The Iron Storm by CW Browning (best fiction novels to read .txt) 📗

the Germans had overtaken Norway, and she knew the exact numbers and sheer might of the Luftwaffe, and the damage they were capable of wreaking ahead of their ground troops. Blitzkrieg, they called it. Lightning war, and it was just that.

Despite knowing how forcefully Hitler had moved into Poland, Denmark and Norway, many people believed that he wouldn’t make it into France, just as Fred didn’t believe it. Even the French High Command and British Generals adhered to the stubborn belief that the German offensive would follow the same pattern as that of the last war.

Evelyn picked up her suitcase and swung it onto the bed, undoing the leather straps. On the train, she’d overheard two French soldiers discussing General Gamelin’s steadfast commitment to defending the east side of France while advancing through Belgium if the Germans did attack. He was relying on the Maginot for defense, and expecting the Germans to follow the same battle order as they had in the last war. She shook her head as she opened her case and pulled out a skirt, laying it on the coverlet next to the case. Hitler was a fool if he committed to the same failed policies of the last war, and she knew he was far from a fool. No. He would be sure that his Generals came up with something that would work this time, an offensive plan that would utilize his air force, and the speed of his Wehrmacht.

And after the success in Norway, he would be only emboldened to press into France. There was no reason for him not to be.

She just hoped that she was out of Belgium before it happened.

London, England

The man poured himself a drink and turned to sit down before an open case. The wireless radio inside was ready to transmit, and he sipped his gin and tonic before pulling out his codebook. After consulting it for a few moments, he picked up a pencil and began writing out the message he was to send.

He still couldn’t believe his good fortune in stumbling across this information. With the increased security in the building on Broadway, and with his own natural caution and reluctance to jeopardize his position, he’d been hard-pressed to find any information that was worth passing along to the people in Berlin. He’d had access to some, of course, but nothing truly worthy of impressing them. Thanks to the appalling carelessness of an upper-level chief in MI6, however, that had all changed abruptly two days before.

The man smiled faintly as he wrote out the coded message. It was really quite ridiculous that an intelligence chief in his position would have been so careless as to leave the correspondence lying on a bench in St James Park Underground, but there you are. He had, and that mistake was now enabling himself to pass on the unexpected gold-mine of information to Berlin.

This is what came of sticking rigidly to the old-school code when staffing the Secret Intelligence Service. Instead of selecting men of certain dispositions and abilities that lent themselves to clandestine work, they had turned to friends and cronies who had a family name and long-standing memberships to the exclusive clubs on St James Street. Fortunately for him, many of them didn’t have the faintest idea how to safeguard the information they were entrusted with.

Information like the names of four new agents on the continent.

The man finished writing out his message and read it through, nodding in satisfaction when he’d finished. That would do nicely. They would be very pleased with this in Berlin, and he just might get another reprieve from the whole Ainsworth affair.

He took another sip of his gin and tonic and reached for the paddle of the radio.

INFORMATION DISCOVERED REGARDING ATTEMPTS TO REBUILD INTELLIGENCE NETWORK ON CONTINENT. FOUR AGENTS HAVE BEEN RECUITED IN FRANCE, BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. IDENTITIES TO FOLLOW IN SEPARATE TRANSMISSION. AGENT IN BRUSSELS IS OF PARTICULAR INTEREST. – HENRY

As he transmitted the coded message, the spy known as Henry pressed his lips together thoughtfully. This would definitely go a long way towards buying him time for the other issue that Berlin wanted resolved.

The Ainsworth affair was proving to be an unexpected thorn in his side. When he told his handlers that he would have no problems uncovering what Robert Ainsworth had stolen in Switzerland over a year before, he had every confidence that he would be able to do just that. After all, there were only so many places Ainsworth could have hidden the information. And hidden it he obviously had, for not even a whisper of it had surfaced since his death. The very silence was evidence enough that no one else had discovered the information either. If they had, he would certainly have heard of it.

Yet despite numerous months of searching, Henry was no closer to finding it than he was when Robert had died in Switzerland last fall. Not only was that frustrating him to no end, but it was frustrating his handlers in Berlin. They wanted the information back, and they wanted it yesterday. They were becoming increasingly more adamant that he locate it, and he couldn’t blame them. If it got out in the open...well, the results would be disastrous. He had to find it, but he needed more time.

Henry sat back and reached for his drink. Hopefully this new bout of intelligence would buy him that time. Sending them four names of known agents would go a long way to appeasing them for now, but he knew it would be only temporary.

He had to find the information Robert Ainsworth had stumbled across in Switzerland, and he had to find it before anyone else.

Antwerp, Belgium

Evelyn walked out of the elevator and looked around the lobby. There were few people about this late in the afternoon. It was that awkward time between lunch and dinner when guests were either still out enjoying the city, or changing for dinner. One man was checking in at