The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  He had mentioned a man named Klees and a wall of broken dolls.

  Like someone who knows it is useless to speak out in his own defense, he got in the car and drove off without a wave. All too soon he was gone from her, and the gulf between them had widened a little more.

  The visibility on Dorchester Road was down to less than thirty feet. When he finally found the weathered signpost with its tilted arrow, Hagen eased the car off the main road onto a narrow lane.

  Thistles, a few late asters and daisies grew with goldenrod among the waist-high hay, but beyond the farm gate, the pasture was close-cropped.

  Switching off the engine, he got out of the car and stood there listening to the hush of the land.

  Duncan was out there someplace, alone in this.

  The all but silent patter of the drizzle came to him, the sound of laughter from long ago, and then the first few hesitant words that had passed between two wary boys of sixteen.

  Duncan hadn’t asked why he had been sent to them, why he had given his stepfather such a hard time, or why he had felt the loss of his fingers so much.

  Instead, he had sized him up and swiftly come to a decision. “Can you climb?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Och, I mean really climb. High, like. You’ll no be afraid?”

  The aerie had been on the cliffs near Lochinver on the northwest coast of Scotland. Once that first ascent was over, they had climbed and climbed, for Duncan’s father had kept the place of his wife’s birth at Lochinver and every summer had sent his son there to be with her family.

  In the fall they had gone to school together, but who would have thought Duncan would become a tutor in archaeology and prehistory with a consuming passion for studying the Celts?

  The dark, forest-green MG sports coupe, with its threadbare canvas top, was parked to one side at the end of the lane. Beyond it, a thin, stony trail ran into the fogbound fields and hills.

  Maiden Castle was the most impressive of the hill forts that dotted the countryside and occasionally drew the curious. The western entrance had been the most heavily defended. Ramparts rose steeply on either side. Down in the hollows, walking through the fog and the drizzle, he heard no sound save that of the flint underfoot and the lonely, haunting lament of hidden sheep.

  With the advance of the slingshot, and death at more than sixty yards, the Durotriges had enlarged the ramparts, both heightening them and deepening the intervening moats.

  And yet the efforts hadn’t been enough. In A.D. 43 Vespasian and the Second Augustan Legion had overrun the fort.

  Across the flat interior, across the thirty-five or so acres where a settlement of five thousand souls had once been, there was nothing but fog, and through this, as Hagen walked on, the distant cawing of ravens.

  McPherson was down in the moat by the eastern gate, between the first and second ramparts. He was lying on his stomach next to a freshly opened grave, leaning over what looked to be the remains of a skeleton.

  The mud-smeared brown corduroys were drenched, the toes of the collier’s boots turned in. The sleeves of the faded work shirt were rolled up exposing the brawny arms. A streak of mud on the back of his closely shaved neck indicated where he’d swatted at a fly. The thatch of dark brown hair had been trimmed by himself. That he didn’t care about personal comfort was all too apparent; that he cared passionately for those ever-decreasing hours he was able to devote to his work, only too evident.

  Hagen had to grin. Duncan traveled widely to scientific symposia all over Europe, he spoke fluent Italian and French with the harshness of an accent that couldn’t be disguised, but at heart he was still a boy who merely liked to find things.

  So caught up was he in excavating the grave, he didn’t even sense he was being watched.

  In 1934 travelers to the Reich had begun bringing back stories of what was happening there. Though few had wanted to believe there was a threat, Duncan and some others had been convinced of the growing menace. Then in 1935 Duncan had contacted him. It had been that simple. Innocent enough. Just keep his eyes and ears open, nothing more. But now …

  “Duncan, a fellow ought to leave the dead lie sleeping in a place like this.”

  McPherson turned and gave him a wily look. “Up and about, are you? Well, don’t just stand there. Come you down and meet your brother. He’s given us the answer, Richard. Now we know why the hill fort fell to the Romans.”

  The face was strongly boned and squarish, the nose prominent and pugnacious. The dark brown eyes were mischievous and swift. The ears stuck out, the brow was that of a blunt instrument, the build that of a thrower of the caber.

  They shook hands warmly, both grinning from ear to ear with relief perhaps, or just because they were back together again. Then the excitement leaped back into McPherson’s voice. “Richard, Sir Mortimer’s beside himself with delight. We’ve found twenty-eight of these blessed graves! Men, women and children all hacked to death and him—” he indicated the skeleton “—with a ballista point stuck in one of the lower vertebrae. The proof, Richard. The bloody proof! Wheeler’s ecstatic.”

  Duncan dropped to a crouch, then knelt to scrape away a few last smears of clay, exposing the point more fully and tapping it with the trowel.

  “Hot iron, Richard. The ballista was a new invention of war to the Celts, a cart-mounted catapult that fired an iron bolt tipped like this. Every legion had sixty of the blessed things. Think what it must have been like for them.”

  Hagen thought of Fort Eben Emael, of the Maginot Line and of what he’d seen of the German war machine.

  “Duncan, we’re totally unprepared. Within the past six months there’s been a phenomenal increase in production. Somehow we’ve got to convince Whitehall the situation is urgent.”

  Two drovers lingered at the bar. A solitary lorry driver, who must have quit his job or been fired before lunch, had sunk pint after pint over that brief period of time and now waited for the clock to nudge the five-thirty so that he could start all over again.

  McPherson indicated the notes he’d taken down in shorthand—Richard had a phenomenal memory for details. The guns, tanks, bomb loads and speeds of aircraft were all there, the privacy of the booth seeming to have enveloped the two of them in its own cocoon.

  “Richard, there’s someone who wants to meet you—indeed, he insists.”

  The identity of that someone was all too clear. For a moment Hagen didn’t say anything, then that weary sadness he’d felt so often of late crept back in on him. “I’ve been told to stick to selling. That’s what I’m paid for.”

  “But for how long? Richard, Winston says he must talk to you about the Antwerp diamond stocks.”

  “I can’t see him. For the sake of myself, yes, and for that of my friends in the Reich. It’s just too risky.”

  “But you’re our eyes, Richard. Och, we’ve lost virtually all of our people in the Reich. Those who would help us are now so few and on the run, we can but hope they’ll be able to get away.”

  “There are Irmgard and Dee Dee, Duncan. Dieter too, though for all I know he could be working for the Abwehr. The Krupp thing is excellent cover.”

  “There’s someone else. I can see it, Richard. A girl? Damn it, man, you can’t be mixed up with anyone. Women …”

  “I know. Of course I can’t, but until that’s settled, let’s leave Mr. Churchill.”

  “And the Antwerp diamond stocks? Is it that we’re to let Heydrich get his hands on them?”

  “I’ll lose my job. Sir Ernest—”

  McPherson clenched his fists. “Sir Ernest will preach caution while secretly wishing something else. Didn’t he ask you to warn him? He’s party to it then, and won’t say a blessed thing if he hears of it, which he won’t. You have my word on this.”

  “And that of Mr. Churchill?”

  “At least let the two of you talk, then decide how you want to handle things. Don’t say no to a man as great as that. Not when he begs you to pay him a visit. Churchill kn
ows full well the risks you’re taking.”

  Duncan had always been able to convince him. “You make it sound like Ben More or Ben Kilbreck.”

  McPherson grinned with relief. “Perhaps we’ll have another go at those wee hills before Hitler takes us on.”

  “I’d like that, Duncan. Dear God but I would.”

  Flames leaped from between the newly added chunks of anthracite. In the timbered vault of the ceiling a ghost of shadows flickered.

  There were no lights on in the study at Chartwell in Kent, the country house of Winston Churchill. There were no others in the room but Duncan, himself and the man, the legend, the radical.

  By the age of sixty-three Winston Churchill had risen to the heights and fallen to the depths of British politics more times than most. As a young man he had been to India, to Egypt with Kitchener, had been in the Boer War as a journalist, only to find himself a hero overnight. With but a brief absence from 1922 to 1924, he had been a member of Parliament since 1900, and for many of those years a prominent cabinet minister.

  Hagen ran through some of the positions he had held. Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty, Secretary of War …his experience and abilities were vast.

  But for some years now he had been a virtual outcast among his peers, unpopular because he preached rearmament, a warmonger, some said, because he had dared to speak out against what was happening in Germany.

  “Will there be war, do you think?” came the voice, the cigar moving again.

  Hagen glanced at Duncan, who gave him a nod. “Mr. Churchill, I’m almost certain of it. The very fact that they’re tightening up security indicates something’s in the wind. Couple this with the new four-year plan of industry and it seems a foregone conclusion.”

  “How soon will it happen, do you think?”

  “Two years—because they have in hand almost a year’s supply of industrial diamonds and are now attempting to buy another. They’re also looking for alternate sources and trying to manufacture their own grinding and polishing powders from bulk purchases of boart.”

  “Is their mood one of war?”

  “I can’t say—for the generals, that is. For the people, the common workingman, I think not. No, I’d say they’re as hopeful and willing to believe in peace as we are.”

  “Tell me about this new dive bomber they’ve been trying out in Spain. The Stuka. The Junkers 87.”

  Duncan would have already briefed him …

  “I want to hear it from you, Richard. Everything.”

  They’d be here until dawn. “Wingspan 45 feet, 3¼ inches. Length 50 feet, ½ inch. Engine, liquid-cooled, Jumo 211 Da inverted V, 12 cylinder, 1100 HP. Speed, 242 miles per hour. Ceiling, 26,250 feet. Range, 373 miles. Bomb load, one 1102-pound bomb on centerline, four 110-pound bombs on wing tracks. Armament, two wing-mounted MG-17 machine guns, caliber 7.92 mm …”

  Churchill appeared not to be listening. That brooding look became darker, more scowling. Then Hagen heard himself saying, “One manually aimed MG-15 in the rear cockpit, same caliber. Spot-on bombing. G-factor crashes have all but been eliminated by some sort of automatic pilot that makes the plane pull out of its dive even if the pilot has momentarily blacked out.”

  “How will they use it to best advantage, do you think?”

  The interest had been there all along. “Ahead of advancing Panzer divisions to take out enemy artillery and machine gun emplacements. In my estimation it’s as effective if not better than artillery, and it’s much more mobile.”

  The salesman was impressive. “Describe the look of the plane for me.”

  Hagen told him of the spatted undercarriage, the gull-wing profile, the closeness of the cockpit, even the smell of the leather.

  “Anything else?” asked Churchill. The cigar was poised, the brow still furrowed.

  “A siren.”

  The breath escaped from Churchill. “Why, for God’s sake?”

  Hagen’s gaze returned to the fire. “To terrify people. It’s excruciating to hear it.”

  Quickly he told him of the Krupp and Dieter Karl, and of how he had forced himself to stand there on the landing field.

  Churchill was adamant. “The Nazi mind knows no depth to its cruelty. A siren … radar?” he asked.

  “For heavy guns on their battleships, yes. They are also working on something they call the Freya, an early-warning system, but I believe as yet it can’t give them the altitude of the incoming aircraft.”

  He had traveled the length and breadth of Germany. He had seen and heard so much. “You don’t seem too enthused about their radar?”

  “It’s a low priority with them. I believe they intend to hit first, Mr. Churchill, and to hit harder than any army ever has. Everything I’ve seen suggests a very rapid deployment of armored troops, a lightning thrust with tanks. The only thing is …”

  The cigar was clamped tightly, the eyes intent. “Go on, speak your mind, for pity’s sake! I need to pick your brains. They deserve to be picked!”

  “They’re not building the trucks they should. Tanks, yes, and halftracks, but a fully motorized army would need great numbers of trucks just to carry supplies and reinforcements, and I haven’t seen them. Not yet.”

  The man was a treasure. “Rockets?”

  He told him about the amber, about its use as a high-altitude insulating material for electrical wires. “They were working on some sort of guidance system at the Heinkel factory on the Baltic.”

  “Could you get us one?”

  The eagerness, the wish to be a part of things, were apparent, the naiveté, too. He knew of Churchill’s stubborn obstinacy, of his wild ideas sometimes and of his bravery, too—no one could dispute those. Still, he would have to be told.

  “How could I? The Gestapo have taken a decided interest in me. For all I know, the Abwehr are also interested. To be caught with such a thing …”

  “That experimental research facility of theirs?”

  “In Berlin? Could I get in there, is that what you mean?”

  “Young man, you know it is.” He would push Hagen now. He would see what he was made of.

  “Then you know the answer. It’s out of bounds, Mr. Churchill, and I haven’t anything to report to you or to Duncan because they don’t tell me and I don’t ask. If I were to ask, that would indicate an interest in something I ought, really, to know nothing about.”

  “What about photographs and drawings? Could you get them? I’ve got to have proof. Those bullocks in the War Office won’t believe me otherwise. This government of ours has decided only to be undecided.”

  “With all due respect, sir, they must know enough already. The chief test pilot of Vickers has seen the ME-109 fly. He was scared to death by the number of fighter planes coming off their assembly lines. Didn’t Whitehall believe him?”

  “They don’t want to believe him!”

  “Then why should they believe what I say?”

  Churchill drew on his cigar and motioned for Duncan to refill their glasses. The time had come to get down to business. “Tell me about the diamonds.”

  “The Germans need about two-and-a-half million carats a year to sustain present production. That’s about half a ton, if you want it in simple terms.”

  “Half a ton …”

  “About nine cubic feet if we assume fifty percent pore space, but diamonds of all sizes, all grades from grinding and polishing powders on up to tool diamonds.”

  “Their value, approximately?”

  “Two-and-a-half million American dollars, five hundred-and-ten thousand pounds sterling. Mr. Churchill, in addition to all our stocks of gem and tool diamonds, there are thirty million carats of crushing boart ready and waiting in the Antwerp vaults. Diamond grinding wheels are the only thing that will sharpen tungsten carbide. Without the boart, they’d be sunk. Those stocks absolutely must be moved to London. If war breaks out, the Germans will make a dash for them. Somehow you must convince the British government to agree to let us move them here.”


  “The British government …” Churchill took a sip of whisky, nodding his thanks to Duncan. “Some of the people in Whitehall have it in mind to establish a cutting center in Brighton. They want to take over Antwerp’s enviable position as the premier cutting center of the world. They want to deal, Richard. To apply pressure of their own while the squeeze is on. Your friends in Antwerp have every reason to be edgy. They’ll want to be certain to have their guarantees in writing.”

  A cutting center in Brighton … No mention of it from the Committee, none either from Sir Ernest. “But De Beers has just concluded an agreement with the Belgian government and La Forminière that offers the best of all gem rough to the Antwerp dealers?”

  Churchill was pleased with the reaction to his little coup. “Precisely! Ernest had to give the Belgians that to ease their minds about Brighton! You are stepping between the Titans, Richard. Dance with care.”

  Never mind the threat of war. Never mind that the stocks might be seized. It was still to be business first!

  “What’s the king of the Belgians got to say about shifting the diamonds to London?” demanded Churchill sharply.

  Taken aback by the obvious antagonism, Hagen answered, “He’s against the move, as you must surely know. It places us in a—”

  “I should say it does, young man. Leopold’s policy of neutrality places the diamonds in a most vulnerable position. If I were you, I should keep a close eye on him. A half a ton … it seems so little, Richard. Pray tell us where they’ll get them if war breaks out?”

  Churchill had swung from being the lion to being the wily cat of a Smithfield butcher shop. “They’re already looking for alternate sources. A lot will depend on how effective a blockade can be mounted and how many of the mines remain open. My guess is that they’ll have to turn to the Belgian Congo for the boart, to Mbuji-Mayi, though they’ll still have to get the diamonds past the mine security.”

  “Couldn’t they use gem diamonds?”

  “There aren’t enough of them easily available. Even with the depressed market, they’re still far too expensive. Besides, I doubt if greed would allow them to do so.”