Louise's Chance

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘I’ll do whatever I can,’ he said. ‘I want Marek’s murderer out of Fort Meade as much as you do.’

  ‘I remember that the OSS Research and Analysis Branch published a notebook of German ranks and decorations. We distributed hundreds of them. You don’t happen to have a copy, do you?’

  ‘We do,’ Rawlins said. He pulled out a thick three-ring notebook from a drawer in his desk. ‘I haven’t used it. It’s wasted on us, since the German prisoners are stripped of their German uniforms when they arrive here.’

  I leafed through the notebook eagerly, skimming page after page of drawings in color of German medals, medal ribbons, patches, badges and epaulets, and descriptions of rank. It must have taken hundreds of hours to compile.

  ‘Can I get you some coffee?’ Rawlins asked.

  ‘I’d love some,’ I answered. Then I quickly added, ‘Just sugar if you’ve got it, nothing else, please.’ I was referring to the can of evaporated milk next to the coffee pot, but I could tell from the unhappy expression on his face that he thought I was referring to his pint of bourbon.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘I meant the canned milk.’

  Rawlins went to the file cabinet where his coffee pot sat. ‘I’m glad you don’t think so badly of me that you imagine I’d spike your coffee without you knowing,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’m on the wagon until noon these days. Trying to cut back.’

  ‘So no eye-openers?’ I said, taking a cup of coffee from him.

  ‘No eye-openers,’ he said, taking his seat again. ‘It’s a beginning.’

  ‘So you’re quitting?’

  ‘I don’t think I can do that,’ he said. ‘I’m just relegating my drinking to appropriate times and places. When you saw my pint in my drawer the other day I figured if you spotted it, so could someone who’d feel obliged to report it. I’m not happy with what I’m doing in the war, but I don’t want to lose the job I have either.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said. And I was. Rawlins seemed like a good man to me and I hated to see him ruin his life.

  ‘Can I take this notebook with me?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. Whatever you need. But why?’

  ‘The two men who died on the crossing, Muntz and Aach. Miss Osborne and I think they might have been murdered.’

  ‘They committed suicide,’ Rawlins said. ‘That’s the official word anyway.’

  ‘Does it make sense to you?’

  Rawlins shrugged. ‘Does it matter?

  ‘If there was a murderer on board that ship, then he’s in this camp. He could be the man who orchestrated Marek’s death.’

  ‘That’s quite a deductive leap. But if you want the book you can have it. What else can I do for you?’

  ‘The Abel Stoddard had five cargo holds. The prisoners were kept in the holds except for their allotted exercise time on deck. Most of them were the Italians, of course, but the Germans were split up into two holds. You don’t know their assignments, do you?’

  ‘Holy smoke, you don’t ask for much. I can look.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ I said.

  The two of us went through the three file cabinets in his office. I was reminded of my old job and was glad I didn’t do it anymore.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Rawlins said, pulling a file folder out of a drawer. ‘Here it is. Hold assignments!’

  He handed the file to me and I skimmed the single page inside quickly, just long enough to see that Major Kapp was assigned to the same hold as Bahnsen, Marek, Muntz and Aach.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, sticking the file inside the notebook. ‘I’ll let you know if we find anything.’

  TWELVE

  I found Miss Osborne in our quarters propped up in bed with papers spread around her. She was in her stocking feet and I could see that her skirt was unbuttoned at the waist. An empty pint carton of milk with a straw sticking out of it and an apple core sat on the lamp table next to her bed.

  Immediately I briefed her about my experiences with Agent Williams inside the camp, our conclusion that Marek had been forced over the stockade fence by a barrage of rocks, our interview with Kapp and our examination of Marek’s corpse and his meager belongings.

  ‘Good work, Louise,’ she said, cramming her paperwork into the pouch from OSS she’d received earlier in the day. ‘Much more interesting than mine, which consisted mostly of scribbling my initials on dozens of papers. Where is Merle? We need his help.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He didn’t want to see Marek’s corpse.’

  ‘Is McVey outside? If he is send him out to find Merle,’ she said.

  I found McVey leaning up against our car, smoking a cigarette. When he saw me he dropped it to the ground and crushed it with his boot. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere, but we need to find Merle. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I picked him up at the stockade gate a while back and took him to the officers’ mess,’ he said.

  Lunch! I’d forgotten all about lunch.

  ‘Where did you take him after lunch?’

  ‘No place. He said not to wait for him, he’d walk wherever else he wanted to go. So I went on back to the stockade to wait for you.’

  ‘Find him, will you? I guess check his barracks first.’ I pulled a dollar out of my pocket and gave it to him. ‘And go to the PX for me,’ I said. ‘Get me a chocolate bar and a can of nuts, cashews if they’ve got them. And a soda, a Coke or a 7 Up. As long as it’s not root beer.’

  When I got back inside Miss Osborne was reading the hold assignments.

  ‘Got your notebook?’ she said.

  I grabbed my steno pad and a pencil.

  ‘The Abel Stoddard had five cargo holds with about twenty-two hundred prisoners spread among them,’ she said, ‘say four hundred forty per hold. The Germans were split among them in Hold Two and Hold Five.’

  ‘Chantal said today that the prisoners exercised by hold, for two hours a day. And their meals were delivered to them in the holds. So as they came across the Atlantic they didn’t come into contact with prisoners who weren’t in the same hold,’ I said.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘According to this Kapp, the two dead men and Bahnsen were in the same hold.’

  ‘I saw that. What about Thomas Hanzi?’

  Miss Osborne shook her head. ‘He was in Hold Five with Felix Steiner and Jens Geller. There were others, of course, for instance one of the SS riflemen was in Hold Five too. The second was with Kapp.’

  Merle appeared at our door. ‘Reporting as ordered,’ he said. ‘And I bring provisions.’ He handed me the nuts, chocolate and Coke McVey had bought me at the PX.

  I showed Merle the ribbon bar we’d found in Marek’s belongings. ‘This was with Marek’s things,’ I said, speaking through a huge bite of Butterfinger, handing the ribbon bar to Merle. ‘I want to decipher it, find out who it belonged to if possible. We’ve got a reference notebook on the ribbons and our summaries of all the prisoners’ paybooks.’

  ‘You think it’s Kapp’s, don’t you?’ Merle asked. ‘You think this will tie him to Marek and Marek’s death?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘It would solve many problems for us. But we need to do the work. I recognize some of these ribbons without looking them up, they’re common. The first is solid blue, it’s a four-year service ribbon – see the tiny SS badge on it? The owner has four years of service in the Waffen SS.’

  ‘That fits Steiner too,’ I said.

  ‘It does. Now the next ribbon on the bar, the one with the wide red stripe and narrow white and black stripes bordering it; this represents the Iron Cross second class. Also common, especially among SS officers.’

  I leafed through both Steiner’s and Kapp’s paybook summaries. ‘They both had one,’ I said.

  ‘The next one has a thick black stripe bordered with red and white stripes and a tiny emblem of crossed swords,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a War Merit Cross second cla
ss for combatants,’ Merle said, finding a picture of the ribbon in the reference notebook.

  ‘They both have one of those too,’ I said, referring to the men’s paybooks.

  ‘The next one, the narrow black, red and green stripes separated by white ones, that’s the German African Campaign Medal,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘Kapp and Steiner’ I said. ‘And most of the other officers in the camp.’

  ‘All right. The next ribbon has a wide red stripe bordered by two wide black stripes, and a tiny tank glued to it.’

  Merle leafed through the notebook. I found myself holding my breath.

  ‘It’s the Sudetenland Commemorative Medal! With a tank combat emblem!’ he said.

  ‘Yes!’ I said. ‘It’s Kapp! Not Steiner. According to Steiner’s papers he was never in the Sudetenland!’

  ‘Is there anything in Kapp’s summary about Reichenberg?’ Miss Osborne asked.

  I read through the two pages. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he was assigned to the Reich Security Main Office in Reichenberg from 1939 to 1941, before he was sent to North Africa.’ I quickly checked Muntz and Aach’s summaries. ‘And Kapp was in Reichenberg before Muntz and Aach were drafted.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean Kapp knew them,’ Merle said.

  ‘Calm down, both of you,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Let’s check the last ribbon. It could still exclude Kapp. It’s a wide red one bordered with skinny white and black stripes.’

  ‘The Czechoslovakian March, 1938,’ Merle said.

  ‘That’s not mentioned in his summary,’ I said. ‘But we know he was in Reichenberg in 1939, so he must have arrived with the German forces in 1938. This ribbon bar belonged to Major Kapp. And Marek also had a tank combat badge; it’s back in the box that holds his belongings. I’ll bet it belonged to Kapp too.’

  ‘It could be Steiner’s – he was in a Panzer division,’ Merle said.

  ‘He was in signals,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘I’m don’t think he would be eligible for a combat badge.’

  ‘Don’t forget that nasty SS cigarette lighter you bought off Marek, Merle,’ I said. ‘That could have been Kapp’s too. Remember, after Marek’s death when we questioned Kapp, Thomas Hanzi lit Kapp’s cigarette with a match. And Steiner doesn’t smoke.’

  Miss Osborne held up her hand. ‘Hold it,’ she said, ‘you’re stringing together too many coincidences because you want to charge Major Kapp with Marek’s murder. Just because Marek owned these items that once belonged to Major Kapp doesn’t mean Kapp killed him.’

  ‘But why would Marek have them in the first place?’ Merle asked. ‘Kapp doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d give his war mementos to Marek out of the kindness of his heart.’

  ‘It was a payment! Don’t you see!’ I said. ‘Kapp had no money, it was confiscated from him when he was processed. He paid Marek for something.’

  ‘Louise, really,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘You don’t know that. You want Kapp charged with Marek’s murder so you’re cobbling together a case against him from fragments. Besides, what was his motive?’

  ‘Once we find out who did the murder, the motive will be obvious,’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘You’re a disciple of Mr Holmes, are you? Of course there’s nothing I would like better than to see Major Kapp in jail and out of this camp. But this is America, and you must have concrete evidence, even against a Nazi SS officer, in order to charge him with murder. Besides, the Swiss Legation will be all over us for violating the Geneva Convention if we charge him without proof.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Merle said.

  ‘Tell Agent Williams and Lt Rawlins what we’ve learned,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Williams is the FBI agent stationed here, it’s his responsibility. He has the resources to use the information we’ve gathered. Now let’s pack these papers up and have a drink before dinner. We’re going to the German prisoners’ mess for dinner tonight.’

  Miss Osborne dug around in her valise for her flask of bourbon and I found my martini fixings. I mixed my drink, if mixing was a term that could be used so lightly, while Miss Osborne poured a couple of jiggers of bourbon into her tumbler and a shot glass Merle had palmed from the officers’ club.

  ‘Oh, Louise,’ Miss Osborne said, ‘I almost forgot. You got a letter. When I was at the mailroom getting the OSS pouch they gave it to me.’

  She dug into the pouch and retrieved the envelope, which she passed over to me.

  It was from Joe. I ripped the envelope open and pulled out two sheets of cheap stationery covered in Joe’s elegant handwriting. It shows how focused I was on Marek’s death that I skimmed over the sweet bits to find out if Joe had found any answers to my question about Reichenberg. He had, and what I read made me feel ice cold with apprehension. Now, how to tell Miss Osborne? Because I had to inform her that I’d asked my lover, who worked for the covert organization JDC, to find out what he could about Aach and Muntz’s address in Reichenberg. If that was a breach of security, and I was sure it was, I just had to pray she didn’t fire me.

  ‘Miss Osborne?’ I asked. ‘I need to tell you something.’

  ‘That sounds ominous. What?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, first I need to say—’

  ‘Spit it out,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I asked a Czech refugee friend of mine about Reichenberg, and where our two dead prisoners of war lived. That’s all; I didn’t tell him anything about our operation or why I might want to know.’

  Miss Osborne looked interested, not angry, thank goodness. ‘As long as you revealed nothing confidential to him I’ll excuse you. I’ll take your word that he’s trustworthy. What did he say?’ she asked.

  ‘He didn’t know the city, so he said he could ask some of his friends,’ I said, feeling my heart sink, wondering if that was excusable too.

  ‘He must have found something, or you wouldn’t be sputtering about like this,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘What did he learn?’

  ‘The address where the two men lived, one of his friends knew exactly where it was. It was a small block of flats, but the flats had individual addresses.’

  ‘So they shared a place,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘OK. They were roommates. Interesting.’

  ‘There’s more. It was what he called a bohemian neighborhood. On the edge of a red-light district.’

  ‘Could be a worse place to live,’ Merle said, muttering into his drink.

  ‘A male red-light district,’ I said. I looked down at the letter so I could pronounce the German words correctly. ‘Der Bubistrich.’

  ‘My God,’ Merle said. ‘The murdered men were pansies!’

  ‘Don’t use that expression, please, Merle. The correct term is homosexual. Some people are,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Does your friend say anything else?’ she said to me.

  ‘Just that the area was known for, well, its colorful subculture,’ I said. ‘You know, costume balls, jazz clubs, parades, things like that.’

  ‘If it was anything like Berlin before the war,’ Miss Osborne said, ‘colorful would be a mild word to describe it. I would choose uninhibited, or even hedonistic. And it wasn’t just homosexuals reveling in those clubs, either. Celebrities and rich people flocked to Berlin before the Nazis took power. I remember seeing a magazine picture of Marlene Dietrich with Marc Chagall at the Silhouette club.’

  ‘When I was reading news clippings at the Registry, trying to find out more about Reichenberg, I saw an ad for a nightclub that fits that description. I’ve never seen anything like it in any newspaper in this country.’

  Merle was open-mouthed. ‘Our SS Major Kapp is Schwül,’ he said. ‘A pervert!’

  ‘Did you learn that word from your grandparents?’ I asked him, annoyed by his naiveté. I’d once had the same attitude but it didn’t make it any less irritating now. ‘I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Kapp frequented the cabaret scene in Reichenberg,’ I continued.

  ‘The Nazis closed all those clubs down eventually,’ Miss Osborne said.

 
; ‘Eventually. Kapp arrived in Reichenberg early in 1938, remember, but the Munich Agreement giving the Sudetenland to the Reich wasn’t signed until late September. Let’s say he enjoyed the nightlife until the Nazis shut it down. He met Aach and Muntz. Perhaps he had a relationship with one, or both, of them. Then to cover his tracks he had them conscripted to different units. But then Kapp runs into them in the hold of the Abel Stoddard on their way to the States. The two men discover their clubbing pal is an SS officer. Do you know what the SS does if they find out one of their own is a homosexual?’

  ‘His fellow SS soldiers murder him,’ Miss Osborne said flatly.

  ‘There were three other SS soldiers on the ship and Kapp was afraid of being killed if word got out,’ I said. ‘Think of the power Muntz and Aach had over him.’ Miss Osborne had started to nod her head before I’d finished my sentence. ‘Kapp doesn’t act frightened now, just the opposite, which may mean he did murder the men who knew about him. And we still have no real facts, but I know one thing for sure. We’ve got to rescue Thomas Hanzi.’

  The beautiful gypsy whom Kapp had selected as his ‘servant’.

  ‘Hanzi is in a dangerous place. Remember, during the fight in the mess Steiner called him a rent-boy. And don’t forget the chicken bones Hanzi found in his bed, I’d bet Steiner was behind that. And now he’s attracted Kapp’s attentions. Hanzi is not safe from either of them,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘So you’re thinking that Major Kapp engineered poor Hans Marek’s death, and the deaths of the two men on board ship too,’ Agent Williams said. Like Miss Osborne and me, Williams had refused a pre-dinner sherry. From the frustrated look on his face I figured that if it weren’t for J. Edgar Hoover’s strict instructions to his agents to eschew alcohol when on duty, he would have loved a drink.

  Miss Osborne, Merle and I had briefed Lt Rawlins, Williams and Lucien Chantal on our afternoon’s work in Rawlins’ office before we went into the stockade to have dinner at the German prisoners’ mess.