“And Jenny?”
“Also Adler. He made the Kettenglied—the connection. But we did not know it at the time.”
“God, why didn’t she tell me? Maybe I could have.
His voice trailed off as the horror of the situation began to sink in.
“She was protecting us,” Weber said. “The less people know, the better.”
“I should have guessed. She was so secretive about her new apartment. Didn’t want anyone to know her address or phone number.”
The fierce-eyed one with the gun, Weber, said nothing. He simply glared at Keegan.
“The last time she moved it was because she got one of our pamphlets in the mail,” said Wolffson. “She knew it was a trick, we would not mail anything to her.”
“I don’t understand,” Keegan said.
“It’s one of the things the Gestapo does,” said Wolffson. “Germans are required to report anything of a subversive nature. So they send one of our pamphlets to everyone on a particular street and if these people don’t report getting it, they are accused of a subversive act.”
“So she moved?”
Wolffson nodded. “And the only way the Gestapo could have gotten her address is by following you or me—or getting her phone number, which was not in her name.”
Keegan stared in silence, thinking about what Wolffson had just said. I didn’t even give the phone number to Bert or to Weil, thought Keegan. It couldn’t have been me.
“You and I were the only ones who knew where she was, Keegan.”
Keegan was getting angrier but he controlled himself. “I told you before, I didn’t tell a soul.”
“Did you telephone her from your hotel?” Wolffson asked.
“What the hell He stopped. Was it possible that they had tapped his phone n Paris, got her number and tracked her down? My God, was he responsible?
“Did you?” Wolffson asked.
“I tried to call her. There was no answer.”
“The Nazis are all over Paris. And I don’t think there is a hotel operator in the entire city that cannot be bribed. All they needed was her phone number to get her address.”
“Jesus.” Keegan paced back and forth for a few moments. He lit one cigarette off another.
“She contacted the Lily in Paris. They flew her to Leipzig and drove her into Berlin,” Wolffson said. “So Vierhaus had lost her. He was desperate.”
It all began to come together for Keegan.
“And had Conrad Weil call me, knowing I would call her. He was in on it. My old friend, Conrad. I should have suspected something was up when he called me. Conrad bends with the wind, he told me so himself. And von Meister was there waiting for me to take the bait.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, truly sorry. But what does Jenny have to do with all this?”
“Nothing, really. I am sure Vierhaus thinks she can give me up but she cannot. She doesn’t even know about this place. She delivered The Berlin Conscience, distributed some leaflets, that’s all. But they think she knows where I am and I am the one they want. Me, Gebhart here and Joachim. We are the leaders of the Black Lily.”
“How did you get involved in this?”
“The newspaper was started by our professors at the university. Sternfeld, Reinhardt and Eli Loehrman. Now Reinhardt and Sternfeld are dead. Only Old Eli is safe. He is in Paris with his son. He is the one who arranged to get Jenny back here.”
“And you boys picked up the banner, eh?”
‘Ja, I suppose you could put it that way. But now the Black Lily is very important. So important that Hitler has put a price on our heads and the Black Lily is the main target of the SS.”
Somewhere in another room a phone rang. Joachim got up from the table and went to answer it.
“Three college boys and one gun and you’ve set the entire Gestapo on its ear?” Keegan said to Wolffson.
“Not just three college boys anymore,” Wolffson said. “There are over two hundred of us in the network. We have connections in Switzerland, France, England, even Egypt and America. So far we have been very lucky. But some of our people
have not been so lucky. You know what happens if they catch us?”
“1 can imagine.”
“1 do not think so,” said Wolffson. “We are taken to Stadelheim Prison and tortured. And then we are beheaded.”
“What!”
‘Ja, Herr Keegan. Beheaded. And most of them are students.”
Weber returned and called Wolffson to the door. There was a whispered exchange, then they walked back into the room. Wolffson looked stricken. The veins around his jaw had hardened into blue ridges.
“The Gestapo arrested Jenny,” Wolffson said in a harsh voice that quivered with emotion. “She has been at Stadelheim prison for five hours. I don’t know that she is still alive.”
Keegan fell back in his chair, ashen.
“You may as well face it, Keegan, they will be very hard on her,” Weber said. “They will assume she knows much more than she does.”
“And we just sit around and let it happen?” Keegan said. “We don’t do anything?”
“There is nothing we can do at this point,” Wolffson said.
Keegan panicked.
“We’ve got to get her out. Get bail, get lawyers! I’ll call the embassy, maybe they can help.”
But hell, what could the embassy do? And why would they help him? He understood now how Wally must have felt the night he was trying to get Reinhardt out. There was one big difference. The Gestapo already had Jenny.
“It will do no good,” said Wolffson.
“If we can just get her out on bail,” Keegan pleaded. “I’ll take her to New York, she couldn’t be safer anywhere else.”
Gebhart suddenly spoke up for the first time, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “Damn it, man,” he said, “get it into your head. It’s too late!”
“There is no such thing as bail,” said Weber. “There will be no trial.”
The shock began to wear off and Keegan slowly realized how desperate her predicament was. What they ‘re saying, he thought, is that she’s gone!
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t even say that.”
Dear Jenny, he thought, is this what you get for loving me? Why did this happen? Was it some kind of cruel joke? Crazy things raced through his mind. God, I may never see her again! I can’t even say good-bye. Jesus Christ! What’s happening here?
“What’s happening here!” he cried aloud, his fists clenched in front of him. Tears flooded his eyes and he tried to fight them back. “It’s unacceptable, unacceptable. There’s got to be somebody we can bribe, somebody we can blackmail, threaten
They stared at him with sadness but little pity.
“Now you know vot it iss like for us every day of der year,” Gebhart said bitterly. “Every day they take somebody avay. Friends, lovers, children. Sometimes whole families simply disappear off the street.”
“Understand, Keegan, we know your frustration,” Wolffson said quietly. “My hatred and anger consume me. I wanted to be a zoologist—work with animals. Look at me. Running all the time. Helping one out of perhaps every fifty or one hundred who get on the list. Throwing pamphlets around the city to people who don’t care.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“We cannot just surrender our lives without doing something,” Weber said.
“I want to kill Vierhaus,” Keegan blurted. “I want to kill that son of a bitch slowly. I want him to plead . . . no beg beg, for mercy. I want to hang him up by his heels and pour honey all over that miserable hump on his back and then let the rats eat their way through it right into his miserable black heart.”