The first was the passport.
Cover name: Ute Maria Schnaubel
Code name: Sunflower
Case officer code name: Wotan
Date of birth: May 15, 1931
Place of birth: Tuttingen, Germany
Profession: student
“Aah,” she murmured. Of course, Tuttingen was in the heart of Swabia. She should have known. Schnaubel was just about as Swabian as one could get.
Field Marshal Rommel himself was Swabian. Known as the Desert Fox, he was commander of the German and Italian forces in the North African campaign. So she would have to speak with a Swabian accent. No problem. She had picked it up within a week at language camp two years before. The first thing she had learned was the inescapable sh sound. “Fährsht du heut’ mit däm Bus?” Are you taking the bus today? The German for “bus” rhymed with “puss,” not “fuss.”
Alice and her mother unfolded the single sheets. They were sticky to the touch.
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.