The Children's War (135 page)

“So you had our names on a list in a file drawer, eh?” Peter asked sardonically.

“Oh, not that bad!”

“A
locked
file drawer,” Peter amended bitingly.

Graham’s eyes widened with sudden suspicion, then he asked, “How did you know all this? Who told you?”

“You just did.”

Graham seemed to swallow a few curses, then filled in the awkward silence by saying, “Well, if it’s any consolation, old boy, the moment he gave you all away, we had him then.”

“Ah, that is consoling. Hanged him, no doubt.”

“Er, no. The Americans won’t let us hang traitors. They’ll happily fry drug dealers, but I’m afraid we have to put our baddies in prison.”

“For ever and ever?” Peter asked, sure of the answer.

“Well, he was released three years ago.”

“You can give me his name,” Peter spoke gently, “or I can look it up in the news files. Which?”

“Oh, Yardley. Alan! He was really
quite
senior! And with the royal connection . . .”

“I thought we both belonged to the English
Republican
Army,” Peter hissed. “Since when have we started covering
them
for their stupid loyalties!”

“Alan, come now, you know the political realities!” Graham let his eyes stray meaningfully toward his groupies. “We had to be careful! Strength in unity, my boy.”

“Don’t ‘my boy’ me!”

“Come on,” Graham pleaded, “you don’t want to pursue any vendettas. It’ll look bad for us if you go digging up old dirt!”

“Oh, you needn’t worry,” Peter assured him in a cold tone. “If I’m going to take revenge on anyone, it will be you. You’re the one who didn’t warn us. You’re the one who sacrificed all of us to please your royalist masters. You’re the one they’re calling for.”

“Alan! It wasn’t my fault!”

“I hear them calling you, don’t you?” Peter raised a hand to his ear, listening to ghostly voices.

“Alan! Aren’t you listening? It wasn’t me! It wasn’t my fault!” Graham insisted desperately.

“Come join us, Graham, we miss you!
That’s what they’re saying,” Peter interpreted for his audience. “I think it’s only fair I help you join them, don’t you?”

“Don’t joke like this, Alan. It’s too weird. Stop it. Please, stop it! They told me to hold off warning you! They just mistimed it, that’s all. The flight, I was going to leave more time, but . . . It would have been such a scandal if they had got it wrong—they couldn’t just arrest him without firm proof! I was just following orders! Honestly . . .”

Peter shook his head, dropping the psychic act.“No, Graham, or whoever you are, I’m not buying that. Our lives were always cheap to our American-born masters. We all knew that and we had nothing but contempt for those buffoons!
But you were there!
You
knew us
and you let us swing! I always knew you were a pompous arse, but I never took you for a murderer!”

The little audience of American-born future masters backed off slightly in preparation for the violence that was sure to follow, but Peter disappointed them; showing a self-control they had not expected, he turned and walked away.

Graham stared after him, watching as his old comrade left the room, then he recovered his composure and, smiling weakly at his little audience, raised his glass. “Excitable sort!” he toasted with a forced little laugh.

Peter went out the massive front doors and into the hallway. There he hesitated a moment, wondering what to do. He was furious, but he was equally helpless. Retribution was impossible unless he wanted to spark a diplomatic incident and destroy everything they had worked for. Squabbling among and within the allies was one of their greatest problems; it weakened their position in the NAU and left them vulnerable to attacks from the Nazi sympathizers in America.

He sighed heavily, lit a cigarette, and stepped cautiously outside. The traffic on Fifth Avenue had abated a bit, but it was still impressive. He glanced around—no reporters anywhere, the embassy had kept their word. He sat on the steps in the evening heat and smoked, enjoying the momentary solitude, thinking of his lost friends.

He ran through Graham’s words in his mind and heard again his halfswallowed excuse:
The flight—I was going to leave more time . . .
Therein probably lay the entire truth: they had held Graham in America until they were sure of what orders to give; Graham had been sent back with a warning but had arrived
too late. The ministry had cut it too fine, waiting for their irrefutable proof, Graham had screwed up getting the message to them fast enough, and probably, somewhere, something inevitable like a late train or a flight delayed by a thunderstorm had cost all his friends their lives.

He cleaned some nonexistent dirt out from under his fingernails and wondered: Had a message been sent to his flat that very night, the night he was out with Allison? Was there an unanswered knock on his door, a sheet of paper shoved under it? He was the only one who knew how to contact everyone else quickly. How close had Graham come to warning him? That very night would have cut it perilously close, but there would have been time, time enough. He should ask Graham if he had made it as far as London, if a messenger had knocked on an unanswered door. He should ask, he thought, but he would not; he did not want to know. On that score it was better to remain in blessed ignorance.

“Dad?”

He turned around to see Joanna standing at the top of the steps and motioned for her to join him. She sat next to him and he gave her a hug.

She waved her hands around her face and grunted.

“What’s the matter?”

“Those things stink.” She pointed at his cigarette.

He looked at his cigarette as if seeing it for the first time and thought of all the times Karl had blown smoke in his face. It had been a ritual every time he had lit Karl’s cigarette, and it had stunk then. “Yeah, they do, don’t they?”

“They’re awful.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I didn’t know they bothered you.” Of course, Joanna had not grown up surrounded by constant smoke. “You’d make a good American,” he added to tease her.

She grimaced. “Uncle Ryszard’s place smelled awful—I could hardly breathe!”

“Oh, I’m sorry! Why didn’t you say something? Maybe we could have done something about it.”

She shrugged. “Genia said not to. She said her father would yell at me.”

“You should have told me; I would have talked to him.”

“But he would have yelled at you.”

“I’d have just yelled back, honey.”

“Doesn’t Uncle Ryszard outrank you?”

“Not on things like that, sweetie. Next time something bothers you, you tell me and I’ll see what I can do. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He inhaled from the cigarette, suddenly feeling a guilt he had never felt before. He made a point of blowing the smoke away from her, of holding the cigarette off to the side, but still he felt guilty. How odd!

“And I’ve heard they’re not good for you,” Joanna said suddenly.

He smiled at her concern. “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.”

“So why do you do it?”

“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully. “Habit, I suppose.” At the time he had heard of the dangers, it had not seemed particularly relevant since the risks he was taking were such that his future health was hardly a concern, but maybe now they were important; maybe it would determine whether he would see Joanna’s children grow up. He didn’t want to miss that. Nor did he want to spend years hacking and coughing and spitting like so many of his elder colleagues had, the way Alex did. “Your mother doesn’t let me smoke near her now that she’s pregnant. And I can’t smoke at home. Seems a bit pointless, doesn’t it?”

Joanna nodded, clearly surprised that an adult could see sense so easily.

“Would you like me to quit?”

She nodded enthusiastically.

Never before had it mattered. Never before was a future so possible. Maybe the past would not matter if the future was full of hope. “Okay. I’ll stop.” He ground the cigarette out on the stone steps. “There! All done.”

Her look of happiness was more reward than anything he could have asked for. He looked around for a place to put the end, but there was nothing obvious, so he shoved it into his pocket. “So, how do you like America?”

“I think it’s great!” Joanna placed such an odd emphasis on
great
that he had to laugh. “Can we stay?”

“I’d like that. But I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Why not?”

“Your mother doesn’t want to.”

“But if we stay here, she’ll have to stay!”

He had discussed this with Zosia extensively, but she had been adamant. He was welcome to stay wherever he wanted, she had said, quite magnanimously, but she was going back. And that meant, of course, that Joanna was going back as well.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, honey,” he explained. “You have to go where your mother goes, and she’s going back. Anyway, wouldn’t you miss the mountains and the forest? Wouldn’t you miss your grandmother and Olek and all your friends?”

Joanna nodded. “Yes, I suppose I would.”

“I would, too. Look, we have a few more weeks here. I’ve got to do a bit of traveling and some more interviews, and then I’ll be done. We’ll go home and I’ll get to spend lots of time with you. Not like here. Would you like that? We can go into town, visit the zoo. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yeah!”

“Do you want to go for a walk?” He indicated the park across the street.

“Sure!”

“Okay, go tell your mother where we’re going.” He watched as she ran happily back up the steps and inside the building. She emerged a moment later, and they
set off across the Avenue and into Central Park. At the first rubbish bin they located, he not only threw away the cigarette end but discarded the rest of the pack.

Joanna skittered around happily. “You’re really going to do it?”

“Of course, I said I would.” He realized he had at that point absolutely no option of backing out. A little girl, a five-year-old little girl, had broken the habit of a lifetime. What power her smile had!

1

E
VERYONE NOTICED
how the Führer’s frown deepened as he listened to the whispered message, and the conversation in the room quickly died away to an expectant silence. The propaganda minister continued his worried, intense whispering as he handed the Führer an American magazine, already opened to an article.

“Another one?” the Führer exploded. “Who the hell is this man!”

There was a whispered answer.

“I know that! But who is he? Is he a fake? Why don’t we have a file on him?”

“Presumably, during his alleged reeducation and forced labor, everything on him was refiled by number. Perhaps Security can explain to you why their files are not cross-referenced by name,” the minister explained, looking pointedly at a number of the guests in the room.

The Führer sat up and put his drink down on a side table. “Enough of this, already! We’re going to sort this out now!” He stood and scanned the room. “Everyone in Security, into the library. Now! You, too,” he added, indicating the propaganda minister. “Everyone else, continue with the party!” The Führer walked toward the door followed by an obedient group of men, their heads hanging like dogs who had just had their noses smacked. The Führer stopped at the door and looked around. “Traugutt, bring your daughter along, we’ll need a secretary.”

That last comment caused a number of the guests to throw surprised glances at the various secretaries in attendance, and there was intense interest in the young, dark-haired woman who walked confidently through the parting crowd to the door. Once they were in the library, Stefi sat demurely at the Führer’s side at the head of the conference table.

“You can take notes?” he asked quietly as he handed her a notepad and pen.

She nodded shyly, then, once the Führer’s attention was elsewhere, she threw an inscrutable glance at her father.

“Gentlemen,” the Führer began, “I think all of you are, to some extent, aware
that there has been an intensive American propaganda effort directed against us this past month. Most of you, however, have not been apprised of the extent of the damage done to us.” He paused and looked at the article in front of him, then sighing, added, “I don’t understand where this is coming from. We were right on track for talks, I had the personal guarantee of some of their most senior politicians that things would be kept quiet—”

“You had the word of Jews and gangsters,” Schindler interjected, “and it was worth exactly what I told you it would be!”

There were a few murmurs of agreement, and someone began, “These Americans—”

“These Americans,” Richard interrupted, “have a different system. One which few, if any, of us truly understand. They are not able to control their own people. It leads to chaos, crime, and corruption, but it is clear that the politicians who gave their word to our Führer have not violated it. This is not a political initiative, it comes from below.”

The Führer nodded gratefully. “It comes from this man. Can anyone tell me who he is?” He pushed the magazine toward the nearest seat. The occupant shook his head and passed it on. As the magazine was passed from one to the other, the Führer motioned toward the propaganda minister. “Tell them what’s been going on.”

The minister shifted uneasily in his seat. “It seems to have started about a month ago with an interview on American television. This man did nothing more than describe what he called his life story . . .”

As the magazine reached Richard, he looked at the photograph in the article. It was small but clearly focused, and the features of his sister’s husband were unmistakable. It had been a difficult decision, but they had opted for not cloaking Peter in anonymity, as they feared it would lessen the impact of his story. Alex had hoped Peter and Zosia would remain in the NAU, but Zosia had been adamant that she would return, and Peter had wanted to stay with her, whatever the cost. So, he had returned, trusting to the seclusion of the mountains and the anonymity afforded by the Reich’s multitudes, bound by the chains of love more securely than he had ever been by any other chains. Richard shook his head at the picture and passed it on.

“. . . backlash against isolationism and against our interests, which we have not adequately addressed,” the propaganda minister was saying.

“What do we care what they think?” Schindler asked sharply as he picked up the magazine.

“It has already had real consequences,” a representative from the border police explained. “We’ve had a significant increase in the number of arms we’ve detected being smuggled into the country. We can only assume that there has been a concomitant increase in the supply.”

“There has been a Reich-wide increase in terrorism.”

“And there have been riots!”

“And an upsurge in union activity.”

Schindler ignored the comments. He looked up and smiled at the Führer. “I know this man.”

“You do? Who is he? Is his story real?”

“I don’t know how real it is, I don’t know what he’s been saying, but look in Vogel’s file. Karl Vogel.”

“Vogel? What does he have to do with it?”

“Vogel owned him,” Schindler laughed. “And I warned him, from day one, that boy was trouble. He should have beat the shit out of him when he had the chance.”

“We’ll make amends for lost time when we get our hands on him,” the Führer promised.“He’s going to wish he had never seen the light of day.”

“There’s no guarantee he’s within our reach, is there?” someone asked.

“Our agents lost him in Mexico City. They ended up following someone to California, but they think it was the wrong man. They lost the double in Los Angeles, so they can’t be sure.”

“Morons!”

There was a generally noisy and rancorous discussion of the ineffectiveness of various subdivisions of Security until the Führer was driven to slam the table with his hand. “Enough! Enough.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then the propaganda minister ventured to ask, “What sort of security measures have been taken so far?”

“So far, nothing organized,” Schindler answered, throwing an accusatory glance at the Führer. “While we’ve been awaiting our orders, we have managed to crack down on illegal publications, border patrols have been enhanced, smuggling rings broken up. I think it’s time for a retaliatory strike. This man is English, isn’t he? We should have started executing hostages in England ages ago.”

“He claims to be sponsored by a coalition, and his handler is from the Polish government,” someone pointed out.

“Then hang a couple of thousand of them as well!” Schindler demanded. “Burn a hundred villages and their inhabitants. We must teach them that they can’t play these sorts of games with us!”

The Führer leaned back in his chair and smirked at his challenger. “Perhaps it will interest you, Günter, to know that an executive order was signed today for massive retaliations to begin on the morrow. And this, this traitor, he claimed to work in London, so we’re going to sweep London clean of every terrorist suspect. Within the week, they’ll have their trials and will be fertilizing Green Park shortly afterwards.”

“Ah,” Schindler stammered. “Good, that’s good. We don’t want to look weak.”

“We aren’t weak,” the Führer reminded him. “Nevertheless, retaliations aside, there is still much to deal with from this mess.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “It’s late, and none of us are thinking clearly. I’ll be assigning task forces to deal
with the various problems raised tonight: riots, increased arms, terrorism . . . uh, what else?”

“Unions.”

“Yes, unions, and of course our official protests to their government about all this, and whatever. Anyway, I’ll expect you all to work in close concert with each other since all the problems stem from the same root. My office will be handling overall coordination, and you are all to report to it and cooperate with each other. Is that understood?”

They all agreed it was.

“Good, go out and rejoin the party. We’ll pick up on this tomorrow.” As the men rose and turned to leave, the Führer called out, “Traugutt, stay behind.” He turned and smiled at Stefi. “You too,
Schatz.”

Richard waited patiently until the last of the others had left and the door was shut, then he turned to the Führer expectantly.

The Führer waved his hand toward the chair next to him. “Come sit here, I want your advice on some things. You always seem to have a good eye for what’s going to happen. Maybe you can give me some ideas about how to handle our answer to the Americans.”

“Of course,
mein Führer,”
Richard answered obsequiously. “But first, I think it’s important that we consider this retaliation order you have signed.”

“Why?”

“I worked out East, remember? I know who you’re dealing with there, and I believe there’s a good reason that the coalition that supported this Englishman chose the handler they did. If he’s a representative of the Polish government in exile, then he has ties to the Home Army.”

“So?”

“They have the most efficient assassination unit of all the terrorist organizations. We have only been able to keep them in check through a complicated series of protocols established over decades of negotiations. If we strike at anyone within the Reich for an action of one of their government spokesmen in the NAU, then we have violated the protocols.”

“So what?”

“If we violate the protocols, they will strike back in proportion to the violation—that’s part of the deal. None of your officials in the East will be safe. Even the majority of us in Berlin will have to fear for our lives. Though you personally have sufficient protection, the rest of the officials don’t, and as they are knocked off, one by one, they may believe that it was a deliberate action on your part to remove them. Especially Schindler. It could provoke a coup.”

“Oh! But wouldn’t it be clear that it was not my doing?”

“By violating the protocols, it would be your doing,” Richard explained.

“Oh! What should I do?”

“Cancel the retaliations. All of them,” Richard advised.

“Oh.” The Führer rubbed his chin. “What about the arrests in London? We
can still do the sweep, can’t we? Those will be genuine terrorist suspects, after all.”

Richard shook his head. “Not worth it. They’ll know why there was a crackdown. They’ll know it was retaliation, and when your own people start dropping dead, Schindler won’t hesitate to point a finger at you.”

The Führer groaned slightly. “But then the populace will think they can get away with this sort of thing.”

“Since we have absolute control of the media, the populace is completely unaware of what has been happening in America. All they know is that there is some level of disruption within the Reich. That is all we must deal with.”

“What about Schindler, and the others? They’ll think I’m being weak.”

“You only show weakness by worrying about them. You are, after all, the Führer. You are our leader, and we have all pledged undying loyalty to you. All of us!”

The Führer nodded his head wearily. “So is there no way to punish this criminal for his actions?”

Richard took a deep breath, then explained reluctantly, “Halifax himself is not a member of the government in exile, so he is still bound by our laws and you could charge him with crimes against the state if he were ever to return.”

“We’ll do that! We’ll scour London, we’ll scour England! We’ll find that bastard!”

“You can do that, but you know, he’ll never come back.”

“We’ll kidnap him!” the Führer suggested excitedly. “As soon as he shows his face again.”