by APC APC
Chapter 3: Double Agent
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Henrik waited until dark before venturing out into the alley. Ober never answered his final challenge, but that didn’t surprise Henrik. Either he would return tomorrow or he wouldn’t. There was a lot riding on it either way. Ober was a double agent, hence the double-headed serpent. But he was cheating both sides for a rather tidy sum. So if Little Fox did decide to tell all, Ober’s life wouldn’t be worth a bottle of cheap German beer.
On the other hand, if he did return, the ten pounds of gold bullion that Henrik would pay him would go a long way to ease his conscience. Henrik was taking a bit of a risk by announcing the time of the rendezvous over the radio. If anyone were listening, it wouldn’t take much skill to decode his simple code, especially if they were the least bit religious. The key was an odd verse in the Bible that read, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Ober wasn’t particularly religious, far from it, but Henrik was confident he would figure it out. Greed had a way of increasing certain men’s spiritual acumen. But did Ober have enough guts to hang around for an extra day? That was the real question. Luckily for Henrik, greed had a way of increasing that virtue as well.
After only a few minutes, Henrik found himself retracing his steps back along the canal to the Jewish ghetto. It wasn’t that he didn’t have other places to go. He had lived just outside Amsterdam for three years. His father’s chalet was only ten miles away in the country. But there was just no other place that he wanted to go, not even home. He was here for one reason and one reason alone, and that reason was waiting for him in the Jewish ghetto. Nothing else mattered. The Rabbi had told him to come back tomorrow, but surely Esther’s father and sister had returned by now. They would help him convince her. The sooner he got her out of that dreary place the better. Ober wouldn’t wait around forever, no matter how much gold he was offered.
As soon as he approached the Jewish ghetto, Henrik knew something was wrong. There was no sentry posted by the gate or in the streets. There was evidence of some recent violent activity—broken windows, bits of clothing on the sidewalks, luggage, odd personal possessions, even bloodstains—but no people. The door to Esther’s town house was ajar and the building had a silent, vacant quality about it. Henrik entered warily, his Luger drawn.
The place had obviously been ransacked, the dining table overturned, the Rabbi’s wobbly old chair broken. The mattress in the sitting room had been cut open roughly as if some soldier had sought treasure there, but there was none to be found. The Jacobs family had spent the last of their treasure months ago just to buy food. This probably angered the greedy soldiers all the more because they seemed to take great pleasure in marking the walls with their bayonets and destroying every last piece of property in the house.
Henrik toured the upstairs bedrooms in the dark, pausing only to push aside an old dresser that blocked the door to Esther’s room. And that was when he saw it—the picture. It was in a shattered picture frame on the floor behind the dresser. Henrik wondered what it was doing there. But then again, the whole house was out of place. Why not an old picture? It could have fallen when the soldiers overturned the dresser, or anytime before then. Who hadn’t dropped a picture behind a dresser?
But not this picture.
He dusted off the broken glass. It was too dark in the upstairs rooms with the black shades drawn to see clearly, so he put away his Luger and descended the stairs. He walked back into the sitting room where the streetlights shone dimly through the broken front window, and then Esther’s bright, intelligent eyes captured him, just as they had three years ago when the picture was taken.
He remembered the exact day in April with the budding tulips turning miles and miles of green fields a deep violet. He hardly recognized the happy young man who stood beside her. It was maybe the last day of innocence for the both of them, before he’d learned of his deep cover mission to America, and the first glimmer of his ambition reared its ugly head.
She had kept the picture all this time. And now it was all he had left of her.
“Lieutenant Douglas?” The voice came from the open doorway where a tall officer stood in dark silhouette. Henrik’s mind was wrenched violently into the present. He had no time to grieve. He was in enemy territory.
“I do not know this name,” he said with a heavy jowl masking his voice. “I am Field Marshal Schmitt of the—”
“I know who you are.” A ribbon of cigarette smoke rose up over the man’s head joining his silhouette to the ceiling in one, thin, dark line. “I have been waiting for you all night. I would have killed you earlier, but you intrigued me. What is your attachment to this place? A woman perhaps?”
Henrik’s fingers crept slowly under his jacket and then he felt, not heard, a bullet pass inches from his elbow and burry itself neatly into the Rabbi’s torn mattress. And now Henrik could see another ribbon of smoke rising, this time from the end of a long-barreled silencer.
“Thumb and index finger only, please. Place your weapon on the floor and kick it to me.”
Henrik complied, flicking the safety off deftly with his thumb. The marshal’s Luger hit the floor hard and went off with a deafening bang. The silhouette flinched and Henrik was on him. The tall officer staggered back, firing blind. Two more silent rounds found their way into the wretched mattress and then the pistol fell to the floor with a thud.
The two men struggled silently in the dark for several minutes. They were perhaps equal in strength and training, each attack being met with a measured and precise counter. It was cold, emotionless combat, like a finely choreographed but deadly ballet. With a sudden backward lunge, the officer broke free of Henrik’s wristlock and reached for his pistol.
It appeared that he would be the eventual victor of this contest, a contest that, based on mere skill alone, could have gone either way. But when he turned back to fire, he felt a steel blade penetrate the flesh of his left shoulder, slicing his tendon. The pistol fell to the floor unfired and the officer staggered back. He lost his balance and fell prostrate onto the ripped mattress, clutching his useless left arm with his right.
Apparently the Luger was not Henrik’s only weapon. He twisted the Sheffield knife in the wound. The officer howled in pain, but made no move to resist. Pain had completely overwhelmed his nervous system. Henrik removed the knife gingerly and wiped the blood on the officer’s jacket. Apparently Henrik’s attacker was a Luftwaffe major, although Henrik did not recognize the squadron insignia.
The major’s eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily. He would probably pass out in a few seconds. Henrik wondered if he shouldn’t just put the poor man out of his misery, a quick coup de grace for a worthy opponent. But then the officer spoke.
“The match is yours, Douglas,” he said in English. “Jolly good show.” And then he was gone.
When the major awoke, his jacket was off and his hands were tied, but his wound had been cleaned and dressed. He tasted tobacco on his lips and coughed. Henrik was holding a cigarette in front of his face.
“You want some more?” Henrik asked in English.
“Yes, please.” He took a long drag and coughed again. “Thank you, Yank. You’re much too kind, for an assassin.” The major tried to laugh but only managed to cough again. His wound was on fire.
“You’re not going to pass out on me again, are you? I have some questions that need answering. Who are you and what’s your business with me?”
The major shook his head slowly and Henrik ripped the bandage off his shoulder. The major winced, breaking into a bitter litany of German cuss words. Then he looked directly up at Henrik with brave defiance in his eyes.
“Quid pro quo, lieutenant,” he said through gritted teeth.
Henrik leaned back against the mattress. There was a surreal calmness to the whole procedure. No panic or desperate pleading for life. They were profe
ssionals, just two paid killers on the job coming to a temporary agreement.
“All right, major. Have it your way. As I’m not likely to leave you alive for much longer, it really doesn’t matter what I tell you. Yes. I came here to see a girl.”
“And you’re in love with her?”
Henrik turned the cigarette around and poked it into the major’s wound. It sizzled sickeningly and the major let out an angry wail. “Now, now. You’re breaking the rules,” Henrik said calmly. “It’s your turn. I don’t even know your name.”
The major swore viciously. “My bloody name is Commander Neils Hollingsworth of Her bloody Majesty’s bloody Rifles, First Brigade.”
“British commandos.” Henrik smiled. “See? Isn’t that better? And now I will answer your question. Yes, I’m in love with her.” Henrik said the words without thinking and surprised himself. He’d never said them before, not even to Esther. Perhaps he’d never even thought them, never actually articulated them in his mind. But now that he’d said them, he knew that they were true. He was in love with Esther with all of his heart. But it was too late. She was gone forever. And the only person that would ever know of his love for her was a killer, just like himself. Henrik turned suddenly hard.
“What do you want with me?”
“Oh, but lieutenant, I already told you that. I’m here to kill you.” Now it was the commando’s turn to play coy. He laughed bitterly and Henrik was tempted to poke the burning cigarette back into his wounded shoulder. He resisted the urge. He needed to stay cool and keep the effusive British commando talking. That wasn’t too hard to do. Neils seemed to be enjoying himself.
“But seeing you wasted your question,” he continued, “let me save you the trouble of asking another. Major Harris was my mate, and you killed him, a man with a wife and children, a man more honorable than both of us put together. I was reassigned from my current mission to hunt you down. No stipulations, no retrievals, no explanations, just dead. And I jumped at the chance.”
“You did a bang-up job.”
Hollingsworth’s eyes turned cold for a tense moment. Fate had dealt them both a foul turn, and now here they sat, two killers in a dark room.
“Where do you want it?” Henrik asked kindly.
“You know, I’ve been thinking. Perhaps I could do you a favor.”
“Now you’re just stalling. Don’t degrade yourself.” Henrik reached for the British paratrooper’s pistol with the long silencer. “Better to end it quickly, with your honor still intact.”
“Suit yourself,” he responded calmly, “but I know where she is.”
“Who?” Henrik asked reflexively. He already knew the answer. He should fire before the trooper had a chance to reel him in. Nothing good would come of this. He was just weaving a lie to save his own skin. There was nothing to it.
“I could help you find her, rescue her. It’s not too late. I know where she’s going.”
“You don’t even know her name.”
“Esther Jacobs, daughter of Eli Jacobs. Her sister is Sarah and her mother, Rachel, passed away in a car accident four years ago. And then there’s the old Rabbi, Zelman Jacobs.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Henrik stood up and leveled the pistol at Neils’ forehead. The trooper didn’t even blink.
“Westerbork, but you’ll never find her without my help. Thousands of Jews pass through that camp every month, and she won’t be there long.”
Henrik felt his hand shaking. He didn’t want to lower the pistol because then he really would be lost, lost in a web of lies from which he would never escape. He would run and run and run, but never find the end of them. But the longer he held the pistol to the commando’s forehead, the more it shook.
We could work together on this. It’s not too late. They’ll process her first. That will take some time. And then comes the selection. They keep meticulous records, and I have access to some of them. It’s part of my cover.”
They were lies, all lies, and Henrik knew it. He struggled a second longer, but he just could not will himself to pull the trigger. He’d killed a dozen men without the slightest hesitation and in much more difficult situations, but now he couldn’t even contract a simple tendon in his index finger by just a few mere millimeters.
With a disgusted sigh, he lowered the pistol and in that instant knew he was damned. To his credit, the British commando showed no sign of triumph or relief. He simply carried on with his pitch as if his life had never been part of the equation in the first place.
“You’ll have to come in from the cold, as it were, and then I’ll contact you with her last known location.”
“How?”
“To Reich Command I’m known as Luftwaffe Major Friedrick Koch. It’s my cover, probably the best we’ve ever had in Germany. But I’m not SS. I can’t get in deep enough. But you could. You are already part of the German intelligence community, a deep cover agent and a war hero.”
The Brit’s plot was building to a climax, but Henrik was already dreading the denouement. “You could dig deep into the heart of the SS, the SD and the Abwehr and find out things that I could only dream about. Then, and only then, could I help you find your Jewish princess. Quid pro quo.”
Henrik heard the distinctive grind of a heavy half-track truck approaching outside. They had found him, the Gestapo or perhaps the SS. His time was up. The Sheffield knife appeared in his hand as if by magic. The paratrooper’s eyes widened with surprise and his heated pitch came to an abrupt end. Henrik weighed the blade in his palm for a long moment pondering whether to slit the trooper’s throat or cut his bonds.
Outside, the sound of approaching soldiers grew louder. There were a lot of them, maybe a whole squad. Henrik was rapidly running out of options. Kill and run or stay and play the commando’s game. Almost reluctantly, he opted for the latter choice. With a quick flick of Henrik’s knife, Neils’ ropes were cut. He stood up slowly, rubbing his wrists, still uncertain as to whether he would live or die in the next second.
“You’ll need this,” Henrik said, handing Neils the pistol and stuffing the blade back in his pocket. Whichever way it went, Henrik was fully committed now. He put his empty hands behind his head and turned to face the door.