The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  After breakfast they’d taken the car and had driven south to the very edge of the Bavarian Alps. The scenery, as always, was magnificent. Sheep bells tinkled in the distance, and from somewhere far below them came the lonely sound of an ax.

  Hagen was glad the two of them were alone. “What sort of questions?” he asked cautiously.

  Irmgard looked away. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of a slab of gray, lichen-encrusted rock, she reminded him of a Norse goddess, a Valkyrie.

  A questioner.

  He followed her gaze. Far in the distance, down across the tree-clad slopes and avalanche trails, the heavily timbered tower of an old gristmill rose through the forest.

  “Why can’t you answer me?” he asked gently. “I’ve nothing to hide.”

  “I love my brother, Richard.”

  “So do I. We’re the best of friends. You know that.”

  “Dieter has asked me not to tell you.”

  “That I’ve been followed this time? That the Gestapo stopped me at the border? That Franz Epp, the Krupp’s head of internal security, has probably done a job on me? So what? I’m clean. I only sell diamonds, Irmgard. Nothing else.”

  “There was a cable for you this morning. Dieter has asked me not to give it to you until you are about to leave us. I’m to have forgotten, to have said I purposely forgot because I wanted you to stay. Which I do. Dear God, I hope you know I do.”

  To give himself time to think, he began to pack up the lunch. They had left the Krupp and Liza to themselves in the cabin at the hunting lodge Dieter had rented. He ought to appear angry, not wary …

  Suddenly sick of the continual need for caution, he said rather harshly, “Can’t I even trust my friends enough to let me relax and enjoy their company as I always have in the past?”

  That had hurt, and he could see this in the way Irmgard clutched her knees.

  Richard waited, hoping she’d tell him. She wished he’d fall in love with her, wished he’d take her to bed.

  From the breast pocket of her shirt Irmgard pulled the cable. “Dieter just wanted you to do that, Richard. To relax and be with us. To remember all of this—” she swept an arm around “—and know in your heart of hearts that we are still your friends.”

  TO HAGEN RICHARD C/O VILLA HUNTER MUNICH FROM WUNSCH BERNARD DILLINGHAM AND COMPANY ANTWERP

  REQUEST YOU BYPASS BERLIN THIS TRIP RETURN OFFICE IMMEDIATE CONSULTATIONS STOP DO YOU SUPPOSE THEY COULD GET IT CLEAR?

  She watched him closely as he read the cable, then turned away more quickly this time, to search the distance for the truth and hold his soul cupped in her outstretched hand.

  She couldn’t possibly know.

  “You’re hiding something from us, Richard. I have seen it in your eyes. I was afraid of this.”

  She seemed so sad this trip. He’d have to put her at ease, would have to laugh it off. “Afraid of what, for heaven’s sake? Irmgard, this is a police state. You know that as well as I. What you haven’t realized is that it’s made you suspicious of even your closest friends. This is a straight business cable in response to one that I sent Herr Wunsch at the request, I might add, of the Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.”

  “The new cannon king. The profiteer of arms, the maker, Richard, of wars. Without us, the industrialists, the Nazis would be nothing.”

  “Yes. Now what gives? What sort of questions are being asked about me?”

  She tossed her head and breathed in deeply. “The last line. Neither Dieter nor the Krupp can make sense of it. They fear perhaps it is some kind of code.”

  He shook his head. Folding the cable, he tucked it away and gave her an honest shrug. “It means just what it says. Can the Krupp get clearance for the deal.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Even I have puzzled. I’m sorry I doubted you, Richard. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least to have discovered that you were some sort of spy.”

  Her grin faded. Steadily they looked at each other, and he saw the fear come back into her eyes and wondered at it.

  “Dieter would be so upset if that were true, Richard. So, too, would the Krupp, of this I am very sure.”

  “You’re very serious this visit. That two-headed Janus was really meant for you, wasn’t it?”

  “You know the shit the Nazis say! They’re bastards, Richard. Pigs! They’ve got us working for them and we’re scared.”

  “Is Dee Dee upset about something?”

  “Didn’t you see the way she laughed when she told us that story? Can you imagine how it must have hurt her to lie like that? She’s one-quarter Jewish and terrified everyone will find out, poor thing. Already there are whispers about her. No longer do the good parts come her way. It’s stupid, Richard. Criminal!”

  He held her close, and she buried her face in his shirt. Dee Dee and Dieter waved and then began to call and run toward them. Caught on that slope he felt so very alone.

  “Richard, Dieter is going to Brazil for the Krupp. Get her out of Germany. Make my brother take her with him.”

  The light was fading rapidly, the rain coming soon. All over the city people would be running to take shelter from the storm.

  As the first and distant rumbles of thunder came, Bernard Wunsch turned away from the window. “Lev, I really wish you’d sit down, just this once.”

  “Then please tell an old man what has happened?”

  “Must you always use age to get the better of me? You’re hardly much older than myself.”

  “Bernard, we’ve known each other a long time. Long enough for me to know you must talk to someone you trust.”

  Irritated, Wunsch ran a hand over his thinning hair, then used a knuckle to straighten the ends of his mustache—clear signs that he was worried.

  “I’m almost certain Richard’s flat was searched—no, do not look so alarmed. I have—” he touched his forehead “—a certain feeling for this sort of thing. Nothing was forced. Neither the door nor the windows, but the skylight that lets out onto the roof was slightly ajar. Madame Rogier has told me Richard sometimes leaves it open for the cat, but me, I’m not so sure.”

  Lev hardly breathed. “So you took a look around his place?”

  “Yes, but I’ve not had the courage to tell you this. Instead, I’ve worried over it for days and days, watching always his progress in my mind. When the cable came in from Essen to say that he was sending me something in the mails, and then one from Munich to say there’d been a change in his itinerary, I decided I’d have to answer him.

  “Lev, listen to me. Richard doesn’t have many things. A couple of photographs of him and his father out prospecting. A group shot of the two of them in the bush with his mother. One of his friend, the Baron Dieter Karl Hunter, another of that boyhood friend of his, that tutor in archeology at Oxford, Duncan McPherson. Then his books—you know how much he likes to read. Well, let me tell you, Lev, he has hardly any books.”

  The man before him seemed to shrink, to whisper now. “Please … what are you getting at, Bernard?”

  Wunsch reached for a pair of slim little volumes, something a child might read. They were bound in red leather and embossed with gold letters on the spines and the signet of a chesspiece on the front covers. “Isn’t it a bit unusual for a man like Richard to have copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass on his desk at home?”

  Lev held his nose, pinching it as always when struck by a thought. “So?” The sad blue eyes looked across the desk. “Don’t keep an old man in suspense, Bernard. I might have a heart attack and then what would you do? Call the police or an ambulance?”

  Smoke curled from the forgotten cigarette. The thunder came.

  “Codes are funny things, Ascher. Sometimes a word, sometimes a seemingly innocuous sentence slipped into an otherwise straightforward message. During the war I had experience with such things. But, to be frank, I do not want to believe such a thing of Richard, but then, God help us, I do, though I would, of course, have to dismiss him immediately
.”

  Lev swallowed with difficulty. Richard a spy … “What’ve you done, Bernard?”

  “Sent him a cable. Included a couple of lines from a poem he had marked in this.” Wunsch lifted one of the little books. “From Through the Looking Glass. It is an appropriate title, is it not? The looking glass …”

  “What lines?” croaked Lev.

  “From ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’ a delightful poem. I must confess it made me smile, but I had great difficulty in choosing an appropriate passage. To fit such words into a cable is not so easy as one might assume.”

  Bernard had been a cipher clerk during the war, not an intelligence officer! “Bernard, you read too many novels. This is nonsense.”

  Wunsch held up a hand for silence and opened the book to read him the lines in English. “They are on the beach. Just the two of them, the Walrus and the Carpenter in great discussion, and they are looking at the sand and wondering how on earth one could ever clean the place up.

  “‘If seven maids with seven mops

  Swept it for half a year,

  ‘Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,

  That they could get it clear?’”

  “You’d best explain things, Bernard. At the end of the day I don’t think too clearly. It’s my eyes. They seem to be going on me.”

  Wunsch set the book aside. “It was just a gamble, you understand. But because of the break-ins, I’ve had to try to warn him. If he is gathering information and using this poem as some sort of code, he’ll realize he’s in great danger.”

  A gamble. Two lines chosen with difficulty from a poem that had been marked. “What is it you want from me, Bernard? Praise for doing the right thing when you ought, really, to have warned him right away? Or sympathy, knowing you may well have blown his cover? If he is a spy. If. I’m not so sure of this. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I very much doubt it. Richard’s not the type. He’s far too kind and generous, far too conscious of others. Besides, he holds no loyalty to the British, not after what they did to his father.”

  “He holds none to the Germans, either, not after what they did to his father.”

  A weary sadness crept in on them. Wunsch stubbed out the cigarette and cleared his throat. “Lev, I’ve asked you in here to tell you that because of what has happened I’ve had to tell Richard not—I repeat not—to go to Berlin this time.

  “Ascher, I’m sorry. Believe me, I know how much Rachel means to you and Anna, but Richard’s life may well be in danger. He may be far too important for us to let our personal lives interfere.”

  So there was something else, and Richard would be only too aware of it.

  Lev couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. Self-protection knew no bounds. “Will they let you traders take the Antwerp diamond stocks to England?”

  Wunsch was aghast. “How is it that you know of this?”

  “Do you think I’m blind? Me? Ascher Levinski who spends three-quarters of his time shaping tool diamonds so that Richard can sell them to the Nazis?”

  “Please, you mustn’t say anything of this. Besides, it hasn’t been decided.”

  “So it’s true. You will try to ship the stocks to London but not the cutters and polishers.”

  Wunsch heaved a sigh. “It’s the other members of the Exchange, Lev. This has been a collective decision. For myself, I’ve tried to make them include all the skilled workmen that are so desperately needed, but—” he spread his hands in defeat “—the British are being stubborn. In all probability they won’t take any of us, and they may not even agree to take the diamonds. Only time will tell, and there may not be much of that.”

  Lev indicated the little books. “Have you told Arlette of this business?”

  “No, of course not. The girl suspects nothing more than that someone has been into the files. When Richard returns she’ll be gone from us in any case. This has been her decision, Lev. I couldn’t stop her. She still feels it would be best for him if she left our employ.”

  Tongues of misty rain swept down from the mountainside, making the forest slopes dark and brooding. Out over the lake the early-morning light was gray and cold.

  Hagen gave his rod a flick, sending the fly some thirty feet toward the shore. There were just the two of them, all alone on the lake. Dieter sat in the stern; he stood in the bow to stretch his legs. The rowboat drifted with the wind.

  Somehow he had to get another message off to England. Something must have happened at the office. Bernard knew nothing of the code.

  The rain came stronger now. A gust rocked the boat. He braced himself and pulled up his collar. Then he flicked the rod again.

  “Richard, the Krupp is nervous, yes, about having gone over everyone’s heads and offered you the deal of a lifetime. It’s only natural he should have wished to read your cable. You must admit that last sentence doesn’t quite flow with the rest of the message.”

  “Bernard simply tacked it on as an afterthought. Dieter, how many times must I tell you that Herr Wunsch simply expressed his consternation at the size of the order? Personally, I can’t blame him. Initially the Krupp requested I supply Der Firma with a year’s supply of diamond products, but when I got to the office he had something else in mind. To supply the whole of the Reich with a year’s supply won’t be easy. Not only are some of the stones exceedingly difficult to get and shape, but the very size of such an order, if known, would create panic buying or worse still, hoarding by the dealers.”

  Dieter gathered in his line. “So you have a code. You communicated the order to Herr Wunsch in secret. Therefore he had to reply in code as well.”

  “You’re being worse than Otto Krantz, a singularly unpleasant fellow I met at the border, at Aachen.”

  “My response to Herr Krantz’s call was what released you.”

  “And I’m grateful, but that’s what friends are for.”

  “Richard, listen to me. I’ve told the Krupp nothing could be farther from your mind than to engage in some sort of petty information gathering, yet I have to warn you that a certain hesitation still remains.”

  “In spite of our standing under his Stuka?”

  “Perhaps because of it. Now, please, tell me how, if not in code, you communicated an order of that size to your director knowing that secrecy was of the utmost importance?”

  So that was it! Given the logic of the thing, the German mentality demanded he use a code. They would assume the last sentence of Bernard’s cable was in code and they’d now be satisfied with that explanation even if he didn’t tell them what it meant!

  Hagen was tempted to go along with things, to create a fabrication just to ease their minds.

  “Dieter, what is it with you people? Do you honestly think the members of the Diamond Exchange would stoop to tapping each other’s cables and telephones? That business works on absolute trust. I simply cabled Herr Wunsch from Essen and told him I was sending something in the mails for him to consider. I then sent him the estimates the Krupp had given me, and I asked Bernard to begin putting out feelers so that when I returned to the office I could take over in his absence. Not even an order of that magnitude would stop him from taking his vacation. That’s another reason he’s anxious for me to return.”

  “Then there is no code?”

  He seemed so disappointed. Hagen shook his head. “But I’m going to have to send him a reply. It wasn’t right of you to ask Irmgard to withhold that cable.”

  Richard had access to so much. Every factory, every works. “I’ll take the answer into town for you. Irmgard must do some shopping. We can send it off while the Krupp and Liza are still sleeping.”

  “Am I not allowed to send it myself?”

  Dieter moved to take up the oars. “Look, I know you have clearance, Richard, but it would be better for me if you didn’t this time.”

  “Then can I ask a favor?”

  “Of course. You know that.”

  “I must send a cable to my mother. She’s expecting me to visit them early
in August, but with the Krupp’s request to attend to, I’m going to have to put her off.”

  “What about Berlin? Will you be joining us there, or will you be returning to Antwerp as requested?”

  “Berlin’s essential. Not only do I have customers who are waiting on me, but you know as well as I, the Krupp will want me to meet with his bankers just to reassure them everything will be all right if the deal should go through. The guarantees will have to be staged. They’re really a formality, but Herr Wunsch will understand my hesitation to proceed without them. So, too, will he understand why I must go to Berlin.”

  “Irmgard will be pleased. She and Dee Dee both seem to have acquired an urgent need for you, Richard. I feel quite left out.”

  The time had come. “Dee Dee’s in trouble, Dieter. No—don’t stop rowing. Just take us out a little more and I’ll try another cast.”

  The oars dipped, the rain made its gentle patter on the lake. Richard took up his rod, and they began to fish again.

  Finally Dieter asked, “Well, what is it? What’s the trouble?”

  Hagen told him, and Dieter noticed that when he did so, he faced the opposite shore. A man consumed with his fishing, a salesman who knew enough to know that someone could well be watching them.

  “She’s afraid, Dieter. Why not get her out of the country?”

  Dee Dee one-quarter Jewish … who would have thought it possible? “I don’t know. It isn’t necessary.”

  “You know as well as I that it could be. Dee Dee’s one of us, Dieter. We need to do this for her. You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. I … I don’t know anymore. I thought so. I still do. Let me think on it, Richard. These things are not so easy. There’s also the matter of her parents. Knowing Dee Dee, I doubt if she would leave without them.”

  “Aren’t you going to Brazil?”

  “Irmgard’s not very adept at keeping things to herself. She’s the one who ought to go to Brazil. Yes, it is correct that I’m going there for the Krupp. We must have rubber. The synthetic stuff is still not good enough.”

  Rubber and diamonds … “Will you see what you can do? She hasn’t asked for this, Dieter. She doesn’t know anything of it.” TO WUNSCH BERNARD DILLINGHAM AND COMPANY ANTWERP FROM HAGEN RICHARD OBERAMMERGAU STATION BAVARIA BERLIN IMPERATIVE STOP RETURNING NIGHT TRAIN FRIDAY STOP HOLD INQUIRIES UNTIL THEN STOP SCENERY BEAUTIFUL STOP FISHING NOT TOO BAD STOP FOOD EXCELLENT AS ALWAYS