Goetz decided he would not tell Keiffer right away what he suspected. If Vogt could somehow get Marie Claire to confirm privet was the safety word, then he could transmit without worry. If he were wrong, the Funkspiel would not begin at all, and Goetz would have wasted his only chance to deceive London. He waited until an hour before he was to broadcast before going upstairs to Keiffer’s office. He found him napping with his boots up on the ornately carved desk.
“Did she say anything?” Goetz asked.
“Nothing. We stopped beating her when she passed out.”
Goetz told Keiffer about the word privet in Marie Claire’s notebook.
“Should I transmit?” He didn’t want to take the blame if their one chance to infiltrate London was blown. Keiffer looked out the window onto the fashionable Avenue Foch. If the French only knew what he was doing up here, he thought.
“I want you to do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, now let me go back to sleep.”
Goetz left the room, and he ran into Vogt, whose face was covered in nail scratches.
“The bitch got hers.” And yet, his voice didn’t seem so confident of this.
At the appointed hour, Goetz began to tap, Privet, all is well.
The response came back immediately. Go ahead, MC.
Goetz had gotten the safety word right, or they wouldn’t have responded. He asked for 100,000 francs, two agents, and three containers worth of explosives to be dropped in a field outside of Paris.
Keiffer poked his head in twenty minutes into his transmission. Goetz stuck up his thumb, signaling all was OK. Keiffer shut the door, and the Funkspiel picked up where it had left off.
Hamelin Prison, 1949
“The first week of March, Marie Claire was transferred to Karlsruhe, and that’s the last I heard of her.” Goetz stubbed out his cigarette and shrugged.
“Karlsruhe? Why?” Slim asked. Karlsruhe station was where she had seen Daniel earlier that morning, waiting for Herr Wiesenthal.
“I have no idea, but I know she was sent there. I signed off on her transfer papers because Keiffer was sick that day.”
“Are you sure she wasn’t sent to Dachau?”
“Dachau? Maybe afterward, but I know she was sent to Karlsruhe. I saw the papers.”
“How long did the Funkspiel go on?”
“Until the Allied invasion,” he said, grinning.
“Why do you think London didn’t realize that the jig was up when you first left off the safety word?”
“We had someone in London working for us. That’s all I know.”
“Do you have any idea who that could have been?”
“No.”
“When did the Funkspiel game finally end?”
Goetz broke into a rueful smile. “On D-day. The Führer ordered a final message sent to London.”
“What did it say?”
“Thank you for the agents and arms.”
Slim stood up and offered Goetz the remaining three cigarettes. He took them.
“I didn’t torture anyone, you know,” he said.
“But you asked that they be,” she said.
“It was war.” He shrugged.
Afterward, Slim met with the commandant.
“Did you learn what you needed to know, Miss Moran?” he asked as he handed her a chipped mug of steaming Earl Grey.
“I figured out one piece to the puzzle. Goetz said that the agent I was looking for was transferred to Karlsruhe prison.”
“Karlsruhe? Are you sure he didn’t mean Fresnes, the prison south of Paris? I understand they threw a lot of the SOE agents in Fresnes. It was used as sort of a holding cell for them before they were shipped out to the concentration camps. Men went to Mauthausen; women to Ravensbrück.”
“But Goetz said that my agent was sent to Karlsruhe.”
“Isn’t the agent that you’re looking for a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Then she would not have been sent there.”
“Why not?”
“The Karlsruhe schloss . . .” Seeing Slim’s look, he smiled. “Yes, believe it or not, the prison was a commandeered palace, and it was used by the Germans as a prisoner-of-war camp only for captured naval and air-force officers. No women were kept there.”
“Any records?”
“You can go and look, Miss Moran, but you should know the Allies destroyed Karlsruhe. Everything was bombed, even the schloss. It’s slowly being rebuilt, but that city is like your wild west. It’s not a place for a young woman like you.”
“Why would Goetz say that she was brought to Karlsruhe if she was going to wind up in Ravensbrück?” Slim persisted.
“Because, my dear lady, most likely she didn’t wind up in Ravensbrück, and Karlsruhe was just a stop along the way. Now, do you have a place to stay in Hamelin?”
At the commandant’s suggestion, Slim booked a room at the Hotel an der Altstadt, which was managed by a slim woman in her forties who spoke halting English.
“Do you like Hamelin, Fräulein?” she asked almost shyly as she showed Slim her room.
“It’s like something out of Grimm’s fairy tales.” The Renaissance architecture gave the city a quaint, if not childlike, appearance.
“Yes, what remains. Half the city was bombed, but we are lucky if you compare us to Dresden or Karlsruhe. Do you know the fairy tale of the Pied Piper?”
“I probably knew it as a child,” Slim replied.
“The story takes place in Hamelin during the time of sickness . . .” The woman searched for another word instead of sickness, but couldn’t seem to locate it within the vocabulary of her limited English.
“You mean the black plague?” Slim asked.
“Yes, Hamelin was overrun with rats. A piper dressed in red offered to lure the rats away with his music, but the city refused to pay him. So instead, he lured away Hamelin’s children like . . .” The woman looked at the floor. “Like what the Führer did.” She pushed open a battered door to a clean room with a worn rug. “Bed. Soft pillow. Here is a desk for you to write.”
“May I have supper brought to my room? I am rather tired from my travels.” She was starving. She had eaten nothing all day but a few tea biscuits with the commandant.
“Yes, I bring you nocken. Would that be good?”
“I love nocken,” Slim said, remembering steaming bowls of chicken and dumpling soup Marlene had often made for her as a child.
The woman smiled and left. There was something terribly sad about her, and Slim wondered what the war had cost her.
She opened her overnight bag and pulled out her rumpled pajamas from the night before. All she wanted was food and a hot bath, but when she turned on the spigot, only bracing cold water poured out. So she tied up her rich auburn hair and scrubbed herself as best she could, grateful that Françoise had warned her to bring soap, as everyday supplies were still hard to find. Waiting for her after her cold bath was a small tureen of steaming soup along with a foamy beer. Slim devoured the simple meal in less than five minutes.
She looked over her notes from the interview, and she could not fathom why no one in London had realized that Goetz was playing the Funkspiel with them. He’d left off the safety word in his first transmission. So why hadn’t this raised a giant red flag that their agent had been captured? Was Goetz right—someone high up was in on the Funkspiel? It had cost the lives of dozens of agents and given the enemy more ammunition. Why hadn’t Michel mentioned that he’d been at Avenue Foch with Marie Claire? And what about Marie Claire? If she was truly dead, then who was it playing the Funkspiel with Chapman? She knew the only way to find out these answers was to find Marie Claire alive. The only way to do that was to go to Karlsruhe.
Chapter Five
The next morning, on the train back to Paris, Slim informed the porter that she would be getting off at Karlsruhe. Taken aback, he asked nervously, “Fräulein, why? There is nothing in Karlsruhe but rubble.”
“To meet som
eone,” Slim replied.
“But I have you going all the way to Paris, Fräulein.”
“I need to get off at Karlsruhe,” Slim insisted.
“You should inform the conductor so your bags can be taken off,” the porter said, unwilling to change the tags on her luggage.
“I have only one small bag, which I can carry myself.”
“Still, you should inform the conductor. Karlsruhe is in the American zone. He will have to call ahead to make sure that you can get off,” he said with a curt nod, and then knocked on the next carriage door.
When the conductor came round to collect her ticket, she informed him of her intentions.
“Fräulein, Karlsruhe is not a place for a single woman. Have you a place to stay? Someone to meet you?” The conductor showed the same concern that the porter had when she’d told him of her new destination.
Slim shook her head no.
“It is not my place to prevent you from exiting the train at that stop, but I do insist that someone meet you. Do you know anyone in Karlsruhe, Fräulein?”
Slim thought of Daniel, but she had no idea where he was. She remembered Wiesenthal’s card and handed it to him.
“But this says Vienna, Fräulein.”
“Herr Wiesenthal is in Karlsruhe. His office will know how to get in touch with him. Can you wire the station at Karlsruhe to call his office?”
“I will have the station agent call the American base. If he’s in Karlsruhe, they will find him. First, I need to inform them that you are getting off there.”
“How can you be so sure Herr Wiesenthal will be at the American base?”
“It is the only safe place for him to stay.”
“So then you know what he does?”
“Fräulein, everyone in Germany knows what he does.” He nodded in a curt manner as he handed her back the card, making it quite apparent that Herr Wiesenthal was a despised man.
At the Karlsruhe station, the conductor helped her down with her bag. He looked around the platform for the station agent, who waved back and nodded to a man slouched in the corner with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Slim’s stomach turned inside out. It was Daniel, and he did not look happy.
Daniel kissed her twice on the cheeks and said a quick, brusque thank you in German to the station agent. Slim followed Daniel into a US Army jeep. Before waiting for her to shut the door, Daniel shifted in gear, and they lurched forward through the ruins of postwar Karlsruhe.
“It looks like an uninhabitable planet,” she said.
“Don’t feel sorry for them. The scum brought it on themselves,” Daniel spat out when he saw her shocked look. Slim was about to say something else but then bit her tongue.
At the US military base, Daniel showed his pass and was waved through. He pulled up in front of a noisy bar.
“We’re going here for an early dinner,” Daniel said as took the keys from the ignition and hopped out. Slim grabbed her bag and followed him inside. The smoke-filled bar was packed with officers; there were a couple of women sprinkled about, but for the most part, this was a space for men. Daniel grabbed two empty chairs and threw them around a small, scarred table. He motioned for Slim to sit down and then left her there. She reached for her cigarettes, forgetting that she had given her last three to Goetz.
“Shit,” she muttered to herself, annoyed.
Hearing her, a smiling, gap-toothed man of about twenty turned around and asked, “You American?”
“Yup,” Slim said, smiling back. “Say, have you any cigarettes? I seem to be out.”
His grin became wider as he pulled out a pack. “I’ve got Luckies, if that’s OK.”
Slim took one and said, “Thanks.”
He flicked open an army-issue Zippo lighter and lit it for her. “Watcha doing in Karlsruhe, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Before she could answer, Daniel returned with two enormous steins of beer, followed by a woman in a dirndl holding a heaping plate of food she placed in front of Slim. Daniel waved the woman away before Slim could say, “Danke.”
Sizing up the smiling American soldier, Daniel said to Slim in French, “Get rid of him.” When she hesitated, Daniel repeated it again.
“Your boyfriend’s charming,” the soldier said, catching the drift of the conversation. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving, but if you want someone to treat you right, I’ll be over there.” He nodded toward the bar and left.
“Daniel, must you be so rude?” Slim said as she watched him pick up a fork and knife and cut into the sausages.
“Must you talk to every GI?”
“Enough.” She stood to leave.
He grabbed her hand.
“Sit back down.”
“I won’t be treated this way, Daniel.”
“Sit down.” This time his voice was softer. “Please.”
Slim sat down. “How in the hell did you find me?”
“Wiesenthal called me. He got back last night. I wish you hadn’t interrupted my work, Slim.” He nudged his knee against hers. “I am happy to see you, though.”
Yes, because you want to get me into bed, Slim thought, but the more he rubbed his knee against her thigh, the more she wanted him.
An hour later, Daniel pulled the sun-faded curtains away from the window and let the moonlight flood their bodies.
“So many freckles, I could play connect the dots,” he said as he ran his finger along her collarbone.
“I bet you could.”
“I bet you’d like that.”
“I bet I would.”
They made love with the same urgency they always had, except this time, Daniel didn’t pull away to sleep or leave. He stayed next to Slim, tracing her body with his soft fingertips.
“Scratch my back,” Slim said, and then added, “please.”
“You are such a princess.”
She turned over and felt his nails comb her shoulder blades.
“So, tell me, Slim, why are you here?”
“Keep scratching,” she said, arching her back as the pleasure of the scratching enveloped her. God, there was nothing, well almost nothing, as delicious as a good back scratch, she thought.
Eventually, she told him about her case.
“I can ask around if there were any women imprisoned at the Karlsruhe schloss, but if the English commandant already told you there weren’t, I don’t know why you can’t use that as your answer,” Daniel said when she’d finished.
“If I use no for my answer, then the crumbs leading to Marie Claire dry up.”
Daniel stopped scratching her back.
“Hey, why’d you stop?”
“I stopped because something’s not right here.”
“A lot of things aren’t right. The head of her circuit, Dennis, threatened me about continuing with the investigation.”
“Threatened you?” Daniel sat up.
“He implied if I insisted on looking for Marie Claire, then it would not be good for me. He said people still have scores to settle from the war.”
“Why do you think he said that?”
“Goetz said there was a mole in the network; I wonder if it was him. I thought it might have been Amelie because she caught Marie Claire and Françoise in flagrante.”
“Mon dieu! Lesbians are so promiscuous.” He reached for his pack of cigarettes and lit two.
Slim told him about the radio game Goetz had played, and how the safety word had been omitted from his first transmission.
“London did nothing?” Daniel asked in disbelief.
“Either they didn’t want to believe that Invictus was done for, or there was a mole on the London side.”
Daniel took a long drag. “Chapman found eleven out of the twelve missing women, right?”
“Yes.”
“And now someone is playing the Funkspiel with her.”
Slim hadn’t thought about it like that.
Daniel said nothing for a couple of seconds. “Why is she making you retrace her steps?”
<
br /> “Why would she want me to retrace them?”
“Because there is one piece that she can’t find, and she’s hoping that maybe you’ll stumble upon it and lead her to Marie Claire before her mother dies.”
“Also, Dennis told me that Marie Claire’s mother died soon after the war.”
“So one of them is lying.”
“What doesn’t make sense is that all the agents say Marie Claire is dead, and yet Miss Chapman believes her to be alive,” Slim said, confused.
But Daniel was no longer listening. He kissed her breasts, tweaked her nipple, and then spread her thighs and headed down. She moaned, and for a while, the war and its aftermath were far away.
The next morning over black coffee and rolls, it was Slim’s turn to play twenty questions.
“Why did you lie to me about the money? You said you were going to use it to help the Jews immigrate to Israel.”
Daniel dunked his stale bread into his cup to soften it up.
“If I tell you what I am doing, you cannot ask any questions.”
“Why not?”
“See, you’re already asking questions.” He shoved bread into his mouth. Four years after his liberation from Auschwitz, he still ate like every meal would be his last. Slim waited for him to finish chewing. His loud chewing was the one thing that she could not stand about him.
“In 1945, Goebbels gave a speech urging every German to fight the Allies until death. Shortly afterward, a group of SS officers banded together to create an opposition force that they called werwolf.”
“Are Nazi werewolves roaming about Germany? Really?” Slim rolled her eyes.
“It’s estimated that they have recruited anywhere from five to ten thousand members. Rumor has it that the werwolf started in the streets of Karlsruhe and then made its home in the nearby Black Forest.”
The Lost Spy (Slim Moran Mysteries) Page 8