The Second Objective

“You men are welcome to bunk down here if you like,” said the major. “Or grab a meal before you head back to town.”

Gra

“Would you mind if we had a look around?” asked Gra

“Around the grounds?” asked the major. “It’s five in the morning.”

“The compound covers over fifteen hundred acres,” said the intelligence officer. “There’s an entire battalion stationed around the perimeter. A bedbug couldn’t get into Ike’s quarters without our knowing it. You think you’re going to find something out there we’ve missed?”

“No. I’m really beat. Thinking it might help me sleep.”

“Why don’t you wait until after the war’s over and come back as a tourist,” said the intelligence officer, out of patience.

“No, that’s all right, they’re welcome to take the grand tour,” said the major. “We’ll arrange an escort as soon as someone’s up and around. Save you the price of a ticket down the road.”

Two MPs walked Gra

“They’re not going to leave us alone, are they?”

“No.”

“I could try to distract ’em.”

“Don’t push it, kid. You got too much to lose.”

“So we’re just going to leave it up to them,” said Bernie. “The army and the MPs-”

“We did our job.”

“We didn’t finish it.”

Gra

Standing under a portico on the terrace, they lit cigarettes and shivered against the cold. In the faint predawn light, they could just discern the enormous outline of the château spreading out around them. When they’d arrived earlier, it had been too dark to see the massive scale of the buildings.

“What a joint,” said Bernie, looking at the map on the brochure. “Guess some big shot built this for himself way back when, was that the deal?”

“Labor was a little cheaper.”

“No unions.”

“In New York, they’d still be pouring concrete.”

Bernie smiled. Their MP escorts stepped out to join them and borrow cigarettes.

Eddie Be

The GIs patrolling the compound perimeter heard a gunshot, then another. They pulled off the road and listened. Another shot. They appeared to be coming from a train car parked on the spur line to the south of the fence. They drove the jeep close and approached cautiously, with weapons drawn. Two boxcars sat on the tracks. The doors of the first car stood open, boxes of ammunition stored inside. They heard a muffled voice issuing from the second car, then noticed that the door was partially open.

A call came in on the MPs’ walkie-talkies about an abandoned train car that had been found near the southern perimeter. The officer reported that shots had been fired and they were moving to investigate. One of the MPs listened on his walkie-talkie as the officers advanced on the train.

Gra

With weapons drawn, the two soldiers slowly rolled open the rear boxcar door.

If they’d been alive long enough to register it, they would have caught a brief glimpse of Corporal Eddie Be

In the next instant the explosion atomized Eddie Be

The MP escorts on the back terrace heard the explosion distort through their walkie-talkie. An u

Gra

“Fuck that,” he said, and started down the steps. “Bring the map.”

36

The Trianon Palace, Versailles

DECEMBER 22, 4:30 A.M.

General Eisenhower woke at 4:30 A.M. after a restless night. He showered and dressed, then walked down from the small flat he was using as a bedroom in the Trianon to his office. His orderly served him coffee while he looked over the night’s accumulated cables from the Arde

He picked up a pen and legal pad, prepared to compose the most important letter he’d written in weeks. Eisenhower had a

On his desk he noticed that an order had come through overnight to SHAEF high command, lowering the threat assessment from Skorzeny’s commandos. Welcome news. He told his orderly to bring his hat, scarf, and overcoat. He was stepping outside. After three days cooped up in this eighteenth-century cuckoo clock, he knew a walk in the gardens at sunrise would clear his head.

By the time the explosion drew most of the security detail toward the southern perimeter, Von Leinsdorf was half a mile inside the compound. Under thick clouds, the blanket of fresh snow on the grounds amplified the first hints of dawn, giving the light the peculiar quality of emanating from the ground up. The storm had passed, but a lingering mist gave the air a granulated texture, as if viewed through cottony gauze. Von Leinsdorf walked just inside the tree line, following the linear shore of a large, frozen rectangular body of water to his left. The woods were empty, the air still as glass; all he could hear was his own breathing and the plush turning of the powdery snow underfoot. He had memorized the maps Skorzeny had given him before the mission, but the snow had erased all low-lying landmarks and made it difficult to orient himself. He knew he was skirting the Great Canal, but it wasn’t until he reached this perpendicular intersection with another hard-edged line of water that he placed his location on the grid he’d built in his mind.