The Oslo Affair (Shadows of War, #2) by CW Browning (read after .txt) 📗

“When?”

“Soon. Planning is underway, as those transmissions I gave you will show. If I had to offer an educated guess, I’d say within the next few weeks.”

Evelyn exhaled. A few weeks? There was no way England could intervene in time. Chamberlain would never approve getting involved with an altercation against the Soviets without any provocation.

“Tell me, how is it that you are here?” Niva asked suddenly, sitting back in his chair and looking at her thoughtfully.

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him in surprise. “You know why I’m here.”

“That’s not what I mean. Why are you doing this?”

She was silent for a long moment. He was asking her why she was working for British secret intelligence, and she wasn’t about to try to explain something she didn’t quite understand herself, especially to a man who was so willing to defect from his own country.

“I don’t think it matters why I’m here, does it?” she finally asked briskly.

He smiled faintly. “No, I suppose not,” he agreed. “Tell me, what’s it like in London now? Since the war began, I mean? Has it changed much?”

Evelyn thought for a moment, her brows coming together.

“Aside from the blackout? No, not really. It seems to be business as usual.”

“No protests? No signs of disapproval with the war?”

“None,” she said firmly.

“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, and she raised her eyebrow in reaction.

“Why do you say that?”

“We’ve been under the impression that the general feeling among the people in England is that they don’t support the war.”

Evelyn frowned. “What gave you that impression?”

The smile that crossed his face unnerved her. “The reports from our people in London.”

She stared at him, feeling her skin grow cold.

“People?” she repeated, feeling very dumb.

He nodded calmly, his eyes on her face.

“Yes. You didn’t think Moscow was operating blind as regards England, did you?” he asked softly. “Well, I can see that you did. You’re surprised.”

He leaned forward and pushed the bowl of stew out of his way.

“Let me give you one more piece of information that you might take to your superiors,” he said, his voice low and his eyes serious. “Don’t trust anyone in London. You have a rat in your ship, and it is very well hidden. I would hate to see a lovely thing like you fall into the hands of the SS, or the NKVD. They would destroy you, and what a waste that would be.”

Evelyn swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Am I in danger?”

He sat back again.

“Everyone is in danger,” he told her. “The question isn’t whether or not you are at risk. It is who you are at risk from, and whether or not you are prepared for what may come.”

Oslo, Norway

Daniel Carew looked up from his desk when a short knock was immediately followed by the door swinging open. He raised his brows in surprise at the sight of a clerk who seemed to be very out of breath.

“Excuse me, sir,” he gasped, coming quickly into the office. “This arrived a few minutes ago. I was told to bring it straight to you.”

He held in his hands a rather thick package wrapped in brown paper and Daniel frowned, standing. He came around from behind the desk and took the package from the clerk.

“Who delivered it?”

“I don’t know, sir. Someone banged on the door and when I opened it, they shoved it at me and ran away again.” The clerk shrugged. “It was a man, but I didn’t get a good look at him.”

Daniel turned the package over and found his name scrawled across the front.

“All right. Thank you. You may go.”

He turned to go back to his desk as the clerk left the office, closing the door softly behind him. Daniel set the parcel on his desk and slowly sank down into his chair.

So it had happened. The message from the unknown sender had been fulfilled.

He sat back in his chair and stared at the package. When he received the message almost a week ago now, he’d thought it might be some kind of prank. It had been mailed through the post with no indication as to author. Typed on plain paper, the text had been short and to the point. If he arranged for a slight change in the BBC's German broadcast, he would receive a report on German military and scientific advancements. Although skeptical, the requested change was so minor that Daniel had contacted MI6 in London and they had arranged for it to be done. Changing the introduction of the broadcast to “Hullo, hier ist London” for one broadcast seemed a simple enough task in return for the possibility of gaining valuable information.

Now, apparently, here was the result.

He leaned forward and picked up the parcel, feeling the contents through the wrapping. There was more than just paper inside. A lump indicated something small and hard was included. Tearing open the brown covering, he extracted several typed sheets of paper and discovered that the hard lump appeared to be a mechanical or electrical tube of some sort. Holding it up, he examined it carefully, his lips pressed together. It looked very similar to a vacuum tube.

Setting it on the desk, he sat back with the typed pages and began to read through them. As he read, his interest grew. This wasn’t some vague account from a disgruntled factory worker. The pages contained specific details in several different areas, including airplanes, ships, bombs and rockets. The information included was so specialized that he strongly suspected it was, in fact, written by a scientist.

Daniel went back to the beginning of the report and began to read through it again, this time slowly and more carefully. With each page, his excitement grew as he realized that the information in his hands was something that came directly from Berlin. Reaching the last section of the report, he read about electric fuses and how they were being used in artillery shells and bombs instead of mechanical fuses.

Lifting his