Chapter 338
In the Germany of the year nineteen-hundred-forty-three bells ringing at four in the morning usually meant trouble and when the agent named only Broadsword in the most secret files at Century House was woken by insistent ringing at the front door of the old farmhouse near the edge of wide, expansive cabbage fields that he lived in with his daughter and only child he hobbled to the front door on his one foot and feeling trepidation.
The bell rang again and with even more force now. He stood in front of the door and tried to control his breathing. The last time he had been activated had been three years ago and all he did these days was bring in the occasional report on morale and Bomb Damage on the Daimler Benz works and other industrial facilities in the area from his trips into town and send them to the British once a month on a coded frequency.
His daughter knew nothing about this, in fact her work at the factory assembling aeroplane engines had once been a convenient excuse when he had been picked up near the recently bombed factory.
He opened the door and his heart stopped. Outside stood two men in the very much unofficial but still very much recognized uniform of the Gestapo. Brown trenchcoats, black hats and stern expressions.
The older one showed the feared metal ID.
But something was on. For one he wasn't instantly arrested, they didn't seem to have a car nearby and one of them was favouring his left arm. But secondly, and most importantly, what the older man said.
He hadn't heard the activation code-phrase since 1940, nor did he expect it from this sort of men, along with all the correct signs and countersigns.
Obviously it was a trap.
But maybe it wasn't. Because even as they stepped through the door blood began to seep through the hands of the younger man and it was clear that he was in pain, so for the moment he as an old Army Doctor who had treated innumerable bullet wounds in Italy during the last war, having served in a certain Officer's command there, went back to what he had been taught many years ago and motioned for them to sit down.
“Here, take this.” the younger man said through clenched teeth and handed Broadsword his weapon, grip first.
It was a model unknown to him, but on the slide he could clearly see the crown insignia and other inscriptions from Royal Ordnance Factory Maltby.
Through his pain Felix merely grinned and said: “I am no more German than you are an Arab.”
Switching back from English to German he began to ask a few questions while Ian went back outside to retrieve their bags from the car.
Inside of the house Broadsword, known as Karl-Heinz Fundel inspected the wound.
“That's not from a bullet!” he exclaimed. Felix grimaced and then looked at Fundel.
“You sound almost disappointed.”
“Well, your arm has been opened almost from your shoulder to your elbow, and by the looks of it this isn't your first wound.”
“We....” Felix hesitated. As much as the man radiated instant likeability, he was still a German and thus the enemy, even if he was working. With his unwounded hand he fingered Ian's PPK which he had been given as a backup piece. No sense in getting overly trusting.
“It was an accident, a rather stupid and embarrassing one.” That much was true. It was bad enough that Ian was likely to be laughing for days once they got out of Germany. Someone cutting one's own arm open on an admittedly bullet damaged boot lid wasn't something that was supposed to happen to Officers that had served their Queen and Country all over the globe in all manner of life-threatening situations throughout the war.
“You should get some stitches. When I was with the Field Marshal in Italy this was a home wound.”
Felix suppressed a yelp of pain as Fundel disinfected the wound.
“Easy there...this sort of thing is hard to get these days.”
Ian returned and came straight to the point.
“What we need is your hospitality for two or three days. I know you have a daughter and because of this my associate and me have prepared a cover story for that purpose. We will not go outside, nor will we take anything without compensation.”
“In what?” Fundel asked with an unhealthy dose of sarcasm, “Pound Sterling?”
“Ration cards. And they are perfectly genuine.” Ian said, “Not that you would have had any choice anyway.”
'And what do I tell my daughter?' he thought and simply stared at his two 'guests'.
“Frankly, I don't care.” Ian said, having correctly guessed what the other was thinking about. “But for the moment let's say that we met in Berlin back in 1936 during the Olympics and that I ran into you and you invited me.”
Fundel was feeling odd. The choice of words and the voice came back to him.
“You ran me before my wife died.”
Ian stared at him and then everything clicked. Back then this contact had been run under a different codename and Ian had only spent a year and a half in Berlin before his career had taken such a turn but aside from Hans Oster this had been his most valuable source. They had never met face to face nor had Ian known that this was his new code name, the files on the old source were classified under a different codeword.[1]
“Only for eight months.”
They exchanged no more words. In Berlin Fundel had been working in an Office of the War Ministry that had done things that in his perception went against both his basic human decency and his Hippocratic oath.
“I won't ask you what brings you here. I strongly suspect that it will end up in the papers in some form sooner or later.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I have my reasons.”
Ian agreed, but said instead that it wouldn't do for an asset to know too much. After all, not even Felix knew everything about their mission, both what the plan had been and what it was now. He dearly hoped the both of them would forgive him one day. Felix most certainly would, they had through too much while working together and Felix was the most consummate professional he knew. Besides, he would would have so much fun that Ian was worried about that part even more.
But there was no point in worrying about that now. The old plan would have to be abandoned, the Germans were sure to increase security at all their secure sites, even a relatively low priority one like the target.
Well, the Germans saw it as low priority. No.10, the Palace, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and MI6 didn't, thus this highly risky endeavour. One could have just bombed the living daylights out of it and the surrounding area but Ian figured the reasoning there was that it would most certainly tell the Germans that the British both know what was going on there and were worried. That might give them the impetuous to push further and faster and that seemed to have kept Winston awake at night.
He had little more than the location and Canaris' old data on what had been going on there a year ago. By now the facility would likely be empty but at the very least looking at it might give the powers that be a better idea what the Germans were all about there and...
Ian was torn from sleep four hours later when the doorbell rang again. He looked up and Felix, with his arm in a sling, had already changed into civilian clothes and held his favourite 9mm in his undamaged hand.
Fundel came in through the door. “It is my daughter, so please, put the guns away.”
Said daughter turned out to be a woman of about the same age as Felix and about 5'50'' tall. A face, whilst not classically beautiful was expressive thanks to two piercing green eyes, all of it framed by flaming red hair that would have been about shoulder length had it not been crunched up under headscarf, a remnant of a shift at the factory.
“Father, who are these people?”
+-+-+-+-
Comments, questions, rotten Tomatoes?
Reinstalled Mass Effect 1 on Win7, as I plan to do another run over the holidays to ensure that my saves are ME3 compatible. Because of this it is highly likely that the next update will chronicle the adventures of Battlegroup Able-Two-Seven.
Also, I hope no one minds that I am starting to sow in references to localities. We will see this area again and even visit my hometown in great detail. Up next: When Ideologies clash – An Anglo-American meet on strategy.
[1] Let's say when Ian exposed the Cambridge Five by accident before the war MI5 and MI6 developed intense security paranoia, especially when the internal purge revealed a whole lot of other leaks. Some turned themselves in out of disappointment with the Soviets, some were caught in the net when they tried to transfer their loyalties to the Americans and some were caught after some old-fashioned police work.