General Gehlen was haranguing von Ribbentrop for not having his ministry under control. No one else would dare take such a tone with von Ribbentrop, but Gehlen sounded quite sure of his rebuke. Read this carefully, Ribbentrop! Complete with exclamation point.
After that followed a more recent letter from Japan; in this one the sender didn’t address the Foreign Minister as Your Excellence anymore. Then Fritz stumbled on yet another report about gold being transported into Switzerland.
They’re bringing the money to safety, he thought. By the millions.
He summarized as much intelligence as he could, focusing on the state of the Western Front, assessments of Allied forces, and the Pacific Theater. He included details from the memos about gold transfers between the Reich and Switzerland and noted down agent activities in Spain, Italy, and France, as well as the names of leaders in Eastern Europe who were operating more or less openly against the Nazi factions in their own countries.
Later, he stood in the bedroom doorway, glancing back and forth between Marlene and the folders. On one side: top-secret Reich matter. On the other: top-secret woman, asleep.
Fritz was riding to Bern in a cold freight car. When he climbed onto a crate and peeked out through the bars of the window slots, he could see fields passing before him, white with snow and marked by stretches of brown earth. One swastika-flag-bearing train station had been bombed into ruins and was populated by cowering refugees, their eyes aghast and weary.
At one point the doors were yanked open to the sounds of scraping metal, and Gestapo men with hungry German shepherds entered the darkening car in order to inspect the papers of the people within. Müller stood up at once. “Heil Hitler.” One man was tossed from the car by two Gestapo men and put into handcuffs out on the rickety platform. Fritz held his diplomatic ID and visa at the ready. The officer checking him didn’t even bother looking him in the eyes.
“Fucking diplomat.”
Fritz said nothing. He knew one false word would cause the men to haul him out of the train and frisk him. Once again he had to keep silent, hide himself away, show his subservience. He didn’t know this officer who wouldn’t look at him, didn’t know anything about his inner life, whom he loved, the things he’d done—but he hated him so much that he instinctively felt for his revolver inside his overcoat pocket. The man returned Fritz’s papers and barked for the next one. As he began to examine Müller’s papers, Fritz saw Müller lean toward the man and whisper something to him. “Don’t tell me what to do!” the officer retorted. Fritz grinned at Müller. All the malice and brutality of their time were on full display right here, in the tight spaces of this one train car.
Fritz had a good sense of direction, yet wasn’t able to tell what route the train followed as it zigzagged through Germany. It took over fifty hours to reach the border, and sometimes at night they saw the glow of fires in the distance and heard the rumble of air raids. At one point the train traveled backward, then it halted somewhere and stayed there for hours, the people in the car reeking of sweat and thirsty breath. To Fritz, it felt as though Germany were suffocating under a foul gray mantle.
“We won’t let this get us down,” he said. The others glanced at him, then looked away.
“Heil Hitler,” Müller said.
Fritz went and stood close to him, the edges of the young man’s paper-white face blurring in the dim car.
“Were you with them then, Müller? On that ship? Did you want to throw me overboard?”
Müller smiled.
“My position has allowed me to do more for the real Germany than you ever could.”
“Heil Hitler, Herr Kolbe. Just say it.”
“I feel like I’m on a ship from South Africa to Germany again.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Herr Kolbe.”
“Oh, Müller. You’re not really very smart, I’m guessing.”
The checkpoint inspector at the station in Basel was the same one Fritz had encountered on previous crossings. The tracks were cold, the lines of steel deserted, the station quiet. Only four people stood in line before the inspector’s table, their tensed-up backs to Fritz.
“Ah, Herr Kolbe, heading to Bern again?” The inspector’s voice was friendly. He had grown a mustache. He looked over his shoulder. Two sullen Wehrmacht soldiers in worn uniforms walked back and forth, their rifles shouldered, boots crunching on stones.
“Not far now. Just a few more steps,” the inspector said. “Then you’re in Switzerland.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple shifting. “You’re staying . . .” He looked at Fritz’s papers. “Three days. Then you’re returning? To Germany?”
“Of course.”
The inspector held Fritz’s visa up close, turned briefly toward the two soldiers again, then checked the document’s other side. “How one piece of paper can be so important, isn’t that true? Herr Kolbe, I was only doing my job. Whatever has happened back there”—he gestured at the customs hut—“is not my responsibility. I never did a thing to anyone.”
“Pardon me, but I really have to get going.”
“Yes. Of course.” The inspector held the visa to his eyes and smiled at Fritz. Fritz knew this expression so well—it was the look of someone who wanted to say something, but couldn’t do it.
Fritz didn’t know what the inspector had to fear. He certainly wouldn’t be tried as a war criminal when all this was over. Perhaps he feared revenge from people he’d sent away for cavity searches, though why he’d plead his case to Fritz was a mystery—Fritz had no idea whom this man had handed over, or why. One thing he did know was that revenge would keep swinging at Germany like a scythe, and for years to come. So much unpunished barbarity. Drag the concentration-camp guards through the streets, let the SS officers starve, lock the Gestapo members in cells for twenty years—it was all the same to him. People liked to wax philosophically that revenge was immoral, that taking revenge made the avengers no better than those they sought revenge on. Fritz could care less about that. He understood the feelings and arguments for revenge all too well. It was his ardent hope that not a single camp commander would be spared. He hoped Goebbels, Göring, von Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, and the rest would be forced to stand trial and account for what they’d done.
“I’m sorry if I was ever rude or disrespectful, Herr Kolbe. I’m under so much pressure here.”
“Under pressure? I know what that’s like.” Fritz almost reached out to give the man a derisive pat on the shoulder. He leaned in close instead. “Now give me my papers, you asshole. One false word from you and I’ll blow your balls off. I’ll be back through in a few days, you miserable little prick. Have I made myself quite clear, or do you have some trouble understanding I should know of?”
The man suddenly turned even paler. His eyes pleaded. “No, Herr Kolbe. Sorry.”
“In line after me is a man named Müller. He was giving me a bad impression this whole trip, making defeatist comments. I strongly suggest you search him thoroughly.”
“Yes sir, Herr Kolbe. Heil Hitler.”
Fritz used a telephone booth in front of the station in Bern to call the OSS team, using the usual code. He didn’t ask for an appointment; he just told them when he was coming. Next, he called Eugen Sacher.
Fritz stood at the hotel-room window, smoking a cigarette. The Bubenbergplatz lay under a blanket of snow, dark dots of cobblestones shining through, like holes for ice fishing. The monument was surrounded by scaffolding, the fog-colored tarp that covered it shifting in the slight breeze, shaking off drops of water. The sky over the mountains was gray. Fritz had lain in a hot bath for a long time, washing off the smell of the trip and his thoughts of revenge.
At the arranged time, he waited for Eugen at the hotel’s rear entrance. Eugen had his hat down over his face and his overcoat collar turned up. Fritz pulled him into the hallway and the two embraced. Up in the room, Fritz poured them whisky.
“It’s nice here,” Eugen said.
“Has anyone come to your place?�
��
“A captain in the Swiss police. He asked if I know you.”
“And?”
“I said I used to, back in Spain, but that I hadn’t seen you here.”
“You volunteered that you hadn’t seen me here? Even though he didn’t ask you that?”
Eugen hesitated. “I guess so.”
“Eugen, what am I going to do with you?” Fritz muttered. He looked out onto the square, at the people ducking into the shopping arcades to escape the weather, the cars passing, a newsstand with papers waving like feathers in the cold wind.
“It’s almost over,” Eugen said. “The Nazis have to surrender.”
“You may be right.”
“So stay here.”
“I’m going to get Marlene out of there, Eugen. I have to go back.”
“But they’re just getting more insane. They won’t keep buying your act much longer. You can’t hide who you are anymore.”
“Nonsense.”
“You’ve been really good at it. I can hardly believe it. But you look different. Something’s changed.” Eugen drank his whisky down and poured himself another. “Tell me you’re not getting reckless.”
Fritz was definitely not becoming reckless, but Eugen was right about one thing: the emotional shield he put up was growing unavoidably thinner. Week by week, his act was becoming less believable. With every tank that neared Berlin, with every man who disappeared from the Foreign Office and every office that was cleaned out, his cover was crumbling. The most damning thing was that it made him feel so good.
Pull yourself together, he thought. He dragged a chair up to Eugen and sat next to him. “I have to go soon,” he said. “But before I do I want to sit here with my old friend and drink this whisky.”
“Have you heard anything from Katrin?”
Fritz looked out the window. He placed a hand on Eugen’s shoulder.
“Eugen, old boy, tell me about your last hike. Tell me what you saw. I used to go hiking with Walter a lot, like I did with you. Outdoors, for hours on end. Katrin never liked that very much.” He laughed. “Marlene will like hiking, though. She has these long, muscular legs—you really have to see them.”
Not as many people were working in the diplomatic mission on Willading Lane now. The hallways were lined with nailed-up crates, many without the swastika emblem. One office Fritz passed had been completely cleared out. An empty schnapps bottle lay on the floorboards, and a portrait of Hitler was on the wall.
Weygand intercepted Fritz in the hallway. He asked where he’d been and held out his hand for the envelope from von Günther. Weygand waved the letter in the air, murmured, “Good, good,” and threw his door shut behind him.
At just that moment, Müller walked into the diplomatic mission. He stared at Fritz, his lips pursed and drained of blood. Fritz told Müller that he’d already taken care of what they were sent to do and if Müller had any complaints about it, he could take them to Herr Weygand. He pointed at Weygand’s office door.
Müller, overcome with rage, knocked and flung the door open. Fritz waited. In just seconds he heard Weygand screaming. Once Müller had stepped back out into the hallway, Fritz handed him his return ticket.
“Your job was to escort me and the documents to the diplomatic mission. That is what you did, efficient as ever. Go get something to eat. There’s time to rest up for an hour or so before your train heads back to the Reich. Oh, by the way: What was that business back at the station?”
Müller ripped the ticket from his hand and stomped down the hallway for the gray daylight. Fritz felt at the revolver in his overcoat pocket.
Von Lützow, looking pale, sat at his desk signing documents.
“A face from the Office in Berlin. How nice,” he said. He was sweating, and his hand holding the fountain pen wouldn’t keep still. At his temples his black hair had turned gray, the color of rock. He asked Fritz to report on the latest decrees from von Ribbentrop concerning communications between Berlin and Bern and the reorganizing of the courier service. Von Lützow felt that he was clearly being ignored—something was going on behind his back between von Günther and other officials in Berlin and Weygand here in Bern. And it wasn’t about Final Victory and Hitler’s secret weapons anymore. It was about money, nothing more.
“So how is our Herr Reich Minister von Ribbentrop doing, Herr Kolbe? I must say, it would be nice if we heard from him now and then here in Bern. One seems rather left on one’s own, if you get my meaning.” Von Lützow pulled the framed portrait of his wife closer to him.
“Von Ribbentrop withdrew to his mansion long ago. No one sees him at the Office anymore.”
The corners of von Lützow’s mouth twitched like those of a small child trying not to cry.
Without asking permission, Fritz lit himself a cigarette. “No one hears anything from Hitler anymore either,” he said.
Von Lützow let out a sound, and Fritz briefly thought he was going to reprimand him. But the man seemed to have lost the strength to do it. This told Fritz that von Lützow was finally a clear target. “But aren’t people in Berlin still of the opinion that . . . I mean, their faith in Final Victory still remains. Does it not, Herr Kolbe?”
“In Berlin? People are starving. After one air raid, I ran into a man carrying his dead daughter in his arms. People don’t want words; they want warmth. They want food and a roof over their heads. And . . .” He paused a moment. “They want peace.”
Von Lützow screwed the cap onto his fountain pen and looked out into the diplomatic mission’s wintry gray yard. They heard a truck pulling up, and soon afterward orders were echoing through the villa.
“Think of your wife and three girls,” Fritz said.
Von Lützow stood and planted his hands on the desk as he watched Fritz leave.
Weygand was waiting out in the hallway, several files tucked under one arm. He nodded his chin toward von Lützow’s door. “He’s shitting his pants.”
“It happens, Herr Weygand.”
“What about you, Kolbe? You’re not going to get any funny ideas here in Switzerland, are you?”
“I’m going back to Berlin in two days. The home front—soon the front lines. The Volkssturm militia would accept someone like you right away.”
“My post is here.”
“Are you getting any funny ideas, Weygand?”
What was wrong with him, for God’s sake? How could he take risks like this? How could he forget the role he was playing? He listened as Weygand droned on about Final Victory, Fatherland, Führer, fighting to the last bullet—all the usual shit he kept hearing, over and over. He abruptly turned and walked off down the hallway. Weygand called after him but he didn’t turn around.
“Kolbe. Kolbe!”
Von Günther used to yell at him like that. Fritz turned back. The hallway separating them was long and dim, the wooden crates absorbing the light. A man with a typewriter in his arms crossed their line of sight.
“Heil Hitler,” Weygand said.
“Sure thing,” Fritz said softly.
He went back to his hotel early that evening. The porter who met him at the door said he was sorry. Fritz rushed into his room. Shirts and underwear lay on the floor like a patchwork rug. The closet, the chest of drawers, his suitcase—everything had been ransacked. His editions of Antigone and Michael Kohlhaas had been ripped apart. Such a hatred for books—the fear of foreign ideas and viewpoints, so common to small minds. He gathered up the pages, smoothed them out, and put them back in order. Then he stuffed the pages back into their covers and ran a hand over them. No one had found anything suspicious here—he’d carried the secret documents on his person the whole time. But who had come here to try?
Fritz crossed the Bubenbergplatz in the dark, the square silvery in the winter night, his shoes splashing through the soft, wet layer of snow that was gradually freezing back over. He followed the Amthausgasse, keeping close to the walls of buildings, crossed the lane multiple times, and plunged down a dark alley near the ca
sino. This was where he first heard his tail, even though he’d had a feeling he was being shadowed when he first left the hotel.
The fear in his heart stayed minimal; Fritz kept his fist around the grip of his revolver. He did not assume that he was targeted to be killed. His room had likely been searched by Weygand’s people, maybe by the Swiss police, perhaps the Russians. He guessed it was Weygand’s men because the books had been torn apart. He walked down to the Aare, the river rushing dark and loud, and scurried into the shadow of a column under the Kirchenfeld Bridge. He heard the other person’s steps and waited until the figure passed.
“Evening.” Fritz’s voice sounded loud and rough-edged under the bridge.
The man slowly turned to him. Fritz saw him in shadow, a silhouette against the river’s flat glaze. He thought he saw the man nod. Then the stranger moved on, heading east, blurring into the blackness of night.
When Fritz reached the cathedral he turned toward the city center, doubled back, and went down the Herrengasse. He fired up his lighter three times below the OSS’s windows, as if his cigarette just wouldn’t light. As previously arranged, after the signal he walked down the street toward the casino. He waited five minutes, came back, then stepped into the side lane and pushed open the cold garden gate.
William Priest stood in the doorway.
“Mr. Wood.”
“Mr. Priest.”
Priest shook his hand warmly. “So you were followed?”
“And my room was ransacked. They destroyed two of my books.”
“Such bullshit,” Priest said. Fritz felt himself loosening up and began to chuckle. Priest placed a hand on his shoulder and the two laughed in the tiled hallway.
“Antigone and Michael Kohlhaas,” Fritz said.
“Antigone I know. Who’s Kohlhaas?”
“German literature, by Heinrich von Kleist. It’s very good.”
“I’ll give it a go.”
“An excellent book. You should definitely read it. Kohlhaas rebels against state authority after facing great injustice. He does make a few small mistakes, though.”
The Honest Spy Page 27