A Bodyguard of Lies Read online

  “A smattering of inconsistencies, mainly. According to my own investigation, there was only one Mary McCoy, a Dublin College graduate, with a gift for foreign languages, fluent in French and German, who worked for the War Office from mid 1940 to early 1945. Ten years ago, this Mike McCoy tracked down and met this woman, thinking she was the cousin he’d grown up with. She turned out to be living in Texas, the widow of an American Air Force officer. According to this old veteran, biographical details matched, but this tenacious ol’ chap was convinced after meeting this woman that she couldn’t possibly be his long lost cousin.”

  “Oh, yeah? What convinced him?”

  “Her eyes. They were a different color of blue than he recalled. His cousin’s eyes were an unusual shade of turquoise. The Texas widow had dark blue eyes. Also, he claimed his cousin, Mary McCoy from Killarney, Ireland, was fluent in French, but knew no German. The Mary McCoy in the War Office was a transcriber of radio messages, which required fluency in both French and German. She handled secret communiques from our undercover agents abroad, many of whom were French and German citizens working for the Resistance.”

  “So maybe he was mistaken about her eyes and about her speaking German. Y’know, old people and their faulty memories. After all, this Mike McCoy must be in his eighties or older—”

  “Seventy-three at the time of his death nine years ago. I inherited his file this year. Nearly seventy pages worth. Replete with his inquiries, details about his cousin, and some of his personal investigations. He was the stubborn, pit bull sort, kept calling every week until his death. After this World War II veteran died, his son took over—a Mike McCoy, Junior. My predecessor, unfortunately, didn’t take the man or his son seriously. I do. I did some checking, rang up a few old-timers in Killarney who recalled the young Irish beauty with the bright turquoise eyes who went off to Dublin, then London, after her parents died. She managed to survive a terrible ferry disaster just before reporting to the London War Office. Close to sixty souls went down with that ferry. At the time, authorities suspected a German U-boat attack but no fragments of torpedoes were found.”

  Jake wrote furiously on his yellow pad. “Okay, Major, got it. So the old man got the eyes right. Eye color doesn’t change, but maybe this woman in Texas was wearing colored contacts and the old guy didn’t know it. Maybe his cousin learned enough German at the university to become a translator. Something the old man wasn’t aware of.”

  “It is possible, Agent Bernstein. In any event, if this Irish girl was killed and her identity stolen by a German spy, so help me, it is incumbent upon me…even after all this time, to set things right.”

  “Sixty years, sir?” Jake was incredulous, but Mossad and the Jewish Defense League weren’t the only ones still hunting Nazi war criminals.

  “It’s fallen upon my shoulders to discover the truth. I believe President Truman said in 1945 that Nazi war criminals would be hunted to the ends of the earth. We believe in doing just that.”

  “I understand, Major Temple. Believe me, I understand.” For a moment, Jake thought of his grandfather, a German Jew who fled Berlin in the mid-thirties. “Assuming the old man was correct—and that’s a big assumption—you want me to investigate this American grandmother, Mary McCoy Snider. To confirm her innocence or guilt.”

  “That sums it up bloody well.”

  “I’m not a regular field agent, Major, although I’ve been trained for field work and the Bureau occasionally farms me out on undercover assignments for various task force teams. Mainly, I analyze data.”

  “Agent Bernstein, I’m familiar with your employment file and your special qualifications for this assignment. I’ve already cleared your participation with your supervisor, ADD Thompson, and he agrees. He also assured me that…uh, considering your background, you’d take this assignment to heart.”

  His background.

  Jake immediately understood what the MI5 officer was referring to. Jake’s grandfather, Nathan Bernstein, had immigrated to the U.S. in 1934 following the summary firing of all Jews working in the German film industry. Grandpa Nate, an award-winning film editor in Berlin, had been one of the lucky ones. He and a few other displaced German Jews got help. Famous German-Jewish emigrants, like Billy Wilder and Marlene Dietrich, provided food, shelter and jobs for the ones who’d followed them into the Hollywood film industry in the 1930’s.

  It had been the luckiest break of Grandpa Nate’s life.

  “I see. Any other reason I was requested for this assignment, Major?”

  “You speak German, and according to your file, you’ve traveled extensively in Germany. You’re familiar with the various accents. If this woman, Mary Snider, was a Nazi spy, as soon as you get her to speak German, I should think you’ll be able to tell if she’s a native speaker. As opposed to someone who learned it whilst in Dublin.”

  “I get your point,” muttered Jake. Despite his own fluency in German, as soon as he opened his mouth, the average man on the street in Stuttgart or Hamburg could tell he was American. Still, he had a good ear. “Major, accents can change with time and relocation, especially if the subject herself is a linguist.”

  “Quite right, ol’ boy. “ The Brit cleared his throat. “Another consideration, not unimportant. You’re single and, from your file photo, rather good-looking. We need an agent who can, uh, charm the ladies.”

  Jake cringed. Whenever the Bureau needed an undercover agent to schmooze a woman to get information—Grandpa Nate had called it schmoodling—they sent for him. Seduction was his dubious claim to fame at Headquarters. A kind of typecasting that he was beginning to resent. Annoyed, he blew air out of his cheeks.

  “Major, if all this is true—this old Irish guy’s suspicions that the real Mary McCoy’s identity was stolen by a very clever Nazi mole, how much damage do you figure this spy actually did?”

  Over the line, Jake heard the man snort with disdain. To an older generation of Brits—and Americans—the horrors and hardships of WW II still lingered. In their collective consciousness, the Nazis and Hitler’s Gestapo were the boogeymen, evil incarnate, for all time. Jake understood this all too well.

  “Incalculable. British counter-espionage was able to round up and hang…or turn into double agents, most of these Nazi spies. Nevertheless, we think a few may have slipped through the cracks. It was wartime and with the chaos created by the Luftwaffe’s Blitz over London—well, it is conceivable that a Nazi agent undetected in the War Office might have been responsible for the deaths of thousands, maybe tens of thousands. At the very least, she would have been in a position to expose the identities of Resistance members and deep-cover agents all over Europe.”

  Fuck.

  “Resistance fighters didn’t just blow up railway tracks, ol’ chap, and sabotage German supply lines. They often hid Jewish families and smuggled many to safe havens. They also saved Allied soldiers and helped them cross enemy lines. Exposing these Resistance fighters was the same as putting bullets through their heads. And condemned hundreds, maybe thousands, of others to certain execution or the SS death camps.”

  The man sounded committed to seeing this thing through. Fury, barely controlled, seeped through the man’s tense voice. His words vibrated with outrage.

  “Agent Bernstein, if we can prove this Mary McCoy Snider was a spy for the Third Reich, we’ll seek extradition and put her on trial. Charge her with a multitude of war crimes and hang her sorry ass, as you Yanks like to say. The media shall have a field day and some bleeding-heart American senators may object, but rest assured, we’ll see justice done. Even sixty years after the fact.”

  “An eighty-something-year-old grandmother?” Jake shook his head slowly from side to side. It seemed pointless after all this time.

  Nevertheless, he could sense his grandfather, dead now these past two years, nodding his approval. His entire family had been slaughtered in the death camps. If nothing else, Jake owed it to his Jewish heritage to give MI5 a thorough, objective investigation. He could he
ar his grandfather’s voice, his English thick with a German accent: “You go get’em, Yaakov. Go get dose sons-a-bitches.”

  “Okay, Major, I’ll get on it right away although I’ve got a desk full—”

  “You don’t understand, Agent Bernstein. This assignment begins tomorrow morning, London time. Just as soon as you can catch the red-eye flight to London—”

  “London? Tonight?”

  “Your ticket’s waiting at the United counter at Dulles. It happens that our computers picked up her hotel registration two days ago at the Kensington Hilton. She’s in London as we speak. With her granddaughter, Meghan Larsen, a teacher, close to your age…”

  Temple’s pause was pointed, implicit with meaning. Jake scowled. They were typecasting him again. The schmoozer…

  Jake’s blood thundered in his ears.. His workaholic mind was crowded with the details of several ongoing investigations. Why would ADD Thompson clear Jake’s desk so abruptly? Unless this MI5 investigation had special priority.

  A sixty year-old espionage case? Somebody higher up the bureaucratic food chain must have given this the green light.

  Hmmm…not for him to question why. He was a soldier, not a general.

  Temple went on. “Mrs. Mary McCoy Snider and her granddaughter have booked a two-week tour of Britain and Ireland. Retracing her origins, perhaps? Or revisiting the scenes of her crimes? At any rate, we have persuaded an American gentleman to take a different tour—at our expense, naturally—and you’re taking his place. There’s no better way to gather evidence, is there, than an on-the-spot investigation? Mary Snider shall trust an American over a Brit, most assuredly. The American legate here in London has been informed and approves. Our PM also approves and our Intelligence MPs are aware. You’ll report to me directly and I’ll keep them in the loop. It’s all arranged.”

  Jake looked around his small office, scanned the stack of files next to his computer. Fieldwork, on such short notice? Already, his heart beat like a rock star’s drum. Well, why the hell not? The damned files could wait and the change would do him good. More than good. He was going stir-crazy and his boss had already given the go-ahead.

  “All right, Major, looks like I’m your man.”

  “Jolly good. You know, Agent Bernstein, it’s never too late to see justice served.”

  Jake wasn’t so sure about that. Sixty years was a long time, even for wartime justice. Yet, Nazi war criminals were being prosecuted even into the twenty-first century. He recalled the recent case of a former SS death camp guard, uncovered in New Jersey living on a pensioner’s salary; he had been extradited to Germany, tried, and was now serving a life sentence in a Berlin prison.

  Lady Justice, though blind, has a long memory.

  “Well, we’ll see, Major Temple. Let’s put the facts before the theory, see where the facts lead us, okay? So far, you’ve got a theory and a bucketload of conjecture.” After all, that’s all the Irishman—this Mike McCoy—had, a theory supported by a few memories and maybe a few coincidences.

  “Yes, quite right, but we ol’ cloak-and-dagger types don’t believe in coincidence, do we? I’ll meet you at Heathrow, 7 a.m. London time. Don’t laugh, but I’ll be the fuddy-duddy in a tan trench coat and plaid sporting cap.”

  “Should be hard to miss.” Jake punched off, smiling. London. I’ll be damned…

  But an elderly grandmother and her high-school-teacher granddaughter? What could be dangerous about them? A week schmoozing them and he’d be bored out of his skull! But he’d be conscientious and do his job to the best of his ability.

  By-the-book Bernstein.

  On impulse, he took out his wallet. Inside the billfold section was an old photo he carried with him always. His grounding. Taken a year before his grandfather died, Grandpa Nate, then eighty-six, stood next to Jake and the rest of his family: his father, mother, and Jake’s two younger brothers, David and Isaac. Absent were all the German-Jewish uncles, aunts, and cousins who’d been rounded up and killed by the Nazis. By 1939, they were gone. All of them. Just five years after his grandfather had left Germany.

  All murdered in cold blood.

  They hovered in the photo like invisible phantoms.

  Clamoring for justice.

  Even for him, a member of the X generation whose recollections of WWII were the old World at War DVDs that his father sometimes watched and an occasional Hollywood movie, the Nazis struck fear. For Jake, evil was a black-uniformed Gestapo officer with SS-lightning strikes on his collar, restraining an enraged German shepherd while herding Jews into a death camp. The red flag with the black swastika in the white bull’s-eye still had the visceral power of a kick in the stomach, evoking palpable fear and hatred.

  He knew this was the main reason he had been chosen for this assignment.

  Well, Grandpa Nate, let’s see what we can do to find justice in our little corner of the world.

  Chapter Two

  London

  Major Temple looked, in Jake’s opinion, like the stereotypical Englishman. Of average height and pale complexion, his graying blond hair was indeed covered by a plaid cap, and his tan trench coat hung loosely about his lanky frame. Jake was certain he’d seen the same outfit on a BBC’s production’s main character, a police constable named Inspector something-or-other. The man before him spoke with his crooked, yellow teeth clenching an unlit pipe, grinding the wood of the pipe like a dog gnawing his bone.

  The major filled Jake in about the assignment as he wended his way through London commuter traffic like a teenaged stock-car driver. Adrenaline pumped through Jake’s brain, and synapses fired in rapid succession. His hands white-knuckled and clutching the dashboard in front of him, Jake reveled in the ride. On the wrong side of the road. It was like bumper cars without the bumping fun. His first adventure. He would’ve enjoyed it more if it weren’t for the dull ache in the back of his skull.

  Unfortunately, the thrill ride was over too soon. After the major showed his ID card at a protected gate, the steel bollards retracted into the ground and Temple stepped on the gas. By the time the Brit had parked in his spot in an underground garage, it was apparent where they were.

  “Ever been here, Agent Bernstein?” Temple inquired, his pipe protruding between his side teeth.

  “Thames House? MI5 headquarters. Nope, never. Thought I had to get to the hotel before the tour bus showed up.”

  Temple nodded. “We have a little time. This stop’s important. You shall see, ol’boy, there’s more to this case than I was free to tell you before. Shall we?”

  Jake drew in a big breath to calm himself down. They were blindsiding him and he resented it. Silently, he followed the major to a steel-lined elevator. Temple placed his palm on a biometric scanner; a green light flashed and the elevator doors opened. Jake followed the major inside.

  One part of Jake’s mind registered the plethora of surveillance cameras tracking their every move. Another part struggled with a sleep-deprived headache. On the plane, he’d read MI5’s entire file on Mary McCoy. Now, he badly needed an infusion of caffeine and a good night’s sleep. Keeping a bland expression, Jake remained silent. After all, he was on their turf.

  They descended several floors. The elevator door opened onto a carpeted floor, dimmed with paneling and heavy drapes. Subdued lighting and plush fixtures led Jake to assume that this underground network was reserved for guests whose identities were to be concealed. Important guests, as in members of Parliament, perhaps, or members of the nobility. A shiver crawled up his spine as the significance of the surroundings struck him. Definitely more to this case than the major had let on.

  For damned sure.

  As they stopped in front of an ornately carved door, Temple rapped first before entering. Seated at a small conference table were two men enjoying cups of tea. Major Temple nodded to both men, who stood to greet the American.

  “Mr. Jones. Lord Wexford. FBI Agent Bernstein. Please do take your seats, gentlemen. We have only fifteen minutes, so shall we make
this concise?” Temple tilted his head and spoke to the air. “Jenny, bring us two cups of coffee. Black?”

  Jake smiled and said, “Yeah, the stronger, the better.” Things are looking up.

  He studied the other two men, as they studied him in return. One, the younger of the two—Mr. Jones, no doubt an alias—wore the rumpled suit of a civil servant. He was blond and freckled, maybe in his mid-forties. The older, silver-haired guy was Savile Row, from his silk shirt down to his Italian loafers. An English gentleman. A lord.

  Jake smiled and played the folksy American routine. “Never met a British lord before.” He shook hands with the two men.

  Mr. Jones chortled and sat down, leaning back in his chair. His blue eyes met Jake’s dark gaze, sizing him up. Jake bristled under the man’s scrutiny and the smug expression on his face, betting Jones had jumped to a few hasty conclusions of his own.

  “Agent Bernstein, Lord Wexford is the eleventh Earl of Cantwell. One of our esteemed members of the House of Lords and a member of Parliament’s Intelligence Committee.”

  Jake inclined his head. “Lord Wexford, I guess Major Temple’s right. There’s more to this case than one old Nazi spy.”

  Both Temple and Jones nodded their agreement, Lord Wexford merely smiling. He appeared preoccupied and ready to get down to business. Jake immediately liked his lack of pretension. There appeared to be nothing arrogant about this man.

  “Certainly correct, Agent Bernstein. The major has asked me to brief you on our other concern tangential to the Mary McCoy investigation. A very delicate matter that we hope you shall help us resolve.” Wexford’s cultured baritone resonated against the mahogany panels in the elegant room. The man’s confidence showed a crack, however, when a nervous hand strayed to his ascot to straighten it.