The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  Was it all to be some sort of game? Were they to wait until the Germans invaded? “And Arlette Huysmans?” he asked quietly. “Can you not see that she stays in England?”

  “That might be difficult, but I shall try. Leave the girl here to enjoy a day at Chartwell. We shall see that she’s well looked after. Meet with Ernest in London, then take a flight from Croydon to Antwerp aboard one of Lufthansa’s enviable box kites. Let the Nazis see that she is no longer with you, Richard. For her sake and for your own as well as ours. Oh, and by the way, on your next trip see if you can’t get the Krupp to take you to the firing range at Meppen. I should like your views on their 88 millimeter cannon.”

  The man who had asked to see her wore a blue boiler suit, a straw hat and a white smock. Though the sun was not yet high, he worked at his easel beyond the ranks of brick walls enclosing a patchwork of rose gardens that tumbled to a series of ponds.

  Timidly Arlette set out to meet him. Churchill continued to work. “Catching the light is so very important, Miss Huysmans. I see that you’re up and refreshed. The breakfast to your liking?”

  “Very much so but I …”

  The chuckle he gave was gentle but it could only have made her feel more self-conscious. “Come, come, now. My daughters made you eat something to settle your stomach and bolster your courage. I’m sure they took the opportunity to press upon you the dire warning that I was like a bear in its den when at the brush. Pray tell me how you take us?”

  The daffodils he was sketching were mingled with a rush of tulips and crocuses beneath which crept a ground cover of periwinkle. “Well?” he asked. “Do you feel at home, or have we put you off?”

  This was the man who in 1914 had come to Antwerp to rally the Belgians to its defense and then, having been so successful, had asked to command the Allied armies there and had been refused and blamed for its later capture.

  “A hero and then one who is tarred with the defeat of others,” grumbled Churchill tartly. “You Belgians must not hold history against me, Miss Huysmans. The British Parliament and public are enough! Had I but been given the chance, we could have seized the moment and driven the Hun back! But enough. How do you take us?”

  He was like a cherub in his crazy painter’s clothes, and yet he had a most determined and commanding presence. “I have been treated as a guest, and this is most kind of you, Mr. Churchill, but I am worried. It is not just that Richard, he has gone, but that I do not know why you should wish to see me.”

  The girl was uncommonly pretty. The blush was there of a sudden and she found no words to counter his scrutiny.

  “You know you are a danger to him.”

  “If I must, I will leave Dillingham’s as Duncan has suggested. Perhaps I will take the job in Liege at the Browning factory where they make the …”

  “The Browning semiautomatic pistol. An excellent weapon, but I much prefer the Mauser of the Germans. Pray tell me, have you ever fired a gun?”

  Doubt clouded her eyes, whose deep, rich shade reminded him of fully ripened chestnuts. “Well?” he asked. “A rifle perhaps?”

  She was forced to shake her head, but now her expression was troubled. “Why is it, please, that you should wish to know this?”

  She could be so useful to them. The gestures, the very look of her, the gift of languages. French, Dutch, German and English, Duncan had said …

  He waved an uncaring hand. “Put it down to courtesy, to a love of knowing about one’s guests. But come, I promised you a stroll. We shall go to the top of the hill to look back upon my house, so that you may see what sort of man has built it.”

  At the edge of a woods they turned to look at his house, and she said that though it was very grand, in some ways it reminded her of a canal house.

  He would overcome his natural reservations about the French and remind himself that she was Belgian. “It’s a hodgepodge of Kentish brick, and there is none finer in all Christendom! Now tell me, could you learn to use a gun? Not to kill someone, my dear. Simply for your own protection.”

  Surprise registered and then a slow and welcome smile. “Please, you will let me return to work at Dillingham’s?”

  Those pallid blue eyes looked steadfastly at her. “We could not have kept you from it, could we?”

  Arlette hesitated, then grinned with relief. “Me, I have tried to tell Duncan that I could be so useful to Richard by being in the office.”

  “As a relay for his secret messages?”

  “Yes, I …” He had caught her out!

  Churchill took another moment to study her. She was like a fine painting, the Rockeby Venus perhaps, but did she have the mettle to stand up to the Nazis? Only time would tell. “Could you work with Hagen and not be in love with him? Such things will only get in the way and endanger the two of you.”

  Moisture rushed into her eyes, and to hide this from him, she turned away.

  A point to consider. “What about this butcher’s son? Could you become engaged to him?”

  “To Willi? How is it, please, that you know of him?”

  He drew on his cigar and looked steadily at her, and she knew then that Duncan had had someone investigate her background. “Willi … Willi would not wish to see me, Mr. Churchill, nor I him.”

  “But you will do so to help Richard in his work.”

  “Please, I do not understand?”

  Was Duncan not correct in saying she was too innocent? “My dear, the Nazis have already taken far too great an interest in your association with Richard Hagen, but by allowing those press photographs of Richard and himself, Reinhard Heydrich has given us a unique opportunity. If we could show them that you and he were no longer lovers, they might well leave you alone since they could not use you to blackmail him.”

  “And the gun?” she asked.

  Duncan would object, but God only knew what the future might hold, and there was still a slim chance the Nazis would leave her alone.

  They went into the woods and he asked her to return to Dillingham’s via Ostend. “In August you must come back to us. By then Duncan will have arranged a suitable place. If all goes well, we will teach you how to shoot.”

  The meeting with Sir Ernest was at the Travellers’ Club in St. James’s, London. The Dickensian atmosphere of many of the shops only served to work against Hagen.

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the thought of Arlette out of his head.

  Had Heydrich wanted to destroy their relationship, not knowing Klees would do it for him?

  If so, he had succeeded. But why destroy the relationship unless he’d wanted him to find someone else?

  Irmgard? he wondered, and knew that must be it.

  As he stood at the curbside of Pall Mall, looking up toward the Roman frieze of the Atheneum Club, a news vendor shouted the latest on the Czech crisis.

  Every newspaper, every newsreel and wireless broadcast said there’d be war unless something was done to stop it. The tensions over Czechoslovakia were building. The long, hot summer was about to begin.

  They’d been digging trenches in Hyde Park. Earnest young men with single suitcases had made their way to the tube stations. The trains had been crowded. People were on the move and collectively they’d had that subdued, early-morning look of the resigned.

  When he got to the Travellers’ Club, he found that Sir Ernest had been called away on business. The note of apology was sincere—he had no reason to doubt it. They’d meet again soon.

  There were sincere thanks for his warning about Austria, a suggestion that they use the blue diamond should there be the need for a warning over Czechoslovakia.

  The situation is very grave indeed, Richard. Goering has demanded and received the Baron Rothschild’s Austrian steel mills in exchange for the baron’s release. Like others, we can but wait and wonder what will be next.

  The blue diamond had a weight of 8.739 carats. Let us simply use this weight and attribute it to an old-miner.

  The Chairman didn’t know that Arlet
te had returned the diamond and had asked that he use it to buy the freedom of Lev’s daughter and son-in-law.

  Richard, the Central Selling Organization would be glad to train Miss Huysmans as a sorter here in London. You have only to send her to us.

  Ostend was not the same. Though she had longed to be home for a visit, the place looked drab and depressing under leaden skies, and she realized then that she had outgrown it.

  Arlette left the shop of her father and walked along the promenade.

  Willi wasn’t at the butcher shop. De Heer de Menten’s “He’s down at the garage” told her all she needed to know.

  “Am I no longer welcome?” she asked. I have not sinned, if that is what you’re thinking.

  “I am busy, that is all. This talk of war. One has to figure out what to do.”

  She left him to his figuring. Willi had always been interested in fixing cars. Given half a chance he’d have escaped to work on his mechanic’s papers. She was suddenly glad he’d done so. At least that was something.

  But she remembered sailing the Vega that afternoon, remembered the military cemetery at Vlamertinge and the way Richard had said, “I think I must have met the man who shot him.” His father …

  The racket in the garage was followed by a curse. Sweat beaded the grease-streaked brow beneath the dirty cloth cap from which the red hairs sprouted.

  De Menten blinked his sea-green eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses that were always getting in the way. The coat, the look of her brought it all back in a rush, and he turned from her to the workbench. “What do you want?”

  “To say hello. To see how you are.”

  “Has he left you? Is that it? That’s it, isn’t it, Arlette? He’s buggered off.”

  He was just the same old Willi. Thinner even, and not taking care of himself.

  The coveralls needed laundering. He smelled of oil, grease, gasoline and sweat but not of the butcher shop. “Can you take time off for coffee?” she asked. “My train leaves at five, but—” she heaved a sigh “—there is another at six-thirty that I could take.”

  Still he wouldn’t look at her. “There’s a dance down at the church hall tonight. You could stay over if you liked. It’s Sunday tomorrow. They don’t make you work on Sundays, do they? Or is he expecting you?”

  So jealous it was still hurting him. “Let’s have some coffee and see. Come on. Arni will let you have fifteen minutes to chat with an old friend.”

  They had their coffee not in the café across the street but in the little storeroom he and Arni used as a change room, catchall and kitchen. They talked and she agreed to go to the dance with him, though she knew it wasn’t right of her.

  “Richard and I are finished, Willi. It could never have worked.”

  “Now maybe you’ll listen to sense. I’ll soon have my mechanic’s papers, Arlette. We can get married then.”

  “And the Vega?” she asked to hide her dismay.

  “She’s as good as the day we sailed her and you left me for him.”

  The strongboxes were heavy. As the men stacked the last of them in the vault, Bernard Wunsch worried about the load on the floor, the plaster, the count of the boxes, the thought of trusting his diamond stocks to some trucker, the channel ferries and the British.

  Irritably he tugged at his shirtsleeves. The elastic bands were cutting off his circulation! “Juffrouw Huysmans, count the boxes, please. There are to be fifty-seven. I have only fifty-three.”

  He left her to it, and she ran her eyes over the cramped space that remained. There was hardly room to move, let alone take the diamonds from their drawers and place them in the boxes. A duplicate cataloging system would be required. Each paper and vial would have to be logged from drawer to box and there were hundreds and hundreds of them.

  As she began to count the strongboxes, Arlette heard someone in the hall and knew that Richard had just got back from London. But then he went into de Heer Wunsch’s office and closed the door.

  Essen, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Frankfurt, then back down the Rhine to Emmerich and the Dutch border. Could it be that they would let him return this time?

  She didn’t know, knew only that she had to see him.

  Bernard irritably stubbed out the cigarette he had just lighted. He reached for his coffee, tried it and grimaced. “Bah, it is cold! Can nothing go right around this place? Martine, she has insisted I get new elastics for my shirtsleeves.”

  He snapped one and then the other. “You see the state I’m in.”

  Hagen drew up a chair. “Isaac’s not the only one with ulcers. You’d better try to calm down, Bernard. Things aren’t going to get any better for a while.”

  Nodding grimly, Wunsch reached for his cigarettes, then tossed the package aside as if he smoked too much and knew it.

  The time had come, and somehow he had to convince Richard that the Committee had settled on the railway cars. Trust Isaac to leave the dirty work to someone else!

  “Richard, de Heer Lietermann and the others can think what they want, but will the British ever let us move our diamonds there?”

  Even with the depressed market for gems, Dillingham’s ran a stock of about £4,000,000 and another £1,500,000 worth of industrials.

  “They’ll have to, Bernard. It’s simply a question of time.”

  Small comfort! “Do we need the Boches at our very doorstep? My God, Richard, what are we to do if …”

  He couldn’t say it. Hagen did. “If I don’t come back and they invade.”

  “Yes, of course. Please, a moment.” Bernard held up a silencing hand and went to check the foyer. Juffrouw Huysmans was still in the vault. Good.

  When he returned, he didn’t sit down but took to pacing back and forth. “Richard, what I am going to ask should have been settled long before this. Could you try, please, to let us know if you suspect trouble? A word tucked into a telephone message or a cable? Just so long as I have it to take to the Committee. De Heer Lietermann will then contact Sir Ernest and the British government. Isaac, he will organize the railway cars.”

  There, he’d said it. The railway cars, not the trucks that they would use.

  He felt like Judas, but even if they trusted Richard, they couldn’t take the chance of telling him the truth.

  Hagen’s tone was guarded. “What would you like me to send, Bernard?”

  “Something from the little books, I think.”

  There, he’d said that, too.

  Still, there was that guarded tone, that watchfulness. “What would you suggest?”

  Wunsch searched among the papers on his desk and when he found the note, he paused to read it again. “It is from the last chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There is a poem that contains many useful phrases that might pass unnoticed in a cable. We can choose anything you think suitable, yes? But I … I have thought of these two lines: ‘An obstacle that came between / Him, and ourselves, and it.’”

  How apt he’d been. “Which word? Choose one or two, Bernard. No more.”

  Then it was true that Richard was gathering intelligence for the British. “Obstacle.”

  “And the Nazis, Bernard? Their Fifth Column? What will you tell them if they should ask you about me?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. This I swear.”

  Bernard was hedging, not telling him everything. No doubt the Committee no longer trusted him.

  “Lev, would you do something for me and say nothing of it to anyone else?”

  To Bernard? “Yes, of course. If that’s what you want.”

  “My train leaves in a couple of hours. Will you go to de Heer Lietermann’s house tonight and tell him that at all costs he must stick to the plan as we agreed?”

  “Which plan?”

  Was there more than one? “I can’t tell you.”

  “Look, Richard, if it’s about that rusty old freighter, you can tell me. The Megadan’s a piece of junk and she’ll go to the bottom under her own steam, never mind the needle of a German U-boat. T
he Committee didn’t lease what they should have, which was a destroyer. Even a fool of a diamond cutter knows that.”

  In spite of the seriousness of the matter, Hagen had to laugh. “How did you find out?”

  “The telephone, how else? I was passing Arlette’s desk to get to the vault. Bernard and Isaac … none of us are perfect, Richard. I had to find out if they were going to include the cutters and polishers in the plan.”

  “Lev, I know what you’re saying, but for now we’re dealing only with the diamonds. Did Bernard and Isaac discuss another plan?”

  The scaife came to a stop. Lev swung the dop aside and reached for a cloth to clean his hands. Loyalty to Bernard and the Committee demanded one thing, honesty to Richard another.

  “Isaac did say something about an alternative, but Arlette came back to her desk and I … I had to hang up.”

  Hagen gripped him by the arm. “Then go to Lietermann personally. Don’t trust the telephones. Tell him what I said, and let him know what you overheard Bernard and Isaac discussing. It can only emphasize the need for caution.”

  “And Rachel?”

  “Keep your fingers crossed. If the line is still working, we’ll try to get them out as soon as possible. If not, I’ll find some other way.”

  “Then do something for yourself. Speak to Arlette. She’s very upset. Bernard and I can understand why you’ve broken off your engagement but a little kindness, a word or two, you understand.”

  Arlette pretended not to have heard him come into the vault, but then she tossed her head and said, “So, you’re leaving us again?”

  “For a little. Look, I wish you’d …” Quickly Hagen told her of Sir Ernest’s offer. “It’s a fantastic opportunity. You’d be good at it, Arlette. A natural. The first woman to become a sorter for the Central Selling Organization.”

  “And I’d be safer there, is that it?” she asked, pausing now to look steadily at him.

  “Safer than anything Mr. Churchill might have asked.”

  As he handed her the blue diamond to put back in his trading drawer, their fingers touched and she thought how miserable she’d been at that dance with Willi. “Does Heydrich know everything about you?”