The Black Gate (3 page)

But the memories, even the painful ones, haunted him. While Connelly had done his job selling the mission to Peter, he hadn’t mentioned one important aspect of the mission: extraction. Even if they could get Peter into Germany, there was no way they would ever get him out. He touched the wedding band that he still wore on his ring finger.
This might be your last and only chance to make things right
, he thought.
Or at least truly say goodbye
.

“Okay, I don’t need to go home, but I do need to make a stop before we head south.”

“But the general said…”

“What’s your name?” Peter cut him off.

The man glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “You can call me Bob, sir,” he said in his Boston Irish accent.

“Bob. Of course. Listen, Bob. There’s something I have to do. It’ll only take us a little out of the way, and I won’t tell General Donovan if you don’t.”

“Sir, the security on this thing is tight as a drum, tighter than I’ve ever seen. If we…”

Peter leaned forward and gripped Bob’s shoulder. “We’re going to do this, or I’m going to get out of the car right now and you can explain to Donovan why the op was scrubbed.”

Fifteen minutes later, Peter found himself climbing the wide stairs to the entrance of the imposing residence of Elena’s parents. The steps had been swept clean of snow, which made the going easier. Walking up stairs was always an awkward affair, although not quite as much as coming down. Nothing here had changed, of course. Unlike in times past, the three story marble columns flanking the grand entry way reminded him of sentinels tasked with keeping out such riffraff as himself.

He paused for a moment before the door, gathering his courage. Then he took the polished brass lion head door knocker in a firm grip and rapped three times.

Exactly ten seconds later the door opened on smoothly oiled hinges. The face of the elderly head butler appeared. His black face betrayed no emotional reaction.

“Hello, Roy,” Peter said. “Is Elena here?”

“She is, sir. Would you…”

“Who is it?”

An electric thrill ran through Peter at the sound of his wife’s voice.
Your soon to be ex-wife, you mean
, he corrected himself. The last time he’d heard that voice had been three months ago, and she had been angry, hurt. Her voice now sounded happy, like it used to be.

Then she was there, standing before him. She was as beautiful as ever, her brunette hair elegantly coiffed, her lithe body in a dress that was no doubt on the cutting edge of fashion. He caught a whiff of her perfume. He didn’t recognize it, but it was lovely and glamorous, just like her.

Unlike Roy’s carefully neutral expression, hers spoke volumes. “Peter.” She made his name sound like an epithet. “What are you doing here?”

“I…” His tongue seemed to lose its sense of purpose, and he stood there for a moment, speechless.
 

“Is something wrong, darling?”

A man he’d never met came to stand beside her. Handsome enough to give Clark Gable a run for his money, he also had the air of old money about him. It was in the way he looked at Peter, like Scrooge before his transformation, beholding a beggar on his doorstep.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” she said dismissively. “Peter, what do you want? I told you I didn’t want to see you. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, sorry for everything,” Peter rasped. His throat felt as if it was swelling shut with anger and humiliation. But he had come here to say something, and he was determined to say it. “You wouldn’t return my calls, and I wanted to tell you because, well, I may not get another chance. I know it probably doesn’t matter now,” his eyes darted to the Clark Gable look alike, wanting to wipe the smirk off the man’s face, “but I wanted you to know. I thought maybe, maybe you might…”

“Might what? Come crawling back to you?” She threw her head back and laughed. It was a hurtful, haughty sound. “Don’t be a fool. Our marriage is finished, or did you forget what my lawyer told you?”

“No, I didn’t forget,” Peter said through clenched teeth.

“I think you should be going now,” Clark Gable said. “Come on, darling. We’re supposed to meet your parents at the club house in an hour.” He held out his arm, and with one last disgusted look at Peter, Elena took it and followed him back into the house.

“I’m sorry,” Roy whispered after the couple was out of earshot, a look of sadness in his eyes as he closed the door.

Peter made his way back down the steps, being careful and taking his time. He’d looked back over his shoulder to see his wife and her new beau watching him from one of the upstairs windows, and he refused to give them the satisfaction of watching him tumble ass over teakettle.
 

“Not a happy visit, I take it?” Bob said quietly as Peter reached the car.

“Not at all.” Pausing just long enough to pull off the wedding band and toss it into the carefully manicured hedge, Peter said, “Let’s get out of here.”

THE CARPETBAGGERS

“Time to wake up, sir.”

Peter blinked his eyes open, squinting against the glare of the light bulb dangling directly over his bed. He shivered, throwing a reproachful look at the small wood stove in the corner, which had been entirely unequal to the task of keeping the room warm.
 

Bob stood over him, a smile creasing the chiseled features of his face. “Hope you got a few winks, sir. You’re going to need them.”

“Best sleep of my life,” Peter groaned as he grudgingly cast aside the comforter and blanket. He was still dressed in an American Army combat uniform, right down to the olive drab wool socks. The flight across the Atlantic in a rattletrap DC-3 transport had left him exhausted and chilled to the bone. After Bob had driven him to the OSS safe house in the pre-dawn hours after the plane had landed, Peter had crawled into bed and instantly fallen asleep. He knew he was in England, but that was all. The darkness, accentuated by the blacked out windows in the homes and buildings they’d passed, had denied him even a glimpse of the countryside he had come to love during his brief tenure at Bletchley Park.
 

As he sat up, every muscle in his body cried out in protest, and the shattered knee of his right leg began to throb with a vengeance. “I feel like I went fifteen rounds with Joe Louis.”

Bob’s smile broadened. “As long as you won, sir.”

Peter managed a chuckle as he tugged on his boots. Bob had been his constant companion since they’d left OSS Headquarters in Washington four days before. He was part butler, part chauffeur, part mentor and, Peter suspected, part bodyguard, as well. He’d pushed and dragged Peter through two very long days of intense training at Area A, doing his best to hammer the most basic agent survival skills into his formerly desk bound charge. While Peter was a skilled marksman with a hunting rifle, Bob and the instructors at Area A had taught him how different hunting could be when the target could shoot back. They also introduced Peter to the rifles and pistols he would find in the Third Reich, in the unfortunate event that Peter had to use them. Other instructors at Area A had taught Peter the basics of how to survive in a winter wilderness, how to use both German and OSS communications equipment, and expanded on what he knew about the Nazi Party and the SS. On their third and last day, Bob had given him rudimentary instruction in jumping from a plane with a parachute and, far more important, how to land in such a way that Peter had a good chance of walking away.
 

The memory silenced Peter’s chuckle. Even in the “baby jumps,” as Bob had called them, leaping from a low wall into a cold muddy pit, Peter’s bum leg had consistently given him trouble. It either collapsed under him or he overcorrected and held his legs too stiff, slamming into the ground like a dropped post. Every jump had left him groaning with pain. While Bob had seemed pleased with his progress, despite Peter’s constant mishaps, he had been forced to call a halt to the training before Peter made it to the static drop tower, let alone a real training jump. They’d simply run out of time.

After lacing up his boots, Peter asked, “What time is it?”

“Time to get going, sir,” Bob answered with his usual vague response to any question dealing with time or location. “I’ve got some food ready for you, then we need to be on our way.”

At the mention of food, Peter’s nose discovered the aroma of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and coffee in the air, wafting into the room after Bob had come in to wake him.
 

With his stomach growling, Peter followed Bob downstairs and took a seat at the tiny dinner table. Bob served him a delicious breakfast, although it could have been dinner, for all Peter knew. He didn’t care. He was famished. Craning his head so he could peer into the small kitchen, he saw it was empty, as was the adjoining living room. He and Bob were the safe house’s only occupants. “My God, man. You cooked all this? Is there anything you can’t do?”

Bob shrugged. “I do whatever needs doing, sir. The only hard part was stealing the eggs.” He grinned. “Come on, now, eat up. It may be a while before you have another chance to eat anything but bratwurst and schnitzel.”

After Peter stuffed himself full, it was time to go. Pulling on his heavy Army jacket, he followed Bob to the door.
 

“Wait here, sir.” Bob flipped off all the lights, casting the house into complete darkness. Opening the door a crack, he peered out, then quick as a cat stepped outside, drawing the door quietly closed behind him.

Peter stood there, wanting to pull the blackout curtains on the front window aside just a hair so he could peek out, but knowing that he mustn’t.
 

A minute passed. Then two. Three.

Just as Peter was growing worried, a car pulled up outside.

The front door opened. It was Bob. “Come on, sir. Quickly, if you please.”

Peter stepped through the door, not nearly as graceful as Bob, and hobbled down the handful of steps in the full darkness of night to the walk that led to the street. Bob stuck to his side, his head turning right and left with mechanical precision, his eyes scanning their surroundings. His right hand was inside his open coat, and Peter caught the momentary gleam of the .45 pistol Bob carried in a shoulder holster.

Opening the rear passenger door of the big car, Bob ushered Peter in, then closed the door before taking his place in the front passenger seat.

The driver, who remained silent and nameless, stepped on the gas, and the car smoothly pulled away. Only then did Peter notice that the windows in the back of the car were curtained. No one could possibly get a look at him unless they were right in front of the car, shining a flashlight at his face.

They drove in silence for what Peter guessed was nearly an hour before they arrived at an airfield. He caught a glimpse of a sign that read
RAF Harrington
as the guards at the entry gate passed them through after exchanging a few quiet words with the driver.
 

Peter’s heart began to beat faster as the big car pulled up in front of one of the Nissen huts near the base operations buildings and control tower.

Bob was out of the car before Peter even had a firm grip on the door handle. “Inside, sir, no dawdling,” he said as he held Peter’s door open. Even here, on a secure RAF base, the man’s eyes darted to and fro, probing the darkness.

Peter did as Bob said, moving quickly to the door. He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob, not knowing what to expect.

“Inside means
inside
, sir,” Bob hissed.

“Right,” Peter breathed as he turned the knob and pushed the door open, stepping inside.

“Right on time.” A man in an Army Air Corps uniform greeted Peter with a cheerful smile. A second man, fussing over a parachute, looked up and gave a quick wave. “We’re your dressers.”

“My dressers?” Peter asked, confused.

“We’ll get you ready for your drop,” the first man said.
 

“You’ll get your chance, boys.”

Peter turned to see a woman sitting behind a desk in the corner. She was in her mid-thirties, dressed in civilian clothes, and was giving him the same sort of look the doctor did when Peter visited for a checkup. He had to restrain himself from covering up his groin with his hands.

“He’s mine first.” Getting up, the woman smoothed her skirt before walking toward a curtained area, gesturing for Peter to follow.
 

Bob was clearly trying to suppress a grin and was failing miserably.
 

“Come on,” the woman snapped. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter said before following her behind the curtain.

“Here’s your uniform,” she told him, pointing to a rack beside a chair. The uniform was black, with glossy boots that came halfway up the calf, along with a visored round wheel cap. The insignia sent a chill down Peter’s spine: twin silver lightning bolts adorned the right collar tab of the tunic, while the hat bore a death’s head below an eagle clutching a swastika. Those were the trademarks of the
Schutzstaffel
, Hitler’s SS. The left collar tab bore the three diamonds and two twin stripes of a
Hauptsturmführer
, the rank equivalent of a captain.

The only bit of color adorning the otherwise ominous uniform was a red armband that bore a black swastika on a white circle background. Peter ran his fingers along the sleeve, then lifted it up to see what was on the silver-trimmed cloth band around the cuff. “
Totenkopf
,” he murmured. “Skull.”

“That’s the honorific of the 3
^rd
SS Panzer Division, the unit in which you were serving when your right knee was torn apart by shrapnel,
Hauptsturmführer
Müller.”
 

Peter turned to look at her. She had spoken the words in perfect German with a strong
Berlinerisch
accent.

“
Ja, natürlich
,” he answered, dropping into his parents’ native tongue automatically, just as he had done at home when he was a boy. Bob, whose many talents also included speaking fluent German, had drilled Peter remorselessly on the details of his new identity. “A T-34 destroyed my tank in the Demjansk Pocket in October 1941. A nasty business, that was.” He shrugged. “Since then, I’ve been pushing paper at SS Headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße in Berlin until I received orders to report to Arnsberg.”