Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 21

Someone was following him. Bill Keller knew it wasn’t any figment of his imagination. The man in the charcoal raincoat and gray hat would have blended into the crowd if Keller hadn’t been looking over his shoulder.

Keller would not have been so concerned if he hadn’t left the War Department that evening with a packet containing a gold mine of information. Some of it had been gleaned by staying late and going through the trash before it was collected and burned. As his co-workers left their looks of mingled pity and contempt seemed to say, There goes Keller again, working late. Nobody to go home to, poor man. And making the rest of us look bad! If only they knew the truth.

The real nugget he had stumbled across today went far beyond the usual scraps saved from the trash. It was a copy of a letter over none other than Winston Churchill’s signature cataloging the number of landing craft — LST — available in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. Churchill apparently believed the matter was important enough to warrant his personal attention. The prime minister believed there were as many as 300 LST. Churchill stated that he was having any seaworthy LST brought to England immediately. Keller thought the Germans were fools if they didn’t know an invasion was coming. But this letter proved that the invasion would come by sea from England, not overland from Allied strongholds in Italy. The document also stated that the LST were to be brought to Brest on the English Channel. If this was to be the Allied staging area, the Germans might be able to target the seaport with an air raid and delay the invasion indefinitely.

Keller was willing to let wiser minds interpret the information. To do that, he knew he had to get the document to Eva Von Stahl. And now, of all nights, this man was following him. Who was he? FBI or that shadowy OSS that one only heard rumors about?

Keller squared his narrow shoulders as best he could, imagining that he felt the man’s eyes boring into a point between his shoulder blades. Small and thin, the animal that Keller most resembled might have been a red fox. He deftly cut through the evening crowd, to all appearances just a man in a hurry to get out of the cold or one who knew there would be hell to pay if he was late for dinner.

In his rush, he barely noticed the man in the tan overcoat who stopped to light a cigarette on the sidewalk up ahead. Keller swept past him. He was sure he had already lost his pursuer and he slowed down. His heart raced as if he had just sprinted up the street.

Keller forced himself to walk at a normal pace, although it wasn’t easy knowing that someone might be watching his every move. He was pleased with himself for noticing the man so soon, but that did not make him any less uneasy. What mattered now was how he would deal with the situation.

He paused outside a men’s shop to examine the window. Watches, cufflinks, ties and the most fashionable hats all scattered on a bed of artificial snow. Christmas was still a fresh memory. Other shop windows were also decorated for the season with greenery such as springs of holly and spruce branches, ribbons and candles, miniature Santas with fingers laid knowingly alongside the nose. A fragment of song played in Keller’s mind. He knows if you’ve been bad or good … Keller ducked inside.

Keller had no intention of shopping. He was relieved to see that the clerk was busy with a customer. He studied the collection of ties, positioning himself so that he could see out the plate glass window. Moments later Keller was rewarded with a glimpse of the man in the charcoal coat going by. He had a heavy face roughened with faint acne scars — the face, Keller thought, of every bully he had known in high school. Keller shuddered.

“May I help you?”

Keller nearly jumped out of his skin. “No, no thank you. Just looking.”

The clerk seemed to appraise Keller’s apparel with a single glance. “We have some excellent coats and hats at good prices.”

Keller looked down at his own clothes a bit self-consciously. Did he look so shabby? “Maybe a tie,” he stammered.

“Of course.”

The clerk helped him pick one out, a blue-and-cream regimental pattern that Keller couldn’t help but feel made the rest of his outfit seem careworn and dull. Nonetheless, he liked it so much that he wore it out of the shop with the old tie stuffed in a pocket.

Calmer now, he started down the sidewalk, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder every few steps. Keller was no fool. He suspected that it was no chance encounter that day in the diner that brought him into contact with Eva Von Stahl. He could only guess how she knew to single him out; most likely, someone in Fritz Kuhn’s crowd remembered who he was and who he worked for. The German-American Bund had its own network of spies with contacts in Berlin. He had brought that on himself by getting involved with the American fascists; he had broken his ties with them years ago but nonetheless, he found it unsettling that his name must be on a list somewhere in Berlin as potentially useful. The OSS or the FBI must have had its sources in the Bund as well because he name had ended up on a list of a different kind here in America. His past was catching up with him.

Keller had let himself be used by Eva, but the truth was that he didn’t really care. She was beautiful and captivating — a fading star perhaps, but still lovely, and one who wanted something from him, a scrawny man who nobody else much cared about. And so he had accepted the lie with both eyes wide open, like walking wide awake into a dream. Sitting in her living room, making her laugh, having her touch his knee — these were memories that Keller knew would carry him down the long and lonely years that lay ahead. When he visited, he tried not to think about her bedroom upstairs. That was too much to hope. One would need something of real value to be rewarded in that way — Keller thought the packet in his coat pocket might come close. It would get him further than a box of chocolates.

And these damn goons wanted to stop him. Angry now, Keller quickened his pace and caught a streetcar as it was just starting to pull away. On the dusky street, he was aware of two men running after the car. So he was still being followed. Had he lost them so easily by catching the streetcar?

He rode to Union Station and got off, then inserted himself into the crowd. Everywhere there were men and women in uniform, a sea of brown and gray and black hats, and an occasional ripple of fur. He smelled mothballs, cigarettes and the ozone left by electric sparks. The trouble with blending in was that everyone seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere while Keller didn’t have anywhere to go. He certainly couldn’t go to Eva’s. He thought he caught a glimpse of the man in the charcoal coat. Making up his mind, Keller headed toward a row of pay phones. The one at either end was being used by girls in WAC uniforms, but Keller got to the center phone an instant ahead of a girl in a secondhand coat, practically grabbing the phone away from her. She had the hatchet face of a country girl trying to make it in the big city. She pouted at him with red lips and muttered a distinctly southern, “Well!”

Keller turned his back on her, put in a dime and dialed Eva’s number.

When the Polish maid answered the phone, he insisted that he must talk to Eva now. A moment later he heard her accented greeting.

“Hello, darling!”

Eva’s voice was enough to reassure him. The noisy train station made it difficult to hear; Keller stabbed a finger into his free ear. “Listen carefully,” he said, discovering that he had formed a plan. Had it come on the spur of the moment from some half-forgotten detective movie? He looked around for a landmark, saw that he was near a row of stands selling newspapers, gum, cigarettes. “I am leaving you something at Union Station. The middle phone near the newsstand. Look in the phone book.”

“What is going on?”

“I’m being followed, Eva.”

“Das ist wirklich schlimm!” More curse than fearful. This is awful.

“The middle phone book,” he repeated. Then, hesitantly, he added, “I love you, Eva.”

And hung up.

The Washington, D.C., telephone directory was encased in a hardboard cover designed to keep it safe from moisture and theft. A steel cable tethered it to the phone itself. Keller took the packet from his coat pocket, removed some of the outer pages, and then shoved the rest into the middle of the phone directory, deep enough so that the spine of the book gripped the pages and they would not fall out. He put the rest of the pages back in his pocket. When he turned around, the girl with the cheap coat and the bright lipstick was still waiting, giving him a look like something she might have found on the bottom of her shoe back home in West Virginia. “Honestly!” He ducked under her glare as she grabbed for the phone.

With luck, his pursuers had not seen him making the call. But now what? He couldn’t go to Eva’s but he couldn’t go home, either. Then again, if they knew he worked at the War Department he was sure they already knew where he lived. He suspected that they were following him so that he could lead them somewhere. Keller found that he was shaking. The frenzy of the evening rush was making him dizzy. He went into the men’s room, took off his hat, and splashed water on his face, trying not to get water spots on his new tie.

Someone came in behind him. Keller glanced in the mirror and saw a charcoal coat. The face under the matching charcoal hat was meaty and red as a ham, as if the fellow had been running. But he didn’t seem to be in a hurry now. He leaned against the tiled wall, not looking away when Keller’s eyes met his in the mirror. A second man came in, the one with the acne scars and the heavy shoulders. He stood just inside the doorway. Someone tried to walk into the bathroom and he put out an arm to stop him. “John’s closed, buddy. Take a leak somewhere else.”

The man in the charcoal coat walked over to the sinks and stood just behind Keller. They watched each other in the mirror. Then the man punched Keller in the small of the back, just above the hip.

Keller felt like a cannonball had hit him in the kidneys. The next thing he knew he was on his knees, the grimy slush on the men’s room floor soaking through his trousers. He gasped for breath. Somebody mashed his hat down on his head. “Hard to run with a busted kidney,” the man said. “It’s better than handcuffs. Now get on your feet and come with us.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Keller managed to gasp.

The FBI agent — if that’s what he was — roughly shoved his hands into Keller’s coat pockets. Almost at once he came out with the few sheets that Keller had made a point of not hiding in the telephone book. “Then what do you call this?” the big man asked in the world-weary tone of someone who had heard it all before, from the bank robbery suspect caught with a bag of money to the murderer gripping a smoking gun. For good measure, he punched Keller in the kidneys again.

“Let’s go,” he said.