The Radio Operator

by Ulla Lenze

  There was a pounding at his temples. A droning sound issued from the high white walls, as if they were pressing in on him. The tastes of coffee and nicotine on his tongue, each intensifying the other. He felt like he was going to throw up.

  “Why aren’t you arresting me?”

  “Then others will step up to take your place. It’s better we keep an eye on the situation and keep it under control. That’s why we’d like you to deliver the radio.”

  Josef nodded.

  “And we want you to keep working with them.”

  “I don’t understand. Why keep working?”

  “No matter what happens. Maintain contact with them. Inform us of anything new that comes up. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Can I think about it?”

  Ettinger sighed, handed him a card. “If you help us, you can start to make up for what you’ve done. Make the right decision.”

  He said goodbye and shook Josef’s hand. A colleague escorted Josef out of the building. He would have preferred to have been led to a cell. To somewhere dark. Deep. No thoughts. Nothing more.

  * * *

  In the subway he took the wrong train. He noticed it after two stops. He got out and took the train to Brooklyn. He felt deeply exhausted. Not even the concern that someone could have seen him going to the FBI had any effect on him. An hour later he was ringing Lauren’s doorbell. Standing in a well-tended front garden with rose bushes and a pergola covered with creeper vines.

  An old woman with labored breathing, Lauren’s landlady, opened the door and nodded toward the stairs.

  Lauren was sitting in her room. She plucked at her neckerchief, seemed to be maintaining a respectful period of silence, as if her status were no longer clear. He put his arms around her, but more like how one would comfort a child. Then he sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette.

  “Please, tell me about it,” she said.

  He looked out the window, but he didn’t see anything, just sank ever deeper into himself.

  Tell her about it? That wasn’t him at all. He wasn’t that man, the man who sat here and had to tell her about the FBI.

  “So no arrest,” she said softly.

  “No arrest.”

  “And instead?”

  “Keep my spot so that nobody steps up to replace me.”

  “You don’t have to do anything else?”

  He hesitated. Held his cigarette in the corner of his mouth for a while without taking a drag. Should he tell Lauren that the FBI had known about him for a while already, which meant she hadn’t betrayed him?

  “You told them about the radio. Why?”

  She plucked again at her neckerchief. She had turned red. Then she shook her head gently, as if responding to a thought, and looked him in the eyes. “I was worried, Joe. I didn’t know who you were anymore. Forgive me. Joe, please trust me again.”

  He felt like he understood something. The problem was, he had always trusted too much. He needed more mistrust.

  He stood up and put his arms around Lauren again.

  A few days later he decided to do as Ettinger had told him. He called Max and set up a meeting. Not long after that he was sitting among clinking bottle crates. Ludwig stank of booze and held a Superman comic in his lap. Max shouted back from the driver’s seat, “The Reich propaganda minister has banned Superman—I’ll have to report you!” and laughed at his own joke. The car lurched from side to side. “Get a grip will you?” Josef shouted. “If we get stopped, it’s all over. Or how else do you want to explain why you’re driving around Manhattan with a radio?” Immediately it got quiet.

  Two weeks later Ettinger summoned him for a meeting. He gave him instructions on the phone beforehand on how he could shake off anyone who might be following him.

  The front car was almost empty when the train came to a stop. He got on, and as the door was closing, he propped it open with his hands and leapt out. He took the next train, got out at Grand Central, ran through the crowds, and then disappeared down another subway tunnel. He rode to Whitehall Terminal and from there went on foot to the Williamsburg Ferry landing.

  Ettinger stood on the upper deck, seagulls circling overhead. Josef joined him, stared at the churning water, and waited for Ettinger to start talking.

  “Have you found out what’s behind Operation Sonnenstaub?”

  “No. Max acts like he knows. But Max likes to show off.”

  He looked Ettinger in the eye. Ettinger let out a breath.

  “He doesn’t trust you. Tell him you want to do something for the fatherland. You’ve been convinced by all the things Hitler has managed to accomplish in Europe. You want to start transmitting again.”

  The buildings of Williamsburg grew closer; in a few minutes they would reach the shore. He would get off here. Ettinger would ride back. They saw kids jumping into the East River, then getting out and lying down on the hot rocks on the shore. Their lives in that moment consisted only of summer and water and heat.

  “Anything else new?”

  “The new agent from Germany has a large office in the Newsweek Building on 42nd Street. It’s listed under some company as cover. He orders every agent to come there alone. Me included.”

  “We know about Sebold. You’d do better not to go.”

  “I’m happy to skip it. But why?”

  “Stay away from Sebold.”

  The sunburned deckhand was already holding the rope ready.

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Ettinger gave him a disapproving look. “We could just deport you, you know. Then once you got back home you’d go straight to the front.”

  “So I am going to be arrested, then?”

  Ettinger nodded. “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “When the time comes.”

  “And will you offer me a deal?”

  “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  32

  New York, September 1940

  HE DID THE DISHES, LISTENED TO THE RADIO, AND WONDERED why he owned only two of everything—two plates, two mugs, two glasses. They all saw a lot of use, though, especially when Lauren was over, and so the dishes never piled up. Josef gave himself over to the thought that it now made even less sense to buy more dishes. He counted the days, days that all felt the same, like they were all a single, drawn-out day, and he didn’t even know what he was waiting for—for them all to get arrested? For America to start dropping bombs on Germany? For Hitler to come marching into America? In any case for something big and final that would make it possible to have a new beginning, instead of this tangible sense that he was headed toward the end. Lindbergh was on the radio warning the US about getting mixed up in the “European conflict” when Lauren came into the kitchen with her hair dripping.

  “The blow-dryer is broken.” Her eyes leapt over to the radio. He immediately turned the volume down. “It’s unbelievable that they keep letting him speak!”

  “Apparently Lindbergh Drive in Buffalo is going to be renamed soon,” he said.

  She nodded and sat down at the kitchen table with a book.

  “Do you think if there were a Joe Klein Street it would have to be renamed too?” His desperate jokes didn’t play well with her. She just grimaced. He set a cup down in front of her and poured her some coffee.

  She buried herself in her book. She disappeared completely, crawled right into the pages. Lauren’s face always looked different depending on what angle he was looking from. When he thought of her, he saw several faces; none had emerged as the one sole face.

  “Why haven’t you left me?” he asked.

  She smiled teasingly and laid her hand on his. “Because then you’d be alone.”

  The question was meant to be playful, but something dangerously serious had now crept in, and he tried to break it up: “You snore, by the way.”

  She laughed, taken aback. “Excuse me?”

  “You snore pretty much all night long, babe.”

  She
took him with her everywhere she went. Charity events, rallies, demonstrations. It wasn’t always easy. He noticed that as soon as he stepped into a room, the mood shifted. Was it because they could tell he was from Germany? Lauren always disputed it afterward: “There are enough Germans in New York who are against Nazi Germany—everybody knows that.”

  “But why do they look at me like that, then?”

  “Maybe because you’re so much older than me.” She was embarrassed.

  That night they went to an exiles’ reading at a German bookstore. There she envied him for being able to understand the pieces the exiled writers were reading from, but he felt out of place. The smile on his face as stiff as cardboard. Toward the end he struck up a conversation with a man named Heinz, a German who had emigrated in the twenties and who was also an amateur radio operator. Pretzels were being served; when the tray came by them Heinz took the last pretzel and split it in half.

  “Does it taste like the ones back home?” asked Lauren, who had suddenly reappeared at his side.

  “We didn’t have pretzels. Not in the Rhineland.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t like gatherings, just in general,” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter who’s doing the gathering.”

  “You don’t like people.”

  “I like individual people, just not lots of people. I like you.”

  It wasn’t true. He didn’t like Lauren anymore.

  That night he stubbed his pinky toe against the bedpost. For two seconds there was no pain, then it shot emphatically into his consciousness. Back in bed he pressed himself close against Lauren’s back. Sometimes that’s all he was: a body holding another body in the night. It wasn’t desperation exactly, more like this was now his one connection to the world.

  In the morning Lauren pushed the newspaper toward him. “So that was the earthquake we felt yesterday!”

  He read the headline: 27 DEAD, 25 MISSING, 200 HURT IN BLAST AT JERSEY PLANT.

  Lauren tapped her finger on an article beneath. It mentioned the Black Tom attack of 1916, carried out by German agents. His throat tightened.

  “No, Lauren. No.”

  “No what?”

  “The Germans aren’t capable of something like this. At least not the Germans in America.”

  He stood up, knocked against his coffee cup, and was just able to stop it from tipping over. The sudden movement made Princess start barking.

  “Hitler is capable of far worse in Europe, Joe.”

  The barking. It wouldn’t stop.

  “You have to leave now,” he told Lauren roughly.

  “I have to leave?”

  She seemed to be waiting for some gesture of affection, but he didn’t move. She took her handbag, tossed her reading glasses into it, gave a quick look around the room, making sure not to meet his eye, and walked resolutely to the door. He saw that when she got there she hesitated once more—his last chance. Then the door opened. He heard the rustle of her clothing.

  He rushed over to the telephone, called Max, and asked to meet.

  “Sure. We have something to celebrate.”

  “Down by the riverbank, right now.”

  He found him next to a bridge abutment, legs planted wide, hat pulled down over his forehead, a cigarette in his mouth. Princess merrily jumped up on him. Josef called her back with a stern shout.

  “So now you know what Operation Sonnenstaub is.”

  “You and the others are behind this?”

  “I don’t owe you any information. You’re just a radioman.”

  A thought flashed up in his mind: he would tell him if he could.

  “This attack took you completely by surprise. Admit it.”

  Max tossed his cigarette butt away. “Whose side are you on, anyway, Josef? I’d watch what you say. You wouldn’t want it to get around to the others.”

  Down on the southern tip of Manhattan, smoke, dust, and ash hung in the air. At the print shop the explosion was all anyone talked about. The radio was reporting that the death toll had risen to fifty. By now it seemed an established fact that the Germans were behind it.

  He heard his name, then Arthur tapped him on the shoulder. “Call for you. Unknown.”

  In Arthur’s office he nodded along to Ettinger’s instructions: “Three o’clock on the Hudson.”

  He hung up, and Arthur stood in his way.

  “Now I know what’s going on here. I’ve always said there was something fishy about the whole thing.”

  “Don’t worry so much, Arthur.” He had no interest whatsoever in hearing any of Arthur’s theories and slipped past him, his hand already on the doorknob. But Arthur kept talking, caught up in the dangerous excitement of revelation; nothing would stand in its way.

  “The idea was to fool everybody. To distract everybody with amateurs. Secretly everybody figures the German agents are a bunch of chumps and the situation is under control. Meanwhile, in the background, attacks are being planned, this time by the real agents. You and your buddies’ job was always just to distract the FBI. And you don’t know it yourselves; that’s part of the plan. I mean, who would willingly say to them, ‘Sure, I’ll play the Nazi sap for you.’ No, they want real commitment. Pretty ingenious. Seems like the Nazis.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  He knew it wasn’t absurd. And if Arthur could come to that conclusion, then so could Ettinger, who wanted to meet with him on the Hudson in an hour.

  Shortly before three he walked down Vandam Street, heading toward the river. The newsboys thrust the headlines in his face. He looked up at the sky that opened up beyond the canyon of buildings.

  Two men were standing next to the wooden bench. One of them was Ettinger. The other, a chubby younger agent who turned eagerly to face Josef, with alert eyes and moist lips. But Ettinger grabbed his arm to hold him back and whispered something to him.

  They walked along the water, one on either side of him. The friendliness was gone. No more cigarettes either. Ettinger seemed to look at him differently now. As if Josef had been putting on an act, while in truth he had always been one step ahead of him.

  “The number of dead has gone up to fifty by now. There’s something you’re not telling us, Joe. Start talking.”

  “Maybe it’s got something to do with this Sebold?”

  “It most definitely does not have anything to do with Sebold. You have to get more out of Max.”

  He looked at Ettinger, shaken, tried to connect back to what it had been like before, them smoking and looking at the skyline together. A certain trust. An understanding. In Ettinger’s eyes there was nothing.

  * * *

  In December he followed the light, how it pushed its way into the room a bit later every morning, and how the twilight began a little earlier every evening, pressing down on the afternoon and shortening it. The trees had lost their leaves early. New York faded into an all-pervasive gray, into cold, into white clouds of vapor in front of his nose, shapes swelling and then collapsing in on themselves; he watched them when he stood with Ettinger. He concentrated on the fog of Ettinger’s breath, which mixed with cigarette smoke. Ever more often now he thought, Arrest me already, you asshole. This voice in his head, Arrest me, you asshole, and clouds of vapor; these meetings consisted of nothing else.

  He now drove the delivery truck for Max. Ludwig had been arrested for shoplifting. He had slid some expensive cigars from their case at Macy’s and then pocketed them; Ettinger told him. Max still didn’t know why Ludwig had disappeared. Max, who by this point had improved his Morse code skills, sat with his mouth twisted up among the drink crates. Josef steered the truck through Brooklyn, keeping his eyes open for traffic cops. Ettinger let him know beforehand which routes were safe. Sometimes he noticed Ettinger in a car behind them. He knew that they listened in on Max’s transmissions.

  Today, a leaden gray afternoon in Central Park, Ettinger arrived a few minutes late. He held a bag of roasted chestnuts in his hand, offering Josef so
me. To be polite, he fished one out. Josef almost thought he heard a hissing sound when he touched it—they were piping hot.

  “The Hercules explosion was an accident, Joe.”

  “Then please arrest me now.” He said it in German: “Verhaften Sie mich.”

  “How come?” said Ettinger, also in German.

  “Because now’s the time when my innocence is most apparent.”

  Ettinger shook his head sadly. “We’re not quite there yet.”

  The next day it was in the newspapers. DOUBTS SABOTAGE IN HERCULES BLAST—FBI IS MYSTIFIED AS TO CAUSE OF EXPLOSION AT KENVIL, NJ.

  Lauren, who in the last few weeks had treated him as though he were personally responsible for what by now were fifty-two deaths, who at the kitchen table pushed newspaper articles his way discussing warships, uniforms, maps, and tanks, grew milder.

  He felt weary and drained. But it was with a certain relief that he climbed into the truck with Max the next day.

  “So it wasn’t an attack, then.”

  “You idiot!” said Max.

  “What?”

  “That’s a lie the American government is spreading. To prevent panic from spreading among the population!”

  Josef started the engine. It was a cold December day, the streets slick. The accumulated smell of gasoline, cigarettes, and acrid sweat hung in the air inside the truck.

  “There was no attack, you hear?” Josef simply said it a second time.

  “You stupid oaf, you’ll believe anything! Sonnenstaub equals Hercules. End of conversation.”

  “There was no attack!” He was shouting now.

  “Calm down, little man.”

  On Flushing Avenue he noticed Ettinger’s white mustache and baby-pink skin in the rearview mirror. Ettinger was driving a black Austin today; the FBI provided him with a different car every time. The Austin stuck to them like a magnet, with a buffer of about ten feet; no one could get in between them. Crossing Knickerbocker Avenue, Josef sped up. Ettinger sped up too, also ignoring the red light. “Hey, careful,” said Max behind him. “We don’t want any trouble, remember?”

  He steered the truck carefully past clusters of pedestrians who stood in the median, driving at normal speed again. When the road ahead of them was clear of people, he floored it.