A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Be sure to wait two or three weeks before writing.” I cut her gratitude off with another quick kiss. “As soon as I find out your address from you, I’ll drive over and tell you the whole story.”

  I noticed that the night air in Stuttgart was much chillier than it had been at the French checkpoint. We were not that high up in the Black Forest, were we?

  “I love you, Karl.” She embraced me gently. “I love you very much.”

  “I love you too, Trudi.” I kissed her for the last time. “I have to rush to make it back to Bamberg. I’ll see you soon.”

  “I want you to have this.” She pushed something into my hand. “It represents me and my love.”

  I glanced down: her Leica.

  “I can’t, Trudi . . .”

  “You must. I will be angry if you don’t.”

  “It means so much to you.” I was tempted, then ashamed of my greed.

  “So does the money you saved mean much to you.”

  “Always be gracious when given a present,” Mom had instructed us, “even if you don’t deserve it.”

  “Thank you, Trudi.” I hugged her again. “I will treasure it always. But in return you must accept the money as a gift, not a loan.”

  “I will not.” She tried to pull away, then collapsed against me. “You are gracious and I am not, Herr Yankee. I thank you as you thanked me. God protect you.”

  “And you.” The playlet ended with a benediction as solemn as that in any cathedral.

  I still carry the Leica, a small, light, remarkably precise rangefinder camera that, innocent of the gimmickry that would weigh down 35mm’s in later days, fits in the palm of my hand. I can’t say that I remember Trudi every time I use it. But I do often remember her and our terrible innocence on that dark August night in 1947.

  As I drove out of town and over the rim of the saucer in which Stuttgart nestles, one part of me warned that the letter would never come and I would not see her again. I told that part of me to shut up.

  Around me I could see dim hulks in the night, the new construction that was under way. Pre–Marshal Plan money was already at work, seeding the German “economic miracle” that was beginning.

  I thought I saw Polly Nettleton in front of an old church halfway up the hill. Or was my imagination playing tricks on me?

  I had little opportunity to reflect on either the construction or the three women I had left behind. When I reached the autobahn, I realized that the chilly air was not limited to Stuttgart. A weather front was moving into Middle Europe from the North Atlantic. Why had I not thought to check the weather? Another dumb move.

  I was on the highway only a few minutes when I saw what the combination of hot landmass and cold weather front meant.

  Fog!

  25

  Peering through the windshield with aching eyes, as though it were a massive curtain obscuring a movie screen, I calculated my chances. It was two o’clock. I had progressed forty kilometers since entering the autobahn outside of Stuttgart. A little better than twenty miles an hour. At that rate it would take between six and seven hours to return to Bamberg. I would arrive between nine and nine-thirty, barely in time for the phony “pickup” operation.

  If nothing else went wrong.

  But on the basis of what had already happened, something else was likely to go wrong. Therefore I had to drive faster, fog or no fog.

  What if I had another flat tire? There was no spare in the boot, uh, trunk.

  Chucky is kaput!

  If, disregarding the fog, I increased the speed to thirty miles an hour, I would arrive in Bamberg about six or six-thirty, again if nothing else went wrong. That would be more like it.

  What’s the point in being an accountant in the making if you can’t do a little elementary arithmetic?

  Could I compromise at twenty-five miles per hour?

  No, that would be cutting it too close. So it was thirty, no matter what might be ahead of me on the autobahn. It was night, wasn’t it? And who else but a lunatic would be driving the autobahn at this hour in gooey fog?

  So I pressed harder on the gas and leaned closer to the windshield. It would be a long night.

  Maybe when the sun rose in another hour and a half or so, it would burn off the fog.

  Wouldn’t that be nice?

  I had no idea what the visibility was. Moreover I had only been driving for a year and had no experience driving in fog and precious little practice in night driving on a highway. Would I see the red lights on a vehicle in front of me in time to swerve?

  I had read an article in the New York Times about the time required to avoid an object ahead of you on the road. As best as I could remember the numbers, I would not have a chance.

  Outside of Nürnberg, having relaxed a little and become confident of my ability at flying in visibility zero, ceiling zero (the name of a film I vaguely recalled), I inched up to thirty-five miles per hour. I soon learned how many seconds I had to swerve after seeing the first hint of red lights in front of me.

  Two, maybe three at the most.

  The vehicle was a big truck carrying a Sherman tank at maybe fifteen miles an hour.

  At least the hulking monster that I raced by looked like a Sherman tank out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t bother to look closely. A number of other such monsters were in front of the first one. I stayed in the passing lane until I was sure I had gone beyond them.

  What sort of damn fools were moving a convoy of tanks at this hour in the fog?

  The United States Army, that’s what kind of damn fools!

  Buy Russian war bonds, as we used to joke.

  The second encounter was with an oil tanker, maybe fifteen minutes later.

  It was an encounter in the full sense of the word: I banged into his rear bumper. And then saw his red lights, as it seemed, below my belt buckle.

  It was a light enough bump, though probably enough to scare the hell out of him, even more than it scared me. He knew he was carrying some kind of combustible fuel and was probably terrified at the possibility of going up in a dirty-orange explosion at any moment even before I bumped him. I thought about the puff of orange only after I had swerved around him.

  I literally vomited what little food there was in my stomach on the dashboard.

  Dear God, what a rotten hero I was.

  I pulled into Bamberg at six-forty and parked in front of the Residenz a little before seven hundred. Eleven hours for a five-hour trip. I was so tired and so spent from groping through the fog all night that I could hardly force myself out of the car. And the most intricate part of my scheme was still ahead of me.

  God ought not to put such an incompetent into a situation such as this one, I complained.

  I cleaned the vomit off the dashboard, staggered into the men’s room, threw water in my face, brewed a cup of coffee, and tried to think what I was supposed to do next.

  At ten hundred, Kelly and I and our team of eight men and two jeeps cautiously bumped up to the Bambergerhof. The fog was as thick as it had been on the autobahn, but now it was colored a faint purple instead of jet-black.

  “You look tired, Sarge,” Kelly said to make conversation. “Rough nights?”

  “Too much school.”

  “Gotta do something to stay sane in this burg. Am I glad I’m getting the hell out next week.”

  I filed that bit of information. It might be useful. “Remember what I told you about this FBI jerk? We don’t trust him.”

  “Sounds like a real asshole.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  Special Agent Clarke was late. We pulled away from the Bambergerhof at ten-thirty.

  “Don’t fret, sport.” His eyes were bloodshot and his face unshaven. “What’s the rush, our friends are not going anywhere, are they?”

  “I certainly hope not, sir.”

  We went through the full routine in the narrow Untersandstrasse in front of the food store: two jeeps blocking the exits from the street; four men, automatic
weapons ready (safeties on, I devoutly hoped), lined up in a semicircle on the street; the other four trudging noisily up the narrow, steep steps.

  The Gestapo came in the middle of the night, didn’t they?

  Well, they still lost the war.

  “Please stay behind my men, sir,” I admonished Clarke, who did not seem disposed to be ahead of them.

  “Sure thing, sport.”

  We knocked at the door, and there was, of course, no answer. I nodded at Kelly and Crawford. They tucked themselves into corners at either side of the minute landing. My .45 clutched firmly in my hand, I kicked at the door. It promptly popped open. More cooperative than the door out in the Bohemian Alps.

  “Cover me, men,” I ordered, repressing a terrible urge to laugh.

  I sprang into the room, spun around, weapon in front of me, and surveyed the whole space.

  “No one here, sir.”

  “Damn,” Agent Clarke muttered. “I didn’t think it would be this easy. Still, it looks like they’ll be coming back, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, it does.”

  “Pretty cheap stuff.” He fingered curtains on the single window. “Clean and neat place, isn’t it? Goddamn krauts are compulsive, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, sir. Permission to search the quarters, sir?”

  “Suit yourself, sport.”

  “Kelly, check with the store owner to see if you can learn where these women work and whether there is a father in the family.”

  “Sure, Sarge.”

  “Crawford, stand guard at the door. Cline, help me to search the quarters.”

  “Okay, Sarge.”

  Not much respect for their noncom, but Clarke didn’t seem to notice.

  While Cline went through the clothes in the closet, I opened the small paper file in which the Strausses had kept their personal effects.

  My heart sank. At the very top were their old identity papers, good enough to get them a job in the American zone, but not good enough to get them out. I had not told Trudi to destroy the papers. So, obedient literalist that she was, she had left them.

  If Clarke should see them, even such an incompetent gumshoe as he would wonder what they were doing for papers. That would mean that we—or CID—would raid the store of my ex-Luftwaffe friend, and he would, however regretfully, testify about the redheaded sergeant from the Constabulary who had tried to buy forged IDs for three women. Well, maybe he wouldn’t. But I couldn’t take the chance.

  It was necessary to think of something. At once.

  “Doesn’t look like they’ve left, does it, sport?”

  “No, sir. . . . Sir, look at this! Are these the people?”

  I held out the picture Trudi had left, just under the old documentation. Magda and Gunther Wülfe and two kids, one of them an infant in her mother’s arms. The young Magda did look enough like the woman I had said good-bye to a few hours ago to be immediately identified as the same person.

  “Lemme see, sport? Hey, sure as hell looks like them.”

  He walked over to the window to study the picture in the thin sunlight the fog was permitting to shine on Bamberg that August morning so long ago.

  As soon as he turned his back, I turned in the opposite direction, so Cline couldn’t see me, and pocketed the three sets of documents.

  “Hey, sport.” Clarke whistled softly.

  I turned back. He was still looking at the picture. I stuffed the papers deeper into my pocket.

  “Sir?”

  “Sure as hell looks like them, doesn’t it?”

  “If you would compare the picture with your documentation, sir.”

  I crossed my fingers.

  He reached in his jacket pocket, patted his trousers, tried the jacket again, and shook his head. “Damn, must have left them at the hotel. Well, no harm done, eh, sport?”

  “No, sir.”

  Not much.

  Kelly returned.

  “The guy talked up a storm, Sarge. Claims they talked with a Dresden accent, whatever the hell that is. I thought all krauts talked the same. Father died in a raid at the end of the war, he says. Work over at the Bambergerhof. He didn’t notice them leaving this morning.”

  “Good work, Kelly. Send Mann up here and take the other three men and see if you can apprehend the three women—their name is Strauss—and report back here.”

  “Right, Sarge.”

  “Nice thinking, sport.” Clarke heaved himself heavily onto the couch on which Trudi and I had first become lovers. “Damn, I bet I saw them in the corridors over there and didn’t even recognize them.”

  “It’s been a long time since that picture was taken, sir.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.” He closed his eyes contentedly.

  Someone tapped on the door. Mann opened it. “Kelly would like a word with you, Sarge.”

  “Hasn’t he left for the hotel?”

  “He wants to talk to you first.”

  I walked out on the landing.

  “I was waiting for you, Sarge. There’s an odd thing . . .”

  “Yeah?” My heart jumped again.

  “The old guy down there said there was a GI who used to hang around here. One of ours.”

  “Constab?”

  “Yeah, old guy says a blue-beret type.”

  “Wow! Any description?”

  Kelly shrugged. “Old guy didn’t know. Young Yankee in blue beret. I figured we didn’t want that asshole in there going after one of ours, so I didn’t tell you in there.”

  “If he doesn’t ask, Kel, we don’t tell him. Right?”

  “Right, Sarge. See you later.”

  Kelly was an innocent; if he were covering for a redhead sergeant, he couldn’t have kept a straight face. Just the same I’d breathe a sigh of relief when he went home next week.

  The rest was easy.

  An hour later Kelly was back.

  He climbed up the stairs with a rattle that caused the sleeping Special Agent Clarke to open one of his bloodshot eyes.

  “Bad news, Sarge,” Kelly announced cheerfully. “I left the others over at the Bambergerhof, but I guess the fox has flown the coop.”

  I ignored his mixed imagery. “Details, Kelly.”

  “The three women work there all right. Mother and two daughters. Blond. The kids good-looking. Maids. They didn’t show up for work this morning. . . .”

  “What time were they due?”

  “Zero six hundred, Sarge.”

  I looked at my watch, almost noon. “Hell, Kelly, they could be anywhere. Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Mannheim . . .”

  “Must have known we were closing in, Sarge.”

  “How could they have found out?” Special Agent Clarke stirred himself enough to push off the couch. “Weak security, sport?”

  “Might I make a suggestion, sir?”

  “Why not, sport?”

  “If they worked at the Bambergerhof, they might well have been in your room. . . .”

  “So?”

  “So, sir, is it possible that they might have seen your documentation and fled because they had learned you were here to apprehend them?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, sport.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, an elaborate gesture of casualness. “That’s pushing it too hard.”

  It also was a bear-trap closing.

  The pickup operation fizzled out by the time the fog had lifted in late afternoon. Agent Clarke announced to us that the main goal of his trip had been achieved: Gunther Wülfe was dead.

  “The woman and the kids don’t matter, sport. Not at all.”

  He meant he could go home and tell his boss that there was no one to turn over to the Russians. “Husband dead, wife probably dead, kids vanished. Empty house.”

  All the bureaucracies—Justice, State, Russkies—would be happy.

  I sent my team back to their quarters and walked over to the Residenz. I was so damn tired I could hardly move my feet.

  In the ballroom, I smiled at Brigie and nodded, sat at my desk for a c
ouple of moments to finish typing my journal of the operation with the appropriate notes, and walked down to the general’s office.

  “He said to go right in when you got here,” Polly said, raising an eyebrow in a question.

  I gave her a covert thumbs-up sign and she relaxed like a Notre Dame fan when they make the last, decisive conversion.

  Maybe it was not her and John I had seen the night before.

  “You look rotten, son. Operation blown?”

  Without any pretense at military courtesy, I threw myself into the chair on the other side of his desk, a seat in the old days I had persuaded myself was for the bishop’s fool.

  “The son of a bitch left his papers lying around the hotel room, sir. The targets might have seen them and ran.”

  “Damn!” the general said. “One more failure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He relaxed a bit. “Well, we’re not particularly unhappy about this one, are we?”

  “No, sir. The people at the Bambergerhof said they were nice women.”

  He rubbed his hand across his face. “Tough times, son. Tough times. . . . You’re not putting his carelessness about the papers in the report, are you, Sergeant?” He frowned heavily at me.

  “Course not, sir. Should we put out a search order for them?”

  “The husband, Gunther, uh, Wülfe, isn’t it? You’re sure he’s dead.”

  “Yes, sir, all our information, even from CID, indicates that there were just the three women.”

  “And this FBI man is satisfied?”

  “He’s got a report that keeps him clean, sir.”

  “If we find them, we send the woman and the two girls back to the Russians. Would you want that to happen to your sisters—you do have sisters, don’t you?”

  “I see your point, sir.”

  “So, send out a low-priority notice, do me a report, and forget the whole thing until something else comes in, which I’ll give you ten to one won’t happen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I handed him my journal. He glanced over it quickly.

  “The idiot would not approve a pickup last night!”

  “No, sir.”