The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  ‘You figure we can get a transcription of the cylinders?’ Weintz asked.

  ‘Probably,’ Conley told him. ‘I don’t see why not. Have your boss ask my boss.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Weintz said. ‘I’ll do that.’

  TWENTY

  The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations

  until the moral disintegration of the enemy

  renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.

  – Vladimir Lenin

  Gauleiter Gerard was sitting at a small table in the speakers’ area behind the stage in the Hotel Vandamm meeting room, staring into a mirror and powdering his face when Welker knocked on the door and came in. ‘You wanted t’ see me?’

  Gerard swung around. ‘Schnek? Yes. Come in and sit. I must finish making myself presentable for my public so we will talk while I continue, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Course not,’ Welker agreed. ‘You do what you gotta do.’

  ‘I have these pock marks of the face,’ Gerard explained. ‘The spotlight makes them look truly bad, so I cover them. The appearance must not distract from the message.’

  ‘Very true,’ Welker agreed.

  ‘I am given to understand that you are an expert with explosives. Is that right?’

  Welker shrugged. ‘An expert? I don’t know. I had some experience in the army during the War. Land mines and booby traps mostly.’

  ‘You planted them?’

  ‘I taught others how t’ find and deactivate ’em.’

  ‘But you could, if required, create one?’

  ‘Oh sure. Much easier t’ create a booby trap than t’ disarm one. Much.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Gauleiter Gerard. ‘And you could teach someone else how to do this?’ Welker decided that he shouldn’t appear too willing or too eager to create bombs. ‘Say,’ he said. ‘Just what do you have in mind?’ A question that he very much did want the answer to. ‘I don’t want any part in blowing up, you know, buildings or whatever, or doing anything t’ harm the U S of A. I’m a patriotic American.’

  ‘Of course you are. We all are.’ Gerard finished his powdering and swiveled around in his chair to face Welker. ‘There are certain places, certain events, that we would like to on occasion disrupt, if you see what I mean. Communist meetings, Jewish organizations … Did you know that there’s a YMHA? That’s H as for Hebrew!’ Gerard managed to sound outraged. ‘Young Men’s Hebrew Association.’

  ‘You want t’ blow them up?’

  ‘Well, we’re not ready for that kind of stuff yet. But maybe blow out a couple of windows – something like that.’

  ‘Well, I guess,’ Welker said.

  ‘So you think you could teach a couple of our guys kind of basic bomb-making?’

  ‘It ain’t going to be that easy,’ Welker told him. ‘Getting the stuff, for instance. There ain’t that many excuses for going around buying high explosives. Which makes it easier for the G-men t’ trace it back to you. I think blowing something up that ain’t supposed t’ be blown up is a Federal offense, so Hoover will come after you. I don’t want Hoover coming after me.’

  ‘I get that,’ Gerard said.

  ‘Course you could make it yourself. Nitro ain’t that hard to make.’

  ‘Well then …’

  ‘But it ain’t what you might call forgiving. You make a mistake and you ain’t around anymore. And a lot of what was around you ain’t around neither.’ Welker was beginning to regret that he had picked this uncouth dialect for Harry Schnek, but now he was stuck with it.

  ‘But you could make it?’

  ‘Not me. I could maybe show someone how, and then they’re on their own and I’m nowheres near what they’re doing. I ain’t kidding, that stuff is dangerous. TNT, dynamite, blasting powder, much better to handle. Still not what I’d call safe, but not like nitro.’

  ‘We’ll have to look around, see what we can get,’ Gerard said, pushing himself to his feet, rocking the table and bouncing up little puffs of powder like a row of tiny dust devils. ‘Got to go and arouse my people,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about this. Glad to have you in my corner.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Welker said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘If seven maids with seven mops

  Swept it for half a year,

  Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,

  ‘That they could get it clear?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,

  And shed a bitter tear.

  – Lewis Carroll

  Geoffrey called her when his plane landed in New York. ‘I’ll be home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Not sure what time.’ The next morning he called back to add: ‘I’ll be bringing a surprise.’

  ‘What sort of surprise?’

  ‘Well, she’s about five foot three, slender, young – quite young – attractive, in a coltish sort of way, and Jewish.’

  ‘What?’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll explain when I see you. Cheerio!’ and he hung up.

  It was three that afternoon when Milton went to answer the door and returned to announce, ‘It’s the master back, m’lady. And a young person.’ He did not sound surprised. Geoffrey and Patricia had, late one night after a martini or two, spent an idle half-hour speculating on what it would take to surprise Milton.

  Patricia was standing, a Scotch and soda in each hand, as Geoffrey strode into the living room, with a teenage girl a couple of cautious steps behind. Patricia handed Geoffrey one of the glasses and then turned to survey the girl. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘Very pretty, but not at all your usual type.’

  Geoffrey raised an eyebrow, something he practiced in front of a mirror and was quite good at. ‘Tastes change,’ he said. ‘People mature.’

  ‘My darling,’ she said, carefully touching the edge of his glass with her own, ‘I would hate to think of you ever maturing. So, how long have you been escorting this young lady, and how and where did you acquire her?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ the girl began, looking startled. ‘That is we didn’t … I mean …’

  Patricia took the girl’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Of course he didn’t. But there must be a story behind why he brought you here, and I’m dying to hear it. Would you like something to drink? Not a Scotch, I think. Tea?’ She pulled the bell pull for Milton, and then turned back. ‘What is your name? And how do you come to be clinging – metaphorically – to my husband’s bespoke coat tails?’

  ‘Sophie, Lady Patricia,’ the girl said. ‘Sophie Hertzel. And your husband, I believe, saved my life.’

  ‘Ah!’ Patricia smiled at her husband. ‘I’m not surprised. He has a knack for doing that sort of thing. Come, sit down, you must tell me the whole story.’

  Sophie went and perched on the edge of the couch seat and stared across the room.

  Milton appeared in the doorway.

  ‘A tea service for the young lady, I think, Milton,’ Patricia told him. ‘And have we any cake?’

  ‘I’ll see, m’lady,’ Milton said, and backed away.

  ‘Now,’ Patricia said, turning back to Sophie.

  Sophie seemed disinclined to discuss the recent past, so Geoffrey took over the job, not dwelling unnecessarily on the painful parts. ‘And so,’ he concluded, ‘we spent the morning in a hunt for Miss Hertzel’s Uncle Moishe, who does not seem to be listed in the Brooklyn phone book. There is one Moses Hertzel, but according to his wife, whom we spoke to at length, he is from somewhere in Russia and he has no brothers, only a sister, she should rot in Hell.’

  ‘No uncle?’

  ‘Not yet, we’ll keep looking.’

  ‘Then she has no place to go?’

  ‘At present, no place,’ Geoffrey agreed.

  ‘Then she shall stay with us until a relative can be produced.’ Patricia turned to Sophie. ‘Have you any clothes? No, of course you don’t.’

  ‘I do have a few things,’ Sophie said. ‘Besides what I’m wearing I have the boys’ clothes I wore on
the train and a change of underwear and a comb and brush.’

  ‘We shall go clothes shopping tomorrow,’ Patricia told her. ‘And other things. A girl must have a variety of other things.’

  ‘But I can’t—’

  ‘Of course you can. And school – you’ll have to go to school. Your English is excellent, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you. We lived in London for some years when I was a child. My father taught at the Royal Academy: piano and conducting. My mother played the violin.’

  Patricia turned to her husband. ‘Where can we send her to school? We’ll need transcripts from her last school or something, won’t we?’

  ‘She has no papers of any kind,’ Geoffrey said, ‘and I don’t see how we can get them. Not the real ones, anyway. But papers can be supplied. I’ll get on it.’

  ‘I haven’t been to the Gymnasium – high school – for the last two years,’ Sophie said. ‘Jewish students were eliminated from the schools. I have been taught at home. So there are no papers to get.’

  ‘Well,’ Patricia said. ‘A minor problem to surmount.’ She reached over to the bell pull, and then sat on the couch and made patting motion on the cushion next to her. ‘Here,’ she said to Sophie. ‘Come sit with me and we will tell each other our girlish secrets. Well, some of them anyway. And Geoffrey will – oh, that reminds me!’ She twisted her head around to see where her husband had moved to. ‘We’re to have a visitor perhaps early next week. An old friend. He says he is, anyway.’

  ‘Has he a name?’

  ‘Welker.’

  ‘Welker?’

  ‘Think back to the War. American. Tall, good-looking, brown hair, little mustache. I don’t know if he had it then, of course. Says you and he used to spend your time telling nasty stories about your superior officers.’

  ‘Oh, that Welker. Captain Jacob. Joseph? Jacob. What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Don’t you like him?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I hold him in high regard. One of the few men I’ve ever met who’s as intelligent as I am, give or take.’

  ‘Really!’ Patricia said. ‘As intelligent as you, indeed! What happened to the customary public-school reticence and self-deprecation?’

  ‘In warfare stupidity kills,’ Geoffrey told her. ‘And there was far too much of it about. It almost seemed a requisite for staff rank.’

  Milton appeared in the doorway, a silver serving platter balanced in one hand.

  ‘Ah, Milton,’ Patricia said. ‘Would you please tell Annie to make up the spare room? This young lady will be staying with us for a while.’

  ‘Yes, milady,’ he said. ‘I have brought tea and a cheese sandwich for the young lady. Mrs Werther insisted on making a sandwich. And a slice of pound cake.’ He set the platter down in front of Sophie and fussed with it for a few seconds, then stood up. ‘And there is a letter.’ He held out a white envelope.

  ‘The post at this time of day?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘It was hand delivered,’ Milton explained. ‘From the Embassy. For His Lordship.’

  ‘Ah!’ Geoffrey exclaimed, taking the envelope. ‘I wonder which of my recent sins is catching up with me?’

  ‘Surely not,’ Patricia said. ‘You’re still nimble enough to outrun your sins.’

  ‘This month I am especially avoiding sins that begin with the letter “B”,’ he told her, ‘including but not limited to Blasphemy, Back-Biting, Babbling, Bitterness, Bastardy, and Drinking Blood.’

  ‘Babbling?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘Even so. In Paul’s first epistle to Timothy he tells him, “Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings.”’

  ‘Why,’ Patricia asked, ‘do you memorize things like that?’

  ‘They sort of stick in my mind,’ he told her. ‘I mean, why on earth do I remember:

  ‘“The llama is a wooly sort of fleecy hairy goat,

  With an indolent expression and an undulating throat,

  Like an unsuccessful literary man”?

  ‘And, mind you, I could go on. But I will spare you.’

  ‘I would be ever so grateful,’ Patricia told him. ‘And I require no further information on the lion, the yak, or the spider either, thank you.’

  Sophie looked from one to the other of her two benefactors. Staying with them, she decided, might be interesting.

  Geoffrey smiled at Patricia, transferred the smile to Sophie, and then looked down at the envelope in his hand. ‘Sent from the embassy in Berlin by diplomatic pouch, or so it claims,’ he said. He took a silver penknife from his waistcoat pocket and carefully slit the envelope open and removed the contents. ‘Aha! That was fast.’

  ‘What is it?’ Patricia asked.

  Geoffrey spent another half-minute examining the two enclosures and then passed the first over to her.

  ‘A picture,’ she said, holding it this way and that as though seeing if anything would fall out of the two-dimensional surface and into the room. ‘A lady and two children.’

  ‘And a draft on a London bank for a thousand pounds,’ he said, waving the other document in front of him. ‘Made out to me, with a note saying “Ich bezahl immer meine Schulden.”’

  ‘I always pay my debts,’ Sophie translated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And just why does this person, whoever he is, owe you a thousand pounds?’ Patricia asked, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘I suppose because mine is the only name he knows,’ Geoffrey told her. ‘I shall hand the draft over to SIS, and they can decide what to do with it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Patricia insisted, ‘but what is it for?’

  ‘A passport for the lady and her children,’ Geoffrey told her, ‘and escort service out of Germany.’ He turned and bowed slightly to Sophie. ‘Although she will not have the privilege of being accompanied by a royal duke.’

  ‘He is a nice man,’ Sophie said reflectively.

  ‘Yes,’ Geoffrey agreed. ‘Yes he is. Essentially. And,’ he reached over and patted Sophie on the shoulder, ‘we’ll have to also get you a passport, or some sort of documentation. I’ll look into it.’

  ‘Who are these people and why do they need a passport?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘No more questions for now, my love. All will be revealed in the fullness of time. Back these go on the next flight to London to get the passports made up and the plan in motion. Now, when is Herr Welker coming over? Is he joining us for dinner?’

  ‘Not today, I think,’ Patricia said. ‘Sometime early next week. He is coming from New York. Perhaps we should dine at a restaurant. And – oh!’ She turned to Sophie. ‘You’re Jewish?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sophie told her, sounding a bit apprehensive. Jewish had not been a good thing to be in her recent experience.

  ‘What do you eat? Or rather, what don’t you eat? Pork, I believe. And something about milk and meat …’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Sophie said. ‘I … we didn’t keep Kosher. I eat whatever, although I am not overly fond of pork or ham. We were not particularly religious.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Patricia said. ‘It does simplify things. Not that we’d have any objection to your being as religious as you like, but now we don’t have to learn all those rules, and get two sets of plates and such.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sophie said. ‘Truthfully, it always struck me as being a bit silly.’

  ‘Most religions have some things that seem a bit silly to outsiders,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Sometimes even to insiders.’

  ‘We have a friend,’ Patricia told Sophie, ‘Avram ben Daveed, or so he calls himself these days. Teaches Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton University in, I believe, New Jersey. Whenever he comes to Washington these days he comes to dinner. He brings his own food. At first we were insulted, now we are quietly amused.’

  ‘He once made chicken soup for us,’ Geoffrey offered, ‘with balls in it.’

  ‘Matzoh balls,’ Patricia expanded.

  ‘Yes,’ Geoffrey agreed. ‘It was very good.’

  ‘The sec
ret was in the feet,’ Patricia added, ‘or so he told us.’

  ‘The feet?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Yes, the chicken feet. They must be in the soup while it’s cooking. I insisted that they be taken out before serving, but by then they had done their job, apparently. It was, I agree, very tasty.’

  Milton reappeared. ‘The young lady’s room is ready,’ he announced.

  ‘Good,’ Patricia said. She turned to Sophie. ‘Why don’t you go to your room and settle in. Ask Milton or Annie for anything you need. The room has a connecting bathroom to the other guest room, which is vacant at the moment. I’ll loan you some things for the evening, and we’ll go shopping tomorrow.’

  Sophie stood up. ‘I am not … I don’t know what to say,’ she said.

  ‘You needn’t say anything,’ Patricia told her. ‘Go, get settled, have a nap. We’ll see you at dinner.’

  When Sophie had disappeared in the direction of her bedroom Patricia moved over to the couch and beckoned to her husband. ‘Come,’ she said, picking up a bowl that seemed to be full of white beads and setting it on her lap. ‘You must tell me all about HRH and your adventure. I assume you had an adventure. I mean even before you acquired the lissome sixteen-year-old.’

  ‘I shall relate all,’ Geoffrey agreed, moving to sit on the couch across from her. ‘But first, how was the embassy party? And, a separate question, is that,’ he asked, pointing at the bowl in her lap, ‘a bowl full of pearls?’

  She nodded. ‘This is the four-strand pearl necklace your mother gave me,’ she told him. ‘All unstrung.’

  ‘I see that,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s quite lovely and I’ve decided to start wearing it again, but I’m a bit nervous about it falling apart – it’s probably fifty years old. So I’ve decided to clean the pearls and restring them. Which involved a week in a baking soda and vinegar bath to finally eliminate the memory of your mother’s favorite perfume.’

  ‘I wondered why you reminded me of Mother while you were wearing them. So it was more than just the pearls themselves.’

  ‘It was the Chanel.’

  ‘Yes. Now that you mention it. And now? You don’t just thread them onto a string?’