“You coulda been a plant, put on that train to fool us. Or to infiltrate all our other boys and steal their secrets. Air routes, evasion tendencies, stuff about the new bombsight. How come nobody in your compartment acted like they knew you?”
“I’m new!” he said shrilly. “Nobody talks to replacements!”
Butchart abruptly released him and put away the knife. Parker sat up and tried to collect himself, but it was no good. His skin was pale gooseflesh, and he was swallowing so fast that his throat was working like a piston. He touched the spot where Butchart had held the blade. There were still red marks from Butchart’s knuckles. A little cruel, no doubt, but I guess it was necessary.
Butchart turned toward me and nodded, and I knew without a word that it was his confirmation signal.
“I’ll tell Colonel Gill,” he said, rising from his chair.
“You mean I’m out?”
It wasn’t clear if Parker was relieved or disappointed, which for us only enhanced his suitability.
“No,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “You’re in. You passed with flying colors.”
“You’ll start your training tomorrow,” Butchart said. “Tobin here will go over the timetable.”
We had two weeks to bring him up to speed on all the garbage information Colonel Gill wanted drilled into his head. Figuring that his taskmaster needed to be just as committed to the “facts” as his clueless student, the colonel assigned a sergeant from his staff named Wesley Flagg to handle the learning sessions.
Flagg was the perfect choice-pleasant, good-hearted, and as sincere as they come. Flagg’s earnestness drove Butchart crazy, enough that he assigned me to keep tabs on the lessons. But as far as Colonel Gill was concerned, Flagg’s greatest attribute was that he never questioned orders. Even if Flagg were to suspect that the information was flawed, there was virtually no chance he would have raised a fuss. He would simply assume that his superiors knew best.
Parker was a fast learner. Every time I asked Flagg for an update, he gushed about his pupil’s ability to handle a heavy workload. But for all his boasting I sensed an unspoken uneasiness about Parker’s fitness for the job. Flagg dared to bring it up only once, asking, “Are you sure Colonel Gill has signed off on this guy? I mean, Parker’s great with the material, but, well…”
“Well what? He’s the colonel’s top choice.”
“Nothing, then.”
He never brought it up again.
The night before the exchange was to take place, Butchart asked me to take Parker his consignment of cigarettes. All four of the airmen were getting several cartons to help them spread goodwill along the way. They also might need to bribe some petty bureaucrat, even though the SS would be their official escorts.
Parker was billeted at a small hotel in the center of Bern. Conveniently-as far as we were concerned-it was just down the block from an apartment rented by a pair of Gestapo officers. Presumably they had passed him in the streets by now. He still wore his uniform from time to time, and they would have wondered right away what he was up to.
OSS operatives who worked for Dulles were taught that when meeting contacts it was best to disguise their comings and goings and to rendezvous on neutral ground. In Parker’s case I was instructed not to bother, even though it put a knot in my stomach simply to walk into the hotel’s small lobby and ask for him by name. A man was seated in the lobby on a couch. I didn’t know his name or nationality, and I didn’t ask.
Parker was restless, as anyone might have been on the eve of such an undertaking. But somehow he was not quite the same as the fellow I remembered from a few weeks earlier. Was my imagination playing tricks on me, or had he lost some of his callowness as he settled into his new role?
He finished packing in almost no time, so I asked if I could treat him to a beer.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I probably won t be able to sleep much either way, so I might as well try to do it with a clear head. But there is one favor you can do me.”
“Sure.”
“Tell me, is there something funny about this operation? Something that, well, maybe no one has mentioned?”
I made it a point to look him straight in the eye, as much for myself as for him.
“There are always aspects of operations that aren’t disclosed to the operatives. It’s for their own protection.”
“That’s all you’re allowed to say?”
As he asked it, his face was like that of the catcher in my son’s Little League game-vulnerable yet determined, timid yet willing to go forward, come what may For a moment I was tempted to tell him everything.
But I didn’t, if only because the advice I had just imparted was true. It was in his best interests not to know. For one thing, the truth would have devastated him. For another, the Germans would have read his intentions immediately. And while it’s one thing to have the enemy catch you functioning as a secret courier, it’s quite another to be caught operating as an agent of deception. Setting Parker up for that fate would have been tantamount to marching him before a firing squad.
So I tried offering an oblique word of advice, hoping that when the right time came he would recall my words and put them to good use.
“Look, if for some unforeseen reason push does come to shove, just keep in mind that it’s you who will be out there taking the blows, not us. So go with your own instincts.”
It only seemed to puzzle him. Finally he smiled.
“Maybe I should take you up on that beer, after all.”
“Good enough.”
He drank three, as it turned out, the first time in his life he had downed more than one at a sitting, and it showed in his wobble as I escorted him back to the room. He turned out his light just as I was leaving.
The actual exchange at the border was almost anticlimactic.
Oh, the SS man showed up, all right, just as he had for the previous swap engineered by Dulles. I suppose he was appropriately sinister with his swagger stick and stiff Prussian walk, and certainly for the way he snapped his heels and offered a crisp Nazi salute along with the obligatory “Heil Hitler.”
It definitely got Parker’s attention, but I don’t recall it striking much fear into me. Or maybe I’ve rewritten the scene in my memory, having watched countless Hollywood versions that have turned the officer’s dark gestures into costumed parody, complete with cheesy accent. I suppose I’ve always wanted to regard him as a harmless stereotype, not some genuine menace who still had a war to fight and enemies to kill.
Whatever the case, Parker offered me a wan smile over his shoulder as he lined up with his three fellow airmen and stepped aboard the train. They were all a bit nervous, but to a man they were also excited about the prospect of returning home.
I got back to Bern late that night. A taxi dropped me at the legation so I could report that all had gone well. But Butchart and Colonel Gill weren’t there, and neither had left word on where to reach them. Only Flagg was waiting, eager to hear how his pupil had fared.
He smiled after I described the scene at the train station.
“I’ll admit that for a while I had my doubts,” he said. “But you know, by the end I was feeling pretty good about it. Parker’s the type who can fool you. Hidden reserves and all that.”
“You really think so?”
“Oh, yes. And he was such a fast learner with the material that I even had time to teach him a few escape and evade tactics. Just in case.”
“Good thinking,” I said weakly.
We said good night, and I walked across the lonely bridge to my apartment. I was exhausted and it was well past midnight, but I don’t remember getting a moment of sleep.
Two days later a French rail worker, one of our contacts with the maquis, reported through the usual channels that Parker had been removed from the train at the third stop, well before Paris. No one in our shop said much about it, especially when there was no further word in the following days.