Poets and Chess Players #11: In Which Fräulein Löwe Asks The Questions

Polzin was rapidly revising his opinion of the girl from ‘beneath notice’ to ‘tolerable’.

This is chapter 11 of Poets and Chess Players, a WWII spy adventure and drama serial. Previously, Comrade Polzin evaded a mysterious tail through the city, only to interrupt an unknown intruder in the act of burglarizing his office. This time, as the Americans head for Vienna and the government closes in on him, he decides to finally bring the radio girl Marta Löwe into his confidence - and what she reveals will change the entire course of their investigation…

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Marta Löwe had enough sense in her head to stay quiet while they worked to put the files back together, a job which took up all of what remained of the morning. In response to his questions, she informed Polzin that the typesetter Herr Mueller had not reported to work at all today, and that Herr Ersek - that was to say, Seleznyov - had shown his face for five minutes, made it known that he had urgent business to attend elsewhere, and then walked out in the direction of the Danube docks. Other than that, she mutely presented pre-sorted sheafs of paper for filing and left him to his own thoughts. Polzin was rapidly revising his opinion of the girl from ‘beneath notice’ to ‘tolerable’.

He had nearly satisfied himself that all his records were still there when Miss Löwe set down a flat wooden case on the edge of his desk, and asked where he would like her to put it away.

“This?” Polzin drew it toward him and flipped the top of the case open, half expecting it to have been rifled too, but all the pieces were there. It was a travel chess-set; he had brought it to the office with the idea of concealing some especially critical notes and then forgotten all about it. “Leave it here. I’ll think of something later.”

“All right.” She half withdrew, and then stepped back. “Would you care for a game, sir?”

“You play?”

“I do,” she said. “And you’re still shaking rather badly. It might help your focus.”

Polzin hadn’t thought so, but when he held his hand up he could see the tremor. The girl made a good point. He could spare ten minutes or so to give his skittering mental powers something concrete to fixate on. “You won’t cry about it when you lose, I hope,” he said as he began to set up the field of play.

Miss Löwe looked amused at that. “You may do your worst, Herr Graner. I learned from your friend Franz.”

Polzin still thought of himself as an accomplished chess player - as a schoolboy, he had bested the other students year after year, and regularly progressed to the regional rankings - but he hadn’t played since before his unfortunate fall from grace. Although he’d expected to win quickly, it took him nearly twenty minutes to corner her king. 

“You’re not the worst I’ve played,” he admitted. “Your endgame needs a lot of work. Did you have a strategy?”

“Well, I thought I had a trap set up…here,” she said, returning a number of pieces to the board and shuffling them back six or seven moves to demonstrate. “You were supposed to take advantage of my obvious oversight and sacrifice your Läufer¹ in return for a very easy chance at checkmate, at which point my queen would close in…so. You saw through it, though, didn’t you?”

“I don’t care to be manipulated,” Polzin said without explaining. He must still be severely distracted, he thought. He hadn’t noticed Miss Löwe’s attempted gambit at all. 

“I see… Well, you do look better now, anyway. God knows I feel better.” She returned her pieces to the case and raised a hand very gingerly to her bruise before quickly pulling it away. “Now, you said there was something I could help you with? To do with the case, I presume.”

“What? -ah. Yes. Clear the desk, and I’ll show you.” 

He drew out the papers he had been carrying in his pocket, the last scraps of what his missing informant MONK had been hiding in that spare flat, and laid them out for her attention. “See if any of this makes sense to you,” Polzin said. “I found it when Herr Ersek and I went to Linz.”

“Under the floor? Yes, he mentioned something like that. So that’s where…well.” Miss Löwe shook her head briskly, and returned to reading in silence while Polzin put the last of his boxes back into place, ready to be taken down and burned as soon as they were done here. He was mildly relieved to find that nothing had been removed, but not at all reassured. The first brute attempt to break into his office should have triggered multiple charges, blowing a hole through the corridor wall and setting off a chain reaction that left nothing to chance. Even Seleznyov didn’t know the details, so how could a one-time visitor suss out and disable all of his traps so quickly? Polzin tried to form a mental picture of Herr Mueller - the obvious suspect - who allegedly had no idea that his employers were any more or less than they appeared. Damn it, though, he was another of Seleznyov’s hires. Where was that scheming son of a bitch when you needed him?

“I didn’t realize he had anything to do with his mother’s family,” the girl said.

“Oh?”

She held up the letter. “Frau Liechti is Dr. Haber’s half-sister, by their mother’s second husband. But he mentioned that there was some row after he came back to the country, and none of his mother’s relations would talk to him anymore… you’re looking at me awfully blankly. I thought you were following up with his cousins? You noticed his associates’ names, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I did,” Polzin said, feeling annoyed to have missed something so obvious. “Well, he must have had something to do with them, if Frau Liechti was writing back. I haven’t gone to talk to her yet. Perhaps you could do so.”

“Hmm. I’m sure I could find some excuse. Was there anything else?”

“A young lady,” Polzin said. “Well-dressed, snippy, exceptionally blonde. About so tall…” 

Miss Löwe was shaking her head. “Connected with him? No one comes to mind.” 

“No girl friends at all?”

She laughed quietly. “You didn’t know the man. No girl would bother.”

“I see.” 

“Hopeless, really.” She put the papers down and turned back to him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. It doesn’t look like there was much of use left - unless you were able to make some headway with ‘Otto’.”

Polzin mentally pulled himself together and took a seat in his creaking swivel chair. “Some, yes,” he said. And then he began to explain.

With nowhere else for his thoughts to go, he told her everything from the beginning. He brought up his theory about Haber’s abandoning the Austrian cause to collaborate with Weiss, pointed out the timing of various arrests and the disappearance of FRANZ’ files, and described with some reluctance the monstrosity he’d encountered behind the clinic doors. Miss Löwe listened, wide-eyed. 

“And of course I arranged to meet with him again today,” Polzin said, rubbing his face. “I suppose I’ll have to go back out this afternoon, whether Herr Ersek turns up or not.”

“But you can’t,” she said, suddenly seeming to remember something. “God, I forgot all about - oh, I’m so sorry. The shock put it right out of my head.”

He felt cold. “What?”

“That message you sent to France,” she said. “I was at the radio set this morning before we opened, and he finally sent a reply back, two parts. One, none of his investigations found anything on Dr. Haber.”

“I expected as much,” Polzin said. He’d sent the message to Popov on instinct more than reason. There was never any real chance that his informant could have gotten so far. “The other part?”

Marta Löwe closed her eyes for a moment to recite from memory. “Liese left France two days ago, looking for you.”

“Liese?” he muttered. “Who the hell is Liese?”

“You’re the agent,” she said, rather defensively.

“Liese, Liese….Liza…” A thought struck him suddenly. “What did he send, exactly? I mean spell it.”

“L-I-S-A.”

Polzin slapped his hand on the desk and pushed himself to his feet, cursing. Two steps later, he’d hit the file cabinet and had to turn and pace the other direction. “LISA². Why - how? No, don’t bother, I know you don’t know. Let me think.”

The girl shrank back into the wall and disappeared from his thoughts. She was right: he couldn’t go see Weiss. At this point, he likely had less than a day to intercept Mat Azeri before he stumbled right into the middle of something he didn’t understand and began making both of their lives even more difficult than necessary. It would be an eight-hour trip to the border, at least, and that was assuming that everything went right. He’d have to catch the very next train and hope that they didn’t pass each other somewhere.

God! …Azeri, of all the people for the man to send him!

“I could go, Herr Graner,” Miss Löwe said quietly.

He stopped, disoriented to remember that she was there. “What, to meet LISA? Out of the question.” 

“I mean, to talk to Herr Dr. Weiss,” she said. “I’ll present myself as your assistant; I think that’s believable enough. He won’t think anything of me.”

“Won’t he?” Polzin considered this. No, if Popov was right about LISA, he didn’t have any time for consideration. “You’re right. He won’t. All right, tell me what you’re doing.”

“I’ll use FRANZ’s templates to print up some false papers, just in case,” she said. “Then I’m going to Dr. Weiss’ office on Währinger Straße, to pass along my apologies that you were unexpectedly called back to the hospital. I’ll ask to speak with his secretary so that I can schedule an appointment for your return. Third December, at the earliest. And then I’m leaving.”

“Very good. But make it the fifth,” Polzin said, already putting his hat on. He shooed her out of his office, reset the traps, locked the door, and left. 

Otto Weiss sipped his coffee and regarded the young woman in the opposing chair with some hesitation. She sat up straight, self-assured, with her hands folded demurely in her lap, her face half-veiled by the hat she hadn’t removed. He returned the cup to its saucer, ceramic clinking as his hand shook, and then cleared his throat as he tried and failed to match her confidence. “Gestapo, you said?”

“I did,” she said, drawing an identification card from her handbag and holding it up. Weiss recognized the format immediately. “You really didn’t suspect he was with us? I’d assumed you rang up to Halle already and found there’s no Dr. Graner in their employ.”

“Of course, directly after he left. But I thought…” He smiled nervously. “Well, surely there’s no need for the police to investigate here. I have an agreement with Captain Bayer, a-at the local station. You could have spoken to him.”

“Doctor, how do you think we found you?” Miss Löwe said. “Someone will speak with Captain Bayer this evening, and I have no doubt he’ll be perfectly forthcoming. What Major Graner and I need from you are specifics - things the Captain doesn’t know.”

“I see.” Weiss took a slow breath and wished he had ever found a suitable substitute for prayer. “I suppose this is about the prisoner transfers.”

“Yes.”

“I see,” he said again. “I - you see, I did try to make a request through the proper channels-”

“Dr. Weiss, please.” She gave him a polite but clearly frustrated smile. “I’m not assigning any blame. That’s not my role. I’m sure some retroactive authorization can be arranged if you’re cooperative.”

“Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you - well - what specifics, exactly, are you looking for? Names? Dates? Results?”

Miss Löwe had taken a notebook from her bag, and read from an entry near its beginning. “On 18 July, 1941, we arrested Klemens Hermann Haber, 31, of Vienna, for various crimes against the State and People of Germany. Trial was not found necessary under the relevant stipulations of the Health Acts, and on 23 July he was scheduled for disinfection at Schloss Hartheim.³ Captain Bayer signed off on his transport, but, obviously, recent developments have thrown that signature into question.” She flipped the notebook to a blank page. “What happened next, Doctor?”

Weiss picked up his coffee cup to buy himself one more second of self-collection. “Bayer sent word that he had a batch ready to go to Hartheim,” he said. “That’s how we operate - I only take the prisoners who wouldn’t be more useful elsewhere. I would never poach from the labor pool.”

“Your restraint is admirable.”

“Thank you. Yes. Well - I went down to the cells and reviewed the prospects, as usual. It was a complete surprise to me to find Dr. Haber there, I swear to you. I’d no idea he had any involvement with such things. We hadn’t seen each other in at least a month, not since we fell out over his opinions on - my methods.” He swallowed anxiously, no longer certain what she wanted to hear. “You understand, I simply couldn’t pass up such an opportunity. So - yes. I instructed the Captain to divert him to my program, as a subject.”

Miss Löwe looked at him without any emotion. “You had no thoughts of helping him to escape justice?”

“No! Goodness, no,” he said quickly. “If I may be so bold, Fräulein, the end result is really all the same. Very few of the subjects have survived more than a month or so. It’s only that I couldn’t let him go to Hartheim without the chance to learn something first.”

“Is that so,” she said, and wrote down something Weiss couldn’t see. “And he also did not survive?”

He felt a flash of hope. “No, he has, just barely. I can release Haber to you. I’d be happy to do it.”

She closed her notebook and put it away. “Good, because you will. But not openly, do you understand?”

“I’m listening.”

“He mustn’t have any idea that you and I have talked,” she said. “You will go about your business as usual. Keep him alive. Let him recover, if you can. And on the fifth and sixth of December, you’ll make sure you aren’t here.”

“Gladly,” Dr. Weiss said. “I’ll stay the whole weekend in Linz. I’ll tell Maria - I’ll tell her something. She doesn’t care. Will that do?”

“Yes, that should be acceptable.” She stood up and went to the door without bothering to excuse herself. “I’ll contact you if our plans change. And don’t expect to hear from Captain Bayer any time soon; if all goes well, someone will be in touch to discuss a more - official arrangement. Good afternoon, Doctor.” 

“Good afternoon,” he said quietly, reflexively, sinking back slowly into his chair. 

So Bayer had sold him out to his superiors! Weiss felt so fortunate to have avoided arrest himself that he could hardly think. But it was Saturday already, and he had only until Monday to settle everything here. The fifth would be next Friday. Dr. Weiss pushed himself up from the chair again and left the office to collect the Magnetophon cart and make his way down through the hospital halls, his feet following their course by memory. He would take one last deposition from his patient - surely he could at least do that without tipping off the man that something had changed. Then some convenient reason could be found to ease off the regimen and move him to a room where whatever Gestapo were planning wouldn’t disturb the other subjects. The last few rounds had been hard on Subject 26. Maybe, for old times’ sake, that would be enough to make it credible.

He drew himself up straight before the door and entered without knocking. Subject 26 was lying back on his pillows, eyes half closed. His eyes blinked and rolled toward the open door without the rest of him moving. “Otto,” he said, very softly. “I didn’t expect you again so soon.”

“Well, I’m moving you into a new experimental group, Klemens,” Weiss said smoothly. “Longer term, lower intensity, since you and Subject 38 have been doing so well. I just wanted to get a new baseline for the records.”

Haber’s fingers rose and then fell dismissively. “It’s only been five days. Nothing’s changed.”

“Humor me,” Dr. Weiss said, and closed the door.

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1. Runner, the chess piece referred to in English as the bishop.

2. FOX.

3. i.e. with carbon monoxide.