Five hours later they were in Knightsbridge, in a drafty granite den of improvised offices not far from Harrods, where Allen found himself, rather to his surprise, feted as a hero by the civilian intelligence types. Not so the military intelligence brass, who that evening kept a discreet distance.
The next morning, a flying bomb’s throaty drone interrupted Allen’s first London breakfast, at the Savoy; the sirens wailed in the distance after the blast set the hotel’s cutlery tinkling. “South of the river,” someone said professionally. The waitresses, imperturbable, gave no notice, but in the streets it was different. A million people had already left the city; entire neighborhoods were deserted.
Despite the good news from France, the faces of the London passersby were drawn from exhaustion after a hundred days of attacks out of that summer’s eerily overcast skies. The war was far from over; talk over the dour Savoy oatmeal and side of watery canned peaches looked past its end to a New Europe, rebuilding with American capital and American know-how. Allen, knowing his moment was now or never, turned the conversation to the war’s denouement and, implicitly, a job for himself. An indulgent Donovan and two curious men from the State Department stirred their tea and listened.
Italy, Allen averred, was where the war in southern Europe would resolve. He cited chapter and verse from Roman clerics of his acquaintance, diffident, well-traveled Jesuits of a cosmopolitan persuasion, broadening his theme, rolling now. There were SS people, Allen made clear, who would play ball, stout fellows in the coming struggle against the dark hordes of Communists boiling across the eastern approaches.
And they’d come to him, Allen went on, ignoring Donovan’s darkening gaze, these docile men from Berlin, hat in hand, to broker the silence of the guns south of the Brenner Pass, yes, it was true, even to his safe house at a certain hotel in the hills outside Bern. A long, thoughtful silence ensued, which Donovan, irritated, a hard eye flickering over the two pensive diplomats, made no attempt to breach. Finally, one of the State Department men, a quiet sort not much given to harsh judgment, put Allen right off his fruit cup: “And to whose SS do these guys belong? Yours, Colonel Dulles? Or Himmler’s?”
Donovan had the grace to laugh, if only to ease the moment. Allen didn’t. Nor did he much care that he had no green light: aiming for far bigger postwar game than a simple peace in Italy, he had turned his sights squarely on Moscow—even if, inspired by Robespierre’s quaint phrase, it meant breaking a few eggs.
XLVI
BERN
OCTOBER 1944
The card was still pinned to the wall next to Borg’s door, with his name in the blue ink; the same pair of galoshes stood on the small yellow rug, stuffed with newspaper to dry them out. But this time the door swung open slowly when Misha knocked.
Oh boyoboy, he thought to himself.
It had been done very professionally. Most of Borg lay under a heavy Arab carpet, which his assailants must have used to muffle the noise while they did what they did to him. There were several lamp fixtures nearby, all broken up, their extension cords severed. Misha let his eyes follow the cords to the junction box on Borg’s worktable.
The big loft room smelt faintly of the roasting pan, sweetish and almost appetizing except that the live electric cords had left arcing burns on his arms and neck which meant the sizzle was Borg. Misha stared down at him. His eyes … Misha drew out his very illegal Walther and was just about to kneel down to lift the carpet off Borg when he noticed the slim, dapper figure next to the window.
“Herr Resnikoff, wherever did you get that gun?” Hans-Peter Russi himself asked, a wolfish smile on his face. “It’s a very nice gun.” He stepped closer, moving around a heap of electrical junk Borg must have toppled over as he tried to escape.
“That,” Russi said, looking down, “is not very nice.” He blew his nose in his fine handkerchief. “I came to arrest Herr Borg for fiddling with government phone lines,” he added, watching Misha for his reaction. Misha could see Russi’s search warrant peeking out from his pocket. “He knew which lines were untappable. That’s a valuable thing to know, wouldn’t you say?”
“What I think is that Borg tried to sell that phone line tidbit to the wrong people.”
“I should say so,” agreed Russi quietly. “Two men from the Soviet embassy left this address in a car not twenty minutes ago. We had the building under surveillance and I imagine we have a nice film of the looks on their faces as they run to their car. It wasn’t the Russians who killed Borg, that’s for sure. I think our friend here really crossed the line with the Germans. Look, put that rug down, will you?”
Misha did and slid the Walther’s safety catch back on. He hoped to God Borg hadn’t named him or he’d be having a conversation with the wrong end of a wire himself.
“I think Borg stumbled on Himmler’s money line between Switzerland and Berlin,” Misha said. “He died because he found out what no one was ever supposed to know: those accounts you and I are both interested in—don’t give me that all-innocent look, Herr Russi, you know which ones I mean—we’ve discovered the Nazi washing machine has an American hose. Borg found the back door that makes it possible, free of wiretaps. Money comes in dirty there”—he pointed east to Zürich—“and comes out clean there”—and he pointed west. “That about right?”
Russi looked irritable, cheated of one of his long Socratic inquiries. “An American hose, that’s rather good,” he said ruminatively. “I wonder if the phones still work here. On second thought,” he said, looking pointedly at Misha, “I think I’ll use the phone in the shop downstairs. I’m a gentleman: you have five minutes.” He turned and started for the door, then stopped. “In case they wanted you, Misha, we’re watching you. Don’t be difficult, will you? My people are expensive, which costs me, and the tax they pay on the overtime makes them damn touchy. Five minutes, understand? And don’t mention me in your report.”
The desk held nothing. Whoever killed Borg had taken all his paperwork and notebooks; a single pencil stub rolled around in the top desk drawer. No work orders, no carbons, no accounts ledgers. Nothing. His books had all been turned out into a heap on the floor near the kitchenette. Misha checked the toilet tank and all the contents of the refrigerator, then, slowly and painstakingly, all Borg’s jackets, inside and out, then his hats, then his shoes.
Think. Borg’s door is broken down. He’s home. He knows why the intruders have come. He knows what they’re after. A photo or a document: some proof of how the money is moved so elegantly. He’s got to move very fast to protect what he’s got … Misha pictured the break-in, the few frantic seconds Borg would have had, before they were on him, to safeguard what he had.
Then Misha saw the laundry bag. It was half hidden beneath tossed bedclothes, almost too casually left alone, as if whoever had searched the room had grown progressively angrier and angrier.
Pays to stay calm, Misha thought as he reached in and found the second pair of PTT overalls. In the front right pocket he felt something: a box of matches. He opened the box and was rewarded with a scrap of paper, folded many times.
Even with the paper only half unfolded, Misha knew he’d found the PTT repairman’s reference for all the telephone exchanges in Bern. One by one, ruled out carefully in red ink, were some two dozen phone exchanges’ names. Borg had tried them all, working out which voice line was safe for Dulles.
Müller Platz 5.
Misha ran his finger along all the MP exchanges and had a sudden inspiration. He reached in his pocket and opened his wallet. Russi’s card had Israel Kipfermann’s Zürich number on it in Russi’s clear, blocky policeman’s handwriting.
Russi’s phone number was Müller Platz 5 131.
The safe telex line between Berlin and Bern is the same exchange on which Swiss counterintelligence has its own office lines: this is the Swiss hotline to Himmler.
Dulles had hit on the perfect means of staying in touch with his contacts in Berlin: he had the Swiss counterintelligence longdistance trunk line,
clean as a whistle, whenever he wanted it, simply by sending a cutout—Good evening, Mr. von Gaevernitz—down to the phone exchange.
He left, careful not to look at the broken shape beneath the carpet near the workbench. When Misha passed the front window of the shop below Borg’s flat, Russi was still on the telephone, his back to the plate glass, his small hand rising and falling for emphasis.
XLVII
WIESBADEN, NEAR FRANKFURT
SEPTEMBER 1945
A beautiful late summer day: drinks on the terrace, the arbor vines gleaming in the sunlight. War might never have happened, Eleanor daydreamed. They were waiting, she and Max Puddicombe, filling in the time until Allen and his new Wiesbaden sidekick, Frank Wisner, showed. At least that Gaevernitz is elsewhere, she thought. He gave her the creeps.
“The monsignor and his train are late. Have some more cake. It’s wonderful, mocha cream and hazelnut paste.”
“Franz-Josef’ll be beside himself,” Eleanor warned. “From what I’ve read, he and his brother are very close.”
“And damn lucky,” Puddicombe observed tartly. “Brother Klaus is this week’s Lazarus, believe you me.”
“It’s all so strange. Down the hall a man sleeps in a fresh bed who this morning was in a cage with a thousand other men on their way to Siberia. Or worse.”
“Or worse indeed.” Puddicombe threw up an elongated, aristocratic hand in appreciation of the villa’s prospect. “A Jewish art dealer’s summer place. Handled only the most choice stuff. Hitler cleaned out the paintings personally.”
“There are two children’s rooms upstairs. I saw the furniture. What happened to the family?”
“The family? What else? They got a one-way ticket east, all of ’em.” Puddicombe seemed eerily unmoved. “Name of Echkenazi. It’s on the nameplate out back, on the garage wall, underneath the ivy. One of the army drivers spotted it.”
“The neighbors might know. Seems like an awful thing, just to forget the people who lived here once. Like they never existed.”
“The neighbors,” Puddicombe replied, “won’t know a thing: three monkeys sitting on a tree, this whole country.” He filled their glasses again. Eleanor idly wondered what sort of person Puddicombe went to bed with—if at all, she thought. Who would go to bed with Max? “We’ll be gone soon too. Our circus here is getting too big for its britches. And when we go, who’ll care about the Echkenazis in this neighborhood? No one. House’ll be sold and that’ll be that.”
“Imagine this happening at home.”
“You can’t, can you?” Puddicombe was shaking his head, relaxing into the champagne. “But we’ve had our moments.”
In the distance someone accomplished practiced the flute; the music wound its way onto the terrace, the notes burnished, precise. Puddicombe helped himself to another piece of cake.
“So what did he do?” asked Eleanor.
Puddicombe did some brute work on the pastry before replying. “Let’s just say incinerating a Russian village was a slow day for these fellows.”
“Klaus was one of ‘these fellows’? Why did the Soviets let him go?”
“We told them he was someone else,” Puddicombe said evenly, “and had the papers to prove it. A little white lie.”
“Who did we say he is?” she pressed.
“A colonel in the Luftwaffe, ran an antiaircraft battery. Has a cousin in Chicago, a heavyweight congressman. Family reunification,” Puddicombe said with an ambiguous smile. “The smart boys in Berlin ran the papers off Thursday, I sold my soul to His Excellency Ambassador Akimov on Monday, we called in a few favors here and there, and that’s that. Now it’s Wednesday and I say good riddance.”
“Wait a minute. Franz-Josef is here to vouch for a wanted man?”
“I was told to cut a deal, I cut a deal. You don’t want to nose around too much, Eleanor. Get your nose burnt.” Puddicombe settled his glass on the exquisite side table. “What a view. Look at those clouds, headed here. Pity. You can just smell the rain.”
Inside, somewhere near the kitchen, a door slammed and Allen’s baritone droned above the not-quite-dissolved Mississippi accent of his new best friend, Frank Wisner.
Eleanor could see Allen’s square, well-tweeded bulk through the kitchen lace curtains eddying in the breeze. “Ah, the girl’s left us a lunch. Why shouldn’t we bring State into the picture?” he was saying.
“No,” Wisner replied. “We don’t even ask. We just do it, Allen. We ask questions, everybody asks questions. And that’ll be the death of it. She’s good, Hannaluise. Look at this spread.”
“Safety in numbers. We’ve bought ourselves one big operation. We better make sure we’ve got our big ol’ ass covered.”
“Why do you think we’ve got Jim Angleton in Rome? To cover our asses. We can lay the whole thing off on the men in black. Hey, that’s real creamery butter—where does Hannaluise find this stuff?”
Allen chuckled. “I’ll bet she knows the black market like the back of her hand. Not too hard on the eyes, either.”
“Now, Allen, you leave the help alone,” Eleanor called out. “Bring out that lunch before it’s all gone.”
Allen, moving fast by his standards, stepped onto the terrace with the enormous silver tray, weighted with a spectacular lunch. Wisner trailed him, a conventionally handsome man, blondish, muscular, radiating a passionate, almost distracted, energy.
“Nice to see you, Ellie,” Allen said. “You too, Max. Sorry we’re a little late.”
She gave his cheek a cool peck. “Hello, Allen.”
“Ellie, you remember Frank Wisner from Foster’s Christmas parties? Frank was with Carter, Ledyard and Milburn, just down the street from our shop. Frank’s fresh from OSS Bucharest, eyeball to eyeball with the Russians.”
“Bad as it sounds?” Eleanor asked, noting Puddicombe’s deliberate silence.
“Worse,” Wisner declared. “And we just walked away. Sickening what we’ve let the Russians do to the Romanians. The elections next year? A big goddamn joke. They’re the next enemy, the Russkies, I can promise you that.”
“Hell, Frank, you put me right off my lunch,” Allen muttered.
“When did you leave, Frank?” Eleanor asked.
“Six days ago. Let’s get right at it: who’s handling the Q and A on our guy here?”
“Lieutenant Benjamin Vanbrocklin of the 430th Counterintelligence Corps,” Puddicombe recited. “He’s probably just leaving the train station. The 10:33 is late.”
Wisner balked. “The 430th? Not one of ours. I thought—”
“Better this way,” Allen covered. “He’ll be twice as white, once Vanbrocklin is through with him.”
A guard, a big silent fellow with slow eyes the color of molasses, appeared in the doorway, unsmiling. “He’s having some kind of nightmare, colonel. Should I wake him?”
“Let him sleep, corporal. Where’s Franz-Josef, Ellie?”
“He’s got himself a horse, apparently, to get here from the chancery office. Their car broke down.” This last over an insistent rapping at the front door. “I’ll get it. It might be him.”
In the doorway stood a thin, clumsy, bespectacled stringbean in an ill-fitting uniform, slow-speaking. “Good morning, ma’am. Lieutenant Vanbrocklin here to interview the prisoner.” He blushed right to the roots of the razor burn on his neck, a farmer’s awkward son.
“I’m Eleanor Dulles, lieutenant. Do come in. We’re having a light lunch while we wait.”
“I do apologize, ma’am. They told me a Colonel Dulles would be here.”
“There are two Colonel Dulleses here, lieutenant: I’m one and my brother’s the other. Come, have lunch. We’re waiting for our guest’s reference to arrive.”
“That’s good. This case has me a little confused, ma’am. Perhaps you could tell me what, or why—”
“I think the other Colonel Dulles had better do that, lieutenant. May I take your coat?” Then the doorbell rang again. “Busy here today. Excuse me, lieutenant. You just
head on out through the kitchen to the balcony patio and introduce yourself.”
Eleanor opened the door and Franz-Josef Sommer, monsignor and banker, stood there, barely changed from the hale outdoorsman financier who’d once shared a dining-car table with her.
Klaus Sommer slept curled up like a cat, his back to the wall, the posture of a man used to protecting himself even in sleep. He was six inches taller than his brother; his impossibly thin wrists hung from the shirt someone had lent him. The skin of his scalp was barely less gray than the cropped hair left him by the camp razor. He snored. His brother reached over and stroked the tall man’s bony shoulder, but Klaus didn’t stir.
“Where was he?” Eleanor whispered.
“Sachsenhausen,” the monsignor replied.
“I thought—”
“It was. The Gestapo camp. The NKVD runs it now. For their politicals. Same prisoners, different guards.”
“My heavens, what a world,” Eleanor sighed. “How did they find him?”
As they left the bedroom, Vanbrocklin entered behind them, his thin satchel in hand. The big guard closed the door and locked the lieutenant and his slumbering quarry in.
“One of your brother’s agents with the Red Cross got word out. The brains of the family, Klaus is,” Franz-Josef promised. “Languages, everything. You’re getting gold, I’m telling you.”
“Saint Michael and all the angels,” the monsignor called out. “Is that real champagne? I haven’t seen real champagne in years. Colonel, let’s have a glass, for old times.”
They did. Eleanor wondered exactly which old times she was having a glass for.
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