by Richard Wake
"The reason I could tell Vlad was because, well, Vlad is in the same business," he said.
"Sort of," Vlad said.
"Let me put it this way," Herman said. "Vlad is in a couple of businesses. Do you understand what I am saying?"
I had no earthly idea what he was saying, which I told him, substituting the word "fucking" for the word "earthly." Vlad snorted his approval.
"You are so careful, my dear Herman," he said. "It is the German in you, always walking on the eggshells -- that is the expression, yes? Hitler has you spooked. You're in a free, neutral country but you act as if the Gestapo is listening over your shoulder."
"For all I know, they are," Herman said, pointing at Albert.
"I don't think so," I said.
"You know nothing," Herman said. "You are so naive."
"Listen -- I once tried to kill a Gestapo officer in Cologne. I had spent time stripped naked in a cell of a Gestapo prison. I'm not fucking naive."
"Now this is interesting," Brodsky said, rubbing his hands together in delight. "You will tell me that story another time. But in the here and now, let me spell out what our friend Herman has been attempting to explain in his riddles. When he says that I am in a couple of businesses, what he means is that, under my cover as a journalist -- I'm a correspondent for a newspaper in Helsinki -- I am working as an intelligence officer for some important people in Moscow."
I looked at Herman, my eyes as serious as I could make them. "But, in case you haven't been reading the papers, that makes you Herr Hitler's partner at the bridge table," I said. "Are you doing his bidding."
"This is where my businesses get interesting," Brodsky said. "I have sources here and there, in Germany and elsewhere, including our friend here," he said, waving at Herman. "When I get a piece of information, I send it in one of three directions. If it is bullshit analysis or gossip, I send it to Helsinki to put in the newspaper. If it is military information that I believe will benefit the Soviet Union for the day when Hitler turns on us, as we all know he will -- even Comrade Stalin does, I believe -- I send it to Moscow. But for information that I believe might benefit the French or the British or the Belgians or the Dutch, my inclination is to send it in their direction."
"Those are his businesses," Herman said.
"And this is where you come in," Brodsky said. "I have begun to receive information that I would like to send westward, and I would like to do it through you."
With that, Brodsky began to tell his story. From a source just outside the German high command -- "but he's very close, and not a damn janitor, although they can be quite lucrative sources" -- Brodsky had obtained the bare bones of the Wehrmacht's western invasion plans. Their name was "Case Yellow."
"Terrible name," I said.
"Terrible people," Herman said.
"Shhhh," Brodsky said. He went on to explain that he knew only two things: that the plan involved the invasion of Holland and Belgium first, and that it was likely to occur before the end of January.
"Sounds like the last time," I said. "Why do they think it's going to work this time after what happened the last time?"
"Come now, you read the papers," Herman said. "You've heard Hitler's speeches. You know why they think they lost, right? It wasn't because of a bad plan or any military failure. It was because of the Communists hiding in the government. It was because of the Jews most of all. German territory was intact, the army was entirely in France, and it got stabbed in the back, right when it was on the verge of victory."
"With the country starving and millions of men already killed and wounded," I said. "That the Jews' fault, too."
"Of course it is," Herman said. "Where have you been?"
"But it's more than that," Brodsky said. "If you look at the map, there really aren't a lot of ways in, especially if the Maginot Line is all that it's cracked up to be. If the Germans come in a little stronger and a little faster this time, they could do it. They came damn close at the beginning last time. They were this close to taking Paris."
We debated back and forth about our understanding of the Battle of the Marne, and the soldiers ferried to the front in taxicabs to join the fight, and how much was truth and how much was propaganda. In the end, though, I needed to get the message to London, and quickly.
"So we can work together?" Brodsky said.
I nodded.
"And if you come across any crumbs that might benefit me?"
I nodded again.
We agreed on a signaling method if either of us needed a meeting. On the path around the perimeter of Lake Zurich, used by families taking a stroll on pleasant days and solitary men smoking cigarettes and walking their dogs in the evening, there was a marble fountain with some fish and other assorted designs displayed as part of a tiny-tiled mosaic. At the top of the fountain, it said "MCMIX."
"If either of us needs a meeting," Brodsky said, "we will just leave a mark with yellow chalk on the side of the fountain's basin. You'll need to check it at least every other day, and definitely on Thursday." He then said the meeting place would be at the Barley House, a bar on Escher-Wyssplatz.
"Way out there?" I said.
"It's right on the tram line -- the stop is right out front. And nobody will ever think anything of it. It's full of people pretty much all day -- the brewery down the street is running three shifts these days."
That settled, we decided to have one more. I had so many thoughts running through my head that I almost forgot. I looked at Herman, and it was as if we remembered at the same time.
"The gold," I said.
"I know, I know," Herman said. "I do have a little something -- not much, but maybe it can get you started. I still don't have any details about the mechanics of the transaction. I can't even prove it's happening, not definitively. But there is somebody at the national bank -- Herr Jan Tanner. Somebody who I trust told me that if this is happening, he is the person making it happen."
"Spell the name," I said, and Herman complied, and I repeated it back.
19
The next night, Gregory and I sent the information that Brodsky had given me to London. It was the longest message we had sent and by far the most important. We still weren't exactly sure what risks we were running, although the picture of Michael Landers with his eye shot out was never far from my consciousness when Gregory was tapping away on his radio key. But whatever the risks, this was worth it. As he finished up, Gregory looked at me and said, with a kind of solemn excitement, if that was possible, "If this were to make a difference, I would be proud to die right now. Maybe for the first time in my life."
"You don't mean that," I said.
"I think I do. I was proud of my marriage. I am proud of Henry. But I have never been proud of anything I ever worked on. I made money. I did it within the rules of my profession. I wasn't a thief. The punishments I inflicted, or had inflicted on others, were always within the understood boundaries. But I never fought in a war for my country. I never did much charity work, other than within the context of the business."
"That isn't true. I rememb--"
"It is true," Gregory said. He was disconnecting the Morse key, placing it in the drawer of the table along with the copy of the Bible, not so much to conceal them as to keep things tidy, even amid the stacks of crates and crap in the spare bedroom of his flat. We were still waiting for the acknowledgment from Groucho, though. If it didn't come, Gregory would just have to pull out everything from the drawer and start again.
"My life was about money and power but mostly money," he said. "What could I tell God when he asked for my accomplishments? That I never stole from people, even as others did? That I never had anyone beaten up just to make an example of them? Alex, there has to be more than that."
We sat for a few seconds in silence. I didn't know what to say, even as I knew what Gregory was feeling. The more I thought about it, the more I recognized the parallels in our lives. I wasn't a mobster, but until Groucho had recruited me in 1937, my life had been
strictly about money and comfort and avoiding personal entanglements.
"I think you understand what I'm saying," Gregory said. He stared me down, locking eyes until I nodded. The moment was broken by the acknowledgment code from London, dash-dash-dot, the letter G.
"You sent the whole thing?" I said.
"Of course."
"The last part, too, about how we are awaiting further instructions?"
"Yes, yes, all of it," he said. "This was pretty big news. They might need a few minutes to digest it."
We had a drink and distracted ourselves with talk about the baby. But it was a temporary thing -- I barely slept, seeing every hour on my bedside clock, worrying about the impending German invasion and how the French and British would react to our message, wondering how they might use me from here. The truth was, I was excited.
I remembered something Leon told me, about the first time he covered a murder for Der Bild in Vienna. He said, "So it's this horrible fucking scene, the guy's head was half hacked off of his body. The cop let me have a peek, and any normal human being would have thrown up on the spot. But I started taking notes from the scene: the cut of the dead guy's hair, the color of his jacket, the blood dripping over the curbstone in a tiny stream and falling into the gutter. Recording the details was like an instinct for me. That's when I knew for sure that I was in the right business."
And this night, and what I was feeling every time I woke up and looked at the clock, that's when I knew.
But there really wasn't anything I could do until Groucho sent some instructions. Gregory would turn on the radio every night at midnight for five minutes, in case there was a message. There had not been one in the weeks since we had started, but he listened every night.
In the meantime, I had Herr Jan Tanner to investigate. In a bookcase behind where Anders spent his day, we had copies of the yearly directories published by the national bank. The next morning, I went and grabbed the 1939 edition -- the heft of the book, with its brown leather cover, buckled my wrist for a second, until I adjusted. I felt Anders staring through my back as I reached up to take it. I could make small talk with anybody, but I had given up trying with that guy, and I usually just saw his blank expression for what it was -- blank. Lately, though, and especially since the murder, his look had seemed more menacing. Or maybe it was just my imagination, which admittedly had undergone a few recent jolts.
The book told me that Tanner's official title was director of currency and physical assets. I assumed that physical assets were gold bars and bullion and coins. He had held the position since 1935. His main offices were in the bank's building in Bern, but the book also listed another office in Zurich. I guessed that he had to spend at least a third of his time here or they wouldn't have bothered to give him the second office. So that is where I would concentrate.
As I considered, Marta barged through the door with my diary open before her. "We need to do this," she said, accusing me of ducking her attempts at organizing my schedule for weeks. The truth was, I had only been ducking her for days.
She sat in the chair next to my desk -- Marta was the only one who ever sat in it -- and, from a separate notepad, began firing off questions and answers. A dozen lunches, dinners, coffees, cocktails, and conferences were decided upon, with Marta doing most of the deciding. She wrote the appointments in the diary in ink -- always in ink, despite the inevitable changes that would occur.
Her handiwork complete, she paged through. She got to the last week in January and stopped. This was suddenly having the potential to be a pretty big week in my life, in all of our lives, after what Brodsky had said, but that wasn't why she stopped. Instead, it was because of a longstanding appointment that had been winking at me for weeks, ever since it was first entered.
"Liechtenstein," is what it said, simply.
In Liechtenstein -- which wasn't 100 miles from Zurich but still a hump, whether by train or by car -- Count Miroslav Novak lived in exile. A member of the Czech nobility -- not major but not a bit player, either -- the count was, as we liked to say in the refined confines of the banking industry, totally fucking loaded. And, out of some sense of nostalgia, or patriotism, or something, he was interested in storing some of that load within the secure walls of Bohemia Suisse. But he wanted to meet me first, and he wasn't dragging his ass to Zurich for the privilege.
Marta dropped the diary on my desk and started thumping on the "Liechtenstein" entry with her forefinger.
"You have to decide now," she said.
"Okay, okay."
"Car or train?" she said.
"Car."
"So you drive on Wednesday. I'll call and set up the meeting for lunch on Thursday. I'll let the Count pick the place. Do you want one night in the hotel or two?"
"Two."
"Which hotel?"
"There's more than one?"
"Fine, I'll pick one," she said, standing up, clutching the open diary to her breast as she left the office. She whistled a few notes of an unfamiliar tune. Marta was never happier than when that damn book was in order.
20
I didn't know what Tanner looked like, and I didn't know what days he would be working out of his Zurich office -- so staking out the bar at the Baur au Lac seemed a waste of time, assuming he stayed over, and stayed there, and didn't just commute from Bern every once in a while. The only certainty was that there had to be a secretary who assisted him in the Zurich office when he was there, and who ran things when he wasn't. So she would be my target.
Tanner's Zurich office was in the Altermatt Building, on Barengasse, a healthy goal kick from the edge of the Paradeplatz, a comfortable distance from which to bless or frown upon the latest maneuver of the Paradeplatz twins, Kreditanstalt and Bankverein. No one thought that the national bank did much frowning when it came to those two, but it was at least a possibility.
My play consisted of two separate maneuvers. The first was reconnaissance, and simple enough. I needed to see the secretary first. The easiest way I could think of was to look at the building directory in the lobby and find Tanner's office. It was on the second floor, 209. Then I looked at the directory and spotted Lindner Investments, which was in 309. And then I went up to Tanner's office and let myself in.
"Can I help you?" said the woman seated at the desk in the entrance area.
"Yes, can I speak to Carl Lindner, please?"
"I'm sorry, you're in the wrong office."
"This isn't Lindner Investments?" I looked as helpless as I could. This was something I was good at, and the woman smiled a bless-your-pathetic-little-heart smile. She told me to wait right there while she grabbed the building directory. It was in a cabinet behind her desk. As she stood, and then bent down to reach for it, I was doubly rewarded -- mostly obviously by the view of the skirt that climbed the back of her thighs as she reached down for the book, less obviously by the sight of her left hand as she reached. No ring.
This could not be more perfect: single, late 20's, attractive besides. Homely might have been better, to be honest, but this would work. This would work fine.
"Here it is," she said, thumbing through the book. "Ah, that's your mistake. You're in 209. Lindner Investments is in 309. Right on top of us."
"Are they noisy?" I said. I was whispering, one conspirator to another. "Are they fat? Are their footsteps heavy? Are they dancers?"
She giggled.
"Thank you so much, Miss ..."
"Buhl," she said. And then, after a half-beat. "Sophie."
As I turned to leave, I noticed on the wall behind me a series of vanity photos, undoubtedly of her boss along with various dignitaries who I didn't recognize. But it was easy enough, by process of elimination, to identify Jan Tanner -- he was the only guy in every picture: shaking hands, toasting something or other, turning over a shovel full of dirt at a construction groundbreaking. It would be an easy face to remember, mostly because of the ears. They stuck out like the wings on a strutting rooster.
Mission accomplishe
d. Three days later, when I staked out the building and managed to run into her accidentally on the street, Sophie Buhl accepted my assertion that fate must be bringing us together and agreed to meet me for a drink the following night.
For my cover, I adopted my previous life as a traveling salesman for a magnesite mine, peddling the stuff that lines blast furnaces for fun a profit. I didn't push her for many details of her work life, but by the second drink, she had volunteered that her boss was in town only three or four days a month and that most of the time, she answered the phone, took messages, and accepted document packages from bankers which she then assessed for future action. The routine stuff was filed away. The semi-important files were sorted and stacked for action the next time Tanner was in town. The urgent material was couriered to Bern.
By the third drink, which was a glass of wine over dinner, Sophie was telling me that Tanner was "nice enough," but that "whenever he smiled, it looked like it hurt his face." She giggled that same giggle when she said it. She also reached for my hand. Suddenly, we were headed in a direction that I knew was possible from the moment that I gamed out the strategy, but tried not to think about.
It all came down to one question: Would I?
One of the advantages of living a life without many serious girlfriends was that there had been relatively few periods of my adulthood when an impromptu fling would be considered cheating. But, well, here I was. Despite the guffaw and my doubts about the long-term with Manon, I was most definitely in a relationship in the here and now. But if it came to that -- if the lovely Sophie were so inclined -- would it be considered cheating if I slept with her, or would it be considered just a part of the job?
The first time I noodled over it, I actually laughed out loud in the back of a taxi, startling the driver. Just a part of the job? It sounded like an excuse three buddies at a bar would concoct after one of them admitted to something that involved three Martinis and a chance meeting with an old teenage girlfriend on a business trip. But in my case, I really thought it was the truth. If I didn't have the information I needed, and if it was essential to continue the relationship with Sophie to get it, and if she was eager, how could I not? I didn't have to press her, and I wouldn't, but if she was inviting, I could lose everything if I turned her down. She would think it was odd, mostly because it would be odd. There was no way around it if that's where we were headed.