“I will always need you, sweetheart.”
She kissed the head of his softening member.
“And now that you’ve emptied yourself, we can relax and have a nice meal, eh?”
Von Sandow giggled and stood up, kissing him lightly on the cheek as she straightened out her clothes.
“Now I feel hungry. Shall we go down, darling?”
On their way to the elegant main dining room, Olivia nodded to someone she knew, informing Humphrey that he worked at the embassy, but not to worry, as he was also there for the same reasons as them.
She coughed and wiped her mouth with a small handkerchief, sharing a knowing and decidedly sexual look with her escort, before disappearing into the restaurant, where the maître di immediately swept the couple off to a private corner, as Humphrey Forbes had previously requested.
The man, for whom the nod was a simple signal, waited whilst the couple disappeared, and gave them time to settle before acting.
That he worked at the German Embassy was correct, but his reason for being at the hotel was other than von Sandow suggested.
He walked quickly up to the front desk with an envelope he produced from his pocket, marked with the name that Olivia was using in her ‘secret’ liaison.
The clerk was immediately attentive.
“Good evening, Sir. How may I assist?”
“Hi there. I’ve an envelope for Miss Jacqueline Dawson. I wonder if you could retain it and pass it to her as soon as is possible please?”
He offered up the envelope, which the clerk took with great care, examining the details.
“Most certainly, Sir. I will attend to it personally. Miss Dawson is dining at the moment, and I will pass it to her the moment she leaves the restaurant, if that’s acceptable to you?”
“Yes, thanks. That’ll be just fine.”
The clerk turned and slotted the envelope into a numbered hole in the rack.
‘104.’
“Thank you.”
The German Intelligence officer moved away from the desk and waited until the clerk was heavily engaged with another guest before swiftly mounting the stairs, two at a time, and finding himself in front of the door to suite 104.
The hotel door lock could not defeat a trained spy for long, and a few twists of his picklocks were enough for him to gain entry.
He found the small briefcase easily, and his camera started to record its contents.
Another pair of eyes had registered Olivia’s movement through the lobby and into the dining room.
Michael Green, having a well-earned break away from his clothing business, watched von Sandow through the periphery of his vision, all the time engaging his NKVD contact and lover in conversation.
Seemingly, no signal was passed, none that could have been detected for what it was in any case, but Green, also known as Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov, and presently the NKVD rezident in America, understood the cough and handkerchief to be a definite confirmation that his agent had snared her target, and that it was likely that the information would soon start to flow from the senator from Illinois, namely Humphrey Randall Forbes.
With professional care, he idly cased the room again, and made eye contact with the huge breasted woman sat three sofas away, drawing a coquettish smile that promised everything he wished for.
He intended to enjoy the sexual delights that Dilara Bölükbaşı would offer when she would clandestinely slip into his room later.
For now, he accepted her smile with the natural nod of a man interested but too shy to approach, and resumed reading the sports pages of his paper.
The FBI pair assigned to watch Dilara Bölükbaşı, suspected as being a member of Turkish Intelligence, and also suspected of being a double agent for the NKVD, saw the exchange, but neither felt it was anything but a man-woman thing, based around the wares the Turkish woman had prominently on display. There had been a number of other such non-events in the hour that they had observed her.
Of greater concern to them now was the presence of the Senator, member of the recently established Armed Services Committee. One agent slipped away to make an urgent call, summoning reinforcements.
Chapter 151 – THE HORROR
The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from Heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell upon a third of the rivers, and on the springs of waters. The name of the Star is called Wormwood, and a third of the waters became Wormwood, and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
They had practised the mission hard, as much as the short time span would permit, which had meant, including the day the order had arrived, twenty-five days of take-offs, precise navigation, dropping inactive bombs, three actual bombing missions, and all things that had generally welded them into a first-class team.
The day beforehand, their B-29 had dropped a pumpkin bomb on Miyazaki, as part of a group of B-29s sent on a milk run job over an ailing enemy nation.
It had been a singularly rude awakening when two of the Superfortresses were chopped from the sky by Japanese fighters of a type never seen before.
One rear gunner, Staff Sergeant Arthur Hanebury, took out one of the impressive fighters, sending it spinning away into the sea, important pieces detaching themselves with every rotation.
The surviving two fighters damaged two more B-29s before drawing off, ahead of the arrival of a wave of protective US fighters.
It was Hanebury’s fourth kill, and second as a Superfort gunner, and the previous evening’s celebrations, although muted by the loss of two crews, were still heavy enough to have left a mark.
Not so much of a mark that he and the men of ‘Dimples 98’ were not ready and raring to go.
“Ten-hut!”
The assembled crews sprang to their feet as the door at the end of the Quonset hut flew open, and the progress of their unit commander and S-2 were announced by the sharp sound of feet marching in unison.
The two officers reached the end of the briefing hut and came to a position of parade rest.
“Be seated.”
The crews dropped into their chairs in eager anticipation, recognising their own excitement mirrored in the CO’s face.
“Special mission 17 is go. We go the day aft…”
The whistles and yells drowned out the rest of Tibbets’ words, so he stopped and let his boys have their moment.
The noise subsided gradually, as senior aircrew called the rest to order.
“We go on Wednesday 29th. You all know the mission profile… this is what we’ve been training for… and soon it all comes good.”
He nodded at his Intelligence officer to start.
Lieutenant Colonel Hazen Payette, the 509th Composite’s intelligence officer, pulled back the red cover, revealing the map, with its taped routes and targets clear in the eye of every man present.
As he spoke, occasionally pointing at the map, notes were taken, even by those who were not tasked for Mission 17, just in case a failure or a loss promoted them to participating in the greatest bombing raid in history.
Hazen drew their attention to the new fighter aircraft that had wounded and killed men from other units in the 313th Bombardment Wing the day beforehand.
“Intelligence suggests that they’re Nakajima 87’s, a specialised high-altitude interceptor. Seems like 679th Bombardment Squadron also had a run-in a couple of days beforehand.”
No one stated the obvious about the lack of intelligence communications on the matter.
“Anyway, they don’t seem to have many of them, but they’re bad news for sure. The powers-that-be’ve upgraded our fighter support, and three squadrons of long-range Mustangs, not one, will be staging out of our foothold on Taiwan to escort you all the way in and out.”