Priest pointed at the documents. “These are good. Ending up on the gallows is not so good. You got tired of living, is that it?”
“I want to stroll with Marlene in a Berlin that’s whole again.” Fritz would have liked to say more, but he couldn’t. Again the thought nagged at him that he didn’t really know who Dulles, Priest, and Stone actually were.
“These documents are good,” Priest repeated. “So good they smell like forgeries to me.”
“They’re real.”
“You have proof?”
“No.”
“How did you get the documents out of your office?”
“Around my leg.”
Dulles cleared his throat and looked down at Fritz’s legs.
“And Uncle Adolf just lets a man in a job like yours travel to Bern?” Priest said.
“Courier trips are assigned by rotation. I’m considered absolutely trustworthy—besides, I’m not a top diplomat.”
“You sure aren’t,” Priest said.
“Easy, Will,” Dulles said.
“A source right inside the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse? It’s too good to be true,” Priest said.
“Too good,” Greta said. “Not necessarily too good to be true.”
“How much do you want?” Priest asked.
“How much money? Not a cent, Mr. Priest.”
“Ah.” Priest, Dulles, and Greta eyed each other, a triangle of glances across the desk, a sworn society. Despite their different personalities, Fritz sensed a solidarity and a great trust among them—so unlike the Office in Berlin, where mistrust was seen as a virtue.
“Not one cent?” Greta said. “Gentlemen, honor does still exist.”
“Come along, Herr Kolbe, I’ll take you down,” Dulles said.
Priest and Greta reached for telephones and started working the dials.
“It’s going to be a long night,” Dulles said. “But we’re used to that.”
Dulles led him back the same way he’d come with Priest. At the door to the backyard, Dulles stopped and looked Fritz up and down.
“We’re going to have to look into a few things. It’s never very easy. Phone calls are being monitored, so we have to do things in a roundabout way: middlemen, alternate routes, technical stuff that I know works, though I couldn’t tell you how. Be careful, Herr Kolbe. If things seem like they’re going wrong, disappear. Never try to fix the matter. Find an excuse and disappear. Do you understand me?”
“I believe so.”
“Good. How are you getting back?”
“Herr Sacher’s waiting in the car.”
“Right nearby? Don’t do that tomorrow. Have him wait farther away. Agreed, Herr Kolbe? See you tomorrow evening. And if you find the time, do go and see the famous shopping arcades here in Bern, Lauben, they call them, they’re quite charming.”
“So you trust me?”
Dulles smiled at Fritz and pushed his glasses back into position before opening the door. “You Germans are a strange people. You’re capable of outperforming anyone, culturally as well as technologically. Truly exceptional. And then you go plummet like this. How does something like that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Fritz said. “It’s either highly complicated or disturbingly simple. Either way, it must be stopped—at all costs.”
“It will be very, very costly, for all involved.”
Dulles waited until Fritz reached the garden gate. Fritz nodded at him, seeking some token response of accord or faith. Dulles’s silhouette, broader yet more welcoming than Priest’s, remained motionless.
Fritz walked out to the street and turned toward Eugen’s car. He heard a sound behind him, like something being dragged. He looked around. A shadow in an alley appeared momentarily to have an arm, and then it was slowly pulled back into darkness. Fritz walked faster and scrambled into the car.
“We’re being watched,” Eugen said.
“Someone’s following me.”
“So now what, Fritz? What now?”
“Drive, Eugen. Just drive.”
“They know who I am.”
“Good Lord, just start driving.”
Eugen started the engine. The car jerked forward, metal grated against metal, and the car lurched back to a stop.
“Eugen?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eugen started the car up again and stepped on the gas. He wiped sweat from his forehead and lost his glasses doing so. Fritz groped around and found them next to the gas pedal.
“They’re—they’re behind us,” Eugen stammered.
Eugen drove along the wide streets, turned off hastily into narrow lanes, then crossed the Aare and steered back toward the city center. After a few minutes Fritz had no idea where they were. Who was in the car behind them? Were German intelligence men following him, or had he fallen into a trap by going to Dulles and his people? Fritz couldn’t think straight. He kept shifting in his seat, and he could smell Eugen’s sweat.
After about twenty minutes, the yellow cat’s eyes in the rearview mirror faded. Eugen was making strange noises, his breath rattling as if he’d just done a sprint. Fritz had Eugen let him out far from the hotel and told his friend he’d be in touch if he needed him. Otherwise, Eugen should keep a low profile, and go about his daily routine.
“Why did they stop chasing us?” Eugen asked. “This isn’t good, Fritz. This isn’t my kind of thing.”
Fritz wanted to say something, but his heart beat so heavily in his chest, he couldn’t get a word out. He gave Eugen’s shoulder a squeeze and climbed out into the warm night.
“What’s the best way back?” he said.
Eugen told him the route.
William Priest was waiting at the entrance to Fritz’s hotel. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking far more relaxed and casual than before. Fritz felt like punching him, more out of hostile rage than fear.
“That was a pretty amateur tail,” Fritz said.
Priest laughed.
“There are always two teams, Herr Kolbe: one that you notice and a second that someone like you never will.”
Fritz cursed.
“The most important thing to know is this: we tailed you, but no one else did. That’s one good thing. Well, see you around.”
Priest stopped a couple of yards away and turned back to Fritz. “You’re certain you don’t want any money? We could pay you in dollars. There’s no end to the funds we have at our disposal. Our organization, the OSS—”
“OSS?”
“Office of Strategic Services. We’re a big deal. See, the OSS is booming with the war on. Washington showers us with dough. The Russians are our brothers-in-arms for now, but that will change at some point. America hates communism. I hate it. So, let’s say a thousand dollars per delivery?”
Fritz shook his head.
“Five thousand?”
“Why don’t you use that money to go buy your wife something nice instead,” Fritz said. He liked giving such a sharp-witted reply.
“Don’t try and kid with me, Kolbe.”
“You think Dulles has something going with Greta?”
Priest laughed and pointed at Fritz. Then he headed off into the darkness, a blur in the night.
He wanted to call Marlene on the phone so badly—and Katrin. He wanted to tell them what he’d done; he wanted to imagine them with their ears to their handsets, to let them play a part in his work. He was dying to tell even one person about his meeting with the OSS. But that couldn’t happen. He had to think of their safety, and of his survival; it was better they didn’t know anything if ever questioned. It was bad enough that Eugen knew the small portion he did. He had to keep his story to himself, completely and utterly. Having to do so hit him low in the gut, just like the act he put on in the Office did.
Fritz stood before the mirror. He looked tired—but he grinned. He pressed his hands over his mouth and committed the image to memory. The skin of his skull shimmered under the glow of the light. If he only knew how to calm himself. He stil
l felt as if he were running far and fast, his heart racing.
He went down to the bar and had them pour him a glass of champagne. The waiter asked him what the celebration was for. “You would never believe it if I told you,” Fritz said. He looked through the bubbles rising in the glass at the red lighting of the hotel bar, and laughed.
Back in his room, he spread a map of Bern out on the table and memorized the main traffic routes and landmarks: the stretch of Old Town that ran east to west with the Aare River flowing around it, the cathedral, the Kramgasse and Schmiedenplatz, and Kirchenfeld Bridge which led to the other side of the river, where the German diplomatic mission was. He ran his finger over the various routes to the clandestine office of Allen Dulles and his team. Priest showing up at the hotel like that had angered him, yet he felt certain he’d landed in the right place. One Fritz Kolbe was passing explosive Foreign Office documents to US intelligence.
He called down to the hotel bar. “You know what? Go ahead and bring a bottle of that champagne to my room.”
“For that thing I wouldn’t ever believe, Herr Kolbe?”
“The very one.”
Fritz set his bare feet on the window ledge and looked out over the Bubenbergplatz, at the circles of yellow light around the streetlamps and under the shopping arcades, and drank his bottle of champagne. It was almost light when he went to bed. The mattress was hard, the way he liked it, the duvet thick yet lightweight, and he smiled because he sensed that weariness was finally winning out over anxiety. He felt his limbs becoming heavy and his breathing steady, then he twitched a little, his eyes snapped back open, and he experienced that wonderful moment when a person is able to sense, as clear as the day, that the warm cover of sleep was taking him away.
At nine in the morning, the car from the German diplomatic mission pulled up to the hotel. Weygand was inside. He grunted hello to Fritz and instructed the driver to take his time so that he and Fritz could talk.
“Do you have any contacts in Bern, Herr Kolbe?”
The question caught Fritz by surprise. Why was Weygand asking that? He might not know about Eugen, yet it was no secret back in Spain that Fritz had been the one to process the documents necessary for Eugen to give up his German citizenship. Had Weygand gone digging back that far? If so, why? Could this seemingly subdued man know something about Eugen and his contacts in Bern?
Fritz was looking out the window. “A very pretty town,” he said.
“Herr Kolbe! Do you have any contacts in Bern?”
“There’s a man named Eugen Sacher. A merchant. I met him many years ago now. He lives here in Switzerland, as far as I know.”
“Did you happen to see him?”
“I don’t know where he lives or where I can reach him. On top of that I hardly have time—when I get even an hour to spare I’m exploring the town. You’ve heard about those famous shopping arcades, the Lauben, surely?”
Weygand rested his fist against the window. “They’re all going to get a big surprise one day,” he muttered. Then he raved about Hitler and grand new weapons and big strategic moves, about how weak the British and American armies were and how primitive the Russians.
As he spoke, Fritz imagined Weygand dressed in pink underwear. That was another idea his father had come up with. Hierarchies had their place at work and in school. There was a place for recognizing other peoples’ achievements too. But as soon as someone abuses his position, even for a second, imagine him in pink underwear, Fritz’s father had said. Whether a king, a general, or anyone else: pink underwear! Where had the man gotten all his ideas? Fritz’s mother had been fond of saying he was practically swimming in them, and she loved that about him. She said she would have loved to be able to read his mind as he worked away for hours in his workshop.
The car pulled up and parked before the diplomatic mission’s front yard. Frau von Lützow was standing at the gate, her daughters lined up along the varnished fence. Fritz said hello. Weygand begged Fritz’s pardon and said that Fritz should go on ahead because he had a small matter to discuss with the madam. Fritz thought he heard Frau von Lützow say, “Make it snappy” but wasn’t sure if he’d understood correctly.
The polished scent of the diplomatic mission’s foyer met Fritz as he walked in and entered the first office. Its window overlooked the yard and quiet street. Frau von Lützow was looking around and talking with Weygand. She got up close to him and pinched the man’s chest real quick. Then with a snap of her fingers, she ordered her children in their white dresses to follow her.
As Fritz went to leave the office, he caught his foot in the kink of a telephone cord. The phone clattered off the table onto the floorboards. He cursed and picked it up. When he’d finished, Weygand was standing in the doorway. The two men looked each other in the eyes a moment. Then Weygand came in and looked out the window through which Fritz had been watching.
“Someone gave away Citadel,” Weygand blurted.
Fritz wanted to ask what he meant, but decided to keep quiet.
“The assault on Kursk—Operation Citadel. Someone gave it away. That means there’s a leak somewhere in Berlin. If the Russians hadn’t known about our plans for deployment, they never would’ve been able to stop us. Model, von Manstein . . . none of those Ivans could have stopped our field marshals. Isn’t that right, Herr Kolbe?”
“They would’ve had no chance,” Fritz said. He did not say, You Nazi asshole.
Weygand was eyeing him as if searching for something in Fritz’s face.
“All of Russian history shows that those people are born only to serve. If I may: Why are you not at the front?”
“I’m exempt.”
“As indispensable to the war effort? You? Why aren’t you a Party member? I find that a little disconcerting—like so much these days.”
Here we go again, Fritz thought. Personal Record Form, entry 27.
“I’m about to apply soon.”
Weygand smiled, took Fritz by the arm, and led him out into the hallway. “People are always so quick to draw the wrong conclusions, aren’t they?”
“That they are, yes.”
“A person has to proceed carefully. At the gallows, they slip that noose around a traitor’s neck very slowly. Then, while he’s still twitching, they pull down his pants. All of that gets filmed.”
“I think Herr von Lützow is waiting for us.”
“Ahem . . . right. Then we probably should get going.”
Allen Dulles and Greta Stone were standing in the doorway to the backyard, watching Fritz as he pushed open the gate. He approached and they did not budge, two statues halved by shadow and the glow of the orange summer sunset.
“Nice to see you again,” Fritz said. Dulles and Greta glanced at each other, that same deep trust passing between them. Fritz wanted to exchange glances like that with these people; he wanted to finally be acknowledged someplace where he could truly be himself. Where else could that happen but here in this clandestine OSS station?
“Hello, Mr. Wood,” Greta said.
“Wood?”
“From now on,” Dulles said, “your name is George Wood. There’s no Fritz Kolbe anymore.”
“Fritz Kolbe is dead,” Greta said. “Long live George Wood.”
“Fritz Kolbe is not dead,” Fritz said.
“He’s deader than dead,” Greta said.
William Priest was waiting for them up in the offices. He pointed at Fritz. This was likely some American form of greeting, so Fritz returned it. Priest grinned.
“I think I can trust you, Mr. Wood,” Dulles said.
“Me, I’m not so sure,” Priest said.
Fritz looked to Greta, who was leaning in the doorframe. She wiggled her hand. “I’m just so-so.”
“You went to the Brits before you came to us,” Priest said. “You should’ve told us that detail.”
“The Brits declined.”
“Wood, you have to tell us such things,” Dulles said.
Fritz was surprised by how easily
these people had switched to his unfamiliar new name. Greta, seeming to notice this, told him the name Kolbe would never be uttered again in these rooms, nor would the name ever get mentioned at any other OSS post.
“You remain unknown,” Priest said.
“These documents of yours”—Dulles patted the files—“they’re outstanding. I want to come clean, Wood: there is immense mistrust of you. It will be tough getting you established.”
“Can you do something for the Jewish people mentioned in so many of the reports?”
“Let what we do be our concern,” Priest said.
Greta was pouring whisky, while Dulles stuffed his pipe, then held a match over the tobacco as if in deep concentration.
“We can’t guarantee your safety, Wood,” Dulles said. “You’re traveling back to Berlin tomorrow. If—and I stress if—something happens to you, we will deny ever having heard of you. On the other hand, we’ll do all we can to protect you, though there’s not much we can do after you switch trains in Basel.”
“Nothing at all,” Priest said and toasted Fritz.
“You want to continue with the deliveries?” Greta asked. She placed her slender fingers on his shoulder and looked down on him as he sat there. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater. Fritz had never seen such a thing on a woman before.
“Yes,” Fritz said. “I do.”
Dulles sat behind his desk, his pipe sticking out of the middle of his mouth. From Fritz’s angle it looked like Dulles had a thick dark-brown nose that was pumping out clouds of smoke.
“You bring us the reports, Wood,” Dulles said, “and we’ll assess them.”
He leaned back and stared at Fritz, then exchanged those dueling glances with Priest and Greta. Fritz understood that the moment had arrived for him to convince the OSS once and for all. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out more documents he’d transcribed onto thin paper.
“One of your diplomatic dispatches from Cairo was intercepted. So you can assume your State Department code has been cracked.”
Greta ripped the page of codes from his hand. She rushed into her office but stopped in the doorway. “This your handwriting? It’s awful. We’ll practically need a cryptographer for this.”
The Honest Spy Page 12