The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  When the woman slid to the floor, pulling him with her, the baron resisted and ran his hands under the blouse and over her shoulders.

  She gripped his thighs. He spread his knees. Laughing, she undid his trousers and began to play with him as he continued to caress her neck and back, pulling at the clothing, plucking at it until both sweater and blouse were free of the skirt and he was unhooking her brassiere.

  The nubby bumps of her spine, the slender waist and flared hips were soon exposed. The woman stood to remove the rest of her things. The baron, not satisfied, pulled her down to her knees again and she stroked his penis, laughingly ran her tongue up it before taking it into her mouth.

  The baron drew her head forward. Now back, now forward. Now back …

  Damas watched, and when it was done, the blood pounded in his veins. Had the Berliner known what effect the sight of such a thing would have on him?

  Had he known that now he’d find out all he could about the woman and watch her as never before?

  There was snow in the courtyard of Landsberg Prison. The guards stamped their feet and swung their arms. Those that manned the machine guns got the full sweep of the wind. Bundled in their greatcoats, they watched the platform that had been set up.

  At a sound Hagen turned from the infirmary window. Otto Krantz came in with a formidable sheaf of papers under one arm and a bulging briefcase.

  Setting these on the table, he rubbed the circulation back into his fingers. “Richard, be reasonable. You know we have Arlette Huysmans. She’s confessed that you were an agent of the British Secret Service, and that you routinely sent information by coded cable, telephone—even by postcard, or simply took it with you to Britain. Yet you still deny this and claim the words and passages from those poems were meant only to remind your mother of how close you’d once been?”

  “That’s correct. If my mother hadn’t left my father, he wouldn’t have gone off to war. He’d still be alive.”

  More of the same bullshit! Krantz studied the nicotine stains on his fingers. Increasingly he had come to believe that the only way to break Hagen was to offer the bastard freedom. They’d done it in Poland. For most, the shock of recapture had been too much and they’d broken down and wept like babies before spilling everything. One or two had had to be shot—there were always the tough ones. None escaped because, of course, there had been no escape. It was the elation of freedom one encouraged before suddenly taking it away.

  Quickly he came to a decision. “Because of your illness, the Reichsführer Himmler decided that the woman Irmgard Hunter was to be tried in your absence. You are to be allowed ten minutes with her. The death sentence can be commuted, Richard. It’s in your power to save her.”

  “And Arlette?” asked Hagen.

  “She will die the same way if you continue to refuse to cooperate.”

  On the way, Krantz stopped to chat with one of the guards. As Hagen listened, he got his first real news of the war. Poland had fallen in less than fifteen days, in eight her army had been smashed. But now the Russians were fighting the Finns in what must be the bitterest winter in over sixty years.

  The Finns had invented the Molotov cocktail. Vodka bottles filled with a mixture of gasoline, kerosene and tar.

  He tried to think. If Russia and Finland were at war, then Germany was still waiting, but for how long?

  And the diamonds … had the traders in Antwerp finally got them safely away? Was there nothing he could do?

  “Come on, my young friend. You’ve got a date to keep. If you’re wondering how things are at home, then let me tell you it’s business as usual. Leopold’s policy of neutrality forbids the Jews to jump. Britain’s distrust prevents them from giving the necessary guarantees. Seven … eight tons of diamonds just sitting there, Richard. All this time. Can you believe it? And Baron Dieter Karl has found himself a new lover, something really gorgeous. Fucks like a mink, or so I hear.”

  “Cecile?”

  “Who else? Happy to be working with us, Richard. A sensible woman.”

  Irmgard’s cell was near the far end of the courtyard. She didn’t turn to look at them when the door was opened, but sat on the edge of her cot, staring up at the tiny window.

  Krantz motioned the guard to stand outside the door. The turnkey brought them two plain wooden chairs and they crowded into the cell.

  Hagen begged to be left alone with her, but the Berliner wouldn’t hear of it.

  She was very thin. They’d shaved her head. The plain gray-blue smock was loose, and when he went to sit opposite her, the welts and broken pus-filled sores were all too evident. “Irmgard, it’s me, Richard.”

  Still she wouldn’t look at him. Hagen reached out to touch her. She flinched, then absently asked how he was.

  “All right. Alive. Actually, I’ve managed to escape for a while.”

  Not catching the humor, she turned suddenly in alarm. “Escape?”

  She saw the grin—the same old Richard. The cuts and bruises were healing. The nose had been badly broken.

  Hagen took her hands in his. She felt his tears, said, “It’s all right, Richard. It doesn’t matter.”

  At a nod from Krantz her voice lost its steadiness. “Arlette … they really have her, Richard. You mustn’t let them do this to her anymore. Tell them what they want to know. Give them the Antwerp diamonds. She loves you very much, but nothing could have stopped them from making her betray you. Even the best of us break down and confess.”

  Fear haunted her eyes. Furtively she ducked them away lest he see this. “Tell them the code. It’s absolutely essential to the security of the Reich that you give them the content of every one of those messages you sent. Work for Dieter. Please, I beg it of you!”

  All down the side of her neck there was a burn. When he tried to comfort her, she cried out, “Don’t be such a fool! They’ll win in the end, and then what?”

  The Berliner was gruff. “That’s enough, Fräulein Hunter. Your time together is up.”

  “May I give him my Bible?”

  What did it matter? Toilet paper when needed. “All right. Yes, yes, you may do so.”

  Hagen held her a moment. “Think of the good times, Irmgard. Remember the mountains. Remember me as I will remember you.”

  “Don’t watch me die. Please, I’m so afraid.”

  Snow fell. Swirling, the big flakes were caught in the wind to eddy in the far corners of the courtyard and play dust devils across the intervening space. Krantz and two guards walked him to the center, to stand before the platform on which, as yet, there was no one. Just a guillotine, a raised sheet of weighted, sharpened steel that stood tall and bleak.

  “Richard, I don’t like this anymore than you. Confess, for Christ’s sake. Agree to work for us and the woman will be spared.”

  Hagen turned on him. “Give me a rifle, damn you. Let her die with dignity!”

  Krantz backed away and let the guards restrain him. “It’s Gruppenführer Heydrich’s command that you be a witness to this. They will force you to keep your eyes open, Richard, and when we go up on the platform afterward, you are to remember that the Fräulein Huysmans faces exactly the same fate.”

  The whole thing wouldn’t break Hagen’s resolve. It would only strengthen his will to resist. Escape was the only thing. They had to lead him to believe it possible. Then they must close the iron fist around him.

  They had to have the diamonds.

  Irmgard was led out onto the platform. Each step faltered. As she neared the guillotine, her guards had to drag her toward it.

  They forced her to her knees. Her lips began to move, but what she said, Hagen couldn’t hear. Her wrists were fastened to the rings with ropes, then her ankles. They made her rest her neck in the slot.

  One of them yanked her head back so that she could look out at him. “Richard … Richard, please don’t watch! I beg it of you!”

  Hagen tried to get away, tried to get a rifle. They ripped the smock open and it fell off her back to hang th
ere. The snow thickened. It began to swirl faster and faster. The guards nearly broke his arms. Someone else seized him by the head. Krantz—was it Krantz?

  Fingers pried his eyes open.

  “Save her, Richard. Say the right thing!”

  “I can’t, damn you!”

  The blade fell. A cry of agony lifted from him. Blood spurted from her severed neck.

  Her head rolled across the platform. Her body jerked, bucking up several times to strain at the ropes.

  Then one of the SS guards kicked her head toward him, and it came to rest in the snow at his feet. “Irmgard … Irmgard …”

  It was only later, much later, that he was able to turn the pages of her Bible. He read a line here, another there. When he came to the Psalms he took more time. When he came to Psalm 56, he found the message. Using a bit of graphite, stolen from the end of a broken pencil, she had written in the margin, Richard, be of good cheer. They do not have Arlette.

  “Name?”

  “Odette Latour.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Place of birth?”

  “Brussels.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Red Cross nursing assistant.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “About a year and a half.”

  When asked, she told them readily that her brother and father had been killed in the 1914–18 war. “My mother died when I was fifteen.”

  “No others? Not an aunt or an uncle, a cousin perhaps?”

  The interrogator spoke excellent French. “They are living abroad, monsieur.”

  “Where, please?”

  “In America.”

  “Then who brought you up after your mother died?”

  “Her sister, my aunt.”

  “Address?”

  “My aunt’s, or mine?”

  “Yours,” he said.

  “Number 47 Boulevard Anspach, apartment 5, Brussels.”

  “Occupation?”

  “But I have already told you this, monsieur. A nursing assistant for the Red Cross.”

  “What, please, is Euflavine?”

  “It is an antiseptic, very good and nonirritating. One can even inject it into veins—in dilute form, of course.”

  “Hypoglycemia?”

  “Insulin shock—the loss of blood sugar below normal.”

  “Symptoms?”

  “Sweating, pallor, a feeling of sickness, tremors—all these often follow a state of confusion, but I am not a nurse, monsieur, only a nursing assistant. When I have passed my examinations—”

  He shrieked, “Simple fractures? What does one do?”

  Quickly she rattled off the steps: “Make sure the patient is comfortable. Support the injured part. Do not attempt to remove clothing …”

  “Fräulein?”

  “Yes?”

  “You understand German. You were speaking in German.”

  He had switched from using French. “But of course I speak your language. My mother came from Düsseldorf.”

  “And your mother’s sister, Fräulein Latour? Where is she now?”

  “In America, as I have already told you. They have a shop in Brooklyn. It is a suburb of New York.”

  “And what is the address of this aunt and uncle?”

  “You do not trust me, and this I cannot understand.”

  “The address, fräulein. The address.”

  “One hundred and ninety-seven Montague Street. Upstairs. On the top floor. The house is near the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge. There is a letter in my purse. It is … it is the last one I have received, so I have kept it with me to remember them.”

  The Gestapo man motioned to one of the SS guards. The purse was dumped onto the table. His hand went out, and she sat there tensely, waiting for him to pick up the letter. He shrieked, “Hagen!”

  She jumped, cried out, “Please, what is it? Is this some person?”

  He tossed the letter aside. “Richard Hagen. You knew him, Mademoiselle Huysmans. Look, it’s no use your lying to us. We know who you are. We have photographs. You used to work in Antwerp for the firm of Dillingham and Company.”

  “I know of no such person or firm. I am Odette Latour, and if you will check with the Red Cross, you will see that this is so.”

  “Your hands.”

  “Pardon, monsieur?”

  “Your hands! Put them on the desk.”

  The touch of him was cold. He held her life by a thread, felt the palms, the fingertips, examined the nails, then took a pair of pliers and laid them on the desk. Oh God …

  “Your hands are not those of a nursing assistant.”

  “Then you know nothing, monsieur! Nothing! That is the whitening that is caused by too much carbolic! The redness, it is … it is caused by …” She wiped her eyes and bit a knuckle. “I … I must scrub out the toilets and do the floors each day. It … it is not so very nice to have to do such things.”

  He smiled and spoke finally in English. “What a waste of talent. Care to come dancing with me some evening when we’re free of this wretched place?”

  The whitewashed walls of the root cellar were low and stained by the peat. Outside, the night would be clear and very cold. The stars over Kincalda House and the frozen wastes of Loch Assynt would be bright.

  Duncan McPherson got up from the observer’s chair. She had panicked but had handled herself well. Still, he had reservations. Weakness couldn’t be tolerated.

  Word had come again from Bernard Wunsch that Dieter Karl Hunter was showing an uncommon interest in Antwerp’s Red Cross depot. Only someone working from the inside could get them the answer they needed, but the girl mustn’t know of her assignment until the last possible moment.

  The diamond stocks were still in Antwerp, but now there was a much stronger Fifth Column than ever before. The German Fourth, Sixth, Twelfth, Sixteenth and Eighteenth armies were all poised near the borders of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. The First and Seventh armies waited behind the Siegfried Line in case of a French counteradvance across the Maginot Line. So many things would interfere.

  “I hate you, Duncan. I think I hate you more than I have ever hated anyone.”

  “Captain. You are to address me by my rank.”

  “Captain, then, but I still hate you—hate all this, the Nazi trappings, the flags, the jackboots, the uniforms …”

  He managed a smile, for the interrogation room had been a work of painstaking research designed to express the harshness one might have to face. “Hate away, but you’ll love me for it when the time comes.”

  The others were gathered around the wireless in the school’s common room. Arlette knew them only by fictitious names that wouldn’t be used elsewhere. There were two women and seven men from Poland, all of them eager to return to their country. The women were wireless operators, the men, saboteurs and intelligence agents.

  As well, there was a motley collection of Czechs, British, French, Dutch and yes, one token Belgian. She, too, had worked with the wireless, both receiving and sending in code. Nights in secret out in the hills and mountains, freezing at times and gray with fatigue because … why because Duncan nearly always had them chased and one never knew if he would do so.

  The man who had interrogated her offered an ale and a cigarette. He was nice and she liked his smile, but that was as far as such things could go.

  She asked about the news.

  “Not good, I’m afraid. The Germans have invaded Norway and Denmark. The Danish were finished in four hours. Apparently there’s a jolly good row going on off the coast near Narvik.”

  “Have the Germans landed?” To think that it had happened at last, and in Norway.

  He held the match for her and she leaned close to light her cigarette. “In force apparently. They’ve taken the Norwegians completely by surprise. Had their chaps hidden in their merchant ships. That new Nazi cruiser, the Blucher, has been sent to the bottom though.”

  Arlette had to l
eave the room. Outside the night was cold. It was April 9, 1940, and the phony war had suddenly come to an end.

  When McPherson found her she was looking up at the stars. For a time he said nothing. What could one say in any case? But he knew she’d be thinking of home. He’d cheated her, of course. He’d had to he to Richard.

  It had been touch and go getting her off the shore at Ostend. Krantz had been bloody close to taking her. Then the lads had come along and plucked her from the sea. Thank God she’d put through a call to Willi de Menten. Thank God she’d asked for the boy’s help, and the message had been relayed. They’d prevented the Belgian crew of the fishing boat from leaving Ostend’s harbor; they’d sailed in their stead, but it had been far too close a thing.

  McPherson knew he’d have to work her hard for the next few days. He’d send her on a cross-country run with her wireless set and her Browning. Yes, that would be best, that and live ammunition for the lads.

  The Nazis would crush Belgium. They’d race for Antwerp and the diamonds.

  Hagen concentrated on the man who sat directly before him. Reinhard Heydrich now wore the collar pips and flashes of an SS general.

  Muller, head of the Gestapo, and Schellenberg, head of Counterespionage, flanked the Oberstgruppenführer but had said so little the trial had been a farce.

  A van had brought him to Munich, to Gestapo Headquarters on the Briennerstrasse. For one brief moment he had seen the light of day and had felt the breath of spring. The tulips had been in bloom.

  “The prisoner will rise.”

  Why did they insist on this charade? “I’d prefer not to stand, Herr Oberstgruppenführer. My legs are still not my own.”

  “The malaria. Yes, that is correct, but you will stand all the same.” To kill or not to kill Hagen, that had always been the question.

  The prisoner dragged himself to his feet. The clothes he had worn in the mountains now hung on a frame that had lost a good fifteen kilos. A loose tooth kept bothering him, and like a tramp, he unconsciously sucked on it or pushed at it with his tongue.

  “Do you still deny that you were an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service?”

  “I will always deny it.”