by Bonnie Toews
“It’s bad luck to break a mirror, you know. Seven years bad luck.”
She grimaced with disgust and drew back from him.
He sniffed. His patience vanished, and fanatic rage seized him. He reached around behind her head and yanked her hair without warning. With a murderous grip, he pulled on her hair roots until he was sure their nerve ends shrieked in protest.
“Do you know what a Jew looks like? Do you?”
He roughly shoved the jagged fragment of mirror in front of her eyes and hissed. “LIKE THIS!”
Shrunken dark hollows, staring back from the reflection, grew in horrified recognition. The mouth in the mirror shook.
“NOOooooo…!” Lee whimpered. “Noooo… nooo… no… That’s not me!” she denied and fainted.
Ketmann stood above her slumped form on the floor, and deep satanic laughter peeled loose from his mouth as he enjoyed his triumph. He had broken her … finally.
The Mosquitoes were flying over their first checkpoint on the West Coast of Denmark’s Jutland, Esbjerg. Below them, fishing smacks rolled on the foamy sea. The storm clouds had lifted, and the rising sun cannon fired copper flames across their wing tips. Weaving between the treetops and over the power lines, they flew so low the pilots could see even a pimple on the face of the cheering Danes waving to them along their flight path. As they drew closer to the East Coast and Kolding, their second checkpoint, they skimmed over acres of farmers’ fields and lacy woods.
Spread out in single-file formation, so that each of the pilots could see the other’s hand signals, the extremely agile, lightning fast fighter-bombers dipped under the enemy’s radar and avoided detection. The surprise of their bold morning attack depended on absolute radio silence.
In the lead plane, the navigator quickly calculated on his kneepad and touched the shoulder of his commander.
“We’re exactly on time, sir,” he reported.
The commander nodded and grinned.
Asudden thirst demanded to be satisfied. Even though her mind had slipped into the depths of hopeless despair, Lee’s heart insisted she must endure, and she braced her head against the top of the ladder-back chair to gulp more water from the glass Ketmann held to her lips. Slobbering rivulets trickled down her chin as she slurped for each mouthful. When her thirst was quenched, she clamped her lips shut to signal no more and sagged back into the chair, fully conscious now.
The memory of her face in the mirror flooded her mind, and she hung her face. She was the ugliest sight she had ever seen. This crazy insistence on living was stupid! For what? Ketmann had ruined her looks. She wasn’t a woman any more. She was a freak! A freak, who refused to die! She winced in disgust. Every reason to live had been taken from her. Rolf. Her self-respect. Her self-image. And Tobias too. What began in decadence and self-depredation grew into something beautifully intimate between them. In the end, Tobias loved her as much as Rolf had, and Ketmann had ordered his execution.
Why doesn’t he kill me and be done with it too? Lord, I’d welcome death. Why do I keep hanging on?
Uncharacteristically quiet, Ketmann sat the water glass down on the desk and returned to his own side. He swished his tail over his seat, like a shark settling down to spawn, before he sank down into the deep cushion of his chair.
He snorted.
“I’ve broken you, but I’ve never made you talk.”
His shoulders slumped, and he heaved a defeated sigh.
“Who is the victor and who is the victim, ja?”
He shrugged.
“Oh well, what does it matter? For us the game is over.”
Over?
He lapsed into sullen silence. In his lap, his gill-like fingers zipped together like rows of fishhooks, while his thumbs idly rotated around each other like boat propellers. He carried on talking as if he had forgotten she was there.
“I’m going to escape to Paraguay, but before I melt into the dark corners of South America, I am going to find that despicable traitor in London who made a fool of me. Because of him, I lost face with my Führer. Twice Himmler transferred me back here. Twice Eichmann ordered my return to Poland to establish more efficient procedures for trafficking the trainloads of miserable, smelly Jews in and out of those filthy death camps. We needed those trains to transport our troops … to bring reinforcements to the two fronts … but the Jews kept pouring in and pouring in from all over Europe … train after trainload of stinking Jews. I did not think there could be so many…”
His voice trailed off.
“We had the world at our feet. We should be the victors. Not you, with your pitiful cow’s eyes.”
His jaw twitched.
“I should have recognized you were a Jew at once. All Jews have the same cow’s eyes. They shuffle to their deaths as if they don’t know what is happening… except for their cow eyes staring back… never accusing… accepting… silent… stupid cows lining up for slaughter.”
He casually arched his back and stretched.
“Tell me, are you all cowards? Why would you not try to save yourselves when you had the chance?”
Lee remained silent, welcoming this respite from his incessant interrogation.
“Ja. I had forgotten. No one else wanted our miserable Jews when we tried to deport them. So, while we rid the world of its Jewish problem, we cannot supply our troops with reinforcements. So, for the sake of the Jews, we lose the war again. Ironic, ja? And yet, the Führer seems to think we can stop the Allies. He still believes he can win the war. Without the atomic bomb, how can he? Funny, ja?”
His eyes hardened. “Funny? Nein! One man stopped us from producing the atomic bomb. One man!”
His fingers drummed the top of his desk again. “LEON!”
Lee stared. Shock charged her root hairs.
“With some difficulty, I have finally learned the British code name of Canaris’ double agent. LEON. But I couldn’t track down his personal records to help me identify him. No doubt the Abwehr destroyed them before the SD took over Military Intelligence. So, it is more difficult to find him. But not impossible.”
He paused, then spat out the words: “I want that traitor! Tell me. Do you know who this LEON could be?”
Lee’s mind whirled. LEON! This was Sir Fletcher’s code name.
“Did you know he sent me our contact codes in those crazy DITTIES FOR DOTTIES Lady Grace produces on her show?”
He read the startled reaction in Lee’s eyes.
“You didn’t know, did you?”
Ketmann softly cackled.
“That demon’s been lying to you at the same time as he’s been betraying me, hasn’t he?”
Clearly confused, a pain, more searing than physical torture, surged through Lee’s mind. Sir Fletcher? Could he have betrayed them? A double agent for German Military Intelligence … worse, a triple agent for Moscow? The idea was ludicrous! Yet, he was the one to convince Churchill and Saunders to send Grace to Denmark to contact Watchdog and to persuade Dr. Nielsen to flee to England. He engineered the operational details of Quinn and Rolf’s caper when they blew up the Germans’ heavy water in the North Sea. Did he betray Rolf? Why? Why destroy the Amanita Project? It was his baby from the start. He picked the scientists and recruited the agents. He was Churchill’s confidante.
“Tell me who LEON is, Lee.”
Ketmann leaned toward her.
She had grown immune to his stinky sausage breath.
“Let me avenge us both.”
It would be easy to tell Ketmann what he wanted to know, she admitted to herself, to tell him LEON is Sir Fletcher McAlister, SOE’s Director of Project Amanita. Certainly the traitor deserved a slow death, slow and torturous, one branded with Ketmann’s style of savagery, yet she could not tell him. A deeper integrity, an abiding belief in ‘innocent-until-proven-guilty,’overrode the bitter and vindictive hate she felt and held her back from saying the words that would condemn Sir Fletcher to death. She gritted her teeth.
“I want him, Lee. I want LEON
. He robbed the Third Reich of its thousand years of golden rule, and when I find him after the war, I am going to kill him. When he thinks he is safe—when he believes he has fooled everyone—that is the precise moment when I shall kill him.”
His eyes flared with anticipation. “I shall relish watching him die … slowly … with the agony he deserves.”
Lee kept her silence, but inwardly she raged. LEON was Sir Fletcher. For Rolf, for Grace, for herself, for every agent betrayed, she ached to confront him, to let him see what Ketmann had done to her. She had as much right to be his judge and executioner as Ketmann did, but she would obviously not live to see such a day. Ketmann was finished with her.
The rims of Ketmann’s hooded eyelids perceptibly narrowed. His jaw clenched, and his veins, like moles burrowing under his taunt temples, twisted and knotted. His chilling gaze locked on Lee.
In a silent struggle of wills, they stubbornly stared each other down. Eventually he heaved a great-embattled sigh and gave in.
“Have it your way… stupid though it is. You could save yourself. I no longer have any quarrel with you. We’re on the same side.”
Lee willed her face to remain still, inscrutable.
“Well, then,” he said, “you leave me no choice.”
He rose to his feet.
“I will issue your execution order for tomorrow morning at dawn.”
Lee listened to her sentence with indifference.
“In a way, I regret our relationship must end like this. You have been a worthy foe, Lee Talbot… even for a Jew.”
What was this? Respect from the enemy! She almost laughed aloud.
“I promise you, Lee, I will find the London traitor.”
What seemed like misgivings crept into his voice, and his show of unexpected emotion surprised her.
“I don’t know why you are protecting him, but he has never been worth the price you are paying.”
He rang for the guard outside the door to the interrogation room.
“Max can prepare you” were his last words to her.
FORTY-THREE
Wednesday, March 21st, 1945
By now, the three waves of Mosquitoes along with their fighter cover of thirty Mustangs were hedge-hopping their way across the island of Funen over the Great Belt to Zealand, closing in on their target. They had just passed their third checkpoint, Odense, the island’s capital and the original home of the 19th Century master of fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen. A simple cobbler’s son, he would have been dismayed to know the armada flying overhead, on the last leg of its journey, was destined to drop fiery death on his beloved Copenhagen.
The young German soldier, distracted in thought, saw nothing strange in the congregation of local Danes gathering as he crossed the square. The closer he came to the front steps of Gestapo Headquarters, the slower he walked, until he reached the foot of the stairs and stopped. He drew a folded piece of paper from his pant pocket and smoothed it open with his hands. It was the poster of Grace.
Ahead, Ketmann opened the main door and strode out on the landing. The German soldier looked up at the imposing SS officer and back to the poster. It said the woman was an escaped British agent. If anyone recognized her they were to report to the Gestapo at once. The features that seemed so familiar in the drawing blurred and transformed into the serene face of the nun he had found in the chapel. The memory of her all-embracing love wrapped him up again in the warmth of her smile. She couldn’t be the enemy. She just couldn’t.
As Ketmann began descending the steps, the young German soldier looked up into his hard cold eyes and nervously toyed with the poster he held in his hand. The closer Ketmann drew to him, the more he fingered the paper until Ketmann’s menacing shape towered above him. In that instant he hurriedly crunched the paper into a tight ball and stuffed it back into his hip pocket before he snapped to attention and saluted.
“Heil Hitler.”
Ketmann regarded the young soldier with curiosity.
“Are you lost, soldier?”
“Nein … ja, mein general,” he admitted sheepishly. “I’m looking for my unit.”
Ketmann peered at him more closely.
“How old are you?” he snapped.
“Fourteen.”
“Mein Gott!” Ketmann said. “Now children defend the fatherland.”
He shook his head in disbelief and brushed past the young soldier as if he didn’t exist.
Disguised as fishermen, Erich von Lohren and Quinn Bergin rested their bicycles against the stonewall fence of St. Joan’s. Through the back streets leading into the square between Shell House and the convent straggled other men. Some dragged vegetable carts or market wagons, while others shuffled along carrying lunch pails, appearing to be workers on their way to the docks. A baker’s truck stuttered, coughed and died, blocking the roadway to the loading ramp behind the Gestapo building.
Quinn, by the convent wall, whistled through his teeth as he pulled his cap lower over his face.
“What’s wrong?” Erich warily scrutinized the square for trouble.
“Would you look at the front steps? Why couldn’t he wait another ten minutes?”
Erich focused on the Gestapo entrance and spotted Ketmann. He anxiously watched the exchange between the young German soldier and the security chief across the square while bending over his bicycle as if he were checking the air in the tires.
“What’s he doing now?”
“Staring at us,” Quinn said without moving his lips and squatted down to help him examine the tire. “Everyone’s in position.”
“I know. I saw them.”
Quinn covertly watched Ketmann.
“For the love of Mike! He’s walking straight toward us!”
Erich tensed for action. “We can’t take him without giving away everything.”
“Grab your britches! He’s … changing direction … checking the gate of the convent. The gate’s open. He’s going inside!”
Grace! Erich lifted his head, and with a sick heart, helplessly watched the gate swing shut behind the disappearing figure of Ketmann.
General Ketmann could not explain why he found himself walking through the grounds of the Catholic convent. He wanted something, but knew not what. Weeks of intensely questioning the Talbot woman had unsettled him as interrogating no other prisoner had. No matter what he did, the whore never broke. He still believed she was the key to Nielsen’s papers. What she knew could restore glory to Germany. He was sure of it. Just as he was equally sure she could tell him who LEON was. All he had was this code name of the London informant from Canaris’ records, and the woman had recognized it. For a fleeting second, he had discerned a deep inner hatred flash in those haunted eyes. It was so fleeting he could almost believe he was mistaken, except for that brief reaction, which had been enough to renew her will against him.
He stopped and looked around. Frustrated misery filled him, and he sighed, a deep heavy sigh. Just as he thought he had won, he had lost. To the end, the whore held out in silence. Begrudgingly, he had to respect her. She had beaten him, and executing her tomorrow morning ended their game of wills. He would miss it… and her. The challenge of testing the human threshold for pain consumed him. Some people cracked so easily. Others, like Lee, endured. He had yet to understand why, and not understanding it further depressed him.
He strolled aimlessly under the beech trees, feeling more and more disturbed. The serenity of the spiritual sanctuary irked him. It was too quiet. The demons within him shrank from its hallowed seclusion and hounded him to flee back to the vexing noises of his confusing world, to the stimulation of disruption and disharmony. He wheeled around and quickened his pace back the way he had come. Whatever he had hoped to find was not here.
Midway along his retreat, the laughing voices of children halted him. He peeked through the shrubs.
A group of girls were playing nursery games in the garden. In the center of their circle was a nun. Her beauty fascinated him. He moved out of his
hiding place and drew closer and closer to her, until he was so close one little girl spotted him and screeched in terror. The girls broke up their game and scurried to the shelter of the nun’s habit, grasping for bits of her robe. They clung to her as they stared up at him with enormous eyes of fright.
He noticed none of this. He saw only the nun and the purity of her Aryan beauty. He was spellbound. Her calm eyes challenged him. He knew that look of serenity. She stood before him, so poised. Her composure triggered a memory. The pianist at the Press Club in Berlin. He mentally watched himself open a folder. Inside there was a newspaper clipping … a blurred photo. He focused on the headline underneath… LADY GRACE DAZZLES BERLIN. In his mind’s eye, he also saw a sketch of the pianist sent anonymously to Baldur-Meyer before he arrested the woman he thought was Grace.
Ketmann caught his breath. Had the London informant been telling the truth? Had Lady Grace been under his nose the entire time? Blast the British! How deviously cunning! What stroke of luck delivered her to him now of all times? He reached out and grabbed her.
At the same time, the girls pointed behind him and screamed.
“Sister Angelique! The planes come! The planes come!”
Ketmann glanced behind him and gazed aghast at the belly of a Mosquito fighter-bomber peeling off over the trees bordering the chapel. Its Merlin engines whined as the earth shook beneath them.
“NEIN!” he gasped in disbelief.
Grace tried to wrench herself free of his grip. He clamped down harder, with vicious strength, and started dragging her toward the convent gate.
“Let me go!” she cried and kicked.
Mosquito after Mosquito swooped over the convent. Cowering under the ear-splitting noise, the girls seemed rooted in the garden watching the awesome sight. Thud after thud rained, followed by terrible thundering, and the ground quaked with aftershocks from the bombings. Belches of fire and smoke puffed above the centurion trees guarding the convent.