nodded. “That’s all, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.” The Welshman darted through the door.
Brigadier Duff Smith rose slowly, nodded to Little, and followed Owen outside.
Jonas Stern stood alone in a coal-dark doorway, his shivering body pressed against cold stone, and watched the broad avenue of Whitehall. He had nowhere to run. He had come so far to get here. All the way from Germany at age fourteen, with his mother in tow and his father left behind. Thousands of miles overland in a refugee caravan where smugglers robbed them of all they had before taking them farther down the illegal route to Palestine. Weeks in a battered freighter that bled salt water through its rusting hull while people belowdecks died of thirst. Years of struggle in Palestine, fighting the Arabs and the British, then in North Africa fighting the Nazis. Then finally from Palestine to London, to the room with the British staff officers with their trimmed mustaches and haughty blue eyes. Major Dickson had at least told the truth: the only reason they’d let him come at all was to interrogate him about the Haganah.
Stern tensed at the sound of running feet. Peering around the brickwork, he breathed a sigh of relief. The feet belonged to Peter Owen, and the Welshman was alone. Stern reached out and caught him by the jacket.
“Jonas!” cried Owen.
Stern let go of the jacket.
The young Welshman rolled his shoulders angrily. “What the hell was that back there?”
“You tell me, Peter. Are Major Dickson’s men after me?”
“They will be if you don’t turn yourself in within four hours.” Owen struggled to light a cigarette in the frigid wind. Stern finally did it for him. “Thanks, old man,” he said. “Christ, I’ll take the desert over this any time.”
“Those smug bastards,” Stern muttered.
“I told you you were being unrealistic. It’s a matter of scale as much as anything. Compared to the amphibious landing of a million men in Occupied Europe, a few thousand civilians—particularly Jews—don’t garner much attention in military circles.”
Stern held up his cuffed hands. “Get these off, Peter.”
A pained look crossed Owen’s face. “Dickson will have me up on charges.”
“Peter—”
“Oh, hell.” Owen fumbled in his pocket and brought out a key.
Stern snatched it away and began walking toward Trafalgar Square. The opened handcuffs tinkled on the cement like change thrown to a street urchin. He put the key in his pocket and kept walking. With blackout regulations still in force, the stars over London shone like distant spotlights, illuminating a sign advertising bomb-shelter space in the Charing Cross tube station.
“You’ve got to turn yourself in, Jonas,” Owen said, struggling to stay abreast of him. “You’ve no alternative.”
Stern noticed that he had begun leaning into the wind with his head turned slightly away as he walked. He hadn’t walked with that gait since his childhood in northern Germany. Some habits never died.
Owen grabbed his sleeve and stopped him in the road. “Jonas, I won’t blame you for anything you do at this point. But I can’t be responsible for you, either. No matter what happens now, I consider the Tobruk debt paid.”
Stern stared at the young Welshman with eyes that said many things, but he did not speak.
“I said Tobruk is wiped clean,” Owen repeated, but the tone of his voice was uncertain.
“Sure, Peter.” Stern started to add something, but his words were drowned by the sudden growl of an engine. A long silver Bentley floated over to the curb and stopped beside the two men, engine running.
Stern shoved Owen against the passenger door and began to run. He heard the Welshman’s voice calling him back. He turned. Owen had snapped to attention beside the Bentley. Focusing on the car’s interior, Stern saw only a driver and a single passenger. He walked cautiously back. Someone had rolled down the rear window. Framed in its dark square Stern saw a weathered face lit by bright eyes, and the shoulder boards of a brigadier general.
“Recognize me?” asked a deep voice with a slight Scottish accent.
Stern stared at the face. “You were at the meeting.”
“I’m Brigadier Duff Smith, Mr. Stern. I’d like to have a word with you.”
Stern looked at Peter Owen, silently asking if this could be a trap. The Welshman shrugged.
Brigadier Smith held up a silver flask. “Have a dram? Beastly cold out.”
Stern did not accept the flask. As he stared at Brigadier Duff Smith, he felt a sudden certainty that he should run like hell. Get clear of this man and all his works. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he was walking away from the Bentley.
The car kept pace, coasting along beside him. “Come on, lad,” Smith called. “Where’s the harm in a little chat?”
“What kind of chat?”
“A chat about killing Germans.”
“I’m German,” Stern said, still marching into the wind. He glanced up at the dark face of Admiralty House. “According to Major Dickson, anyway.”
“Nazis, I should have said.”
“I killed plenty of Nazis in North Africa. That’s not what I’m after.”
Smith’s reply was barely audible above the rumble of the Bentley’s motor, but it stopped Stern in his tracks. “I’m talking about killing Nazis inside Germany.”
The Bentley rolled to a standstill beside Stern. The brigadier’s eyes glinted with black humor. “That sound like your line of country, lad?”
The Bentley’s driver got out and opened the rear door opposite Smith, but Stern still hesitated.
“You speak good English,” Smith said, to fill the silence.
“Don’t take it as flattery. Know your enemy, that’s my motto.” Stern pointed at the brigadier. “Can you get Major Dickson off my back?”
“My dear fellow,” Smith said expansively, “I can make you disappear off the face of the earth, if I so choose.”
Stern was vaguely aware of Peter Owen shouting something as he climbed into the Bentley, but all he remembered was Brigadier Smith’s final exchange with the Welshman before he rolled up the rear window. Owen was protesting that General Little wanted Stern in custody, and that Major Dickson would be hunting him with a vengeance if he was not. Smith did not seem at all perturbed. He said something to Owen in a language Stern would later learn was Welsh. The gist of the translation was, “You don’t have a problem, laddie. You never found him, you never saw me, and that’s the end of the story. Find yourself a pub and stop worrying. Nobody ever found
