The Lost Spy (Slim Moran Mysteries)

by Kate Moira Ryan

  “You are a coward.”

  “Sister, I am many things, but I am not a coward.” Brandt’s voice was more sad than reproachful. “I picked up Marie Claire at Karlsruhe prison. I was on my way back to Natzweiler after a weekend leave. Gudrun gave me a sandwich wrapped in the handkerchief she embroidered for me.”

  Karlsruhe, 1943

  Brandt was annoyed when he received the telegram directing him to pick up an inmate at the prison. He had a number, not a name, so he was shocked when he was told to go to the women’s section. He made the director recheck the inmate’s number twice, thinking there had to be some mistake. She berated him for not picking up the woman sooner. She had called SS headquarters in Karlsruhe several times, she explained with a hint of exasperation. Brandt asked why the woman prisoner couldn’t just stay there, and the director rolled her eyes and told him that she was a political prisoner who had to be exercised and fed separately. It was too much work for her already overburdened staff. He asked that the woman be prepared quickly to leave. He had a train to make, and he was supposed to meet a new guard who was being posted to his camp at the station. He didn’t want to miss it, as the trains were running intermittently now because of the constant Allied bombing.

  Brandt was startled when he saw the petite beauty with corkscrew blonde curls. She looked like a Botticelli cherub. Who was this woman, he wondered, and why was she in his custody?

  After he had signed the paperwork, the director locked handcuffs on the woman’s delicate wrists.

  He saw her name and asked in French, “Marie Claire? You are French?”

  She nodded fearfully.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of. Please follow me.” He led her out gently. There was something vulnerable about her that made him feel protective, but why was she being placed in his custody? Perhaps he was to escort her part of the way. After all, he wouldn’t be expected to take her to Natzweiler; the camp was only for men.

  At the station, he met Heinrich, the new SS guard who was being reassigned to Natzweiler from another camp. The guard handed him another telegram. Brandt’s knees buckled when he read it. Marie Claire noticed. He could see her grow alarmed. Good Lord, was he supposed to kill her as the telegram instructed? The prisoners he killed were near death from starvation, or they were Jews; either way, they were the Untermenschen—subhuman. He had no qualms about gassing them, removing their flesh, and encasing them in plaster, but this woman looked human. And then the troublesome, meddling station agent asked why he was taking the woman to Struthof. To shut him up, Heinrich showed him the telegram. Brandt could see the woman grow more fearful at the commotion. He settled her onto a bench, and the station agent gave her some of his ersatz coffee. When she asked him what the telegram said, the station agent lied and said she was to work on a farm to help with the summer harvest. It seemed to calm her.

  They boarded the train a couple of minutes later, and Brandt watched Marie Claire as she stared out the window, her eyes devouring the late spring landscape while the tears fell from her face. He heard her stomach rumble and handed her the sandwich Gudrun had packed for him along with a handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

  How old was this girl? he wondered as he watched her half-heartedly pick at the sandwich. She could not be more than twenty-three or twenty-four. He was twice her age. She’d be more suitable for Max. Oh, Max, he had been such a beautiful baby. He remembered how his wife had doted on the small boy who had always been sick. As a doctor, Brandt knew that such a sick child was vulnerable to almost any random virus. Six years later, Gudrun had been born. She was a vibrant, healthy baby, and Brandt focused his attention almost entirely on the small child who had seemed to adore him from the moment she’d drawn her first breath.

  Max and his endless cycles of illness began to repel Brandt. After all, he was a doctor recruited by the Nazi party to weed out the sickly and feeble. Eugenics, the science of building the superior human, was the name of the game. His wife chided him for ignoring Max, who slowly grew out of his weakened state and thrived as he hit his teen years. When a representative of one of the elite, state-run schools picked Max out of his Hitler Youth troop to attend, Brandt was stunned. He laughed. How could they want his son? And yet, after watching his son during a day of competition to celebrate Hitler’s birthday, Brandt had seen what others did. He’d signed the papers and sent his son off, even though his wife had begged him not to.

  Four years later, in the summer of 1942, Max had been sent to the eastern front. His first letters home had proclaimed an early victory. As the dry season had progressed into fall rains and the tanks and the transport vehicles had become stuck in the mud, the letters had grown less jubilant. For weeks, they had been stalled outside of Stalingrad, and everything had been soaked with a claylike mud. Finally, the late autumn air settled into a chill, and once again the vehicles had been able to move about on the tundra. Max’s letters had been a bit more cautious than before but still proclaimed victory within the month.

  Then the first snow had fallen in early November. None of the Wehrmacht had been outfitted with winter gear because of the early victory that had been expected. His letters home had become less frequent, and in the last one, Max had written how he’d slit the back of his trousers open so he could relieve himself after he’d caught dysentery. He’d been warned that if he pulled down his pants completely, he’d get frostbite and die. That was when Brandt’s wife began to grow even more vocal against the war and Hitler. She’d tried to sway Gudrun from joining the BDM at twelve, but Brandt had overruled her.

  A month later, the telegram had arrived. Max was dead, killed in action. By then, Brandt had taken over the Natzweiler infirmary as the camp doctor, or so they’d thought. His job had been to get specimens for Himmler’s Reich Institute in Berlin, a task which he’d avoided fulfilling until a shipment of Greek Jews arrived and Himmler had ordered him to gas the homogenous specimens of Mediterranean Semites. By then, Brandt had stopped caring. His son was dead, his wife had ceased to feel anything but revulsion toward him, and all he had left was Gudrun. She was his main reason to take those twice-a-month trips back to Karlsruhe.

  Here now was a woman in his care, a little older than his son, and he was being ordered to kill her as senselessly as he’d killed those defenseless Greek Jews. Supposedly, she was a spy. He looked at the frightened waif twisting the embroidered handkerchief and wondered, How could she be a spy? This must be a mistake. He tried to catch Heinrich’s eye. Perhaps he could convince Heinrich to let her go free, or be sent somewhere else. After all, there were no tangible records kept at Natzweiler. Surely a room could be found at one of the women’s camps. Why hadn’t the director just kept her locked up in prison? The stupid woman was more concerned about inconvenience than anything else. Clearly the rules could have been bent just a little, and this young lady could have spent the remaining years of the war—Brandt had no illusions about a German victory anymore—hidden among the other prisoners. He nodded toward Marie Claire and then caught the eye of the guard, who shrugged as if to say, “What do you want me to do?”

  Heinrich would be no help. If he wanted to save this one person, he’d have to do it himself, but how? Spies were either shot or hanged; everyone knew that. He couldn’t fake either, but what if he knocked her out with phenol and then pretended to cremate her body? As the train traveled through the bombed-out countryside, Brandt began to formulate his plan.

  Rome, 1949

  “So you decided on the train that you were going to save Marie Claire?” Slim asked.

  “Yes, but I needed to let her know.”

  “Is this your handwriting?” Slim asked, pointing to the faded, scribbled letters on the handkerchief.

  “Yes. When she tried to hand the handkerchief back the first time, I refused. But then I told her that my daughter embroidered it for my birthday, and I’d like to have it back. That’s when I wrote on it.”

  “How did you do it without your colleague noticing?”

  �
�I took out my pad, placed the handkerchief on it, and wrote a message. I placed it in her hands as we left the train. She read it, looked at me, and then I motioned for her to follow me.”

  Natzweiler, 1943

  They got to Natzweiler late. Everyone was in the barracks except the guards. Brandt led the shaking young woman up the stone-slab steps slowly as she clutched a small suitcase and her coat under her arm. Brandt wanted to take the bag from her, but he didn’t want to appear too friendly in case someone was watching. At the gate, they separated from Heinrich, who headed toward the barracks to check in. Brandt could feel the eyes of the other guards on them as he guided her through the gate toward the infirmary attached to the crematorium. How exactly did he intend to save her? Was there anyone he could trust? There was the drunken stoker of the crematorium, Stefan. Would he help? No, the man was such a useless lout, he was barely competent. How was he to get this woman out of camp?

  “Who are you?” the woman whispered. The sound of her voice shook him out of his thoughts.

  “I am the camp doctor,” Brandt heard himself responding in the same hushed tone.

  “Where am I?” She looked around in the darkness, confused.

  “It doesn’t matter. Now listen to me: I am going to give you a weak injection of phenol. It will make you woozy. You will ask me what it is for, and I will say it is for typhus. You will pretend to struggle—you will scratch my face. You will slump over. I will tell the stoker of the ovens to prepare your body to be burned. He will place you on a stretcher; before he shoves you in, I want you to reach up and gouge him in the eye. I will tell him to go and get medical help. And you and I will be alone in the crematorium. If you do not do exactly what I tell you to do, you will die.”

  She did what he told her to do, right down to gouging the stoker’s cornea. While Stefan was writhing in pain, Brandt looked around the crematorium and spied the cases of the Greek Jews encased in plaster. He pried one open with the poker for the oven and dragged out a body encased in plaster and lifted it into the oven. Marie Claire looked at him wide-eyed, but Brandt ignored her look of horror. He needed to get her out of the camp, but how could he when all the guards on duty knew what she looked like?

  As the camp doctor, he had a certain amount of autonomy. He could come and go as he pleased, but he had just returned from a weekend away, and if he left again, it wouldn’t go unnoticed. How could he get her out the crematorium? He knew that Stefan would be back soon and would see that Brandt hadn’t killed Marie Claire.

  He saw the empty box that had housed the Jew he’d just thrown into the fire.

  “You need to get in there quickly. Here, let me help you.” He grabbed her by the arm and put her inside the makeshift wooden coffin.

  “I don’t want to . . .” Marie Claire slurred from the phenol shot, struggling, and her shoe fell off. The wooden sole made a thumping noise on the concrete floor.

  Brandt heard the door open. He slammed the case shut just before Stefan came in.

  “The bitch scratched my eye. I don’t think you gave her enough of that stuff.”

  “Listen, I just looked at these bodies. The plaster is melting from the heat of the ovens, and the bodies are beginning to decompose.”

  “Let me see, Doctor. Maybe I can . . .” Stefan tried to pry the top off the case, but Brandt slammed the cover down.

  “No!”

  “Maybe I can . . .”

  “Are you telling me that I don’t know what I am doing?”

  “No . . .”

  “I want these boxes loaded up on the truck tonight. I am going to bring them to the station and ship them to Berlin on the overnight train.”

  “But the paperwork and the . . .” Stefan searched for a word.

  “Logistics? I will call Berlin and the stationmaster. I want the bodies on a truck ready to go in an hour.”

  Rome, 1949

  “So Stefan took the shoe from the floor, but how did he get the handkerchief?” Slim asked as the pieces began to fall into place.

  “She must have dropped it before I shoved her into the wooden case.”

  “So you saved her life.”

  “I had this idea that if I could help one person, then maybe it would absolve me somehow.”

  “And has it?”

  “I wanted my humanity back. Saving her gave it back to me for a little while. After I had dropped her off, I went to Berlin with the Greek Jews and never returned to Natzweiler.”

  “Where did you bring Marie Claire?”

  “I suppose the war is far enough in the past that I can tell you. I don’t know if she’s still there.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “I took her to Mont Sainte-Odile.”

  Slim looked at Brandt, incredulous. “That’s the convent on the mountain. It overlooks the Natzweiler!” she exclaimed.

  Brandt shrugged. “It was the only place I knew to hide her.”

  “Do you think she’s still there?”

  “Sister, so many years have passed, how would I know that?”

  “One last question.”

  “What?”

  “How did you escape Wuppertal when you were imprisoned?”

  “I went into the storehouse, stole a uniform, and walked out of where I was being held. I know you want some great story that the British helped me, but after the war, everything was a mess, and security was lax. The guards on duty got drunk and were distracted by a card game.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it, and now I must say goodbye to my daughter. But before I do, I want you to promise me one thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “If my daughter is not suited to become a nun, I’d like you to help her transition to a more normal life.”

  “Me? Why me?” Slim was taken aback at the suggestion.

  “I helped you find the answer to something that you have been searching for, and now you must help me.”

  He stood up, bowed slightly, reached out his arms for his daughter, and then enveloped her within the folds of his cassock.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rome 1949

  Later on that night, Slim dined privately with Margaret in her room.

  “Did you find your missing spy?” Margaret asked as she broke off a piece of bread and dipped it into her soup.

  “I may have.”

  “And what was Gudrun’s father like?”

  “Normal, and that’s what was so frightening. I don’t think he’ll ever fully comprehend the wrong he did.”

  “What do you think we would have done if we had been living in Germany during those years? Would we have gone along with all the hatred?” Margaret asked.

  “I’d like to believe that we’d be part of the Resistance in some way.”

  “But would we have? An entire nation went mad, and no one can come up with a reasonable explanation as to why. Don’t get me wrong: there are a million reasons, but there isn’t one that addresses how ordinary people with any sort of moral compass can do such horrible things.”

  “That is a question for the ages. Everyone says never again, and yet it will happen again and again,” Slim said, quoting Daniel. She put down her soup spoon.

  “How depressing,” Margaret said as she pushed her half-eaten bowl aside.

  “Listen, Margaret, I did promise Gudrun’s father one thing.”

  “What could you possibly promise that man?”

  “He’s concerned that perhaps Gudrun is not cut out for the convent . . .” Slim saw that Margaret was about to stop her. “Hear me out. I did notice the other day that she showed an interest in the opposite sex. She’s very young to commit herself to a life of celibacy. I know she’s like a kid sister to you, but if she expresses any interest outside these convent walls, why not let me pay for her college education at Trinity?”

  “Her education, what little she had with National Socialism, stopped at age twelve. She’d never pass the entrance exams to get into Trinity,” Margaret scoffed.
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  “I can pay for a tutor,” Slim offered. “Look, if we don’t start helping this generation of Germans, we’ll have a repeat of what just happened.”

  Margaret reluctantly agreed to broach the subject with Gudrun, and if she were willing, she’d allow Slim to pay for a tutor to prep Gudrun for Trinity’s rigorous entrance exam.

  When Slim returned to the hotel, she asked Brancati at the front desk if there were any messages. There was one from the Gucci store—the shoes she had ordered were ready to be picked up—but still nothing from Daniel.

  Where was he? she wondered. She knew that he was angry with her, but to run off like that without a word was too much. Maybe Françoise was right; she’d be better off without him.

  Before she drifted off to sleep, she thought about Marie Claire. Why was Brandt so drawn to help her? For some reason, Slim needed her to be alive. Did she want her to be alive to prove that there was some shred of decency in the world, or that miracles did happen, or that even the randomness of life resulted in something wonderful? No, she needed Marie Claire to be alive because she wanted to find out who the mole was in the SOE.

  Slim got up late, breakfasted in bed, and then made her way down the Spanish Steps toward Gucci. Half an hour later, happily laden down with packages, she ducked into a café on the other side of the piazza next to the glove maker, Sermoneta. At the counter, she ordered an espresso and was stirring the dissolving sugar when she remembered that she’d forgotten to pick up the wallet she’d chosen at Gucci for Françoise. Suddenly, she felt a hand grip her elbow.

  “Daniel?” She turned, expecting to see him with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “Miss Moran, I’m from the American Embassy, and I’m wondering if I might have a word with you?”

  There was something about the man’s steely gaze that made Slim uncomfortable.

  “What do you wish to speak to me about?” Slim felt the man’s hand tighten around her elbow.