A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (17 page)

Leni took the knapsack and camera from the seat.  Then she placed the knife in her pocket and headed across the sand.
  Once she reached the area where she was forced to turn around several days before, she ran low to the ground until she reached the crest of the road.

The tomb tower loomed against the weakening sky.  A ditch, bordered by a row of fir trees, ran along and between the high, ancient wall and the tomb.  Leni froze.  Off to the right beyond the wall, a group of brown tents were located, not visible from the road.  She ran to the wall.  The stone was cool to her face as she hugged it where it reached the ditch.  The trench would give her cover to move another hundred yards toward the tents.  Once she reached the end of the ditch, she sat in the sand and removed the camera from the knapsack.  Among the tops of the fir trees the antennas loomed above her.  She took several photographs, then several shots of the ditch and the wall from which she had just followed.  Leni gathered her legs under her and squatted at the edge of the wall.  She would have to make her way across perhaps forty yards of open desert to get close enough to the tents.  She leaned out from around the corner of the fence, and . . . pulled back.  Two men stood outside the second tent smoking cigarettes.  One man was talking, the other laughing occasionally.

She was about to make a run for it toward the larger tent when an officer . . . a British officer . . . came out and headed toward a smaller tent with an antenna protruding out of the canvas top.  Under his left arm were a bundle of papers.  She managed to click several shots before the officer ducked inside.

Deciding she had enough photographs for Berlin, she retreated back down the ditch and then sprinted across the opening until she again reached the crest.  The road was in sight.  Her automobile was like a ghost waiting for her in the dying light. 

Leni knelt in the sand.  She didn’t see any movement.  Trying her best not to be too dramatic, she reflected on the possibilities.  It could only mean one thing.  This English operation had everything to do with getting information to Churchill.  It had to be that.  Why else would the English build this unit . . . here . . . now, if it wasn’t because of his presence at the conference?  But what sort of information?  Military?  Intelligence facts he deemed important enough that it following him half way around the world? 

An inspiration concerning the Tehran children’s camp gave her a way to get the developed film from Hance’s camp darkroom to Berlin.

Placing the camera in the knapsack, she stood and peered across the horizon.

----

Leni was only several hundred yards from the main road, near the rise, when the men spotted her. 

There was a shout as she reached the next small crest and headed down a slope and had almost reached a dry, narrow creek bed that ran south out of the oasis.  Leni turned.  Two of them had their rifles leveled.  The tallest man, with short-cropped hair, stepped forward quickly at the creek bank.  Here, the ground was loose and spongy.  All three wore British army uniforms.

“Didn’t you hear us calling you?” he challenged.

Leni glanced down.  “Sorry.”

“Why are you here?” the smallest man asked.  He wore glasses. 

The third man held a rifle also, remaining ten feet away.  Leni recognized him as the young guard who had intercepted her last evening.  “I’ve seen her before,” he said.  “She was driving around out here two days ago.”

“I was hiking that’s all.”

The tall man moved closer.  ‘You should have picked a better place,
Ma’m.  You’re in trouble now.”

“What’s in the knapsack?”

“My personal camera,” she said.  “It’s a hobby.”

The small man said, “That’s a good one, isn’t it?”

“Do you know who my husband is?”  Leni challenged.

The small man laughed.  “I don’t think that really matters right now.”

“It should.”

The tall man stepped closer.  “Come on, show us your identification.”

Leni rammed her hands into her shorts pockets and felt for the knife, thought ahead of the possibilities, how the odds were against her.  “It’s in my automobile, sergeant.”

“And I suppose that’s your automobile parked on the road with a flat?”

“A flat?  Will you gentlemen help me?”

“Oh, sure,” the small man laughed.  “Just before we take you in and get to the bottom of your curiosity.”

Leni’s heart raced heavily against the inside of her chest.  All three men were much larger.  She would have to use the element of surprise to have any chance.  There would be no way to talk her way out of this with Robert.

“No excuses,” the tall man said firmly.  “Come with us.”

Leni stepped toward the tall man until he was within reach.  The best position possible, Leni reasoned.  Then, she had the knife open in her hand, deep in the pocket.  Her mind clicked like a machine.

Leni lunged for the quiet one first, spun him around, and was behind him before any of the others could react.  The knife cut across his throat in one rapid motion, and with a sudden jerk the neck snapped.  His body dropped, staggering Leni under the instant dead weight.  The man gave a sickening gurgle, and released his grip on the weapon as he slumped to the ground.  Leni grabbed the rifle.

The first shot hit the small man squarely in the chest.  He squeezed off one shot that flew harmlessly over Leni’s head, before he fell to the ground screaming.  Leni sprang toward the tall one, who was trying desperately to unbutton his side holster.  Leni hissed and struck at him with the knife.  But he sidestepped her blow, the knife blade catching him in the cheek, cutting flesh.  Blood splattered over Leni’s face.

Enraged, the man spun, caught Leni in the small of the ribs.  The air exited her lungs.  Defensively, she rolled onto the ground, came up swinging the knife in a wide circle, cutting only air.

The man’s face was a mass of blood.  Leni attacked again before he could gather himself, lunging straight ahead with the knife.  Her head burst, filled suddenly with a sharp, bright light as an elbow caught her in the side of the head.

Staggered momentarily, Leni stiffened against another attack.

Blood flooded from the man’s mouth, a wide, crazy smile exposing his teeth.  He sidestepped again as Leni lunged toward him.  But this time she anticipated his action and caught him squarely in the ribs with the knife.  The man grunted in pain, staggered momentarily, his eyes wide with surprise.  He charged.

Leni drove him to the ground with a forceful elbow to the back.  Then she was on him, straddling him before he could get up.  With both hands on the grip she drove the knife between the ribs, piercing the heart.  Waiting until she was certain the man was dead, Leni rolled off his body, knelt and vomited.  The young guard lay in the mud whimpering like a small child.

“Your officer died bravely,” she told him as she staggered over him, “this is more than I can say for you.”  Leni reached down, grabbed hair, pulling his head back.  Then he cut his throat.

Later the rain came, slowly at first, and then it grew into a sheet of gray, an insistent tapping on the desert floor.  The dead men lay in the middle of the creek bed.  Burying them in the approaching nightfall was not an option.  A sinking feeling swept over her.

Three dead men discovered at the military site changed everything.  The Allies in Tehran would be on full alert now.  She wouldn’t be able to move about undetected.  Leni sat on her haunches, arms locked around her knees, knapsack pulled in close to her.  She was trembling badly.  Bitter bile rose in her throat. 

Then gradually, the desert slowly transformed into dull shadows.  Leni felt her pulse slow as the rain washed the blood from her face.

----

After arriving at the Soviet Headquarters on Syroos Street, Goli entered the back door and was led upstairs to an open, wide office on the second floor.  A ceiling fan stirred warm air swept in from the streets through casement windows.

Shepilov leaned against the desk.  His black hair was wet and combed back as if he had just taken a shower.  Goli could hardly contain her excitement.  How long had she waited for this moment?  “Is he here?”

The Russian picked up a single sheet of Teletype paper from the desk.  “He’s not being very cooperative.”

“He hasn’t told you anything?”

Shepilov shook his head.  “Heuss appeared surprised when instead of interrogating him about the present operation we began questioning him about your husband’s death.  He has admitted that he was assigned to an operation in the mountains only several miles from where your husband was that fateful morning.  I don’t think he saw any harm in telling us that.  Almost relieved you might say.”

“I want to talk to him,” she said.

Shepilov placed the paper on the desk.  He stared at Goli for an extra moment.  Then he righted himself, arms crossed and walked to the door.  “This way.”

----

Goli followed him down a long hall to a set of back stairs leading to a basement.  They came to the end of another hall where a door was and a wooden desk companioned with a single chair where a soldier sat and stared at him.  Shepilov nodded.

The guard unlocked the door and they entered a small, square room.  A lingering medicinal smell caught in the back of Goli’s throat as their steps clicked on the smooth gray floor.  A single light bulb hung down from a cord in the middle of the room, and beneath sat Heuss in a wooden chair.  He was a small-framed man and it surprised Goli when she noticed him wearing a wrinkled gray suit and a blue shirt instead of his German uniform.  He held a cup of coffee in his hands tied together with white rope.

A thick, short man stood against the wall behind him.  Against the other wall were two chairs with a board stretched between them.  

“Are you feeling better, Captain?”  Shepilov asked.

“I could do with another smoke,” Heuss said.

“Give him a cigarette,” Shepilov ordered in Russian. 

He was handed a cigarette.  Shadows danced on the man’s thin face, then an unexpected hint of recognition as Goli stepped beneath the light.  He slowly turned to Shepilov.  “Just thought I’d let you know I don’t speak Russian very well.”

“Not true.  You speak it fluently,” he said.  “So, we’d like information on an operation in the mountains last year.”

The German kneaded his forehead with his thumbs.  ‘I don’t have a very good memory.”

Shepilov snapped his fingers and the large man moved from the wall and sat a valise on the table.  The Russian made a good show out of laying out papers, notebooks, and copies of papers out onto the table.  “Now,” Shepilov said, “. . . we begin again this time with seriousness and urgency, Captain.  We have some work to finish this afternoon and we don’t have much time.”

Shepilov took the tin of French cigarettes from the chair.  He lit another, letting the smoke burn his lungs.   “The operation we desire information on took place outside Isafahan.”

“There were a lot of operations in the mountains,” he said.

“We’re interested in one operation in particular.”  Shepilov waved to Goli.  She came closer.

“Do you remember me?”  She asked sternly.  “You killed my husband that day.” 

“I have no idea of what you’re talking about.”

Displeasure pinched Shepilov’s face.  “Don’t be a burden, captain.  We don’t have time for all that.  Your country’s long, bleeding venture into Iran precedes you.  And, we have worked hard at placing you there at that time and at that place.”  When Heuss started to speak, Shepilov interrupted him with an open hand.  “We are here to learn the truth.  It’s that simple.”

Heuss said, “I’m a soldier.”

The Russian stood and approached, his eyes settled directly on the German.  “I want to know who ordered the assassination of Bozorg Faqiri.”

Heuss dropped the cigarette at his feet.  “Like I told you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Goli jumped at him and slapped him across the face.  She went and stood against the wall, trembling.  “You are a liar, Captain Heuss.  My friend here has assured me you will tell everything to us tonight.”

The room fell silent.

Then Shepilov nodded to the large man.  “His name is Nikolai Dobyrin, Captain Heuss.  And trust me when I tell you that he is blessed with a cold heart and brute strength.  The white scar above his left eye is when he once let down his guard while questioning a Polish agent.  A mistake I assure you he will always remember.  He has taken care of your accommodations for the night.  Or longer if need be.  But I don’t think you’ll last out the night.  Dobyrin is very effective with his tasks.”

Heuss sat up straight.  Goli watched as a shadow of doubt on his face betrayed him.  He knew everything, and she wouldn’t feel sorry for what he was about to suffer. 

----

By seven-thirty that night not even Heuss’s mother would have realized the German’s swollen, tortured face.

Goli stood in the corner of the bare room, the stench of blood, sweat, and human fear overwhelming.  Dobyrin was at the table wiping his face with a towel, his shirtsleeves rolled up exposing powerful forearms.

In the center of the room the soldier’s body drooped awkwardly in a position Dobyrin callously referred to as ‘the cracker’.  Two chairs positioned two feet apart with a bar braced between.  The German hung upside down, the bar running beneath his knees, with his hands bound to his lower legs.  The position placed an extreme burden on the entire body, the head hanging at an odd angle and the back arched in a tense pose.