“Black Forester?”
Hewitt grunted. “Brilliant, you’ve still got a grasp of German. That’s good to hear.”
“Been a while. Might be a tad rusty.”
“Fortunately on this jaunt you won’t have much need of it to make you look as though you’re German. We’re not sending you in undercover. This is a straight sabotage mission.”
Thatcher glanced around the office and saw it was devoid of any family photographs. Likely Hewitt had little use for such things — if he even had one to begin with. “What’s so special about Schwarzwalder?”
Hewitt leaned back. “Often you can tell a lot about the nature of the coming mission by who is in charge. Schwarzwalder, for example, was classically educated at Mürwik Naval School as well as Preußische Kriegsakademie.”
Thatcher blinked. Hewitt had just given the name of the Prussian Staff College in perfect rendered German. “You speak German.”
Hewitt shrugged. “When you deal with them all the time, you tend to pick up the language. But I’d never hold up under scrutiny.” He waved his hand. “In any event, Schwarzwalder comes from a wealthy family in the south of Germany, but his upbringing was strictly northern. He’s got quite a reputation.”
“I’ve heard something of Nazi reputations.”
Hewitt shook his head. “That’s just it: Schwarzwalder is no Nazi. If anything, he likely despises them. After a sterling career, he retired only to be called back into action. He was pressed into service in this war. With a wife and three sons, he knew better than to defy Hitler. No telling what might have happened to his family if had done so. It’s the way with a lot of naval captains; they didn’t subscribe to what Hitler espouses, but rather than see their lives torn apart, they reluctantly agreed to go back to sea. We expect that Schwarzwalder is much the same.”
“How does that have any bearing on my assignment?”
“Well, for one thing, it means your survival chances are better than if someone else was captaining the ship. Other commerce raider captains are likely to leave any survivors floating in the ocean until they either freeze to death or the sharks finish them off. Schwarzwalder likely won’t let that happen.”
“‘Likely?’” Thatcher smirked. “You don’t sound all that positive.”
Hewitt scratched his face. “Well, we can’t be, can we? Raider X has supposedly only just put to sea. Schwarzwalder is on his premiere cruise with her as we sit here. That said, his actions are likely to be more genteel than others. He won’t be merciless with civilians, in other words.”
“Why not?”
“Because despite the Nazi belief that every enemy should be executed, such a notion will run counter to everything that Schwarzwalder was taught in his military education. Like us, those schools implore their students to maintain some sense of discipline in warfare. Enemy combatants are one thing; civilians are quite another. Schwarzwalder won’t have the death of innocents on his conscience. I expect he will pick you all up and formally make you prisoners of war. Or he might even drop you off on some island or neutral port somewhere.”
“But there’s no guarantee.” Thatcher took another sip of his brandy. Curiously enough he still felt like he was awaiting the executioner’s command to fire. There was no real reprieve with what Hewitt was offering him. Just a different chance to die for his country. He smiled in spite of it all. And then he noticed Hewitt had stopped speaking.
“Listen Thatcher: I know all about you. I know how your mind works.”
“Do you now?”
Hewitt leaned forward and took a sip from his own glass. “You might be thinking somewhere in the head of yours that if you do get popped by Raider X and picked up by Schwarzwalder, that you could just as easily offer your services up to Hitler. Or maybe you could implore Schwarzwalder to drop you off in Portugal or somewhere else where you could set up a new life.”
Thatcher said nothing while Hewitt eyed him.
“Let me relieve you of that fanciful notion.” Hewitt now had his gaze firmly locked on Thatcher. “You don’t have much that we can hold over you once you leave the confines of this office, that is true. Your immediate family is back in the States or scattered to the four winds, some are dead and some are simply nowhere to be found.” Hewitt shuffled a few papers on his desk. “But you do have an aunt living out near Hereford, don’t you? You haven’t seen her in quite some time but it’s my understanding that you dote on her quite a bit when you do. Maybe you view her as the last link to your mother, I don’t know. But we have documentation here that tells me you care an awful lot about her.”
Hewitt put the papers down and looked at Thatcher again. “It would be a terrible shame if anything were to happen to your little old aunt. I mean, I imagine she wiles most of her time away on a rocking chair in front of the fire on these cold afternoons, wouldn’t you?”
Thatcher felt his jaw tighten. “Perhaps.”
“And if we got word that you had somehow… flittered away like a little bird, off to some warmer locale to sun yourself on a beach without a care in the world, that would mean we’d have to tear her away from that cozy life she’s got for herself.”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” said Thatcher, “this isn’t Nazi Germany. Is it? You can’t very well just uproot a little old woman and put her in jail.”
Hewitt recoiled. “Oh, my goodness, I wouldn’t dream of putting her in jail, Thatcher.”
“Well, it’s just that you-“
“What I would do is ship her north to one of our estates in Scotland. Far removed from any village. And there, I would put her out in the middle of a night exercise for our trainees. She would be live training for sentry removal with a knife.”
The words dropped hard on the desk as Thatcher looked at Hewitt and again saw the expression that revealed his handler had absolutely no qualms about what he had proposed.
“You can’t do that.”
Hewitt shrugged. “You know, you’re probably right. In any other time when the homeland isn’t being routinely attacked by the raving maniac across the channel, I couldn’t. But these aren’t ordinary times, Thatcher. And the Emergency Powers Act gives someone like me an awful lot of latitude when it comes to making sure my organization is successful. You see, we’ve been charged with disrupting Hitler any way we possibly can. And when the Prime Minister gives you a direct order, one tends to take that mandate very seriously. As I have.”
Thatcher leaned back in his chair and smiled. “So yes, while in peacetime, you could perhaps fly off as you’d like, during wartime, there’s nothing to stop me from dragging auntie out of her warm bed in the middle of the night and making her stand outside in the frigid highlands while a student trainee sneaks up from behind and punches a blade into her flabby neck.” He glanced down at the papers on his desk again. “You’d do well to remember that. If you have any sort of affection for your aunt, then you’ll quell that desire to use this assignment as a gateway to freedom and concentrate instead on making sure you complete it to the best of your ability.”
“Or die trying.”
“Exactly. Die trying,” said Hewitt. “And god help auntie if you die without trying because we’ll know about that as well.”
“What else?”
“What else?”
“Cover story? What’s my background?”
Hewitt shrugged. “You don’t really have one. We’ll give you your official papers back, but that’s it. You were hoping to travel to Portugal and later Spain to do business. You’re in real estate.”
“Nothing else? What if they do a background check on me?”