Christopher's Ghosts (16 page)

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 will 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.

Lori went straight home from the station in a taxi. She went upstairs, sat down at the piano, and in case Miss Wetzel somehow missed her arrival, played a passage from a Liszt sonata. Then, still wearing her Paris suit, Lori clattered in high heels down the stairs, catching a glimpse of Miss Wetzel’s watery blue eye in the peep hole, and strode off in the direction of the Tiergarten. Within fifteen minutes a large black car drew up beside her. A door opened. Lori got into the empty backseat. The usual pair of SS troopers occupied the front seats. Heydrich had sent a couple of underlings to collect her just as he might have sent them to make the day’s fiftieth arrest. No words were
exchanged. No siren or klaxon sounded, either, but the traffic parted before the Daimler on its way to the hunting lodge as if a regiment of invisible policemen were directing traffic.

 3 

In secret police headquarters on Rügen, Stutzer was still awaiting Rima’s answer to his last question when one of the apprentices entered the room and whispered something in his ear. Stutzer broke eye contact with Rima. The look on his face, half cajolery and half naked threat, changed abruptly to naked rage. He leapt to his feet and rushed from the room. Through the thick door Rima heard the shrill noises of his tantrum.

Minutes later, Rima and Paul were released from custody. No explanation was given; in fact no one said a word to either of them. They were taken in a car to the station, provided with tickets, and escorted aboard the fast train to Berlin. Their luggage was already in their first-class compartment. So were the apprentices, fresh-faced young fellows in blue serge suits that still smelled of the flatiron. Rima had never imagined that secret policemen, trained to torture and kill, could be so young, or look so little like brutes. These two looked not much older than Paul and no less harmless. You could picture their mothers combing their wet hair in the morning and giving them pocket money before sending them out into the world.

When Rima took down her rucksack and disappeared into the lavatory, one of the young men followed her. He waited outside the door until she emerged in one of her navy-blue schoolgirl costumes, her hair in a braid down her back and a book in her hand. Paul remained as he was, where he was, until she returned.

In German she said, “Shall we read to each other to practice our English?”

She opened an American novel and began to read aloud. The apprentices gave them searching looks, then feigned loss of interest. They were undercover, after all.

With no change of tone, as if still reading, Rima said, “Let’s test the English of these louts.”

“Okay,” Paul replied, eyes fixed on the page before them. “Do you think they’re as likeable as they look?”

“They are the big brothers of your friends from the Tiergarten. In my opinion they’re both Jewish. Characteristic simian skulls, and look at those noses.” The apprentices made no sign that they understood these insults.

As if reading from her book, Rima said, “I think we can speak freely in this language. What happened to you back there?”

“Nothing. I was left alone in the room the whole time. You?”

“I was questioned by the madman. He was beautifully dressed.”

“What did he want to know?”

“Our secret destination. He gave the impression that he already knew everything. He just wanted confirmation that we were trying to escape to a foreign country.”

“He said that?”

“He was sure we had a plan.”

“And what did you say?”

“Nothing. He gave me very little chance to talk. It was like watching a man have an epileptic fit. I was scared to death.”

“Then why didn’t you tell him whatever he wanted to hear?”

“I might have. You have no idea what he’s like, red in the face, showering spit, shrieking like a stuck pig. What was he going to do next? But while I was trying to think of something that would do you no harm but not make him beat me or shoot me, someone came in and whispered in his ear. I heard some of what was whispered, just words—‘Berlin, highest authority, immediately.’ Obviously he was being given orders. The messenger expected death—you could see it in his eyes.”

“How did Stutzer react?”

“Another fit. He leaped up and rushed out of the room. Then he started screaming in the hallway. Right after that they took us to the train.”

“I wonder what happened.”

“My love, don’t you understand?” Rima said. “Somebody rescued us.”

“Who, for heaven’s sake?”

“Someone with power over Stutzer. Someone in Berlin.” Paul looked baffled. Rima wanted to say,
Think
! But she looked into his eyes instead and saw that he did not require instruction.

Paul said, “It can’t be true.” He turned his head and looked out the window.

Rima said, “Then there must be some other explanation.”

She closed the book. They rode the rest of the way to Berlin in silence, They parted at the station. One of the apprentices followed Rima home, the other Paul. Then they vanished back into the apparatus.

 4 

Late that afternoon, as soon as she was set free from the hunting lodge, Lori went straight to the American embassy and told O. G. everything. The confession was a rite of exorcism. Demons flew from her mouth. She breathed naturally again, without thought. For the first time in months her lungs gave her heart enough oxygen. O. G. listened without expression, and when she was finished offered neither blame nor sympathy, but sat for a long moment with his fingertips touching and his eyes fixed on a point a few inches above Lori’s head.

He said, “Forgive me for asking, but am I right in supposing that you haven’t given Heydrich what he desires?”

“Of course I haven’t. But in his imagination this is a courtship, and all the usual things occur. The man tries, the maiden demurs. But however… .”

O. G. held up a hand: tell me no more. He said, “It looks as though he’s put a price on what he wants. Paul goes free, and maybe Hubbard too. You go to Heydrich.”

“Clearly that’s what he has in mind, but you can never be sure with him, and he would never come right out and tell me that that was the arrangement.”

“He wants to hide his hand? Why?”

“Because in his own mind he’s not the sort of man who pays for it. He loves me, he says. He is dizzy with love. It’s an operetta. What he wants is sweet surrender. Quid pro quo would ruin everything.”

“I see,” O. G. said. “Then consider this. If in fact Heydrich is using Paul as a way to frighten you into making him a gift of yourself… .”

“If in fact he is doing this?” Lori said. “I just told you that’s what he’s doing.”

“I heard you, and I believe you,” O. G. said. “And since this seems to be the case, it seems to me there are two solutions. First, you surrender. I assume that is not a possibility. Second, we find a way to get Paul out of harm’s way as quick as we can.”

“In what way is that a possibility?”

“If Heydrich thought you were, forgive me, testing his love, he might let Paul just sail away.”

“On the
Bremen
? It’s a German ship. Paul would still be in Heydrich’s power. If I didn’t surrender in the four days it takes to steam from Bremerhaven to New York, they would throw him overboard.”

“Yes. But he has to go on a German ship. Otherwise Heydrich loses all control.”

“Precisely. Do you imagine he’s going to let Paul go if he does not already have what he wants?”

“I need hardly tell you that if he has what he wants he will do as he pleases,” O. G. said. “What I imagine, Lori, is that you are a resourceful woman.”

“And Heydrich is a monster of resourcefulness. You have no idea.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But this is the best I can do in the way of advice even though I have given the same counsel several times already.”

Lori said, “Is it really as hopeless as that? Surely you have ways.”

Slowly, O. G. shook his large shaggy head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I do not.”

For years Lori, like many others, assumed that O. G. was chief of the embassy’s espionage operations. She was wrong; despite his air of conspiracy he was, officially, as cherubic as he seemed. It was true that
he was a gatherer of information, but the larger truth was that in 1939 the United States of America had no foreign intelligence service, and therefore posted no political spies in its Berlin embassy or anywhere else in the world. Diplomatists such as O. G. gathered political fact and rumor; military attachés found out what they could about the Reich’s armed forces. But there were no thugs, no letters in invisible ink hidden in hollow trees, no blackmail or murder or kidnapping or even bribery. No intelligence service was rich enough to match the bribes the National Socialist German Workers’ Party routinely paid to its important members in the form of property confiscated from Jews and other official enemies of the state. Secrets of the Reich sometimes fell into American laps. True, O. G. gave his dinner parties and played tennis and cards with high officials and hoped for confidences. Americans seldom went so far as to adopt the British practice of trying to jimmy locked tongues by asking rude, persistent, detailed questions of their hosts or guests. They were unfailingly polite, seemingly as neutral individually as their country was, even though they knew that war was coming and America could not possibly stay out of it.