The 34th Degree

19

T he jeep pulled up in front of the cadet chapel, a Gothic edifice on a hillside that soared above the surrounding woods. Andros turned to the driver and asked, “I’m supposed to find the superintendent in here?”

The MP didn’t give an answer, and by this time Andros wasn’t expecting any, so he went up the steps and under King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, which hung above the entrance.

Inside, it was cool and dark. Carvings of the Quest for the Holy Grail glowed dimly from the light filtering through the stained-glass windows. Andros let his eyes adjust and looked down the cavernous chapel toward the altar. A lonely figure sat in the first pew with his head bowed. Andros took off his cap and proceeded down the aisle beneath the procession of flags that arched overhead.

When he reached the front pew, however, he was surprised to find not his superintendent but an elderly gentleman in an ugly tweed suit and crumpled shirt. The man was hunched over an open briefcase, sorting papers.

“Excuse me,” said Andros, “I was looking for General Wilby.”

The man raised his angular face. Two small green eyes regarded Andros from behind thick, round spectacles. “I’m afraid the superintendent won’t be able to attend this little meeting, Cadet Andros,” he stated in a slow, mannered, and annoying voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Colonel Prestwick.”

Andros frowned as he looked at the long nose and thin lips. This Prestwick didn’t look like any sort of military officer he’d ever seen, much less one with the rank of colonel.

Prestwick said, “Come, sit down. Nobody will bother us, I assure you. The MP will see to that.”

Andros sat down in the pew next to Prestwick. “What’s this all about…Colonel?”

“You are the son of General Nicholas Andros of the Hellenic Royal Army?”

The reference to his father made Andros shift uncomfortably. “My name is Chris Andros. I’m a second lieutenant in the United States Army. That’s who I am, Colonel Prestwick.”

Prestwick cleared his throat. “Yes, well, it seems you haven’t been as straightforward about your commission in the U.S. Army with your family or fiancee as you are with me. Indeed, they think you’re at Harvard. These letters are all addressed to your old Cambridge address, and your letters are posted in Boston.”

Prestwick handed over what Andros immediately recognized as photostats of the love letters he and Aphrodite had exchanged before Athens fell to the Nazis in the spring of ’41.

“Our offices in Bermuda intercept all transatlantic correspondence,” Prestwick explained, adding, “I must tell you, your romantic prose had our girls swooning.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Andros demanded, angry and embarrassed that his words should be exposed to strangers. “Who do you think you are?”

“I told you. I’m Colonel Prestwick. I’m with the OSS.”

Andros had heard of the OSS, the American spy agency, but if this man was one of its so-called intelligence officers, he feared for the future of the country. “I’m sorry, did you say OSS or SS? I didn’t know the American government spied on its citizens.”

“We don’t.” Prestwick sniffed as he smoothed out his tie. “That’s the FBI’s job. Our interests are more global. That’s why we opened your letters; we could tell they had been opened and resealed by our German friends first.” Prestwick removed the photostats from Andros’s hands and replaced them in his briefcase. His manner suggested that their contents were classified and that Andros was privileged to have even glimpsed his own correspondence.

Andros never liked mysteries, and he was sure he didn’t like Prestwick. “So are you accusing me of being a spy, Colonel? Is that it? Are you going to kick me out of the academy?”

“Quite the contrary,” Prestwick said. “Your little white lies have established the perfect sort of cover for you. The Germans have no knowledge of your military background. That’s why I want you to work for us at the OSS. We have a rather special assignment for you in Greece.”

A hollow pang of anxiety filled Andros’s stomach, and he stiffened in the pew. Had Prestwick said Greece? The subject of Greece always brought to the surface painful reminders of his inadequacies as an Andros. But the possibility of learning what had happened to Aphrodite was simply too overpowering to resist. He looked at Prestwick with deep suspicion. “What’s in Greece?”

“A document of fantastic military significance.”

Andros narrowed his eyes. “What sort of document?”

“The enemy’s encrypted plan for the defense of Greece, disguised as an ancient text.”

Andros leaned forward with interest. If the OSS was interested in the defense plans for Greece, that meant Greece was no doubt the likely target for the impending invasion of Europe. Liberation would be close at hand for Aphrodite and his cousins. “And where in Greece is this text, exactly?”

“That’s what we want you to find out for us,” Prestwick explained. “All we know is that it’s in the possession of this man here.” He handed Andros a blowup of what had been a group shot. “It’s the most recent one we have on file.”

Andros found himself looking at a handsome German wearing the uniform of the Kriegsmarine. He had deep-set eyes and light, slicked-back hair under a cap with a white top. “A U-boat commander?”

“At one time,” Prestwick said. “Bills himself as an international businessman. Baron Ludwig von Berg. In reality, he’s a top-ranking general in the SS.”

Andros passed the photo back to Prestwick. “Never heard of him.”

“You’re not supposed to; he’s too important,” explained Prestwick. “Among other things, he heads the foreign intelligence section of the SD. That’s the secret intelligence department of the SS. Next to Hitler and Himmler, we consider him the most powerful man in the Third Reich. Of the three, he’s certainly the most dangerous. And that’s saying a lot.”

“And he lives in Greece?”

“On a vast estate outside Athens when he’s not in Berlin, although sometimes he disappears from both locales for weeks at a time. Where, we don’t know. But based on private intelligence sources in Switzerland, we suspect it’s his special research laboratory.”

“Where you think he’s hiding this cipher containing the defense plans.”

“Yes,” said Prestwick. “Furthermore, we believe somebody close to him, an insider, may be persuaded to divulge the location of this facility.”

“And who would that be?”

“His mistress.”

“I see.” Andros smiled wryly at the audacity of these OSS people. “You want a spy to seduce her into spilling the location of this document and compromise her lover?”

“That’s the general idea, yes.”

“Somebody to go to bed with her, encourage her to talk?”

Prestwick nodded. “I suppose if need be, yes.”

Andros leaned back and crossed his arms. “Then you don’t need me, Colonel. I’m not the man you’re looking for. What you need is a gigolo, some lowlife scum accustomed to taking advantage of women.”

“What we need is a well-connected civilian in Athens,” Prestwick replied. “Again, I cannot emphasize enough how your little white lies to your friends and family have established the perfect sort of cover for you. The Nazis have no knowledge of your military background.”

Andros could see that Prestwick failed to understand that the military was not simply part of his “background,” as typed on some government report, but his very life. To give it up would mean giving up the essence of who he was or, rather, who he hoped to be.

“You’re in perfect physical condition for this mission,” Prestwick continued, reading from a file. “You’ve completed parachute training. You’re a crack shot with pistol and rifle. You won’t need to worry about the operation of radio equipment or demolition work for this mission. According to these records, your only failure here at West Point is your abnormal fear of water, which seems to have prevented you from becoming an Olympic-caliber pentathlon champion. But I suppose such a handicap is understandable, considering the circumstances of your mother’s death.”

Andros tried to picture his mother’s face as he remembered it from family photographs. But all he could see was the face of Baron von Berg smiling at him from under the U-boat commander’s cap. He tried to push the image out of his mind, but the pain wouldn’t go away. Neither would this OSS colonel, he realized, not without some help.

“The British must have scores of secret agents in Athens,” Andros told Prestwick. “Are none of them up to this task?”

“Several British agents have approached von Berg’s mistress,” Prestwick explained. “She hasn’t turned any of them in, but she’s rebuffed all efforts to help us, no doubt fearing for her family.”

Andros asked, “She’s Greek, then?”

“Yes.”

“A collaborator?”

Prestwick nodded.

Andros stood up to leave and said, “Then she should be shot.”

“She very well may be, by German or Greek, I couldn’t predict,” Prestwick remarked. “But we were hoping it wouldn’t come to that.” He pulled a photo from the file and handed it to Andros. “After all, she is such a beautiful girl, wouldn’t you agree?”

To Andros’s astonishment, he was looking at Aphrodite’s face. “This is a joke.”

Prestwick’s face was serious as he shook his head.

Andros shoved the photograph back. “Then it is a lie.”

“No lie, Chris.” Prestwick took the picture but didn’t put it away. “It seems she’s been no more forthright with you than you’ve been with her.”

Andros felt sick. The Germans might as well have blown up the Parthenon or desecrated the Sistine Chapel. His knees gave way, and he sank back into the pew next to Prestwick, his mind swirling in confusion.

“Apparently, the Baron and his men moved into her family estate in Kifissia after the invasion,” Prestwick explained matter-of-factly. “She had to cooperate unless she wanted to wake up one morning and find her family had disappeared- Nacht und Nebel, Night and Fog, as the Nazis call it-at the hands of the Gestapo. Frankly, I don’t think she had much choice.”

Andros managed a weak laugh. “You obviously don’t know Aphrodite,” he said. “With her, it’s always a choice. She would rather die than be forced to do something against her will.”

“All I know,” said Prestwick in a patronizing tone, “is that the Baron protects her and her family not only from the Gestapo but from those Greeks who would just as soon hang them out to dry for collaborating. That is why she has shunned all approaches from British SOE agents in Athens, even though she secretly helps the families of the Greek Resistance through the Red Cross. That is why you must go back to Greece. You were born for this mission.”

Andros recoiled at the suggestion. He had fought too hard to escape the complicated political situation in Greece and his father’s legacy to go back now. He had invested too much of himself into his new life in America and into carving out his own future and sense of identity to throw it all away. That was what this man was asking him to do, however lofty the vernacular. And for what? To be a spy. Spies, Andros knew, were a lower form of life, held in contempt by men such as his father and his West Point comrades.

“Think about it, Chris,” said Prestwick. “In a few weeks or months you could be one of hundreds of thousands embarking on the largest invasion in human history, a human guinea pig to test the enemy’s defenses. Or you could be the one who paves the way for the invasion’s success, saving tens of thousands of lives, perhaps millions. You might even win us the war.”

Andros wasn’t thinking about the war or his sense of duty or even his desire for revenge against the Germans; if anything, his father’s folly in chasing the Great Idea had taught him to distrust any overt appeal to boyish pride. He was thinking about Aphrodite as he looked again at the photo Prestwick was holding. Those clever eyes, seductive lips, and long, dark, shiny hair were all he had left in this life. No mother. No father. Not even his precious honor. All the medals and glory in the world would be worthless if Aphrodite wasn’t there for him to embrace when this war was finally over.

He was also thinking about von Berg. It did not surprise Andros that this monster had risen from the primordial ooze of the Kriegsmarine that had murdered his mother. Nor that he belonged to the same fraternity of murderers who had invaded his homeland and slaughtered his father. But the thought that this beast could be lying in the same bed with Aphrodite filled him with a rage he never would have believed possible. It was a rage he would have to control, he realized, if he hoped to kill the rabid animal.

Andros knew what he had to do. He looked Prestwick in the eye and, in a firm voice, said, “When do I go in?”

“Four days,” said Prestwick, who expressed no surprise at the decision. “In the meantime, we’re sending you to the Farm for some special advanced training.”

“‘The Farm?’”

“Our most elite school for spies,” Prestwick explained. “We’re bringing in an instructor especially for you, to prepare you for your mission. We won’t have much time, but hopefully, we can break some of the traditional military habits you’ve picked up here at West Point and teach you a few new tricks as well. Now the MP outside will escort you to your quarters to pack your belongings. You will speak to nobody.”

Andros rose to his feet. “You don’t waste any time.”

“At this point in the war, we can’t afford to,” said Prestwick, replacing his papers in his briefcase.

Andros nodded. “Then I’ll be going.”

Prestwick watched Andros walk up the aisle to the back of the chapel and disappear. He then closed his briefcase and went into the chaplain’s office, where Major General Francis B. Wilby was sitting with Andros’s official West Point file.

“He’s no spy,” said Wilby. “He’s a soldier, the best I’ve seen in years. That crazy outfit of yours is no place for a man like him.”

“Nonsense, Superintendent,” Prestwick replied, taking the file from Wilby. “He’s an accomplished liar and will serve us well.”

Prestwick struck a match, touched it to the corner of the file, and dropped it into the metal wastebasket. “The name of Chris Andros shall be struck from every record, Superintendent. West Point’s top cadet never existed.”