choose which one to say at any given time. I've heard that expert chess players can do that - if that was the case, Frank would have been a grand master of reading people. Praise from Frank was hard to come by, and he never revealed much, but I knew he knew what was going on. "Helped our French counterparts a great deal. Of course, if the politicians had listened to them, we might have had some different headlines today," he said, gesturing to the newspaper folded up on the floor at my feet. I could see the headline: 'EDEN ADVOCATES PEACE WITH GERMANY'. I picked it up and read that Anthony Eden, the British foreign minister, had advocated no sanctions or action against Germany for their infraction of the sacrosanct Treaty.

"So what now?"

"I'll let you know. We might not have work for you for a while yet, as usual." That was typical Frank as well. He always downplayed my role in what he referred to as 'the tight-knit community of agencies that give the United States all the intelligence it will ever need'. He acted as though I was but one of any number of spies he could send somewhere at the drop of a hat. Secretly, I hoped that was far from the truth. I kind of wanted to be special, to be the one that could get things done others couldn't.

"If there is something for you to do, it might be in Germany again. Are you good to go back there?" These words were slow and deliberate, and my response was as fast as any one of Frank's.

"Yes. Of course."

"Good. Did you encounter any trouble?"

"I was stopped by the military police and questioned, but my cover fooled them just fine. There was no delay in schedule."

"Good. Our contact in Rotterdam had no trouble retrieving the briefcase. Even said they'd like to work with you in future. Said you acted professional, not like the last agent we sent."

I wondered what that meant exactly. Sometimes Frank could be as misleading and mystifying as anyone. I kept wondering, until he turned and met my eyes.

"You did good. Now get out of my car."

I smiled a bit as I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Typical Frank. I shut the door without a word and he drove off almost immediately.

I decided not to go back into the movie. I probably wouldn't understand what was going on anyway.

[EmprorCoopinius]

Ooooooh, color me interested.

[Spacehusky]

Indeed.

[Koegh]

Wow, that was really well written. Nicely done there :-)

[rcduggan]

this looks EXCELLENT

[Phoenix Dace]

Thanks everybody!

I think it's worth a small introduction and explanation. I decided to write this because I had a hankering to write some narrative and couldn't fit it into my other AAR. That, combined with the fact that it had reached so few reader replies per update (1 or 2 depending) that I no longer am motivated, led me to actually start writing this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not abandoning my other AAR. Quite the contrary. They will continue in parallel, and in different worlds. Although I expect this one to update faster, at least for now, for numerous reasons: one, that it has a larger fanbase already. Two, that I'm more motivated to write it at this point, and three that I'm experimenting with a new system of writing.

You see, I have already written far ahead in the story. I'm currently working on Chapter Six, because these are a lot of fun to write and I have a whole lot of material to work with, as well as a lot of ideas rattling around in my head for the future of this story. But I'm not going to update a whole lot in a row. No, instead (this is the new system I referred to) I'm going to keep writing as fast as I want to, but only release the chapters at a slower pace, or at least at the same pace but several updates behind. That way, if I suffer a lack of motivation or writer's block or something, the steady stream of updates won't be impacted for a little while yet. It also gives me a chance to reread the updates before I post them with a new eye, and add or improve sections, as well as fixing glaring errors. In short, I get to be my own editor.

(Ask any writer - reading your own work immediately after writing it is a horrible way to edit. Reread it a few days later and it's a hundred times better.)

So, in short, this new system I'm trying out works better for everybody.


As for the story itself, I think the first chapter is fairly indicative of what it's going to be like throughout, or at least for a while.



And finally, I will have Chapter 2 up later tonight, as well as a more detailed reader reply.

[Rodrico Stak]

This is very, very good. Great job! Personally, I don't think I could ever write a very good narrative AAR - the first update would be excellent, the second very great, the third great, the forth good, and it would just go downhill from there. Good job so far, and good luck!

I eagerly await the next update.

[Phoenix Dace]

EmprorCoopinius and Spacehusky: Thanks!

Koegh: Thanks! Actually, I think the opening is one of the worst parts of what I've written so far. I made it better through editing, but I still think it's kind of weak.

rcduggan: Thanks!

Rodrico Stak: Thank you very much! I hope this doesn't go downhill the way the one in your head does.



Next chapter will be up in a moment once I finish my in-browser editing.

[Phoenix Dace]

Chapter Two: New York and Washington D.C.; Richard Delaney

Frank handed me a large envelope, and I glanced at it before taking it from his hand. "What is this?" I asked, slightly hesitant.

"Your new assignment."

It was June. I had seen hide nor hair of Frank for three months, ever since I returned from Germany. Predictably enough, the whole affair had blown over. It appeared my trip to Germany had been entirely for nothing. Outside it had been hot, and I had the first button of my shirt undone. Frank, as always, was wearing his customary bowler hat over his short hair, and seemed unphased as he looked out the front windshield of his car, never once meeting my eyes. I took the envelope and tore it open at the top. Inside were five pieces of paper, unfolded inside the large confines of the envelope. I pulled one out; it was a photograph of three men in black overcoats standing on a set of steps outside a doorway. One was lighting a cigarette, and the flame and his downcast face hid his features from my view. The second had his face shrouded by a low-pulled cap and had his back to the camera's viewpoint. The third looked to be speaking, albeit softly, and I could see his face in profile.

I pulled out the second page. It, too, was a photograph, this time of the man whose face could be seen in the previous picture. He was walking down the street towards the source of the photographs. The last three pieces of paper were what looked like files on the three men, complete with small headshots clipped to them. I read the names. Two were in quotes, the last was not, but all sounded American in one way or another. "Who are these men?" I asked Frank, while scrutinizing the face of the first man whose file I had produced.

"They're a Soviet spy ring," Frank replied immediately, his voice low.

I paused before answering, mulling over my options and looking at the headshots. None of the men had any sort of distinguishingly Russian features; one in fact looked Spanish, possibly from Mexico or one of the border states. "Yes, all right," I said after a while, "but who are they?"

"One of them is a registered member of the Communist Party and has been recruiting spies for the Soviets since 1933. That's Thomas Devrille," he said, pulling out one of the files. Thomas Devrille was the man smoking the cigarette, and also one of the names in quotes. "He is an aide to Earl Browder and has quite possibly been placed there by the Soviet government. Either that or Browder himself is recruiting for the Soviets, but that's a scenario we don't even want to imagine. We suspect him to be a Soviet plant, but we have no confirmation. What we do know is that he has been active recruiting intelligence operatives who pass information through him to the Soviets."

"What kind of information?"

"Whatever information he can get his hands on. We know or suspect he's recruited, though we don't know their names, workers or managers from various military-related industries. This is from information of ours obtained on Soviet blueprints and designs. Where they're going leads us to where they've been, if they got it from us. So far we believe he has passed vital information regarding construction of parts for battleships to the Soviet Navy, which makes us believe he may well have someone inside one of our major shipyards or the Navy itself. We also believe he has been supplying information from a source at North American Aviation from information passed to the Soviets regarding our NA-26 and BC-1 combat aircraft."

"All right. The other two?"

"The man with his back to the camera in that nice shot you first looked at is a Soviet spy sent directly from Moscow to make contact with Devrille. He's operating under the name Frederick Wagner while here, and is masquerading as a Czech German here visiting family. Don't let it fool you; the man's a Soviet spy, and a cold hard killer. We have information to believe he sold out one of his superiors to the NKVD just last year in order to gain a promotion; his superior had been in talks with one of our agents to begin providing information to us and now they're both dead thanks to Wagner, whose real name is Kuril Peshonov. We'd love to get our hands on this rat, but I'm not sure if it will be entirely possible. He's good at what he does."

"That only leaves the man with two pictures of him."

"You know all this information is in the files, right?" Frank asked me, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"I remember better if I hear something while I read it."

"So read out loud," Frank growled quietly.

"Come on."

"Fine. The third man is the one we're most inclined to get rid of. He's the assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State, and we found out yesterday that he's been passing classified information to the Soviets for just over a year. Devrille is his handler, Peshonov is here to check up on Devrille. This man has been feeding state secrets through Devrille to the NKVD, but he's very good at covering his tracks. There is no paper trail, and we're damned if we can figure out how he gets the information to Devrille."

"What's his name?"

"Richard Delaney."

"And where do I come in?"

"You kill Richard Delaney."

I recoiled in horror for a moment as I looked at the picture of him walking towards the camera. He had a friendly face and he smiled as he walked. His hands swung in great big arcs in time with his feet, he wore expensive shoes. I realized I was memorizing unimportant facts about him in a vain attempt to relate to him so I could have an excuse not to kill him. "I ... don't think I signed up for that."

"I told you when I got you into this business that there would be some things you would be uncomfortable with at first."

"I thought you meant things like the questioning in Germany! Not killing an American!"

"You fit the profile of a good assassin as well as a good general espionage agent. Why do you think I got you into this? There's thousands of men out there that could do exactly what you did in Germany, only they wouldn't get caught. But I didn't recruit them, because we needed something more. There are people - people like Richard Delaney and Thomas Devrille - who we know are doing things that are hurting this great nation of ours and that are sacrificing our brave agents here and in the field. They are making the world a dangerous place to be a free American. If these men had their way, Stalinist communism would rule in New York State, and you'd have to stand in a line around the block to get your weekly allotment of toilet paper and toothpaste. Do you want that? Because I sure don't."

I still was unconvinced that I was the right man for the job. Evidently he could see it, so he carried on. "Richard Delaney has sold secrets to the Soviets that will cost innocent lives. Whether they're our agents in the field who get caught and tortured to death by the NKVD, or innocent civilians in Latvia, or Poland, or Finland, or wherever the Soviets decide to spread the world revolution to next, using stolen American hardware. Delaney is responsible for the ongoing death of freedom in Russia and around the world, and you would let him walk a free man just because we can't pin him down? Because he's been smarter than us for at least a year?"

"But surely there's someone else that could..." My voice trailed off. I had no good arguments.

"You fit the profile. You will be good at this. You will get over it. Delaney deserves to die, and you need to accept that."

"You've convinced me of that fact, Frank, believe me. Delaney deserves to die... but why me?"

"Because you're perfect for it. Even if you don't know it yet."

I opened my mouth to protest and then shut it again, because to a statement like that there is no good argument. I looked down at my hands, letting the envelope and the five pieces of paper sink to my lap. "Okay," I said. "I'll do it."

"Good."

Frank reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small pistol with a long metal tube attached to the front of it. I recognized it from the training course as a combined silencer and flash suppressor. "This is yours now. Don't lose it." He dropped it into another envelope, sealed the top, and handed it to me. "Once Delaney has been eliminated, we fully expect Devrille to assume he has been compromised and either go into hiding or attempt to flee to Russia. If we can catch him in a neutral country or before he leaves the United States, we will try to take him out. If we can't, we have to let him go. Peshonov will simply disappear, then turn up in Moscow some weeks after. I don't expect us to be able to nail him down."

My mouth was dry and I could feel my hands growing sweaty. "What's it like?" I asked, then swallowed and cleared my throat, realizing my voice had come out weak and high-pitched. "What's it like," I reiterated, "to kill someone?"

Frank didn't try to deny his past to me at this point. "It's like a cold feeling in your stomach. I suggest burning it away with a glass of whiskey. Just one."

I laughed humourlessly. It wasn't funny, but I was stressed already and I felt I needed to laugh.

Frank continued talking. "I'll contact you after Delaney's gone. Details on how to find him are in the file. Now go," he said, with a gesture of his head. I stood up out of his car, shut the door, and stood on the sidewalk, watching him drive away.

*

It was three days later. I had a hat pulled down over my face, the pistol weighing down my jacket pocket. It was a cold night, but I shivered inside for different reasons. My hands stayed in my pockets, where I kept the gun, and I kept rubbing my fingers over the stock to ensure it had not fallen out on the ground, despite how impossible I knew that was. True to my training, I had made sure the serial numbers were scratched off the gun and all its bullets - the gun had come that way straight from Frank, but the bullets had been my personal touch. I was in Washington, a city I had not visited for several years, and I stood on a street corner, dressed like a typical unemployed worker. My pants were ratty and had holes in the knees, my face was dirty, and I wore a beaten-up old jacket and a short-brimmed hat that shaded the non-existent sun from my eyes. The heaviness of the gun in my front-right pocket was something I didn't think I'd ever get used to.

It was night, and I was pretending to smoke a cigarette. I still had not taken up the habit by that point, but I felt it would add to the effect. The burning embers of the cigarette end and the thin column of smoke rising to the heavens made the night seem all the more dark around it, casting shadows that gave the whole setting an eerie feel. I shivered despite feeling quite warm as I saw a man dressed in a pale brown overcoat walking towards me down the street. There was no one else in sight. Delaney had worked late and was now out for an evening walk; returning home from it, in the dark, he seemed quite happy. I could hear a small tune coming from his whistling lips, and he seemed to have a jaunt in his step as he walked down the sidewalk. I had been right - he swung his hands in abnormally large arcs when he walked.

I took a quick look up and down the street as he got nearer, then looked intently at his face for but a moment. It was definitely him; there was no danger of my shooting a stranger, one who was not passing information to the NKVD, in the dark of night. I glanced behind me down the alley that formed my escape route and hiding place in plain site. There was no one, not even a rustling of the wind or a stray dog. I turned to find Delaney almost upon me, moving past absentmindedly.

Moving almost on autopilot, I grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt with my left hand and pulled him suddenly into the alley, where in one smooth motion I slammed him up against the wall, produced my pistol, and shot him in the forehead. He never even had time to shout a cry of alarm. Stowing the gun back in my pocket, I ducked down to grab the expended cartridge and shoved it into that pocket as well. Still hanging onto the dead man's lapels and suddenly feeling the weight of a full-grown man straining my arm, I grabbed him under his left armpit with my right arm and shoulder, trying to avoid the gruesome spectacle that was his face, and I drag-carried him ten feet to the alley's lone occupant, a large metal trash container, already open from my preparation five minutes earlier. I dragged his body up and over the lip and threw it in unceremoniously, dumping back in on top of him much of the garbage I had pulled out in the first place. It hid his body fairly well, and I was certain no one would find him until some time later.

I briskly walked away, only looking back over my shoulder once. I threw out my leather gloves, which by now looked and smelled of blood, sweat, cigarettes, and garbage, in a public bin ten blocks away, before I made my way towards the train station to get back to my hotel and the train back to New York in the early morning.

It was after I had disposed of my gloves that it hit me. Frank was half right. It was like a cold punch in the gut, knowing that I had just ended a man's life. Regardless of his status as a spy, I suddenly felt the urge to curl up in a ball and cry, which I fought off easily. It felt so very wrong, and yet at the same time I seemed to have no regrets for what I had done. Yes, I had killed a man. Had he deserved it? Who was I to judge? In the end, as I continued walking towards my hotel, I dismissed all these questions. That night, I slept without a single problem, and had no nightmares about what I had done.

Looking back on this from a distance, perhaps Frank was exactly right when he said that I both fit the profile and was perfect for it. I just didn't know it. Yet.

[Dinglehoff]

Assassinating traitors! I love it!
This is good, keep it up.

[Kordo]

It seems our main character is a much tougher man then even he thought.

[Spacehusky]

Novel quality writing! Keep up the good work.

[Koegh]

Wow, I'm really liking the detail you're putting into your stories. Things like mentioning how he stops to pick up his cartridge afterwards. Very cool.

Nice touch mentioning the aircraft by their manufacturing designations.

[Rodrico Stak]

Very nice! 10 of 10 on that update!

[rcduggan]

excellent quality writing..

[Phoenix Dace]

Dinglehoff: Thanks! There'll be more of that.

Kordo: I have plans for him ... development-wise as well as story-wise.

Spacehusky: Thanks indeed!

Koegh: Thanks on both accounts! If there's one thing I am, it's thorough. And stubborn.

Rodrico Stak: Thanks mate! High praise indeed!

rcduggan: Thank you!


I'm most of the way through writing Chapter 6, which means in a moment Chapter 3 will be up, following in-browser editing.

[EmprorCoopinius]

I love it, what an introduction to the game for our young intelligence operative.

[Phoenix Dace]

Chapter Three: New York and Helsinki; Chasing Down a Rat

I awoke with a start, my head snapping around to the right in a moment of brief panic. Something twinged in the side of my neck and I grimaced in pain. There was no one there. Looking around, I saw that I was still on the train, and remembering the events of the previous night and my arrival on the train that morning I lay back against the back of my seat contentedly. It was no longer early morning, but the train was virtually empty. It was a Sunday morning, and few people had to travel from Washington to New York on a train leaving at six o'clock. Every now and then the train would pull to a stop and a few people would get on while a few people got off. My compartment was empty and had remained so since I got in it. Every now and then someone stuck their head in the door, saw a half-asleep man in a business suit with a briefcase tucked under his seat, and decided to leave again and find another compartment.

I had only had about four hours at the hotel, which I supposed explained my tiredness and my falling asleep. It made me a little nervous, for I had no idea who might or might not be on the train now. There could have been a Soviet agent, a friend of Richard Delaney's, who was hunting me. He could have found me and killed me in my sleep, and I would have simply never woken up. I shook my head to clear both these thoughts and my sleepiness, and resolved not to sleep for the rest of the train ride, turning my head to watch out the window at the scenery whipping past me as we sped up after the stop that had been responsible for waking me up. I heard the compartment door open and saw in the reflection of the window an older man in a gray suit take an approving look at me, walk in, and sit down on the other side of the compartment, next to the hallway and the door. He took out a newspaper he had tucked under his arm, unfolded it, and started reading. As soon as the paper hid his eyes from mine, I turned my head and casually scanned the headlines. There was nothing about a murder in Washington. I knew there wouldn't be. I turned my head to watch out the window again.

My train got in near eleven o'clock, having covered over 200 miles in just over five hours, and I stepped off the train with my briefcase in hand. Inside it was my change of clothes, those I had killed Delaney in, and my pistol. I had not shaved since the day before, and a thin layer of stubble was starting to cover the lower part of my face. I did not look remotely presentable, and do not think I would have liked to meet a woman or anyone respectable at that point. I took my bearings for a moment and headed out to catch a taxi back to my apartment. Once stepping outside the train, I took stock of my surroundings and was somewhat surprised to see Frank's car parked on the side of the street, him staring right at me from under my bowler hat. I walked towards him, but walked to the front of his car and looked around on the street for a taxi. He crossed in front of his car, hissed "Get in," as he passed me, and got into the driver's side door. Breathing a small sigh and taking note of my heart thumping madly in my chest, I did as he instructed, climbing in the passenger's side and shutting the door. He started the ignition and drove away through the thin midday Sunday New York traffic.

"What's this?" I asked. "I don't see you for three months and then I see you twice in a week?"

"We have a problem."

"Well?"

"It appears Thomas Devrille has caught word of Delaney's death sooner than we expected. We thought we could eliminate him before he discovered Delaney's death, but it appears he might have been expecting to meet up with Delaney last night, after you took out Delaney. He either found out Delaney's dead, maybe by finding his body, or he assumed the worst and took off. We last caught sight of him at the D.C. airdrome where he caught a ride on the Graf Zeppelin to Hamburg. We suspect he's going to try and enter the USSR through a third-party nation from Germany to Russia, since thanks to our friend Hitler emigration to Communist Russia is frowned upon in Germany. We've dispatched two agents from northern and central Germany to the Hamburg airdrome. They'll tail him and see where he ends up."

"Where do I come in?"

"Have I stressed to you the information this man possesses?"

"Not really, no."

"I've told you we know or suspect him of handling agents that work in our naval shipbuilding and airplane manufacturing industries, and possible branches of the government or military besides Delaney. While Delaney may have been the most dangerous of his agents, that doesn't mean the others are any better. Devrille was paranoid about being captured, by us, and always had an escape route planned."

"I know, I read that in his file," I interrupted.

"Shut up, a lot of this isn't in the file since we didn't expect to be sending you after him, or at least not so soon. Devrille was not only paranoid about us, but also about elimination by his Soviet masters. So, he kept the identity of as many of his agents as he could a secret, as far as we can tell from all his superiors, in order to make himself appear not only more important but also in order to make himself indispensable to the operation of this spy ring in the United States. Without him, no one could handle his agents, and so the Soviets needed him. But if he's taking refuge in Russia, he will reveal all their identities, whether he wants to or not, and the Soviets will most likely appoint several handlers to this spy ring, meaning it will keep operating as if Devrille hadn't even left. Not only that, but because the NKVD is smart, they'll send more than one handler, so even if we find one out and eliminate him, it will only dent their progress, and they will know the identity of all these spies. In other words, if we manage to eliminate Devrille before he reaches Russia, we may well have shut down this spy ring, unless of course Peshonov learned some of their identities."

"What if the individual spies try to seek out Soviet agents?"

"If they do, they're stupid and might get themselves shot, either by us or by them. If they do, we'll handle that when we can. Devrille is our immediate concern."

"I ask you this a lot, but where do I fit in?"

"Once we find out which country Devrille is in, it will probably take a little while for him to organize transport into Russia, and we're going to do our best to slow him down along the way. You'll fly in on a mail plane and eliminate him, then come home by civilian airship. Understand?"

"Got it." I didn't really understand how they expected to slow down his transport through the neutral nation, but I figured it was not my job to worry about things like that. It was my job to go where they told me and do what they said.

Frank pulled to a stop three blocks from my apartment. "I'll contact you very soon. Go for a walk at five o'clock this evening."

I got out and he pulled away.

*

I next saw him that evening. His car pulled up as I reached the corner of the block, and without a word I opened the door and got in. "Well?" I said.

He thrust a piece of paper and a small book at me immediately. The piece of paper was an order of transit on a mail plane leaving at six o'clock thirty for Helsinki. The book was a small guide to Finnish. "Listen up," Frank said, turning the corner and then pulling into an alley behind my building. "I'm not going to repeat myself because we're short on time, and these instructions aren't written down."

I nodded quickly and he carried on. "Devrille is in Helsinki, and he's staying the night there in a cheap hotel. Evidently the Soviets don't yet know of his presence there, or undoubtedly he would have an NKVD escort to assure his arrival in Moscow unharmed. Peshonov has disappeared, and we think there was no correspondence between him and Devrille on the way out of the country or Devrille would be in capable hands right now. Your plane leaves soon and you're going to meet one of our agents who followed him from Hamburg in order to find his exact location. You will meet him in the airport bar. He will be wearing a green and purple striped scarf over a black overcoat. You say 'what are you doing in Helsinki', he responds 'I'm studying the local wildlife for the National Geographic Society'. Then he will give you your instructions and you will go about them."

I nodded again and he jerked his head at my door. "Get out and go."

I did as he said, hurrying up to my apartment and packing a small leather briefcase. I chose warm clothes, knowing that even in summer Helsinki would be cold. I threw my pistol, complete with silencer, in with the clothes and piled them around and on top of it so it would not be immediately visible, before closing up the briefcase and rushing out the door. I caught a taxi to the mail plane, which took off on time, bound for Oslo, Stockholm, and finally Helsinki. It was possibly the longest airplane ride of my life. The two stops were smooth, but I was tense as the sacks full of mail were loaded and unloaded at each one, and it took time to refuel. It finally pulled into Helsinki at noon local time, or five o'clock New York time. I cursed the late arrival time as I ran my way down the mail plane's ramp, knowing full well that the plane's late arrival could have cost us a chance to eliminate Devrille, and thus could have prolonged the hunt for this Soviet spy ring for years. As an unlisted passenger on a mail plane, I was exempt from customs, and after making my way through the lower areas of the terminal I found my way to the airport bar. It was warm inside, and a thin layer of cigarette smoke filled the room around head height, lazily drifting up to the ceiling. Sitting in the corner was a man in a black overcoat, chain-smoking. He had a hideous green and purple striped scarf wrapped around his neck, and looked to be sweating profusely. He was slightly overweight and had a Germanic complexion and nose. I made my way over.

"What are you doing in Helsinki?" I asked him nonchalantly from above.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he quickly burst out the response. "I'm studying the local wildlife for the National Geographic Society." Then he hurriedly unwrapped the scarf and took off the overcoat. "You have no idea how hot it is in here wearing those," he said quietly in German-accented English, loosening his collar.

"I'm here for Devrille," I whispered back. "Where is he?"

"He does not leave his hotel during the day and is exceedingly paranoid for his life. A border crossing on foot would be insane this far north and the Finns are very hostile to the Russians. He is catching a French goods ship which has stopped to refuel. He will be on it in the morning and it will take him to Leningrad where he will be safe."

"So take me to him now," I said, reaching down to the reassuring feeling of my briefcase and the pistol inside.

He reached out with a hand in alarm. "No! The hotel is cheap so it is busy during the day. Devrille eats only in the hotel restaurant and stays in his room all the rest of the time. The hotel is too busy to take him out in daylight. We must do it tonight."

I sighed. I wanted to get it over with. "All right. What's the plan?"

"You Americans. Always wanting to get on with things." I shot him a glare. Evidently he believed I was a much more experienced assassin than I was, for he swallowed and got to the point.

*

It was after midnight and I was about to do the most acting I had done since Cologne. I had splashed cheap Russian vodka on my cheeks and swilled it around in my mouth for several minutes, giving myself the appearance of drunkenness. Thanks to the German spy, whose name I had discovered was Franz, I had a set of Russian clothes including a thick but not very warm jacket that was perfect for hiding my pistol inside. I also had a wad of Finish and Russian currency, mixed together, and my target's room number. Franz had helped me learn some rudimentary Finnish, but if all else failed I would assume Russian, a language I was fluent at, and shout loudly as if drunk.

I shoved the door open and stumbled into the lobby of the hotel. It was dim inside. A door off to the side was marked for the in-house restaurant, which looked dingy and unhygienic. The room reeked of cigarettes, and the furniture was old and ratty. Cigarette smoke was probably ingrained into every piece of fabric and stationary surface in the room, including the cheap carpet and even cheaper wallpaper. I staggered my way over to the front desk and hammered on it. A man who had evidently been sleeping on the floor sat straight up and then stood uneasily. He was thin, reedy, balding, and had a thin, poorly-grown moustache that made him look seedy. I half-wanted to advise him to shave it off so he would double the establishment's image, but decided not to. In slurred Finnish, I stumbled my way through a poorly-worded sentence, putting a thick Russian accent on, about getting a room. He responded quickly and dismissively. It was, after all, near one o'clock, and he had evidently been getting some sleep himself. I stumbled through another sentence which was really just the first one again only with a more urgent tone of voice, and produced the wad of bills. His eyes lit up as I faked half-closing my eyes out of tiredness and a drunken stupour, and started counting off bills. I counted in Finnish, skipping several numbers I couldn't remember, and substituting Russian numbers for others. Eventually he stopped me, far after what was reasonable for a hotel room of any quality, let alone in this place, and produced a room key. I thanked him in my slurred voice, pocketed the rest of the wad, and stumbled to the stairs.

On the way up I made a show of stamping my feet and even faked a trip and fall once, but stopped after I was sure he could no longer hear me, and started hurrying up quickly and silently to the fourth floor, where Devrille was staying. I made my way to his room, at the very end of the hall, and pounded on it with my fist. I could hear sudden, scurried movement inside, and I began shouting in drunken, slurred Russian for someone named Piotr to let me in, that I had had enough drinks and I needed to sleep.

"There's no Piotr here," came a very hesitant response.

"Piotr, stop playing a trick on me and let me in," I shouted back. "I really need to piss."

"I said there was no Piotr here and I meant it," Devrille shouted back. "Fuck off."

"Fine then you asshole. I'll just piss on the door Piotr, you fucking deserve it." There was a pause and I continued, louder than before. "You fucking bastard son of a goat, let me in. You know I don't have a key and you locked the fucking door." On the last sentence I rattled his doorknob for emphasis. Still there was no answer. Evidently he was hoping I would go away. So I carried on. "What, have you got a whore in there and you won't share, Piotr? Let me fucking in or I'll wake up the whole building and blame it on you."

That got his attention. I heard thumping and hurried movement towards the door. "That's right, Piotr," I shouted, pulling out my pistol and raising it to head height, pointed at the crack of the door. "They all come around eventually."

The door swung open and I caught a quick glimpse of Thomas Devrille with no shirt on and his left hand hidden behind the door, his right on the doorknob. My pistol swung immediately and I fired two shots into his head. The second was superfluous, as the first dropped him like a stone with barely a sound more than a small 'pfft'. He never even saw it coming. As he collapsed, I caught sight of a small revolver in his left hand. He had either been worried that I was exactly who I was, or had been ready to shoot the drunken Russian to get him to shut up.

I stood blankly for a moment, making sure he would not move, then crouched and picked up the two expended cartridges. Straightening up, I stepped quickly into his room over his body, shutting the door quietly behind me, and I checked all rooms of the apartment for anyone else. There was no one. Returning to the body on the floor, I picked him up partially underneath his armpits with my gloved hands, one still holding the pistol, and dragged him to his bed. The covers were disturbed and his open suitcase lay at the foot of the bed, his clothing strewn around it, probably in his mad rush for the pistol when I first pounded on the door. I dragged him into the bed, leaving a trail of blood on the sheets as I did so, and then I pulled the covers high up over his body, throwing one of his shirts over his bloody head and doing up a couple of the buttons haphazardly. If I had not known better, I might have thought he had passed out in his bed trying to remove his shirt. I took his room key from his pants pocket, put my pistol away, checked the hallway both ways, and shut the door behind me, locking it. Then I stumbled my way downstairs, found the 'key return' box, and shoved both it and the key to my supposed room in it. I returned to the front desk angrily.

I didn't know the Finnish for my angry rant, so I slipped seamlessly into Russian and started shouting about the disgusting state of the room and how I had expected better from a Finnish establishment. The same weed of a man at the desk seemed taken aback and confused, probably because he didn't speak a word of Russian, and after about a minute of my angry tirade I stormed out of the hotel, throwing my hands in the air in anger.

Once outside the hotel, I kept up the drunk facade for as long as the hotel manager could see or hear me, then slipped into a dark alley and legged it back to my Finnish hotel room, where Franz was waiting to relieve me of my Russian clothes. My airship back to New York was via Berlin, and left the day after next. My remaining time in Helsinki was spent looking at various landmarks like a tourist, happy to have completed my mission and shut down a Soviet spy ring. This time I felt no remorse at all, and the fact that I felt no remorse raised more concern for me than the fact that I had killed a man. I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me.

Thomas Devrille would be found days later. The hotel employees assumed he had left without them seeing upon the return of his room key, and it was not until they tried to issue his room to someone else - without cleaning it - a week later that his body was discovered. It probably raised quite a shock in Helsinki and in Moscow once news reached NKVD headquarters. Honestly, I not only could not care less, I never even knew the extent of the drama and mystery surrounding his death. By that point I was back in New York, and back to my regular routine of not hearing from Frank and getting on with my day-to-day life.

[EmprorCoopinius]

Excellent update, really starting to like our young protagonist.

[Phoenix Dace]

EmprorCoopinius ... twice: Thanks! I'm really enjoying writing this, and I'm enjoying this part with the character as is. I have to keep reminding myself not to rush, that there will be years and years of intelligence work and I need to pace myself.

The Invisible Poster: Thanks for your high praise! Yes, that subtext was certainly intentional! Great job picking up on it!



I might get Chapter 7 written up tonight, which means Chapter 4 might go up tonight or tomorrow.