by Richard Wake
Things degenerated from there if that was possible. I called her some really vile names. The worst thing she said about me was that I was "naive." A couple of times, she attempted to say that her current feelings for me were real, however they started, but I cut her off every time.
"I don't believe anything you say. How could I?"
She reached out to touch my hand. I jumped up and away from her as if it were radioactive. I grabbed my coat.
"Fuck this, I'm done," I said. When I slammed the door of her flat, it didn't feel as good as I had hoped.
27
Cold, wet, snow, Zurich. Only this year seemed worse. People didn't need what I had just gone through to be depressed in Zurich in January. All they needed to do was open their front doors and begin the morning trudge to the office.
I drank through the weekend of my confrontation with Manon. The phone rang a few times in my flat, but I didn't pick it up. I didn't know if it was her and I didn't care. As far as I was concerned, the slam of that door was the final punctuation on our relationship. There was nothing more to be said, no need for any kind of follow-up. If she started showing up at Fessler's, I would find somewhere else to eat and drink. It's not as if the town wasn't full of half-empty restaurants selling mediocre food.
By Monday, I was in reasonable emotional shape, better than I had been since the night in Bern. The bank was a decent distraction, especially given that January was our informal audit month when Marta and I tore apart every record from the previous year and checked them against our ledgers. We set up at our big conference table, which was about the only time we used it all year, and ordered in lunch for two or three days, however long it took to go through everything. By the end, we had fixed any discrepancies and could know with some certainty that our books were in order.
It felt good to dive into the minutiae of the business. After the audit, it was back to my never-ending series of bullshit sales calls and lunches and drinks and whatnot, with less time spent in the office and a couple of nights of paperwork at Fessler's. It was there, one night, when Gregory sat down. I had just walked in and sat at my booth, and he brought me my Manhattan without asking. He had one, too.
"I didn't think you drank those," I said.
"I don't."
"But..."
"I don't but, I have to be honest, I've been drinking more since we started," and then, with a flick of his eyes, indicated the stairs up to his flat, and the radio. "But I don't get drunk, not on beer or wine, not anymore. So I'm trying these. I'm so excited, just thinking about it, that I need to take the edge off."
We each gulped a mouthful, me trying to warm up a bit from my walk over to the cafe, Gregory trying to settle himself.
"Are you sure you're OK with this?" I said. "I can work out the radio a different way if--"
"Don't even think it," he said. "I told you how alive I felt with this, and it's all true. I'm just not used to feeling this alive if that makes any sense. Just the edge -- I just need to take the edge off."
He gulped again.
"You should be careful." I pointed at the mostly empty glass. "You never know when you're going to have to use that magic finger. Can't have you slurring in Morse code."
"Don't worry -- but I have something to tell you. London messaged last night. First time, right at midnight. I wrote down the message, but then I didn't want to leave it laying around, so I burned it. But it said, and this is exact because I memorized it, 'Source says G plans postponed indefinitely by weather. Await further updates.' That was it."
"Why didn't you tell me immediately?"
"We never worked out a procedure."
"You could have called last night. You could have come by the bank this morning."
"Are you sure that's safe?" Gregory said. He was right. I had no idea. For all I knew, Manon was somehow still watching me. Or somebody else. Or that my phone had been tapped. And the last thing we needed was for someone to think Gregory was something more than my old friend from Vienna.
"You're right, you're right," I said. "You did the right thing. We need a system."
As it turned out, I walked by the cafe every morning on the way to the bank. This would be easy, a variation on the yellow-chalk-on-the-fountain scheme I had with Brodsky.
"Take some chalk," I said, pointing at the menu slate that they changed every day with the specials. "Make a mark near the bottom of the black pole that holds the cafe sign out front if you have a message that I should know about. Unless you just want to grab me walking by in the morning."
Gregory thought for a second. "No," he said. "Henry would wonder what I'm doing up and in the cafe so early. He really doesn't like having me underfoot in the morning. And the truth is, I spend enough time down here as it is."
"Okay, now we need a place for you to leave the message."
"How about this?" he said. "The last thing I do every night is check the trash out back. The bins are in a wooden enclosure -- you've seen it, right?"
I nodded.
"Okay," he said. "Where the fence post on the left joins the two sides of the enclosure -- I'll just jam a folded piece of paper with the message into the space between the post and the side. I'm sure it'll fit, and nobody will ever see it. And Henry won't suspect me being down there -- I check the trash every night. And you would have to be pretty unlucky to get caught back there by Henry. He's never out there early, never before the deliveries start. That's about 10 o'clock."
This would work. It was actually kind of exciting, just working out the details. There also was a feeling of relaxation, just a little bit, because the German invasion plans had been put on hold by the shitty winter. Maybe there was still time to head it off, although I had no idea how that might be accomplished.
Between thinking about that, and my paperwork, and my Manhattans, I was actually having a pretty good night, until Liesl came down to the cafe with a look on her face that was part concern and part disappointment. She obviously knew that Manon and I had split up and didn't even need to say it. I had no idea what Manon had told her. My only certainty was that it wasn't the truth.
"What happened?" she said.
"Ask her," I said.
That was the entire conversation. I picked up my stuff and left.
28
The trip to Liechtenstein, which had been like a stone in my shoe for weeks, suddenly seemed a relief. The weather was still crap, snow piled everywhere, but the sun fortuitously appeared as I got behind the wheel and, as it turned out, I made pretty good time. There are a couple of ways into Liechtenstein from the Swiss side, and I chose the route that took me over the Alte Rheinbrucke, a narrow, covered wooden bridge that was rickety enough that I was second-guessing my decision about halfway over.
That was technically the border, halfway over the bridge in the middle of the Rhine. But the way the customs niceties worked out, you received a passport stamp and a hearty wave from a guard on the Swiss side, drove through the wooden cavern, and received another stamp and wave from a guard on the Liechtenstein side. It all seemed a farce. Both guards were probably in their 60s, and the last time either of them actually left their semi-warm shelters and opened a car trunk or a piece of luggage was likely the previous October.
As it turned out, there were three small hotels in the center of what passed for a town. Their actual names were irrelevant. If they had been called by their level of luxury, they would be called The Kind of Shitty, The Shitty, and The Unalterably Shitty. At least Marta got me into The Kind of Shitty, and I was early enough to be able to grab a late lunch.
Two things about the dining room were notable, neither of those things being the food, which was standard, overcooked, and vaguely institutional. In other words, the mutton I ordered was cooked extra long, as if they were attempting to make absolutely sure that the poor animal was dead. The two notable things were the thin film of grease on the water glass -- who needs water, anyway? -- and the three German officers who were eating at three separate tables, equidista
nt in the large dining room, so far apart from each other that it didn't seem possible that it was an accident. There was never a nod between them, never a sign of recognition, not a wave, not a look, not a salute, nothing -- not even when the one sitting in the back was forced to walk within about five feet of another one as he headed for the exit.
Liechtenstein was about 15 miles long and, in many places, only two or three miles wide. On one side of the two or three miles was Switzerland, and on the other side was Austria, which was now part of the German Reich. It would not be unusual at all for Wehrmacht officers to be stationed in Austria, near the border -- and the truth is, they probably didn't have a lot to do if they were posted to this hinterland, and they did need to eat lunch.
But a general and two colonels, in the same hotel dining room, where the food really was like the entire establishment, kind of shitty, didn't make a lot of sense to me. The fact that they were alone, without any subordinates for companionship, and that they didn't acknowledge each other in any way, just made it weirder.
Most waiters would object to a question about the whole scene because waiters were trained to be unhelpful assholes above all else. But the guy who was working in the dining room that afternoon, fitting in perfectly with the surroundings, was a little light on the customary protocol. In other words, he couldn't seem to muster the energy to be an asshole. So I took a shot.
"Can I ask you something?" I said. He did not reply, but he did not turn away. I figured was in.
"Those officers, eating all alone, not seeming to know each other or even look at each other -- what's that all about?"
"Same every day," the waiter said. Again, he did not turn away, so a follow-up question seemed, if not welcome, at least a possibility.
"But why? It's not like the food here is--"
"It's not the food," he said.
"Then what?"
The waiter did not answer, other than to gesture to the right, toward the front windows of the dining room, with a flick of his head. As he walked away, I looked out the window. The colonel who had just left was walking across the square and then into one of the two banks that stared each other down, dominating the space.
Of course. You pop over for lunch and then, before heading back, you take a piece of your latest pay packet and deposit it into a bank in Liechtenstein -- you know, just in case the whole Thousand Year Reich thing doesn't work out as it's painted in the brochures. It's a little insurance, and nobody's the wiser -- and you're just over the border if you need to get the money in a hurry, and two miles from Switzerland after that. No wonder they couldn't look each other in the eye.
My meeting with Count Novak was for lunch the next day, at his home. It wasn't gigantic, but it was just fine, thanks, a baby castle with a turret and a drawbridge over a stream, all gray fieldstone and surrounded by a couple of acres that ran into a vineyard. He gave me the quick tour until the sky started spitting.
"It's a pity about the weather because the views are unique," he said, pointing, "Liechtenstein that way and Austria that way."
The truth was, the property abutted the Austrian border, which frankly scared the hell out of me. Before driving over, I made the hotel concierge draw me a map of the route with the Austrian border highlighted in red ink. The last thing I needed was to wander into the Reich by accident and find my name on some list. Like, you know, the list of Czech spies who were put on trial in 1938 after attempting to kill a Gestapo officer.
Lunch with the count went well. He was, indeed, fucking loaded. The deposit he would be making at Bohemia Suisse was larger than I had hoped. By the time we were done, it was nearly 3 p.m., and the weather had deteriorated. Part of me wanted to drive home anyway, but between the snow/sleet and the fading daylight, I decided to act like a grownup for once and spend another night in The Kind of Shitty.
Lunch had been big enough and late enough that I didn't need to subject myself to another night in the hotel dining room. After a short nap, I decided to settle in at the lobby bar and consume the day's remaining calories there. The Manhattans were well-made, and the glasses were, in an upset, clean. There was nobody to talk to -- the bartender was making drinks for the dining room, too, and doing a lot of running -- but that was fine with me. I did not have a university degree, but I owned a doctorate in amusing myself at hotel bars. Besides, it was going to be an early night followed by an early wake-up and the long drive.
That was the plan, as my third drink arrived. I couldn't imagine anything would change it, until an older gentleman in a military uniform sat down at the stool next to mine and said, "Alex, it's been too long."
I did a double-take, like out of a bad comedy. It was Fritz Ritter. His day job was as a general with the Abwehr, the German army's intelligence section. In his spare time, he was the highest-placed agent that the Czech intelligence service possessed.
29
The last time I had seen Ritter, it was early on the day of the Anschluss, when the Germans came over the border into Austria and were greeted with cheers and flowers placed into their rifle barrels by what was at least a significant minority of the Austrian citizenry. I liked to tell myself that it was not a majority, and I tended to believe it. Most days, anyway.
Ritter had sneaked me into Austria from Germany, through back farm roads, as the Wehrmacht massed along the border. He had broken me out of a Nazi jail only hours before I was to be sent to Dachau, and had me masquerade as one of his aides as we drove out of the prison, and for that, I should have been grateful. But he also had used me as a dupe to save himself, and put my life at risk, and so I really was not grateful. When he left me, down the street from the train station in Salzburg, I didn't say anything as I walked away. I didn't know what to say or how I felt, not completely. Nearly two years later, I still wasn't sure.
"Alex," Ritter said. He attempted to lock eyes, but my gaze quickly fell. He repeated my name, and his voice cracked a little.
"I always attempted to protect you," he said.
"You put me in jeopardy."
"I always had it under control."
"So you say."
"I did. I never would have put you in mortal risk. Your uncle meant too much to me. You have to believe that. It's important to me that you believe it."
Ritter and my Uncle Otto had met in the 1920s and were occasional running buddies, aging bachelors who traveled a lot for work. When the Gestapo got too close to Ritter's secret, that he was spying for the Czechs, Otto got caught and killed after a completely accidental meeting with Ritter. Then Ritter used me to help frame the Gestapo captain who was his pursuer.
"How can you say I wasn't jeopardy?" I said. "Remember that tribunal? Remember Rudolf Hess acting as the judge? That squirrelly fuck could have had me shot on the spot."
"We had it covered, I promise you," Ritter said. "We knew he was going to rule in our favor."
"So you say."
That was the best comeback I had: so you say. Most of me actually believed him. And the more I got into the spy business, the more I came to recognize that some risks can be justified in the cause of the greater good -- and that saving an intelligence asset who happened to be an Abwehr general probably qualified as the greater good.
We sat in silence for a few seconds. "Let's have a drink," I said, waving over at the harried bartender, who was just back from the dining room with a tray full of empty glasses. It was as close as I was going to come to saying "I believe you," or "I forgive you," and Ritter accepted it as such. His smile was his acknowledgment that the message had been received. When the drinks had been delivered, we carried them over to an empty table, away from the bartender. We had our pick of the round, marble tabletops and cherry cane chairs. We were the only people in the place, still.
"So, are you still--"
"I am," Ritter said. "And I hear that you are, how shall I say, more involved. That is why I'm here tonight."
"So it isn't an accident?"
"It is not," he said. "And I have to be back
to Innsbruck in," and he looked at his watch, "shit, about 2 hours. My adjutant thinks I have stepped out for a romantic liaison. But we have a meeting tonight before continuing on an inspection tour in the morning. So this needs to be quick."
"What needs to be quick?"
"I have a message for you to get to London."
And with that -- after shushing my interruption with a "just listen" -- Ritter began to tell a story about a recent meeting in Berlin, and a change in plans. About how Hitler had always hated the plan to invade France through Holland and Belgium. How he had always wanted something new, something different, and how the general staff had insisted that there was no other practical route.
"But then, this one officer, Manstein, a Lieutenant General, he came up with something," Ritter said. "His bosses told him to shitcan it, that it would never work. But Manstein somehow got the plan in front of Hitler, and he loved it. And so they refined it some, but then they adopted it."
"And what is it?"
"They not going through Belgium or Holland anymore," he said. "They're going through the Ardennes."
I knew about as much geography as the average guy -- probably more, given how much I had traveled over the years. But I had never been to the Ardennes. I could find it on a map, but I had never seen it. I heard it was pretty in the summer, with narrow, winding roads through thick forests, but that's really all I knew. I guess the questions were evident on my face.
"Look," Ritter said. He grabbed a cocktail napkin and a pen from his pocket and began sketching.
"Holland and Belgium up here -- nice and flat and easy to traverse," he said. "And the Maginot Line down here. The French think it's impregnable, and the Germans likely agree. It had better be, all the money they spent on it.
"And the Ardennes is here," he said, circling the area between the top of the Maginot Line and the border with Belgium."
"But isn't it all mountains and shit?"