The Honest Spy

by Andreas Kollender

  He wondered for a second why he didn’t. Do what is right and have no fear. In a few hours he’d be risking his life at the border, and because of this shitty war he didn’t dare tell Marlene what he really wanted to do. Instead he thanked her for the coffee. He looked into her eyes and tried to read her thoughts. She looked so young. Was it possible that she was thinking and wanting the same things as he?

  “When I’m around you I always feel like a schoolboy,” he confessed.

  “I make you nervous, Herr Kolbe?”

  “Isn’t it a little mean for you to ask a question like that?”

  “A little, yes.”

  A shudder of resignation rippled through Fritz. This woman was married, and there was no way he could possibly tell her what he was planning, no matter how much he would love to confide in her. She must be able to tell from the way he looked that he’d suddenly been deprived of something important.

  “How do you think this all will end?” he asked.

  Her face grew earnest, the muscles of her broad cheekbones tightening. She popped open the cigarette case and Fritz gave her a light with the lighter he’d bought right after they first met.

  “We will pay, Herr Kolbe, everyone in their own way. My son, Hans, he . . .” She exhaled deeply as if freeing herself from more than just the smoke. “That was only 1940. Yet we keep living.”

  “I’m so sorry about your son, Frau Wiese . . .”

  She raised her hands, a shield. Fritz couldn’t imagine losing Katrin. He muttered a curse.

  “Could you ever leave here?” he asked her.

  “What about the patients? I’m a trained nurse, and I’ve been promoted to the professor’s personal assistant. Also, my mother still lives in Berlin. No, I can’t leave.” She gazed around the office as if looking for someone else who was present. “This here, this is what I do. For me it has nothing to do with politics. I try anyway.”

  “I’ll be coming back.” He’d told Katrin the same thing, in Africa, about a hundred years ago. He looked her squarely in the eyes.

  “In case we never see each other again, Frau Wiese, I’d like to tell you how very lovely it’s been to at least get to know you. It was such a pleasure. I’m hoping, well . . . that you’ll watch out for yourself.”

  “Why wouldn’t we ever see each other again?”

  “I’ll be sure to get the chocolate.”

  “Then we’ll certainly see each other again, Herr Kolbe.”

  “It’s Fritz.”

  “Fritz. Call me Marlene.”

  He held out his hand. Feeling her skin against his did him good. Her hand was warm and her grip firm. From the doorway, he turned to her one more time.

  “I’ll tell you all about it one day.”

  She put out her cigarette.

  “No matter what it is,” she said.

  The train station was bathed in a bluish light, all the regular lamps having been replaced with blue-tinted ones. The mighty locomotives bore swastika symbols. Metal grinded harshly against metal, a gigantic forge in the cold light. Women with children shoved their way into the cars, suitcases got jammed in narrow doorways, announcements were barked, and whistles sounded. Fritz’s ticket was for the first car, special reserved seating. He was about to haul himself up the steps when he heard someone shout his name. The shock of it drove through his chest like the blow of an axe. He clutched the metal handrail and looked around.

  “Hey-ho! I’m not about to let you go running off to Switzerland without saying good-bye.”

  “God, Walter.”

  “What is going on with you? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “You scared me to death, that’s all.”

  “Fritz? Everything all right?”

  “I’m fine, Walter. My mind was just elsewhere.”

  “With that woman?”

  “Marlene, yes, that’s right.”

  “You described her to me so thoroughly, I feel like I already know her. A fantastic woman, Fritz. What are your chances?”

  Fritz placed a hand on his heart.

  “You’re alone too much,” Walter observed. “You might be getting a little strange.”

  “Only since I’ve been back in Germany. Things weren’t like this before.”

  The conductor blew into his pipe, doors were slammed shut, and the locomotive pumped out smoke.

  “I have to go, Walter. It was good of you to come.”

  They shook hands.

  “Friendship might be the only thing we have left,” Walter said, looking around them.

  “What kind of mess have we gotten into here?”

  “I don’t know. None of it should have ever been allowed to happen. And now it’s our life. Not exactly heroic.”

  “Take good care of yourself and Käthe, Walter. And of Horst.”

  Fritz found an empty compartment, pulled the door shut behind him, and closed the thin curtains. At 8:20 p.m. on the dot, the train started rolling out of the station, and Fritz wanted to see nothing more of Berlin. If anyone searched him, he was a dead man. The worst part was that he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He had no weapon. Bringing one hadn’t been an option. He could practically feel the Gestapo men’s firm grip on his upper arms, and he had no clue how he would endure what would surely come next.

  There was still time to stop it from happening. It would be easy enough: pull down the window, feel the wind and smell the steam of the locomotive toiling away, then loosen the papers from his leg and toss them out . . . Done. Only a simple few seconds, during which weakness would feel like strength. Afterward he’d be free, and his right leg so much lighter. He could stay in his job for the rest of the war, and no one would make von Günther’s secretary face trial if they lost. He would make it through this—he would stay alive in order to testify against von Günther later.

  He grabbed for the curtains with both hands, yanked them open, and saw his pale reflection in the glass. Do what is right and have no fear. He exhaled a long, deep breath, his face vanishing in the fogging glass. He pulled the curtains shut again and took his passport out of his jacket pocket. German Reich, it read, and below those words were the eagle with the slanted swastika and Ministerial Passport. He scratched at the swastika with his fingernail, harder and harder until a hint of golden dust was left on his fingertips.

  He tried to read and play a little chess with his travel set. He ate his bread and cheese and drank lukewarm ersatz coffee from his thermos. At a stop in Heidelberg, a man in a suit shoved open the door to his compartment. Fritz stared at him and the man closed the door again.

  As the train barreled onward, Fritz’s dim and clattering cell delivered him ever closer to Switzerland.

  He had to get off the train in Basel, along with everyone else. The border station there served as the final German enclave before entering supposedly neutral Switzerland, Marlene had told him. She’d once visited Switzerland with the professor, who had thought the place was teeming with secret agents—said you never knew whom you were talking to.

  Exhausted, with stubble on his face, Fritz stepped from his car, glanced at the guards at the border crossing, and walked down to the baggage car. There he saw to the usual cargo boxes from the Foreign Office. Red Reich flags hung from the station ceiling, and soldiers with rifles on their shoulders stood on both sides of the checkpoint, staring at passengers, their steel helmets harshly reflecting the light.

  Fritz’s calf itched. His heart constricted. He tucked his briefcase up under his arm, prickling with sweat, and stepped into line with the other passengers who were waiting at the checkpoint. The border inspector was checking people quickly before bossily waving them through. There was still time to turn around, go to the toilet, consign the documents to that rushing suck of water. No. No! There would be no more turning back.

  He heard a locomotive rumbling, giving off steam, breathing heat; he heard a woman call shrilly for her child. As he got closer and closer to the border inspector at the desk in front of the customs
hut, he felt a growing urge to urinate.

  When the border inspector waved papers at a little elderly man, two uniformed men stepped out of the customs hut, walked around the corner of the inspector’s desk, and silently led the man back inside. They’d be conducting a body-cavity search, Fritz knew. He wondered according to what criteria the men were picking out passengers. Were they choosing based on some kind of quota, or by looking deeply into eyes that could not stay still?

  Fritz’s stare dug into the bright overcoat before him, belonging to a woman with a dark mole on the back of her neck. The inspector was holding her ID. For a second he glanced past the woman and into Fritz’s eyes. A slight twinge happens when one person is looking at another right at the moment the other person notices. Fritz smiled. The man slapped the woman’s ID wallet shut and said, “Next!”

  Be calm, hand of mine, Fritz prayed. He felt the urge to twist his body somewhat due to the sweat under his arm. He showed the inspector his ministerial passport and visa without comment. The man watched him, his eyes small.

  “What do you have in your case, Herr Kolbe?”

  Fritz opened the leather flap, pulled the sealed folders out a bit, and let them slide back down.

  “Not so fast!” The inspector pulled the case open and ran his fingertips along the edges of the folders. “You have four days in Switzerland, not a minute longer,” he said. “Carry on! Don’t just stand here, keep going.”

  Fritz didn’t hear a single sound come from the hut. He hurried to the first toilets he found and urinated for so long he had to prop one hand against the wall. He stood at a sink and tore his shirt off, grabbed the bar of soap from his suitcase, and washed away the sweat. His hands still trembling, he pulled on a fresh shirt, tied his tie, and slid down along the tile wall to the floor. He stayed there, clutching at his forehead, until the washroom door opened. He fought his way up at once, whistling the overture to The Magic Flute, grabbed his things, and rushed out past the person entering.

  Outside, the commotion at the train station spun all around him: women, children, men with hats cocked at an angle, distorted sounds, the shop windows reflecting harsh sunshine. Fritz chased down the streetcar that connected to trains of the Swiss Federal Railways and got on the one to Bern. Only when he was leaning his forehead against the cool window and saw the blue sky over the silhouettes of those striking mountains did his breathing begin to slow, and the itching on his calf lessen.

  He had four days to carry out his plan. The whole first day he had to spend in the German diplomatic mission on Willading Lane. This outpost of the Foreign Office was housed in a villa with green window shutters and a yard with severely pruned shrubbery. Fritz sat with Consul von Lützow and his secretary, Weygand, in an office that smelled of freshly brewed coffee. Von Lützow, a man with very dark hair and a stature similar to Fritz’s, asked about conditions in Germany and all the work being done by von Ribbentrop. Von Lützow said he’d only met the Foreign Minister once. “One does feel a bit left to oneself at times,” he said.

  Just as Fritz was hoping he would finally be taken to his hotel, von Lützow invited him to dinner with his family. Fritz declined, citing the long trip and the fact that he hadn’t slept well.

  “Come now, Herr Kolbe. My wife’s German culinary skills will keep you going.” Von Lützow reached for the silver-framed photo on the desk. His wife had a broad, stern face, with lively dark eyes. “It was not easy for her to leave Berlin and come here with the children to join me. Not to worry: after we eat I’ll have you driven back to the hotel in my car. Do not be deceived by appearances, Herr Kolbe—we may not have to endure all those air raids here, but life is hard nonetheless. You wouldn’t believe what administrative hurdles we have to jump, and one thing”—he wagged his index finger—“one thing is clear: Bern is teeming with spies. Our intelligence section never complains about having too little to do. Yet even here, Herr Kolbe, Germany remains unbeatable. Whenever Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin sends his agents here, we know about it. Isn’t that right, Herr Weygand?”

  Von Lützow’s secretary hadn’t yet said a word. A smile was stuck on his face. He was a pallid man with a cleft chin. Fritz noticed that Weygand balled his right hand into a fist at random intervals. Before Weygand could reply von Lützow rubbed his hands together and said, “Dining and drinking heal body and soul. Don’t be shy; we have enough. And the scenery here, Herr Kolbe . . . If you had more time I could suggest several hiking routes. Splendid.”

  At dinner, von Lützow’s wife told Fritz about the good standing German women enjoyed and the crucial role they played in raising children. Her three daughters sat lined up along the long side of the table, against the wall, speaking only when asked. Frau von Lützow’s actual face was not as pleasant as the image of it Fritz had seen in the consul’s office. She had something hard about her, and when she glanced at a person, her eyes narrowed to slits. Weygand eyed Frau von Lützow, sliced his roast into very small pieces, and leaned into his fork. When von Lützow asked Fritz about his thoughts on Hitler, the realization hit Fritz that he was being interrogated, and detailed questions would follow any second. They had seen right through him this whole time and knew why the skin of his calf still stung.

  “Herr Kolbe? Our Führer?”

  Fritz spread out his arms. “What else can be said that hasn’t been already?”

  Frau von Lützow nodded favorably; Weygand watched Fritz from over his fork, a piece of rosy-red meat raised near his eyes.

  “We’re depending on him,” von Lützow said.

  “Depending?” Frau von Lützow said. “My dear husband, there’s far more to it than that.”

  “There’s International Jewry, for one,” Weygand said.

  “Hear, hear,” Frau von Lützow said. “Heil Hitler.”

  “Heil Hitler,” said the three children.

  “Hi Hitler,” Fritz said. Weygand scrunched his eyebrows, while Frau von Lützow cleared her throat and wiped an imaginary crumb from the corner of her mouth.

  After dinner, Weygand escorted Fritz to the door. A long black sedan with swastika standards on the fenders stood waiting beyond the front yard’s angular shrubbery.

  “Always so quiet, Herr Weygand?” Fritz asked.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “What for?”

  Weygand opened the car door for him. Darkness loomed inside. “Get in,” Weygand said without looking at him.

  In his hotel room, Fritz threw his suitcase onto the bed and washed his face with cold water. Putting his hat back on and pulling up his collar, he rushed back out into the night. On the drive over he’d spotted a nearby telephone booth.

  Eugen answered cheerfully, but Fritz cut him off.

  “I’m in the Hotel Justicia on Bubenbergplatz. Come here as soon as you—”

  The phone booth lit up, a glare reflecting around Fritz. A car was coming around a curve. It passed the booth, returning Fritz to murky darkness.

  “As soon as you make contact. Eugen? Are you doing this for me or not?”

  The handset at his ear grew warmer and released a stammer from Eugen. Fritz gave him a moment.

  “All right. I’ll try. I’ll come see you after. And Fritz? Have a big drink waiting for me.”

  “You bet I will. They have to bite. They’ll be eating out of your hand. And I’ll deliver too. So that all this miserable crap can end as fast as possible. I want the Nazis destroyed. I want to go to Africa. I want to see Katrin, Eugen—I want to hold my daughter again.”

  Fritz went to hang up the phone but had one more thing to add.

  “And Eugen? Don’t mention my name.”

  In the hotel bar a few guests, couples mostly, remained at the tables lit by little red lamps. One man in a hat was sitting alone, reading a newspaper. Fritz kept an eye on him. He drank a whisky, but even that failed to slow the beating of his heart. He smelled cigarette smoke in the air and listened to the couples around him chattering, the variety of tones blending together in a kind of gent
le background music.

  A car pulled into the parking lot, its headlights coloring the bushes yellow, and then the lights went dark. The car doors stayed shut. Eugen probably still had his hands on the steering wheel and was thinking about driving off.

  “Come on, Eugen, get out,” Fritz muttered. After a few minutes the driver’s door opened slowly. The weak light of the hotel windows and streetlamps made Eugen’s suit look as though it were coated in an amber powder. Fritz raised a hand in greeting but Eugen couldn’t see him yet.

  They hugged hello, two old friends who’d hadn’t seen each other for a long time. The newspaper reader glanced at them, folded up his paper, and left. They watched him go.

  “Nice hotel,” Eugen said.

  Fritz placed a hand on his upper arm. “It’s great to see you.”

  Eugen only wore perfectly fitted suits and tonight was no exception. His nose looked too big for his face, and he kept his short gray curls under control with plenty of combing. Fritz wanted to ask how things were going with his friend, but now was not the time for friendly chatter.

  “What did the British think, Eugen? What did they say?”

  “I’d really like a whisky.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Yeah, well, what can I say?”

  “Eugen!”

  “They aren’t interested.”

  “What?”

  “It was all for nothing, Fritz.”

  Fritz sank down deeper and deeper in his armchair, a feeling of emptiness and the darkness of the room enveloping him. “I never even got upstairs,” he heard Eugen say.

  It had all been for nothing. This could not be. This simply was not true.

  “Fritz, don’t take this wrong—but you don’t have a clue about how all this works. It’s pointless.”

  “I’m going over there myself.”

  “For Christ’s sake. You can’t take the risk. You think the Germans aren’t watching the other embassies? You can’t go there, Fritz. Pull yourself together and think. You always were a dreamer—but now is not the time for naïveté.”