The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  The whole of the diamond district had been vacated. The bourses were empty, their tall windows shattered. Some of the buildings were gutted shells. Roof timbers cried out to the sky.

  Arlette had waited for him that first night. Arlette …

  He went through to the foyer, empty like everything else. The door to the vault was open, but it was too dark to see anything. The memory of her came to him, the sweet, soft feel of her in his arms.

  He wished they could have had children, wished she was alive.

  The shop Lev had kept so meticulously was barren. Dieter must have escaped the fire. Dieter had had everything shipped to Munich.

  And Lev? he wondered. Had Lev been forced to go there? Bernard … where was Bernard now? Killed in the battle for the diamonds, or sent to Munich, too?

  Somehow he had to get out of Belgium. Krantz and Dieter would hunt him down, and if not them, then Heydrich.

  He’d need a set of papers, a change of clothing—so many things. He’d have to pick up Heydrich’s dossiers at the farm and the brown paper wrappings from the Red Cross parcels that must have contained diamonds from the Congo.

  Returning to his office, Hagen reached for the telephone, was startled to find the line still connected.

  Cecile had been sleeping with Dieter. Cecile would have to be forced into helping him escape.

  Hesitating, he rang the club and asked for her. She answered soon enough, asked who it was. He waited, saying nothing, then hung up.

  She put down the receiver. “It … it wasn’t him. I’d know Richard’s voice anywhere. It was just someone inquiring about the club.”

  Krantz took in the shapely figure, the sequined sky-blue sheath, the long blond hair and stunning blue eyes. Gestapo Antwerp’s listeners would soon tell him who had called and what, exactly, had been said.

  Still showing the effects of the fire in Munich, Dieter Karl stared at her back. She’d been so beautiful in bed, had had such a splendid body.

  But it had all been a lie. “Let us get Richard first, Cecile, then I will see what I can do for you.”

  The Berliner smiled inwardly. Heydrich would need heads—Hagen’s, the woman’s, the Huysmans girl’s, and another’s.

  “You do that, Baron. I’m sure Frau Verheyden will appreciate a little help, but just so as she understands how things are, she’s not to leave the club or do anything but what you tell her.”

  There, he’d turned responsibility for the woman over to Hunter in front of witnesses—the SS Hauptsturmführer Lechner of the Interrogation Squad, and his all too able assistant, the SS Sturmmann Helmut Schultz.

  Schultz was a sadist. Krantz knew he was lowering himself into the slime of Poland, but what else could he do?

  Heydrich had given them an ultimatum. Find Hagen within two weeks or else.

  BRUSSELS 0310 HOURS

  TO THE CARPENTER

  BLUFF CHECK INCLUDED

  JUNE 4, 1940

  FROM XAVIER

  TRUE CHECK INCLUDED

  LOCATION TRANSMITTER MOVED FROM ANTWERP TO BRUSSELS AREA

  Message reads: IN PLACE / AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS

  Arlette Huysmans had safely reached Brussels. From having helped to save the diamonds, she could now go over to gathering intelligence in a Europe that had all but collapsed under the weight of the Nazi heel.

  The final evacuation at Dunkirk had just been completed. A beleaguered Winston Churchill, now Britain’s prime minister, ran his tired eyes over the telex again.

  In Britain’s darkest hour a single ray of light had appeared, the first of what he fervently hoped would be many.

  “Signal this: Am recommending you for the George Cross When prudent, attempt recover Red Cross parcel diamonds Congo Antwerp.

  “Sign it, White Rabbit.”

  “And Richard?” asked McPherson. “Shouldn’t we let her know he might still be alive and somewhere in the Antwerp area?”

  Churchill hated to say it but knew he must. “They won’t stop hunting for Hagen, not until they have him, but the girl … she must remain free for as long as possible. God willing, we shall see her again.”

  There were thousands of men on the run in Occupied Europe—stray soldiers of the BEF who’d become separated from their units, downed bomber and fighter pilots. The girl could help them there as well, once she’d settled the diamond thing.

  The dungeons of Antwerp’s Steen Castle hadn’t been used in well over two hundred years.

  Mold, slime that looked like leaking pus in the lantern light, stinking drains and airless walls greeted Krantz as the heavy door of the cell was shoved open.

  Half-hidden in the gloom, the shabby figure stirred. Painfully, Bernard Wunsch got to his feet but was forced by his condition to lean against the far wall.

  Krantz noted the haunted look, the quivering of swollen lips. Setting the lantern on the straw-littered floor, he told the guard to leave them. Then he sat down on the iron cot Wunsch had momentarily forsaken and dragged out his cigarettes.

  “Richard Hagen, Herr Wunsch. We know he must still be in the area, that he could not possibly have got through our lines to join those who were fleeing at Dunkirk.”

  “Then you don’t know Richard.”

  “Oh, I do, I can assure you. A cigarette? Don’t be so stubborn. Certainly you can refuse to talk. I merely offer the cigarette as I would to a man I can respect.”

  “I don’t like your tobacco. I never have.”

  “These are Dutch—straight from Eindhoven. Don’t be stupid. Say the right things and you can go home to your wife. No one need ever know.”

  Wunsch took the proffered cigarette. The Gestapo lit it for him.

  “Arlette Huysmans, Herr Wunsch. Your diamond cutter… ?”

  The Belgian’s eyes betrayed him. The diamond cutter and the girl must have met. Damas had been right.

  “I thought so,” said Krantz. “So, you will tell us, please, where this diamond cutter is.”

  “How should I know?”

  “Because you do. He’ll have news of the girl, and she’ll have news of Hagen.”

  “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “Oh? Why is this, please?”

  Piece by piece the Nazis had put together what must have happened on the docks, but they could have no firm knowledge of Arlette. “She was drowned in the sea off Ostend,” said Wunsch.

  “But came back to life. Has she linked up with Hagen? Are they hiding out in some other city—Brussels, perhaps?”

  Though it must have hurt his broken ribs and shoulder, the Belgian shrugged.

  “We can have your wife brought in for questioning,” hazarded Krantz.

  “She knows nothing. It would only be a waste of your time.”

  “And of a life?” he asked, hating himself for making such a cheap threat. A good policeman should be able to pry everything out of his prisoner without a hint of violence.

  But the times had changed.

  The Belgian budgeted the cigarette, taking small puffs lest the smoke make him cough.

  “Tell me the names of Richard Hagen’s friends in Antwerp—all of them, his contacts, too. Look, we know he’s in the city. He telephoned the Club Chez Vous.”

  “Then I have nothing more to say to you.”

  Wunsch took a final drag. The Gestapo looked across the cell at him, then dropped his eyes to the lantern.

  “I shot Hagen’s father. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time—how could I have? But the Oberstgruppenführer Heydrich had someone dig into the records. That zealot put two and two together, Herr Wunsch, and came up with my name. So now, my friend, I’m stuck with the son.”

  The gray cod eyes lifted from the lantern. “I must have the names of all of Richard Hagen’s contacts in Belgium. His friends here and in Brussels perhaps. Those who are elsewhere.”

  “Why not ask Cecile Verheyden?”

  “I will, but first, I prefer to hear these from yourself.”

  Two hours later Wunsch was blood-spattered and i
n tears.

  At dawn they dumped his naked body from a car and left him in the street. People came to look at him, others turned quickly away or did not cross the Meir at that intersection.

  There was no means of identifying him, no papers, no way whatsoever beyond the lacerated skin and the bloodied pulp of what had once been his face.

  Damas stood on the roof of the shed, fingering the spent brass cartridge casing of a 7.92 mm bullet. The bodies of the two snipers had long since been removed, so, too, those of the others.

  The freighter Megadan still lay on its side. There was still debris about from the battle.

  The girl had been well trained. She hadn’t hesitated, had known exactly what she must do. First Theissen and then his second in command, then their wireless operator.

  There was no customs record of her entry into Belgium, therefore she had come in on the quiet. Therefore, too, she’d been given good papers and a suitable cover.

  Since losing the diamonds, the Germans had shunned him. They’d need him, of course. Far too many were on the run. Belgians, knowing Belgians, would have to be used to find them.

  The girl would have gone to ground somewhere, have taken a job most likely and fitted right into things because that would be the only way she could hide.

  Again he thought her cover must be good, since she’d been so well trained.

  Had the British sent a wireless set with her? Gestapo Brussels and Antwerp had tracking scanners. Perhaps they’d picked up her signals? She’d have been brief. She’d have known all about the threat of detection, would have wanted to move her set about the country.

  But would she be able to do such a thing? Would her cover have included this?

  A secretary … a receptionist. Wouldn’t it have been wise to have placed her into something with which she was familiar? A shop? he asked himself, remembering that her parents in Ostend had had a shop before the bombs had removed it.

  All about him German engineers readied the port of Antwerp while others emptied the warehouses, shipping the goods by rail to the Reich. Still others looked to its antiaircraft defenses.

  Climbing down from the shed, Damas went along the quays until he came to the fabricating shop. Independent of Krantz, he’d had one of his men watch the place. So far there’d been nothing to report. Hagen might come. The girl might come. Had the Wehrmacht turned off the electricity to the building? The girl would need that for her wireless set. She’d have batteries, of course, but no means of recharging them, and so would want to conserve them whenever possible.

  When he found the dried crust from a slice of rye bread on the lowest step to the loft, he thought nothing more of it.

  When he stood beneath where once there’d been a roof vent, Lev and Anna smelled the smoke from his cigarette. But then he went away, and when, after several hours of anxious waiting, he didn’t return, they began to relax.

  “I told you it was nothing,” whispered Lev.

  His wife of over forty years didn’t answer. Without de Heer Wunsch’s help, Ascher had had to leave the place each night in search of food. She knew he needed all the encouragement she could give him.

  “It is nothing, as you’ve said. So, another game of gin rummy, or would you prefer to read?”

  “Let’s have that game and then perhaps a cup of tea.”

  Thank God the power was still on. He’d rigged an electrical cord up to them and had brought in a small hot plate. It had made all the difference in the world.

  “There’s lemon—real lemon, Anna. From the back steps of the Club Chez Vous. Someone must have dropped it.”

  He’d had to have a look at what was going on. He’d had to see for himself that the place was still open for business.

  Steam rose from the heavy iron kettle. The children, seated at long benches around the table, watched with consuming interest. Arlette stirred the soup, drew in the aroma of it and shut her eyes. “Ambrosia,” she said. “Chicken stock, lentils, onions … Mmm, it’s good.”

  They were all hungry, all tired, confused, so many things. Refugees—never had she seen so many displaced people. The cellar of the church was full of them, the hostel but one of twenty the Red Cross operated in Brussels.

  Some of the children had lost their parents, others had simply been separated from them. Every day there were new ones to care for; every day word would come in that someone’s parents had been found.

  As she filled their bowls, Arlette made certain that each received exactly the same amount. No more, no less.

  The boy, Michael, the oldest, started in. Annette, who sat beside him, stiffened in alarm. His spoon stopped. He shut his eyes and waited for the reprimand, but felt Mademoiselle Latour tousle his hair. “So he’s hungry, everyone. Michael’s only telling us that we should eat while it’s hot.”

  Arlette broke the bread, and here there were some differences, but any who felt cheated got a little more to make it up. Then she filled their glasses with milk and each got exactly the same amount, even though the littlest ones often spilled theirs or couldn’t finish them.

  Franz Boeck was impressed. Of all his helpers in this hastily thrown-up kitchen, the girl had fitted in the best. She never complained, did ten jobs at once, was always happy, always smiling—and such a smile—always willing to stay late and do a little more.

  She had even stayed overnight a few times to calm the children, yes, but also—and here he was impressed—to get to know them better.

  The hostel was in the basement of the Church of St. Julian, not far from the southern end of the Park van Woluwe. If he’d had to choose, he couldn’t have asked for better. At least some protection from the bombs and shell fire.

  But now that the fighting had stopped, now that the country was occupied, he would like to have had space on the ground floor. One never had much warning of when the Nazis would make a sweep. Sometimes their henchmen came for the stupidest reasons—fully sixty percent of the people here were children under the age of ten. At other times …

  Windows would have given them a little warning.

  The girl, one of a staff of twenty-five, found the dregs of the soup kettle and began budgeting out a little more for those who had been very, very good, perhaps? Ah no, not that one. For those who had suffered the most and were feeling so very lost.

  “You seem to have found your niche, Mademoiselle Latour.”

  Arlette brushed the back of a hand quickly across her brow and gave him a generous smile. “It’s nothing. They’re so good today, I’m going to take them all for an especially long hike in the park this afternoon.”

  Boeck nodded. The children looked at one another. Escape! Escape from this place.

  He could read it in their eyes. The girl had charge of forty children. She could sweet-talk them into anything.

  Boeck was a Fleming, tall, thin, of middle age. Fastidiously tidy, and of a tidy mind, he was inclined to be overly serious but seldom without good reason.

  Tugging thoughtfully at the iron-gray goatee, he asked her to step into the aisle with him. There were over fifty tables in the hall, nearly three hundred people, yet they could talk quite quietly when needed.

  “Mademoiselle, a small word of advice. I don’t know from where you come or how you came to us—my supervisor, de Heer Vervoordt, who has signed your papers, was killed at the front. Perhaps he had been informed by others, but I …”

  The earnest blue eyes swept over the room. “What I want you to know, Mademoiselle Latour, is that for someone as capable as yourself, there are no questions from me. I will say exactly what your papers say. You do understand, don’t you?”

  Arlette waited tensely. When he didn’t elaborate, she said carefully, “I try to do my best, mijnheer: I really have been with the Red Cross for as long as my papers say. I’m much saddened by what has happened to my children and want only to help them.”

  “But there are others, mademoiselle. Our head nurse, Mevrouw Demeulemeester for one, who will say you have not worked for us as
long as your papers claim.”

  “Then they are wrong!”

  Boeck gripped her by the arm. “Please, all I’m suggesting is that you be aware of this. For now you’re fitting in extremely well, and as I’ve said, I’m only too happy to have you with us. God knows we need you.”

  Walking home in the twilight from her tramcar stop, Arlette found herself remembering things she hadn’t thought much about in months and months. The beach at Ostend, the shop of her father, the smell of cedar and spices, of things from so far away, all mingled with the aroma of his pipe smoke and the sound of quiet conversation.

  Her mother in the kitchen baking bread or making pastry, in the shop, too, beside her father. Willi … Willi de Menten. The Vega … had Willi managed to escape in her?

  The Vega …

  Her pistol was hidden in the flat beside the wireless transceiver. Beneath the lining of her coat collar there was a capsule of cyanide.

  At 2200 hours she rolled back the sitting room carpet to check the wireless set. The compartment had been well made—it fitted right into the floor—but she knew a routine search would soon find it.

  At 0310 hours she lay awake, wanting desperately to contact London, to reach out for guidance, yes, but for friendship, too—that was the thing she missed the most.

  The convoy passed along Antwerp’s Kammenstraat, heading away from the river by a roundabout route that would take it to the Central Station. Long lines of prisoners of war had been crossing the river for days. Belgian, British, French, all so gray with fatigue, dispirited, silent and hungry as the tramp of boots brought home the message of defeat.

  Many of the men were wounded. Without exception, all were dirty. They’d be packed into waiting railway cars just as so many others had been before them.

  Would they ever return? One could see this question in the faces of so many.

  After the convoy had passed and the thin crowd of onlookers had broken up, Hagen quickly crossed the street to enter the bakery.

  Jani Lutjens saw him and turned quickly away to busy herself in wiping down the shelves. “So, what can I do for you?” she asked tensely, knowing only too well it would be something she’d not want.