Sleeper Agent (7 page)

They went over every inch of every stitch of clothing the girl possessed. Systematically they searched the girl herself. Things can be concealed in many ways. There are seven orifices in the female body. Each can afford a place of concealment. They did not miss any of them.

The girl endured the humiliating ordeal in stoic silence. She let herself be manipulated like a manikin. She seemed totally, inexorably resigned.

It was a distasteful, degrading experience. For all three of them. But it was not in vain. Taped to the instep of the girl’s right foot Tom found a second
Kennkarte.
It had the same picture, the same description, the same vital data. It was the ID of the same girl. Only the name was different It was Maria Steinmetz. Frau Wolfgang Steinmetz!

Tom stared at the card. So that was her secret. The damning fact she had been so mortally afraid he’d uncover, so fearful that her very actions in trying to conceal it had given her away. How often that happened, he thought

Mrs. Wolfgang Steinmetz. Wife of a wanted Gestapo Colonel.

He placed the card on the table. He looked at the young naked girl standing in the middle of the room, her arms hanging dead at her sides, her head bowed. He swallowed. He turned to Larry. “Let her get dressed,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” He left the room.

The house taken over by the CIC team belonged to a local big shot. It was large, opulently furnished in typical Teutonic taste, situated on the outskirts of town.

The owner, his family and servants had been living in it when Tom and his teammates had commandeered it. The Germans had been given half an hour to clear out and allowed to take only the most necessary possessions. In fear and shock they had obeyed, and the CIC team had moved in. They’d stay there until they had to move on, at which time the family could return to their home.

It was routine procedure, a procedure that had been learned the hard way: Always take over a house that is occupied and kick the occupants out fast. Empty houses are booby-trapped!

Tom and Larry were using the family dining room on the main floor as their interrogation room. Now Tom stood in the large entrance foyer. For a moment he leaned against the closed door to the interrogation room. He seemed to
see
the foyer for the first time: the front door with the two etched glass panels, the grandfather clock stopped at 7:19, the ornate mahogany dresser with the bevel-edged mirror and the hanging clothes rack made of deer antlers, the rows of roebuck and elk antlers and the plaques with wild boar tusks adorning the walls.

His parents might well have lived in homes exactly like this, he thought, before they emigrated to the United States. Before he was born.

He wondered what his mother would have thought had she known that her insistence that he learn to speak the language of the old country fluently had made it possible for him to do his present job. To perform duties such as the one he’d just completed. She would not even have been able to comprehend it. Neither she nor his father. . . .

Hermann Jaeger came from a small town in Bavaria. He emigrated to America in 1910 and found employment in a watch repair shop. In 1913 he returned to his native Germany and brought back a bride, Fannerl, to his new country. In 1917 their only child, a son, was born.

Fannerl kept her Bavarian ways. She was slow to learn English, and the boy spoke mostly German at home. It was she who named her son Thomas—though it was never clear whether it was after Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Mann.

The family lived in New York City, in Yorkville. Hermann had his own little jewelry and watch repair shop within walking distance.

When after 1939 people began to equate Germans with Nazis, the Jaegers were deeply disturbed, but they could not bring themselves to leave their familiar neighborhood, although thy abhorred the spreading influence of Fritz Kuhn and his Bund.

Tom went to Columbia, majoring in English and European lit. He lived at home, helping with expenses by working part time as a reader and translator for various publishers, reading books in German and writing synopses of them in English.

After Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war on Germany, Hermann changed. He withdrew into himself. He was literally heartbroken. One night he did not come home. Tom went to the shop and found his father slumped over his workbench, dead, his jeweler’s eyepiece still wedged in his eye. Fannerl soon followed her husband. During her last weeks she spoke only German, as if she blamed her adopted country for having taken her husband from her.

Tom was at loose ends. He met a girl among the standees at the Metropolitan Opera. She was fun, intelligent and exciting. He desperately needed to channel his emotions, and after a whirlwind romance he proposed. He and Julie were married late in 1942.

With a German name, Julie—“American” enough to pass the strictest DAR scrutiny—soon began to feel the pressures and disapproval of her friends, especially since her “German” husband was not in the armed forces. Subtly she began to persuade Tom not to wait to be drafted but to volunteer—to show he was really an American. He did.

Because of his language abilities, he ended up in Military Intelligence Service at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and finally in the CIC.

He had earned the Bronze Star for his work in the ETO. He had been involved in countless cases, investigations and interrogations. The Maria Steinmetz search was not his first such body search.

But he still felt unclean. It was an uncleanness he knew he couldn’t wash off. And he still had not conquered the nagging feeling of guilt that worried his mind. He—a
German
—fighting his own people.

He stepped away from the door. He looked at his hands. He went to wash up.

When he re-entered the interrogation room the girl was sitting in her chair. Her handbag lay forgotten on the floor next to her, her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, and her bleak eyes stared unseeing into space.

Tom took his place opposite her. He picked up the real
Kennkarte.
He frowned at it. Why? Why, with a false ID card that could pass any inspection, had she hidden this real card on her person? Was there a reason?

Or was it just another manifestation of that peculiar Germanic trait that made it impossible for them to give up the last tenuous link to past power and glory? Was it the fear of not being able to prove conclusively to officialdom their true loyalties should the Nazis still prevail and once again seize power? He’d run into that sort of thing before. But if that were the case, what
was
the link?

Tom studied her quietly for a moment. The fact that the girl was the wife of a wanted Gestapo officer meant nothing by itself. Unless she had knowledge of her husband’s whereabouts and activities. The CIC did not wage war on the families of their enemies. The fact that she had been using false papers was a relatively minor violation. One that could easily be rectified. Anyway, he suspected he knew why.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that in this frightened, humbled girl with all her vulnerability there was hidden a greater, a more dangerous secret.

He also instinctively knew that she would not be easy to break, despite her deep apprehension. She would have to be handled with special care. He decided that the soft approach would be the best. He had a quick thought that his decision was prompted by his feelings of pity for the girl because of the traumatic suffering he had been forced to inflict upon her. He dismissed it His choice was the correct one.

He glanced at Larry. He spoke in German. “I think Section eighty-seven, Paragraph nine applies in this case. Agreed?” he asked crisply.

It was their own special code. It simply meant Let’s use the good-guy/bad-guy routine. You be the bad guy.

Larry picked up on it immediately. He scowled. “Of course,” he snapped. He turned to the girl. He stared at her. Coldly. “Now,
Frau
Steinmetz,” he said, his voice sharp with the ring of malevolence. “It is about time that you come up with some real answers. You hear me?”

The girl cringed.

“You
are
the wife of a Gestapo colonel, are you not? An SS officer? A wanted war criminal?” Each epithet was rapped out with hateful vehemence. “
Answer me!
”

The girl winced. “Yes,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

“You
were
using false papers, a criminal offense, were you not?”

She nodded.

“I want to know
why!
I want to know everything
you
know. About your husband. Where he is. What he does. And I want to know it
now!
You understand?”

The girl stared at her clenched fists in her lap. She remained silent.

“
Answer me!
”

She flinched as if physically struck by Larry’s shouted demand. “I . . . I don’t understand what you mean,” she whispered. “I know nothing. Nothing at all.” Her voice was unsteady.

“Well, Frau Colonel Steinmetz,” Larry said caustically, “I think you do!” He leaned across the table, his face close to hers. “And I
will
find out!” He smiled nastily. “Don’t think that the fact that you are a woman means anything to us,” he said in an ominously quiet tone of voice. “It does not.
You
should know that,” he finished with a smirk.

He suddenly grabbed the girl’s chin and lifted her face. His eyes stabbed at hers. “So help me, Frau Gestapo Colonel Steinmetz”—he savored each word and spat it out as if offended by its taste—“I’ll get every bit of information you have out of you! I’ll grab hold of your brain,
Frau Gestapo Colonel Steinmetz,
and I’ll squeeze it until every drop of knowledge oozes from it!”

Tom had been following the performance closely. He knew it was an act, and yet he felt genuinely disturbed. He shook the feeling off. He could not afford it. You did not last long in the ruthless world in which he functioned if you allowed yourself to become personally or emotionally involved with your subjects. For any reason.

He frowned. He looked concerned. He had
his
part to play. He touched Larry on the arm. “Larry,” he said soberly, “take it easy.” He spoke in German as if unaware of the fact. It seemed completely natural. He lowered his voice to a confidential murmur, yet loud enough for the girl to overhear. “Don’t you think she’s gone through enough right now?”

He gave the girl a sympathetic look. He turned back to his partner. “Why don’t you take a break? Let me talk to her for a while. . . . Go on.”

Larry glared at him. Without a word he got up and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.

For a moment neither Tom nor the girl spoke. She sat rigidly, her hands clasped tightly before her, her head lowered.

Then Tom began to talk, quietly, reassuringly. “Frau Steinmetz,” he said, “you must realize that it is best to be cooperative. For your own sake. For the sake of your little son.”

He waited for a brief moment, then he went on, almost reluctantly. “Look, I . . . I really shouldn’t suggest this to you, Frau Steinmetz, but I do feel . . . regretful for what we had to do to you. . . . Look, my partner is determined to find out
something
from you. He is a hard man, Frau Steinmetz. . . . Why don’t you—” He hesitated, then seemingly made up his mind. “Look, you could tell us some unimportant facts perhaps—something that can’t harm your husband. I know you can’t do that. Just . . . anything, ,to satisfy him.”

He knew only too well that once a subject begins to talk, to give any information at all, it becomes increasingly easy to get the next fact. And the next. Until there are no secrets left.

He stood up. He walked behind, her. She tensed. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. He felt her shiver. “Why don’t you talk to me, Frau Steinmetz. Perhaps I can help you. I should like to.”

In that moment he actually loathed himself, and yet not for a moment did he doubt that what he was doing was necessary—and right.

“The war is over, Frau Steinmetz. Soon there will be no more killing. No more suffering. You and your boy are alive. And whole. Perhaps your husband is, too? Soon you may all be together again. And happy.” He spoke quietly, convincingly. “Even if your husband will have to face justice, perhaps be interned for a while, it won’t be forever. Think of it, Frau Steinmetz. Don’t spoil it by being unnecessarily stubborn. Think of it. Think of yourself. Think of your little boy.”

He watched the knuckles grow white as the girl clenched her fists almost convulsively. He felt the suppressed sobs shake her body. He went back to sit across from her again. “Frau Steinmetz,” he said softly.

She looked up slowly. Her eyes were moist with unshed tears brimming at her lids.

“Where is your husband?”

She looked haunted She did not speak.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he said. “Just . . . tell me what you can. How did you come here? Why did you use the false
Kennkarte?
Why?”

“Because . . . they told me to.” It was a mere whisper. But it was a beginning.

“Who? Who told you to?”

“The Gestapo.”

And slowly, haltingly the girl told her story.

She was indeed the wife of Colonel Wolfgang Steinmetz—and proud of it. He was a good man. A good soldier. A good German. The false
Kennkarte
had been given to her by the Gestapo in Prague. That’s why it could not be detected as a forgery. It was the real thing except for the name. She had been ordered to use it. She had been told that all members of the families of Gestapo and SS officers were put to death by the enemy. Perhaps tortured. She never doubted it. Had she not heard it said over the radio by Dr. Goebbels himself? She had nightmares thinking about her little boy being killed. Or tortured.

She had been told to destroy her real identification card, but she had not been able to do it. It had been the final link to her true identity, as the document pertaining to her husband had been the last concrete link to him.

Flat-eyed, lifelessly she told her story in a low, monotonous voice. She had been caught. The wife of a Gestapo colonel. Using forged papers. She would be executed. She—and her son. She was convinced of it. It is what the Gestapo would have done. . . .