The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel Read online

  Polko saw what was happening and quickly covered the distance between them. He slung the strap of his Sten over his left shoulder while slipping a Colt .45 ACP semiautomatic from his waistband. He aimed the pistol and fired once, hitting the hauptscharführer square in the chest and causing him to roll almost into a fetal position. Then he reached down and put another round in the base of his skull.

  Polko glanced over his shoulder. He saw the rest of their men running up as Szerynski signaled for them to provide cover.

  Szerynski and Polko then stepped closer to the passenger car.

  There were no sounds—human or other—coming from it.

  Szerynski peered around the corner of the doorway that the young hauptscharführer had crawled out of. But even with the flames from the locomotive he saw nothing inside but dark shadows. He could, however, smell the interior of the car. It reeked of peppermint—schnapps!—and cheese.

  As he reached for his flashlight, he looked over his shoulder at Polko. He saw him pulling the dead bodyguard’s pistol from its leather holster. Polko put his .45 back in his waistband, then worked the action of the Luger. A 9mm round ejected. It landed at Szerynski’s feet. He saw it was a live one.

  Well, that one sure as hell would have had my name on it.

  Szerynski flicked on his flashlight and, pistol ready, shone the yellow beam inside the passenger car.

  A parlor and a forward sleeping compartment . . .

  This is a wealthy man’s transport!

  The luxurious interior—rich carpet and draperies, leather-upholstered seating, and highly polished wooden paneling and heavy tables—was a shambles. Two more baby-faced young SS scharführer bodyguards lay crumpled against the door to the sleeping compartment, one sergeant atop the other. The one on top, whose head was turned at an impossible angle, suggesting a broken neck, had a drinking glass impaled in his blood-soaked face.

  Szerynski’s flashlight beam next found the high-peaked black uniform cap of an SS officer—light reflected off its silver skull-and-crossbones Totenkopf and, above that, SS eagle insignias—then found the officer himself. He lay sprawled on his back against the crushed ceiling of the car. One of the highly polished wooden tables had sheared free and smashed into his upper body. A cut across his forehead had coated his face in blood.

  So who the hell could he be?

  Szerynski waved the flashlight beam around the interior one more time.

  No one else in here . . . he’s got to be the one.

  He turned to Polko and said, “Let’s get him the hell out of there.”

  Polko signaled for two of his men to come closer.

  He pointed with the Luger toward the SS officer and rapidly ordered: “Get that Nazi pig the hell out of there!”

  The two men immediately crawled in through the door opening and then went to the SS officer. Szerynski was somewhat surprised when Polko also crawled in behind them, but then wasn’t when he went over to the two bodyguards, put the muzzle of the Luger to their temples, and fired a single round into each.

  Then he spat on them.

  When the two men pulled the heavy wooden table off the chest of the SS officer, he made a deep groan.

  The bastard is alive!

  Szerynski’s men, with some obvious effort, then dragged the overweight SS officer out the door, stopping about fifteen feet away from the passenger car. As the taller of the two removed the officer’s Luger from its holster and stuck it in his waistband—the checkered wooden grip was inlaid with a silver skull-and-crossbones Totenkopf—the shorter one yanked open the officer’s tunic and roughly searched inside. After a moment, he made a face of self-satisfaction.

  He pulled out a black calfskin wallet, then walked over and handed it to Polko, who then passed it to Szerynski.

  “The Nazi pig’s papers,” Polko officiously announced, needlessly.

  Szerynski opened the wallet, unfolded the SS identity booklet, and shone his flashlight on it. After he studied it, he glanced at the fat officer lying on the ground, then back at the ID.

  An SS-sturmbannführer? he thought, then whistled lightly.

  “What?” Polko said.

  Szerynski ignored him. He walked over to the SS officer. The Nazi had his eyes closed. Szerynski nudged him in the hip with his boot.

  “Herr Sturmbannführer, what is the purpose of your trip?” Szerynski said in German evenly, shining the flashlight on his bloody face.

  The SS officer, who looked dazed, stared back but did not reply.

  Polko quickly walked up and aimed his Luger at the officer.

  “I shoot Nazi pig with Nazi pistol,” Polko said.

  “No!” Szerynski said, as he pushed away the arm aiming the Luger. “Not yet.”

  Szerynski reached to his shoulder holster, thumbed open the snap securing his semiautomatic, then aimed the .45 at the officer.

  Szerynski looked back at the officer. “The purpose of your trip?”

  The officer, after trying to wipe blood from his face, nodded once.

  “I . . . I cannot say,” he said thickly, clearly in great pain.

  “Cannot or will not? Tell me the purpose of your trip here!”

  After a moment the SS officer answered, “I . . . I do not know. I was sent here on orders.”

  “What do you mean, you do not know? And sent here by who?”

  The SS officer, apparently considering his options, coughed once but did not answer.

  “Who the hell are you?” Szerynski pursued.

  He coughed again, then said, “SS-Sturmbannführer Klaus Schwartz.”

  “No shit!” Szerynski snapped, waving the identity card in front of his bloody face. “It is on your ausweis! Right above your photograph and across from Himmler’s signature. So, did Herr Reichsführer personally school you in mass murder?”

  As head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler had, with Hitler’s encouragement, created a powerful state within the state of the Third Reich that was answerable to practically no one. It had its own secret service—the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD—and its own secret police force—the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo—and its own army—nearly a million troopers in the Waffen-SS. The SS looted everything from cash to gold dental fillings of the millions sent to their deaths in the hundreds of SS-controlled konzentrationslagers.

  Despite Himmler’s dumpy body and shifty appearance—he had a small head, beady eyes, and wore round spectacles—the cold-blooded reichsführer was a force to be feared.

  “I am not a mass murderer,” Schwartz said defiantly.

  “Is that true?” Szerynski said. “How do you explain the boxcars of sonderkommandos sent here from the KL?”

  The SS officer’s face showed surprise at the mention of the slave laborers from the konzentrationslager. And again he remained quiet as he considered his answer.

  Then Schwartz shrugged. “I am merely—how do you say?—an assistant. I am nothing.”

  That is bullshit!

  Then why are you traveling with three SS bodyguards to visit a construction project?

  “Bullshit! No SS-sturmbannführer is ‘nothing,’ you lying bastard.”

  Szerynski put the muzzle of his .45 to the man’s forehead, causing him to involuntarily cross his eyes for a moment.

  “And where is tonight’s train carrying sonderkommandos?” Szerynski went on.

  Schwartz did not answer.

  “Where?” Szerynski pursued, applying more pressure to his forehead with the muzzle.

  Schwartz, looking past the pistol at Szerynski, still gave no answer.

  Szerynski then turned to Polko and in Polish ordered, “Bring the rope. We can get him to talk.”

  Polko nodded, then barked an order to his men.

  The SS officer apparently understood the exchange. He waved his right hand, palm out. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Szerynski pulled back his .45 and met his eyes. “Good.”

  Schwartz nodded once—then had a sudden coughing spasm. He brought up his hands to h
is mouth. Szerynski thought that there was something odd about it. Then Szerynski noticed Schwartz fingering the seam of the cuff on his left sleeve—and then tossing something into his mouth and biting hard.

  What the hell?

  SS-Sturmbannführer Klaus Schwartz started foaming at the mouth. His body began convulsing.

  After quickly dropping the black wallet and holstering his pistol, Szerynski bent over and tried to pry open Schwartz’s mouth.

  “What?” Polko said, leaning over and trying to help.

  “I think he swallowed a death pill. Maybe cyanide.”

  Schwartz’s body then went limp, and there came a deep gurgling from his stomach.

  Szerynski let loose of Schwartz’s head, and the chunky body fell to the ground with a dull thump.

  “Damn it!” Szerynski said.

  Polko then casually stepped forward and with the Luger pumped four rounds of 9mm into Schwartz, two into his chest, one into his groin, and the fourth into his forehead.

  Then he spat on him.

  That leaves only one round in your Luger, Stan.

  Szerynski looked back to the passenger car and pointed at it.

  “If you’re finished wasting ammo here,” he said, “get the men to collect everything they find in there. Leave nothing—especially ammo. You’re down to your last shot.”

  Polko looked at the pistol, then back at Szerynski. His expression showed he hadn’t been counting.

  Szerynski reached down for the black leather wallet.

  “This should come in handy, especially if we find another SS uniform in this bastard’s suitcase.”

  He gestured with it at the dead SS bodyguards.

  “Make sure you get all their papers, too,” he said, then slipped it into his coat pocket.

  “And what about bodies?” Polko said.

  Szerynski, the flames from the locomotive lighting his face, pointed at the wreckage of the passenger car.

  “Drag them back in there and then we burn everything,” he said.

  Szerynski then pulled from his coat pocket a wool sock that contained two pounds of malleable Composition C-2 high explosive. The sock looked as if it were stuffed with a fat link of sausage. An eighteen-inch length of Primacord snaked out of the overhand knot at the top of the sock.

  “Remember what to do with this?” Szerynski said.

  “Mold it around one of the rails at a track tie,” Polko said. “Then cover it with as big a pile of rock as possible to concentrate the explosion on the rail.”

  “Right. And don’t set it off till we’re ready to get the hell out of here.”

  He held out the plastic explosive to Polko, who suddenly turned his head at the faint sound of another steam locomotive.

  “It’s the train carrying the prisoners!” Polko said.

  Szerynski strained to hear the sound, then thought for a moment.

  “We cannot ambush it now,” he said. “We have lost the surprise element.”

  “But . . .”

  “No but, Porucznik,” Szerynski said, and thrust the sock of explosive toward Polko. “Hurry, damn it! We cannot stop them from what they’re doing to the prisoners. But blowing the track will slow them down.”

  Polko considered that, then grabbed the sock of C-2, made a casual two-finger salute, and trotted toward the train track.

  * * *

  Not quite ten minutes later, after his men had returned the dead to the passenger car and doused the interior with kerosene from a can used to fuel its heater, Szerynski tossed in a wooden match. The flame caught slowly and began to spread.

  He started moving toward the edge of the forest, signaling all to follow.

  As he and his men disappeared into the thick of the trees, behind them came a sudden whoosh and they were momentarily brightly illuminated by the flames engulfing the passenger car.

  A moment later, the plastic explosive went off, and, a long moment after that, with Szerynski and his men now running toward where the other resistance fighters waited, dirt and small rock rained down.

  [TWO]

  OSS London Station

  Berkeley Square

  London, England

  0910 30 May 1943

  “Yes, Mr. Ambassador, I said I understand,” Colonel David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce, chief of the Office of Strategic Services London Station, said into the telephone, struggling to keep his tone civil. “I’ll see what I can do. Good-bye.”

  Bruce—who had intense eyes set in a chiseled face, his dark hair starting to gray at the edges—was a distinguished-looking forty-five-year-old lawyer from a prestigious Virginia family. He had made his own fortune before marrying one of the world’s wealthiest women and—like his father-in-law, Andrew Mellon—had been a high-level diplomat.

  “Damn him!” Bruce said as he slammed down the receiver.

  An attractive brunette in her thirties suddenly appeared in the open doorway.

  “Sir?” Captain Helene Dancy, Women’s Army Corps, said, the concern in her voice apparent. “Anything that I can do?”

  Without looking up at his administrative assistant, Bruce barked, “Get Ed Stevens in here! And now!”

  Dancy’s eyes went wide.

  “Yes, sir!” she said, and spun on her heels to leave.

  Her reaction wasn’t lost on Bruce, and he called out, “Helene?”

  She stopped and turned. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry about snapping. Please accept my apology.”

  She forced a smile, and turned again to leave. “Of course. It’s quite all right.”

  Bruce added, “And bring some coffee, please. We are going to need a fresh pot.”

  “Right away,” Bruce heard her call back as he turned in his high-back leather chair to look out the window at the gray day. He thought over the conversation just now that had triggered his uncharacteristic outburst.

  I don’t know what aggravates me more—his arrogance, or me letting his arrogance get under my skin.

  There was the sound of knuckles rapping on the wooden doorframe. David Bruce spun his chair back around.

  A tall, thin, silver-haired forty-four-year-old wearing a perfectly tailored worsted uniform of a U.S. Army officer stood in the doorway.

  “Helene said you wanted to see me a week ago yesterday?” Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens, deputy chief of OSS London Station, said. “What’s going on, David?”

  Unlike Bruce, Stevens was not a diplomat with an assimilated military rank. He was a graduate of West Point, and had been personally recruited by the head of the OSS, William “Wild Bill” Donovan.

  Before the war, Stevens had resigned his commission so that he could live with his family in England and help his wife run her wholesale food and wine import-export business. Part of Stevens’s duties had been to serve as the face of the business when dealing with the difficult upper-crust English businessmen. When Donovan had seen that Stevens handled them with remarkable ease, he decided those skills would well serve the OSS. Having military experience was icing on the cake.

  Bruce waved for his deputy to come in, motioning for him to take one of the wooden armchairs in front of his desk.

  He glanced at the phone and said, “I just got off the line with Winant.”

  There had been no love lost between David Bruce and the Honorable John Gilbert Winant. Bruce held himself to the highest standards—some suggested impossibly high standards—and had no patience for those who did not meet the same. He considered Winant, the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Court of Saint James’s, to be a weakling of the first order, which he believed was the absolute last thing they needed during wartime. But Winant was the personal representative of the President of the United States of America—the embassy at One Grosvenor Square was a few blocks from OSS London Station’s Berkeley Square headquarters—as well as one of FDR’s buddies, and accordingly had long enjoyed FDR’s generosity.

  Bruce realized that what really annoyed him about Winant was the fact that having an
ineffectual envoy in such a high-profile position—especially after FDR essentially had called home Winant’s immediate predecessor, Joseph P. Kennedy, for being a defeatist—reflected poorly not only on America but also on its other representatives.

  David K. E. Bruce, for example.

  Bruce believed that America had a long history of fine ministers to the Court of Saint James’s—beginning in 1785 with its first, John Adams, who would become President of the United States—and it needed another strong one. And needed it now.

  Bruce had old friends in the State Department who out of school told him that the Brits had approached FDR about the subject, whispering that they would be happy with Donovan assuming the position. But Bruce knew that there was no way in hell Wild Bill would give up being spymaster, and certainly not to be tied to an embassy desk and making cautious happy talk.

  Donovan can be diplomatic. But as a rule Medal of Honor winners don’t suffer fools gladly. Wild Bill would much rather unleash that Irish temper and, borrowing his language, ream someone a new anal orifice than attempt to kill them with kindness.

  “Winant,” Bruce said, “called inquiring what the hell is going on with General Sikorski. Apparently the Polish Government-in-exile is making it known at the embassy that it doesn’t feel it’s getting its due from the Allies.”

  The sixty-two-year-old Wladyslaw Sikorski, who had served as commander in chief of the Polish Armed Forces and chief of the Polish General Staff, was prime minister of the Polish Government-in-exile in London.

  Stevens raised his eyebrows. “After being trampled by the Germans and the Russians, I cannot say that I blame the Poles. But telling Winant anything about what we are doing to support Sikorski and the resistance is the last thing we need to do. Ironically, despite his position, he simply cannot keep his mouth shut.”

  “Agreed,” Bruce said. “And Sikorski is tough. He smells Winant’s weakness and knows he can pressure him. To what end he will be successful, however, remains unclear. Because Winant, after the diplomatic firestorms that Joe Kennedy caused, won’t do anything without FDR signing off on it personally. And likely not even then.”

  “Which is why he called you? To find out what we’re doing, and then tell Sikorski that that’s all he’s going to get?”