The Double Agents (Men at War 6)

[ONE]

OSS Whitbey House Station Kent, England 0705 4 April 1943

Charity Hoche rubbed her eyes, then yawned. As she sipped tea from the fine white porcelain china cup and found that it had turned tepid, her stomach growled. She looked at the clock.

Okay, she thought, one more cup and then I’ll head down the hall for something to eat.

I’ve been at this two hours—eight, counting last night—and I don’t feel I’m any further along than when I started.

Charity put the cup on its saucer, then reached across her desk and picked up the matching fine white porcelain teapot. With one hand on the teapot handle and the index finger of the other hand holding the teapot lid in place, she refilled the cup.

As the pleasant waft of fresh hot tea from the cup reached her nose, she thought about how acclimated to England she had become—at least, in one way. She almost never drank tea in the States. Yet here, despite the endless supply of coffee that was available—there always seemed to be a pot brewing—she not only had come to drink tea, she had come to drink only tea.

And she had become somewhat of a tea snob. She found that she preferred the Irish teas over the English ones, particularly the Irish Nambarrie for its remarkable full flavor and delightful aroma.

She found, too, that for some reason the caffeine in tea better suited her. It was easier on her mind and helped her to think more clearly and—if it were indeed possible—think more easily.

And she really needed that benefit now.

She had spent most of the previous night in her office—some six hours—having begged off the repeated offers to join everyone headed to the pub for the ministrations of Major David Niven’s Attitude Adjustment Hour.

At the massive, ancient wooden desk—she envisioned a progression of English noblemen over the centuries also working at it—she had tried to list everything she knew about the missing Ann Chambers.

It had not been a very long list at all.

More helpful—though, in and of itself, that was not saying much—was the memo that Lieutenant Colonel Ed Stevens had brought from OSS London Station. It outlined the bare-bones basic information that was known to them: the date that Dick Canidy had last seen Ann, the date she had last been in her office at the Chambers News Service bureau, the date the bombs of the Luftwaffe had turned her Woburn Mansions flat to rubble, and what it was thought that she had been doing at the time of the bombing.

This last item proved to be essentially useless since it said nothing: “As her whereabouts immediately before, during, and after the bombing are an unknown, it can only be presumed that she was either at home relaxing or working, or away from home relaxing or working.”

Despite the fact, Charity thought, that no evidence of Ann or anyone else was found in the rubble.

There also was a listing of twenty-plus people in London and the immediate area with whom Ann was known to have had more or less regular contact.

Each of the people listed had notations on the sheet of when they had been contacted about Ann’s disappearance and what—if anything—they had known about it. Almost all had stated that they knew only that Ann had gone missing. The few people who had nothing noted beside their names had yet to be reached at all, and there was a penciled notation in the margin that read: “Ann w/any of these??”

Stevens had also brought to Whitbey House a very large and very heavy brown manila accordion folder that contained copies of Ann’s last few months’ work. The bureau chief—her editor—had put together the package at Stevens’s request, and included a note stating that not all of Ann’s stories carried her byline and so in the interest of thoroughness he had included everything he thought she had written and edited.

Stevens had passed the bulky folder on to Charity, saying that if nothing else she could at least get a feel from the stories as to what Ann had been up to just prior to her disappearance.

Ann had been busy.

Charity had begun the previous evening by separating out the

articles with Ann’s byline from the rest. The pile it made was almost equal to the pile that remained. Reviewing the features turned out to be difficult. The reading aspect was hard enough—some of Ann’s subjects were very emotional—but trying to mine possible clues that could lead to someone—anyone—was mentally exhausting.

Does this seamstress who donates her time stitching special garments for bombing victims who have lost a leg or arm know anything of Ann?

What about the nurse voluntarily making the regular rounds to the infirm in their homes, bringing food and medicine and a human’s warm touch and kind words?

Possibly. Those and many others.

Yet the only way to find out is to actually find them all and ask.

And that is an immense task.

Still, it had to be done, and she methodically took notes on all possible contacts.

By ten o’clock, when Charity’s eyes began to water to the point they could no longer focus, she still had not finished reading all of Ann’s byline pieces.