Brad Hudson had been the last reeled in or, rather, the last to jump willingly into the Dragonfly boat. As May drew to an end, all had been recruited except for the young fly-fisherman Alistair reluctantly had in mind to complete his specially picked network. Sam Barton, aka Bucky, had signed the OSS applicant form in Kelly’s Coffee Shop in Oklahoma City the Monday after his twenty-second birthday. Chris Brandt, christened Christoph, of New Braunfels, Texas, had scrawled his signature on the dotted line within twenty-four hours of his call to Washington asking for an interview. Victoria and Bridgette had already contacted him and were as good as signed up when Alistair left for Meeker, Colorado, and returned relieved that he’d failed in an objective he’d had little hope and desire of accomplishing in the first place. He’d given in to the temptation of a chance to see Joanna again with the added bonus of a weekend of fishing that might ease some of the stress chronic to his life.
He’d found Brad Hudson a carbon copy of his dad and Joanna as desirable as he remembered. How she’d managed to stay the woman of his memories considering the tough life she’d lived was beyond him. It had been twenty-three years since he had last seen her. When he first laid eyes on Joanna Bukowski, she was wearing a threadbare coat, standing in freezing weather in a soup line in Koblenz, where he and his army buddy, Thomas Hudson, were billeted as part of the Allied force occupying Germany at the tail end of World War I. A ruckus broke out in the line that required military authority to restore order. A man had grabbed Joanna’s ration of bread and soup and run away, leaving her without a bowl for a second serving. She had spun around with a cry of appeal to the American soldiers butting in, and Alistair had never seen a look so desperate or a face so beautiful despite it being gaunt from malnutrition. It was a moment he’d never forgotten. “Let us help you,” he’d said. And Thomas, already extending his arm, had added, “Yes, let us help you, Fräulein. There’s a café close by where you can get warm, and we can get you a hot meal.”
She’d taken Thomas’s arm, and just like that, Joanna Bukowski was whisked out of Alistair’s reach. Alistair served as best man at their wedding in January 1919. Upon his friend’s discharge from the army that year, Thomas had brought his bride to Meeker, Colorado, land of the mountains and rivers he loved. Alistair had thought it best not to see them again.
She had naturally been shocked to see him, but Alistair had been gratified that she recognized him after only a few seconds’ stunned stare. “It was your voice,” she explained. “I’ve never forgotten the sound of your voice.”
Of course.
After the initial shock, Brad had hovered in the background, curious, inquisitive. He had wanted to know about the history that his client and father had shared. Alistair, for his part, had gotten the economic lay of the land at once. Financially, the boy was needed at home. He could not be spared for the Paris mission, so the man in brown would concentrate only on the fishing while he was here and forgo the purpose he’d had in mind, but when Joanna asked if he were still in the army, he’d answered truthfully and said yes, that he was a major now assigned to a civilian agency.
Her son’s eyes had filled with doubt and suspicion. “Running a courier service?”
“For want of a better description,” Alistair had replied and said no more. He had planned to get back to Meeker when he returned from France. Who knew? Joanna might accept his arm this time, but then she had confided to him as he’d said good-bye, “I’m getting married again, Alistair. Brad doesn’t know yet.”
“Who to?” he had asked, his hopes once again falling like a rock.
“To Brad’s boss, the owner of the lumberyard where he works. It’s been quick, but I care for him. He’s a good man and wants to take care of us.”
So, having heard the boy express his dissatisfaction with his military deferment while they had waited for the fish to bite, Alistair had not been surprised at Brad’s telephone call shortly after his return to Washington to ask if there was a spot for him at the OSS.
“Does your mother approve?” he had asked.
“She knows I want to join up to do my part. What else she doesn’t know can’t hurt her,” Brad had said.
Oh, yes, it could, young man, Alistair had thought, but he’d given the lad the go-ahead to come to Washington, D.C.
He’d tried to discourage the boy as much as the necessity for secrecy allowed. He’d pulled no punches about the business of the OSS. The agency could do without the son of Joanna Bukowski Hudson. She had suffered enough. But Alistair had been unable to dissuade him. Brad Hudson would not be put off because, as he’d correctly guessed, Alistair wished to protect the son of a woman he still desired. The boy had a sharp ear and keen eye for the indiscernible.
Now he and the others were ready to go. Alistair had chosen the French and German cover names they would use in living their false identities in Paris. They would go by these working names in Paris but would remain unknown to one another, even after their missions were complete. Alistair had informed the team of their cover names separately and ordered them not to divulge them to one another. Secrecy would be their greatest protection against betrayal. He kept the process simple. He selected noms de plumes beginning with the first letter of their real names. Sam Barton would become Stephane Beaulieu. Brad Hudson was to go by Barnard Wagner, and Chris was to answer to Claus Bauer. Bridgette was Bernadette Dufor, and Victoria, Veronique Colbert.
But as a group they’d chosen and had fun selecting their field code names, or call signals, to identify themselves in radio transmissions and by which they would communicate with each other from now on. Alistair had steered them away from tags suggesting gender, occupation, or physical size—any clue that would tip off the enemy to their identity. They had consulted a dictionary and agreed to select names from under whichever letter Webster’s Dictionary fell open to. The book parted to L, so Bridgette selected Labrador, a good choice for a woman as even-tempered and dependable as she. Victoria’s finger had lighted on Liverwort, the godawful name of a flowerless green pancake of a plant, in ludicrous contrast to her beauty. Brad had favored Limpet, a marine mollusk with a muscular foot that could cling powerfully to wave-swept rocks. Alistair thought that an excellent fit for the young man he had come to know.
The other two men also chose words descriptive of Alistair’s perception of them. Sam picked Lodestar, the guiding star of a ship; and Chris, Lapwing, a bird noted for its slow, irregular flapping flight and shrill, wailing cry. Alistair had to laugh at his selection. He wondered if Chris had made the connection to his singing voice, overheard when he belted out a tune in the camp shower of Station S, or to his own slow, swinging way of moving contrary to the smooth grace of his lightning-fast running speed.
At his table in the tavern, Alistair stubbed out his final cigarette among the other butts in the ashtray. If the group stuck strictly to the mission they were trained for—to gain and report intelligence—they had every chance of survival. At this point, the contacts he’d lined up in Paris were ready and waiting to receive them. None had been blown. Sam Barton—Stephane—would go to work in a French firm of consultant engineers doing business with companies taken over by the Nazis. Bridgette—Bernadette—had been hired as an assistant to Madame Jeanne Boucher, couturier of one of Paris’s top fashion houses, and Victoria—Veronique—as a fencing instructor in the famous fencing school L’Ecole d’ Escrime Français, whose students were officers in the German Army. Chris—Claus—had been assigned a job as a physical education instructor in a school formed to educate the sons of high-ranking Vichy and Nazi officials, and Brad—Barnard—was to ingratiate himself with an Abwehr general passionate about fly-fishing. None would know their specific assignment until they arrived for final training at Milton Hall, located sixty miles north of London, a large estate used as the espionage headquarters of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the SOE.
Stop worrying, Alistair! Bill Donovan kept telling him, but Alistair could not calm a deep-seated unease that each member had cause to strike out on secret missions of their own. He had yet to determine Sam Barton’s and Victoria Grayson’s hidden agendas, but the others were plain enough. Brad Hudson and Bridgette Loring each had big scores to settle with the Nazis and might not be satisfied with merely gathering and reporting information on the enemy. Chris Brandt, son of German parents still with a foot in the old country, was out to prove that he was every bit as American as hot dogs and Coca-Cola.
As far as Alistair knew, no member of the team was aware of any other member’s motive for volunteering. Other than their own impressions gleaned in the eight weeks they’d trained together, they knew nothing at all about one another. What they didn’t know of their teammates’ histories, assignments, targets, work locations, and cover names could not be spilled in a Gestapo or an SS torture chamber.
Lights were coming on in the tavern. The cocktail crowd was beginning to filter in. Time to go. Returning the pack of Lucky Strikes to the pocket of his brown jacket, Alistair swallowed the last of his club soda, set his glass on the napkin, and left before the moisture from the melting ice obliterated his inked drawing of the dragonfly.