The White Vixen (39 page)

For now, though, fighting the boredom was her number one priority. The post had a movie theater—“cinema”, as it was called here—but she’d already seen this week’s feature,
Tootsie
. Dustin Hoffman was hilarious in the lead role, but she had no desire to see it again. Her time was too valuable to waste seeing a movie she’d already seen, or reading a book she’d already read.

She told herself she had to loosen up a bit more. The iron discipline which she’d used to rule her life had gotten her this far and would take her further, but she was starting to wonder if there wasn’t more in life than duty. Duty to her country, to her service, to her martial arts training, even this duty to learning new languages and espionage skills. With a sigh, she rolled over on one side, thinking that a nap might be in order. At least it would take her mind off things.

Ian’s face drifted into her thoughts, not for the first time that day. She remembered with crystal clarity the words he’d last spoken to her, a week ago now at RM Poole. He wanted to marry her, and she told him she’d accept. There was a part of her now that shuddered at the mere thought of tying herself down like that. Was there room in her life for someone else, someone with whom she’d share everything? She’d never had to share anything with anybody.

That was the problem. She had lovers over the years, after Jimmy and Franklin, but when they started to get too close, she pushed them away. The two she’d told Ian about were years ago, when she was much younger, more undisciplined. Since then, she’d dated a handful of men, slept with a very few of them and enjoyed their company, but once they’d started pressing into her life, her personal space that had room for only one, she pushed them away. She had to. Intimacy, she could handle. Companionship, she usually found welcome. But long-term partnership? Marriage? That would mean exposing too much of herself, sharing too much, and she didn’t want to do that.

Well, she was thinking of doing that with Ian, wasn’t she? And why the hell not? He was a wonderful man. Loyal, honest, dedicated, and very much in love with her. Not to mention damned attractive and wonderful in bed. What more could a girl want in a man? He wasn’t wealthy, by any means, but Jo had never cared much about material things. Certainly she could’ve made a lot more money working a civilian job someplace than she was making in the Air Force. She took after her father in that. She knew Joseph Geary had turned down offers from private industry that would’ve tripled his CIA income, but he was out for more in life than accumulating money. He’d told her once that more than money, he craved challenge, and helping defend their country against its enemies was certainly more challenging than selling stocks or running a company.

Her father had dedicated his life to serving his country. That brought up an interesting question: what exactly was his daughter out for in life? She didn’t see herself ever wearing general’s stars, so promotion, which drove so many of her fellow officers, wasn’t a driving force for her. Proficiency in her area of expertise? She’d come a long way on that score, that was for sure. A person with her skills, her military training, was going to be in demand in years to come. She paid attention to geopolitical trends, and something told her that the Cold War was going to wind down in a few years, and something else was going to start winding up. The Iranian hostage crisis should have tipped everyone off. Islamic extremism might very well replace communism as the West’s primary threat, and those people operated with a different set of rules than the ones followed by Moscow. Under those new rules, someone with her skills would be an even more valuable commodity.

Rising to the peak of her profession, though, wasn’t exactly at the top of her priority list. What was the peak, after all? A desk job someplace? Her father’s work in the field for OSS, and then CIA, had led to his current job. She was much too young to consider administrative work, although something like that could be interesting ten or twenty years down the road, when life in the field became a bit too strenuous, as it undoubtedly would. Becoming the foremost linguist around, the best martial artist, now those were real challenges to be sure, but leading where? There would always be another language to learn, another art to master, and as she well knew, nobody ever mastered the martial arts; she was on an infinite journey that would always leave her with more to learn.

Looming over everything was the long shadow cast by a certain Royal Marine. She remembered his touch, and suddenly she felt a twinge from deep inside. Not a sexual longing, but something far deeper, more profound. She placed a hand on her abdomen. Children? They’d not discussed that, of course. Over the years, Jo felt maternal longings every now and then. That was only natural. No childless woman could see a baby without thinking of having one of her own. But now, for the first time, she seriously considered the prospect of becoming a mother, of having Ian’s child. She expected the thought to be scary, but it wasn’t. It was…comforting, perhaps. She sighed pleasantly.

In her heart of hearts, Jo Ann knew that she loved Ian Masters. But she also knew that something was keeping her from making that final leap into marriage. She was trying to figure out what that was when she dozed off into a slumber blessedly free of dreams.

***

Estancia Valhalla, Argentina

It was time to finally call it a night. Willy closed the last file on his desk and sat back, rubbing his eyes. There was a time when Sundays were days of rest at Valhalla, as they were throughout Argentina. Those days, at least for a while and at least on this estancia, were gone.

The work was going well, really. The nation was still celebrating yesterday’s news that the English had surrendered the Malvinas. Thankfully, casualties were very light. The fighting was more intense on South Georgia, but the English marines finally gave up there, too. The dancing in the streets of Buenos Aires would go on well into the night. Tomorrow, reality would start to intrude. People would go back to work, they would start to slowly realize that their lives hadn’t really changed that much, and the newspapers would start reporting on the movements of the English fleet. Galtieri would put up a brave front, but anyone in the know about the comparative military strength of the two nations would quickly realize that the Argentine occupation of the Malvinas was likely to be short.

Unless, of course, something happened to the English fleet before it could land its marines.

Willy stood up and stretched. The house was quiet, except for the muffled sounds of music coming from the library. Dieter was spending this Sunday evening as he spent them all, in the library with his books and Bach. Today he had seemed quieter than usual at dinner, forcing Willy to carry the conversational ball with their guests, the Carmaños. Giselle was particularly bewitching, and Willy smiled as he remembered their afternoon ride, which included a stop at their favorite spot, a secluded glade featuring a picturesque babbling brook. Dieter had first shown it to Willy when he was six. Ten years later he showed it to Giselle, and it had always been their special place. A few years later it became even more special, for it was the place where they’d first had sex, when she was seventeen. They were shy, hesitant, fumbling. Not today. She was almost fierce during their lovemaking, challenging Willy to match her passion, a challenge he gladly met.

On their ride back to the estancia, he caught himself thinking that when this was all over, he would marry her. She would have his children and they would live a happy life in Valhalla—provided, of course, he could avoid being lined up against a wall and shot.

He entered the library, expecting to find his father asleep, but Dieter was just putting a volume back on its shelf. Willy saw that it was
Mein Kampf.
He’d read it in the original German as a teenager, dismissing it as the ramblings of a fanatic, but re-reading it ten years later impressed upon him the writer’s cunning and twisted genius. Fortunately, the men who had survived their leader’s demise and made it here were much more sensible, more pragmatic. In their own way, though, they were just as ruthless. Not for the first time today, the word VALKYRIE crossed his mind.

“I’ve come to say good night,” Willy said.

“Ah, yes,” Dieter said, returning to his favorite chair. “I apologize for not speaking much during dinner,” he said, reaching for his glass of schnapps. “I trust the Carmaños were not offended.”

“Of course not,” Willy said.

“You should marry that girl,” Dieter said, eyeing him. “She’s a fine one, even if she is half-Spanish.”

Willy smiled. “I may surprise you yet, Father, and do just that.”

Dieter grunted, taking a sip from the glass. “Make it soon,” he said. “I fear I will not see another Christmas, much less grandchildren.”

Willy almost blurted out his first thought: Is that why you’re pushing this dangerous plan? Is reunifying the Fatherland so important that you must see it before you die? Instead, he said cautiously, “The Malvinas are ours, Father. CAPRICORN is on schedule. It will all happen soon. Next Christmas we will have much to celebrate.”

“Let us hope so,” Dieter said, draining his glass. He rose unsteadily to his feet. Willy stepped forward quickly to help him.

The younger man wanted desperately to tell the older man what he knew, how VALKYRIE had to be stopped, that it was insane and could bring down the wrath of the Americans upon them all, but he remembered Heinz and his cautionary words: “You must not tell your father what you know. As hard as it is, you must seem ignorant of what they’re doing. If the Reichsleiter finds out about us, we are finished, and so is Argentina.”

But Willy knew he could not bear to see his father rot in prison. He helped Dieter to the door and down the hall to his bedroom. No, he would not see him put before a firing squad, either. Somehow, he had to find a way to save his country, and save his father at the same time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Bariloche, Argentina

Sunday, April 11th, 1982

Bryan Jamison was pleasantly surprised by Bariloche on the occasion of his first visit. The city reminded him of Salzburg, in the Austrian Alps, and indeed it was the center of the Argentine lake district, in the foothills of the Andes. Bustling with some eighty thousand people, the city was on the southern shore of Lago Nahuel Huapi, one of the largest lakes in the country and the centerpiece of a sprawling national park. Bariloche was designed in the Central European style, but now Jamison could see modern, garish apartments and office buildings crowding the city’s architectural skyline. It wasn’t very pleasing to the eye.

Today there was no time for that, though. After spending two days browsing through antique shops and chatting up the dealers, even buying a few pieces and arranging for their shipment to an MI6 cover in Dublin, it was time for business. Dangerous business, to be sure; extracting a subject from his country was always dicey, but this was wartime, and there was not one person to extract but four.

He was fairly confident he wasn’t being followed, but couldn’t be sure. Hopefully, BIS just considered Duncan MacPherson to be a harmless Irish businessman, not worthy of their attention. One couldn’t count on that, of course, so precautions had to be taken. Not very obvious ones, but he’d already established on his previous visit that MacPherson was a man on the go, and this morning was no exception. He rose at seven, breakfasted at his hotel, Las Piedras II, and spent an hour strolling the busy sidewalks before hailing a cab. This particular cab was driven by a Chilean agent. Once they’d exchanged identifying code phrases, the two men went over the plan once more as they headed east along Avenue Bartolome Mitre. The driver turned left on Beschtedt, and Jamison saw it ahead: Iglesias Catedral, where Mass would begin in about twenty minutes, and where Duncan MacPherson, a good Irish Catholic, would celebrate it.

Oscar, the driver, nodded as Jamison exited the cab and handed a wad of pesos through the window. The MI6 agent nodded one last time, and the Chilean responded by staring ahead, as if looking for his next fare. He would be where Jamison wanted him in one hour.

Jamison joined the crowd of worshipers entering the cathedral and paused as he came into the sanctuary. Scanning the pews in a certain area, he quickly found who he was looking for. Antonio Gasparini and his family were there, in the fifth pew from the front on the left. Theresa was wearing a tasteful but stylish blue hat, Gasparini’s signal that they were ready. If she had been bare-headed, that would mean BIS had tumbled to the operation, and after Mass, Duncan MacPherson would simply return to his hotel and prepare to leave for Chile later in the day, alone.

But the hat was there, and Jamison’s heart started to beat a little faster. He found an empty seat and tried to concentrate on the service. It wasn’t easy.

Fifty minutes later, Jamison slid out of the pew, excusing himself as he brushed past his fellow celebrants, and left the sanctuary. He found a men’s room, relieved himself—not faking it, either, nerves again—and then, exiting the restroom, turned down a hallway that led away from the main entrance to the sanctuary. On his first visit to Bariloche he’d visited Iglesias and did a little unobtrusive scouting. He found the side double doors with no trouble. A minute later, they swung open, and a young man in assistant’s vestments kicked the door stops into place. His eyes went a bit wide when he saw Jamison. The agent smiled and nodded, and the acolyte retreated back into the sanctuary.