The Alice Factor

by J. Robert Janes

  She spoke excellent German, had a look about her that intrigued. The brown beret and trench coat suited, but there were dark circles under her eyes, suggestions of hunger and exhaustion.

  “If you’d care to come upstairs, I’ll see if I can find it. We should have a forwarding address someplace. You can leave your suitcase in the hall. No one will touch it.”

  “These days I’d rather not.”

  “Then you must allow me.” A portly man, Reugen took the suitcase from her, only to grunt at the weight of it. Had she rocks in the thing?

  “It’s a typewriter,” she said modestly. “I’m a secretary. I’ve come to Antwerp to look for work. I was hoping my uncle …”

  Herr Reugen stepped aside to let her enter the lift. If she had to kill him, Arlette knew she’d have to do it between floors.

  The office was spacious and equipped with several drafting tables. As Reugen led the way, he worried about the threat to security, then dismissed this. The girl was so like his daughter. The same age as Ilse, the same height. And in the city alone.

  Arlette ignored the drawings that must be of coastal defenses the Todt were constructing at the mouth of the Scheldt. She asked to use the telephone, and he left her to it. No one else was in the office as yet, but she could hear the sounds of others down the hall.

  Reugen was either an architect or an engineer.

  There was trouble getting a line through to the club and more than once she thought to leave it. Cecile worked late. She’d be asleep …

  “Hello … Hello, who is it?”

  Had Cecile been crying? “A friend. Look, I need a place to stay. Would it be all right for me to come to see you?”

  There was a pause, a split second’s hesitation. “Of course. About six? Would that be all right?”

  Six p.m. was hours away.

  Arlette set the receiver carefully down, only to look up into the warm brown eyes of Herr Reugen.

  “Bad news?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “Just a friend who is too polite to say she’s indisposed.”

  Reugen straightened his tie. “Would you care for a cup of coffee and a biscuit? It would please me very much. A little company. Please … come, come … my office is just next door. Then I can, perhaps, drive you to your uncle’s new address as it is on my way.”

  “The bicycle …”

  He smiled and waved a reproving finger. “We will tie it to the luggage compartment, as I used to for my daughter before the war.”

  He’d been in Poland since the late fall of 1939, and now Belgium. Three periods of leave, that had been all they’d given him. Six weeks in total.

  A lonely man.

  The schoolmaster was hanging from the end of the hoist beam in the shipping yard behind the fabricating shop of Dillingham and Company. He’d bitten through his tongue. Flies had collected over the gash on his forehead, they’d crawled into his nostrils, were searching for moisture and salt in the eyes.

  Hagen had made a little side trip with the Belgian. They’d gone to the warehouse Damas used and had picked up more than three dozen sticks of dynamite, sufficient blasting caps and fuse.

  They’d taken a Schmeisser, 1700 rounds of ammunition and a Mauser rifle.

  It was this last that troubled Krantz the most, and as he sat in the car waiting to give the orders, the body turned and he was taken back to the docks and the death of the Lutjens woman—that same feeling of desperateness, of knowing Hagen was out there someplace, that he’d try to kill him if he could.

  “So, Baron, we take a walk. You first, or me, I wonder?”

  “Richard isn’t that stupid. It’s broad daylight. There’d be no escape.”

  “Good! Then perhaps you’d best go first.”

  The Berliner lunged across the seat to wrench the door open. “Be my guest, Baron. Go on. Get out! See what it feels like to stand alone knowing a man is out there trying to kill you.”

  The wind was from the northeast, cool and in off the sea. The sun was high, and all around the car there were warehouses.

  Dieter got out of the car. The body turned. He began to walk toward it.

  At a signal from the Berliner, the others remained in the cars.

  Krantz leaned forward to glance in the rearview mirror, to look down the road behind them to the roofs of the most distant warehouses. Come on … come on. Shoot if you must!

  He sat back and waited. Anxiously he turned to look behind them. When the shot came, it didn’t hit Hunter. It hit the side of the rear door, ripping the metal and taking the back off Krantz’s left hand!

  The Berliner flung himself across the seat. A shot shattered the rear window, killing the man who sat in the right front seat.

  In the tense silence that followed, Krantz managed to cradle his wounded hand. Splinters of bone stuck through the mass of bloodied tissue. “Bastard … bastard,” he cried in anger. The hand was numb, no feeling at all. He tried to move his fingers and found they wouldn’t respond. “Some brandy,” he gasped. “A cigarette.”

  Hagen … had he got away?

  Only the road, the long line of the tracks and the warehouses faced him as he crawled out of the car.

  The lace of the curtains was Flemish and very old. Horst Reugen watched as the girl called Odette Latour fingered it. Had she an uncomfortable interest in the Tolstraat or the Scheldt Monument? They’d been to the uncle’s address only to have found the man gone.

  “Please say you’ll stay. No one will bother you, and in a day or two you can, if you so choose, find other lodgings.”

  Arlette let the curtain fall. It was now nearly ten o’clock in the morning. She’d asked him to drive by the docks, and he had become suspicious and had refused.

  “I know you cannot have the proper residence papers, Fräulein Latour. For me this is no problem, but for the authorities …”

  Reugen left it unsaid.

  Through the lace she could see his car parked on the street below. The bicycle was still tied to the back of it. “Is it so obvious?” she asked, not looking at him.

  Encouraged by the sadness in her voice, he said, “I could perhaps help you to secure the necessary documents.”

  “Have I any choice?”

  Reugen reached for his hat. Again he was struck by her tender years, by the resemblance to his daughter. She’d been in the office. He’d have to report her.

  “For now I think not, but please don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

  Arlette let him leave the flat. Later she’d ask herself why she’d done such a stupid thing. She heard the lift come up to their floor. The architect got in.

  When he reached the street, Herr Reugen thought about the bicycle and decided not to untie it. He’d want her to sleep with him. He’d question why she had so few clothes.

  As he drove away, the utter loneliness of her position came to her.

  It was not far to the docks and the main Red Cross depot. She could take the wireless and leave the flat before it was too late. He’d only ring up and immediately know what she’d done.

  When he drove past the building a few minutes later, she stepped away from the window. He’d thought to find her in the street.

  Five minutes later the telephone rang. Herr Reugen was worried. She said, “I was just about to take a bath. I hope you won’t mind.”

  A girl from the countryside. “No, please, I insist. Use the place as you would your own. I will try to be home a little early and we can talk about things then.”

  Long after he’d rung off Arlette remained by the telephone. Then slowly she went through to the bedroom to stand in its doorway.

  It was all so tidy. The bureau held photographs of Herr Reugen’s wife and family, a daughter and a son, both of whom were in uniform. There were nice warm woolen socks in the top drawer, some extra money at the back, the smell of mothballs.

  The corduroy trousers in the second drawer would be far too big in the waist for her, the sweaters too large, but should she pack a few thi
ngs and some food?

  Would he come back again?

  Quickly she went through to the sitting room to stand at the window, listening for the lift and looking down at the street.

  Herr Reugen’s flat was on the top floor. True, the windows were exposed …

  Leaving the door ajar, she went along the hall and up the stairs that led to the roof. The door there was padlocked but that posed no problem. She could force it easily and string the aerial where no one would think to look. She could contact London just before dawn and ask for more time.

  If only he would say nothing for just a little while.

  “Herr Reugen, it’s me, Odette. Please, I am sorry to have troubled you at work but would you like me to prepare something for supper? There is a piece of steak. I could …”

  He said that anything she had in mind would be fine.

  Cecile Verheyden clung to life in filth and bathwater, naked and shivering on the floor. The terror of not being able to breathe was always there. Cold, like ice, she had cried out to God, had screamed at them, only to be plunged back in and forced down, down, down …

  As the terrified woman clutched her shoulders, Krantz held his throbbing hand and said, “You boys are slipping.”

  The two interrogators were stripped to the waist and soaked. The Verheyden woman hadn’t been easy. She’d thrashed about so much they’d had to hit her several times.

  When they reached for her again, the Berliner said, “Let me show you how it’s done. Baron, help her to kneel beside the tub or is the sight of her too much for your stomach?”

  Hunter turned away in anger. Krantz shrieked at him to take hold of the woman.

  “Now drag her to her knees.”

  “She hasn’t any strength, damn you!”

  “Nor will you have, if she doesn’t tell us what we need to know.”

  Irmgard had had this done to her. Irmgard … Hunter caught Cecile under the arms and lifted her to her knees.

  The Berliner grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head back. “Hagen!” he shrieked. “Who are his contacts?”

  They’d done a job on that pretty face. Bruised and badly battered, she could hardly focus. She tried to speak, and when he heard her whisper, Krantz tore her from Hunter and shoved her into the bath.

  Like a man throttling a dog, he held her under. There was still strength, still resistance. She kicked, thrashed out her arms—tried to breathe!

  He yanked her out and she choked, threw up, bent double vomiting water.

  Poland … it was so like Poland.

  “Count to three with this one. Down, yes? Then up to give the hint of release, then down again right to the bottom, then up at last. It is best that way.”

  Krantz shoved her under. The cheeks of her seat stiffened in panic. The legs began to straighten, the feet to fight for purchase on the slippery floor, her body twisting, her arms reaching outward … the voice coming to Hunter as he watched and could do nothing. “Dieter … Dieter, no!” A scream. “Please don’t let them do this to me! Please!”

  Irmgard … Irmgard.

  As Hunter watched, Cecile evacuated her bowels. Krantz pulled her head out and flung her into the waiting arms of the interrogators.

  When she died, they left her naked body half in and half out of the tub, kneeling on the floor.

  The steak had been cooked to perfection. There’d been onion rings and fried potatoes. The cabbage soup had had little bits of sausage in it, just like at home. “Of course my wife doesn’t like my being away so much, but she understands it is the war. What else can one do?”

  Arlette took a sip of her wine. “Find a mistress perhaps.”

  The accusation flustered Herr Reugen. She smiled wisely and said, “There are five other Belgian girls living in this block of flats. One more won’t be noticed—isn’t that what you’ve been thinking ever since you first saw me?”

  He reached for his cigarettes and offered them. Her fingers touched his.

  He blurted, “Would it be too much to ask for … for the little favor of …”

  Again there was that smile. “Of your saying nothing, Herr Reugen?”

  “Horst, please, Odette. I … we …”

  “Could be happy?” She tossed her head. “Yes, I suppose we could. Fair’s fair. My body in exchange for my freedom. I don’t exactly relish the thought of jail.”

  Did she have to make it hurt so much? “Will you at least consider it?”

  “How long do I have?” she asked.

  He picked at the last of his meal. “A week, two weeks … I place no time limit on it. Let this be your home. I’ve enough for the two of us.”

  Their glasses touched, they sipped their wine. She trembled once and said, “Your offer is really very kind.”

  “The ‘uncle’ was not a relative of yours, was he?”

  Flustered, she set down her glass and almost cried.

  Reugen reached across the table to comfort her. “Odette, I had to telephone him for your sake. He has said you must be mistaken.”

  The Browning was in her coat pocket and her coat was folded on the chair behind him. There was a paring knife on the drainboard in the kitchen, but he was closer to it. The vagus nerve then. Pressure there would stop the motor fibers to the heart. Death would come, in seconds.

  “Please tell me why you lied to me,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I had no money. I needed to use the telephone. I thought … ah, what does it matter what I thought?”

  She was angry with him now, but it would be best to get everything out in the open. “Who did you telephone?”

  “A friend. She was just somebody I’d met once.”

  Then the girl was truly alone in the city. “Was there a man with her?”

  “A German officer. Look, she said I could go there after six o’clock. I’ll leave now.”

  Reugen caught her by the sleeve. Her chest rose in alarm.

  Apologetically he said, “Please, I beg you. Don’t go. Stay here and think it over. We could try things out, and if you found them to your liking, you could stay as long as you wished.”

  “And if not?”

  He let go of her. “I will say nothing because even now I have allowed you to stay too long, and the authorities would only want to know why I hadn’t reported you.”

  The Red Cross parcels were thirty centimeters to the side, the regulation size. Each parcel weighed no more than ten kilograms. The addresses, in pen, gave a POW camp in East Prussia near the border of what had once been Poland.

  Hunter ran his eyes over the fifteen parcels he’d had singled out from the shipment of over ten thousand that had been caught in the harbor during the invasion.

  Each of the parcels would contain four kilograms of crushing boart and a third of a kilogram of mixed tool diamonds, in addition to the woolen socks, underwear, toothbrushes, soap and canned or dried food.

  It hadn’t been easy finding just the right person in the Congo. A security guard at one of the mines had seemed a promising prospect but the man had had to be killed. That death, however, had softened a woman in the office of the mine manager. Georgette Augiers had been lonely. At the age of 43 she had wanted love and promises of marriage.

  She’d had a friend, a foreman, one Pieter van den Oorst, half Belgian, half Afrikaner.

  It had been through her and van den Oorst that he’d managed the parcels—a steady if modest flow of diamonds past the British blockade with the promise of more.

  But now Richard would destroy the link, and if not him, then Arlette Huysmans.

  When Krantz, fresh from having the dressing changed on his shattered hand, came into the warehouse, Hunter was ready for him.

  “The girl has to have been sent from London to find these,” he said. “That’s why she has a wireless set. Stake out this place and you’ll get her.”

  “And you, Baron? What will you do?”

  “Once we have her, we have Richard.”

  With difficulty Krantz found himself a cigare
tte and lit it. “They’re not working together. She can’t even know Hagen’s alive.”

  “Then we let Richard know she’ll come here.”

  That was interesting. “How?” asked Krantz. The pain in his hand and arm was excruciating. He’d refused the morphia.

  “By leaving the Club Chez Vous alone. By leaving only myself in there to face him. Richard will never try to make contact with Cecile if you have so many of your men in the place.”

  That was also interesting. “Then be my guest, Baron. You to the club, myself to stake this place out. Tell the others to leave the club in ones and twos over the course of the next hour or so. I can use them here.”

  Hagen would kill the Baron but hopefully not before Hunter had told him about the girl.

  From the couch in the sitting room, Arlette could hear the German snoring peacefully in his bedroom. There had been times when she’d thought he’d awakened suddenly, times when she’d thought him listening for her.

  Even as she crossed the room to open one of the windows a little wider, Arlette knew she’d have to kill him.

  Leaning out, she looked along the darkened street, then up to the eaves above her. A corner, a ledge, a drainpipe—something—she had to get a fix on the window so as to find it from the roof.

  Reugen turned onto his side when she stood in the doorway listening to him. It would be so easy to kill him now, and then what? The hue and cry as soon as he didn’t show up for work?

  Softly she closed his door and put two cushions against the bottom of it. If she had the opportunity to lie, she would tell him that they’d been because of his snoring.

  The hallway was dark, the staircase up to the roof cramped. Crouching, she felt for the lock, found its hasp, traced out the end of its plate, the first of the screwnails …

  Using a dinner knife, Arlette removed each of the four screws and set them carefully in a corner on the top step. It would take time to replace them, but if successful, this was far better than forcing the lock.

  London wanted her to get into the Red Cross depot but London didn’t understand how things were.

  The roof was flat in its center but steep at the sides—sheets of copper that shot away to the eaves below and then the windows.