“Not all of us,” Fritz said.
After the first day in the engine room, Fritz noticed that he smelled different than before. He was allowed to use the sailors’ washroom, including their soap that looked like marble. Despite that, the scent of engine oil had seeped into his skin, seemingly for good, and couldn’t be washed away. At least outside he had benefited from the sunshine and the robust ocean wind; down below he was breathing in things that could not possibly be good for his health.
Yet despite it all, Fritz was happy enough with his noisy cell and his solitude. Through one of the sailors, he got a message up to the Biermanns: he had backed down to the Nazis, but he still didn’t know how long he could hold up.
4
MORE TO THE STORY
Switzerland, a few years after the war
The memories hit Fritz more intensely now that he’s telling these two strangers how it all began. When he’s sitting alone facing a stack of blank paper, he turns inward and remains sealed off—feeling shattered, morose, and hostile in that way he never likes to feel. Wegner and Veronika listen attentively as he speaks and rarely interrupt him, yet he senses that they’re also acting as a kind of corrective for him. At times he hears the clearing of a throat; at others, the rasp of a lighter. Wegner takes lots of notes, as does Veronika, but she writes things down at times when he doesn’t.
Fritz spins his globe. “These facts that you need, Herr Wegner, are about men who stand over a man at night and threaten to drown him. Facts like those rip right through a person. I practically urinated in my trousers. Is that a fact?”
Wegner nods, hesitantly.
“From South Africa up north, then northwest,” Fritz says, running his index finger over the blue Atlantic. “From the island of Saint Helena on toward Cape Verde, then a change in course to the northeast. The Canary Islands, Madeira. To the south of us lay the Sahara. These were all the sites of great expeditions focused on exploration and foreign cultures. And what was I doing? That damn ship was taking me closer and closer to Fascism.”
“Do you think those men really would have killed you?” Veronika asks.
“To types like that, a life really only counts when it’s their own.”
“Do you have a photo of Katrin?”
Fritz opens the shabby, rustic cupboard. Its shelves are filled with handwritten papers, old folders, photos, newspaper clippings, and documents, and worn books. He knows right where to find his photos of Katrin.
“May I?”
“Please.”
Veronika takes the photo and smiles. “What a cute girl,” she says.
“That was taken in Camps Bay.”
Veronika passes the picture to Wegner, who looks at it and then studies Fritz a moment.
“Were you able to stay in contact with her?”
“I could have.”
“Where is she now?”
“This story is not yet over, Herr Wegner.”
“You don’t think that’s overstating things a bit?”
Fritz falls silent.
Wegner lights up a cigarette. Fritz could never quite explain why, but he’s always liked watching the way a person lights a cigarette—Marlene most of all. Most people look relaxed in that first moment, leaning back, growing content. He even remembers smoking himself in that secret office in Bern, and on the shattered streets of Berlin when he was facing death, his nerves wearing thinner than used wax paper.
“In 1939, you were back working in the Berlin Foreign Office,” Wegner says. He’s looking at his notes. Fritz can tell it’s just for show, that Wegner knows the facts.
“Yes,” Fritz says, “I was back in the Office on Wilhelmstrasse, in the heart of the city, in the center of power. Walter Braunwein picked me up from the port once I was finally allowed to leave that miserable ship. The Office sent a car for Biermann and his wife, all quite official. Biermann looked horrible; he was rather ill.”
“Braunwein picked you up? Now there’s a true friend,” Wegner says.
Fritz hesitates. Then he says, “Yes, he did, along with Käthe.”
“Might be another interview candidate,” Wegner says.
“They don’t know a thing about it.”
Wegner sets his pencil on the table and looks out the window. The sky is deep blue, the meadows are shimmering green, and the mountains loom bright gray. Fritz liked to imagine those mountains making a tremendous racket as they rose thundering into the sky while forming eons ago. The world is so lovely, he thinks.
Veronika asks if she can have another piece of his tasty apple pie. When Fritz goes into the kitchen for a slice, he hears her whispering with Wegner. She has more patience and likely more understanding of all the sacrifices that his long-ago actions truly had required of him. He goes back in and sits down with the young reporters.
“It’s so nice to see people eating all they want,” he says. “As the war progressed in Germany, it was harder and harder to get any decent food on one’s plate. But those aren’t the sort of facts that interest you, are they, Herr Wegner?”
“With all due respect, Herr Kolbe, that—and the period where you got whatever you want to call it, scruples or whatever—doesn’t play that well in print, if I may say so.”
“Oh, you may say whatever you want, which is quite a good thing, isn’t it? It wasn’t always like that. My period of scruples, as you call it? I was torn. For God’s sake, just imagine that you’re working for the Devil himself day in, day out. And yet there were crucial things that occurred even before all the document smuggling. Marlene, for example.”
“Marlene Wiese? You can’t be serious—I mean, in regards to what we’re doing here. My goal is to write an article about one of the greatest spies—”
“Without Marlene,” Fritz interrupts, “we likely wouldn’t be sitting here. Definitely not.”
He carefully moves the globe to the side and pulls down a city map of Berlin from the rustic cupboard.
“This is about Berlin now. And no need to bother with my scruples. That’s my issue and mine alone.”
He unfolds the city map. The paper tears along the folded lines as Fritz expands the page, Berlin practically breaking into bits.
“Kurfürstendamm was where Braunwein procured a little apartment for me,” he says. “And here”—he points at the map—“is the Foreign Office. Wilhelmplatz. Corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Vosstrasse.”
Wegner pulls a large photo from his briefcase—a portrait. Fritz recognizes the face: gaunt and angular, with those heavy-lidded, piercing eyes.
“Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop,” Wegner says. “Your head boss in the Foreign Office.”
Fritz laughs bitterly. He takes the picture of Katrin off the table and places it on the tiled oven. He doesn’t want his daughter’s lovely face near this man.
“After the war, I saw von Ribbentrop one last time, at the Nuremberg Trials,” he says. “I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to know what I did. Yet when we saw each other, I don’t think the bastard even recognized me. Me, a minor official. He never had anything to do with regular people, our fine Herr Von. He was hanged. I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I can’t say that I was sorry about him. I sometimes wonder what these men thought about in their final moments. Was there any understanding at all? Did they think of someone they loved?”
“Love?” Veronika asks. “Those people?”
“Sure,” Fritz says. “Everyone loves someone, or something. Even those men loved. Whether we like this fact or not is fully beside the point.”
Fritz realizes that Wegner’s trying to steal a glance at Veronika’s profile without anyone noticing. She too has that bold nose. Fritz likes that. The young woman radiates appeal, and he likes having her here. He believes she’s a good person.
Wegner taps the photo, on von Ribbentrop’s forehead. “Did you ever speak with him personally?”
“In the Wolf’s Lair. And I got pretty close to Hitler.”
“You passed the ex
act layout of the Wolf’s Lair on to the Americans,” Wegner says. “But nothing happened—unlike with other information you divulged.”
“Why didn’t the Americans bomb it?” Veronika adds.
“I wasn’t ever told. I wasn’t ever told much. I still haven’t been.”
“Everyone is just a puppet in a story like this,” Wegner says.
“Not me! Damn it. Not me. What is it with you?”
“My apologies. Pardon me.”
“Maybe we should give the story more structure,” Veronika says. “That might work, and could be beneficial in some way.”
“Oh Christ,” Fritz says. “Structure? Tough to do, Fräulein Hügel. We’re talking four years of keeping my mouth shut and playing along.”
In hindsight, the years before the secret files came on the scene seem dull, gray, and empty to Fritz, and he doesn’t know how to reassemble them. He hated himself; he loathed himself. Looking back now, he has no idea what he did that whole time—and he doesn’t want to know. Veronika is right, though. He—they—must try to follow this story like scaling a rope, working their way hand over hand. If they don’t, he’ll only lose his resolve to finally get on paper everything that happened.
“I never wanted to be a hero,” he says. “It’s important to me that you know that.”
He takes a stack of faded photos from the cupboard. He leafs through them and lays another head shot on the table.
“Ambassador with Special Duty Ernst von Günther,” Fritz says. “I worked my way up to his outer office.”
“You must have a picture of Marlene, don’t you?” Veronika asks.
“Inside here I do,” he says, and pats at his heart.
Veronika makes a camera with her fingers and says, “Click.”
“The story needs a face,” Wegner says.
These young people have no idea the feeling such words unleash inside Fritz. A cold shudder runs over his skin. For the longest time, when he looked in the mirror, his face contorted into a purplish grimace before his eyes. The story needs a face? Which one?
He lays the portrait of his direct superior on the city map.
“Here we go,” he says, and in his mind von Günther rises from the photo paper, bouncing on the tips of his toes, marching down the long corridors of the Office, full of enthusiasm, a document in his hand as always. Eventually the day will come when he will stare at Fritz and Fritz, struck by mortal fear, will reach for the gun in his pocket. But for now von Günther is calling Fritz’s name from out of the past: “Kolbe! Kolbe? . . .”
5
THE DILIGENT COURT JESTER
Berlin, 1943
“Kolbe! Kolbe?”
Fritz could hear von Günther’s voice through the brown door connecting to his superior’s office. He lifted his chair and pushed it back a bit. He couldn’t slide it, as the rug was too tattered and fuzzy. He walked across his fastidiously tidy office and knocked on the door.
“Come on in, do come in. My dear Kolbe.” Von Günther’s jovial tone disgusted Fritz. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly before pushing down on the door handle.
Von Günther’s office was large and bare. It had two thickly curtained windows that faced Wilhelmstrasse. A picture of Adolf Hitler in profile hung in a golden frame.
“Take a seat,” von Günther told Fritz. “We have some files to discuss.”
He spread out the documents. The desk lamp’s glow fell on the polished wood like moonlight on a still sea. The Reich Eagle with its garland-encircled swastika was printed on the files; too much ink had been used, and the edges of some eagles were bleeding over and fraying black. Fritz’s superior drummed his fingertips on one eagle at the top of a big stack of dull cardboard folders. Top Secret Reich Matter, Fritz read to himself. Finally. He didn’t dare look von Günther in the eye. Fritz wasn’t sure exactly when his resolve had kicked in. Up till now it had only been a plan—he’d had no idea whether he’d have the courage to follow through on what he was contemplating. He had been thinking it through for so long, feeling clear about his resolve at times, perplexed at others. He’d walk around his apartment, back and forth, his fists balled and trembling. It all led to one conclusion: if he was caught, he was dead.
“Kolbe?”
“Herr Ambassador?”
“Are you listening to me? Is something wrong?”
Ambassador with Special Duty Ernst von Günther was responsible for keeping the Foreign Office in close liaison with the armed forces—the Wehrmacht. Thousands of top-secret files crossed his desk. He was Political Affairs, Department One, Military—in short, “Pol 1 M.” He was the very man whose outer office Fritz had needed to reach, which he did after years of bitter frustration and self-loathing that he’d made great effort to suppress.
After his shocking arrival in a Germany of swastika flags and goose-stepping, Fritz had gotten this far through dogged hard work and a little luck. Walter hadn’t been able to do much for him, and Consul Biermann had managed just as little. Fritz had first been assigned to a position in Personnel and Visas, where he’d spent his days staring at the walls of a windowless green office.
1939. 1940. 1941. 1942. Dread, death, destruction, delusions of grandeur, war. Tyranny. There was the time two SS men had been in his office, their black tunics open, hands in their trouser pockets. They had fun chatting while waiting for the papers Fritz was to issue them.
“Babi Yar,” one was saying. “Thirty thousand fucking Jews in one fell swoop.” He slapped his thigh and laughed as if he’d just scored a lovely goal in a soccer match.
“Yep, that’s how you do it,” the other one said.
“Thirty thousand, Herr Kolbe. With one stroke. Now what do you think of that?”
“I’m not well versed in such things, Herr Lieutenant.”
“Not well versed?” Both men laughed. “It was only Jews, Kolbe!” the first one said. “It’s not like we’re monsters.”
“Yes sir, Herr Lieutenant.”
“So are we done yet, Herr Kolbe?”
“Papers like these take time, Herr Lieutenant.”
“Good God, Kolbe, just get on with it.”
Fritz folded their documents, ran his thumbnail over the crease, and slid the pages into envelopes. Once the men had turned their backs to him, he formed a pistol with his fingers and shot them in the backs of their necks.
Fritz had asked Walter if he could get von Günther to consider him. Fritz always greeted Ambassador von Günther when he saw the man dashing down the corridors and heard his loud voice in the Foreign Office. Von Günther’s outer office secretary, Frau Schmidt, was in her mid-forties and wore starched blouses. Fritz considered ways that he might persuade Frau Schmidt to quit her job. Death came to his aid in the end. Frau Schmidt learned, all on the same day, that her husband and one of her sons had been killed at the front. She crept out of the office, someone congratulated her on her heroic sacrifice, and she was never seen again.
Fritz was the first to respond to the internal job announcement. He was promoted to von Günther’s personal advisor the very next day. He wasn’t exactly as attractive as Frau Schmidt and was in fact a good deal shorter, von Günther told him, but he’d only heard good things about Fritz. He was diligent, disciplined, organized—he’d made himself thoroughly well known in that regard. Biermann and that resourceful Walter Braunwein had both put in a good word for him. If the things these gentlemen said were true, he explained, then Fritz was exactly the man he wanted working for him.
Von Günther launched into a lecture about the latest crises. There was the British counteroffensive in the desert and those monstrous bombing raids. Despite the heroic nature of Germany’s soldiers, they still weren’t advancing any farther on the Eastern Front, and Morocco and Algeria were a disaster. But the Battle of Stalingrad—now there was greatness. “My God! Such heroism, Kolbe, such sacrifice!” von Günther said, though he admitted things weren’t looking good at the moment, objectively speaking.
Fritz put on a pleasan
t smile, borrowed from his repertoire of lies and loathing.
“But in such a crisis, a man proves himself, Kolbe—and our system does too, yes?” Von Günther drummed on the files again. “Having to weather crisis is the only way to build character. You will see. Germany will master this.”
Fritz could hear the drone of truck engines out on the street, which made the windowpanes vibrate. Von Günther was noticeably younger than Fritz, a large man with a wide face that had more than enough room for his eyes and nose.
“It’s how one acts that always decides matters, Herr Ambassador,” Fritz said.
“Action, indeed. Summer of ’41, Kolbe—that was too late to launch a campaign against Russia. I said it back then. Spring, it would have to have been spring.” Von Günther lit up a cigarette and nudged the blackout curtain to the side with a fingertip, as if touching a Renaissance painting without permission, to gaze out. Not a single light shined outside. Fritz placed a hand on the top-secret files. All mine, he thought. Sweat burned in his armpits. Next to the folders stood two framed photos. In one, von Günther’s wife was laughing in the sunlight, holding a bouquet of flowers in her arms. In the other photo the ambassador’s two daughters were sitting on a wooden fence in white dresses, their little hands clamped on the crossbeam. The wife and girls were giving Fritz admonishing looks.
“No bombers today?” von Günther asked the window. Such is war, Fritz thought—people gazed at the sky more than ever before.
“It’s always tough on the children.”
Von Günther nodded at that. “Well, I’m going home now, Kolbe. This stack of files must be destroyed. Take care of it. Our dear von Ribben-snob has signed off, all issues resolved.” He laughed. “You know that snob married into money? Wife’s family produces champagne. That von of his is yet another acquisition—belongs to some distant relative.” He opened the door of his desk to pull out a green bottle of Henkell Sekt. He handed it to Fritz, saying it was a gift—the Office had enough of it. “If only von Ribbentrop were as bubbly as this champagne here, things would go down so much easier here at the Office.”
The Honest Spy Page 6