by Tricia Goyer
“Taking a job, I see. You must be new around here.” The private’s friendly grin revealed his dimples.
“That’s correct.” Gabi knew a flirt when she saw one.
“Maybe we can have a coffee after you get off work.”
“Do members of the Grenzpolizei always make a pass while they’re on duty?” Gabi punctuated her comeback with a brighter smile that turned the private’s ears red and prompted his compatriots to stifle a laugh.
“Very well,” he said dryly, waving her on. “Please respect the no-talking rule in the tunnel.”
She was committed now. Gabi clutched another lungful of air to settle her nerves and queued up for the German checkpoint. The dark tunnel, packed mostly with Swiss women pressing to get to work on time, imbued a surreal eeriness. Nazi Germany certainly had to be another world, and this would be her first personal experience with the evil she had read so much about.
As Gabi advanced toward the end of the tunnel, a spotlight burned ever brighter into her eyes. She strained to see what was beyond the steel mesh fencing, which looked to be a transit hall leading to several rail platforms.
This queue, surprisingly, moved quickly, and she found out why when she reached the German customs control. A trio of Wehrmacht officers, flanked by a fourth brandishing a machine gun, waved through three or four at a time with barely a glimpse at the official documents. She assumed they were regulars accorded expedited treatment.
“Halt. Papiere, bitte.” A German officer, who looked to be in his early thirties, singled her out. With a square head larger than normal and a great beak of a nose, the officer personified rigid authority and a streak of ruthlessness.
Gabi’s eyes moved from his angular visage to his gray-green tunic with four pleated patch pockets and a pair of silver twist, cord-piped collar tabs. What most caught her attention, though, was the insignia on the left breast pocket: a woven eagle and skull embroidered onto a matching gray-green wool trapezoid with a firm backing. She meekly handed over her work permit without a peep.
The officer studied the official German document. “How long have you been working at H&M?” His pronunciation of High German put her off balance for a moment, but she had rehearsed an answer to this question.
“Actually, this is my first day,” she replied in High German.
The German officer next reviewed her Swiss identity card, eyes roving from her black-and-white photo on the document to her face. Gabi felt her neck muscles tighten and her stomach lurch, but she ignored her discomfort. She thought about distracting him by asking what bus line she should take, but she decided to remain as inconspicuous as possible. She lowered her gaze so he couldn’t look into her eyes underneath the brim of her hat.
More seconds passed as a train whistle shrieked from a locomotive passing overhead. Heavy railcars sent a deep rumble through the concrete-lined tomb. The sound of squealing air brakes signaled that the train was coming to a full stop.
“Carry on.” The officer returned her work permit and moved to the next person in line.
Just like that, she was in. Gabi accepted her papers and walked purposefully past the mesh fencing into the German side of the Badischer Bahnhof. Several concrete stairways on the right and left directed passengers to numbered platforms, but Gabi continued marching along the dimly lit hall strewn with old newspapers and trash. She noticed that a half-dozen shops were boarded up, save for a single kiosk offering a limited inventory of newspapers, magazines, and books along with several baskets of fruit. The price posted for her favorite fruit—apricots—looked cheaper than in Switzerland.
Dieter Baumann’s directions were specific. Once in Germany, she was to walk to the bus depot in front of the train station, where the Swiss operative would be waiting for her. She set her sights on the bright daylight of a summer morning, but a hand brushed her arm, and someone sidled up to her. Gabi’s footsteps slowed.
“I see you passed through with no problems.”
Gabi turned toward the voice.
“Keep going. We can keep talking, but let’s not draw any extra attention our way.”
“I thought you were meeting me at the bus stop.”
Dieter Baumann, dressed in a gray pinstripe suit, unleashed a broad grin. “I lagged behind just in case something tripped you up at the checkpoint.” He winked at her. “I wasn’t amazed that you made it. You never cease to surprise me, Gabi. I’m even awed by how gorgeous you look in those old-fashioned work clothes.”
Nice try, Dieter. Her stomach churned as she realized how she’d let her emotions get the better of her in previous interactions with him. His intentions were becoming clearer. How he’d singled her out. Used his good looks to charm her. Uttered compliments to disarm her. And now this operation in wartime Germany, which smelled like week-old perch from Lake Geneva. Gabi quietly balled her fists as her anger increased with each step, yet she could not give away her true feelings. Mr. Dulles counted on her. The Americans counted on her. And her compatriots counted on her to expose this weasel.
Gabi returned a flirtatious glance. “My mom said this Basque suit was quite the style back in . . . 1921, when she last wore it.”
“You talked to your mother about—”
“Of course not. You have nothing to worry about.” She ever so lightly brushed her fingers against his hand. “Have I ever let you down?”
Gabi and Dieter took seats close to the front of the bus where a farmer kept one arm draped over a tarp-shrouded wooden cage. Piercing squawks erupted each time the lumbering bus hit another pothole, an occurrence of increasing frequency.
Gabi thought the driver, a Frenchman in his sixties wearing a navy beret, wasn’t too interested in winning the Bus Driver of the Month competition. When he wasn’t driving straight into potholes, he forgot about double-shifting to the next gear, preferring to grind the gearbox as the dented bus lurched in response.
She touched Dieter on the arm and rolled her eyes, which elicited his grin. “I’ll need to see a doctor for my lumbago after this bus ride is over,” she said. “So where are we?”
“The Friedlingen quarter of Weil am Rhein. We’re coming up soon on several Swiss textile factories, including H&M.” Dieter pointed toward his left. “They were established before the Great War when Swiss bankers poured investment francs into German holding companies because of cheaper land and available labor. After the Nazi blitzkrieg in 1939, neither side saw any reason to change the status quo. The Swiss had the law on their side because they owned the factories and the Germans needed their output to clothe their advancing armies as well as the home-front populace.”
“That explains a lot.” Gabi looked to her right through a grimy bus window. Beyond the leafy green environs, she caught the white steeple belonging to St. Franziskus Catholic Church—in Riehen. She found it hard to believe that her hometown—and freedom—were just a kilometer or two away as the crow flies. The double rows of three-meter-high fencing and barbed wire along the border were a formidable barrier, however.
“Is our stop soon?” she asked.
“Two or three to go before the main square. We’ll walk from there.” Dieter cradled a small leather valise in his lap as part of the Swiss businessman ruse.
Gabi turned toward her counterpart. “Have you been to this house before?”
“No, and I didn’t want to risk another trip into Germany for reconnaissance. My source guaranteed the house is empty. A key is underneath the clay pot next to the back door. This place is on the edge of town and backs up to a vineyard. If we run into any nosy neighbors, I’ll say we’re acting on behalf of the Gestapo. That usually cuts short any conversations.”
“Your High German is that good?” Of course, Dieter could speak Hochdeutsch. She was referring to his Swiss accent.
Dieter held up a hand. “Not as good as yours. Tell them you’re my secretary on a mission that we’re not at liberty to discuss.”
When their stop came, they exited the bus. The deliberate walk through Weil am
Rhein’s modest commercial district passed without incident, and ten minutes later they found the house at Wittlingerstrasse 6, an upper-crust villa that had seen better days. The two-story mansion, painted in amaranth pink and as tall as it was wide, was set off from a quiet two-way lane with a circular gravel driveway. An unkempt lawn was green from summer thundershowers, and the scruffy grounds and straggly bushes hadn’t been tended to recently.
Gabi adjusted her hat and glanced over her shoulder, scanning the streets for any signs they were being watched.
“Let’s walk in the back door like we own the place,” Dieter said. “In broad daylight.”
The pair strolled around the sizable villa to an unfenced backyard bordered by several hectares of ripening green grapes, dangling in winged clusters from three-wire trellises. Within the backyard confines was a small garden plot overrun with weeds and field grasses. The unpicked tomatoes, zucchini, and squash were rotting on the vine.
Gabi helped Dieter move the clay pot, where the latchkey was waiting as promised. Dieter inserted it into the back door lock, which opened without protest at his quick, twisting motion. They stepped into a tidy kitchen, where a newspaper lay open on the breakfast nook table. Gabi peaked at the front page: it was a regional rag—the Süddeutsche Zeitung dated July 14, 1944. Just three weeks ago.
“We take the hall to the stairway.” Dieter pushed open a kitchen door that swiveled in each direction. “Then it’s upstairs and a right to the master bedroom. Next to a sitting area is a wall safe behind a credenza.”
The wooden stairs creaked as they mounted to the living quarters. “Don’t worry about making any noise,” Dieter said. “No one’s around.”
The master bedroom, with a walnut-stained hardwood floor accented by a circular Persian rug, included two leather chairs and ottomans set in front of a fireplace. “Safe should be over there.” Dieter pointed to the far wall and window that overlooked the driveway.
“Behind the French Country sideboard?” Gabi, the daughter of a furniture maker, pegged the chestnut sideboard with brass hardware to be from the Louis XIV era.
“I believe so.” Dieter walked over and studied the antique credenza for a moment. “Here, give me a hand.” He directed Gabi to the other end of sideboard. She set her handbag down, and with the count of eins, zwei, drei, they lifted and moved the heavy furniture piece a couple of meters, revealing a secure lockbox set in the wall just above the floor molding.
“Right where the safe was supposed to be,” Dieter said.
Gabi gathered her ankle-length wool skirt and crouched down for a closer look. “You’re kidding me—a Rubin safe.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, just the opposite. Rubins are as easy as they come. Manufactured in Hamburg or Berlin. Jewish firm, if I remember correctly. This one looks to be 1870s vintage. Unless the components of the combination lock have rusted out, this should pop open in a jiffy. Maybe we’re lucky and they left the combination lock on the factory setting—100, 50, 100.”
Gabi dialed 100-50-100 in rapid sequence. The lock failed to click, however. “Well, I didn’t think it would be that easy.”
She rubbed her fingers and leaned her right ear against the combination lock. Then she rotated the dial to the right several times in quick succession before slowing considerably. Gabi closed her eyes and listened intently for the slight noise of the lever touching the tumblers. Nothing during the first go-around.
“I thought you said this would be a snap.” Dieter peeked past the curtain edge at a window overlooking the driveway.
“Once you determine which of the tumblers the lever is touching, it’s relatively simple to find the exact combination. Let me see . . .” Another rotation of the dial came up dry.
“It’s going bad?” Dieter’s eyebrows folded in concern.
“No, it’s still early. These things require patience.”
Gabi leaned closer again. Four, five minutes of listening passed until she heard something—actually, it was her fingers that ascertained a slight eccentricity in the tumbler. She memorized the number: 72.
She turned the combinational dial in the opposite direction, and her fingers detected the lever touching . . . 36.
“I think I got it,” she said. People were creatures of habit, and if she were playing the roulette wheels at Monte Carlo, she’d push her pile of chips onto the felt square of 72—if the roulette numbers went that high.
She carefully moved the dial toward 70 . . . 71 . . . and detected the slightest indication of the lever touching the tumbler. Safe companies, she knew, always allowed a little bit of fudge on the combination numbers—plus or minus one—meaning that 71, 72, or 73 would work. The safe door unlocked with a satisfying thud.
“We’re in.”
Dieter hurried from the window to her side. Gabi reached in and pulled out a legal-sized brown manila folder, several centimeters thick, stuffed with papers. She didn’t see anything else inside the safe—wait, in the back . . . her fingers touched something soft . . . and out came a royal purple velvet pouch with a gold-braided drawstring.
Gabi held up the fist-sized pouch to the light streaking through the window, surprised at its heft. “What’s this?”
“I’ll take that, please.”
Both heads swiveled toward the deep voice’s source standing under the transom—a voice speaking High German.
“Karl, what are you doing here?” Dieter sprang to his feet.
Gabi turned to see a shadowy figure whose fleshy face was partially obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, and her stomach somersaulted. She was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. She stood to her feet and thought about making a run for it, but the menacing man with a bulbous nose blocked the path between her and the bedroom door.
“I see you know my real name, Herr Baumann. Quite a game we’re playing. What else do you know about me?” The German chuckled, then quickly lost his smile when he reached into his jacket and extracted a black pistol.
Dieter held out both hands. “Karl—Ludwig—let’s stick to the plan.”
Suddenly, an eerie sense of familiarity came over Gabi. Her racing mind searched its memory banks until something clicked. The memory of the man’s beefy hands wrapped around her throat came to the forefront, as well as the grotesque way he squeezed the last gasp of oxygen from her lungs until she bit into his sausage-like fingers.
“Wait a minute—you’re the same guy as last week in Basel’s Old Town!” Feelings of shock and betrayal swirled through her pounding heart. Dieter had set her up—
“Very perceptive, Fräulein Mueller. I’m running out of time, so if you’ll just hand over the diamonds.”
Gabi gasped. Diamonds? She turned toward her partner, anger pounding with every heartbeat. “So that’s what you brought me into Germany to do—bust open a safe on a diamond heist?”
Dieter backpedaled. “Listen, we didn’t know what was in that safe, did we, Karl?”
The German smiled. “You’re right. It could have been anything. Jewish diamond dealers always keep German war plans in their safes, ja?”
Karl fluttered his free hand to Gabi, still keeping the pistol pointed in their direction. “The diamonds. I’m waiting.”
She’d never had a gun pointed at her. The stakes had just been raised. The chances of surviving this encounter had dropped dramatically, unless . . .
Dieter dared to take a step toward the hefty man holding the gun. “Karl, we had an agreement, remember? Fifty-fifty.”
“So? I lied. Now, Fräulein Mueller, my patience is fleeting.”
Gabi knew time—as well as her options—were running out. She directed her wrath toward Dieter once again. “Why did you do this to me? Tell me, why!”
Dieter’s eyes widened at her outburst. “Gabi, this wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. I was always going to cut you in.”
“Cut me in? You animal!” Gabi advanced on Dieter, furious. In one smooth move, she dropped the purple pouch and thick folder into her l
eather handbag and swung it in the air. “You tricked me, you traitor. Now look at what you’ve gotten me into!”
She whipped her handbag through the air, but instead of striking Dieter, she directed the blow across Karl Rundstedt’s right forearm. His pistol clattered across the parquet floor and slid under the four-poster bed. The German dove for his weapon while Gabi secured the handbag’s strap over her shoulder and lunged for the door. Forgetting his gun for the moment, Karl rolled over and grasped her ankle with his left hand.
“Dieter!” she yelped. “Get him off me—”
Dieter kicked the man’s face once, but before he connected a second time, Karl used both hands to trip Dieter, then pounced on him like a raged animal, pummeling Dieter’s back.
Released from Karl’s grip, Gabi scrambled to the fireplace, grabbed the brass poker, raised it over her head, and swung with all her might, striking Karl’s left shoulder.
“Ach!” Enraged by the blow, he swiped at Gabi’s ankles, bringing her down hard. The poker tumbled out of her hand, and Dieter snatched it. He rolled to his knees and raised it above Karl’s head.
“Run for it, Gabi! Take the diamonds and go!”
Gabi turned to the door, then paused as Karl lunged at Dieter, knocking the poker from his hand. They wrestled furiously for control of the brass weapon.
Dieter glanced her way. “Do as I say—now!”
Using this moment of distraction, Karl stretched out his left hand and retrieved the pistol from under the bed.
“Run, Gabi!” Dieter pushed to his feet as he grabbed the poker and swung it, forcing Karl to deflect the blow with both arms. Then came another blow and another . . .
Gabi sprinted out of the room just as a deafening gunshot splintered the air and the wooden doorjamb just centimeters from her shoulder. Hitching her skirt above her ankles, she scampered down the stairs, out the back door, and bolted across the driveway with a single-minded focus—returning to the safe haven of Switzerland as quickly as she could.