The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  "Good, you're awake. Eat up, use the facilities," he said, pointing to the bucket in the corner. "Try to make yourself look presentable. The tribunal is in 15 minutes."

  Then he was gone, the door clanging shut. Tribunal? That sounded like a military court, but what did any of this have to do with the military? The truth was, what did they possibly have me on? Nobody in Germany knew the details of my plan, or that there even was a plan. All I had done was loiter in an alley, smoking a cigarette, behind a hotel where I was well known, where I had been a guest twice a year for the last 15 years. If they caught Major Peiper, and he talked, then I had a problem. But even then, even if that had happened, how had they found me so quickly? Peiper didn't know where I was going. And I had driven around Cologne for over an hour before parking across the street from Bischoffshausen. There was no way anybody was following me.

  None of it made sense. But it didn't matter because, after about 10 minutes, the guard was back and I was cuffed, hands behind my back. We left the cell, crossed an interior courtyard of some kind and headed into a different part of the building. It was night, but I still didn't know what day it was.

  The room we entered was kind of a mock courtroom, with a table on the right, a table on the left, and a third table on a raised platform in front of them and between them. In the back, there were about a dozen chairs in two rows. I was directed to sit in one of these chairs, with the guard standing beside me. There was no one else in the room, except for a couple of other guards.

  I turned and looked at my guard, with a questioning shrug. He looked right through me.

  In a minute or two, the door opened and Vogl walked in, accompanied by another man in a Gestapo uniform. They sat together at the table on the left. Vogl didn't look at me. He didn't even look in my direction.

  A minute later, two more men walked in, also in uniform but not Gestapo. It took me a second, but then I recognized one of them: General Fritz Ritter from the Abwehr, Uncle Otto's old running buddy, the guy who I had met at dinner in Nuremberg. We made eye contact, but only for a second. Friend or foe? I thought friend, but I couldn't tell for sure. It was a swift glance, and his face betrayed nothing.

  What the hell was this? What had I gotten myself into? I had no idea. I couldn't even imagine. But then came the order, "All rise." And so we did, as the man who would sit at the table on the raised platform entered the room and climbed onto his perch. I didn't know him, but I knew him. Everybody in Germany knew him, everybody who had ever seen a newsreel in a movie in the last five years, everybody who had heard his slavish, almost cartoonish speeches in praise of Big Adolf.

  "All right, let's get to it," he said, oddly fidgeting. The judge, or whatever you wanted to call him, was Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer.

  49

  It is hard to overestimate what those newsreels meant—and we saw plenty of them in Austria, given that the government needed to play nice with Germany to get Austrian films distributed in the Reich. They took our crap films, we took their crap newsreels. That was the deal.

  So we saw all of Hitler's top henchmen on a pretty regular basis. Mostly, you were left with snapshot impressions, one-liners to describe them. Goebbels was a little weasel. Himmler was an evil worm. Göring was just a fat fuck. But Hess was different, a bit squirrelly, kind of a nut. The other guys seemed like operators. Hess seemed slavish by comparison, the truest of true believers, without an original thought of his own. Whether it was true or not was beside the point. That was the impression.

  And now, sitting in the same room with him, I couldn't shake that notion. He was up on that platform, clearly annoyed to be there, foot tapping, both hands on the table in front of him, fidgeting with a coin. He had no paperwork before him. He was accompanied by one aide, dressed in civilian clothes, who sat in a chair back by the door and immediately began reading the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazis' favorite rag. The headline screamed, "The Shame of Vienna." I could only guess what atrocity they had concocted.

  "Gentlemen, the Führer has chosen me to mediate this dispute between your two services. But I have important business later this evening in Berchtesgaden. You have one hour. General Ritter, begin. You have five minutes to make an opening statement, then Captain Vogl will follow. Then we will hear, I assume, from the witness."

  Looking around the room, seeing no one else besides the guards, it seemed that the witness was me.

  Ritter stood and made this charge: that Vogl was guilty of treason against the Third Reich. "He has, over the course of many months, traded information with an agent of a foreign government in exchange for money. His motive was not ideological. It was simple greed, and we have the incontrovertible proof. He believes in nothing. He is loyal to nothing. He betrayed the Führer and the Fatherland for filthy lucre, nothing more."

  Vogl shook his head as Ritter spoke. He looked tired, almost beaten. I had no idea what the look on my face was, but it likely approximated astonishment. Because if Vogl was a traitor, then Göring was a swimsuit model. There was just no way, unless he was an actor of unparalleled skill. But beyond that, how were they planning to use me to prove it? Because there wasn't anything. If they asked me under oath what kind of Nazi I thought Vogl was, I would honestly answer that I thought he was the creepiest true believer I had ever met. But beyond that, why had Ritter chosen me to be a pawn in this? I was usually pretty good at reading people, and I’d thought he was a decent guy who genuinely liked my uncle. But he had just identified me as a spy.

  Ritter sat, and Vogl stood. His voice was hoarse. He really did seem beaten. "The deceit of the Abwehr and of General Ritter is clever but reprehensible. He has fabricated a case against me for a simple reason: He is the traitor, and he knew I was getting too close to his despicable secret."

  That was it. Vogl sat again. Hess seemed stunned that Vogl's presentation was so short—he used about 30 seconds of his allotted five minutes. It took Hess a few seconds to say anything as everyone waited. Finally, "General Ritter, what is your proof?"

  "I would like to interview the witness, Herr Deputy Führer."

  "And what is his name?"

  "Alex Kovacs."

  "The witness will stand."

  So I stood. So it was me. There was a dangerous game being played here, but I knew neither the rules nor my part. I didn't know if I should tell the truth or lie or what. I didn't know if it even mattered, seeing as how I was likely fucked either way. I mean, I was the only one wearing handcuffs. And then came the first question from Ritter: "Herr Kovacs, have we ever met before?"

  I wanted to believe that Ritter was on my side somehow, but I couldn't figure out the play. I thought the thing to do was tell the truth whenever possible, just for consistency's sake. I also figured he wouldn't have asked the question unless he wanted people to know the answer—or he thought they already knew the answer and just wanted to get it out of the way. Anyway, I decided on the truth, for now.

  "Yes, we have met."

  "And what were the circumstances?"

  "I was dining with a client in Nuremberg. You knew him from your service in the Great War. You sat down at our table and reminisced."

  I decided to leave out the part about Ritter knowing Uncle Otto. I figured Ritter would lead me there if that was where he wanted me to go. He didn't.

  "What is your business, Herr Kovacs?"

  I offered a short spiel about selling magnesite. Hess appeared to be preoccupied with the coin that he was now spinning on the table.

  "Are you a spy for the Czech government, Herr Kovacs?"

  "Absolutely not. I'm just a magnesite salesman."

  Ritter returned to his table to retrieve a piece of paper from which he read. "Herr Kovacs, did you have lunch at Dimble's restaurant in Frankfurt on February 23rd of this year?"

  Shit. What was this?

  "Yes. While my train to Cologne was making an extended stop, I had lunch at Dimble's. It's close to the station."

  "Did you visit the toilet in that restaurant?" />
  "Probably. I don't remember."

  "Did you retrieve an envelope taped to the underside of the toilet tank in that restroom?"

  I denied it because it was the truth. But the question opened up two more for me. One: How did Ritter know I’d had lunch in Frankfurt? Two: How were Groucho and the Czech intelligence service involved in this? Because they’d sent me on that pointless errand to the restaurant in the first place. Had they been setting me up?

  It was getting hard to focus in the fog. Then Ritter turned from me to Vogl, pointing and saying, "And isn't it true, Captain Vogl, that you had a gabelfrühstück at Dimble's restaurant in Frankfurt several hours before Herr Kovacs did on February 23rd?"

  Again, as if the life had been beaten out of him in the cellar at EL-DE Haus, Vogl replied in a monotone, "Yes, I ate in the restaurant."

  "Were you in Frankfurt on official business?"

  Pause. "No."

  "Why were you there?"

  Longer pause. "I was meeting a friend."

  "A woman? Is her name Elsa Haas? Was this an illicit relationship? You are married, Captain Vogl, correct?"

  Vogl did not answer, instead looking down at his hands, folded on the table in front of him.

  Ritter went on, ignoring the silence. "And the envelope, sir? You taped it under the lid of the toilet tank, correct?"

  Barely a whisper. "There was no envelope."

  "You are honor-bound to tell the truth, sir."

  "There was no envelope."

  Ritter returned his attention to a folder on the table. He opened it and removed what looked to be a bank book along with a separate sheet of paper. He approached Hess and handed them over. "Herr Deputy Führer, I offer this as further proof of Captain Vogl's treason. The bank book, from the Brust & Co. Bank in Zürich, was taken from Captain Vogl's coat pocket on Wednesday night when he and Herr Kovacs were taken into custody in the alley behind the Dom Hotel in Cologne. As you can see, several deposits totaling ten thousand Swiss francs have been made over the last 18 months. As you can also see, the name on the bearer line of the account book is that of Captain Vogl."

  Vogl replied in a voice so low that I wondered if Hess could hear him. "I have never seen this before."

  "The document accompanying the bank book, Herr Deputy Führer, is a report of a fingerprint analysis of the bank book performed by Abwehr technicians, an analysis attended by a Gestapo observer. Both the Abwehr and Gestapo representatives have signed the letter. There were two identifiable sets of fingerprints on the book and two that were not. The identifiable prints belong to Captain Vogl and Herr Kovacs."

  Ritter turned to me. "Do you have any dealings with the Brust & Co. Bank?"

  I had no idea what was going on. I could barely focus. I defaulted to the truth, even though I was pretty sure there was no way they could know about my private dealings with a private bank. I mean, that was the whole point of a Swiss bank. "I have an account at Brust & Co.," I said, leaving out Hannah.

  "And did you make the deposits in Captain Vogl's account?"

  "No."

  "Did you arrange for those deposits?"

  "No."

  "Did you give him the bank book?"

  "No."

  "Then how did your fingerprints get on it?"

  I had no answer. Ritter sat down. It appeared that he was finished.

  50

  The silence lingered for several seconds before Hess finally looked down and said, "Captain Vogl?"

  A ghost in a black uniform, appearing as dead as the death's head emblem he wore so proudly, Vogl stood and began speaking. He talked about a suspicion that an unnamed Abwehr officer had traveled into Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1936 with a briefcase full of secret papers about Gestapo troop strength in various sectors of Germany and their field radio codes—information that the Gestapo later found out was in Czech hands from a double agent of their own. Researching travel records of Abwehr officers in the eastern sector indicated three possibilities. Two were eliminated with a reasonable level of confidence, leaving Ritter by process of elimination.

  "That is when we began following General Ritter on an intermittent basis. The truth was, he eluded us for hours at a time, occasionally days at a time, and this elusiveness, in and of itself, continued to fuel our suspicions."

  As he spoke and got into the narrative, Vogl seemed to regain a bit of his strength. He opened a file folder on the table and picked up a sheet of paper to which he referred as he continued:

  "In the fall of 1936, while surveilling General Ritter in Cologne, our agents observed him meeting in the bar of the Wasserhof Hotel with Otto Kovacs, the uncle of our star witness today. Otto Kovacs also was an executive in the family mining company. I personally supervised the subsequent questioning of Otto Kovacs, but he denied being a spy for either Czechoslovakia or Austria, his countries of birth and residence, respectively. Otto Kovacs subsequently committed suicide, but it appears that his nephew has taken his place. We observed General Ritter meeting with Alex Kovacs in the restaurant in Nuremberg, a meeting that Mr. Kovacs acknowledged in his testimony."

  The portrait Vogl was painting, and the mention of Otto, brought back every conflicted feeling I had experienced since his death. I now knew who he drank with the last night of his life. But could he have been a spy after all? Or was this just two old friends getting together to tell old stories? As those questions swirled, my hatred for Vogl was reinforced. He had tortured Otto. He just admitted it.

  Vogl looked up at Hess. "Again, Herr Deputy Führer, agents of the Gestapo assigned to the task of surveilling General Ritter lost track of him on several occasions. On at least two of those occasions, Alex Kovacs was within fifty miles of our last sighting of the general at the same time, traveling as he did for his magnesite mine. We believed we were getting close to catching the general in the act."

  Vogl lifted another paper from the file folder. "Besides the circumstantial case we had assembled, our double agent in Prague told us that there was concern in the Czech intelligence service, and I quote, 'that our most productive information source is sensing he is in jeopardy.' That was about two weeks ago, Herr Deputy Führer. That is when this smear against my name was obviously concocted."

  He stopped, then smiled. "With permission, Herr Deputy Führer, I would like to question Herr Kovacs."

  Hess waved his assent. Vogl turned toward me.

  "Just one question, Herr Kovacs. What were you doing in the alley behind the Dom Hotel on Wednesday night? Were you not there at the direction of General Ritter, as a part of this plot to frame me?"

  "I was not."

  Vogl picked at still another piece of paper. "Then why, sir, did you enter the country with a false passport on Tuesday, in a car you had hired in Zürich, a car that was parked a block away from the alley? Why did you stay in Bonn on Tuesday night at the Stark Hotel, using that false passport? Why the secrecy, if this was just a normal business trip?"

  I thought for a second. But the problem was, I didn't know if I could trust anybody. I could say that I was in the alley to give Vogl the bank book, but that would be an admission that I was a spy. I could say that I was there at Ritter's direction, to frame Vogl, but I would be in the same spot.

  So, the truth. "I was in the alley to kill you, Captain Vogl, to avenge the death of my uncle."

  At this, Hess dropped his coin. It rolled off the platform, and everyone seemed to watch it until it settled on the floor. Hess seemed interested for the first time. "I thought Captain Vogl said your uncle committed suicide."

  "I believe that was a lie."

  Vogl was silent. Hess was now fully engaged. "How did you plan to kill him?"

  "With a knife."

  "Is the knife in evidence? Let me see the knife."

  Ritter lifted a briefcase from the floor, removed a large envelope, reached in, grabbed the knife, and handed it to Hess. He fondled the leather, weighing it in his hand, feeling the balance. Then he flicked open the blade. He positioned it jus
t so under an overhead light and squinted to read the manufacturer's engraving. "Solingen, I knew it. Excellent quality. Excellent."

  At which point, Hess pocketed the knife. He was taking it for himself. "Captain Vogl, from the look on your face, I will assume you did not know of Herr Kovacs's plans. And you, General?"

  Ritter stood and spoke confidently. "We believe Herr Kovacs is lying. He is a spy for Czechoslovakia; we are confident of that. His entry into the country with a false passport just added to our confidence. We were following both him and Captain Vogl, and we believe we interrupted a clandestine meeting between two espionage professionals who were working to sabotage the Führer's vision and the Third Reich's future."

  With that, Vogl sat. Both sides appeared to be done. The room was silent, awaiting some signal from Hess. But all he did was clear his throat to get the attention of the aide who had been reading the newspaper, then motion toward the wayward coin on the floor. The aide walked over, picked it up, and handed it up to Hess on his little platform. Hess began to spin it again on the table.

  As before, there was only one certainty: that I was fucked. Both sides had called me a spy, sacrificing me as a pawn in a bigger game. How either of them knew for sure was beside the point. It was the only consistency that existed in the two stories: Alex Kovacs, spy. However Hess decided, I was still going to be leaving the room in handcuffs. If I was lucky, they would just deport me. But I wasn't feeling lucky, not even a little bit.

  I didn't know how long we waited—five minutes, 10 minutes. The only sounds I heard were my own breathing and Hess's damn coin. Then Hess suddenly looked at his watch and, as if startled at what he saw, began to speak.

  "The guards will come to the front of the room." Three of them did just that, one carrying leg chains.

  "Captain Vogl, you will be taken into custody and delivered to the Abwehr for further interrogation. General Ritter, you are free to go."