Sleeper Agent (8 page)

Tom listened to her in silence. It was not a new story. He’d heard it before in every conceivable variation.

The girl fell silent.

“Where is the Colonel now?” Tom asked gently.

Her expression did not change. She was beyond reaction. “I do not know.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Not for many weeks.”

“What was the special assignment on the Gestapo order you were carrying?”

“I do not know.”

“What were your husband’s duties in the Gestapo?”

“I do not know.”

I do not know. . . . I do not know. . . . I do not know. . . . The same answer delivered in the exact flat tone of voice. Over and over again. There was no way of reaching her.

To herself, her person, her existence, her actions mattered no more. She was dead.

Larry joined them. Together the two CIC agents tried to convince the girl that she would not be killed. That she would not be tortured. That her son would not in any way be harmed. That her beliefs were wrong, the result of Goebbels’ propaganda and Gestapo lies.

They could not reach her behind her flat, drawn mask of total resignation. Patiently they explained to her that she would have to go before a Military Government court in the morning on a charge of using falsified identification papers. She might be fined. She might not. A travel permit would have to be issued. But she would be allowed to go on. To Bayreuth. Home. With her son. No harm would come to either of them.

She would have to spend the night in jail. Not imprisoned by American troops. No. In the local German jail. Among her own people. Her boy would be with her friend. They would be put up at the
Gasthaus
for the night. In the morning they would all three be on their way. She listened, empty-eyed. They were not sure she heard them.

It was late. They decided to wait until morning to interrogate the other girl, Liselotte Greiner, once again. They had little hope of getting any information from her. Tom felt certain that both girls knew more than they would admit. They were lying. But, then, they might also be telling the truth. They would try to find out. In the morning. . . .

In the morning, early, Tom was awakened by an insistent banging on the door to his room.

“Yes?” he called groggily, fighting his way up from a deep sleep.

“Sir!” It was Sergeant Pete Connors. “You’re wanted on the phone. It’s the jail. It’s urgent!”

He was wide awake at once. He hurried to the interrogation room.

It was the German jailer. “
Bitteschön! Bitteschön!”
His pleading voice sounded panic-stricken. “Please! Please come to the jail. Please come at once!”

Tom and Larry were there in less than ten minutes. The elderly German jailer looked gray-faced and sick. He hurried them to a cell, the cell that held the Gestapo colonel’s wife. He opened the door. She was there. Hanging from the bars in the window on the opposite wall. Dead. Even in the lonely cell she had been forced to listen to the lethal words of Goebbels and the Gestapo. And she had believed.

The jailer was a kind man. A considerate man. A man of compassion. He had taken from the girl all her belongings, as was the regulation. Anything with which she might have harmed herself. But he had allowed her to keep her comb. And her handkerchief. And her large bag to keep them in.

The girl had torn off the shoulder strap, and it had become a hangman’s noose.

When she had stepped up on the bench fixed to the wall under the barred window, the strap had been just barely long enough to be tied to one of the bars and knotted tightly around the girl’s slender neck. In desperate determination she had stepped off the bench to hang from her macabre gallows until she strangled to death.

Profoundly shaken, his stomach a sudden leaden knot, his throat a swollen lump, Tom stared at the girl.

He put her there. . . .

Staring glassy eyes which seemed to strain to escape their sockets. A blackish bloated tongue protruding obscenely between small white teeth. Purple-blue splotches on her puffy face and her bare arms, and a pair of grotesquely pointing, stiff legs on the side of the rough wooden bench that had served as her gallows platform.

He—put—her—there.

“Oh, my God!”

Tom heard Larry’s shocked, hoarse-voiced exclamation as if through a cocoon of cotton. He had to turn away. But he didn’t. He had gone too far with her, he thought in bleak self-recrimination. He had driven her to this. And for what! His dread-dark guilt feelings were never more ravenous, threatening to devour his very being. He felt his sanity ripping loose. But he kept himself staring at the girl. Slowly he forced himself back to reality and reason.

He
had not killed the girl. The stinking, rotten lies of the stinking, rotten Nazi bastards had killed her! He breathed deeply. He began to think clearly once again. He looked away from the girl. And he saw it. It was written on the scrubbed, worn surface of the tabletop fastened to the wall. A message:

“
Leb wohl mein Liebling, weitermachen!
—Farewell my darling, carry on!”

He walked over to the girl. He examined her more closely. She had had nothing with which to write her last words. She had had nothing with which to get at the only means of writing them—her own blood. She had been determined. She had bitten open a vein on her wrist.

Farewell my darling
. . .

Slowly he returned to the table. He stared at the message. The blood-ink had dried a dirty brown.

In his mind’s eye he saw the grim desperation with which the despairing young girl had gone about her ghastly task. Again he felt an overwhelming flood of pity wash over him.

He stared at the pathetic message. And suddenly the guilt-created haze obscuring his mind swept away. The message! He should have seen it at once. The girl, for all her youth and appeal,
was
the loyal wife of a war criminal. A dangerous Gestapo officer. And she admired him. She had died only because in her own warped mind she had conferred upon her American enemies the same unholy, inhuman ways of her own rotten system. She had obviously been lying all the time. Undoubtedly she had known her husband’s whereabouts. She might even have been in on his future plans, and judging from the man’s record they would surely be worth discovering.

The proof was right there in front of him. On the tabletop. Written in her blood. The message.

For whom was it meant? Obviously not her friend. She would not call her “my darling.” Not her young son. It was not worded right to be for him. It had to be meant for her husband. And, if so, she must have known it would be delivered to him.

Only one person could do that!

He heard Larry order the shaken jailer to cut the girl down and take her away. He whirled on them. “No!” he said sharply. He despised himself for saying it “Leave her!”

The telephone receiver felt leaden in his hand. He had an irrational hope that, somehow, he wouldn’t get through. But presently he heard the voice of Sergeant Connors. “CIC.”

He sighed. “Pete,” he said. He hardly recognized his own voice. “Get over to
Zum Grünen Kranze.
The
Gasthaus.
Round up the Greiner woman. Leave the kid. Bring her over here. To the jail. On the double!”

Pete didn’t even sound surprised. “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “Be there in a few minutes.”

Tom replaced the receiver. He stared at it as if it shared a guilty secret with him. He got up.

Liselotte Greiner was brought to the jail exactly seventeen minutes later. It had seemed an eternity to Tom, waiting in the dingy little office of the jailer, with Larry and the uneasy German.

Sergeant Connors ushered her in. She swaggered arrogantly into the room, confidently aware of her good looks. Insolently she ignored Tom’s offer of a chair. “Why have I been brought to this . . . this
place?
” she demanded to know. She looked around with obvious distaste. “Surely I am not under
arrest!
” Her mockery was brazen.

She seems so damned sure of herself, Tom thought, it might be a cover-up for a real sense of apprehension. He fervently hoped so. He came straight to the point. “Where is Colonel Steinmetz?” he snapped.

The girl did not move a muscle. Almost derisively she said, “I do not know
what
you are talking about.”

Tom was taken aback. He had expected some reaction. He had been watching her closely. Watching for those little involuntary telltale signs that betrayed so much. There had been nothing.

He thought quickly. The girl was clever. She would have prepared herself for just that question. When her companion had been detained she would have realized that she had been made to talk, that her interrogators had found out about her Colonel Steinmetz. She was too clever to run away without a proper travel permit. That would only have thrown suspicion on her, and she would have been hunted down and brought back. All she really had to do was to stay put—and keep her mouth shut.

He looked at her, his set face grim. He had a chilly sensation. It was true. The fanatic Nazi women were ten times harder, ten times more ruthless than their male counterparts. He had run into many of them from the concentration camps. This one—she would not break easily. If at all. He grew tense. He had no choice. He nodded to the jailer.

The man started. “
Ja-jawohl,
Heir Hauptmann Jaeger,” he stammered. “
So-sofort!
At once!” He hurried out.

The girl stared at Tom, venom in her cold eyes. “Jaeger,” she repeated pointedly. “A
German
name!” She smiled a contemptuous smile. “I thought your German was too perfect for an
Ami!
” She looked him up and down, a withering appraisal. “A
German!
Betraying his own!” She made a mock exaggerated gesture of spitting on the floor. “
Ptui!
”

Tom sat perfectly still and quiet, but his pulse raced and roared in his ears. Damn the bitch, he thought savagely. Damn her soul to hell! He stood up. “Come with me, please,” he said pleasantly.

They walked briskly down the corridor toward the cell. Tom kept his eyes on the girl. She’s a cool one, he thought with grudging respect If she’s the least bit concerned, she doesn’t show it.

The jailer waited by the open cell door. His sallow face looked chalky. He averted his eyes from the girl coming toward him.

Tom stepped aside. His mind was icy with the knowledge of what he was about to do. But he
had
to know. He was powerless to spare the girl. He could not allow even the possibility of a deadly agent such as Steinmetz going into action behind the lines. Without a word he motioned the girl through the open door.

She took one step into the cell—and stopped dead. Her hands flew to her mouth, and a shocked cry of anguish escaped between her clenched fingers. Her eyes—strained open and black with horror—were riveted upon the grisly sight before her. For an eternal moment she stood rooted to the spot, then she slowly reeled back to sag against the stone wall. Her arms fell lifeless at her sides. She pressed her head back against the rough stone, her mouth open in a hellish silent scream. Great rending sobs shook her body, but she seemed unable to tear her eyes from the misshapen bloated body of her friend hanging grotesquely on the wall before her, staring back at her with frightful bulbous eyes.

Tom didn’t take his eyes from the stricken girl. His own heart beat wildly as he watched her go into hysterics. He could feel the cold sweat running down his armpits. He stepped close to the dread-possessed girl. “You
know
Colonel Steinmetz?” The question was shot at her, grating in the silence.

She was totally unaware of him.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Answer me!”

She was utterly oblivious to anything but the turgid monstrosity on the wall. She could not wrest her eyes from the sight confronting her. She was on the verge of total physical collapse from shock.

Tom stepped in front of her, blocking her field of view. He slapped her face sharply.

The girl focused her burning eyes on him as if seeing him for the very first time.

“You
know
Colonel Steinmetz!” It was no longer a question. It was a statement of damning fact.

The girl stared at him with glazed eyes. She no longer had a will of her own. She no longer commanded her mind. The shock had drained her of every control. “Yes.” Her voice was a shriek of excruciating horror.

“Who is he?”

“My . . . brother.”

“
Where
is he?”

“In . . . Bayreuth.”

“You were meeting him there?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“April . . . April twenty-fourth.”

“What are his plans?”

“Fight . . . fight . . . the Americans.”

“How?”

But the girl did not answer. She lapsed into silence. The stark abysmal horror in her eyes shone with near madness. “You . . . you did that to her,” she whispered in abject terror. “You . . . did . . . that.”

She stared straight ahead. He knew she saw herself on that wall. Her horrified eyes sought out his. “You . . . killed her.” And finally her strength broke. She collapsed at his feet.

In the Führerbunker in Berlin, that maze of impenetrable shelters deep in the earth beneath the Reichschancellery, protected by six feet of dirt and sixteen feet of concrete, Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, had celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday on April 20, the day before.

It had been a quiet celebration. Many of the top Nazis had paid their respects: Goebbels, Himmler, Göring, Von Ribbentrop, Doenitz, Raeder, Jodl, Krebs, Speer, Eva Braun and, of course, Martin Bormann.

Bormann had been impatient to get the ceremonies over and done with. He had met the young man sent to him from Schloss Ehrenstein, Obersturmführer Rudolf Kessler.

He had been impressed. He knew the vital importance of the mission that was to be entrusted to the young man. He was impatient to begin. There was much to be done, but fate had conspired to keep him from doing it, with delay after delay.