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“Which it won’t.” She dropped a withering glare to his hand, waited until he released her. “Now, back to what I was saying. Since I alone know where the key is located, all I have to do is sneak into the room while Doenitz is asleep and—”
“No.” Whoever went in that building had to respond instantly if discovered. Jack was the trained killer. She was simply a mole who gathered information. He was the obvious person for the job. “I will break into the admiral’s private quarters.”
Her smile turned ruthless, deadly. The change in her put him instantly at ease. They were finally playing on his level.
He smiled back at her, his grin just as ruthless, just as deadly as hers.
She appeared unfazed.
“Here’s the situation, Herr Reiter, and do try to pay close attention. There are only two ways into Admiral Doenitz’s quarters. Through the front door or through a small window into his bedroom.”
The thrill of finding a solution had Jack rubbing his hands together. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“The window leading into the admiral’s room is small.” She dropped her gaze down to his shoes and back up again. “Far too small for you.”
“Then I’ll go through the front door.”
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “To get through the front door you would have to pass through six separate stations, with two guards each. They rotate from post to post on twenty-minute intervals, none of which are synchronized. Translation, that’s a minimum of six men you would have to bypass at any given time.”
“It’s what I do.”
She flicked a speck of dust off her shoulder. “Needlessly risky. Especially when I can get through the window and back out again in less time than a single rotation.”
Jack’s mind filed through ideas, discarded most, kept a few, recalculated.
“I’ll ultimately have to get past those guards the night I go in for the plans,” he said.
More thoughts shifted. New ideas crystallized, further calculations were made.
“I’ll just take the key and the plans all at once.” He blessed her with a look of censure, testing her with his words as much as with his attitude. “Translation: we go to Wilhelmshaven tonight and finish the job in one stroke.”
She jabbed her finger at his chest. “You’re thinking too much like a man. Go in, blow things up, deal with the risks tomorrow.”
“Not even close.” If anything, Jack overworked his solutions before acting on them. It was the one shred of humanity he had left.
“Two nights from now Karl Doenitz will be in Hamburg, at a party given for him by my mother.” She raised her hand to keep him from interrupting. “And before you say it, that also means the key will be with him in Hamburg, as well.”
“Keep talking while you get the paper I asked for.”
She remained exactly where she was. Naturally.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” she said. “I get an impression of the key tonight, make a copy tomorrow, then go back the evening of the party and photograph the plans.”
“Why not just steal the plans tonight and be done with it?”
“And alert the Nazis that the British have discovered their secret weapon? No.” She shook her head. “We need to photograph the plans when no one is around and replace them exactly as we found them.”
Her plan had a simplicity to it that just might work.
“And while I’m inside Doenitz’s private quarters,” she continued, “you get to do what men do best.”
“And that is?”
“Protect my back.”
If Jack didn’t let his ego take over, he could see that her idea had possibilities. Perhaps, under all the layers of subterfuge, they thought alike. Maybe too much alike.
The woman was proving smart enough and brave enough that if he let down a little of his guard he might begin to admire her. Too risky. Emotional attachments, of any kind, were a spy’s greatest threat. Especially when he had no real reason to trust his partner.
“Your plan has merit,” he said. “But I only have two more days to get the plans and return to England. With the timeline you presented, there’s no room for mistakes.”
She nodded. “Then we make no mistakes.”
“We? Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Her brows drew together. “No, I’m pretty sure I’ve thought through all the details.”
“Your mother is throwing the party for the admiral. Your attendance at such an illustrious occasion will be expected. How are you going to pull off the last of our two trips to Wilhelmshaven while at a cocktail party in Hamburg?”
Her expression closed. “I’ll handle my mother. She won’t even miss me.”
“And her fiancé? Somehow, I doubt he’ll be so…inattentive.”
“I’ll deal with him, as well.”
He gave her a doubtful glare.
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
Trust. It always came back to trust. But Jack had lost that particular quality, along with his faith in God, the same night the real Reiter had come for his blood.
“And if you’re caught tonight?” he asked in a deceptively calm voice.
“I won’t be.”
“If you are.”
She lifted her chin, looking every bit a woman with royal blood running through her veins. “Failure is never an option.”
Jack’s sentiments exactly.
If he took out the personal elements running thick between them and ignored the fact that Kerensky was a woman—a woman he couldn’t completely trust—not only could her plan work, but it had a very high probability of success.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. “It’s getting late. The drive to Wilhelmshaven will take almost two hours each way.”
He glanced at his watch, looked at her evening gown and jewels then down at his own tuxedo. “We both need to change.”
“Yes. We’ll take my car, which is still at the theater.” Which they both knew was only three blocks from her home.
“Right, then. We’ll meet outside the theater at—” he began before he checked his watch again “—0130 hours. I trust that suits you?”
Head high, she moved to the front door and jerked it open without looking back at him. “Of course.”
He reached around her and swung the door shut with a bang.
She spun about to glare at him. “What are you doing?”
Reminding us both who’s in control.
With nothing showing on his face, he angled his forearm against the wall above her head and waited until her eyes lifted to his. “I leave the way I came.”
She took a hard breath but held his gaze. For an instant, he was struck again by her determination and courage.
The back of his throat began to burn.
“Then I drive,” she said without blinking.
“By all means.” He pushed away and headed toward the open window, but then he surprised them both by returning to her and cupping her cheek. “I’m warning you now, Katarina. At the first sign of trouble, we abort. No questions asked.”
“Whatever you say, Herr Reiter.” The mutinous light in her eyes ruined any pretense of compliance on her part.
Jack sensed he was in serious trouble with this woman. He had to get matters back in his control. “One more thing,” he said.
She angled her head at him.
“Make sure you dress warmly.” He shifted to the window, dipped and then swung his leg over the ledge. “It’s going to be a long, chilly night.”
Chapter Six
The drive to Wilhelmshaven began in silence, and continued that way for most of the journey. Sitting in the passenger’s seat, Jack surveyed the passing landscape. There was no horizon, no clear distinction between land and sky, just an inky blend of dark and darker. An occasional shadow slid out of the night, only to retreat as they sped by. Wind shrieked through the invisible slits of the car’s windows.
Concentrating on the road, Kerensky drove cautiously, with both hands on the wheel. She hadn’t looked at Jack since they’d left the city limits of Hamburg. Which was just as well. Between the poor quality of the road and the poorer quality of the car’s headlights, driving required her undivided attention.
He took the opportunity to study her out of the corner of his eye. She was dressed head to toe in black wool. Black pants, black sweater, black gloves—the perfect ensemble for blending with the night. She’d slicked her thick, fiery hair off her face and twisted it into an intricate braid that hung halfway down her back.
He could almost feel the vibration of her carefully contained energy. Like a sleek, untamed animal poised for a fight.
She baffled him, tugged at him. She had a face meant for the movies and was so lovely his chest ached every time he looked at her. But he also knew how much depth lay below that exquisite surface.
Never once had he caught a hint of the corruption or selfishness that drove most spies. His instincts told him that she had her own personal agenda for working with the British. Those same instincts also told him that her motivation was connected to a dark secret she kept well hidden from the world.
He understood all about dark secrets and hidden motives, as well as the moral confusion that came from lying and stealing every day. For too many years, Jack had relinquished his Christian integrity—no, his very soul—to carry out other men’s agendas. German. American. What did it matter if he was Jack Anderson, Friedrich Reiter, or someone else entirely? One face, two names, no identity. Those were the legacies the bureaucrats had created for him.
Now this woman, with her strength and determination, made him think beyond the mindless killing machine he’d become. She made him toy with the idea of a future beyond the war. He suddenly wanted something…more. More than hate. More than vengeance. Something that went beyond his own humanity.
Worst of all, the woman made him hope for a better world, where belief in God meant something beyond a faded memory.
This was the wrong business to feel emotions, any emotion, especially ones that made him soft toward a woman.
“You’re too beautiful,” he blurted out.
She whipped her head around so their gazes met in the dim light.
She gave a deep sigh of frustration before returning her attention to the road. “It’s called heredity.”
Heredity. Right. The word tugged at a thought hovering in the back of his mind. Jack forced himself to remember he was having this conversation for her benefit. “Your beauty could be used against you.” He’d seen it often enough.
“Or to my advantage. Lucky for you, there’s more to me than a pretty face.” She sounded weary, as though she’d given this speech countless times before.
Jack wasn’t impressed. He was responsible for keeping them both alive. He had to be able to predict her behavior and gauge what she would do if she ended up in a crisis. “This mission depends on your quick reflexes and ability to think on your feet. For at least five minutes you’ll be alone inside the Kriegsmarine headquarters.”
“I’ll only need three.”
He did his best not to react to her bravado. “Wrong attitude. You can’t be impatient. Impatient equals careless. And careless equals one dead female spy.”
A nerve flexed in her jaw. “Have I given you the impression that I’m stupid?”
“One mistake is all it takes.”
“It won’t be mine.”
She returned to clenching her teeth.
He returned to holding on to his temper.
“Fancy words, Kerensky. Will you be able to back them up?”
He didn’t know her well enough to judge for himself. And for five long minutes he would be unable to control the situation, unable to protect her if Admiral Doenitz awakened. Jack knew she was hiding something from him. And he thought he knew exactly what it was.
Heredity.
If he was right, the woman could not be caught. Ever.
He knew what they would do to her, where they would send her.
No emotion. He reminded himself of his personal motto that kept him alive. Nothing personal.
Who was he kidding? “How much Jewish blood runs in your veins?”
Her sharp intake of air was barely audible, but he’d heard it all the same. Already knowing the answer, he found himself holding his breath, waiting for her response to his bold question with a mixture of dread and hope. When she held to her silence, he wondered if he might have been wrong in his assessment.
Jack Anderson was never wrong. “How much?”
Her hands tensed on the wheel, the only sign of her agitation. Making a soft sound of irritation, she adjusted herself with a swoosh of wool against leather. “We do not speak of these things in Germany. We do not even whisper them in the dark confines of a car.”
He had no easy response. She was right, of course. Even if she was only part Jewish she could not reveal such a secret to him.
No emotion, he reminded himself again. Nothing personal.
