Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

When he reached the front pew, however, he was surprised to find not his superintendent but an elderly gentleman in an ugly tweed suit and crumpled shirt. The man was hunched over an open briefcase, sorting papers.

“Excuse me,” said Andros, “I was looking for General Wilby.”

The man raised his angular face. Two small green eyes regarded Andros from behind thick, round spectacles. “I’m afraid the superintendent won’t be able to attend this little meeting, Cadet Andros,” he stated in a slow, mannered, and annoying voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Colonel Prestwick.”

Andros frowned as he looked at the long nose and thin lips. This Prestwick didn’t look like any sort of military officer he’d ever seen, much less one with the rank of colonel.

Prestwick said, “Come, sit down. Nobody will bother us, I assure you. The MP will see to that.”

Andros sat down in the pew next to Prestwick. “What’s this all about…Colonel?”

“You are the son of General Nicholas Andros of the Hellenic Royal Army?”

The reference to his father made Andros shift uncomfortably. “My name is Chris Andros. I’m a second lieutenant in the United States Army. That’s who I am, Colonel Prestwick.”

Prestwick cleared his throat. “Yes, well, it seems you haven’t been as straightforward about your commission in the U.S. Army with your family or fiancee as you are with me. Indeed, they think you’re at Harvard. These letters are all addressed to your old Cambridge address, and your letters are posted in Boston.”

Prestwick handed over what Andros immediately recognized as photostats of the love letters he and Aphrodite had exchanged before Athens fell to the Nazis in the spring of ’41.

“Our offices in Bermuda intercept all transatlantic correspondence,” Prestwick explained, adding, “I must tell you, your romantic prose had our girls swooning.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Andros demanded, angry and embarrassed that his words should be exposed to strangers. “Who do you think you are?”

“I told you. I’m Colonel Prestwick. I’m with the OSS.”

Andros had heard of the OSS, the American spy agency, but if this man was one of its so-called intelligence officers, he feared for the future of the country. “I’m sorry, did you say OSS or SS? I didn’t know the American government spied on its citizens.”

“We don’t.” Prestwick sniffed as he smoothed out his tie. “That’s the FBI’s job. Our interests are more global. That’s why we opened your letters; we could tell they had been opened and resealed by our German friends first.” Prestwick removed the photostats from Andros’s hands and replaced them in his briefcase. His manner suggested that their contents were classified and that Andros was privileged to have even glimpsed his own correspondence.

Andros never liked mysteries, and he was sure he didn’t like Prestwick. “So are you accusing me of being a spy, Colonel? Is that it? Are you going to kick me out of the academy?”

“Quite the contrary,” Prestwick said. “Your little white lies have established the perfect sort of cover for you. The Germans have no knowledge of your military background. That’s why I want you to work for us at the OSS. We have a rather special assignment for you in Greece.”

A hollow pang of anxiety filled Andros’s stomach, and he stiffened in the pew. Had Prestwick said Greece? The subject of Greece always brought to the surface painful reminders of his inadequacies as an Andros. But the possibility of learning what had happened to Aphrodite was simply too overpowering to resist. He looked at Prestwick with deep suspicion. “What’s in Greece?”

“A document of fantastic military significance.”

Andros narrowed his eyes. “What sort of document?”

“The enemy’s encrypted plan for the defense of Greece, disguised as an ancient text.”

Andros leaned forward with interest. If the OSS was interested in the defense plans for Greece, that meant Greece was no doubt the likely target for the impending invasion of Europe. Liberation would be close at hand for Aphrodite and his cousins. “And where in Greece is this text, exactly?”

“That’s what we want you to find out for us,” Prestwick explained. “All we know is that it’s in the possession of this man here.” He handed Andros a blowup of what had been a group shot. “It’s the most recent one we have on file.”

Andros found himself looking at a handsome German wearing the uniform of the Kriegsmarine. He had deep-set eyes and light, slicked-back hair under a cap with a white top. “A U-boat commander?”

“At one time,” Prestwick said. “Bills himself as an international businessman. Baron Ludwig von Berg. In reality, he’s a top-ranking general in the SS.”

Andros passed the photo back to Prestwick. “Never heard of him.”

“You’re not supposed to; he’s too important,” explained Prestwick. “Among other things, he heads the foreign intelligence section of the SD. That’s the secret intelligence department of the SS. Next to Hitler and Himmler, we consider him the most powerful man in the Third Reich. Of the three, he’s certainly the most dangerous. And that’s saying a lot.”

“And he lives in Greece?”

“On a vast estate outside Athens when he’s not in Berlin, although sometimes he disappears from both locales for weeks at a time. Where, we don’t know. But based on private intelligence sources in Switzerland, we suspect it’s his special research laboratory.”

“Where you think he’s hiding this cipher containing the defense plans.”

“Yes,” said Prestwick. “Furthermore, we believe somebody close to him, an insider, may be persuaded to divulge the location of this facility.”

“And who would that be?”

“His mistress.”

“I see.” Andros smiled wryly at the audacity of these OSS people. “You want a spy to seduce her into spilling the location of this document and compromise her lover?”

“That’s the general idea, yes.”

“Somebody to go to bed with her, encourage her to talk?”

Prestwick nodded. “I suppose if need be, yes.”

Andros leaned back and crossed his arms. “Then you don’t need me, Colonel. I’m not the man you’re looking for. What you need is a gigolo, some lowlife scum accustomed to taking advantage of women.”

“What we need is a well-connected civilian in Athens,” Prestwick replied. “Again, I cannot emphasize enough how your little white lies to your friends and family have established the perfect sort of cover for you. The Nazis have no knowledge of your military background.”

Andros could see that Prestwick failed to understand that the military was not simply part of his “background,” as typed on some government report, but his very life. To give it up would mean giving up the essence of who he was or, rather, who he hoped to be.

“You’re in perfect physical condition for this mission,” Prestwick continued, reading from a file. “You’ve completed parachute training. You’re a crack shot with pistol and rifle. You won’t need to worry about the operation of radio equipment or demolition work for this mission. According to these records, your only failure here at West Point is your abnormal fear of water, which seems to have prevented you from becoming an Olympic-caliber pentathlon champion. But I suppose such a handicap is understandable, considering the circumstances of your mother’s death.”

Andros tried to picture his mother’s face as he remembered it from family photographs. But all he could see was the face of Baron von Berg smiling at him from under the U-boat commander’s cap. He tried to push the image out of his mind, but the pain wouldn’t go away. Neither would this OSS colonel, he realized, not without some help.