The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  A well-trampled trail led right to it.

  Irmgard wouldn’t meet his gaze. Hands jammed into the pockets of her coat, she just stared across the quarry floor.

  He started out. The silence came to him. After hours it was always like nothing else on earth. All quarries were the same in this regard, though some more than others.

  When he neared the shed, he found he couldn’t go any farther. His hands shook. He knew he might have trouble using dynamite again, but the shaking wasn’t from this.

  Irmgard took the key from him. The padlock was frozen. Blowing on it, banging it against the door, she finally got the thing to open.

  The shed was empty.

  “What did you want the dynamite for?”

  “To keep in case I’d need it later on—I don’t know. It was just an idea.”

  “To destroy Dieter’s diamond center? Admit it, Richard. If there’d been explosives, you’d have taken them back to Munich and wired that place. You’d have come back in a few weeks, months—who knows—and you’d have destroyed it all and Dieter, too.”

  She’d tell them everything.

  “Or Heydrich or both? Was that it?” she asked.

  “Irmgard, why don’t you leave it be?”

  This angered her. “You can’t fool with them. You are to give them all the information they need to take the Antwerp diamond stocks. You are to help Dieter establish a cutting center second to none, and you are to give them the codes you’ve been using. They have to have them, Richard. There’s no getting away from it. They need to know exactly what you’ve told the British. Dee Dee, Erika and I will be allowed to live only so long as you do exactly as Heydrich asks.”

  “Did you know they’d empty that shed?”

  “Did I betray you?” She shook her head. Turning from him, she lit the candles on the table in front of the fire. The ski resort was on the outskirts of Innsbruck. They’d have their supper. She wished for another time, another place, but that could never be. She asked about Arlette and was he in love with her? Was she very pretty?

  He asked, “What will you tell them?”

  “That we made love and that I slept with you. Richard, wait! The Gestapo will ask for every little detail, how many times we kissed, where we did it, what it felt like for me, for you, did we both come madly with joy? How could we? But I must try and so must you because that’s what Heydrich wants.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then he will know you’re in love with this Belgian girl. She’s been helping you, Richard. They are certain of this. They will try to kidnap her and there’s nothing you can do about it now.”

  “Kidnap … ? Why haven’t you warned me?” It was a cry that had been ripped from him.

  “Because I couldn’t! Because I have done as they asked. Richard, the lines will be down, the roads sealed off.”

  She began to pull at the buttons of her sweater, to undress in front of him, but she knew he’d not touch her now, not even look at her.

  When he started for the door, Irmgard shouted after him, “There’s nothing you can do, Richard. Nothing! The plan to take her will already be in motion. That’s why Heydrich let us come down here. He knew, Richard. He knew!”

  Bernard Wunsch gripped his sopping mackintosh by the collar. Already his fedora hung from its peg in the hall of the apartment. “Arlette’s what?” he shouted.

  “Gone. The one from England came here not more than an hour ago. Ah, he was such a nice young man, still a boy and so very English.”

  Wunsch tried to still the rising panic within him. “But he was to come to the office. He was to say, ‘The Carpenter has sent me.’ Ascher and I—”

  That ample woman clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Bernard, Bernard, when will you learn not to worry so? Arlette would have checked him out most thoroughly.”

  “My dear, how did this courier know she was staying with us?”

  Martine shrugged. “I went shopping as I always do. There were three nice lamb chops at the butcher’s. I know meat is so expensive but lamb like that—”

  “Three!” His voice was like an alarm.

  “But … but of course. Arlette must eat as well as you and I. Bernard, I have done this now for several days, ever since she has come to stay with us.”

  The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach deepened. With it came the sudden knife of the ulcers.

  As the spasm passed, his voice leaped. “And at the grocer’s? A few more potatoes, a little more endive? Martine, how could you? These men are not fools. Arlette lives within a very small circle. All they had to do was follow you and ask a few questions of one of the shopkeepers.”

  Pushing past her, he grabbed the telephone. Were they tapping this one, too? Well, damn it, let them listen!

  “Ascher, the worst has happened. Go at once to the Central Station. I will take the car and try the airfield.”

  “And the roads? Bernard, what will we do about the roads?”

  “I will notify the police. I will say that some diamonds are missing from the vault.”

  An hour … Arlette and the “courier” had left the house nearly an hour ago.

  Rain streaked the windows of their compartment. At Ghent there would be a ten-minute stopover, at Bruges another. With luck, they should arrive in Ostend at about eight o’clock in the evening.

  Everything seemed to be all right. The very fact that they were heading for Ostend should have banished any doubts she might still have had. Yet there it was, that lingering hesitation in her mind. There was something not quite right about him.

  Collin Forbes uncrossed his long legs and gave her another smile. With the absolute surety of a young man of twenty-eight, he said, “Now you’re not to worry, Miss Huysmans. Believe me, everything’s been laid on. Relax. We’ll soon have you over to England.”

  Duncan could well have sent someone else. This one could be a German agent.

  “Do you like working with diamonds?” he asked, brushing a hand over the smooth brown hair that was so neatly trimmed.

  “Yes, very much. It’s really quite interesting.”

  “So, you’ll be given a job in the same line, I suppose?”

  He pulled out a package of Gold Flakes, shook it open and held it out to her.

  She shook her head, watched as he lit up and blew smoke nonchalantly toward the luggage rack above him. Evasively she said, “I don’t know what I’ll be doing. And you? What do you do—usually?”

  He gave a toss of his head. “Oh, a bit of this and that. Things are heating up, so I expect they’ll soon have us all in uniform.”

  At Ghent he got off the train and she could see him through the window, hurrying into the station to find a call box. Again she felt uneasy.

  When a woman with two young children entered one compartment, Arlette got up to make room for them. Folding Forbes’s coat, she went to put it up into the luggage rack, then thought better of doing so.

  The knife was in the right-hand pocket. Sitting there, with the little girls watching her and the woman prattling on about how late the trains were and why was it they could never seem to run on time, Arlette drew out the knife but managed to hide it from them.

  Its handle was black. A stainless-steel thumb catch released the blade. All this was fine and as it should have been, except for the double rune of the SS.

  Damas moved along the car. Lootvens was in the one ahead of them, Van der Velsen in the one behind. Jurgens was their contact man, and Jurgens was good. One of the best.

  Three cars back of them a disgruntled Otto Krantz would be impatiently waiting for it all to be over. At Ostend they’d take the girl off by fishing boat and put her on a freighter that would be lying in wait at the rendezvous some ten kilometers out to sea.

  Everything was going like clockwork. Now the Nazis would really see how well his team functioned. There’d be other assignments, far more responsibility with the Antwerp diamonds.

  The girl left her compartment, but only to walk a
way from him along the aisle toward the lavatory. Nerves perhaps. The door was locked, the Occupied sign all too clear.

  Dismayed, she turned to retrace her steps as he ducked into the nearest compartment and sat down.

  She was terrified. Pretty—yes! Those eyes of hers betrayed so much.

  Damas felt his hands encircling that neck of hers, felt her struggling beneath him, felt the softness of her skin, her breasts and thighs …

  Some of his special students had been like that. In for private tutoring, late, too, and in tears afterward, but too afraid to tell their parents. It had been a way of getting back at the rich, the Jews who’d soon be taught how it really was.

  Arlette walked the length of the car, afraid to glance into each of the other compartments, yet knowing she must.

  Later—how much later was it?—Forbes’s coat began to slip off the luggage rack. Glancing up at it, Arlette turned quickly away. The coat haunted her, slipping a little more each time. The knife would fall out of the pocket. It would clatter on the floor between her and Forbes. The knife …

  Since returning to the train, he’d been preoccupied, no longer so confident.

  As if he sensed her thoughts, his grin came swiftly. “Steady on, old girl. We’re going to get through this.”

  Oh he was so good, so very good. An actor.

  When the coat slid dangerously, Arlette leaped to take it down and fold it over her lap. He got up to take it from her, but she said, “No, it’s all right, please. I’m cold. It will warm my knees.”

  As his eyes settled suspiciously on her hands, she smoothed them over the coat. After a moment he looked away.

  “There’s a new station at Bruges. Have you seen it?” she asked.

  What was she on about? “Of course I’ve seen it. My aunt lives in Bruges.” They could see the factories in the distance.

  The knife was warm and smooth. Sliding it under the coat, Arlette tried to fix her eyes on the man who had called himself Collin Forbes. There must be no hesitation. As the train came to a stop, she must leap up, shove the coat into his arms and drive the knife straight into him.

  And the little girls? she asked. Could she murder someone in front of them?

  The train began to slow. As it drew into the station, the woman spoke firmly to the girls and put her knitting away.

  Forbes pulled his gaze from the corridor to the platform but soon returned it to the corridor.

  The woman from Bruges got up to put on her coat. As the brakes were applied, she stumbled. “Mon Dieu, these trains, mademoiselle!”

  Arlette threw the coat in Forbes’s face. Shoving past the woman, she hit the side of the door, then bounced through and raced down the corridor only to collide with someone. Tearing past him, she fought to reach the exit at the far end of the car, but people were everywhere. Someone shouted, “Hey, you!” Someone else cried out. Suddenly there was a shriek, the sound of fighting …

  With a leap, she hit the platform and began to run.

  There were tracks, tracks, tracks, and in the early-evening light, brand-new warehouses and sheds in the distance.

  The lights came on to shine in loneliness outside the warehouse. For some time now the place had been quiet. Still she waited, straining to hear again the sound of their footsteps. Satisfied, Arlette began to climb down. Splinters snagged her silk stockings. She no longer wore shoes, had lost those out on the tracks when she first fell.

  Each crate had offered narrow toe- and handholds. It had been good that the stack was high; good, too, that the opposite door of the warehouse had been open. Even as she climbed, they had run past her—first a harried Collin Forbes, and then three others who had fanned out among the crates and had gone to ground like her.

  Straining, she lowered herself stealthily to the floor but clung to the crates.

  The concrete was cold, the air damp. There’d be a fog.

  When she reached the heavy sliding door, she found that it had been left slightly open. There was just room enough to squeeze through.

  The light was dim, shrouded by the mist that all too soon crept through her clothes. Pressing her back to the wall of the warehouse, she moved cautiously into the shadows and then into a wedge of darkness.

  One of the men came to stand under the light. Another soon joined him. A train came in and they waited for it to pass. The ground vibrated. There was a hiss of steam, the smell of soot.

  When she stumbled into someone, the scream lifted from her in silence.

  The man who had called himself Collin Forbes lay dead at her feet, and when she ran a trembling hand up over the jacket, she felt the blood-soaked shirt.

  The men looked her way. Unconscious of what she was doing, Arlette began to clean off her hands on Forbes’s trousers.

  One of the men spoke to the other and pointed her way. At a nod, they parted. As she got hesitantly to her feet, Arlette wished with all her heart she had kept the knife.

  He struck a match and held it over the body. In death, Collin Forbes looked pale and shabby. The man was German, a Berliner. Grim, brutal, short, squat and muscular, about fifty-five or sixty years of age … The one who had been with the “priest.” The one Richard had called Otto Krantz.

  He found Forbes’s passport, wallet and keys. Putting these away in a pocket, he struck another match and searched for the pistol. It was not far from the body.

  Then he sensed that she was near and came after her. Arlette backed away until once again she was among the piles of crates.

  Damas could hear her breathing. The British agent had surprised them all by killing Lootvens in the car ahead of them and leaving the body slumped against the compartment wall as if asleep.

  He’d paid for it, and now the girl would, too.

  Arlette heard something—the soft rustle of clothing, the muted scrape of a shoe. Richard, she began. Richard …

  Fingers touched the right sleeve of her coat. In panic, she lunged away. Damas made a grab for her. She cried out and ran blindly into a stack of crates, banged her knees, her hands, fought him off, was being smothered … smothered …

  Panting, she lay tensely under him. He had a knife. Its point was pressed against the underside of her chin. “Don’t move,” he whispered.

  A voice rang out. “Damas, you leave that girl alone!”

  It was the German, the one called Krantz. “Remember, my friend, we’ve a boat to meet.”

  A boat … The Belgian lay so still. His breath hardly came at all as he slid the fingers of his other hand around the base of her throat and felt the skin there, the strand of pearls.

  The top of her sweater was gripped. A button popped. Arlette got ready to lunge, to scream, to fight back.

  The knife pricked her skin, a warning.

  “Damas?”

  “Over here.”

  With all her might, Arlette swung a fist, hitting him on the side of the head and in the eye. Damas shrieked at her. She brought her head up hard, hitting him in the face. She fought with him, hit his eyes, struck out blindly at them until in agony he shrieked again and let go of her.

  Bolting up, she ran from them, ran until she could run no more.

  Then she began to climb, and when the iron ladder reached the beams high above, she left its security to crawl out on one of them and find the overhead crane.

  Not content, she pulled herself up onto its roof to lie there on her side, curled into a ball.

  To the west of Ostend the road was bright with sunshine but lonely in the early morning. As the wind rushed in from the sea, it dried her clothes and went on to pass a rippling hand over the lush green meadow grass that stretched away.

  The first of the church bells came faintly. From the nearest farmhouse, a woman appeared with her children. Arlette rode past them, they watching her with curiosity, she concentrating on the road ahead.

  From time to time she chanced a look behind. She was exhausted, her clothes in ruins. She had stolen the bicycle from a garage near the railway station on the outski
rts of Bruges. A piece of luck, a slim, slim chance.

  They’d have a car. They’d know where to look for her. She couldn’t go to her parents, couldn’t ask for their help, hoped they’d be safe and left alone.

  Willi might be waiting for her with the Vega. His mother had answered the telephone with a halting voice, the stranger. Yes, Willi was in the army. No, he wasn’t there at the moment. Yes, he might come on Sunday. Mechanics did get leave since there hadn’t been a full call-up of reservists.

  But could Willi bring the Vega? “Please, Mevrouw de Menten, it’s urgent! You must call the base and tell Willi I’m being followed. He’ll understand and know what to do.”

  Dear God, she hoped he’d be there. If only Krantz and the schoolmaster would leave her alone for just a little longer.

  Gulls cried in the gusting air. Below her, on the right, the marram grass bent among the dunes. Waves broke. Endlessly they called to her, and all around her now there was the sound of them.

  The car was black, shiny and distant. As it sped toward her, Arlette began to pedal faster and faster. She knew it was no use. He’d get her again. He’d lie on top of her like that. The one called Krantz would want answers—answers about Richard. She couldn’t let them get her. She couldn’t!

  When the bicycle pitched off the road and disappeared among the dunes, the car came to a screeching stop.

  Arlette heard the doors being flung open, heard their shouts as they raced after her.

  When she hit the water, she saw the sail and heard their laughter but didn’t stop, couldn’t stop—ran out into the freezing waves until they had dragged her down.

  “Willi … Willi, over here!”

  She tried to wave, went under again only to come up and cry out to him. The waves were pushing her back toward the shore. No matter how hard she swam, she could make so little headway. “Willi! …”

  It was a fishing boat, a small trawler with a faded brick-red sail. Not the Vega. Not the Vega.