by Paul Griner
Dieter stood with his back to the window, holding his book open in the day’s last light as the walls faded from pink to pearly gray. Claus took care not to read the title; the less he knew about Dieter, the better. He startled Claus by clapping the book shut.
“No light left,” Dieter said, and dropped the book on his bunk. He began to pace again, Claus making sure he didn’t hesitate by the windowsill and grab the bread. Eventually the evening whistle blew, the guards made their rounds, and other prisoners sang cheap sentimental war songs. The choruses spread out in rings, and when those died out a few foreigners began loudly repeating phrases in English.
“‘What time is the train?’”
“‘There are the shoes. One is red, the other black.’”
At last the night whistle sounded and the guards called, “Shut up, you!,” and rapped on the doors with their batons until everyone did. Then the tapping began, quick and short. Dieter stopped at the sound of it.
“Do you hear that?” he said. “Tell me, please, what’s it mean?”
“How should I know?”
“Because you said you’ve been here before.”
“Not here.”
“No.” Dieter shrugged. “I thought it perhaps was universal. Every night it is the same thing, this tapping. I wish someone to explain it to me.” He sighed. “You think I’m a spy then too. This is for you won’t talk. The English are hard to convince.”
“I’m not English,” Claus said, and rolled upright on his bunk. The cell grew unbearably silent once Dieter stopped his pacing. In a few minutes Claus had it. “Math problems,” he said.
“Math?”
“To keep their minds sharp. Here’s one. How many bananas can a camel carry? She has three thousand bananas but can carry only one thousand at a time, and she must eat one banana for every mile she travels.” After an interval, the tapping started up again.
“The answer,” he said. After another break came a longer series, slower and repeated. “Two trains and a fly.”
“Two trains and a fly?”
“You don’t know that one? Everyone does. Two trains, one hundred fifty miles apart, traveling toward each other, one at ninety miles an hour, the other at sixty. The fly flies from one train to the other until they collide. How far does the fly fly?”
Dieter stood in the dark with his head tilted forward on his fat neck, as if trying to see the answer on the floor. From down the corridor, steps came toward them. Claus knew they were for him. All day he’d been successful, not a word of German, not a mistake that would link them together, but nonetheless his stomach knotted, his armpits began to sweat, his chest filled with the belief that they were coming not to release him but to hang Dieter. He opened his mouth to speak—in German—then closed it and stood.
“Can you tell me the code?” Dieter said. “To the tapping?”
Did he genuinely not know, were the Germans so desperate now that they weren’t training their spies in the most basic of techniques, or was this a trick to get Claus to reveal his own training? The former, Claus decided, but even so he shook his head in the dark. The cell door swung open and a blinding light shone in.
“You then,” he said to Claus and tossed in a belt. “Put that on and come along.”
Claus held the belt in his palm.
“Goodbye,” Dieter said. In German, he added, “Freund.”
Friend? Claus paused, unable to bring himself to reply.
“Come on then,” the guard said. “Don’t be all day about it.”
Claus reached up to the windowsill and took the bread and put it in Dieter’s open hand and then turned sideways to slide by him, not wanting to touch him as he passed.
July 24
“GOT YOURSELF ARRESTED, did you?” Bertram said before the door had even clicked shut behind him. The new secretary had ushered Claus in without a word and he’d been careful not to catch her name or refer to Madge, grateful she’d said nothing; half-meant condolences would only anger him.
“Good touch that, eating the paper. Made you seem a real spy.”
Claus flushed, embarrassed and angry. It had been instinct, born of years in prison, where the smallest contraband could lead to isolation and loss of privileges, and he’d realized only as he did so that it made him look guilty. He waited a few seconds before responding. The cuckoo clock seemed unnaturally loud, its pinecone weights trembling. What seemed worst of all was that he’d noted how the detectives beat him and the kinds of questions they’d asked so he’d be able to tell his handlers. Bertram had trained him too well. “Did you think that was on purpose?” he said when his breathing was calm. “It got me beaten.”
Bertram gestured with his hand.
“Yes,” Claus said. “I’m sure it’s nothing if you’ve never gone through it.”
Bertram raised his eyebrows. “Were you scared?”
“You’re damn straight I was. And am. They freed me, but they might well not the next time. And you’re a liar if you say you wouldn’t have been.”
Bertram opened a whiskey and poured himself one, Claus as well, without asking. “One of the many things from the Colonies I can’t do without,” he said. As near to an apology as he would get, Claus realized.
Bertram studied him. “You haven’t asked about redirecting the bombs,” he said.
Startled, Claus shrugged to buy himself time. “Why would I? I already know your answer.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
Claus sat down but didn’t pick up the glass, and Bertram shifted topics once again. “Canis timidus vehementius latrat quam mordet. ‘A timid dog barks more violently than it bites.’ The London police aren’t much to worry about, truthfully, though I’m sure they made it uncomfortable for you. Shouldn’t have, of course, but then these days the police aren’t really attracting the best people.” He re-stoppered the bottle and raised his glass in salute, sniffed the shimmering liquid. “They made quite a deal about Dieter, and you, until I let them know who you were, but they’ve not arrested a single spy on their own.”
Bertram shook his head. “A fool, Einschuffen. Managed to get himself captured by a railroad porter. Asked what station he was at, in heavily accented English, in the middle of the countryside. The detectives only had to fetch him, though I’ve no doubt one or two will get a medal. But it’s not as if even then they had to work. He had pyramidon powder on him and his papers were obvious forgeries and his ration book hadn’t been used for a month. German chocolate in one pocket, matches from a Munich barbershop in another. Saved us a good deal of trouble.
“He should have had one or the other—the German clothes and chocolate, indicating that he was escaping in a hurry, or the pyramidon powder and the forged ration book, to show he meant to fool the Germans into believing he planned to spy. Not both.
“Though all in all, it actually works in your favor. You can tell your Abwehr contacts they’re not up to snuff. Put them in a bind. They’ll believe you that much more.”
“I’m to tell them I shared a cell with him?”
“You’re to tell them many things. More about Calais, for one. And about plans for an invasion near Marseille. But that you shared a cell with Einschuffen? Yes. Standard police procedure. Put two suspected spies in the same cell and hope that at least one gives himself away. You said nothing and were released.”
“And what will happen to him?” Claus said, though he knew.
Bertram looked out the crosshatched window. “He was hung, of course.”
“Was hung?” Claus had barely had time to return to his apartment and sleep.
“No point in putting it off. It was to be his fate anyway. Not even the Germans would credit that all their spies made it safely. And the public does have to be reassured.”
“The public?”
Bertram bowed his head. “I know. Still, it must be done.”
“Yet you paused before telling me.”
“Not from moral doubts, I assure you.”
; “Then what?”
“You didn’t tell him what his fate was going to be, I take it?”
“You can hardly expect me to have been the bearer of that news.”
“No, I couldn’t.” Bertram sighed. “Quite a mess, evidently.” He put his drink on the desk, as if it wouldn’t be proper to hold one while saying what he had to.
“Einschuffen was taken by surprise, it seems. Thought he was going to be freed, especially after you were. When they explained he began crying. That didn’t stop them, but it went from bad to worse. The noose wasn’t tight when they opened the drop and it slipped up his face, catching the tip of his nose and cracking his neck.”
“And I asked him to come over.”
“It’s a risk every spy takes.” He ran his finger around the rim of his glass, making a slight musical noise. “You yourself worry about being shot.”
“He was hardly a spy. And I worry about accidents, nothing planned.”
“Good God, you don’t feel bad about it, do you? People die. It’s war.”
“Yes, but not people I choose.”
“The Abwehr chose him, not you. You merely asked that they send someone.”
“‘Even one hair casts a shadow,’” Claus said. It was one of Bertram’s pet phrases from earlier in the war.
“Well, a shadow, yes,” Bertram said. “But in the grand scheme of things, with the Nazi cloud, no one’s going to notice his shadow.”
“I will.”
“Don’t you Americans have a phrase? That you’ll ‘get through’ it?”
Was that to be it, all sins forgiven because a greater sin lurked above them?
“I’d like to know, what’s the point of luring someone like that to his death?” Dieter had been so pleased to see his name in the paper, so disappointed that it had been misspelled. It was like killing a child. “He wasn’t a spy. You said yourself he was a fool. Do you think they’d waste a real spy on such a dicey mission? It’s nothing short of murder to invite someone like that to come and be killed.”
“You do have some of the strangest notions. We’ve done it throughout the war. A bit hard to develop qualms about it now.”
“Not when the war is nearly over. Not when we know they’re going to send fools. And why on earth would you put me in the cell with him? Bad enough if he were just a faceless figure, but to have met him?”
“The war is far from over, and it will serve you well with the Abwehr. To make them believe in you, the danger you face. The more real it is to you, the more real it will be to them. Tell your handlers that not only were you caught but that Dieter was caught, and that if they send another, for whatever reason, he should be better prepared.”
“Wonderful. We’ll have them sending in agents we can’t identify. That should help us.” Claus stood.
“It will, if we know they’re coming to meet you.” Bertram sat on the corner of his desk and smoothed his yellow school tie, bright as corn. “And I believe they already have.”
Claus looked at him.
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” Bertram shook his head. “I thought you managed the arrest to give yourself a few days to think things over.”
“I’d have told you if I planned to do that. And why would I need to?”
The green scrambler phone rang, but Bertram ignored it. “Spur of the moment. In any case, the Germans have sent someone else, I’m sure of it. Though I can’t yet prove it” He moved to the wall and looked at a map of Germany before running his palm over the long crack in the plaster beside it. “Remember when I told you to trust no one? I had someone in mind even then. You know her, you see.” He turned to face Claus. “The nurse. Mrs. Zweig.”
“Kate?” Claus said, before his body even had time to react. “You’re nuts.” Then he felt as if he had no legs and sat. The phone was still ringing, Bertram still ignoring it. Claus felt guilty for ever having doubted Kate—the test at the racetrack. Bertram must have planted the seeds of doubt long ago and he’d been foolish enough to water them. “Dreaming,” he said. It was a good front, but he wondered now. Worst of all was that he knew Bertram intended him to.
July 25
TWO BUZZ BOMBS HIT almost simultaneously, the sounds of their explosions so close it was hard to tell them apart. The curtains blew in from the first and were sucked out by the second, and Rosalyn called down from the roof that both were in their sector.
Claus sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes open, relieved that sunlight no longer hurt, more relieved to have something to do. Unable to sleep, he’d tossed and turned on the uncomfortable couch while working over Bertram’s claims. His breathing had been shallow, his heart heavy, as if someone had laid a piano on his chest.
“She’s too tidy,” Bertram had said. “We have to worry most about foreigners. Turks, Spanish Jews, Greeks, Balkan half-castes, every one of them innately perverse and all crossbreeds, men of no particular patriotism or honesty, but she’s English, so naturally we’re less suspicious of her. And a woman, which the Germans could be smart enough to take advantage of. And a nurse—who would suspect them? Yet one of the Germans’ best agents in the last war was a teenage girl cycling around Belgium in a Red Cross uniform.”
Claus had asked how she’d looked when she’d arrived. He’d been brought in occasionally to verify a refugee’s story or to trip someone up, since he’d spent much time shooting films in Germany between the wars, and the real resistance refugees were haggard, as if they’d stood facing winter winds for months.
Bertram had flicked his hand dismissively. “Terrible. Exhausted, spent, drooping. Real, in other words. And her stories have all checked out. One of our Parisian friends corroborated her account about the dyed dog. Though that doesn’t make me trust her. Perhaps the Germans are just getting smarter. Her story is too tight.”
Now Herbert came in from the other room, buckling on his belts.
“Duty calls,” Myra said.
“Yes,” Herbert said. “Would anyone like to answer?” His words were slightly slurred as his false teeth didn’t quite fit.
Hard to find choppers on the black market.
Rosalyn yelled down again from the roof. “The flats in Chandos Place, I think, and over near Beechum’s Furniture, on Craven.”
Myra glanced at Claus before turning to Herbert. “You take one and I’ll take the other.” To Claus she said, “Charles, stay here and man the phones.”
“No,” Claus said, and then, realizing his voice had been sharp, modulated his tone. “Please. I’m okay, really.” He disliked being coddled, and Myra hadn’t sent him out since he’d been back. “Herbert’s been out twice already.”
“Fine with me,” Herbert said, as Claus had known he would.
Myra said, “You haven’t seemed well. A bit snappish, frankly.”
“I’m sorry. But it’s the sitting here that’s driving me crazy, as if I’m fragile.”
“Humpty Dumpty,” Herbert said, unhelpfully.
Myra blew out her cheeks. “All right. We’re short-staffed today. No sense overworking anyone.” She bent over the map. “The flats are mostly abandoned, and Beechum’s fire watchers are probably there. Too early in the day for the pubs.” After a pause she said, “Take Beechum’s. Help the watchers out if you can.”
She was still coddling him, but he guessed he didn’t have the luxury of a second protest, so he merely nodded and checked the map. He tapped where the other one was supposed to have hit, not far from Winifred’s. “Hope everything’s all right there.”
Beechum’s was far enough away that he had to ride the post bike. His balance was poor and he rode slowly through the deserted streets, a commercial district, as empty as on a Sunday. The rare slanting morning sunlight warmed his back, and the bike with its warped wheel squeaked and clanked, the peculiar rhythm oddly soothing.
And she found you in the hospital too?
She saw my name on the admissions list.
Do nurses regularly scan admissions lists? Aren
’t they busy enough as it is?
It’s the hospital she works at.
Perhaps she was honest, then. Mendacem oportet esse memorem. “A liar has to be good at remembering.” Why not tell the truth, if it won’t reveal anything about you?
From Carting he turned onto Savoy, broader but darker, the half-timbered buildings leaning out over their storefronts; his teeth jarred as the metal wheels struck the cobbles.
But she said she’d helped fliers escape. Surely that’s easy to check up on.
Yes. Relatively recently. A good cover, wouldn’t you say? A few free airmen, and then an escape through Vichy France, Spain, and Portugal?
She was searched, wasn’t she?
She had nothing. But remember, if her story is true—and like most good spies’ the majority of it would be—she’s an experienced smuggler. Think of how many borders she’s had to cross already in times of war. Don’t you see, Claus? It would be just like them to send an incompetent like Dieter to distract us, to make us think we knew what they were up to, while at the same time sending someone far more clever.
But even if they have, that doesn’t mean it’s Kate. Mrs. Zweig.