This Chapter Has Moved – Updated version found here!
(Last updated Juy 6, 2008)
(September 12, 1942)
“It Ain’t Necessarily So“ (or “You Turned the Tables on Me”)
By the end of the next day, Katherine wondered why she had bothered taking a bath the night before. Whatever cleanliness she had felt hadn’t lasted through the first part of the day.
But either today had been cooler or she was becoming slightly acclimated to the heat and more able to deal with sand coating her skin and the inside her mouth and nose, as well as every part of her it could reach and some parts she would have been sure it couldn’t reach. It was bad, but she hadn’t suffered any more bouts of insanity. Maybe it was both slightly cooler and she was starting the acclimation process.
But that night when they stopped, something turned the camp upside down. She was kept out of the way and not allowed to see enough to form an opinion on what was going on. But something was happening between Captain Kichner and Major Cleere. As if the power had shifted and then a formation was called and Sergeant Hauber was taken away and she was left without a guard so she wandered over to where everyone was.
Major Cleere was yelling at Captain Kichner who was standing at attention taking it. And his men were behind him all standing at attention. Finally she got a piece of an idea but had trouble fitting it into her view of the world as she knew it and she couldn’t stand the confusion and shouted at the Major, “What is going on?” He turned to her as if he had forgotten she existed, as well he had. She demanded to know, “Are you in charge here?”
“Yes.”
She turned to Captain Kichner, “And that makes you?”
“S.I.G. [5] When she looked at him blankly, he explained, “German Jews from Palestine who were recruited by the British to operate behind enemy lines passing as Germans.”
She was trying to absorb this. It turned her world upside down. Her brain seemed addled in its attempt to reorganize where everything fit – where everyone fit! It all made sense on some level and somethings she had noticed but not thought about now she saw as puzzle pieces and she just hadn’t known there was a puzzle for them to fit into. But she saw the completed puzzle now even if the pieces were still in the process of moving from their previous positions into new ones where they fit better. But she still felt like hitting her hadn against the side of her head to dislodge some pieces. She had to completely revise her view of who everyone was and shifting the ideas and pigeon holes in her brain was not happening easily.
She also wasn’t sure the British would realize what they had there. “What an idea. Recruited from organizations that had been fighting the British in Palestine. How long has that been going on?”
“A few months.”
She began to walk away mumbling to herself but then she turned back to them having finally filtered in a piece of what the major had been yelling at Kichner — now revealed to be a German Jew disguised as a German officer.
“Major, am I to understand that you think that one of these men who has been pretending to be a German is actually a German spy?”
“Or a traitor.”
She turned to the captain, “Do you agree that it is one of your men?”
“That seems the most reasonable explanation.”
She lowered her voice so only the two of them could hear her. “In that case, I think I can find your spy.”
They both turned to her incredulously, The major actually said, “What?”
She started moving away and as she had expected Kichner and Cleere moved with her. When she felt they were out of normal earshot of the others, she called out to those she had thought were British prisoners, “Does anyone have a deck of cards?” When no one answered, she asked again, “Oh come on. Someone has to have a deck of cards.” She turned to the major. “Promise you won’t punish anyone or confiscate the cards and have someone come up with some cards.”
“What do cards have to do with it?”
“So, I can find your spy.”
“With a deck of cards?”
“And a table and two chairs.” Her brain rebelled at telling them anything but if there was a spy, they were all at risk. “You see – it is so hard to trust you because I have the mindset of not trusting him. but it looks like we are all in this together. But my brain is still trying to adjust and I feel a little fuzzy-headed at the moment. Well, I was raised by the people you call Gypsies.”
“You mean you learned how to tell the future?”
She was exasperated – it is one thing to earn money by telling fortunes to silly people and another to find that intelligent people might think there was any chance of anyone telling the future, but maybe he was just responding to what he thought she thought she could do. “No, Major, of course I can’t tell the future. I do not believe anyone can tell the future. What I can do is read the past and it is the past that concerns you here. Get a pack of cards from your men, Major. Sergeant Hauber, get me the table and the chairs from the captain’s tent.”
The sergeant waited for his superior to confirm this order so she turned to Kichner. “Come on, Captain. Do you have a better chance of finding your spy? If you could discover the spy among you, surely you would have discovered him by now. And this proves another contention of mine that people can’t tell a Jew from a non-Jew. For I am going on the assumption that if there is someone among you who is working for the enemy, he isn’t a Jew. Even though he seems to have fooled every single one of you. I guess it is possible for the man to be a traitor instead of a spy but I really feel the odds are that he is a spy – a German, what they have started to call an Aryan pretending to be a Jew pretending to be a German soldier. That has got to be hard on the psyche. And I am sure I can figure out who is going through this kind of triple confusion among people who are going through only a double identity. It will probably come as a surprise to you two, but I am really quite good a knowing a lie when I hear it. Which makes it doubly annoying that you all were able to fool me. I need to analyze why I failed at that for I never thought for a moment that any of you were anything other than what you presented yourselves as beng. But if you only have one card left in your hand, you have to play it and I suspect if I am not the last card in your hand, I am the only one with any chance of success.”
“I do not believe you can find a spy that I haven’t detected.”
The major had returned with the cards, “Neither do I.”
“Yet you both think that there is a spy among you that you haven’t detected. The proof shall be in the pudding, Gentlemen. Can you tell me what causes you to think there is a spy?”
“Why would you need to know that?” asked Kichner.
“Captain, it isn’t a military secret.” The major overruled him and told her, “One of the Italian women left a note in his jacket which he didn’t find until just a little while ago after we stopped for the night.”
“Of course she did.”
Kichner frowned at her but gave her more facts, “The note said that someone had gotten a message to her father that said we were not what we seemed and that we, Germans, were working for the British and the British prisoners were commandos. She said her father was still thinking about whether to give the information to Colonel Runstedt but probably would after we left – which was wise as there was nothing that one German Colonel and some Italian civilians could have done while we were there. But they did have a radio.”
Cleere asked her, “Why would you think you can find the spy?”
“I am more confident that I can find a spy in your midst, than you, Captain, are confident that you can seduce any woman you come across.”
“I don’t always succeed.”
“That is why I am more confident.”
“If you not only find someone you think is a spy but convince me of that, I will take you dancing when we get back to civilization.”
She smiled sweetly, “I don’t think so.”
“What? You don’t dance?”
“First of all, what would make you think I wanted to go dancing with you? But, of course, I dance, I was raised by Gypsies. It is follow I don’t do.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Captain, please confirm my request to your sergeant and gather your people around the table when he has it set up.” As soon as the table appeared Katherine started separating the cards and returned most of the non-descript cards to the major. She was left with face cards, aces and tens. She planned to improvise a version of Gypsy fortune telling just for this occasion.
“Gentlemen, I am going to define these cards for you once. Do not try to remember or try to figure out their full meaning, your subconscious will do that. Just listen to my descriptions.”
When she finished one of the men said, “That death card means death doesn’t it?”
“Sort of. But it doesn’t predict your own death – nothing can do that. The death card can refer to death that surrounds you or it can be change. It can be a lot of things. Don’t worry about it if it appears. I would expect it to appear often in a group that deals with death as much as soldiers do.” She was shuffling the cards now. “Gypsies have special knowledge of the unconscious mind and can use cards to focus a mind so that it can be read [7]. Here is how it works: Each of you in turn will come and sit here.
You will shuffle the cards then after answering each of the following questions, you will lay down a card:
When and where were you born and where did you go to school?
What did your father do for a living?
Where your mother, siblings, wives, and any children are now?
What was the passage you read for your bar mitzvah?
What military experience did you have before joining the S.I.G.s?
When did you join the S.I.G. and how did you find out about it?”
Katherine had subtlety maneuvered the sergeant to be on her right and it was to him she first turned. “You are first sergeant.” He hesitated. “Nu?” She said. That little touch of Yiddish surprised them all, but got him to move.
Sergeant Hauber came and sat and started shuffling. “What were those questions again?” She told him the first one and he answered and then asked, “Do just take the one off the top.?”
“That is entirely up to you. You can shuffle and cut the cards with each question or just now start at the top and then do one after anther. Or pull out the bottom card. Whatever you want. Go with your first thought.”
He stopped shuffling and laid down the top card and to each question laid down the next card at the top without shuffling in between. Born May 3, 1907, Torah reading was Leviticus 21:1-24:23, Haganna
She glanced at the cards and reached for them with one hand and held out her hand for the rest of the cards with the other one. She mixed them a bit as she looked up at the man who had been on the sergeant’s right. “Your turn.” He hesitated. “Sergeant, tell this gentleman that it didn’t hurt.”
The soldier with whom she had had no dealings at all frowned at her and came over and reached out for the cards and he too asked for the questions, gave her the answers and laid down each card from the bottom of the deck after he stopped shuffling. Birthday 10/21/1920, He didn’t remember his exact Torah passage but it was something in Genesis about Abraham.
She glanced at these cards and reached for them at the same time that she held out her hand for the rest of the deck.
“Don’t we get a reading?”
“If you want a reading, ask me afterwards.”
She glanced up at Captain Kichner who was next. She smiled and held out the deck. He didn’t move. She reached up to rub her left jaw, “Come on, Captain. You owe me. And this is your chance to get information you have failed to obtain any other way.”
His eyes narrowed but he moved, sat in the chair and took the cards. She started to recite the questions, but he looked at her coldly and said, “I remember the questions. The answers are, I was born in Heidelberg. My father owned a motor dealership and repair shop. He is dead as are my mother, sister and brother. My wife divorced me and I have no idea where she moved to. No children. I was in the German army until 1933. I was recruited for the SIG from the Palmach. Torah passage I studied for my bar mitzvah was Genesis 23:1-25:18,” He had shuffled while talking and at the end of each answer laid down the card that was on top.
“I’d have figured you more for the Irgun. Did you resent having a passage that was mostly about a woman?”
“Yes, but at least she was a beautiful woman, or had been when she was younger.”
“Thank you Captain. Next.”
The next man, who she had never spoken to, didn’t hesitate. Then it was Untersturmführer Hofmann. She smiled at him sweetly and offered him the cards and he smiled back and took them and started shuffling and answering the questions. He, too, remembered the questions and didn’t need prompting. “I was born in Frankfurt on Rhine on December 10, 1917, but we moved to Tel Aviv when I was seven. My father runs a jewelry store, my mother and brother still live there. No wife, no children. I don’t remember my Torah passage.” He laid down his cards and tried to hand her the deck but she didn’t reach out to take it.
She glanced only briefly look at the cards he had laid down but said, “Surely you have a vague idea of your Torah passage?
“I don’t remember it – it’s been a long time and since I spoke and read Hebrew on a daily basis, it wasn’t as big a thing with me to learn it.”
“Makes sense. Did you do the reading on the day assigned or was your day moved?”
“I don’t remember, I guess on the day assigned.”
“Then it would have been about a very famous ruler. Can you tell me who?”
“Sorry. Don’t remember. How much do you remember of things you learned when you were 13. We weren’t religious; it was just a silly ritual to get through. I hardly remember any part of it.”
“It would have been about David. Does that ring a bell?”
“Yeah, right.”
“So, you had been living in America before you returned and immediately joined the S.I.G.s.”
“Yes.”
“Most of the group joined from the Palmach or the Haganah.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yet, you were made an officer.”
“I had the education and certain skills and they thought I had leadership potential.”
Katherine turned to the others, “Who knew this man when he joined up?”
“I met him when we joined at the same time.”
“Did he seem to have some military training already?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get your military training?”
“You think I’m the spy?”
“Yes, I do.”
“On the basis of this?”
“The Torah passage you would have read couldn’t have been about David who wasn’t mentioned in the Torah — not that a secular Jew would necessarily know that — it was about the Pharoah and his dreams. And you have been exhibiting several visual cues — what poker players call tells — that show you are lying.”
“What?”
“You don’t play poker? A tell is a mannerism that someone exhibits when they have a good or a bad hand. It is what people reveal in body language when they lie.”
“You think you can tell when someone is lying?”
“I was raised by Gypsies. Gypsies think that a five year old child who can’t tell when someone is lying is retarded. Gypsies live in a world of lies — they couldn’t exist among the dominate cultures they find themselves in without lies. They are rarely given legal ways to earn a living.”
Kichner had begun moving towards the table and was now within Hofmann’s line of sight. “You don’t believe this do you, Captain?”
“Some of it is falling together with things she cannot know.”
“She may be the spy.”
“And I would willingly believe that if she knew the information that we have learned has been passed on. But she was never in a position to find out any of it. She was always with Major Cleere, Sergeant Hauber, or myself. I made sure she never passed on any information last night. And she didn’t know we weren’t Germans..”
“You are only focusing on me because of her mumbo jumbo which you cannot believe.”
“No, it is entirely the way you are answering her questions, not the silly cards.”
Others were moving up also. Seems once the thought was put into their heads, many found reason to suspect him. The guy to his right was not one of the Germans who had all been disarmed but one of the British non-coms who still had his sidearm. Hofmann moved quickly and totally unexpectedly from a totally relaxed position, took the sidearm and brought it to bear. Katherine bent the cards in her hand and sprang them at him and then threw herself down off the chair behind the weak table and so she didn’t see Kichner throw the knife nor see it spring from Hofmann’s body.”
Major Cleere was not please. “I didn’t want him dead. He had valuable information.”
Kichner just looked at him coldly.
Katherine got up from the ground and said, “Major, how do you think it would help you to have him alive? Do you think he was going to tell you what he knew.”
“With some persuasion.”
“And how long did you think you were going to have for this persuasion? You actually think a few hours or even a day of concentrated effort would get you the truth? Maybe it would if you were willing to use Gestapo techniques, but when you have no way to prove any part of what someone tells you and you cannot keep them around to test what they tell you, you have no idea if they are just telling you what they think will make sense.”
Captain Kichner said, “I thought you could tell if someone were lying.”
Katherine at first seemed to ignore Kichner’s observation. “Another problem with the idea is that you, Major, couldn’t do the things that it would take to get someone to talk. The captain here might be willing and able to do it but I wouldn’t be willing or able to stay around through such an interrogation to find out whether Hofmann was lying. And I have no idea if someone would exhibit distinctive tells under torture, but I suspect torture would throw off everything I know about lies – the only lies I have known are those given voluntarily. I cannot imagine what would happen under torture. And it takes a lot longer than that to torture the truth out of someone even if you use the ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques of our enemy. But there was really no choice anyway, although we should all have foreseen his attempt at killing some of us when he gave up on his own life. And how much time do you have before you do whatever you are going to do? For surely you are headed for an operation, one which now you must assume is being anticipated. Where are you going?”
“I do not think I can tell you that.”
“What are you going to do, leave me here? Or you can take me but not tell me where we are – actually that might work since my knowledge of North Africa consists of maps of Suez, Cairo, Alexandria and that railroad station where the British have held the line – El Alamain.”
“Hofmann didn’t know exactly where we were going anyway, did he Captain?”
“I saw no reason to reveal our exact target – none of my men know, except in the broadest way, where we are going. Only you and I know the details.”
“Okay, if you won’t answer that question, how about this one, Captain, since you must have wanted not to have to destroy that British column, why did you try so hard to stop me from firing that mortar.”
“If I had been trying to stop you, I would have. I could have outrun you or thrown a knife or just about anything else.”
“How had you been planning to get out of attacking the British force?”
“Actually, I hadn’t figured out something when you provided the means. I still had to make it look good or we would have had a pitched battle at the top of that ridge against the Oberleutnant’s troops. And I was trying to avoid such a fight.”
“But they had the mortars set up.”
“I admit that I was still working on a plan. Was just trying to find an opening. You were Heaven Sent. Tell me how you were able to do it.”
“Ah, some of it was that I learned to juggle while with the Gypsies, who actually joined up with a circus when I was a child. The tribe I was with spent some time working with a circus and I learned a lot of skills there. And I have an uncle in the army who showed me mortars one day so I had lifted a shell and knew what to expect and he had actually explained to me how the mortar worked.”
“So, you had a lot of strange skills that helped you do this. God should get some of the credit for putting you in the right place at the right time.”
“If God could do all that, why does He not do something to stop some of the worse situations people are finding themselves in these days. All I did was save you from having to figure out something. You had weapons and men, I suspect you really don’t believe you really needed me.”
“So, you think it was coincidence?”
“What else?
Captain Kichner, leaned towards her. “I could believe that you are a German spy.”
“Except that everything I have done that would lead you to think I was a spy has been done to help the British.”
“Could be an elaborate ruse.”
“Captain, you have an extraordinarily suspicious mind. But he is right, of course, Major, I am surprised there is any trust among us.”
“Trust is always difficult, especially in wartime. Let me ask you, are you sure Hofmann was the spy?”
“He tried to grab a gun. Not in a panicky sort of way but from a relaxed position, deliberately. Of course he was a spy. Do either of you have any doubts?”
“I don’t doubt he was a spy, I just doubt how you came up with that.”
“There was no magic in that, Captain. The thing that amazes me is that all the rest of you fooled me. I think that was just because I believed so very much in you being what you obviously were. I am convinced you had been a German officer and so you knew how to live the part, not play the part. I had had an occasional thought that you and the major seemed very chummy, but I believed totally that you were what you claimed to be. Even the oddities I observed about you convinced me of your authenticity. So I also believed in everyone else. Sergeant Hauber never put a foot wrong and I never had a single doubt about him either. But Hofmann was not playing a part, he was playing a part within a part and he was sending off mixed messages, I didn’t think anything of it until you told me you were only pretending to be the enemy and that you had a spy among you. Then I suspected who the spy was and I just had to figure out how to bring that out.”
The major asked, “Do you feel anything about getting him killed?”
“Strange that. I have never been a part of killing anyone. But he was an enemy spy. If I had to kill German soldiers who were just doing their jobs, I think I would have nightmares. But Hofmann wasn’t a soldier, he was a spy. I wonder if it would ever bother me but who knows how it will affect me down the line. At the moment, I seem fine with it.”
“So, you aren’t a spy?”
“Me? No, Although, you are, Captain.”
“I would have to admit that my position is similar to what Hofmann was doing, pretending to be on the side I oppose.
Copyright 2007-2008 by B. E. Warne: All rights reserved.
