The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  She bathed her neck and let the water run down between her splendid breasts. They would catch this Hagen and they would kill him.

  Tossing a bar of scented soap into the sink, she left the laundry for Frau Gerda Meyer. “Dieter, come and join me, yes? Come, come. Let me wash that lovely thing of yours and see if I can’t awaken it.”

  The lift reached the cellars. Above him, Hagen could hear the nervous padding of the dogs as they went through the cutting and polishing rooms.

  Silently he moved away.

  There was a technician in the room where the diamond powders were separated by settling in olive oil. The man was dozing in a chair.

  Blackout screens covered the windows. The stone walls had been whitewashed. The rows of stainless-steel settling tanks were up on wooden stands.

  Beyond the tanks there was a door through which he could just see the gray iron cylinders of the ball mills they used to grind the boart. For some reason the mills had been shut down, and he realized then that Dieter hadn’t wanted him to hear them.

  From a nail beside the furnace Hagen took a coil of old electrical wire. He broke off a length, then went back through to the settling room. The light coming from it seemed brilliant. There’d be no shadows, no place to hide.

  The technician stirred and gave a yawn. Sitting up, the man stretched to ease his cramped limbs and looked at the clock. It was almost time to decant the number-threes.

  The wire cut into his throat! Gagging, struggling to get free of it, he slammed Hagen into the wall. One of the dogs barked. The man hooked his fingers under the wire. Desperately he fought for air and fought to escape.

  Hagen rammed the man’s head against the wall and twisted the wire. The dogs began to whine. Restlessly they prowled the room above them.

  At last he was able to lower the body to the floor.

  One after another he opened the valves that allowed each size of diamond dust to be drawn off. As the oil and sludge poured onto the floor, he brought kindling and papers from the furnace room.

  Splashing brandy onto the papers, he went to see if there was any kerosene in the furnace room. The oil and sludge soon followed him. The caretaker was a fussy sort. Everything was there as it should be to light the furnace on the coldest of nights.

  Everything including the brown paper wrappings from several parcels. Address after address showed the names of prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, the return addresses of Leopoldville in the Congo.

  Struck by what he’d found, Hagen quickly folded a few of the things and put them in a pocket, then stuffed the lift with papers and kindling, and splashed kerosene over them.

  From the furnace he took a shovelful of glowing coals.

  The blazing lift started on its way. The dogs began to bark. As the oil ignited, tongues of flame spread throughout the cellar. Soon the cook began to scream. “Fire! There is fire in the cellars, Baron!”

  Guards poured in the front door and raced for the cellar stairs. He’d have to get out, have to get away!

  Hagen found the coal chute and went up it and out into the grounds. He was lost among the houses on the other side of the Prinzregentenstrasse when the first trucks of the fire brigade careered around a corner.

  There was only one place the Gestapo wouldn’t think to look for him.

  The darkened streets led him to the gardens, these to the Residenz, the palaces of the kings of Bavaria. From there it wasn’t far to Gestapo Headquarters on the Briennerstrasse.

  Krantz fingered the cigarette case. Had he misjudged Hagen? In spite of everything one did, luck still played a part in so many things. The father had been a real hunter but it had been against him then.

  Where would the son go? To hide in the diamond center had been one thing—good and certainly enough to have tricked them all.

  But here? he wondered as he stood in the courtyard behind the headquarters and looked at the garages. To lie down with the lions? Hagen couldn’t possibly have done it. There were far too many guards.

  “So, where would he go, Baron?” he asked. “The Villa Hunter?”

  Badly burned about the face and hands, Dieter Karl found it painful to speak. “It’s already been searched.”

  “Then search again. You’re the one who let him go.”

  “If you’d had any sense …”

  The diamond center had been completely destroyed. The floors had fallen in. They’d have to build again. “We must find him, Baron. You and I share in this, more so yourself, I think, than I. Is it that you let him go on purpose?”

  Hunter cursed him. “Why should I have?”

  The Berliner budgeted a smile. “Perhaps it’s only that you were busy with other things and neglected your duty to be watchful.”

  Damn him anyway! “I should be in Antwerp. The diamond stocks … My men are waiting to attack.”

  “They won’t wait long. They’ve been given their orders. So, a little more looking, I think. You to the Villa Hunter, me to have a few words with the boys.”

  “He’ll get word out about the Congo diamonds.”

  “Not if we stop him, Baron.”

  The garages were empty save for one disgruntled mechanic in greasy coveralls, who was busy fixing something at one of the workbenches.

  Krantz walked through the place without a word and went up into the garage loft. The loot was everywhere and he had to wonder at the greed of the SS. The place had been turned into a sort of Aladdin’s cave. Rolled tapestries, crates of silver and fine china, pieces of sculpture enough to stock a small museum but no sign of Hagen. Of this he was certain.

  Even so, he called in some help and gave the place a fine-tooth combing.

  The offices of Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty were a hive of activity, no matter the lateness of the hour. Dragged out of bed and put on a plane at Kincalda’s field in Scotland, Arlette was shown in.

  Churchill nodded grimly as he ran his eyes over the latest telex. “Intelligence reports are in deluge, my dear. Pray do forgive me. I seem to have so little time. Do have a look at that mosaic of aerial photographs Duncan is perusing. Find us the warehouse wherein this schoolmaster Karl Christian Damas hides his squad of Nazis.”

  Briefly Duncan outlined things for her. Arlette, nervous under their combined scrutiny, began to search the mosaic. Everything was so tiny, the houses, the streets. She found the Meir, Antwerp’s great thoroughfare, found the Cathedral of Our Lady, the Grote Markt, the town hall, even the house of Madame Hausemer.

  Locating the Club Chez Vous without much difficulty, she soon found places where she’d window-shopped, strolled along the quays, done so many things.

  “Try,” said McPherson. “Damas knew where to take them on very short notice.”

  Dismayed by the problem, Arlette turned to face them. “There are nearly two hundred hectares of warehouses in the port of Antwerp, some fifty kilometers of landing quays and over eight hundred kilometers of railway lines. It’s huge, whole towns and villages …”

  “But you will try to find the one place this schoolmaster has used, my dear, because we absolutely must know of it.”

  “Try to put yourself into Damas’s shoes, Arlette,” urged Duncan.

  How could she? Arlette remembered the closeness of him, the point of his knife, the way he’d lain on top of her.

  “Duncan, give me that file on him,” said Churchill gruffly. “I seem to remember that before he went to teach at the École de Maagdenhuis, he taught in Ste. Anne at …”

  “Ste. Anne is across the river,” said Arlette. “There is a tunnel—two tunnels. One for pedestrians, the other for cars and trucks.”

  “Neither of which is far from the harbor. Am I right?” demanded Churchill.

  Yes, of course he was right. She pointed them out to him. “But the school in Ste. Anne, if it’s the École de Sanderhuis Watermael, has been closed and empty for some years.”

  “Would you be able to take a good look at it for us?”

  “Yes … yes, I could do su
ch a thing.”

  The cigar was clenched. “Duncan, see that she is dropped into Belgium so that no one knows she is there but ourselves. Brief her and cut her loose. At all costs we must stop them from getting the diamonds.

  “My dear, forgive me. I cannot trust your compatriots—no, not Wunsch of course, and the others, but this Damas … you do understand? When you’ve located them, simply contact Duncan and we’ll take care of it from here. Oh and try to do a little something else I had in mind for you should Belgium be overrun. The Nazis may well be getting diamonds out of the Congo via the International Red Cross in parcels that are slated for Polish POW camps in the Reich. Get us one of those parcels, my dear. Get me the proof so that, if need be, I can take the Diamond Corporation to court for violating international law and our naval blockade of the Reich.”

  Churchill tossed an indifferent hand. “Of course, it might simply be the work of some corrupt Belgian official at the mines. But I must have the proof, and you—” he fixed her with the intensity of his gaze “—must never let what I have just revealed pass your lips.”

  He hated to see her go; she’d have been so useful to them later, could easily have formed the nucleus of a resistance. But war was ever-shifting. One had to take the offensive no matter how small the advantage.

  “My dear, would you do something else for me?” he asked more kindly. “Kill this schoolmaster. Put an end to him.”

  The loft above Munich’s Gestapo headquarters was in darkness. For hours now there had been only the infrequent comings and goings in the garage below him. At last Hagen could stand the waiting no longer.

  One man was changing a tire, another was replacing a head lamp. There were three cars in the garage, but all were some distance from the stairs to the loft.

  The third man was underneath a black Mercedes, changing the oil or searching for possible trouble. It was the car that Heydrich used when in the city.

  The man crawled out from under the Mercedes. Wiping his hands on a rag, he put a cloth over the driver’s seat and gave the engine a try.

  Leaving it running, he went back to adjust the carburetor. As he worked, one of the others let out a curse and opened the door to vent the exhaust.

  Hagen went down the rest of the stairs and turned the corner into the lunchroom. Behind this there was the change room. He ran into the lavatory only to hear a water closet flush.

  There were no doors on the cubicles. The man was not far from him.

  Back in the loft, he waited again.

  At about 4:00 a.m. the place was dead quiet. There seemed to be only two men on duty, and both were having something to eat in the lunchroom.

  It was now or never. He went down the stairs and through the garage. Not stopping, he entered Gestapo Headquarters and went straight up to the second floor and along to Heydrich’s office, which was locked.

  Far down the corridor the lonely sound of a typewriter drifted from somewhere below, that of a telephone, and from below this in the cellars, a single scream.

  He tried the door to the adjutant’s office and found it open. From a desk drawer he took a bunch of keys. Some opened the filing cabinets, one switched off the alarm system, another unlocked Heydrich’s door.

  Pulling the rug over to the bottom of the door, he turned on the desk lamp. Everything was as it had been before.

  There were two spare uniforms in the closet, a leather trench coat with an SS armband. Two Walther P-38s hung side by side in their holsters.

  Worrying over the boots, he went into the washroom and silently filled the basin, had a wash, a shave and a look at himself.

  Even though he’d seen himself at the Villa Laumannfeld, still the sight was a shock. Not only was he haggard and old looking, his nose was still swollen and crooked. One eye was partly closed and still bore shades of purple. There were cuts and scars he hadn’t owned before.

  In the filing cabinets he came across Heydrich’s personal dossiers. Choosing the top generals, he filled a briefcase, then found a file marked Antwerp. Page after page held the names of Belgians, of contacts, possible contacts and outright collaborators.

  Stuffing the file into the briefcase, he left the office dressed as an SS Oberstgruppenführer. Though he forced himself to walk steadily, he fortunately met no one.

  The Mercedes was parked in the lot beside two others. The keys were on the board in the garage. The men were busy with brooms, getting the place ready for the day shift.

  At 4:15 a.m. one of them went to change. At 4:20 the other two followed him.

  Hagen drove out of the yard past sleepy guards too startled to do anything but stand to attention. The Mercedes awoke to the road but there was still a long way to go.

  Otto Krantz was impressed. Hagen had not only got into Gestapo Headquarters, he’d got into Heydrich’s office and had stolen a few things.

  But that car wasn’t going far. They’d rigged the fuel gauges of all three of them to read full and had virtually emptied the tanks. Hagen must have hidden on the roof.

  Would he break down and tell them everything when captured? Would he sing as so many had?

  A momentary feeling of sadness came to Krantz. The chase had been good, the hunt far better than average. In many ways Hagen had been a lot like his father. Difficult.

  Every nut and bolt seemed to rattle in the twin-engined Whitley bomber as it banked to the west and began to reduce altitude. The wind whipped at her boots and tucked-in trousers. Below her, the land was black as ink and then dusted with tiny lights—the farms, villages and towns just to the south of the Scheldt and to the north of Brussels.

  The Whitley leveled off at an altitude of about eight hundred feet. The light came on. The flight lieutenant gave her the thumbs-up sign, and she dropped through the hole into the night.

  At once there was incomparable panic and terror. The chute wouldn’t open! She’d hit the ground and …

  The static line snapped. The relief of floating freely swept in on her, an elation that was like no other.

  Instinctively Arlette bent her knees and rolled over as she hit the ground. Immediately she began to gather in the chute.

  As the sound of the Whitley faded, the wind came cool on her cheek. Then suddenly she was cold, lonely and terrified all over again. Worse still, she didn’t know where she was. Worse even than this, the wireless transceiver could be miles away. Hung up in a tree someplace, out in one of the canals or in the river.

  There was no reception committee, no one waiting for her.

  Routine took over. She bundled the silk canopy into a tighter ball and went in search of the wireless set.

  The ground grew wetter. Soon she was wading through shallows, parting the reeds.

  The canopy had floated out into the river—but was it really the Scheldt?

  There was no moon.

  Gingerly, Arlette went down the bank and tried to pull the heavy pack in with a stick. The sound of the reeds came back to her, then the barking of a dog. For an instant she listened, trying to determine the direction of the barking.

  Pulling off her things, she went out into the icy water. Mud squished between her toes. Marsh gas welled up. Loaded with water, the canopy dragged. More than once she slipped and fell. More than once the dog barked.

  Then she saw the farmhouse—just the outline of it against the sky. It was off to her left, across the river.

  The dog was quieted. A door was closed. Slowly, cautiously, she gathered in the last of the canopy and carried it up the bank. Then she went back for the bulky pack that held the forty-five-pound, short-wave WT transceiver in its plain brown suitcase.

  Shivering, her teeth chattering, Arlette removed the packing and carried the set up to her clothes. The temptation to shove the packing out into the river was almost more than she could resist, but she buried it and the chute some distance downstream of the dog.

  After another dunking to wash off the mud, she dried herself with a handkerchief—that was all she had to spare. Ops hadn’t thought o
f her getting wet! Ops seldom thought of things like that!

  Quickly she got dressed. She was freezing, wanted desperately to head for Ostend to see her family, to get news of them and perhaps even tell them she was alive and back in Belgium.

  Instead, she picked up the suitcase and headed across the fields away from the dog.

  Krantz surveyed the scene before him. The jackboots were mired in cow shit. Heydrich’s brand-new trousers hung from a cow’s tail, and the thing had passed water on them.

  The jacket, cap, belt and holster lay on the floor in a puddle of milk that had now gone sour.

  The milkmaid was bawling her eyes out! Hagen had buggered off on them! He hadn’t done the obvious. He’d taken the car only a few short blocks to the Karlsplatz, the traffic hub of Munich. There he’d ditched the thing and hopped a tramcar, only to leave it almost immediately.

  They’d seen him run into a lane. They’d blown the whistle on him and had fanned out but he’d commandeered the bicycle of a news vendor. Two blocks later it had been a passing car of the Uniformed Municipal Police who had swallowed hook, line and sinker his story about trying to get to Berlin with important documents.

  The lift with the police had ended on the outskirts of the city with two dead cops and the engine still running.

  He’d taken a farmer’s cart, then yet another bicycle. A horse … had he used one and gone across the fields? “Gott in Himmel, you stupid slut, shut up and tell us what happened!”

  The girl was incoherent. When she was slapped, her braids got in the way. “He has … He has … the clothes of my father …”

  The farmer had gone off to war like everyone else and had left the place to the women. Krantz kicked the pail across the shed, startling the cows and bringing a fresh well of tears to the girl.

  “Issue an all-points. I want every road from here to the borders checked.”

  When asked which borders, he shrieked, “All of them!”

  A harried Dieter Karl was thrust into the shed. In spite of the burns, the Gestapo had handcuffed him. Krantz didn’t waste time. “Gone! That bastard’s gone!”