Volk

by Piers Anthony

  The hotel, to her surprise, was both reasonably priced and of reasonable quality. It seemed that the Nazis had pre-empted the best for themselves, and she was the beneficiary. The room was small, but it had its own bathroom and a competent lock on the door. Both were important. There was a cart in the hall with a pile of used books; it seemed that in this time of privation, reading had become quite popular. She appreciated that. She sorted through the pile and took a novel that she hoped would be diverting. She had had enough of Nietzsche for the time being.

  There was even a radio. She turned it on and listened to the news in French as she chewed on the bread and cheese. Then she allowed herself the luxury of a warm bath. After that she washed her underclothing, because she had only one change. What was supposed to have been a three day trip was being indefinitely extended.

  The city remained quiet at night. But now she heard the noise of rats inside the walls. She shuddered, closed her eyes, and pulled the covers up over her head.

  In the morning she went to the SS office and inquired. A different officer was there, but he had the information. “The train from Frankfurt is available. The connecting train here in Paris is not, but progress is being made.”

  That was a relief. “I will inquire again tomorrow,” she said.

  “As you wish, Mädchen.”

  She did not respond to the somewhat derogatory implication. She just departed before the man could think of anything else. The longer she stayed in Paris, the more nervous she would be. It was not just a matter of running out of money.

  Meanwhile, she had a day to herself in Paris. At least she should see the sights. That much was free. That was good, because she discovered to her dismay that inflation was ravenous here; her francs bought less food than they had the day before.

  Armed with a little tour booklet, she set out afoot. The Louvre was close, but it was probably closed. She had heard that even when it was open, the art treasures had been replaced by plaster replicas, including the Venus de Milo. So she would save that for another time, if time offered. The Grand Opera House was also close, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about opera, and she let that also go for now. So she started with the Tuileres gardens. Perhaps they would be in ruins, but there might be something worth seeing.

  The flowers were beautiful. There were more types than she could identify, and they transformed the region. She could almost forget, for the moment, that this was a cruelly war-torn country. There were also many impressive statues.

  At the end of the gardens was a section called Place De La Concorde, where Marie Antoinette was beheaded by the guillotine. Quality sat there for a time among the flowers and contemplated the events that had taken place on this historical spot. It was a unique experience, and it made her shiver in the warm day. She deplored violence and killing, though she had to recognize their significance in the history of mankind. Yet how lovely this place was now.

  Then she walked on to the Seine River, where there were many bookstalls open to browsers, but this was not her purpose at the moment. She turned left on the Qual Des Tuileres and proceeded about half a mile to the Hotel De Ville, and right across a branch of the river to the Place de la Citi‚ where she could see the Notre Dame Cathedral. It seemed that all the churches were kept open by the Germans, though their philosophy hardly supported religion. This was another wonderful step back in time. She could almost feel the burden of the world’s history enmeshed within its heavy atmosphere. She was struck by the mystical gloom of the sanctuary. She wished she could turn on a light, because she could hardly make out the altar and the statues of saints.

  There was no service here now, because she was here at the wrong time, but that was just as well, because she was not Catholic. Nevertheless, she went to kneel where ancient kings and queens had knelt, and found it easy to imagine that some ampere of their energy lingered there, softly vibrating in the shadows. Now she found the darkness to be an asset, because it allowed her to picture the historical figures there.

  She emerged from the Cathedral and blinked in the bright sunlight. This was like man’s struggle to overcome his medieval ignorance and achieve the light of modern civilization. She felt not scorn but great sympathy. Man was not to be blamed for his ignorance; it came with his existence. The effort was at times excruciatingly hard, as the present occupation by the Nazis showed.

  Quality walked back across the river, retracing her route to the Place De La Concorde. Then she went to the Alexandre Bridge and crossed the Seine again. She went straight until she reached Les Invalides. She went around to the back of the building to find a church. Housed within it was Napoleon’s Tomb, in a crypt. The tomb was several feet below, but she could stand above it on a viewing platform and get an excellent view simply by looking down. She couldn’t help wondering what his remains might look like, after all this time. Then she chided herself for her morbidity.

  She went back to the river and turned left before crossing the bridge. This street was the Quai D’Orsay. She followed it until she reached the Le Tour Eiffel on the left. Now this was something she had dreamed of as a girl: seeing the Eiffel Tower up close.

  Then she crossed the river and visited the Chaillot Palace. From there she followed the Avenue D’Iena to the Etoile where she saw in the distance Napoleon’s Arch of Triumph. And where was he, by the end of his life? But she should not begrudge him his monument.

  It was enough for the day. She walked straight up the avenue Des Champs Elysees until it intersected the Place De La Concorde, which was now familiar, and followed it back to her hotel. She had walked only about three miles in all, but it seemed like centuries on another level. She was surfeit. There was just no city in the world like Paris!

  • • •

  On the third day the news changed. “The Paris train is now available,” the officer said. “However, we have received word from General Franco’s administration that he has changed his mind and will not permit the Jews to cross the Pyrenees. Therefore other arrangements will have to be made, and you are free to go home.”

  “But the money,” she said. “I must take the money back.”

  “I have no authority to release funds to anyone. Appropriate application must be made and approved.”

  Quality felt the sinking of her heart. “How long will that take?”

  “It is hard to say. Perhaps only a week.”

  And perhaps never. She knew what she had to do. “Then I must make the application. Do you have the proper forms?”

  He rummaged in the desk. “It seems not. But you may write it out on a separate sheet. We are not such sticklers as the French for such things.”

  She wrote out a request, knowing that the format hardly mattered. They were now entering a different phase of the game. She gave it to him. “Is it all right to inquire tomorrow, just in case there is a quicker approval?”

  “Of course, Mädchen.”

  And tomorrow, or the day after, as her personal money ran out and she became increasingly desperate, the officer would suggest that the approval might be expedited if certain conditions were met. In this manner, without violence or even open coercion, she would become an officer’s mistress. She had been warned of the way of such things in Spain. Enlisted soldiers raped, but officers had higher class methods.

  She packed and went immediately to the train station. There was a train to Nantes, near the coast. That wasn’t where she wanted to go, but she took it anyway. She had to be out of Paris and far away before anyone thought to check on her. That was why she had written out the application: to gain a day’s time. Otherwise she could have found it impossible to leave Paris. That, too, was the way of it.

  She breathed a silent sigh of relief as the train departed without challenge. She was on a legitimate mission, until someone thought to make a unilateral cancellation of it. If she cleared Nantes before tomorrow morning, she should be too difficult to trace, and they would not bother.

  At Nantes she caught a train to Bordeaux, and thence to
Toulouse, exhausting her money. She was hungry, being unable to buy anything more, but would survive.

  But when she went to get her truck from the garage, there was another problem: she had paid for only three days, and it was now a week. She owed for four, and she had no money.

  “There is a way,” the garage proprietor said, understanding her plight, which it seemed was not uncommon.

  “No!” she said. She did not know what she was going to do. She couldn’t walk across the Pyrenees, even if well fed, which she was not. It was just too far.

  “You misunderstand,” he said. “Look at me; I am an old man. I have daughters your age. But your Quaker truck will not be challenged, no?”

  “Normally not,” she agreed guardedly. “But smuggling isn’t—”

  “It is a man. A Jew. The Boche trumped up something against him, and took his house. He barely escaped the warrant for his arrest. He must escape the country.”

  Now she understood. “You will let my truck go?”

  “With a tank full of petrol. And I will give you a good meal. If you will get him across. You can do it, when another could not.”

  She realized that it was a good offer. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done this sort of thing before. “Very well.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” he exclaimed, and she realized how tense he had been. The Jew must be a friend, but it was dangerous to help anyone the authorities were after. Across the border, the Jew could make his own way. At least he would have a chance.

  The garage man’s stout wife gave her good hot soup, a baked potato, and some wine. She had to refuse the wine, with apology, because she did not drink. She knew it was well intended; in France everyone drank wine, and it was safer than water.

  Then the man caught on. “Quaker!” he said. “I had forgotten. They do not drink. You really are one.”

  “I really am one,” she agreed. But not as good a one as she had been before she came to Europe. Now she was well compromised around the edges.

  She was given blankets on the floor of the warm kitchen, and spent her most relaxed night in a week. Early in the morning, refreshed by a breakfast of porridge, she went to the truck. “Where is the—?” she asked.

  “It is better that you do not see him. I hid him in the back last night.”

  She was alarmed. “No drugs. No smuggling.”

  “I promise, no. Only an old man like me. You will never know he is there, if you do not look.”

  That did seem best. The garage man could have hidden the Jew without telling her, but that would have been risky, because he needed the cooperation of the driver to get across the border. Had she looked inside and found him, she might have thought he was trying to steal the truck.

  She drove out of Toulouse toward the border. There was no sound from the back. But the truck overheated slightly more rapidly than before, indicating that it was carrying a bit more. She was attuned to it, and could tell.

  She came to Bourg Madame. She suffered a chill of apprehension as she saw that there was now a German guard at the border, in addition to the French one. The Germans were extending their hold on the country.

  “Have you any contraband?” the German barked in French.

  “No,” she said, her mouth dry. She hated both the risk and the lie.

  “It is a Quaker truck,” the French guard explained. “We let them through.”

  “No exceptions,” the German said. “Get out, woman; we shall inspect your truck.”

  Quality’s heart seemed to shake in her chest. But there was nothing she could do. She got out of the truck and walked around to the back.

  “Open it!”

  With a feeling of dread, she opened the back panel. As the light spilled in, she saw with relief that there was only a pile of old blankets there. Maybe the Jew had lost his nerve and gotten out while she waited for the motor to cool.

  The German reached in and grabbed a corner of a blanket. He yanked it toward him.

  There, huddled beneath, was a man.

  “So the word was right,” the German said. “The Jew did try to cross the border.” He drew his pistol. “Out, Jew! You are under arrest.” Then he turned to Quality. “And your truck is impounded, and you are also under arrest.”

  There it was. The worst disaster had struck. Quality had the sick feeling that this was God’s rebuke for her misdeeds. She had lied, and been caught, and now she would pay the penalty.

  CHAPTER 8

  FELIX

  Ernst saw Quality wave as he drove away. It was a perfectly ordinary thing, probably mere habit on her part, but it touched him. She seemed like such a fragile thing, standing there in her feminine jacket and skirt, yet she had been in Spain for the end of its civil war and had seen her share of blood. She was a soft-spoken pacifist, yet tough enough to get her job done. He respected that. Lane Dowling had a better treasure in her then perhaps he knew.

  Now it was time for him to move on down to the southern tip of Spain. He had used up his slack time, driving with Quality. He would not be able to report to Heydrich until he returned to Germany, because the privacy of the local phones was not to be trusted. He would of course exonerate the Quaker mission; even had he not known Quality from America, he would have seen that these people were merely doing what they claimed to be doing, feeding hungry children who would not otherwise get fed. They were simply trying to do their bit of good in the world, in contrast to the great majority who had other imperatives.

  There it was, he realized: Quality was good. She stood out from others not in appearance, though she was an extremely comely woman, but in the quality of her nature. Her name was the symbol of her being: Quality. He had felt it throughout, without being quite conscious of it until now.

  When she had called him “thee,” in English, he had felt something odd. He knew that she used the Quaker plain talk only when among friends. There was another symbol: they called themselves Friends. Indeed they were friends to the world, with their opposition to strife and their efforts to help those in need. Yet Quality was not his friend. She was his friend’s fiancée. He had treated her as such. Still—

  “Thank thee, Ernst,” he said, repeating her words, and felt a warm shiver. He wished he could truly be her friend. He had told her that he regarded her as a fine woman. Now he realized how nice it would be to regard her as more than that.

  Fortunately there was no chance of that. Their meeting had been coincidental, and it was unlikely that he would see her again. He need have no concern about presumption in his wandering fancy.

  • • •

  In due course he reached Algeciras and rented a room, as if he were a tourist pausing to see the sights. He did not report directly to the Abwehr post; he was an unofficial agent. But he would be there to help when Admiral Canaris arrived to supervise the implementation of Felix.

  “Felix” was the unofficial code name for this project. It was, in essence, to mount an assault on the rock of Gibraltar and take it from the British. With that fortress and seaport in German hands, the British would be severely constrained, and it might be possible to close off access to the Mediterranean Sea and isolate the British fleet. It promised to be a strategic masterstroke that would protect the otherwise vulnerable underbelly of the Axis.

  On July 24 Canaris appeared, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Pardo of the Spanish military intelligence. They were in civilian clothing, as Ernst was, and showed no papers. They operated only by personal recognition. It turned out that the Admiral had used a false passport himself to go to Madrid and meet with Spanish representatives, and even with General Franco himself. He had explained to Spain’s ruler the German proposal for a surprise assault on Gibraltar. Franco had been supportive, but had reservations about the strength of the British Navy.

  So did they all! But that strength certainly would not diminish as long as Gibraltar remained to service it. With the ocean supply route cut off, the pressure of the Luftwaffe and the U-boats should be decisive. The British would have fe
w places to hide.

  Admiral Canaris set up residence in a German safe house, Villa Leon, and used two other houses to establish surveillance of Gibraltar. The town commandant’s office in La Linea, adjacent to Gibraltar’s access to the mainland, provided a view of the northern defenses. The lighthouse at Punta Camero gave a good view of the west face.

  It was Ernst’s job to work with Captain Witzig of the Abwehr to establish whether an airborne assault on Gibraltar was feasible. Witzig was a small slim man, but he had a good record: he had been a paratrooper at Eben Emael in Belgium, and had been decorated for valor. Ernst took the man to the various observation points he had located, and discussed the situation with him.

  “Why not just send in overwhelming force across the peninsula connecting Gibraltar to the mainland?” Witzig demanded.

  “That route is obviously mined,” Ernst explained. “British guns control it from many angles. Assaulting troops will experience ruinously heavy losses, and it will not be possible to make a broad enough front to assure that any get through.”

  “What about siege equipment? Bring down big guns from Germany, blast out the mines and the fortifications behind them, so that the troops have clearance?”

  “We would have a time getting them here at all, let alone in necessary haste and privacy,” Ernst replied. “The Spanish railways use a different gauge track from the French, requiring the transfer of all supplies and shipments at the border. This is a tedious process at best, and impossible to conceal from the eyes of spies. Also, the lines to Alceciras move through Madrid, making secrecy impossible in the light of British intelligence. In addition, Spain is constrained by limited resources for road maintenance, ordinance repair, communications requirements and foodstuffs.”

  “This is not exactly the Third Reich,” Witzig muttered appreciatively. “So then it must be landings by paratroops or gliders, bypassing the peninsula.”