Faceless, page 4
The message was brief.
You are now officially part of Operation Valkyrie. OV is a plan first devised by the German Reserve Army to support Hitler, in case there was a general breakdown in civil order as a result of the possible Allied bombing of Berlin or an uprising of the millions of foreign forced laborers.
Your mother [unnamed] will work in the office of the General Army Office, which is part of the OKW, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. She will work for the reserve army, the very center of Operation Valkyrie. You [unnamed] will attend the Hermann von Haupt Gymnasium, one of the elite secondary schools in Berlin. Your admission has been arranged. You shall be enrolled for the spring term, which began the first week in March. If you perform with consistent excellence, you will become eligible for a part-time position after school in the New Reich Chancellery, the headquarters of the Greater German Reich. Your complete legend will be given to you upon reaching your destination and shall be written in CODE ONE.
I have a a complete legend! Alice thought. This was a mark of achievement. She wasn’t just being tacked on to her mother’s legend as an offspring. She had, of course, played very minor roles in other operations that her parents had gone on. But she had never been so significant that she warranted a legend of her own. She read the last sentence of the message.
On conclusion of reading this, follow standard protocol.
Alice glanced at her mother, who had begun nibbling at the sweet paper. She had to eat it slowly, as it tended to upset her stomach. Not Alice’s. Alice loved the stuff. It tasted just like the jelly candy that she had spent her pocket money on when she was little. She began biting the paper. She hardly had to chew it, as it dissolved almost immediately.
Alice continued, studying the back of Stefan’s head as he guided the plane. Finally she looked out the window. They were coming down through a cloud layer into what seemed to be shifting densities of darkness. Soon the night would be stripped away and the land below would reveal itself. No lights, of course, were visible.
The intercom crackled. “We are approaching the drop zone, ladies.”
They had descended to eight hundred feet. Stefan cut back on the speed. Posie would be the first out. She slid back the canopy of the rear cockpit and began to climb out and down the rungs of the ladder on the port side. Then she arched her back into the wind. This was the ideal exit posture. She would be in a freefall for close to sixty seconds before her chute opened.
Within seconds Alice followed, pushing her hips forward to achieve that perfect curve her mother had mastered after so many jumps. Her chin up. Her face tipped toward the sky. Then there was that indescribable feeling of the freefall. There would be total peace as the air cushioned her, as she tumbled through divine nothingness, but ever so softly. This is freedom, this bliss. The world is my friend. The air loves me. I am one with all.
She emitted a small gasp as she saw Stefan raise his hand and wave. He smiled broadly. Even with his helmet and goggles, she could see the lines radiating out from his eyes. And I am just wind, blurred and forgotten, she thought.
But it was a lovely night. She felt her parachute open. The stars spangled the sky. It was perfect. She loved the blackness of the night that provided a foil for any light. Without the darkness, the light would become cheap and tawdry. A candle’s flame less worthy. A hearth no longer cozy. Inscribing the darkness were those spring constellations—Leo, the Lion, embraced by the Crab and the Maiden, Cancer and Virgo with its bright blue star, Spica. They were all there, blazing like ornaments as the earth leaned toward the sun. She pulled her feet and knees together. She needed to be slightly curled before landing and ready to buckle her midsection so that her feet would absorb the impact.
She touched ground, then immediately threw herself sideways to distribute the landing shock along the five key points of her body—balls of feet, side of calf, side of thigh, side of hip, and side of back. There!
It was a perfect landing. She heard running footsteps approaching as her parachute still billowed.
“Willkommen in Deutschland, Fräulein Schnaubel.”
Five
Together Again
“Wieder zusammen, meine Lieben, Lotte und Ute.” Alice watched as her father, Alan Winfield, better known in the city of Berlin as Gunther Schnaubel, raised his glass of schnapps. Welcome, my dear ones, Lotte and Ute.
His eyes glistened with tears. It did not matter that he welcomed them in their new language, and now called them by these new German names. They were used to such things. When Alice had been small, they were in Russia, in a tiny village in the Crimea on the beautful Sea of Azov. She had been called Anoushka, which meant “grace” in Russian. Her father was Mikal, her mother Elizaveta, and Louise had been Maria. And in Finland, just before the war broke out, her father had been Aapo, her mother Basak, Louise was Kaipo, and Alice was Gaia. It didn’t matter what language they spoke. They knew who they were, even though their names might sound strange to their ears.
She remembered the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. They had seen it just four months before, when they had traveled to London. She thought of Juliet’s speech bemoaning the curse of her last name.
’Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d . . .
Alice had written a school paper on the passage and received an A-plus from Miss Evans. Miss Evans, who could never quite remember who Alice was if they met in the village. “Oh yes!” she had exclaimed the first time. “No, no, of course you’re Alice, Alice Winfield. But truly, I think of you as Juliet now. That paper was excelllent.” At least half a dozen times more, Miss Evans had called her Juliet.
Her father looked up from his Kasspatzel. The smell of the dish was divine. All Alice could think was, It’s not snoek! No more fish casserole, thank god. No, this was a Swabian specialty of dumplings smothered in cheese and topped with caramelized onions, all baked together. Spaetzle was popular throughout Germany, but she knew that what made it a Swabian specialty was the caramelized onions. She had learned this from Rasa summer camp, when she’d taken the advanced program in regional German cooking and lifestyle.
“It’s clean here.” Her father cast his eyes around the cozy dining room. By clean he did not mean tidy. He meant that their apartment above the Bendlerstrasse garage was not wired. No bugs recording them. Then he added, in a lower voice, looking down as if talking to the dumplings, “Aber man kann nie vorsichtig genug sein. Das Zimmer ist sauber.” One can never be too careful. The room is clean.
“I’ll get the strudel.” Her mother started to get up.
“Nein . . . nein, Lotte. I’ll get it. You’ve been traveling. You must be tired.”
Two minutes later, he came back with an apple strudel. But again it was Swabian style, with lingonberries mixed in with the apples. He set the pastry in the middle of the table. “Courtesy of Frau Meister, who will be working with you at OKW, in the general army office of the chancellery.”
Alice took a bite of the strudel. It was heavenly. The lingonberries added a slight tang. She close her eyes and savored the taste. She heard the fire crackling in the little porcelein stove that warmed the room. It was all becoming slightly surreal.
She wondered where the pilot, Stefan, was now. After they’d said goodbye, the plane had dissolved into the fog that had chased them up the Channel, then across the northern tip of the Netherlands and all the way to a potato field on the east side of the Elbe River. And now, after a two-and-a-half-hour ride, they were here in Berlin.
As delicious as the strudel was, Alice felt herself nodding off. “To bed, leiben. The necessities for the rest of your legend are in your bedroom. You have three days to study them before you start school.” Her father paused. “And oh, by the way. There is a gramophone in your room, so you may listen to music. And a set of headphones. Just turn it on when you get into bed.”
“Of course, Papa.” (No more Dad or Father.) “And what shall I be listening to?”
“Richard Wagner’s operas. The Ring cycle.”
“Oh yes, I remember we heard it in camp, two summers ago.”
“Hitler’s favorite operas, you know.” He paused. “Those Valkyries!”
Of course, thought Alice. The Valkyries, the choosers of the slain. In the Norse myth that had inspired the opera, the Valkyries were the winged young women who swooped down over the battlefield and picked up the heroic soldiers who had died. They flew them to Vahalla, the majestic hall, the warriors’ paradise.
But there was more to her father’s offhand remark than met the eye. She felt a shadow of apprehension. Something more would be coming. But she knew she must wait. Be patient. Although this was her first A-level mission, she was aware that there was a pace to these things. For a mission to be flawlessly executed, timing was everything. So in the meantime, she would listen to the music of Wagner’s greatest operas and work to find clues within them.
Rasas could absorb information in a number of different ways. And music was one of the most pleasant ones. These were fantastical operas filled with giants, beautiful maidens, gods and goddesses, and all varieties of mythical creatures.
Alice loved her bedroom. It was tiny, like a ship’s cabin. The efficiency of the small space was extraordinary. Her bed could fold into the wall. In a wall adjacent to the bed was a fold-out desk. A stack of papers had been set up on top. These were “soft necessities.” Once she had mastered the material, most of it would be burned—not eaten like the sweet paper. She would certainly have had a stomachache from consuming all that, for the stack was at least three inches high.
She got undressed. Turned on the gramophone and began to listen to the opening chords of the first scene of Das Rheingold. The oboes were beautiful, and then the French horns came in. The music coursed through her like the mists of the river where the three beautiful Rhine maidens guarded the treasure—the golden ring.
Six
The Gentleman Warrior
In addition to German opera, there would also be popular culture to absorb—including comics. She had read some of these comics already in other countries, and they were truly funny. She particularly loved the Max and Moritz, which were almost like comic strips. She had first encountered the comics about two naughty boys at her Rasa camp—untranslated. It was an easy way to learn some German. Max and his good friend Moritz were two very clever boys who committed all sorts of devilish tricks that ranged from the very violent—like putting gunpowder in the schoolmaster’s pipe—to the more harmless high jinks of putting beetles in their uncle’s bed.
The next morning, Alice found a letter addressed to her, slipped under her bedroom door by her mother, presumably; attached to it was a pamplet with a picture of a German girl with blond braids standing on a moutainside. Her arm was raised in the Nazi salute. At the top of the page was a dark eagle, the symbol of the Nazi party. She began reading the neatly typed note clipped to the cover.
“Welcome, Ute, to Jungmädelbund Group 22 of Berlin, District 5 of the League of German Girls for those ten to fourteen. You have already been certified to be of racial and ethnic German heritage—Aryan, with no contamination of foreign blood, and free of hereditary diseases. We understand from your record in Swabia that you have reached the highest levels that can be attained for girls of your age. You are nonetheless required to register at the League of German Girls administrative offices.
“However, despite these qualifications being met, you must now attend preparatory exercises in order to become a full member of Group 22 in your present home in Berlin. These consist of participation in a Jungmädelbund meeting, a sports afternoon to include a test of your courage known as the challenge, and a lecture about the tasks of the Jungmädel.”
This was not news to Alice. She had heard all about the Jungmädelbund since before the war broke out. They were like a diabolical version of the Girl Scouts in America or the Girl Guides in England, which Alice and Louise had been part of. Alice had started in the youngest Girl Guide group as a Rainbow guide, and then advanced to a Brownie pack. This year she would have become a full-fledged guide. Louise had been a Ranger but had become bored with it two years before her mission in Norway.
Alice glanced toward the desk. A new item had been added to the pile of soft necessities. Neatly folded on top of the stack of papers was some clothing. She went over and peered down at a crisp white shirt and a black kerchief with a brown leather knot. She knew she would not be able to wear the neckerchief until she had passed the Jungmädel challenge. Alice heard the door open and saw her mother. “I guess I have to do the challenge again.”
“Yes, the Swabian girls’ league is apparently not as stringent as the Berlin one.” Her mother gave her a wink. They both knew that Alice had never taken the Swabian challenge to begin with. All part of the ruse. “You want some toasted mutter brot and hot chocolate?”
“May I eat it here at my desk?”
“Of course.” Her mother smiled. There was work for her daughter to do.
With the extraordinary concentration with which most Rasa children were endowed, Alice had to master the nearly one thousand acronyms for all the military departments and the street maps of Berlin, as well as more mundane details about the Hermann von Haupt Gymnasium, where she would go to school.
By the time Posie Winfield returned with the small tray of hot chocolate and bread, she could tell from her daughter’s posture that she was in a state of dluth, an old Rasa word indicating deep concentration. It was a derivative of the Scottish Gaelic word “dlùth aire.” Each Rasa reached this state in a different way. Posie herself would count her pulse rate in her wrist. Alice would tip her head and blink for five seconds very rapidly, until it was as if she could see the most basic elements of the information in front of her eyes, of what she was studying—every detail and dot and how they were connected for meaning. At that point every single one of her millions of brain cells was ready to receive enormous amounts of information.
As Alice mastered each batch of information, she would come out from her bedroom and slip reams of papers into the lovely porcelain stove. When she went back into her bedroom, her mother would close the flue of the stove after six minutes or so, and scoop out the ashes. She would rake through them to make sure that there was not one scintilla of the written words left. She had to be sure they were clean ashes.
Near noon, Alice brought out another batch of papers.
Posie looked up from her knitting. “Your last batch?”
“Almost.”
“Good. Colonel von Stauffenberg is coming for tea soon.” She carefully observed Alice’s reaction.
“Aaah yes!” she said with definite enthusiasm. Alice saw her mother give a quick smile. Stauffenberg was possibly a fios. MI6 might call such a person an asset, but that didn’t encompass the full extent of this spy’s capabilities. And that was what the elegant Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was—an incredible asset to British intelligence.
The count was a lieutenant colonel in the German army who had served in both Russia and Africa. A year before Alice and her mother arrived in Berlin, he had been gravely wounded in Tunisia when his vehicle was hit by Allied fighter bombers. He had lost his left eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand.
And though a hero, he had become a traitor—not to his country, but to Hitler. He had joined a secret resistance movement. That part of the pages that Alice had read was decidedly short on details. Apparently his cover was so deep and the plot so dangerous that Alice trembled as she read the document. And now she was about to meet him! But she would not know for a while if he was her fios. Such things were not immediately revealed. Soon she would learn where the signal sites would be, for her to leave chalk marks. The marks, uninterpretable to anyone else, would signal her contacts where to go for a coded message, or where to make a brush contact, as it was called in the spy world, where the message or an item could be exchanged. She must always carry with her a piece of chalk. A mark on a predesignated place in the city, a mailbox near a subway station, a specific lamppost with such a mark—this would be the signal that she needed to contact an agent.
She was a bit nervous. How did one shake hands with a man who only had one hand with three fingers remaining? And would he wear an eye patch, or have one of those eerie glass eyes? Eye injuries had been especially common during World War I. There were several Rasa who had lost an eye. They would immediately retire, for along with their lost eyes they lost their spy cover—facelessness. Such faces were forever memorable now.
Three hours later, Alice heard the clock toll on the southwest corner of Bendlerstrasse and the Bendler Bridge. In her dluth state, Alice had memorized a detailed map of Berlin. Less than a quarter mile from their garage in the Bendler block, there was a clock that tolled the hour. Three o’clock, time for tea. And with the sound of the chimes, she heard a knock on the door of their apartment. Stauffenberg, the Gentleman Warrior, as her father called him, had arrived.
Alice got up, straightened her skirt, and rushed to the mirror, where she quickly rebraided her hair. This detail of braiding her hair had been emphasized in her reading. There was a peculiar statistic listed, that eight out of ten girls between the ages of ten and fourteen wore their hair in braids. Most often just two braids, but occasionally as many as eight braids were worn. With more than two, the braids were wrapped around the head in a style called the Gretchen. But she didn’t have enough hair for eight braids, nor enough time.
She leaned toward the mirror and pinched her cheeks for a little color, then put on her dirndl apron and went to the parlor.
