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.
“Herr Colonel Stauffenberg,” she said in a whispery voice. He immediately smiled, a broad and beautiful smile. He clasped her hand in a strong grip, between the stump of his wrist on his right hand and the three remaining fingers on his left. She was surprised by the strength. Her first thought was of the warmth that emanated from that beautiful face. He wore a patch over his missing eye, but the other was deep blue. He had dark hair, high elegant cheekbones, and a straight nose.
In Germany’s eyes, he was not simply a hero, but an idol. Idols are idolized for their remarkable beauty or the mesmerizing spell they can cast on people. But true heroes, Alice thought, were models for bravery and decency. The man who stood before her was simply a decent man. So what she was seeing was the handsome exterior that encased something even more dazzling inside. The Gentleman Warrior in front of her was definitely an enigma, as much as the Enigma code they were trying to decipher at Bletchley, where her sister wanted to work.
“Kleines Fräulein Schnaubel, it is so nice to meet you. Just thought I’d stop in for a chat with your mother while your father works on my automobile. Fuel injector problem.”
“Oooh!” Alice opened her eyes wide.
“You know about fuel injector issues?”
“Yes, a series 89654800?” Alice replied.
“My goodness!” the count replied, clearly impressed.
“She is the daughter of a mechanic, Herr Colonel, and has a gift for mechanical things.” Posie Winfield offered.
“Well, I’m sure you will do very well at your school, Hermann von Haupt. Although I’m not sure if they teach the young ladies auto mechanics.” He chuckled.
Seven
The Higher Daughters
“Heil Hitler!” Alice jumped to her feet, along with the nineteen other girls in her classroom, as she raised her arm in a slant. This was only her third period at the Hermann von Haupt school, but each time classes changed and a new teacher entered, this was the practice. The teacher would then reply, “For the Führer, a triple victory.”
Alice slid her gaze toward Birgit, her guide sister. “Which class is this?”
“Racial awareness. Or RA, we call it,” Birgit whispered as the teacher, Frau Mueller, pulled down a canvas from a map rod. It showed a black-and-white photograph of two dozen or more people. She then turned to the class.
“I understand that we have a new student among us today.” She took a small piece of paper from her pocket. “Fräulein Ute Schnaubel. Welcome, and please come forward.”
Alice stood up and walked to the front.
“Ute, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?”
“I . . . I come from Swabia, a small village near Augsburg.”
“It might be small, but I hear that you achieved the highest level in your Jungmädel group.”
“Yes, that is true, but I must now be tested here. . . .”
Frau Mueller whisked the air in a gesture of dismissal. “I know . . . I know. I think it is silly. It is as if they are saying that because you are from a small village, somehow this doesn’t count. But it does. You are a big strong Aryan girl, and now we shall prove this.”
From a desk drawer she took a set of calipers, an L-shaped metal device with two hinged legs that was used for measuring the circumference of one’s head or the length of one’s nose.
“What if she has a Jewish nose?” someone giggled.
“Hardly,” Birgit hissed.
“No talking, girls!” Frau Mueller said sternly. “We don’t make jokes about Jews. We just try to restrain or deport them.”
“Along with others,” someone added.