by Richard Wake
"It is all mountains and shit, as you say," Ritter said. "No one ever seriously considered it as a possibility. I mean, how do you get the tanks and the big lorries through on those little, windy roads? They'd have to go so slow if they could fit at all. They'd be easy picking for the French air force, you would think. At least that's always been the theory. But this Manstein has convinced Hitler, and the general staff has gone along with it."
"You think it's mad?"
"I don't know what to think," Ritter said. "I'm no tactician. Then again, I'm not sure Hitler is, either. But I guess we'll all find out. The point is, you have to get this to London. It's urgent. I think it's the most important thing I've ever passed along -- and I got them the Polish invasion date. Of course, they didn't believe me."
"What?"
"Long story, not your problem. You just need to send this as soon as you get home. Tomorrow, right?"
"How much do they need? Manstein, all of that?"
"No, just the basics: that the planned point of invasion is no longer Holland and Belgium, that it's the Ardennes instead. You can fill in the colorful details the next time you have an in-person meeting."
"Do you know when?" I asked. "Is there an invasion date?"
Ritter said that there was no date, but he believed it wouldn't be until at least spring. "I'm pretty sure they've moved back the date on the original plan at least five times because of the weather, and now I think they've just given up. But I don't have a date."
Five minutes later, Ritter was back on the road, headed for Innsbruck. Before he left, though, I asked his opinion about the Nazi gold and the importance of nailing down the details. He was surprised and fascinated, but ultimately skeptical. He said, "I'm just not sure the Swiss can be embarrassed into stopping doing anything that makes them money. They consider it their God-given right."
"I still have to try," I said.
"You wouldn't be you if you didn't," he said. "When I first thought of Otto's nephew as a spy, I thought it must have been some kind of mistake. Getting so involved? Risking so much for such idealistic reasons? I loved Otto, but that wasn't him. I never thought I would see it in you. But it's there. Goddamnit, it's there."
I hugged Ritter when he stood up to leave. And he looked at me and said, "Just send my message. It's more important than stopping Nazi gold. It's stopping Nazi steel."
Part III
30
I met up with Henry and Gregory at the cafe, and we walked the few blocks down the cobbles of Oberdorfstrasse to Bellevueplatz, where a few of the tram lines came together. The cold was just this side of bitter. The sun was out, though, somehow. It might have been the first time all week.
We took the tram out to Hardturm, a stadium out away from the center of the city. It left you about a mile from Letzigrund, the FC Zurich home ground, where the game was being played. We could have taken a different tram and gone right there, but that would have missed the whole point of the exercise, in Gregory's mind.
"This is the best part of the whole thing, much better than the game," he said. We were safe and warm on the tram, and he unbuttoned his coat and reached deep into an interior pocket and pulled out three steel mini-flasks, one for each of us, and handed them around. His smile was pure contentment, like a kid -- a kid, that is, who was taking his first pull of schnapps at 11:30 a.m.
"You're lucky the weather turned a little nicer, old man," Henry said. "Because you know how delicate Alex is."
"Yes, Alex, our little flower," Gregory said. "But look at that sun." He turned his face toward the window and basked.
The reason we were taking this tram was that it would leave us right across the street from the Grasshoppers' stadium. This is where FC Zurich fans would gather and walk through the streets, maybe 1,000 of them, and we were FC Zurich fans because Gregory had become an FC Zurich fan in the two years he lived her by himself. Many would spit on Hardturm as they walked by. Several would stop and piss on the wall. That Gregory would join the pissers went without saying. As he buttoned up and rejoined Henry and me, he shouted, "Saving that up for the fucking Grasshoppers since I woke up." A couple of 20-year-olds cheered and clapped him on the back.
The walk was about a mile, give or take. There was singing led by the leaders. There was always a jackass or two with some firecrackers, just to make sure everyone knew they were there, and the smell of gunpowder filled the air. As we walked in a great amorphous pack, Henry got to talking with a couple of the pyrotechnic conspirators who apparently knew of a couple of extra-large steel trash cans in a pen next to one of the buildings up ahead. Henry followed them. He shouted over to us, "Back in a sec. Just studying the native culture." His departure gave Gregory and I a minute to ourselves.
"Anything?" I asked him.
"Silence," he said.
"How long has it been?"
"Eight days, nine, I don't know."
The information from Fritz Ritter was the most important we had sent, and it wasn't even close. My hand shook, just a bit, as I wrote the message, and then edited to make it shorter, then edited it again. Gregory, too, seemed just a bit hesitant on the Morse key.
This is what I finally settled on: "Highest source says G invasion plan changed. Now targets Ardennes, not H and B. No date yet. Please advise."
I hoped that "highest source," a term I had never used, would indicate it was Ritter. There was no way we were sending his name, no matter how secret the code. I didn't even tell Gregory who it came from, other than that the source was of the highest caliber, and unimpeachable.
"Why can't you tell me?" he said.
"Come on, I'm protecting you -- and the source."
"Nobody's going to torture me unless it's for the shit that comes out of my kitchen."
"This isn't a game, Gregory."
"Hell, I know that. But..."
I think he knew there were risks, but he always tried to dismiss them. Sometimes, he needed reminding, which is why, I assumed, his voice trailed off.
We received the dash-dash-dot reply almost immediately, the single letter G. So we knew they had received it. But, as before, Groucho and his bosses in London were offering no replies, no further instructions. Part of me thought that this might just be how it worked. But if this were a real intelligence operation, wouldn't there be subsequent leads to follow or other sources of information to target? Why wouldn't I be involved? Or was I just a conduit?
Standing there within a football mob, both of us wondering, there came a great, percussive boom that startled both of us -- not shit-yourself startled, more like heart-skips-a-beat startled. Henry reappeared seconds later.
"My ears are ringing," Henry said. He was shouting. "Like, really ringing." He oddly seemed as happy as Gregory had been on the tram.
We continued walking. There were several amateur artists carrying thick pieces of chalk who would affix the letters FCZ on many available wall spaces, much to the consternation of the apartment superintendents along the route. One dumped a bucket of water on one of the calligraphers, which would make for an uncomfortable rest of the afternoon for the gentleman in question. Then again, this presumed he could still feel anything. Given the number of empty beer bottles that stood like sentries on the curbstones, one could only wonder. All of this was watched by a small squadron of police who formed human barricades at several intersections, not to confront anyone or stop any of the vandalism, just to make sure the mob was funneled in the proper direction.
Grasshoppers were the posh team, and FC Zurich was the working class team, which made Gregory's an easy choice when he arrived in 1936. It's funny. Back in Vienna, he left the Hutteldorf neighborhood -- real working men, real people -- when he had the opportunity to bring his "business" inside the Ringstrasse and to claim that upper-class territory for himself. He liked what that said about him and his family. But at the same time, he never gave up his tickets to the SK Rapid games in the old neighborhood. Henry talked about growing into adulthood in the rowdy standing terrace of the P
farrwiese, Rapid's home ground. He marked the first time his father allowed him to stand with the men as his father's first acknowledgment that was an adult. "He taught me to shoot a pistol two years before that, but it wasn't until the terrace at Pfarrwiese," Henry would say, and actually get a little misty.
So FC Zurich it would be. As we walked, Gregory was inhaling beer out of a bottle that one of his new best friends had provided -- his people, his team. And he was a true and rabid fan, even though the side was terrible, relegated to the second division, with no chance at all in the game coming up against the Grasshoppers.
When we first arrived in Zurich -- Henry, Liesl and I -- the football team was the only thing that really got Gregory going, got him engaged. But there was something else now, as only I knew.
"Hey," Gregory said. He was leaning in and whispering into my left ear, not that it would seem to matter, given that Henry was still digging into his ears, one at a time, as if he were mining wax. The ringing obviously had not stopped.
"Hey," he said, again. "I was thinking, maybe we should send another message to London, just to remind them we're still here."
"Sounds a little needy," I said. "A girl would never respect that if you tried it."
"Like you're such an expert at relationships," Gregory said. He obviously knew that Manon and I were kaput, and so did Henry, but I refused to talk about it, and they gave up asking after a couple of days.
"Okay," I said. "Let me think. Some of it does seem kind of needy. But there's also at least a little danger of being discovered every time we transmit. It doesn't make sense to send needless messages."
"Needy and needless. Your vocabulary is quite limited today."
"Fuck you, old man." I put my left arm around Gregory and my right arm around Henry, and we walked in the midst of the throng, singing the club song. At this point, I even knew the second verse.
Once inside Letzigrund, Gregory's wisdom played out before us. The final score was Grasshoppers 3, FC Zurich 0, and the game probably wasn't that close. The walk over from Hardturm had easily been the best part of the afternoon.
31
Liesl was due in about two months, and she had begun to waddle more than walk. The library wasn't a half-mile from the cafe, but she said she stopped at least twice to rest when she walked to and from work. Henry offered to drive her, but she said the exercise was good for the baby. Still, for all of the talk of the glow of motherhood, Liesl looked like hell.
We had gotten through our last couple of conversations without her bringing up Manon. But let's just say that the third time was not the charm. I didn't have any bank paperwork with me -- this was just going to be dinner and out for me -- and when she sat down with a glass of milk and a piece of chocolate cake to join me, we talked mostly about the baby and how Henry seemed less hapless and more assured about fatherhood.
We both loved him, and we expressed our love by lovingly shit-talking him behind his back. And so, when Liesl said, "At least he's stopped practicing the drive to the hospital and timing it down to the second," my natural reply was, "He was probably shaking so much from the nerves that he dropped the stopwatch."
We were doing fine, and the dishes had been cleared, and I was getting ready to make my excuses.
"Don't go," Liesl said. She looked at her watch. It was just past 8 p.m.
"Early night for me." I reached for my coat on the rack next to the booth.
"I wish you would stay."
"Why is that?"
"Because Manon might be stopping in." She just blurted it out, seeing no other way to get me to stop. She apparently had not thought this through.
"Might be?" My voice had risen several decibels. One of the fossils looked in our direction, just for a second.
"Calm down," she said. It was more a hiss than a statement.
"Why can't you leave this alone? Why can't you leave me alone?" I shucked my arms into the sleeves of my coat and began buttoning.
"Because I care about both of you, and whatever happened can't be all that bad. You have to be able to fix it."
"Have you ever considered that it might be that bad? Have you ever thought for one damn second that I don't want to fix it?" And with that, I kept walking, away from the pregnant matchmaker and out into the Zurich night.
It was still early, and it was Thursday, and I remembered that I had not checked the MCMIX fountain since Monday. It was in the wrong direction from my flat, but it was only about 10 minutes away, and I had energy and anger to burn. It must have been 20 degrees, maybe lower, and the wind cut. I hated scarves but had taken to wearing one in the previous few weeks. On this night, I was more than glad -- scarf, collar up, hat secure, head ducked into the wind, eyes slightly tearing up. It was from the cold, I knew, not any thoughts about Manon. I really was done. It was only natural that I would still get upset at Liesl's meddling, but I really was done. I did wonder, though, why Manon had agreed to come to the cafe. Perhaps Liesl had assured her that I was out of town or something.
The moon was full, the light shimmering off of the lake. It was cold enough that the path around the lake was empty, the typical nightly dog-walker undoubtedly setting for a quick smoke for himself and a quick piss for Sparky in the alley behind his flat. And standing there at the fountain, standing quite alone, I saw two yellow chalk marks. I didn't know if two meant something different than one, because Brodsky and I hadn't worked that out. My first thought was that the extra mark signified some elevated level of urgency, but I didn't really know. Whatever it meant, I figured, it wasn't even 8:30, and maybe it was urgent. Bellevueplatz, where a handful of tram lines came together, was only a couple of hundred yards away. I would be at the bar, the Barley House, in 15 or 20 minutes.
32
The tram ran north and west of the old town and ended up on Limmatstrasse, parallel to the river and about a block away. This was working class Zurich, and there was no more honest work -- God's work, some would say -- than working in a brewery. In this case, it was the Lowenbrau brewery, a red brick fortress which we passed on the right just before reaching my stop, Escher-Wyssplatz. Lowenbrau was more than drinkable, much more than the Feldschlösschen piss that was sold seemingly everywhere in the city. Lowenbrau also was superior to Hurlimann, another local, a semi-piss on the official Alex Kovacs rating scale.
The Barley House was, as Brodsky had said, right outside of the tram stop. I got off the train and looked to see if anyone was following. No one was -- I was the only departing passenger, just as I had been the only person getting on the tram at Bellevueplatz. So far, so good.
The bar was, as Brodsky had said, jammed with men wearing blue coveralls with a little Lowenbrau crest on the breast. The second shift was likely on its lunch break. If I had to guess, the brewery staggered the break times, as there was a group of workers leaving and heading back to the brewery just as another group was arriving, several of them shoveling down the last of their sandwiches at the door. A two-minute walk in each direction left 26 minutes available for the purposes of hydration, and the Barley House was quite available.
Inside, a layer of smoke about a foot thick was clearly visible along the ceiling, even in the dim light. The walls were once white, probably, but were by then covered with the brownish stain of a million cigarettes. The floor was sticky. But the time from order to mug-in-hand was perhaps 30 seconds, which made up for the amenities. So armed, my search for Brodsky began, and I wended my way through and around the knots of brewery workers, most of whom were standing. The search, too, took about 30 seconds, as Brodsky and I were two black swans in a heaving sea of blue coveralls. He was sitting at a small table off by himself, the last one before the toilets.
"Quaint, isn't it?" he said. I could barely hear him.
"It's a shithole and a goldmine, a rare combination." I had leaned over and was nearly shouting in his ear. The notion that anyone could possibly overhear our conversation was out of the question. Brodsky had chosen well.
"The owner is a frien
d, and you're right -- they print money. They're only closed two hours a day, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., when they hose down the floor, and open all of the windows, and try to clear the fug. He is just a neighborhood guy, but he actually owns a chalet near St. Moritz. But he never can get away."
"He must have to burn his clothes every night," I said. Then I theatrically sniffed the air. Picturing the owner of this place, sitting by the fire at a ski resort, sharing a fondue pot with the Duke and Duchess of Something-or-Other, was too absurd to consider. I actually chuckled out loud.
"What's so funny?" Brodsky said.
"I don't know. Life."
He scolded me for not checking the fountain for chalk marks. The reason there were two marks, he said, was because he left one on Monday and a second one on Wednesday.
"I've been drinking here four straight nights now," he said. "My liver isn't made for this. Or my lungs."
"So what's so urgent?"
"Only the fate of the free fucking world."
"So the non-Soviet part?"
"Let's agree to argue about dialectical materialism another time," he said. "At a quieter place, with proper drinks. And maybe a fire. Now just listen."
Brodsky leaned in closer and began telling a story that, as it turned out, I already knew. It was the same story Fritz Ritter had told me in the bar in Liechtenstein -- well, pretty much the same story. The critical point was the same -- that the German attack would come through the Ardennes, and not until at least April because of the weather. The reason he offered was different, though.
"There was a little plane crash," he said. "Two guys in a tiny plane, the one guy carrying the German invasion plans. He was supposed to be dropped off in Cologne or something, but the plane veered off-course and crashed in Belgium. Apparently, the guy tried to burn the plans before the Belgians caught him, and he thinks he succeeded. But the Germans don't believe him.