A Game of Spies Read Online Free PDF Page B

Whitehall.
    Hobbs and Oldfield had devised the plan together. They would activate Eva and send her after the OKW clerk, Klinger. The need for intelligence concerning the invasion had, by then, become undeniable. Teichmann’s revelation had closed off all the usual avenues. But Eva, and the few like her, were the aces up Oldfield’s sleeve.
    Yet by sending Eva to meet with her contact they would risk sending her into Canaris’ hands. For her contact, a man named Waldoff, may have been given up by Teichmann. From England, there was simply no way of knowing.
    They had decided to activate Eva anyway. Their options had been limited, and time was trickling away. When spring came, so would the invasion. But they would send another agent into Germany, to lend her a helping hand. And if Eva could get her information from Klinger, then they would sweep her out, right under Canaris’ nose.
    Oldfield, of course, had not wanted to make Hobbs the second agent.
    His reasoning had been persuasive. He had produced several photographs of Hobbs and Eva together, taken during their long courtship around London. If MI6 had the photographs, Oldfield had said, then the Nazis might have similar ones. It was entirely possible that they would make the connection between Hobbs and Eva, and his attempts to reach her would be frustrated.
    Hobbs had argued back with convincing reasons of his own. He had already been established as a traitor in the eyes of Hagen. He could suggest a kidnapping, saying that he was ready to go over to the other side for good. The method of getting into Germany, therefore, would be taken care of. Once he had arrived, Oldfield would wait for four weeks after receiving the letter, to give Hobbs time to emancipate himself, and would then activate Eva. The extraction would be confirmed via a radio message sent by Gehl. Hobbs would make contact. And then they would disappear—riding off together into the sunset, the way he had pictured it, like the heroes at the end of a Hollywood flick.
    The argument had gone back and forth. It would be less risky, Oldfield had insisted, to use another agent. To parachute him in. To keep the personal and the professional separated.
    Hobbs had countered that Eva would be less likely to trust a stranger who showed up on her doorstep. Hobbs, on the other hand, she knew. Hobbs, she trusted.
    Oldfield had raised his eyebrows. Does she trust you, William?
    He had convinced the man that she did.
    But now he felt less certain. Why, after all, should she have trusted him? He had used her—seduced her, recruited her, and sent her away.
    He quirked his lips sourly. There was no use in thinking it to death.
    It was time to go.
    But he looked out the window for yet another moment, dallying. The Gehl family was in Wilmersdorf, not so far from this very spot. But Hobbs had no papers, no weapon except the knife with which he had killed Borg. So the journey tonight promised to be dangerous. He was not anxious to undertake it. But he was even less anxious to stay here with Borg.
    Nothing to be gained by wasting more time, he thought. The sun had vanished completely now. The stars had come out, glittering like diamonds.
    He crossed the room for a final time, stepped gingerly over Borg, and removed his trench coat from the closet. He took a last moment to bolster his faltering courage, and went.
    As soon as he was in the street, a strange thing happened: He considered stopping into a beer hall for a drink.
    The idea was ludicrous. He did not even have false papers with which to protect himself. But as he walked, surrounded by jovial Berliners, keeping one eye peeled for a taxi, the idea gained a certain mad appeal. He had not had a drink for weeks. He was not accustomed to going weeks without a drink. One drink—what could it hurt?
    He heard Oldfield speaking, from somewhere deep in the recesses of memory:
    Agents may go days, weeks, months, or even years in complete or near-complete