by James Lepore
“That’s where Hedy comes in. She and her first husband—she was divorcing her second in Paris—invented this frequency hopping thing. It’s based on a player piano.”
“A player piano?”
“Don’t ask me why or how.”
Silence, then: “You really are a spy.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Is that why you went out earlier?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
“To scout out a meeting place.”
“Who are we meeting?”
“Not we, me.”
“Who?”
“Someone to help me find your father and Tolkien.”
“Is that who you’re contacting on that machine?”
“Yes, the Americans. They’re on the ground here.”
“How can they help?”
“You saw those troops ringing the abbey. We may have to storm the place.”
“Ian.”
“Yes?”
Billie had taken a step toward Fleming. She had removed the down quilt from the room’s four-poster bed and placed it on the floor in front of the fire, the pillows as well.
“Shall I get undressed? Are we . . . ?”
“Yes and yes,” Fleming replied. “Get under that quilt. I’ll join you in a sec.”
Billie smiled, reached around, and unhooked the back of her calf-length wool skirt. It dropped to the floor at her feet, revealing her long, shapely legs in garter belt, nylon stockings and black panties. Fleming devoured this sight.
“Go ahead,” he said, turning back to the radio and pushing the on button. “I’ll join you in a sec.”
25.
Carinhall
October 7, 1938, 11:00 p.m.
Suddenly the room below was filled with smoke, huge white clouds of it quickly filling its four corners and billowing up to the loft railing. Tolkien caught a quick glimpse of Goering being pulled into a room by his aide, then felt himself being tugged violently from behind. “Put this on your face,” Trygg Korumak said, handing him a towel soaked in water. Another dwarf, a woman with braided auburn hair and deep-set green eyes, was pulling at Franz Shroeder and handing him a damp towel as well. “Follow us,” Korumak said, when the professors had their faces covered.
They did, scurrying along the side of the open loft hallway until they reached a recessed door, which the woman unlocked with a long bronze key. They entered a room the size of a large closet. A storage room, it seemed to Tolkien, who bumped into a bucket from which protruded several mop handles. “What was that?” Tolkien said, as the woman locked the door behind them.
“Not now,” Trygg replied.
The room was pitch black, but the woman had found a chain hanging from the ceiling and pulled down a set of collapsing stairs. “Up!” she said. “Go!”
“Drop the towels,” Korumak said, “you won’t need them now.”
On their hands and knees in the dark attic, they followed the small woman and Trygg, who were walking, for about a hundred feet. When they halted, Tolkien, whose eyes had adjusted to the darkness, watched as the woman opened a small window and looked out quickly. Turning to face them, she motioned come. Tolkien now realized that Franz Shroeder, who had not said a word, was breathing heavily. “Franz, are you alright?” he said to the old man, who was now kneeling with his head down.
“I’m . . .” Shroeder said, but before he could finish his sentence, Korumak was tugging at Tolkien.
“You first,” he said, pushing the Englishman firmly but gently to the open window. Looking out, Tolkien saw a rope ladder leading to a roof some twenty feet below. Standing on this roof, holding onto the nether end of the ladder, was the dwarf he had seen serving champagne to Goering’s guests not five minutes ago.
“Go!” the woman said.
26.
Berlin
October 7, 1938, 11:30 p.m.
“There is a message for you,” Hans said.
“From whom?”
“The caller ID was 007.”
As he spoke, Hans was pouring Rex Dowling his favorite drink, Glenlivet with two ice cubes. Now he placed it on an ADLON-embossed cocktail napkin and slid it gently toward the American, who was smiling as if they were discussing the weather, which had turned cold, or women, whom they both liked at warmer temperatures. Smiling, his face a mask of idle pleasantness, the reporter picked up the drink. As he sipped, the slight narrowing of his blue eyes over the rim of his crystal rocks glass transmitted a concise message to the bartender. Go on.
Hans nodded and took a moment to scan the thickly carpeted, dimly lit room, its small, round, randomly placed tables and corner banquettes filled with people quietly talking and sipping drinks. Hans knew most of them, including the Gestapo agents in civilian dress who stopped by almost every night to glare at the overseas press contingent and intimidate any tourist or business traveler who might be thinking of undermining the Reich. No foreigner was really welcome in Berlin in 1938.
“How is your drink?” Hans asked. “To your liking?”
“Ausgezeichnet”, Dowling replied, “danke.”
“Your German is terrible, Herr Dowling,” said Hans, loud enough for the agents at the nearest table to hear, then, his voice lower, “007 needs firepower.”
“What kind?”
“Small arms, rifles, machine guns.”
“Men?”
“Yes.”
“Have you spoken to your uncle?”
“Yes. He will extract from Czechoslovakia, but otherwise 007 is on his own.”
“Leaving him high and dry?”
“Chamberlain just finished the Munich agreement. He wants no complications.”
“So Meppen is cancelled.”
“Yes.”
“Did 007 ask for me?”
“Yes.”
“Where do we rendezvous?”
“Rex, I didn’t think you really cared . . .”
“Hans.”
“In the forest in Deggendorf.”
“Do you have the coordinates?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Immediately, if not sooner.”
“Can you help?”
“Yes, my brother as well.”
“Weapons?”
“Yes, a few.”
“Men?”
“No, just Jonas and me.”
“Transportation?”
“Yes. I have a colleague who has a garage on Hermann Goering Strasse. He’ll lend us a truck with no history.”
“We have to leave now, tonight.”
“I need an hour.”
“You’ll lose your job.”
“It’s time I joined the underground anyway.”
“Can you reach 007 to confirm?”
“Yes.”
“You can tell me about that scar on the ride to Deggendorf. Is there a special story, or was it just boring old shrapnel?”
“A story involving an American and a woman.”
“Good, it will help us pass the time.”
27.
The Schorfeide Forest
October 7, 1938, 11:30 p.m.
“What happened back there?” Professor Tolkien asked.
“Sleeping gas,” Korumak replied.
“Sleeping gas? That smoke?”
“Yes. It doesn’t last long. Five minutes at the most.”
“Who . . . ?”
“The dwarf servants.”
“What is sleeping gas?”
Korumak did not answer. He stared at Tolkien. “Your face is bleeding,” he said. “I’ll get you some water in a moment.”
“Why?” Tolkien asked. He put his fingers to his thro
bbing head, where he had bumped it against something very hard, and then along his cheek, which stung and was indeed bleeding.
“Goering was going to question us,” the dwarf replied, “then lock us up and notify Himmler. They overheard him.”
“Where are we?”
“In a mine,” replied Trygg Korumak. “Not far from Carinhall.”
“Why did you blindfold us?”
Once clear of Carinhall, the small group had gathered in the forest at the foot of a wooded hill to get their bearings. There, Korumak, in a husky whisper, had simply said, “Follow me. Do not speak.” Twenty minutes later, after clawing their way through a ten-foot-high high wall of dense brush, they had emerged in a small, moonlit valley on the opposite side of the same hill. Up and over and around what seemed like a dozen boulders, they went, until finally Trygg halted and handed Tolkien and Shroeder large cotton kerchiefs, saying sharply, put these over your eyes.
“The entrance is secret,” the dwarf replied.
“I couldn’t find it again in a million years.”
“Perhaps. Then again, perhaps you could. We are all capable of much more than we realize.”
“How long will we stay?”
“An hour, no more.”
“Where are we going?”
“To meet with friends, water people.”
“Water people?”
“Yes, they will guide us to the Oder and then take us downriver to a place where we can cross back into Germany.”
“We’re walking?”
“Part of the way, yes, tonight and all day tomorrow.”
“And then where?”
“To Metten, to find the Devil’s Canyon.”
“The Devil’s Canyon?”
“Men call it that.”
“What men?”
Tolkien and Korumak were sitting cross-legged in front of a small fire in a circular cavern they had reached by a long series of steeply descending rough-hewn stone steps. At the beginning of the descent, Tolkien had struck his head on the ceiling of the tunnel. After that, he had crouched very low, gripping the back of Professor Shroeder’s coat with a strength he did not know he had. Along the cave’s perimeter were five stone platforms carved with precision out of the cave’s wall. On each was a thick straw mat covered by a wool blanket. Against the wall near the stairway stood a half dozen axes, their curved, mace-like blades shimmering in the firelight. From an arched opening to their right, the voices of Professor Shroeder and the two dwarfs who had lead them out of Goering’s hunting lodge and into the forest could be heard approaching. Tolkien heard the words levasst-u-rukhas, or rather sounds to that effect. Ancient Norse? he said to himself, and then, no not at all like it. Then what? Before he could ponder more, Korumak replied, “The men who discovered it.”
“You mean Professor’s Shroeder’s canyon, the ritual . . .”
“Yes.”
Tolkien remained silent. He had studied the dwarfs of Scandinavian legend extensively. They were, above all else, secretive. They had a language of their own, which they never spoke in the presence of men or other races, not even the gods, and which they rarely committed to paper or writing of any kind. Their dwarf names did not even appear on their gravestones. Great miners and metal workers, they were also fierce warriors, with the strength and endurance of three or four strong men. They were cunning and loved gold, and because he had portrayed them this way in The Hobbit, the managing partner at the publishing house he had visited yesterday had told him, smiling broadly, that he was seen to be simpatico with the Reich regarding the Jewish problem. The Jewish Problem. Bloody Nazis. Thank God he had refused to sign that vile “I am not a Jew” oath. He would write a proper letter of rebuke when he returned home. If he returned home.
“Are the two servants your countrymen?”
“Yes.”
“I am in their debt.”
“We all are.”
Before he could speak again, Shroeder and the Carinhall dwarfs entered the round cave laden with woven baskets and stone jugs filled with water. Tolkien looked upon them, particularly Shroeder, with something akin to shock. The German professor was dressed in brown woolen leggings and fur-covered boots that laced to just below his knees. On top he wore a tunic of the same dark color and material, and over this a hooded, dark green woolen cape that reached nearly to his feet. Leaning on his cane, the old German professor looked tired and pale, and sad somehow, as if he had just come to terms with an unhappy fate. His face bore the signs of scratches and bruises that had been cleansed but were still raw. Yet there was a presence to him, a light in his eyes that Tolkien had not seen before and indeed never expected to see in the mild-mannered old professor. Was he talking to the Carinhall dwarfs in their language?
The dwarfs had changed clothes as well, their servants’ livery exchanged for sleeveless leather tunics with silver buckles over woolen blouses and leggings. The metal hobs on their leather boots scraped on the stone floor. The woman handed baskets filled with similar clothing to Tolkien and Korumak.
“These are Dagna and Gylfi,” Korumak said. “Professor Tolkien.”
The dwarfs bowed deeply, but said nothing.
“Thank you,” Tolkien said. “For saving us, and for these,” indicating the baskets of what looked like warm and comfortable clothes. He noticed now that Dagna and Gylfi were the same fair coloring as Korumak, with the same thick auburn hair, the same hooked noses and deep-set piercing green eyes. Gylfi had braided his beard in two places, like Korumak wore his. If she had worn a beard, the Englishman would have taken Dagna, the woman, for a man.
“We’ll change in there,” Korumak said, nodding toward the anteroom, “and tend to your bruises.”
Before turning to leave, Tolkien noticed that the basket that Gylfi was carrying held what surely looked like loaves of bread, dark and round, and steaming hot. How in the world? he said to himself. But that, and other questions, many other questions, could wait. He was dirty, and bruised, and thirsty, and hungry, and drained of energy. Yet he had no doubt that all of that would very soon be remedied, that, though only three days ago he was lecturing at Oxford, this cave, and the path he was about to embark upon were where he should be, where God in his wisdom wanted him to be.
28.
Carinhall
October 8, 1938, 2:00 a.m.
“How was the flight, sergeant?” Hermann Goering said.
“Fine, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Surprised to get such orders?”
“No, Generalfeldmarschall. We are always ready.”
“They have a two hour head start.”
“That will not be a problem, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Do you know what you’re tracking?”
“I was told two men and three dwarfs—two male dwarfs and one female.”
“Correct. They may have gone in different directions.”
“I brought five hounds, Generalfeldmarschall, and five Schäferhunde.”
“Fighting animals?”
“Yes. The hounds are for tracking only.”
“You know I keep mountain lions here?” said Hermann Goering.
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Four altogether, all full grown. Two males and two females.”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“You say your hounds are top quality, pedigreed?”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“German hounds?”
“They are Flemish hounds, Herr Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Yes, the half-breed Flemish. They will be under our flag as well, soon enough. What are your hounds’ names?”
“Hildegarde, Trudy, Greta, Marlene and Marie.”
“All female?”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall, regular Heer.”
“The Luftwaffe will win the war, not the Army, do you agree, sergeant?”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Still, you have your uses.”
The sergeant, in a long, black, hooded leather coat, did not reply. He had not been asked a question. He and Goering were standing in Carinhall’s Belgium block courtyard. The light from the cast iron lanterns on either side of the lodge’s massive front door bathed their faces. On the grass that surrounded the lodge’s forty-foot-high flagpole in the center of the expansive courtyard, the five bloodhounds sat on their haunches, their eyes fixed on their trainer and lord and master, Army Sergeant Klaus Klein. Behind them, standing at ease near the truck they arrived in, were four more Army regulars, all in the same long, black, hooded leather coats as Klein. Each had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder. They were all well over six feet tall. The insignia on the arm patches was the stylized face of a German Shepherd baring its fangs. In the truck’s open bed the five German Shepherds were standing, looking over at Sergeant Klein.
“They seem quite ready,” Goering said, looking over at the shepherds.
“They know there is work to do,” Klein replied.
“Will they kill a man?”
“On my command, yes.”
“You know I want these escapees brought here alive?”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“I want no interference from any other service branches.”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Am I quite clear?”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Good. Now tell me, what do you need?” Goering asked.
“Articles of clothing would be best, Generalfeldmarschall.”
“Captain Drescher is in the kitchen, inside and down the hall to your right. We have plenty of clothing. They all left in a hurry.”