The Unlikely Spy

The energy and excitement of the place took hold of him immediately, just as it did every night. The windowless walls were the color of clotted cream and covered with maps, charts, and photographs of U-boats and their crews. Several dozen officers and typists worked at tables around the edges of the room. In the center stood the main North Atlantic plotting table, where colored pins depicted the location of every warship, freighter, and submarine from the Baltic Sea to Cape Cod.

 

A large photograph of Admiral Karl Donitz, commander of the Kriegsmarine, glowered down from one wall. Braithwaite, as he did every morning, winked and said, "Good morning, Herr Admiral." Then he pushed back the door of his glass cubicle, removed his coat, and sat down at his desk.

 

He reached for the stack of decodes that awaited him each morning, thinking, A far cry from 1939, old son.

 

Back in 1939 he had degrees in law and psychology from Cambridge and Yale and was looking for something to do with them. When war broke out he tried to put his fluent German to good use by volunteering to interrogate German POWs. So impressed were his superiors they recommended a transfer to the Citadel, where he was assigned to the Submarine Tracking Room as a civilian volunteer at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. Braithwaite's intellect and drive quickly set him apart. He threw himself into his work, volunteered for extra duty, and read every book he could find on German naval history and tactics. Equipped with near-perfect recall, he memorized the biographies of every Kapitanleutnant of the Ubootwaffe. Within months he developed a remarkable ability to forecast U-boat movements. None of this went unnoticed. He was given the rank of temporary commander and placed in charge of submarine tracking, a stunning achievement for someone who had not passed through the Dartmouth Naval College.

 

His aide rapped on the glass door, waited for Braithwaite's nod, and let himself inside. "Good morning, sir," he said, setting down a tray with a pot of tea and biscuits.

 

"Morning, Patrick."

 

"The weather kept things fairly quiet last night, sir. No U-boat surface sightings anywhere. The storm's moved off the western approaches. The east's bearing the brunt of it now, from Yorkshire to Suffolk."

 

Braithwaite nodded, and the aide went out. The first items were conventional stuff, intercepts of routine communications between U-boats and BdU. The fifth caught his attention. It was an alert issued by a Major Alfred Vicary of the War Office. It said the authorities were pursuing two individuals, a man and a woman, who might be trying to leave the country. Braithwaite smiled at Vicary's guarded understatement. Vicary was obviously from MI5. The man and woman were obviously German agents of some kind and whatever they were up to must be damned important; otherwise the alert wouldn't have crossed his desk. He put Vicary's alert aside and continued reading.

 

After a few more routine items Braithwaite came upon something else that caught his attention. A Wren at the Scarborough Y Service station had intercepted what she believed was a communication between a U-boat and a wireless onshore. Huff Duff had pinpointed the transmitter to somewhere along the east coast--somewhere from Lincolnshire to Suffolk. Braithwaite pulled the item out of his stack and set it next to Vicary's alert.

 

He rose and limped out of his office into the main room, stopping at the North Atlantic plotting table. Two members of his staff were repositioning some of the colored pins to reflect overnight movements. Braithwaite seemed not to notice them. He fixed his gaze on the waters off Britain's east coast, face grave.

 

After a moment he said quietly, "Patrick, bring me the file on U-509."

 

 

 

 

 

55

 

 

HAMPTON SANDS, NORFOLK

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny reached the grove of pines at the base of the dunes and collapsed with exhaustion. She had run by instinct, like a frightened animal. She had stayed off the road, keeping instead to the meadows and the marshes, flooded with rain. She had fallen more times than she could remember. She was covered with mud, smelled of rotting earth and the sea. Her face, beaten by the rain and the wind, felt as if it had been slapped. And she was cold--colder than she had ever been in her life. Her oilskin felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. Her Wellington boots were filled with water, her feet were freezing. Then she remembered she had run from the cottage with no socks. She fell to her hands and knees, gasping for breath. Her throat was raw and tasted of rust.

 

She stayed that way for a moment until her breathing evened out, then forced herself to stand and enter the trees. It was pitch-dark, so dark she had to walk with her hands outstretched before her like a blind person groping through an unfamiliar place. She was cross with herself for not bringing her torch.

 

The air was filled with the sound of the wind and the pounding of the breakers on the beach. The trees seemed to be in a familiar pattern now. Jenny walked by memory, like someone shuffling through their own home in the dark.

 

The trees fell away; her secret hiding place appeared before her.

 

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