Descendant

New Milford, 1957

My wife Louise answered the door. The two officers stood on the veranda with their caps tucked under their arms, just as Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover and Major Harvey had done fourteen years before. It was a hot, bright day, and they were both in shirtsleeves.

“Captain Falcon?”

I came out of my study and put my arm around Louise’s shoulders. “Help you?” I asked them. I didn’t like the sound of “Captain.”

“Like to have a few words with you, Captain, if that’s OK.”

“Sure. What’s it about?”

“Maybe we could come inside?”

I invited them into the living room. The dark oak floor was highly polished and the sun was shining on it, so that when they sat on the couch opposite me it was difficult for me to make out their faces. They were both young, though. One was sandy-haired and the other was wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses like Clark Kent.

“We’re from counterintelligence at Fort Holabird, sir. We need to speak to you in confidence.”

I turned to Louise and said, “How about some coffee, honey?”

“OK,” she agreed, although she wasn’t especially happy about it. Louise was very petite, with bouncy brunette hair and an Audrey Hepburn look about her, but she had her own opinions about almost everything, which were usually the exact opposite of mine, and she never allowed me to treat her as if she were a “little woman.”

She went into the kitchen and started a percussion solo for spoons and cups and coffee percolator. The officer in the black-rimmed eyeglasses leaned forward and said, sotto voce, “We’ve had a communication from British intelligence, Captain — MI6. It concerns a series of incidents in the suburbs south of London, England.”

“Incidents? What kind of incidents?”

The sandy-haired officer said, “Homicides. Well, I say they’re homicides, but they’re practically massacres, to be honest with you. Thirteen people killed at a business conference; six children killed at an orphanage; nine women killed at a social club. Altogether, seventy-three people dead in the space of five weeks.”

I slowly sat back. I didn’t say anything. I had already guessed what was coming.

“MI6 have kept all of these killings out of the news. They’ve been telling relatives that there’s some kind of bug going around — Korean Flu, something like that. In fact they’re actually calling their investigation ‘Operation Korean Flu.’ ”

The officer in the eyeglasses said, “It’s not a bug, though, Captain. All of the victims were cut open and the blood drained out of them. Exact same scenario as Operation Screecher, during the war.”

Louise came in with a tray of coffee and gingersnaps, which she passed around with a tight, shiny smile. “Gingersnap? They’re homemade. Not by me, I’m afraid, my mother.” While she did so, none of us said anything, except, “Thank you.”

When she had finished pouring coffee, Louise waited for a while, and all three of us looked at each other in uncomfortable silence. At last she said, “Maybe I’ll go outside and cut some roses.”

“Sure, good idea,” I told her. She hesitated a moment longer, but the officer in the eyeglasses raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, and she left. I could see her through the French windows, snipping away at the rose bushes as if she were giving all three of us vasectomies.

“Before we tell you any more, Captain, we have to remind you that you are still bound by the same rules of confidentiality that you were during Operation Screecher.”

“Maybe I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell me any more. We’re not at war now, are we?”

“Well, yes, Captain. I’m afraid we are. It may not be an all-out fighting war, but it’s still a war, and your country needs your help.”

“What if I decline to give it?”

“We don’t actually think that you will, Captain.”

“I see,” I told him. I wasn’t stupid. However callow these officers looked, they worked for one of the most secret and highly specialized counterintelligence units in the Western world, and I could tell when I was being seriously threatened.

The officer in the eyeglasses said, “According to our records, you were in Antwerp, Belgium, in the winter of 1944, searching for a Romanian national by the name of Dorin Duca.”

“That’s right. I never found him, though. Or it, I should say. I always assumed that he was killed by a V-2.”

“In actual fact, sir, Duca escaped to the Netherlands. He was located by another operative from Operation Screecher and detained.”

I frowned at him. “I didn’t know there were any other operatives in Operation Screecher. I thought that I was the only one.”

“No, Captain, not exactly. Other operatives were occasionally brought in as and when the situation called for it.”

“Well, that’s news to me. Besides, what do you mean by ‘detained’? You can’t ‘detain’ Screechers. All you can do is eliminate them. Knock nails into their eyes and cut their heads off.”

“This particular operative had special abilities which allowed her to take Duca into detention.”

“This was a woman?”

The officer nodded. “She confined Duca to a casket and the plan was to fly him to England and then ship him back here to the United States to see if we could learn anything useful from him as regards counterintelligence operations.”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe this. We were going to bring a Screecher to America? Deliberately? Didn’t anybody have the first idea how dangerous those creatures can be?”

“Oh, I think so, sir. After all, Screechers wiped out practically the entire resistance movements in Bessarabia and Bulgaria during the war, and they did some major damage to the French and Dutch underground movements. The Nazis even used them in Warsaw, during the Uprising — sent them down the sewers to hunt down members of the Home Army.”

“But what possible use could a Screecher be to us, once the war was over?”

The officer took off his eyeglasses. “The opinion was that we needed to maintain our edge over the Russkies, Captain. It was all part of Operation Paperclip.”

“I don’t know what Operation Paperclip was.”

“That was the code name we used for bringing Nazi scientists and intelligence experts to the United States after the war. Not even the State Department knew about it, to begin with. None of them had visas, and most of them had their files altered to conceal the fact that they were hundred percent Nazi sympathizers, or worse.”

“You’re talking about people like Wernher von Braun?”

“Exactly. Von Braun developed the V-2 for Hitler, and now he’s developing rockets for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Then there’s Hans von Ohain, who used to design jet engines for Heinkel — he’s Director of the US Air Force Aeronautical Laboratory — and Alexander Lippisch, who did the same for Messerschmitt — he’s in Cedar Rapids, designing jet fighters for Convair. Reinhard Gehlen used to be in charge of intelligence for the Wehrmacht, and he’s set us up with the most effective counter-espionage network that we’ve ever had. Kurt Blome — he used to test plague vaccines on concentration-camp victims. Now he works for the US Army Chemical Corps.”

“There were seven hundred sixty of them altogether,” put in the sandy-haired officer.

“But Duca? Duca isn’t even human!”

“We’re aware of that, Captain, but it made good military sense to bring him over here, too. If the Russkies got hold of him, think of the damage that they could do to our intelligence-gathering.”

Louise was standing in the sunshine, not clipping roses any more, but raising her face to the sky, with her eyes closed, as if she were enjoying the warmth of the sun, or praying. I had a terrible sinking feeling that I was about to let her down, and very badly, but not through any fault of my own. I stood up and walked to the French windows and lifted my hand up, pressing it against the glass. But her eyes were still closed and she didn’t see me.

“You’d better tell me what happened,” I said.