Christopher's Ghosts

by Charles McCarry

  Rima grabbed her clothes and scurried below. As she ran, the searchlight followed her. The siren sounded. Then the loudhailer blared.

  “Heave to!”

  Only the mizzen sail was rigged. Still naked, Paul brought the boat about into the wind and dropped the sail. Someone aboard the S-boat tossed him a line. He made it fast, then put on his trousers and shirt and the American sneakers he had been wearing.

  “What boat is that?” the man on the loudhailer asked.

  “Mahican, out of Rügen.”

  This was a magic name to the secret police, who were aboard all coastal patrol boats and also had boats of their own. Paul knew that many questions would be asked, that none of his answers would be believed. The episode could go on for hours, or that there might not be an end to it. It was strictly forbidden to sail this far from land at night.

  The S-boat launched a small boat. The boarding party consisted of an overage navy lieutenant with a stomach and a petty officer with a submachine gun. A third man wearing a uniform with the blank collar patch of the secret police came down the rope ladder. As the small boat came alongside Mahican, the searchlight switched off. The secret policeman was in shadow. Paul could not see his face.

  “Papers!”

  Paul had no papers to show the boarding party. Neither he nor Rima had brought them. The papers for the boat were kept in a locked drawer in Hubbard’s desk. He told them this.

  “No papers?” said the navy lieutenant, amazed. This was a serious infraction.

  Rima appeared, fully clothed. Her hair was braided. She was composed—frozen would have been the better word.

  “Explain,” the lieutenant said.

  “We sailed on an impulse, without bringing documents.”

  “An impulse.” The lieutenant’s face was stony, but his tone let Paul know that he knew what sort of impulse he was talking about. He snapped his fingers. “Like that?” he said. “That was your impulse?”

  “We saw the aurora borealis,” Paul said. “We decided to sail out and look at it. We didn’t think. We apologize.”

  “Names?”

  Paul and Rima supplied the information the lieutenant needed. This included the usual dates and addresses and the names of their parents and grandparents. The lieutenant wrote them out by the light of a flashlight. He spelled Christopher with a K. Paul corrected him.

  “That’s not a German spelling,” the lieutenant said.

  “I’m an American citizen.”

  The lieutenant was surprised. “You sound like a German. You look like a German. This girl is also an American?”

  “No,” said the secret policeman in a voice of authority, breaking his silence. “She is a quarter-Jew. We know all about her. You, Christopher, where were you taking her?”

  The voice belonged to Major Stutzer.

  “Nowhere,” Paul said. “We were just sailing.”

  “You were just sailing along,” Stutzer said, “boy and girl enjoying the evening, is that it?”

  “That is correct, Major.”

  “And merrily breaking the laws of the Reich as if they do not apply to Jews and American citizens. Is that also correct?”

  “We had no such intention,” Paul said.

  “We will see about your intentions,” Stutzer said. “You, Jewess. Did you steal this boat?”

  “No, Major.”

  “Before this is over, you may wish that you had.” To the navy lieutenant Stutzer said, “Take them in tow. I will stay aboard the sailboat.”

  The navy lieutenant said, “You want to stay aboard this sailboat while it is under tow?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Very well, Major.”

  The navy lieutenant’s face was expressionless. “Make it so,” he said to the sailor, who fastened a line to Mahican.

  FOUR

  1

  The S-boat did not finish its patrol until dawn. Long before that, Rima was desperately seasick and so was Major Stutzer. The heavily armed patrol vessel, more than a hundred feet long, was driven by two engines capable of making forty-five knots. It spewed diesel fumes that were breathed in and vomited out by the three people aboard the yawl. In the S-boat’s twin boiling wakes, Mahican yawed and pitched and shipped water. Paul had observed many S-boats under way in the Baltic and had never before seen one moving this fast unless it was in pursuit of a high-speed target. Stutzer knelt in the stern, retching. His tight, tailored uniform was soaking wet. He had lost his cap with its death’s head badge. His brilliantined hair stood up in spikes. Paul had already lashed Rima to the main mast to keep her from being catapulted overboard. Now he secured Stutzer to the mizzen mast. It occurred to Paul that Stutzer may have become the first member of the secret police ever to be tied up by someone he had just arrested. He was too sick to protest. Paul checked the knots and made sure there was not so much slack in the line as to make it possible for Stutzer to fall overboard and be dragged behind Mahican. The last thing he and Rima needed was to dock at the navy pier with a drowned SS major in tow.

  Paul, queasy himself, was afraid that Mahican’s wooden hull, which was at least twice as old as he was, might break up under the stress of being towed at high speed. Stutzer could not command the S-boat’s captain to slow down because he had no means of communicating with him apart from shouting into the slipstream, which was useless, or gesticulating, which was hopeless because he was aft of the S-boat and all its lookouts were gazing forward or to port or starboard.

  As soon as the S-boat was tied up at the navy dock, Stutzer scrambled ashore and demanded that the gangplank be lowered. As soon as it was he dashed aboard. Rima and Paul heard him screaming at the lieutenant. His voice was shrill. He threatened investigations, interrogations that would reveal the hidden reasons for this outrage. At the very least, a long term of imprisonment was inevitable. Execution, even. The middle-aged sailor who brought mugs of sugary coffee to Paul and Rima grinned happily as he listened to this tirade.

  The apprentices, wearing civilian clothes, had been waiting on the dock for the S-boat. They too listened as their chief berated the captain. As yet they had no orders regarding Paul and Rima, therefore they ignored them. Stutzer went on and on, and although Paul could not see him, the memory of an enraged Stutzer uttering screams filled with spit formed in his mind. He had seen Stutzer in this condition once before, on the day when Lori slapped his face in the Kursaal Café. Had Paulus been captain of this vessel instead of the plump lieutenant, Paul thought, Stutzer would long since have been marched below in manacles if he had not walked the plank.

  At last Stutzer came ashore. He was still wet and it was clear that salt water and bile had ruined forever the fine wool of his beautifully tailored uniform. He was still furious. The captain of the S-boat had had his joke. Now he had an enemy. In a shout, Stutzer gave orders to his men, then disappeared. The apprentices conferred. The sailor who had brought the coffee was still with Paul and Rima on the dock.

  Paul said, “What happens to our boat?”

  “We may want to keep it, it’s such a nice one,” the sailor said.

  “I mean really.”

  “You’ll probably get it back from the navy, if the navy holds onto it. After all, what have you done that’s so terrible?”

  The apprentices approached, expressionless, marching in step. The sailor took back the empty coffee mugs and made a face. He acknowledged no authority but the navy’s.

  At secret police headquarters in Bergen, Paul and Rima were taken not to separate cells as they had expected, but to a small room with a window, and told to sit in chairs at opposite ends of a table. When Stutzer returned, more than an hour later, he wore civilian clothes—a blue double-breasted pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a silk polka-dot tie the color of red vermouth. Exactly the right amount of starched shirt cuff, fastened by an opal cufflink, protruded from the sleeve of his jacket. The handkerchief in his breast pocket was artfully folded and the indispensable party badge pinned to his left lapel was in exactly
the right place. He wore a gold watch on the inside of his wrist, like an aviator. His oiled hair was once again combed back flat on his narrow skull. His black shoes were highly polished and when he sat down, Rima saw that he was wearing gray silk socks with blue clocks, pulled tight over his ankles by garters.

  Stutzer called her into his office, leaving Paul in the holding room alone. He ignored her for several minutes—the indispensable ritual—while he read a single sheet of paper. Then, suddenly, he struck. Decisiveness in his every movement, he wrote something on the paper with flying pen, blotted the ink, picked up the telephone on his desk, and snapped out an order. A man came in and took the sheet of paper away. Only then did Stutzer look at Rima. His eyes were peculiar. Pupil and iris were nearly the same shade of very pale blue. This made them seem colorless.

  “Please do not imagine that you are under my protection,” Stutzer said.

  Rima had no idea what, if anything, he wanted her to say in reply. Why should she think, even for the shortest moment, that this man would protect her? From what could he possibly protect her except himself?

  Stutzer said, “What was Paul Christopher’s plan?”

  His plan? Rima said, “I don’t understand, Major.”

  “It is a simple question,” Stutzer said. “What was his intention last night? Where was he taking you?”

  “For a sail. It was my idea, because of the northern lights.”

  “You just went for a romantic sail under the aurora borealis. And let him stick his Aryan cock into you. Did you also suck it?”

  Rima lowered her eyes and said nothing.

  “Where was he taking you?” Stutzer asked. “It’s a simple question.”

  “Truly, Major, just for a sail. No destination was discussed except a return to Rügen.”

  “The two of you agreed to return to Rügen?”

  “Not in so many words. It was taken for granted that we would do so.”

  Stutzer continued to stare. This was not the answer he wanted. He began to breathe audibly. His face reddened, his eyes widened. Again he was motionless, not even blinking. Suddenly he screamed at her.

  “Tell me the truth or you will wish you had! You will wish you had never been born, you… .”

  He called her names, he described depraved sexual acts he believed she had committed, he repeated the details of her father’s shaming, he recited her ancestry including the names of her great-grandparents, he described the dark-skinned men her mother was sleeping with in Buenos Aires and the things they did to her and she to them. The entire tirade was delivered while every part of Stutzer’s body was perfectly motionless except his twisted face and popping eyes and his tongue, which was visible, red and narrow and making words inside his wide-open mouth. Despite the raving it was a remarkable demonstration of knowledge. He had memorized everything about Rima even though she was just one of what must have been hundreds of suspects. He was telling her that he knew everything, that he was capable of anything.

  Stutzer stopped shrieking as suddenly as he had begun. One moment he was rabid, the next he was composed and speaking in a calm, even genteel tone of voice.

  “Now, Miss, you must tell me the truth,” he said. “This information is vital to the Reich. It is more important than you can possibly know. Where was your American going to take you?”

  Rima was disoriented, nauseated. Once again she could not control her trembling body. Against her every conviction, she was overcome by the desire to placate this man. But she was struck dumb. She couldn’t form words. Stutzer had cut the circuit between her brain and her tongue.

  He said, actually smiling at her with small crooked teeth, “Think carefully, my dear. All you have to do is tell the truth.”

  2

  It was midnight before Hubbard discovered that Mahican was missing. Paulus advised him to wait till morning before worrying. After all, it was Midsummer night, the moon was up. No doubt Paul and Rima had sailed out to look at the aurora borealis. If their minds were elsewhere, the current might have carried them quite a long way. Possibly they had come ashore somewhere else on the island and at this moment were probably leaping through a bonfire. Even if they were still adrift, the sea was calm. Paul was a good sailor, the girl was capable. Patience was the thing. By dawn the innocents would more than likely be discreetly asleep in separate rooms.

  Paulus saw no need to discuss this situation with Hilde. Hubbard could think of any number of reasons not to discuss it with Lori. She would assume that Paul had been arrested again, that this time he might be gone for good. Lori was fearless no longer. How could she be, how could anyone be? They lived in a world in which all the signposts had been taken down.

  Hubbard rose at first light, as usual, and when he went downstairs he found Paulus waiting for him in the hall. Paulus beckoned him outside. Paulus had already been down to the mooring.

  “They’re not back,” he said. “No sign of the boat.”

  “This is not like Paul,” Hubbard said.

  “No, but perhaps he is a different Paul. This is the first time he’s sailed out to look at the northern lights with a beautiful girl on board. I’ll make inquiries.”

  What Paulus said he was going to do, he did immediately. He got out his army model bicycle, put the clips around his trousers cuffs, and rode off. In Paulus’s opinion, sunrise was the best time of day to go calling. People were more likely to tell the truth when they had just opened their eyes. In war and on maneuvers he had always gone out to talk to his troopers before reveille. They said what really was on their minds when they were half asleep and hungry and had a useless morning erection and the urge to urinate.

  Hubbard was helpless to take action. Mahican was their only boat. No one on Rügen would loan him another or tell him anything they knew. The local police, who for long years had been so affable, so fond of Lori and so proud of her heroic uncle and father and cousins, so tolerant of Lori’s foreign husband, were no longer approachable. They had stopped looking any member of the family in the eye on the day Lori slapped Stutzer’s face.

  At about seven o’clock, Paulus returned. He had talked to a friend who was a retired navy captain. Word of the hilarious joke that the S-boat captain had played on Stutzer had spread through the naval community that morning before coffee was boiled.

  “So the report is that Mahican survived being towed all night at flank speed, and that the children are wet but safe,” Paulus said.

  “Then where are they?”

  “That’s the rest of the report. They were taken into custody. Stutzer is said to think that Paul was trying to smuggle the girl out of Germany. She has a Jewish father, it seems, but for some reason she’s not classified as a Jew herself, or at lest not a full Jew.”

  Hubbard nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.

  “The navy has impounded your boat,” Paulus continued. “In their log, the recovery of Mahican and its passengers was a rescue, nothing more. You can claim your boat as soon as Stutzer goes back to Berlin and his mind is on something else.”

  “I wonder when that will be.”

  “Soon,” Paulus said. “That’s the impression I got.” His tone was grave. He said nothing about the exact condition in which Paul and Rima had been discovered by the delighted crew of the S-boat. Hubbard, he knew, shared everything with Lori or with his manuscript. Paulus realized how exceedingly unwise this was and how impossible it was to explain this to Hubbard.

  Lori was still asleep. When she woke around eleven, they chatted while she drank the cup of tea that Hubbard brought to her. When she was fully awake Hubbard told her the news, as tersely as Paulus had told it to him.

  Her voice flat, Lori said, “That wretched girl.”

  “It’s early in the day to decide who’s to blame,” Hubbard said. “The question is, what do we do now.”

  Lori knew immediately what to do. It was the only thing to do, and it could only be done in Berlin.

  She said, “There is nothing to be done in Rügen. Stutzer wi
ll take Paul to Berlin.”

  “I agree,” Hubbard said. “Berlin is the place. We’ll get O. G. on the case. Paulus can keep an eye on things here. We should leave now—pack up and go at once.”

  Lori said, “It takes too long to drive. I’ll take the train.”

  Hubbard was nonplussed. “Take the train? Why?”

  “Because it’s faster than the car. Because Stutzer may stop the car and confiscate it.”

  “But you’d be alone when you arrived. You’d have to wait till I got there.”

  There was little a woman could do in the Reich without the permission of her husband.

  She said, “Hubbard, the train is faster!”

  Hubbard capitulated. Minutes later Lori emerged, fully dressed in a Paris suit Hubbard had not seen before, looking beautiful apart from the dead eyes. The suit looked expensive. Hubbard wondered how Lori had saved so much out of her household purse and why she had spent what she had saved on couture. It was out of character.

  On the train, Lori took a window seat in a second-class compartment—one of Hubbard’s Yankee economies—and gazed out the window. She saw her own reflection superimposed on the drab landscape as it flowed by. Once or twice she thought she caught a glimpse of the Horch speeding down a country road in the distance, but she knew she must be wrong. She forbade her mind to communicate with her, but all the way to Berlin it played with the idea that no one on earth could save Paul except Reinhard Heydrich.

  It was still early afternoon when Lori arrived in Berlin. She had no means of contacting Heydrich unless she chose to walk unannounced into No. 8 Prinz-Albrechtstrasse and ask to see him. He had always lain in wait for her. She, the prey, had never imagined that she would want to see him, so no telephone number or address or secret semaphore was necessary. She never knew when he might turn up. He loved to surprise her. Once while Hubbard was lost in his writing, Heydrich had called at the Christophers’ apartment disguised as a municipal inspector, and in what he considered a hilarious prank, lectured Lori in a parade-ground voice on imaginary violations of various building codes. On another occasion he had had Hubbard and Paul taken into custody in the late morning, then arrived shortly afterward with an elaborate three-wine lunch packed in hampers and a squad of uniformed servants to cook and serve it. Because Heydrich always seemed to know whether she was at home and if she was not, where she was likely to be, Lori assumed that he had planted a spy in her building. Whoever was observing her and reporting her movements had to live on a lower floor. The Christophers’ apartment was on the second floor, Miss Wetzel’s on the first, with none below her on the ground floor and a blind veteran of the eastern front living alone across the hall. Miss Wetzel was always home, and she had nothing to do all day but listen for footsteps on the stairs and gaze through the peep hole in her door. Lori’s clothing would tell the spy where she was going—riding habit meant the Tiergarten, a plain dress, shopping, a better dress a social engagement, a suitcase, alarm.