Eventually the vessel began to move, its throbbing diesels pushing it out of the pen, into the estuary. Despite himself, Macurdy sweated a bit, and raised a brief prayer, less to God than to allied destroyers and planes, that he might arrive safely in England. Not that I wish you guys bad luck or anything, he murmured inwardly, but my mother didn't raise me to drown in some Nazi Unterseeboot.
The seamen were calm enough though, and before long he slept, despite the strange sounds and smells.
For the sake of speed and the batteries, the vessel ran on the surface till dawn, then the humming electrics were cut in, and the diesels shut off. Then bells jangled. Without pausing, the submarine tilted downward slightly and submerged.
The rubber boat was low enough that any chop would have soaked and any real seas upended them. But the sea was relatively calm, its low smooth swells the aftereffect of some distant storm, perhaps off the west coast of Jutland. Neither Montag nor Anna spoke, even in a whisper. They'd been warned not to, before they'd climbed out the conning tower.
Now he could see the beach ahead, low and sandy in the starlight, the swooshing of the low surf as regular as a heartbeat. The sub was well out of sight behind them, and Macurdy wondered if crewmen, off in a rubber boat, ever had trouble finding it at night.
Then the surf gripped them, drove the boat onto the beach and left it grounded. Anna's mobility was hampered by the heavy wool, knee-length coat she wore, and hoisting her over a shoulder, Macurdy stepped out, a petty officer leading, hurrying a few paces to avoid the next wave. Once on dry sand, he put her down. They had no baggage, only Anna's purse and Macurdy's wallet, neither with anything incriminating except their skillfully counterfeited papers and English money.
"Everything is all right?" the petty officer asked Anna. He'd been told she was in charge.
"Yes."
"Well then, good luck." The man took time to shake their hands, then with the other seamen, pushed the boat back into the cold surf, and paddled out of sight in the darkness. Mac felt faintly guilty watching them leave, for wishing them a safe arrival, to their ship if not their port. This war, he told himself, needs to be over, and wished he could make it so.
Then the two spies crossed the sand to the thick bank of heath shrubs behind it. Beach contact, they knew, was the most uncertain point in such landings. The beaches were pa trolled, or said to be, and their would-be pickup team might have to lay back, might even have been captured. Another possibility was that the captain had miscalculated, and put them ashore on the wrong beach.
Anna looked at her English watch. "it is about two hours till dawn," she said. "You might as well sleep. I'll stay awake and watch for our contacts. If I get too sleepy, I'll wake you and we will change places."
Macurdy lay down on the sand, protected from the damp chill by the Web of the World, and a heavy sweater with a Scottish label.
He fell asleep almost at once, and in that sleep dreamed: He was aboard the liner Queen Elizabeth, with the men he'd served with at Camp Robinson, at Benning, in the 509th, the 505th. Shuddering, he remembered dreaming this before, and had let it get away. The liner became a landing craft, one of many, but he was the only man on his, as if it were some derelict caught up unintended in the assault. Shells rumbled, warbled, roared. The craft staggered in the surf, then grounded. The ramp dropped, and he rushed off into chest-deep water, waves lifted him, set him down, and he was on the beach, no longer alone, one of thousands that packed the sand.
From between two dunes came giants, 50-foot redheaded monsters carrying great chains, anchor chains, wielding them like fly swatters, beating the beach with them. With each blow, dozens of men died. There were shrieks. A chain smashed the sand in front of him, jerked upward thick with blood and flesh, started back down… and he awoke, panting.
The beach had no crushed bodies. There was only Anna standing watch a few yards away, looking at him. He wondered if he'd cried out in his sleep. Shivering not with cold, he got to his feet, thinking of the Voitik sorcerers scheduled to meet the invasion army with spells and monsters. To the east, a band of faint silver lay on the horizon, and already he could see farther than before. Soon it would be daylight, and they had not been picked up. Anna had a decision to make.
Anna still watching, he began to do side-straddle hops to activate his body. When he'd finished, she said "let's go," and they began walking along the beach until they came to a path leading inland through the heath. They took it.
Macurdy's attention was not on where they were. It was on the dream beach where monsters tramped among GI's, crushing them beneath great clawed feet, smashing them with bloody chains. He hadn't dreamt it idly, he told himself. It was a reminder of duty, a duty he'd only now recognized.
They hiked through heath for much of a mile, while the dawnlight strengthened. Then the heath ended. Ahead was what had been a farm cottage, now a home guard outpost, with two jeeps parked outside and a uniformed sentry by the door. Anna headed straight for it, Macurdy following, wondering.
At fifteen yards, the middle-aged sentry pointed his rifle at them. "Stop right there," he said, and they did. "Who are you, and what's your business here?"
"My name is Anna Hofstetter," Anna replied in upper-class English. "We were just put ashore by a German submarine, and wish to report our mission to the authorities."
For a moment both the sentry and Macurdy gawped, then Macurdy added, "I'm Lieutenant Curtis Macurdy. We're an OSS mission-the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. Army. I need to get in touch with our superiors, at once."
The sentry gathered his wits. "Sergeant!" he shouted, forgetting protocol. "Come out here right away"
Anna's stunned gaze didn't leave Macurdy till the sergeant arrived. They repeated their identities for him, then he ushered them inside and phoned his superiors. That done, he gave the phone to Macurdy, who reached Grosvenor Square by the confidential number he'd memorized. Afterward the home guard fed them porridge, bread and jam, cheese, coffee-even bacon!
A jeep from MI5 arrived from London in about an hour, in the charge of a green 2nd lieutenant, to take them into custody. Macurdy fended them off with obstinacy and lies, insisting that he was a 1st lieutenant, and not about to be ordered by a junior officer. Minutes later an OSS jeep arrived with an American captain, and took them away, leaving the unhappy lieutenant behind.
What stuck in Macurdy's mind, though, riding off down the road to London, wasn't his small victory over MI5, or even how quickly things had developed. It was that he'd never suspected Anna's disloyalty to the Nazis. Apparently she'd lived so long in secrecy that her aura had adjusted!
31
"Should Auld Acquaintance…"
Before the day was over they'd both been debriefed, which took until evening because the OSS wanted everything. Among other things, he emphasized that it was Anna who led them to the British Home Guard station and turned them in.
Normally his mission officer would have debriefed him, but the man was away, and a young lieutenant did it. Handling it professionally, even the description of the Voitar and their ears, and the drills Macurdy had done-until Macurdy told about his visit to Hithmearc. The lieutenant got nervous then; it showed in his eyes, and conspicuously in his aura. He's afraid of me, Macurdy realized. He thinks I'm crazy.
Awakening spontaneously the next morning, Macurdy went to breakfast and found Anna there. Someone had arranged for MI5, the British counter-espionage service, to pick her up. "And Curtis, I'm afraid," she said. "I feel threatened by them. I was, after all, born here to an English mother, and they may consider me a traitor."