Cave Dwellers

by Richard Grant

  Now the chief began a long-winded disquisition with frequent reference to the papers in his hand. He presented these one at a time—Oskar recognized the red Swiss passport when its turn came—and turned at certain moments to point at one of the cars and once to gesture more generally toward the Höhe Meissner, as though drawing that into his story line. The Gestapo men nodded and dutifully tried to follow, but after a while it seemed they’d heard enough, the complications of high-level police work wearing them down. Things were simpler in the Gestapo, and you could thank the Führer for that. One of them fetched an official-looking document from the Opel and handed this to the chief. Oskar guessed it was a Passierschein, a magical piece of paper conferring freedom of travel. Since there might be other checkpoints ahead, this would save everyone a lot of bother.

  Alles in Ordnung, then. The meeting ended, and the police convoy crossed the stream. Now onward to the town of Kaufungen. Where, in a tidy building across the street from a Biergarten, by order of the Hauptwachtmeister, the four companions—minus Clair, who was ushered into an interview room—were separated, led to small holding cells and locked away.

  —

  Standartenführer Kohlwasser was of two minds. Three, possibly.

  The tire repair was taking too long—the fool of an adjutant proving unequal to a simple bullet hole—so he strolled ahead with Mr. Toby Lugan to the Gasthaus Schwalbenthal, which, as he’d rightly estimated, lay only a few hundred meters up the road. Someone—and he had an idea who—had gone to considerable lengths to prevent him from getting here. Yet here he was, and he wasted no time apprising himself as to how things stood.

  The senator’s boy had come and gone before him. So had his confederates, three in number, their descriptions tallying to an acceptable degree with previous sighting reports going right back to Bremerhaven. The little gang had been apprehended by the Ordnungspolizei, detained for a short time and then transported from the scene, leaving scarcely a quarter hour ago. So much the Standartenführer gleaned from various bystanders, including the landlord, who struck him as a shifty type; it might be well to pull him in on suspicion of collusion, but that could wait. For the present, he felt it safe to infer that the prisoners were en route to the local Gendarmerie, where their disposition would fall to the pigheaded local cop who’d been so unhelpful on the telephone. He doubted they’d make it that far—the Gestapo should have roadblocks up by now—but in any case, they were temporarily out of his grasp. Although that might be to the good—and here was where his two- or three-mindedness came in.

  It shouldn’t take long, the state of his staff car notwithstanding, to locate the criminals and arrest them on his own authority. Whisk them away, charge them with murder and drop them in a hole somewhere. The problem there was the American boy, over whom a political storm would surely arise, and whom the SS would be obliged at some point to release. Which would not quell the storm and might even intensify it, as God knew what sort of lies the boy would spout. And so a different course recommended itself.

  As long as the criminals were in the custody of the Ordnungspolizei, responsibility for their safety and well-being resided there as well. Should anything unfortunate happen—say, a party of aggrieved citizens, driven to violence, storming the station house and taking justice into their own hands—the SS would be blameless. Such an event could be arranged.

  But there was a third possibility—or, really, a refinement of the second. It depended on Toby Lugan, who had indicated a certain ambivalence about the prospect of returning young Clairborne Townsend to his father. Could he be pressed to make his misgivings a little more explicit? Because if so, and if Kohlwasser could resolve the problem in a satisfactory manner…well, the minority counsel would be in his debt, would he not? And the debt would be enforceable under pain of blackmail, should it come to that.

  This was almost too good to dwell on right now. And it came on top of another imminent triumph, the exposure of a conspiracy that began with the so-called Erwin Kaspar but extended, if his suspicions were correct, to the senior ranks of the rival service and might even reach Canaris himself.

  But first things first. Kohlwasser was stuck on this accursed mountain. He looked around for Toby—and there he was, standing with one leg hitched up on a chair and a glass of red beverage in his hand, holding forth to an elderly couple who appeared to find him entertaining, though it was doubtful they understood what he was going on about.

  Toby saw Kohlwasser and saluted him by hoisting his glass. “For want of a tire, eh, Helmut? Come try some of this. I can feel my hair growing back.”

  —

  The admiral’s giant Mercedes seemed to fill the main street of Kaufungen from curb to curb. The beefy chauffeur had gotten the feel of the motorcar by now, after a long morning on the road. He piloted smoothly around such obstructions as presented themselves—farm wagons, dogs, a flower vendor whose wares posed a colorful menace, a small pack of pedestrians committing the un-German crime of jaywalking (on which grounds he judged them to be tourists).

  It would have been nice, he thought, to have some processional music to accompany their stately passage through town. Your first thought naturally would be Elgar—but that might strike some listeners as unpatriotic. Handel would get you halfway there, something from the Royal Fireworks. But to be really safe you couldn’t do better than Beethoven: Symphony 7, Movement II, the Allegretto. He’d have to downshift for that and purr through Kaufungen at a walker’s pace, timing their arrival to coincide with the big dynamic surge around 6:50—the strings build to forte, the Mercedes rolls to a halt, the percussion kicks in, the passenger door opens, the winds restate the main theme in a triumphal timbre and out steps the Baroness. Bravissima!

  Well, he would do the best he could.

  —

  Oskar tried pacing in his cell, but there was no room for it. He’d expected bars; in the movies there were always bars, which you could clutch in despair or stare through with forlorn yet heroic resolve: you would get out of here somehow, no jail could hold you for long. This cell, however, had only a door, like other doors except for the small viewing hatch. He didn’t see much point in staring out of that. He scoured what remained of his inner strength, hoping to scrape up a spoonful of heroic resolve, but what he got instead was an absurd and tragic recollection: Leo Gandelmann trying to pace in his tiny apartment, flapping his scarecrow arms, a clatter of cheap cookware, a ridiculous foil box. Zoo animals bellowing faintly in the background. Oskar professing his love for Germany. Leo’s condescending smile. Let’s have dinner after the war.

  The loud voices coming from somewhere down the hall seemed at first to be connected to that memory; he imagined an impressive primate grunting in dissatisfaction, Leo the stoic zookeeper responding with a patient lecture about regulations. It took a few moments for that cheerful delusion to fade and something more dire, therefore more believable, to replace it.

  So far, it had been possible to expect that however bad things looked, they were proceeding according to some kind of plan. Which plan had required that Oskar and his companions be taken in by the police—a seemingly fatal development that turned out to be lifesaving, for how else could they have slipped through the Gestapo cordon around the Höhe Meissner? And this, by extension, had given Oskar hope, even a fragile confidence. Jaap Saxo, he imagined, was busy in the wings, masterfully stage-managing events as they unfolded. He’d foreseen every eventuality, placed operatives at critical locations, hacked a path through the deadly thorn roses, and now Oskar needed only to follow it.

  But how long, really, could you sustain that sort of wishful thinking? There had been one way out, and this is where it had led them: a police station at the heart of a police state. Where they were locked in separate rooms, unable to communicate or carry on with their foolish conspiracy. And what hit Oskar hardest now was that Jaap had laid it out so plainly, right from the start. That very first night in the Baron’s library, he’d told Oskar exactly how it would go. You’ll have
absolutely no one to back you up if things turn out badly. And look: the man was as good as his word. There was nothing left but waiting, and that might soon be over too.

  The voices down the hall were getting louder. Who would it be, he wondered—the Hauptwachtmeister again? Or was it time for the SS to take over? How long would a hastily fabricated Swiss passport protect him? Would he be tortured? Would he break down, betray his allies? How far would it go, how many names would he give up? (Even Leo’s? No, please, not that.) And what about his friends? What awful things would they do to Lena? And Hagen…well, at least he was a soldier. One of their own. They might show him the kindness of a quick bullet.

  The footsteps, when they came at last, fell with the weight of inevitability. A key clanked in the lock of Oskar’s door. It opened just a few inches and the footsteps moved onward; he could hear other doors being opened in turn. Well, why drag it out? Oskar stepped into the hall. Hagen and Lena came out after him. They stood there looking at once fatalistic, puzzled and expectant, but what could they be expecting at this point? The old desk sergeant gestured to the three of them—Come on, get moving—and there was nothing to do but trudge after him, past the booking desk, on to the anteroom.

  But the scene out there was not what Oskar expected.

  —

  Chief Watchmaster Hans Diehl had seen a bit of everything over the course of thirty-two years as a policeman. He’d seen his fellow human beings at their worst and at their most exalted. He’d witnessed acts of breathtaking heroism and of unspeakable depravity. He’d parlayed with thieves and rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty and consoled grieving parents and endured the smirks of criminals his evidence had failed to convict.

  Yet here was something new: a specimen of humanity he’d never encountered before, a rare sort of creature that, had it ever existed, must be long extinct by now—or so Hans Diehl had thought.

  Here was the Baroness von F——.

  Though not large in stature, she seemed to occupy the entire anteroom, leaving just enough space for her male companion, an elderly general who, from the decorations on his chest, must have participated in every action from the Battle of Sedan to the spring ’18 offensive. The lady herself looked as though she might have been a pioneering aviatrix, then gone on to become a silent film star, then gone on to marry the wealthiest man in the movie business, then poisoned him. Her gaze was intent, conveying a fervent and heartfelt interest, as if the chief were among the most fascinating people she’d ever met. He felt a powerful need to do something for her—open a door, light a cigarette, lay his coat down over a puddle. It was sorcery. There was danger here. The lady was an aged enchantress, a figure out of Gothic myth.

  “Est là quelque part,” she said, which he took to be the start of a fatal incantation. “Nous pouvons parler?”

  The old general cleared his throat, like a rumble of distant artillery. “She wants to know if there’s someplace we can talk.”

  Accede to this at your peril, an inner voice warned. And yet in the next moment the chief watched himself spring forward to release the latch securing the half door that led beyond the sergeant’s desk. He stepped aside, motioning toward his private office. At least he didn’t bow, thank God, as the Baroness swept past him. He caught the gaze of his sergeant, who was giving him a look he didn’t care to interpret, it was so impertinent. Well, damn him. Hans Diehl would handle this. Whatever it was.

  They’d barely gotten seated and he was still composing his first question—would “How may I help you?” sound too eager, too subservient?—when the Baroness surprised him by drawing a handkerchief and dabbing her eyes.

  “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur,” she said, regaining her composure only, it appeared, by an act of considerable will. “You must forgive an old woman. The truth is, I’ve become so worried about my nephew. If you might be able to help me, I should be grateful beyond words.”

  Her German was almost as thorny as her French, tangled up in subjunctives and conditionals, a living answer to why the chief had never gotten far with Goethe. He thought it remarkable that someone still talked like this.

  “Tell me about this nephew, then.”

  “He’s my great-nephew, actually. Or is it my great-great? These relationships can be so confusing. His mother, you see…”

  The chief didn’t try to follow it. He’d always pictured aristocratic families as being like fancy spiders, stringing their spangled webs all over Europe, crossing back and forth to mate and spawn and devour one another’s young. The lady’s drawn-out explanation comported pretty well with that. The only part that concerned him was the final bit: this great-great thrice-removed relative having come to Germany a couple of weeks ago and then fallen out of contact. Last known destination, the Naturpark Meissner-Kaufunger Wald.

  All right, then—here were a couple of points the chief could latch onto. “You say he came to Germany. Came from where? And what’s his name, this nephew of yours?”

  “Stian. His name is Stian Fogel. He has come from Switzerland.”

  The chief sat back in his chair. He hadn’t consciously been leaning forward, but there you are: the spell of the enchantress had rendered him uncharacteristically solicitous. That spell lifted now, and in its place was incredulity. Was he to believe that the young detainee just down the hall—the one notable for his extraordinary blankness—was a blood relative of the Baroness’s? And that, by some happenstance yet to be explained, he’d fallen in with the missing son of a U.S. senator, target of a nationwide manhunt? The chief hadn’t gotten far with mathematics, either, but he reckoned the probability of this must be on a par with stepping into the street only to be trampled by a runaway rhinoceros.

  And yet…there was evidence in support of it. There was the letter, smelling faintly of attar of rose. That florid handwriting. Your old loving Auntie.

  “Could you tell me,” he asked the Baroness—and, damn it, he was leaning forward again—“was your nephew traveling alone?”

  The grande dame gave him a sly, rather coquettish smile. “Oh no, mein Herr, I should say he was not. There is a lady friend. We have not met her. We have not yet even been allowed to know her name. Il est tout un grand secret!”

  The chief sighed. Of course, he thought, all the pieces would fit. If you were going to make up a story as outlandish as this one, you wouldn’t skimp on the details. But who in God’s name would attempt such a thing, and why would someone like the Baroness—not to mention this Brigadegeneral, holder of the Iron Cross—go along with it? Each theory was as implausible as the other.

  The obvious course was to draw no premature conclusion, take a formal statement from the Baroness, roll it in with the others, keep his nose to the ground and go on with his investigation.

  A knock came at the door. He could tell it was his sergeant and that it was urgent by the pattern of raps, a code they’d been using for years. The door opened just enough for the old fellow to stick his head in.

  “There’s a call on the radio,” he said. “It’s that SS officer, the one from Berlin. He’s driving here now. Something to do with the, ah, guests down the hall.”

  And now this, thought the chief, on top of everything else. “How did he sound?” he asked, ignoring the rather blatant curiosity being shown by the Brigadier. “Did he sound angry?”

  The sergeant’s head extended a little farther into the room. “He sounded…actually he sounded pretty excited.”

  Excited. Well, why not? There was a prize to be had. Honor and glory for the desk warrior from Berlin. The missing Yankee boy had been run to ground by good old-fashioned police work—no thanks to any goons in leather jackets blocking the roads and waving their guns around. But try telling that to anyone. Everything belonged to the SS now—including the credit that rightfully should go to someone else. Thirty-two years of hard plodding, and Hans Diehl had no say over who went and who stayed in his own damn lockup. Well, we’ll just see about that.

  “My lady,” he said, rising from his
chair, “I have the pleasure to inform you that I believe we have your nephew here, just up the hall. My sergeant will go fetch him for you. And his lady friend.”

  The sergeant raised an eyebrow; he was asking something, the chief couldn’t tell what. Ah.

  “Yes,” he said, “bring all of them. And their belongings. Don’t leave a thing. We’ll show our friend from Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse a clean house.”

  “Vous faites la bonne décision,” the Baroness said with conviction.

  It didn’t sound like a profession of thanks. The chief wasn’t sure what it was.

  The old general stood and clapped a firm hand on his shoulder. “Good call,” he said quietly. “We’ll take it from here.”

  —

  Toby Lugan found the Standartenführer an interesting character to observe, a case study in some psychological condition he didn’t have a name for—call it reflective malevolence. Reflective in the sense of having been considered, weighed against other options, settled upon rationally. For example: he could be chatting away quite amiably, as he’d been doing with Toby on the drive down from the mountain (a cautious drive, the adjutant mistrusting his own repair work), then cheerfully and with no change in demeanor move on to the topic of torturing a confession out of someone. Should it be done secretly or in front of witnesses, so as to make a more telling impression? Should the guilty parties be executed on the spot or consigned to a camp to die more gradually? And how should one deal with the press? Issue a general statement or leak the story to a tame reporter and reward the fellow with a scoop?

  “I have a man,” he confided, “at the Morgenpost. He’s been helpful recently. The only worry is, will he be sober enough to get the tone right? The…the regret, you know. That these souls were so misguided as to bring this fate on themselves. And the hope that others may learn from their example.”

  There was nothing personal about it, nothing emotional—that was the point. He reminded Toby in a roundabout fashion of the Honorable Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, an entertaining fellow who’d recently taken to the Senate floor to oppose an anti-lynching bill, for the Negroes’ own good. He’d given the matter a lot of thought. There was not a hateful bone in his body; he personally bore no ill will toward anyone. He’d just come to the reasoned conclusion that it was best for the Negroes, all things considered, if now and then a few of them got lynched.