Dragonfly Read online

  Thank you for downloading this eBook.

  * * *

  All the books totally free of charge, if you like to receive our books on the next time, please Subscribe and join our free books group.

  Subscribe

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Cast of Characters

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Recruits CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Missions CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  The Game CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  HOME CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  CHAPTER NINETY

  CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

  CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

  CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

  CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

  CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

  CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

  CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINETY-NINE

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Reading Group Guide Discussion Questions

  A Conversation with Leila Meacham

  ALSO BY LEILA MEACHAM

  In dedication to Ann Ferguson Zeigler, again.

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  The sun on the hill forgot to die, and the lilies revived, and the dragonfly came back to dream on the river.

  (WELSH INSCRIPTION)

  The Cast of Characters

  The Americans

  (BUCKY) Samuel Barton, civil engineer

  OSS code name: LODESTAR

  Working name: Stephane Beaulieu

  Bridgette Loring, fashion designer

  OSS code name: LABRADOR

  Working name: Bernadette Dufor

  (CHRIS) Christoph Brandt, track-and-field coach

  OSS code name: LAPWING

  Working name: Claus Bauer

  Brad Hudson, fly-fisherman

  OSS code name: LIMPET

  Working name: Barnard Wagner

  Victoria Grayson, fencer of foil

  OSS code name: LIVERWORT

  Working name: Veronique Colbert

  Alistair Renault, OSS case officer, chief of station for French Affairs, aka the man in brown

  The Germans

  Major General Konrad March: head of the Abwehr, the German intelligence agency in Paris

  Wilhelm March, the general’s son

  Sergeant Hans Falk, the general’s aide-de-camp

  SS Colonel Derrick Albrecht, chief of the counterintelligence division of the security service of the Reichsführer (SD)

  Sergeant Karl Brunner, the colonel’s aide-de-camp

  The French

  Beaumont Fournier, author

  Nicholas Cravois, the Black Ghost

  Madame Jeanne Boucher, owner of the Paris fashion house La Maison de Boucher

  Claude Allard, riverboat captain and owner of a fishing tour company in Paris

  Jules Garnier, director of personnel at the Sorbonne

  Madame Gabrielle Dupree, proprietress of a boardinghouse and landlady to Bucky

  Madame Adeline Gastain, neighbor to Major General Konrad March

  Maurice Corbett, chief of detectives, French National Police

  Sister Mary Frances, mother superior of the Convent of the Sisters of Charity

  Jacques Vogel, director of the L’Ecole d’Escrime Français

  Henri Burrell, Alistair’s man in Paris

  *

  Explanations of

  German Military Organizations

  Wehrmacht: the German Army

  Abwehr: the German intelligence agency, a branch of the German Army

  Schutzstaffel: SS

  Waffen SS: the military arm of the SS

  Allegemeine SS: the administrative arm of the SS

  Sicherheitsdienst: the security service of the Reichsführer, operating under the Allegemeine

  CHAPTER ONE

  September 1962

  Cambridge, Maryland

  The man in brown snapped shut the book he’d been reading and looked up with a stare of disbelief. There was no doubt about it, absolutely none. The five-member team the author described in this obscure little book about clandestine operations in German-occupied France during WWII was the same group he’d sent into Paris in the fall of 1942. Four had made it home, one barely, the last left behind dead, buried in an unmarked grave on French soil. Or so they’d all believed…

  Alistair Renault sat very still. Eerily coincidental that he should have read that chapter in The Greatest Ruses of World War II today, almost twenty years after he’d watched the most amazing team of covert operatives he’d ever trained take off in the predawn darkness from England into enemy territory. In three weeks the team was to have met in Paris for a twenty-year reunion. The date, long canceled, had been sug
gested, insisted upon, by the team’s missing member. Alistair wondered if September 23, 1962, was as stuck in the others’ minds as it was in his.

  He turned to the author page to read again, but with more interest, the credentials of John Peterson that qualified him to write The Greatest Ruses of World War II, a subject on which few had greater knowledge and none more experience than the man in brown. Mr. Peterson’s sparse qualifications, the lack of footnotes and a bibliography, and the so-so writing, plus its publication by a little-known university press in 1952, would not have enticed a serious reader of WWII literature to give his war chronicles a try, but the title of the book, set on a low shelf in the local library, had caught Alistair’s eye. All through his reading, he had wondered about the validity of the man’s research. The acknowledgments page made no mention of persons from whom John Peterson had received assistance or the sources he had consulted. For all the reader knew, the author could have made up the dramatic content and labeled it nonfiction. Alistair did not recognize the names in the book’s cast of characters, but he knew that the chapter detailing the clandestine activities of a five-agent team code-named Dragonfly that had operated in Paris during the city’s darkest years was factual—at least up until the claim in the shocking climax. He should know: He was the man who’d run the operation. Whether the ruse the author had described at the chapter’s conclusion was bogus, he didn’t know. He suspected it was, against a flickering hope that it wasn’t. He intended to find out.

  John Peterson, bald, bespectacled, lackluster, appeared from his photo to have been in his late fifties in 1952. He’d be pushing seventy today and, if still living, was probably retired. Madison, New Jersey, was a little over a four-hour drive away. Before requesting John Peterson’s telephone number in New Jersey, of which there must be a slew, he’d try Madison High School, where Peterson had been an American history teacher. Perhaps a talkative school clerk would give him all the information required for Alistair to locate him in Madison, and he would take a little motor trip to the Rose City to introduce himself to John Peterson.

  He was indeed fortunate to be referred to a loquacious clerk who had handled student registration for the school since its founding in 1920. “Forty-two years I’ve been here,” she said proudly, and to Alistair’s questions replied, “Oh, Mr. Peterson’s been gone from Madison for a long time. He and his wife divorced…No, I don’t know where he relocated or even if he continued teaching. My guess is that he took off to travel around Europe. He was a big one for Europe.”

  “Europe…” Alistair mused. “Any special country?”

  “He liked France.”

  Would she know if Mr. Peterson was still alive? Alistair asked.

  “We haven’t heard of his death, and I believe we would have,” the registrar said.

  What about his ex-wife? Maybe he could locate Mr. Peterson through her?

  A snort. “That hussy disappeared with her paramour right after she took Mr. Peterson for everything he had, poor man.”

  Alistair thanked her, hung up, and then asked the long distance operator for the number of the book’s publisher in Trenton, New Jersey. No such listing was available. The publishing house had probably gone defunct years ago. Alistair was not disheartened, for he was still in touch with an organization that could locate the most elusive persons of interest. He’d place a call to a buddy at the CIA with whom he’d served in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, and put him on to John Peterson’s tracks. Meanwhile, he’d telephone the surviving members of Dragonfly to ask them to find and read the last chapter of The Greatest Ruses of World War II.

  Surprisingly, he found them all at their places of work on this late Friday afternoon. They were still young and active at forty-two and, though scattered all over the country, had remained in his life and one another’s since their first reunion in New York City on the twenty-third of September in 1945, forever bound by ties that transcended blood, lifelong friendships, and career attachments. Initially, it had been their doing, the remaining in touch, unusual in a business where war-weary operatives were only too glad to shake themselves free of their case officers as soon as their missions were over. At first he had resisted continuing the association—the idea of it was so foreign to him—but the team had held fast, and after a while he had responded with pleasure to their phone calls, visits, and invitations to weddings, christenings, holidays, and milestone celebrations. The four who had returned, along with their spouses and children, had become the closest to family he’d ever had.

  He telephoned Labrador first. He had never stopped thinking of the members of Dragonfly by their OSS field names, just as they had never dropped his military rank when addressing him. It was always Major, never Alistair.

  Labrador met his summary of the last chapter of John Peterson’s book with a shocked silence that lasted a long five seconds. Alistair waited as his listener gnawed at the possibility that there might be a grain of truth to the author’s preposterous claim, but then protested, “I don’t believe it. The others all say they watched the execution from their cell windows. Peterson just made up that cock-and-bull ending to fit his ‘ruse’ scheme.”

  “I’m inclined to think the same,” Alistair said, “but I want you kids to read it for yourselves and get back to me with your analysis. Meanwhile, I am going to try to track down John Peterson.”

  “If he’s not living, we’ll never know.”

  “There are ways to find out. I’ll begin working on it.”

  “Good grief, Major, what if…his conclusion is correct?”

  “Then we’ll go from there and follow the path to wherever it leads.” (No one said Good grief anymore, a throwback to the ’40s, Alistair thought, amused.) “The book is out of print, I’d think. If you and the others can’t locate a copy, I’ll xerox the chapter and mail it to you.”

  The others received Alistair’s news with the same degree of shocked silence, for the last chapter of The Greatest Ruses of World War II maintained that the missing member of Dragonfly had survived the firing squad that three of the group had witnessed. The execution had been carefully planned to fool the Nazi SS. Comments ranged from an explosive “Nonsense!” to expletives prompted by rage at the cruelty of the author’s claim. None of the team members had ever discussed their exploits with anyone nor had they been approached for an interview by a man named John Peterson.

  After the last call, Alistair pushed back from the telephone. What if the chapter’s conclusion was correct? What if the missing member of Dragonfly was alive and well and living in Europe as the chapter claimed? The execution had occurred on June 11, 1944. It had been eighteen years since three members of the team had witnessed the brutal death of one they had loved and still mourned. What if Dragonfly was not missing one of its wings after all?

  There might be one quick and easy way to find out.

  The man in brown drew open a desk drawer and pulled from it a thick set of files, each labeled with the names of the candidates who eventually became Dragonfly. He’d absconded with the files after President Harry Truman terminated the OSS in October 1945, putting him out of the job he was born to do until the CIA had snapped him up. If he had left them, the dossiers would only have gathered dust in locked-away, classified government files, their names and missions forever forgotten along with those of other courageous men and women who had risked their lives for their country. In the back of his mind, Alistair had a notion that someday he might write his own book, telling of the bravery and selflessness of five young people who had volunteered for infiltration into the city of light gone dark.

  Unable to find a current phone listing for the missing dragonfly’s parents, Alistair then dialed the private number of his friend at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, and after speaking with him, took the weighty collection of files to his easy chair, attempting to ignore a pack of Lucky Strikes in the drawer of his armchair table. But the urge to smoke overpowered his doctor’s warning that his lungs were a
puff away from emphysema. This situation called for a nicotine fix. He settled the bundle on the table, lit up, took off his shoes, placed his socked feet on the chair’s ottoman, and reached for the first file.

  Along with his other epithets, Alistair had been known as “the ferret” when it came to searching out information on a subject. Flipping through the candidates’ intimate details and mental and physical qualifications, he mused on how these collections showed the kids’ mettle even then. Prodded by John Peterson’s specious, poorly written version of Dragonfly’s years in Paris, Alistair thought that he just might decide to write that book after all, tell the derring-do tales of five young Americans code-named Labrador, Liverwort, Lodestar, Limpet, and Lapwing. He would begin in May 1942.

  The Recruits

  CHAPTER TWO

  May 1942

  Washington, D.C.

  The members of the choir of Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church on Fifteenth Street in Washington, D.C., referred to him as “the man in brown.” Even after two years of singing with them the Sundays he was in town, few knew his full name of Alistair Renault, and no member could claim to know him at all. Dressed in his drab brown attire, he appeared on Wednesday evenings for choir rehearsal just as the body of thirty gathered in the church chancel and did not linger for coffee and cookies and fellowship afterward. The choir director considered Alistair’s the most magnificent singing voice ever to come under his baton and would have appointed Alistair lead tenor if only he could have relied upon him to be present every Sunday, but he understood that the man had a government position of a hush-hush nature that precluded his regular attendance.

  On this particular day, this same man of mystery slid a sheet of paper listing names, addresses, and personal details of each across a large mahogany desk. The recipient was Colonel William J. Donovan, known as Wild Bill Donovan to friends and foes. The desk belonged to the director of the Office of Strategic Services, better known as the OSS, the country’s first national spy agency, whose conception had been discussed in the White House in 1940. The office had become official the following year, before Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States. The paralyzing global uncertainties of that spring had confirmed America’s need for a centralized intelligence system set up to collect and analyze timely and accurate information as a means to plan military strategy against the enemy should the U.S. be drawn into a worldwide conflict. This aim was to be achieved primarily by the insertion of agents trained for covert operations into hostile territory. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into existence by executive order and chose as its head Wild Bill Donovan, the most decorated officer of World War I, in civilian life a prominent Wall Street lawyer before being recalled to active military duty in 1942 with the rank of colonel.