The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  The two men got into the car and it was driven slowly away.

  For almost an hour he searched the frigid darkness for the third man, only to find the street deserted.

  Waking Lev’s daughter and son-in-law was like waking the dead! The echoes of his first hammered in the hall. No time … “Goddamn it, open up in the name of the Führer!”

  Moses, terrified and blinking at the unaccustomed light, timidly opened the door. “Herr Hagen …”

  He shoved past him in a rush and nudged the door closed. Rachel hurried into the hall only to stop suddenly at the sight of him.

  As calmly as he could, Hagen told them what was going to happen. “You mustn’t tell anyone. Just get dressed and leave while you can. Use the morning rush hour to cover yourselves. Take a little food and water, a blanket perhaps—so little, no one will notice.”

  “And where shall we go?” asked Tannenbaum bitterly.

  “Haven’t you any relatives in the countryside? Isn’t there someone, some Gentile who’ll take you in for a few days until things blow over?”

  The bookseller snorted at this. “Her grandparents perhaps.”

  “Good.” He realized then that the husband had meant the cemetery. “Could you stand it there for a day or two? Look, I need time to work something out.”

  The cemetery … “It’s at Weissensee, in the northeastern suburbs. So far the Nazis have left it alone. There are crypts, Moses. Perhaps we could …?” Rachel left it unsaid.

  They’d never leave the flat and he knew it! “Get dressed and I’ll go there with you.”

  The tramcar ride was the loneliest he’d ever made. At four-thirty the city was just beginning to awaken. At five-thirty the dawn had not yet broken. At six-fifteen the beam of their flashlight revealed that the cemetery had been left untended for some time. Ivy covered many of the stones that lay flat on the ground. The grass was thick and soaked with dew, the air damp and cold. Weeds had grown up everywhere and their bare, dead stalks protruded from among the standing stones.

  Rachel took the lead. Soon their shoes were soaked through. Hagen wondered if the couple would be all right, if Krantz had had them followed. He cursed Heydrich for the bastard he was. He was grateful for the size of the place.

  When they came to a small white oval set in an upright slab of black marble, he saw the photograph of Lev’s mother. There was a passage in Hebrew; above this, the star of David.

  “I never knew her,” said Rachel, “yet I come here often for my father’s sake.”

  “There’s a crypt just over the hill, Herr Hagen. Perhaps it will do.”

  The light fled away to angels, blue-green with verdigris, that guarded the door. Hagen broke the rusty padlock with a stone.

  “I’ll be back, don’t worry. But for now you must stay here and keep out of sight.”

  “And how do we know you’ll be back?”

  “Moses, please. Herr Hagen has risked his life to do this.”

  Hagen glanced over his shoulder. “Look, if I’m not back within four days you’ll know I’m in trouble. Wait at least until then—longer if you can.”

  Quickly he told them of the route through the border crossing at Emmerich and handed Rachel the pendant.

  They couldn’t help but see the worth of it.

  Shaking hands very formally, they said goodbye. He hated to leave them. Even with the pendant they stood so little chance.

  Horcher’s was crowded as usual. From the far side of the dining room came the strains of a waltz, from the tables whose occupants were nearly all in uniform, the sounds of cutlery and talk, broken now and then by sudden bursts of laughter.

  Seated at a table for four, not far from the central buffet, Hagen waited.

  Already he’d been waiting for some time.

  Two tables from him Goering and Heydrich were earnestly discussing something, while Goebbels smirked and Himmler remained fastidiously remote.

  At another table the generals Guderian, Jodl and von Brauchitsch added wineglasses to their maneuvers.

  Heydrich had simply ignored him. There was no sign of Canaris.

  When a hand touched his shoulder, Hagen turned suddenly to look up and saw the warning and the fear in Irmgard’s eyes.

  She was wearing navy blue, with a stark white blouse and dark tie. The crispness of the uniform suited her. “Aren’t you glad to see me?” she asked, her voice despondent.

  “I didn’t know you were working for the Abwehr.”

  “Dieter,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  Hagen refused to answer. What was she playing at? She looked well-tanned and fit, her hair lightened by the sun. But had Canaris sanctioned the meeting under Heydrich’s watchful gaze? Just what the bloody hell was going on?

  Picking at the tablecloth, she said, “Tell me how things are. It’s been so long. Dieter sends his regrets. As you can see, he and Herr Piekenbrock were to have joined us. Business … always it is business these days.”

  Hans Piekenbrock was the Abwehr’s second in command.

  Fortunately the waiter came. Hardly glancing at the menu, she ordered something, he the same. He thought of Rachel and her husband and decided that no matter how much he might need Irmgard’s help, he couldn’t risk asking for it.

  When she said, “I’m to drive you to Munich this evening,” he knew that the admiral wanted him out of Berlin.

  The street was strangely silent, while all around them the sound of breaking glass came harshly.

  Gripping the steering wheel, Irmgard eased her foot back down on the accelerator. As the Daimler began to move slowly forward, she glanced tearfully into the rearview mirror, then at Richard, who was grim and silent.

  In each town and village it had been the same, but here—here in Munich at two o’clock in the morning when people should have been asleep? Dear God, no!

  The wail of another fire engine came, but it was over on the Briennerstrasse where the shops were so expensive and fashionable.

  Street after street had been littered with broken glass. Each time they had tried to get through some place it had been the same. All the windows of the Jewish shops had been smashed. Roving jackbooted gangs of drunken SS and storm troopers had run howling from street to street. What they hadn’t looted, they had set afire either intentionally or by accident.

  “Richard, pray for us. I don’t like this.”

  “Just get down the street. Maybe we can work our way around them.”

  Again she glanced into the rearview mirror. They passed a department store whose mannequins wore the furs and suits of winter. They passed an antique shop, a jeweler’s.

  Halfway down the block, he told her to back up.

  “I can’t. They’re behind us.”

  Time stopped. The mob of fifty—a hundred perhaps—paused. Their torches seemed to waver.

  Then, with a shout of rage, the carnage began. As the mob surged past each shop, the windows shattered and showers of glass spilled onto the walks and the street beyond.

  Unable to take her eyes from the rearview mirror, Irmgard clung to the steering wheel. Unable to take his gaze from the street in front of them, Hagen gritted his teeth in anger.

  All too soon the order banning looting was forgotten. As blood ran down their fingers, they fought their brothers for the choicest things.

  Those who objected to the looting and the damage were dragged into the street and savagely beaten. Now and then a Gentile shop was left like an island in the storm. When they reached the car, the mob surged around it, then began to rock the Daimler violently. Hagen tried to stop them. Someone smashed the windshield. Irmgard was grabbed and dragged kicking and screaming from the car. He forced his door open and went down in a welter of blows as she shrieked, “I work for the Abwehr, damn you! The Abwehr! He is Admiral Canaris’s friend!”

  Someone must have heard her, for they backed away as if threatened by the plague. As she clutched her torn coat, Irmgard stood in the light f
rom the headlamps defying them. “The Abwehr,” she said. “The Abwehr.”

  Grinning, leering now, they backed away a little more, but to prove their worth, to make up for things, they dragged a young Jewish woman into the lights.

  As Irmgard’s screams joined those of their victim, they tore the nightclothes from the woman. Not content with raping her, four of them seized the woman by the arms and legs and pitched her through the window of her father’s shop. Then they tossed a torch in after her and ran.

  The bedroom of the Villa Hunter overlooked the gardens far from the carnage and the smoke that still hung over parts of the city. As the dawn came up, Hagen turned away from the window. The pogrom had been far too extensive. It wouldn’t be over for weeks. The arrests would go on and on. The borders would be closely watched.

  The young Jewish woman who had been raped had died in his arms.

  “Irmgard, I need your help. There’s something I’d better tell you.”

  Her gaze moved over the bandages, the gash in his forehead, the blackened eyes and battered chin. “I work for the Abwehr, Richard. Remember? If Canaris had had his way I would have slept with you last night. That was the order—get Richard Hagen out of Berlin and into your arms.”

  “Or else?”

  She didn’t answer. He said, “Brazil … there was trouble, Irmgard. Why not tell me about it?”

  She answered, “I tried to send some letters to you and found out the truth about my brother.”

  And yet Canaris had given her a job? That could only mean the admiral hadn’t been aware of the letters.

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  “Does it matter? Yes, I can see that it does. You’re such a good person, Richard. Me, I’ll carry on until they take my head. Now, please, what is it you need?”

  They were on their way back to Berlin that morning in a van, borrowed from one of her father’s factories, that was full of new uniforms for the Wehrmacht. When they arrived at the cemetery in the late afternoon, the synagogue nearby was a blackened ruin. Only the outer walls still stood. Apart from an old woman and a gaping child, there wasn’t another soul about.

  “Wait for me, will you?”

  “No. I’m coming with you. You might need me, Richard.”

  “Stay with the van. That way you won’t have to park it and draw attention to us. Come back in half an hour. Please.”

  “Tell them I’ll hide them in Munich at the house. Tell them they’ll be safe.”

  Ask for forgiveness—it was written in her eyes.

  Hagen stood at the side of the road while she drove away. Then he headed into the cemetery. Just when he began to run, he’d never know. Just when he had torn open the heavy doors of the crypt, he wouldn’t remember.

  Sunlight filtered into the depths. There wasn’t a sign of anyone.

  Irmgard and he hadn’t spoken in hours. The night had come down long ago, yet still she drove the van with the same desperateness, though Berlin was now far behind them.

  Another convoy of SS trucks appeared ahead of them, and she started out to pass it without a thought for the approaching headlamps. There was a screech of brakes—theirs, someone else’s, he didn’t know.

  Some eighteen kilometers outside of Munich she turned off the autobahn to the west and followed more of the trucks until, at another turning, they had finally left them.

  “The concentration camp at Dachau is not far, yes? So I thought this would be best for us. The greatness of the Germanic peoples, Richard. It is possible for us to build such things.”

  The van slowed to a stop before the gates of Schloss Schleissheim, one of Munich’s loveliest castles.

  “Dachau, and this, Richard. Ravensbrück—oh, yes, I know about Dee Dee. For me, I would have preferred that we could have walked together in the Nymphenburg’s Hall of Mirrors. Then we could have seen each other’s secrets, isn’t that right? Me, you, naked among the mirrors. Heydrich there, Canaris there, Hitler, Goering … all of them watching us.”

  She switched off the headlamps. They would sit here in the darkness and she would let the cold and the damp seep into him.

  Her voice was harsh. “You know you cannot say one damn thing about what has happened. You cannot object, cannot cry out. To do so is to admit that you tried, Richard, and for them that will be enough. As for me, I am simply your accomplice.”

  “I couldn’t just let it happen.”

  She hit the steering wheel. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, do you not see what they’re trying to do to you? Those two Jews were nothing. Nothing!

  “And now … and now you have been forced to understand that Heydrich knows everything about you. Don’t try to fool them anymore. That’s the message he wants you to get.”

  One of the night watchmen tried the entrance doors to the castle. No guns, no dogs, just an old man in the distance with a hand-held biscuit tin of a torch.

  “Richard, we can never get Dee Dee out of Ravensbrück unless you cooperate. For you, for me, there is only one solution and that is to give them the Antwerp diamond stocks and to work for them to secure their diamond needs for the foreseeable future.”

  She ran her hands around the steering wheel and stiffened her arms as if coming to a decision.

  “You are caught in a power struggle between two monstrous organizations. The Abwehr are no better, no more decent, no less cruel than the SS and their Sicherheitsdienst. But Heydrich has the Gestapo. He’s Himmler’s boy, Richard. Canaris may think he has the ear of the Führer but Himmler kisses it always, and Heydrich knows this better than anyone. Those who choose to work for the right side will survive and prosper. Those who don’t, will join the Jews and others in the camps or the grave.”

  Hagen heard himself asking, “What happened to you in Brazil?”

  “As I said last night, I found out the truth about my brother.”

  “Is Dieter working for Heydrich as well as for Canaris?”

  “That is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Canaris still thinks Dieter is loyal to him. That is why he has asked him to meet with you, but that is also why Heydrich chose to ignore you at Horcher’s. For now Dieter will be excused the sister who is an enemy of the Reich. Besides, I can be useful to them with you. You’re still far too important to them, Richard. It would not be right to kill you yet, but always this must be the question in Heydrich’s mind. How useful are you to him and when must he have you killed?”

  “Has Dieter been able to hire any diamond cutters and polishers?”

  “Not yet, but they have a Dutchman who knows the industry and they have been able to persuade him to help them. They are also looking to set up a central fabricating shop. This will take time, so Dieter has some others to assist him, but I don’t know who they are.”

  A Dutchman … Klees. “When will your brother leave for the Congo?”

  Her brother. Not Dieter anymore. “In another week.”

  Dieter had said there was someone else. A Belgian girl … Arlette. They’d kill her, too, if Richard wasn’t careful. They’d try to get to her …

  “What about the cables I send?”

  “They know you must be gathering intelligence for the British, but they still do not have your code. At least, I do not think they have.”

  “Arlette, it’s Hagen here. How are things?”

  “Fine … they are fine, mijnheer. I … I am so glad you’ve called. The flawless Ds you requested for your trading account have come in, and I have given de Heer Dunkelsbuhler your thanks.”

  D for Duncan. She had sent the message over, but flawless Ds would only make the Scharführer Helmut Langer suspicious and the Gestapo would be listening in.

  “Clear blue-white diamonds, Herr Scharführer. Gem diamonds of the highest grade.”

  “Mijnheer Hagen, is there someone with you?”

  He told her not to worry, that it was only the chief of security at the Messerschmitt factory in Augsburg. “We need a few grinding wheels and some other things, Arlette. A rush order. If you’
ll take down a message for the shop, I’ll do my very best not to go too fast.”

  When he rang off, Arlette felt lost and empty. She had wanted so much to tell him Lev’s daughter and son-in-law had arrived safely in Antwerp, that the man he’d sent to the crypt had reached them in time and had driven them to a railway station outside of Berlin.

  That night, after eleven, she went to the club of Cecile Verheyden and telephoned Inverlin Cottage. The butler said that Mrs. Winfield was not available but that he would take down the message. So many grinding wheels, so many glass cutters.

  When decoded, it would read:

  TO THE CARPENTER FROM ALICE

  ESCAPE LINE DEAD REPEAT DEAD / NOTIFY DE BEERS SECURITY HUNTER DIETER KARL WILL ATTEMPT CONTACT SMUGGLERS MBUJI-MAYI AND TSHIKAPA REGIONS CONGO / HUNTER IN PAY OF ABWEHR AND SD REPEAT SD / HUNTER SAILING 3 DECEMBER NORTH GERMAN LLOYD STEAMER ILSBERG OUT OF BREMERHAVEN / ATTEMPTS BEING MADE RECRUIT SKILLED WORKMEN DIAMOND TRADE AMSTERDAM SUSPECT KLEES ADVISE ACCORDINGLY / PRODUCTION ME 109 FIGHTERS AUGSBURG PLANT 120 UNITS PER MONTH MESSER-SCHMITT FACTORY BEING GIVEN PRIORITY OVER DORMER AND HEINKEL BOMBERS FOR DAIMLER-BENZ ENGINES / ENTRY TO MAN DIESEL-ENGINE FACTORY REFUSED / ALICE

  The night was cold and the streets were lonely. At first Arlette was certain she was being followed, but then the steps faded away and she was left alone.

  Damas watched as the girl went up the stairs to find the key in her purse and unlock the door. Light from the hall threw her silhouette at him, she pausing tensely, uncertain still.

  Then she closed the door, had words with her landlady probably, and finally went up to her room to undress in the dark.

  Berlin had urged the utmost caution. Something was not right. Krantz hadn’t been happy. Hagen had pulled a switch on them—Damas was certain of this and smiled at the thought.

  When she parted the curtains to look down at the street and search its places of deeper darkness, Arlette found it empty.

  * directive from Gestapo II Müller.

  Nine

  THE DUNES TO THE WEST of Ostend were white with snow, the sea was dark and where it met the land there was a broken rampart of ice. Arlette leaned her bicycle against a picket fence, then made her way through to the beach. Richard was in England again. He’d come back from Germany, had come down with malaria right away and had been ill for weeks.