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

German-born journalist—Leni Capek was who she would be known as for a long time—complete with forged documentation and false background.  Through some careful planning, and the assistance of another agent, she was given a government position within city hall.
    Eduard Benes and this Czech government had fled to England eighteen months before.  The final carefully planned incident was orchestrated—false charges against Leni involving a late night incident outside of a famous bar when she slapped a German official.  Assault charges were brought up and among the crowded sidewalk witnesses were produced.  This story assisted her in fleeing with other Czechs.
     
    Two months later at Cholmondeley Park, near Chester, England.  While traveling with a group of officials reviewing the Czech army training, Leni met an older, unsuspecting, and very handsome Colonel Robert Boland.
    A British officer who happened to be stationed in Tehran, Iran.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    -Five-
     
    When Salinger was reassigned to Cairo in late May 1943, he had rented a room in a large house on Harras Street close to the Italian legation.  It was white stone, Mediterranean style, divided into four apartments.  The ground floor flat had a back door opening into a patchwork of grape arbors and a vegetable garden.  But Salinger had insisted on renting the second-floor apartment with a balcony overlooking a small garden among mango trees and a wrought-iron fence lining a narrow street. 
    The cities of Tunis and Bizerte had fallen to the British Western Desert Force on May 7 when Salinger was still in Bern.  By May 12, the day Salinger departed the Swiss city by train, organized Axis resistance in Africa had ended.  Returning to Cairo, he found a city no longer living under the depressing threat of Rommel’s Afrika Corp marching into the city.
     
    It was after dark when the taxi dropped Salinger off at his apartment.  He had spent the afternoon sending in reports and cleaning out his desk.  He mixed a drink and sat in the half-shadowed balcony overlooking the street just beyond the fence.  It was a sparsely furnished apartment with two wicker arm chairs and a thick rug.  Beside one chair was a floor lamp where he spent long nights with a novel.  Beside the other chair were a small, square table and a jar of flowers.  The woman who cleaned his apartment switched them out once a week.  
    The chatter of quick conversation below calmed him for a while.  When the street fell silent, he turned on the radio and listened to the announcer’s voice broadcast the war news.  The Russians had officially captured Kiev.  Hitler’s folly in Mother Russia was draining his armies.  Then the announcer read a communiqué from the Central Pacific Command.  Three days before in the Pacific Theater. U.S. Marines had captured Makin.  On an island named Tarawa, the Marines had consolidated their positions and were making good progress against enemy positions on the eastern end of Betio Island.
    Salinger heard the knock.  He went inside, walked through the dark apartment and opened the door.  Frank Bentley, head of OSS operations in Cairo, stood there.  “I really had no idea you would be here.  There wasn’t a light on at all, Booth.  It’s never a good sign when a man is sitting in a dark room.”
    Bentley was an always-somber man with Hollywood goods looks, slightly over six feet with black hair.  He was dressed in a light brown suit and blue tie.  His dark mysterious eyes shone from drinks earlier in the afternoon.
    Salinger turned on the lamp.
    “I’m taking several of the staff to dinner at the Shepheard later,” Bentley said.  “Would you like to go with us?” 
    “Thanks for the offer anyway, but I’m going to try and get out of the city tomorrow night.”
    “The baked fish is the best I’ve ever had.  You’ve been there, of course.”
    “Thanks just the same,” Salinger