“Nope. Let me handle this one alone. They smell a rat and they’ll scram. That damn leak, you know what I mean?”
Brandon sure did. It seemed that over the past few months somebody had tipped off several Nazi spies and sympathizers, who’d skipped town just before the OSS could get them. Evidence pointed to someone within the FBI itself. Brandon’s theory was that Hoover wanted them out of town because they’d learned about Hoover’s extensive network of illegal spying on citizens solely for political reasons. Better a little espionage than a lot of embarrassment.
“Get on with it, then,” Brandon told his star agent.
“Sure deal, boss. Only, keep some of the boys at the ready.”
“What’s this guy’s game?” Brandon mused.
“No idea yet. But it’s bad, Tom. The Battle of the Bulge isn’t going the way the Krauts hoped—they’re getting their keisters kicked. And now they want to hit back. Hard.”
Payback …
The agent regarded his gold pocket watch, which would be a pretentious affectation on most anyone else, certainly an intelligence agent. For Murphy, though, it seemed completely natural. Indeed, to see him strap on a Timex would be out of place. His next accessory, too, was right at home in his sinewy hand: he took his 1911 Colt .45 from a desk drawer and eased back the slide to make sure the gun was loaded.
Murphy rose, pulled on his dark gray overcoat, and slipped the pistol into his pocket. He winked at his boss. “Time to go catch a spy. Stay close to that phone, boss. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need you.”
The two men were sitting on metal chairs upholstered in red vinyl at the Horn and Hardart automat on Forty-Second Street. The atmosphere was loud; voices and the collision of china reverberated off the glossy walls and the row upon row of small glass doors in the vending machines, behind which an abundance of food sat.
A sign on the table read:
HOW AN AUTOMAT WORKS
FIRST DROP YOUR NICKELS IN THE SLOT
THEN TURN THE KNOB
THE GLASS DOOR OPENS
LIFT THE DOOR AND HELP YOURSELF
Luca Cracco was eating pumpkin pie. The custard wasn’t bound with enough eggs, which were strictly rationed by the Office of Price Administration. He suspected gelatin as a substitute. Mamma mia … The OPA had also rationed butter and other fats since 1943. Margarine, too, was on the list. But lard had been okayed a year ago, in March of ’44. Cracco could tell, from the coating on the roof of his mouth, that, yes, pig fat was the shortening in the crust. With a pang, he remembered when he and his brother, Vincenzo, would stand at their mother’s hip on Saturday afternoon and watch her cut flour and butter into pastry dough. “Butter only,” she’d instructed gravely. Her son’s own output at his bakery was far less—and his income much smaller—because he refused to compromise.
Butter only …
The tall blonde man across from him was eating beef with broad noodles and burgundy sauce. Cracco had tried to talk him into H & H’s signature chicken pot pie, a New World original, but he was sticking to something he was more familiar with. A dish similar to what he might have at home. Like spaetzel, Cracco imagined. Heinrich Kohl, presently Hank Coleman, had just snuck into the country from Heidelberg, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany.
They sipped steaming coffee and ate in silence for a time. Kohl often looked around, though not, apparently, for threats. He simply seemed astonished at the variety and amount of food available here. The Fatherland was in the throes of crushing deprivation.
In whispered conversation that could not be overheard, Cracco asked about the man’s clandestine trip as a stowaway on the freighter that had brought him here just last night. About life in Germany as the Allies inched toward Berlin. About his career in the SS. Kohl corrected that he was Abwehr, regular German army, not the elite “protection squad.”
Kohl in turn inquired about the bakery business and Cracco’s wife and children.
Finally, Cracco leaned forward slightly and asked about Vincenzo. “Your brother is fine. He was captured near Monte Casino, when the Americans made their fourth offensive there. He was sent to a POW camp. But he managed to escape and made his way north—he knew that Italy would fall soon—and was not willing to let the war pass him by. He still wanted to do more.”
“Yes, yes, that’s my baby brother.”
Kohl continued. “He met with some people and expressed that sentiment. Word came to me, and I met with him. He said that you and he had been in touch and you expressed a passion about getting revenge for what had happened to your country. That you could be trusted completely.” The German ate a robust spoonful of noodles and sauce; the meat had disappeared first. “We contacted your handler, Geller, and he, you.” The handsome man looked down at the dish before Cracco. “Your pie?”
“Lard.” As if that explained it all. Which, of course, it did.