Manhattan Mayhem

THE BAKER OF BLEECKER STREET by Jeffery Deaver

His call to action, to avenge the terrible crimes done to his country, came in the form of a note tucked into a neatly folded dollar bill.

Standing behind the glass cases in his bakery, Luca Cracco avoided looking directly at the man who handed him the cash. The customer was a tall balding fellow with liver spots on his forehead. No words were exchanged as the customer, whose name was Geller, took the crisp brown paper bag containing a loaf of Cracco’s semolina bread, still warm, still fragrant. If any of the other patrons in the store noted that Cracco pocketed the bill, rather than wield the brass crank of the red mahogany National cash register to deposit the money in the drawer, they didn’t pay it any mind.

Cracco, a man of thirty-two, curly haired and with a proud and imposing belly, rang up another sale. He glanced toward black-haired and voluptuous Violetta, who was replenishing the bin of wheat bread. She would understand why the sale had not been registered, why her husband had not returned change for the dollar when the loaf cost fifteen cents. Their eyes met, hers neither approving nor critical; she knew of her husband’s other activities, and though she would have preferred him to stay true to his role as the best baker in Greenwich Village, she understood there were things a man had to do. Such matters among them.

Cracco did not immediately turn his attention to the message within the bill-he knew largely what it would say-but instead continued to sell to customers from his dwindling stock of goods: the signature semolina loaves and whole wheat, of course, but also more sublime creations: amaretti, biscotti, brutti ma buoni (“ugly but good,” as indeed the cookies were), cannoli, ricciarelli, crostata, panettone, canestrelli, panforte, pignolata, sfogliatelle, and another of Cracco’s specialties: ossa dei morti, “bones of dead men” biscotti.

A rather telling name, he reflected, considering what now sat in the pocket of his flour-dusted slacks, the note embraced by a silver certificate.

Situated in a building that dated to the past century, Cracco’s bakery was shabby and dark, but the cases were well lit and the pastries glowed like jewels in Hedy Lamarr’s bracelet. Cracco believed he had a calling beyond merely baking bread and dolci; in this city filled with so many Italian immigrants, he felt it a duty to provide solace to so many who had been derided and mistreated for their connection, however removed, to the black-suited icon of the Axis: Benito Mussolini.

He glanced out the window at Bleecker Street, overcast this icy January afternoon. No sign of anyone in trench coat and fedora, pretending not to surveil the store while doing just that. There wasn’t any reason to believe he was under suspicion. But in these days, in this city, you could never be too careful.

Cracco rang up another sale, then gave his wife a brief nod. She dusted her hands together with sharp slaps and stepped to the register. He went into the back room, the kitchen, where the ovens were now cool. It was noon, late in the daily life of a bakery; the alchemy of turning such varying ingredients-powders and crystals and gels and liquids-into transcendent sustenance occurred early. He arose every morning at 3:30, swapped pajamas for shirt and dungarees and, careful not to wake Violetta and Beppe and Cristina, descended the steep stairs of their apartment on West Fourth Street. Smoking one of the four cigarettes he allowed himself each day, primo, he walked here, fired up the ovens, and got to work.

Now, Cracco pulled the apron over his head and, as was his nature, folded it carefully before placing it in a laundry bin. He took a horsehair brush and swiped at his slacks and shirt, watching the flour dust motes ease into the air. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the dollar bill that Geller, the liver-spot man, had given him. He read the careful handwriting. Yes, as he’d guessed. This was the moment: the final piece of the plan, the last stage of the recipe to bake revenge into bitter bread and force it down the enemy’s throat.

A look at his Breil watch, crafted in Italy, a present from his father, also a baker. The timepiece was simple but elegant, the numbers bright and bold against the dark face.

It was time to leave.

Cracco lit a cigarette, secundo, and before the match guttered out, he set fire to Geller’s note and let it curl to ash in one of the ovens. He pulled on his greatcoat and wrapped a scarf around his neck, then topped on his gray fedora. His gloves were cloth and threadbare, worn through completely on the right thumb, but he could not afford to replace them just yet. The shop provided only a modest income, thanks to the war. And, of course, he did not undertake his work for Geller for money, unless you counted the spy paying him one dollar for a fifteen-cent loaf of bread.

Luca Cracco stepped outside as flurries began to fall, frosting the walk, just as he himself might sprinkle powdered sugar on a bigné di San Giuseppe, the Roman puff pastry baked just before St. Joseph’s day in March.

“You have confirmation? You really do?”

But Murphy was being Murphy and that meant he wouldn’t be rushed. The man continued in a quick, staccato voice: “I was following him last night. All night. And he goes into the Rialto on Forty-Second Street. You know, Gaslight was still playing. After all these months. You can’t get enough of her. Who can? She’s bee-u-tiful. Dontcha think?” Ingrid Bergman, he was speaking of. “Of course, she is. Come on, Tommy. No actress prettier. Agree.”

Jack Murphy worked for Tom Brandon and, when they’d been in the army, had been lower in rank. But another man’s superior status, boss or commander, never figured much in Murphy’s reckoning (except for the one time he was given a decoration by President Roosevelt himself. Murphy had blushed and used the word “sir.” Brandon had been there. He was still surprised at the show of respect.)

Murphy rocked back in the chair. Brandon wondered if the agent would plop his flashy two-tone oxfords, black and white, on Brandon’s desk. But he didn’t. “And whatta you think happens, boss?” The small curly-haired man-taut as a spring-didn’t even seem to be asking a question. “So, the host at the theater does the four-piece place setting giveaway-trashy stuff from Gimbels-and the organist plays a few tunes, then the lights go down and, bango, time for the newsreels.” Murphy ran a hand through his locks, which were red, of course.

“We were talking about confirmation,” Brandon tried.

“I hear you, boss. But listen. No, really. The newsreels, I’m saying. There was one about the Battle of the Bulge.”

Terrible, the German offensive that had started in December of ’44, a month ago. The Allies were making progress, but the battle was still raging.

“And what does he do?” This tiny pistol of a man pointed his finger at his superior and said, “The minute the announcer mentioned the German high command, he takes off his hat.”

Brandon, who resembled nothing so much as a balding shoe salesman at Marshall Field’s in his native Chicago, was perplexed.

But Murphy didn’t notice. Or, more likely, he did. But he didn’t care. He said to the ceiling, “Does that mean Hauptman’s a spy? Does that mean he’s a saboteur? No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that we need to keep watching him.”

The him was a German American mechanic who lived in Queens and who had had some nebulous ties to the American Nazi Party before the war and had recently been seen wandering past the Norden, as in bomb-sight, factory, not so very far from where the men now sat.

And so Murphy was on the case like Sam Spade after a cheating husband.

Brandon, of course, agreed: “Okay. Sure. Stay on him.”

Outside, snow fluttered down and wind rattled the panes of this large, shabby room-the office that didn’t exist.

It was situated in a six-story limestone walk-up in Times Square, overlooking the Brill Building, where so much wonderful music was made. Major, retired major, Tom Brandon loved music, all kinds. Tin Pan Alley-much of it written in the Brill Building-and classical and jazz and Glenn Miller, God rest his soul, who’d died just last month, flying to entertain troops. Jack Murphy liked, guess what, Irish tunes. Pipes, whistles, bodhrams, concertinas, guitars. He sang sappy ballads, too, after a round or two or three of Bushmills. He had a terrible voice, but he picked up the bar tab for all the boys, so Brandon and the rest of them in the office could hardly complain.

The office that didn’t exist.

Just like Brandon and Murphy and the other four men who shared this austere paint-peeling room didn’t exist. Oh, the Operation for Special Services, the intelligence agency, was as real as its colorful founder and head-Wild Bill Donovan (the name said it all)-but the OSS had been born from military intelligence and was supposed to take a backseat within the country’s borders. Here, spy catching was the province of J. Edgar and his not-so-special agents. The OSS’s bailiwick was overseas.

But a few years earlier, there’d been an incident. Once war broke out, Hitler wanted to strike Americans at home. He ordered his head of intelligence to come up with a sabotage plan, and Operation Pastorius was born, named after the first German settlement in America. In June of ’42, German U-boats dropped Nazi commandos on the East Coast. One team on Long Island, one in Florida. They had a large store of explosives and detonators with them. The saboteurs were to blow up economically important targets: the hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls, some of the Aluminum Company of America’s factories, the Ohio River locks near Louisville, the Horseshoe Curve railway stretch in Pennsylvania, Hell Gate Bridge in New York, and Penn Station in New Jersey, among others.

The plan fell apart and the spies were detected-though not by the FBI, which denied there was a conspiracy at first and then finally accepted the Coast Guard’s word that enemy troops were on U.S. soil. Still, the bureau had no luck whatsoever tracking the spies down. Indeed, they didn’t even believe the head of the German saboteurs when he confessed. It took him days to convince the agents that he and his men were the real thing.

Roosevelt and Donovan were furious over Hoover’s ineptness. Without telling the Justice Department, the president agreed that the OSS could open an office here in New York and run its own operations. Brandon handpicked the brash Irishman Jack Murphy and the others, and they set up shop.

He and the team had had some successes. They’d caught an Italian flashing an all-clear signal to a skiff bringing in a load of dynamite off Brooklyn, meant to sink ships taking Jeeps and other vehicles overseas. And stopped German and Japanese citizens from photographing military installations. There’d been an attempt to poison the Croton reservoir-a joint endeavor by Mussolini- and Nazi sympathizers.

They’d get Hauptman, too, if he was a spy and not simply too rude to take his hat off when he first sat down in the Rialto.

But now Brandon was tired of the movie theater incident and turned toward the Big Deal. He said firmly, “You said confirmation.”

“Our man just got to town,” Murphy said with a gleam in his eye.

“Well.”

Murphy was speaking of a German plan that he had uncovered a week or so ago, known as Betrieb Amortisations.

Or, in English: Operation Payback.

One of the wiry Irishman’s sources in the field had learned that a brilliant spy from Heidelberg, Germany, would soon be arriving in the United States. He was bringing in something “significant.” Whatever that was wouldn’t win the war for the Axis, but it could give Hitler bargaining power to sue for peace and keep the Nazi government intact.

“Swell, that’s swell!” Brandon wasn’t known for his enthusiasm, but he couldn’t contain himself.

Murphy pulled an apple from his pocket. He ate a lot of apples. Two or three a day. Brandon thought it gave him rosy cheeks, but that might have been because he associated apples with Norman Rockwell’s paintings on the Saturday Evening Post cover. Murphy explained, “Don’t know where he’s staying. But I do know that he’s picking up his special delivery tonight. I have an idea where.” He polished the apple on his sleeve and chomped down. Brandon believed he ate the stem as well as part of the core.

Brandon said, “I’ll get some boys together.”

“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.

A laugh. “In the Fatherland, we would be lucky for lard.” He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, inhaled slowly, enjoying the sensation.

Cracco joined him. Terzo.

Kohl examined the Chesterfield. “At home, we make cigarettes from lettuce leaves. When we can find lettuce. And your country, Italy, is no better. Ah, what those bastards have done to her.” Then, a shrug. He smoked half the cigarette down, stubbed it out, and put the rest in his pocket. “The shipment will arrive this evening. You and I will pick it up.”

“Good, yes. But Geller tells me we have to be very careful. The ones we need to be particularly wary of are the FBI and the OSS, the intelligence service.”

“There is a specific threat?”

“It seems so. But he doesn’t know what, exactly.”

“Well, if this is to be my last meal, I’ll have another.” Kohl laughed and nodded at the empty bowl before him. “You would like some more pie, yes?”

Lard, thought Luca Cracco and shook his head.

After the late lunch, Heinrich Kohl vanished into the forever-migrating Midtown crowds. Gray and black greatcoats and fedoras for the men, overcoats and scarves for the women, some of whom wore trousers against the cold, though most were in cotton lisle stockings-which had replaced silk after the start of the war.

Luca Cracco descended beneath Grand Central Station and caught the subway shuttle for the trip of less than a mile to the Eighth Avenue IND line. He took a southbound train to West Fourth Street and walked to the bakery, which Violetta was closing up. It was a quarter to five and the shelves were nearly empty-only a few loaves remained. She would now return home. Beppe and Cristina were in the care of Mrs. Menotti, the woman who lived in the basement of their apartment building. A widow, she earned money by doing laundry and overseeing the children of the couples in the building who both worked, as many families now had to do.

Luca and Violetta had met ten years ago at the Piazza di Spagna, near the bottom of the famed steps. He had approached and asked if she knew which house the poet John Keats had lived in. He knew exactly which dwelling it was, but he was too shy to directly ask if the raven-haired beauty would have a cappuccino with him. Three years later, they were married. Now, they were both heavier than then, but she, in his opinion, was more beautiful. She was quiet on the whole but spoke her mind, often with a coy disarming smile. Cracco believed her to be the smarter of the couple; he was given to impulse. Luca was the artist, Violetta the businesswoman. And woe to any banker or tradesman who tried to take advantage.

He told her about Kohl and the meeting.

“You trust him?”

“Yes,” Cracco said. “Geller vouches for him. And I asked certain questions that only the real Kohl would know the answers to.” A smile. “And he asked me questions, too. I passed the test. The dance of spies.” He thought, as he often did: Who would have guessed, when he came to America-to avoid the looming war, for the sake of his future children-that he would become a soldier, after all.

“I need to get the truck.”

He could have gone directly to the parking lot from lunch with Kohl, but he’d wanted to stop by the bakery. And see his wife.

She nodded.

Nothing more was said of the assignment. They both knew its danger, both knew there was a chance he might not be coming back this evening. He now stepped forward and kissed her quickly on the mouth and told her he loved her. Violetta would not acknowledge even this glancing sentiment and turned away. But then she stopped and spun around and hugged him hard. She went into the backroom quickly. He wondered if she was crying.

Cracco now walked out the door and, hands in pockets, turned and headed east to collect his bread delivery truck; you could spend an hour finding an empty place to park in this neighborhood, so he paid a warehouse $3 a month to leave the vehicle there. He maneuvered carefully as he walked; the streets and sidewalks here were not as meticulously cleared of ice and snow as the more elegant Upper East and Upper West Sides. And, as always, there was the obstacle course of people, all ages, bundled against the freezing air and hurrying on errands this way and that.

His walk took him through the complex panorama of Greenwich Village, a pocket of nearly 80,000 souls three miles north of Wall Street and three south of Midtown. Nearly half the inhabitants were immigrants of varying generations. In the west, where the Craccos lived, the majority was Italian. Whereas the family was lucky enough to have their own modest apartment, many residents lived in shared units, two or three families together. It was a bustling world of shops and coffeehouses and clubs from which jazz and swing music escaped into the streets though open windows on hot nights, blending into a hypnotic cacophony. In this area you would also find bohemians-and not necessarily real ones from Czechoslovakia. It was the term used to describe New York’s intelligentsia, painters, writers, socialists, and even a communist or two. The Village had become their home.

In the north-from Washington Square College of New York University and the park, which Cracco could now see on his left, to Fourteenth Street-were the elegant apartments of financiers and lawyers and heads of corporations. Some of those inhabitants earned as much as $7,000 a year!

The East Village, his destination now, was populated by Ukrainians and Poles and Jews and refugees from the Balkans. The men were largely laborers and tradesmen, the women wives and mothers and occasionally washerwomen and shop tenders. Their homes were tenements, tall and grim-outriders of the Lower East Side, to the south, where the early immigrants to New York had settled. The perfume of those streets was cabbage and garlic.

Soon, after only two near-misses on the ice, he arrived at the snow-filled parking lot near the Bowery. He climbed into his Chevrolet and after five minutes bullied and tricked the engine to life. The gears protested as he sought first, and, when they finally engaged, he pulled out of the lot and drove north.

At seven p.m., Cracco collected Heinrich Kohl in front of a flophouse in lower Hell’s Kitchen, west in the Thirties.

The man climbed into the passenger seat.

“Anyone follow?” the German asked.

“No. I’m sure.”

Amid the dense traffic, Cracco piloted his truck south and west until he hit Miller Highway, the main thoroughfare along the Hudson River shore.

He heard a snap of metal and looked to his right. The German’s deft hands were slipping cartridges into the cylinder of a revolver. He put it in his pocket and loaded another gun.

Cracco thought: War is raging on virtually every continent on earth, a thousand people at least have died in the time it took this truck to drive from the hotel to the highway, yet that horror was distant. More shocking was the pistol he was now staring at. Six small bullets. The baker wondered if he could actually point the weapon at another man and pull the trigger.

Then, he pictured his country being so savagely attacked and decided that, yes, he could.

The truck eased slowly along the highway, through the northern portion of the West Village. He could see, now dark, the famed West Washington and the Gansevoort farmers markets-the city’s main meat packers and produce venues. Mornings here were beyond chaos, with purveyors and restaurateurs and individual shoppers mobbing the stalls. By eight a.m. the cobblestones grew slick with blood and fat from the sides of beef, the split-open pigs, and racks of lamb hanging from hooks in the open air. Poultry could be bought here as well. Not much fish; that market was in the Bronx. And at the produce market, every vegetable, legume, and fruit God had created could be found.

Now, glancing to his right, Cracco noted the many piers and docks striking out into the Hudson. Another memory: he and his brother Vincenzo and dozens of other boys leaping off the docks in Gaeta, south of Rome, a beach town where the Cracco family would drive in their Fiat on summer days. That is, they would make the trip if the sputtering temperamental vehicle didn’t overheat-which both brothers prayed at Mass would not happen, Cracco suspecting it was a minor sin to bend His ear for something so selfish. (Though He seemed to grant the supplications with blessed frequency.)

Here, too, in the sweltering days of summer, boys-and the occasional girl-would launch themselves into the gray Hudson River, not the most aromatic or clean body of water. But what did youth care?

He realized that Kohl was speaking to him.

“Si?” Then corrected himself, angry at the slip. He was, after all, supposed to be a spy. “Yes?”

“There. That’s it.”

A listing freighter was docking beside a pier, the structure and the ship equally dilapidated. The docks in Greenwich Village were not like those in Brooklyn or New Jersey, where the big cargo ships offloaded their valuable goods. Smaller ships plied these waters, like the hundred-footer that had carried their precious cargo into the country from Europe.

Cracco recalled the family’s voyage here from Genoa in a state-room-an elegant but deceptive term for a three-meter-square chamber with one bare light and no windows. The only passenger in the family untroubled by seasickness was Beppe, yet unborn, and sleeping without care in the warmth of his own private ocean.

The men looked around carefully. The highway was crowded with traffic but the pier was hidden from view by a half dozen boxcars on a siding. No pedestrians here; there were no walkways and all the businesses nearby were closed for the night. Cracco noted boat traffic on the Hudson, of course, the hulls largely invisible in the dark but their running lights bright and festive. The massive black expanse of river was dominated by the huge Maxwell House coffee sign, with its forty-five-foot cup, tilted and empty (the company’s slogan: “Good to the last drop”). It glowed brightly. Cracco believed there’d been a time when it had been shut off in the evenings-not to save money but so that it wouldn’t serve as a beacon to enemy bombers. Now it was lit again, the country apparently no longer believing that the enemy would bring the war to its home shores. Erroneously, of course.

He pulled the truck up alongside the ship. Kohl handed the pistol to Cracco. It seemed hot, though that would be impossible on a night like this. He looked at it once, then put the weapon in his pocket as well.

“Are you ready?” Kohl asked.

For a moment, he wasn’t. Not at all. He wanted to hurry back home. But then he thought again: Payback.

And Luca Cracco nodded.

They stepped out into the cutting wind and walked to the edge of the pier, watching the crews secure the ship with ropes. A few minutes later the captain hobbled down the gangway.

“Bonsoir!” he called.

As it turned out, the guns were unnecessary. The captain, a grizzled fellow, wrapped in scarves and two jackets and chewing on a pipe, didn’t seem the least suspicious that a man who looked Italian and one who looked German were picking up cargo from war-ravaged Europe. And to the crew, these were just harried workers collecting a mundane shipment for their business.

Cracco spoke only marginal French, so it was Kohl who conversed with the man and pointed to Cracco, the consignee. Stomping his feet against the cold, the captain offered the bill of lading. The baker scrawled his name and took a carbon copy. Kohl paid the man in cash.

Five minutes later, seamen winched a one-by-one-meter crate to the pier and then muscled it into the back of the truck. Kohl tipped them and they hurried back to the warmth of the vessel.

Inside the bread truck, Kohl clicked on a flashlight and the two men examined the crate marked with Etienne et Fils Fabrication on the side. The German said, “Port of entry was New Jersey. Customs cleared it there.”

Cracco imagined a lethargic civil servant glancing into the packing crate at the device and not bothering to inspect further. Perhaps he hadn’t bothered even to look inside. Kohl pried the top off and they looked down at the small bakery oven, painted green. The only difference between this and a real oven was that the one they now examined included a large metal tank, as if for gas, to fire the burners.

Cracco whispered, “That’s it?”

Kohl said nothing but nodded, and his eyes shone as if he were proud of what was contained in the canister. As surely he was.

“I would have expected bigger,” Cracco said.

“Yes, yes. That’s the point, now, isn’t it? Let’s get back. We’ve been here too long as it is.”

Jack Murphy was deciding that shivers were creatures unto themselves. He couldn’t stop them. They roamed his body, from neck to calf. Some playful, some downright sadistic.

His teeth chattered, too.

The OSS agent was hiding behind the switching station where an old Hudson and Manhattan R. R. track split off from the New York Central main line. The spur ended on a shabby pier, about fifty yards south from where the two spies were taking delivery of the shipment that one of his better intelligence contacts had alerted him to. Murphy had been staking out the place since he’d left OSS headquarters that afternoon, battling the tear-inducing cold.

His contact had told him that the shipment was arriving on this dock on this vessel today, the only delivery in Manhattan, but had said nothing more. Hence his long and arduous vigil. Finally, to his relief, he’d watched the bakery truck come into view along Miller Highway and then turn onto the service road and ease carefully over the icy ground to the pier.

Cracco’s Bakery

Luca Cracco, Prop.

Est. 1938

Bakery truck, of course; because the shipment was an oven.

A New York Central locomotive, towing passengers headed home from the day’s work in Lower Manhattan, had just left the Spring Street terminal, south, to his left, and now passed by. The thick perfume of diesel fumes filled the air in its wake.

More shivers, which replicated and sent their brood to muscles he didn’t know he had.

Thunder and lightning, Murphy thought in Gaelic, rocking on his numb feet, clapping his hands together. Let’s get on with it, you damn spies!

How he wanted nothing more than to be back in his two-bedroom apartment on the East Side with his wife, Megan, and son, Padraig. Sitting before the fireplace. Sipping a whisky. And reading the book he’d started last night. A murder mystery-he loved them. It was The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie. Murphy was determined to figure out the villain’s identity before the detective.

His hands grew even more numb. If it came down to it-and he knew it would-could he pull out the.45 and shoot accurately? Yeah, he could. He’d master any muscle spasms. Traitors to their country had to pay.

Finally, at long last, the spies were now leaving with the oh-so-precious cargo.

Murphy couldn’t move in yet, though. He needed to find if they had accomplices. He staggered back to where his Ford Super Deluxe, dark red, was parked. It was the latest model available, ’42. Ford had stopped production of consumer cars that year, shifting to military vehicles, but had produced a few Super Deluxes. Murphy had managed to find one of the elegant coupes.

He climbed in and started the engine, which purred. He engaged the three-speed transmission and clicked on the radio. It was set to Mutual Broadcasting, one of his favorite stations-he and the family would tune in regularly to listen to The Adventures of Superman, The Return of Nick Carter, and his favorite, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. But now he wanted to hear the news about the war, so as he eased forward he used the car’s floor button to change the channels to find a station he wanted.

As Detroit’s diligent heater poured blessed warm air over him, Murphy crept along, several car lengths behind the truck as it made its way into the heart of Greenwich Village. Finally, it turned onto Bleecker Street, then into an alley behind Cracco’s Bakery.

Murphy continued past the alley and around the corner. He parked the Ford down the street and slipped into the alley behind the bakery, where the truck was idling.

The tall blond man-German, of course-stepped out and took a look around. A shorter round man-Italian, Cracco undoubtedly-joined him. With much effort they managed to unload the crate and get it through the back door of the shop. The German stepped out, holding a pistol, and regarded the alley closely. Murphy backed out of sight. Then the OSS agent heard the doors slam and the truck’s gears engage. A fast glance and he watched the Chevrolet leave. Murphy wasn’t concerned; he doubted the two men were going far. Probably just to park the truck.

He waited several minutes, then looked again. The alley was empty. He slipped to the back door of the bakery. Peering through the window, he could see the kitchen. It was dark, as was the rest of the place. He picked the lock and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He squinted against the dimness, noting the ovens, the trays, the pots. And he inhaled the comforting smell of yeast and fresh bread (thinking again of his wife, who baked every Sunday). The front of the shop was empty and dark, too.

Who are you, Signor Cracco? And why are you doing this? Is it patriotism, is it money, is it revenge?

No matter. Motives were irrelevant to Jack Murphy. If you were an enemy, for whatever reason, you had to pay the price.

He walked silently over the concrete floor to the crate. The top had been pried open and he lifted it, shone the flashlight inside. Well, yes, it was what he’d expected: quite a special delivery, indeed.

Saints preserve us!

He looked around and found a chair in the corner of the kitchen. He sat down and drew the pistol from his pocket. Sooner or later, the German and the Italian would return, possibly with accomplices. And Jack Murphy would be ready for them. The smell of yeast wafted over him once more. He was hungry. Soon he’d be back with Megan and Paddy and they-

“You!”

Murphy gasped as the voice hissed from behind him, close to his ear: “You, don’t move!” Italian accent. It would be Cracco. The man had been hiding in a pantry. A pantry Murphy hadn’t bothered to check. A gun barrel tapped the back of his head.

Murphy’s heart slamming fiercely, breathing fast. So both men hadn’t left. Only the German. Perhaps they suspected they’d been followed and had arranged this trap.

Jesus and Mary, he thought.

Cracco snatched the Colt from Murphy’s hand.

He started to turn, but the Italian ordered, “No.”

Murphy thought: He doesn’t want to watch my face when he shoots me. He heard the pistol in the spy’s hand click twice as he cocked it.

The OSS agent closed his eyes and chose the Lord’s Prayer for his last.

His posture ramrod straight, as always, Geller strode into the back of the bakery. The liver spots on his balding pate looked particularly prominent in the low yellow light. Luca Cracco was forever putting dimmer and dimmer bulbs into the kitchen’s fixtures. Electricity, like all else during wartime, had grown increasingly dear.

“Ah, this is where you work your magic,” said Geller, the man who’d set today’s events in motion with the note wrapped in a one-dollar bill.

Cracco said nothing.

“In the months we’ve been working together,” the man continued, walking up to an oven and peering into the open door, “I don’t believe I’ve ever complimented you on your bread, Luca.”

“I know I bake good bread. I don’t need praise.”

Words are never arrogant if they’re true.

Geller continued, “The wife and I like it very much. She makes French toast sometimes. You know what French toast is?”

“Of course.”

Heinrich Kohl, standing nearby, however, didn’t. Cracco explained about the egg-infused bread dish. Then added firmly, “But you must make it with butter. Not lard. If all you have is lard, do not bother.”

Geller nodded to the crate. “Let me see.”

Kohl opened the lid. The men looked down at the canister attached to the oven. All three men were somber, as if they were looking at a body in a casket.

Cracco said, “Uranium. That small amount will do what you say?”

“Yes, yes. There is enough there to turn New York City into a smoldering crater.”

I would have expected bigger…

This material, Cracco had learned, would be turned into what was called an atomic bomb, and it seemed like something out of the science-fiction fumetti comic books that were so popular in Italy. Kohl had been working on it in Heidelberg for several years, seven days a week, ever since the directive from the führer was handed down to construct such a weapon.

Cracco patted his pockets and then stopped abruptly. “Is it, I mean, can I smoke?”

Kohl laughed. “Yes.”

He handed out Camels and the men lit up.

Cracco inhaled deeply.

Quarto…

At that moment another man appeared in the doorway of the bakery’s kitchen. A trim man, with a military bearing like Geller’s. He looked around, mystified.

“General,” said the new arrival respectfully. He was speaking to Geller, whom everyone referred to that way, though he was retired from his job as the U.S. army chief of staff in Washington. Presently he was a civilian-second in command of the Office of Strategic Services. Wild Bill Donovan’s right-hand man.

“Sir. I-”

“At ease, Tom. It’ll all get explained.” Geller then asked Kohl, “Do we need to do anything with it?” Nodding at the canister in the crate.

“No, no, it’s perfectly safe. Well, if you open the lead casing, you’d die of radiation poisoning in a day or two, and, I promise you, that would not be a pleasant way to die.”

“But it won’t blow up, will it?”

“No. The uranium must be shaped carefully and machined to within micromillimeters and the vectors arranged in such a way that critical mass-”

“Fine, fine,” Geller muttered. “Just need to know if our boys drop it, we don’t incinerate the Western Hemisphere.”

“Nein. That won’t happen.”

“Sir?” Brandon asked again.

“Okay. Here’s the scoop, Tom. Luca Cracco and Heinrich Kohl. This is Tom Brandon. Head of the OSS office here in New York. Even though we don’t technically have an office here in New York.”

Cracco had no idea what this meant.

Geller continued, “Colonel Kohl, of the Abwehr, formerly with the Abwehr, was a professor of physics at the university in Heidelberg before the war. He’s spent the last four years working with a team there to make one of these atomic bomb things. We knew Hitler wanted one, but we weren’t too worried. Everybody in Washington thought the crazy bastard’d shot himself in the foot with his Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. You know, the law that kicked all non-Aryan professors out of colleges in Germany. Including most of their top atomic physicists. Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, and-”

Kohl said with a wry grin, “Yes, yes, how ironic it was! Hitler lost the very men who could determine the precise measure of mass to turn uranium 235 into a fissile material. And that is-”

Geller cut him off before the professor/colonel got technical again. “And they fled to the West. But der Führer insisted the work go on-with people like Heinrich here. Of course, he happened to have a conscience, unlike some of his colleagues. His goal all along was to keep working on this… what do you call it again?”

“Fissile material.”

“Yeah, that. But smuggle it to us, through the underground.” Geller glanced at Cracco. “Enter our amateur spy, here. About two months ago, Luca’s brother, Vincenzo, a soldier with the Italian army, was captured by the Nazis and thrown in a POW camp.”

Many people thought the Italians and Allies were enemies throughout the war. But that wasn’t the case. Mussolini was deposed in 1943, and the king of Italy and the new prime minister signed a secret armistice. Many Italians then began fighting alongside the American, English, and Indian forces against the Germans in Italy.

“Vincenzo escaped from the Nazi camp and headed to Germany to fight with the underground. When they learned about Luca, they put Vincenzo in touch with Heinrich, and they came up with a plan to smuggle this fashionable material-”

“Fissile.”

“-to America. Luca jumped at the chance to help. So they disguised the… material as part of an oven. And had it shipped to his bakery.”

Brandon said, “But, all respect, sir, why didn’t I hear about it? We could have…” The agent’s voice faded. He scowled. “You couldn’t tell me because you suspected the double agent we’ve been worried about might’ve been in our office here.”

Geller nodded. “German intelligence learned what Heinrich had done and that the shipment was on its way, when and where it would arrive. They alerted their agent in place. But we didn’t know who it was. It looked like the traitor could also be in your office here, Tom. So Luca and Heinrich were the bait. The double agent followed them-and they caught him.”

Brandon snapped, “It’s Jack Murphy, isn’t it? Jesus. Hell. I should’ve guessed. He never told me where his leads came from, how he knew about the operation. And he wanted to run it alone. So he could kill the two of them and ship the stuff back to Germany.”

Cracco said softly, “I wanted to shoot him. I nearly did. But that is what the Nazis would do. Americans would give him a fair trial. So, I spared him, tied him up.” He smiled. “I was rough with him, however, I have to say that.”

Brandon added, “I always wondered why Jack had a two-bedroom apartment.”

General Geller laughed harshly. “In Manhattan? On an OSS agent’s pay?”

“And had a fancy pocket watch. Oh, and he drove a ’42 Ford Deluxe.”

Cracco felt wounded. “You mean he did this for money?”

“Looks that way,” Geller said.

“Where is he?” Brandon’s voice was thick with pain.

“Paddy wagon’s taking him to federal lockup.” Geller offered a smile, which Cracco had learned was a rare occurrence. “Bill Donovan’s talked to Attorney General Biddle. We’re keeping Hoover in the dark. He’ll find out about Murphy’s indictment when he reads it in the Times. If he reads the Times.”

“What are you going to do with this?” Brandon indicated the canister in the crate.

“You didn’t hear this from me, but it’s going out west. New Mexico. There’s a project going on that’s pretty hush-hush. There’ve been some setbacks, and they need more of this fissile stuff. That’s it? Fissile?”

“That’s right.”

Brandon was looking at Kohl when he asked with a frown, “They’re going to use it, that bomb, against Germany?”

Geller said, “Naw. I told Heinrich and Luca right up front: It won’t be dropped in Europe. No need, for one thing. Hitler’s done for. The Bulge was his last gasp. Germany’ll fall by May, at the latest. It’s the Japs that’re the problem. The Pacific Theater could go on for another year, we don’t stop ’em. This will.” A nod at the crate.

“Sir?” a crisp voice called from the doorway. “The team’s here.”

Geller said, “Inside, boys.”

Three large men in overcoats stepped into the kitchen.

Geller said, “All right, get this to Fort Dix, over in New Jersey. We’ve got a special train headed to New Mexico tonight. Colonel Kohl will go with you. There are some scientists there who can use his help. Oh, and whatever the colonel says, I’ll have the stripes of anybody who drops it.”

“Yes, sir!”

Cracco watched three soldiers lift the crate off the floor and stagger outside with it.

Kohl turned to Cracco. “Well, my friend, it’s been a short acquaintance, though a productive one. I think I am going to like this country. The politics, the freedom, the culture… And, more important,” the man said with a serious frown that soon blossomed into a smile, “restaurants where you can find an entire meal behind little glass windows. This clearly is a paradise on earth!”

Cracco and the colonel embraced, and the German stepped out the door of the bakery into the alley to accompany the uranium, with all his potential for horror and for good, to New Mexico.

Tom Brandon stood partly at attention, partly slumped, a difficult pose to achieve.

Geller said, “We’ll talk later, Tom. Oh, and if you hear from J. Edgar Vacuum or his boys, send ’em to me.”

“Yes, sir.” The younger OSS officer nodded, then walked through the door, pulling his coat about him.

Geller turned from the empty doorway. “I got word this afternoon: Your brother’s safely back in Italy, behind Allied lines.” The general reached forward and shook his hand. “Ah, Luca. You’ve done a good thing here.”

The baker shrugged. “It was my duty. The attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor was inexcusable. I would do anything to avenge that crime against my country.”

His country.

America.

It had been Cracco who’d suggested the name Operation Payback. For, indeed, it was.

Geller added, “Oh, and here.” He handed Cracco a dollar bill, open, not folded, as in the past.

“What is this?”

“When I told President Roosevelt about the operation, he asked me to thank you. And when I told him what a fine baker you were, he asked me to bring Eleanor and him a loaf of your bread.”

“The president of the United States wants a loaf of my bread?” Cracco blinked.

“Semolina, of course.”

“I’ll bake some now. At once.”

Geller said, “Don’t have time. I’ve got to leave for Washington in a few hours. The first train out.”

“Sit,” Cracco said. “Have a café, which I’ll make myself, while I bake.” He picked up a metal bowl of risen dough, covered with a damp cloth.

“No, don’t bother. I’ll take one of those.” He pointed to a bin of a dozen loaves.

Cracco frowned. “No, no, that’s day old. Good only for turkey stuffing and pudding.”

“Roosevelt won’t care.”

“But I would.” And Luca Cracco pulled off his jacket and took an apron from the stack of cleans ones that Violetta had laundered and carefully folded. He slipped it over his head and tied the drawstrings around his girth.

“Sit,” said the baker once more.

General Geller sat.

A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, JEFFERY DEAVER is an international number-one best-selling author of thirty-five novels and three collections of short stories. He’s received or been shortlisted for dozens of awards. The Bodies Left Behind was named novel of the year by the International Thriller Writers Association, and the Lincoln Rhyme thriller The Broken Window and a stand-alone, Edge, were also nominated for that prize. He has been awarded the Steel Dagger and the Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association and the Nero Wolfe Award; he is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers Award for best short story of the year. Deaver has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Bouchercon World Mystery Conference. His most recent works are The Starling Project, an original audio play from Audible.com, The Skin Collector, and The October List, a novel in reverse.