The Spies of Zurich

by Richard Wake

  Maybe it was just my imagination.

  We got to the lake, and then Ruchti turned us around and walked us back, retracing our steps along the riverbank. He said something about the weather. I said something back. We got to the police station, and he shook my hand. He said, "Okay, we'll be in touch." It was the same thing he had said in my office.

  I watched Ruchti as he climbed the steps and re-entered the building. If his purpose had been to do anything other than mess with my head, I don't know what it was.

  13

  Manon and I settled into a relationship that I would describe as comfortably passionate. The passionate part was obvious enough -- we were spending about three nights together per week, right from the start. I was 40, and she was 30ish -- still not sure, exactly -- and there seemed little reason for pretense or the dating dance. She had a job, and I had a job, hers busier than mine but both requiring occasional overnight travel, and the thought of flowers and chocolates and such seemed silly. There was an attraction, and it was real, and I know that at least a couple of times a day, I found myself zoning out of a conversation or forgetting everything I had read on the previous page because I was thinking of Manon. I sensed that the feeling was mutual, and that was enough.

  Some nights, she would just show up at Cafe Fessler when I was sitting at my stammtisch, going over a pile of bank paperwork after dinner. It was easy, natural. I would finish my work while she had a drink, chatting with whichever Fessler happened to be handy. Sometimes she brought a novel and sat with me and read while I plowed through the pile -- initial here, sign there, daydream for a second and feel the stirring below the table.

  The Fesslers left us alone, for the most part, other than to say a quick hello. They would have this look on their face that unnerved me, just a bit. It was a shade on the beatific side, not a typical look between friends, and I even asked Henry about it at one point.

  "Look, we're just happy for you," he said. I knew that was it, but I hated what it left unsaid. That is, that my life before had been such an abject pile of shit that Manon was somehow rescuing me from misery.

  But here's the thing: I wasn't miserable. I enjoyed my own company, for the most part. I had been on a dry spell, and that was true enough. And I was finding it hard to meet new people, also true. But I was content. I was not miserable. I had dated more in Vienna and had a few somewhat serious girlfriends along the way, but Henry and his father had many times seen me very happily alone for significant stretches of time. I was not some kind of social basket case. Henry was always the one who seemed to need a girlfriend, and who fell the hardest when the relationship ended -- usually right after they found out what daddy did for a living. But I was never like that. My life was not an abject pile of shit.

  This night, it was Liesl who made the quick visit. She looked at me and offered up the smile. She looked at Liesl and giggled as she walked away.

  "What was that about?" I said.

  "Nothing."

  "Come on."

  "She's just happy to know that I'm getting it on a regular basis."

  "No way. Women don't think like that."

  She stopped, shook her head. "For future reference, what's German for 'men are complete idiots'?"

  I had been thinking about Johanna, the girlfriend I had in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. She was the daughter of a baron and baroness whose star (and bank account) were fading, and likely to fade even quicker under the Germans. But she wouldn't leave when I left, for a lot of reasons -- and mostly because I didn't even ask her to leave in the end. We wanted different things, and she could never let go of the notion that she was tied to her family, and her family was tied to Austria, and that was that. But part of it was that I had kept the spying part of my life from her, and when I finally told her, she laughed in my face, laughed as if it were impossible to see the traveling magnesite salesman acting for any kind of noble, higher cause.

  That her opinion stung went without saying. Her disdain then, the beatific smiles now -- how exactly did people see me? My Uncle Otto had taught me many things, but one of them -- "Cards to the vest, son, cards to the vest in life and in love" -- had stuck with me, maybe too much. I always figured, if you didn't let people in, they would just see what you showed them. But more and more, it was dawning on me that a blank canvas was just an invitation for other people to fill it in however they wanted.

  I didn't want that with Manon. I didn't know where we were headed, but I didn't want that. So I wanted to tell her something about the spying part of my life, but I didn't want to endanger her or scare her. Because there was little doubt I was going to get in deeper. As soon as I heard about the Nazi gold, I knew. I couldn't just walk away from that kind of knowledge. I didn't know what to do with it, and I didn't even know if it was entirely true, but it was the kind of thing that could affect Germany's ability to fight in a very big way, and I had to pursue it. I just felt it inside, that I needed to get involved, regardless of the risk. And fuck Johanna.

  But what to tell Manon? I couldn't tell her what happened in Vienna. And while I might be able to tell her soon about being the banker for the Czech spy network in Switzerland -- the Fesslers all knew, so what was one more? -- but it still seemed awfully soon for that. I settled on telling her the gold story but without the details of who told me or how or when. I said it was a guy from another bank who got drunk and told me he heard it third-hand. And that there was no proof.

  Manon was simultaneously fascinated and enraged.

  "The goddamn Swiss," is how she began, followed by a recitation of every lousy thing she could say about the country and its people, ending up with, of all things, "and that includes the fucking fondue."

  "But I don't know what to do now?"

  "You need to embarrass them," she said.

  "But how?"

  "You need to get the story published. Nobody here would ever do it, but you have that friend in Paris, right?" she said. I had thought about Leon. This is the kind of story he would kill to write. He had worked on a scandalous tabloid in Vienna, and he had worked on a serious broadsheet, and his heart was with the serious. To expose the Swiss banking system for making a deal with the Nazi devil would be his highest honor.

  "But I don't even know if it's true," I said.

  "Then you have to find out. Get your banker friend drunk again and go from there. You need to do this. Publicizing this is the only way to get these assholes to do the right thing."

  There might be some other ways after I had spoken again to Groucho. But none of that came up as we made what turned out to be an extra-quick walk back to my flat.

  14

  Arriving at the bank the next day, trying to figure out how I was going to contact Groucho, the answer came in the morning post. It was a picture postcard. On one side was a photo of the Fraumunster, the church that stares across the Limmat at its big brother, the Grossmunster. It was a photo of the outside of the church, marred by a red X that was drawn on the bottom right, in the foreground. It was just a random, stray mark, you would assume, except that on these kinds of postcards, there was no such thing as a random, stray mark.

  On the other side were my name and the bank's address, along with this message:

  It was great seeing you! Zurich has so many wonderful sites! One day, we saw 7 of them and, let me tell you, we were exhausted -- slept till nearly 11 the next morning. Heading home soon. Thanks again for the hospitality!

  G

  It was easy enough to figure out -- Groucho wanted to meet on the 7th at 11 a.m. at the spot marked by the X. The 7th was the next day. As it turned out, the X marked the spot of the Fraumunster Kreuzberg, the cloister. Behind an iron gate, open to tourists and worshippers and lovers of murals painted of nuns and angels, it was a courtyard in the center with the murals along the sides, tucked into covered walkways supported by marble pillars. Some of the walkways were darker than others, depending upon the time of day and the angle of the sun. I understood why Groucho picked the place. Th
ere were plenty of places to hide in the midst of a public place. From what I could see, there were six people in the cloister.

  I stood in the center of the courtyard and scanned the scene, my face painted with as much religious fervor as I could muster, turning slowly, trying to spot Groucho, my left arm embracing my body, my chin cupped in my right hand. I sneaked a look at my wristwatch. It was 11:05, but I didn't see him. Then I heard a cough. It came from the side to my right, an area wholly darkened by shade and a spot I couldn't see because of one of the pillars. I walked over and found Groucho pretending to admire a painting of two nuns cowering behind a deer, their faces framed between antlers that the artist bathed in a kind of ethereal light.

  "A fan, are you?" I said.

  "It's art, I guess," he said.

  "It's holy art, sir. In some circles, your skepticism would be heard as heresy. Your soul would be damned."

  "My soul was damned a long time ago."

  "Finally, something we agree on," I said.

  I asked him what he had been doing during his stay in Zurich, and he really didn't answer, other than to say that he wasn't in Zurich the entire time. I tried to draw him out a little more, but he seemed uninterested in chitchat and eager to get to the point. I preempted him, though, and surprised him by saying, "I changed my mind. I'm in."

  "Well, fuck me," Groucho said.

  "Shhh," I said, and then pointed at the nuns on the wall.

  He laughed. "I have to admit that I'm surprised -- no, shocked. I hesitate to ask why you changed your mind because I don't want to jinx it, but why did you change your mind?"

  I told him the story about the Nazi gold. I had learned in my time working with Groucho that he was interested pretty much only in the provable and less in theory, which he dismissed as "intellectual embroidery" and with gruff interruptions that demanded a return to the facts. But while this was a story light on facts and heavy on theory, Groucho was mesmerized. His only interruption was a single "holy shit," half-whispered, followed by an encouragement for me to continue talking.

  When I was finished, we stood there in silence -- Groucho and I, the two nuns and the deer. We had been there for five minutes, but no one in the cloister had interrupted us. Finally, Groucho spoke. He actually took an exaggerated deep breath before he started, as if steeling himself.

  "Look, this is huge -- you can see that," he said. "We need to find out if it's true, that's the first thing. But you know, that might be the easy part."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't have to tell you that we work for smart people who sometimes have no instincts. I don't have to tell you that we might have stopped Hitler before he took Austria with a little show of Czech muscle. We might have stopped him before Munich if the French had a set of balls. It's obvious to you, and it's obvious to me what this gold laundering means, but part of me thinks our bosses won't see it the same way."

  "How is that possible?" I was incredulous. Because while Groucho was right about the rest of it, as he had said up on Uetliberg, things were different now. This was much bigger. If he was right, France was next. They had to see what this meant.

  "Look, I hope you're right," he said. "But I can just as easily see Benes sitting at the end of our big conference table telling me that, in the bigger picture, we must realize that upsetting a sovereign, neutral government that permits us to run our espionage operations from its soil and blah, blah, blah."

  Then, more silence. Two 5-year-old kids ran by us, giggling and pointing at the deer. Their mother, or a harried facsimile of one, rushed past us in pursuit.

  "But let's not worry about that yet," Groucho said. "First things first: we need to prove that it's true, that it's really happening. Do you have any ideas how?"

  I really didn't. Then again, I really hadn't made up in my mind that I was going to get back into the spying business until the day before. Groucho began thinking aloud, about having me become a part of Fritz Blum's network.

  "No," I said. "I'm a free agent here, or I'm out. I work for you and report directly to you. You can tell Blum I'm in the game, but I don't work for him. That's non-negotiable. Besides, it doesn't make any sense. I'm going to be fishing in a different stream than his boys."

  "Well, then you're going to need a radio," Groucho said. "And you're going to need some training. There's a little more involved in this than just being a courier."

  "How hard could it be? They fucking let you do it," I said.

  My bravado was beyond false. I think Groucho knew that, too. He looked at his watch, and we arranged for another meeting -- this one, in his hotel room. Before he left, I wanted to tell him about the meeting at police headquarters with Ruchti, the one I found so unsettling.

  "What's the cop's name?" Groucho asked.

  "Ruchti."

  "Peter Ruchti?"

  "Yeah, you've heard of him?"

  "You might say that," Groucho said. "Peter Ruchti is an officer in the Swiss intelligence corps, which is really about two guys whose idea of covert communications is using a couple of tin cans and some string."

  "No," I said. "He's just a cop, a homicide detective. He's investigating the murder."

  "No, he's a spy," Groucho said. "And seeing as how he used his correct name, my guess is that he wants you to know."

  Part II

  15

  A fortress on Talstrasse, the Baur au Lac was Zurich's grandest hotel, where the swells had the swellest of times and paid handsomely for the privilege. The key selling point was in the name: the view of Lake Zurich. In my mind, though, it came up a little short in that department because the hotel was not on the lake itself but about a block back. And while it was true that the view was uninterrupted by any buildings, there was a small park and about six lanes of traffic between the hotel and the lake, traffic that you could hear with the windows open. It was not some perfect idyll within the city. Of course, that was the opinion of someone who had never stayed there and likely never would. I couldn't afford to be a regular customer, but that did not mean I couldn't afford to be critical.

  Still, I was sitting in the lobby bar, having a drink, and surveying the swells. My tiny table was in the corner, my view of part of the lobby obscured by some sort of potted palm. This was an amateur mistake, but seeing as how I was an amateur on my first real spying mission, oh well. Better to miss part of the room than to get the waiter to change my seat, which would just have drawn attention to my presence.

  I had been there for about 20 minutes, and my second Manhattan had materialized, and it was all very normal, other than the tightness of my sphincter. It was a busy room, and while the typical table had two people seated, there were plenty of singles -- having a drink before dinner, waiting for a companion, just reading the afternoon paper and unwinding amid the marble and the tapestries. In some cases, spying involved physical danger and derring-do. In my case, it involved drinking and observing people. So, as it turned out, I had really been a spy for my whole adult life.

  The plan had been to stay for a third drink, but no more. Again, that would have likely drawn some attention -- from the waiter, if no one else. I wasn't sure exactly what I was hoping to see -- Groucho had said I should start doing this every night, here and at a couple of other hotels, just a drink or two. Between that and my typical roster of client lunches, I would see more than I imagined, he said, as long as I kept my eyes open. And so it was, near the bottom of my second Manhattan, when Klaus Berner arrived in the bar with a man who I recognized but did not know.

  Berner was a vice president in charge of something or other at the Swiss national bank. They had a lot of vice presidents, and I had met most of them at one time or another. Precisely what they did was another question. Then again, precisely what I did in my day job was also open to debate, if anyone cared to think about it. And while I didn't know the name of Berner's companion, I did know the face. I knew it because it was one of the 50 or so men whose photographs Groucho had given me to study.

  He had
made me up a packet of portraits after our talk at the Fraumunster. Apparently, one of his tasks while in Zurich was assembling this Nazi rogues gallery, and now he was picking and choosing photos for me from a much more extensive collection. It filled an entire briefcase, and not a small one. I didn't bother asking him how he had gotten them, although they looked quite official, like the kinds of photos that big companies, or big governments, kept in their personnel files.

  He appeared to have two copies of every photo. Included were the head of Germany's legation in Zurich, and a few other people who worked there who were known to be spies. I handed one of the snapshots back to Groucho.

  "I already know this asshole," I said, explaining how I had come to be acquainted with Ernst Meissner, the smarmy census taker, and his story about offering business contacts and socializing opportunities.

  "You know that's bullshit, right?" Groucho said. "The truth is, the Nazis have organized the true believers and made sure, if they aren't already, that they're armed and ready. You know, just in case the time comes when the Wehrmacht decides to cross the border and learn to yodel."

  "We kind of figured that."

  "Yeah, and you know what else? The Swiss have kind of figured that, too. I'm pretty sure it keeps your pal Ruchti up at night."

  Berner and his companion sat at a table on the other side of the lobby. I'm pretty sure he didn't see me. I knew I had seen the face of his friend, and that it was in my collection of photos -- photos that, coincidentally, were in a file folder in the briefcase that was currently nuzzling against my right calf.