Taking a step back, he looked at Lena with a new sort of clarity. She’d just solved, in one breezy conversation, a mystery that had bedeviled him for months. And now it was more important than ever that he contact his case officer about this weak spot in the Abwehr’s planning. It had a name and an approximate location. It was connected to someone with the authority to invite a U.S. senator for a state visit and, incidentally, condemn his son to a summer in hell. Oskar didn’t know what to make of all this, but he imagined his superiors would.
A voice came over the ship’s loudspeakers, advising passengers in that curiously monotonic style—the words being read verbatim from the Watch Officer’s Guide, Oskar supposed—that the ship would presently begin sounding low-visibility signals. The point of this warning didn’t become fully apparent until the damn horn actually blew, with a sonic force scarcely below that of artillery fire. The deck vibrated sympathetically.
“Maybe we should go back in,” Oskar said when it was over.
“Go if you like,” Lena said, turning her shoulder on him.
He realized that in his excitement he’d neglected to give her the praise she deserved. He would have done so then but the horn sounded a second blast, and it wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon—the first tendrils of fog were creeping over the gunwales like the feelers of a gray monster. Oskar paused at the hatch for one look back at his surprising lover, her shoulders squared and feet planted defiantly as though against some notional gale. While he watched, she dug into her pockets and found a crumpled napkin, which she twisted into earplugs. Not so crazy after all, as Socialists go.
—
The Robert Ley got its bowline over at 1620 hours, twenty minutes behind schedule—not bad under such conditions.
Oskar knew Bremerhaven in passing. It lay just an hour’s drive from the Bremen Nebenstelle—a satellite location, a “nest” in service jargon—where he’d been hurriedly inducted into the fraternity of espionage. Nest Bremen was a substation of the larger Abwehrstelle in Hamburg, traditionally commanded by a naval captain, who, in turn, appointed other naval officers to run the outposts at Flensburg, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. The primary task at Nest Bremen was intelligence activity directed at the United States. There were twenty-odd such Abwehr stations scattered around Germany, each with its own cadre of field officers and a wide latitude of operation. So it was possible that another agent dispatched from, say, Nest Cologne, whose specialty was economic warfare, had been operating in Washington at the same time Oskar was there. Or another from Münster, snooping into aircraft designs. None of these agents would have known of the others; nor would their masters in Germany have been aware of the parallel, often competing, operations. Admiral Canaris liked to encourage a spirit of clandestine entrepreneurship, and he preferred to keep the messy aspects of the job as far as possible from his base in Berlin.
So much Oskar had been told, and he’d also been told to keep it to himself. There’d been no more fuss than that: no blood oath to swear or Official Secrets Act to sign. Security in the Abwehr was less a question of institutional secrecy than of personal character. You were brought in, generally, by someone you knew and who trusted you. Out of loyalty to that person, and to the tradition of the officer corps, you acquitted yourself honorably—if need be, to the last breath. It was a straightforward system and a very German one. Oskar wondered whether things worked differently on the SS side. Perhaps one day in a fit of madness he’d ask his new acquaintance, Hagen von Ewigholz, about this.
Just now, feeling no madness coming on, Oskar looked down from the rail of an upper deck as the customary dockside ritual proceeded on the shore. The inner harbor at Bremerhaven closely resembled every other German seaport he’d seen: bristling with giant cranes, walled off from the city at large by red-brick warehouses and newer, metal-clad buildings with high rows of sooted windows, loud with the beeping of horns and grinding of cargo lifts and revving of transport engines, swarmed over by a platoon of stevedores. Somewhere a train whistle blew. A foreman shouted. Northerly gusts brought drier air and the acrid smell of an ironworks, scouring the wharves of fog but doing little to relieve the oppressive grayness of the afternoon.
Oskar watched a pair of black, late-model Opel sedans pull up at the head of the pier. They had a certain look about them, even as they sat idling, like scarabs taking stock of a large, interesting corpse. At last the doors opened and out climbed four, five, six men in nondescript civilian clothes. In modern Germany, the lack of a uniform was often a kind of uniform, and Oskar surmised that these men were Gestapo. Two of them sauntered in opposite directions along the wharf, which ran parallel to the shoreline, taking up positions from which they could watch the berthed liner along different sight lines—thus able to spot, for instance, someone trying to elude passport control by lowering himself into the water. Another pair, meanwhile, opened the trunk of one car and began pulling out the unremarkable tools of their trade: a portable card table, a folding chair, a pair of brown leather cases. Parceling out their equipment, the men strolled down the pier toward the spot where a team of dockworkers had just finished rigging the ship’s gangway.
Oskar went down to the main deck, bumping shoulders with fellow passengers who had crowded there. A team of stewards, good-natured by profession, struggled to maintain a degree of order, asking the Americans again and again to please remain standing behind this rope line—Yes, madam, just there, thank you. Excuse me, sir, please do not—but they were accustomed, of course, to dealing with Germans, who would stay put where you told them to. The Gestapo team came aboard and began setting up shop at the brow of the gangway.
Where was Lena? Oskar wasn’t worried, but he did want to know.
As soon as the control point was manned and ready, the American dignitaries were ushered through. The captain himself oversaw this, walking with Senator Townsend to the card table, effecting rapid introductions and looking on while the great man’s passport was given a cursory glance, stamped with an entry permit and politely returned. The rest of the party—a few lesser members of Congress and the mayor of a steel town on the Great Lakes, with their sundry aides and sword-bearers—were waved through with equal alacrity. At the sight of Toby Lugan, Oskar drew back into the crowd and watched him, jostled from behind by crewmen toting luggage. While his papers were stamped, he paused to light a cigarette and, amid a venting of smoke, engaged one of the Gestapo agents in what seemed a pleasant if insistent chat. Then he chuckled and clapped the bewildered-looking man on the back, hard enough to make him wince, and finally clambered obstreperously down the gangway. The agent turned to murmur to a colleague, a short, stocky fellow who stood a couple paces back and whom Oskar took to be the officer in charge. This man pulled out a small notepad and made a brief entry, no more than a couple of words.
It occurred to Oskar that Clair hadn’t been among his father’s entourage. No sign of von Ewigholz, either.
Now the routine at the control point changed. The security team rearranged itself so that each departing passenger could be scrutinized from a couple of angles. Meanwhile, down on the pier, a Hitler Youth group marched out and assembled in two neat rows facing the ship. The boys were from about twelve to fifteen years in age, their commander was only a couple of years older, and they all wore crisply ironed yellow shirts with colorful shoulder patches and short brown woolen pants. Two at a time, they came running up to the quarterdeck, where—panting and beaming like well-trained puppies—they offered to help the American visitors with their luggage. They must have been vetted for English-speaking skills, because each proved capable of engaging in the rudimentary banter of a tourist phrasebook. The Yanks were charmed—especially the women, who shared an insuperable urge to stroke this or that shock of sun-bleached hair. The boys bore it all in good grace, apparently having been vetted as well for cuteness and docility. Oskar felt mildly disgusted.
Lena materialized as the last passengers were processed through security. Still no sign of Clair. She was drag
ging rather than carrying her sturdy portmanteau. Oskar’s plain canvas duffle was already waiting on the quarterdeck in the care of a friendly steward. Together they bumped forward in the dwindling line until it was their turn to present themselves to the officious man behind the table, with his companions looking on from either side. Oskar stepped up first.
The man stared back and forth between Oskar and his passport photo, then with no particular expression raised the passport head-high, where it could be examined from behind by his superior. This meant nothing, necessarily. Oskar had watched the same routine carried out half a dozen times.
The officer in charge flicked an eye over his papers and asked mildly, “The purpose of your extended stay overseas, Herr Sinclair?”
“An illness in the family,” said Oskar, playing back the story given by Stefan Sinclair upon departing Germany several months before. A note would have been made then; somewhere, a record existed. “My uncle, my father’s brother…who has since, regrettably, passed.”
“Es tut mir leid,” said the officer dispassionately.
“Danke.”
“And this is Frau Sinclair?”
Lena stepped forward, pressing her own papers into the officer’s hand. He declined to examine them, merely cocking his head toward the man seated at the desk.
“Welcome home,” he said, unsmiling.
—
In a nod toward beautification, the civic authorities had made a little park fronting the wharf, with a trapezoid of clipped grass enlivened by beds of salvia and tubs of alpine geraniums, given vertical interest by two rows of fastigiate beeches and a heroic statue of the city’s founder, Johann Smidt. At the center, a three-masted pole displayed the flags of the Reich, the Free City of Bremen and the Kingdom of Hanover. A modest ceremony was under way in a small proscenium nearby. Oskar watched from some fifty meters off, where he stood with Lena by a massive bollard at the edge of the wharf, as Senator Townsend and his party were welcomed with the correct degree of official enthusiasm by a thin man in an old-fashioned morning suit. Toby Lugan was just visible over his shoulder. In the middle ground, plump-cheeked girls from the Bund Deutscher Mädel presented flowers while a small wind ensemble tried to coax a fanfare from the throats of their clarinets and flügelhorns. Oskar didn’t recognize the music and guessed it must be something by one of the new “patriotic” composers whose work had been deemed free of unhealthy Jewish and Negro influences—stylistically, somewhere between Also sprach Zarathustra and the “Horst Wessel Lied.” They were interrupted twice by a film crew seeking better camera angles. Nobody seemed to mind. Propaganda was the true art form of the New Germany, and the weekly newsreel Die Deutsche Wochenschau among its purest expressions. Everyone, including the senator, wished to be seen at their best.
“Oskar, look!” said Lena, supplying punctuation with a sharp elbow.
He glanced back at the Robert Ley; and here at last came Clairborne, clattering down to the wharf, green-and-white scarf flying like a pennant, trailed by a pair of overladen stewards and, at a discreet distance, Obersturmführer von Ewigholz. No one was waiting to receive them, and Oskar wondered if the SS man hadn’t purposely held Clair back until there was no possibility of his creating an awkward scene. Well played, he thought. He touched a finger to his hat.
“What are you doing?” said Lena.
“Nothing. Watching the show.”
Von Ewigholz was in uniform today—resplendent, if that was the word, in coal-black and gleaming silver, wearing a peaked officer’s cap and sporting at his belt something that looked quite like a riding crop. A cavalry officer, Oskar remembered. Then he saw that Lena was waving to Clair, trying to catch his attention.
“Stop that,” he hissed.
Too late—Clair had spotted them. He stopped walking and then started again, a comical bit of artlessness, limbs tangling and untangling as he changed course. The acrid breeze caught his long hair and threw it over to one side.
“Lena!” he shouted. “And Stefan—thank God! Friendly faces at last! I’ve been under lock and key.”
Behind him the stewards hauling his luggage exchanged looks of amusement. They liked him, you could tell, in spite of everything. Von Ewigholz they did not. In fact, Oskar thought the stewards might actually have flinched as the SS officer marched past them, boots clomping on the pavement like hoofbeats.
In the little square, the ceremony went on. Senator Townsend pumped his arms like bellows driving air through his larynx, and the cameraman moved back, as though anxious not to miss some nuance involving a clenched fist or the slightly terrified expression of the Bürgermeister.
Clair hove up beside Lena. “I wonder if I should go over there,” he said, “and give my father a hand.”
Lena shot him a quick look. “I’m not so sure—”
With a laugh, the boy laid a hand on her arm as if they were conspirators. “At least let’s get closer, shall we? I love to watch people’s reactions.”
The two of them stepped forward to what Lena evidently felt was a safe distance. Von Ewigholz posted himself like a sentry at Oskar’s elbow. They looked on in silence, as though studying some avant-garde performance, a play within a play.
“She keeps him happy,” the SS man said after a while. “She keeps him under control.”
He spoke quietly, though Oskar doubted Clair would have minded being spoken of this way, as a problem to be handled. Oskar guessed he’d be used to it by now and might even have come to enjoy it.
“She does,” he agreed—or, rather, Stefan did: the affectionate husband, showing tolerance for his wife’s harmless flirtation. He could feel the SS man’s attention moving onto him like a shadow.
“Where do you go from here?” von Ewigholz asked. “Back home now? To Weimar, is that right?”
“First to Bremen. Lena has family there, an elderly aunt I’ve never met. We’re hoping to stay a night or two, but first we’ve got to find a telephone—in a hotel, I thought—so Lena can let her know we’ve arrived.”
“Then you must let me give you a ride,” von Ewigholz said. Something in his voice made it sound like a command. “At least as far as Bremen. We’ll be driving right past there on the new highway.”
For a moment Oskar almost wondered if he’d actually heard this, or if it was something his fevered imagination had conjured up. Thankfully Stefan was out in front, already making a polite demurral. “Why, you are so kind, sir, but we couldn’t possibly—Lena and I are frightfully disorganized, we’d only delay you…”
Von Ewigholz turned to him—face-to-face, one man to another. “Please. It would be a favor to me. This American boy…I’ve come to like him, actually, and therefore I’m worried. His little tricks, his antics, may have been harmless on the ship, but here in the Reich? He doesn’t understand, he has no concept of proper limits, and so there’s no telling how he might behave. But your wife, your Lena—you see how it is with them. And please believe me, Herr Sinclair, this is not the kind of man you need to be concerned about. Please do come with us to Bremen. At least that far. First, we’ll find you a telephone; then I need to requisition a car. Something big, I think. He’s got a lot of luggage himself.”
The man’s eyes had a curious quality of being frozen yet gleaming with life, sharp with alertness and curiosity, while the rest of his face remained impassive and expressionless. It was difficult to stand fixed in that gaze without fidgeting. In the end, even Stefan was no match for it.
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” he said. “That would save us…” He gestured with an arm—a wordless summary of all the things it would spare them, this ride in a big car with an SS Obersturmführer. Random security checks. The expense of travel. Negotiation with ticket agents. The ritual of presenting one’s papers at every turn.
“Indeed,” said von Ewigholz, nodding curtly, acknowledging all the things that need not be said.
They turned to watch the wrapping up of formalities in the square. Bull Townsend, faintly ridiculous with a
clutch of daisies in his fist, yielded the podium to another American, this one elderly and genial and sporting a blue sash under his shiny sports jacket. He spoke about enduring bonds and cultural affinities and the burdens of history we all must bear. Finally there was polite applause and a palpable air of restlessness, the crowd ready to move on to the next thing, whatever that might be.
At this point—while the Bürgermeister intoned some kind of benediction and the camera crew started breaking down its equipment—Clair stepped forward at last, approaching his father but halting a few paces away. The senator spotted him, delivered a parting handshake and a couple of slaps on nearby shoulders, then pressed through the crowd like a football player exiting the field. Father and son regarded each other for a moment as though trying to decide whether there was something, anything, they ought to say. Clair offered a hand to be clasped, but then Bull Townsend surprised them all by taking the boy into a full, vigorous embrace. You could practically hear the bones crunching. Clair endured this for a second or two before pulling back, looking flustered yet also gratified. He brushed the long hair away from his face and said something too quiet to overhear. “That’s the spirit!” said Bull. “Go out there and show ’em what you’re made of!”
Then he marched off, making for a Mercedes limousine that had pulled up on the far side of the square. One of the doors hung open and Toby Lugan stood next to it, clutching his papers and glancing at his watch. Just before Oskar turned to go, Lugan raised his head and looked over, meeting his gaze for the first time since he’d walked out of the tavern in Washington, DC. He might have grimaced, though it was hard to be sure. Then he climbed into the car and was off, Oskar supposed, to commence fact-finding.
—
At twenty-three, Oskar was old enough to remember a time when Germany hadn’t been so obsessed with uniforms. He’d been obliged, in the course of adolescence, to take up the habit of scanning lapels for gold-and-scarlet pins, deciphering the insignia on badges and epaulets, recognizing subtle markers of rank and position from across the room. But it hadn’t always been so, and he could recall when a coal-black uniform trimmed out in silver wouldn’t have commanded the immediate, nervous, even servile deference that greeted von Ewigholz when he stepped off Schillerstrasse into the lobby of the City Hotel. By the time the other three followed him inside, a hush had already fallen on the reception area and was spreading into the adjacent parlor, where a group of businessmen around a tea table paused with their schnapps glasses in the air, caught in mid-toast. The day manager, hurrying out from an office, gave the party an officious bow and inquired how he might be of assistance.
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