Read sample The Unquiet Genius

PROLOGUE

The disembarkation announcement startled his cabinmates, ruining what seemed to him a deep sleep, given the raucous snoring the two men had emitted during most of the voyage from Palermo. But for him, sleep did not come. He may have looked like sleep had overcome him, with his shut eyes, lying in his berth, coiled tightly like a child in the womb. That peaceful image clashed with the battle taking place inside his head. His overwhelming desire to end his torment sparred with his previous acceptance of the church’s teachings that to do so, he would be proclaiming sovereignty over God’s creation, himself. His failure to carry out the plan the night before, which he had spent so long devising—the plan to let the Tyrrhenian Sea take him—produced pangs of confusion that were heightened by not knowing what he was supposed to do next. But there had been one moment of clarity—he knew he could not return to his past life.

Before his cabinmates could toss off their blankets, he was already out of his berth and had slipped into his iron-gray overcoat. Then he snatched his suitcase from under his berth and opened the cabin door. He looked back as the door shut and glimpsed the two men looking at one another, one scratching his head, the other wiping the sleep from his eyes.

He waited midship on the port side while four deckhands wrestled the gangway into place. Several other people waited with him, but no one spoke. They focused on the movements of the deckhands, all seemingly eager to find themselves on firm ground. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky, with its growing yellowish tint, hinted that soon the morning sun would arrive and another day in his tormented life would be set upon him.

Some measure of time passed after stepping off the gangway. He didn’t know how long it was, but he found himself standing in the middle of a piazza. The light was much brighter now, though he remembered little of his walk from the ship. Not his surroundings, his thoughts, or if he’d passed by people along the route. His head was in a thick fog that seemed to smother any attempts to focus on the details of his environs. He closed his eyes, a minute later—maybe it was longer—swaying as if he were being buffeted by a stiff wind. He put out his hands to brace his fall, but one still held his suitcase, so his chin hit the cobblestones hard, causing his vision to short circuit. He rubbed his jaw while his vision returned, and then he rose and looked around the expansive piazza. It was devoid of people except for a moonfaced, timeworn man stooped over a broom, sweeping the trash in front of a large baroque-style building—the Church of San Ferdinando. He was standing in the Piazza Trieste e Trento. Nearby was the Royal Palace, as was the Gran Caffè Gambrinus, a place that he and his friend and superior, Professor Carrelli, frequented before the martial prefect decided to close it due to its reputation for attracting antifascists.

He looked at his watch. It was approaching seven. He picked up his suitcase and headed toward the church, kneading his aching jaw along the way. The old man, his sweeping motion slow and weak, watched him as he passed by and climbed five steps. As he grabbed the door’s tarnished brass handle, he could feel the old man’s eyes on him. But before he pulled it open, the old man spoke.

“No, no, no. It is too early. Two more hours. Come back then.” He turned and saw the old man shaking his head and then resume his sweeping, leaving him standing there, not sure what he should do. A drenching disappointment washed over him. Not because of the closed church, but because of his weakness, his failure to carry out his suicide.

He took in the piazza. There were more people now, some on bicycles, a few walking, some with faces raised toward the rising sun. He descended the steps and headed across the square in the direction he thought he’d come from. He moved slowly, head down, thinking about where he should go. He had determined he would never return to teaching, so making his way to the Institute of Physics in Naples was out of the question, and he couldn’t go back to his hotel room at Albergo Bologna. He was just passing the opera house when someone rushed past him. A moment later, he heard his name.

“Ettore?”

He stopped and turned toward the voice. He recognized the woman. She was a nurse who had helped him with his stomach ulcers several months before. She was kind and patient. He liked her. Anna. That was her name.

“It is you,” she said as she moved closer. She was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, but the white outfit was dingy, wrinkled, and spotted. She was most likely headed home. “How are you feeling, young man? Have your ulcers calmed down?”

“I am…well. Thank you for asking, Anna.”

She reached up to touch his chin.

The move startled him, and he backed away.

“I…I just wanted… What happened? Did you fall? Your chin is bruised. You didn’t get into a fight, did you? You don’t seem the type, Ettore.”

Her questions surprised him. He rubbed his chin and felt a bruise. Did I fall, he asked himself. “No, no. Not a fight. I slipped and fell. But I am fine.”

Anna looked at his suitcase. “You are traveling, I see. Where are you headed? To Rome to see your family?”

His family. The letter to his family, in which he’d written:

Anna tugged on the sleeve of his coat. He flinched at her touch. “Ettore? Are you all right?”

He turned and hurried away, leaving her standing in the piazza, calling out his name.

CHAPTER ONE

Miles Stoker, at first, was surprised, but that surprise slowly turned to anger. As Kim Philby’s deputy, he had grown used to being at the man’s beck and call. Some days, he lamented he was just an errand boy. It shocked him that Philby summoned him by sending a lowlife, pock-faced courier who he didn’t recognize but who had no problem identifying him in his favorite hangout: the Arts and Battledress. Stoker had been keen to keep his sexual activities well out from under the microscope. He knew there were others in MI6 who felt the same as he. Homosexuality was a long way from being accepted as a way of life in the hallways and offices of the Secret Intelligence Service or Scotland Yard.

Stoker finished his gin martini and passed his phone number to the BBC presenter he had just met. The young man, whose startling good looks captured the attention of nearly all the club’s patrons when he entered, was a new face at the Arts and Battledress. Stoker had wasted no time in being the first to introduce himself. Now, he bid the man farewell, grabbed his Burberry trench coat and black fedora, and exited the bar.

On the taxi ride from Orange Street back to No. 54, Stoker mentally prepared himself for his meeting with Philby. He hadn’t seen Philby since Monday, and he had heard that he was in a deeply foul mood ever since his widely reported run-in with Conor Thorn at a party at Ian Fleming’s. Philby had been a no-show at No. 54 since it had taken place. Stoker hopped in the undersized elevator in the lobby, punched the button with the faded B, and headed down to the basement bar. The elevator door screeched as it opened, revealing a spacious, weakly lit room filled with cigarette, pipe, and cigar smoke. At least fifteen men gathered around several tables, hunched over in quiet conversations, sharing state secrets they couldn’t breathe a word of to anyone outside the long-standing spy institution. A bar in a spy agency. A very British touch, thought Stoker as he walked over to a table in the far corner of the room where a lone figure sat. Philby, a cigarette dangling from his lips, held up an empty tumbler, signaling Stoker to not join him empty-handed. Miles Stoker, errand boy.

A minute later, Stoker joined the sour-looking Philby with a tumbler of cognac and a gin martini in his hands. Stoker noticed Philby’s blackened eye and swollen nose. A little annoyed at having to fetch his drink, he decided to poke the slightly flushed spymaster, asking, “So, was it a tripped and fell or was it—”

“Don’t push it, Miles,” Philby said. “You’ll find me in no mood for any probing inspired by mockery.” Philby, slouched in his chair, took a whiff of his glass, then a healthy swallow of the smoky liquid. “So, was it love at first sight or just two men passing in the night?” Obviously, the pockmarked courier had reported back to his master with details.

Stoker decided to disengage from the scrum, knowing too well that the acid in Philby’s tongue was top grade. “What do you need from me, Kim?”

Philby sat up and leaned in. “Conor Thorn. You remember him. From your run-in at Paddington Station?” Philby’s cognac-scented breath sluiced over Stoker. Of course, he remembered. Thorn had almost bagged him at Paddington when he finished briefing Henry Longworth on how to get the stolen invasion plans for Operation Torch into the hands of his Nazi friends. But he was sure Thorn didn’t get a good look at him—well, as sure as he could be.

“What of the man?”

“You may have heard that he and his accomplice, Emily Bright, have foiled another operation that Moscow had a deep interest in. That makes two.”

Stoker was well aware of the first failed mission, but not the second. He also knew that Moscow Center’s reaction to the initial failure had been very harsh regarding what they considered Philby’s mounting shortcomings.

“Two failed operations. A number that will not grow,” Philby added.

Stoker loosened his ascot, took a sip of his martini, and waited for more.

“I want him out of the way. He’s been too much of a nuisance. And I need you—”

“To take care of it.” Stoker took his martini, tipped his head back, and drained it. “Where is he?”

Philby sat back and picked up a pack of Woodbines from the table and shook one free. “That’s the problem. He hasn’t been seen since…” Philby lit the cigarette with the nearly spent one between his fingers.

Since he punched you in the face, Stoker mused.

“Since Tuesday.” Philby blew a cloud of blue-gray smoke toward the maze of pipes and ducts that hung below the ceiling. “I suggest you have someone follow Bright. She’s back at No. 10. Given their relationship, she’s bound to rejoin her friend in due course. When that happens, you take charge. I don’t care how long it takes, how you do it, or where it’s done.”

Stoker nodded and began thinking first of the how. He was very fond of knives. They were quiet and brought death fast, if used properly. As to where, that wouldn’t be in his complete control. Unless he was to lure Thorn into some sort of trap, possibly one that used his friend, Bright, as bait.

“What about Bright? What if she was collateral damage?”

Philby smiled and picked a speck of tobacco from his tongue. “Ah, all the better, Miles. All the better.” He leaned forward and in a soft voice said, “One more thing. Do not underestimate Thorn. That would be a mistake.”

CHAPTER TWO

“It’s up to you, Conor. You gotta make the call to go or no-go.” Those were the words Jack Taylor was saying to Conor Thorn, Office of Strategic Services operative and former US Navy officer.

Taylor, who headed up the training for the experimental OSS maritime units, and Conor got along fine. Taylor gave Conor all the rope he wanted as the mission leader. Enough to hang himself. Which didn’t bother Conor, he preferred it that way. He was confident in his decisions concerning the missions he was sent on…usually. But this time, Conor was questioning his decision to go on with it, given the lousy weather coupled with the area they were being sent to having a reputation for severe ebb currents. If asked, he would deny that some of his self-doubt sprung from a previous experience as a child with tidal currents that ended in tragedy. But that would have been a lie.

The two rubber inflatables, Taylor called them Goodyears, were one thousand yards off the coast and headed for the beach, where they were to pick up two high-value assets, an unnamed male and female. Conor knew Taylor couldn’t get them any closer because of the sandbars. The rain alternated between beating down on them in sheets and horizontally directed rain that stung their faces like red-hot buckshot. White phosphorescent caps, whipped into a frenzy by the wind, broke the inky darkness of the night. Despite the howling squall, he could hear Flanagan breathing hard behind him. One of the OSS’s newest recruits, Flanagan was out of shape but seemed to be game for anything. In the second boat, Oliver Shoemaker, a Yale grad and former Olympian in swimming at the ’36 Berlin games, took the lead. Will Sanders, another Ivy Leaguer, though from which school Conor couldn’t recall, was behind Shoemaker.

Shoemaker and Conor had butted heads from the beginning. The same age as Conor, Shoemaker had spent his postgraduate days at Yale law school, then getting his first job out of law school at his father’s firm making $100,000 a year, and he made sure everyone on the team knew about it. That and his prowess in a pool. When they first met, it had not surprised Conor that Shoemaker had brushed off Conor’s question about whether he’d won any medals.

Each member of the team was carrying a rucksack and had an M1 Garand slung over their shoulder. In Conor’s pack was a relatively new piece of equipment—the SCR-536, a portable transceiver with a range of one mile that gained the nickname “handy-talkie.” The wind-swept seas proved a treacherous challenge for the two boats, but both boats made it ashore, Shoemaker’s boat nearly capsizing in the process.

After collecting their two assets, Conor radioed Taylor and reported their status. On hearing Taylor’s response, both boats immediately headed back into the raging waters, which had now been whipped into swells that hit five to six feet. Shoemaker pushed his boat off the beach, followed by Conor. Shoemaker was the first to board. Ten seconds later, Conor couldn’t see Shoemaker’s boat; it was swallowed by darkness and the sheets of pelting rain. Ten feet off the beach in water four feet deep, Conor felt his footing give way. The ebb current was pulling him out to open water—he was being pulled under the boat.

Conor’s mind jumped back to when he was ten years old, in the clutches of his mother, Bridgett, as she struggled to pull him ashore after he had fallen prey to a vicious riptide off a New Jersey beach. Her strength being drained, she’d managed to toss him toward the beach as she was pulled under. Four days later, the sea gave up her sodden, swollen body.

In the present, he kicked hard, hitting the bottom of the boat, then pulled his M1 from his shoulder and freed himself from his rucksack, letting both sink to the bottom. He continued kicking as he grabbed the rope that ran along the top edge of the boat and pulled hard, raising him to a point where his head was even with the boat’s rounded side.

“Grab my hand!” Conor screamed above the roar of the wind and angry surf. Flanagan stopped paddling, reached for Conor’s right hand, and yanked. A series of waves was pushing them back to the beach as the asset in their boat, the male, grabbed his other hand. On their second attempt, Conor was pulled into the boat and fell, ass first, on something hard. He reached underneath him and found a paddle, then dug it deep into the white-capped waves. He yelled at Flanagan to push harder. The rain didn’t let up, and neither did the wind. The cold temperature created a sleet-rain mix; the sleet stung his face and hands. They were making headway, finally, putting distance between them and the shoreline. They both kept paddling. Conor looked off their starboard side, trying to locate Shoemaker’s boat. He yelled for him twice. On the second attempt, he heard a response. It was Shoemaker.

“Do you have everyone?” Conor shouted.

There was no answer.

The wind picked up and with it the size of the swells, now reaching heights of seven feet. He had the lives of Flanagan and the asset in his hands. He couldn’t do anything for Shoemaker. He shouted at Flanagan to keep paddling toward the PT boat.

The two deckhands and Jack Taylor pulled them aboard the PT boat’s stern, Conor coming on last.

“Where’s Shoemaker?” Taylor shouted into Conor’s ear. It was his turn not to answer.

Conor looked out toward the shoreline; the black, storm-incensed night revealed nothing. Then a paddle clattered on the boat’s foredeck, startling Conor and Taylor.

“Over here,” Shoemaker screamed above the snarling wind.

The deckhands, Taylor, and Conor rushed down the boat’s starboard side and looked over into the water, the deckhands quickly going to work with a long boat hook pole to pull the inflatable in close.

In the boat were Shoemaker and the asset. No Sanders.

“Ah, shit,” Taylor spat.

Conor suddenly remembered—Sanders had gone to Princeton.

Taylor turned to Conor. “Colonel Donovan won’t like to hear we lost someone on a training mission.”

Conor thought about the trust Taylor had put in him as far as making a go or no-go decision on the mission. A fucking training mission. “No, Jack. Not we. I lost a man. Sanders. From Princeton.”