The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  Krantz examined his fingernails, then took out a trooper’s wooden-handled penknife and began to clean each nail.

  “The Reich Ministry of Industry needs the products I sell. Without them, it’s doubtful even the Gusstahlfabrik of the Krupps could manage.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m on a business trip. Look, I’ve done this sort of thing lots of times before.”

  “How many times, please?”

  What the hell was behind the questioning? What did the Gestapo really want?

  “I think it must be my thirteenth trip in the past two years. I don’t know. Look, I never bothered to count them. I’ve worked for the firm too long for it to matter.”

  Eighteen trips, my friend. Eighteen, thought Krantz but didn’t say so.

  The telephone rang. Krantz laid a meaty hand on the receiver and gave him a cold, cod-eyed stare as if to say, You’d better be telling the truth the next time.

  Fishing the passport toward him, he listened disinterestedly to the caller. From time to time he glanced from the photograph to Hagen and back again.

  When the Berliner hung up, he did so with a finality that troubled. “How is it that you are a friend of the Baron Dieter Karl Hunter?”

  “I met him on safari a little over three years ago. We went shooting together.” We did a lot of other things, too, thought Hagen, but didn’t enlighten him further.

  The Gestapo arched his eyebrows and sucked on a tooth. “Well, it seems you have friends in high places, Herr Hagen. You are free to go.”

  Krantz gave a shrug, a plastic grin that grew into a generous smile and a laugh that began low down and rumbled upward as if the whole thing had been a great joke.

  Only when he came to the card de Herr Klees had given him, did the Berliner revert to his former self.

  Hagen cursed himself for having forgotten it.

  “I should ask who he is, Herr Hagen. It’s just a matter of routine. We policemen …” His voice trailed off. Their eyes met. Hagen’s gaze didn’t waver.

  “Herr Klees is a former acquaintance of my director’s. As the director was out of the office, I met with him and promised to pass his card along. I simply forgot to leave it with our receptionist.”

  “May I keep it?”

  Shit! “I’m sure Herr Wunsch is aware of the address, but just in case he isn’t, maybe you’d better copy it down and let me keep the card.”

  “Yes. Yes, that would be best. Then we will both have it.”

  The telegraph kiosk at the main post office in Essen seemed set out in broad daylight. The clerk behind the wicket greeted the request with undisguised suspicion and reticence.

  “I’ve clearance,” said Hagen, sliding the letter from the Reich Ministry of the Interior and his passport under the grille.

  The man took his time. These days one had to. “To send such cables is not so easy anymore,” he grumbled, pinching the fleshy nose in thought.

  “Look, I know you have to be careful, but it’s only to my mother. She had a bad cold and I forgot to telephone her before I left Antwerp. You know what summer colds are like. Her chest isn’t all that good. She’s not so young anymore and I’m her only son.”

  The clerk knew all about mothers. Who didn’t? He also knew a wind when he felt one.

  “Why not telephone her from here?”

  The man’s fleshy lips parted, the pale blue eyes returned to their puffy folds. Like a basking turtle waiting for the tide, he stood motionless behind the grille.

  Hagen gave him the look he reserved for all such turtles. “Because, though the Reich is far ahead of everybody else, international calls still take far too long to place.”

  “You could try a blitz call.” Why don’t you? implied the clerk.

  Was it suspicion and just plain stubbornness or orders from above? “The cost,” said Hagen evenly. “The cable. Why not simply send it?”

  “You’re a foreigner. All foreigners are suspect.”

  “Even messages to their mothers?” scoffed Hagen.

  The turtle returned the shrug and said nothing. So much for Germanic efficiency!

  “Send it or I’ll be onto the Führer and he’ll fry your butt in grease.”

  “The Führer does what he has to. I do what I’m told.”

  “Then you won’t send the cable even though I’ve got the clearance?”

  Again the man pinched the fleshy nose. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t send it. I am merely questioning you on the necessity.”

  Turning from him, he took the cable over to the desk, hitched up the elastics on the arms of his shirt, pulled down the translucent green eyeshade he wore and sent the thing.

  TO WINDFIELD MRS LOIS ANNE INVERLIN COTTAGE BLACK DOWN HEATH PORTESHAM ROAD DORCHESTER ENGLAND

  FROM HAGEN RICHARD KAISER WILHELM HOTEL ESSEN

  MEANT TO CALL STOP FORGOT STOP SORRY STOP DID YOU MANAGE TO SHAKE YOUR COLD STOP HOPE MY GERMAN CUSTOMERS ALLOW ME TO SELL THEM SOMETHING STOP CHEERS HAGEN

  From the Father William poem in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland he had chosen two lines: “Pray, how did you manage to do it?” and “Allow me to sell you a couple?”

  When decoded, the message would read: STOPPED AT BORDER / QUESTIONED

  Nothing else, not for now. But at least they were still letting him send things out, and this he had absolutely had to know.

  Hagen turned away from the microscope to rest his aching eyes. Since sending the cable five days ago, he had worked from dawn until well after dusk matching industrial diamonds with the jobs they were supposed to do.

  The vastness of the Gusstahlfabrik at Essen was spread all around him, over eight square kilometers of smokestacks and furnaces, hot-metal working, cold-metal working, drop forges, shearing and rolling mills, deep drawing and spinning … sheds and sheds of assembly lines.

  Only in the lab was there comparative quiet. But, then, he only came up here once in a while, descending always to view at close hand the high-speed lathes, drill presses, wire-drawing dies and grinding wheels that had each needed diamonds either as the cutting edge itself, or in the trueing.

  “Jake, what are your boys doing with these octahedra? Every one of the points has been ripped off. I can see the chatter marks.”

  The works’ foreman, a fourth-generation employee of the Krupps, a real dyed-in-the-wool Kruppianer, twisted his grimy cap uncomfortably. Signs and posters exhorted everyone to be careful of what they said, especially to foreigners.

  Yet Herr Hagen had always been most careful—one to whom a man could talk. He would have had the necessary clearance from above.

  “It is the new gun barrels. The steel is so much harder, so much more costly.”

  “How fast are the lathes turning?”

  “Eighty-six RPM. It is fast, ja? I have said we should slow them down, but Herr Vogel, my supervisor, insists it is your diamonds. He says they are—forgive me, Herr Hagen. He says they are being cut by Jews.”

  “Would that make a difference?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Hagen grinned, putting the foreman at ease. “Let’s go and have a look.”

  Relieved, the burly foreman led the way. Once on the working floor, he felt at home. He knew every centimeter of the works, loved the bustle of earnest labor, the smell of grease, hot cutting oil and freshly turned metal. They passed through a maze of rolling stock. Bars and billets were stacked everywhere. Overhead cranes continually came and went. Always present, the sound of a drop forge grew steadily until Jake yanked on a door. Instantly an earth-shattering sound came at them, shaking the walls and the floor. Repeatedly the forge gave out its shrieking lament.

  “Makes you want to piss, eh, Jake?” shouted Hagen.

  “To shit, ja?” laughed the foreman, making shuddering motions as he squatted and wiggled his backside to the delight of the men operating the forge.

  Then he lifted his fist as the forge relaxed, and wiped his brow. The thing was colossal. Down and down it came, again and again,
hammering out armor plate, pounding it into shape with utter ruthlessness.

  Hagen shook his head to clear his ears. Leaving the forge behind, they came out into the comparative calm of regimented rows of tanks, some all but complete, others only partial skeletons. PzKw Is and IIs, 7.5- and 10-ton tanks, the Mark IIs armed with 20 mm cannon. But now the 20-ton Mark IIIs, and bigger still, the 23-ton Mark IVs, which were armed with 75 mm cannon that fired high-explosive shells. There weren’t many of these larger tanks, not yet. But haste, there was so much haste. Like ants, men swarmed over them. Like demons, stricken by some sort of orderly madness, they worked, knowing that at least they had jobs in these difficult times and that maybe, just maybe things would get better.

  Sloped armor gave the plates greater thickness against enemy shells, deflection, too. But who was the enemy? Who was it all meant for?

  At 500 meters the 75 mm cannon could penetrate 40 mm of armor plate.

  From out of the constant din came the foreman’s shout. “It is the 50 mm cannon barrels the general wants to mount on the Mark IIIs, Herr Hagen. This way, please.”

  They went through yet another shed. Side by side with the tanks, Kruppianer were turning out cannon barrels and shell casings. Every three minutes one of the casings would be jammed into the chuck, spun into the cutting tool to have its top threaded to take the detonator that would explode the shell on impact.

  In one area, once an island of vacant space, a dozen or so workmen were operating a battery of stamp presses punching out helmets as if they were minting coins.

  It would be a marching army, too, yet where were the trucks they’d so desperately need? The assembly lines were still there, lost in the works, but they hadn’t been enlarged. Instead, the Gusstahlfabrik and other similar works were concentrating on heavy guns and tanks, half-tracks and other motorized armor at the expense of plain, simple transport.

  At ease among the men and the machinery, and liking it, Hagen rolled up his sleeves and pitched in. Trueing the gun barrels involved running a reaming tool inside them while each barrel was turning on the lathe. The reamer would work for hours, then suddenly one of the diamonds in the head would catch and break.

  Lowering the speed had helped a little. Backing off on the advance of the reamer had eased things, too.

  “It is the metal, ja?” shouted the foreman. “It is too hard.”

  “It’s the same as for the 75 mm cannon barrels, isn’t it?”

  A nod.

  “How’s your power supply?”

  Every once in a while the lines became overloaded. The drawdown caused a drag that was followed by a surge of power. For just a split second the added torque caused one of the diamonds to catch and break along a cleavage plane.

  “Back off on the speed. Slow it right down. Try 30 RPM and let’s see what happens.”

  Three hours later, at 56 RPM, with good, sharp octahedral points and a much reduced rate of advance, things had improved. Though the process was not perfect, General Guderian, the expert in tank warfare, might just get his 50 mm cannon barrels for the Mark IIIs after all.

  Smoke billowed about the first of the furnaces, filling the air with the stench of sulfur. As the taphole was ruptured, a shower of sparks preceded the flood of molten metal that raced to find the molds. Then the taphole was plugged, the furnace tilted back for recharging, and another melt produced.

  One pour was much like another. The line of furnaces at the Gusstahlfabrik was so long, the screen of smoke and dust obscured the far end of the building.

  From the head of the stairs, Otto Krantz looked into the distance as sweating, bare-armed, asbestos-aproned men labored in the heat below him.

  Hagen was what he’d said he was. Then why the interest, why the special attention? Why that cable to his mother if not to ask after her health?

  An element of uneasiness crept in. The flames, the smoke, the stench of sulfur didn’t help.

  Krantz fished out the Dutchman’s address. Berlin had said help could be called in, that he’d have a free hand. Why not pay the Dutchman a little visit and have a glass of beer?

  It couldn’t hurt. Talk but don’t ask. Just have a look. Yes … yes, that’s what he’d do. Then he’d take a little side trip to Antwerp just for fun.

  The Villa Hügel—the house on the hill—was huge. Lit up by floodlights and viewed through avenues of tall trees, its depressingly narrow and heavily lintelled windows looked out on the world with the stolid detachment of a prison.

  In 1869 there had been no trees on the hill. Being sixty years of age, Alfred Krupp, the cannon king, hadn’t had time for seedlings. Whole groves of mature trees, their roots bagged in burlap in the dead of winter, had been moved to the hill.

  In April of the following year Krupp had laid the cornerstone only to find the Chantilly limestone from the quarries outside of Paris jeopardized by the Franco-Prussian War. Undeterred, he had supplied the cannons to kill the French and yet had continued to get the stone by detouring it through Belgium. He had even kept the French stonemasons who had been working for him.

  It was an honor to have been called to the house. It was also a disquieting puzzle.

  The man who would one day be called the Krupp was at the back of the garden, sitting in the darkness of the little summerhouse he had had built for himself. The sounds of a wireless broadcast crackled faintly. The speech was being given at another rally in Nuremberg. Hitler had just spoken of Lebensraum, the need for living space. East into Russia, but to get there one had to cross Poland or Czechoslovakia, and if either should prove too difficult, would he not turn westward to the Low Countries and to France?

  Had the war to end all wars really been such a dismal failure?

  Krupp reached out to switch off the wireless. Hagen waited for him to speak.

  Alfried was thirty years old. Since. 1931 he had been a member of the elite SS Fordernde Mitgliedschaft, the sponsoring members. He was a skilled pilot, a member of the Nazi Flying Corps, not of the Luftwaffe, though a colonel all the same, a Standartenführer.

  As yet, however, he hadn’t formally joined the Nazi Party. Of this Hagen was fairly sure, though many of the other industrialists had taken this final step.

  He liked fast cars and was reported to be madly in love with a woman who had not only been divorced—a family taboo—but whose sister had run off to Latin America with a Jew.

  Out of the darkness came his voice at last. “The Führer is impressive, is he not? The man’s oratory never fails to stir the masses.”

  Hagen was cautious. “I was here in March of last year when ten thousand of your men gathered in the Hindenburg Bay to cheer him and to sing ‘Heil Hitler Dir.’”

  “The locomotive works. Yes, that was a sight. Tell me, Herr Hagen, what do you think of our works?”

  “They’re impressive, a city within a city, but then they’re only a part of the Krupp interests.”

  “And the Reich? Do you think it will exist for a thousand years?”

  Instinctively caution entered his voice. “I don’t know, Herr von Bohlen und Halbach. I’m just a salesman, not a politician.”

  One might have scoffed at such an answer. The man in the corner said nothing.

  Shy with strangers, awkward even, Alfried Krupp was not the easiest person to talk to. Of the same generation as Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, he had graduated with honours from Aachen. He was a certified engineer who had not only studied chemistry, physics and metallurgy, but had done so extensively, even if his chasing around the resorts of Europe had interfered a little with the progress of these studies.

  No slouch. Not this quiet man. What did he really want?

  “Tell me something about diamonds.”

  Hagen let a pause register surprise, shock even at such a general request. Krupp was far too busy for generalities and must, of necessity, know quite a lot about diamonds.

  The cigarette glowed. To fill the pause, Krupp made an attempt at casual banter. “It is nice he
re in the garden at night. So quiet I can hear the works humming in the distance.”

  “What, exactly, would you like to know about diamonds?”

  “Start by telling me about the Belgian Congo. Can we get tool diamonds from there?”

  Hagen hesitated. Krupp said, “Please, there are no hidden microphones. You may speak freely.”

  “Very well, I will, Baron. If you mean outside of the established trading channels, then no. It’s impossible. As for the Congo and its tool diamonds, no again. It’s true that about forty percent of the diamonds from Tshikapa are of gem quality and that this signals a high percentage of tool diamonds, but the whole production is quite small.”

  “And there are no other deposits? It seems to me …”

  “Mbuji-Mayi.”

  “Yes, that is the one. Rumored to be soon the largest producer in the world.”

  “Virtually all of the stones are not just industrial, Herr von Bohlen, but what we call crushing boart. Much of it ends up in the grinding wheels your people use to sharpen the tungsten carbide cutting tools.”

  “Then it’s essential to us, but have we a problem getting tool diamonds from there?”

  One could see nothing but the cigarette, the silhouette of the man. “I’ve just answered you, Baron. Most of what we sell—that is, of the high-quality tool diamonds—comes from South Africa.”

  “From De Beers, from the Diamond Corporation, the cartel.”

  “Yes, but you know as well as I do, that they’ll soon control the deposits in the Congo as they do elsewhere.”

  “And the Diamant Boart, this new Belgian company of which your firm is an affiliate?”

  “Merely a company to explore and promote the use of crushing boart from Mbuji-Mayi.”

  “Is it true this company stocks in excess of thirty million carats of this boart in Antwerp?”

  In round figures about two-thirds of a ton, or at fifty percent space between the crystals, a volume of just over twelve cubic feet. Roughly the size of an average cedar chest.

  Enough to cart away, if one wanted to, without too much difficulty.

  Enough to last the Reich for several years. Was that what the Germans had in mind? The Antwerp stocks themselves—not just the boart but the tool diamonds and the gems? It was an unsettling thought.