The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  “The company—he has not mentioned the company, Dieter?”

  “He’s enjoying it too much. Now come on, Irmgard, don’t sulk. Richard has an interest in you, of this I’m certain.”

  Laying the other cable on the counter, she read it once again, then handed her brother the copy she’d made.

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

  HAVING A PLEASANT RUN THIS TIME BUT VERY BUSY STOP GREATLY FEAR I’M UNABLE TO COME AS ARRANGED STOP WILL DO EVERYTHING I CAN TO PUSH FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS MID TO LATE AUGUST STOP WISH I COULD BE MORE DEFINITE BUT THAT’S THE WAY OF THINGS STOP TELL FRANK TO KEEP THE CORKSCREW HANDY STOP AFFECTIONS TO YOU BOTH.

  “I didn’t know he felt so warmly toward his mother, Dieter?”

  “He doesn’t, but why tell Frank to keep a corkscrew handy? Surely his stepfather would do so?”

  “You’re being too German, too cautious. Richard is only teasing his mother. You know very well he keeps his stepfather at arm’s length.”

  “And his mother.”

  Unknown to them, the message read:

  TROUBLE ANTWERP OFFICE / QUESTIONS BEING ASKED / REICH NOW ORDERS YEAR’S SUPPLY

  “Bitte, Dieter. Please. It’s so good to be alone with you.”

  The rain fell steadily now, and from the bedroom window in the loft, a gray light filtered in to them.

  Hunter held Dee Dee from himself, locking his thumbs into her armpits so that her weight rested on him and her arms were wrapped around his own. “Kiss me again. Please,” she said with that desperate urgency only she could give.

  “In a minute. I want to look at you, Dee Dee. Sit back. I want to remember this moment.”

  “You sound as if it will be our last! I wish you wouldn’t. It’s bad enough you’re going away.”

  His eyes lingered on her body. Dee Dee nervously wet her lips. As she watched him, she clamped her knees more tightly against him. “Is there something wrong with me?” she asked. Irmgard must have told him, or Richard … Yes, Richard had been the one to let him know about her grandmother. It was so unfair. Jewish … part Jewish!

  The duvet slipped from her shoulders. Goose pimples began to rise on the milk-white skin, exciting him.

  She straightened up and arched her back. Eyes on her breasts, he smiled, thought wicked thoughts perhaps, or thought he must leave her.

  In a whisper she said, “Touch them. Wet your fingers.”

  Did he really love her? Sometimes Dieter simply took her for the taking. Sometimes they made love with a passion that could only be lasting.

  When he touched a nipple, she caught his hand and held it to her breast. Leaning back, she stirred his erection.

  He brushed his hands over her flanks. Cupping each breast, he caught the nipples and made them hard—strained to sit up, and hungrily found her lips.

  She drank him in. His hands slid down over the firm soft contours of her seat, gripping her now. She found her voice. “I want to come, Dieter. I need it.”

  “Then come. Let me watch.”

  “Please …”

  Hunter lay back and grinned up at her. Flattening a hand against the smoothness of her stomach, Dee Dee spread her fingers and pushed them down into the jet-black curls of her mons—wouldn’t take her eyes from his.

  Parting the lips, she found herself and began slowly to bring herself to orgasm. Several times it failed, several times she touched her nipples or held the base of her throat.

  His cock was big and hard between her legs. She could feel it riding up against her.

  Dieter gave a chuckle. She heard it as laughter. Harsh and bitter—mocking her and so distant.

  Dee Dee bit her lower lip and shut her eyes. It was horrible of him to watch her masturbating, horrible of her to do it in front of him.

  Reaching back, she found his cock and squeezed it. He said, “That’s not allowed.”

  She said, “Damn you!”

  Smoke crept into her dark eyes, misting them. She held her seat—flattened a hand over a buttock, kept on until the blood pounded in her head and she gave the first of several earthy cries, didn’t care anymore, had to do it. Had to!

  She flung herself off him and onto her hands and knees. Waited tensely, said, “Damn you, Dieter. Do it to me!”

  Hunter pushed her down over the edge of the bed. Kneeling between her legs, he flattened his hands on the cheeks of her rump, spread them, molded them, then slid the hands right up the length of her and drove himself into her.

  The blood rushing into her head, Dee Dee pushed herself up against him—strained to do so and gave a stifled scream, a broken cry of ecstasy.

  Again and again he slid himself into her. Moaning, tossing her head from side to side, she tightened her muscles and wept as he came inside her. Wept for all the good times they’d had, for all the promises.

  Afterward, lying cradled in his arm, he smoking a cigarette, she heard him ask, “How do you find our Richard this time?”

  She traced an uncertain finger through the curls on his chest. “Distracted. Worried. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Only curious. Did Richard say anything about that mining company he’s always dreaming of? We could help him, Dee Dee. I’d like to do that for him.”

  She laid her head on his chest, listened to the beating of his heart. “He’s quiet this time. Me, I don’t think he’s interested anymore. Resigned to working for his firm perhaps. Yes, resigned to that and preoccupied.”

  “Tired?”

  “Yes, tired and run-down. Irmgard is worried about his malaria. Perhaps that is what’s bothering him.”

  “Isn’t he taking mepacrine? It’ll help. It always does when he goes into the tropics. He takes it for several weeks beforehand. Quinine and sulfa are only good when he has an attack.”

  Had someone stolen the mepacrine from Richard’s suitcase? she wondered. Nothing was sacred anymore. Nothing. It would be just like the Gestapo or the Sicherheitsdienst, the Secret Service of the SS, to have done such a thing if Richard was gathering information. But then, of course, that could not be.

  Hunter drew on his cigarette and held in the smoke a long time before brushing a hand over her hair. “Doesn’t Irmgard suit him? What’s she said?”

  Dee Dee turned suddenly to look at him. “That they will probably play chess while we fuck like dogs and that she will let him win or he will let her.”

  “She didn’t say dogs. She said make love. Irmgard’s a romantic.”

  “And so is Richard.”

  “Then we must see that the two of them come together.”

  The rally was in the Tiergarten, in Berlin’s sprawling central park. There were masses of troops, crowds of cheering people. Lines of torches lit the sky while on a platform, under a golden eagle, the hierarchy of the Third Reich sat in silence as their leader ranted on and on about peace.

  The crowd remained spellbound. Not a soul moved, not a horse among the mounted guard.

  Imperceptibly, Hagen moved closer to Irmgard. Dieter was running his eyes over the stage. Dee Dee was leaning back against him.

  Flanked by Goering, Himmler, Heydrich and Rosenberg, the Führer paused, his clenched fist uplifted. Hess stood some distance away, with Bormann and Goebbels.

  And not a sound, other than the flapping of the banners and now, from somewhere distant, the lonely, wounded howling of a dog.

  Then, as if to shut out the canine insult, the Führer nodded and the place erupted with “Peace! Peace! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! One Führer, one Germany!”

  Hitler beamed. Goebbels began to applaud. The band struck up the ancestral “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.” All up and down the broad avenues the people linked arms and swayed from side to side. Mad with joy, most of them would go home believing their Führer had honestly meant peace.

  Hagen scanned the faces around him. Since he’d come to Berlin there hadn’t been a chance to get away for even an hour or two. If only the girls weren’t w
ith them. If only there weren’t blank faces in the crowd …

  Goons. Thugs. He picked them out, surprised to find so many clustered near.

  Weighing the options, he put his arms about Irmgard and kissed her ear. “I promised to call on the daughter of one of our employees. Let me lose myself in the crowd. I’ll meet you all back at the Kakadu. We’ll have a drink and then go on to the Kranzler for a bite to eat.”

  “Richard, don’t! Please …” She couldn’t take her eyes from the stage. “Something’s wrong. I feel it. We’re being watched.”

  “She’s Jewish, Irmgard. Her father’s afraid for her.”

  “Then go. Do what you can. The crowd’s breaking up.”

  The Tiergarten was huge, wild in parts, tame in others. Riding trails crisscrossed and circled the lowlands or went up into the woods. Down in the hollows, near the ponds, the sounds of the crowd and traffic fell away, and he could hear the gentle trickle of water as it flowed over one of the little dams.

  The ponds were in series. Those toward the Unter den Linden were a shade higher than those toward the zoological gardens. Hagen followed the sound of the water. When a shadow moved, he froze. When another appeared among the trees off to his left, he knew they’d stuck close to him.

  Steadily he walked out of the woods, found a cindered path and began to make his way along it toward the Potzdamer Platz.

  They fell in behind him, the two of them.

  Under one of the lights he was asked for the time. Then the two of them walked on ahead and left him standing there.

  About thirty or thirty-five. Tough. Hands in the pockets of their coats. Collars up. No cigarettes …

  Hagen turned, and when they looked again, he was gone.

  Number 87 Motzstrasse was just off the Nottendorfplatz, not far from the cathedral. As Lev had said, the place was on the fifth floor. What he hadn’t said was that the tenement was run-down, that the street was dark, and that the stairs, seen from the porch, rose precipitously to the first of several landings.

  Satisfied that the lone car parked down the street was empty and had been so for hours, he struck a match, found the bell and rang the flat.

  Nothing happened. Again he tried the bell, this time pressing it a little longer.

  Still there was no answer. He thought of trying one of the other flats, thought of leaving.

  Time … he’d have to take the time.

  Cursing the place, he tried the outer door and found it open. The lock had been broken ages ago, so, too, the buzzers.

  When he reached the fifth floor, there was only a small landing. Three doors led off this. The name was scratched in the dark brown paint. He knocked.

  They didn’t answer. It was now nearly midnight and he’d been away too long.

  Looking back down the staircase, he caught a breath. It was a hell of a drop.

  He knocked again, this time a little louder, a little more sharply. Still there was no answer. Only on the third attempt did a woman’s voice timidly ask who it was.

  “Rachel, I’ve come from your father.”

  The door opened in a hurry, the woman tearing at the locks. With tears in her eyes, Frau Tannenbaum blurted, “We thought it was the police. Come in. Please. I’m sorry, so sorry. Papa … Papa, how is he?”

  Once started, she couldn’t stop talking, though he tried to impress upon her the need for haste. She was tall like her father, with the same sensitive blue eyes, but with the long, dark auburn hair of her mother, braided into a rope that was clutched in embarrassment. “My nightgown. I’m sorry. We were asleep. Moses—” she turned to her husband “—Moses, ask Herr Hagen into the sitting room.”

  Behind her, lost in the hallway, Moses Tannenbaum clutched his skullcap as if still not sure of what to do with it. He wore the beard and look of a rabbinical scholar, had the wounded brown eyes of a haunted man.

  Hagen dispensed with formality. “Apply for visas. Emigrate. Get in wherever you can. That’s the message your father asked me to give you.”

  “And did he tell you the doors were closed?”

  This had come from the husband. Hagen paused to reassess the situation. The bookseller slipped his yarmulke on. “The Nazis want to kick us out, Herr Hagen, but the countries of the world are reluctant to take us in.”

  “Will you leave if I can manage to sponsor you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even if it means leaving the shop?” This had come from the wife.

  “You know that, Rachel.”

  “Look, I can’t promise anything, but I’m going to England soon. I’ll try to see what I can do.”

  Tannenbaum shook his head. “Save your breath. The British don’t want us.”

  “What about Belgium?” Again the head was shaken. “Brazil—there might be a possibility there.”

  “We’d need money.” Moses shrugged to indicate the flat. “As you can see, we have none.”

  “There’ll be money waiting for you. Consider it a loan.” It would complicate things, but given the circumstances, what else could he do?

  Irmgard and Dee Dee had got to him.

  “Say nothing of this, please. Even to your very best friends. Just keep it to yourselves.”

  They thanked him warmly. Rachel asked him to wait a moment more. After she disappeared into the kitchen, he heard her cutting something and then wrapping it.

  “There … for my father. Please. You take it with you. It’s only a bit of honey cake, but it’ll tell him more than words or my letters that we’re well and now so full of hope.”

  The street was empty. The car had left. From the direction of the Nottendorfplatz came the sounds of traffic. Otherwise the night was still, the wind gone.

  A cat, a stray, wandered from an alleyway only to dart across the street and disappear into the darkness. Not liking the look of things, Hagen walked briskly away from the tenement. When he passed a boarded-up building, he knew he had his man. Short, squat and wearing a fedora. Standing by a door, cupping a lighted cigarette in one hand. As still as the night yet letting himself be seen.

  Otto Krantz—he was certain of it. The Berliner would be chuckling at his discomfort.

  The steps began when he was some distance away, and until he reached the bright lights, Hagen knew he was being followed.

  Dieter and the girls weren’t at the Kakadu. He ran his eyes over the huge semicircular bar and the crowded tables. Pretty blond and brunette waitresses were everywhere—they never hired anything else in this place. There were men on the make, women too. Business was booming as usual.

  “Do you wish a table?”

  “Yes. Please. For four. No, make it for five.”

  A number. Any number …

  He let the waitress lead him to a table. He tipped her well, then took off his coat. Leaving the honey cake on the table and the coat over the back of a chair, he headed for the washrooms, pausing only to order a round of drinks for the friends who hadn’t shown up.

  In the back, he shoved open the door of the men’s room, then made for the kitchens at a run. Once out on the street again, he managed to find another taxi. Krantz wasn’t far behind him. As the taxi turned a corner, Hagen had a last sight of him standing at the curbside enjoying life, a man on holiday, a Berliner …

  At the Kranzler Restaurant there was no sign of Dieter and the girls. Something had gone wrong. He should never have left them, never have asked Irmgard to distract her brother.

  Dee Dee lived in Charlottenburg overlooking the Lietzensee. When in Berlin, Irmgard often stayed with her. As he paid off the taxi, Hagen could see that the lights were out in the second-floor apartment.

  The hall light was out, the door to the flat slightly ajar. He warned himself not to go in, to leave while he could. The doors should have been locked.

  Dee Dee was lying facedown across the bed. Her arms were outstretched, her head turned away from him, the hair spilling forward in a tangle over the edge of the bed.

  Blood had trickled from a cut behin
d her ear.

  “Dee Dee …”

  He couldn’t bring himself to move.

  “Richard … oh, Richard. Dieter …”

  The front of her dress had been ripped open to the waist. “Dieter went after you. Irmgard tried to stop him, but they … they came at me. One had a knife. They said they were going to teach me a lesson. They took me into the trees and they …”

  A policeman had finally heard her screams and had blown his whistle. She had run from them and had somehow managed to get home.

  She hadn’t been raped. “Lie back and try to rest. Let me get you a drink. It’s over, Dee Dee. Nothing more’s going to happen to you.”

  Grimly he went through to the living room and switched on the lights. Still in his tuxedo, Dieter Karl was sitting in a chair. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Dieter said, “Where were you?”

  “I went to see the daughter of one of our employees. She’s Jewish, Dieter. I didn’t want to cause you any embarrassment.”

  “Then don’t. From now on be honest with me, Richard. If you need such help, you’ve only to ask.”

  “Where’s Irmgard?”

  “Gone home to Munich for her own good.” Daylight came at last, and with it a burst of sunlight that lit the living room and all the lovely things Dee Dee had gathered around her.

  Hagen sat alone in a chair. Above the mantelpiece there was a still life by Cezanne, a magnificent thing, so simple though. A blue pot, some apples, a kitchen table. The warmth … a mother’s voice. Children somewhere … Why couldn’t life be like that?

  The mantelpiece was of white, draped alabaster, with fluted panels at the sides and Greco-Roman carvings along the top. A tall, beautifully shaped porcelain vase from China complemented the painting.

  There were small, gorgeous pieces of sculpture, other paintings, one by Degas, another by El Greco, a Dürer …

  If she had to, Dee Dee must be made to leave it all behind.