Cave Dwellers

by Richard Grant

  Jaap took it for granted that Kohlwasser, like anyone who boasted of being quite frank with you, was lying to his face. But the lie was a subtle one, wrapped, it seemed, in a layer of truth. He gave him a doleful, commiserative smile. “Not the easiest job in the world.”

  “These days—is that what you mean? This day and age? Or in our particular kind of society?”

  Jaap let it pass. Kohlwasser waved a hand, dispelling the momentary tension.

  “No, you’re right. It’s never easy. In our profession, a man is only as good as his informants, isn’t that so? Now, I happen to think my informants are better than most. Well-placed, at any rate—that I can say. But how does one really know? Informants play their little games; we all do. They tell their tales, they point their fingers, but always there’s uncertainty. They may be telling only part of the story. Or they may have gotten hold of something but they don’t know what it is; they can’t see the whole picture, so they fill in the gaps with inferences that seem plausible yet turn out to be quite wrong. They interpret when they ought to be reporting. They insist on making connections when in fact there’s only coincidence. Yet we don’t want to discourage them, do we? Because sometimes, you know, they turn out to be right.”

  Jaap stared at the wall behind Kohlwasser’s desk—the obligatory display of certificates and commendations, a group portrait autographed by some party eminence, a gilt-framed diploma whose Latin text was printed incongruously in an imposing Gothic typeface. He sensed the other man’s pent-up, maleficent energy as one feels the approach of a storm. Nothing to do but wait for it. “I’m more of a technical man,” he said mildly. “Tanks and planes.”

  Kohlwasser exhaled strongly, like a venting of steam. “So would we all be, if we could. Reduce everything to numbers and diagrams. This piece goes here, that one goes there. Add and subtract, study the charts, and just so, you’ve got the answer. Clean and unambiguous. But where do the numbers come from? Who draws the charts? Human beings, ultimately. And so we’re back to the first question: whom is one really to trust? Here, let me give you an example.”

  He opened a drawer. No need to search—the manila envelope must’ve been right on top. It was closed with a string, and Kohlwasser made a ceremony of unwinding it, tilting the open end downward to spill the contents onto the shiny wood of the desk. Photographs, a dozen or more, alike in their amber-gray blurriness. They appeared to have been captured by a tiny lens, the type you could conceal in a buttonhole, but the prints had been blown up to the dimensions of a business letter. Courtroom size. Efficiently, like a chess player setting up the board, the man’s tapered fingers moved them into two neat rows, interior scenes on top, followed by a sequence of street shots. Ambient light only—candles blazed like flares on a battlefield, passing headlamps left bright smears. Jaap guessed the order was chronological.

  “Two separate informants,” Kohlwasser said, his tone now clinical, “have confirmed independently that the subject here”—tap tap, with a pale, slender finger—“was present at a gathering in the Fasanenstrasse. They give different dates, but sometime last autumn, perhaps as late as December. It’s possible he attended more than once. Not a regular member of the circle, though. Nor a casual guest, either. Someone specially invited. A curiosity—young for that crowd. Someone’s paramour, one might surmise. Or someone’s protégé.”

  Jaap tried to look without seeing. Failing that, to see without feeling. His eyes moved dutifully from one shot to the next.

  “Another curious thing,” Kohlwasser went on, watching him carefully, “is that these photos were taken not in Berlin nor even in Germany but in America—in Washington, back in March.”

  “America?”

  Kohlwasser made a clicking sound, drawing air sharply between his teeth. “This is someone you know?”

  He managed, in asking, to imply that Jaap himself had suggested the possibility. A nice interrogator’s trick. Jaap knew that one and knew also the correct response: a slight frown, quickly and politely withdrawn, calling into question the mental soundness of the questioner.

  “Is he someone I ought to know? A navy man?”

  “No.”

  “No? Well, then.” Jaap shook his head. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  Kohlwasser watched him a few seconds longer and then looked down at the photographs. He chose one and lifted it for closer examination, careful not to disturb those on either side. It was an indoor shot: Oskar slightly to the left of the frame, a second figure partly visible across a small round table, the background in deep shadow. Jaap fought the urge to project himself into the scene, to imagine the sweat, the stuffy air, the tension of a Treff in a foreign capital. Idly he wondered how close the photographer had been sitting. Close enough to listen in? To read the address on the envelope being handed to the large man on the right?

  “An act of treason is being committed here,” Kohlwasser said. He seemed to be trying for a tone of proper outrage, but his pleasure seeped through. “It’s not often, in this business, we manage to catch anyone so cleanly in flagrante. A live drop in a public restaurant. Which makes one ask, Can it possibly be real? Might this be one of those little games covert operatives like to play? Spies and their masters—one in plain sight, the other safely hidden, pulling the strings. What do you think, Herr Kapitänleutnant?”

  Jaap spent a few moments inspecting the photograph while wondering what the SD man was getting at. Was he accusing Jaap of cowardice or heartlessness in sending an agent to his doom from the safety of a desk in Bremen? Did he divine that this very notion had been rattling like a ghost for weeks now in Jaap’s innermost thoughts? In the end Jaap supposed it was merely a goad, meant to provoke a reaction—nothing more.

  “From these,” he said, dismissing the pictures with a brush of the hand, “it’s impossible to tell. I’d have to know the contents of the envelope. I’d have to know the identities of the two men. Maybe they’re friends. Maybe they’re involved in a business venture. Maybe, as the Americans would say, they’re freelancing.”

  “I was rather hoping you could help me on that score.”

  Jaap stared back opaquely. It was easy enough; his feelings were strangely remote. He’d long ago accepted the probability that Oskar was either dead or banged up in a cell somewhere, German or American. He’d long ago acknowledged his own responsibility. Such things were part of the kind of war they were fighting. He wanted now only to be certain of Oskar’s fate. Military custom demanded that, at least. “You’ve learned nothing, then, from your own investigation?”

  Kohlwasser looked faintly surprised. Not the reaction he’d been hoping for. He made one last thrust, eyeing Jaap coolly. “Well…there was one other detail, something rather odd.” He opened the drawer again. As before, the very one he wanted was waiting right on top. Another photograph, this one in color and sharply detailed. He laid it down emphatically, covering those already there. It showed a box wrapped in gold foil, rectangular, thick enough to hold a ponderous typescript, tied off with a crimson bow. “This object,” he said primly, “was recovered later, from the scene of an aborted rendezvous, having been delivered there by the young man in question. And no, it’s not a box of chocolates. It’s a gift of an entirely different nature. But that needn’t concern us now. It’s the package itself I find so interesting. Not the sort of thing one often sees, is it, in this business of ours?”

  Jaap allowed himself a shrug, mostly to release the tension in his shoulders. “I’m afraid it’s out of my line.”

  “Mine as well, until now. But, you know, it strikes me there’s a certain type of criminal who leaves what might be called a signature. A distinctive pattern that reveals something of who he is, how he operates. He thinks it means nothing, just a little flourish, maybe a private joke. But such a little thing may prove to be his undoing.”

  “Then perhaps you’re in luck, sir. I gather your interrogation of this young man has been…unproductive?”

  A clean thrust there: Kohlwasser look
ed momentarily stung. “I’m afraid,” he said tersely, “there was no opportunity for interrogation. Our representatives on the scene found it necessary to bring this little game to a halt. A definitive halt.”

  So—dead, then. Kohlwasser held the stronger hand, but in the end he’d revealed the only card Jaap cared to see. In that respect, from the Abwehr’s point of view, the meeting had been a notable success.

  “I’m sorry,” said Kohlwasser, “if this news causes you any distress.”

  Jaap studied the man for a moment. He reckoned it was too early to start hating him. There would be time later to indulge that sentiment. “I’m a patriot too,” he said. “If this man was a traitor, well—”

  “Yes, a patriot,” Kohlwasser said irritably. “Of course you are. Everyone, it seems, feels patriotic nowadays. Even this one, probably.” Flicking one of the photographs with a finger, spoiling the arrangement. “Even he may have felt himself to be motivated by some twisted form of love for the Fatherland. What is needed, however, is to recognize that some of these fine men, these officers and gentlemen from the best families, are patriots of the wrong era. The wrong end of history. That’s a lesson many people, unfortunately, have yet to learn.”

  Jaap regarded him calmly, without expression. The gleam of his eyes, the tawdry sheen of his “Parisian-style” suit. No Frenchman would wear that outfit to a dogfight, but it was the height of fashion in Goebbels’s Berlin. “You’ve won a victory, then, comrade,” he said. “The war goes on. For now, you should celebrate.” He gestured to the gleaming silver case at the edge of the desk. “Have a cigarette.”

  STRENGTH THROUGH JOY

  NORTH ATLANTIC: MID-MAY 1938

  The German liner Robert Ley made turns for twenty-one knots in a choppy sea nearly the color of a Wehrmacht field uniform. Oskar stood holding a rail with the northerly wind in his face and the porridge he’d eaten for breakfast shifting in his stomach like ballast left improperly secured. Despite the uncongenial weather, there were other people on deck, quite a lot of them—young men and women of sturdy build and bronze complexion and hale, confident manner, all of them wearing the wool-and-denim uniform of the DAF, the German Labor Front.

  Leo’s friends in the Socialist underground had agreed to help Oskar, along with his notional wife, Lena, secure passage back to Germany, and so they had. On a ship full of Nazis.

  This cruise—that’s how it was billed, a cruise, not a pitching-and-rolling purgatory lasting six days—was a propaganda stunt on a grand scale. Oskar figured it must have been conceived by someone in the arid reaches of the Wilhelmstrasse, but it was being effected through the good offices of a morale-boosting enterprise called Kraft durch Freude—Strength Through Joy—that offered cheap holidays to ordinary citizens, normally chosen by lottery. Why not extend this happy German pastime (the Wilhelmstrasse person must have thought) to the people of America? We have friends over there; look at what a fine job the German American Bund is doing. And there’s Gau-USA, Americans Against Rearmament, the Free Society of Teutonia—the people are rising up against Roosevelt and his warmongers, so we only need to give them a little encouragement. They’d settled eventually on a group called Friends of the New Germany, its membership said to run to tens of thousands. Tickets printed in both English and German had been shipped over around Christmastime. Expectations were high. The Robert Ley was chosen for the historic voyage by virtue of its being recently commissioned and therefore up-to-date in every detail; the ship’s plumbing was especially fine, something the Yanks would appreciate.

  Oddly, when the ship sailed from New York on May 15, there were many unfilled berths, clearly the fault of the American organizers. And so there’d been room for late bookings, Herr and Frau Stefan Sinclair among them. The crew had welcomed them effusively—nothing raised their spirits more than expatriated citizens answering der Ruf der Heimat, the call of the homeland, unless it was passengers able to carry their own luggage. Most of the Americans who’d boarded up to that point had been somewhat older and—shall we be kind?—not at the peak of physical prowess.

  Oskar, moving cautiously around the deck while Lena took refuge in the stateroom, bewildered and possibly terrified, found the Yanks to be a jumbled lot: pallid couples from the heartland, proprietors of small businesses, salesmen with straining belts and immaculately polished shoes, bellicose shirkers of military service who admired the martial culture of the Reich, disappointed pensioners who railed against the New Deal and the Jews who ran the papers and the filth coming out of Hollywood. And their wives—a Greek chorus of pinched-looking women who stayed largely in the background, working hard at “letting their hair down” and having a little fun. On the whole, Oskar guessed the overarching principles of Strength Through Joy must elude them. There were certain things they liked—cheap tickets, clean staterooms, free servings at the bar—but who wants to be dragged out of bed at six in the morning for calisthenics? Why on earth would civilized people engage in communal showering? Why is so much deck space given over to volleyball courts? Why is there no shade? Why is the menu so inflexible, and does it have to include so much porridge? Oskar suspected the Reich was losing more friends than it gained here.

  The Labor Front people were a different story. The DAF was a queer beast to start with: a paramilitary corps in the guise of a national trade union. The young men and women assigned to this voyage had apparently been chosen for their fitness, language skills, outgoing personalities and political reliability. Their job was to mingle with the American guests, serving as proctors, translators and—it went without saying—informers. Every one of them was friendly to a fault. They were eager to talk to you, fascinated by whatever you had to say. The Americans were susceptible to such treatment and loved the attention, not knowing any better. Oskar felt like he was trapped on a ship with a pack of gregarious wolves.

  Maybe Lena had the right idea: stay bunkered down in the cabin. But Oskar’s training militated against that. The first task of an undercover operative was to live your cover, to be the person you were pretending to be. He was Stefan Sinclair, a German librarian recently married and now returning home. He should be out and about with his countrymen, taking the air, stretching his limbs, savoring the pale northern sunlight. He should be seen doing it. And so here he was at the rail, slightly nauseous, smiling through chattering teeth, repenting that second helping of boiled oats.

  At last some Americans appeared on deck, half a dozen men carrying bottles of beer, the early hour notwithstanding. One of the DAF wolves pounced on them. How about a game of football? What do you say, gentlemen? The DAF man opened a gear locker and pulled a ball out. He bounced it off his knee, then tapped it lightly into the shins of one of the Yankees—a bald-headed individual whom Oskar deemed, on no grounds at all, to be a bricklayer. A bricklayer from Indiana. This fellow looked at the DAF man as though he had no idea what he was talking about or what kind of game you would play with a ball like this. The German kept at it, knocking the ball against one set of shins after another; the Yanks couldn’t seem to decide if he was making a joke or asking for trouble.

  The scene was becoming too awkward. Oskar strolled over into it, intercepting the ball and holding it in both hands as if he intended to launch it toward a basket. Show some cultural empathy, he thought.

  “Let’s pick teams,” he said. “I’ll take this guy. He looks pretty strong—I bet he was a star back at school.”

  “I lettered in football,” the bricklayer admitted. “Never played soccer, though.”

  “That’s swell! We’ll show them how it’s done. Who else here is good?”

  “Hold on a minute!” The DAF man grinned; he relished a challenge, and winked at Oskar like a conspirator. “My side gets the next pick! We pick…this fellow here, the tall one.”

  “Don’t worry,” the bricklayer teased, “he’s not so great. He may look big, but he’s awkward as hell. Sammy here, that’s who we want. What do you say, Sammy? You and me and—”

  “Stefan
.”

  “Stefan.” The bricklayer stuck a hand out, adding in schoolboy Deutsch, “Ich freue mich, Sie kennen zu lernen.”

  “Mir auch.” They shook. “Your turn.”

  The DAF man looked happy and a bit surprised. His experience with Americans evidently hadn’t led him to expect very much.

  Teams chosen, four to a side, they moved to the aft deck, where a miniature field had been marked out in yellow paint with goalposts bolted port and starboard, nets strung behind them. With any luck, they’d soon lose the ball overboard and be done with international sporting for the day.

  The air out here, away from the ship’s protective superstructure, was a physical presence, hard and blue and unalloyed. Even the sun felt cold. Lifeboats suspended from davits did nothing to block the wind, which must have just swept down from Greenland. The Americans looked around as if surprised to find themselves in the middle of the Atlantic. But the notion of playing ball here seemed to agree with them. No doubt the beer helped.

  There was uncertainty over the rules: where to begin, how to explain something so familiar. The better course seemed just to play, shouting instructions as needed. That worked out all right, and once engaged, the Yanks proved tougher than one might have predicted. The bricklayer in particular showed an impressive degree of animal cunning. These men put Oskar in mind of the aging alumni of a student dueling club—red-faced gentlemen who turned out for yearly reunions, draining tankards and bellowing the old club songs. Though seldom taking up a sword, when they did, they fought with guile and brutality, often overwhelming younger, more agile opponents. These Yanks were a bit like that. They were just starting to tire when a modest clamor arose at the forward end of the deck, below the pilothouse.