Except the intel.
The intel, as he had learned the hard way long ago, was always real.
Packard nodded enthusiastically. “I can’t think of a Mason who wouldn’t die for this kind of opportunity,” he said. “Consider this your 34th Degree.”
“Sure,” Deker said slowly.
“No worries,” Prestwick said as he quickly made some adjustments. “The next burst will send you back. You will see, feel, and experience everything that these people did at this significant moment for them in 1943, starting with my grandfather. Are you ready?”
Deker nodded. In spite of himself, the terror from his previous torture seized him, and he gripped the arms of the chair tightly.
“Okay, then,” Prestwick said, and pushed the button. “Here we go.”
Deker felt a surge of energy coming into his head, then a blinding light, and finally, a black tunnel engulfed him.
11
J ason Prestwick hurried along Fifth Avenue with a teddy bear from FAO Schwarz tucked under his arm. A phone call in the middle of the night had instructed him to pick up the cub at the famous toy shop and “carry it to a certain floor of a building in Manhattan,” the New York headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services.
Now, as he neared Rockefeller Center on this sunny afternoon of May 11, 1943, Prestwick slowed down and ran a quick check on a possible tale. At sixty-two, the Yale University professor knew he was hardly the sort one would associate with the spy trade, what with his tall, awkward frame, ill-fitting Harris tweed sport coat, shaggy gray hair, and round spectacles. Still, one had to be careful. No doubt some top-secret information about Operation Maranatha was stuffed inside this absurd teddy bear, and he was the courier.
The professor of classical Greek had been recruited in 1939 by the British Secret Intelligence Service as a cryptanalyst. After helping William Albright and the ULTRA team crack the Nazis’ secret Enigma codes, Prestwick had brought his formidable cipher and code-breaking skills to the Research and Analysis branch of the OSS, America’s fledgling spy agency. He later transferred to the agency’s Secret Intelligence section in order to serve as an OSS liaison with Britain’s Special Operations Executive, or SOE, created by Churchill “to coordinate all action by way of subversion and sabotage against the enemy.” That meant helping resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe and engaging in all sorts of splendid intrigues designed to “set Europe ablaze.” For a frustrated academic like Prestwick, itching for cloak-and-dagger action, it was the perfect sort of work, even if he was a deskbound case officer and not a field agent behind enemy lines.
Prestwick passed under the statue of Atlas in front of the 630 Fifth Avenue entrance, crossed the lobby, and stepped into the nearest elevator. Already he fantasized about the good news on Maranatha. It was his greatest “caper,” as he liked to call his operations, and he looked forward to celebrating that evening at the Stork Club. Maybe he’d win back some money at gin rummy from a certain air force colonel and then share highballs in the Cub Room with a certain lovely starlet. The band would strike up “That Old Black Magic,” and they’d dance the night away…
The offices of British Passport Control were on the thirty-sixth floor at the end of a deserted hallway. A New York police officer sat outside on a wooden chair, dozing off under the Times as Prestwick walked by. The front-page headlines reported that Axis forces in North Africa were on the eve of official surrender.
Inside the reception area, a young blonde in a short skirt smiled at the teddy bear and pushed a button beneath her desk. The buzzer unlocked the door to the office of Bill Stephenson, code name INTREPID, the agent who coordinated joint American OSS-British SOE operations from New York.
As soon as Prestwick stepped into Stephenson’s office, he could sense something was off. Somebody else was seated behind the spymaster’s desk with his back toward the door. A cloud of cigar smoke hovered over his bald head. When the chair turned, Prestwick found himself face-to-face with Winston Churchill. Prestwick’s jaw dropped.
“Don’t just stand there gaping, man,” said the British prime minister. “Come in and close the door.”
12
P restwick sat on the edge of his stiff chair. Across the desk, the great round face seemed to hover over the dark bow tie with white polka dots, disembodied from the prime minister’s navy blazer. Holding that blazer together over the expansive stomach was a single brass button. With each puff the great man took of his cigar, the button came alarmingly close to popping off. Prestwick wondered if it would be poor etiquette for him to duck should it fly toward his face.
“In less than eight weeks, the largest invasion force ever assembled in human history will land on the shores of Sicily,” Churchill began. “We are talking about more than five hundred thousand American and British troops.”
Churchill unrolled a large map of the Mediterranean across the top of the desk, placing the teddy bear as a weight on one corner. Over Nazi-occupied Europe, the prime minister had drawn the outline of a huge crocodile stretching from Spain in the west to Greece in the east.
“This is our first assault on Fortress Europe and the first big seaborne landing on a coast held by the enemy.”
Churchill thrust his Havana up the soft underbelly of the crocodile to make his point. His fingers were long and thin, almost delicate. This always surprised Prestwick, perhaps because his memories of their previous chats were invariably dominated by the prime minister’s gruffness.
“As this is precisely what the Germans are expecting, the Combined Chiefs of Staff asked the British SOE and the American OSS to come up with several deception operations designed to convince the Germans that Sicily is only a cover, that the bulk of the Allied invasion force will land in Greece. The idea is to force Hitler to spread his coastal defenses thinly rather than concentrate them on Sicily, our intended point of entry.”
None of this was news to Prestwick, and he wondered where the prime minister was going. “I believe I understand the fundamental concept, sir.”
“My men at SOE got the ball rolling with Operation MINCEMEAT,” Churchill continued, apparently irritated at the interruption. “They arranged for a corpse, wearing a British officer’s uniform and carrying documents referring to an invasion of mainland Greece, to be floated off the Spanish coast. Two weeks ago this ‘Major Martin of the Royal Marines’ washed up on a beach near Alicante and was found by local fishermen. His papers fell into Nazi hands, as planned, and, I understand, are making quite an impression on the German High Command.”
This Prestwick hadn’t heard. “Why, that’s wonderful news, sir!”
“Mmm,” Churchill grunted, neither confirming nor denying what Prestwick had said. “Not to be outdone by London, you proposed your own OSS operation.”
“That’s right, sir,” Prestwick replied, trying not to smile. “Operation Maranatha.”
“Tell me, then: How did this inspiration come to you?”
“Gladly, sir.” Prestwick straightened in his chair. “While Major Martin was intended to dupe the German military and intelligence authorities, we also appreciated Hitler’s contempt for these traditional sources of information. He often consults his astrologers and numerologists before making any major decisions. Ultimately, he relies on what he perceives to be his infallible intuition. In the past we’ve encouraged this superstitious streak by propping up our own bogus astrologers, publicizing their prophecies in the world press and then using American OSS and British SOE agents to make them come true. Our Hungarian friend de Wohl’s prediction of SS general Heydrich’s death and our use of Czech assassins to carry it out is a case in point. So when we caught wind of Hitler’s interest in Greek Fire, I naturally considered ways we could turn it to our advantage. That’s when I recalled a fantastic tale I heard from a young Muslim warrior during one of my travels some years ago.”