The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

It carried the return address:

Richard Koch

Gen Delivery

NYC NY

And it was addressed to:

Mr. J. W. Stevens

c/o Pete’s Bar

117 1st St

Neptune Beach Florida

Attached to the inner envelope was a handwritten note that instructed the recipient to affix the proper three-cent postage to the inner envelope and mail it from a box in New York.

Had Eva Carr opened the smaller envelope, she would have seen the letter therein, written by hand by Koch, that began “My Dear Jay,” then opened with a line inquiring as to Stevens’s health and well-being, and abruptly segued to announce that Koch would be coming back to collect his car, within the next thirty to forty-five days, and if Koch could so impose on Stevens he enclosed a twenty-dollar bill (in U.S. currency, of course, which had come from German counterintelligence) in order to have someone check out the car to ensure that it was in sound operating order, that it didn’t need a new battery or tire or other, that it had a full tank of fresh gasoline, et cetera, et cetera.

The letter closed by wishing Stevens—and Pete’s—a successful new year.

[ THREE ]

Wordlessly, the teams made their way southward in the rain at a half trot, following along the dune line. They came to an occasional footpath—beach access points that connected parking lots to the shore—and stopped, carefully looking for the lone, love-struck couple out for a middle-of-the-night stroll or the drunk who may not have quite made it home, before crossing the path and continuing south.

At one point, they came to a halt at a four-foot-high fence that blocked their way—Kurt Bayer actually ran right into the wall of vertical wooden slats wired together and was grateful that it had flexed at impact—and, breathing heavily, the four had to take time to debate whether it was faster to scale the fence or to run toward the ocean in order to circumvent it.

They chose, after a brief and animated discussion, to scale it and soon were running at a measured pace back toward the south, the path clear of everything but sand and more sand for the next forty-five minutes.

Then they came to another beach access path, and there in the dark the faded signag

e announced, unnecessarily:

NO LIFEGUARD

ON DUTY!

SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK!

TOWN OF ATLANTIC BEACH

It was the last part that Richard Koch had found the most interesting, for it confirmed for him what he thought he both remembered and recognized in the dark and rain of the landmarks through this area.

Kurt Bayer stood there beside him, catching his breath, and they waited for Rudolf Cremer and Rolf Grossman to catch up to them. After a moment, they could hear them—feet squeaking in the sand as they ran—and shortly thereafter their vague shapes came into view through the mist.

Koch could hear their labored breaths. Then he heard Cremer manage to say, “Is—is this—this it?”

Koch whispered, “This should be the path leading to Sixteenth Street, and, if so, just over there about five hundred meters”—he pointed south and slightly inland, past some scrub pine trees and palmettos—“are the cottages.”

“Let’s go, then,” Grossman said, already moving and trying not to sound as if he were breathing as hard as he was. They passed the pines and palmettos and came to a pair of darkened cottages, two hexagonal designs built side by side on pilings six feet above the sand and overlooking the ocean. Koch knew that these belonged to J. Whit Stevens because he had twice rented one of them himself.

They were identical, with weather-beaten wooden siding, wooden decks and railings—some sections warped—and rusty tin roofs. The windows were shuttered for the season. Even in the dark it was clear that these were summer rentals, absently looked after with the kind of neglect where one fixes things only when they break—and maybe then not even right away—as opposed to performing some semblance of preventative maintenance.

Koch, after pulling his Walther P38 9mm semiautomatic pistol from the leather holster on his hip, then hearing the others doing the same, led the men toward the nearest cottage.

He could feel the sand under his feet becoming more packed, and then becoming almost solid, as he reached the point where grass grew at the foot of the wooden steps leading up to the deck.