Beehive (Of Shadows & Secrets #4)

9. Will

9

Will

“ W eren’t you making gadgets before?” I asked. “I mean, you did give Thomas that really cool garrote thingy, though I suspect he might’ve preferred non-lethal gifts for Christmas.”

Arty chuckled. “I’m Jewish, remember? What do I know about shopping for a spy’s Christmas presents?”

Thomas snorted. “You’d better know a lot, considering you’re about to give us more.”

“It’s May. These are clearly not Christmas presents.” Arty reached inside his mystery box and handed a small package to Thomas. Whatever was inside had been neatly wrapped in brown packing paper and tied with a leather strap.

“For a not -Christmas present, this sure is wrapped up all nice and pretty,” Thomas said.

If Arty rolled his eyes any harder, they would’ve popped out of their sockets.

I glanced up to find Manakin grinning and Loon glaring, making me wonder if the woman even knew how to smile.

“Go on. Open it,” Arty nudged.

Will fiddled with the leather before ripping into the paper like a boy tearing into the paper securing his first bike. His enthusiasm had me smiling as he tossed the wadded paper aside and peered at a plastic-wrapped cigarette box. He held the box to his ear and shook it, then tossed it on the table and turned to Arty.

“We don’t smoke, but thanks . . . I think.”

Arty rolled his eyes again. “Are you always so obtuse?”

“If he knew what obtuse meant, he might be able to answer that. He’s more obtuse than an isosceles triangle after it got rung for dinner,” I said.

Arty cocked his head. “That wouldn’t necessarily make an isosceles triangle ob—”

“It was a joke, Arty.” Thomas leaned toward Arty’s ear and muttered as though sharing some national secret. “Just nod and laugh or he’ll tell more, and they’ll get worse. Trust me.”

Arty’s brows scrunched, then smoothed.

I was fairly certain he still didn’t get it.

Thomas picked up the cigarette box and examined it more closely. “All right, I’ll bite. What is this? A non-obtuse person would assume this isn’t a simple box of smokes.”

Arty hesitated, probably still hung up on the joke he’d missed, then focused on Thomas. “That non-obtuse man would be correct. What you hold in your hand is the smallest camera ever made by the US government.”

I leaned across, suddenly intrigued. “Is it the box? Or is it in the box? What does it look like?”

“If you hold on for a minute, I’ll show you.” Arty shoved me back into my seat with one arm while his hand disappeared into his box again. He held up a duplicate of the cigarette box Thomas held, only his didn’t have any plastic wrapping. He flipped the lid open and pointed the inside toward me. Eight butts of eight cigarettes stared back.

“That’s anticlimactic,” I said.

Curls played at the corners of Arty’s mouth. He reached into the box and raised one cigarette.

“Have a light?” he asked as he held it out toward me.

Before I could respond, a faint click sounded, and Arty shoved the cigarette back into the container.

“Was that—?” I could barely find words.

“One picture captured on film. Yes.” Arty nodded once, punctuating the point. “There are eight cigarettes. Two are actual tobacco, while the other six are one-shot cameras. That doesn’t give you much film to work with, but it could be handy in a tight space. To snap the picture, you just squeeze the filter.”

Arty pulled a ciggy-cam he’d just used out and handed it to me, filter end first. “Feel the filter. Find the mechanism.”

I did, then handed it across Arty to Thomas. He played with it long enough for me to lose interest, so I turned back toward Arty. “That’s a big box. What else did you bring me, Santa?”

“Again, still Jewish. Santa is a fantasy of your—”

“Materialistic Christian culture. Got it, Mister I-live-in-a-house-owned-by-rich-people-for-generations-and-spin-a-gold-plated-dreidel.”

“My dreidel isn’t gold plated!” he protested.

Thomas set the ciggy-cam down and shoved Arty with his shoulder. “It may as well be. Have you seen your parents’ house? Hell, it’s not a house. It’s an estate.”

“Oh, Thomas.” I shifted my sights. “You are related—”

“To no one of consequence,” Stork cut in, the sudden sharpness of his tone jarring us out of our playful banter. Arty and Stork both knew Thomas was a du Pont and would one day inherit more money than any of us had ever imagined, but I’d forgotten we weren’t alone. Loon didn’t know us—and we didn’t really know her.

Family secrets were best kept within one’s family. Stork was right.

“Children,” Loon interjected, turning everyone’s heads, including Manakin’s. “Santa Claus is actually a Russian invention. Saint Nicholas was said to hand out bags of gold to the poor and needy, hence the story of gift-giving began. You have Uncle Joe’s forefathers to thank for your holiday festivities.”

Arty and I gaped at the woman. She’d barely spoken ten words since we’d arrived, and now she wanted to launch into a history lesson about Christmas?

“Um, okay. Great. What’s next, Arty?” I asked, hoping Loon would go back to her brooding silence.

“This,” Arty said, retrieving a pipe from his box. The piece looked like black plastic, while the bowl—or whatever you call it—was made of a rich wood, possibly cherry. It had an elegant, movie-inspector vibe.

“A pipe?” Thomas said, cocking his head. “We still don’t smoke.”

“And you’re still obtuse,” Arty quipped. “This is a bone conduction radio receiver.”

“Oh.” Thomas’s eyes widened to almost comical proportions.

I shrugged and shook my head when he glanced my way.

Arty looked well pleased to have stumped us again. “When you put this in your mouth and bite down, you will be able to hear whatever the other end picks up. And by ‘other end,’ I mean the transmitter.”

He retrieved a box the size of a deck of playing cards out of his wooden treasure chest and held it up. A tiny pig’s tail antenna curled up from one end.

“Plant this box wherever you want to eavesdrop, and whoever is biting the pipe will hear everything.”

“How in the world—” Thomas began.

Arty waved him off. “There isn’t enough time to explain how bone conduction works, certainly not to a neanderthal like you.”

“Hey!”

Arty smirked. “Just know that sound is conducted from the transmitter to the pipe, up your jaw, and into your ear. Good enough?”

Thomas perked up. “Oh, that kind of bone conductor. I thought—”“God, make him stop,” I said, desperate to keep the blush from overtaking my ears.

Stork actually laughed out loud.

Thomas beamed, like a kid who’d just told a fart joke in Sunday School.

Arty blushed.

Loon’s frown discovered new ways to deepen.

“Can we get this over with, minus any more juvenile erection jokes?” Loon groused.

“There’s nothing juvenile about my—”

“Thomas!” Arty and I said in unison.

He shrank back in his seat.

Arty struggled to wipe his grin. “A word of caution on the pipe. The Soviets are very good at intercepting transmissions. They will have listening posts all over Berlin. You should only use this little trick for a quick burst of conversation, then destroy the transmitter as soon as possible.”

“Got it,” Thomas said, setting the pipe beside the used ciggy-cam.

“The rest of the items are fairly benign. Thomas, that means they’re not exciting.”

If I’d been drinking in that moment, I would’ve sprayed all over the table. Arty had gotten seriously funny since I’d seen him last. We needed to see each other more often.

Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose, as though we either bored him or were beneath his effort to reply.

“Another garrote, a box of compass buttons for each of your suit coats and overcoats, another deck of playing cards where the Jack of Clubs has a map of Berlin sealed inside,” Arty ticked through his list of contents.

“A map?” I asked. “You think we’ll need a secret map now? I thought that was only a wartime thing.”

Manakin inserted himself. “Your cover is as a German art expert hired by the American government to repatriate lost pieces to surrounding countries and homes of Jewish families, those who survived, at least. Someone in that role would not carry a detailed map of the city with sensitive military and intelligence locations marked on its surface.”

“Ah, right. Good point,” I conceded. “If Arty’s done, can we talk through our cover?”

“I’m done,” Arty said, closing the lid to his box of goodies.

Manakin pulled two more sheets of paper from his folder and slid them across to us.

“Tobias Richter?” I asked, reading the name typed in bold at the top of the page.

“Wilhelm Müller again?” Thomas added to my confused gaze. “Won’t these names raise suspicion?”

Manakin held up a palm. “The Nazis who knew those names are dead. The Soviets, as good as their network is, wouldn’t have any reason to know them. You never operated on Soviet soil, and they were busy fending off Hitler’s boys when you used them last. Your familiarity with those cover names and identities should make it easier for your to slip into—and maintain—their personas.”

I scanned my page. “It’s all the same as before.”

“Very close to it,” Manakin confirmed. “Your profession and education are different, tailored to the art world, and Condor’s training in protection was added, but they are essentially the same covers you used before.”

Thomas tossed his page onto the table and sat back. “I like it. What else?”

“We need to talk through insertion, how you will contact our assets in the Soviet sector. We also need to go over general craft for operating behind the curtain.”

“Insertion? If we’re going in as officials hired by the American government, why do we need to insert?” I asked.

Manakin leaned forward on his elbows. “You will be greeted at the border by a Soviet official. It is safe to assume he or she will be an MGB agent or a political officer. Either way, you will be scrutinized from the moment you make contact. The Nazis were good at the spy game, but the Soviets are the best in the business.”

“So no letting our real names slip?” I tried to joke.

Loon scowled and crossed her arms. From the look on her face, she could’ve just as easily reached across the table and slapped me.

“Right. No slipping,” Manakin said, as though discussing the weather. “Oh, we should also talk about the dissolution of the OSS.”

Thomas and I nearly leaped out of our seats.

“They’re doing what? To the OSS?” Thomas shouted.

“Easy, boys.” Manakin motioned for us to sit back down. “We have time for all of that. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Congress is already working on a replacement.”

“Great, that’s all we need. Congress messing with our game,” I mumbled.

A sideways glance revealed Arty with his arms crossed, looking like the one person in the room who didn’t want to speak. Thanks to his father’s ties to Roosevelt, he likely knew a lot more than any of the rest of us, perhaps even more than Manakin. I filed that tidbit away for a more private conversation with my former roomie.

Thomas’s chair groaned as he sat back. “When do we leave?”

Manakin blinked a few times, as though trying to clear his mind of its clutter, then muttered, “Tomorrow.”