Cover of Darkness

Stripped out of his wetsuit, McElroy hunkered bareheaded in the open door of the van. He was dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, his feet in insulated slippers, wrapped in a wool blanket, drinking black coffee from a dented tin cup. Behind him BRINE rummaged around in their stores, hunting dry socks for the next dive. This smaller vehicle served as their support inventory, bare of communications equipment, the floor chalked off into sections for different instruments and gear. They hadn’t been assigned a security guard.

  The rain had let up briefly, and looking up, McElroy could make out a faint starshine. There was no moon, but he took that for an omen.

  Parked in front of the van was a late-model American Ford sedan, the body and brightwork masked off in flat camouflage drab. The windows and windscreen were non-reflecting glass, and the license plates were lettered in Cyrillic. The car was attached to the Allied Military Mission. The rear suspension of the Ford hiked the differential up a good six inches higher than the front end, which was just the fashion for running heavy contraband goods over bad roads at high speeds, McElroy figured. The driver, a U.S. Army Spec/5, lounged on the hood of the car smoking a Camel; he had what the Englishman pictured as a rangy Appalachian Piedmont cast to him, the look of a family history rich in hot cars and moonshine. McElroy knew he wasn’t far wrong. The high-powered, heavily-sprung Mission vehicles regularly played hare-and-hounds with Soviet military personnel and East German Volkspolizei, traveling under diplomatic cover and taking photographs of restricted installations on the other side of the wire.

  The back seat of the Ford, hung with blackout curtains, doubled as a darkroom. The rear door opened, and the Air Force major, Jacobson, got out, followed by Kim Adrian. The major had a manila enbelope with him. McElroy didn’t see who else was in the back of the car. The enlisted man, ignoring Major Jacobson, flipped his cigarette away and got behind the wheel of the Ford. He drove away.

  Jacobson and Adrian came over to McElroy. BRINE came to stand in the doorway of the van at McElroy’s shoulder, their shadows thrown out sharply on the wet ground like those of a primitive family group huddled in the mouth of a cave.

  “We’ve got photographs of the landing at Gross Dölln,” Major Jacobson said. “Taken together with what you’ve given us from the river, we have a definite identification. We can confirm the downed aircraft is a FIREFLY.”

  The two divers moved out of the doorway, and the other two men stepped up, halfway into the light. “We’re short of time, Jimmy,” Adrian said.

  “I’m short a man,” McElroy said.

  One of the divers on the Maltese team had been injured, not seriously but bleeding badly. BRINE had brought him back to the surface. The other two divers were below and due up.

  “Can we do it?” Kim Adrian asked him, impatiently. “That’s the immediate question.”

  McElroy smiled through his fatigue. “Is that the Royal We?” he inquired.

  Adrian ducked his head. “We need breathing room, Jimmy, a space to fold our tents and steal away,” he said.

  BRINE glanced at his watch. “Two hours until daybreak,” he said.

  “I’m not going to risk the men,” McElroy said to Adrian. “One team, one more dive.”

  Adrian nodded. “It’s your responsibility,” he said. He and Major Jaobson left the trailer.

  McElroy and BRINE looked at each other.

  “A tired man gets careless,” BRINE remarked, “and a careless man makes mistakes.”

  McElroy turned away, flexing his back and shoulders in an effort to shake off his stiffness and jitters. “You don’t strike me as a careless man,” he said.

  “I wasn’t thinking of myself,” BRINE told him.

  “Good,” McElroy said. “I wouldn’t want to push my luck. We’ve had it fairly easy, barring accident.”

  “Knock wood,” the Welshman said.

  The two divers gathered up their clammy wetsuits.