The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

Grossman took a close look and repeated, “What the hell did you do?”

When Koch didn’t reply again, Grossman said coldly, “We need to know how this affects what we do after the teams separate.”

“He’s right,” Cremer added. “Who’s going to be looking for us?”

Koch nodded. “All right. Fine. I went to the man who had my car…”

J. Whit Stevens had held the Banker’s Special five-shot revolver in his right hand.

“I had no reservations about selling your car after your letter came with that twenty-dollar bill,” he had said. “I knew then that you were up to something shifty, not just somewhere having fun, overstaying the length of time you said you’d be gone.”

Koch, hands in his sweatshirt pouch, the right one holding the 9mm Walther, looked at Stevens and waited for an opportunity.

Stevens misinterpreted the silence. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

Koch shook his head. “No, I don’t. Look, can you put down the gun?”

“I had my suspicions before I saw the twenty you sent. It’s a Series 1928 Gold Certificate. They’ve been out of circulation for years. The size of it—about a third bigger than today’s paper money—is a dead giveaway.”

Koch thought, The fucking Abwehr gave us the wrong money? Christ!

He said, “I don’t know what you’re taking about.”

“Of course not,” Stevens said, coming closer. “But I do.”

He pointed the pistol at Koch’s pants pocket. “Mind if I have a smoke?”

Koch shrugged, then reached into his pants pocket with his left hand and brought out the pack of Derby cigarettes.

Stevens nervously waved the pistol at the pack.

“Nice Kraut brand, Herr Koch.”

Richard Koch stared back but did not respond as he held out the pack.

“I traveled extensively in Europe before the war,” Stevens went on, smugly. “England, France, Austria, Germany. I know a few things about your country, including its brands.”

Koch said nothing, just jerked the pack upward so that a single cigarette appeared in the small hole torn in the top of the pack. Stevens reached for it with his left hand—and Koch tossed the pack hard into his face.

There was a sharp crack as Stevens’s .38 fired. Koch felt a burning sensation in his left thigh but ignored it as he grabbed the revolver while thrusting his right knee into Stevens’s groin. Stevens groaned and doubled over, and Koch forced the muzzle of the revolver behind Stevens’s left ear—and squeezed the trigger.

Instantly, a small geyser of blood and gray matter erupted from the exit wound atop Stevens’s skull and he collapsed to the floor, blood from the wound pooling on the India rug.

“…And I grabbed the keys to the truck, and came right here,” Koch said to Cremer, Grossman, and Bayer at the cottage.

He chose not to mention the three bricks of cash collected from the bedroom safe when he went for the truck key—twelve thousand dollars of J. Whit Stevens’s rainy-day fund kept separate from the rest that was kept in the safe embedded in the concrete floor of the bar.

“Scheist!” Cremer said. “We have not been ashore a full day and already we have a trail of a missing coastguardsman and a dead pub owner!”

“We have to move!” Grossman said excitedly, and got down on his knees and started repacking one of the soft black bags.

Koch shrugged.

“No argument,” he said. “Give me a minute to clean this scratch and we go.”

Ten minutes later, after carefully packing all the bags and making sure that they had left no sign of their presence in the cottage, the four men went down the wooden steps and headed toward the parking pad of crushed oyster shells beneath the cottage.

“What the hell?” Cremer said when he saw the horrid yellow-and-black plumber’s pickup. “When you said ‘truck’…” His voice trailed off.