Munich Signature

by Bodie Thoene

  “Are you up to filling in the details, Murphy?” Trump was not only calm but apologetic. “People, not numbers. We can’t send the senators away empty-headed, like they came. Set the stage, Murphy. It’s a terribly blank stage for us over here. And we’ll do it because it’s right—” he closed the scrapbook—“and not just to sell papers.”

  Murphy exhaled loudly with relief. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “We’ll need public support, something to show the State Department that America is for these people—petitions and such.” Trump was fired up. His steps quickened. “You have a mother, Murphy?”

  “Everybody has a mother.”

  “She go to church?”

  “Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and Friday sewing circle. Why?”

  “Call your mother. Ask her to call every other praying woman from every other church she knows of. Ask her to tell them to call everybody they know. That’s where we’ll begin—your mother’s sewing circle. We’ll need signatures for petitions to the State Department. Food—tons of it. Clothes. Medicine and the like. Christians who know how to pray with their hands and feet, Murphy. That’ll do it!”

  ***

  By the beginning of the second week onboard the Darien, Maria joined a rotating shift of women who had taken over the job of cooking meals. The large oblong loaves of black bread, which had been hung in hammocks from the pipes in the galley, had now become hoary with white mold. “Fuzzy white rabbits,” Maria called them. “Fetch us another white rabbit, will you?” When the mold and crust was peeled away, the inside of the loaves was hard, but edible—especially dipped into a fine simmering stew of fish.

  Once meal preparation had been taken out of the inept and frantic hands of a male cook hired on for the trip, tasteless food somehow became delicious. While the men and children labored to catch fish with improvised lines and hooks, the sea herself provided the salt to season the daily fare. Fish was boiled, fried, baked and poached. Like the manna in the wilderness centuries before, fish fed these wandering children of Abraham. Fish with potatoes. Fish with beets. Gefilte fish—almost. Breaded fish fried in the crumbs of the white rabbits in the hammocks.

  More than once Klaus was called to help haul up a particularly large fish only to find that the line was snipped and the catch devoured by one of the sharks that patrolled beside the freighter. There were sharks everywhere. Their malevolent presence made mothers cling tightly to their little ones, and more than one passenger awoke in the night to a horrifying dream about snapping jaws and black eyes rolling back at the kill.

  It was the sharks that Maria feared—more than storms, more than waves as big as a house, more than Nazis. The sharks could not have haunted her more if they had put jackboots on their fins and tattooed swastikas on their noses. She had seen them snap a dangling fish in two. Somehow they seemed like demon shadows in the water—skimming along, waiting. Waiting. Waiting for one false step. One slip of a foot. One careless child playing on the rail. For now, only the leftover entrails of fish satisfied their hunger.

  Fish guts also aided in the harvest of more fish from the Atlantic. A fish head on the end of a hook was like seed sown in fallow soil.

  “Y’ calls it boit!” Tucker explained to the rabbi of Nuremberg.

  Maria knew that it should properly be called bait, but there was something literary in Tucker’s cockney pronunciation. The fish should bite the boit.

  “More boit! More boit!” The rabbi would snap his fingers impatiently after landing a big, flopping something on the deck with the aid of six of his Torah school pupils. Then he blessed each glop of fish entrails and tossed the loaded hook into the water. The learned rabbi of Nuremberg became the finest fisherman on the ship. “Perhaps it is the prayers,” shrugged the less fortunate fisherman.

  Contests were organized. The Orthodox Jews pitted their skills against the nonreligious Jews. The fishing was not so good that day. Bankers fished against shopkeepers. Doctors against lawyers. Boys against girls. The girls won easily, having overcome their squeamishness about all things slimy. There was a certain pride when the biggest catch of the day was announced. Of course, sliced, diced, and stewed, the fish never looked as magnificent as it had looked slapping against the deck. But it was good. Better than porridge and plain black bread with cheese or black bread with potatoes or black bread with beets.

  When the last white rabbit was taken down from the hammock in the galley, no one noticed that there was no more bread. Most would have been relieved, since the white fuzz on the black bread had been a subject of concern for them. The sea would not run out of fish. This seemed a miracle to most. The landlubber rabbi of Nuremberg had taken to stretching his gnarled hands out to bless this source of manna every morning and every night.

  “Blessed art thou, Lord God of the Universe, who bringeth us . . . fish.”

  23

  Command Performance

  The morning sun glinted on the white silk and silver thread of the prayer shawl. Like a carved figurehead on the prow of a sailing vessel, the rabbi stood in the bow of the ship as he prayed. This was the first time in his life he prayed facing west. The wind billowed beneath the folds of his tallith, and the tied fringes extended like the feathers of a seabird reaching for the current of air.

  The scent of America was in the spray and on the breeze. The name of America was laced in the prayers of every praying man and woman, and even on the lips of those who did not pray at all.

  The rabbi of Nuremberg raised his voice above the winds and recited Psalm 92 for the Sabbath Day: “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Eternal; to sing praises unto thy name, O most High: to shew forth thy loving kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night.”

  As the congregation prayed with the old rabbi, little Ada-Marie stood up and staggered forward on the gently rolling deck. Maria reached for her daughter, but already the child stood at the feet of the rabbi. He was their Torah schoolteacher. Their friend. Their storyteller and fish catcher.

  Oblivious to the worship ceremony, Ada-Marie raised her arms to be picked up. Without missing even one syllable of the psalm, the rabbi chuckled with delight and hefted the child into his arms. “For thou hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands.”

  As if on cue, Ada-Marie now stretched her arms up toward God. The fringes of the silk tallith were tangled in her fingers, and for a moment she too looked like a little bird longing to fly up into the heavens. She laughed and repeated the words of the rabbi: “How . . . great . . . are thy works, O E-ter-nal.” She was delighted that the grown-ups had come to join the children in Torah school.

  ***

  Elisa awoke to the sound of birds chirping in the tree outside her window. The tree was ancient and tall and in full leaf. Sunlight dappled the new green of the top branches and filtered down to warm the window panes.

  Here, in this massive old house on the outskirts of London, she had been allowed to rest and read for two days. But she still felt herself a sort of prisoner. The mansion was some sort of training area for men under the command of Tedrick, and she was allowed freedom only in her bedroom and the sitting room that adjoined it.

  Tedrick had turned out to be a colonel. Two women who served on the house staff referred to the fact that Colonel Tedrick would be back in a day or so to begin her briefing. In the meantime, she had been promised that soon after that she would be allowed to place a trans-Atlantic phone call to Murphy at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

  They seemed quite concerned that Murphy remain docile and placated. She had been warned that any indication of trouble from her would result in the communication being cut off. Colonel Tedrick would provide a script for her to fill in the details. Whatever personal assurances of her well-being and affection she wished to give Murphy would certainly be allowed.

  Elisa resented the efficiency of Colonel Tedrick and his organization. They had left no detail unattended to, no avenue open for her to ref
use to cooperate with them.

  A young woman named Shelby Pence was assigned to question her regarding her life in Vienna. Shelby, who spoke fluent German and had spent two years as a secretary for the British Embassy in Berlin, had a remarkable ability for making what might have been a dull task quite interesting.

  Where Elisa lived and shopped and went out with friends were the innocuous sorts of details Shelby seemed most interested in. Names and descriptions of orchestra members, their habits and peculiarities, became subjects that made both women howl with laughter.

  If it had not been for Shelby, Elisa thought she might have passed the time in tears instead of laughter. Shelby, with her light red shoulder-length hair and ready smile, was two years older than Elisa and had already been married once and divorced. Often the interviews that were meant to garner details of Elisa’s personal life dissolved into personal conversation between the two women. Over endless cups of tea they discussed Berlin as it had been before such absolute evil had consumed it. Shelby squealed with delight when she discovered that Elisa’s father had been the owner of Lindheim’s Department Store—it had been her favorite place to shop. They might have passed each other in the aisles!

  At this point, Shelby forced herself back to her assignment. She was not to interview Elisa Lindheim . . . but rather, Elisa Linder, holder of the Czech passport who played violin at Vienna’s Musikverein.

  This morning, Shelby knocked softly on the door before Elisa had climbed out of bed. “It’s me, luv.” She opened the door a crack and then, seeing Elisa gazing out the window, she entered, wheeling a clothes rack behind her.

  Elisa smiled and sat up, her eyes wide at the sight of a rack of lovely dresses with the tags still on them. “What . . . ?”

  “I picked them out myself. The colonel noticed we’re nearly the same size, and so I got all the fun of shopping for you. Try them on. What you don’t like I’ll gladly wear for you!” She winked. “Well, today is the day, isn’t it? Colonel Tedrick promised a phone call to New York.”

  Elisa had jumped up and was eagerly looking through the clothes. “Shelby!” she said at last. “They’re beautiful—all of them!” She gave Shelby a quick hug. “You’ve made this almost bearable.”

  “Well, pick out something pretty and run take a bath. You have to look lovely when you talk to your husband.”

  ***

  “The problem with the Czechs, of course—” Colonel Tedrick lit his briar pipe and studied the wreath of smoke—“is that they offered you no real training. Totally unprofessional. Plop you down in a jail in Vienna with the instructions that you must keep your mouth shut.” Puffing on the pipe, he considered the lack of instruction Elisa had received. “It is no wonder you were unable to follow through when you met with Le Morthomme. We shall do better with you, Elisa. Give you a taste of the sort of training Himmler gives his Gestapo and Canaris gives the Abwehr.” He stuck out his lower lip and cocked an eye to question her. “Ever fired a gun?”

  Uneasy with the line of questioning, Elisa shrugged and shook her head. “But you told me I had only to make contact in Paris with Thomas, and then—”

  “Of course, yes. But the Nazis may not take kindly to your involvement. If that is the case, a weapon may well come in handy.”

  “What use—?”

  “Might have been some use to you if you could have simply shot that fat fellow who cornered you and your friend in your Vienna apartment, eh?”

  Elisa exhaled loudly, then remarked dryly, “I suppose if I had known how to fire a gun, I would be in New York right now with Murphy, and you would have two less men on your payroll.”

  Tedrick laughed, then waved her anger away with the smoke from his pipe. “Quite! Well, well, well—technicalities! That was simply a matter of—”

  “Abduction.”

  “I was about to say necessity,y Elisa! How else might we have wrested you away from John Murphy without a scene?”

  “You wouldn’t have! And I would not have had any need at all for learning to fire a gun.”

  “You have need now.” He cleared his throat and became serious. “Shelby reports that you were the last person, as far as you know, to see Rudy Dorbransky alive.”

  Elisa focused her gaze on the burled walnut desktop. She did not want to look into Tedrick’s probing eyes. She did not want to discuss that night in Vienna again. “Yes . . . Rudy.”

  “And he gave you this—” Tedrick tapped the battered violin case that held the priceless Guarnerius.

  Elisa nodded. “He told me where it was. I waited, and then . . . later . . . I got it out from behind the display case with Haydn’s skull . . . in the Musikverein. I told Shelby about it. And then my friend Leah Feldstein . . .”

  Tedrick absently thumbed through the typed transcript. He raised a hand to stop her. “We know all about that, and the point is, you saw Rudy—what they had done to him.”

  “Yes.” Elisa whispered her reply. “His hands were—”

  “Quite.” Tedrick shifted his massive bulk uneasily in the leather wingback chair. “Rudy was one of our own fellows.”

  “I assumed he was . . . that his work was simply smuggling passports to those in need.”

  “Passports . . . and other things. We often provided passports to him in exchange for favors. A message here . . . a document there. We knew long before the Nazis marched into Austria what Hitler’s plans were.”

  Elisa flushed with a new anger. “Then why didn’t you stop him? Why?”

  “We were able to communicate with Chancellor Schuschnigg on the matter. He took it into his own hands and called for the vote in Austria. A rash move on his part. Made the Führer angry.”

  “But why did Britain sit back and—”

  “My dear girl, you have wandered from the point!” An edge of irritation laced Tedrick’s words.

  “And what is the point?” Elisa was accusatory. Her fists were clenched in her lap and her blue eyes radiated anger as she thought of the violence that had come to Vienna and all of Austria from the Nazis.

  “We are an organization meant to gather information.” Tedrick sniffed defensively. “Our information is relayed on to His Majesty’s government, where decisions are made—or not made. We are simply here to provide perhaps a glimpse into the minds of the other players in the game. Help our team to guess future moves.”

  “And do the opponents also have the capacity to read your moves?”

  Tedrick smiled with relief. “Quite. Which is why it is important that you carry a gun and know well how to use it, my dear. You see, the same fellows who tortured Rudy Dorbransky are still out there and quite willing to do the same to you as they did to him.”

  “But Albert Sporer is dead.”

  “Come now, do you think he was alone?” The fire in the pipe died, and Tedrick poked at the tobacco with the end of a match. “I am certain that your . . . husband . . . Mr. Murphy was informed in Prague that the Gestapo is quite interested in you. We relayed that information to the Czech government some weeks ago. Murphy was notified. Did he not tell you of the danger?”

  Elisa frowned, remembering the night of the party at Hradcany Castle when Murphy had seemed to sense some terrible darkness on the Charles Bridge. He had not been the same from that moment. Until they reached England, he had always seemed to be looking over his shoulder for an unseen threat. “Not in words. He did not want to worry me, I suppose.”

  “The danger is real, even for a short detour across the Channel into Paris. Even with something this simple, much hangs in the balance. Believe me, the Gestapo will not let you go so easily.” Again he tapped the violin case. “After all, you were the one Dorbransky chose to take his place. They killed him. They killed him in order to get the information he carried here. They were not quite clear about what they were after, or you would have been eliminated while you were walking around with the violin in Vienna.” He sat back to let that thought penetrate Elisa with a cold knife of fear. “Now I think they know what they want.�
�� He changed the subject suddenly. “Your photograph—slightly altered—has been run in the major European newspapers. We will see to it that another photograph appears in the London Times announcing that you will solo on the BBC radio over the next few weeks.”

  “But Paris?” Elisa was alarmed. When would she be allowed to leave London for Paris? When could she get this job finished and leave for America?

  “Paris is certainly on your agenda, my dear.” He struck another match and held it to the bowl of the pipe. “But most certainly John Murphy will understand that you cannot turn down a chance to play with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London. The Gestapo may even listen in—who knows?”

  “You are telling me—” Elisa sat back as she tried to comprehend exactly what Tedrick’s agenda was—“that I will be here longer than—”

  “Longer than we thought originally.” He smiled without emotion, a cold, determined kind of smile that told her she had no choice in any of this. “Long enough to perform several times with the BBC. You must explain it quite clearly to Mr. Murphy. Any musician would jump at such an opportunity. No one could refuse such a contract.”

  “I could.”

  “That is where you are mistaken, Elisa.” Tedrick was certain of the power he held over her. So certain that he would not bother pretending to be sympathetic. “You see, the moment you picked up this—” he shoved the violin case across the desk to her—“you signed a contract to perform. And so, you will perform, and you will begin that performance with a phone call to New York. Then we shall provide you with the rest of the script.”

  ***

  Charles knew that it was very late at night—or very early in the morning—when the phone in the hotel suite rang.

  Murphy was still dressed. He had never undressed. Never gotten into his pajamas. Never been to sleep the whole night long. He had paced the room and stared out the window at traffic and once when Charles had gotten up to go to the bathroom, Murphy had explained, “Elisa is going to call, see? The time is different between London and New York. When it’s daytime there, it’s night here. When it’s night here, it’s day there.”