The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  “The Belgian army are to provide a guard. It’s been okayed, Lev. Just tell the others.” Wunsch winced.

  “Lev, leave the child with me. I’ll be all right in a moment. Don’t let any of them use the trucks of the Mercantile Company. Remember what I told you. Infiltrated, Lev. That place has been infiltrated.”

  Lev didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d be lucky to use anything. When he reached the Central Railway Station, he found the streets milling with people, all wanting to escape the city.

  At the Beurs voor Diamanthandel, the largest of the four Antwerp bourses, the windows had been shattered. Glass littered the street, the floor and the tables inside.

  Jacob Lietermann, Isaac Hond, Abraham Merensky and some others were arguing. In the heat of chaos they had time to bang their fists and shout at one another. Merensky thought the railways might be better. Isaac Hond kept mentioning the squad of Nazis that had still to be found.

  “The British … where are they?” shouted someone.

  Another bomb fell wide of its mark in the docks, and for a moment no one knew just where it would hit.

  When the dust had settled, they picked themselves up. Ashen, they looked at one another.

  In all the years he had worked in the industry, Lev had never been inside any of the bourses. Now, of all times, he had been granted that privilege. As he walked among them, they stepped aside. It was Lietermann who asked, “Ascher, what’s happened to Bernard?”

  “A minor indisposition. Bernard has received word from England that two destroyers are on their way. You are to take the diamonds to the Megadan but under no circumstances are you to use trucks of the Mercantile Company.”

  “How long will it take the destroyers to get here?” asked Merensky. “A day … two days? Are they somewhere at sea, Mijnheer Levinski, or are they still in their home ports?”

  With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Lev said he really didn’t know.

  Merensky clenched a fist. Hond said it would be best to wait. Lietermann advised against this. “We will just have to take our chances. The army will surround the diamonds and see that we get them loaded onto the freighter.”

  The village was deserted—completely destroyed. Only a few shattered walls remained.

  Splintered timbers; wrecked, charred and uncharred cars; trucks; vehicles of all manner were strewn about the road. Among the fallen bricks and bodies, a child lay dead.

  Hagen looked at the boy. No more than ten years old, he had run from the family car and been hit by cannon shells, the 20 mm exploding shells from an ME-109.

  The father was slumped over the steering wheel. The mother, her stomach ripped open, lay half in, half out of the car. Her black leather purse and gloves were still clutched. The little red pillbox hat had rolled away. What the hell had she thought she was doing? Going to church?

  The baby was a congealed pulp on which the blowflies still feasted. Maggots crawled from its eye sockets and nose. They squirmed in the gaping mouth and trickled from the tiny lips.

  All along the road as far as he could see it was like this. Here and there horses lay on their backs with stiffened legs and bloated bellies.

  The sun was high, the silence eerie. Mingled with the smell of plaster dust and cordite, the stench of death was everywhere.

  In a daze he walked on. The village square had received a direct hit from a Stuka. Some twenty—or was it thirty?—refugees had been fighting one another for water. Some had managed to crawl away. One man, completely naked, his back badly burned by the blast, had lost both legs below the knees and yet had managed to drag himself almost to a side street.

  From the shattered bell tower of the church the lonely trickle of cascading mortar stirred. Then the silence crept back in.

  Hagen wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht lieutenant whom he’d shot behind a barn. Taking off the haversack, he moved into the shade of a ruined wall to wipe the sweat from his face and ease his blistered feet.

  Vast sections of southern and eastern Belgium had been just left—abandoned, destroyed. Who would bury the dead and rebuild the houses and the factories? Where would he meet up with the battle and try to slip through the lines?

  When a dispatch rider came by with an empty sidecar, he waved him down.

  The cries of a wounded horse, the incoherent babbling of dazed and bleeding men broke the silence of yet another village. Among the horrible faces that had come to surround them in the square was that of a woman in tatters whose lower jaw had been blown away. In her arms she carried a dead boy. Hiccuping, coughing blood, she tried to speak.

  Hagen attempted to take the child from her, but she refused to give it up. Repeatedly she drove herself to speak.

  At last he understood.

  Their uniforms didn’t matter. It was help she wanted, not for herself but for others. From the shattered remains of a house came cries of agony.

  Trapped, they were peering through gaps in the rubble of a cellar. There was nothing he could do for them.

  “Herr Leutnant, it would be best for us to leave.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, Gefreiter.”

  “Shoot her, Herr Leutnant. Please.”

  The woman was dying. How had she carried on this long? In French he asked if anyone could tell them the name of the village. No one seemed to want to understand. They all gaped at him.

  The whole second floor of the house suddenly collapsed. Dust, noise and rubble filled the square. Everyone ran except for the woman. Enveloped in the cloud, she stood there looking toward what had once been her home. The dust blew into her eyes. The wind of it tore at her, and when the cloud had passed, she was gray.

  Blood seeped from the cavity in her face. Hagen cocked the gun. She blinked. Perhaps she understood. “Forgive me,” he said.

  The square echoed with the shot. She fell without a sound, and the dead child tumbled from her arms.

  “It was for the best, Herr Leutnant. Jesus, this is a mess!” The dispatcher turned suddenly away and threw up.

  That night they were camped in an abandoned farmhouse when the dry whip-crack of 88 mm guns awakened them. Far to the north toward Antwerp, lightning flashes lit the horizon while overhead a pale moon hung.

  Millions had fled and thousands had died. Every bridge they had come to had been destroyed. Every railway line had been torn up.

  For an hour they watched the battle. Then, safe from it, they settled down again only to be awakened suddenly. Around and around them the noise circled, clanging, throwing sparks, until at last the sound of the guns came back.

  Two plow horses stood in the moonlight by the flattened ruins of the barn. Trailing behind them was the tongue, the front axle and a few boards from the wagon they’d once pulled.

  Patiently they waited for the harness to be removed, content in the knowledge the farmer would feed them.

  Blood, scraps of flesh—the remains of an arm—still clung to the reins, all of it clear under the ghostly light.

  The flat on the Boulevard Anspach in Brussels was not far from the Central Station and the Gare du Nord. Arlette knew it was hopeless to try to get back to Antwerp. It was as if the whole of Belgium had suddenly been set afire. News traveled like flames leaping from roof to roof. The crowds would surge at the least hint of hope, then surge back to wickets that had long since been closed. Every means of transport had been used. Bicycles, baby carriages, wheelbarrows …

  The roads from Brussels were jammed with cars and trucks, all honking, all trying to head northwest to one of the channel ports.

  Somehow she had to get back to Antwerp; somehow she had to find Damas and his men before it was too late.

  Lugging the forty-five-pound wireless tranceiver in its plain brown leather suitcase, Arlette started out. If only she could steal a bicycle. If only she could thumb a lift with the army, but they wouldn’t take her, a civilian, and anyway they were heading south and east toward the front.

  When she saw a train of three cars and an engine parked
along the tracks from the Gare du Nord, she started for it. Others followed—they’d caught sight of her. The train began to move. Arlette reached out to grab its handrail. Damn the suitcase! Damn the thing for moving!

  It was like running with an anchor.

  Giving the suitcase a heave, she flung it up onto the platform and grabbed again for the handrail, hit her knees, tore her stockings and dragged herself up into the car.

  “You’ll have to get off.”

  It was the conductor. “How?” she asked, trying to catch her breath. The coach was empty but for the two of them.

  He indicated the suitcase and the rapidly receding tracks.

  She shook her head and grinned at him. He reached for the suitcase and she said sharply, “You touch that and you’re dead.”

  The girl meant it, too. There was a pistol in her hand.

  “Let’s have a cigarette,” she said. “Is this thing going to Antwerp?”

  It was. It had been waiting for King Leopold, who had decided to go elsewhere.

  An eerie glow bathed Antwerp’s harbor. High above the docks the night sky was filled with the drone of heavy bombers and the stiletto whine of Messerschmitt fighters.

  Searchlights sought the planes. Bursting antiaircraft shells reached out with fists of shattering phosphorus.

  Suddenly the wing of a bomber was illuminated, now the fuselage. The great plane lurched, seemed to hang in the sky. The scream of its engines began to grow as it passed over the docks to fall somewhere in the city.

  The explosion rocked them. People milled about the docks—the old, the young, the terrified and those whose job it was to maintain order. The clanging of the fire engines and the shrill warnings of the ambulances only added to the din of bombs, the AA guns and the air-raid sirens that wailed when everyone knew exactly what the hell was going on.

  Trapped in the harbor, the ships were sitting ducks, and that was the trouble, the whole damned trouble.

  As another of the trucks arrived at the Megadan’s wharf, a harried Bernard Wunsch turned to the Belgian army captain whose men had thrown a guard around the place. “I think I will have that cigarette after all. I’ve just spent the day in hospital. A minor heart attack, they say, perhaps the first of several, but … ah, what can one do at a time like this?”

  The truck backed onto the quay. Immediately men began to unload the strongboxes and stack them with the others onto the waiting cargo nets.

  Would there be time? Would they get the diamonds off? Would this blasted air raid never end?

  Two more trucks arrived, then of all things, a horse-drawn wagon whose canvas tarpaulin was soon pulled away to reveal yet more of the strongboxes.

  With the diamonds had come their owners or those chosen to represent them. At first they hung about the strongboxes, then gathered into a tight little knot for mutual consolation.

  More trucks arrived but none of these was from the Mercantile Company. Now the cargo booms were being swung out over the quay, and the men were working like crazy to get the boxes onto the nets. The sounds of the air raid dwindled to last bursts from the antiaircraft guns. Soon the all-clear broke over the harbor.

  Wunsch wiped the sweat from his brow. Dillingham’s diamonds had finally arrived. But would the Megadan get safely away, would the British destroyers come?

  Would the blasted things even get loaded? The winches … had they been sabotaged?

  “Lev …” he began, only to glance up at the nearest cargo boom. Jammed! The thing was jammed! “Lev, where is that ‘priest,’ that schoolmaster?”

  It was then just a little after 3:00 a.m., and all the winches had been sabotaged. The diamonds … eight tons of strongboxes—God alone knew their exact value. One hundred million British pounds worth of gems? Two hundred? Five, ten, twenty millions’ worth of industrials … ?

  Simultaneously at 3:07, two shattering explosions ripped the stern right out of the freighter. She began to list at once. Men leaped into the water.

  Satisfied, Damas walked away into the night.

  Richard Hagen had escaped from Germany and was attempting to do the impossible. The salesman was carrying a briefcase full of top-secret documents as well as information that couldn’t be allowed to leak out.

  They’d get Hagen, too, should he make it to the city.

  From all reports the invasion was proceeding rapidly. As soon as the German army was within sight, they’d seize the diamonds and hold them until reinforcements arrived and finally Antwerp was overrun.

  Dillingham’s watchman shook his head in wonder. Arlette Huysmans was caught in the beam of his flashlight. He knew it was her, yet couldn’t believe it.

  “Dagg, I have to get up into the loft. London must know they’ve sunk the freighter.”

  But how could she possibly let London know?

  “I have a wireless set. I’m working for them.”

  When he still refused to believe her, Arlette set down the suitcase and opened the catches. “Now are you satisfied?” she demanded.

  Lijnbach saw the Bakelite dials and switches, the heavy oak cabinet. “What are you? Some sort of spy?”

  “Dagg, please!” She stamped a foot. “At least have sense enough to switch off your light.”

  Fussy, he said he didn’t know about letting her into the building. Perhaps she should go and talk to de Heer Wunsch. “He’s along the docks, at the freighter.”

  God save her from stubborn Belgians! “I am not to let him know I’m here. Each moment you waste is one we must have. There’s a force of Nazi parachutists just waiting to steal the diamonds.”

  Lijnbach hesitated. Everyone had said the girl had drowned in the sea off Ostend, and now here she was. De Heer Wunsch and de Heer Levinski would be pleased, yet … should he let her into the building?

  “All right, but I’ll go first. I’ve been hearing things in there,” he grumbled.

  “What sort of things?”

  “Funny noises. Like the sound of someone closing the breech on a rifle. It’s only been since the men stopped coming to work and de Heer Wunsch had to lock the place up during the day.”

  Arlette waited while he opened the side door. She hesitated, then said, “Look, check the loft for me, will you, Dagg? I think I will go and speak to de Heer Wunsch after all.”

  When he didn’t come back, she knew they must have killed him.

  An oily black smoke trailed over the city from the burning fuel tanks in the harbor and the Shell depot, which was just upstream. Some of the debris had been cleared but many of the streets were still impassable. And as for the roads, forget them! Every road from Antwerp to the sea and the French border was clogged with refugees.

  Fort Eben Emael had fallen in thirty-six hours, some said less. All along the defenses of the Albert Canal and the Meuse the troops were falling back. Of one dozen Belgian planes that had escaped the dawn raids of May 10 to bomb the bridge at Vroenhoven, only one had returned.

  And now there was alarming news from the French front. The Germans had seized Sedan and made a gap into which they had poured a formidable mass of armor.

  They’d head for the coast to cut off and encircle the British and the French armies. Would it be at Calais or Dunkirk that a last stand would be made?

  Bernard Wunsch went through the office. Apart from destroying a few confidential memos and the personnel files, what else could he do?

  Down at the docks the oil slick from the sunken freighter glistened. The Megadan lay on her side.

  He spoke to the Belgian captain who commanded the men guarding the diamonds. To think that so many millions were concentrated in such a small space.

  There was still no sign of the promised destroyers. At any moment the planes would start coming over again.

  “You’ve not seen a priest hanging about? Tall and thin, and with spectacles?”

  No, he hadn’t seen a priest.

  De Heer Lietermann joined him for a quiet word. “Bernard, we are leaving the city. Come with us while there’s
still time.”

  Was it to be that they should all flee like rats from a burning ship? “Jacob, my doctors have ordered me to stay in bed. Can you believe it?”

  They shook hands. Lietermann signed for two of his strongboxes and had these loaded into the trunk of his car. “Then it’s goodbye, Bernard. Take care of things for us and may we meet again some day.”

  At noon Wunsch saw the priest, and at noon the planes started coming over again. They would bomb the harbor so as to prevent all ships from entering or leaving.

  Panzers fought at points of least resistance. Reconnaissance units, often on motorcycle or in armored cars, used the roads to locate those pockets, and if not them, low-flying Storch and Folke-Wulf aircraft. It wasn’t always so beautifully coordinated, but with the main roads ahead cleared of refugees by ME-109s and soon clogged with long lines or armored vehicles and men, complete mastery of the skies was essential. Supply lines were kept open, bivouacs laid out in advance, artillery swung into position and the tanks and other armor held back until the points of least resistance had been pinned down.

  Seldom did they cut across country—that would only have slowed the advance. Instead, they tended to stick to the roads until meeting resistance. Then the heavy guns would start up.

  Later the tanks would move ahead in echelon waves of five, with infantry in their lee. Flamethrowers, mortars and grenades—some hand-to-hand fighting—took out the pillboxes, the farmhouses or railway sheds that offered resistance. MG-42s raked the battlefield.

  So often there were short bursts of fighting, then none at all. Usually it was simply the unstoppable advance of armor, the sound of tracked vehicles, the squeak of thousands of tank lugs even in the dark of night, the steady drone of their engines.

  Disheveled, still in the uniform of the German lieutenant, Hagen tore open the dead dispatch rider’s satchel.

  St. Trond had been devastated. It was now May 13, and the Allies had fallen back to the Namur-Antwerp Line. Tirlemont and Haelen faced the full brunt of the assault.

  He’d have to go around the battlefield, go east and north. Somehow he’d have to ditch the uniform and cross the lines.