The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  “What about these tool diamonds? If Brazil’s not good enough, is the New York market not up to it?”

  “With luck there’ll be an embargo in the States, but the Nazis will try to get what they can from there. Fortunately New York’s just not that big a trading center. Not yet.”

  “And the Congo?”

  “A small amount of tool diamonds might be obtained from there, assuming again that they could get them past the mine security and the blockade.”

  Churchill withdrew into a cloud of cigar smoke. When he spoke again, Hagen was unprepared for the question. “How long do you think Heydrich and the Gestapo will continue to let you operate?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I may never know until it’s too late.”

  “And the Abwehr—have you the whole pack of hounds after you?”

  Again he said he didn’t know.

  Churchill leaned forward to fix him with a piercing gaze. “Well, I do, young man. Tell him, Duncan.”

  McPherson looked most uncomfortable. He would have liked to tell Richard in his own good time. “Abwehr agents have been asking about you both here and on the Continent. The feelers are out, Richard. They want your leanings, your willingness to co-operate.”

  “Then Arlette was right. My file was photographed.”

  “Aye, but by which side? Networks cooperate, but does the Sicherheitsdienst tell the Abwehr everything it knows? The Abwehr’s sudden interest suggests that it was Heydrich who authorized the break-in at Dillingham’s.”

  “Are you now about to be caught between them, Richard?” asked Churchill. “Heydrich has made his openers, but will Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the Abwehr not also have something to say to you?”

  Churchill drew on his cigar, savoring the thought. “Normally such a matter as the Antwerp diamond stocks would come under the mandate of the Abwehr—German military intelligence abroad. Heydrich, if I understand my sources correctly, is jealous of the Abwehr and determined to set up within the Secret Service of the SS a counterpart to it. In this he has, I believe, the sanction of Heinrich Himmler, the overall boss of the SS and the closest confidant of Der Führer!

  “The Titans, Richard. God give you shoes of silk!”

  “Mr. Churchill—”

  “Duncan, please don’t chide me. If one cannot appreciate the humor of one’s desperate straits, one cannot best assess their remedies.

  “The Titans, Richard. The Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst, the Krupp, the king of the Belgians, the heads of the Antwerp Diamond Exchange, the British government and the greatest diamond broker of them all.

  “Pray tell me, young man, would Heydrich try to discredit you with this Klees business simply to stir up trouble and thwart the move to London of the diamond stocks, or would he also, perhaps, not have used this Dutchman to slice you off from your friends and throw you into bed with the Nazis?”

  There was no answer that was easy. The problems posed, the sense of entrapment and loss, the sudden futility of trying to win out against it all were too great.

  “You’ve been ill, Richard,” said Churchill, his eyes moistening with sudden sympathy and regret for what he’d just said. “Pray do forgive me. Yet the matter, if I may say so, must be faced.

  “Gentlemen—” he indicated the two of them with the cigar “—I was never good at mathematics, but I wonder, Richard, are you not the factor that will balance out that equation of Heydrich versus Canaris and cancel each side, so that zero equals zero and neither of them poses a threat to our moving the diamond stocks to London?”

  “Pretend to work with Heydrich, pretend to work with Canaris—” began Hagen, aghast at the suggestion.

  “Pretend to go along with them,” said Churchill, the muse. “Every measure will be taken to protect your identity here. You’ll be one of my secret inner circle of advisers. Duncan will be your only contact other than myself. Richard, I want you as my Alice in Through the Looking Glass. Duncan will be the Carpenter; myself, the White Rabbit.”

  Sadly Hagen looked at each of them, knowing it could only end in disaster. “With all due respect, sir, my use of the Alice poems has already been questioned.”

  “By your director, Bernard Wunsch, and your friend Dieter Karl Hunter. But do they know for certain you’re sending code? Did Dieter Karl even recognize the source of that quotation Wunsch sent you?”

  “Not yet. I wouldn’t be here if the Nazis did.”

  “Then let the Alice factor decide. Bluff it out. If the worst comes to the worst, tell them that your mother read you those poems as a child and that you and she trade quotes back and forth as a means of reminding each other of the past. If you like, I will personally see that she understands she is not to question your use of her as a letter drop. The same goes, of course, for your stepfather’s old address in Oxford.”

  “We’ll need a new code. It’ll take time to work it out.”

  “For now you must continue with what we have. It’s good, Richard. They’ll puzzle over it, but remember they need you. For us you are in a unique position—for them also.”

  It was only as they got up to leave that Churchill returned to the matter of Klees. “Is this Dutchman really the end of an escape route we might use?”

  Hagen told him it would have to be checked out several times. “Heydrich and Krantz were just too close to it for comfort.”

  “And this Klees wants you to obtain a safety deposit box for him in London?” asked Churchill.

  “Yes.”

  “Duncan will arrange it.”

  “But why? It’ll ruin my career.”

  “Richard, it will allow the Nazis to think you corruptible. Play along with Klees. Let the Nazis work to find out you’re helping this Dutchman, then they’ll think you can be bought. I want to see just how far they’ll go to get that half ton of diamonds they need.”

  Five

  LESS THAN A MILE separated the tourists from the fishing port of Ostend. Here there was peace and quiet, no crowds to interfere.

  Hagen ran his eyes over the yacht. The Vega gleamed among the clutter of fishing boats whose masts were draped with brick-red sails.

  Arlette had met him at the pier, shy and extending a hand, saying, “You were ill. I’ve gone back to work at Dillingham’s. De Heer Wunsch has given me the weekend off.”

  Two days, the Hotel Imperial for him. He’d checked in and they’d come here straightaway, had walked the length of the Digue, the town’s impressive promenade, then around the harbor. She’d known intuitively he wanted to be alone with her. No parents yet. Just the two of them.

  “I used to come here often, Richard. To buy fish for my mother, and the shrimp the fishermen cook on their way home in the early morning. It’s a lovely sight to see the lights of their boats at dawn. These men are poor but they’re very good and very proud.”

  “That’s a super yacht, Arlette. Willi’s done a beautiful job.”

  She tightened her grip on his arm, was glad to hear him say this. “Hasn’t he? I thought you would like to see it. Have you ever been sailing? Perhaps …”

  Why were things so awkward for them? By rights they should feel at ease with each other.

  The yacht was over on the far side of the channel beyond the lines of drying wicker baskets and rows of herring in the sun. Richard closed a hand over hers and said again, “It’s so good to see you.”

  As if he couldn’t believe it! As if it hurt! “What happened? What’s the matter?”

  “Arlette …” He couldn’t say it. All the way across the channel—for more than three-and-a-half wretched hours of the smoothest crossing, he’d told himself he’d have to say goodbye, that it wasn’t right of him to involve her.

  Then there she was, waiting for him, and he’d known he couldn’t do it. Had hated himself.

  “Willi won’t mind if we go aboard the Vega.”

  Hagen shook his head. “I would, if I was him.”

  This time it was she who led him to a small café. The tobacco smoke was thick, the p
lace full of fishermen who eyed him with suspicion until she spoke to several of them in Flemish. Her laughing eyes and easy manner surprised him; she made them feel so good, those poor old men.

  Huddled over a small table to one side, the two of them faced each other. At once she was serious again. “So, now you will tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Let’s just get to know each other. You’re a Fleming.”

  Arlette tossed her head and smiled. “Me, I’m half and half. My mother is a Walloon, my father a Fleming. That’s why I can speak French and German, or Dutch if you like, or Flemish.”

  “Or English.”

  “Yes, and I would remind you Ostend is a Flemish town, just as is Antwerp.”

  He spread his hands on the table. “Do you love me as much as I think I must love you?”

  “Is it to be a business deal between us, or do you ask because you cannot believe what I have already confessed?”

  Hagen reached for his coffee but set it aside. Never once—not even with Cecile—had he felt this way. “I’m not very good at this, am I?”

  “Should you be?”

  “Look, I want us to get to know each other. I want …” Oh hell, what did he want?

  Arlette saw him drag something out of a pocket. The chain rattled on the table. A superb blue diamond caught the smoke-filled light, a cluster of lesser stones …

  She held her breath and tried to stifle the gasp, but couldn’t quite do so.

  “Richard, are you crazy? In a place like this, you should show such a thing?”

  The color had raced into her cheeks. There was moisture in her eyes. “Look, I want you to have it. No strings attached. Nothing. Please. Just have it.”

  “But …but …”

  “We’ll put it in the vault. Lev can take the stone out of its setting if you like. You can have something else made.”

  There were no words to say what she felt. Her fingers trembled when she touched the stone. It had such a deep and gorgeous shade of blue.

  “Think about it, will you?”

  She shook her head and closed a fist over the thing. Three of the lesser diamonds lay coiled with the braided chain. “Does this mean that you would like us to become engaged?”

  How could it? So soon …

  He closed a hand over hers. “It means that I think I love you very much, but that I’m afraid for your sake.”

  Now she couldn’t look at him. Now she could hardly find her voice, was conscious of everyone watching them. Everyone! “Then we must do so in secret. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Hagen rubbed a thumb gently over the back of her hand. “Only that you know I’m worried and that I must have good reasons or I wouldn’t be saying this to you.”

  “Please take me somewhere. Please tell me this isn’t a nightmare.”

  They left the café and went along to the Vega. Willi would still be at work. Richard sat in the center well with his back to the side of the boat. She knelt between his upraised knees.

  Slowly, hesitantly, with infinite tenderness the girl timidly kissed the salesman. The first touch of her lips on his made her quiver. The next only reinforced things.

  She drew away a little and caught a breath, looked fondly at Hagen, then threw caution away and kissed him as Damas had never seen a woman kiss a man before—long and hard and urgently, then tenderly, lingering only to withdraw as if naked between the salesman’s knees.

  The two of them kissed again, lightly, hesitantly. The girl had that extreme look of smoldering passion young virgins get when in heat. There’d be trouble with unclean thoughts. She’d be haunted by them and yet would let her mind dwell on them until there could be no other solution but to spread her legs.

  Karl Christian Damas was one of the SD’s key operatives in Antwerp. A Belgian, a Fleming of some forty-two years of age, he was a schoolmaster by trade but a priest in disguise.

  Bespectacled, tall and thin, with pale blue eyes and the studious expression of a scholar, he had about him the bemused air of an aesthete bent on teaching the mothers of his young students the facts of art and history while their daughters found out something else.

  Berlin had asked him to meet the Dover ferry and take a look at the man called Richard Hagen.

  He hadn’t bargained for what he’d seen.

  Again the couple kissed, the girl resting back on her haunches with hands placed behind her against the deck to brace herself; the salesman touching the skin at the base of her throat as he sought her lips.

  Naked, the girl would be beautiful—vulnerable, so many things. She’d have to stare up at him, would have to beg …

  She’d say, Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t. I …

  Damas turned away and lost himself among the fishing boats.

  Only then did he head for the railway station. The flat at number 239 the Waalsekaai in Antwerp was nothing special. The river was far too close, the building two hundred years past its prime. Damas had long since removed the priest’s collar, but clothes being expensive, had simply put on a tie and had kept the dark suit and shoes.

  Hagen the salesman of diamonds, the American—the expatriate? he wondered. Quite handsome, if one fancied men, which he didn’t. Quite lost, it seemed, but not just by the young girl who had knelt between his knees. No, lost and deep in thought—worried, yes—but by something else.

  Damas went through to the sitting room to glance at the telephone. Berlin would want to know about the girl right away. He had that feeling about it.

  Yet rules were rules and Krantz was a stickler for them. The break-in at the offices of Dillingham and Company had been example enough. “Get the keys. Check Hagen’s flat before you go busting down the doors. Find the men who will know something about those alarms.”

  How right Krantz had been.

  Though the break-in had been discovered—the girl had been the one to blame for that. A receptionist, a secretary. Pretty, very pretty. She had noticed Hagen’s file had been tampered with. She had quit her job too, only to return to it so as to be with the salesman.

  Damas loosened his tie. It wasn’t easy to get such information. One had to stake out a place. One had to follow people and have contacts, lots of contacts. But there was always talk. Even in the diamond business there was talk. Especially about a break-in.

  He found a cigarette and lit it. Naked, the girl would lie across her bed or on the floor in that room of hers. Hit hard enough, she wouldn’t cry out …

  Stepping over to the telephone, he hesitated—Krantz again—then decided not to risk it.

  Locking the door behind him, he hurried from the flat to find a call box. One word, that’s all it would take. One word to the clerk at the German embassy in Brussels and Krantz would send someone to see him.

  The sound of the telegraph key hammered in the stillness of the night. From somewhere in the warren of trenches a man coughed blood and died.

  Everything had been foul and wet. Everyone had felt so very alone.

  Then the shelling had begun again, and over the Somme the night sky had been filled with starbursts and the staccato chatter of machine-gun fire.

  Bernard Wunsch turned away from the window of their comfortable flat. “The storm will last all night, my dear. You can’t even see the lights of the shipping in the harbor.”

  “What were you thinking of?”

  “Me? Ah, the war. The sound of thunder reminded me of the guns, the lightning of the flashes.”

  That ample woman who had been his wife and companion for more than thirty years set her knitting aside on the coach. “Come and sit by the fire. Stop pacing about like a homeless cat. You’re upset and that’s not good for you. Would you like me to make you some cocoa?”

  “You know I hate the stuff. Make some coffee. Make it good and strong. I must go out.”

  “It’s those cables, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Bernard, you’ve been looking at them off and on all weekend. Ever since you came back fr
om the bookstalls in the flea market you’ve been doodling. Did you think I wouldn’t notice you’d bought English copies of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass?”

  He gave her an ineffectual shrug. “It’s the news. Hitler …”

  “Herr Hitler—pfft! There is something going on at the office, Bernard, and you’re determined to get to the bottom of it.”

  She could be so stubborn. He glanced at the clock and turned back to the windows. Rain beat against the glass in gusts. If he told her he had to talk to Richard she would only ask further questions. It would be best to be firm. “Martine, this is not for you to know.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake burn your scraps of paper! That wastebasket is full.”

  The cables had come into the office on Friday, the first separated from the second by about five hours. Had this Irmgard Hunter tried to reach Richard in England as well? Had they, in turn, realized the urgency of things and tried to reach him at the office?

  He had struggled with his conscience ever since and had done the unpardonable by stalling.

  TO HAGEN RICHARD DILLINGHAM AND COMPANY ANTWERP

  FROM HUNTER IRMGARD HOTEL BAUR DU LAC ZURICH

  JANUS PASSAGE DELAYED INDEFINITELY STOP WILL WAIT TWO DAYS STOP PLEASE CONTACT

  Had the woman been afraid for her life? Had the Nazis followed her to Zurich?

  Guilt forced him to read the other cable.

  TO HAGEN RICHARD DILLINGHAM AND COMPANY ANTWERP

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

  DARLING SORRY YOU WERE ILL STOP FRANK DID HIS BEST TO MAKE YOUR VISIT PLEASANT STOP WISH WE COULD BE EXACTLY AS WE WERE STOP HOW DELIGHTFUL IT WILL BE TO SEE YOU OVER CHRISTMAS STOP LOVE MOTHER

  Telegram One

  Janus? A two-headed Roman god. One who watches both the front and back entrance simultaneously. One who is the protector of both the beginning and the end.

  Why was Janus being delayed? Why had Irmgard Hunter sent the cable from Zurich? Why not from Munich? Why not from somewhere inside the Reich?

  Telegram Two

  (1) “did his very best to make”—from “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Through the Looking Glass.