That one had been unpleasant. But it had been by no means the worst.
He shuddered at memories that crept insidiously forward into the light.
What about the young boy?
They are taking the boy and his father, the only two people from this small coastal town to have seen the body on the beach, taking them back to Washington to be properly debriefed. At least, that’s what he’s told them. And, being patriotic Americans, they’re eager to help in any way they can.
It’s just him and Blaine in the car with them. He doesn’t know Blaine well. The man is older than him, has served in the OSS for some time. He had helped in the round-up of Japanese-Americans back in ’41. Blaine looks like a hard sonofabitch, and there are no black marks on his record. He comes across as the kind of guy that doesn’t ask questions, just gets the job done with as little fuss and fanfare as possible. That’s why he was one of the first to be hastily headhunted and recruited by the Department. A safe pair of hands.
They’re driving south along the coast road, looking for somewhere remote enough to pull over and do this thing. Blaine spots a track off the road, leading into woods. It’s perfect. Blaine looks at him, and he nods back. The car pulls off the road and bounces uncomfortably along the rutted track into a tree-shrouded twilight. He turns round to the father and the boy and tells them it’s probably a good point for them to take a toilet break, as they won’t be stopping for some time. Even then, odd and unlikely as that is, they nod, trusting him unquestioningly because he wears a suit and has shown them an ID card with the American eagle embossed in tin across it.
He suggests the father goes first, and nods to Blaine to go with him. The men both leave the car and stumble through knee-high ferns into the woods to seek their own private spots. Only, Blaine isn’t going for a toilet break. He watches them until both men vanish, then smiles reassuringly at the boy.
‘Are we going to see the President?’ the boy asks.
‘He’s a busy man right now. Even though we’ve finished up in Europe, our boys’re still fighting the Japs. There’s a lot still to do.’
‘Yeah,’ says the boy thoughtfully. ‘How do you think that German ended up over here?’
‘I don’t really know. That’s why we’re taking you and your father back to our headquarters so we can puzzle this thing out together. You did the right thing telling the authorities.’
The boy smiles, proud that he’s done his bit.
He knows this is going to be hard.
He thanks God he can delegate the messy business to Blaine. It’s one thing to remotely give the go-ahead for some innocent to be discreetly removed, quite another to have to pull the trigger oneself.
Through the trees, he can see movement. It’s Blaine returning alone. The boy’s father is dead. Now it’s the kid’s turn.
The boy turns to follow his gaze. ‘Where’s my dad?’
He wonders whether there’s any point keeping up the pretence now. The lad may struggle, or try to run if he works out what’s about to happen, but he won’t outrun a bullet.
The boy looks back at him. ‘What’s happened to my dad?’
‘I’m sorry, boy, but we’ve got to do this.’ He gestures to Blaine to grab the lad and pull him out of the car, and finish off this unpleasant job. But Blaine remains fixed to the spot, shaking his head.
The boy is beginning to panic. ‘What have you done with my daddy?’ he begins to whimper.
‘Blaine, get the boy!’ he orders the man.
Blaine shakes his head again. ‘I can’t do it. Not a kid.’
‘What? Just fucking well do it!’
The boy, now sobbing, turns to Blaine, standing outside the car. ‘Please don’t hurt me!’
Blaine, the ‘hard’ man, is crumbling - not so hard after all it seems. ‘I can’t do it, sir. There must be another way.’
‘You know we have to do them both, now get on with it!’
The man grimaces and pulls his silenced handgun out. He raises it uncertainly, lining the gun up on the boy in the car.
‘I’m really sorry, kid,’ he mumbles. ‘You have to get out of the car now.’
The boy opens the rear door and steps outside, his eyes fearfully locked on the pistol. He whispers ‘please’, his hands involuntarily clasped together like he’s praying.
‘Do it, Blaine!’
The man fires a wavering shot that hits the boy in the arm. The boy’s startled face looks down at the growing crimson stain on his sleeve. He looks up from the wound and without a word of warning turns on his heels and runs from the car, up the dirt lane towards the main coast road.
The boy has to be stopped . . . but the useless fool Blaine is not giving chase. He’s staring after the boy, his gun arm isn’t raised to finish the boy off. It’s hanging uselessly by his side.
He climbs out of the car and grabs Blaine’s gun and turns round to take aim. But the boy has stumbled, and lies on the ground shaking, trembling, sobbing. His momentary bid to escape spent.
The dozen or so strides he takes towards the boy cowering on the floor have been replayed time and time again in his mind. The final shot he has managed, over time, to blank out.
He shuddered, the boy had definitely been the worst of them.
There had been seventeen in total. Seventeen civilians whose deaths he’d had to arrange in the months after the end of the war. And then after that, after the civilian liabilities had all been disposed of, there had been another job for him and the Department - ensuring that those men who had attended Truman’s crisis conference had remained silent on the matter, for the rest of their lives.
Being the youngest man who had attended during those two days at the White House had most definitely been a factor in Truman’s decision to entrust him with keeping the whole incident under wraps; he would outlive them all.
For the last sixty years, he alone had overseen the task entrusted to the Department - collating data on those men, powerful men who lived very political and complicated lives; watching closely those who looked wobbly, those whom he had a hunch might just talk.
And, oh yes . . . there had been a few.
Several of the most senior men who had been with Truman on those two days had come dangerously close to looking like they might spill it all as they entered the autumn years of their lives. Of course, that was when they became most worrying: old men, facing their inevitable mortality and wondering if now, after so many years, it might just be safe enough to tell a favourite grandchild or nephew an incredible story from way back.
He smiled with satisfaction as he recalled the discreet and not so veiled warnings he had made to some very powerful and influential men from time to time throughout his long vigil. Men who had recoiled with shock that they should be under surveillance so many decades after the event.
Men who should have known better.
Wallace smiled with pride. Truman had turned to him on that final day, as men great and powerful filed dutifully and silently out of the conference room. Truman had quietly asked him to stay, and no one else.
President Truman took off his glasses and rubbed his tired and red-rimmed eyes. The last forty-eight hours had clearly taken a lot out of him. ‘I’m the new boy, here, Wallace. I don’t know who to trust, who are the sharks. All I know is that amongst all these supposedly wise men, it was your advice that seemed to make the most sense. It was your counsel I took in the end, not theirs.’
‘Thank you, Mr President,’ replied Wallace.
‘I’m going to need someone I can trust, someone with a lot of smarts, someone who can work quickly, think on his feet like you did today, to make sure this whole sorry episode stays buried. Think you’re up to it?’
‘Me, sir?’
‘Yes, lad, you.’
‘I’ve not been in intelligence long, sir . . . just a few months -’
‘Then perhaps you’re untainted. You’re not habitually used to procedures, ways of doing things that might slow you down . . . red tape
that might prevent you from acting quickly, if it was required. Do you understand me?’
‘I’m not sure I do, sir.’
‘This must never, ever become known to the public. And I’d like you to take charge of that. I’ll make sure you have everything you need - money, men, materials, your own little secret agency . . . just make sure this thing never surfaces. Whatever it takes . . . you understand me? Whatever it takes. Whatever you need to do, I don’t care what it is, and I won’t want to know either, you make sure this remains a secret.’
Truman’s eyes remained on Wallace, studying his reaction, looking for uncertainty in the young man’s response. If there was doubt or any indecision in his response, he supposed the young man would not be suitable . . . and he too would be a potential liability to deal with.
‘Whatever it takes, sir?’
Truman nodded. ‘Well? Do you think you’re up to it?’
In the darkness, outside the motel rooms, in response to that question asked over sixty years earlier, Wallace nodded with satisfaction. He had been up to it.
His eyes picked out the headlights of the van as it exited the interstate off the slip road, disappeared momentarily behind some trees and then, seconds later, cruised quietly past the diner and on to the parking lot in front of the motel rooms. The headlights winked off and the van rolled silently forward, the engine switched off, using the last of the vehicle’s momentum. It came to a rest a few yards from where Wallace waited in the shadows.
His men had taken their damned time.
He had called them from the diner’s toilet over two hours ago. He was lucky this man Chris and his friend hadn’t a clue who they had in their care. In fact, after his initial fear of the impromptu ‘rescuing’ had passed, Wallace had begun to find the whole situation rather amusing.
It had been an appalling fuck-up, his men being caught out like that, allowing these two amateurs to best them and escape into the night. And then, to make matters worse, abduct him shortly afterwards, right under their noses. But, despite the fact that shots had been fired, and there were some people who had witnessed what had happened, it had worked itself out all right. Here they were, somewhere remote and quiet, and now it was time to tidy things up once more.
As he had waited for his men to arrive, Wallace had contacted the dive team. The deed was done, the package had been dropped into deeper waters. So, it was finally done, the only real evidence of the event was gone. All that was left now to think about was what these two amateurs might decide to say and do.
Wallace beckoned to the two men sitting inside the van to follow him and approached the motel rooms. Both men gently stepped out of the van, leaving the doors open rather than make a noise closing them. They came to a halt outside cabin five and Wallace raised a hand, an indication that they should wait right there.
It was silent now, except for the occasional whisper of a passing car on the nearby interstate, and the hum of the neon light above the motel cabins. There were no other guests tonight, only Chris Roland’s car in the parking lot . . . and the anonymous-looking black van.
Wallace studied the door in front of him. It had a flat-key lock, little more than a springed latch.
He turned to his men, motionless silhouettes in the dark poised for action, and pointed to the lock. The older of his two men, the grey-haired man who used the name ‘Jimmy’ for this particular contract, approached the lock and quietly produced an adjustable lock-pick, cradling it carefully so that the metal parts didn’t jangle. Deftly he inserted it into the lock and twisted it, feeling the resistance and adjusting the spacing of the teeth until the pick approximated the profile of the lock. It opened with the lightest of clicks. He nodded to Wallace to let him know that it was done and then took a step back.
Inside, Wallace could hear the faint rustling of rhythmic breathing. Chris Roland was in a deep sleep.
All the better, then.
He didn’t want a discussion with the guy, he needed time to think, not talk. If he was going to do it himself once more, he’d rather put a single cap into his unconscious head than endure a startled plea for mercy. Not something he was particularly keen to experience again.
He approached the side of the bed, feeling his way cautiously with one foot in front of the other. A shard of amber light from the arc lamp outside fell across the bed and picked out the English guy’s face.
Wallace smiled as he looked down on Chris sleeping deeply, no doubt dreaming of fame and glory and journalistic prizes. A smile spread across Wallace’s lips, not of compassion, but of satisfaction. The job was nearly done . . . just this last thing.
Truman had asked him all those years ago if he thought he could do the job.
Damned right he could. He had seen it through right up until now. There was only one name left on that list of Those Who Knew, one person left alive who had lived through the events of that day, and that last name was his. When his time was up, and if he was honest with himself, that wasn’t going to be too much longer now, there really would be no one left to tell the story.
It would die right alongside him. He had fulfilled Truman’s brief absolutely to the letter.
There was something about that thought that filled Wallace with an odd feeling of loss. The job needed finishing up with a single bullet into this man’s head, and that of his friend’s, and their bodies disposed of. That would be the end of it all. And then, with the few months he had left, he would need to close down the Department, shred what was left of file n-27, empty the safe that sat in the corner of his now rarely used office of the last of the money and close the door once and for all on that mezzanine floor.
There would be something poetically final about that; finishing off a job well done.
But it was the finality that troubled him. Once he had done away with these two young men, it would just be him once more. The last person . . . the only person to know.
A very lonely responsibility.
Chris stirred and muttered in his sleep and turned over. Wallace raised his gun and lined it up on the back of Chris’s head.
There was something else to bear in mind. Killing him now, after the unfortunately noisy skirmish earlier this evening, might result in some awkward complications he wasn’t sure he could square away with the money he had left. Making these two men vanish wasn’t going to be as easy as it once was. Those gunshots in the dark back in that sleepy little seaside town might attract the interest of some slack-jawed local law enforcement officer. But a murder? That would mean the FBI would get to stick its nose in, and frankly, with whatever time he had left, Wallace didn’t want to be worrying about a knock on his door and a visit from the G-men.
I could let him go.
There was nothing left of the story for Chris Roland. No bomb, no photographs of a bomb, no eyewitnesses, no testimonies, nothing. There was now just the plane and two skeletons dressed in shreds that might possibly be recognised as a Luftwaffe uniform; an intriguing story perhaps, but nothing that would lead anywhere. There was nothing that could be substantiated.
With a shudder of dawning realisation, the old man could see the job was already done. The secret was now safe. He decided that leaving it like this was tidy enough as far as he was concerned. And anyway, there was something about this bumbling British amateur he had grown to like.
He lowered his gun.
Your lucky night.
Wallace reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out, something he had kept close to himself for sixty years, something he had once upon a time prised loose from the stiff grasp of a dead boy called Sean Grady, lying amidst blood-spattered ferns. It jingled ever so slightly as he lifted it carefully out and placed it softly on the bedside table.
You can have that, my young friend.
Wallace felt strangely light, as if the small metal disc and the chain attached to it had been a weighty shackle. It glinted in the amber light streaking in from the lamp outside. Wallace had never really understood why he had taken
it off the dead boy. It was evidence, of course, something that really shouldn’t be found. He should have destroyed it. But instead he had kept it all these years, perhaps as a reminder of how ruthless he had once been, and might need to be again? Perhaps out of a sense of guilt - that boy, the young girl and her teacher in New York, none of them deserved to die . . . but they really had to.
Wallace felt his throat tighten and a momentary welling of a confused, unidentifiable emotion. He struggled to fight it down and put a lid back on it.
This young man can have it, he thought. On its own, the little disc could tell no one anything, but in some odd way, to the old man, it felt like he was passing on the baton, the secret, to someone else to keep close, to cherish.
Wallace eased his way back towards the door and slipped quietly outside. He turned to the motionless dark shapes of his hired men gathered by the doorway.
‘We’re done here,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go.’
Chapter 61
Going Home
The surf rolled across the pebbles and came to a reluctant halt a few inches away from his trainers, before drawing back with a hiss of frustration. Chris looked up at grey clouds rolling across the mid-morning sky. It was going to rain pretty soon. Another rainy day to join the other seven he’d endured out here amidst the coastal wilderness of Rhode Island.
He looked down at the object in his hand, the dog tag with the serial number on it, and the German name: OberLt Kleinmann M. That’s all he had left now.
‘Fuck it.’
That bastard Wallace had stitched him up. He had discovered that fantastic bit of news first thing this morning when he had gone to open his door to step outside and spotted the note pushed through underneath the draught flap.