A Bodyguard of Lies

by Donna Del Oro

  Maybe not glory. There were no parades or medals. Just two crazy neo-Nazis and their followers. Certainly, this Wolfgang and his counterpart were a couple of them and probably the limo driver as well.

  Meg silently shifted from one foot to the other. She was weary from worry and lack of sleep. Her grandmother, she could tell, was exhausted, too. The frantic rush from the thoroughbred farm, the hurried flight in a small, chartered jet to Germany, followed by an overnight stay in a borrowed flat, had thrown off the elderly woman’s rest schedule. But her grandmother had insisted, when Meg had awakened in the private jet, that she wanted to do this. It was important to her, Meg recognized.

  More than important, Meg sensed it was vital.

  Not only was her grandmother avoiding arrest by the Brits, but she was in her own way, Meg sensed, going home to Germany. In a way, Gran was getting closure.

  If such a thing were possible after the life her grandmother had led.

  Meg watched the strange trio. Pierre was the self-assigned photographer, posing her grandmother and Madeleine in front of the Parliament Building’s entrance steps. The neo-classical building, or Bundestag, was the center of Berlin and the new, reunited German Republic. Once the scene of many Nazi Party rallies and parades, the Thirties and Forties-era Reichstag was once the heart of Hitler’s regime. The passionate believers in that fascist state held their largest, most fervent displays of nationalism in front of this very building.

  “Are you German? Austrian? German-Swiss?” Meg asked Wolfgang in her halting German. The young hulk, sporting a blond buzz cut, piercing blue eyes, and a black leather jacket, said nothing. His gaze roved up and down her, then he turned away. Didn’t crack a smile or a frown. “I’m learning German,” she added, hoping to thaw him out. If she could learn a little about him, she’d learn more about the Le Blancs.

  This guy was well-trained. All he said was, “Gut fur dich,” which Meg translated as, Good for you. Said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, she noted.

  To which she muttered under her breath, “Well, kiss my ass.”

  That comment cracked a smile. “I wish I could,” Wolfgang mumbled in perfect English as he smirked, then scowled and turned back to watching the photo shoot.

  Meg scowled and scooted a foot or two away from his side. Don’t provoke them, Jake had warned. She decided he was right. She was no match for Wolfgang and the muscular driver. Nor the Le Blancs. Having seen their handguns while on the jet, she knew they were armed and dangerous. The two hulks as well.

  While traveling up the Lindenstrasse from the Potsdamer Platz, the Le Blancs had discussed the various photoshoots they’d planned with their grandmother. Berlin was first, then various locations in Hannover, Clare Eberhard’s hometown. Gradually, in bits and pieces Meg was learning the truth about her grandmother’s origins.

  The Le Blancs had already photographed Meg’s grandmother standing outside Churchill’s War Rooms. The scene of Clare’s greatest deception, they crowed, and her greatest triumph.

  The horror of it made Meg’s flesh crawl. Made her stomach cramp into knots. Her grandmother had once spied for the Nazis! Caused the deaths of countless Allied pilots and their crews on bombing runs over Germany. Exposed French Resistance fighters and other Allied sympathizers who hid Jewish civilians, resulting in their executions. Meg had read the books and seen the movies. Entire families executed because they dared to hide a Jew or Allied soldier. Her skull shivered with such horrors.

  Madeleine had even fastened her grandmother’s valuable, bejeweled hummingbird pin on the elderly woman’s coat lapel, which the Le Blancs wanted displayed in the photos. In English, so that Meg could understand, Madeleine had explained its significance. The pin represented her grandmother’s code name during the war and all that she had accomplished for the Third Reich as one of their most successful spies. It was a gift from one of the Gestapo’s Unterfuhrers. Meg wondered how Madeleine would know such a thing unless her grandmother, Clare Eberhard, had told her and Pierre.

  Not for the first time, Meg wondered who the Le Blancs really were. And how had they found her grandmother.

  “You recall the glorious parades from the Potsdamer to the Reichstag, Mutter,” said Madeleine. The woman was now using the term, Mother, to address Meg’s grandmother. “You were there when der Fuhrer gave his stirring speech at the mass rally in 1933, when the National Socialist Party came to power. Your father was a high-ranking official of the Party, who then became an Under Minister of Culture. You were there. Do you remember how proud you and your mother were? How proud Horst Eberhard was? The count’s son, who had married into a family of great political influence. And to show his devotion to his new wife’s family, he became an SS officer, and then a spy. You were so proud of him.”

  Her grandmother’s eyes glowed with a sheen of long-faded memories and emotions, now made vivid by these prompted recollections. Madeleine was stirring up in the elderly woman the passion of her past fanaticism.

  “Oh yes! I was there, though just a teenager. I was twenty, I think. I had just married Horst. We were so excited, so much in love, so happy for our country! We were looking forward to serving the Third Reich and making it victorious. Any way we could. No sacrifice was too big.”

  In the limo, Clare had turned to Meg and in English recalled that time when all seemed possible in pre-war Deutschland. The Third Reich was the answer to all their prayers; Adolf Hitler was their messiah. Meg realized that her grandmother, in this unusually lucid period, was trying to help her understand what life was like then and why she’d joined the SS intelligence service.

  “Horst had the same linguistic abilities. Later, we taught languages at the university. We both spoke English like natives. French, too. It seemed natural that we would aid the German cause by going to Britain and spying there.”

  Meg had remained silent, letting her grandmother take her hand. Her own was limp, clasped inside the gloved, grotesquely twisted hand of the elderly woman. Too choked up to speak, Meg could only stare at their two hands and wipe away her tears. The bond they’d shared all these years, though now frayed, still tied one generation to the other. With a shudder of emotion, Meg listened to her grandmother’s explanation.

  “And then, just twelve years later, April, 1945, the Soviet flag was raised over the ruined Reichstag building. Ruined by Allied bombs. All of Berlin. All of Germany…ruined.”

  “Yes, a terrible outcome,” exclaimed Madeleine.

  “Hannover, too,” cried her grandmother, “though I tried to warn them. I discovered from Captain Ferguson one night that the RAF was going to bomb Hannover early the next morning. My home! My family! I broke protocol and radioed to warn them to evacuate the city! Later, I learned there hadn’t been time to evacuate everyone. It was payback, you see, for the London blitz. For Coventry and all the other English cities bombed by the Germans. I wanted to save my city! When it mattered so much, I failed!”

  Meg watched fearfully as her grandmother’s voice rose in shrill hysteria, her eyes growing large with the pain of remembrance. The elderly woman’s breathing grew shallow; she began to pant and perspire.

  “Madeleine, can’t you stop this?” Meg urged the woman. “Grandma’s getting all worked up! It’s not good for her heart. The stress—!”

  Madeleine shut her off with a raised finger. A glance at the husky, young man at Meg’s side was an implied threat. If Meg behaved, she’d be allowed to come along on their photo shoots. If she didn’t, Wolfgang would keep her at the flat, shackled…or forced to undergo another body search. The lascivious way Wolf looked at her occasionally was message enough. What he did with her at the flat did not concern the Le Blancs. That was their implied threat.

  “Meg, be quiet and learn something. For all of us in the movement your grandmother represents the history of our great past. The grand potential of the Third Reich.”

  The potential for disaster, Meg thought, that many reasonable-minded Germans foresaw. Unfortunately, Hitler and his black-shirts an
d brown-shirts had been clever and diabolical at eliminating dissenters from their midst.

  “Yes, those early days were a wonderful time, so full of promise,” her grandmother affirmed shakily, “But then the war…” The old woman frowned and clenched her hands together, her mouth trembling.

  Now, standing in front of the old Reichstag, it was Pierre’s turn to bolster the old woman’s flagging enthusiasm. He posed Clare and Madeleine at the bottom of the steps before he set the timer on the camera resting on its tripod.

  “The National Socialists could have won the war, Frau Snider,” he said in French, “had the U.S. not gotten involved. All of Europe surrendered to the Third Reich like falling dominoes. Great Britain would have fallen, too, thanks to our brilliant scientists and the V-1 and V-2 rockets.”

  He shed his grim expression and smiled triumphantly before striding over to stand on the other side of her grandmother.

  “Dear lady,” he added, “you gave advance warnings of enemy bombings, exposed enemies all over Europe, helped the Heinkel bombers find their targets in London and elsewhere. At great risk to your own life. You are truly to be commended and admired. Our magazine spread of you will do just that. Hail you for the heroine that you are. The praise is long overdue.”

  It was apparent to Meg that Pierre knew his World War II history; and now his propaganda story and photos of Clare Eberhard would be used to recruit new, young fascists. Like Wolfgang. Her grandmother wasn’t thinking clearly, for those same stories would also seal her fate.

  Not that the Le Blancs cared.

  Meg sighed and took a long, impartial look at her grandmother. Praying for insight, Meg wondered if this was the true Mary Snider. Who was Clare Eberhard? A ruthless, Nazi fanatic who killed and spied for her country? Or a lovesick woman led astray by her fanatical father and husband? As Clare’s story unfolded, Meg began to see a more complete picture of the woman she’d loved all of her life. Just as Jake had tried to tell her once.

  Finally, the entire truth was emerging.

  Had her grandmother ever loved John Snider, the American pilot who had thought he was marrying an Irish woman who’d spent the war years working for the Allies? Meg frowned. Poor Grandpa Snider. What would he have done if he’d known the truth?

  What would Uncle Jack do when he discovered the truth about his mother? Would it destroy his Navy career?

  Did Meg’s own mother know the truth? Was that why she was so screwed up? Why she became estranged from her elderly mother?

  “Clare, the work you and Horst did was vital,” Pierre added, “As your story and these photos will attest. You will rally and inspire an entire new generation of followers! Like our grandson there, and his friends. Imagine, Clare Eberhard. The only German deep-cover spy never caught by Allied intelligence! What an amazing story!”

  In his hand, a remote clicked away as one exposure after another was shot. By Meg’s side, Wolfgang was making a video of the entire photo shoot with a handheld video camera. Minutes passed. Pierre changed their poses several times, the young man adjusting his stance as needed.

  Madeleine squeezed Clare’s shoulder. “The other mole, the Black Widow. Wasn’t that Lady Sarah Spencer—or after her marriage, Lady Wexford? Her diary told quite a story. If the English only knew!”

  Her grandmother’s gaze drifted from Meg’s face to a faraway place in the distance. Clare Eberhard stopped smiling.

  Pierre and Wolfgang stopped filming.

  “Yes, Horst called her donkey-face. She was a fool but not dangerous. Then there was Catherine, uh, I can’t recall her English name—Horst discovered that she was a doublecross agent. The British had turned her and made her spy for them. Horst gave her a traitor’s death before he left England.”

  Understanding a little of her grandmother’s German, Meg’s hand flew up to her mouth, stifling a gasp. Madeleine ignored her and patted Clare’s shoulder.

  “No doubt, a fitting bullet to the head,” she said, shifting to French as she glanced around. Other tourists were stopping nearby to take photos.

  “My only regret,” the elderly woman shuddered, “is that Horst did not survive the war. When they sent him to France, to gather information about the Allied troops there…oh God, I knew it would end badly. He took Sarah’s diary but I don’t know what happened to it.”

  Madeleine adjusted her pose and shared a long look with Pierre. “We’ve read several accounts of what happened to him. No one was certain.”

  Pierre continued in the rapid French that Madeline had begun using, “The Americans caught him but he convinced them he was a British soldier who’d lost his unit. I learned later that a Messerschmitt pilot separated from his squadron and came in low and machine-gunned him and the rest of his squad. The Wehrmacht was withdrawing from France but trying to protect their rear guard. Such a Godless world, that Germans mistook poor Horst for an Allied soldier…then gunned him down like a dog.”

  “A terrible end for such a patriot,” Madeleine said, shaking her head. Madeleine, Pierre and Wolfgang, their fists over their hearts, bowed their heads in a moment of silence.

  Her grandmother also bowed her head. Meg watched their tribute to Horst Eberhard. She was amazed, observing the contradiction before her. Her grandmother’s behavior, too, was a contradiction.

  At times, she seemed lucid, her total recall appearing remarkable when speaking about the distant past. But when brought back to the present, she appeared disoriented and confused. As if her mind was now fixated on the war and nothing else.

  Without warning, her grandmother dissolved into sobs. Meg, having never seen her grandmother cry before, started to go to her but Wolfgang pulled her back. His big hand clamped on her arm like a vise. Meg longed to kick him in the balls. Instead, she recovered her composure, buried her fury and watched helplessly as the Le Blancs fed her grandmother’s habit.

  “I’m sorry. I need another painkiller,” Clare sobbed.

  Against Meg’s protest, the Canadian woman had taken over her grandmother’s carry-on bag with all the medications. In control of the drugs, Madeleine whipped the bottle of painkillers out of her pocket. With a hurried look at Pierre, she gave the old woman a pill, washed down by one of the cold beers they’d carried with them from the limo’s fridge.

  “Madeleine, please,” Meg objected. “She shouldn’t have another one, not until tonight. Certainly not with beer. Her doctor warned against overdosing.”

  A warning look from the Le Blancs, and a painful arm-squeeze from Wolfgang, discouraged her from saying more. She recalled Jake’s warning. For her and her grandmother’s sake, Meg shut up.

  Madeleine was quick to calm the elderly woman down.

  “Ah, but Mutter, Vater didn’t survive, but I did. Thank heavens, dear Grossmutter sent me away to Zurich. I, and your youngest sisters, were saved by your mother’s wisdom. She disobeyed her husband and sent us to safety.”

  “My sisters? Dietlind and Stefanie? Will I see them in Hannover?” Clare’s sobs subsided and she looked hopefully at Madeleine.

  “Of course, dear Mutter,” Madeleine assured the old woman, patting her arm consolingly. “As I wrote to you, Pierre and I were able to locate them. It was difficult, but finding you and my aunts became the sole reason for my existence.”

  Her grandmother had a German-born daughter? This Madeleine was the daughter of Horst and Clare Eberhard? Was that why her grandmother was so easily manipulated by this couple? Gran believed that Madeleine was her long-lost daughter?

  Meg noted the quick, guileful look exchanged between Madeleine and Pierre Le Blanc. The smug expression on Pierre’s face was slowly replaced by a speculative one when he glanced at Meg. Then he returned to his camera to make another setting.

  Meg’s heart sank. In that instant, as the Le Blancs exchanged looks, Meg’s question was answered. Madeleine was not her grandmother’s long-lost daughter. Sure, she probably fit the physical type. She was the right age. It was feasible that Clare’s young daughter could have been sent
to Switzerland during the war. But her grandmother would’ve received word long before now that her daughter had survived.

  Her eyes brimming with tears, Meg caved and let them stream down her face. The Le Blancs’ claim was simply a ruse to get Clare to cooperate, Meg was certain. Clearly, they were exploiting her in a cruel and devious way. What would that do to her grandmother’s health when she ultimately discovered the truth about them?

  Madeleine led the elderly woman slowly up the entrance steps to a place beside one of the massive columns. Pierre and Wolfgang followed, with Meg strong-armed along. She felt the GPS beacon abrading her crotch as the man forced her to walk closely beside him. Not the most sanitary place to hide the transmitter Jake had given her. She hoped the damned thing was working.

  Tucked inside a sanitary napkin Meg was wearing inside her panties, it was transmitting their location. Meg prayed it was, anyway. Madeleine had searched her suitcase and found nothing out of the ordinary except a box of sanitary napkins, which she’d noticed Meg buying in the rest stop store. The simple explanation Meg had given her seemed to suffice. It wasn’t comfortable but it was concealed. Good thing she’d put it in then, for the goons had taken her totally by surprise at the stud farm and had chloroformed her. Unconscious afterward for a while, Meg was certain the beacon would’ve been found had she not hidden it well.

  The transmitter was beckoning Jake. If he was within range, that is.

  Please, Jake, get here soon.

  Meg hugged her arms as a cool breeze fluttered through nearby plane trees. Despite a smidgen of hope, Meg was pessimistic the beacon was working. Her mind shivered with fear. What if Jake told MI5 where they were going and British intelligence discovered them first? Her grandmother would be arrested and thrown into jail. Maybe she would be, too.

  Maybe that was the least of her worries.

  Maybe she and her grandmother would be safer with the Brits. After Madeleine and Pierre were finished with her grandmother, then what would happen to them?