The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  (2) “exactly as we were”—from one of the verses the White Rabbit reads out at the trial of the Knave of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  (3) “How delightful it will be”—from the Mock Turtle’s song in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  Passage (1) in plain vertical cipher using four rows and groupings of four letters (n substituted for second s):

  d i n m possible meaning: don’t

  i s t a take

  d b t k it

  h e o e to him

  Passage (1) in plain horizontal cipher using four rows and groupings of four letters:

  d i d h possible meaning: take

  i s b e it

  n t t o to

  m a k e him

  There were several other futile attempts at decoding, even to arranging all of the letters in a row and then taking them from both ends and working toward the center so as to build four-letter columns. didhisbesttomakeexactlyaswewerehowdelightfulitwillbe

  d e i b

  h l i l

  s i b w

  It was now the evening of September 8, and Irmgard Hunter, the sister of the Baron Dieter Karl, would have waited all weekend in hopes of Richard’s call.

  “Martine, I have to meet the train from Ostend. I must speak with Richard.”

  “Then let me burn those for you. I promise I won’t look.”

  He shook his head and went to the fireplace. Taking a handful of his crumpled notes, he began to feed them into the flames. He could make no sense of the passages that had come from England, and this troubled him. The letters must be keyed to a numbered code that in turn meant entirely different letters. It was a level of sophistication that was upsetting. Only Richard and his opposite, whoever he was, would know the answer.

  Decoded, the message would read: CONTACT IRMGARD HUNTER / RECRUIT IF POSSIBLE / WHITE RABBIT SENDS REGARDS.

  Shadows fell over the Zurichsee. One by one the lights in the city came on, and from the hills that ringed the lake and kept back the snowcapped mountains, an air of quiet contentment settled over the valley below.

  As Hagen watched her, Irmgard gripped the terrace railing.

  The guest house was on the outskirts of the village of Uetli Berg, about a half-hour’s train ride up into the hills from the city. She’d left a note for him at the hotel, asking him to call a friend, who had directed him here.

  The house appeared to be empty but for the two of them.

  The last of the sunlight etched the strongly featured Nordic brow. It made the thick, wide brush of her eyebrows more hooded, more severe.

  But then she flashed him an uncertain smile and extended a hand. “Thanks for coming. My God, I still can’t believe you’re here. I thought … Oh, what the hell does it matter what I thought? I knew you’d come.”

  “How’s Dee Dee?”

  The hazel eyes searched his for signs of interest in herself, signs of caution. “Badly frightened. They won’t let her leave the Reich, Richard. When we went to get her travel papers, they took her passport away.”

  “Can’t Dieter do anything?”

  “Dieter, Dieter—is it always to be up to him? Can’t you do anything? Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that … well, I’ve leased this place for her. Me, the daughter of a Nazi industrialist has had to find a bolt hole for her childhood friend.”

  “And Dieter?”

  She gripped the railing again. “My brother says there is no need to worry. If you ask me, I think Dee Dee’s become an embarrassment to him.”

  Why couldn’t Richard put his arms about her? Why couldn’t they kiss like lovers? “We’d best go in. It’s getting cold.”

  “When does he leave for Brazil?”

  “Soon, I think. Look, can you help me with the finances? They’ve blocked her money. I—” she swung round now, stood so close to him “—I can’t go to my father. Dieter … Dieter would only ask why I needed the money.”

  Hagen took hold of her by the elbows. The blue diamond had drained his account. He’d be overdrawn. He’d have to ask Bernard to cover for him. “Of course. Would a hundred suit? Pounds, that is. I can let you have a bank draft on my trading account. No problem.”

  His hands were still holding her—reassuringly, damn it! “They’ll have to let Dee Dee leave, won’t they? She doesn’t have to be connected with Dieter. She can just quietly slip away. Then I can come to visit her here, and you can, too. Isn’t that right?”

  Hagen kissed her brow. She flattened her hands against his chest, moved in closer, wanted him. Dear God, how she wanted him.

  “I know I mustn’t cry, but I’m afraid for her, Richard. Dieter … Dieter isn’t himself anymore.”

  At dawn they followed a well-worn path and climbed in silence to the summit that was above Uetli Berg. Now the whole breathtaking panorama was spread before them. The high peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the Appenzell, the Jura, the Black Forest, too.

  They’d spent the night in separate rooms. She’d lain there hoping he would come to her; he’d stayed by the fire for so long, lost to his thoughts.

  “When will you be back in the Reich?”

  “A month, two months. I don’t really know. I was in England, Irmgard. I’ve not even been in to the office.”

  Was there someone else? There had been … a nightclub owner. A very beautiful woman, Cecile Verheyden, Dieter had said with that look in his eyes, but that had been finished two years ago.

  Irmgard reached for his hand and held it tightly. Together they watched the sun rise. “Be careful when you come back, Richard. Remember that things can no longer be the same.”

  In Zurich he glanced through the message he’d written and then encoded:

  TO THE CARPENTER SEARCH TITLE CHALET VILLEREUSE UETLI BERG CONFIRM LEASED HUNTER IRMGARD AND NOT ABWEHR SAFE HOUSE / ALICE

  On October 8 the Austrian chancellor, Schuschnigg, publicly condemned Hitler’s policy of Anschluss, the union of the two Germanic-speaking countries. On the thirteenth of the month the Germans stated they would respect Belgium’s neutrality and would come to its defense if it was attacked by any foreign power. In return, they demanded only that the Belgians agree not to go to war against the Reich.

  In the Sudetenland the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia demanded its right to autonomy, and in Danzig, Poland, there were Nazi-inspired riots against the Jews.

  The Japanese war in China had entered yet another critical phase. No country seemed safe from the madness.

  Hagen ran his eyes over the message that had come in to the office from the Magpie Lane address in Oxford:

  SEARCH MADE CHALET VILLEREUSE UETLI BERG / SUBLEASED TABOR INGE / APPEARS HUNTER IRMGARD HAS TAKEN STEPS TO PROTECT SELF / EITHER AN ELABORATE ABWEHR DECEPTION OR CLEAR / PROCEED TO RECRUIT WITH UTMOST CAUTION

  It was raining in Berlin, making gray the austere stone buildings and wide avenues.

  Directly across from a corner of the Tiergarten the broad windows of the Fuerstenhof Cafe faced onto the Potsdamer Platz, where the early-morning life of the city would soon pass before him.

  Hagen bought a copy of the Völkischer Beobachter, the People’s Observer. Over black coffee, rusks and marmalade he watched the Platz.

  Sometimes it was the best way to get a feel for what was going on. The traffic tower in the middle of the Platz would soon be inundated as nearly a dozen avenues converged on it.

  The request from the Krupp had been brief. Another meeting. Could he come?

  There’d been none of the hassles at the border, not a sign of Otto Krantz. Indeed, it had been an uneventful trip. Yet he couldn’t help but feel uneasy.

  Arlette and he had said goodbye at the Central Station. It had been late and he’d been worried about her. But she’d stayed on the platform watching the train disappear, hadn’t wanted him to go.

  Intuitively she’d known how worried he was.

  Across the Platz, the flower sellers were arranging their wares. Under the broad awning of a chocolate shop an ancient sh
oeshine boy had begrudgingly been allowed to set up shop in payment for a few marks and a percentage of the day’s take.

  The doorman at the Haus Vaterland was making certain the sidewalk and steps were being properly cleaned. Hagen pitied the boy under him.

  Life went on. The traffic soon began to swell. A second pot of coffee came, another plate of rusks. One staff car after another passed before him until he suddenly realized there were far too many of them.

  In the newspaper there was nothing about a meeting, another rally. Yet the cars had come from all over the Reich, he was certain of this now.

  Just what the honorary SS-Gruppenführer Keppler, the secretary of state, was doing at the meeting Hagen didn’t know, but the man was proving to be a problem.

  “One carat equals one-fifth of a gram, Herr Gruppenführer. To meet the needs of the Reich for one year I must somehow find two-and-a-half million of them.”

  Alfried Krupp hastened to interject, “That is of all diamonds, Herr Keppler. Approximately thirty percent of those would be what we call tool diamonds. Then there are those we need for bearings and those we need for—”

  “Please, Baron, let Herr Hagen finish. You were saying?”

  The sounds of impatiently drumming fingernails came to him, a heavy sigh. About the table, in the basement of the Reich Chancellery, seven men were seated besides himself.

  Hagen reached for his briefcase and took out a small, much worn wooden box. From it he poured a handful of dark brown, almost black beans, then took a small, hand-held brass balance that was nothing more than a piece of string tied to the center of a short wooden rod from the ends of which the two small brass pans were suspended.

  As if to a schoolchild he said, “Those are the seeds of the carob tree, Herr Gruppenführer. Long ago pearl merchants in the Middle East found that when dried, the seeds so seldom varied in weight they could use them as a standard for weighing their pearls. Later the carat, or carob seed, was used for weighing diamonds in the field until the weight became standardized at one-fifth of a gram.”

  From his pocket he took a vial containing several emerald-green macles. Placing one of them in the left-hand pan, he added five carob seeds to the right-hand pan.

  They almost balanced. It was so close …

  Keppler nodded. He adjusted the rimless glasses that perched tightly on the bridge of his nose. “May I?” he asked, reaching across the table.

  “But of course. Just hold the balance by the string.”

  The Führer-like mustache, blunt head and stern, unfriendly gaze were clear. No humor there. Keppler knew he was being ridiculed by the others.

  Kurt Schmitt, the Nazi minister of Economy, cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, if we could get on with this. Herr Hagen, you’ve said you can supply us with only one-quarter of the order every six months. That is not enough.”

  “I’m trying my best to rectify that, Herr Schmitt, but believe me, it’s not going to be easy.”

  “Why? There are some thirty million carats in the vaults of the Diamant Boart in Antwerp right now.”

  This had come from Franz Epp, the Krupp’s head of internal security and counterintelligence. “Yes, I know, but it’s simply crushing boart suitable only for saw blades, grinding wheels and powders.”

  Epp arched his eyebrows impatiently. “Then why, please, can’t we at least have a year’s supply of those?”

  “Because there are others who demand their orders, too, Herr Epp. Because, although the crushing boart is there, it’s in the form of cubes, octahedra and granules that must be—”

  “Please, what is meant by octahedra?”

  It was Keppler again, still holding on to the balance by the string.

  Hagen reached into a pocket for another vial and his hand lens. Pouring a stream of boart onto a sheet of paper, he offered the secretary of state the lens, then quickly sorted through the stones with the end of a pencil. “Those clear, glassy, pyramidal-looking crystals are octahedra from South Africa. The yellowish-green and whitish to brownish cubes are from the Belgian Congo. Some of the black to steel-gray granules are from Brazil, others from the Congo as well.”

  “And the name boart?” asked Keppler.

  Ritter von Halt, the director of the Deutsche Bank, looked at Keppler as if he were an idiot. Roche, of the Dresdener Bank, was more kindly. “Bastard. It’s from the old French word for bastard, Herr Gruppenführer.”

  Hagen was glad Roche had been the one to say it. “Please continue,” said Epp.

  “By all means. The boart must be crushed and ground and then sized. This takes time—hours, several days. Then the grinding wheels and saw blades must be made to order.”

  “Why can’t we make them ourselves? Couldn’t we?”

  The making of the tools was a part of the business no one would want to lose. “You’d need the technicians. We’re only just getting into sintering. Bonding agents have varying strengths. Day by day our technology is changing, gentlemen. My advice would be to be patient if possible.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  This had come from Schmitt, the minister of Economy.

  Even as his mind raced back to the number of staff cars on the roads that morning, Hagen continued as if nothing of importance had been said. “Then I’d suggest, Herr Schmitt, that we send a team of technicians to Antwerp. If you’ll give me a little time, I might be able to sort out the matter with my firm and with the Diamant Boart of which we are an affiliate. They’ll not greet the idea with enthusiasm, but let me work on them.”

  It was an offer he hadn’t wanted to make, but it had the desired effect. Franz Epp was blocked, the Krupp immensely satisfied. Rohnert, from the Ministry of Industry, thought the idea good. “If we can do that, Herr Hagen, would it not also be possible for you to train our cutters and polishers?”

  So they had got as far as that …

  “They’d have to work under Jews,” said Schmitt. “They’re all Jews.”

  “Not all,” offered Hagen. “But if you could look the other way …”

  Epp didn’t buy it. Hagen was a Jew-lover. “Men don’t change their skins overnight. Since when would you advise us to take advantage of the Jews?”

  Tough, a brawler from the steel mills and cannon works, Epp was the one he feared the most. It would be best to pass it off. “I want to sell diamonds, gentleman. If it takes a bit of training, then fair enough. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And the gold?” asked Ritter von Halt of the Deutsche Bank.

  “Payment is still to be in bullion, in advance. Those are my instructions, gentlemen. Like everyone else, I have my orders.”

  This they could understand.

  “And the delays, the shipping of one-quarter of our order every six months instead of one-half?”

  “Gentlemen, please. I’m doing the best I can. Already I’ve had to meet with clients in Zurich and Prague to try to put them off. On my way home I’ve got to call into Amsterdam for the very same reason, and when I get back to Antwerp I know I’ll be off again to Paris and then to Finland and Norway.”

  “You don’t stay long in one place,” said Epp dryly. “You’re like a builder of houses, Herr Hagen. You’ve an answer for everything.”

  “I can’t stay long in any one place. If I did, I’d lose the sales.”

  As they filed out of the room, Alfried Krupp laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. “It was good of you to come on such short notice, Richard. I appreciate that. We’ll talk again.”

  Wanting a quiet time to sift through things, Hagen let the Krupp go ahead of him, only to find Keppler dragging his feet. As he packed away the balance, he noticed that the emerald-green macle had been pilfered. It happened all the time. Keppler had lifted the stone.

  At the most it had cost him 120 marks, about 10 pounds.

  Out in the corridor, sounds of “Heil Hitler!” came to them from the direction of the stairwell. Hagen heard them all giving the salute, then saw them part and found himself face-to-face with the Fü
hrer.

  Keppler introduced them. Hitler held out his hand and he took it in his. The palm was dry, the handshake firm and businesslike. “Führer and Reich Chancellor, it’s a privilege.”

  “You’re the diamond man I’ve been hearing things about.”

  “Good things, I hope?”

  Keppler had been asked to report on the meeting. That was why he’d been there, why he’d pilfered the diamond. To show his Führer …

  Hitler must have liked the smile for he responded in kind, though he was preoccupied and obviously in a hurry. “You must come to see me some time. My adjutant, Herr Hossbach, will see to it if you’ll speak to him. I’m very busy today. Important matters, you understand.”

  Apart from the protruding, sometimes intense eyes, Adolf Hitler was a singularly ordinary man. The hank of hair over the brow, the pallor were common enough, so, too, the small mustache. Yet he had the power to mesmerize a whole nation. There had been none of the shouting, none of the oratory, simply a quietly normal tone of voice.

  Hagen stood aside with the others as Hitler went on down the steps, presumably to find the lavatory or to call on one of his aides.

  “Did he really mean I was to see Hossbach about a meeting?”

  “He’ll have forgotten about it already,” said Keppler. “The Führer has too much else on his mind at the moment.”

  Keppler gave Schmitt a knowing glance, and Hagen knew then that something momentous must have happened.

  Horcher’s was a sumptuous restaurant but the invitation to lunch, coming on the heels of the meeting, was a puzzle. As he checked his coat and hat, the muted sounds of cutlery and talk were mingled with the strains of a Viennese waltz played by an excellent string quartet.

  Once the favorite haunt of foreign diplomats and visiting royalty, Horcher’s still retained the plush red velvet brocade and dark oak paneling of its Victorian decor. The waiters still wore their black knee breeches, with red waistcoats, white aprons and white stockings.

  Everything was very formal. Under the immense chandeliers, against the glitter of cutlery and crystal, the string quartet went about its business in spite of the changing times and the absence of appreciative listeners.