Eva

by Ib Melchior

  Even as he allowed himself the luxury of his thoughts, he knew he’d stay in the damned garden, and return to Ilse.

  And—to what?

  Would she give him away? He thought not.

  He could be wrong.

  He stood up, too restless to sit. He walked over to the bushes where he’d dumped the SS officer. The man was gone. Back with his friends nursing the bump on his head and trying to explain it away, no doubt.

  He looked at his watch. It was difficult to get enough light. Six minutes to go.

  What would they do to him, if Ilse blew the whistle on him? They would have to kill him, of course. Unless he could kill them first. He felt for his gun. He carried it in the small of his back. My Dick Tracy comforter, he thought mirthlessly. What if he did do a Prune Face? What if he did cut out. Aborted the damned mission?

  What if Ilse did trust him? What would they do to her, if he disappeared?

  Again he looked at his watch. Three minutes. He stepped out on the path. He looked toward the window to his room. It was dark. Slowly he walked toward it.

  The window was still open, and he climbed in. He looked toward the bed. Ilse was not there.

  Suddenly the light went on in the room, a soft glow from a single bulb in a floor lamp. Woody whirled at the sound of the switch.

  At the door stood Ilse—and the Achse agent, Signor Luigi Bazzano.

  25

  THE ITALIAN SCOWLED AT WOODY. “I told you, Signore, to remain in your room.” He sounded aggrieved. “It is not safe for you to wander around in the garden.”

  “I could not sleep,” Woody said testily. He threw a quick glance at Ilse. She looked noncommittal. “I needed some fresh air,” he finished.

  Again he glanced at Ilse. She stood motionless, staring at nothing, her face pale and pinched. He was bursting to talk to her. Why was the Achse agent there? What had she told him? Imperceptibly he backed away. From both of them. To give himself room—if he had to act.

  Bazzano looked from one to the other. “Please,” he said. He spread his hands in an imploring gesture. “I must ask you to come with me. Per favore, Signore.”

  “Why?” Woody asked sharply. He put his right hand on his hip. He knew he could draw his gun in an instant. “Why?” he repeated.

  The Italian help up a hand. “Calma, Signore! There has been a—disturbing incident,” he explained. “One of our guests was attacked. He apparently heard someone trying to break into a ground floor room. When he went to investigate, he was struck on the head.” He patted himself on the top of his head. “His skull may be cracked.”

  “Who did it?” Woody asked.

  The innkeeper shrugged elaborately. “I do not know,” he said.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Less than an hour ago.”

  “I see,” Woody said tartly. “And what has that to do with us?”

  Bazzano looked anxiously at the two of them. “Molto, Signore,” he blurted out. “Very much! There may be a prowler around. Un ladro—a robber—perhaps. You may not be safe in this room. I will take you to a place where you will be safe.” He drew himself up and pounded his chest. “Your safety is my duty, Signore!”

  “Very well,” Woody said. “We will get our things together.” He looked at Ilse. She met his gaze, her eyes veiled. “Ilse?” he said.

  She nodded. “I will get ready,” she said tonelessly.

  The room the innkeeper took them to was in the basement. It had no windows, but a small grated ventilation shaft. It was spartan, with two cots and a couple of straight-backed chairs. The Italian showed them a heavy dead bolt on the inside of the door. “When I leave,” he said. “Bar the door. Open to no one but me. Capisce?”

  Woody nodded. “And when will you come for us, Signor Bazzano,” he asked. “When will we be able to continue our journey?”

  “In a few hours,” the Italian said quickly. “Very soon, Signore. About eight in the morning.” He bobbed his head, and ducked out the door.

  Woody frowned after him. Automatically he tried the door. It was unlocked. He felt uneasy. He did not like the sudden shifty look in the man’s close-set eyes, and the way his tongue had flitted out to wet his fleshy lips.

  He dismissed it. He could do nothing now, but be on the alert. He turned to Ilse. She was watching him. He went up to her.

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  Her huge eyes were unnaturally bright as she looked up at him. “I—thought about what you said,” she whispered haltingly. “Much of it is true. There has been a terrible evil among us.” She gave a little sob. “Perhaps—perhaps I can make up a little for it. For what my mother . . .” Her voice broke.

  “Your mother . . .” Woody began.

  She interrupted him. “I know about my mother,” she breathed in bleak defiance.

  He took her shoulders in his hands. A gentle, unconscious gesture of support. “Knowing and accepting are two entirely different things,” he said quietly. “It is sometimes difficult to know—it is always more difficult to accept.” He looked down into her upturned face, torn by the look of anguish he saw in it. “You must learn to do that, Ilse. Accept what your mother had become in the course of serving a brutal, inhuman master. Accept that it has absolutely nothing to do with you. You bear no guilt. No shame.”

  The tears welled in her haunted eyes, clear drops of grief that caught the light and spilled it down her cheeks. Slowly she crept into his arms and laid her head on his chest. She wept silently.

  He stroked her short, tousled hair and buried his face in it.

  “Hold me,” she whispered. “I am so alone . . .”

  She sobbed.

  He held her tight.

  “You are wrong,” he said softly.

  SS Sturmbannführer Oskar Strelitz looked up as Bazzano entered the room.

  “Well?” he snapped.

  Bazzano sighed. “It is done,” he said. “They are safely in the basement room.” He glowered sullenly at the German. “As you requested.”

  “Perhaps it would be best if we clarified one thing, Bazzano,” Strelitz said coldly, his arctic eyes impaling the Italian. “I do not make requests. I give orders. Orders that will be obeyed. By you.”

  “I am not marching in the German army,” Bazzano protested.

  “You are in the pay of the Brüderschaft,” Strelitz countered acidly. “You will do as they order. As I order. Is that fully understood?”

  “It will be much of an expense,” Bazzano complained. “It is not within the functions of the Anlaufstelle. I do not have such funds.”

  “You will be adequately compensated,” Strelitz snapped contemptuously.

  Bazzano licked his lips. “As long as that is understood,” he shrugged.

  “The man, Diehl, who calls himself Bauhacker, and the woman with him, Ilse Gessner, must be eliminated,” Strelitz said. He glared at the agent. “I agreed not to take care of the matter myself. Here. Now. Because it might compromise your Anlaufstelle and your operation. But only because you, Bazzano, assured me the mission would be carried out once they left here on their way to the Anlaufstelle in Bolzano.”

  The innkeeper nodded vigorously. “My cousin, Pietro, he will take care of them,” he said. “They will not reach Bolzano. I, Luigi Bazzano, guarantee it!”

  “Indeed you do,” Strelitz said coldly. “With your life.” He scowled at the Italian. “That attack on the SS officer. Have you any further information?” he asked.

  Bazzano shrugged. He gave a sour thought to the painstaking justification he had had to give his SS guests for having Jews at the inn. Protection, he had pleaded. Protection for the important Achse travelers. Anyone who might come looking for SS fugitives would be shown the Jews. The SS men had accepted his explanation. Grudgingly. But then—why not? Any time a Jew could be used for the benefit of an SS man, use him. He eyed Strelitz. “No, Signor ufficiale,” he answered. “Only what the man told us.”

  “Could Bauhacker, Diehl, have been responsible?”


  Again Bazzano shrugged, his palms turned up. “It is possible. It is not for one to know. It is also possible it could have been another guest here. It is even possible that the SS man told us the truth. There are all sorts of delinquenti around these days.”

  He shuffled his feet. He gave Strelitz a calculating, sidelong glance. “There is—another matter,” he said. “It is, perhaps, of interest to you.”

  “What is?” Strelitz snapped impatiently.

  “The other couple here,” Bazzano said. “She is the pregnant one.”

  Strelitz looked sharply at the Italian. “What about them?”

  “The young man,” Bazzano explained, “he is much worried. He worries that his woman may not be able to endure the strain of the traveling to Bari. By the usual Achse route. He—he asked me if I could, that is ease their journey. Make it quicker, perhaps? That is what he asked.”

  Strelitz fixed him with his hard eyes. If the man did not already have a way to do so and had not seen a possibility to enrich himself in the process, he would not have brought it up, he thought. What did he have in mind? He was curious. If anything could be done to ease the trip, and the risks, for Frau Eva and her child, it must be done. “Can you?” he asked curtly.

  Bazzano nodded—reluctantly. “It is possible, Signor ufficiale. But it will cost much money.”

  “What have you in mind?”

  “My cousin, Mario, he has a boat,” Bazzano said eagerly. “A fine motorboat. He keeps it in Sottomarina. It is a small fishing village south of Venice. In the Golfo di Venezia. I, myself, and my cousin, Pietro, who is a very good driver of automobiles, would take the young people to him. In my own automobile. And he could take them on his fine boat all the way to Bari.” He shrugged regretfully. “But, as I told you, it would be much money. It is a long voyage. Many kilometers. Seven hundred kilometers. More perhaps. Much benzina—much gasoline. And many hours. Perhaps thirty.”

  “Arrange it.”

  The Italian bobbed his head. “Si, volentieri!” His eager face suddenly fell. “But,” he sighed, “it would be necessary for me first to give money to my cousin with the boat. He will need it.”

  Strelitz observed the innkeeper scornfully. A slimy little lout, he thought. It was degrading for the Brüderschaft to have to deal with the likes of him.

  “You will get your money,” he said disdainfully.

  The Italian licked his lips. “I shall also need to know where in Bari is the Anlaufstelle. I only know the next one on the route. In Bolzano.”

  “I will get the necessary information, and your money, for you,” Strelitz said shortly. “By 0800 hours. Be ready to leave by then.”

  He stood up. “You will take the young woman and her escort to your cousin and instruct him to transport them to Bari on his boat. Understood?”

  “Understood, Signor ufficiale.”

  “And you know your orders regarding the man and the woman in the basement?”

  Bazzano nodded. “I do.”

  “Including the travel papers?”

  “Si,” Bazzano said. He spread his hands. “But why?” It is much work. And it is not necessary to . . . ”

  “Just do it!” Strelitz snapped. He smiled nastily at the Italian. “Consider it a safety valve. In case your cousin, Pietro, should happen to bungle the job.”

  Indignantly Bazzano drew himself up. “Never!” he declared. “Never, Signor ufficiale. My cousin would never bungle.”

  “Good,” Strelitz said crisply. “Then you will have no trouble in carrying out my orders without fail.” It was dismissal. “I, myself, shall leave here shortly before you do.”

  “And I, Luigi Bazzano, will obey your commands, Signor ufficiale. You may trust me. Implicitly!”

  Strelitz regarded the Italian, his lips stretched thin in a little smile of contempt. It was insufferable, he thought, that he and his vital mission had to be degraded by having to rely on such pitiful inferiors. But he had no other recourse. Not in the matter of the Diehl nuisance.

  But there were other matters. Matters he would deal with himself. The safety of Eva Braun Hitler and her unborn child.

  And Operation Future.

  Ilse stirred fitfully as Woody gently disengaged himself, but she did not wake up. She had fallen asleep in his arms as he sat on one of the cots, leaning against the wall. He had always considered it the greatest expression of trust when a dog or a cat fell asleep in his lap, rendering themselves totally vulnerable to him. He looked down at Ilse. Or a girl, he thought. Carefully he lowered her to the cot and stood up. He was stiff. He’d been sitting, holding the exhausted girl, for a long time. He hadn’t had the heart to wake her.

  The light, coming from a single feeble bulb in the ceiling had been left on. He looked toward the door. The heavy dead bolt was still in place. There was one other door in the room, a smaller one. He hoped it led to where he thought it would. He opened it.

  The cubicle behind it was about the size of a shower stall. It was the kind of crude indoor toilet he’d run across occasionally in Europe, especially in France. A cement floor slanted toward a hole in the middle and with two small raised platforms, like tile footprints, to stand on. And a spigot low on the wall. It would do.

  Only a trickle of water flowed from the spigot when he turned the handle. He opened it all the way. The performance was not improved. He gave up.

  He glanced at his watch. He frowned. It was well past 0730 hours. Where the hell was the damned innkeeper?

  He walked to the door. He slid the bolt from its clasp. He tried to open the door.

  It was locked.

  Someone had locked it while they were resting.

  He stared at it. They were locked in. He’d half expected it. The Italian agent seemed about as trustworthy as a nearsighted cobra. He was about to bang on it, when he stopped himself. It would do no good. And he wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction.

  He glared at the closed door.

  In time it would open.

  To what?

  26

  THE BACK OF THE BATTERED LITTLE TRUCK smelled musty and sour with a faint hint of carbolic acid. Pietro, the driver, an acnescarred young man with two front teeth missing and unkempt black hair, drove like a madman, and the truck bounced and swayed, tossing them around in the empty cargo space.

  Woody was furious. For more than twenty-four hours he and Ilse had been cooped up in the damned basement at the Merano inn. Signora Bazzano had fed them personally, always accompanied by two silent gorillas with ham-sized fists and no brows. The food had been ample and tasty, and there had been plenty of wine, but the door had been kept locked. The Signora had chirped something about emergency measures and her husband being away on some urgent mission or other, all because of a disturbing and unsolved attack on a guest at the inn. All activities related to the Achse had therefore come to a standstill, she’d proclaimed.

  When Woody complained about being locked in, she’d thrown up her hands melodramatically and cried it was her husband’s strict instructions and was all to ensure their own safety. How that worked, she had not explained.

  The only good thing about the whole damned mess, he thought, was the fact that both he and Ilse had been able to get more than enough rest, and the rich food had restored their strength. He only wished he could keep such phrases as “fatted calf” and “last meal” from entering his mind.

  It was now Wednesday, June 13. He had lost a full day, and had had no chance to learn anything about Eva and her companion, or try to find out if they were at the inn. His only consolation was, that according to Signora Bazzano, no one else had left the inn during the last twenty-four hours.

  Finally, that morning, Bazzano had shown up, all apologies and unintelligible explanations. They would be leaving immediately, he’d announced. For the Anlaufstelle in Bolzano. His cousin, a clever boy who could be trusted as if he were Luigi Bazzano himself, would drive them there on his way to pick up supplies for the inn, which he always did on Wednesday morn
ings. Hurriedly he’d given them the address of the stop in Bolzano and the passwords to use, and he’d stuffed their new travel papers in Woody’s breast pocket.

  He felt for them. He’d not even had a chance to examine them.

  He fished them out. He held them to one of the streaks of yellow light that lanced into the truck through numerous cracks.

  He froze.

  The travel permit, for him and Ilse, gave them permission to travel by whatever means at their disposal, private or public, to the city of Rome.

  Rome. Not Bari!

  He stared at it. Was it a mistake? Deliberate? To keep him from getting to Bari? If so, why? Who had issued the orders? Why Rome? He cursed. He should have realized there would be other escape route branches fanning out once the B-B Achse line reached Italy. But, even if he had, how could he have insisted that he be sent to Bari? He had been lulled into a false sense of security, he realized, by the name B-B Achse. Bremen–Bari, dammit! Not Bremen-Bari-Genoa-Leghorn-Naples or whatever other damned Italian seaports the bastards could think of.

  He calmed down. Excuses weren’t going to get him anywhere. He took stock. He had lost a full day—and he was on his way to a totally different place from where he wanted to go. If he hoped ever to catch up with Eva.

  Eva? Wait a minute. Had she, in fact, been sent to Bari? Or to Rome? Or to some other Godforsaken place? Who the hell knew? He suddenly felt utterly defeated. He had no possible way of knowing. Or finding out.

  Even if he in some way could change his destination once he arrived in Bolzano—and he had not the foggiest notion of how to pull off that little trick—but even if he could, how could he know he wasn’t just scratching his ass on the wrong cheek? The damned mission was closer to coming to a head in time than ever before—and further away in realization than when he started.