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PROLOGUE
MAY1945
ORANIENBURG, GERMANY
SUBURBOFBERLIN
SOVIETUNIONSECTOR
THOMASStansfield was sick of war.
Sick of the killing, sick of the destruction, sick to death of watching friends, comrades in arms, and civilians alike rendered corpses by the giant meat grinder that was war. Though he was barely in his mid-twenties, Stansfield knew that something inside him had prematurely aged. Perhaps terminally so. Thomas might be sick to death of war, but now, only days after the Allies had finally captured Berlin, he was terrified that he might just be the catalyst for a new one.
“Is that the convoy?”
Though he was almost certain of his answer, Stansfield still pressed the Zeiss binoculars to his eyes before replying. The trio of nondescript vehicles could have been among any of the hundreds currently poking through the smoking remains of the Third Reich’s capital like jackals swarming the still-cooling corpse of a wildebeest on some African plain.
They were not.
Though the day’s last light was draining away from a crimson sky, enough illumination remained for the binoculars. BA-64 armored scoutcars guarded the front and rear of the three-vehicle column, but it was the center vehicle that garnered Stansfield’s attention. The Soviet ZIS-5 cargo truck lumbering along in a cloud of exhaust featured a single vertical scratch on the metal toolbox mounted just about the right rear wheel housing. The scratch was jagged enough to suggest that its origin was accidental.
It was not.
A fourteen-year-old member of the Resistance had etched the mark two evenings prior at considerable risk to her life. When he’d been fourteen, Stansfield had been focused on perfecting his curveball in the hopes of making the high school baseball team. The notion that he and his fellow spies used children to do the work of men had appalled him at first.
No longer.
Innocence was one of the first casualties of war.
But not the last.
“Ja,” Stansfield said, lowering his binoculars. “Give the ready signal.”
Stansfield’s answer, as was the original question, had been spoken in German. He had been horrified by the vicious attack against Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese. Like many of his friends, he had set off for the Army recruiting station that very day, determined to enlist and do his part to avenge his countrymen. But unlike so many others, Thomas’s enlistment had been circumvented. He had filled out the required paperwork and waited for the official notification that would provide the time and date of his physical exam.
It never came.
Instead, one of Thomas’s professors had requested that he come to his office to sort out an administrative detail. Stansfield had dutifully complied, but the person waiting in his professor’s office had not been his professor. In fact, the trim, bespectacled man wasn’t a member of the faculty at all. He’d explained in a precise Ivy league diction that Stansfield had come to the notice of a select group of people. A group who’d been tasked to aid America’s war effort in an unconventional manner. Rather than enlist, Thomas was encouraged to complete hisdegree while incorporating two additional fields of study into his course load—French and German.
Thomas did as he was asked. A year later he graduated with honors and walked into the waiting arms of the organization that would later be known as the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS. Other men his age served as soldiers, sailors, or Marines, but Thomas became something else.
A spy.
“Moment of truth.”
Andre’s whispered comment thundered in Stansfield’s ears.
His work with the OSS had taken him the length and breadth of Europe. From gathering information on the state of German munitions factories, to coordinating airdrops for the French Resistance, to scouting possible landing zones for D-Day paratroopers, Stansfield had interfaced with countless Allied counterparts. As with anything else in life, the quality of agents and assets could be graded on a bell curve. Some he would have trusted with his life, while others he’d been convinced would get him killed through pure stupidity.
And then there was Andre.
Stansfield had first made the boy’s acquaintance in Paris, where Andre had worked as a runner—someone charged with conveying messages to Resistance cells scattered throughout the city. Though fanatical about hunting down spies and traitors, the Germans tended to ignore preadolescent boys. Especially boys whose asthma made it difficult for them to walk any significant distance without wheezing.
This was a mistake.
Though he looked no older than twelve, Andre was actually sixteen. In a sane world, this distinction might not mean much, but as Thomas knew firsthand, sanity had departed the European continent long ago. The German forces responsible for Berlin’s final defense had consisted in large part of old men and young boys. If he had been fighting for the Nazis, the French boy might very well be a squad leader by now.
Andre wasn’t fighting for the Nazis any more than he was plaguedby debilitating asthma. Though French by birth, he had grown up in an eastern border town and could speak German like a native. A gifted polyglot, Andre was also fluent in Spanish, Italian, and English. Lately he’d been honing his skills with a language that might prove even more relevant to future conflicts.
