Fulcrum of Malice

by Patrick W O'Bryon

  The death house at Cherche-Midi prison was silent but for the sobbing of a prisoner in the next cubicle. A man, nameless, faceless. Perhaps one of those shackled partisans whose delivery had taken precedence over hers on the day of her incarceration. The courage of her neighbor had dissolved into terror, but perhaps he had more to lose than Marita. Rumor was that men got the rope rather than the guillotine. At least the blade of the Fallbeil was quick. The hangman used a narrow cord and simple knot. No snapping the neck, no clean break, just a long, agonizing struggle to assure the condemned saw the error of his ways before he perished.

  In the tight confines of her death cell she sat on the narrow metal bench bracketed to the wall. No bed—it would never have fit—or even a jug of water. She wouldn’t be here long enough to need either. The high, barred window to her back cast a pale light. She tracked the zig-zag course of roaches scuttling at her feet. From time to time she swatted away a fly. Giving her hands something to do, she gathered up her ragged hair. She had kept the gift from Frau Biedermann and now used the comb as a clip. The guard with the handcuffs had accepted her explanation that it would keep her hair free of the descending blade.

  The damp walls reeked of urine. It made her wish she had peed before leaving her cell. There had been so little time to prepare even knowing that each hour might be her last. When they did finally come for her she was too nervous to think of any personal comfort. The other women had called out their support—“Vive la France, vive le général de Gaulle”—as the guards led her to this death house an hour earlier. Good women. Brave women. And now both blood and urine would soil the bed of the guillotine. Just one more mess for her captors to clean up. I piss on all you Boche bastards!

  Her appeal for clemency had been denied, her tribunal a farce. In a barren room with the appearance of hasty preparation—a Nazi flag tacked to the wall behind the magistrates’ dais, another table for the attorneys, a single chair for her—justice was served. The presiding judge obviously had better things to do. Perhaps he was late for a luncheon at Le Pré Catalan. Playing bookends to the head magistrate, the two assessors observed her from time to time over their reading glasses. Her timid attorney Bertin smelled of sweat, his collar obviously too tight, his fingers drumming incessantly on the tabletop during the brief proceedings. Nervous facing an important German judge, she guessed. She herself had remained calm, resigned to her fate, unwilling to give her persecutors reason to doubt her strength and character. A heavy chain bound her waist and confined her wrists. An armed soldier stood on either side of her. What a threat to the mighty Reich she was.

  Once she had made clear she needed no interpreter, the presiding judge read the charges to the prosecutor, who then spent a mere quarter hour making his case. He emphasized the English design of the wireless set found in her office and her easy access to intelligence in a club filled nightly with Reich officers. Several times he mentioned her nefarious Jewish blood. The sole evidence to support the charges was the transmitter, on display before the tribunal.

  Marita received a token opportunity to explain her purported treason. While she spoke, the presiding judge organized the stack of files before him, probably estimating how soon his odious workday would be over. After her denial of guilt, he nodded to the assessors and declared judgment and punishment in one breath: “Immediate execution by beheading for this traitor to the Greater Reich.” Bertin had only an “I told you so” look to share. Marita herself shrugged off the foregone conclusion to this farce. As they led her from the room, the chief magistrate already called the next case.

  Upon her return to the cell block, her fellow inmates broke loose with questions, ignoring the rule for silence in the presence of guards unless directly addressed. “It’s to be death, my friends,” Marita smiled with self-imposed nonchalance, “as expected.” “But they never execute women!” came the response from several cells, giving empty hope to those who still denied what was happening in their midst. Then the block had fallen silent.

  In the death house, a deep, throaty laugh preceded the arrival of shuffling boots and jangling keys. The voices stopped outside her cell and she heard the ancient tumbler start its turn. “No, wait! We’ll do the men first.” The key hesitated in the lock at the words of the man in charge. She straightened her back, her hands tightly knit to quiet the trembling. “Oh go ahead, bring the woman along, as well. It’ll do her good to watch them dance.” Her door creaked open. “Good morning, mademoiselle. A fine day to meet your maker.” He turned to give his colleagues a smile. “But don’t you worry—I am very good at my job.” His comrades echoed that husky laugh. Not a German. A foreigner, his French suggestive of Switzerland.

  Long ago, Ryan had spoken enthusiastically of bicycling through the Alps over snow-peaked passes and coasting down into green valleys dotted with charming farmsteads. One day they would go there together, he had promised. Or perhaps it wasn’t a promise, only pillow talk of no consequence. But that was more than a decade past, a beautiful moment she would never experience. She inhaled deeply as she rose to her feet, knowing that all she had loved and lost, and whatever might have come in her future—all that was now about to end. And she refused to cry.

  She smiled at the men in black uniforms: “Shall we get on with it, messieurs?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ermenonville, Occupied France

  19 September 1941

  Rolf remained tight-lipped over the phone when he summoned Ryan and Argent back to the château. Two weeks had passed with no news of Marita, so both were on edge when the calls came in. He had insisted on meeting again at Ermenonville. When Edmond finally braked to a halt, Rolf was waiting in the courtyard, casually smoking a cigarette beneath the entry portico. He greeted them with a smile and handshake and asked them to follow him up the curving staircase. He refused to speak further until they reached the room with the tall French windows and a view of Paris in the distance.

  “Some good news at last, gentlemen.” Rolf removed a glass-stoppered carafe from the sideboard and set out three snifters. He began to pour, hesitating long enough to wipe a smudge from the rim of one bulbous glass. “Our lovely friend is doing fine for the moment, as safe as can be expected, and—”

  Ryan interrupted: “Can we speak with her, see her?”

  “Sadly, no on both counts. She’s been in the women’s wing of Cherche-Midi these last weeks. We finally found a Justice Department insider open to our bribe. He gave us what we wanted. Amazing what well-spent francs can do.”

  “How’s she holding up?” Argent demanded.

  “Your charming Mademoiselle Lesney survived interrogation and a typical staged trial, but it’s clear powerful men still want her out of the picture, and quickly. But we got off damn well—they learned nothing of the operation at the club.”

  “Who gives a damn about that?” Rolf’s manner infuriated Ryan. This was Marita he was talking about. “How do we reach her, get her out?”

  “Nothing’s ever that simple, Ryan. She was convicted of espionage, a capital offense. The tribunal sentenced her to death.”

  Argent grabbed Rolf’s arm, his patience also at an end. “And with what proof? You said they didn’t catch on to us!”

  Ryan finally made the connection. “They convicted solely on that wireless set they planted because the whole setup was payback from that extortionist, right?”

  Rolf nodded. “He’s most certainly our culprit.” He sipped the cognac and sighed with satisfaction. “Appears our friend Serge Bergieux disappeared into Göring’s clutches, just as planned, but still found a way to get revenge on our dear mademoiselle. He was very tight with the local Gestapo, it seems.”

  “So what comes next?” Ryan made no effort to hide his frustration. “We’re still waiting for that good news you promised, Rolf.”

  “Well, things have changed for the better, thanks to our people in Berlin. There’s to be no execution.”

  “She’s to go free?” Argent’s face momentarily brightened. />
  “Regrettably, they only commuted the death sentence. She’s still looking at ten years in a forced-labor camp.” Rolf distributed the snifters, but the others ignored them. “Deportation is already underway.”

  “She disappears into the Reich and we’ll never find her!” Ryan gritted his teeth in frustration.

  “It seems we’re a day too late for that. According to the jailor with the greased palms, she’s already on an eastbound train.”

  “My God,” Ryan said, “there must be hundreds, maybe thousands of those labor camps by now!” He dropped into an armchair, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of such a task. “So how on earth do we track her down now?”

  Rolf continued undeterred: “Well, that’s just the thing—on our own we’ve no hope of finding her, but Berlin can do just that if given time and proper incentive.”

  “Then have your people find her and Argent and I will get the job done.”

  Flushed with obvious anger and frustration, Argent stopped mid-pace. “They owe us for what we’ve been doing here to make their lives easier.”

  “Again, gentlemen, certain hurdles stand in our way,” Rolf set down his snifter, still untouched. “Please understand—this isn’t a priority for the Abwehr, more a generous favor we’re asking. But I’m told things might be expedited should one hand wash the other. Berlin will be happy to pull strings to locate her, perhaps even obtain her eventual release once the matter settles down a bit…”

  Ryan waited for the other shoe: “But?”

  Rolf could resist the alcohol no longer and took a sip. “But they expect something in return, something only you, Ryan, might deliver.”

  “If it’s in my power, they’ve got it.”

  Rolf switched momentarily to English: “Ah, ‘there’s the rub,’ as Shakespeare would say. My chief wants to discuss certain matters with you in person. He’s a very private man when it comes to such things.”

  “Then set up the meeting—right away—and I’m there.”

  “Unfortunately, he’s in Berlin.”

  Ryan drew a determined breath. “Then it appears I’m off to Berlin.”

  “Excellent!” Rolf appeared pleased to have that hurdle out of the way at last. “Your travel visa is only a phone call away, and powerful people will look after you once you arrive.”

  “And what of Argent here?”

  “He’ll grab a train the moment we know her location, and we’ll post a coded message in all the Berlin personals so you can rendezvous with him. Should Argent arrive first, he can scout out the situation, perhaps even contact her or find guards open to a bribe. But, dear Ryan, it’s first up to you to do what’s necessary in Berlin.”

  “Whatever your man asks,” he hesitated, fearful of overreaching, “as long as it’s also in my country’s best interests, of course. But keep me in the loop. Once we know exactly where she’s held, no matter what else is on my plate, I join Argent and we get her out of Germany. We’re agreed then?”

  No one challenged the commitment in Ryan’s eyes.

  Polished by heavy traffic, the rails in the freight yards of Pantin shone amber in the light of the waning day. Several trains idled as crews finished last-minute servicing. One massive locomotive chuffed away, transporting the bounty of France to Germany. Clouds of smoke and cinders filled the corridor between drab industrial buildings and tenements as it left the yards. A passenger train rattled through next, heading north, passing the red-gold fire of the setting sun from one window to the next. The autumn fog would soon move in, stealing any last hint of beauty from this rough setting of oil-stained gravel and soot-laden air.

  The women emerging from the buses took no notice of the shifting light. French police forced the prisoners up a long ramp into forty-and-eights, boxy freight cars designed to handle eight horses or forty soldiers. The carriages began to sag low as twice that many women struggled for standing room in the confined spaces. The few with foresight sought out the air vents near the roofline. Once the doors were padlocked and the train underway, no one would move for many long hours. Perhaps days.

  Men in gabardine oversaw the loading. Boches.

  A police sedan pulled trackside and braked to a halt behind the row of buses. Marita steeled her nerves and prepared to join the brutalized throng, but her guard guided her past the pitiful throng to the forward car in the train. Distrusting her luck and worried that someone would take note of his error, she numbly boarded a third-class coach and settled on a wooden bench beside a heavily-barred window. About twenty other privileged captives already waited, some with handbags, none with luggage, all staring forward, immobile and silent, keeping heads low to avoid unwanted attention.

  Her guard bent close to remove her handcuffs and whispered a German wish for success: “Hals- und Beinbruch!” Her mother used to say it came from the Yiddish—Break a neck and a leg. The man left the carriage without looking back.

  A sincere wish for luck, or a sarcastic commentary on a life of forced labor beyond the Rhine? Enough to know she had escaped the guillotine. Spared for some unclear purpose, she would make the most of the opportunity, perhaps the last break she would ever get.

  The muted shouts and cries from the trailing freight cars faded as the train picked up steam. Behind her, two uniformed guards started a card game on the rearmost bench. The rocking of the carriage and quiet whisperings of her fellow passengers began to lull her exhausted mind.

  The final horrors of Cherche-Midi prison rolled out in a ceaseless loop: that smooth metal bar spanning the breadth of the death room, that compact guillotine in the corner beneath the tall window, its angled blade glistening with a brightly honed edge. The executioner needed only to twist the handle to release her from this hell of a life.

  Trembling, Marita had felt her strength ebb, her eyes returning again and again to the high window revealing a narrow courtyard warming under morning sun. She would miss sunlight filtering through foliage, groomed parks where lovers strolled, children sending toy sailboats across fountain basins as nannies and mothers traded gossip.

  She had watched the two partisans prepare to die. Their eyes appeared glazed, expressions resigned, minds already distanced from the proceedings. It was impossible to say which man had been wracked by despair just minutes before. Neither resisted when the guards helped them mount the stools. She focused on the man closest to her, the one who’d shared a quick exchange of regret as they entered the chamber. The Swiss executioner fashioned simple slipknots in the cords and climbed up to attach them to the iron rod. He slid a noose over the first man. His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously as the knot tightened at his ear. She stared, biting her lip as the hangman cinched the second rope tight.

  The rest was simple. The Swiss hopped down and in one motion jerked the stool from beneath the first condemned. The man dangled, struggling to free his bound wrists, his eyes and jaws wide open. The second stool tumbled aside and the wide-open eyes of that victim immediately reddened as veins ruptured.

  Marita had tried to look away, but a guard held her head straight. She had no choice but to watch as the men danced convulsively side-by-side. Trembling with the revulsion, she narrowed her vision to the feet jerking above the overturned stools. The stench of voided bowels filled the room. One guard laughed and said, “See, didn’t I tell you these partisans are full of shit!”

  The dying took what seemed a very long time. Hoarse guttural sounds emerged from deep in the men’s throats, each wheeze somewhat shorter than the previous until only a pitiful whine emerged in final gasps.

  Her legs had suddenly given way, her knees on the filthy floor, her arms still supported by the guard’s. He offered words of encouragement as he squeezed her breasts: “The blade is so much quicker, you know, so consider yourself blessed.”

  She awoke with a start. The jostling train had thrown her head against the window. Exhaustion drained her body and mind, the horror of the previous morning still pulling her down.

  They had brutally grabbed her arms
and dragged her over to the guillotine. How clean they kept the instrument of death, how free of the filth infesting the rest of the death house. “Face-down, mademoiselle, unless you’d prefer to watch my blade fall.” The eyes of the patronizing executioner betrayed his impatience. She focused on the man’s words and ignored the overriding stench of death and excrement.

  New voices and muddled argument invaded her mind as she surrendered to the inevitability of death. Then came a numbing of all thought and understanding as they removed her from the bed of the killing machine. They led her out across the narrow courtyard, her hands still cuffed at her back. Shouts of surprise and support greeted her return to the women’s wing, but she understood little of what was said. The cell door in the house of the living slammed closed behind her.

  She had collapsed on the bed. In her mind the two words from the death house had finally sunk in, concepts that made sense and yet made no sense. Commuted. Deported. She slept until the following morning, unable to respond to the offer of food, to the shift from day into night, to the clanging and shouting of guards. Commuted. Deported. She would live to see another day. To find some purpose in all her misery.

  CHAPTER THREE

  En Route, Paris to Berlin

  20 September 1941

  Ryan felt the constriction in his throat and sensed the return of the dark depression of recent years. He rocked unconsciously to the rhythm of the moving train. It was good to be alone in the first-class compartment, for he knew his state of mind made him very poor company. Two thoughts plagued him: Erika and Leo possibly dead, von Kredow still alive.

  At Gare de l’Est, a German couple had opened the compartment door and asked to share the cabin. Expensive Party badges gleamed on their lapels and neatly-wrapped packages filled their arms. A shabbily-dressed Frenchman served as conscripted porter, waiting patiently in the aisle with their overstuffed luggage. Another successful plundering of the Parisian economy. Ryan’s icy stare sent them on to the next compartment. He’d barely registered their murmurs of distaste at such incredible rudeness.