The Hunt (aka 27)

by William Diehl

  A tremor of dread rippled through Keegan. Was this some kind of ruse? If they were the Gestapo, where was Jenny and what were they doing in her apartment? And where was he and why were they grilling him?

  Something didn't play right.

  "You came into Tempelhof tonight on your private plane, Mr. Keegan. You walked right through customs."

  "So?"

  "No customs inspection?"

  "I didn't have any luggage. Besides, I go in and out of Berlin all the time. They all know me."

  "So they let you through and followed you to her flat."

  "No way. Somebody started to follow me but I dumped them." He stopped and looked at his two abductors for a moment and smiled. "Of course. It was you guys. You're the ones I dumped. And since I dodged you and you showed up at her place anyway, you knew where she lived. Hell, you were after me. Why?"

  "I will ask the questions, you just talk."

  "Okay. Want me to tell you what I don't think?" Keegan said.

  "So? What don't you think, Herr Keegan?"

  Keegan again held a hand up so it blocked the harsh light and looked back and forth between his captors.

  "I don't think you're Gestapo. You don't look like Gestapo, you don't act like Gestapo, you sure as hell don't dress like them. Your hair's too long and you wear beards. And if you were Gestapo, you wouldn't be asking me about customs. Besides, if you were Gestapo we'd be down in one of those dingy state buildings and I'd probably have electrodes attached to my testicles. Isn't that the way they do it?"

  "You are very perceptive, Herr Keegan. But we knew that. What else don't you think?"

  "Well, if you aren't Gestapo then my guess is you're probably just the opposite. What are you, some kind of vigilantes? Guerrillas? And what am I doing here? And what were you doing ransacking Jenny Gould's apartment?"

  "We were not responsible for that."

  "Then who was? The Gestapo?"

  "You're very clever, Mr. Keegan, the question now is, where do you stand?"

  "About what?"

  "About Vierhaus. How close is your relationship with Vierhaus?"

  "Vierhaus! I don't have a relationship with Vierhaus. I've seen him at a couple of parties and I got stuck in a steam bath with him once. And what the hell business is that of yours anyway? Who the hell are you?"

  "Vierhaus is the head of an organization called Die Sechs Füchse," the bearded man said. "You didn't know that?"

  "The Six Foxes?" he said.

  "It is a special intelligence group, completely separate from the SS. He is head of this group and he reports only to Hitler."

  "You telling me that Vierhaus is some kind of superspy?"

  The big, bearded man nodded slowly. "He is perhaps more dangerous than Himmler or even Heydrich. Everyone knows what they are up to but Herr Doktor is a question mark. We know he advises Hitler so we know he has influence. We also know he has a soul as black as my beard."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because it is my business to know it, Herr Keegan."

  "Well, just what the hell is your business, anyhow? And what's all this got to do with me? I'm not a German."

  "You claim to be in love with a German."

  Keegan's temper exploded. Where was Jenny and who were these jokers and what was all this wind about Vierhaus and superspies and the Gestapo? He jumped up suddenly, sending the chair spinning off behind him. It clattered against the wall. The man with the gun got edgy and held it at arm's length pointed straight at Keegan's head.

  "That's none of your goddamn business!" Keegan snarled, walking up to him until the muzzle was an inch from his forehead. "And I'm tired of you waving that thing in my face. Either put it away or use it," he said flatly.

  "Don't be foolish, American."

  "I think you're all bluff. You didn't bring me here to waltz, you brought me here because you want something. Now why don't you just get to it and stop waving that piece around."

  "Don't make light of the . . ."

  "Hey, why the hell am I here?" Keegan demanded. He moved forward until the muzzle of the pistol was touching his forehead. "There, you can't miss. Now, either you pull that trigger or tell me what the hell you want. I told you I don't know anything about Vierhaus. And how do you know about my relationship with Jenny . . . and what the hell business is it of yours anyway?"

  The bearded man stared at him for several seconds. He reached out and lowered the arm of the man with the gun.

  "My name is Avrum Wolffson," he said finally. "Jenny is my half sister."

  "Your sister!" Keegan said with shock. He stared at Wolffson for several seconds, then said, "Well, she ought to get after you for playing with guns."

  "Do you make a joke of everything?"

  "Why not? Life's a joke. And the older you get the funnier it gets. Look, I came over here to get my fiancee and take her back to Paris. I get here, her apartment is a mess. She's gone. I get a face full of chloroform, I wake up in a warehouse someplace with hot lights and guns in my face and you guys giving me the third degree, now you tell me you're her brother? What the hell is going on?"

  "I had to make sure you were not connected with Vierhaus."

  "Why? Because of Jenny? Is this some kind of bizarre family tradition, to try and scare the hell out of her suitors? I'm in love with your sister. I've asked her to marry me. I mean, why would I do such a thing?"

  "I don't know, but you and I were the only ones who knew where she lived. Somebody got to her place and she's gone. And I didn't tell anybody, so that leaves you."

  Keegan was getting angrier but he controlled himself.

  "I didn't tell a soul," he said.

  The big question now was, why was anybody after Jenny? Why?

  "Why do they want her?" Keegan asked.

  "You really do not know, eh?"

  "If I knew would I ask you?"

  "Perhaps. If you were trying to convince us you are not involved."

  "You're very paranoid."

  "Yes, it keeps us alive."

  Wolffson lit another cigarette. He held the tip of it up and blew a stream of smoke across the end of the cigarette, watching it glow, giving himself more time to make his decision.

  "Come on, Wolffson, why would the Gestapo be dogging me?"

  "The light is on her. She is the target."

  "What do you mean, the target?"

  "I mean the Gestapo is onto her. She has been betrayed and we think your friend Vierhaus is the one who is after her."

  "Betrayed? By who? And for what?"

  "Some miserable Judenopferer turned her up."

  "A what?"

  "A Judenopferer is a Jew who hunts other Jews. The word literally means ‘Jew sacrificer.' They spend hours going over court records, looking for the most remote Jewish connection, they listen to rumors, infiltrate families . . ."

  "You still haven't told me why."

  "To get to me."

  Keegan sighed. "Okay, I'll play. Why do they want you?"

  "Have you ever heard of an organization called the Black Lily?"

  "No . . . Wait a minute. I did hear that expression once. At the American embassy."

  "The night you refused to help Reinhardt?"

  Keegan did not answer for a long time. He felt his pockets for his cigarettes and matches and lit a cigarette and then slowly started to nod.

  "That's right," he said. "The night I turned my back on Reinhardt." He rubbed his eyes. "Look, Wolffson, I know a lot of things now I didn't know then. But I don't know what the Black Lily is. And can we do without the hot lights? I'm getting a headache."

  Wolffson turned around and made a motion with his hand. The heavy light went out and a small table lamp was turned on in its place. A third man was sitting at a table nearby. The room appeared to be a one-room flat. It was small and contained a bed and dresser, a table and two chairs, a stuffed easy chair and a floor lamp. Black cloth was taped over the windows. In a corner there was a small table that held a hot plate with a cof
fee pot simmering on it.

  The man at the table was unarmed and his nose was flattened and bruised. He was clean shaven, had a conventional haircut and wore wire-rimmed glasses. The shorter man with the gun had a bandage taped to his jaw, which was badly bruised and swollen. He was burly, his muscular arms straining rolled-up sleeves, and had fierce, angry eyes, the demeanor of a man holding himself in check but about to explode. A thick black beard added to his ominous presence. The tall man's left eye had begun to swell. He, too, was in excellent physical condition but his look was intense rather than mad and his beard was more scholarly than menacing. He was calm and totally in command.

  None of them could have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old.

  Well, thought Keegan, looking at the bandages and bruises, I got in a few licks anyway.

  "One gun?" he said. "You have one lousy gun?"

  "We are on the run, have been for months. But it is now more intense. You know what it means in German, Freiheit?"

  Keegan thought for a moment. He wasn't familiar with it. He shook his head.

  "It would be in English something like . . . freedom. We don't blow things up. We don't kill people. We distribute pamphlets and try to help people who are in trouble with the government. Jews, Germans, gypsies, no matter. If they become targets and we know about it, we try to get them out of the country."

  "In America, back in the slave days, we called it the Underground Railroad."

  "Ja, to help Negroes escape to Philadelphia."

  Keegan chuckled. "Right," he said. "So what got them so hot on you all of a sudden?"

  "We also keep the German people informed of what is really going on here, so they can never say they did not know what was happening. They can never lie about it, they will have to say, ‘Yes, we knew and we turned away our eyes.' That is what The Berlin Conscience is for. Anyway, a man died a few days ago. A Jew named Herman Adler. He was a Judenopferer. He was also Joachim Weber's uncle." He nodded toward the young man at the table.

  "Your uncle turned other Jews in to the SS?"

  Joachim nodded and looked down at the table. "He betrayed me and Avrum," he said, and nodded toward the young man with the gun, the silent one. "And Werner Gebhart there."

  "My God."

  "Adler was one of the best they had," said Wolffson. "He was responsible for the arrest of dozens of people. Jews, Gentiles, Gypsies. We tried to reason with Herman, offered to get him out of the country. But he was arrogant about it. There was some yelling, some anger, and then he had a heart attack. Just like that he was dead. We felt sorry for Herman. He was scared. He was doing the only thing he could do to stay alive."

  "He betrayed too many of us," Joachim, the nephew, said bitterly. "Our grief over him was brief."

  "Then the thought occurred to me that perhaps we could make an example of him, a lesson to other hunters," said Wolffson. "So we wrote a story about what he—and the other Judenopferers—are doing. I realize now it was a stupid thing to do. It merely goaded the wolf. The Gestapo has become obsessed with destroying the Black Lily ever since."

  "And Jenny?"

  "Also Adler. He made the Kettenglied—the connection. But we did not know it at the time."

  "God, why didn't she tell me? Maybe I could have . . ."

  His voice trailed off as the horror of the situation began to sink in.

  "She was protecting us," Weber said. "The less people know, the better."

  "I should have guessed. She was so secretive about her new apartment. Didn't want anyone to know her address or phone number."

  The fierce-eyed one with the gun, Weber, said nothing. He simply glared at Keegan.

  "The last time she moved it was because she got one of our pamphlets in the mail," said Wolffson. "She knew it was a trick, we would not mail anything to her."

  "I don't understand," Keegan said.

  "It's one of the things the Gestapo does," said Wolffson. "Germans are required to report anything of a subversive nature. So they send one of our pamphlets to everyone on a particular street and if these people don't report getting it, they are accused of a subversive act."

  "So she moved?"

  Wolffson nodded. "And the only way the Gestapo could have gotten her address is by following you or me—or getting her phone number, which was not in her name."

  Keegan stared in silence, thinking about what Wolffson had just said. I didn't even give the phone number to Bert or to Weil, thought Keegan. It couldn't have been me.

  "You and I were the only ones who knew where she was, Keegan."

  Keegan was getting angrier but he controlled himself. "I told you before, I didn't tell a soul."

  "Did you telephone her from your hotel?" Wolffson asked.

  "What the hell . . ." He stopped. Was it possible that they had tapped his phone in Paris, got her number and tracked her down? My God, was he responsible?

  "Did you?" Wolffson asked.

  "I tried to call her. There was no answer."

  "The Nazis are all over Paris. And I don't think there is a hotel operator in the entire city that cannot be bribed. All they needed was her phone number to get her address."

  "Jesus." Keegan paced back and forth for a few moments. He lit one cigarette off another.

  "She contacted the Lily in Paris. They flew her to Leipzig and drove her into Berlin," Wolffson said. "So Vierhaus had lost her. He was desperate."

  It all began to come together for Keegan.

  "And had Conrad Weil call me, knowing I would call her. He was in on it. My old friend, Conrad. I should have suspected something was up when he called me. Conrad bends with the wind, he told me so himself. And von Meister was there waiting for me to take the bait." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, truly sorry. But what does Jenny have to do with all this?"

  "Nothing, really. I am sure Vierhaus thinks she can give me up but she cannot. She doesn't even know about this place. She delivered The Berlin Conscience, distributed some leaflets, that's all. But they think she knows where I am and I am the one they want. Me, Gebhart here and Joachim. We are the leaders of the Black Lily."

  "How did you get involved in this?"

  "The newspaper was started by our professors at the university. Sternfeld, Reinhardt and Eli Loehman. Now Reinhardt and Sternfeld are dead. Only Old Eli is safe. He is in Paris with his son. He is the one who arranged to get Jenny back here."

  "And you boys picked up the banner, eh?"

  "Ja, I suppose you could put it that way. But now the Black Lily is very important. So important that Hitler has put a price on our heads and the Black Lily is the main target of the SS."

  Somewhere in another room a phone rang. Joachim got up from the table and went to answer it.

  "Three college boys and one gun and you've set the entire Gestapo on its ear?" Keegan said to Wolffson.

  "Not just three college boys anymore," Wolffson said. "There are over two hundred of us in the network. We have connections in Switzerland, France, England, even Egypt and America. So far we have been very lucky. But some of our people . . . have not been so lucky. You know what happens if they catch us?"

  "I can imagine."

  "I do not think so," said Wolffson. "We are taken to Stadelheim Prison and tortured. And then we are beheaded."

  "What!"

  "Ja, Herr Keegan. Beheaded. And most of them are students."

  Weber returned and called Wolffson to the door. There was a whispered exchange, then they walked back into the room. Wolffson looked stricken. The veins around his jaw had hardened into blue ridges.

  "The Gestapo arrested Jenny," Wolffson said in a harsh voice that quivered with emotion. "She has been at Stadelheim Prison for five hours. I don't know that she is still alive."

  Keegan fell back in his chair, ashen.

  "You may as well face it, Keegan, they will be very hard on her," Weber said. "They will assume she knows much more than she does."

  "And we just sit around and let it happen?" Keegan said. "We don't do a
nything?"

  "There is nothing we can do at this point," Wolffson said.

  Keegan panicked.

  "We've got to get her out. Get bail, get lawyers! I'll call the embassy, maybe they can help."

  But hell, what could the embassy do? And why would they help him? He understood now how Wally must have felt the night he was trying to get Reinhardt out. There was one big difference. The Gestapo already had Jenny.

  "It will do no good," said Wolffson.

  "If we can just get her out on bail," Keegan pleaded. "I'll take her to New York, she couldn't be safer anywhere else."

  Gebhart suddenly spoke up for the first time, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Damn it, man," he said, "get it into your head. It's too late!"

  "There is no such thing as bail," said Weber. "There will be no trial."

  The shock began to wear off and Keegan slowly realized how desperate her predicament was. What they're saying, he thought, is that she's gone!

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "Don't even say that."

  Dear Jenny, he thought, is this what you get for loving me? Why did this happen? Was it some kind of cruel joke? Crazy things raced through his mind. God, I may never see her again! I can't even say good-bye. Jesus Christ! What's happening here?

  "What's happening here!" he cried aloud, his fists clenched in front of him. Tears flooded his eyes and he tried to fight them back. "It's unacceptable, unacceptable. There's got to be somebody we can bribe, somebody we can blackmail, threaten . . ."

  They stared at him with sadness but little pity.

  "Now you know vot it iss like for us every day of der year," Gebhart said bitterly. "Every day they take somebody avay. Friends, lovers, children. Sometimes whole families simply disappear off the street."

  "Understand, Keegan, we know your frustration," Wolffson said quietly. "My hatred and anger consume me. I wanted to be a zoologist—work with animals. Look at me. Running all the time. Helping one out of perhaps every fifty or one hundred who get on the list. Throwing pamphlets around the city to people who don't care."

  "Then why do you do it?"

  "We cannot just surrender our lives without doing something," Weber said.

  "I want to kill Vierhaus," Keegan blurted. "I want to kill that son of a bitch slowly. I want him to plead . . . no beg . . . beg, for mercy. I want to hang him up by his heels and pour honey all over that miserable hump on his back and then let the rats eat their way through it right into his miserable black heart." He slammed his fist into the wall and then, exhausted, sat down on the edge of the bed.