As Time Goes By

by Michael Walsh

Everybody sipped politely. Tick-Tock frowned.

  “Everything but one thing,” continued Solly.“And now, Ricky, you should forgive me, another toast, this one even more important.” Solomon's face, Rick noticed, had taken on an uncharacteristically serious mien.

  “To my daughter, my only daughter, Lois,” he began, and Rick felt his heart stop.“Who today I proudly announce is betrothed to a very important man in this city of ours.”

  Solly looked proud. Abie and Tick-Tock looked puzzled. O'Hanlon looked satisfied. Salucci looked mean. Weinberg just looked.

  “Yes, and to none other than Robert Haas Meredith. Three months he has been courting her like a true gentleman, and now we got payoff. Always a bridesmaid and finally a mother!”

  Rick clenched his jaw so tightly, he would have bitten off his tongue had it gotten caught in the mandibles.

  “Solomon,” exclaimed O'Hanlon, rubbing his hands together.“Sure, and I couldn't be more delighted. This happy event well and truly cements this peace treaty of ours, for haven't Mr. Meredith and I conducted some small business together most profitably in the past and look forward to doing so in the future? ‘Tis truly a splendid day for all.”

  O'Hanlon and Solly were laughing now, best of friends. What was it the Irishman had said to him at Rector's about warring kingdoms? Now Rick understood.

  A month later Lois Horowitz and Robert Meredith were married. The newspapers described the bride as Lois Harrow, the daughter of a successful property man from Darien. The ceremony at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue was small and very private, and the few members of the public who happened to stumble upon it were ushered out by a phalanx of extremely large men in tight-fitting, bulging suits.

  A teary-eyed Solomon Horowitz gave away the bride. Dion O'Hanlon was the best man. Rick Baline sat in a church for the first time in his life. Even he had to admit they made a handsome couple. He wondered if their lives would prove to be as uncomplicated as their looks.

  When she emerged from the church, Lois threw her arms around Rick's neck.“Isn't it swell, Ricky?” she breathed.“I’m going places now!” Over her shoulder he could see Meredith shaking hands with his new father-in-law.“We can still be friends, can't we?” Lois said as he trained his ears on the other conversation.

  “Mr. Horowitz,” Meredith was saying,“it is a pleasure doing business with you.”

  He didn't see Lois again for three years.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Fräulein Toumanova,” said the pursed-lipped Austrian secretary who sat in the outer office and surveyed the world with a gimlet eye,“the Herr Direktor would like these reports typed up at once and delivered to him personally by four o'clock this afternoon.”

  Irmgard Hentgen was the gatekeeper, Reinhard Heydrich's last line of defense against unwanted intrusions on his working day. She was not, strictly speaking, his private secretary: in the Nazi scheme of things, that job was reserved for a man. But she oversaw who came and who went, and she handled the details of Heydrich's schedule.

  “Sofort, Frau Hentgen,” replied Ilsa Lund. She did not like Frau Hentgen and suspected that the woman had very little use for her.

  “By four o'clock,” repeated Frau Hentgen, in case she hadn't been heard the first time.“It is imperative that these …”

  Ilsa ignored her. Life was too short to listen to Frau Hentgen repeating herself. Besides, she had work to do.

  In the space of just four months she had risen from the anonymity of the typing pool to Heydrich's secretariat, where she was one of three women under the supervision of Frau Hentgen. Ilsa was not sure whether to attribute her rise to her intelligence, her skills, her looks, or some combination of the three, but she was not about to question it. She was close to Heydrich now, very close. All she had to do was get one step closer.

  Her entrance into the headquarters of the Reichsicher-heitshauptamt had been surprisingly easy. White Russians were seen as natural, if inferior, allies in the war against Bolshevism and Marxism, and their bona fides were accepted with alacrity. Everybody thought the Germans were omniscient as well as omnipotent, which was what the Nazis wanted everyone to think. In many ways, though, they were surprisingly lax, shoddy even, so certain were they of the rightness of their cause and the inevitability of their victory.

  “… and this must be done immediately!”

  “Yes, thank you, Frau Hentgen,” said Ilsa, accepting another sheaf of papers with feigned good grace. Without even looking at them, she knew what they were. Reports on real or imagined activities against the Reich. She also knew in advance what the recommendation of the reporting agent, which was inscribed at the bottom just above the signature, would be: death. Death appeared to be the Nazi solution for everything.

  Some, not many, she managed to lose. Even in the Reich, documents got misfiled or mislaid, and she had no reason to fear that Frau Hentgen or anyone else had the slightest idea of the double game she was playing. She had saved some lives, as surreptitiously as possible. Names were passed along, so that their owners might be warned, and some of them even managed to get away. But she couldn't save everybody without eventually directing suspicion back upon herself, so she had to choose, choose among perfect strangers, who should live and who must die.

  A heart-stopping moment had come a week or so ago when, thumbing through the stack of death warrants, she had come across the name of one of their minor operatives, a laborer named Anton Novotny, who was involved in the construction of a new Gestapo prison. Novotny's arrest, however, turned out to have nothing to do with the Resistance at all; he had been denounced by a boy in his Wohn-quartier for making a joke about Heydrich. A joke was all it took these days, and sentence had been both pronounced and carried out before what little laughter there had been had died away: a pair of RSHA men barged into a tavern where Anton was taking his leisure, frog-marched him outside, and shot him right there in the street.

  Due to security considerations, she could have no direct contact with Victor, and she could only hope that her reports were filtering back to him and the rest of the team in London via the various cutouts and intermediaries along the network.

  She couldn't tell whether she was having much success. The British, she learned, had been right: Czech resistance to Hitler was feeble. Unlike the citizens of Norway, Denmark, France, and Holland, the Czechs showed little inclination to throw the Germans out. Even Hitler's well-known contempt for the Slavs did not seem to offend them, and they continued their twin trades of arms making and beer brewing with the same aplomb they had shown before the war. Certain members of the Underground, she knew, were carrying on Victor's work of pamphleteering, printing their broadsides in farmhouses and trucking them into the squares on donkey carts and the backs of old women. She even knew of a few partisans who were still waging a guerrilla war in the countryside, although their numbers were dwindling practically daily. Still, the uprising that everyone hoped for had not come; indeed, it seemed farther away than ever. Maybe Rick had been right. Maybe the whole thing was crazy. She went home each night feeling angrier and more discouraged.

  They needed a bold stroke. What stroke bolder than to cut off the very head of the evil itself? Watching Heydrich's arrogant procession into and out of his office every day made her wish that she could kill him herself right at his desk, to avenge the torture of her husband, the rape of her country, and the death of her father at one blow.

  British Intelligence had also been right about another thing: Reinhard Heydrich was a man of exceedingly fixed habits. Every morning he rose at precisely 6:30 A.M. in his bed at his villa. Breakfast was invariably preceded by a vigorous game of handball, after which he showered and shaved and put on a fresh uniform laid out by his valet the night before. At 7:25 A.M. his chauffeur appeared at the villa's front door with the car, its motor running, and Heydrich hopped aboard. The car arrived at his office in Hradcany Castle on the dot of eight. Although the staff officially went on duty at eight, everyone knew it was professional
suicide to arrive after Heydrich did, so they generally got to work half an hour earlier. He worked straight through the day, stopping only for lunch at one P.M., which lasted until precisely two o'clock. He left the office at six P.M., took some exercise in the form of a brisk walk around the castle He rarely dined alone, and he never slept alone. Heydrich had the reputation of tiring of his mistresses rather quickly, and word around the office was that his current partner was rapidly losing his interest.

  Ilsa had encoded all this information and duly entrusted it to a rotating series of Underground couriers with whom she could meet without raising suspicion: postmen, waitresses, boarders in her rooming house on Skorepka Street, across the river from the castle. Whose eyes it may have found she did not know. Major Miles's? Victor's? Rick's?

  She had heard nothing of Rick since she'd left London, and she had tried to put him out of her mind as best she could. How hard that was, with the memory of their last night together still so vivid.

  Her hands trembled slightly as she leafed through the reports. She was just loading a piece of paper into her typewriter when a voice behind her startled her.

  “How pleasant it is for me to see your glowing face each morning, Fräulein Toumanova.” It was Heydrich himself, reading the pages over her shoulder. He had never spoken to her before.

  She put the papers down, folded her hands together on her desk, and waited. Now that the moment was here, she was not sure what to do next.“Thank you, Herr Heydrich,” she managed to reply.

  From his height of well over six feet, the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia stared down at the blonde secretary who had caught his eye. Truth to tell, he had spotted her some time ago, but the chief of the Reich security office could not be seen to have taken such quick notice of a girl in the typing pool. Better to wait to see if she had any brains—but not too many!—in that pretty head, to see if she could force her way past the other girls and into the secretariat, there to fall under the basilisk gaze of Frau Hentgen, who kept track of everything for him and whose instincts about people he had found to be unerring.

  Frau Hentgen had been less than enthusiastic about Fräulein Toumanova, which was easily attributable to the young lady's Slavic ancestry: like a good Nazi and a better Austrian, Frau Hentgen thought the Slavs fit only for servitude. Or, perhaps, her antipathy was due to Miss Toumanova's uncommon skills; not only was she an excellent typist and fluent in several languages, but she even played the piano rather well. Not to mention that Miss Toumanova was beautiful and Frau Hentgen was ugly. One could never rule out jealousy when it came to women. It was one of the many ways in which he found them irrational. Just as the Germans were having to get used to all kinds of climates, however, so also would their rulers have to get used to all kinds of women. He was willing to experiment for the sake of the nation.

  “Indeed,” said Heydrich, resting one hand lightly upon her shoulder,“a beauty such as yours brings light to the darkness of a cursed and evil world. It reminds men like me of why we fight, why our struggle and ultimate victory is so important.”

  She felt herself blushing, as if basking in his praise instead of flushing in rage. She kept her eyes lowered, toward the floor, until she realized she could see her own reflection staring back at her from the man's polished boots.

  “Such very good work you have been doing, Fräulein Toumanova,” he continued.“The Reich is pleased and proud to be able to employ a woman such as yourself in the ongoing struggle to the death against the Bolshevik usurpers of your homeland.” Almost imperceptibly, he began to caress her.“Such initiative as well! Your tip about the reactionary cell in the Böhmenwald last week proved most accurate. Isn't that right, Frau Hentgen?” he concluded loudly.

  “Ja, Herr Heydrich,” Frau Hentgen replied curtly. Cued by Frau Hentgen, the other women in the office took absolutely no notice of this conversation. They kept their heads down, bent over their work. No one dared type, and so create a disturbance, but each found plenty to do that needed the urgent attention of a fountain pen.

  Heydrich's reference to the Böhmenwald made her shiver. From time to time the Underground would feed her information about a hideout for which it had no further use; very infrequently the Resistance would give up a comrade, one whose loyalties were suspect (so they assured her) and who had therefore been deemed a danger to the entire movement. She hated condemning those men to death, but she did not know what else to do.

  “I have been meaning to congratulate you,” Heydrich continued.“I hope you will allow me the honor to do so very soon.”

  Ilsa finally dared look up. His manner was stiff and formal, but he was smiling. With his brushed-back blond hair, aquiline nose, and gleaming white teeth, he was at once handsome and repulsive.

  “Danke schön, Herr Heydrich,” she said.

  “Unfortunately, by the time my men got there, the rebellious scum had fled. How they knew we were coming is of course a mystery, but these Slavs are mysterious people. Isn't that right, Frau Hentgen?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Heydrich!”

  He leaned more heavily upon her, his grip tightening. Ilsa felt a chill dance up and down her spine.

  “Oh, well,” said Heydrich,“that sometimes cannot be helped. Even the most abject Untermensch has an animal's sensory apparatus, and if his nose twitches at just the right moment …” He sighed theatrically.“I have time,” he concluded.“A thousand years, at least.”

  He withdrew his hand from her shoulder and stepped back smartly.“However, we should speak of more pleasant things!” he exclaimed.“I understand from Frau Hentgen that you are an accomplished pianist. I myself have some modest skill on the violin. It would be a great honor to have you accompany me. Tonight, perhaps?”

  Ilsa took a deep breath.“Herr Protector,” she began,“such an honor …” She tried to fumble for words.“Surely a poor Russian girl like me is not worthy …” She gave up and fluttered her hands.

  “Nonsense!” shouted Heydrich, causing all the other women in the office, however briefly, to glance over at them. They had seen this unfolding tableau before, yet it remained fascinating, like watching a snake hypnotize its prey before swallowing it docile, uncomprehending, and whole.

  The moment was here at last: Heydrich had made his approach. Mentally and emotionally she was ready. Now she had to play for time, had to get word back to London that contact had been made, that the opportunity for her to get close to the target was at hand, that the hunter was now the hunted.

  She knew just what to do and what not to do. She could not plead a prior engagement, for Heydrich would simply ignore it or, worse, order the man she was to meet arrested and probably shot. She had to turn him down without making it look as though she were turning him down—and leaving the possibility open for another time. Rejecting him but luring him, onward, closer, into the trap—and trying not to get caught in it herself.

  She blinked rapidly, then lowered her eyes. As she hoped, this gesture brought Heydrich's face down closer to hers.“Mein Herr,” she said,“ich bitte Sie. Heute abend ist es nicht möglich wegen …”

  Tonight it is not possible because … Deliberately ambiguous, she waited to see how he would interpret her.

  “Ach, Frauen,” he groaned.Oh, women….

  She laughed beguilingly.“Oh no,” she said, feigning embarrassment. The look of brief confusion on Heydrich's face plainly indicated that he was thinking of sex, not music.“It's just that I would not think of accompanying a man as distinguished as yourself without being able to practice first. Would a couple of days hence be all right?”

  The Protector quickly regained his composure and looked at her with new respect. A gambit or a misunderstanding on his part? Perhaps this one was more clever than she looked. Good: he liked a challenge.“I understand completely,” he said.“Shall we say the day after tomorrow?” He gave her a leer that he habitually mistook for sophistication.

  “The day after tomorrow,” she repeated loudly, for everyone in the room to hear.“Two da
ys is all it will take for me to get the complete reports on your desk,mein Kommandant.”

  So they had a little conspiracy going. That pleased Heydrich.“Excellent,” he said.“Hail, victory.Heil Hitler.”

  As one, the staff rose.“Heil Hitler!” they shouted in unison as the Protector entered his inner sanctum and flashed the old Roman salute the Nazis had appropriated.

  That afternoon she stayed late, typing up some reports and forwarding them to the appropriate bureaus. When everyone had left but her, she wrote the number 22 on a small piece of paper and put it in her pocket. Twenty-two was Rick's lucky number; it was also today's date, May 22. The coincidence was a good omen.

  On the way home, she stopped at Banacek's bakery and handed the clerk her number. To the casual observer, there was nothing untoward about this action; it was merely the number of an order made earlier in the day by telephone. The clerk, a small, inoffensive man named Helder, nodded as he read it and handed her half a dozen fresh rolls and a couple of pastries.

  Number 22 was much more than that, however; it was the signal that contact had been made and the target would soon be ripe for the taking. It would be relayed at once by wireless to London. The plane carrying Victor, Rick, and the rest of the team would leave within the hour. Ilsa paid the clerk in coins and thanked him as she departed. Operation Hangman was under way.

  That night she took extra precautions, for Heydrich's spies were everywhere. She practiced on the parlor piano for an hour, then complained loudly to her landlady that she was not feeling well. She requested a compress and a hotwater bottle and went upstairs to bed. She turned off all the lights in her room and sat by the window in the dark, searching for any sign of a watcher below. She could see none.

  A soft tap at her door woke her from a doze. She crept over in her bare feet and opened it a crack. Helena was there, a new servant girl who had recently been engaged by the house.“Pall Mall,” the girl said, which was the day's password. The test was not only to know the password, but to pronounce it properly, which she did. Ilsa opened the door just widely enough to admit Helena and then closed it tight.