The Honest Spy

by Andreas Kollender

  “Who is Eugen Sacher?”

  Why had he ever mentioned Eugen to Weygand? How could he have thought being open would divert suspicion away from him?

  “Madrid, 1935,” the Gestapo man added. “It had to do with his giving up German citizenship.”

  “If you say so.”

  Von Günther came out of his office. Seeing the stranger sitting at Fritz’s desk, he planted his hands on his hips. “What’s this all about?”

  “I’m questioning your secretary.”

  “If you want to question any of my subordinates, you contact me beforehand.”

  The little man looked as surprised as he was angered by the snub. His people weren’t used to such pushback. For a moment, Fritz felt respect for von Günther.

  “Herr Kolbe is one of my most trusted staffers. He is diligent, loyal, and never hesitates to work overtime.”

  “That’s neither here nor there.”

  “Do you wish to go upstairs with me to the office of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop? Herr Reich Foreign Minister is always willing to hear my concerns.”

  The little man stood up and looked von Günther up and down. Go ahead and tear each other to shreds, Fritz thought.

  “I know Herr von Ribbentrop quite well,” von Günther said. “I cannot imagine that he would be pleased about this. Why exactly are you here?”

  “I owe you an explanation? That’s certainly news to me. Havermann worked here too. Isn’t that right, Herr Ambassador?”

  “Then interrogate Havermann. He wasn’t even in my department,” von Günther replied.

  “We already interrogated him.”

  “How is he?” Fritz asked.

  The two other men, their cheeks flushed from anger, looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there at his desk.

  “Dead.”

  “His family?”

  “Nothing will happen to the daughter. The wife is being questioned.”

  “Kolbe!”

  “Herr Ambassador?”

  “Go destroy those files now. You can show how it all works.”

  Fritz took out the stack of folders piling up in the safe. There was nothing to do about it now. He thought of all the information that was in there: the transport of Jews, shipyard reports, supply routes to the Eastern Front, documents on combating partisans, talks with the Japanese ambassador Oshima, assessments of Roosevelt’s health, agents in Spain. All going into the fire, instead of to Allen Dulles.

  “Wait,” the little man said. He shouted down the corridor, “Corporal Schulz!” A young soldier came running up to the door holding his rifle to his chest. The little man ordered him to escort Fritz on his task.

  Fritz was back in his office ten minutes later. He didn’t know what von Günther and the Gestapo man had been doing while he was gone, but they were still standing across from one another. Von Günther held out a hand. Fritz handed him the page with the document numbers and the signature of the man in the basement who oversaw incineration. Von Günther held the page up to the Gestapo man’s face.

  “We’re not close to finished here, Herr von Günther,” the little man said. He saluted. “Heil Hitler.” He left without shutting the door behind him. Von Günther tapped on the door and it swung closed but didn’t catch. He pushed again and the latch clicked in place.

  “If you encounter these secret-service types, Kolbe, just get clear of them. You really must be mentally ill to devote yourself to such a profession. Types like that only ever see things their own way, you know. They see ghosts, in the truest sense of the word. Very well, Kolbe, next thing up is . . . Is something wrong? You look pale.”

  Fritz again saw the wispy flames engulfing the documents, discoloring their edges before flaring into a bright blaze. Death sentences. And the noose around his own neck grew tighter the closer to him the questioning got. He had to get to Bern. He had to have Dulles, Greta, and Priest tell him what to do in dangerous situations. He also needed a weapon. He would never let himself be tortured in a Nazi prison.

  He said he wasn’t feeling too well. Von Günther handed him a glass of water from the office sink and said he should go home and get some rest. God knows, he said, Fritz was working too much. “Call it a day early, just this once. That’s an order, Herr Kolbe. I am your superior.”

  Once Fritz was at the door, von Günther called after him. “Don’t go getting scared, Kolbe, yes? Look at me. I am not scared. You still have some things to learn.” He smiled with sympathy. “Well, go on. Heil Hitler.” Von Günther returned to his own office.

  Fritz took him up on the offer. As he left, he carried the chair from the other side of his desk under his arm and, once outside, threw it onto one of the piles of rubble. There was only one chair in his office now, and no one would be able to sit and face him there again.

  Fritz checked the blackout cardboard and curtains in his apartment and pressed them closed. That’ll do, he thought.

  On a map, he drew in the exact layout of the Wolf’s Lair. He circled Hitler’s bunker and the mansion where Ribbentrop resided. He kept thinking about Dulles, Greta, and Priest, and he worried about Eugen. It was highly likely Eugen was being watched. Fritz knew he had made mistakes. He couldn’t attempt any more contact with Bern, not via Eugen at least, and he had to find some new way of working with the OSS. Dulles would know how to accomplish this.

  He ate a piece of brown bread with a little butter and a pinch of salt. The rationing was growing worse, and he reminisced about plates full of Spanish tapas, Polish bigos smelling of bay leaf and sauerkraut, French cheese on bright-white bread, a steak at a restaurant in Cape Town down along the promenade, and that Schweinebraten stuffed with herbs his mother made. How had Marlene put it? Do some proper cooking, then get all snazzied up and smoke a cigarette after dinner. If only there were a single person he could talk to, one single soul he could tell what he was doing.

  He heard footsteps out in the stairwell. Hurriedly, he folded up the map and slid it under his bed’s worn-out mattress. Someone was knocking on the door. He stepped up to his front door and stared at the shabby wood. The person knocked again. He could act like he wasn’t home.

  “Fritz? It’s me. Marlene.”

  She’d come to visit him—unannounced. How wonderful. How dangerous. He opened up.

  “I got ahold of some cookies at the hospital. And—now brace yourself—they have chocolate on them!” She tilted her head sideways. “Fritz? How about a please come in?”

  He so deeply yearned for her. He was just aching to pull her close right now. But the incident in the office weighed heavily on him—the officer’s questioning, the destruction of those files whose contents he would never know, his fear.

  “I can’t right now,” he said. He did not say, Come in, sit down with me, let’s eat the cookies, kiss me.

  “I don’t understand,” Marlene said. She fell silent, letting her head hang. He wanted to tell her so much. He didn’t want to tell her a thing. Her shoes were old but well cared for, her suit worn but elegant. He heard her breathe through her lovely nose.

  “What is it, Fritz? I was so happy about this. It wasn’t easy for me, coming here.”

  He kept silent.

  “Should we go somewhere else?”

  He pressed his hands together and bit his lip. He held on tight to his resolve, snuffing out any resistance.

  “It can’t work,” he said in a strange voice. “You . . . you’re married.”

  Marlene straightened her shoulders. “That’s for me to deal with.” After a moment she added, “I was just fooling myself,” and left.

  He threw the door shut and cursed. He punched the wall. Goddamn it! He ran down the stairs and out onto the bomb-shattered Kurfürstendamm. The sky was as gray as the scarred city. He caught a glimpse of Marlene’s blue suit and could see rage and disappointment in the way she held her back. He caught up with her and grabbed her arm. She yanked it away.

  “What?”

  “Marlene . . .” He waited until a
woman and her child had passed by them.

  “What?”

  “It’s difficult.”

  “Things like this always are.”

  “There is more to this.”

  “Watch yourself, Fritz Kolbe. I’m in no mood for nonsense. I don’t care for it one bit.”

  “Sometimes I imagine that I’m with you in Africa,” he said. “It’s so lovely there. They have fresh-caught fish.”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “Come back to my place. Let’s eat those cookies.”

  “I don’t want to anymore.” She walked on. Fritz watched her as she sidestepped a mound of debris and passed a burned-out car, becoming smaller and smaller amid the rubble. It was a sad sight. She walked through the dying city and, at one point, looked up at a weather-faded, reddish swastika flag that dangled limply from a scorched wall.

  Come back.

  Marlene.

  Come here.

  He dragged his bicycle from his building’s foyer and rode to the Braunweins with his head down. Cursing with anger, Walter told Fritz that they now had to sleep with a little too much fresh air. He showed Fritz the bedroom—the outer wall had a nearly circular hole in it, over which Walter had nailed boards and a gray blanket.

  “You don’t look good, Fritz. What’s the matter with you?”

  My friend, Fritz thought, my old buddy Walter. And I can’t tell you a thing. I can’t explain it to you any more than I can to Marlene. Walter had never once brought up their tense encounter in Fritz’s office. Walter was good at such things; he had always been so adept at letting things go. Just like that.

  “The Gestapo came to your office, I hear?” Walter placed a hand on his shoulder. “Those types can really scare a person. But hey-ho, Fritz, it’s not like you have anything to hide.”

  Fritz cursed himself for having come here at all. There was no point.

  “I have to go abroad soon for a few weeks,” Walter said. “Could you check in on Käthe?”

  “Where to?”

  “Fritz, please. The people in Intelligence found a way to send me overseas—a pretty risky way too.”

  “Walter—where? Give me a compass direction, at least.”

  “North. East . . . South. West.”

  “Are there any memos about it at the Foreign Office?”

  Walter’s brow pinched, and he smoothed out the blanket on the wall. Had Walter noticed something different about Fritz? Could Walter see through him?

  “Does this assignment you’re going on have an official name?”

  “That’s quite enough, Fritz.”

  Käthe pushed open the door, which dragged on the floor, likely from the blast. She’d made coffee, she said.

  They sat down at the table. Nearby, the Braunweins’ People’s Receiver radio played the music of Franz Liszt. Fritz asked Käthe to turn it off. Käthe looked at him and didn’t budge, her eyes blank. For heaven’s sake, Fritz thought. He turned the dial until it crackled and Liszt faded into silence.

  “Turn down the assignment, Walter. And you, Käthe—leave Berlin, once and for all. Get out of here for good.” He stood at the table and stared at his friends. No one spoke. The wall clock ticked on listlessly. Fritz couldn’t stand it. If only they could all return to a life without Hitler.

  “Get away from here, Käthe. Your husband will be leaving you all alone.”

  “Fritz, have you lost your mind?” Walter shook his head.

  “It’s his job,” Käthe said gently. “He can’t take me along with him like he used to. I’ll be here when he comes back. I’ll be here when Horst has to leave again.”

  “The two of you know as well as I that the war is lost.”

  “Goddamn it, Fritz,” Walter said. “You’re saying too much. People are getting killed for outbursts like this.”

  “What, are you going to turn me in?”

  Both men stood. Walter stepped up to him. They stood inches from each other, sharing the same breath.

  “I would never turn you in, Fritz. That kind of betrayal makes me sick.” Walter placed a hand on Fritz’s arm. “We’re all too worked up. Is it any wonder? I say we drink a schnapps.”

  Have a few minutes of peace, Fritz told himself. Relax a little, have a schnapps.

  “I’ll get the nice glasses,” Käthe said.

  “You stay there, I’ll get them,” Walter said. The glasses were small, with thick stems. The light from the floor lamp glistened in the cuts of the glass like ice crystals, and the glasses felt nice to hold. The schnapps was the color of water and smooth as silk.

  “Where are you off to, Walter?” Fritz asked.

  “I’m not saying. You know there are things I can’t tell you.”

  “More schnapps,” Fritz said. He was feeling far too reckless. He desperately needed to find a better way to navigate between the two worlds in which he drifted. At the moment, he was doing a balancing act with one foot in each and it was threatening to rip him apart. “Let’s do another,” he said.

  Walter laughed. “You sure?”

  “Sure I am, come on. Käthe too.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Oh, come on, Käthe.”

  After working a few hours the next morning, Fritz adjusted his tie and headed out down Wilhelmstrasse. He had to get to Charité Hospital, to Marlene.

  The door to her office was shut. He wanted to knock but couldn’t make himself. He walked down the gray hallway, passing stretchers and nurses in worn-out smocks, then turned around and headed back, facing the dark door like a wall before him. He raised a fist to his ear, ready to knock, but stopped his hand inches from the wood. He cursed, then knocked.

  “Come in.”

  He opened the door.

  “Out!”

  He shut the door. He never thought Marlene capable of such a harsh tone. It hit him hard, squashing his will to fight. He nudged the door open and said, “I’ll return later.” He only got Marlene’s back.

  He headed back to his office. Von Günther was standing at his desk with another man and asked where he’d been. “Work, work, work,” Fritz said.

  “Where’s the other chair?” von Günther asked. His open hand gestured at the empty spot in front of Fritz’s desk. Coin-size imprints in the carpet showed where chair legs had stood.

  “It’s kaput. I’m sorry, Herr Ambassador.”

  “This is?” The stranger’s words sounded more like an order than a question. He was short and wore a general’s uniform that gathered in folds over his flat stomach.

  “My secretary, Fritz Kolbe, Herr General. Herr Kolbe, may I introduce General Gehlen, Foreign Armies East. Head of Military Intelligence on the Eastern Front. One of our best men.”

  Gehlen eyed Fritz up and down. The man was slender with a pointy face and had thinning hair, like Fritz. “Fritz Kolbe, secretary to Ambassador von Günther,” he said and tapped at his forehead. “Best notepad ever invented, right up here,” he said. “You only have to keep it sharp. Did you know you can train the memory, just like a muscle?” He continued, “Von Günther and I have been going through some documents. We want to deposit certain papers at the diplomatic mission in Bern—the reason does not concern you. Von Günther tells me you are absolutely trustworthy; you even did the Switzerland run once, to his utmost satisfaction.”

  “Yes sir, Herr General.”

  “I never forget a face,” Gehlen said. “And I appreciate loyal staffers. It’s of great importance to us that we have von Günther here, acting as the Foreign Office branch of the Wehrmacht. You are aware of the position you’re in, Kolbe?”

  “Of course, Herr General.”

  “Von Günther?”

  “I would entrust my children to him.”

  “Always be watching out, Kolbe. Always be looking around you. Be attentive, listen to details. In tense times people become weak—it’s unforgivable. But if you’re capable of recognizing others’ weaknesses, then you’re already well on the road to success. Like I am. Weakn
ess, Kolbe—it’s everywhere. Well, I’m flying back to Russia today. Von Günther will give you your instructions, and you are to tell no one.”

  “Yes sir, Herr General.”

  “Gentlemen.”

  “Heil Hitler,” von Günther said.

  “Heil Hitler,” Gehlen replied.

  Once the general had left, von Günther rubbed at his chin. He looked tense.

  “Perhaps, Kolbe, perhaps that man has just the sort of greatness that our system and the Führer need. I do wonder sometimes . . . How should I put it? If a person is just one individual, right in the thick of things, then that person loses sight of the whole. It’s about the mass movement, Kolbe. The masses are about size; masses are great. As an individual, one is nothing.

  “Now, I can tell you that other departments here don’t work the way they would if I were running them—and that’s not even taking into account any questions of competence. So, Kolbe, you should organize the following files according to this formula I have here . . .”

  Von Günther explained the system to him. He had sealed the folders for travel as usual, so there was no way Fritz would be getting at any of this material. They spoke a few minutes more, then von Günther went back to his office—but first he stopped in the doorway. “Gehlen thinks big,” he said. He made a circular motion with his index finger as if winding the hand of a clock. “We should keep in good standing with that man. He’s actually a fairly agreeable fellow, all things considered. Tell me, Kolbe, can Weygand be relied on more than von Lützow, in your view? Over in Switzerland, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Very well. So then, it’s off to Bern at the end of next week. You arrange it.”

  “Herr Ambassador, one last question if I may: Do you know where Walter Braunwein is being sent?”

  Von Günther planted his hands on his hips. “What’s this about?”

  “He said something to me about a new assignment abroad. I was just thinking, well, maybe I could ask him a little favor. Maybe he could bring me some—”

  “Have you gone mad, Kolbe? A little favor? Bring you something? It’s not a trip to some beach resort. Sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”