The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  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 two 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?"

  "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.

&n
bsp; "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 when he lived here 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 Pfarrwiese, 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.