Espionage Read online

  Cover image Grunge Gangster © Duncan Walker, iStockphotography.com

  Cover design copyright © 2012 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  American Fork, Utah

  Copyright © 2012 by A. L. Sowards

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect

  the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: March 2012

  ISBN-13: 978-1-62108-141-8

  For Jay & LaRee,

  loving grandparents and members of America’s greatest generation

  Acknowledgments

  A big thanks goes to Melanie, VaLynn, Teresa, Laurie, and Josh for their helpful reviews of my manuscript. This book is better because of your suggestions. Thank you, Bradley, for your insight about Nazi-era German words. Thank you, Grandpa George, for sharing stories about growing up on a farm during the Great Depression.

  I would also like to thank the many teachers who have taught me and encouraged me to love reading, writing, and learning new things. If you remember me as a student, I guarantee I remember you as a teacher. Special mention should go to Mr. Frederick for bringing Fortitude South to my attention for the first time.

  I will always be grateful to the team at Covenant for taking a gamble on my work. Thank you to all the staff for their professionalism and amazing talent. Thank you, Sam, for your wonderful edit and your unfailing patience.

  A special thanks goes to my husband. Thank you for pointing out plot holes, asking hard questions, and helping me hear and visualize scenes. Thank you for letting me pursue my dream. Love you!

  And to those of you reading this book, thank you for picking it up. I hope you enjoy it.

  Useful Terms

  Abwehr—German military intelligence agency that operated before and during WWII—until early 1944, when Hitler turned all Secret Service activities over to the SS

  Feldwebel—Noncommissioned officer in the German Army; rank similar to a sergeant in the US Army

  G-2—Intelligence staff in the US Army

  Gefreiter—Soldier in the German Army; rank similar to a private in the US Army

  Hauptmann—Officer in the German Army; rank similar to a captain in the US Army

  Hauptsturmführer—Officer in the Gestapo; rank similar to a captain in the US Army

  Milice—French police. Their main task was to find and arrest the French Resistance. They generally cooperated with the Gestapo

  Oberleutnant—Officer in the German Army; rank similar to a first lieutenant in the US Army

  Oberst—Officer in the German Army; rank similar to a colonel in the US Army

  Obersturmführer—Officer in the Gestapo; rank similar to a first lieutenant in the US Army

  OSS—Office of Strategic Services. US intelligence and sabotage agency that operated from June 1942–January 1946

  RAF—Royal Air Force (British)

  SHAEF—Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. Headed by General Eisenhower, this group planned the Normandy invasion

  SOE—Special Operations Executive. British intelligence and sabotage agency that operated from July 1940–January 1946

  Standartenführer—Officer in the Gestapo; rank similar to a colonel in the US Army

  Sturmmann—Stormtrooper in the Gestapo

  Chapter One

  Switchblade

  Early April, 1944

  Peter Eddy felt the cold ocean water soak through his pants before he’d even had a chance to grip the oars. He looked up through the rain to see Captain Ducey laughing at him.

  “You can still say no, Private.”

  Peter slipped the oars into the channel, feeling rainwater trickle down the back of his neck. “And let the Nazis get away with it? No, someone has to do this. I just wish the waves weren’t quite so high tonight.”

  The gray-haired captain gave Peter half a grin. “Bad weather can be an ally. Use it. You have three hours. You should be done in half that time. You say you have never done this sort of thing before?”

  Peter smiled. “Haven’t even shoplifted.” He thought about telling the old sea captain that for three years straight he had led his high school baseball team in stolen bases, but that wasn’t the type of theft Ducey was interested in. Besides, Peter found that most of the English didn’t get baseball.

  “I thought not. Best of luck, then. You Americans are a crazy lot.”

  Peter nodded his farewell and began rowing. It wasn’t long—maybe four strokes—before Ducey and his ship disappeared from sight. I’m not crazy, Peter told himself, not for the first time that night. Inexperience doesn’t mean I can’t burglarize a Nazi garrison.

  Peter had met Captain Ducey just that night. The tough old sailor hadn’t been willing to talk about any of the previous missions Peter suspected the man had been on, but he had taught Peter the basics of navigating his small, stealthy ship. Ducey seemed to know the English Channel as well as Peter knew his family’s farm back in Idaho, even if his half dozen voyages during the Dunkirk evacuation were the only trips he was allowed to tell Peter about.

  Peter’s mission, Operation Switchblade, was his first for the US Office of Strategic Services, and it was extremely important. As he rowed, Peter reviewed the information he had learned during his briefing. Three days ago, a German spy stole one of the code books the American military used to communicate with sources in German-occupied territory. It was always bad news to have a code book stolen, but the military normally reissued code books so frequently that it wasn’t a significant loss. This particular code book, however, was used to communicate with deep-cover agents in Belgium, Denmark, and Northern Germany. Peter was told that some of the agents were so entrenched in the German military hierarchy that issuing a new code book to them was deemed a risk of unacceptable proportions. The code book’s loss was devastating to the Allied cause. If the book stayed in Nazi hands, they could set traps to capture and kill valuable sources of information.

  One little book—that was why Peter was alone in the dark, in the rain, on the English Channel, hoping not to run into sea mines or be shot by a Nazi patrol when he landed on the beach. It was his job to find the book and destroy it before it left the French fortress.

  When Peter’s dinghy hit the beach, he wasn’t sure he was ready. The OSS man, Captain Knight, had assured Peter he was the right man for the job, but Peter still wasn’t convinced. He had grown up just a farm boy. Since then, he’d been one of thousands of new recruits, then a tank driver, then a very junior member of General Eisenhower’s staff. Too late to turn back, he told himself. Now you’re a spy.

  The beach was rocky, but the man-made barriers dwarfed the natural ones. The German Army was expecting a cross-channel invasion sometime this year, and they had turned the beaches of Northern France into a soldier’s nightmare. Peter prayed that he wouldn’t step on a mine as he pulled his boat from the surf, past rolls of razor-sharp barbed wire, and around wooden poles stuck into the sand to slow down any invasion force. Peter could make out the glowing end of a cigarette not too far down the beach, and wondered how many patrolmen he could expect. He smiled as h
e remembered Ducey’s advice. Bad weather can be an ally.

  The night was dark, windy, and wet. The few German patrols he saw seemed more focused on staying dry than on looking for phantom enemies. Who, after all, would try to invade on a night like this? It was the type of weather that made sensible people want to stay indoors. Peter usually thought of himself as sensible, but as he climbed the steep hill off the beach, he was grateful for the tempest. The clouds obscured nearly all light from the moon and stars, and the rain dimmed the sound of his footsteps as he circled the Nazi base. The threat of an air raid kept the fortress dark; the time of night kept it quiet.

  He avoided the compound’s carefully guarded main gates and went instead to a smaller gate, almost hidden. His briefing for the mission had included a map of the complex made by a French refugee who had long ago served on this base. Peter waited while a patrolman walked past and checked the gate then noiselessly slid toward it when the man moved on. The side gate was secured with an old lock—which took approximately thirty seconds to pick. Peter locked it again behind him, sure a patrol would check it again before he was finished and ready to leave.

  Once inside, it was easy to avoid the solitary, huddled soldiers on patrol. Their flashlights gave Peter plenty of warning that they were approaching. Besides, the building he sought was not far from the gate he had forced, and he soon found an unlocked window that allowed him inside. Peter entered the compound swiftly and found the rooms he sought at the end of a long hallway after backtracking only once.

  At that time of night, few people were about; the staff room was deserted when Peter arrived. The walls were covered with maps, silhouettes of friendly and enemy planes for identification, a picture of Hitler, and a medium-sized Nazi flag. Beyond the staff room was the commander’s office, which Peter managed to unlock, even without a key. In the office, the wall decor again included a picture of the Führer, but there were fewer maps. Rummaging through the pile of undone paperwork on the commander’s desk, Peter located a book and verified that it was the one he’d been sent to retrieve. It wasn’t very big—several dozen pages thick, with a soft, well-worn, red leather cover. It had no title, but the first line of text matched what he had memorized earlier that day. Had it really been that easy? Peter wondered. His biggest hardship in retrieving the book had been the weather. He’d been expecting something more difficult.

  He looked at the clock and realized he still had plenty of time until Ducey would consider the rendezvous broken, so he took apart the commander’s phone and snipped a few wires before putting it back together.

  * * *

  Gefreiter Hess was halfway through his patrol. His shiny, recently polished boots struck the floor and squeaked slightly as he walked—the polish a result of strict grooming standards for members of the German Army, the squeak a result of walking through the rainstorm earlier in his patrol.

  Hess yawned. He still wasn’t used to being up all night, and patrol duty from 0000 until 0600 hours was not as exciting as he once imagined war would be. There were no Soviet snipers within a thousand miles, rarely any British pilots sighted, and the last French Resistance fighter to enter this base had been caught and executed more than two years before. No one had breached his base’s security since then.

  Hess continued his patrol through the staff room, pausing there to glance at the maps on the walls, tempted to sit in one of the relatively comfortable chairs and put his feet up on a desk. But the desks were covered with charts, orders from Berlin, and dozens of contingency plans for defending France from the cross-channel invasion everyone thought the Allies would begin that spring. And if the patrol leader were to catch you . . .

  One of the other new guards had made that mistake. The hauptmann in charge of the nightly patrols had walked the halls silently—in socks—and found the guard sleeping on duty. The punishment had been severe. Reluctantly, Hess left the staff room and continued his patrol into the base commander’s office. He walked into the room with a slight smile on his face. Usually the room was locked during his patrol, and he was eager to enter. Even when empty, the office was the center of power on the base. He could almost taste it as he breathed.

  Then something heavy hit the back of his head, and his body fell to the floor with a thud.

  * * *

  Peter put the ammo box down and leaned over to check for vital signs. He had lost his blood lust for German soldiers several campaigns ago and was somewhat relieved to feel a pulse. He gently dragged the unconscious gefreiter around to the other side of the desk, where he would be concealed from the hallway, and continued his work, grateful the dark clothing he wore and his hair—almost black with water from the storm outside—had helped him remain invisible to the patrolman.

  Peter was bent over the desk, putting a waterproof covering on the code book, when he heard the sound of a gun leaving its holster, followed by a German exclamation. In addition to English, Peter spoke near-fluent French because his uncle was married to a French woman. Peter’s German was very limited, but he could guess that what he’d heard, if translated, would have earned the wrath of his mother and the bitter soap she’d kept on hand for washing out Peter’s mouth when he was younger. He slowly turned around and faced the German hauptmann, glancing at the man’s socks and recognizing that as the reason he had heard no warning footsteps.

  “Turn around; hands on wall,” the hauptmann said in rough French.

  Peter gave the pretense of cooperation, turning around at a calm, slow pace. Then he brought his Colt M1911 up suddenly, swung toward the hauptmann as he dropped on one knee, and fired a shot into the German officer’s chest. The hauptmann got a shot off too. It hit Peter’s upper left arm, not hitting anything that would cause lasting damage but hurting nonetheless. The German officer dropped his weapon and fell to the floor. Peter’s wound began to bleed almost immediately, and when he put his hand over the injury, he felt the warm sticky blood seep through his fingers. He didn’t bother to see if the officer was unconscious or dead. He knew gunshots made enough noise to be heard over a rainstorm, and he was suddenly in a hurry to get out of the base commander’s office. Using the same tool he’d cut the phone wires with, Peter cut the bottom of his shirt off and wrapped it tightly around his wound.

  The code book was too big for Peter’s pocket, so he stuck it inside the waistband of his pants. He looked around the room for an escape, knowing he needed to exit quickly. There was a single window in the office, but opposite that window, about twenty-five yards away, were the barracks that housed two German companies. Peter thought it would be wise to avoid the barracks if he could.

  In the room were two immobile German soldiers and two doors. Peter knew the door he had come through led through the staff office to a hall with guards patrolling outside. So he went through the second door. As he closed it behind him, he heard loud voices and heavy footsteps rushing down the hallway, reacting to the gunshots. The door locked from the inside, so Peter locked it and turned around. The room he had just entered was a storage room. Filing cabinets lined one side, there were cleaning supplies in another corner, and shelves with rolled-up papers and unlabeled boxes took up the rest of the room. It had no windows and no doors, save the door Peter had just come through.

  Somewhere on the base, an alarm bell sounded, and the German guards began yelling at him through the door. Despite having been raised in a strict Mormon household where vulgar language was prohibited, Peter nearly swore. He thought he was trapped until he noticed a puddle on the floor, looked up, and saw the grating on the ceiling that was part of the room’s ventilation system. He guessed it was about two feet wide by two and a half feet long. He climbed onto the shelves rather clumsily because of the now-numbing pain in his left arm. As he climbed, German soldiers began banging on the door with something. He couldn’t see what they were using, but based on the sound it made when it collided repeatedly with the door, he guessed it was something solid. The screws holding the grate to the ceiling were old and rusty. He tugg
ed two of them loose immediately, and two more pulls rendered the remaining ones useless as well. Then he yanked out the fan. Peter glanced over his shoulder. The hinges on the door were showing signs of strain.

  The ventilation system’s second, mostly solid grate was hinged to open out onto the roof. Peter jumped to the ground, grabbed a broom from the corner, and used it to knock the second grate open. He climbed back up the shelf, nearly fell off the unsteady furniture, then regained his balance and used both hands to grip one end of the hole in the ceiling and swing his legs into the other end. It wouldn’t have been a problem at all if both of his arms had been fully functional. As it was, his left arm gave out, and he found himself hanging by his legs. By that time, the German soldiers had nearly broken the door down, but all the sit-ups and pull-ups Peter had done during recovery from his last set of war wounds now proved beneficial. He swung his good arm up and managed to slither through the hole just as the door’s hinges gave way.

  The lights surrounding the complex had been turned on, casting alternating shadows. The view from the roof would have been extraordinary, but it was still raining far too heavily to see more than a few yards beyond the base’s fence. Peter hardly noticed the rain, focusing instead on survival. He located the side of the compound nearest the beach and dropped from the roof.

  By this time several dozen guards were roused. Most of them were heading into the front of the building Peter had just left, but some of them were patrolling the fence that surrounded the base. Peter crawled on his stomach the twenty-five yards to the troop housing, glad the rain masked his movements. Although he’d planned to avoid the barracks, the shadows at their base now seemed a safe haven. Out of breath, Peter paused in the darkness, lying on the soggy ground next to the barrack wall, hoping his pulse wasn’t really as loud as it sounded in his ears. Looking back, he could make out dark silhouettes walking along the roof he had crawled from moments before. Getting out of their sight by crawling to the other side of the barracks was fairly easy. He stayed low and stuck to the shadows of the building.