This is what happens, Oskar felt like telling her. You agree to do a favor for some old friends in the SDP. Next thing you know, you’ve got bodies on the second floor.
“You should go in there,” the Resistance woman told him, her voice surprisingly calm; she sounded, if anything, resigned. “Peter, I’m pretty sure, is dead. Alex, I can’t tell. Perhaps you have more experience. I’ll keep an eye on your friend.”
Oskar nodded. He looked at the gun in his hand, still slick with blood, and wondered pointlessly what he could wipe it off with. Then he turned grimly toward the bedroom but noticed the old man, Ruhmann, emerging from the shadows at the far end of the hallway. He’d come up the service stairs, Oskar guessed, discreetly tucked behind one of these doors—the same route the Socialists must have taken, which had brought them face-to-face with Clair. One small mystery solved. Ruhmann came forward slowly, lugging a Gladstone bag that looked as full and substantial as he himself seemed frail and spent.
“I imagine you’ll be needing a doctor,” he said.
NETTING MEN LIKE SHOALS OF COD
BREMEN, ALTSTADT: 23 MAY
Jaap Saxo’s navy-issue shoes, in need of polishing, left tracks in the dew that had collected overnight on the marble paving slabs around the statue. He’d begun his day in Bremen, as a matter of preference grown into superstitious habit, with a stroll through the Old City. It was early, but already a gaggle of tourists—could they be American?—had assembled on one side of the famous monument, clutching their cameras and Baedekers and dictionaries while a young man in an Arbeitsfront uniform lectured them about Roland, his heroic deeds in the service of Karl der Grosse, his sword Durendal, his status as protector of the Free Cities and the legend that the Bremen town fathers kept a duplicate statue hidden in a cellar, in case the original should be toppled and the city left thereby defenseless. When Jaap drew near, the young man snapped to attention and offered him a Hitler salute.
“Good morning, Herr Kapitänleutnant!”
Jaap returned an ordinary naval salute and kept walking. It was imprudent, he guessed, but these Nazi boys annoyed him and he was in a gray mood to begin with—and had been for weeks now. Perhaps that’s why Bremen suited him. The northwest always suited him, with its salt air, its easygoing spirit and its distance from Berlin.
His destination was the Aussenhandelsstelle, the Foreign Trade Office, which occupied an old guesthouse off the main square and was the final stopping point for businessmen traveling overseas—this despite the fact that nowadays no oceangoing vessels departed from here, all such traffic having moved downriver to the daughter city’s deep-draft harbor. Such is the German civil service when it’s dug its claws in. Jaap couldn’t fault them. They’d grown comfortable in Bremen and so, if he wasn’t careful, might he.
The clerk at the reception desk knew him by sight as a “special client,” an officer whose professional interest in certain aspects of their operation was understood to lie outside the bounds of normal scrutiny. If the Kapitänleutnant needs to look at a file, Fräulein, just be sure it gets put back properly. Jaap’s business today required access not to files but, rather, to stories, personal recollections. He passed through an inner door and up an ancient, narrow flight of stairs to the former guest rooms on the topmost floor. Squeezed into a corner and lit from overhead by a murky skylight, a secretary acknowledged him by lowering her half-glasses and waving him past her tiny desk to where a blackened door sagged half-open.
“The assistant director is expecting you,” she said, a note of play in her voice. “They called up from downstairs. You know they don’t like it when you won’t stop to chat. They’ve got certain theories about you, but they need more information. You should wear a wedding ring someday. That’ll keep them going for a week.”
Jaap favored her with his best smile. “Thank you, Heidi. How’s your little brother—have you heard from him?”
The secretary, who couldn’t have been much over twenty, lifted a framed picture from her desk: a blond boy too young to shave in a crisp white tunic, its sleeve showing the lone stripe of a seaman recruit. “He volunteered for the U-boats,” she said. “He says there’s special training involved.”
Her eyes, raised to meet Jaap’s, seemed to be asking for something: a reaction, encouragement of some kind.
“That’s very exciting,” he told her, smiling again. “I’m sure he’ll do well.”
He held the smile until he stopped to tap lightly on the open doorway.
“Yes, all right, you can see I’m here,” said a heavy man in a fine but yellowed shirt, from a swivel chair he’d rolled over to a bank of diamond-mullioned windows. His broad desk, stacked with papers in several colors, was several paces off, as though its mooring lines had been cut. “Give me more notice next time and I’ll find some reason to be out. Then you can have the run of the place. Have the run of—” He winked, tossing his head in the direction of the anteroom.
“Herr Kretschmann,” said Jaap. He closed the door behind himself and settled into an empty chair. “How is your memory these days? Sharp as ever?”
“Ach!” The big man concealed his pleasure by jutting his chin out and shaking his jowls. “Too many things stashed away up there.” A tap on the forehead. “Never find the one you’re looking for. Ask me the last port of call of some leaky coastal freighter fifteen years ago, I can rattle it right off. Ask me what I ate for lunch yesterday, your guess is as good as mine.”
“My guess would be blood sausage,” said Jaap. “In plum sauce with a splash of sherry, to cut the grease.”
Kretschmann laughed, an event in which most of his body participated. “Not a bad guess. But I think that was Tuesday. What can I do for you, my good sir?”
“Erwin Kaspar,” said Jaap. “Early twenties. Trade mission, late last winter. Dispatched by the Agriculture Ministry, but I suspect he might have trailed through here to present his credentials, maybe left his name in a ledger. Strictly by the book, young Herr Kaspar.”
Kretschmann sat for a while impassively, his head angled toward the bank of windows. God alone knew what went on inside that great round cranium. In his own good time, he swiveled his chair to face Jaap straight on. “I know the name,” he said.
“Ah.” Jaap knitted his fingers, waiting for the story that must be gaining force just over the horizon.
“In point of fact,” said Kretschmann, “you’re not the first one who’s come in here, to this office, asking about this Kaspar fellow. A young man who seems very much in demand. What’d he do, knock up some Kreisleiter’s daughter? Pilfer the Winter Aid box? Make off with secret documents?”
Jaap chose not to react, though the last question was too pointed for his taste. “It’s rather what he didn’t do. He never came back. I’m trying to trace him.”
“Never came back!” Kretschmann raised his eyebrows, but not, thought Jaap, in surprise. “Well. That’s not so unusual these days, is it? Fellow sails off to America. On a government ticket, no less! And we never see him again. Not a new story. And hardly much of a mystery, Kapitänleutnant, I shouldn’t think.”
Perhaps not—yet Jaap hadn’t mentioned America. Kretschmann seemed to realize this as well. Still seated, he rolled across the creaky floorboards to his desk, pumping the chair along like a paddle boat. He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of schnapps and two dubious-looking glasses.
“You mentioned,” said Jaap, “that I’m not the first who’s been asking about Erwin Kaspar.”
“I’m coming to that!” said Kretschmann, pouring the drinks. “Here, don’t make me get up. I was just coming to that. I’ll show you something. It’s here somewhere, God knows where.”
Jaap took a glass while Kretschmann pawed through one drawer and then another, knocking things loose that rattled against the old wood. The man had begun to sweat. Finally he pulled his hand out, holding it up to display a business card that was printed on oversized stock and pinched between his fat thumb and forefinger. He waved this briefly, l
ike a fan, then handed it to Jaap, who stared at it for a moment before giving it back.
“That’s the one,” said Kretschmann, energetic now. “Here, raise a glass with me. Zum Wohl!”
They drank. The schnapps was fierce and peppery: a tonic for the nerves.
“Helmut Kohlwasser,” said Kretschmann, reading from the card. “SS-Standartenführer. Reich Security Main Office. That’s all. A big shot—no phone number, no street address. And no office hours, the lucky chap!” He poured himself another glass and waved the bottle at Jaap, who shook his head.
“These men don’t have office hours,” Jaap said, “because they’re on the job all the time. Day and night.”
Kretschmann seemed not to be listening. “I didn’t like him,” he said, lowering his voice. “Between you and me, Kapitänleutnant, the way he marched in here, demanded to examine my files—examine them, like some kind of doctor.”
“And asking about Kaspar.”
“Kaspar? Oh, your young, ah, traveler. No. Not Kaspar in particular. He was looking for names, anyone who’d booked passage to America in a trade-related capacity, either privately or officially, between certain dates in…I believe it was March. Yes, March. And there was Kaspar, right in his window. Not the only one, but for some reason, given how this big shot behaved, you got a feeling: This is the one I’m looking for.”
Jaap smiled; the man was good with accents. “You’re very observant, Herr Kretschmann. That’s really quite a remarkable memory.”
“Well…” Kretschmann glowed at the compliment, his face now even redder.
“Listen,” Jaap said, “this is not an official visit—just a personal call, yes? I’m in Bremen on navy business and dropped by in passing to say hello. But in case anything else arises—”
“With Kaspar?”
“Or with Kohlwasser. Should there be any further developments, anything at—”
“I shall contact you,” said Kretschmann, barely above a whisper. It was a conspiracy, just the two of them, and he loved it. “I shall be very discreet. ‘A discrepancy in tonnage figures’—how’s that for a signal?”
“It’s perfect, Herr Kretschmann. But I must go now.”
“Zum Wohl!” said the big man, raising an empty glass in imitation of a farewell toast.
To your health. Well, that was apt, thought Jaap. “And to yours,” he said.
—
The Haus des Reichs was as ghastly as he remembered it. His uniform got him through the front door and into the wing occupied by the Kriegsmarine. The place seemed busier than usual today—messengers scurrying past with sealed envelopes tucked under their elbows, huddled conversations that fell silent when he approached. Here and there, desks and cabinets had been set up in the broad hallways, suggesting that certain aspects of the operation were expanding faster than had been envisioned a couple of years ago when the office space had been allotted. He glanced at door plates in passing. Munitions. Logistics. Communications (Secure). This sort of information would be very useful to a hostile agent, and here it was, right out in plain sight, available for the price of a sailor suit. You never thought a spy would dare, or bother, to stroll into a place like this, but the same could be said for most places, and Jaap himself had cabinets filled with things obtained just as unimaginatively. None of that especially concerned him today.
Abwehr Nest Bremen had a floor to itself on the north side of the building, away from the river, and to enter it Jaap needed to present his identification twice. At the second checkpoint his clothing and his letter case were pawed through with reassuring vigor. When at last he was granted admittance, he found the atmosphere curiously charged. There was excitement in the air, but it seemed of a nervous sort, as in a newsroom with a big story in the works whose ending was still in doubt. There was none of the bustle of the hallways below. People were in their offices, speaking quietly into telephones or flipping attentively through documents with classifications stamped in red.
Jaap walked slowly, expecting to be greeted or challenged or at least recognized by someone. He was no stranger here, having come over to Intelligence in ’35 with Admiral Canaris and his cadre; in navy parlance, he was a plank owner. Yet the faces in these offices were unfamiliar to him. Times were changing, the bureau was growing and Jaap felt out of touch. Such feelings were to be expected when you’d been out in the field, working and living undercover. You came in and resumed your true identity, but it could take weeks, or months, to really feel like yourself again. Except the field Jaap had come in from was Berlin, where the dangers he’d faced were on the order of loose chatter at cocktail parties. The worst moment had been his meeting with Kohlwasser, and that had amounted to a comparison of cock sizes. It wasn’t Jaap who was out of touch; it was these people here, running their agents and training their saboteurs and plotting their infiltrations of American shipyards, while the real war—or, rather, the question of whether there was going to be one or not—was being decided by gentlemen in well-appointed rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse, the Élysée, Whitehall, Capitol Hill.
Canaris understood this. So did Beck, Weizsäcker, Oster, Gisevius. Even von Kleist, that firebrand, knew when to sheathe his sword and pop in a boutonniere and go calling on his friends at MI6. The smartest thing Nest Bremen could be doing right now was to stop yammering about “the American target” and start cultivating useful contacts there. Jaap had made one stab at that, and from what he could ascertain—precious little—it had come to grief. But he would try again, if he could.
Promptly at eleven o’clock, he was ushered into the Holy of Holies: an oversized room filled with potted jungle plants, a conference table, two large nautical charts (one of major Atlantic shipping channels, the other of the eastern seaboard of the United States) and a desk designed for use from a standing, not sitting, position. Here he found Dr. Erich Pfeiffer in his element: monocle in place, cigar smoldering in a brass tray, cognac in a cut-class decanter and a secretary at each elbow as he riffled through a sheaf of classified documents like a rummy player checking for marked cards.
Jaap came smartly to attention. “Commander,” he said.
“What? Who is it?” Pfeiffer removed his monocle, blinking. “Ah, Saxo, good. Just the man. Fräulein, if you’ll— Thank you. And the door, please. For God’s sake stand at ease, man. You know we don’t go in for all that fuss here.”
Jaap thought better of smiling. Fuss was exactly what Pfeiffer went in for. The commander—his actual rank was Fregattenkapitän, but he preferred its Royal Navy equivalent—was known to be a rabid colonialist, and if he couldn’t have his globe-spanning empire, he would have all the trappings anyway.
“Thank you for your letter, Commander,” Jaap said. “I’m glad you found my report satisfactory. I was hoping today to request your counsel on the possibility of mounting another operation along similar lines. In fact, as luck would have it, an American delegation has just—”
“You know, Saxo, I was up in Hamburg the other day. Kapitän Wichmann asked after you. Sorry, I had to tell him, haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he trotted off to Berlin.”
Jaap did smile now. He’d just won a bet with himself—a wager that he couldn’t get through all four of the sentences he’d prepared as an opening salvo. “My time in Berlin was quite fruitful, I believe, Commander. Especially with regard to our friend at the Interior Ministry.”
“Interior Ministry.” Pfeiffer chewed the words like a chunk of bone he’d found in his sauerbraten. “Intriguers. Whisperers. Conspirators. Slippery two-faced bastards in evening jackets, the lot of them.”
It was no use suggesting that in Intelligence, intrigue and conspiracy were roughly like soil and water, basic elements from which all else grew. Pfeiffer had his own style of doing things, and it was hard to argue (though Jaap would have done so) that his methods weren’t fabulously successful. Nest Bremen was the largest and most active of the Abwehr’s several dozen outposts. It had the biggest staff and the greatest number of field agents. Tho
ugh it was nominally a suboffice run out of Hamburg, the two station chiefs, Wichmann and Pfeiffer, barely spoke a common tongue, and so a de facto division of responsibility had evolved: Hamburg would keep its eye on the traditional enemy, Great Britain, while Bremen could throw history to the wind and go after—that loathsome phrase again—the American target.
But the real difference, in Jaap’s view, was that Wichmann was too much of an old-blood conservative to feel much real animus toward the Brits, with their royalty and lovely harbors and schoolboy honor. Pfeiffer, in contrast, was a fanatic—not a Nazi but strictly nationalistic. He despised the Yanks and wanted them to know it. And so he dispatched agents in waves, practically recruiting them off the streets and sending them over the wire with a few weeks’ training, an English phrasebook and orders to blow up the White House. The whole thing was a fiasco—there were probably FBI agents building their careers on it, netting Pfeiffer’s men like shoals of cod—but nobody noticed this, because outside of Nest Bremen no one took the American target seriously.
“According to information I’ve recently received, Commander…” Jaap let this float for a moment like a fly over water, fishing imagery having somehow gotten into his head. “The American delegation that just landed includes a senator who is in support of healthy relations with Germany. And he’s brought at least one member of his staff, a gentleman known to be fond of drink. As well as a son, an eighteen-year-old.”
“Honey trap!” Pfeiffer exclaimed, slapping the tall desk. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“Not necessarily, Commander. Though I do believe it’s possible these people might have useful knowledge to impart, given the proper…enticement. In particular, I hope they might be able to shed some light on the fate of our earlier operation, the one involving a young Wehrmacht officer. But beyond that, and seeing that the other operation may not have achieved its objectives, I was contemplating, so to speak, a different sort of dangle. This one aimed at the senator personally. Our friend at Interior will make the approach, while we provide the Blattmusik. Better us than the Tirpitzufer, I think.”
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