A Gathering of Spies by John Altman Page B

“Do you know the name Katarina Heinrich?”
    â€œKatarina Heinrich?” Meissner said.
    â€œKatarina Heinrich, yes.”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so.”
    â€œRight! Well, then, take care. I’ll see you later in the week.”
    â€œPleasure,” Winterbotham said.
    They left Fritz Meissner sitting on his bed, looking after them with a slight frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Taylor asked.
    â€œHe’s lying.”
    â€œWith any luck we’ll find the proof in those letters. Then we can go back and confront him with that.” Taylor pinched out his cigarette and tucked it carefully into his breast pocket. “I almost hope we’re wrong. If she’s got the same training that Fritz had, she’ll be a handful.”
    â€œWhen do you expect she’ll try to make contact?”
    â€œIt’s been thirteen days since she went on the run. I would say she could reach England as early as next week.”
    Winterbotham nodded. “I assume you’re watching the ports.”
    â€œAs best we can. But there’s an awful lot of cargo coming in from America these days, human and otherwise.”
    Winterbotham frowned. Even in his sleep-deprived state, he had begun to get a clear picture of the tasks before him. Getting Ruth back to England was the priority. But to do that, he would need to move farther ahead with his masquerade for the Abwehr , convincing them he had information of use to them. To do that, he would need Schroeder to continue brokering the deal. To do that, he would need the full support of MI-5. And to get that, he would need to help them clear their plate of their top priority: finding the Heinrich woman before she got her information back to Germany.
    Besides , he reminded himself, if she does get the contents of those blueprints to Berlin, and they do manage to build the chain-reaction bomb before the Americans, rescuing Ruth won’t make any difference. We’ll all be dead and Hitler’s armies will be goose-stepping right down Downing Street .
    â€œLet’s go have a look at those letters,” he said.
    â€œVery good,” Taylor said. “Care to stop for a bite first? I’ve got a friend at the Savoy—”
    â€œNow,” Winterbotham said.

5
    NEWFOUNDLAND BASIN, THE ATLANTIC OCEAN
    MAY 1943
    The RMS Queen Mary sailed through the night.
    Her cargo holds were stocked with timber, meat, sugar, fuel oil, explosives, powdered milk, diesel, steel, tobacco, and lead. Her cabins and decks were filled with people: merchant seamen, American servicemen, Catholic missionaries, women from the Red Cross, and a handful of brave civilians who were willing, for reasons of their own, to risk the roving U-boat patrols scattered throughout the Atlantic.
    Sister Abigail Harbert believed that she had just met one of the nicer people on board the Queen Mary , a young woman named Eleanor Lewis. Young woman was not the fairest way to think of her, perhaps, since she was actually very close to Sister Abigail’s age, but Sister Abigail considered herself to have been made wise and ancient by her devotion to Jesus. Eleanor Lewis, on the other hand, had not yet accepted Christ as her savior. But she was a brave and kind young woman nonetheless, and Sister Abigail believed that she might very well be able to convert Eleanor Lewis before they pulled into port six days hence, if she kept at it.
    Eleanor was a pretty young woman with dark-brown hair cut short, a conservative style of dress, and a wet look in her green-gray eyes. That wet look, to Sister Abigail, encouraged sympathy. Eleanor always seemed on the verge of tears, even when she was telling a story as inspiring as the one she had just finished telling.
    â€œMy darling Al,” Eleanor said, when Sister Abigail asked her why she was willing to risk the wolf packs roaming these black waters. “He was wounded in an accident last