Black Chamber

by S. M. Stirling

  He hadn’t reacted at all to her or Ciara, not even the usual brief covert glances at hips or bosom or bottom, or to the few other women they’d seen, but that might just be extremely good self-control. Gentlemen weren’t supposed to look at you that way, which generally meant they did it very quickly and covertly. He certainly wasn’t effeminate, but that wasn’t the same thing at all; in the terms she’d grown up with he wasn’t a maricón, but could easily be a bugarrón. That ambiguity was a pity, since the knowledge would be potentially useful to blackmail or discredit an enemy agent. It was a matter of profound indifference to her personally, but that wasn’t how the world in general looked at it, and you used the world as it was to accomplish your mission. Winning was all that mattered.

  I’ll ask Horst what he thinks, she thought suddenly. It will plant a suspicion in his mind, which will also be useful; any sand you can put in the enemy’s gears is a good thing. He’s pretty conventional that way. Men with men revolts him; women and women he just disapproves of because the Church says he should.

  Instead of prolonging the conversation with Daubigny she brought out the violin case.

  “Does anyone mind?” she said to the compartment at large.

  “Really, Elisa, I didn’t expect you to actually steal it,” Ciara said disapprovingly; she seemed a bit annoyed in general today.

  Unusual for her, Luz thought. She’s a very sweet girl most of the time. Not something you can say about me; I can be charming, and I’m good company . . . but not sweet. I never was, not even as a child, I think.

  “I’m not stealing it; I’m being una buena gente and taking it to the owners,” she said reasonably. “I’ll send it parcel post to them in Dresden from . . . wherever we end up on the seashore. If I’d left it at Schloss Rauenstein someone definitely would have stolen it and they’d never see it again. Meanwhile I keep it in trim by using it.”

  “I suppose,” Ciara said dubiously.

  Horst laughed. “Elisa has a true soldierly attitude toward property,” he said, and dropped back into German: “God provides the nuts but it’s up to us to crack them, as the old saying goes.”

  “That’ll be possible?” Luz said to Horst. “Posting it back to them? Honestly, I wouldn’t want to risk wrecking a violin this beautiful on a submarine.”

  “One way or another, Elisa,” he said absently. “Either by mail, or someone I know will dispatch it later if I leave it with them.”

  Just then the orderly dashed past the windows of the special train and came in panting; he was older and plumper than the one they’d had on their trip from the border to Schloss Rauenstein. The plumper was notable in a low-ranking noncom in Germany these days. He had cloth and paper-wrapped bundles in both hands and his haversack bulged, and he was grinning until he put his burdens down and saluted Horst sharply. There was a faint smell like a bakery about them too, and something spicy and meaty.

  “Keine Kohle, Gefreiter?” Horst said.

  “Nein, Herr Hauptmann,” the man said.

  He was speaking good schoolroom-and-military Hochdeutsch but from his accent he came from the working class in this general area of the country, where the Low German dialects spoken day-to-day were virtually a different language and more like Dutch or Frisian than the tongue Martin Luther had cobbled together. Beaming, he continued:

  “I can get coal from the tender that will do well enough with a little skill at laying the fire. What I have here is actual bread, not drööch sawdust held together with potato starch but fresh-baked Bauernbrot from real rye and wheat with caraway seeds. And real butter, some strings of good Landjägers, and a Harzer Roller cheese that may be older than the war—”

  Luz looked at him with interest; Landjägers were a type of pressed, smoked, and dried beef-and-pork sausage made with red wine and spices. Hunters used them—hence the name—and other travelers, since they kept well and one link made the meat portion of a meal. They would go extremely well with the fresh dark rye bread, and the pungent yellow Harz cheese.

  “—and greens, kale mostly and onions. And . . .”

  He paused for effect:

  “Some Leibniz butter cookies! This is what I have tracked down for my commander and his guests, sparing no effort in the hunt!”

  “Corporal Jäger, you are a shameless thief, not a hunter,” Horst said sternly.

  But the sentence was a joke of sorts since hunter was exactly what the man’s surname meant. Luz had noticed that Horst had a born aristocrat’s easy mixture of authority and familiarity when dealing with subordinates whose position in the hierarchy was well established.

  Retainers, in other words. His family’s estate in Silesia is probably very well run, if they’re much like him, but God help any peasant who tries to do the Freiherr wrong.

  “And you are a very good scrounger,” he went on. “What will you do with this . . . plunder?”

  “I would never plunder my fellow Germans, Herr Hauptmann,” the noncom said with a straight face. “It was my winning charm and explaining that even a stationmaster’s wife had no prospect of hanging on to this stuff with a major movement passing through so she might as well sell to a handsome, charming, well-funded worthy like me before it’s sniffed out by some ruthless swine who picked up bad management habits from the Poles—”

  That was a joke itself too: Polnische Wirtschaft, Polish management, was a common German saying for dirt, chaos, and dishonesty.

  “—and left his conscience behind in the East.”

  “Your quick fingers and my money, you scoundrel,” Horst said, visibly suppressing a smile. “So?”

  “I will make a lovely stew, Herr Oberst. Not a true Grünkohl mit Pinkel, since I have no Pinkel and smoked pork, but Landjägers will do. I will begin the simmering at once to make the kale tender and sweet. And there is a little lard for potatoes fried with some of the onions.”

  “You may go,” Horst said. “And leave some of the butter cookies, and save a few for our dessert too while you’re stuffing your own belly.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberst! Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!” the man said.

  He braced to almost comic rigidity for his salute, as if implying all the Kadavergehorsam in the world, then gathered up his swag and headed back to the miniature kitchen.

  “And get that coal and get the heating stove going!” Horst barked after him good-naturedly.

  He chuckled openly when the man had disappeared. “Every good infantry company has one like that,” he said. “And you learn to appreciate them when a decent meal is a rare treat.”

  “Very true,” Luz said sincerely.

  She’d noticed exactly the same thing working with the American Army, whose official supplies were usually abundant and healthy . . . but paralyzingly boring after a while. There were rumors that the Quartermaster’s Office of the General Staff taste-tested them to make sure they weren’t very tasty, on the theory that the troops would increase the logistics strain by childishly gobbling more than they really needed if it was actually appetizing. There came a day when the prospect of another can of Libby’s corned beef on crackers just made your stomach seize up, not to mention your bowels bind into immovable knots.

  And usually abundant didn’t mean always abundant, either. There were times when the units you were working with outran the supply trains and it was tortillas and beans and whatever someone like Corporal Jäger could work their sleight-of-hand on, coming up with a chicken or a piglet or some blessed tomatoes and eggplant in the most unlikely places.

  “How about some Ysaÿe before dinner?” she asked, raising the bow of the violin again. “The Malinconia?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Luz sat on the edge of the bed and smiled a small secret smile to herself as she composed the letter later that evening. There was an art to using book codes. They were unbreakable, yes, as long as the person who intercepted it didn�
�t have the right book and edition; but they were also very obviously codes if you used the most straightforward method, with page and line and word rendered as numbers. The real trick was to compose an otherwise innocuous message in clear text that contained the reference numbers disguised as words. The only really safe coded message was one that nobody but the recipient would know was a coded message.

  In this case she was using The Mucker, revealed by using Billy as the first word in the first paragraph, and then substituting alternating first and last letters in each line of her writing for the numbers. That type of code was easily breakable in itself, but not when used as a key to a book code—the numbers were meaningless without the book—and it made a convincing plain text cover much easier to write without convoluted syntax or odd word choices to activate someone’s suspicions.

  The grin died a little. It also made it impossible to convey complex mathematical data, which would have been perfect. She could . . .

  “What are you doing?” Ciara said; she was sitting on the chair at the other end of the bed, combing out her hair for the night.

  “I’m writing a message,” Luz said. “In a code I can’t tell you about, to someone I can’t tell you about but who isn’t who it’s addressed to, who can get it out of Germany if they get it. And they may or may not get it in time, and international mails are slow and undependable these days . . . but it might get to the U.S. of A. in time to do some good.”

  “Oh!” Ciara said, relief flooding her face. “You mean they won’t have to depend on us getting the information to them at the last moment—”

  “No, unfortunately. ¡Maldito sea! You see, it has to be a message that Horst and the German postal censors can read without realizing it’s in code; he’d never let me send a sealed note. I have a plausible cover story for that—”

  It had been her own suggestion, about two years ago, to develop that finishing school she’d attended—and Elisa had, though nobody had thought about that then—as a drop box for the Chamber’s European operations. It had a natural reason to receive and send mail abroad, with its multinational clientele, and enough German women from socially prominent families had gone there to give it protection and respectability.

  All that they’d needed to do was slip in an agent who could access the school’s correspondence—Luz of course had no idea who that was or how they did it—and then keep the school going by an occasional infusion of funds from the secret accounts disguised as contributions by alumni. The woman in charge of the place was an impoverished German countess of impeccable lineage—a Reichsgräfin if you wanted to get technical—and from the reports hadn’t noticed a thing, which Luz had anticipated.

  Because poor old Countess von Weilbach wouldn’t notice a badger if it bit her on the bum, she thought, mentally quoting a British fellow pupil. I don’t think anything since the Congress of Vienna was really real to her.

  And of course there were plenty of graduates in Switzerland and other nearby countries, where the odd letter could find its way to an American embassy and out in the diplomatic bag or sent telegraphically via standard diplomatic coded cables. It was an excellent conduit as long as it wasn’t overused and you weren’t in a hurry. She was in a hurry, but it was what she had.

  “—but that means I can give only a general warning. And the actual precise day of the attack will be set by wireless message once the U-boats are nearly in place, so I can’t give an account of that. Even the exact locations wouldn’t be enough without the precise time. And even this message is only possible because of the violin.”

  “The violin?” Ciara said.

  “That’s my excuse for being in a post office in the first place, or sending someone.”

  “That’s . . . very clever, in a sneaky sort of way,” Ciara said. “I thought you’d really stolen it!”

  “I’m a spy, querida; it’s my job to be clever in a sneaky sort of way. And to steal things when necessary; I have several perfectly good violins at home, though. There! Now the Navy will be expecting something, if we’re lucky. They’ll be on alert anyway with the war about to officially start, but knowing that U-boats are trying to sneak into our ports is better than nothing.”

  Ciara blew out her cheeks in relief. “Then it doesn’t all depend on us?”

  Luz hesitated and decided on honesty. “I’m afraid mostly it still does. Only getting—”

  She patted her upper chest to show the location of the photographs.

  “—this to the Navy will really do . . . and I don’t dare let my only copy out of my hands and I can’t make duplicates, not in the time we have. And we’ll be reaching America about as fast as the mails, give or take a day.”

  “Oh,” Ciara said, her face falling a little. “I would feel so much better if it were only us at risk!”

  Luz nodded. And she means every word of that, she thought.

  She’d used three iterations to compose the message; now she carefully ripped up the first two and ate the rice paper in small batches, washed down with water. A footfall outside brought her to her feet, and she cracked the door a little. Horst was reaching for the door of the men’s compartment.

  “Ah, sweetie,” Luz said quietly. “Where’s Herr Daubigny?”

  “Still in the sitting room,” he said. “Why?”

  “Ummm . . . Horst, how shall I put this . . . do you sense anything rather odd about him? Not politically, I have no doubt at all he’s what he says he is that way, but . . .”

  “He is rather private and he is completely obsessed with Negroes,” Horst said, mildly surprised. “And he plays chess badly.”

  “No, he’s a middling-not-bad chess player, like me; Ciara’s really good. What I meant was . . . this is a little embarrassing . . . it’s because he’s a man. Now, I may be vain, but I think I’m quite attractive . . .”

  “Das ist wohl wahr, meine Süsse!”

  “And I can tell when a man isn’t paying any attention that way at all, however politely . . . and he wasn’t. Or to Ciara, who’s quite pretty too in a completely different way from me. So, just as a warning on a personal level . . .”

  Horst’s square handsome face changed for a moment, and then he clamped down iron control.

  “Thank you,” he said grimly. “There were swine of that sort at cadet school. They are unreliable, but for the present he is useful to the Fatherland, arse-bandit or not.”

  A grim smile: “While I’m more than willing to give up my life for Germany . . . or even my ability to sleep well . . . certain things I will not. I will see that he attends to his task and nothing more, and pass on your warning to those who will watch over him. Quietly, of course.”

  “I’m not certain, Horst,” she said, frowning and managing to convey that she was, but was also trying to be fair. “You’re a man; you should be able to tell more easily.”

  Except that I have now poisoned the well of perception, so you’ll see what you expect to see . . . and you were predisposed to dislike him personally from the beginning, because he’s a traitor to America. You’ll use traitors, but you’ll never like them, or really trust them. Not that there’s the slightest connection between one’s tastes and one’s patriotism, but give a dog a bad name and hang him is something that works everywhere.

  They both swayed as the train finally lurched into motion. “Ah, the scheduling difficulty has been resolved at last!” Horst said sardonically. “We will be in Wilhelmshaven tomorrow.”

  Luz chuckled, her face lighting, and got an identical fighting grin from Horst at her eagerness.

  “The game is afoot!” she said. “After all this waiting . . . well, waiting is part of it. But I’ve never liked it.”

  “Yes, there is much of it in war,” he agreed; then he looked both ways, leaned the short distance, and kissed her.

  She returned it with interest, then spoke a little breathlessly as they drew back: “I rea
lly would like to send that violin to the von Herders. It may be my last opportunity to do a good deed; our survival isn’t really a high probability at this point.”

  “Perhaps it would be better for me to do that, Süsse,” he said. “Don’t seal it—mail from a military post has to be inspected and then stamped passed. I will be sending some letters to my family at the same time.”

  “That’s a very kind offer, Horst. Of course, I’ve got the address ready. I would appreciate it if you would mail it for me. Oh, and send this letter to an old teacher of mine at the school in Bavaria too, if that’s possible.”

  She handed him the letter, unsealed but addressed. “You should look it over, of course, and tear it up if that isn’t possible.”

  Preoccupied, he took it and tucked it into his tunic pocket with a cursory glance.

  “Yes, I remember you mentioning the school. It should be possible—the Gräfin is irreproachable, if a bit eccentric. In fact, I think one of my cousins on my mother’s side went there because the Gräfin is also Catholic. Yes, and Seraphika came back from München mumbling and mooing like a true Bavarian cow.”

  “Grüß Gott, i bî da Sissi und kumm vo Minga,” Luz said, dropping from Hochdeutsch into a broad Bavarian patois.

  “By Almighty Lord God, you sound like the missing link between Austrians and human beings!” he said with a laugh and a salute.

  She was grinning again as she ducked back into the sleeping compartment. She pressed an ear against the door and laid a finger on her lips until she heard the click of the one opposite. Experience had shown that you had to shout for a voice in one compartment to be audible in the other; this train had been a rich man’s toy before the war, and it was well made even by German standards of craftsmanship. The sleeping compartments were very compact, as they had to be to allow a passageway, but nicely laid out with their own electric lights, basins, and water taps.