The Diaries - A Gage Hartline Espionage Thriller (#1)

by Chuck Driskell

  He entered the long, narrow Internet café and quickly shed his coat. It was too warm inside, possibly made more intense because Gage was nearly frozen from the two kilometer walk in the stiff wind. He paid two euro in advance and walked around a bit, warming himself and casually looking at the three other computer users. On the train, Gage decided, concretely, to treat this as if Jean suspected something. As he had stared at the rolling hills of the middle state of Hessen from the 2nd-class car, Gage thought about the long delay in the board room and the noises he would have made during his two trips; his actions would most certainly arouse some sort of suspicion if the DGSE had been listening.

  And why wouldn’t they be listening?

  Gage pulled his cell phone from his pocket—it was silenced. Jean had yet to call him. But Monika had.

  He sat at the rearmost computer station and called her. She slept late. Saturday had been a full day of customers, and then she had studied until after three in the morning.

  “So around six?” she asked, now fully awake and her tone playful.

  “Yes, but I’ll call you with someplace to meet.”

  Monika paused. “Everything okay?”

  “I just want to treat you to a nice meal, that’s all.”

  The mutual excitement about their date was palpable, brightening Gage’s day considerably.

  After hanging up, he ordered one of the Internet café’s unbelievably strong coffees—he liked robust coffee, but this was a cousin to the tarry chicory he’d once had in New Orleans. Gage added some powdered creamer to lessen the blow and began to navigate the web. He didn’t log in to any email accounts because a savvy operator could pinpoint an Internet protocol address within seconds of a sign-in. Email was not why Gage Hartline was here.

  From his pack he removed the diary. Careful not to damage its brittle pages, Gage had marked sections with single pieces of bathroom tissue. The first, at the front of the diary in the upper corner, was the name Greta Dreisbach. He punched the name into Google, scanning the results. There was nothing conclusive other than Facebook addresses of women by that same name. Somehow he didn’t think they were alive in 1938.

  Gage began to use combinations, such as the name combined with 1938, or Frankfurt, or Morgenstern, which was the Jewish family’s name on the stumble-stone in front of the house.

  He opened the diary to the second piece of tissue. Greta had written a gut-wrenching passage about being pregnant, afraid to tell her lover, a man named Aldo:

  …Aldo returned this morning. Without any kind word of greeting, he locked the door and took me roughly on the sofa. It was cold, distant, animalistic. Afterward, he was indirect, speaking only about his trip. His phrases were clipped and he seemed irritable. I felt so very compelled to tell him about my pregnancy, but it’s as if my mouth was paralyzed. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. He was at first concerned by my silence but soon became quite callous. He sent me to quarters, telling me to straighten up or find another job.

  I don’t know what to do. I miss Papa so much. He would be so sad, so disappointed in me, but he would know…he would know what to do.

  Gage massaged the bridge of his nose as he turned to the next marked entry. This was the one which had disturbed him so the night before:

  Aldo held his hand over a candle, scorching the skin in the center of his palm. He stared at me, his eyes watering as his hand trembled. Horrible black smoke came from his hand, the most acrid smell to ever touch my nostrils. I could hear his skin bubbling! He made me do the same afterward, while pressed to my backside, whispering his penitence into my ear, touching me as the flame seared my hand down to the bloody center. He squeezed my neck very hard when I began to cry, then, as always, sent me to quarters and told me to cover the atonement mark.

  And I still didn’t tell him. I was catatonic each time I tried. Why!?

  Gage rested his forehead in his left hand, staring down at the diary. Surely worse atrocities had occurred, but there was something soul-wrenching about the way this Greta had poured out her worries into her diary. He’d begun to make notes, writing her name, Aldo’s name, Austria, pregnant. More searches. Nothing. Greta Dreisbach and Aldo were common names in Germany. There were thousands of matches, none of which seemed relevant.

  Why was she so scared of this sicko?

  Last night, he’d read through the copious March entries. He flipped the page to April. After days and days of entries of Greta languishing over the fact she couldn’t tell Aldo of her pregnancy, he ran across a new name: Elsa. He searched the combinations again, finding nothing. Apparently, as Gage connected the dots, Elsa was Aldo’s “official” significant other. They didn’t live together, so he assumed her to be a girlfriend or fiancé. She was good to Greta, and Greta remarked numerous times how she felt for “poor, sweet Elsa.” And then on Tuesday, April 12th, on a day Aldo was high as a kite over some sort of business victory, a man named Albert visited Greta’s place of work with his wife Margarete. At first Gage thought her name might be a misspelling, but Greta continued to spell it that way. Before he searched the names, Gage read the passage:

  It’s as though, every time he visits, Albert can see right through me. At first I thought he, like some of the other men before him, might try to have his way with me, but that isn’t it. I noticed him looking at the burn marks on my hands when I served tea. I caught his eye, he was looking at me with a sort of empathy.

  I feel strongly he knows, or at the very least suspects, I’m Jewish. I do not know how, but I can see it in his eyes. As he spoke over the plans for the new grand building, he turned to me several times, nodding his head slightly as I stood there nervously waiting in the corner. It was as if he was comforting me! He’s the smartest man I’ve ever been around and, even from a distance, to glean from him, is almost intoxicating. He speaks to Aldo frankly, challenging him often, unlike so many of the others. It truly feels as if he’s privy to all that’s gone on between Aldo and me, without ever having heard about any of it.

  Albert’s manner and bearing have bolstered me. Tomorrow I will tell him…tomorrow I will tell Aldo.

  There was no entry for the next day, or any of the following days. The next one was marked April 19th.

  I haven’t been able to write for a full week. I’m so scared, yet so thankful to be alive. I never told Aldo. (I knew I wouldn’t!) Instead, I told Elsa, pouring out my guilt and sorrow before seeking her advice. She wasn’t angered, even confiding in me that she tried to kill herself once, all due to the fears he has wrought inside her. It was an effort to make me feel comfortable, and it worked. She didn’t have to be as understanding as she was, given the circumstances. I expected some degree of jealousy but received compassion in return. It makes me think I wasn’t Aldo’s only illicit lover.

  On the day I told Elsa, Aldo was away…I never know his schedule…but she did. She implored me to leave, to go right then and never turn back. I was unable to carry my things because of my diaries. They are large and heavy, but I couldn’t part with them. They’re my soul, my most prized possessions. Elsa told me to disappear forever and to never tell a single being who the real father is.

  I left Berlin wearing her tailor-made clothes, looking the part of a debutante (a slightly pregnant one) carrying only a grip with my diaries, walking all the way to Potsdam. It was awful. My morning sickness, of course, was at its very worst. I would stop in alleyways, retching uncontrollably. People on the sidewalk looked at me like I was a leper. One man, wearing the party emblem, was walking with his two children when I was heaving on the street. He openly cursed me for bringing my sickness out into the Reich. I ran, even while retching, for fear he would have me arrested.

  Once I reached Potsdam, I used my knowledge of housekeeping to convince a frazzled housewife to allow me to work for a meal. Her husband was a kind man and, after three days of cleaning and arranging their home, he gave me enough money to reach Frankfurt. But when I arrived, I learned my parents and cousins were gone, no one knew exactly
where. They had fled to the north. My aunts and uncles were still there, too old to run, but telling me to follow suit.

  Because of my sickness, I have to stay here and convalesce.

  And now some good news! Last night I met Heinrich, from the same neighborhood, a kind man, a grocer. He fed me, allowing me use of his cozy attic room where I sit now. I like Heinrich, and I think tonight I shall tell him I’m pregnant. Because in what remains of my life, I feel compelled to trust someone, anyone, lest I die all alone. And I would rather painfully perish with but a friend, than to stagger through this life with only emptiness.

  Perhaps Heinrich will leave with me? Hope, diary, hope! It keeps me going. I am not sick right now, so I will take advantage of this moment to enjoy a bit of sleep.

  Gage closed his finger in the passage, closing his eyes, leaning his head back. He knew he was living out a bit of his own agony through the eyes of this poor Jewish girl. She had crossed Germany, with child, without the benefit of family or friend. More than half of the diary still remained; perhaps it would provide some sort of positive denouement to what had thus far been a tragic, sometimes disturbing tale.

  His finger hovered above the red button. When touched, it closed the connection to the Internet and notified the man at the front of the amount of time used on the Internet.

  Wait…Heinrich?

  Gage concentrated, thinking back to the stumble-stone in front of the Keisler Building. Heinrich Morgenstern and family…

  Heinrich was listed as killed…

  Wife was listed as killed…

  The date they had been taken was in November, 1938, because Gage remembered it being right around the time of the infamous Kristallnacht. He flipped to the back of the diary, seeing empty pages. He backed up…the last entry was November 10th.

  Sonofabitch…

  He squeezed his eyes shut, growling through clinched teeth. Greta had surely married Heinrich because, presumably, according to her writing, Heinrich had been single when she arrived. He must have been Jewish, too. She said he was a kind man. He must have married her and they both died, with prejudice, soon after. Gage slumped in the chair. A person could hear of the millions who died in the Holocaust—a shockingly large number, but the thought would soon pass like so many tragic facts do. The number was old news, too large to seem real, just like the deaths from the U.S. Civil War or the World War II casualties from the eastern front. It wasn’t too unlike the view from an airliner, viewed from such great height to even seem threatening. But stand on the ledge of a three-story building and lean out over the concrete. Death seems imminent from that height, available to a person in mere seconds. Gage had just viewed the atrocities of the Holocaust from a three-story view, and it had left him shaken.

  He glanced at his watch. It was time to head back to Frankfurt. This diary might have some value to a Jewish museum somewhere. Gage paused, thinking. There were likely thousands of other diaries just like this one, many probably even more tragic. But he didn’t know that for certain and, in the coming days, he would make some inquiries. After putting everything into his pack, he went to the front, paying his five euro, then stepping out and walking into the brisk wind.

  Gage marched in the direction of the train station, unable to shake the passages of the diary. The only other person in his life was Monika and, somehow, he couldn’t help but transpose her image on this poor Jewish girl Greta Dreisbach, running from her sick molester, a powerful man named Aldo.

  Aldo…

  A thought stopped him so fast that a man, walking behind him, ran squarely into him. The man muttered a German curse and brushed past. Earlier Gage would have thought the man was tailing him; now, completely distracted, he didn’t give it a single thought. Gage did a full turn, his eyes dancing all around as his mind raced. He shed the pack, digging into the contents to view the notes he had made.

  No…it couldn’t be.

  He rushed back to the Internet café, hurriedly making the attendant give him a code to one of the terminals. Gage sat, taking a deep breath before bringing up Google and searching for the names Albert and Margarete.

  Google didn’t like that, trying to force the spelling to the traditional “Margaret”.

  Gage put quotes around the non-traditional spelling of “Margarete”.

  He clicked the mouse.

  The search came back with hundreds of entries about Albert and Margarete Speer. Albert Speer…the armament and production mister of the Third Reich. Famous. Renowned. A member of the Reich’s inner-circle.

  He couldn’t breathe. Next to him, a teenager cackled, laughing at something being typed to him on Facebook’s chat screen. Gage touched his notepad, his index finger stopping under the name that didn’t fit.

  Aldo.

  He opened the diary.

  Aldo just returned from Austria, high from a great victory.

  It had been 1938, the year of the Anschluss, the so-called “friendly annexation” of Austria.

  Elsa.

  Poor, sweet Elsa. Trapped just like me.

  Aldo…Adolf.

  Elsa…Eva.

  Gage steadied himself. He typed the following: Greta Dreisbach, Adolf Hitler.

  Click.

  There it was, on a site devoted to all things about the Third Reich. Hitler’s personal organization, his employees. Far down the list, below personal accountants and advisors there was a grainy picture beside the name Greta Dreisbach.

  Gage glanced around the room, his mouth moving like a fish out of water. He massaged his chest. Breathe, buddy. Breathe.

  Greta was in uniform, not smiling. Just standing there, one of those old-time photos where the subjects look like they would rather be shoveling coal than made to pose for a picture. Even with the stoic pose, it was easy to see she had been attractive. Her dark hair was pulled back severely, framing large, expressive eyes and a rounded face. Only a few lines of description existed:

  Greta Dreisbach — Long-time maid of Adolf Hitler, rumored to be a possible lover. She disappeared in 1938 and was never heard from again. Some historians have suggested Hitler might have had her killed, but after exhaustive searches no concrete information about this minor player in Hitler’s circle has ever been discovered.

  Gage lifted the diary from his bag, staring at it.

  No concrete information until now.

  Feeling a thudding in his temples, he donned his sunglasses.

  ***

  Saarbrücken, Germany

  The windows on the outside wall of Monika Brink’s bedroom creaked, sounding as if they might blow in from the force of the gale. The glass panes were covered in condensation from Monika’s steamy shower, only displaying a hint of the steel gray of the November sky. Another gust hit the side of the Saarbrücken apartment, promising an icy night which would fully indoctrinate Germany into the coming winter.

  Monika and her lifelong friend Hanna padded into the bedroom. It was painted a light blue, adorned with stacked textbooks and paperbacks. On the far end of the room were an old television set and a portable CD player. It was the bedroom of a busy person, cozy and warm, and used for only two things: reading and sleeping. As Monika stripped off her pajamas and stepped into the shower, Hanna stood in the bathroom with her, leaning on the counter. She held a glass of sweet white wine, swirling it as she talked in a singsong manner.

  “You’ll be back when?” she yelled over the noise of the water.

  “Tomorrow night, or early Tuesday!” Monika shouted back, squinting her eyes due to the burn of the shampoo.

  “I’m betting on Tuesday,” Hanna replied, plugging in the curling iron before walking into the bedroom and plopping onto the unmade bed, sipping her wine as she thumbed through a magazine.

  Monika emerged from the steamy shower, skin bright pink, wiping a circle in the mirror before toweling off and blow-drying her long, dark hair. Minutes later, Hanna appeared in the overheated bathroom and sat on the stool, smirking at her friend.

  “So what’s the plan?�
� she asked Monika, staring at her in the reflective portion of the mirror.

  Monika clamped her hair in the heated curling iron. She only liked to curl the ends, giving it what they called a “flip” down at the shop. “No plan…I’m just going to Frankfurt to see my friend,” Monika answered, not making eye contact. “You know that.”

  Hanna tapped a cigarette from the pack on the counter, using a book of matches to light it.

  “One for me, too,” Monika said, accepting it with her mouth as her friend held in place. “He doesn’t know I smoke.”

  “Big freaking deal, and stop trying to change the subject.”

  “What?”

  “You know what,” Hanna said knowingly. “You shattered the glass-ceiling two weekends ago.”

  Monika blinked rapidly as the cigarette burned her eyes, trying to hold it in place as she curled the hair on her right side. “So.”

  “So, tell me you don’t want him sweating and grunting on top of you!” Hanna yelled, laughing. “Tell me you haven’t been dreaming about that for, what, months in that bed right in there?”

  Monika appeared appropriately shocked, her smile bleeding through. “That sort of salacious thinking has never passed through my pure mind.”

  Hanna stood, wine glass in one hand, cigarette in the other. She leaned toward the mirror, her eyes locked with her friend’s. “Oh, yes, it has.”