Sleeper Agent (14 page)

Yes, he had come from Prague, only a few days ago. He had been an officer, a statistician, on the staff of the Luftwaffe High Command. It had been a dreary, discouraging job. He had fled the city with the rest of the staff officers, but like most of them he had not surrendered to the Americans. He correctly guessed that all General Staff officers, regardless of rank, had a high priority on enemy wanted lists. By losing himself in the flood of refugees he had hoped to escape a lengthy stay in some PW camp. He shrugged. It had not worked.

The coat? It had been given to him by his commanding general as a sort of parting gift.

Where was this general? And the other General Staff officers? He did not know. All he knew was that he and a few other officers had crossed into Germany from Czechoslovakia together and gone their separate ways.

“You know who these officers are?” Tom asked.

“I do.”

“I want you to make a list Every officer from the Luftwaffe General Staff that crossed with you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“I also want you to list the code names or letter designations of every project you worked on during the last six months. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go to it.”

The list of code names and letter abbreviations was not long. Tom’s eyes raced down the paper. There was no KOKON. He frowned at the lieutenant. “Have you ever heard of a project called KOKON?” he asked. Or, K-O-K-O-N?”

The man shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I have not.”

Tom had a twinge of disappointment. He dismissed it “Do you know an SS colonel named Steinmetz? Wolfgang Steinmetz?”

“No. I do not” He handed Tom the list of General Staff officers. It, too, was quite short.

Tom glanced at it. He read it once more. Heading it were three high-ranking officers: Generalmajor Anton Beigel, Generalmajor Dieter Joachim, Oberst Eugen Cornelius.

The crew in the Oberweise barn had just been handed one hell of promotion.

Tom and his teammate had brought a small detail of men from the 21st Armored Infantry with them when they returned to Oberwiese. The GI’s were guarding the Oberweise barn crew while Tom and Larry interrogated the suspects one by one.

The two CIC agents had questioned stubborn suspects before. But never a group as blindly obstinate as the five improbable refugees from the barn.

They told them they knew their true identities. They brandished their indisputable evidence before them. They confronted them with the list of General Staff officers headed by the name Anton Beigel. But despite it, and despite looking and acting the prototype of a Prussian Junker officer, Beigel imperiously insisted he was a discharged corporal. He practically ordered the CIC agents to believe him. It was
his
word against that of some inferior detainee, he claimed. What was more, his papers proved his true identity. It was there in black and white. Who would dare doubt the written word against the irresponsible say-so of some nonentity? No contest was conceivable, of course. He categorically refused to admit to what was obviously fact—that he was indeed Generalmajor Anton Beigel.

Joachim followed suit.

The matronly officer’s widow hardly deigned to open her mouth. When she did, it was to deny any knowledge of or connection with Beigel and Joachim, or for that matter any interest in them—a couple of enlisted men. It was bad enough that regrettable circumstances forced her to share the shelter of the barn with them.

Her son had been brought up just right in the Hitler Youth. It was all he could do to keep from spitting in his interrogators’ faces.

Their last chance was Ilse Neumann, the ex-Wehmachthelferinn. They had her brought to the harness room where they had established their interrogation area. A rough workbench served as a desk, a couple of bales of hay as chairs for the agents.

Tom’s voice was cold, matter-of-fact as he explained to the girl that she was considered not a civilian refugee, but a prisoner of war, as were the two soldiers. Her German discharge papers, dated within the last couple of weeks, could not be considered valid. He informed her that as a PW she was entitled to all considerations due that status, all the obligations—and the serious consequences of resisting such obligations. As a PW it was her duty
not
to withhold the name, rank and serial number of any military personnel.

The girl listened in silence, staring straight ahead.

“I want to know,” Tom demanded firmly. “Beigel and Joachim. They are both generals on the Luftwaffe General Staff. Is that correct?”

The girl swallowed. “I do not know,” she said. She kept her eyes from his.

Wearily Tom studied the girl. She was obviously deathly afraid. And she was lying. He knew it. And she in turn was well aware of that fact. The question was Why? What could possibly be accomplished by the ridiculous charade? Still, she was the only one who had betrayed any area of weakness. It had become evident that she and Beigel were more than just fellow refugees stranded in the Oberwise barn.

Could she be bluffed? It was worth a try. He reached over and on the margin of the paper lying in front of Larry he scribbled an R.

Larry glanced at it. He stood up and walked from the harness room.

The girl watched him apprehensively.

Tom gazed at her steadily. He said not a word. Together they waited in silence.

With every passing moment the uneasiness of the girl mounted.

Larry returned. He carried a musette bag fetched from the jeep. He sat down at the bench. He took out a bunch of large yellow tags with a short piece of string attached to each one. Unhurriedly he began to write on one of the tags.

Still not a word was spoken.

Ilse was pale. Her large blue eyes were dark, filled with fear. They flitted from one of the grim CIC investigators to the other. She began to tremble.

Larry finished his writing. He stood up. He walked to the fearful girl. Without a word he tied the tag to a button on her blouse front. It hung like an evil tarot of death on her ample bosom. He looked over at Tom.

“One last time, Fräulein. Will you tell the truth?” Tom asked the girl.

“I . . .” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “I . . . have.”

Tom shrugged. “Your choice,” he said, his voice flat. He nodded to his comrade. Larry rummaged in the musette bag. He came up with a big red pencil. He turned to the girl, and on the PW tag he wrote a large red R.

Tom stood up. He looked at the girl with obvious pity. “I am sorry,” he said, compassion in his voice. He turned to leave.

“Please!” Ilse pleaded, her voice husky with alarm. “Please, Herr Hauptmann.” She glanced at the tag. “What means this?”

Tom turned back to her. He spoke kindly. “It is a PW tag, Fräulein.”

She looked at him, fearfully questioning.

He explained. “You are considered a prisoner of war. A PW. This tag will accompany you wherever you go from now on. It states your name, the time, the place and circumstance of your capture. It is routine.”

Again she looked at the tag. She lifted her hand toward it. She could not bring herself to touch it “And . . . this red R?” she whispered. “What means it?”

Tom turned away. He hesitated. Then he said, “Russia.”

She had known. Yet she blanched. “
Russia!”
she repeated automatically.

Tom turned back to her. His face was angry. “You chose it, Fräulein!” he said savagely. “It is your own doing.” He stopped. He went on. “You will be turned over to the Russians. For interrogation. Possibly interment. In Russia. Or Siberia. We have a quota of prisoners we must turn over to them. We give them the ones who choose not to cooperate with
us.”

Ilse was ashen-faced. She swayed slightly on her feet. She stared with dread at Tom. “And . . . the others,” she said. “You will mark them with a red R too?”

“Yes.” He turned on his heel.

“Wait!” It was a cry in the wilderness. A cry of utter despair.

He turned back to her.

“I . . . will cooperate,” the girl whispered. “Please do not send us to
them.
Any of us.”

“Well?”

She stared at the PW tag. The big red R filled its yellow face. She clenched her hands before her in unconscious supplication. She squeezed them until her fingers showed white.

“Gefreiter Beigel is Generalmajor Anton Beigel, OQu IV. . . . Deputy Chief of General Staff, Intelligence, OKL—Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, Field Echelon, Prague.” The damning words were delivered in a flat, lifeless voice. She added, “I . . . I was his secretary.”

“Joachim?”

She nodded. “Generalmajor Joachim.”

“You will repeat exactly what you have just said to Generalmajor Beigel’s face.” It was a statement, not a request.

“
Ja,”
she said.

He looked at her. The tears were running down her cheeks. She could not know, he thought She could not know that his reluctant disclosure of a Russian “quota” was pure fabrication.

The prisoners stood in a defiant group, guarded by the GI’s, when Tom and Larry brought Ilse face to face with them. The girl was deathly pale, her eyes dark with despair, focusing on nothing.

Tom placed her directly in front of Beigel. The man fixed his blazing eyes upon her. She shivered. “All right,” Tom ordered harshly. “Repeat exactly what you told us.”

The girl’s mouth worked. But no sound emerged.

Beigel stood as if hewn in granite. His eyes bored into those of the terrified girl. The power emanating from him was a tangible thing. Starting at his bullneck, protruding from his tunic collar, his face flushed a deep, angry red as he stood immobile.

Twice the girl tried to speak. Twice the man’s blazing eyes silenced her.

Tom knew what she was going through. Face to face with her comrades, she had to betray them. She thought by denouncing them she would save them from a fate of unspeakable horror. Them—and herself. It was a soul-wrenching choice to be forced to make.

At last she cried, a cry of pure anguish, “I told you nothing! I only said what you wanted to hear. I was frightened.
I
—
told
—
you
—
nothing!”
She put her hands to her face. She sobbed.

Beigel moved not a muscle.

Tom and Larry walked to their jeep. Larry was carrying the musette bag. He called it “the bag of tricks.” It was. It had been successful once again. With no result.

Tom was angry. It wasn’t strictly necessary to get confessions from the two officers. His evidence was strong enough. Their identities could be checked out, in time. Damn them! Thick-skulled bastards! Well, their obstinacy had rubbed off on him. He’d be damned if he’d send a couple of suspects back to AIC without confirmed identification!

And there was something else. The third name on the list Colonel Eugen Cornelius. The prisoners had refused even to admit any knowledge of such an officer.

Beigel was no fool. Autocratic, pig-headed, yes. But no fool. He must know he was fighting a losing battle. It could only be a matter of time before the facts would emerge. Then, why? Was he fighting a holding action? Buying time? For what? Had it something to do with Cornelius? With that damned shot in the forest?

He made up his mind. He
had
to get to the bottom of the whole mess before calling it quits. He felt better, having come to a decision.

Larry tossed the musette bag into the jeep. He gave a short laugh. “You know,” he said, “if it weren’t so funny-peculiar, it’d be damned funny-ha-ha!”

Tom grinned. “I’ve had enough of the ha-ha. Let’s go on to the peculiar.”

“How? We’ve threatened the bastards with fibre and brimstone. Or more specifically, with the firing squad and the Russians. What the hell’s left?”

“Forget about that phony crew in the barn.” Tom looked toward the main house. “Let’s go to work on the jolly forester. No holds barred!”

“Okay,” Larry said. “I’m with you. But how the hell do we crack him?”

“We don’t,” Tom countered tersely. “We let them do it.”

Larry looked startled. “Them?”

“Beigel and his buddies.” Tom nodded toward the barn.

For a moment Larry stared at him, nonplused. Then he brightened. He shook his head. “You’re some kind of devious bastard!” he said. “But you go straight for the jugular!”

Tom grinned. “You better believe it!”

Gathering her children around her, the forester’s wife scurried ahead of the two agents as they marched to her husband’s sickroom. The family clustered apprehensively around the bed.

Tom swept the somber group with a benevolent glance. He returned to the forester. “Herr Forstmeister,” he said pleasantly. “We shall be leaving now. We have finished our investigation here.” The entire family relaxed visibly. Tom continued. “We want to thank you for your cooperation.”

The forester’s grinning geniality returned. He sat up in his bed. “
Selbstverständlich!—
Naturally—Herr Offizier.” He beamed with servile heartiness. “Anything we can do. Anything!”

“Fine.” Tom started to leave. He turned back to the bedridden man. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is one thing.” He looked at the forester. “As an important state official, Herr Forstmeister, you can be of value to

The forester sat up even straighter in his bed. “
Jawdhl!”
he snapped.

“We are leaving you in command here,” Tom continued. “You will be in charge of Oberwiese and the surrounding area. Responsible to the CIC.”

“
Ja-wohl!”
the man barked. He preened with pride. He shot a stern glance at his two boys and snapped his fingers. At once they stood stiffly erect.

“
Zu Befehl!”
the man said. “At your orders!”

“Very well,” Tom said. His manner changed subtly. His voice took on a ring of officer-to-officer confidentiality.

“You know, Herr Forstmeister,” he said candidly, “we actually did think we had a pretty important case here. We had been led to believe that Gefreiter Beigel and Unteroffizier Joachim were really
generals
in disguise. Hiding out. With a colonel named Cornelius.” He smiled. “Of course, they denied it.”