The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  At a turning, Irmgard went ahead of him to unlock a room that was octagonal and lined with steel cabinets whose drawers were flat and so like those he knew.

  On the dome of the ceiling the azure-blue dust of the heavens held a golden tracery of stars. On the walls were ghostlike scenes of Eden in soft pastel. Tall windows faced northward, giving reasonable viewing light. On the benches beside the nests of stainless-steel sorting screens, were two white canvas sacks.

  From the throat of one of them came a cascade of diamond rough. Some Congo cubes, a lot of carbonado, stones from Brazil and Venezuela, glassies from South and South-West Africa. A hodgepodge gleaned from several forays to the digs and buying wherever they could.

  Yanking open the other sack, he spilled a stream of cut gem diamonds onto the bench. All of them were small and of little value, a point or two. Salvaged from the jewelry of “emigrating” Jews and other refugees.

  Not stopping, he went to the cabinets and began to open the drawers at random. Most were empty, others held a little more. They had no ready source of diamonds as yet. They were desperate.

  In a basement that had once held thousands of bottles of wine, there were now the settling tanks full of olive oil to separate the ground boart into its various grades of diamond powders.

  “Dieter will never do it, Irmgard.”

  “Not without your help.”

  They were waiting for him in the sun room at the Villa Hunter. Long before he reached them Hagen heard the baby. She made noises over everything, played with the spoons and tried to grab Dee Dee’s teacup.

  “Richard, it’s good to see you.”

  She searched his face for answers but gave no explanation. “Erika’s beautiful, Dee Dee. How’ve you been?”

  It seemed so stupid to ask such a thing. The child played strange. Hagen took hold of Dee Dee’s outstretched hand. Was it all to be so awkward and formal?

  Richard was everything she had remembered, only there were changes. He had grown a little older, had been hurt by things, not just by the news of them. She could see this in his eyes, in the way he no longer smiled so easily. “We have lived—survived. Let’s not talk about it. Please, for me this is … what can I say? Such a relief.”

  “You’re not going back!” This had come from Irmgard. “She’s staying here with us, isn’t she, Richard?”

  He took the baby from her. Erika tugged at his ear. Suddenly he felt the warmth of the child’s lips on his cheek, the silkiness of her ash-blond curls. He kissed her forehead, held her high above him and chuckled. She was just a child, a person all her own.

  Heydrich’s child. The bastard had raped Dee Dee repeatedly. When she could no longer hide the fact she was pregnant, he had become enraged, had had her thrown into Ravensbrück and her property stolen.

  Afraid for her life, she’d had the child there and Heydrich had made her keep it.

  Not a word as to who the father was, not even to Irmgard.

  “She will come to love you quickly, Richard. Even the worst of the SS guards are a little afraid of her magic. We’re special, did you know this? We have a small hut to ourselves—just a room, a bed, two chairs and a stove. That is so rare a privilege the others who line up every day think I’m the commandant’s whore and don’t speak to me for fear I will betray them.”

  From not wanting to talk about it, she couldn’t help but tell him.

  Irmgard tried to reassure her. “Heydrich’s said you’ll be allowed to stay here with me for the summer. Richard’s free to come and see us whenever he can.”

  Hagen sat down at the table and bounced the child gently on his knee. Her little feet and hands were perfect. She seemed at home with him already.

  When he tried to say something, Dee Dee reached across the table and put a finger against his lips. “You’re so kind and good, Richard. In a world where kindness has all but left us, you and Irmgard are the only ones who care.”

  “Don’t give up hope. Day and night you’re both on my mind.”

  “On your conscience.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t let us interfere with what you have to do.”

  Irmgard hit the table and shouted at her. “I told you not to say that!”

  Dee Dee had a depth of serenity that surprised him. “Irmgard, I’ll say what has to be said.”

  Tears rushed into Irmgard’s eyes. “And I’ll be forced to repeat it, damn you! Don’t you understand they’ll make me tell them everything?” She went to pieces before their eyes, felt so ashamed for the things she’d had to say.

  “The bathtub,” she said cruelly, her voice climbing. “Again and again, Richard. Naked in their hands. Naked! Them tearing at the roots of my hair and shoving me under. Under, Richard! Gagging. Crying out. Gasping for air. I need air. Air! Dear God … air. I had to fill my lungs. I had to.

  “I vomited underwater. I gagged. I sucked in another breath and another. I had to. So many times. So helpless. Don’t you see, my darling, I had to tell them everything?”

  Her head was bowed. Exhausted, she stood before them, he and Dee Dee so stunned by what had just happened, they couldn’t seem to move.

  At last Hagen took her gently in his arms. He kissed her cheek; he tried to wipe the tears away. There were no words to say what he felt, yet he had to tell her he understood. “Let’s just try to be ourselves and spend what time we have together.”

  Gestapo Headquarters in Munich was in a somber brownstone building. Garages out the back held the limousines and Black Marias. The cellars held the detention cells.

  Hagen went up the front steps between black-uniformed SS sentries and in under the ever-present flags. The duty sergeant examined his briefcase. More guards stood at attention just inside the doors and at the entrances to each of the halls.

  Emptying his pockets, Hagen hid the fear and outrage he felt. “I’m a man of few possessions, Herr Scharführer. Murdering the Gruppenführer Heydrich would be the farthest thing from my mind.”

  There was no humor in the sergeant. With a curt nod, the visit was cleared.

  The marble halls were the loneliest he’d ever walked. A hive of activity, telephones rang; typewriters hammered; secretaries, both male and female, went to and fro with telexes, documents, photographs and maps.

  Would it do any good to try to memorize the layout of the halls, the positions of all the guards? Could he kidnap Heydrich and free Irmgard and Dee Dee that way? It was a futile thought.

  Heydrich wasn’t in his office on the second floor. He was shown in anyway and left to sit in one of the leather armchairs within sight of the adjutant in an adjoining room.

  The office was a mirror of the one Heydrich had in Berlin. All the Nazi leaders had these exact duplicates. Should Berlin ever be threatened, they could move here at a moment’s notice and still govern the country.

  The antique desk was spacious and fastidiously tidy. There were photographs of Frau Heydrich and their children. Maps on the walls concentrated on both the west and the east. So many pins and tiny swastika flags, so many notations.

  There were batteries of gray filing cabinets and card indexes. Heydrich was rumored to keep tabs on the more than one hundred thousand leaders of the Nazi hierarchy. There’d be files on those who were collaborating with them in other countries, dossiers on those who’d resist.

  The men who’d followed Arlette. Her “priest,” Karl Christian Damas.

  Heydrich’s black leather trench coat with its swastika armband hung in a corner with his cap, holster and pistol. There’d be spare uniforms, spare jackboots. Heydrich and he were of about the same height. Would it be possible to …

  “Richard, my apologies. Things are so busy these days.”

  Heydrich didn’t bother with the Heil Hitler or even with a handshake. He moved in swiftly and sat down behind the desk.

  Then he sat there building church spires with his fingertips and studying Hagen.

  The fingertips impatiently tapped together. Should he confront Hagen wi
th everything or simply ask, “Have we an understanding, I wonder?”

  The salesman’s gaze gave nothing away.

  “I think so, Herr Gruppenführer.”

  “Good. So, first, the new diamond center. Dieter Karl has left lists of the equipment that is needed. My adjutant will provide you with copies and you will go over them. Add what is missing, delete what is unnecessary. Suggest the best available suppliers.”

  He nodded. They’d get to things soon enough. “Anything else?”

  Heydrich brushed the tips of three fingers over the front of his hair. “I’m glad you asked, but please forgive me if I haven’t much time. The Polish question is very much on our minds.”

  “Will there be war?”

  Startled by the effrontery, Heydrich paused. Had Hagen thought to anger him? “That depends entirely on the Poles, but the question does not concern you and me.”

  “With all due respect, Herr Heydrich, we both know it does. If Germany declares war on Poland, the traders in Antwerp will transfer their stocks.”

  “Unless Belgian neutrality interferes.”

  “Even if it does. They’re not fools, Herr Gruppenführer. Sure, it looks as if they’re wringing their hands in despair and unable to decide, but stop for a moment. The threat you people pose is breaking up what it took five hundred years to build. Some of the traders have already gone to Israel to start up a center there, others to Buenos Aires and still others to New York.”

  “They are fleeing like rats.”

  Hagen shook his head. “They are realists. They’ll ship those diamonds even if they don’t receive the written guarantees they want. They’ll gamble, Herr Heydrich, because you’ll have forced them to do so.”

  “Then let us agree that you work to our benefit and that you remember Herr Klees. We’ve a man in Antwerp we want you to contact. You’ll work through him when not in the Reich.”

  Hagen couldn’t believe they’d let him leave the country. There had to be something—Arlette? he wondered. Arlette … “That might be hard for me, Herr Gruppenführer. As it is, the Committee aren’t all that happy with my being so involved.”

  Heydrich brushed this aside. “He’ll be discreet. Now first, Dieter Karl has another request. Through our sources he has compiled lists of suitable tradesmen in the diamond industries of both Antwerp and Amsterdam. You will go over the lists and circle those you feel are absolutely essential to our needs.”

  Lev’s name would be on one of the lists … “I’ll do my best, but you mustn’t think it possible for me to know them all.”

  Again the matter was brushed aside. “There are those in the sintering factories of the Diamant Boart that we will need. Dillingham’s can provide others. You will find out, Richard.”

  Heydrich swung his chair away from the desk to cross his legs and stare across the room. Quickly he came to a decision. “Richard, the admiral and I have reached an agreement about you. From now on you will be considered an agent of the Sicherheitsdienst. We’ll provide you with the necessary documents but will keep them on file here—signed, of course, by yourself in case you should ever think of trying to double-cross us again. There will be no more need for these little Treffs, these little games you’ve been playing with Canaris.”

  Heydrich asked about the railway cars. “Are they really the means by which the diamonds will be shipped? Doesn’t the Jew Isaac Hond plan to use trucks, Richard? The trucks of the Mercantile Company?”

  So that was what Bernard had been hiding all this time. “I didn’t know of them. You can see how well you’ve managed to discredit me in their eyes.”

  The salesman’s look of dismay was genuine. “Now that you know, you will find out for us all the details. Trucks will be so much easier for us to intercept.”

  Had they a team of ten, twenty or thirty men in place already? “If I can, I will, but it may not be so easy.”

  “Your director, Herr Wunsch, knows all about the plan.”

  Heydrich made no mention of Hagen’s having gathered intelligence for the British, none whatsoever of alternate sources or of Dieter’s efforts in the Congo.

  It was only as Hagen got up to leave that the Gruppenführer asked him which factories he’d be visiting this time.

  “None, I’m afraid. Herr Krantz left me no time to prepare. But since I’m so close, maybe I should take a run down to the quarries near Landeck. Last fall they were having a problem with the grinding wheels they use to sharpen the new tungsten carbide drill bits. They also use our saw blades for trimming the rock.”

  Hagen had made his first move under the new order. And so soon? “The Fräulein Hunter can drive you. Stay over in Innsbruck—a little holiday, Richard. Please, I insist.”

  There’d been no mention of Dee Dee and Erika, none at all of Arlette.

  The adjutant had him sign the papers, then swore him in as a member of the SS. They even took his photograph downstairs in the basement.

  Out on the street a light snow was falling, the last perhaps before the world would descend into war.

  “Richard, don’t try to do anything foolish. Just get the hell out of Germany and don’t come back.”

  “Dee Dee—”

  “Look, I’m not expecting anything for myself.”

  “But Erika …”

  Dee Dee pulled off a glove and felt the snow, the leaves of the boxwood hedge, such simple things. She ran her eyes over the gardens at the Villa Hunter. Erika was sitting with Irmgard at the edge of one of the fish ponds. Irmgard was telling her about what big fish there’d be come summer.

  “Erika, yes. If you could get them to let you take her to Belgium, I’d give her to you, Richard. I’d be so happy. It’s not her fault what happened. I’ve had to tell myself that so many times, and I’ve come to love her all the more.”

  Hagen reached for her. “Trust me, will you? I need a bit of time.”

  “He’ll kill us and then he’ll kill you.”

  “Maybe, but for now not a word.”

  She turned quickly away, couldn’t look at him. “What makes you think they won’t make me tell them what you’ve just said?”

  He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, was surprised at how thin she was. “It’s a chance I’ll just have to take, Dee Dee. You’re both my friends. I can’t leave you to face this alone.”

  She flung her arms about his neck and kissed his cheek, burst suddenly into tears and whispered, “The Hunter factories have been asked to supply the SS with 150 Polish uniforms.”

  It could only mean that Heydrich planned a little diversion, an “intrusion of German territory.” An excuse, then, to start the war.

  In the afternoon a note came from Heydrich. It was dated April 7, 1939, and bore the official stamp of the SS.

  Richard, we have seen the Belgian lists of strategic materials they will not supply to any of the belligerents in time of war. Diamonds are not included, nor are the tools you people make. In spite of this, we will still proceed as if cut off from all supplies. Heil Hitler.

  “Arlette, it’s Hagen. Can you hear me okay?”

  “Just. Could you talk a little louder, please?”

  “That better?” he asked, almost shouting.

  “Yes … Yes. De Heer Wunsch, he is on the other line, Mijnheer Hagen. I will take down the order, if you like. Then you can speak with him.”

  “Richard, it’s Bernard here. How are things?”

  “Bernard, good of you to come on the line. I want to take a few days to go down to the Freisen und Milhausen quarry near Landeck.”

  “Those blasted experimental drill bits. Their breaking has nothing to do with us!”

  Good for Bernard. “And the saw blades.”

  “It’s always the case with granite. Obstacles get in the road of progress.”

  Wunsch covered the receiver and nodded grimly to Lev, who’d been having a worried cup of coffee with him.

  “No real problems yet, Bernard. If there are, I’ll let you know.”

  “What,
no obstacles?” Ruefully he looked at Lev and shrugged.

  Richard tried to ease his mind. They talked, then Wunsch listened in as he gave Arlette the message.

  Unknown to them, it read:

  TO THE CARPENTER FROM ALICE

  RED ALERT / 150 POLISH UNIFORMS ORDERED SS HUNTER FACTORIES MUNICH / MOST URGENT YOU ORGANIZE TRANSFER ANTWERP DIAMOND STOCKS MEGADAN NOTIFY DE BEERS / COURIER HUYSMANS ARLETTE ENGLAND IMMEDIATELY / DIAMONDS NOT INCLUDED BELGIAN LISTS STRATEGIC MATERIALS / ALICE

  The mountains were all around them, breathtaking under snow and ice. From Innsbruck the road ran west to Landeck.

  Hagen then turned southward. The snow was soon piled high beside the road as the car climbed into the wooded heights.

  At a bend, a recent avalanche had cleared a swath down the mountainside, and they could see the gorge and valley below them. Irmgard got out of the car to take in a deep breath and stand with her back to him. “It’s almost like the time we had before things went to hell.”

  “Why not wait here for me?”

  “That quarry’s full of snow, and you know it!”

  “Isn’t the watchman still there?”

  “How much dynamite do you want and for what purpose, please?”

  He looked steadily at her. “Enough to do a little job. Enough to ask you to keep that from them until you can no longer do so.”

  He wasn’t asking her not to tell them. He was giving her the excuse she needed.

  By a stroke of good fortune the watchman wasn’t there. The alpine hut and barn were on a ledge right at the top of the road. The plow the old man used to clear the snow lay to one side next a frozen heap of horse dung.

  From there the road, unplowed but showing a track, ran into the gaping canyon of the quarry. Towering cliffs of gray granite were cut by ledges, some so high above them they looked like eagles’ roosts. The wire saws, the boom hoists, donkey engines and drills were all silent in their winter.

  A trickle of snow fell from a precipice where, in summer, men pounded wedges into holes they had drilled to feather out the giant blocks of stone.

  Dynamite wasn’t a large part of their operation—its use would only shatter the rock and spoil the tombstone quality. But now and then it had to be used to remove the knots of waste rock. There’d be blasting caps and fuse enough. Hagen ran his eyes over the snow-covered expanse of the quarry floor, and when he found the tiny tar-papered shed of the magazine, it looked forlorn.