Sleeper Agent by Ib Melchior

through town, unguarded, carrying a white sign before them as if it were a conquered enemy standard: THESE ARE PW’S. DIRECT TO NEAREST CAGE. So many individual soldiers were trying to give themselves up that nobody could find time to bother with them—even when they anxiously accosted the GI’s, holding out their paybooks and literally begging to be taken prisoner. The Americans would just point to the rear and order them to march.
    Mixed in with the hectic military traffic came German civilians fleeing Czechoslovakia before the Russian onslaught; petty Nazi officials, who only weeks before had been the haughty masters of Sudetenland; dependents of the occupation forces; and others who thought it best to seek safety from the “savage Slavs.”
    On foot, crammed into all kinds of vehicles, pushing carts or bicycles, they streamed into the little Bavarian town. They were ordered to stay off the main roads so as not to impede military traffic, but this rule was constantly violated. It was the duty of the CIC to screen this flood of people before allowing them to proceed farther into Germany—behind the American lines.
    The girl sitting so tensely before Tom and his partner, CIC agent Larry Scott, was one of these fugitives.
    They had interrogated her companion first. Her name was Liselotte Greiner. She had answered their routine questions satisfactorily. Her papers were as valid as any, and her story had been plausible. She was obviously intelligent, but her handsome face had seemed hard. Perhaps it was only a resentful animosity she could not conceal. But she had been in complete control of herself, even a little haughty.
    They had not liked her. But it was not their job to like or dislike their subjects. Only to screen them. They had been all set to send the two girls on their way after the usual cursory examination which under the circumstances constituted a screening.
    But Tom had felt uneasy when they started questioning the second girl. Her name was Maria Bauer. Where her companion had been composed, she was nervous. Where they had seen only hostility and venom in the eyes of her friend, here there was also fear. Where the other’s face had been only hard and resentful, hers was also vulnerable and fearful.
    Tom recognized his nagging feeling of uneasiness. He knew what it meant. A hunch. A hunch that all was not as it seemed. A hunch that his subject was concealing something. A hunch that could not be explained logically but which was a familiar sensation to every seasoned interrogator. Seldom wrong, it had to be followed up.
    He glanced at Larry. His partner met his glance and nodded imperceptibly. He, too, felt it, Tom realized.
    Many subjects were nervous and ill at ease under interrogation. It was normal. But this girl had something to hide. Something she was in deadly fear they would discover.
    Tom once more studied the little gray Kennkarte in his hand. It was the standard German identification card. It seemed in order, crisp and clean. He looked at the date of
    issue: 17 September 1943. He frowned. “When was your Kennkarte issued to you?” he asked. His German was perfect.
    The tip of the girl’s tongue flitted between her dry lips in a darting motion. “On September seventeenth, 1943.”
    Perhaps that was it, he thought. Perhaps that was what had alerted him, nudged his subconscious into kindling his hunch. The girl had fished out her identification card from a large purse she nervously clutched to her. It was in too good a condition to have been treated like that for more than a year and a half.
    “You’ve had this card since then?”
    “Yes.”
    Slowly he turned the card over in his hand. Thoughtfully he examined it “It’s in pretty good shape for being that old, isn’t it?”
    Again the tip of her tongue darted swiftly between her bloodless lips. “I . . . I didn’t carry it with me for a long time after I got it,” she whispered. “I . . . I left it at the house.”
    Tom looked