D-Notice by Bill Walker (big ebook reader txt) 📗

his arms, her lips burning against his as fiercely now as they had the first time over forty years before. A wave of passion overwhelmed her, and she moaned when he caressed her jaw line in that special way of his. Hedeon broke the kiss after uncountable moments, leaving her dazed, her lips tingling. “Oh, Pavel, it’s been so long. I didn’t know if I could bear it. When will it all end?”

He tilted her head up with his hand. “Soon, my love, soon. After the loose ends are cleaned up, we are sending you home.”

Lillian stumbled back, her world rocking. “W—what?”

“You have been of great service to the Motherland, Ninotchka. It is time you came home to the honors that are rightfully yours.”

“B—but my life is here.... Everything I know, everything I love—is here....”

“Everything? How do you think it has been for me, my love? I sacrificed a fiancée.” He moved to embrace her once more and Lillian stopped him with an outstretched arm and burning gaze.

“And I sacrificed a husband!”

“Surely you did not love that royalist swine!”

“He was good to me.... And the son he thought was his.... All these years, Pavel. Alone. It’s been so hard. And now this. Don’t ask me to sacrifice our son, as well. I won’t do it. The Motherland isn’t worth it.”

Hedeon nodded, saying nothing. He walked back to the window, clasping his hands behind his back. “Never fear, Ninotchka.... The time for sacrifices is almost over....”

A commotion in the next room made them both turn toward the door. Sounds of a door being kicked in followed by the muffled coughs of silenced pistols galvanized Hedeon, who headed for a credenza and removed a Makarov pistol from the drawer. Quickly, but without a trace of panic, he removed the magazine, checked to see it was loaded, slapped it back in, then pulled back the slide, letting it snap back with a resounding clack. He turned to Lillian, motioning her to follow. “There is a back way! Come!”

The door exploded inward before she could move and Mueller and Franz entered, their pistols held at the ready. They were dressed in dark civilian clothes but, to Lillian’s eye, there was something decidedly “military” in the way they carried themselves and handled their weapons. Mueller smiled, revealing white even teeth. His eyes, however, held no warmth. “Guten Abend, Comrade,” he said, his voice edged with sarcasm. “It seems we meet at a propitious moment.”

Hedeon wasted no time. He lifted the Makarov and fired, the shot going wild. The slug buried itself in the thick wood molding near the ceiling. Before he could get off another, Franz fired, hitting Hedeon in the hand and sending the pistol flying. Lillian screamed and made a move toward Hedeon. She stopped herself when the Stasi man’s pistol moved her way.

Mueller’s expression turned to contempt. “I thought you would be smarter than that, old friend.”

Hedeon glared at him, his one good hand holding the ruined one. Blood patted the expensive carpet.

“They should have purged swine like you long ago, Gruppenführer Müller!”

“So, you know....” A smile spread across Mueller’s face.

“We have known since the beginning. You don’t think that phony police identity of yours fooled us for one minute, did you? We had records of everyone in the SS. But you were useful in the beginning, but now—”

“But now, I know where all the bodies are buried, Comrade.” Mueller turned to Franz, indicating Lillian and Hedeon with his pistol. “Take them to the safe house. Wait for my call.”

Franz nodded, then pushed Lillian and Hedeon toward the door. When they were gone, Mueller let his eyes roam over the opulent apartment, a scowl on his face. “And he has the audacity to call them decadent.”

Turning on his heels, he strode from the apartment, shutting the door with a resounding slam.

Opposite the Dorchester, two men sat in a black Astin-Martin, their weary eyes trained on the door and the Daimler limousine idling at the curb. They sat up straighter when Lillian, Hedeon, Mueller, and Franz exited the hotel and clambered into the waiting car. Scant seconds later, the car pulled into traffic and streaked away.

The passenger, a middle-aged man with a hangdog face and premature gray hair, picked up a walkie-talkie, while his companion, a tall man with jug ears, started the car and eased out into the stream of traffic.

“Hutchins, here,” the passenger said into the walkie-talkie. “They’ve just left. They’ve got Hedeon and Thorley’s mother.”

“Jolly good,” came the answer swathed in static. “Stay with them, no matter what you have to do. Is that clear?”

Hutchins started to nod, then stopped himself. “Right. We’ll stay with them. Over.”

Back at MI6 headquarters, Roger MacKinnon stood over the radio, frowning. “What on earth is Thorley’s mother doing there?” he asked, his voice rising in annoyance.

Standing next to him, Sir Robert Sandon suppressed a smile, his heart dancing a jig. For once it seemed things might be going his way. He turned to MacKinnon and fixed him with a sober gaze. “Welles was looking for a sleeper,” he said, drawing out the moment. “It seems we’ve found her.”

The look of shock on MacKinnon’s face was more than he could have hoped.

Chapter Thirty-One

“We’re here,” Erika said, shaking him awake. Michael groaned and stretched, feeling a jab in his neck from a kink that had settled in over the past hour while he’d slept. He remembered going through the border at Aachen and not much more after that. Rubbing the fog from his eyes, he squinted out through the windscreen at the Bonn skyline cowering