The Unlikely Spy(151)
"We have a problem," Neumann said. He gestured at the covered body of Martin Colville. "I found his daughter's bicycle. We have to assume she's here somewhere and knows what happened. We also have to assume she'll try to get help."
"Then go find her," Catherine said.
Neumann nodded. "Take Mary in the house. Tie her up. Gag her. I have an idea where Jenny might be going."
Neumann went outside and hurried through the rain to the van. He started the motor, reversed down the drive, and headed toward the beach.
Catherine finished tying Mary to a wooden chair in the kitchen. She tore a tea cloth in two and wadded one half into a ball. She stuffed it into Mary's mouth, then tied the other half around her face in a tight gag. If she had her way Catherine would kill her now; she did not like leaving a trail for the police to follow. But Neumann obviously felt some attachment to the woman. Besides, it would probably be many hours before anyone found her, perhaps longer. The cottage was isolated, nearly a mile from the village; it might be a day or two before anyone noticed that Sean, Mary, Colville, and the girl were missing. Still, every survival instinct told her it was best to kill her and be done with it. Neumann would never know. She would lie to him, tell him Mary was unharmed, and he would never find out.
Catherine checked the knots one last time. Then she removed her Mauser from her coat pocket. She took hold of it, wrapped her index finger around the trigger, and touched the barrel to Mary's temple. Mary kept very still and stared defiantly at Catherine.
"Remember, Jenny is coming with us," Catherine said. "If you tell the police, we'll know. And then we'll kill her. Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Mary?"
Mary nodded once. Catherine took hold of the Mauser by the barrel, raised it into the air, and brought it down on the top of Mary's head. She slumped forward, unconscious, blood trickling through her hair toward her eyes. Catherine stood in front of the dying embers of the fire, waiting for Neumann and the girl, waiting to go home.
54
LONDON
At that moment, a taxi braked to a halt in a driving rain outside a stubby, ivy-covered blockhouse beneath Admiralty Arch. The door opened and a small, rather ugly man emerged, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He did not bother with an umbrella. It was only a few feet to the doorway, where a Royal Marine guard stood watch. The guard saluted smartly, which the ugly man did not bother returning, for it would have meant switching his stick from his right hand to his left, a troublesome task. Besides, five years after being commissioned as an officer in the Royal Navy, Arthur Braithwaite still was uncomfortable with the customs and traditions of military life.
Officially, Braithwaite was not on duty for another hour. But, as was his daily habit, he arrived at the Citadel one hour early to give himself more time to prepare. Braithwaite, crippled in one leg since childhood, knew that to succeed he always had to be better prepared than those around him. It was a commitment that had paid dividends.
The Submarine Tracking Room--down a warren of narrow, winding staircases--was not easily reached by a man with a badly deformed leg. He crossed the Main Trade Plot and entered the Tracking Room through a guarded door.
The energy and excitement of the place took hold of him immediately, just as it did every night. The windowless walls were the color of clotted cream and covered with maps, charts, and photographs of U-boats and their crews. Several dozen officers and typists worked at tables around the edges of the room. In the center stood the main North Atlantic plotting table, where colored pins depicted the location of every warship, freighter, and submarine from the Baltic Sea to Cape Cod.
A large photograph of Admiral Karl Donitz, commander of the Kriegsmarine, glowered down from one wall. Braithwaite, as he did every morning, winked and said, "Good morning, Herr Admiral." Then he pushed back the door of his glass cubicle, removed his coat, and sat down at his desk.
He reached for the stack of decodes that awaited him each morning, thinking, A far cry from 1939, old son.
Back in 1939 he had degrees in law and psychology from Cambridge and Yale and was looking for something to do with them. When war broke out he tried to put his fluent German to good use by volunteering to interrogate German POWs. So impressed were his superiors they recommended a transfer to the Citadel, where he was assigned to the Submarine Tracking Room as a civilian volunteer at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. Braithwaite's intellect and drive quickly set him apart. He threw himself into his work, volunteered for extra duty, and read every book he could find on German naval history and tactics. Equipped with near-perfect recall, he memorized the biographies of every Kapitanleutnant of the Ubootwaffe. Within months he developed a remarkable ability to forecast U-boat movements. None of this went unnoticed. He was given the rank of temporary commander and placed in charge of submarine tracking, a stunning achievement for someone who had not passed through the Dartmouth Naval College.
His aide rapped on the glass door, waited for Braithwaite's nod, and let himself inside. "Good morning, sir," he said, setting down a tray with a pot of tea and biscuits.
"Morning, Patrick."
"The weather kept things fairly quiet last night, sir. No U-boat surface sightings anywhere. The storm's moved off the western approaches. The east's bearing the brunt of it now, from Yorkshire to Suffolk."