The Rhinemann Exchange
For Norma and
Ed Marcum—For
So Many Things,
My Thanks
PREFACE
MARCH 20, 1944, WASHINGTON, D.C.
«David?»
The girl came into the room and stood silently for a moment, watching the tall army officer as he stared out the hotel window. The March rain fell through a March chill, creating pockets of wind and mist over the Washington skyline.
Spaulding turned, aware of her presence, not of her voice. «I’m sorry. Did you say something?» He saw that she held his raincoat. He saw, too, the concern in her eyes—and the fear she tried to conceal.
«It’s over,» she said softly.
«It’s over,» he replied. «Or will be in an hour from now.»
«Will they all be there?» she asked as she approached him, holding the coat in front of her as though it were a shield.
«Yes. They have no choice… I have no choice.» Spaulding’s left shoulder was encased in bandages under his tunic, the arm in a wide, black sling. «Help me on with that, will you? The rain’s not going to let up.»
Jean Cameron unfolded the coat reluctantly and opened it.
She stopped, her eyes fixed on the collar of his army shirt. Then on the lapels of his uniform.
All the insignia had been removed.
There were only slight discolorations in the cloth where the emblems had been.
There was no rank, no identifying brass or silver. Not even the gold initials of the country he served.
Had served.
He saw that she had seen.
«It’s the way I began,» he said quietly. «No name, no rank, no history. Only a number. Followed by a letter. I want them to remember that.»
The girl stood motionless, gripping the coat. «They’ll kill you, David.» Her words were barely audible.
«That’s the one thing they won’t do,» he said calmly. «There’ll be no assassins, no accidents, no sudden orders flying me out to Burma or Dar es Salaam. That’s finished… They can’t know what I’ve done.»
He smiled gently and touched her face. Her lovely face. She breathed deeply and imposed a control on herself he knew she did not feel. She slipped the raincoat carefully over his left shoulder as he reached around for the right sleeve. She pressed her face briefly against his back; he could feel the slight trembling as she spoke.
«I won’t be afraid. I promised you that.»
He walked out the glass entrance of the Shoreham Hotel and shook his head at the doorman under the canopy. He did not want a taxi; he wanted to walk. To let the dying fires of rage finally subside and burn themselves out. A long walk.
It would be the last hour of his life that he would wear the uniform.
The uniform now with no insignia, no identification.
He would walk through the second set of doors at the War Department and give his name to the military police.
David Spaulding.
That’s all he would say. It would be enough; no one would stop him, none would interfere.
Orders would be left by unnamed commanders—divisional recognition only—that would allow him to proceed down the grey corridors to an unmarked room.
Those orders would be at that security desk because another order had been given. An order no one could trace. No one comprehended…
They claimed. In outrage.
But none with an outrage matching his.
They knew that, too, the unknown commanders.
Names meaning nothing to him only months ago would be in the unmarked room. Names that now were symbols of an abyss of deceit that so revolted him, he honestly believed he had lost his mind.
Howard Oliver.
Jonathan Craft.
Walter Kendall.
The names were innocuous sounding in themselves. They could belong to untold hundreds of thousands. There was something so … American about them.
Yet these names, these men, had brought him to the brink of insanity.
They would be there in the unmarked room, and he would remind them of those who were absent.
Erich Rhinemann. Buenos Aires.
Alan Swanson. Washington.
Franz Altmüller. Berlin.
Other symbols. Other threads…
The abyss of deceit into which he had been plunged by … enemies.
How in God’s name had it happened? How could it have happened?
But it did happen. And he had written down the facts as he knew them.
Written them down and placed … the document in an archive case inside a deposit box within a bank vault in Colorado.
Untraceable. Locked in the earth for a millennium … for it was better that way.
Unless the men in the unmarked room forced him to do otherwise.
If they did … if they forced him … the sanities of millions would be tested. The revulsion would not acknowledge national boundaries or the cause of any global tribe.
The leaders would become pariahs.
As he was a pariah now.
A number followed by a letter.
He reached the steps of the War Department; the tan stone pillars did not signify strength to him now. Only the appearance of light brown paste.
No longer substance.
He walked through the sets of double doors up to the security desk, manned by a middle-aged lieutenant colonel flanked by two sergeants.
«Spaulding, David,» he said quietly.
«Your I.D…» the lieutenant colonel looked at the shoulders of the raincoat, then at the collar, «Spaulding…»
«My name is David Spaulding. My source is Fairfax,» repeated David softly. «Check your papers, soldier.»
The lieutenant colonel’s head snapped up in anger, gradually replaced by bewilderment as he looked at Spaulding. For David had not spoken harshly, or even impolitely. Just factually.
The sergeant to the left of the lieutenant colonel shoved a page of paper in front of the officer without interrupting. The lieutenant colonel looked at it.
He glanced back up at David—briefly—and waved him through.
As he walked down the grey corridor, his raincoat over his arm, Spaulding could feel the eyes on him, scanning the uniform devoid of rank or identification. Several salutes were rendered hesitantly.
None was acknowledged.
Men turned; others stared from doorways.
This was the … officer, their looks were telling him. They’d heard the rumors, spoken in whispers, in hushed voices in out-of-the-way corners. This was the man.
An order had been given…
The man.
PROLOGUE
ONE
SEPTEMBER 8, 1939, NEW YORK CITY
The two army officers, their uniforms creased into steel, their hats removed, watched the group of informally dressed men and women through the glass partition. The room in which the officers sat was dark.
A red light flashed; the sounds of an organ thundered out of the two webbed boxes at each corner of the glass-fronted, lightless cubicle. There followed the distant howling of dogs—large, rapacious dogs—and then a voice—deep, clear, forbidding—spoke over the interweaving sounds of the organ and the animals.
Wherever madness exists, wherever the cries of the helpless can be heard, there you will find the tall figure of Jonathan Tyne—waiting, watching in shadows, prepared to do battle with the forces of hell. The seen and the unseen…
Suddenly there was a piercing, mind-splitting scream. «Eeaagh!» Inside the lighted, inner room an obese woman winked at the short man in thick glasses who had been reading from a typed script and walked away from the microphone, chewing her gum rapidly.
The deep voice continued.
Tonight we find Jonathan Tyne coming to the aid of the terror-stricken Lady Ashcroft, whose husband disappeared into the misty Scottish moors at precisely midnight three weeks ago. And each night at precisely midnight, the howls of unknown dogs bay across the darkened fields. They seem to be challenging the very man who now walks stealthily into the enveloping mist. Jonathan Tyne. The seeker of evil; the nemesis of Lucifer. The champion of the helpless victims of darkness…