Louise's Chance

by Sarah R. Shaber

  I didn’t think that would be enough. OSS had done a number of psychological studies on the Nazis. They tended to be without empathy, and enjoyed exercising power over people just for the sake of it. In a prisoner-of-war camp there wouldn’t be much for this kind of person to do except harass vulnerable prisoners.

  ‘Now, you asked to speak to Jens Geller first this morning, correct?’ Rawlins said. ‘He’s waiting for you at the interview tent.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘This incident involving Thomas Hanzi is bad news for us,’ Miss Osborne said, as we waited for a military policeman to bring Geller into the interview tent. ‘If there’s a hardline Nazi faction in this camp, one committed enough to torment Hanzi because he’s a gypsy, it will be difficult for us to recruit any of the prisoners to volunteer for our mission, no matter how the interviews go. They’ll be too afraid.’

  ‘Can’t we get rid of Major Kapp somehow?’ I asked. ‘He must be the ringleader.’

  ‘There’s talk of a special prisoner-of-war camp just for officers, but it’s months away from being completed,’ she said. ‘We need volunteers to penetrate the Nazi lines in northern Italy now.’

  MP Steesen, who appeared to be permanently attached to us, escorted Jens Geller into the tent.

  ‘Be careful what you say,’ Miss Osborne said softly. ‘The camp authorities thought only Kapp knew English, but it turned out Bahnsen did too. And Geller reacted to a slur in English from a guard. Starting now we won’t speak freely to each other during interviews until we know for certain the prisoner doesn’t understand us.’

  Steesen shoved Geller into the chair at the table in front of us. Like most of the prisoners, Geller was thin and maintained his soldier’s posture, sitting almost at attention in his chair. He still wore his hair in the German fashion, like Hitler, oiled and parted on the side with his bangs slicked down toward one eyebrow. As he fiddled with a box of matches I noticed that the tips of his fingers were stained brown.

  Miss Osborne clicked on the recording machine to begin the interview. Geller glanced at it with curiosity as the tapes began to circle.

  ‘Mr Geller,’ Miss Osborne began.

  ‘Unteroffizier Geller,’ he answered.

  ‘Sergeant Geller,’ she continued. ‘I understand that you were a motorcycle messenger for the Three Hundred Thirty-fourth Infantry of the Afrika Korps, that you were captured at Bizerte.’ Merle translated.

  At hearing Merle’s voice Geller broke into a huge smile. ‘Texas,’ he said in English to Merle. ‘Cowboy?’

  Merle played along with him. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’m from Amarillo.’

  ‘John Wayne,’ Geller said.

  This time it was Merle’s turn to laugh. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘How much English can you speak?’

  Geller shrugged. ‘Movies only English,’ he said. ‘Stagecoach. Destry Rides Again.’

  ‘Where did you live that you could see American movies?’ Miss Osborne asked.

  Geller looked at Merle quizzically, and he translated into German.

  ‘Berlin,’ Geller said. ‘My father was a shopkeeper, a tobacconist. We rolled our own cigarettes.’ Which was why his fingers were stained, I thought. ‘He gave me just enough money every Saturday afternoon so I could see a movie. Even after I finished my schooling, room and board and a movie was all he could pay me.’

  ‘I see from your papers that you enlisted,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘I was eager to be a Reich soldier,’ Geller said. ‘Fighting for the eternal Fatherland has a such a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’

  I heard the sarcasm in Geller’s voice even before Merle translated his words.

  ‘You are loyal to the Reich, then,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘In the beginning,’ he answered, ‘it was all so glorious. Especially to a young man who had endured years of humiliation and poverty. Who could only look forward to selling cigarettes and pipe tobacco for just enough money for his family to live, barely live. Once the Nazis gained power, red banners flew on every building, huge swastikas many stories high hung from the Reichstag, enormous cheering crowds filled the Königsplatz, thousands of soldiers goose-stepped in front of the Reichstag, their hands raised toward the Führer on his viewing platform. It was better than any American movie. Who didn’t want to be a part of it all? Within months all European German-speaking people were united under the Reich. Then we conquered France and had our revenge for the Versailles Treaty. Even Kristallnacht didn’t dissuade us from our path.’

  Still the sarcasm leaked through Geller’s German.

  ‘Except that Germany hasn’t won the war,’ Miss Osborne said quietly.

  Geller stared at her for so long we thought he might not speak again. He looked around the room, as if he expected someone to be eavesdropping. Then he nodded at the tape recorder. Miss Osborne reached over to the machine and shut it off. The rotating tapes slowed to a stop. Geller leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette from a pack of Camels stuck into his shirt pocket.

  ‘Germany will not win the war,’ Geller said at last, translated by Merle. ‘That wanker Hitler invaded Russia. Russia! He thought he could succeed where Napoleon failed! Pfft! No army in the world can conquer Russia. Stalin will throw millions of men at us, and the Americans and British will invade from the west, and the only question is who will get to Berlin first, and how many Germans will die.’

  I wrote on my steno pad, in capital letters, ‘I THINK THIS MAN IS OURS.’

  ‘I gather you would like the war to end soon,’ Miss Osborne said.

  Geller leaned over the table. ‘I have two younger brothers in the Wehrmacht. What do you think? I don’t want them to die for nothing.’

  ‘You could help us shorten the war, you know. By working with us. The sooner Germany surrenders the more likely that your brothers will survive,’ Miss Osborne said.

  Geller stared at the floor while finishing his cigarette.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘What is holding you back?’

  ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘I’m not safe now,’ he said. ‘You heard what happened to the gypsy, Hanzi? If a word, even a word, of collaboration between a prisoner and American intelligence gets out!’ Geller drew his finger across his throat.

  I wondered what Miss Osborne would say to that.

  ‘We are recruiting for a top-secret operation,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘It will be dangerous. But you would have the same training, and protection, as our own agents.’

  Geller crushed his cigarette into an ashtray, then immediately lit another one.

  ‘I will think about it,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to go now, please. I’ve already said too much.’

  ‘In a minute. Sergeant Geller, did you know the men who died on the voyage across the Atlantic?’

  ‘You mean the soldiers who killed themselves?’ he asked. He shook his head. ‘No. You remember the Germans were split between holds. They were in Hold Two. I was in Hold Five with that pig-dog, Steiner.’

  Miss Osborne nodded at Steesen to take Geller back to the stockade.

  Before he left, though, Geller pointed at Merle’s boots. ‘Cowboy boots,’ he said. ‘How much?’

  ‘Seven bucks,’ Merle answered, grinning.

  Geller threw his hands in the air. ‘I do not have!’ he said, also smiling.

  ‘Maybe after the war,’ Merle said.

  ‘I will remember that,’ Geller said on his way out of the tent.

  ‘If we bribed Geller with your boots, Merle, maybe we could turn him,’ I said, passing him sour cream to heap on his chili.

  ‘It would be a sacrifice on my part,’ Merle said, ‘but for a good cause.’

  ‘We can do better than that,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘I expect we could come up with a brand new pair of cowboy boots for Sergeant Geller.’

  ‘I think there’s a western outfitter on the Virginia side of th
e Potomac,’ I said, enjoying my chili too. It had at least as much meat as beans in it.

  ‘All joking aside, I think he’s a good prospect. What do you think, Louise?’

  ‘I agree. I mean, the man basically admitted that he was a Nazi supporter until Hitler invaded Russia, and now he thinks Germany will lose the war. And he’s got two brothers in the Wehrmacht. The sooner the war ends the better their chances of survival.’

  ‘As long as there’s an SS Major in charge of this camp I worry no one will cooperate with us,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Geller did say his personal safety had to be guaranteed. I can hardly blame him.’

  ‘You said we could protect him,’ I said to her.

  ‘I exaggerated. Right now we don’t know what we’re going to do with the prisoners we recruit; we don’t have safe houses prepared or training organized yet. Washington is working on it.’

  ‘Can’t we isolate our recruits in the camp, if we get any, once they’ve been selected?’ Merle said.

  ‘Kapp and his minions – because he’s bound to have minions – will know at once if they’re isolated or sent to another location. And all these men have families back in Germany and many have relatives in the Wehrmacht,’ she said. ‘The prisoners will be worried about their safety.’

  ‘Thanks to the Red Cross all the prisoners, including Kapp, can write letters home. Some of them could be coded,’ I said. I’d already had direct experience with a coded postcard. Its innocent message had signaled a major operation that we at OSS almost missed.

  ‘Kapp won’t need to write coded letters,’ Miss Osborne said, buttering a piece of cornbread, ‘not when he can punish anyone he wants right here in the camp. What was to stop our gypsy friend Hanzi from being murdered last night? Nothing.’

  Chantal, the Red Cross representative, slipped into a chair at our table while we were finishing our coffee. ‘Have you heard?’ he asked. Then, ‘What is that?’ when he spotted Merle’s chili.

  ‘It’s chili,’ Merle said. ‘Want to try some?’

  ‘Mon Dieu, no! It smells like charcoal. And are those red beans? Horrible things!’

  ‘Enough about the chili,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘What did you want to tell us, Lucien?’

  ‘Hans Marek’s escaped again,’ he said.

  ‘In broad daylight?’ I said. ‘How?’

  ‘In the kitchen garbage,’ Chantal said. ‘No one searched it before it was trucked to the dump.’

  I knew an FBI agent who would be furious. Clearly Marek wasn’t the saboteur type, he just wanted to have some fun, but Agent Williams would take any escape as a black mark on his record.

  ‘Marek must have sold more of those ribbons and badges,’ Merle said, ‘so he has money to spend on girls.’

  ‘I’m sure the FBI has all the usual places staked out,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Have you been able to find out anything about Aach and Muntz, the men who supposedly killed themselves on the crossing?’

  ‘Nothing much that we didn’t already know,’ Chantal said. ‘They lived at the same address in Reichenberg. They were conscripted on the same day, which is not unlikely, considering how methodically the Germans do business. According to the other prisoners on the ship they spent a lot of time together. All that is within the realm of possibility.’

  ‘Dying, or killing themselves, on the same day isn’t,’ Miss Osborne said.

  Chantal threw his hands in the air. ‘There were no witnesses, at least none that will admit it. The men just vanished off the deck during their exercise time.’

  ‘The truth is no one cares how they died,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Except us.

  And what about the incident this morning, the burnt chicken bones that Thomas Hanzi found in his bunk?’

  ‘The tents aren’t secured,’ Chantal said. ‘Anyone could have sneaked in between guard patrols during the night and constructed that little charnel house. That poor young man was terrified. Lt Bahnsen was quite kind to him, though. I believe Bahnsen was studying for the Lutheran priesthood before the war? Did you know he holds a prayer service on Sundays in the mess tent?’

  ‘Does anyone go?’

  ‘A few.’

  I reminded myself to change my assessment of Marek in my notebook. He was too impulsive for an undercover mission. So far, of all the prisoners we’d interviewed, I’d only starred Bahnsen and Geller. OSS would need dozens. Of course many more POWs would arrive in the States, but timeliness was so important. Back in Washington and in our London office propaganda materials were already being designed and constructed, as well as authentic uniforms and forged identity papers. We needed reliable native German speakers to deliver them safely behind German lines.

  I wondered how many more prisoners we could recruit if SS Major Kapp wasn’t the senior German in the camp. And if two prisoners of war hadn’t died mysteriously on the way to the States. And if someone hadn’t threatened Thomas Hanzi with a pyre built of chicken bones on his bed.

  That afternoon we interviewed four more German prisoners of war. One was seventeen years old. He’d been conscripted right out of military school and sent straight to Tunisia to load flak anti-aircraft guns. ‘Way too young,’ I wrote in my notes. Another German’s hands shook so much he couldn’t light his own cigarette; Merle had to strike his match and hold his hand steady for him. His voice trembled when he spoke. We could hear the fear in his voice even without translation. ‘Terrible case of nerves,’ I wrote in my notebook.

  The last two prisoners we spoke with were laborers with little education. ‘Not trainable,’ I wrote.

  The three of us stayed in the interview room to read through and discuss my notes.

  Miss Osborne shut my notebook and handed it back to me. ‘I agree with you, Louise,’ she said. ‘I think Bahnsen and Geller are our only possibilities so far, and I’m not so sure about Bahnsen.’

  ‘The man was drafted out of seminary,’ I said. ‘How could he not be willing to help us beat the Nazis?’

  ‘I have a odd feeling about him,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘He seemed to have made his own plans, and wasn’t sure they would fit into ours. It was nothing he said. Just intuition.’

  I dreaded eating dinner in the prisoners’ mess again, but Miss Osborne said it was a good way to observe the prisoners outside the interview room. As always the food was plentiful and full of rationed goodies: roast pork, fresh butter and rich desserts.

  Major Lucas was AWOL again tonight, enjoying his meal at the Fort Meade officers’ mess, where he didn’t have to watch German prisoners of war stuffing themselves with the same food he and his soldiers were eating.

  So there were just five of us of us at the head table in the POW mess tonight, Lt Rawlins, Mr Chantal and the three of us from OSS. Agent Williams was missing too, out in hot pursuit of Hans Marek, I assumed.

  I’d just started spooning up my chocolate pudding when Steiner, the Nazi SS officer we’d interviewed earlier, erupted from his seat and began to scream and point at Thomas Hanzi, who startled at the shouting and quailed back into his chair. Steiner picked up a heavy water pitcher and flung it at him, just missing his head. Kapp jumped to his feet, overturning his chair, and clenched his fists, his jaw muscles pulsing in his face. The rest of the Germans at the table retreated, upsetting dishes and throwing chairs out of the way as they fled.

  The MPs guarding us unholstered their side arms and looked to Rawlins for orders. Rawlins shook his head at them.

  ‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ Chantal asked Lt Rawlins. Rawlins shook his head again. ‘Let Kapp handle it, unless there’s real violence – he’s in command.’

  Steiner pointed at Hanzi while shouting with Kapp, and whatever he said enraged the major. Kapp picked up the water pitcher Steiner had thrown, smashed it on the edge of the table, shattering it into pieces, and advanced on Steiner, gripping the pitcher handle still attached to a jagged chunk of glass.

  Chantal jumped to his feet. ‘This looks like violence to me,’ he said to Rawlins.

  ‘I’m
in charge here,’ Rawlins said. ‘Sit down.’ Chantal did as he was told, but he was clearly upset. I gripped Miss Osborne’s hand, and she squeezed back. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered to me. ‘Smart of Rawlins to let them fight it out.’

  Kapp and Steiner glared at each other across the table, breathing hard. The other prisoners collected at the back of the room. They were silent, but closely watched the showdown between the two SS officers. I could see they were nervous about the outcome, and I wondered which of the men they wanted to prevail. Bahnsen was still seated at his table, one arm draped across his chair back. Unlike most of the other prisoners he didn’t look frightened, only bemused. Hanzi stood right behind him, as if for protection.

  Steiner leaned on the table and placed a hand flat on the tablecloth. He said something roughly in German, clearly questioning Kapp’s authority. Before anyone could intervene Kapp charged Steiner and rammed the jagged edge of the broken pitcher he still held deep into Steiner’s hand. Blood spurted out of the injury all over the white tablecloth. Steiner screamed, clutching his wounded hand to his chest. Kapp said something to him in a calm but threatening voice.

  Rawlins finally decided it was time to intervene. He ordered two MPs to seize Steiner and take him to the medical officer and then to solitary confinement. On his way out of the tent, blood dripping from his napkin-wrapped hand, Steiner threw a phrase back at Kapp I actually understood. ‘Geh zum Teufel!’ Go to hell! Once Steiner was out of the room Kapp beckoned to the German prisoners, ordering them back to their tables. They came quietly, slipping into their seats to finish their meal. Kapp’s table finished eating amid shards of broken glass scattered across the blood-stained tablecloth.

  After the Germans finished dinner and marched out of the mess tent the five of us who’d eaten at the head table poured coffee for ourselves and discussed the incident.

  ‘Do you know what they said to each other?’ I asked Merle.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘I didn’t recognize most of the words. Except at the end, when Kapp stabbed Steiner, he said, “Not him,” referring to Hanzi, I think. That’s all I got.’