Korsch had set discreet inquiries afoot the moment he was back, but nothing substantive had come of them. He had contacted Schmundt the moment he was back in the north. The last communiqué from him said that Rabbi Wissen was nowhere to be found. Rumors indicated a southward flight, probably toward Switzerland.

Korsch exploded in wrathful fury upon reading the message in Schmundt’s hand.

Was the fool toying with him? He had had enough of the Swiss dead end! He didn’t want to hear about Switzerland! The Semite professor was somewhere much closer at hand!

Returning to the place where the trail had gone cold, Korsch reprised the series of events since he had tracked the rabbi’s flight out of Warsaw.

After laying his hands on the fellow Luddoff in Wloclawek and torturing the information out of him, he had traced and followed the moves of the rabbi to Ciehocinek, then to Torun and Bydgoszcz, where they had apparently turned south to Wagrowiec and Poznan.

There the trail had forked. He had taken the wrong road toward the south.

Now here he was trying to pick up the scent, the one toward the Baltic this time, but so far without much success. He had roughed up a few people, but if anyone knew which direction the Kropf and Wissen families had taken after leaving Poznan, no one was talking.

Korsch had been thrown off track by some fellow impersonating a Wehrmacht officer, who he was now sure must have been a member of the underground. That man would be dead when he caught up with him! Korsch had gone to Dresden, with clues that he thought led toward München and thence to Switzerland.

Now as he paced angrily back and forth, memory of the acrid incident drifted back into his consciousness. As important as the exchange with the imposter of a captain was, it was one exchange that would never find its way into any of his reports!

If he ever got his hands on the fellow, he vowed he would utilize the most skillful means of the Gestapo to obtain what he wanted to know. They had ways of making people talk!

Thus far all Schmundt kept telling him was about clues toward Switzerland. He was sick of hearing about them!

Korsch wondered if the fellow was going to prove as valuable as he’d originally thought. He wasn’t sure if his blood ran quite cold enough. Still, he had his uses and had proved a decently capable agent till now. In fact, his protégé, reports had it, was actually succeeding in making something of a name for himself in some modest-level Gestapo circles. So he continued to keep in touch with the young fellow and told him to let him know if he heard anything that wasn’t connected with Switzerland.

Notwithstanding their joint efforts, however, the rabbi remained unfound.

79 Another Visit

79

Another Visit