A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) by Randy Grigsby Read Free Book Online

became one, taking morning walks along the Maria- Theresia Strasse into old Innsbruck where she found cafes with bread and coffee for breakfast.  Each morning she strolled through the Alpenzoo.  After lunch it was either a tour of churches, such as the St. Theodor Cathedral.  Or castles, like the Schlass Ambras Castle.  She liked the Anatomical Museum so much that she visited it twice.  She strolled through numerous botanical gardens, all the time wondering what the future held for someone like herself who had chosen such an occupation.
    On the third morning, Catherine sensed that the time was near.
    That evening when she arrived back at the hotel there was a telegram waiting for her.  She sat in the luxurious lobby and read the message.  Her target had arrived in the city.
    ----
    The next afternoon, Catherine killed the traitor with a knife to the heart while they sat together—strangers in conversation—on a loading station bench.
    That night she dreamed of Ewald.
    The next morning, restless, she took an early stroll through Rathaus Park and wandered through the grounds of the University of Vienna.  There, she found a lover, a young art student from Prague, who interested her for the night.  But the next morning as they awakened among tossed, sunlight-drenched sheets, she broke his heart and dismissed him.
    ----
    Berlin.  Six months later.
    Beneath bright noonday skies the Mercedes drove through grounds shaded with silver birches and oak trees in the affluent suburb located in the western part of the city.  Then the staff car pulled off the main road taking Catherine through the entrance of Kaiserin Auguste Victoria Haus.  Richter had personally seen that Georgi was treated at VAVH, founded in 1909 by the German Empress, and considered one of the best children’s medical facilities in Nazi Germany.               
    Dr. Rudolf Hoffman, chief of Pediatric Care, waited for her at the front entrance.  He was a large man, six foot four at least, with shoulders that drooped forward.  Thinned, ash-colored hair was combed straight back on his head.  He led her to lift at the end of the narrow hallway where they got off on the second floor as nurses bustled about, and then went across a wide room.  Dr. Hoffman, hands jammed deeply into the pockets of his white jacket, led her to a glass partition.  A thick, green curtain behind the glass shrouded Catherine’s view into the room.
    “He’s receiving the best care, I can assure you,” he said.  “But let me warn you, this will appear a lot worse than it is.  He is isolated for his protection.”
    Her heart sank. 
    “We have reached the prognosis Georgi is sick from a disease of the lungs.  He possesses a weak immune system to begin with.  Possibly inherited,” he said.  “That sort of disability allows his lungs to become congested and thus the infection set in.”
    “I want to see him.”
    “Certainly.”  Hoffman pecked on the glass with a long finger, and the curtain parted slowly.
    Catherine stepped to the window and peered in.  A male nurse draped in a surgical gown and heavy gloves opened the curtains.
    Numerous mechanical apparatus, contraptions of all descriptions, crowded the room.  Breathing bellows and glass drip bottles.  The lights were soft; a small square window above a single bed was closed creating half shadows.  Beside the bed was a metal table cluttered with various bottles and metal trays.  Catherine sucked in a sharp breath.  There among the clean, white sheets, finally she saw her son’s terribly blanched face.  “What are the odds that he’ll survive?”
    “We don’t know yet.”
    ----
    1:20 p.m. 
    Catherine watched through the rain-specked window at the familiar streets of Berlin, a town she fondly remembered as a child as the Mercedes sedan sped along the Tauenzienstrasse, the wide expanse, then turned off onto a side street from Wittenberg Platz.  Before the war, she considered this place a