Faceless, page 7
“Yes, madame. I mean, I don’t know how old she is. But I hear she is very pretty.”
Clutching her bag of cookies and her box of little cakes to her chest, Alice dashed out the door. Between the scent of the perfume and the encounter with Frau Goebbels, she was more than agitated.
Frau Goebbels was real, but the scent of that perfume could not have been real. Did they sell that perfume here in Germany? She stopped for a moment and shut her eyes. Her mind spun backward. It was as if she was watching a movie in reverse—the frames flashing backward. The sound of the mirror shattering in their cottage back in England when Louise furiously slammed the door. Then the preceding frame in the film—the argument that had started when she’d come across Louise primping in the mirror, dabbing on the new perfume. The harsh exchange with their words cutting like glass fragments: . . . one question before you slam me out . . . You’re being dramatic . . . Am I now? Oh, that’s rich . . . I think you’re the dramatic one. You look like an actress trying out expressions for an audition. . . .
Alice knew she had to push all these thoughts out of her mind—the words, the scent. It was ridiculous. More than one person could wear that scent. It wasn’t as if it was Chanel No. 5. It was cheap. Chemists carried it. You could buy it if you went in to buy a packet of gum, Band-Aids, cough syrup, and yes, a bottle of Laurel Bright, please. It cost less than a pound. A few shillings, maybe. Countless women might be wearing that scent. She was just being foolish. It was a needless distraction. And needless distractions had no place in the superior minds of Rasa spies.
She had something more important to do. Sgudail. Yes, the old Rasa term her mum had used. Trash picking . . . considered an excellent source of intel. She needed to deliver these cakes and cookies to . . . to . . . the shadow . . . lurking in the rich people’s garbage.
Taking the shortest route to the whipped-cream house, she stopped suddenly on the corner diagonally across from it. A very official-looking auto had just pulled up in front of the mansion. The door opened and a man stepped out. Alice inhaled sharply. He wore the gray-green uniform of the SS, the Schutzstaffel, which was the military unit charged with enforcing Hitler’s racial policies.
And this man was no mere officer. There was a scramble of gold brocade on the shoulder boards of his uniform indicating that he was a general, and not simply any general. The oak leaves on the notched lapels meant he was an SS Oberstgruppenführer, a highest-command general. No wonder there were all those champagne bottles and caviar jars in the trash bins. But how did that explain the shadow? Who was the shadow, and where had it come from?
Dare she creep into the alley now and leave the cookies in the bin? Her own shadow was lengthening. She waited until the general entered the house and the government auto pulled away, then began to walk calmly toward the alley. She had the oddest feeling that she was being watched. Was the shadow near?
The trees that bordered the backyards of the houses rustled in a light breeze. Their leaves seemed to whisper to her, beckoning her. She realized that she had begun to tiptoe down the alley. How ridiculous! Tiptoeing in her gym shoes toward the trash bin. She looked around and, as quietly as possible, removed the cover from the bin and put the entire bag of cookies and the box of small cakes on top of some coffee grounds. There was a moment, as she placed the bag and box, that she actually thought she could feel the shadow’s hunger. She almost heard a gasp, but it was just the shiver of the linden trees’ leaves in the breeze. Replacing the lid as quietly as possible, she hurried away to the corner of the alley.
She decided to wait to see what might happen. Would the shadow appear? She was uncertain if he—or possibly she—might be glimpsed. She walked a few steps to a larger bin, which she could crouch behind and peek out. She could see various lights begin to flick on in the whipped-cream house. She figured that the kitchen in the house was downstairs, on the basement level. This was often the case in these large mansions. As much space as possible was put between the kitchen and the dining area, as servants were to be rarely seen. Food was delivered on dumbwaiters to the upstairs pantry, and the staff of butlers and footmen would then serve.
She was enormously curious about this house. If she were up higher she might be able to peek over the wall. There was a low branch in almost full foliage that hung over the bin. Dared she try and get to it from the top of the bin and then into the tree? If she could, she would have an excellent vantage point and be camouflaged by its leaves. She was atop the bin in two seconds and in another three had swung herself onto the branch—as easily as jumping onto the balance beam for gymnastics. She decided to climb higher, to the leafiest part of the tree.
Nimble as a lemur, she ascended the tree. Then, tucked into this green cubbyhole between alley and sky, Alice peeked over the adjoining fences that separated the backyards of the houses from the alley. She was peering down on a lovely terraced garden. Tulips were in bloom, and there was a small pond that flashed with goldfish swimming. Pots spilled with pansies and ivy, and honeysuckle blossoms clambered up a trellis. On another trellis was a cascade of frothy tiny white flowers. It was a fairyland. She could almost imagine that she had been transported back to England, to Misselthwaite and to her favorite book, The Secret Garden. How she had loved that book, and the garden that Mary and Dickon brought back to life, and Colin, Mary’s sickly cousin, who Mary also brought back to life in her own way.
She now saw a corpulent woman lumber across the garden of the whipped-cream house with two large bags of garbage. The woman pushed through the back gate. Setting the bags down, she removed the bin’s lid. Alice saw her head jerk slightly; then she leaned forward and peered deeper into the bin.
“Was ist das?” she heard the woman mutter as she drew out the bag of cookies.
No . . . no . . . no . . . , Alice thought. The woman took out a cookie, looked at it, then bit into it.
“Ummm,” she hummed, and licked her lips. “Warum sollte jemand einen Keks wegwerfen, der noch völlig in Ordnung ist?” Why would someone throw away a perfectly good cookie?
“Because,” Alice mumbled to herself, “someone else is starving near here.” The shadow!
Alice knew it, and she was determined to feed that shadow.
At just that moment, she heard a slight rustle in the tree across from her. She gasped as she saw the dark eyes of a painfully thin boy peering directly at her. He put a finger to his lips and then vanished. Colin? she wondered. From The Secret Garden?
Ten
Happy Birthday, Dear Führer!
On the day of the Jungmädel competition, Alice woke up with a start. That scent again! Had she been dreaming? Could dreams have scents? It was not real. She knew this. For there was another scent that seeped up now from the garage below. There had been a big motor oil spill the evening before, and a thick carpet of sawdust had been laid down to soak it up. The pungent wood odor mixed with that of the oil was distinct and permeated their living quarters. No way could Laurel Bright cut through that odor. Since that day nearly three weeks ago, she’d successfully banished any distracting thoughts of that strange scent she’d encountered in the bakery and convinced herself that it been a product of her imagination.
Perhaps, she reasoned, she had felt such deep remorse over the harsh words she had spoken to her sister, Louise, that it was in some way connected to that. Maybe she wanted to apologize. The times they had made up in the past after squabbling were always so nice. They would think of something fun to do—almost like a celebration. They’d go out for ice cream or their mum would lend them money for a cream tea or to go to the cinema. That must be what she was feeling when she smelled that fragrance. It was nothing more than wishful thinking.
She heard a cannon go off outside. April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday and the official start of his birthday celebration. She had to get dressed quickly, for she would be marching in the parade as a competitor in the Jungmädel events.
There were tanks and flyovers by at least three units of fighter planes. Thousands of goose-stepping soldiers followed by more than a dozen Jungmädel competitors, as well as the older girls from the Bund Deutscher Mädel of the German Girls’ League. These athletic events were held all over Berlin. The events that Alice would be competing in were at a stadium called the Little Handelsblatt, in the Mitte district of Berlin.
And three hours later she swung onto the balance beam dressed in her black shorts and white sleeveless T-shirt with the emblazoned Nazi Eagle. She hadn’t planned to compete in this exercise, but when Elske Meyers sprained her ankle, Fräulein Grauber had begged her to compete. She had said she would, though track was more her strength than gymnastics.
“Do both, Ute. There are ten days until the games. You can practice. I’ll stay after school and coach you. I’ll get you excused from music during the day. You are just as good as Elske. Maybe even better. Please, Ute, do it. Do it for me. . . . No! Do it for the Führer, like a good Jungmädel!”
Alice had nodded and agreed, for the Führer. This was what one did as a Rasa. One lied, one acted, one performed for God, king, and country—England, not Germany. And no one would ever suspect. Because she, Alice Winfield, was a member of the most skilled intelligence service on earth. And so now, at the Little Handelsblatt stadium, she sprinted out from the bench and lofted herself in one smooth leap onto the balance beam.
For the past two weeks, though, she had been able to think of nothing else but the shadow boy. Every day she had managed to drop off food. She was careful to make sure that the housemaid had finished filling up the bin and would not be coming out. But just last night the bin had been empty, and she was uncertain what to do. She had brought a baked potato and a slice of cake, neatly tied up in a cloth. She didn’t want to put it in the empty bin for fear the housemaid would find it. So instead she put it in another house’s trash bin that was already full. She sensed that the shadow boy was watching. She certainly hoped he was.
She planned to go back there as soon as she was free from the competition. But that would be another few hours. She must push such thoughts out of her mind and concentrate now. She walked forward on tiptoes, then back. She pivoted and then suddenly exploded into a split leap, followed by a scissor leap. She finished with a series of handsprings, culminating in a backflip with a twist.
She did not win, but she placed second. With a first in the track events, she was likely to be eligible to become a candidate for Highest Service to the Reich, or Höchster Dienst am Reich. HDR, as such girls were called. This was not the same, however, as being a Fount of Life girl. Only girls from the older division were eligible for that, thank god! Alice thought. Of course, her parents would never permit her to do that, even if she were old enough. These girls were selected because of their perfect racial hygiene for the Lebensborn program. The aim of the program was to increase the birth rate of Aryan children for the nation. The government provided financial support to unmarried women at the maternity homes.
But as an HDR girl—well, an infinite number of possibilities would open up, and it would help her mission to win the RP, the Reich Praktikum. And then she could come closer to the inner circles of the Reich itself. Her mother was now in the typists’ pool and had already cracked a low-level code often embedded in what might appear to be a casual memo.
It was what her mum called the Danke Code. It seemed that in a scattering of ordinary letters, one officer at the OKW was often thanking another for remembering his wife’s birthday or sending a fruit basket or tickets to the opera. But it was really a code for troop movements or messages about U-boats often dispatched across the Atlantic Ocean toward the northeast coast of Maine. It had nothing to do with flowers or opera tickets. It was invaluable intelligence.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have calculated the scores of the participants today with their academic records and shall ask the recipients of Highest Service to the Reich to step forward and receive their certificates from Lieutenant Colonel Werner Grothmann.” There was a wild cheer from the audience. Grothmann was the aide to none other than Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Jewish extermination program—the Final Solution, as it was called.
Grothmann was a handsome man with slicked-back blond hair and a squarish jaw. He was often in the offices where Alice’s mother worked. She said the young women swooned over him. They called him Gary Cooper, after the famous American movie star. He began to read the names of the girls.
“Brünnhilde Achmann, Inge Bretzman, Gerta Hammacher, Erika Hunnolz . . .”
People applauded. The parents stood up and yelled and often hugged each other for producing such fine Aryan specimens of physical prowess and intelligence. The names were in alphabetical order, so Schnaubel was the thirtieth to be announced. Her parents leaped up like the rest when her name was called, rejoicing that their own daughter was among the elite of these racially pure, extraordinary young girls. They even had tears in their eyes. They were, of course, the consummate spies.
Lotte Schnaubel, or Posie Winfield, had just had another success herself. Four VIIC U-boats had been redirected from the north, in Brest, France, just in the nick of time. They had been heading toward the Bay of Biscay, on a search mission for two British anti-submarine ships. But because of Posie’s intelligence, the British ships were able to get out of harm’s way.
As Alice mounted the stairs to receive her certificate, she saw the lieutenant colonel smile broadly at her as she approached. He grasped her hand warmly and leaned forward. His ice-gray eyes twinkled a bit. “My, what a pleasure it is to shake your hand, Fräulein. You have lovely brown eyes, just like my favorite niece.” Her eyes were not brown, of course. But when he looked at her face, which seemed so lacking in any distinctive feature, he simply superimposed what came to mind. Two seconds later he said, “I just attended her fifth birthday party yesterday.” For Alice it just meant that another person had projected a convenient face onto her own.
When the ceremony concluded, Alice and her parents began walking from the stadium to their apartment over the garage. Alice wore a blue flower pinned to her tunic, a symbol of her exalted status now as an HDR girl. A Reich heroine. Perfect strangers came up to congratulate her.
The family stopped in at another bakery, as her mother wanted to get a Linzer torte to celebrate. But the baker refused payment. “An HDR girl—never! I bow down before you.” He made a sweeping gesture. Her father mildly protested. But the baker would hear nothing of it.
“And I detect a slight Swabian accent. I insist that you take some of our Hefezopf loaves, fresh out of the oven. I make miniature ones. I’ll give you a half dozen.”
“Oh no, you are too kind,” Posie said.
“Nonsense, madame. One cannot be too kind. Our very own daughter is now a Fount of Life mother, and about to give birth any day.” Alice felt something seize up in her. She and her parents thought that this breeding program was one of the foulest of the regime. It was only outdone by the extreme evil of the extermination measures that sent Jewish people to their deaths at concentration camps. But her mother smiled tightly and said only, “I wish her and the baby good health.”
“What else could it be but good health? No defects in our family for countless generations.” Sheer delight danced in his eyes as he spoke.
They walked out of the store with their baked goods.
“I’ll never touch his damn sweets,” her mother muttered. She began walking toward a trash bin.
“You can’t, Lotte. It’s too much of a waste.” They always addressed one another by their cover names in public.
“We’re going to that reception tonight. Won’t be home until later. We won’t need to stuff ourselves when we get home,” her mother said.
“But I’m home!” Alice replied. “I don’t want to have to wait until you get home to eat.”
“Yes, and I made you some chicken.”
Aaah, she thought. I’ll have a feast to bring to Tree Boy.
He was no longer the shadow but had become the boy in the tree. She was almost desperate to get back to the alley and see if he had picked up the little cakes she had put in the other garbage bin the day before. She could take a few of the Hefezopf, and perhaps one of the hard-boiled eggs her mother had put aside. Alice liked to imagine the boy eating these treasures and growing fatter. She thought of him constantly now.
Eleven
Tree Boy
With two small loaves, still warm, two eggs, an orange, and a quarter of a roasted chicken in her knapsack, Alice made her way toward the whipped-cream house. She stopped at the corner before turning into the alley. A black Mercedes-Benz automobile was pulled up in front of the mansion. She felt a chill run through her. It was another SS vehicle. The insignia was on its license plate.
Two officers stepped out. Alice gasped. Exactly two hours before, she had shaken the hand of the first man, Werner Grothmann. And the second man was Heinrich Himmler. She recognized him from the garage. Her father had worked on his car, this very Mercedes. But why were they coming to this house?
Did one of them live here? She hated to think of either one of these two loathsome creatures living in this lovely house with the magical garden in the back. She walked around the alley.
“Hey there!” A voice cracked the air. Alice froze in her footsteps. “Yes, you. Might you come over here for just a minute?” She turned and walked back to where the two men stood.
“This is the Schmelling house, is it not?” It was Himmler who asked the question, but Werner Grothmann was looking at her. Would he remember her? At least she had changed out of her tunic and was no longer wearing the blue flower.
“I . . . I . . . I’m not sure,” she replied. “I don’t live in this neighborhood.” She thought fast. She had run so many times through the Tiergarten, weaving in and out of the bordering streets, that the map of the district was etched in her brain. “I live over on Leberstrasse and was just cutting through. I’m sorry.”
