by Richard Wake
I asked him if he had a sense of what was next, and he said, "I know this is lousy, but do you think there's any chance Hitler goes for England first before coming after us?"
"I don't know," I said, even though I was pretty sure I did.
"Yeah, I really don't think so, either," he said.
Claude said he had fought at Verdun and survived. "But I won't take any clients near there -- I just won't go back," he said. "We have three salesmen, and the territories are drawn with pretty straight lines on the map, except that one." He stopped, took a long sip of his whiskey.
"I'll never go back," he said. And then another long pull. "Thank God my two kids are girls."
That's how it was with everybody. Actual information was barely available, but everybody had a gut, and everybody's gut was telling them the worst. It was human nature, 25 years after the last war, to expect the Germans to pull the same shit again -- especially with Hitler. They hated the Kaiser, but Hitler scared the hell out of them -- and, to repeat, fear is a much more potent emotion than hatred. Besides, nobody suffered like the French did in the great war. Whole villages were wiped out, never to be rebuilt -- and not just a couple. A generation of women had no husbands, no children. It's no wonder they needed Uncle Pierre in the reserve units.
I can't imagine what it must have felt like, to be a Frenchman and to know that the fucking Germans were coming again, for the third time since 1870. Then again, Claude's fantasy of a hope that they might turn on England first said a lot. As did the quiet, punctuated only by his sighs, that we fell into after a while.
Once we were moving again, most of the passengers seemed to shift to neutral corners. I went back to my compartment for a quick sleep. I would say that two-thirds of the passengers got off with Claude in Lyon. The stop there was long enough for me to stretch my legs in the station and buy a newspaper. It was early Friday morning, May 10th. There was nothing in the paper about an invasion.
Once we were moving again, headed toward Geneva, I finished the paper in my compartment and then walked down to the dining car for breakfast. There was only one other table occupied. The waiter was quick with a cup of coffee and a menu.
"Seems quiet," I said, looking around.
"Very," he said.
"Is this unusual?"
"Yes," he said. Then he leaned down. "But I was talking to a porter on another train while we were waiting on the platform in Lyon. He was on a run headed south, toward Limoges, and he said they were packed."
"Any reason why?"
"Rumors, I guess," he said.
In the absence of information, what else was there? Rumors. There wasn't much more to say. The waiter left me to put in my order. I don't remember if I ended up eating it or not.
Everything was slow. We sat forever in godforsaken places for no apparent reason. The stop in Geneva was supposed to be 15 minutes, but it lasted over an hour. The stop in Bern was supposed to be 5 minutes, but it lasted 30. Finally, the train limped into Zurich at about 2 p.m. A trip that should have taken 10 hours ended up taking nearly 24.
And in the station, in what was usually a quieter time between the morning and evening rush, a steady stream of people were coming in off of Bahnhofstrasse, striding with a purpose. The afternoon papers, the ones bannered with the headline that consisted of three enormous black words -- "Germany Invades France" -- were selling as quickly as the newsagent could untie the next bundle.
49
For the next couple of days, I barely slept. My job, it seemed, was to read everything I could, see everything I could, and report back to London with as many daily updates as possible. I didn't have much, honestly. Army units seemed to be moving about and repositioning themselves from south to north -- I could see that much from the train station. I attempted to read divisional insignia from the uniform patches of soldiers grabbing a quick smoke on the platform during their stops, and even though it seemed pretty meaningless, Gregory and I passed it along to London every night.
I still had not seen or heard from Manon since I arrived back from Paris. She wasn't at home, or at work, or at the cafe, or with Liesl. Nobody knew where she was. And while I was worried, and a little bit mad that she hadn't found a way to leave behind some kind of message, I wasn't that worried. She was undoubtedly doing the same thing I was doing.
Still, I missed her, which fouled my mood even more than the daily updates in the newspapers. Because the story they told was the story that Fritz Ritter and the others had predicted. The invasion came on the 10th, as they had said. The attack went through the Ardennes, as they had said. Gamelin, the British, all of them had the roadmap -- but they all had crumpled it up and thrown it in the fire as if it were nothing more than kindling. And now the idiots were paying.
Three days in, the Germans were at the Meuse. If they managed to get across, they would take Sedan. And if they took Sedan, the entire country of France would have a collective nervous breakdown. In 1870, Sedan was the critical battle of the Franco-Prussian War, the decisive battle, and a thorough humiliation for France. This would be worse. Back then, France was forced to hand over Alsace and Lorraine to the Prussians, which was terrible but, well, it was only Alsace and Lorraine -- and besides, they got them back after the next war. Nobody who thought about it for even 30 seconds figured that Hitler would be willing to settle for a couple of provinces this time. And if he got Sedan, the road to Paris would be wide open.
By that third day, the Swiss were starting to panic -- not so much in Zurich, but more up near the French and German borders. I took a car ride and ran into paralyzing traffic from up there, all of it headed south. At one point, I was driving north with ease as the other side was jammed and not moving. Then a policeman blocked my path, waving two small white flags. He shuttled me off onto a side road.
"What do I do now?" I asked him, and he offered some very fast directions to Basel by taking secondary roads. He rattled them off too quickly to memorize.
"What's this about?" I said.
"We're turning this road into a one-way headed south," he said. "It's our only chance to clear this mess."
It was dark by the time I got back to Zurich. The streets were deserted. It was kind of like Vienna was in the days before the Anschluss, people burrowing in and saving their money before whatever was about to happen. I still didn't think the Germans would swallow Switzerland as long as the banks continued to play along, but who knew anymore.
I ate dinner at Fessler's. It was deserted. I saw Henry and Liesl and the baby for a minute, but they seemed intent on nesting in their flat, maybe even more intent than parents typically are, because of the war. They weren't in the cafe for five minutes. Gregory sat with me while I ate, and I told him what I had seen, and we composed the message for London. We did it right there at the table, and then he went upstairs to work out the code from the bible.
"What if they get Sedan?" Gregory said after we had received the confirmation back from Groucho.
"If Sedan falls, France falls."
"Look at a map -- it's a straight shot to Paris. And if the papers are right, the best French divisions are up in Belgium. So are the British."
"Maybe they can get it turned around."
"I don't know," I said. "It doesn't seem like these people react very quickly to anything."
"They have to wake up soon," Gregory said. "I mean, really. Don't they?"
Walking home, I kept thinking about what Gregory had said, and how he had always maintained more optimism than I had, despite how let down we had been. Yes, he was right. Yes, they did have to wake up -- and they probably would. Faced with a crisis, their eyes would be opened. France still had a big, fearsome army. The British would be some help, and they still had time here. The Germans were moving fast, but could they keep it up? Could their supplies keep up with their tanks?
There was still hope. I had actually talked myself into feeling pretty good, or at least better than I had been feeling, and then I opened the door and saw that Manon was there.
We devoured each other, just about without words. Then we traded information, although neither of us knew much more than that the roads headed south were jammed. She didn't know anything more about Sedan than what was in the papers. But she agreed that it was the key to the whole thing. And she was more clinical in her assessment than I was.
"It might be too late for them to react," she said. "Idiots."
"Too late? It can't be. It's only been a couple of days."
"We'll know soon," she said. "Might not take long at all."
My hope had deflated again, and as I approached the confluence of despair and exhaustion, I fell asleep entwined with Manon. We were awakened a couple of hours later by a phone call from Liesl. I dropped the receiver in the dark and made her repeat what she had said because it had shocked me so. But the message was the same the second time as it had been the first time. Gregory had been shot in the cafe. He was dead.
50
The scene at the cafe was every bit as bad as I imagined it would be. Manon and I rushed over and found the police cars outside, jamming the narrow street, their lights flashing red and blue. Gregory's body had been removed by the coroner, but a puddle of blood remained as evidence of the spot. It was already drying, congealing on the wood floor.
Liesl was a rock, as was little Sylvie, wrapped tight in her mother's arms. Henry was catatonic. The three of them sat in a booth off to the side as the police detectives went about their business. We joined them, and I instinctively hugged Henry and didn't let go. But it was like I was embracing a lifeless form. He barely reacted to questions, or to a squeeze of his shoulder.
The drawer of the cash register was open and empty. A detective came over -- I didn't catch his name -- and said, "The lock on the door was forced, maybe with a crowbar. The till was empty. It appears, based on that alone, to have been a robbery that went horribly wrong. But what we don't get is why anyone would think there was a lot of money in the register at a place like this. Would there be?"
Henry didn't react to the question. I nudged him and said, "Henry," in almost a whisper, and he stirred as if from sleep.
"No, not much money," he said. "Nothing worth killing over."
"Was your father the kind of person who would resist an armed robber over a few francs?"
Henry shrugged, then fell back into his trance. But the cop was asking the right question. You never know how you're going to react in a given situation, but there is no way in hell that the Gregory I knew would have risked his life over that amount of money. Maybe back in the day, back in Vienna, when he had a crew to back him up and a reputation to uphold. But not here, not now, no, not at his age, not with little Sylvie there. It just didn't make any sense.
Which, of course, left...
I just couldn't entertain the thought. My mind literally could not process the possibility that this was somehow related to the radio in his spare room, and so it vanished from my consciousness before the thought even registered. The mind can be a fantastic organ sometimes, and it was for me that night, at least until Peter Ruchti walked into the cafe and began talking to a couple of the detectives who were still puzzling over the cash register and stepping daintily around the pool of drying blood.
Manon recognized Ruchti immediately and gave me a quizzical look across the table. I had not told her about Gregory because that was our deal -- we would share information but not sources or co-workers. It was just safer for everybody that way. But then, after this, I didn't know what I was going to do. But I did know that I needed to talk to Ruchti, so I got up from the booth and announced to no one and everyone, "I need a breath of air," and walked out onto Oberdorfstrasse.
As I walked across the cafe, I looked at the window, my eyes having been caught by a blue-and-red flashing light. Across the street and a little bit down the street, a man stood in the shadow of a doorway. But he was lit, red and blue, with each cycle of the police car's light. He was lit just a little, though, and the colors distorted the picture, and I was a decent distance from the window, but the man standing in the doorway looked very much like Anders, the security guard at Bohemia Suisse.
But by the time I reached the street and had another look, there was nobody there. So I just stood there, leaning against the cafe, hoping Ruchti would take the hint. In about two minutes, he did. He offered his condolences.
"Do you think it was a robbery?" I said.
"No. But they do," Ruchti said, pointing vaguely inside. "And that's okay with me. But you have to be honest with me."
"About what?"
"About whether or not Gregory Fessler was working with you," he said.
I didn't answer for a second. I liked Ruchti, and I trusted him. He hadn't steered me wrong on anything, and he warned me about Vogl.
"Vogl." I spat the name out as soon as it came to me. "You don't think--"
"No," Ruchti said. "I don't think there's any way he's in Zurich. And I know he's Gestapo, but I don't think some captain in Poland has the ability to order a murder in a neutral country, hundreds of miles away. But you haven't answered my question."
I paused again, just looking at him. I didn't know what was right, but I had to take a chance.
"Gregory was working with me," I said.
"Doing what? Actually spying?"
"Well, no."
"Then what? Was he making radio transmissions? Because, you know, we're pretty sure that the German legation here now has a radio detection vehicle, a small lorry with an antenna on top that drives around the city. We've seen it a few times, followed it back to the German mission. It can detect a radio transmitter--"
"What? WHAT?" It was Henry. He had come out the door of the cafe and overheard the last bit of what Ruchti had said.
"No. Alex, tell me it's not true. Tell me you didn't get my father roped into this whole fucking spy business."
Ruchti looked at me, partly in a questioning way, partly in helplessness. When I started speaking, I addressed Ruchti's unspoken question first.
"Henry and his wife know about my role at the bank because they were part of the deal with the intelligence service to get out of Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss."
Then I turned to Henry.
"Mr. Ruchti here is with a Swiss police unit that has some intelligence aspects to it, and he knows some of my story," I said. "And Henry, yes, your father was helping me send coded radio transmissions to my Czech contact, who's living now in London."
"So is that it?" Henry was screaming, crying. His words pierced the night. "Is that why he was fucking killed. Goddammit, Alex. Is that why?"
Ruchti did his best to rescue me.
"The homicide detectives are experienced, and they think it was a robbery," he said. He looked Henry directly in the eye. "If they believe it, I believe it. The truth is that spies in this country have no reason to kill each other, and they don't because the Swiss government has made it quite clear that violence on Swiss soil will not be tolerated. Mr. Fessler, it just doesn't happen. And I would know."
The lie was stunning -- because, if not Gregory, there certainly was the fellow on Rennweg with the slug through his eye to consider. I wasn't sure if Henry bought it. He didn't say anything. Ruchti left with a shrug that Henry did not see, and a pantomime of a telephone receiver pressed to his ear. Call me, he mouthed.
Back inside, Henry began pacing near the kitchen. The police were packing up, and Liesl and Sylvie had already headed back to their flat. It was nearly 5 a.m. I asked one of the cops if he would escort Manon home. She looked at me questioningly, and I pointed toward Henry, and she understood that I would stay behind with my friend. Finally, when the door was closed, and we were alone, Henry looked at me in a way that scared me. It was a look I had never seen from him.
"Where's the fucking radio?" he said.
I led the way to Gregory's apartment, and then to the spare room, and then to the small table secreted behind the packing crates. The radio was there. I felt it, and it was cold.
"How could you?" Henry
said. He repeated it, and then he repeated it again, and then he said "fuuuuuuck," the delivery more long than loud.
"Henry, he was a grown man," I said. "It was his decision. He felt the need to help."
"Alex, that's bullshit. Need to help? Fuck that -- what did he need? He had me. He had Liesl. He had his grandchild. Why did he need your fucking adventure?"
"I don't know," I was looking down at my hands at that point. I know I heard what I was saying, but I'm not sure Henry did. "I don't know why he needed it. But he did."
I paused for a second, then began babbling. "You know how much he loved you and Liesl, and how thrilled he was about Sylvie, and what a beautiful family you--"
"Get the fuck out of here," he said. "We're fucking done. And take that fucking piece of shit with you."
Henry stormed out. He slammed the door of the flat and stomped up the stairs. I heard him on every tread. Then I looked around for an empty box amid the clutter, a box that would hold the radio, and the sending key, and the bible. And I left, out of the flat and down to the cafe. I did my best to secure the broken door, jamming a chair beneath the knob to hold it in place. Then I found a menu and wrote a small sign on the back side of it and propped it in the front window:
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Then I carried my box of shit and my bag of guilt and left through the back door.
51
I knew the Fesslers were Catholic, at least in name, but I had not known that Gregory had been much of a churchgoer, not until his funeral, when the priest made a reference during his talk to "the friendly debates he and I would have many mornings after Mass, on topics ranging from the headlines on the front page of the newspaper to the latest disappointments perpetrated by his beloved FC Zurich."