The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  The Gestapo watched her as she crossed the street to walk along the boulevard. It was the end—she knew it was. They’d be waiting. They’d have searched the flat. There’d be no place to run, no place to hide.

  To give herself time to think Arlette took the stairs, but each one grew more difficult and there were five floors.

  Walking along the empty hall, she felt for the cyanide capsule in the lining of her coat collar. Could she really swallow it?

  Ripping the lining open, she freed the thing, held it in the palm of her hand …

  “They’ve gone.”

  “What?” she yelped.

  It was Mevrouw Pellerin, her neighbor across the hall, peering through a crack in her door. “Gone,” whispered the woman.

  Hurrying now, Arlette pushed open the door to her flat and went through to the sitting room to roll back the carpet.

  Removing the boards, she lifted out the wireless set in its plain brown suitcase and transferred the Red Cross sticker to it.

  Then she hid the first-aid kit away, put the pistol in her coat pocket and took a last look around.

  At the Gare du Nord the German officer in charge was very smart-looking in his uniform. A red-and-white-striped pole barred the main rampart that led to the platforms. Two soldiers with rifles raised this barricade to let the people through. Others watched from the sidelines.

  Arlette set down the heavy suitcase so that he could see the Red Cross sticker. Handing her papers over, she waited, knowing they’d be on the lookout for her.

  His sharp blue eyes lifted. “What is the purpose of your visit to Antwerp?”

  The lie was ready. “Liaison for the collection and shipment of parcels to prisoners of war in Germany. I am to have a meeting with my counterpart at the main depot on the docks at Antwerp.”

  “The name of your superior?” he asked.

  “De Heer Boeck.” Dear God forgive her.

  Her papers were returned. The officer clicked his heels and bowed. A hand was raised and the barrier lifted.

  She picked up the suitcase and, willing herself not to rush, made her way through and up the rampart to the platform.

  Already too many had been let through. There was hardly room to stand.

  Attaching herself to a group of elderly nuns, she suggested that if they wished seats, they’d best try to get closer to the tracks.

  When the train came in, the front two cars were, as usual, reserved for the Wehrmacht. Accompanying the nuns cost her a seat, and she was forced to stand with some others in the corridor.

  So far so good. A patrol came along on the other side of the train. Dogs, rifles … nothing out of the ordinary. Not really. With the occupation only just begun, the Nazis weren’t taking any chances. But thank God they’d seen fit to allow the trains to run.

  The trip would take about an hour and a half, given the delays, perhaps as much as two hours. She’d have to contact Cecile, have to find a place to stay. She couldn’t risk going back to Madame Hausemer’s again.

  Just outside of Mechelen, the Gestapo conducted a search while the train was still moving. They started at the far end and they went through like a cold wind. Everyone had to show their papers. Some had to take down their luggage and open it. Food, cigarettes, wine and booze—they seemed uninterested in these things, and the knowledge of this fled on ahead.

  Arlette clung to the leather strap. The car rocked from side to side. They passed a switch box and she saw a railwayman signal to the engineer. They were putting the train onto a siding. They were going to do a thorough search. They’d pull her off the train. They’d hit her—tear the wireless set from her. Open the catches … Run … should she try to make a run for it?

  Calm … she must remain calm.

  As the Gestapo entered the car behind, Arlette went along to the one ahead and asked if she might sit down.

  Her German was good. She was pretty, and she did look tired.

  The Hauptmann Martin Berger stood up to address the man who sat opposite him in the otherwise empty compartment. “Herr Generaloberst, may we allow this young woman a seat? Her luggage …” Berger indicated the suitcase with its Red Cross sticker.

  The general, busy with some papers, gruffly said, “Yes, yes, of course.”

  He indicated the seat opposite him and went back to work, only to pause and say, “Martin, why are we stopping?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Arlette. “They’re just taking on some more passengers.”

  The Gestapo never thought to look for her in those two cars. They questioned everyone else, opened every suitcase no matter how small.

  Reluctantly they were forced to let the train proceed, but by then she had agreed to have lunch with the Hauptmann. He wouldn’t have taken no for an answer, and she hadn’t had the courage to refuse for fear of being discovered.

  They reached Antwerp’s Central Station after a journey of two and a half hours. The Hauptmann helped her down with her suitcase, even suggesting they give her a lift.

  This she refused but thanked him warmly. They shook hands and said goodbye until the next day.

  Alone like her, Karl Christian Damas fell in some distance behind her. Krantz had told him to watch the station just in case the Huysmans girl should manage to slip through the Gestapo’s net.

  The suitcase with its Red Cross sticker puzzled him, but there was no mistaking her.

  When, seemingly on impulse, she headed for Antwerp’s docks, he knew exactly where she’d try to hide.

  The streets of Antwerp were gray in the twilight mizzle that had swept in from the North Sea. Bundled in his trench coat and hat, Krantz was tired, hungry and fed up.

  The girl had successfully eluded them. One possibility did exist, and that was the schoolmaster. But then the girl could well have killed the Belgian.

  “Hagen,” he said. “Let us try to find him. The Club Chez Vous first and then perhaps a little something to eat.”

  Increasingly he’d come to believe that although the odds were overwhelmingly in his favor, it could well be Hagen and not Heydrich who would kill him.

  Trapped, and unable to escape, the diamond salesman would have to go on the offensive.

  Hunter and the Verheyden woman were downstairs in the club. Krantz didn’t bother to check his coat and hat but waded through the Wehrmacht crowd.

  Gray in the smoke-filled air, gray in the sea of uniforms, the Verheyden woman had chosen to wear that color as well.

  He ignored Hunter. “So, Frau Verheyden, a few short words. Hagen’s father would have had Belgian friends. So, too, then the son could well be friends of those friends. You’ve left a little something off your lists of his contacts, and this I must now have.”

  The baron tensed but said nothing. Nervously the woman stubbed out her cigarette and turned to say something to the leader of the band. The music stopped so suddenly there was a distinct lull in the accumulated conversation.

  “Don’t make me do it,” breathed Krantz.

  “Cecile, tell us,” said Dieter, standing now.

  “Why?” she asked. “Richard was my friend, my lover, yes—my ex-lover.”

  The conversation began to fall off—here a stifled laugh, there a broken guffaw.

  The Berliner dragged out his cigarettes. For a moment he was lost to the silver-plated case and the dented head of the kaiser. Again when he spoke, it was as if he breathed the words. “Now, Frau Verheyden, or do you wish me to have you stripped naked and beaten in front of all these nice young men?”

  The implication was all too clear. Lust and violence so often went together. Unfeeling, the cod eyes took her in. Counting … was he counting to ten?

  “Laeken … Father Gerald. He … he was an old friend of Richard’s father from the Congo days. Richard … Richard and I used to visit him.”

  “The address?” asked Krantz, knowing he had slipped back into the slime of Poland and hating himself for it. But knowing, too, he had had no other choice.

  “Forty-four Van Eyc
klei, just across from the—”

  “The Stadspark. Yes, yes, I know the street. The apartment number?”

  She gave him that, too, then turned her back on him.

  “Baron, don’t let her out of your sight. Post extra men inside the doors and wait here for me. Business as usual, you understand? If Damas turns up, tell him to sit tight. Hopefully we’ll have work for him.”

  Damas waited in the deeper darkness of the loft above Dillingham’s fabricating shop. The distant and infuriating sound of a winch came to him again, intruding on the silence he so desperately wanted.

  The Huysmans girl was here—he knew it, felt it, could almost reach out to touch her she was that close. She’d found the bodies of the diamond cutter and his wife, had thrown up in spite of all the training. Had taken the time to cover the corpses with a blanket.

  He had men watching all the exits, men downstairs in the empty shop, two men with him now.

  “The roof,” he whispered at last.

  Arlette lay very still. The corrugated iron was cold. The suitcase with its wireless set was to her left—she’d use it as a barricade if possible. The Browning was in her hand.

  Leaving the suitcase, she eased herself over to the edge of the roof. With the blood rushing into her head, she sought out the deeper pockets of darkness and tried to remember where the ladders were.

  A tiny metallic clink was followed by the scraping of a coat button. Without a light, in fog, mist and darkness, they were creeping across the roof toward her.

  When the silhouette of one of them became a little clearer, the urge to fire was almost more than she could bear.

  Squirming back to the wireless set, she began to pull it after her.

  They would reach the vent and find her gone. They would stand up perhaps. She’d have a better chance then. She mustn’t panic, must shoot at each of them and only once.

  Damas searched the darkness ahead of them, picking out the line of the roof and then the housing of the vent. Since all exits were covered, there was no possible escape.

  Arlette drew the heavy suitcase a little closer. Her feet had come suddenly to the end of the roof. She couldn’t let them take the wireless. She hoped it would be destroyed. If only there was some way she could escape with it—no sight of her, no sound. Just gone from them into the night.

  Lowering herself out over the end of the building, her shoes touched and touched again the steel I-beam of the hoist boom that ran from there a short distance out into the yard behind the shop.

  There was a chain-operated hoist on the boom. They had used it for lifting the heavier crates onto the trucks.

  Easing the suitcase after her, she backed away from the outline of the roof until coming to the end of the I-beam. Then she lay flat and huddled against the girder with the suitcase turned lengthwise to them.

  Broad tree-lined thoroughfares surrounded the triangle of the Stadspark—the Quinten Matsijslei, the Rubenslei and the Van Eycklei, the one they wanted. Across the streets there were houses—rows of them. Blocks of flats.

  Krantz had cars posted at the apexes of the triangle. Even though there were Wehrmacht troops billeted in the park, he sent men into it while others took up their stations in the web of streets immediately to the south.

  Given the shortness of available time and the lateness of the hour, it was the best he could do.

  In three packed cars, himself in the lead, they headed down the Van Eycklei—very nice houses, very baroque—Flemish and old, high and gabled … heavy doors, locks and locks, centuries of them. Dark, so dark …

  In a rush, they hit the front door but the flat was on the second floor. The stairs were steep, the thunder of their shoes was now everywhere.

  As one, he and the others hit that door, too, splintering the wood—staving the thing in and flinging on the lights. Shouting now.

  Blinded by the glare—bewildered—terrified by the noise, the missionary’s housekeeper of fifty years and her sister were hustled into the sitting room, clutching their nightdresses. One had the temerity to make a dash for a spear—there were several of these standing in a corner. Shelves that contained bits of carving, mementos, gourds …

  A burst from a Schmeisser filled the room with plaster dust, screams and broken glass. All too soon the two old sisters lay dead in a pool of blood.

  “Hagen!” shrieked Krantz, swinging at the man who’d killed them. “I wanted Hagen, you idiot!”

  “Gone … he’s gone, Herr Krantz. There’s no one else in the flat,” said one of the others.

  Gone …

  The missionary had died a year ago at the age of ninety-seven. The Verheyden woman had known this and had thought to use it to buy herself a little more time.

  The bitch!

  Krantz shoved past the men. There were four bedrooms, a book-lined study, kitchen, dining room, bathroom … Suddenly exhausted by the effort of rushing the house, he switched on the bathroom light and ran a finger around the basin.

  No bristles, but Hagen would have rinsed the thing out.

  Coffee cups on the drainboard in the kitchen. Three teaspoons, two cups, now why?

  There was a gap in the rack of the clothes closet in one of the spare bedrooms. Right in the middle too. A place for a pair of shoes below. Mud … was that a bit of mud on the floor?

  Hagen …

  A whistle sounded from the roof, three stories above him. The all-clear. No second blast.

  He pulled the blankets back and felt the sheets, but old girls like those would have done their underwear every day, so, too, the sheets.

  A wave of fatigue rushed in on him. Closing his eyes, the Berliner held the bridge of his nose. Hagen … Where would he go next? He’d need food, water, dry clothing, a place to shave.

  “Herr Krantz …?”

  “Yes. Yes, what is it?”

  “Shall I tell the Hauptmann to call off the search?”

  “Comb the streets and laneways. Look up on the roofs. Get more men from the park. Find Hagen and bring that bastard to me.”

  There was soup enough for five or six good strong men on the back of the stove, bread enough for an army in the larder box, cold chicken, some cheese, a bottle of pickled onions and a half liter of red wine.

  He’d eat as Hagen must have eaten, and then he’d catch a few winks.

  Though he hated to admit it, the salesman was getting the better of him.

  Just before dawn Damas let himself into his flat. As Hagen watched, the schoolmaster went through to the tiny kitchen to light the gas ring and put the kettle on.

  Two tablespoons of coffee beans went into the hand grinder. Fed up with such a menial task, Damas began to turn the thing.

  Filter cone, pot and filter came out of a cupboard. As he waited for the kettle, he fidgeted, drummed his fingers on the drainboard, moved about constantly.

  The gas supply must have been reduced. The pressure … there was hardly any pressure. In anger, he reached for the valve, only to find it wide open.

  A cigarette was needed. Taking one out, he bent to light it at the gas ring, momentarily lifting the kettle away. Then he went back to fidgeting, to loosening his tie, to pulling off his jacket. The girl … the Huysmans girl …

  Something was really bothering him. As Hagen watched, the schoolmaster dragged out a handkerchief, only to notice there was blood on it and to fling the thing from himself. He hit the counter with a fist.

  The coffee didn’t settle him. Standing there remembering the chase, the hunt for the girl, he gripped the edge of the counter and rocked back on his heels.

  Krantz had wanted the girl to be taken alive. Could nothing go right?

  When the schoolmaster came into the bedroom, he tossed his pistol on the bed and pulled off the tie before going over to the window to yank the heavy blackout curtains closed.

  He’d try to get a little sleep, try to think what was best. The girl had been so very clever—cold as ice. So pretty.

  A girl with a secret wireless transmitter
. One of the enemy …

  Damas reached for the light switch, only to discover he wasn’t alone.

  Fifteen

  AT DAWN THE CLUB CHEZ VOUS was closed and empty looking. Still very afraid, still very much on the run and knowing they’d nearly caught her last night, Arlette pushed off from the curb. The stolen bicycle blended in with the streams of others. The wireless set was strapped to the carrier behind her.

  Everything about the club looked normal enough, but could she chance it? She desperately needed help, a place to stay, a change of clothing.

  There were no cars in the street, not even a Wehrmacht lorry. No uniforms for that matter.

  Jostled by the other cyclists and forced to keep pace, she rode past the club but turned up at the nearest side street.

  Again there were no signs of the Nazi presence. The streets were far too empty of them.

  Five and a half blocks from the club, the cars started to appear. Those few that were parked at the side of the road looked as if they belonged, and since few Belgians were allowed cars, they were, of course, of the Nazis.

  Getting off the bike, she walked it quickly along the sidewalk. She’d have to find a telephone, have to hope that Cecile or someone else would warn her if the place was a trap.

  Peeled black letters gave faint testament to former businesses: Konstanz, Electrical Contractors; Van Dern the house painter …

  Bold ones gave the new occupants: The Offices of the Todt Organization.

  It would have to do.

  The German businessman who stopped her in the hall was in his early fifties. In many ways he reminded her of de Heer Wunsch. He asked what she was doing in the building and she said, “Please, I am looking for the offices of my uncle, Monsieur Adrian Beaumont, the lawyer.”

  His name had once been on the door.

  Horst Reugen gave her a fatherly smile. “He used to have his offices here, Fräulein, but I’m afraid we required the premises.”

  The fullness of her big brown eyes swept over him. The girl gave such a frown. “Would it be possible for you to tell me his new address?” she asked. “I’ve only just arrived in the city and would like very much to see him.”