Creep Around the Corner. Douglas Atwill
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she appeared much younger. Now, she looked like a middle-aged Nebraskan on vacation, Miss Partridge on a schoolteachers’ tour of the Swiss cantons.
She said, “Your checkered jacket and slacks are perfect. I couldn’t have found any as good in the Supply Room.”
“I guess that’s a compliment.”
“Take it that way.”
When I asked her a question about the assignment, she put her finger to her lips and pointed to the driver. We motored in silence to downtown Stuttgart to an iron-fenced house called Villa Ingrid. Very near to the Hauptbahnhof, it had survived the blanket bombings of the Allies. Gossip about Villa Ingrid lived a healthy life among the desks at the Historical Section.
We knew that it was involved with Hungarian matters, the debriefing of refugees from the revolution, training of agents, agendas for the future, but little more. Volunteers needed special clearances to work in the villa and assignment there was highly sought after. The steel driveway gate opened automatically and we drove into a bay of the garage, the driver closing the garage door before McQuire moved to get out.
A woman who resembled McQuire in stature met us at the garage door and took us to a room on the ground floor. There were two fake crocodile suitcases, medium-sized, on the center table. Without a word, McQuire took one and motioned for me to take the other. Mine was heavy. We walked through hallways with closed oak doors and out through the garden behind the villa. Unlike the front, the back garden had a large lawn, linden trees and a high wall with a gate, which buzzed open as we neared. We ducked out onto the back street, McQuire looking both ways. The street was empty and the boarded up back windows of adjacent villas were eyeless.
We walked the few blocks to the Hauptbahnhof and waited for the train to Zurich at 0935. On the bench in the large waiting hall she told me about the assignment.
“Switzerland is, on the surface, our ally, but they strongly forbid the US from covert operations or counterintelligence operations of any nature. To get secret documents to our offices in Zurich, we need to look like ordinary citizens on vacation, a mother and her son from Boston, or an aunt and her nephew, we’ll have to decide which on the way there. I have your papers in my hand-bag.”
“Will somebody meet us in Zurich?”
“No, we’ll take the first taxi to the museum, talking all the time about modern art. The consulate is on the next street, so after the taxi leaves we’ll walk around and leave our suitcases there. There will be identical suitcases waiting for us, packed with old clothes, which we will bring back to Bad Issel.”
“Do you expect trouble?”
“We should always expect trouble.”
I looked around at the other benches in the hall, red-cheeked Germans taking on a more sinister aspect with this new information. Germans often stared energetically at Americans, so that only added to my mistrust. It appeared that a woman all in black on a far bench was watching us without respite. Would a foreign agent not be trained to look away now and then? To stare was a dead giveaway. I was sure that McQuire had seen that danger in the black dress, but she did not deem it worth her comment.
“Don’t get too spooked, Bradford, but we will be followed. It only remains to identify which of these seated are the ones. Usually more than one.”
“Shouldn’t we be armed?”
“I am, but you should hold tight to your suitcase.”
“I thought that the Regular Army agents did this work, the ones with years of training.”
“They do, but I prefer a new man like you. Intelligent amateurs, quick to respond to new stimulus, make the best couriers. There’s something about a trained agent that gives them away. A tired nonchalance, I think, like priests who have heard too many confessions.”
“Don’t they recognize you after so many assignments?”
“I change my appearance each time.”
This did nothing to allay my fears, because the captain looked just like the captain to me, even in her distinctive dress from Omaha. Surely the trained European eye, honed by centuries of intense observations, could see through her mid-American veneer.
A new thought popped into my mind.
“Has anybody been killed doing this?” I asked.
“Not in a long time.”
Bowel-opening fear was not the proper response, so I said, “The sign-board says our train is boarding.”
“Keep your eyes peeled.”
At the gate, I looked back for the bench with the old woman in black, but she had moved forward to a few places behind us in the line. My knuckles must have been snow white on the suitcase handle. I wondered if I was really meant for courier duty. My dossier-covered desk with its green-shaded lamp seemed so homey, so safe, so far away, the monkish calligrapher’s table with scrolls awaiting the pen, shelter from the buffetings of the world, no treacherous old women in black dresses and shoe-daggers washed in nerve poison.
I followed McQuire onto a second-class car; she walked through several more until she found a compartment already occupied by four young women, apparently school-girls. They moved to allow us to sit together.
McQuire put her suitcase on the rack above her head, so I did the same. The schoolgirls watched intently as I helped McQuire position hers. Just as we were seated, the train started to move. McQuire settled in with aplomb, shaking open a copy of the Paris Herald Tribune. In a few minutes I saw the old woman go by our compartment, turn her head to see us, pause slightly and then go on. McQuire, who was deep in the news columns, had not noticed. I suddenly had to pee, but expected I ought to wait.
McQuire introduced herself in German and asked where the girls lived. München. Did they go to school there? Ja. Were they going on holiday? Ja, ja, bestimmt. Did they like to ski in Switzerland? Natürlich, Fräulein. Then followed a ten minute exchange of Teutonic chatter, McQuire and the girls nodding back and forth, smiling, laughing, in the end all turning to look at me.
“What?” I said.
“I just told the girls that you were my handsome nephew and studying to be an artist. Ein Kunstler.”
It was a four hour trip to Zurich, with a short stop at the border. The old woman came by our compartment several times, once stopping without shame to look straight in at me as the four girls and McQuire dozed. A cold winter rain devoid of compassion fell on me when she stared, her eyes near enough to mine to see their ice-blue color. Were those flecks of crimson in the blue? I wondered if she had a gun in the handbag that she clutched to her breast. Perhaps there was a special grommet hole in the leather and the gun was already aimed right at my nose. The silenced bullet would go straight through the grommet, not even scratching the weathered leather of her handbag, and slip through the window glass while my compartment companions slept. I was a dead man, I knew, but then she lowered the bag and moved on. The fear resounded in me for the next hour like a billiard ball caroming aimlessly from side to side, side to side.
At the border, the Swiss Customs men walked the car inspecting each passport in turn. McQuire produced ours from her bag and they nodded, asked her something in German, but she replied in English.
“I don’t speak good German. My nephew and I will be staying in Zurich only long enough for the museum. Thank you.” The girls looked at her strangely as they offered their papers, because the Fraülein spoke acceptable German. They knew something was amiss. I remembered a caveat from intelligence school: never speak a foreign language at borders, only English, even if you were multi-fluent. McQuire must have hundreds of these guidelines available for instant use, ready to wend our way through difficulties.
The customs men considered what she said, looked back at our passports, stamped them and closed our compartment door. In Zurich, everything went as planned. After being deposited at the Kunstmuseum, we strolled along an avenue with horse-chestnut trees and turned into a side street. There