The Black Gate by Michael R. Hicks

Author:Michael R. Hicks [Hicks, Michael R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imperial Guard Publishing, LLC
Published: 2014-09-25T22:00:00+00:00

“Is it true?”

He looked up to see his secretary, Iris, standing in the door, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. In her mid-fifties, she was twenty years older than most of the rest of the secretarial staff, but could run rings around all of them. Along with every possible skill a man could wish for in an assistant, she had an uncanny knack for knowing just what Connelly needed right when he needed it. She also seemed to know everything that happened in the headquarters building, whether she was cleared for it or not. This was the first time that even she hadn’t had a clue that an anvil was dropping on top of them.

Pursing his lips, Connelly nodded.

Iris came in and closed the door, then set the coffee down on his desk. He noticed it was only two-thirds full.

Without a word, Iris went to one of the five drawer safes and quickly spun the combination lock. Kneeling down, she yanked open the bottom drawer and reached toward the back to retrieve a bottle of whiskey. Gracefully returning to her full height, she strode over to the desk as she unscrewed the cap and filled up the cup the rest of the way.

“This won’t help, but it certainly can’t hurt,” she said as she resealed the bottle and returned it to the safe drawer.

Connelly took a sip of the powerful brew, forcing himself not to simply gulp it down. “It’s true that the agent reporting is saying that Peter’s not carrying out his mission, but who knows if that’s really the case? I don’t want to believe it, but…” He shrugged helplessly. “Whatever he’s doing, he must have his reasons.”

“There are already rumors going around that he’s a traitor,” she told him.

“That I don’t believe, not for a damn minute!” He put his head in his hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”

“I don’t believe it, either, but that’s the story that’s making the rounds.” The OSS was built on secrets that were never to go beyond its walls. But sometimes, still confined within its walls, secrets that should have only been known to a few became known to many.

“Anyone who thinks that can go straight to Hell. Peter’s not a traitor.” I hope, he didn’t add.

“So what’s going to happen now?”

He looked up into her bright green eyes. “I don’t know. God help me, I just don’t know.”

***

On the other side of the Atlantic, the operations officer of the RAF’s 617 Squadron, the famed Dambusters, sat ramrod straight at his desk in the squadron headquarters building at RAF Scampton, his telephone pressed to his ear so he could hear over the muted roar of a pair of four engine Lancaster bombers coming in for landing. “Yes, sir, today’s raid against the Bielefeld viaduct was a complete success, collapsing about sixty meters of the viaduct. It’s the first raid where we used the Grand Slam bomb. It shattered at least one of the pylons, and

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