The Honest Spy

by Andreas Kollender

  He sliced through the crispy skin of the trout and separated fillet from bone. If Marlene were sitting here across from him, he would still be able to look her in the eyes. The Marlene Wiese who was married. Marlene, naked on the kitchen table, swastikas under her back or chest. Marlene, exhausted. Marlene, brave. Marlene in his apartment, Marlene at Charité Hospital, Marlene on the street. Mar-lay-nah. Her maiden name was Martens, Marlene Elisabeth Martens. Then Katrin would come out of her room in this adorable hotel, rest a hand on his back for a moment, and sit with them, paging through the menu and calling out all the things she did not like, and Fritz would laugh.

  At the reception desk, he asked to be connected to Charité Hospital in Berlin. He spoke to seven different harried-sounding people before finally getting Marlene on the line.

  “I love you,” he said. He heard an ungodly scream in the background, then the sound of metal rattling.

  “I love you too,” she said, and then her voice sounded more distant. “No, no, bring him in back here. Right, I’m coming at once. Fritz? Fritz?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Gestapo came to see me.”

  Fritz pounded on the front counter. The man at reception gave him a look. Fritz held a hand over his eyes. “Good God. Did they do anything to you?”

  “They were so cruel, Fritz. So disgusting. Wait, you can’t go in there yet. Back there, yes. Yes, I know. I don’t care what you think about it. Just do it. Good. Fritz?”

  “I’m here. Did they hurt you?”

  “No. I’m not hurt, no. They know about us, though. They know. They wanted to know where you were when Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler.”

  “I was in Paris. All official.”

  She was sobbing into the phone. A dark gloom shot through Fritz.

  “I’m going to get you out, Marlene. Just hold on. I’ll be back in Berlin soon.”

  “My God, Fritz. I was so scared.”

  “I’ll kill them. I’ll blow them all away.”

  “Yes, do that. Look—I have to get back to work here. Take care of yourself, Fritz, just . . . take care.”

  “Marlene, I . . . I . . .” he stuttered, picturing Marlene’s face close to his. He wanted to touch her lovely nose. Somebody started to pull her away from the phone. He screamed for her.

  “Fritz. Don’t come back. Stay there.” The line crackled and went dead.

  Fritz wanted to smash the telephone against the counter’s hard wood. He rushed back to his room and screamed as loud as he could at the landscape portrait above the bed, yet no sound came out. He struck the mattress with a chair with such force, it bounced back and hit him over one eye.

  Marlene. For God’s sake. He rushed to the train station, searched the cold newspaper rack for a German paper with Hitler’s portrait printed in it, and ran back into the hotel. He barked at the man at reception to give him a fork immediately. In his room he stabbed so long and violently at Hitler’s face that the fork busted in two, causing him to accidentally cut his own cheek.

  That evening Fritz told Dulles and Priest about his confrontation with von Lützow. He also reported on Musorksky and asked whether the OSS had been watching when the Russian entered the hotel. That they had, Priest said. He asked if the Russian had hit Fritz, because of . . . Priest pointed at Fritz’s cheek.

  “That was something else. What if he had shot me?”

  “That was never his plan, Fritz,” Priest said.

  Dulles looked back and forth between them, but said nothing. Fritz smoked one cigarette after another. He felt Marlene screaming at him from Berlin. Live, Fritz, live!

  “Goddamn it,” Fritz said.

  “What’s wrong?” Priest asked.

  “Forget it. Musorksky said the same thing you did, Will: that the war is going to continue even after Nazi Germany ends. He also thinks the Americans will be working with high-level Nazis.”

  Dulles and Priest looked at each other.

  “We have to concentrate on the here and now, Mr. Wood,” Dulles said. “Once again, the material you’ve provided is first-class. Your final chance to work on von Lützow comes tomorrow, midmorning. Here is the card of a man who works at a bank here in Bern. This is all the information I can give you, for your own safety. Assure von Lützow that this contact is secure and serious, and that he has nothing to fear. Hopefully von Lützow will hand you the documents. You will then leave those behind in the hotel, after you stop there on your way to the train station. What’s the matter?”

  “Does Weygand need to be taken out, Fritz? Is that it?” Priest said. “Tell us now.”

  “Oh please. No.”

  Priest laughed. “You’re too good for this world. We are at war.”

  “That saying has been used to justify far too much.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” Dulles said. “There’s no time for philosophizing. Once you’re back in Berlin, Wood, you’ll be all on your own again. Don’t stay in the city if you can help it.”

  “The Russians really are keen on you,” Priest said.

  “This will likely be our final meeting of the war,” Dulles said. “A drink wouldn’t hurt, I should think.”

  Priest poured the whisky.

  “How much longer will it keep going?” Fritz asked.

  “Resistance is pointless, but the Germans can get fanatical. A number of days ago, some prisoners were taken near a German village. Their lieutenant had been hanged from a tree. The SS had ordered the lieutenant to attack an American unit with his armored assault gun. According to the prisoners, he told the SS that he would do so at once—if he only had ammunition. But he didn’t have any. Not one shell, not even a round for the tank’s machine gun. The SS repeated the order to attack. ‘With what?’ asked the lieutenant. That was his death sentence. They hanged him. Given events like these, well, it seems the war is going to last much longer than it should.”

  “There are also whole units giving themselves up to us,” Priest said.

  “Gentlemen,” Dulles said and raised his glass. “To the deaths of Hitler and the Emperor of Japan.” They toasted, the whisky sloshing in their glasses, its color like liquid honey. The alcohol burned in Fritz’s gut.

  “I won’t try to hide it,” Dulles told Fritz. “My department has profited enormously from all that you’ve done. Your efforts have made our team in Bern stand out from the others. I made the president take notice of you, and in turn, he naturally took notice of me. I’m climbing the ladder, Wood. In America. For America. The best country in the world. I want you to know that I’ll be indebted to you my whole life, and indeed am honored to be so.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” Fritz said. Dulles’s words left him cold. He thanked them for their trust and cooperation, but said that it was not yet over and Berlin was still a den of murderers.

  The time had come. He had wanted to lure Dulles in, to ensnare him. Fritz cast his line out with his heart thumping and Marlene’s sobs in his ears.

  “I must get out of there. Marlene as well. I’ve never demanded anything of you before. Now, I have one demand. The Gestapo came to see Marlene. I want you to get my Marlene and me out, now. Help us.”

  “Okay,” Priest said, “we—”

  “One moment,” Dulles interrupted. He pulled out his tobacco pouch and began stuffing his pipe. Brown bits stuck to his thumb and he flicked them to the carpet. “This isn’t done yet, Wood.”

  “It is for Marlene and me. For Katrin too. I’ve delivered so many pages to you. I’m Kappa. I’m the best you have. But it’s done now.”

  “Just hear me out, please. We’re right in the most decisive phase of the war. Hundreds of thousands of American boys are now fighting Hitler’s armies, ten thousand miles from home. I need you where you are, Wood. I need you inside your foreign ministry while it’s coming apart, a state that can only make things that much easier for you.”

  “Easier? Did you listen to what I just said? My Marlene was questioned by the Gestapo. More people than ever are disappearing in Berlin.
Get me and my woman out of there!”

  “Hold out a little longer. Keep the faith. Every piece of intelligence you can provide us makes our advance easier. With the war in the Pacific as well. You can save lives.”

  “Other people’s lives.”

  “Allen, there has to be some way to accommodate him,” Priest said.

  “Wait, Will. One second.” Dulles leaned over the desk and met Fritz’s eyes. “None of us has ever been as deep inside as you are now. You cannot walk away from there. Not now. I promise you I will personally take care of you—after the war. But you cannot walk away from there. You don’t simply abandon your post.”

  “What goddamn post? Listen to me. Put a plan into motion, using whatever means are at your disposal, to get Marlene and me out of there.”

  “Not now, Wood. Not yet. You have to hold out a little longer.”

  “Why didn’t you have the Wolf’s Lair bombed?”

  Dulles looked at Priest, who spread his palms as if to say that Dulles should be the one to tell him. Dulles furrowed his gray brows. His left eye twitched.

  “A few more weeks. A few more deliveries by courier mail. I know you can’t get much through by mail, so make sure what you send is crucial intelligence. I swear to you, Mr. Wood! You must hold out. Stay just a little longer.”

  “How about this, Fritz . . .” Priest went into Greta Stone’s former office and came back seconds later holding a bundle of dollars. “Here’s twenty thousand, as a small compensation. I’ll hold the money for you and Marlene. At least let me do that much. Will you take it?”

  “Every last cent, Will.”

  “I must be off,” Dulles said. He rose and looked down on Fritz, exhaling through his mustache. He left without saying good-bye.

  “Asshole,” Fritz said.

  “Some whisky, Fritz? A lot of whisky?”

  As if there were peace, as if there were calm and time for leisure, the two men sank into armchairs, sipped their whisky, and chatted about sports and literature. They were stealing time they did not have. The time flew by yet also stood still as the men laughed and shared anecdotes from their lives, lowering their voices when speaking of absent loved ones, and then Priest explained why Dulles had learned not to refuse anyone seeking to meet with him. Before the First World War—or during, he wasn’t sure exactly—a young man had come to Bern and insisted upon talking with Dulles. But Dulles got the opportunity to play tennis with a charming young lady and so he cancelled. Later, he learned that this man was Vladimir Lenin. Since then, he’s always agreed to even the oddest sounding request to meet.

  “So I have Lenin to thank? Maybe he wasn’t so evil after all.”

  “The guy was a bastard.”

  “Will, you incurable cowboy.” Fritz paused a moment. “Could I keep doing work for you after the war? Provided you see to it that Marlene gets out of Berlin. I’ve learned how to pretend to be someone I’m not. I’ve been doing it for years. I can lie and deceive. Sometimes, I didn’t even know who I was anymore.”

  “There’s a lot that needs to play out before we can think about what comes next.”

  “Were you able to get anything done about Katrin?”

  “Not yet. But I’m looking into it. I promise. Think you can pull it off, Fritz?”

  Fritz clenched his teeth and pictured those Gestapo faces bearing down on Marlene, so close she had to smell their breath.

  As Fritz arrived at the diplomatic mission the next morning, Weygand was just getting into a car. He saw Fritz and pointed at him, his finger twitching.

  In the hallway he ran into the woman he’d chatted with about flowers the day before. She asked him in a whisper what was to become of them. Fritz said it would work out somehow. She placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him close. “I’ve been spitting in Weygand’s coffee for years,” she said.

  Fritz laughed and told her she was a treasure. He asked for her take on von Lützow. Hard to say, she whispered. A decent man, actually. The type of man who could’ve been a manager in a savings bank somewhere. Or a German teacher. She asked Fritz what he had always wanted to be.

  “Fritz Kolbe,” he said.

  Von Lützow was sitting rigid at his desk. He stared at Fritz as if searching for something in his face, perhaps searching for something inside of himself. Fritz greeted him cordially. For several minutes they sat across from one another in silence. There was not one document on the polished desktop, no pages, no envelopes. The photo of his wife was gone. Fritz didn’t much like being stared at for so long. He wouldn’t have thought von Lützow capable of the stamina such an act required. Sometimes Fritz returned the stare for a while, only to look back at the desktop, made to gleam by the green-shaded lamp.

  “Yesterday I tried to reach von Ribbentrop,” von Lützow said. “Impossible. Then I called Berlin and asked to speak to von Günther. He was not there, or more specifically, no one seemed to know where he’d gone. I eventually reached a department head in Salzburg. He was drunk.”

  Fritz lit a cigarette. Had von Lützow really tried to blow the whistle on him? Had he in fact betrayed him, and were Gestapo officers now creeping up to the office door? Fritz didn’t want von Lützow to see what he was thinking. He forced himself to stay calm, feeling grateful for the camouflage the cigarette provided.

  “I wanted to ask the gentlemen about your assessment of the situation. I wanted to say: aside from the banking sector, one might think we’ve been forgotten here. In fact, it turns out there is a bit more happening in that sector than I knew. Yet as you so aptly put it, I am the boss here.”

  Von Lützow opened a desk drawer and took out a large unmarked envelope. He placed it before him on the desk and laid both hands on it.

  “My wife, Herr Kolbe, is a committed National Socialist.”

  “I understand.”

  “In Berlin, you say, they’re talking about Weygand and not me?”

  “If you make the right decision now, they’ll be talking about you.”

  “You think so?”

  Fritz wished he understood better what motivated people. If von Lützow ended up cooperating with him, it wouldn’t be because of one clear reason. So many factors entered into the decision: his wife, children, Weygand, the ignored phone calls, service to Hitler, the peace and calm of Switzerland, and countless other matters Fritz could only guess at. Who really knew what doubts and conflicts raged within people? The dangerous ones were those who felt no conflicts at all. They were not living beings—they were nothing but ticking clocks.

  Fritz took out the business card Dulles had given him and pushed it across the table. “A safe contact. Someone who knows the score and has certain powers, most importantly access. He’s completely reliable.”

  Von Lützow didn’t touch the card. He reached into his jacket and placed a little key atop the envelope.

  “To my safe. There’s only one other key, which I have.”

  He pushed the envelope across the table with both hands. The key twinkled in the lamp’s light. Fritz took the key, then folded the envelope and slid it in his inside pocket.

  “I am the boss here,” von Lützow said.

  “That you are.”

  At the door, Fritz turned back one last time. Von Lützow sat at the desk looking like he’d been poured from lead.

  “We did everything wrong,” von Lützow said.

  Fritz wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw tears glistening in the man’s eyes.

  “Not everything,” Fritz said. He patted the envelope inside his jacket.

  “I hope I never see you again, Kolbe.”

  Despite Fritz’s hopes, the journey back to Berlin was just as disastrous as the trip out had been. The train finally neared the capital after almost two days but halted well before any buildings could be seen. Fritz guessed why instantly. He jumped out of the stinking car, climbed up the iron rungs, and stood up on the roof, which was sticky from soot.

  There had to be a thousand bombers overhead. Bright-yellow blasts flashed
throughout the city, the earth trembling with them. Billows of smoke from glowing fires rose into the evening sky, darkening and fading into the clouds and black fumes caused by antiaircraft shells bursting. Spotlights cast their monstrous smoggy fingers into the sky, as if feeling a way through the chaos. As Fritz watched, sporadic explosions sent more flames surging into the smoke-clogged air. A fiery ball fell from the sky, wildfires blazed away around the city, and airplanes flickered and vanished as the waves of explosions raged on and on. Before him was the black silhouette of a city that kept shaking, shaking. Somewhere inside this inferno Marlene was huddled, her hands pressed to her ears or a cloth over her mouth.

  Fritz climbed down and ran along the locomotive shouting, “Keep going!”

  The engine driver leaned out the window and looked at Fritz. “Are you crazy?”

  Fritz yanked out his diplomatic ID. “I’m traveling with documents crucial to the war effort. I must reach the Foreign Office. Get us there.”

  “Please, don’t push me. Anyway, you look pretty athletic. You can’t miss the way—just follow the light.”

  “Just get the train moving, for God’s sake.”

  “We won’t be traveling into Berlin today, not now. Then once all that business is over, we’ll start chugging toward the outskirts of the city, all nice and easy. And when we get there, Mr. Big ID, it’s quitting time for me.”

  “Then just drive to the outskirts now. Go, drive on.”

  Fritz climbed up into the cab and pulled out his revolver. His hand stayed calm and steady. That’s how quickly this happens, he thought, how the instinct kicks right in. The locomotive driver looked down at the gun, then into Fritz’s eyes.

  “So you’re one of those types,” he said.

  “To the outskirts. Now.”

  “You can’t just charge in there any way you want to, man.”

  “Drive on.”

  The engine driver began to work the heavy, squeaking iron levers, and the locomotive rolled forward, slow and lurching. Fritz stuck the gun back into his pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But my wife is in there.”