A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (7 page)

Nor had anyone Quinn spoke to seemed to know anything, at least nothing anyone had been prepared to reveal under his cautious questioning. Quinn had his Amt III ID to protect him, and every German’s natural reticence to draw attention by asking questions, but such safeguards would only go so far. If he asked too many people too many questions, someone was likely to start poking around to see where his authorization came from.

He knocked again on Denlinger’s door. After a few moments it opened a crack, and Denlinger’s gaunt, sallow face peered out suspiciously at him. After seeing that it was Quinn, he shut the door, and there was the sound of the chain being unfastened. Quinn couldn’t help but be mildly amused at the caution. What would Denlinger do if he had opened the door to find the Gestapo waiting for him? Shut it tight and not let them in?

The door swung open, all the way this time, and Denlinger stepped aside to give Quinn just enough room to enter. He stepped through the doorway, but Denlinger, shutting the door behind him, stepped quickly in front of him to bar his way any further. Quinn understood the gesture: the German did not want him in his flat, but neither did he want him out in the hall in public view while he told him as much.

“I’ve already asked around,” Denlinger said. Quinn was not sure whether to read the hushed tone of his voice as conspiratorial or simply sullen. “No one here knows anything about Garner.”
You’re not wanted here. Leave
.

Quinn nodded, deliberately taking the words at face value. The flat was tiny and cramped. Quinn could see the gathered Resistance members over Denlinger’s shoulder looking suspiciously at him. “I see. That is unfortunate. Well then, I’ll just be needing to speak briefly with your associates, and then I’ll be on my way.” He held up his hand as Denlinger opened his mouth to object. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Herr Denlinger. Of course not. But I still need to speak with people from your cell who have had contact with Garner, even if they don’t know his current whereabouts.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to disrupt. After you have finished your other business, of course.”

Denlinger glanced uncertainly over his shoulder, to see if anyone else would come to his aid. The motion confirmed the opinion Quinn had formed when he first met the German student this afternoon: a coward, an intellectual who fancied himself a revolutionary. He would attend these meetings, tell people that he already
knew agreed with him about the need for change, but he would never take action, never put himself in harm’s way.

No one else spoke, and reluctantly Denlinger stepped back out of his way. “We were just about to start, Herr Kaufholz,” he said, and paused, waiting for Quinn to ask his questions now, before the meeting started. Quinn simply waited, patiently staring at the Resistance leader. Denlinger shifted uncomfortably.

At last the young man said, “Go ahead. What is it you wanted to ask?”

“Nonsense, Herr Denlinger,” Quinn said. “Please, I wouldn’t want to delay your meeting any more than I already have. I can ask my questions after you’re finished.”

Denlinger looked around at the others in the room again, but still no one came to his aid. Reluctantly, he stepped across the room and resumed his seat, then began talking to the group, now obstinately ignoring Quinn. Quinn understood his reservations; being part of a Resistance cell, even one that just met and talked like this, had always been dangerous in Nazi Germany, but it must have gotten considerably more so since the student riots in Prague a few summers ago had brought a wave of government repression.

Quinn hung back in the shadows by the door, studying the room. It was sparsely furnished, almost bare. There were eight others besides Denlinger, five men and three women, some of them still watching him suspiciously, some now giving their attention to the meeting. None of them looked older than their early twenties; they would all be university students. They had already taken up anything in the room that could serve as a seat: a couple of wooden chairs, a rickety stool, the kitchen counter. One woman was standing, off in the corner, out of the way.

Quinn’s eyes paused on her; he smiled slightly when he realized who she was. She was staring at him, and a slight frown creased her forehead; she had recognized him, too, but she was unable to place him. That was only natural; even with the name of Richard Garner to make the association, this afternoon she would have seen only his uniform, not his face. Unobtrusively, he made his way over to stand next to her.

He nodded in greeting, facing the center of the room and the gathering but turning his head slightly so as to make eye contact with her. “Fraulein—Voss, isn’t it?” he said, low enough for only her to hear. “You’ve changed out of your uniform. Probably appropriate in these surroundings.”

Her eyes widened slightly as she realized who he was. He held up his hand to forestall whatever she was about to say. He nodded over her shoulder, at a door ajar next to which she stood, leading to the flat’s only other room. She followed his look, then turned to him and nodded. As the two of them stepped through the doorway into a bedroom even smaller than the main room, Quinn shot a look back over his shoulder at the men and women in the room. Denlinger was still talking to the group, but was once again staring at him, an inscrutable look on his face.

Fraulein Voss wheeled on him as he closed the door silently behind them. “Who are you?” she demanded in a hushed, angry hiss.

“Peace, mein Fraulein, peace,” Quinn said. “I am not an enemy. I am on your side.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “And you expect me to just believe that? I’m not supposed to tell those people out there that you’re from Amt III?”

“I am not from Amt III,” he said. “Mein Fraulein, if I were trying to infiltrate the
Weisse Rose
—to what end? Just exactly what threat do you suppose those talkers and intellectuals out there pose to Germany? But if I
were
trying to infiltrate them, don’t you think there are subtler ways of going about it?”

She stared at him, obviously conflicted. There was logic to what he said—but the German Reich was not a state where trust came naturally.

“Then what
are
you doing here?” she hissed. “And what are you? Why were you at Prinz Albrechtstrasse this afternoon?”

“The man I was asking about this afternoon—Richard Garner. Herr Denlinger informs me he has already asked your group here about him?” He waited until she had nodded in confirmation. “I am an associate of Herr Garner, mein Fraulein. A friend, perhaps. He has disappeared. I am trying to help him. Germans who believe as we do are all forced to engage in small deceptions for our safety, especially when we are as close to
certain arms of the government as you or I.” He paused. “For instance, I suspect that you were not being entirely truthful this afternoon when you told me you had never met Garner. Yes?”

She hesitated, then nodded again.

“Excellent,” Quinn said. “Then perhaps you can help me, and, I hope, at the same time help Herr Garner and,” he nodded in the direction of the meeting, the low voices of which were still reaching them through the partly open door, “the cause in which you believe?”

There was still hostility in her eyes. At last she shook her head. “No, no. I’m sorry, but I can’t accept that. You were in an Amt III uniform this afternoon. If nothing else, even if you’re not Gestapo, the others deserve to know that you’re not what you say you are.” She took to a step toward the door, but reflexively Quinn reached up and grasped her upper arm. “Mein Fraulein, please—”

She twisted in his grip. “No,” she said, her voice rising. “Let go of—”

She was silenced by a sudden, authoritative knocking at Denlinger’s front door. The low voices in the other room were instantly silent as well.

For a few moments, no one in the flat moved, or even breathed. Those with their backs to the front door were not even willing to turn and face it.

The knocking came again. “Open up,” a male voice demanded.

Quinn and Fraulein Voss stepped through the doorway into the main room, but went no further. Voss pulled the door closed behind them. Denlinger looked at each of them in turn, then around at the other faces in the room, as if willing any one of them to take the lead. At last he got uncertainly to his feet. He licked his lips and called, “Who is it?” His voice trembled.

“Open up on the authority of the Reich,” the voice demanded. “We are here on state business. This residence has been selected for random inspection.”

In four quick strides Quinn had crossed the room and grasped Denlinger by the shoulder. No one else moved.

“You have to get me out of here,” he hissed in the other’s ear.

Denlinger merely stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Quinn’s grip on his shoulder tightened. “This is no random inspection, and you know it. They’re looking for me. They’re looking for a foreign agent. If they find a half dozen student dissidents in here, you’ll be detained for a few days and placed under surveillance. But if they find me with you, you’ll end up in a work camp.” A work camp was a virtual death sentence.

This was far closer to active resistance than Denlinger would have ever willingly brought himself of his own volition. His jaw worked soundlessly for several moments. “For . . . foreign agent . . .”

The knock came again. “This is your last warning,” the voice said. “Open up or you will be detained.”

“A back door,” Quinn pressed. “A fire escape.”

At last Denlinger broke eye contact with him and moved, hesitantly at first, in the direction of the closed bedroom door behind Fraulein Voss. “Fire escape,” he mumbled.

There was a much louder thud and the front door rattled in its frame as someone tried to break it down. It would not hold long—one more blow, maybe two. Denlinger reached past Voss and pushed the bedroom door open, then stepped through. Quinn followed, pulling the woman by the elbow after him.

Denlinger had stopped so abruptly that Quinn stumbled into him as he came through the doorway. He stepped back, ready to let out a mild curse, but the word died on his lips. The bedroom window was open, the iron bars of the fire escape visible beyond it. Blocking the window were five men who must have come up through the fire escape: a Gestapo officer in his forbidding black cap and gloves, black uniform and greatcoat, flanked on either side by two coalscuttle-helmeted Waffen-SS storm troopers bearing submachine guns.

The officer’s eyes had fastened on Quinn. He held what looked to be a small photograph by the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He glanced down at the photograph, then back at Quinn. After a moment, he flicked the photograph round and held it out for Quinn to see.

Quinn broke the officer’s gaze unwillingly, knowing all too well what the picture must be. He stared at it; it
was an image of a man’s face.

His own.

DENLINGER SEEMED to have discarded his paralyzing indecision of a few moments before for pure, unthinking self-preservation. At the sight of the photograph, he turned round, pushed Quinn aside and went tearing back through the doorway into the main room.

For several agonizing seconds, no one else moved or said anything. At last, the Gestapo officer spoke. “Mr. Quinn?”

Quinn blinked; it took him a beat to register what the officer had said—and that he had spoken in English. “I’m sorry?” he said, in German.

The officer slipped the photograph into his greatcoat pocket and took a step forward, holding out a calming hand to reassure Quinn and Fraulein Voss. He was probably just under thirty, with short fair hair and hazel eyes. “You are Simon Quinn, sir?” he asked. He spoke with a perfect upper middle class accent.

Quinn nodded, not sure what was going on.

“Captain James Barnes, sir,” the officer introduced himself. “Royal Marines. We understood you might be in a spot of bother.” He smiled and extended his hand.

Through the bedroom doorway came the loud crack of the front door splintering. Quinn stared at the proffered hand. The politeness was surreal; only a British officer could shake hands in such a situation. Tentatively, he clasped it.

Barnes stepped aside and nodded to the open window. “We should probably be getting a move on, sir.”

Quinn nodded and stepped toward the window, but Fraulein Voss stayed where she was. He turned towards her. “You should come too,” he said in German. “You work for the Gestapo. They can’t find you at a
Weisse Rose
meeting.”

“What’s going on?” she demanded. “Who are you? Who are
they?”

“We can sort all that out later,” he said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s better than what’s going to happen if you stay here.”

She still did not move forward on her own, but she did not resist when he pulled her with him.

Two of the storm troopers were first through the window, then Quinn. He poked his head tentatively over the fire escape rail to survey the alley below in the dim twilight, half expecting to see a squad of a dozen storm troopers with submachine guns raised, waiting to arrest him—in which case he still could not say with confidence which side his apparent rescuers would be on. But there was only a nondescript, unmarked van, its engine running but its lights off, with two men dressed as storm troopers—presumably two more Royal Marines—standing by its open back doors, watching the entrance to the alley intently.

Satisfied, Quinn turned and held out a helping hand for the woman. She ignored it, but still allowed Captain Barnes to support her by the elbow as she climbed through. By the time Barnes and the last two storm troopers had followed, Quinn was already clambering down the metal ladder after the first two men.

He dropped the last few feet from the ladder to the ground, then reached up to grasp Fraulein Voss round the waist and lift her down. He felt her stiffen in his arms.

They were heading for the van when they heard the crunch of quick-marching feet approaching. An SS officer, Luger in hand, came round the alley corner at the head of a dozen armed storm troopers. “Stop!” he cried when he saw the group at the van.