The Blackbird Conspiracy by Ted Bolerjack

Author:Ted Bolerjack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theodore Bolerjack
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

LEAVING ANNA THIS SECOND TIME had been much harder for Thorne than the first. He’d seen a tear in her eye as she ducked out from the rug that separated his space from the rest of the factory, and he’d sat there for several minutes on the cot, her warmth still evident on the blanket next to him. He finally clinched up the blanket in his fist, and knew at that moment he had crossed the line—crossed over from professional to personal in his relationship with Anna Larsen— and he cursed himself for it. He knew that he was in love with her.

While he couldn’t be entirely certain of her status with Stefan, he knew she was entirely devoted to him, or at least his cause. The move to Liege would be risky for Stefan’s crew, but each and every member of that clandestine team was adept at evading the Germans and there was no reason to believe they couldn’t accomplish the feat at hand. The German army was in disarray in their retreat back to the Fatherland and was far too busy fleeing the advancing Allied front to be bothered with rounding up anyone in their midst. He also knew the resistance had an unseen network of communication lines, and pathways that ran right under the Germans’ noses, and with a spot of luck, Stefan’s team would slip right past them.

It was one of these paths in the underground network that he had used to cross over the Axis front seeking the protection of the Allies somewhere west of Liege near the Hoegaarden region. After being shuttled through numerous Allied command posts in the Flanders region, he was finally able to arrange a lift aboard a cargo plane headed back to an RAF airbase in the vicinity of Brighton. It had been a long thirty-six hours of jostling rides in the back of Jeeps and cargo trucks, as he was shuttled across the English countryside, but Thorne eventually made his way back to the Grand Central Hotel.

From the lobby he attempted to reach Allan Faulk, leaving messages with the various branches of Military Intelligence that he knew how to reach; in the end, there was nothing to do but wait for Faulk to find him. He settled in for a long nap after reaching out to Baker Street to determine his next appointment with Beecher.

In the morning, he found messages waiting for him at the front desk from both Beecher and Faulk. He was to be in Beecher’s office later that morning, but first he wanted to place a call to a number Faulk had left.

The telephone earpiece blurted out a shrill buzz as he awaited someone to answer the extension. It took three calls during the hour before he finally got through.

“Faulk here.”

“Allan, it’s Richard. Can we meet?”

“Afraid not, I’m tied up with something for the next few days, but this is a secure line. I take it you made it back to London in one piece?”

“Yes, I’ve got the identity of our man.

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