The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

“Where’s Anders?” The shop was empty but for the two of them.

  “Gone … gone to hell or heaven for all I know. Jesus, why have you come to me? Haven’t I had enough?”

  Hagen reached for the doorknob. She had two small children. She had a sister, Berke, who ran the Club Chez Vous.

  “No … don’t leave. Look, it’s all right. Of course you must come to me, but you didn’t think, did you, Mijnheer Hagen, that they might also be watching this place?”

  Hagen stepped away from the door. “I did. I’ve been by twice in the past two days. I know they’ve been watching your sister, that they’ve let her go, hoping I’ll try to contact her.”

  “Wait for me in the bake room. Don’t go upstairs. My mother … the children …”

  “Is Cecile working for the Nazis?”

  “Of course not. Oh, I see … the baron. But of course you thought …”

  She shook her head and went back to wiping the shelves.

  Later they had their coffee in the room that held the bake ovens. The Old Dutch Bakery was nothing fancy. A steady clientele. Open at 6:00 a.m., closed for two hours at noon, and open again from then until 6:00 p.m. Fridays until 9:00.

  Jani didn’t know Richard Hagen well. Anders had always been the one to talk to him, but then Anders had got on well with just about everyone.

  “He’s dead. I know it,” she said. “A person can feel such a thing. A wife …”

  The hazel eyes had lost their quickness, the face was thinner than usual, the blond hair in disarray.

  “Maybe Anders will be released. The Germans must want the bakery to remain open.”

  “Anders wanted to go to war. He was glad it had happened.”

  Dragging the telegram from her apron pocket, she thrust it at him.

  Her husband had been reported missing in action and believed dead. The thing was dated May 16.

  “Will you talk to Berke for me? Try to get a message through to Cecile that I’m still in the city and will do what I can.”

  “You’re crazy. Did you know that? A man without papers is a man condemned.”

  “I need money to buy myself a decent set. I also need to know the name of a man I can trust to supply me with them.”

  “You and ten thousand others!” She tossed her head. “Are you carrying information the British will want to know?”

  There must have been some talk. “That and much more.”

  They’d take the children from her. They’d put her up against a wall and shoot her.

  “So, where are you staying?” she asked.

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “In the streets, where else? The blackout and the curfew are blessings in disguise.”

  “Then you’d better stay here—in the pantry. I’ll … I’ll try to contact Berke for you.”

  Damas watched as the woman left the shop after the supper hour and made her way along the street to a tramcar stop. It had been a hunch, a bit of a gamble. Krantz had men watching the sister but had so far left this one alone.

  When the two women met at a small café near the Stadhuis Gijdehuisen, he knew he was on to something. Berke van der Plaat was the older of the two by six years. Used to being the big sister, she frowned at the news the younger one had brought and kept shaking her head in dismay.

  Cecile … yes, they were talking about Cecile Verheyden and Richard Hagen.

  Money … had it to do with a sum of money?

  Damas knew it had, and when the Lutjens woman left the café, he followed her to a house near the Platin-Moretus Museum.

  A half hour before curfew, she left the house in a hurry to catch the last tramcar home.

  With a nod, he had his men pick her up and take her to a warehouse on the river.

  The splintered crosspieces of the window held shards of glass. Cobwebs were caught in the cool breeze to trail out from the shards in long streamers or bag like tents in a gusting wind.

  Hagen felt so empty. Berke’s sister hadn’t returned at curfew. No telephone calls, no warning. He’d waited longer than he should have and then had left the bakery at a run just as the first of the Gestapo cars had turned onto the street.

  They’d taken everyone from the house and had closed and padlocked the place. He had to find somewhere to hide. Krantz wouldn’t stop. Now that the Berliner knew he was still in the city, he’d hound him down.

  At a sound, slight and across the floor from him in the distance by the stairs, Hagen stiffened. Dieter had emptied the fabricating shop. Everything had been taken.

  The sound came again. He held his breath and waited as someone came down the stairs to leave the building and stand just outside the door.

  After a while the man moved away into the darkness, his trail being picked up by another.

  In tandem, the two men made their way through the blackout. Infrequently the drifting clouds revealed the paleness of the moon. Once at the Grote Markt, they headed for the Club Chez Vous.

  Then the first one stole up the back lane while the other one waited. A patrol came by. Music filtered from the club. There was laughter from the troops on leave, shouting, clapping …

  The man who’d come down the stairs returned to watch the street and steal away. The other one followed him back to the fabricating shop.

  “Anna, it’s me. I’ve had the most fantastic luck. A whole pot roast of lamb. Leeks, potatoes, carrots … they even remembered to put the garlic in.”

  There was a sound like no other—anxious fingernails on wood, a partition being eased away. Small laughter, a gentle rush of words, a kiss, a hug—the casserole being lifted in. “Watch out. It’s still hot. Be careful.”

  The fitting of the partition back into place took some time. And then … why then, just outside the building, there was the sharp flame of a match, hidden in cupped hands. The acrid stench of burning sulfur. The billowing of the cobwebs.

  At midnight fog lay everywhere along the river and over the port of Antwerp. Droplets of mist, gray in the light of the headlamps, filtered down, bringing memories of Berlin, of nights like this between the wars. Of bodies he was about to find. Of nights when as a detective he’d been forced to “look into things.”

  Krantz hesitated to get out of the car, and since he was in command, the others who were with him also waited.

  But they’d not know that he was thinking Hagen, being Hagen, could well be waiting for them.

  “Baron,” he said, “why not go and have a look? Damas, you stay where you are. You, too,” he said to their driver. “Tell the others to remain in their car, Baron. The woman’s right ahead of us, down that bank, in among the reeds.”

  Damas shouldn’t have killed her. The Belgian would have to be dealt with. One couldn’t leave him alone. It had been a mistake to think one could.

  Hunter got gingerly out of the car but left the door open behind him. Krantz was playing games. Heydrich wanted heads. Richard was out here some place.

  He’d not go near the Club Chez Vous, not Richard, not until he knew the coast was clear. Somehow Krantz would have to be led into leaving the club alone.

  Cecile would be no problem. Berke van der Plaat had been taken to the cellars of the Steen, but just in case Cecile thought otherwise of cooperating, they could let her see her friend or bring her here.

  Passing into the beam of the headlamps, Hunter walked uneasily toward the river, switching on the flashlight only at the last moment.

  Krantz waited. There was no shot, no sign of Hagen yet. And in this fog could he really shoot from a distance sufficient for him to escape?

  Hagen could kill all eight of them even as they poured from the cars.

  Hunter found the woman at last. For a second the baron stiffened. Uncontrolled, the beam of the light swung along the bank and out over the water.

  She’d be floating among the reeds. She’d be lying facedown. A mother of two children, the wife of a baker, a widow …

  Her hair was flaxen but dark, reminding him of Irmgard. Her legs were long and slackly parte
d. The clay that had squished between her fingers was a deep blue-gray, and where there were smears of it on her back and rump, they marred the pale whiteness of her skin.

  “Check the face.” said Krantz on joining him. “Go on, Baron, do it, and remember that your former friend was the cause of this.”

  Hunter crouched. The Berliner’s shoes were to his right. Her face had been shoved into the mud. In terror of drowning, she’d been suffocated by the mud.

  Krantz gave him a nudge. Hunter reached out over the water, avoiding the mud at all costs—teetering, nearly losing his balance—then snatching at the woman’s hair, digging his fingers into it, gasping, straightening up—pulling her with him. The face … the face … Mud was jammed in her nostrils, mud drained from the cavity of what had once been her mouth.

  The face was a mask of terror, the cheeks taut, the eyes clogged.

  He dropped her like a stone and turned away to vomit.

  Krantz calmly lit a cigarette but remained staring at the corpse as the retching continued. Berlin came back to him. The things he’d seen … Poland, too. Yes, Poland.

  Abruptly the Berliner motioned to two of the men who were with them and had the corpse dragged up onto the bank.

  Jani Lutjens, the sister of Berke van der Plaat, had had a passable figure—a bit too thin and bony for his liking, a bit too tall. Not beautiful, just average, a nobody really and yet …

  As he ran his eyes over the badly mutilated body, Krantz realized that the schoolmaster was a natural. Unleashed, he’d find the Huysmans girl and she’d be only too willing to tell them where Hagen was.

  If she knew of it. Of course that might not be—there was always that possibility. But in war one could not worry about such things until one had the answers one needed.

  “Baron, find your own way back to the club. Herr Damas and I have something we must do.”

  The trawler was berthed in the Straatsburgdok at the far end of its quays and near the refit firm of Burgden and Lunde. She’d lost her engine but had since been ignored. She’d have to do. The cabin area below decks would be quite suitable.

  Lev and Anna would be safe enough for a few days, safer by far than where they were now hiding.

  As he made his way through the dark and the fog toward the Kattendijkdok, Hagen thought of their brief meeting in the loft of the fabricating shop. There’d been tears in their eyes. They’d hugged each other tightly.

  He’d had to kill the two men who’d been watching the place. Time was short.

  Lev had told him he’d met Arlette, that she must have been the girl on the roof of that shed.

  Brussels, Lev had said. She’d come by train. But was she still in Brussels? Could he try to find her?

  The tracks that ran parallel to the Willemdok Oude were slippery. In the darkness he didn’t see them and went down hard. From the direction of the control, a guard shouted.

  The Wehrmacht had sealed off the harbor with controls at all points of entry.

  Cursing himself as he crept away, Hagen made a wide detour that could only cost them time they didn’t have. When he heard a burst of shots from the direction of the fabricating shop, he knew that all was lost, that Lev and his wife had been taken.

  Krantz surveyed the bodies. The Jew had clung to his wife, she to the diamond cutter as Damas had cut them down.

  “Brussels … the woman said Brussels.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” snapped Krantz. “But where in Brussels?”

  Taking the Schmeisser from the schoolmaster, he opened the breech and removed the spent clip. “Try always to keep a little in reserve so that if you have to reload, you can do so from a position of some strength.”

  They had stripped the woman in front of her husband and she had given them the answer the diamond cutter had refused.

  But why had they been packing up? Why the rolled blankets, the hastily bagged scraps of food?

  Why unless Hagen had come to offer help.

  “Cecile, listen to me. If you’re keeping something from us, then now is the time to tell me. Krantz has got that Belgian schoolmaster working on things. Berke’s sister …”

  Hunter couldn’t say it. She waited, loathing everything about him, the times they’d slept together, the feel of him, the arrogance that now seemed broken.

  “Is it that you were upset by the sight of what they’d done to her, Dieter?”

  He reached for his glass, then thought better of it. His clothes were disheveled. There was mud on his shoes and the turnups of his trousers, more of it on the knees. The collar of his shirt was open. He’d had to run, had been afraid, perhaps for the first time in his life.

  She knew he’d come to the club alone and on foot. Though he was armed with a pistol, it couldn’t have been a pleasant journey for him. “Richard will kill you, Dieter, and then he’ll kill Krantz.”

  “Not if you tell me who the rest of his friends are. Richard is still in Antwerp, Cecile. He’ll have to hide someplace.”

  “But not with friends. Not Richard. He wouldn’t do a thing like that, no matter how desperate he was.”

  “He’s the reason Berke’s sister was killed.”

  “Murdered!”

  Hunter knew it was useless to try to reason with her, yet all he could see was the woman he’d pulled from the river. Her face, her body.

  “I’m warning you, Cecile. Don’t hold things back. They’ll only take them from you.”

  “Name?”

  “Odette Latour.”

  “Address?”

  “Number 47 Boulevard Anspach, apartment 5.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Red Cross nursing assistant.” The Gestapo had sealed off the cellar and had descended on the hostel. Lunch had just been served.

  The Sturmbannfuhrer Walter Rath glanced at the photograph on the girl’s papers, then at the one the Gestapo had provided.

  The others were being questioned. He motioned to the children, who looked along the table toward them with fear in their little eyes. “Eat,” he said. “Go on. Eat it!”

  He closed her papers but held on to them. “Latour …? That’s French?”

  Arlette acknowledged that it was. He asked if she spoke German. She said that she did.

  “What places have you visited in the Reich?”

  “Düsseldorf, but when I was ten years old. My mother’s family were German.”

  “Were?” he demanded suspiciously.

  “Are.” She smiled. “Her sister, that is. My mother died when I was fifteen.”

  The girl the Gestapo Krantz wanted had chestnut hair and deep brown eyes like this one, but in the fall of 1937, the hair had been worn much longer. She’d be of about the same age. “This aunt, her address?” he asked.

  “One hundred and ninety-seven Montague Street.”

  “Where is that?” he snapped.

  “Brooklyn.”

  Again he asked where that was and she answered, “New York City,” offering so little information it had to make him wonder about her.

  The children were beginning to fidget.

  Rath ran his eyes up over the girl. Krantz’s orders had been clear. Report all suspicious persons but leave them at liberty unless, of course, they should attempt to make a break for it.

  As he returned her papers, he said, “Aufwiedersehen, Fräulein Latour. Our apologies for the interruption. These things—” he indicated the search “—are necessary.”

  Across the all but deserted Grand Place, the guards in front of the Hôtel de Ville stood rigidly to attention in the rain. The swastika that hung above them had been wrapped around the flagstaff by the wind.

  Arlette knew it was only a matter of time before they picked her up. She had to move the transmitter. She mustn’t let them find it.

  Starting out to cross the Place, she clutched the collar of her raincoat and held on to the handle of the plain brown suitcase a little more tightly.

  A large Red Cross sticker covered the exposed side of the suitcase. She knew tha
t her using it would mean trouble for de Heer Boeck if she was caught, but what else could she have done? He’d be in trouble in any case.

  When she reached the Boulevard Anspach, she found the street blocked off. The Germans were doing a house-to-house search. Every intersection had been closed. People were running from their apartments and from the offices and shops below to line up against the walls. Never mind the rain. Never mind that there were old people, women and children, or that it was very near the dinner hour.

  She could hear the cries of “Raus! Raus!” the slamming of rifle butts against apartment doors.

  The stone balusters and tall windows, the high, crowned dormers in the steep green-copper roof sidings, drew her attention. Five floors … the chimney pots up there …

  Terrified by what was happening, she tried to think. Had they found the flat? Had they searched it already?

  Suddenly a man shrieked behind her, “Open that!”

  Startled, she spun around as two Gestapo in plainclothes closed in on her.

  “The suitcase,” shouted the older of the two.

  “But … but everything will get wet.”

  The younger one tore the suitcase from her and flung open the catches.

  “Bandages, Herr Neitz. Iodine, scissors … it’s a first-aid kit.”

  “Yes, of course it is. Now will you give it back to me, please? I’m from the Red Cross.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I … I live over there, at … at number 47.”

  “Your papers. Papers, please. Hurry!” demanded the one called Neitz.

  He scanned them. In spite of the teeming rain, he took his time and got them thoroughly soaked. “Do you know the Jewish tailor, Mandelheim?”

  She shook her head and swallowed. “He deals in secondhand clothing.”

  “Then you do know him.”

  “No, I don’t, Herr Inspector. I merely pass his shop twice each day, going to and from work. The shop has been closed for some time.”

  Still they kept her papers and the suitcase. The search went on, and for a good half hour she was forced to watch as building after building was emptied.

  When the all-clear sounded, the younger one handed her the suitcase; the older one, her papers.

  “Someone reported that two British airmen had been seen on the roof of one of the houses.”