Opération ISKRA
Lionel Noël
(Excerpt from July 16th, 1943, p. 119-126)
Downtown Montreal, 8:57
Sitting in a meditation posture, Egan O'Shea focused his breathing on the hara, the centre of the body. The light of the day was veiled by the room's faded drapes. He was aware of it as well as of the workers renovating the front of the building. Eyes closed, he had a clear perception of the surrounding sounds, even the farthest. Over the years, his senses had developed as he was becoming more practiced. He breathed in the slight fried bacon smell coming from some neighbouring room, and even the exquisite aroma of hot croissants. Unless it was a memory from Paris.
O'Shea had begun practicing meditation at the same time he had taken up jiu-jitsu. Coming back from Spain, he'd begun feeling the devastating effect of shell shock. At night he would shake, covered with sweat, prey to morbid nightmares. Little by little he'd sunk into alcoholism and the abyss of madness. He drank to blur his apocalyptic dreams, bombings, burning cities, Chinese, Spanish - was it Shanghai, Guernica? He could never remember exactly. In between his fits, he immersed himself in the books on oriental philosophy he'd read in his youth. One day, dead drunk, he'd left Boston for the West Coast. A bum in San Francisco, he kept on drowning himself in alcohol. In his delirium, he found his way to Chinatown. He lost entire nights to opium dens. But he'd finally managed to kick the habit.
Able to understand Mandarin as well as Japanese, he'd survived through small translation jobs and found his way back, little by little. But he was still on the brink of suicide. That was when he'd met Sato.
Jiu-jitsu and the Japanese sensei had saved his life. After some months of intensive training and study, O'Shea had assimilated and perfected how to lock joints, how to dodge attacks, how to use the body's vital spots. Sato also knew strangulation methods. After Pearl Harbor the sensei had been interned by the authorities. It was unfair. O'Shea often thought of him.
Meditation had given him back his health and his mental balance. He had since accepted the frightening demons of his past. He would, of course, never become a drinker of mineral water. His inner Epicurean didn't want that, for he relished the pleasures life could bring and wanted all his senses to rejoice in them.
He breathed in deeply again. His abdominal muscles contracted and relaxed to the rhythm of his slow abdominal breathing. Here, now, sense the universe. Someone was coming softly up the stairs. There was a knock on his door.*** At the corner of Sherbrooke and Crescent, the clock at the front of a store was showing nine o'clock in the morning. Anne Doucet had left the Windsor Hotel and left Robert Keegan to his shopping. The secret agent was pillaging black market shelves in some downtown shops, spending a fortune.
Keegan had handed her a telegram of congratulations from General Donovan, which also contained instructions. These were clear: under their cover as journalists, O'Shea and Doucet would be able to cruise close enough to the talks. Donovan had the backing of the President's security agency, who had nevertheless advised him to be tactful.
Keegan had reminded Anne that her old RCMP colleagues were not happy with her presence. During the interview, the American had seemed more concerned by his looks than by the explanations he was giving her. One eye on the mirror in the hall, he was constantly adjusting his tie and smoothing his hair. Before leaving her, he'd handed her the diplomatic pouch and the black metal-coated Walther PPK inside. The spotless white grip brought out the gold SS emblem in its centre, and the young woman had shivered.
"Nice weapon, Miss Doucet! Ivory grip. Where does this unfriendly piece of jewellery come from?"
Not answering, she'd taken the weapon out of the pouch. It had an almost feminine elegance. She'd glanced around, then discreetly screwed the silencer onto the barrel. There was also a full clip. She'd pushed it into the grip before putting the gun in her purse. Realizing she would say nothing more, Keegan had merely said goodbye, too polite to be sincere. Anne Doucet had turned away from him and crossed the foyer followed by the envious eyes of the receptionists.
She'd walked to Egan O'Shea's place. Several soldiers on leave whistled as she passed. The streets were crowded with them, since they stopped off in Montreal before going on to Halifax, and from there to the war. From the red and white lettering on the insignias sewn high on the sleeves of their uniforms, you could see most of them came from the Western provinces. Making her way along the sidewalk, she was thinking she hadn't seen O'Shea since the suspicious burning of the church. He was certainly not the kind of guy who kept you informed! With Keegan, she'd wondered about the problems of the Irishman with the FBI, but they'd had to conclude that the bastard would keep his mysterious secret close to his vest. Elusive, hard to understand, O'Shea was sometimes so close, sometimes so distant... And he had the ability to hide his affectionate glances behind some indefinable harshness. Solitary and antisocial: that was perhaps the reason for his charm.
Anne Doucet at least took notice of the harmonious architecture of the houses, with their spiral staircases, and availed herself of the beautiful weather to admire closely the curves of the multicoloured cornices and wooden gables on Crescent Street.*** Olga Monkmann knocked again, insistently. Her young, slightly accented voice could be heard through the thick wood.
"Mr. Donelly? The owner sent me. We're checking the condition of the windows."
"Never a quiet morning," O'Shea grumbled, interrupting his meditation.
The intruder pounded on the door again and O'Shea swore in Gaelic.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" he said impatiently, walking to the front door in his underwear.
He turned the key, slid the latch bolt and opened the door. He'd barely seen the body hidden in the loose clothes and the hooded face when his reflexes took over, absorbing the hard punch to his solar plexus. Stepping back from the impact, and in order to avoid the circular motion from his attacker's hip, he still felt the steel Fairbarn commando blade slicing through the thin skin of his neck. Blood ran down the Irishman's torso. But he was already dodging the next attack, the heel of a hand to his chin, then he grabbed and twisted his assailant's wrist. To avoid having her wrist broken, Monkmann pivoted in the same direction and violently hit O'Shea's jaw with her elbow. The brutal impact sent O'Shea flying into the living room cabinet. Its wooden door exploded with a popping noise and the Irishman felt faint. In a final surge of despair, ignoring the pain, O'Shea leaped to the table where his gun, a Spanish 9 mm Asra, was lying. Olga Monkmann drew her Colt, which was lengthened by an outsized silencer. In the indescribable confusion, the two weapons discharged their deadly bullets. The plaster of the walls exploded in grey dust under the impacts. Hit in the right arm, the Irishman dove through the open window, while emptying his gun. He landed hard on the fire escape landing and rolled down the stairs.
On the sidewalk across the street, breathless with the noise of the guns and O'Shea's shattering exit, Anne Doucet quickly pulled the Walther PPK from her purse. The attacker appeared at the window and fired on O'Shea as he tumbled down to the ground. In the midst of the general panic, Anne Doucet calmly fired, spraying the shooter's position. The whistling bullets drew sparks from the fire escape's railing but, like a mirage, the attacker disappeared. Crescent Street fell deadly silent. It had all happened so fast... At Anne Doucet's feet, O'Shea was lying in a pool of blood. A growing, amazed crowd, hungry for morbid excitement, was already surrounding the inert body.Montreal, Windsor Hotel, 15h15
Olga Monkmann was lasciviously sucking Robert Keegan's dick. Pressed against the door, lost in his pleasure, Keegan was no longer wary of anything. He was not seeing the luxury of his surroundings any more. The staff said that in the previous century Oscar Wilde had briefly occupied this suite, but Keegan didn't care. Staring at the blond hair, pulled back and fastened on the nape of the neck with a black bow-tie, he was ready to explode. This splendid creature was licking his erected member. Ready to come, Keegan could feel his heart pounding in his temples.
He'd been quick. At three o'clock, near the front desk, he'd met again with the mysterious Olga Bernstein. "Let's go to your room, she'd whispered in his ear. I can't wait any longer!"
He'd led her to his suite to fuck her like a rutting animal. In the elevator, the operator had pretended not to notice the American's hand under the skirt of the lady dressed in black. She was wearing an elegant hat with a dark veil over her deathly white face. In the corridor, she had kissed Keegan's neck, softly, all the while unchastely massaging an erection fit to make a donkey jealous through the grey cloth of Keegan's suit.
The hat had fallen by the wayside, and now she was giving him an expert blow job. But Keegan wanted to fuck her and he pushed her head away. Walking backwards to the bed, Olga spread her legs. Keegan's excitement reached new heights when he saw she was not wearing any undergarments. His fingers quickly pushed between the nylon sheathed thighs that promised even wilder heights of desires. Gasping, moaning, she begged:
"Go take a shower, quick, and come back to fuck me!"
Keegan ran into the bathroom, letting his clothes fall in the middle of the room. He couldn't see Olga Monkmann when she checked the contents of his jacket, on the hat stand. While the water was running, she carefully examined his leather wallet, his ID card and his yellow and gold secret service badge. When he reappeared, a towel around his waist, he was like a bewitched man, boundlessly proud of seducing and bedding such a classy woman. He admired her delicate nudity, her harmonious and sensual curves contrasting with the heavy canopied bed and the rest of the room. The whiteness of her skin looked to him like a ray of sunshine amid all that dark oak furniture. Unable to restrain himself, he fell on her, kissing her everywhere, then his mouth went down between her thighs. She was wet and her breathing betrayed her excitement. She wrapped her splendid legs around his neck and, putting one hand behind his head, she caressed his right jaw. As Keegan's tongue was beginning to explore, Olga Monkmann's whole body clenched, with the savagery of a panther. With a quick motion of her hips, she immobilized Keegan's head with her legs and, with one strong twist, her hands broke his neck...
© 2004 Éditions Alire & Lionel Noël
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