A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (3 page)

The day was bright and sunny, the air filled with the sound of cawing seagulls and the bustle of men at work on the docks. He squinted in the sunlight and covered his eyes. He had a pair of sunglasses in his jacket breast pocket. He took them out and put them on.

A squat, thickset figure sat with his back to Quinn and his legs dangling over the edge of the railing, fishing rod in hand. He had long, curly, black hair, and the sunburnt skin of his bare back was red and flaky.

“Morning, Giglio,” Quinn called.

The large man turned towards him. A pale yellow scar ran down the left side of his face—a memento from when his ship had been dive-bombed by a Spitfire during the battle of Malta. He grinned.

“Buon giorno, Signore!
A fine day, no?” His English carried a thick Sicilian accent.

“A fine day,” Quinn agreed. “The others in town?”

“Si, Signore
. We’ll be leaving this afternoon?”

“I’m supposed to meet Kanellopoulos at eleven. He’ll give us the location where we’ll rendezvous. We should get underway right after that.”

Giglio nodded.
“Si, Signore
.”

“Have you had breakfast, Giglio?”

The Sicilian shook his head. He nodded to his fishing rod and grinned ruefully. “Breakfast, I had planned to catch myself. But—” he shrugged, “—the fish do not seem to like my plan.”

Quinn grinned. “I’m going ashore. I’ll be back soon.”

“Right,
Signore.”
Giglio turned back to his fishing.

Quinn climbed over the railing at the edge of the cabin cruiser’s deck and jumped the five feet onto the jetty to which it was tethered.

The docks were still fairly quiet this early in the morning, but soon they would be bustling. Already there were signs of activity, as workers loaded and unloaded cargo at a few ships and a boy stood on a street corner selling newspapers. A pair of coast guard speedboats patrolled out in the bay. Quinn started walking along the waterfront, away from where the cabin cruiser was docked.

A low rumble from the sky made him look up. Three fighter jets, American, were flying overhead. They were headed out to sea, no doubt returning to their aircraft carrier after an early morning patrol. One had an ominous trail of black smoke pouring from one of its engines; no doubt these three had tangled with the Luftwaffe this morning.

Quinn crossed the road and headed down a street running perpendicular to the docks, leading into the city. Three blocks later, he bought some hot baklava from a street vendor and sat on a nearby bench to eat it. He gripped the piping-hot pastry lightly between his fingers and took only small nibbles until it had cooled down a little. While he sat, he gazed up at the vapor trails of the three fighters, the one mixed with a trail of smoke.

It was a silly little war, this war in Greece. Technically, most of its combatants were not even
at
war. The British and American forces were merely aiding their ally, Greece, against Croatia, while the German and Italian troops that they fought were doing the same for Croatia against the Greeks. That way, British and Italian infantry could slaughter each other, and American and German fighters could clash in the skies, while
all four countries remained at peace with each other. Hundreds of young boys, still in their teens or early twenties, died every day to preserve that peace.

And in a very real sense, Simon Quinn was directly responsible for all of it.

He did not notice the car with darkly tinted windows pull up to the curb, nor did he notice the old man get out. When the old man sat down next to him on the bench, he gave him only a momentary glance before going back to his baklava.

It took a few moments for recognition to set in. When it did, he whirled around in disbelief and stared at the apparition from his past.

The old man regarded him coolly. “Hello, Simon,” he said, his public-school accent tainted ever so faintly by foreign birth.

Quinn found himself speechless for several seconds, staring at the small, dignified old man sitting next to him holding a burnished hickory cane and leather valise. Very few people even knew this old man existed; nobody knew his real name. Friends and enemies alike regarded him with a mixture of fear and respect—even awe—simply as Talleyrand. He had earned the nickname for the zeal with which he maintained his power, for the cunning and ruthlessness with which he manipulated the lives of countless others for his own inscrutable ends, and for his apparent agelessness. For as long as anyone could remember, he had been Her Majesty’s spymaster, the Director-General of the Secret Intelligence Service, and he showed no sign of relinquishing the position anytime soon. Quinn had never before heard of him leaving Great Britain, but now he sat next to Quinn on a public bench in a decaying port city in northern Greece.

“You,” Quinn managed. At first his voice held only astonishment, but now venom appeared too. “What are
you
doing here?” “Now, now, Simon,” Talleyrand chided. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“You’re not a friend,” Quinn said.

“Well, it’s nice to see you too, my boy.”

Quinn stared at him a moment longer, then tossed aside the rest of his baklava, got up, and walked away.

Talleyrand stood as well and called after him, “You’ve been recalled to life.” Quinn stopped dead in his tracks. “Yes, old boy. There’s a task that your country needs you for.”

Quinn did not react at first. Then, slowly, he turned back to the old man. “No,” he said. “I’ve washed my hands of you. Whatever stew it is you’ve made for yourself, you’ll have to get yourself out of it this time.” And with that, he turned purposefully on his heel and strode quickly away.

Talleyrand stared after him. “Fair enough,” he murmured at last, and got back in the car.

Quinn walked back down the street in the direction of the waterfront. He was a little over a block away when he heard the sound of sirens coming up from behind. Everyone in the street turned and watched as three police cars and a van, lights flashing, screamed by toward the docks. When they reached the end of the street, the vehicles turned the corner and were gone. The onlookers went back to whatever they had been doing before.

Everyone except Quinn. He had seen only a flash of the figure sitting in the back seat of the last car, staring sullenly out the window, but he had recognized him instantly.

Kanellopoulos. His contact.

A shudder of dread ran through him. He stood transfixed, staring after the police convoy, praying they would turn in the opposite direction when they reached the corner. But no—they turned and headed straight in the direction of his cabin cruiser.

He broke into a run, heading for the docks. He rounded the corner and came skidding to a halt, looking down the waterfront towards his boat. Already it was crawling with police. He could see Giglio between two policemen as they escorted him to one of the police cars. Two coast guard boats sat a couple of dozen yards out in the bay, ready to catch anyone who might try to swim for it.

Even as Quinn watched, a policeman emerged from below decks, triumphantly holding aloft a machine gun. The hold carried forty-nine more just like it, all destined for the Greek guerrillas fighting in the north behind the Croat lines, and all illegal.

FOR LONG, endless minutes, Quinn watched the police crawl over his boat. A crowd had started to gather at the perimeter the police had set up at the head of the jetty, prevented from encroaching any further by half a dozen policemen stationed at the periphery of the scene.

After a while, the car pulled up to the curb next to him once again, and the back door opened. Talleyrand got out and waited, standing a few feet behind Quinn and watching the scene at the jetty from over his shoulder.

At last the old man said pleasantly, “What do you suppose the penalty is for gunrunning? Greece is at war, fighting for her very existence. I’m sure that at a time like this, it must be rather severe.”

He let the statement hang in the air, then suggested, “Perhaps you would like to reconsider my offer?”

Quinn still stared at his boat, refusing to turn and meet the old man’s gaze. “Those guns were destined for partisans behind the Croat lines, fighting for the
Greek
cause. And you know it.”

“So you say now,” Talleyrand said solemnly. “Of course you do. But how can the authorities know that? Especially since that young man Kanellopoulos they picked up this morning will no doubt testify that those weapons were intended for Croat guerrillas—in exchange for a pardon.”

There was another silence, Quinn unwilling to concede defeat. But he knew he had no choice. At last, he turned to face Talleyrand. “All right,” he said. “What do you have to say?”

The old man looked about, spotted a bench facing out onto the water and gestured to it with his cane. Quinn walked over and sat down. He stared out at the sea while he waited for the old man to follow. To the north lay the port’s crowded docks; to the south, the headland curved away where the Gulf of Árta opened into the Adriatic Sea.

Talleyrand settled himself next to Quinn. “Don’t worry about your boat or your crew,” the old man reassured him. “They’ll be held in custody until you’ve completed your mission, then released. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

“And my cargo?”

“Ah, yes.” He pursed his lips. “Your cargo, I’m afraid, will have to be, ah, confiscated for the Greek war effort.”

Quinn stared at him bleakly. “At no compensation to me.”

“The price of doing business, I’m afraid,” Talleyrand said, sounding not at all repentant. “Now, to the business at hand.” He removed a large manila envelope from his valise and handed it to Quinn. Quinn opened it and pulled out a series of black and white photographs of a man in his middle forties with a receding hairline, greying dark hair, and a pair of horned-rimmed glasses.

“Richard Andrew Garner,” Talleyrand explained. “Born in Hamburg, 1925, the son of an Irish importer. He was educated in England and enlisted in the RAF in 1943. He went through officer training and spent the last eighteen months of the war as a navigator on a Halifax bomber over Germany. He was demobbed a year after the Corunna Armistice and spent a term at Birmingham University before we recruited him. He started off working for us in Hamburg, then we moved him to the Berlin Station in 1956. He’s been there ever since; he’s now Assistant Chief of Station. He speaks English and German fluently.”

“So what’s the problem?” Quinn asked. Despite himself, he was falling back into the familiar rhythm of things—running over all the information in his mind, finding the holes he needed to fill and the questions he needed to answer.

“Three days ago, Richard Garner left the British embassy in possession of some highly sensitive documents
and hasn’t been seen since.”

“You think he’s turned?”

Talleyrand nodded. “That does seem the most likely scenario. If the Germans get their hands on those documents, it will mean some very bad things for Britain.”

Quinn frowned. “If? You don’t believe they already have him?”

“No,” the old man said. “We’d know if the Germans had him. It would have come over the Gestapo communications that we can monitor, or something like that. No, though we don’t know why he’s disappeared, it seems clear it was not part of a pre-arranged plan with a German operator. Perhaps he had intended to turn later, and something has flushed him out ahead of schedule. Our best guess is that he’s holed up somewhere, waiting to make contact with the SD.”

Quinn was still staring at Garner’s face, memorizing every detail: the jowly cheeks, the businesslike, straightforward look in his eyes. “So you want me to locate Garner and retrieve the documents?”

Talleyrand shook his head. “I want you to destroy the documents and eliminate Garner.”

Quinn looked up sharply from the photograph. “You want me to kill him? You don’t even want him questioned? You’re not even sure he’s turned.”

“It doesn’t matter. I cannot stress how sensitive these documents are, Simon. If they fall into the wrong hands, British national security will be irreparably compromised. The fate of the entire nation rests on the apprehension of Richard Garner. And as I say, he does not appear to be following a plan or acting in concert with an enemy agency. He’s certainly unstable, and most likely very scared. Scared men are unpredictable, and unpredictable men are the greatest danger of all.”

Quinn considered. “Why do you need me for this?” he asked at last. “Why can’t you find this Garner yourselves?”

“Ordinarily, we would,” the old man said. “But events of the last twelve hours have added a new dimension to the situation.”

Quinn pursed his lips. “You mean Hitler’s death?”

“Ah, you’ve heard. Precisely. The original situation was unstable enough, but now events have become completely unmanageable. The German government, the military, the Gestapo, the European satellite states—they’ll all be in a state of complete disarray and impossible to predict. And so they’ll stay for at least another three days.”

“When Hitler’s successor is named. After his funeral.”

“Yes.”

Talleyrand took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, stuck one in his mouth and lit it. He offered one to Quinn, who shook his head.

“What’s more,” the old man continued, “if Garner is going to defect, he’ll have to act now. He knows we’re looking for him. Without this unfortunate incident, he could have lain low for a couple of weeks, until the coast was clear, and then made his move. But, as long as the next ruler of Germany is in doubt, those documents he has will give a strong advantage to any of the leading figures in the German government who will be looking to influence the succession. Garner will have to move now to make use of them. Given a short while longer, we would have been able to locate him ourselves. But now, we do not have that short while.”

“All right,” Quinn said. He gave the photographs another brief look, repeating the name, “Richard Garner,” then replaced them in the manila envelope. A thought occurred to him. “You say he’s been in Berlin for fifteen years?”