The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  He could be so impossible at times. Grumbling, he reached for his shirt and put it on. As he climbed to her, he fumbled with the buttons. You’d think he was going to church or something. “Please kiss me,” she said. “A real embrace. Let’s show everybody how much we love each other.”

  The kiss was wet, awkward and damned clumsy, the wind like ice! She hated herself!

  They ran down into the hollow. De Menten tried to kiss her again, and at first she let him. Then he dragged something out of a pocket. It just had to be the right time.

  The gold wedding band had been his grandmother’s. “Try it on, Arlette. We can cut it if we have to. I can mend the break with the brazing torch and polish it up on the buffer.”

  He probably could. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and despised herself for betraying him. “I will ask Lev to fix it for us, and I will ask him to produce for me a diamond engagement ring.”

  They talked of the letters they had written to each other—Willi was not much use at it but he had tried. They talked of setting a date for the wedding, but she asked him to wait a little.

  In August the Nazis called up an additional 750,000 men. Massive military maneuvers were being held near the Czech border. Everyone said the Czechs ought to be more accommodating, that the Sudetenland was not that important.

  And in August Arlette waited until the last minute, then lied to Willi and said there could be no holidays for her as they’d planned.

  “I must go to England for de Heer Wunsch. Yes, I know it isn’t fair. Yes, I know everyone is taking their holidays. Willi, please try to understand.”

  She set down the receiver but stood there a moment. Even with the threat of war so close, the Belgians could still worry about their holidays. As did the French and everyone else. The world had gone mad.

  Eight

  FROM THE BROW OF the hill the land spilled away in jade-green slopes to the cold, blue waters of Loch Assynt and the cloud-shrouded peaks of the Quinag Ridge beyond. Arlette couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The Highland light was so incredibly clear. In the near distance, the ruined tower of a lonely castle rose from a small promontory that jutted out into the lake. Waves rippled the surface of the loch, which stretched away into the hills and mountains. Cattle and sheep dotted the gorse and grass that lay before the white-stucco, slate-roofed, scattered cottages of the tiny crofting village of Inchnadamph.

  “It’s so very beautiful, Richard. Dear God, to think that I might never have seen or heard of this.”

  Amid a tracery of fields, a whitewashed, cut-stone manor house of thirty rooms or more stood alone. One line of beeches marked the road to the house. To the east there was what looked to be a playing field. To the west, where the fields sloped gently toward the loch, an inn, a shop of some sort and a house were clustered at the junction with the main road.

  It was at once a land of mystery, of hopes for the future, yes, but of something else. Something almost indefinable. A great sadness that, in spite of the beauty, she felt only too deeply but could not understand.

  Dwarfed by the landscape, the manor house commanded the eye, and she couldn’t help but wonder why Duncan, a man of modest means, had leased such a place.

  In spite of the anorak and heavy turtleneck sweater, she shivered. Duncan was watching them. She knew he wasn’t happy to see her, knew he still didn’t approve of Richard’s loving her.

  But this … this look of his was something else. A cold appraisal.

  As they drove down into the valley, McPherson shouted the history of the place to her. The clan MacKenzie had owned the lands ever since the Restoration. They’d taken them by the sword from the MacLeods, whose chieftain had given succor to the fugitive James Graham, first marquis of Montrose, in late April of 1650.

  “MacLeod broke the code of the Highlands. Och, he couldna resist the temptation and damned himself and his clan forever by turning Montrose in for silver.”

  It had been the gibbet for the one and the sword for the other. Ardvreck Castle had fallen into ruin. Kincalda House had been built a little more than one hundred years later, and ever since then it had been home to the MacKenzies.

  Salmon rods, golf clubs, a butter churn full of walking sticks were set against the wall next the windows that flanked the open door. Arlette went on ahead, and they could hear her steps echoing in the halls.

  “Well, Richard, what do you think?”

  “It’s a sight for sore eyes, Duncan. Has old MacKenzie passed away?”

  “Och, no. He’s as fit as a fiddle. I simply made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

  “Those mountains … you know how the weather socks in …”

  “The airfield will just have to do. Richard, we had to have a place to begin. Churchill was adamant.”

  A school for agents and infiltrators. “And Arlette?” he asked. “Duncan, just leave her be. Sir Ernest has a spot for her.”

  “Aye, that would be best.” More he wouldn’t say, but it was all too clear Richard was still very much in love with the girl, and equally clear that Churchill had plans for her.

  They listened as Arlette’s steps came to them from the hall above. She hesitated, then went on. Perhaps she was looking into each of the rooms, perhaps she was just getting the feel of the place.

  The steps stopped and they heard her no more.

  “Duncan, I won’t have Arlette brought here for some sort of training, no matter what Mr. Churchill has asked.”

  “The lass is far too timid, Richard. The Nazis …” He’d leave that unsaid, but Churchill, being Churchill, had wanted her evaluated. Indeed, he’d insisted on this. A first step for everyone.

  Hagen went up the stairs after her, only to find Arlette had removed her shoes and had left them in the hall lest the noise give away the fact she’d come back to listen to them.

  There were paintings on the walls, as he’d remembered—mostly eighteenth-century landscapes in gilt frames. Chandeliers hung in the stairwell. Above the open doorway to the west wing was a portrait of a Highland chief in full dress tartan with an unsheathed sword.

  Arlette was looking curiously up at it. He chuckled at the worried frown. Without thinking, he said, “I never can remember if that’s Kenneth a Bhlàir, Kenneth of the Battle, or his son, Kenneth Og, the one who was murdered.”

  “Richard, what is this place?”

  Though he wasn’t to have told her, he did so anyway. Arlette placed her hands on his chest and looked steadily at him. “And now we both know one more thing we must keep from the Nazis.”

  It was all so like a well down which they had been thrown. There would be no escape, not even here.

  The letter was open on the bedside table in her room. The writing was in German, the postmark and stamps from Brazil.

  Arlette ran her eyes quickly down the thin, pale blue paper. Too few diamonds, an uncertain source …a network of people …

  They were to head for a river called the Jequitinhonha. The letter was signed, All my love, Irmgard.

  The sister of the Baron Dieter Karl Hunter.

  McPherson closed the door and came on into her room. “That letter was opened and then resealed, Arlette. The girl was crazy to have written Richard. Abwehr or SD agents know of it.”

  She would not look at him. “Arlette, listen to me. If I could, I would leave Richard and you to your loving, but I can’t. Heydrich knows Richard’s greatest weakness is his feeling of responsibility for others. I daren’t show him this letter for fear he’ll do something foolish.”

  “Yet if you don’t, what then? And the Fräulein Schroeder, Duncan? Would you rob Richard of his sense of decency?”

  “Please try to understand that these times aren’t ordinary. We have to do things we wouldn’t normally do.”

  “Like killing and murder?” she said, turning on him now. “Is that what you intend for this place?”

  He crumpled the letter and threw it past her into the fire. “Richard is my friend. If you truly love him, you’ll lea
ve him. Now I’ll say no more but that I think you weak and a danger to him.”

  At dawn, mist shrouded the upper slopes of the Quinag Ridge. High above the loch a light drizzle began.

  Duncan was in the lead, then Richard and finally Arlette. None of them had said anything for some time. It was as if Richard had sensed things weren’t right between them and had withdrawn.

  As they picked their way across the screes, Arlette fell farther and farther behind.

  Between the screes there were bare patches of lichen-encrusted bedrock. Out on the screes the boulders were sharp and angular. More than once she slipped and had to grab hold of the rocks.

  More than once the slopes below her shot away to nothing, while those above were soon lost dizzily in the fog.

  A smell of sulfur emanated from the rocks.

  At last they came to a shelf on which stunted pine, gorse and peaty water enclosed the gray stone walls of a ruined cottage. Duncan didn’t give the place a second glance. With dogged determination, he skirted the ruins and headed off up the barren slopes at a punishing pace.

  Richard went after him. The mist drifted, became shredded by the ghost of a wind.

  At the far end of the loch it began to rain.

  When a boulder came tumbling down on her, she was caught halfway out on a scree. It bounced, went this way, that way from so far above she couldn’t see it yet, couldn’t seem to move …

  With a crash it appeared out of the fog, bounced nearby and rolled away. A rush of rubble followed, a thunder of it as she hugged the scree and cried out, “No! Please, no!”

  The sound of the rubble roared away until it was only a trickle. Terrified, Arlette picked herself up and stood there uncertainly. Richard and Duncan must have heard the rockfall.

  Badly shaken, she began to retrace her steps, planning to wait for them at the ruins. She has almost reached the shelf, was just starting down to it, when the sound of a rifle shot came flat and hard on the cold, damp air. The echo rolled away to rumble in among the hills.

  Panicking again—caught out on that slope—she froze. For ten seconds her heart raced madly. She began to run, to slip and slide on the boulders.

  When she reached the shelf, Arlette dodged in among the pines and threw herself behind a wall.

  A second shot rang out and then a third, but by then she knew for sure they had been meant for her.

  Sheep droppings, a scattering of moldy straw and rusty ironwork, the wheel of a barrow and the weathered remains of a scythe lay among the stones and clumps of moss.

  Caught on a bit of gorse behind the ruins was the bright yellow-and-black tartan scarf Duncan had handed Arlette that morning.

  There was a trail, a bit of a path that climbed from the shelf to the crest of a low ridge, then disappeared beyond it. To the east of the ruins the land rose and fell in humps and hollows. Upon an endless carpet of moss, heather, gorse and bog water, lay a dotting of giant boulders. Ethereal in the clinging mist, they brought to the utter silence a harsh and unfeeling omnipotence.

  Hagen hunted the terrain, then ran his eyes slowly along the distant line where mist and rock joined. There was scant cover. She had run out there and had left the scarf behind lest it give her away again.

  Gradually the sun rose to break through the clouds and burn off the mist. Out over the moor nothing stirred. Behind him on the heights of the Quinag Ridge there was no sign of Duncan. As if in defiance of the sun, it began to rain.

  The cleft was not too steep. Where the burn fell over the edge of the moor, it plunged to a pool some thirty feet below her.

  From there the woods—thin in places, thick in others—spread out toward the northeast, to a road and then more hills and moors beyond.

  Arlette squinted over a shoulder at the afternoon sun. Once down in the cleft by the pool, she’d be out of sight. Once through the woods, she could follow the line of the road until she came to the village.

  How she loathed this place, the feel of it, the endless silence, the hours of never knowing if he’d shoot at her again.

  Easing herself forward on her seat, she began to make her way down into the cleft. Shadows hugged the inner wall, but on the opposite side of the burn she found a place to rest and bathe her blistered feet.

  Pulling off her boots, she eased her feet into the icy water, then lay back on the ground and stared up at the sky. Everything in her said to leave while she could and seek the safety of the woods.

  Exhaustion made her eyes close.

  When Hagen found her, she was fast asleep but awoke at once. Motioning her to stay where she was, he searched the moor, then came down to her and spilled three empty brass cartridge casings from his hand.

  “Did you get a look at him?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Arlette, they didn’t mean to hit you, only to see how well you’d respond.”

  Never for a moment would she forget the look in his eyes. One of defeat, of betrayal, of loss for the friend he’d once known. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I found these on a rock up there at the top of the cleft. If he’d wanted to kill you, he could so easily have done so.”

  Hurriedly, she told him about the letter, of what it must mean.

  He nodded and said, “I’ll go back into Germany anyway. I’ll do what I can to save them.”

  “Then I will go back to Antwerp and help you all I can.”

  It had been said so quickly, and yet in that moment he knew that no matter how hard he tried to dissuade her, she’d do as she’d said.

  On Thursday the rain was gone. Across the sky gossamer clouds scudded, leaving patches of blue between.

  The tower of Ardvreck Castle was really only three stories high, the remains of the other walls somewhat less. Moss clung to the gray stone blocks.

  One curious thing set the tower apart. It was round at the base, but above the first story it was square and slotted so that it looked out on the world and the loch like a haunted gallows tree.

  There was a cattle gate of peeled poles, a bit of a stone wall that ran on either side of the path to the water’s edge. Beyond the castle, the land rose in a grassy mound to the low summit of the promontory.

  Arlette let herself in at the gate. They had spent the days of the storm as prisoners of themselves. Nothing had seemed to work. She couldn’t go to Richard and say, Let’s just drive to Inverness to see the shops, to have tea someplace. Anything. He couldn’t say to her, There’s a film I’d like you to see.

  Instead, he had worked with Duncan. Oh, for sure they had fought. Richard could never forgive his friend for what had happened. He’d threatened to quit, to take her to America, but he’d known only too well the reality of things. Dee Dee Schroeder and Irmgard Hunter were very much on his mind, and yes, Duncan had been ordered to “evaluate” her, and yes, she was still being seen as a threat to Richard’s work.

  More than once she had caught them talking about her. Twice she’d overheard Duncan saying, “They’ll kill her, Richard. You canna continue to take up with the lass. She’ll drag you down and then where will we be?”

  Arlette knew that Richard felt he ought to break things off with her, that he was torn by guilt and was continually arguing with himself.

  Willi would laugh at her if he knew how little she was enjoying herself. She’d have to go back to him, would have to continue with the lie, though she’d hate herself for doing so.

  Exploring the ruins did no good. When Richard found her, she was sitting in the sun out of the wind.

  “Where’s Duncan?” she asked.

  “Gone to Lochinver to meet his father. I said we’d like to have the day to ourselves.”

  “And would we? Richard, what’s to become of us?”

  In silence they walked back to Kincalda House, and when he had shut the door behind them, Arlette went through to the stairs and started hesitantly up.

  She was a virgin and afraid, had all those nagging thoughts of an unmarried girl, all those wo
rries, yet wanted him.

  Hagen waited, not knowing what to do. When he reached the room, she was standing in front of the fire.

  “So, it is only the two of us, Richard.”

  They kissed, she trembling with uncertainty. They touched. She said, “Here, let me. Please.” A whisper.

  As Richard watched, Arlette pulled off her sweater. She undid her blouse and slid the straps of her slip off her shoulders. Reaching up behind her back to unhook the brassiere, she gave him an embarrassed glance.

  He took a step closer. She said, “No, please. Stand back a little.”

  Her breasts spilled into view, high, upturned, round and firm, the nipples seeming to strain at him, the nubby bumps around them in halos of rose.

  Hagen held them. Tenderly he kissed her on the lips, then lowered his head to brush his lips across each nipple. Waves of pleasure ran through her, ripples of it. Repeatedly he kissed each breast, then found her throat, her lips, her hair, his arms enfolding her at last as she ran her hands up over his shoulders.

  Arlette pulled off the rest of her things. It felt so good to be naked in his arms. Not wrong, not evil, not a sin.

  Hagen slid his hands down over the soft, smooth arch of her back. He held her by the seat and drew her closer. She fought for air and tilted back her head, pressed her middle against him. Now his kisses came lightly on her throat, her breasts, and she gave a soft laugh, a gentle chuckle of rapture and whispered, “My love. Oh, my love.”

  Naked, Hagen stood there looking down at her as she lay on the hearth rug. The copper tones in her hair were burnished by the flickering light. The slim, flat tummy, the tangled clutch of auburn curls in the soft V of her slightly parted legs drew his gaze. She held her breasts and nervously parted her lips …

  He said, “You’re so very beautiful.”

  Self-consciously, Arlette kept on looking up at him. His shoulders were fine and strong, the muscles corded at his waist. The curly hairs of sand began at his chest.

  Lowering her eyes, she found the maleness of him hung below a thatch of sandy curls. She had never seen a naked man before, a penis only in paintings and sculptures and but briefly.