Shadows over Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  His twists and turns soon brought him to an altogether silent wing of the building, and at length he arrived at an intersection of two corridors, where he stopped, glanced furtively over his shoulder, then to his right and left.

  Apparently satisfied that he was alone, he suddenly seemed to spring to life, as if his veins had just been pumped with blood from a man thirty years younger. Quickly he pushed his cart into a dark alcove, unloaded about half its contents, which he stashed in a corner on the floor, then lifted a large bundle that had been stowed beneath the meat in a hidden compartment. In the seclusion of the alcove he began to remove the outer layers of his porter’s attire, including the gray wig and beard.

  Logan was especially glad to get rid of the uncomfortable beard, though he laid it neatly with the other items, for he would have need of it again. From the bundle, he took the uniform of an S.S. sergeant, which he hurriedly put on. Within moments the old porter was transformed into a member of Hitler’s elitist corps of protectors of the Third Reich. He placed the porter’s things into the bundle, tying all together securely. At the very last he strapped on his sidearm.

  Finally, taking up the bundle under his arm and inhaling a deep breath, he stepped back out into the dimly lit corridor. With stiff military bearing and purposeful stride, though no one was nearby to witness them, he walked about ten yards to a flight of stairs, which he descended into the detention area of the building. At the bottom of the steps stood a locked door with a small barred window placed at eye level, and a single buzzer on the doorpost.

  Logan set the bundle down out of sight, then withdrew a handkerchief and small vial from his pocket. He saturated the cloth with a few drops from the vial, then, keeping the handkerchief out of view, stepped up and pressed the buzzer. He only hoped the German he had learned in training and had been practicing so diligently in his spare time would pass the ultimate test.

  In a moment a face appeared at the window.

  “Ja?” said the guard from inside. “Was wollen Sie?”

  “Ich bin hier für die Gefangene übertragung gekommen,” replied Logan.

  “No one told me of a transfer of prisoners.”

  “I’ve got the order right here.” Logan took a folded paper from his breast pocket and held it up to the window.

  The guard opened the door and Logan stepped inside.

  “Immer Sicherheit! Jeden Tag Sicherheit!” complained the guard. “Every day they preach to me about security. Then they don’t tell me what’s going on. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Why don’t you call upstairs?” said Logan, manifesting considerable impatience at this guard who displayed fewer stripes on his shoulder than he. “But be quick about it. I haven’t got all day!”

  The guard turned to the wall behind him where the phone hung. But he progressed no farther, for the instant his back was turned Logan stepped forward and, grasping his body with one arm, with his free hand jammed the handkerchief over his nose. In three seconds the guard went limp and slumped to the floor.

  Quickly Logan dragged his unconscious body out of sight, then returned to the guard desk, grabbed up the keys, and scanned the pages of the roster. Finding the information he sought, he retrieved his bundle from outside, firmly closed the outer door, and went into the prison cell block.

  Here he encountered the long hallway he had been told to expect, with locked doors running down each side, similar to the one through which he had just passed. He resisted the temptation to look into each tiny window; from the groans and whimpers he heard, he knew what kind of sight would greet his eyes. Unfortunately, he could not now help all these poor men to escape. He had come for three in particular, and so must harden himself to the pitiful sounds, trying to assure himself that one day he would see them all free.

  Three-quarters of the way down the corridor he paused. He stepped up to the window of the door and saw a man sitting on his bunk, huddled against the wall with his legs pulled up to his chest, a single blanket wrapped around his shivering body. For the first time it suddenly dawned on Logan how icy cold these dark dungeons were; his own adrenaline had been pumping so hard he was almost in a sweat. Hearing a sound at his door, the man looked up.

  He was Reuven Poletski, a Jew, one of the driving forces of the Warsaw resistance movement. He was a man of average size and undistinguishing features. However, his dark hair and thick brown eyebrows appeared especially vivid against the prison pallor of his skin. But he did not appear the fierce leader of men his reputation had made of him—that is, until he glanced up and his eyes met those of the man he supposed to be an S.S guard. They were filled with such contempt and defiance that Logan almost forgot who he really was and hesitated for a moment opening the door.

  But the silent exchange lasted less than a second before Logan swung into action, unlocking the door and thrusting it open.

  “Reuven Poletski?” he said.

  “I am,” replied the prisoner in what Logan took for Polish. He proudly squared his shoulders and stood courageously to meet whatever fate was in store for him.

  “I’m with the Resistance,” said Logan in French. “I’ve come to get you out of here.”

  “This is some trick,” said Poletski, also in French, eyeing Logan warily.

  “We haven’t time for a cross-examination.”

  “I will not go without my wife and son,” answered the Pole resolutely.

  “Don’t worry. We will get them out, too. That’s my business.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “You’re a very important man, Monsieur Poletski. We certainly cannot let the Nazis have you without a fight. Now hurry.”

  Reuven Poletski and his family had been in the process of escaping Poland after an enormous price tag had been placed on Poletski’s head. They had made it as far as Paris, and had been staying with friends until false papers and a guide out of the city could be arranged for them. But a suspicious neighbor, a collaborator, had turned them in. They had been in Gestapo hands only three days before La Librairie, which since Logan’s arrival had been steadily gaining a reputation for successful escape operations, had been called in. Poletski had to be freed, for he knew enough to bring down the entire Warsaw resistance structure. And now with his family also in custody, there was no telling how long he could hold out. Even three days was pushing it.

  “I want you to know,” said Poletski, as he gathered what meager items of clothing he had, and speaking with a proud edge to his voice, “that were it only myself, I would never have left Poland—and as soon as they are safe in London, I will return.”

  “That’s fine, Poletski,” replied Logan. “But first we have to get you out of here. Come on, we haven’t much time. This thing was planned for the only twenty-minute gap we could discover in this place. In another ten, these corridors will be crawling with Germans again.”

  Quickly they located Poletski’s wife and sixteen-year-old son. Logan unlocked their door, Poletski explained excitedly, and in three or four minutes the small party was assembled once more at the guard’s station. Hastily Logan changed back into his porter’s clothes, while the three Polish refugees put on the Nazi uniforms Logan had smuggled into the building in his bundle.

  “We hardly look like S.S. men,” said Poletski, surveying the illfitting uniforms on the diminutive frames of his wife and son.

  Logan took a second look. The son was nearly as tall as he was himself, and Madame Poletski filled out the uniform admirably, better than he had expected.

  “Don’t worry. You look fine. By the time you get to the outside gate, they won’t give you a second thought. It’ll be me they’ll be after.”

  Notwithstanding Logan’s assurances, Poletski was clearly nervous, though for his wife and son, not himself. How could he not be? It was insanity to attempt an escape right from under the noses of the S.S.; certain torture and death awaited them if they failed.

  When they were ready to leave the detention area on the final leg of their journey to fre
edom, Logan paused by the unconscious guard, stooped down, and gave him another dose of chloroform from the handkerchief.

  “That should hold him until we’re away from here,” he said.

  “We would be safer if he were dead,” said Poletski.

  “I don’t operate that way,” replied Logan, rising from the floor. He opened the door and led the three escapees out of the detention block, up the stairs, and to the alcove where Logan retrieved his meat cart.

  Moving quickly, they kept to the same service corridors by which Logan had come. As Logan led the way, he filled Poletski in on what to do the moment they exited the building and made for the guardhouse.

  As they rounded a tight corner, Logan took the lead, and suddenly found himself face-to-face with a German officer. Immediately slapping on a toothy ingratiating grin, he tipped his beret and said in his gravelly porter’s voice, “Bonjour, mon Captain.” He only hoped Poletski, who had not yet come around the corner, had heard him and taken his cue.

  Almost the same instant from behind him Logan heard a sharp German command:

  “Move aside, Porter!”

  It was Poletski, getting admirably into his character.

  “Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur!” Logan replied, with profound humility, making an overdone attempt to move the cart aside. But he seemed to catch one of the wheels on one of the floor stones, causing the cart nearly to overturn. He righted it before catastrophe struck; but during the entire several seconds the captain, now pinned against the wall, was forced to attend to the errant cart, while the three other soldiers passed by on the other. Logan’s smile at his discomfort was fortunately hidden beneath the tufts of his beard. Poletski and his family had marched past Logan and cart and the captain with all the precision and hauteur of the German conquerors they were dressed up to be. In the meantime, the S.S. captain hurried on down the hall in the opposite direction, just thankful to have made it by the maniac of a meatporter without breaking his neck.

  At last they reached the final door. Poletski shook his head doubtfully.

  “We can’t possibly get out of the compound,” he said. “It was pure luck we made it this far.”

  “Have faith, Monsieur Poletski.”

  “Do you plan to hide us in that thing?” he asked, cocking his head dubiously toward the meat cart.

  “I have something a bit more creative in mind,” said Logan. “Now, as I was starting to tell you when we were interrupted by that captain in the hallway, you let me get about fifty meters beyond the gate—three minutes should do it . . .”

  ———

  Two minutes later the guards at the main gate looked up to see the old porter once more shuffling across the courtyard, pushing his now empty cart at his unhurried, sluggish pace. He paused, and nodded his head toward the corporal.

  “You want to check again, non?” he said, fumbling at the ties on the tarp.

  The guard looked under one edge of the canvas, then gave the cart a harsh shove.

  “Get on with you, crazy old man!”

  Logan said nothing, just lumbered past the gate.

  For the first time he was painfully conscious of each slow, methodical step, as he listened intently behind him. But he knew that if he even picked up his pace imperceptibly, he might raise the suspicions of whatever guards were still eyeing him.

  He was almost to the corner of the adjacent building when his cue came.

  From inside the courtyard he heard the sound of urgent commanding shouts and the sound of running feet on the pavement.

  Logan started to walk faster, but he dared not turn around. If he had, he would have seen a tall S.S. officer, followed by two shorter ones, run breathlessly up to the guardhouse and ask in frantic German, “Did a porter just come by here . . . pushing a meatcart?”

  “Ja, mein Herr,” answered the corporal.

  Logan was now out of sight and breaking into a run.

  “And you let him pass? Imbecile!” shouted Poletski. “He is a Resistance agent. We will have to go after him.”

  “What do you want us to do, mein Herr?”

  “You have done enough already! Call inside and have them check the prison compound. We will soon be back with the agent. Come, men!”

  The two others with him silently obeyed, and all three ran out of the compound and down the street in the direction Logan had gone.

  When the corporal emerged from the guardhouse after making his call a minute later, the evening was once again silent. There was no sign either of the porter or the three officers in pursuit of him.

  31

  Arnaud Soustelle

  The closing months of 1941 were turbulent ones in Paris. If the German occupation had turned France upside-down, these months turned it inside-out.

  Hitler’s invasion of Russia had stirred new fervor among French Communists. A demonstration protesting the German breach of faith with Russia, a former ally, turned into a riot in August. Two Communists were executed for their part in the protest. Then followed what, in a world fraught with perfidy, seemed to be the height of betrayal to French patriots, whether they were Communist or Gaullist—hundreds of Frenchmen enlisted, forming a military division to join the German army in the fighting on the Russian front.

  When a German soldier was gunned down in a back alley, apparently by a communist, the Nazi’s reacted by taking a number of hostages. But when still another soldier was murdered, the S.S. retaliated with savage recriminations, including the execution of a dozen of these innocent French hostages. Paris became a powder keg, ready to explode on many fronts at once. The hit-and-run tactics of the French resistance fighters only angered the Germans all the more. For every French prisoner they took or hostage they executed, however, it seemed two were miraculously set free. Each time the scenario was different, but the Resistance agents seemed able to penetrate the most secure of their installations. Always there was a disguise, always a diversion. Yet the diversity made it impossible to detect ahead of time what was about to happen. Eventually talk began to circulate among S.S. and Gestapo headquarters that the escapes were all the work of a single man. A dedication began to grow to discover his identity and put a stop to his sabotage of the Third Reich’s attempt to consolidate its stranglehold on Paris.

  Attacks on both sides continued sporadically through the fall and winter. Controversy and discord were everywhere. The indifference of the general public was one of the most disheartening factors for those involved in the Resistance. While a handful of patriots were sacrificing their lives toward the hope of liberation, a much greater majority of Frenchmen were going on with their lives under the German occupation as if nothing had happened. And an alarming number actually fell in with the Nazis. The patriots did not know whom to hate more—the Nazis or their collaborators. How, they asked themselves, can watching the deaths of their innocent countrymen not turn the hearts of such vile traitors—if such opportunists even have hearts?

  Arnaud Soustelle was among the worst of this ignoble breed.

  Prior to the war he had already begun to acquire a reputation as an inspector of police with a total lack of moral scruples. For even a small bribe he would turn in a trusting friend, he could beat information out of the most stubborn of suspects, and he took special delight in devising ever more inhumane ways to torment Jews.

  When the Germans came in 1940, Soustelle lost no time in hitching his loyalties to the Nazi wagon. Hitler’s racism suited him well, and armed with his particular talents and a loyal retinue of informants and connections who would do anything for a price, Soustelle found himself openly welcomed by the German occupiers. He was soon serving in the Sicherheitsdienst, or simply the S.D. This security agency for the Nazi party operated in the same ignominious capacity as the Gestapo, though the S.D. more willingly welcomed civilian nationals within its ranks. Arnaud had thus far proved an extremely valuable agent for his native knowledge of the city, and his policeman’s savvy served him well.

  Today, however, walking down the avenue Foch
with a light snowfall dusting the shoulders of his new overcoat, Soustelle felt a slight twinge of a very uncharacteristic emotion: trepidation. It was not a feeling the tough forty-five-year-old Frenchman was used to, or liked. At six feet tall, broad of chest with icy gray eyes and hawk-like nose, it was ordinarily he who instilled fear in others.

  But it was no small matter to be summoned to S.S. headquarters, especially when he was well aware of recent failures having to do with leads he had given them. These Nazis were an unforgiving lot. Forgetting all his successes, they would probably boot him out (no doubt to some labor camp in Germany) if he wasn’t careful. But, he reminded himself, as he would his superiors, he had not yet exactly failed. He had merely not yet completely succeeded. But he would. Of that they could be certain.

  Thoughtful, he slipped his hand into his pocket, took out a chunk of black licorice, and popped it into his mouth. It was a habit he had acquired many years earlier, and now almost continually he had a thick wad of the stuff churning about inside his mouth. Where most men smelled of tobacco, Soustelle perennially reeked of the bitter-sweet odor of licorice.

  Chewing on the candy, he continued to wonder what was in store for him as he walked. He passed the main gate unimpeded, crossed the courtyard, and entered the building. This particular part of the compound had once been a fine townhouse occupied by a wealthy Parisian. He proceeded directly up a wide stairway, paying no attention to the intricate balustrade or the expensive flocked wallpaper. In another few moments he paused before a large oak door, and, before knocking, tossed another licorice drop into his mouth. He would have argued vehemently that it was not a nervous habit, but however coincidental it was, he seemed to devour many more during times of stress.

  “Herein!” came a feminine voice from inside.

  “I have an appointment with the general,” said Soustelle upon entering.