“Plenty of people are interesting,” Fritz says, “provided you take time to listen. What’s your colleague’s story?”
“Martin? He likes biographies. He says history is made by people, not by some connecting forces that historians think they recognize in hindsight. By people, individual people. He reads a lot, but only biographies. Otherwise nothing, almost nothing.”
“Reading novels is good,” Fritz says. “Reading them makes your life better, even in tough times.”
“You’re avoiding my question, Herr Kolbe.”
Fritz turns over the schnitzels. One side is golden brown now, tiny bits of fat jumping up in the pan. “There’s salad as well,” he says. “You do know he keeps eyeing you?”
“He’s married.”
Fritz’s laugh is partly bitter, partly amused. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “What was the question again?”
“What are you not telling us, or not telling yourself?”
He stares at the woman. The thought occurs to him that he looks older than he is. Who does she see at this moment? Her glance echoes her question. He wants to tell her, he really does. He can’t do it.
“I don’t have an apartment anymore. This”—Marlene pointed at the dirty sheet—“is all that’s left. A few pots, Fritz. Not one book, no pictures, not my favorite flower vase or dishes. Not the letters from my son.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Just a few pots.”
“Pots are good, Marlene.” Fritz hugged her and she began to cry. He took her into the living room, poured her a cup of tea, and set some more chocolate from Switzerland on a little plate.
“Both those lovely books you brought me from Switzerland are gone too.” She sobbed and said nothing more, just sat there with her head hanging, and he let her cry. He got the files back out and continued writing. Once she had calmed down a little, he asked about her mother, who he remembered lived in Berlin. Marlene said she’d been evacuated to Southern Germany.
“I’m from Munich,” she said. “I was born there. Mom and Dad had a men’s clothing shop. Actually, it was more Mom’s. My dad was a dreamer. He wanted to write novels. I liked that.”
“So, did he?”
Marlene smiled and shook her head. She sipped tea, ate chocolate, and began to look around the room. Fritz pulled a pile of photos from the cabinet. “Africa,” he said.
As he worked, Marlene looked at the photos, pausing at some pictures, turning others over. When she was done she tapped the pile into a neat rectangle on the table. She slowly reached for one of the documents, turning it her way. Her wedding ring twinkled. He slid paper and pencil over to her.
She read. “Fritz, my God.” Her voice conveyed recognition and despair.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
“The French Resistance,” Marlene murmured.
“I only summarize the most important things.”
“Methods used by the SS in Russia, and by the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht too?”
“September 1941. Babi Yar, a ravine near Kiev, I think. Over three thousand Jewish women, children, and men were shot to death by units of the magnificent Wehrmacht. General Field Marshal von Reichenau welcomed the measures and requested that radical methods be used. Disputes over whether too much ammunition is being used on Jews instead of at the front are still going on today.”
“Measures? Radical methods?”
“Yes.”
“But, Fritz, if you . . . what if you hand over, say, a secret U-boat route, and the Americans or British go sink one of those U-boats?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what this is.”
He’d mostly avoided thinking about it up to now. Now he pictured the childlike, beardless young man who’d driven him to the Wolf’s Lair, the driver he’d told to “watch out for yourself.” He’d been pushing any true consideration of the deadly consequences of his actions deeper and deeper into the darkest dungeons of his soul, knowing full well that they were to reemerge one day—yet not what they were to inflict on him.
“You’re fine with that?”
“No.”
“Yet you do it?”
“Yes.” He clung to this one little word.
“You must never repeat one word about any special cartography units, Fritz. Not one word! My husband is a cartographer.”
He pushed the pages and pencil away and stared at Marlene. If only her husband had died years ago, like hundreds of thousands of others in this war. He placed his hand on hers.
“I promise,” he said.
“Your word of honor?”
“Yes.”
“So no information about—”
“Yes. Jesus.”
“He’s my husband, Fritz.”
“He’s the other man.”
They gazed at each other. Marlene was twisting her wedding ring on her finger. Was she only here because of the war? What did an attractive and energetic woman like Marlene Wiese want from a too-short, staid-looking man like him? How much time and room was there left for them?
“It’s so nice having you here, Marlene.”
She smiled and put one hand over the other, hiding her twinkling wedding ring. “So, how’s it going there?”
“Uh, what do you mean going?”
Marlene tapped on the paper. “Penmanship isn’t exactly your strong suit.”
She reached for more paper, but before long she said she had to lie down and shut her eyes. She didn’t have any other clothes to wear, she muttered, and no pajamas either. He got out one of his shirts. Marlene undressed. He saw her naked for the first time. His desire for her was gentle and calm. She pulled on the shirt, and he stepped before her and fastened the buttons over her breasts and her stomach, feeling her pubic hair at the lowest button. When she leaned over his cracked sink while brushing her teeth, the flesh of her bottom shined. He brought her into the bedroom.
“Nice place you have here,” she said. Fritz drew the covers over her and stroked strands of hair from her face. “When you come in later, hold me tight.”
“I will be sure to,” he said.
When he came into the bedroom later, she was sleeping on her side, her legs pulled up to her stomach. Fritz undressed and carefully climbed into bed. He nestled up to her creamy-white back and didn’t know what to do with his arousal. He had yearned to make love for so long, and so deeply, yet she was already anxious, and he didn’t want to burden her with his erection. He carefully placed his arm around her chest, then laid his head against the back of her neck and pulled his lower body away from her. It was impossible to sleep like this. He pressed his cock into the warmth between Marlene’s thighs. She shifted, murmured something, and turned her face deeper into the pillow. Fritz held her tightly to him. He could feel his own heart beating, and Marlene’s heart too, under his hand in that shadowy crease between her breast and ribs.
He had overslept; he was supposed to have been in the Office over an hour ago. He rushed into the kitchen and stopped in his tracks. Marlene was standing naked at the oven, wearing his felt slippers. She hadn’t combed her hair, her gaze was not yet wakeful, and her salmon-tinted nipples looked cool and small. Fritz looked at her. His eyes filled with desire. He wanted to cling to this image of her, wanted it never to disappear from his mind.
“I could stand here for hours,” he said. “For days.”
She smiled, calm, satisfied, maybe even happy. She’d found some coffee, she said, and handed him a cup. Her fingers gleamed against the porcelain, the glow of her skin traveling along her outstretched arm, her shoulder, her collarbone, and the curves of her breasts, along her ribs, and down to her hips and her upper thighs.
“Can you go in even later?” she asked.
She had tiny creases in the corners of her eyes, and when she laughed deep lines etched curves in her broad cheeks. Her jawbone was set hard, and the skin over her collarbone stretched taut. Her nipples reached out to him when he kissed her. She had a deep, dark navel in her tummy, a little burrow into the very hear
t of her. Her privates smelled of flesh and lust. A thick, long scar ran across her left knee, and her toes were big. “Aren’t they awful?” she asked.
“Nothing about you could be awful in any way,” he said. He kissed her on the mouth. With her eyes so close to his, he could see the tiny black dots sprinkled within the blue. “I want to be the breath that flows through that wonderful nose of yours,” he said.
“I have a wonderful nose?” she asked.
“You do,” he said. She asked him to hand her a cigarette. Today she was going to take care of the administrative details. She would give Charité Hospital as her new address; the professor had nothing against her doing so, and she had everything there she needed. She didn’t want to be living with someone, so moving into Fritz’s place permanently wouldn’t work either.
“Because you’re married,” Fritz asked.
She blew smoke out. “I’ve betrayed him. We promised each other that such a thing would never happen. I didn’t want it.”
“You wanted it with me.”
She pushed him away, her arms out stiff. He pressed his weight against her, squeezing his eyes shut because he couldn’t bear to see her looking at him like this, then he felt her elbows begin to give way, her arms going limp. He slumped against her and there they stayed: still, just breathing.
A few minutes later they got dressed. Fritz watched how Marlene put her bra on backward, fastened the hook, turned the bra around, and pushed her arms through the straps, her breasts rising and then vanishing behind the white fabric.
“I don’t want to do anything that’s bad for you,” he said. “Ever.”
“You already have, Fritz.”
Von Günther was standing in Fritz’s office holding files.
“You’re in far too late, Kolbe.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” Fritz said.
“Stop.” Von Günther slammed the files on the desk, a little blast of air shifting papers.
“Our Führer,” he began, and another of his lectures came whooshing at Fritz, one about “greatness” and “will” and the giant, concrete-abstract machine that defined modernity. “You are a trusty little cog in this large powerful machine. You must comprehend that.”
“Yes sir, Herr Ambassador.” Fritz so hated this. His heart seethed.
Von Günther turned on his heels. He exhaled loudly, the heavy, responsibility-laden sigh of an important man.
“Tell me one thing, Kolbe: Did this have anything to do with that woman?” Von Günther circled two breasts on his chest.
You bastard, thought Fritz. He wouldn’t be able to keep Marlene a secret now that von Günther had seen him with her in the air-raid shelter.
“Frau Wiese was bombed out of her home.”
“She’s staying at your place right now? Temporarily.”
“Yes sir.”
Von Günther laughed. “Just don’t be late again, Kolbe. All right? No one will find out a thing from me.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Women, yes? Good, now listen. These files here are for von Lützow’s secretary, Weygand. Only for him. He will pick you up at the train station in Bern. You’ll give him these documents—the rest goes like usual. Don’t say one word about this to von Lützow. Understood?”
“Yes sir. Is something wrong?”
“I can’t tell you, Kolbe. I’m not allowed to tell anyone. I don’t want to either.”
“No, of course not. By the way, does anyone know why Havermann was arrested, Herr Ambassador?”
“He was listening to enemy broadcasts. His daughter reported it.”
“His own daughter?”
“This girl already senses greatness. As it should be. It’s a good thing.”
“Havermann was listening to music.”
“Broadcast by the enemy.”
“Music doesn’t have a nationality.”
“What was that? Kolbe, are you crazy? I never want to hear such things coming from you. What is wrong with you?”
After having spent so many years alone in his apartment, it felt strange to open his apartment door and know that Marlene would be sitting on the sofa, reading something, or maybe cooking a frugal meal in the kitchen. Marlene had gotten some clothing from a donation held on the square at Gendarmenmarkt. She used to hire a Jewish tailor to do her sewing for her, but he was long gone, along with his whole family, so she stitched up the skirts, jackets, and blouses herself. The tailor’s name had been Liebling. “I couldn’t do anything for them, Fritz.”
On the last night before his second trip to Bern, Marlene held out her hand to him as he came into the living room. They knew every day, every night, every time they touched could be their last. The notion was nothing new during wartime, yet no matter how many times the words were spoken, the sentiment never lost its spark of urgency. Perhaps this was the one headline that applied to all of their lives.
After they made love, Fritz told Marlene about Katrin, and she told him about her dead son.
“He was such a lovely boy. He should have lived,” Marlene said. Fritz was holding her in his arms. “It’s so horrible when children die before the parents.”
Fritz would have loved to say something nice to cheer her up. But what?
“We’re going to finish off everyone who’s responsible. We’ll hurt them wherever we can.”
The next morning, she helped him bind the thin pages around his calf. Her hands were shaking. She asked if it pulled at the hairs on his leg and laughed uncertainly.
“If they catch you,” she said, “I do not want to end up in their hands. I don’t, Fritz. I want to live.”
Marlene pulled open a drawer and took out a butcher knife. She stood there, tall and strong, her thick hair undone, her nose flushed a little. Fritz didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He cradled her hand that held the knife and caressed it.
“I’ll go right now and take these files to be incinerated as ordered and have it signed off, all completely normal and according to regulations.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“Of a better world, yes.”
She hugged him. He felt the knife flat against his back and her breasts against his chest.
“Will you bring more chocolate back?”
He smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll be sure to.”
“I’m not going to the train station, Fritz. We’ll say good-bye here.”
They hugged again. The knife fell and Fritz heard it cut into the floorboards.
“And ham, Fritz? What do you think? Or a little cheese?”
“I love you,” he said. From the doorway, he turned to take a look at her. She was standing in the kitchen, the cool light finding one side of her, and next to her stood the knife in the floor, its blade a gleaming gray. He put down his suitcase, went back in, and kissed her lips.
“Now it’s even tougher traveling to Bern,” he said. “Yet easier.”
“Both?”
“Yes,” Fritz said. “Life seems to be that way.”
He telephoned Käthe Braunwein from his desk at the Office. She answered sounding faint and weary.
“Käthe, where is Walter supposed to be sent?”
“You remember when we went hiking? In the Allgäu? It was spring then, those big Allgäu meadows full of flowers and—”
“Käthe! Käthe—where to?”
“Ah, Fritz.”
Fritz cursed. He could have screamed.
“Käthe, listen, I . . .” Right then someone knocked on his door. “Yeah, yeah, come in!” Fritz shouted. It was Heinz Müller in his baggy uniform. Fritz put a hand over the receiver. “What, Müller?”
“Heil Hitler. I have some teletypes here for Ambassador von Günther.”
“Fine, yes, just leave them here. I’ll take care of it.”
Young Müller left the papers on Fritz’s desk, saluted, and left. Fritz waited until the door was shut.
“Käthe, where is Walter going?” he shouted.
The door pushed open a
gain. Müller was staring at him.
“What now, Müller? And kindly knock before you enter.”
“I heard you shouting, Herr Kolbe. Who are you speaking to there?”
“Get out!” He pressed the phone to his ear, feeling the hands of those men onboard the Louisiana on him again. He still didn’t know for sure if Müller had been among them. He scratched at his calf strapped with papers. He needed some clue about Walter Braunwein.
“Käthe, please . . .”
She’d hung up.
Using a false name, Fritz called the field office where Walter was working. He got right to the point and asked for a Herr Braunwein, but got rudely rebuffed.
And his death sentence pressed tight against his calf.
The border checkpoint inspector at the train station in Basel was the same one Fritz had encountered the first time he crossed the border. This time the man had dark circles under his eyes, and he was thinner. Fritz thought too that he could see more soldiers patrolling under the station’s dark roof than before. The man ahead of him in line had glanced around and noticed the diplomatic pass in Fritz’s hand. He asked Fritz if he was also from the Office, which would be quite the coincidence considering that some people who worked in the same ministry never once ran into one another even in Berlin. He said he was heading to Zurich for two days of work, then some rest and relaxation in Switzerland, wonderful indeed. He handed the border inspector his papers, turned Fritz’s way one more time, and laughed—somewhat too loudly, Fritz thought.
The border inspector slapped the man’s papers against his palm and waved over two soldiers. “Go with these men.”
The previously unknown colleague looked back at Fritz, confused, his eyes blank with fear. Better you than me, Fritz thought. The inspector took Fritz’s passport and visa from his hand and thumbed through a list.
The Honest Spy Page 17