Prague Counterpoint (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  Charles and Louis wrapped their arms around Leah’s waist. They understood perfectly what Elisa was saying even if their dear Aunt Leah did not yet fully comprehend it.

  ***

  Dressed for morning mass, Herr Hugel emerged from the building and stood blinking in the sunlight as if blinded by his own glory. He wore an old army tunic that strained at the seams in agony at the corpulent flesh that threatened to burst out. A red sash dipped below his belly where his waist should have been, and from the sash a saber hung. The tip of the sword clattered against the cobblestones as he marched off to church.

  Elisa had already changed into her prettiest blue dress. It would help to look attractive, she thought, in case she needed to talk with any Nazi soldiers. They were less likely to treat a pretty woman harshly. She had learned that much long ago in Berlin.

  She waited until Hugel swaggered around the corner; then she hurried to the door. “I’ll be back in an hour with breakfast and enough groceries to last awhile if I have to leave for Paris today. Don’t forget to hide the passport photos in the violin case so I can take them with me.”

  “Just an hour, remember,” Leah warned. “You’ll have to be back here and gone again before Hugel returns.”

  Elisa grinned confidently and winked at Charles, who blushed at the attention of such a beautiful woman. “A pastry from Demel’s for you,” she promised and then slipped out the door.

  ***

  The blue dress did indeed come in handy. Smiling coyly at soldiers and guards assigned to check identity documents at the barricades around the city, it seemed that the men hardly noticed Elisa’s papers.

  While long lines of women waited to pass into the open-air market, Elisa was escorted through the checkpoint by a short, dumpy captain from Frankfurt who declared that he had spotted her a block before she reached his station. Elisa ignored the angry glares of the women still in the line. She had less than an hour, after all, to load her shopping bag with as much as she could carry. Less than an hour before she had to return to the apartment for the volume of Faust. Less than an hour before Herr Hugel returned from his devotions to resume his place as Apartment Führer and Nazi watchdog!

  ***

  Arms aching, Elisa ascended the steep stairs to her apartment. A box of Demel’s pastries was balanced on top of her bag. Leah had watched her coming up the street and threw the door back before Elisa could knock.

  She had only four minutes to spare before Hugel would be back. Elisa grabbed the volume of Faust, presented Charles with pastries and a bottle of cough medicine, and hugged Leah farewell.

  “I’ll be back this afternoon,” she assured them. “And if I am to go to Paris, I promise I’ll get the papers for you. Don’t worry, Leah! Promise me you won’t worry anymore.” She touched the cheek of her friend. “Everything will be all right.”

  34

  Betrayal

  Herr Fiori held the precious volume of Faust up to the light of his desk lamp as he thumbed through each page. For nearly an hour he searched for some tiny beam of light in the midst of the script; some message that might identify the woman who had brought Faust into the shop.

  Twice he rose to peer out the peephole of his office door. The courier was blond and pretty, the sort of woman any man would look at twice. It would be a shame to have such a beautiful face and body fall into the hands of the Gestapo. As she waited, the young woman browsed the bookshelves with interest like any other ordinary customer. But she was not ordinary, Fiori knew that. The volume of Faust confirmed it. But what was he to do with her?

  Fiori sipped a cup of cold coffee as he examined each page against the light. Line by line, letter by letter, he found nothing until at last he came to the section titled clearly Trüber Tag. Dismal Day.

  Fiori frowned as the tiniest beam of light gleamed through the first letter of each word in the outraged cry of Faust to the demon Mephistopheles: “In misery! Despairing! Long lost wretchedly on the earth, and now imprisoned!” He read the order regarding this beautiful new courier from Prague, and his heart sank. “As a felon locked up in a dungeon with horrible torments, the fair, ill-fated creature! It’s come to that! Bis dahin, dahin!”

  The thought of what must come to this fair young woman sickened Fiori, and yet here it was. The order! For the sake of all, Fiori must obey.

  He hesitated and then turned another page until at last he found more small pinpricks of light, illuminating the fate of Elisa Linder Murphy. “Bis dahin,” Fiori muttered at last. “It has come to that.”

  With a twinge of regret, he picked up the telephone and dialed the number of Gestapo headquarters. The line was answered by a curt, heavy German accent, “State police.”

  “Otto Wattenbarger, bitte,” Fiori said coolly.

  After a moment the voice of Herr Wattenbarger came on the line. Fiori did not take time for explanation. He simply did what he knew he must do for the good of everyone concerned. “Someone is here whom you may wish to examine.”

  Otto recognized Fiori. They had spoken before. “Fifteen minutes?” Both were aware that others might be listening.

  “I can detain her that long.” There was nothing to be said or done. Fiori hung up the telephone, confident that Otto would be waiting when Elisa walked out of the shop with the volume of Faust in her hand.

  Fiori returned from the back room and cleared his throat as he passed the bookshelf where Elisa browsed. He carried the book of Faust in his hand and raised it slightly, then inclined his head toward the front counter.

  So this is it, Elisa thought with a rush of excitement as she fumbled to replace a biography about Haydn on the shelf. No doubt Fiori had gotten some message from Prague, or had entered one into the volume. Now Elisa would get the promised instructions: where she might find the one called the Dead Man; when she must leave for Paris. Whatever message Fiori sent to Paris did not matter to her. She did not need to know anything other than the fact that she was a small part in this vast underground resistance. That awareness alone was enough to make her stomach churn with anticipation.

  “A very nice volume, Frau Murphy,” Fiori said. “Yes. A nicely preserved volume, indeed.”

  She waited for some word of direction. A time. An address. “Yes.” She tried to make some intelligent conversation. “One of my father’s finest.”

  “I am sorry I cannot help you with it today, however,” Fiori continued, tapping the red cover absently.

  What? What can this mean? “I don’t understand,” she answered quietly. She wanted to ask him what she should do next. She simply stared.

  “The value is difficult to ascertain. Perhaps if you allow me a few days for research. You are leaving for Paris, you say? Perhaps before you leave you may come by here, and I will have had more time to work on the matter.”

  What it all meant, she could not guess and did not dare to ask. “When would you like me to come back, Herr Fiori?”

  “Three days. That will give me enough time to research. You may pay my fee then.”

  Elisa did not know if she should keep the book or take it with her now. It was all so different from what she had expected. She was to be in Vienna days longer than she thought. This would give her more time to decide how she could help Leah. It seemed like an answer to her prayers!

  “Shall I take the book, or do you––”

  “I have my notes, Frau Murphy. You take it. By all means.”

  She nodded, trying to catch some hint of the mystery in his eyes. He betrayed nothing but the mundane expression of a bookseller talking to a customer. Had there been no message to hide in the book? No word to send on to Paris yet? Three days? What was the delay?

  A brawny Nazi corporal entered the shop, and Fiori turned away to face him with a smile. The visit was at an end. Elisa gathered the precious volume up and brushed past the man in uniform as she left the shop.

  Fiori watched through the shopwindow as Elisa walked quickly toward the Packard. He shook his head sadly. Soon, as Faust proclaimed, she
would be locked in a dungeon with horrible torments: “Imprisoned! In irreparable misery! Handed over to evil spirits and judging unfeeling mankind!”

  Her golden hair caught in the sunlight, and the blue of her dress seemed as fresh and bright as the spring flowers at the Schönbrunn Palace. Fiori wondered how well she would hold up in a Gestapo cell. Would this beautiful woman with the creamy skin crack like porcelain under the stress of fear?

  Even as he wondered, Otto Wattenbarger and another larger man with dull, black, sharklike eyes emerged from the alleyway and walked toward her. At the sight of Otto, she stopped; then after a moment, she turned to cross the street. He walked after her, calling her name. Fiori had not realized that Otto knew her. Somehow this made it all much easier.

  She did not stop for him when he called but quickened her pace. She walked away from her car. Away from Fiori’s Bookstore. She turned a corner and was lost from Fiori’s view. Otto pursued and also disappeared, but Fiori knew what the end of this would be. He had smelled the stench of the Gestapo prison. Surely this beautiful young woman would not last long in a place such as that.

  When the bell on the counter rang impatiently, Fiori moved away from the window and returned to business.

  ***

  “Heil Hitler, Elisa?” It was a question, not a statement. Otto Wattenbarger stepped in front of Elisa, blocking her path.

  Her blue eyes flashed angrily at the sight of his smirk. She did not reply but tried to simply walk around him. He stepped in her way again and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “What do you want, Otto?” she asked wearily.

  “I said, ‘Heil Hitler!’”

  “And I said, what do you want?”

  “It is law now, you know. Or have you been away in Prague so long that you haven’t heard? The greeting required by law is ‘Heil Hitler.’”

  “I guess I have been away too long.” She turned to go, but he clutched her arm in an iron grip.

  “You don’t like the new laws of the East Reich, Elisa?” His eyes were steel.

  “I don’t like you, Otto. And I don’t like the company you keep.”

  “You prefer Jews?”

  “I prefer everyone over you. But I am beginning to believe that the only decent people left in Austria, besides your parents—” she saw him flinch slightly—“are indeed Jews.”

  Rage filled Otto’s face. “You refuse, then, to use the required greeting?”

  She smiled defiantly. “I choose not to greet the likes of you with any greeting at all.”

  Otto’s eyes narrowed and he glared down at her. He held tightly to her arm and then snapped his fingers. The burly man emerged from the shadows. Elisa gasped with surprise and struggled briefly to free herself.

  “You are the most wretched human being!” she hissed.

  The two men grabbed her roughly and pulled her toward a waiting car.

  “Not half so wretched as you will soon be,” Otto replied as they shoved her into the backseat.

  35

  Trump Card

  It was two days before Murphy climbed from the back of a vegetable truck in front of the San Francisco Union Post. Unshaven and disheveled, he stepped down from among the heaps of cabbages and thanked his Mexican host in flawless Spanish. He had picked up the language as a correspondent in Spain, and the driver of the truck tipped his straw hat respectfully to the American who spoke better Spanish than just about anyone on the West Coast, regardless of nationality.

  Bob Trump. Murphy read the name on the matchbook cover and let his eyes scan the ornate façade of the tall Market Street building. Gargoyles and lions with wings supported the scroll bearing the motto and logo of the venerable publication: Veritas simplex oratio est. “The language of truth is simple,” Murphy read aloud, hoping that this publication had not forgotten the meaning of the Latin words inscribed on the stone scroll. The date below that read 1876. A whole lot of simple truth had gotten tangled up since then.

  Murphy smoothed his jacket and attempted to straighten his collar. He had seen many a newsman walk into the newsroom in shabby attire, but not many had been hired looking like a skid-row bum…in dinner dress, no less.

  He had already decided that he would not waste any time in San Francisco. He still had enough cash to get back to Europe and possibly pick up an assignment there, but if he could return on the payroll of the Union Post, so much the better. The Post syndicate was old and well respected. Publisher Bob Trump was known for his disdain of Arthur Craine, and he would no doubt jump at the chance to shove in the dagger by hiring Murphy. At least Murphy hoped as much.

  He drew a deep breath and walked into the gleaming marble lobby. The familiar sound of typewriters and telephones greeted him. He leaned against the counter of the reception area and waited for a harried-looking blond to notice him.

  He flipped open the matchbook. “Bob Trump.” He managed his most charming grin as she looked him over disapprovingly.

  “You have an appointment?” She did not return his smile but focused her eyes on a spot of beet juice that stained Murphy’s once-white shirtfront like cheap red wine.

  “Sort of.” He brushed his hair back off his forehead. “Clark Gable told me to speak with Mr. Trump.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That explains it,” she mumbled, unimpressed. Picking up the headset, she plugged the cord into the switchboard. “Yeah, Mr. Trump, another one of Mr. Gable’s drinking buddies has dropped in.” There was a long pause; then her eyes widened and she stared openly at Murphy. “Yes. A mess, Mr. Trump! Right.” She covered the mouthpiece. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “John Murphy.”

  “Murphy, Mr. Trump.” A roaring voice emanated from the headset. “Yessir!” she finally replied; then she pulled the plug and spun around, regarding Murphy with some awe. “He says he’s been waiting for you, and where the . . . blank have you been? He figured you must’ve got killed on Highway 1 or something, so go on up to the third floor before he has apoplexy, will you?”

  All of this was spoken in one breath as the woman flung back the half door in the counter and yanked Murphy toward the elevator. “He says he don’t care if you’re a mess! He heard you on CBS after the Anschluss, and then Gable called Thursday from Bakersfield and told him what you said to Craine! Guess you’re going to work for the Union Post, sir. Sure hope you take a bath once in a while.” She smiled, winked, and waved as the elevator doors clanged shut.

  ***

  “You are quite stubborn.” Otto eyed Elisa as she stood in front of his desk.

  “You have no right to arrest me!” she spat, staring him down. “Take a good look at my passport. I hold an American passport––”

  “With a permit to stay and work within the boundaries of the Reich!” Otto shouted.

  “This was still Austria last time I was here! Now I am married to an American citizen. Call the American Embassy! I demand that you call the American Embassy! They will not stand for this!” Elisa congratulated herself. She was following every instruction with bravado, even though she was shaking inside.

  “And what do you suppose they can do about it? You are in the Greater Reich now, Elisa! You must follow the law!”

  “Call the embassy.”

  He ignored her and hefted the book of Faust. Then he laid it on his desk and changed his tone until he was almost friendly. “It surprised me that you were married. And to an American, too.” He held his hand out. “You’d better leave your ring with me.”

  She drew back and covered the blue lapis wedding band with her other hand. “I won’t.”

  “Where you are going it will be safer here with me.” He was amused.

  “I demand that you call the American Embassy!” She stamped her foot defiantly.

  “A lovely wedding ring. It suits you. The guards will take it. Or the other inmates in your cell.”

  Elisa did not reply now. She twisted her band around her finger. It had been like a shield to her since the first terrible night she had
put it on. She was not about to turn it over to an animal like Otto now! “My husband is John Murphy of the INS,” she began.

  “I wouldn’t admit that if I were you.” He smirked openly. “You are involved in anti-government activities, Elisa. We know about it, and sooner or later you will admit it. It is better if you tell me. An old friend––”