“Yes, Leni, that must be it.”
“Yes, that is it,” Leni said turning back to the cemetery. “It’s just much too far.”
----
Leni decided to wait before dressing for the day until her husband had departed for the embassy. At exactly a quarter before nine—he was punctual, as she had found most British to be—a sedan door closed in the courtyard below her window. Then there was the report of a motor pulling away through the gate.
She ate a breakfast of fruit and juice at the morning table, and then went upstairs to her bedroom. She locked the door. From the closet, she laid out on the bed a pair of dark khaki breeches, a lighter khaki shirt and a pith helmet. From the top closet shelf she took down a white, thin box labeled ‘ribbons’, sat on the bed and opened the box removing Benjamin Fields’s papers.
Poor Ben, she had never wanted to kill him. It was her mistake that he had found her going through his things. He was madly in love with her and would have done anything for her, except betray his country, which is why he had to die.
She sorted out the items on the bed.
Several letters from a woman named Elizabeth from Brighton. Two folders labeled with dates: 28 November 1943. 30 November 1943. A leather notebook with gold initials ‘B.F.’ stitched in the bottom right corner. A gift from Elizabeth, Leni guessed. Inside the notebook were four sheets of paper, outlining the itinerary for a meeting headlined EUREKA. Each edited with pencil notations. Then the initials ‘WC’. Winston Churchill. And finally the penciled in initials ‘SLU’, a notation that still puzzled her. She would go through the embassy roster when the opportunity presented itself to see if it matched anyone’s name. Finally, there was the outline of the conference agenda, including an important topic allied leaders would be discussing—Operation Overlord, the invasion. Leni was well aware information detailing the invasion had been forwarded to German Intelligence several months ago from agents in Algiers.
Leni sat in the chair by the window, lighting a cigarette. For the longest time she studied the items, certain she was close to something very important or Benjamin Fields wouldn’t have been involved. If she had learned nothing else about the major during their brief tryst it was that he was an essential member of the British Intelligence organization. She snuffed the cigarette out in a cut glass ashtray on the side table. Certainly the British authorities would be looking for whoever now possessed his papers, which would make her time in Tehran limited.
She replaced the items in the box and returned it to its place on upper shelf of the closet. In the bathroom she undressed, showered, and shortly came out wearing her favorite bathrobe.
The bedroom was stuffy, so Leni opened a window letting in the dry morning wind. She hesitated in front of her dressing mirror staring at a face that surprised her. Her auburn hair needed brushing and the beauty, her ultimate weapon, was hidden within a deep weariness.
Leni lay across the bed, her arms crossed over her chest. She would give herself a moment to rest; she had slept very little last night because of her excitement. Hesitating she knew if she dozed, the dream of when it all began would come to her. She always dreamed after killing.
Despite the warm room, and the dry wind through the window, Leni found herself trembling.
----
Her real name was Catherine Doehla, born into a middle-class neighborhood in Berlin. After graduating from high school, she became a schoolteacher because her mother was a teacher.
Her father, a mapmaker and the dedicated socialist, was a happy man, fun loving, she and her brothers riding his knee as Momma cooked dinner in the pleasingly small kitchen. On Sunday morning’s father acted out the comics, his strong arms hanging at awkward angles as he mimicked cartoon characters.
In
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy