Eva (34 page)

Woody stiffened. The countersign! The puppeteer had not given him the countersign! Had he heard? Could he? Behind those damned draperies?

“Please,” he said loudly and firmly, “I should very much like an answer. You are not in a
Festhalle
now, my little friend. So, please stop dancing and give me an answer, if you can.”

The puppet stopped. He bowed. “As you wish,
mein Herr,”
he said. You might try the
Gasthaus Krüger.
Two streets to your left.”

Woody suddenly felt cold. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Either they were in the wrong place, or they had been given the wrong passwords. He was suddenly certain of it. An
Anlaufstelle
agent wouldn’t make a mockery out of the process of identification, as the puppeteer was doing. The man was just a simple woodcarver. Bavaria was famous for its colorful woodcarvings. There must be thousands of artisans. They had been sent to the wrong place. Deliberately? Had the bastard in Coburg maliciously misled them? Double-crossed them? To show them who was boss? If so, he had only one recourse: Return to Coburg and get the right information. It meant he was dead. As far as the mission was concerned. Dammit all to hell!

“Thank you,” he said leadenly.

He started for the door, followed by Ilse. The baskets. They had to hang on to those damned baskets. Come up with some cock-and-bull story of why they were returning to Coburg with them, if they were stopped. He started to pick them up.

Suddenly a door burst open and a woman came hurrying into the shop from a back room.

“Manfred!” she called. “Stop him! Do not let him go!”

At once the puppet on the stage plopped to the floor like a wet rag. The draperies were flung aside—and a man stood facing them.

A steady hand held a Walther 7.65 pointed straight at Woody’s guts.

“Stay right where you are,” he ordered coldly. “Both of you. Do not make a move!”

W
OODY GLARED AT THE PUPPETEER.
The man was not at all what he had expected. Not the simple, roly-poly and playful Bavarian peasant type, but a man in his fifties, lean to the point of being gaunt, with a deep scar, recent enough still to burn angrily red, running from his left temple to the tip of his chin. Cold, hard eyes bored into them.

Woody drew himself up. “What do you mean by threatening us?” he exclaimed in outrage. “I shall call the police!” He surveyed the man standing before him. His extreme gauntness gouged deep, black hollows under his eyes and in his cheeks. In a flash image Woody saw the faces of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp inmates. Theirs had been the faces of suffering and horror. The face of the man confronting him was the face of ruthlessness and menace.

The woman urgently whispered something in the man’s ear. He looked startled. He asked her a question. The woman answered it. Although he tried, Woody could not make out what was being said. The man frowned at him.

“You asked to be directed to a hotel,” he said slowly. “What kind of hotel did you say you were looking for?”

“You heard me perfectly well when I asked,” Woody snapped angrily. “A reasonable place. Simple. Without luxuries such as a
Festhalle.”

The puppet maker drew a deep breath. “I was—mistaken,” he said. “I should not have recommended
Gasthaus Krüger.
There is another place, more suited to your needs. A simple place. With a
Mädchenfüralles
who will take care of you.” He lowered the gun.

“What the hell is going on?” Woody asked, exasperated. His fear, only just relieved, still made him sound tense and angry.

“You must forgive us,” the man said. “But it is better to be overcautious than not cautious enough.” He put away the gun. “My wife just now received the new passwords. Because the Bamberg
Anlaufstelle
had to be closed down temporarily—a matter of possible compromise—all passwords were changed.” He looked at Woody. “You were not expected here until tonight. You are early.” He eyed him with obvious curiosity.

“We were lucky,” Woody shrugged. “We came into possession of a motorcycle. We made good time.”

The woodcarver nodded.

“It is still early in the day,” Woody went on. “We should like our travel papers brought up to date, including the motorcycle. We need some gasoline—and we shall be on our way to the next
Anlaufstelle.”
He looked at the man. “Where is it?”

“In Nördlingen,” the man answered. “At a tailor shop.” He put out his hand. “May I have your papers?”

Woody handed them to him. He was beginning to relax. “Here,” he said, “I am glad I do not have to present them to your puppet.”

The man smiled mirthlessly. “You must forgive me my little act,” he said, as he examined Woody’s papers. “It is my cover. A good cover. Who would consider a simple-minded puppet maker a menace, or an agent of the SS?”

He put Woody’s papers in his pocket. He turned to Ilse. “May I have your papers, too,” he asked. Ilse gave them to him. “We have a collection point,” the man said. “Close by.
Mutti
will take you there. I shall have your papers fixed up—and you can leave for Nördlingen already tomorrow morning.”

“We want to leave today,” Woody said firmly. “There is still plenty of time to reach Nördlingen.”

The woodcarver gave him a quick glance. “That will not be possible,” he said.

Woody looked straight at him. Here we go again, he thought. “You owe us,” he said quietly. “And everything is possible, if you want it to be.” He went on, emphasizing every word. “Besides, I know the comrades in
Die Spinne
will—appreciate your cooperation.”

The puppet maker gave Woody a sharp glance at the mention of the powerful, secret SS organization that operated the
B-B Achse.
Woody’s veiled hint of the consequences, were he
not
to be cooperative, was not lost on him. He studied the young man. Who was he? Really? And the girl? She was unusual. Only one other woman had passed through his stop. Only days ago. Who were they? There was no way of knowing. It was possible they were nobodies. It was also possible they were not.

“Two hours,” he said flatly. Narrow-eyed he looked at Woody. “I will, of course, have to log your request for emergency processing.”

“Do that.”

The agent turned to his wife. “Give them something to do,” he said drily. “They should not be idle if we have visitors.” He turned to Woody. “I will bring your travel papers to you here,” he said. “In two hours.”

He left.

The woman turned to Ilse. “Come with me,” she said pleasantly. “I will give you something to do. Sew buttons on a little jacket, perhaps. For Pinocchio. And your young man, I will ask him to repair a broken board in the bridge behind the stage.”

They set to work. Woody watched Ilse, as she sewed tiny buttons on a diminutive green Bavarian peasant jacket. She sure is easy on the eyes, he thought. A regular pinup. He wondered about her. Who was she? And how did she come to have the pull she did? He’d tried, in a half-assed way, to draw her out. At first, he thought she’d been friendly, although understandably reticent, but after they’d left Zorina’s place she’d seemed withdrawn.

Ilse looked up. She caught him watching her and quickly averted her eyes. Dammit, he thought. What the hell gives?

“Ilse,” he said evenly, “you and I are going to have to be together for a long time. Under circumstances that may not always be easy. We will be—damned close. We will have to be able to depend on one another. Trust one another.” He looked searchingly at her. “Is there something wrong? If there is, now is the time to . . . to clear the air.”

For a moment she sat motionless, without speaking. Only her fingers moved, manipulating the tiny buttons. He did not break in on her silence; she was obviously trying to arrange her thoughts. Her emotions. He could almost see when she reached her decision. When she finally spoke, her voice was low.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Is it true what Madama Zorina said?”

Puzzled, he frowned. It was a totally unexpected question.

“What?” he asked. “Is what true?”

“That you were in charge of the guards—at Flossenburg Concentration Camp?”

A spontaneous denial almost burst from him. He caught himself. It
was
true. Of
SS Hauptsturmsführer
Fritz Diehl, it was true. And he was Fritz Diehl. For now.

“Why?” he asked, playing for time.

“Is it true what—what the Americans say about those camps?” she asked. “The—the terrible things they say went on there?”

It was becoming a conversation of questions, he thought. No answers. Well, dammit! here was one. “Yes!” he snapped vehemently. “Every damned word.”

She flinched as if he had hit her. She gave a little sob.

“Is that—what you did?” she breathed.

He was torn. His cover demanded he say yes. But it was obvious that the girl was appalled and revolted at what she had heard. She would reject him totally, if she thought he’d really been part of it. He could not afford that. He also realized that he did not want it. Yet he knew that as a good operative he could not afford to weaken his cover by denying involvement.

“No,” he said hoarsely. What the hell was he doing?

She looked up at him. “But—Zorina said . . .”

“Zorina was assuming,” he said curtly. “I did not think it necessary to correct her.”

“Then, what . . .”

“Ilse,” he said earnestly, looking into her face, “accept the fact that I was
not
involved in the horrors of the—the concentration camps. Accept the fact that I abhor what went on there as much as you do. And—accept the fact that the circumstances in which we find ourselves make it impossible to talk freely and openly about everything.”

She looked into his eyes. “I want to believe you,” she said softly.

“You can.”

She nodded. Somehow he knew she did.

“The camps,” she whispered. “They were under the control of the
Reichsführer?”

“Himmler?”

She looked at him, oddly. “Yes.
Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler.”

He nodded. “That’s correct.”

She bit her lip. “It is—because of him that I am here,” she whispered.

Woody was startled “Himmler? Because of Himmler? How?”

“He issued a personal directive to the SS organization in command. He instructed them to—to make certain I was taken to safety.”

“Why?” He asked the obvious question with reservations. Did he want to know?

“My mother,” Ilse said. “She—she had a position with the SS. She asked the
Reichsführer.
She thought Germany would not be a good place for me. After the war was lost.”

“Why did she think that?”

“I do not know.”

“Your mother,” he said, “what did she do? For the SS?”

“I am not sure,” Ilse replied uncertainly. “Something in administration.” She sounded almost apologetic. “I was always away. At school. For the last few years I only saw my mother when she came to visit me.”

“Where is she now?”

Ilse shook her head. “I do not know.” She fell silent, and busied herself with her minuscule buttons. He watched her. Somehow he felt warm and happy.

Ilse looked up. “I know it is not your real name, Hans Bauhacker,” she said timidly. “I—I want to call you by a name just for me. When we are—together.” She looked up at him, wide-eyed, as if frightened by her own audacity. “Of course,” she added quickly. “I will not want to know your
real
name. I . . .”

“Woody,” he blurted out.

“Wu-di?” She frowned prettily.

Shit, he thought, disgusted with himself. Now I’ve done it! “No, no.
Rudi.
Nickname for Rudolf.” He smiled.

She smiled back at him. “Rudi,” she said softly, “I am glad they chose you to go with me.”

The way she said the name made him wish it really was his.

Willi had wondered how it was possible for two
Ami
soldiers in an American vehicle to transport
B-B Achse
fugitives, the kind of subjects the entire enemy army was searching for, along the SS escape route, until he realized that they had no idea of what they were doing.

They were nothing but black marketeers. Contemptuous parasites, he thought, preying upon both their own and the vanquished.

Assigned to a supply unit they often traveled between towns in their area of occupation, and occasionally—at the request of their “customers” and for a suitable expression of appreciation—they would take along a civilian or two. To visit a sick aunt or something.

They had let him and Eva off at one of the gates in the ancient walls that still partly surrounded the oldest part of this historic town on the Ach River. Memmingen was an important railhead on the Augsburg-Ulm line, Willi knew, and was known for its woolen goods, its soaps, and its rope making. Like all the towns in Bavaria it teemed with sad, gray townspeople mingled with enemy occupation troops and a host of discharged prisoners of war and civilian refugees left strewn about the countryside in the tens of thousands.

The Memmingen
Anlaufstelle
was a rope manufacturing plant near the railroad yards; their contact was the plant manager, Heinz Ludwig.