Chapter 3: A Risk Worth Taking

“Mr. Schmidt? Herman Schmidt?”

Schmidt raised his eyes from his glass of beer. The hotel bartender waited patiently for an answer.

“‘Ja’”

“There is a phone call for you sir,” the bartender said, motioning with his head toward the other end of the bar where a phone was off the hook.

Schmidt slowly eased off the barstool and proceeded to the phone.

“Talk.”

The voice at the other end cleared its throat.

“They told me I could find you in the hotel bar. I hope you don’t mind me calling, Lieutenant Schmidt, but we’ve encountered a situation that I was told you might find interesting.”

“Talk,” repeated Schmidt.

“Two Gestapo agents were killed today by . . . by what appears to have been a large animal. They were torn to pieces and there are bite marks. I . . . I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Many hours on a train from Estonia to France were quickly washed away. Schmidt had originally planned on a few beers and a bed but now he was wide awake.

“Tell me where,” he said.

The other man said the agents were found at the edge of a small coastal village. They were conducting a stakeout when attacked. Schmidt was given the location where he could examine the bodies and hung up.

“Tell the bellman to get my bags,” Schmidt instructed the bartender. “And get me a car to the train station.”

The bartender, a Frenchman, saluted. “Heil Hitler,” he said.

Schmidt did not return the salute. Damn French were always pandering. He tossed a few coins on the bar, turned on his heel and headed for the door.

He would make a call to SS headquarters in Berlin from the train station. His superiors, which reached the very top of the Nazi food chain, would find this turn of events distressing and undoubtedly fascinating.

There was quite an appetite for the unusual among them. It was Lieutenant Herman Schmidt’s job—no it was his calling—to investigate, to track down such things.

Lieutenant Herman Schmidt had a feeling that years of work were about to culminate in something big. He was getting closer and closer to finding what he’d been searching for. He could sense it.

Lieutenant Herman Schmidt left the hotel with a smile on his face.

*

Erika could shift and get off the base without much chance of problems, but it just wasn’t practical. Transporting copies of the documents she’d stolen while in wolf form was one thing. Carrying the heavy bag and her clothes was something else.

When you are a spy behind enemy lines, your mind is constantly at work, plotting contingencies. You work scenarios—if this happens, I’ll do that. If that happens, I’ll try this.

The problem was, she wasn’t sure exactly what they knew. They may not have any idea she was the one they were looking for. She’d covered her tracks well. She’d been very careful.

She had no idea how they had learned they had a mole in their midst, but obviously they had. They’d even known the location of the drop site. Perhaps this meant that the British also had a double agent in their operation.

An engine fired up on the other side of the compound. Staying to the shadows, she hurried in that direction and found a large truck idling. Two soldiers were attaching a big gun on wheels to it. They were going to tow it to an emplacement nearby. This was her chance.

As soon as the men were finished hitching the gun to the rear of the truck, she slipped up beside it, climbed in the empty rear quarters of the truck and quickly stripped off her uniform. She stuffed it, along with her shoes, in her bag. She shifted into her wolf as the truck began to move.

If something went wrong, she would need her wolf.

They drove through the gates and, to Erika’s relief, they turned onto the road leading in the direction of Volker’s temporary mansion home. She guessed they were two miles from the lane that led up to the house when an explosion rocked the truck.

Erika was thrown free, her right shoulder striking the ground hard. This part of France was rife with large hedgerows. She tumbled into one of them just as another explosion lit up the night.

One of the German soldiers jumped from the burning wreckage and was immediately cut down by automatic weapon fire. French Resistance forces were providing a distraction, something for the Nazis to focus on instead of the impending invasion.

It was a smart tactic, but couldn’t they have hit a different truck? Her bugout bag containing money, falsified papers, a gun and other useful items—not to mention her clothes—were now gone. At least she’d been smart enough to take on her wolf. Her frail human form would not have withstood being thrown free from the truck.

Using her keen night vision, she stuck to the hedgerows and began running as fast as her aching shoulder would let her. This day was becoming a nightmare, but if she could get the information she was after regarding the secret Nazi rocketry program, it would all be worth it.

When the Nazis conquered a nation, they took whatever they wanted. It had been that way in Poland and Norway, and all the others. France was no exception. For reasons she hadn’t yet deduced, Dr. Volker had been assigned to the Normandy region of France and he had set himself up in a palatial estate once owned by an influential politician.

When not hosting one of his big blowouts, there were sure to be at least a few men smoking cigars and drinking Cognac on the veranda. Tonight, she found the place dark but for a few lights on in the house. She hoped her luck was changing.

She bypassed the guard at the gate and leapt the wrought iron fence, approaching the Victorian mansion from the side. There was a guard wandering the yard, smoking a cigarette. She skirted him and found a side door.

The moon was nearly full, and it peeked down on her from between heavy clouds as she transitioned back to human form. Naked and vulnerable, a feeling she hated, Erika tried the door and found it unlocked.

Now inside, she made her way toward the servants’ stairs. Hopefully, the staff had gone to bed for the night, and she could make it to Volker’s study without being spotted. She considered shifting back to her wolf, but her claws were long and sharp and would click on the polished hardwoods.

The kitchen smelled of Bavarian cream. Volker, for as fit as he was, had an unholy appetite for food. He also had quite an appetite for sex. He was known to all the girls in the nearby brothels. Erika hadn’t slept with him yet, but she’d been close. She often wondered if his pillow talk might include any snippets about his work.

As it turned out, she didn’t need the information from Volker’s lips. While working in the intelligence office, she had happened across the ciphers that would allow British Intelligence to make out his notes and papers. Now she just had to get her hands on the papers themselves.

She crept up the servants’ staircase on tiptoes and came out at the end of a long hall. He’d shown her where he worked. He’d bragged about his rocket and wanted her to see the model. He’d also wanted to show her his ‘other’ rocket that evening. Fortunately, they were interrupted when he had to take an important phone call.

Using the tiny camera concealed as a lipstick in her purse, she had taken photos of everything she could in the room, documents, schematics, the model of the V-2 rocket. He’d told her that this rocket would be able to reach London with more accuracy than its predecessor, the V-1. The damage it would inflict would be even more devastating.

The British wanted to know where the blasted things were being built so they could take out the facility. Short of that, they needed to know the rocket’s range and where they might be fired from. If that information was in this house, she would find it.

Someone was ascending the grand staircase. Whoever was coming was whistling a melody she recognized. It was a piece from one of Wagner’s operas. Hitler was known to love the composer’s work. Volker did too.

She tried the door to Volker’s study, but it was locked. The whistling was growing louder.

She’d felt vulnerable before. Now she was about to be completely exposed in more ways than one. In a panic, she tried the door just to her right. It was unlocked. She stepped inside.

It was Volker’s bedroom.