«I didn’t know,» replied Helden, overwhelmed by a feeling of despair.
«See for yourself. It is midafternoon and the day is cool, but the sun is out. He’ll no doubt be in the square, singing his little songs and feeding the pigeons. They soil his clothes and he doesn’t notice.»
She saw him sitting on the stone ledge of the circular fountain in the village square. He was oblivious of the passersby who intermittently glanced down at him, more often in revulsion than in tolerance. His clothes were frayed, the tattered overcoat soiled with droppings, as the concierge had predicted. He was as old and as sickly as Herr Oberst, but much shorter and punier in face and body. His skin was pallid and drawn, marred by spider veins, and he wore thick steel-rimmed glasses that moved from side to side in rhythm with his trembling head. His hands shook as he reached into a paper bag, taking out bread crumbs and scattering them, attracting scores of pigeons that cooed in counterpoint to the high-pitched, singsong words that came from the old man’s lips.
Helden felt sick. He was only a remnant of a man. He was beyond senility; no other state could produce what she saw before her on the fountain’s edge.
The coin of Wolfsschanze has two sides. The time is near for the catastrophe to begin… It seemed pointless to repeat the words. Still, she’d come this far, knowing only that a great man had been butchered because his warning was real.
She approached the old man and sat beside him, aware that several people in the square looked at her as if she, too, were feebleminded. She spoke quietly, in German.
«Herr Gerhardt? I’ve traveled a long way to see you.»
«Such a pretty lady … a pretty, pretty lady.»
«I come from Herr Falkenheim. Do you remember him?»
«A falcon’s home? Falcons don’t like my pigeons. They hurt my pigeons. My friends and I don’t like them, do we, sweet feathers?» Gerhardt bent over and pursed his lips, kissing the air above the rapacious birds on the ground.
«You’d like this man, if you remembered him,» said Helden.
«How can I like what I don’t know? Would you like some bread? You can eat it, if you wish, but my friends might be hurt.» The old man sat up with difficulty and dropped crumbs at Helden’s feet.
«‘The coin of Wolfsschanze has two sides,’» whispered Helden.
And then she heard the words. There was no break in the rhythm; the quiet, high-pitched singsong was the same, but there was meaning now. «He’s dead, isn’t he?… Don’t answer me; just nod your head or shake it. You’re talking to a foolish old man who makes very little sense. Remember that.»
Helden was too stunned to move. And by her immobility, she gave the old man his answer. He continued in his singsong cadence. «Klaus is dead. So, finally, they found him and killed him.»
«It was the ODESSA,» she said. «The ODESSA killed him. There were swastikas everywhere.»
«Wolfsschanze wanted us to believe that.» Gerhardt threw crumbs in the air; the pigeons fought among themselves. «Here, sweet feathers! It’s teatime for you.» He turned to Helden, his eyes distant. «The ODESSA, as always, is the scapegoat. Such an obvious one.»
«You say Wolfsschanze,» whispered Helden. «A letter was given to a man named Holcroft, threatening him. It was written thirty years ago, signed by men who called themselves the survivors of Wolfsschanze.»
For an instant, Gerhardt’s trembling stopped. «There were no survivors of Wolfsschanze, save one! Klaus Falkenheim. Others were there, and they lived, but they were not the eagles; they were filth. And now they think their time has come.»
«I don’t understand.»
«I’ll explain it to you, but not here. After dark, come to my house on the lake. South on the waterfront road, precisely three kilometers beyond the fork, is a path…» He gave her the directions as though they were words written to accompany a childish tune. When he had finished, he stood up painfully, tossing the last crumbs to the birds. «I don’t think you’ll be followed,» he said with a senile smile, «but make sure of it. We have work to do, and it must be done quickly… Here, my sweet feathers! The last of your meal, my fluttering ones.»
37
A small single-engine plane circled in the night sky above the fiat pasture in Chambéry. Its pilot waited for the dual line of flares to be ignited: his signal to land. On the ground was another aircraft, a seaplane with wheels encased in its pontoons, prepared for departure. It would be airborne minutes after the first plane came to the end of the primitive runway, and would carry its valuable cargo north along the eastern leg of the Rhone River, crossing the Swiss border at Versoix, and landing on Lake Geneva, twelve miles north of the city. The cargo had no name, but that did not matter to the pilots. She had paid as well as the highest-priced narcotics courier.
Only once had she shown any emotion, and that was four minutes out of Avignon, toward Saint-Vallier, when the small plane had run into an unexpected and dangerous hailstorm.
«The weather may be too much for this light aircraft,» the pilot said. «It would be wiser to turn back.»
«Fly above it.»
«We haven’t the power, and we have no idea how extensive the front is.»
«Then go through it. I’m paying for a schedule as well as transportation. I must get to Geneva tonight.»
«If we’re forced down on the river, we could be picked up by the patrols. We have no flight registration.»
«If we’re forced down on the river, I’ll buy the patrols. They were bought at the border in Port-Bou; they can be bought again. Keep going.»
«And if we crash, madame?»
«Don’t.»
Below them in the darkness, the Chambéry flares were ignited successively, one row at a time. The pilot dipped his wing to the left and circled downward for his final approach. Seconds later they touched ground.
«You’re good,» said the valuable cargo, reaching for the buckle of her seat belt. «Is my next pilot your equal?»
«As good, madame, and with an advantage I don’t have. He knows the radar points within a tenth of an air mile in the darkness. One pays for such expertness.»
«Gladly,» replied Althene.
The seaplane lifted off against the night wind at exactly ten-fifty-seven. The flight across the border at Versoix would be made at very low altitude and would take very little time, no more than twenty minutes to a half hour. It was the specialist’s leg of the journey, and the specialist in the cockpit was a stocky man with a red beard and thinning red hair. He chewed a half-smoked cigar and spoke English in the harsh accent associated with Alsace-Lorraine. He said nothing for the first few minutes of the flight, but when he spoke, Althene was stunned.
«I don’t know what the merchandise is that you carry, madame, but there is an alert for your whereabouts throughout Europe.»
«What? Who put out this alert, and how would you know? My name hasn’t been mentioned; I was guaranteed that!»
«An all-Europe bulletin circulated by Interpol is most descriptive. It’s rare that the international police look for a woman of—shall we say—your age and appearance. I presume your name is Holcroft.»
«Presume nothing.» Althene gripped her seat belt, trying to control her reaction. She did not know why it startled her—the man of Har Sha’alav had said they were everywhere—but the fact that this Wolfsschanze had sufficient influence with Interpol to use its apparatus was unnerving. She had to elude not only the Nazis of Wolfsschanze but also the network of legitimate law enforcement. It was a well-executed trap; her crimes were undeniable: traveling under a false passport, and then with none. And she could give no explanation for those crimes. To do so would link her son—the son of Heinrich Clausen—to a conspiracy so massive he’d be destroyed. That extremity had to be faced; her son might have to be sacrificed. But the irony was found in the very real possibility that Wolfsschanze itself had reached deep within the legitimate authorities…