He needn’t have worried; no one was watching, everyone’s eyes on the giddy young woman and her fancy camera.
“Now look happy!” she commanded. “It’s a lovely day, the swallows are singing—everyone smile!”
—
There had been a time not so long ago when Chief Watchmaster Hans Diehl could have—and surely would’ve—chosen not to take this phone call. Who? he would have said. Kohlwasser, what sort of name is that? He’s a what—Standartenführer? A banner leader? Like a drum major, that kind of thing? Calling from where? Well, look—tell him I’m sure there are plenty of marching bands in Berlin that would welcome his services. We have no need of him here in Kaufungen.
You can bet your hat, he’d have said it right to this pompous desk warrior’s face. And until the year before last, he would’ve been safely within his rights to do so.
The chief had served proudly and without a single red mark against his name for thirty-two years. He’d risen from assistant village constable to the mounted Gendarmerie, from there to the municipal Schutzpolizei, back to the Gendarmerie as a senior watchmaster, and for almost a decade now he’d been top man for the entire Bezirk of Kaufungen, the largest and most physically challenging territory in northern Hesse. He’d run every sort of case you could imagine, from murder to missing livestock, arson, blackmail, poaching, rape, breaking in, drunken mayhem, violent assault, the whole mad rainbow of domestic eruptions—and yes, kidnapping as well. He knew this job from top to bottom; no one was better at it, no one more professional or discreet.
Yet none of that mattered any longer. Years of experience, local knowledge, the respect of the community he served—all of it counted for less than a single sheet of paper signed in 1936 by none other than Heinrich Himmler, erstwhile poultry farmer and now apparently the world’s second greatest authority on everything under the sun. And by the magic of that pen stroke, centuries of German law and custom had been overturned, the thoughtful apportionment of police authority among nation, state, district and municipality flattened like a child’s paper castle into something unrecognizable. Everything belonged to the SS now—that was the nut of it. The whole intricate machinery of law enforcement, built and fine-tuned over generations, had been reduced to a single cog in a crude apparatus called the Security Service.
They’d given that cog a vulgar name: the Order Police. Whatever you’d been before—beat cop, fraud investigator, fire warden, dogcatcher—today you were Ordnungspolizei. There was even a new uniform, the same for every last man! Green, cut in military style, it made you look like a scoutmaster playing war games. For a couple of months, the chief had refused to put the damn thing on—he had a perfectly good uniform already, with years of use left in it—but then word had come down. And that was the new system in its purest form: words, a multitude of words, all moving in the same direction. They traveled by every medium of conveyance, typed out in directives, murmured in your ear, published in The Black Corps—an incredible thing, the official SS organ, at once vile and sanctimonious—and, worst of all, shouted through the static on that lamentable invention, the telephone.
The chief held the handpiece a few inches from his ear so the voice of the ill-mannered Standartenführer—a sort of colonel; he’d looked it up—rang tinny and hollow throughout his office in a tidy building in the heart of Kaufungen, a small and law-abiding town.
His sergeant, the only man on the force with as many years of service as Diehl himself, shook his head sympathetically.
“Excuse me, Herr Standartenführer!” Diehl shouted back at arbitrary moments, interrupting the diatribe at the other end. “I’m afraid the connection is faulty, I missed that last bit! Could you speak more plainly, please?”
This was the second call from Berlin just this morning, following one last night during an already delayed supper. Aside from getting his blood up, they served no purpose Diehl could see. He didn’t need to be told it was serious business, the missing son of a foreign VIP. Grosser Gott, he’d had the whole force out for hours, as well as some auxiliaries he’d called up, plus some extra patrolmen on loan from the larger force at Kassel—and that had been a bitter pill, a question of local pride. Nor did he welcome hints about a “political dimension.” Politics and policing didn’t mix, in the chief’s view; a law was a law, and the same ones applied to everybody.
Above all, he could not abide rudeness. And this blustery little colonel, this Kohlwasser, was as rude as any SS man Diehl had ever crossed lances with—which was saying a mouthful, as to a man and a dog they were an ill-bred lot. He pursed his lips and held the philosophic gaze of his adjunct for a few moments longer. Finally he nodded—enough for now—and the sergeant switched on the old radio, an antique model long retired from active use but kept around for emergencies such as this, when it served as a convincing simulator of telephone line noise, starting off quiet but rising in volume and pitch as the tubes warmed up. Diehl let it build until it drowned out the clamor from the distant Reichskapital. Then he dropped the handpiece into its cradle. If only it could always be so easy.
“What was he saying,” he asked, “just before the end there?”
The sergeant shook his head. “Didn’t catch it all, sir, I’m afraid. But I believe he said, I’m coming down.”
The chief watchmaster nodded. That’s what he’d thought too. Well, let the fellow come, then, and get some cow shit on his parade boots.
—
“Believe this?” said Bull Townsend from his bed at the Hotel Adlon. “This so-called doctor telling me to stay off my feet for two days? Two days! Some tendon came loose, I guess. Hurts like hell, I don’t mind saying. Then he tries to give me a shot but I tell him to get that damn needle away from me, I’ve got things I need to see to and the world don’t stop because my knee’s hurting. My boy’s out there, dead for all I know. And when his mother calls, I’ll sound like I’m half in the bag? Well, forget it, Herr Doktor Arschloch.”
Toby Lugan approached the bed cautiously. It was large enough to sleep three and looked as though an explosion had occurred among the many pillows and blankets that lay around Bull like twisted wreckage. The senator sat propped at an angle apparently chosen to provide an optimal flow of air from his diaphragm to his vocal cords. Toby didn’t like his own chances of a getting a word in edgewise, though there were words that needed saying, one wise or another. “Listen, Bull—”
“And the goddamn embassy, those pricks! I ask for a situation update, they send over some girl looks like Margaret Hamilton at the wrong time of the month. Wants me to sign papers. Authorize her to act in loco. Promise to let her know the instant, the instant, we hear a goddamn thing. I told her, Ma’am, I’ll promise you anything. Slide a paper in front of me, I’ll sign it. Hand me a spark plug, I’ll piss on it. All I want is to get my boy back.”
“Bull, that’s what I—”
“People you want to hear from, they’ve forgotten your number. Must’ve wrote it down on toilet paper, I guess. People you don’t want to hear from—I’m talking about reporters—they’re calling every other minute, had to tell the switchboard I’m sick and tired of this, take a message and then burn it. One of them got through anyway. Barely understand him, couldn’t tell if his English was that bad or he was snockered. But he got me laughing, said he was on to a big scoop, something about Clairborne, wouldn’t say what, needed me to give him an ‘ex-klu-seev.’ Finally had to hang up on the son of a bitch, he would’ve kept me up all—”
“Damn it, Bull, shut up.”
The expression on the senator’s face was worth Toby’s career, should it come to that.
“It’s Clairborne I came to talk to you about. And…one other thing, but that can wait, probably. I’ve just gotten a call from, ah, someone in the Security Service. They’ve got some reports, aerial surveillance and whatnot—it’s nothing definite, there’s only local people on the ground right now—but they think they’ve spotted Clairborne. Out in the country, east of Kassel. And there’s some ph
ysical evidence—a hat on a trail, trampled grass, stuff like that—suggesting he might be with a few other people. They might be the kidnappers, my contact doesn’t know; he’s heading down there now, invited me to join him. Your personal representative, that type of thing.”
“Well, damn it, Toby! Let me sit here blabbing when you’ve got news like this, what’s wrong with you? How far away is it, this fucking place?”
“I’m told it’s a four-hour drive.”
“Four goddamn hours.” Townsend struggled to rise, but the injured tendon wouldn’t allow it. He emitted a low, prolonged bellow, then said, through gritted teeth, “Don’t they have airplanes in this country?”
“I’m pretty sure they do, yes.”
“So get on that phone and find one, then get on it and go find Clairborne. You might want to take that embassy gal along. I promised her…hell, I don’t know what all I promised. Anyway, she’ll probably know how to talk to them. Left her card there on the table.”
Talk to whom? Toby wondered. Germans? Kidnappers? He picked up the card and read SUSAN DURST, SPECIAL LIAISON.
“The hell you waiting for?” said Bull. “Got something more important on your mind?”
Toby hadn’t consciously been waiting for anything, but now he became aware once more of the leather case in his hand. It seemed to be getting heavier the longer he carried it around. And yes: though he wouldn’t have put the matter so crudely, it probably was incalculably more important than the senator’s missing son. Toby had spent a few hours last night absorbing its contents, which were written in a clench-jawed Prussian dialect that must have been taught at General Staff College, fully intelligible only to its graduates. But Toby understood enough to realize what a bombshell he was holding. So this, he thought, is how a major European power goes about the business of invading a smaller neighbor. Well, why not? They’ve had centuries of practice, gotten the thing down to a science. So that part wasn’t surprising, from a Realpolitik point of view.
But it was surprising, number one, that somebody from the Interior Ministry had made off with these documents and, number two, that he’d slipped them easy as pie into Bull Townsend’s tennis bag. Where, owing to an untimely confluence of cussedness and gravity, they were discovered not by His Honor but by a humble political spear-carrier. Who’d been toting this thing around since yesterday, and it was a mighty spear indeed.
“Is there some damn thing you’re not telling me?” said Bull. “Something about Clairborne?”
“No,” said Toby. “No, it’s—it’s something else. It can wait.” He picked up the hotel phone, and when the switchboard answered, he said, “Wie erreiche ich ein Flugzeug?”
Like great hotels all over the world, the Adlon was well practiced at meeting the exacting requirements of its guests. Toby was in a taxi bound for Tempelhof in under ten minutes. Should he swing by the embassy en route to pick up Girl Susan? Better not—Toby could act in loco parentis himself, should it be necessary or advisable. Who knows what kind of tawdry mess he was going to find down there? Or how badly Bull might be hurt, should the whole thing get out? Maybe Toby’s uncomfortable partnership with Helmut Kohlwasser would prove useful after all.
As for the leather case…well, we’ll have to see, won’t we? Maybe he’d burn it up, along with its sensational contents. Or just toss it out of the plane. Or maybe he’d wrap it up and send it to Czechoslovakia, let those poor bastards know what was coming.
—
It only made sense, Oskar supposed, that after months of living under cover, then in hiding, then under a new cover, discarding names as facilely as changing suits, he should now have trouble letting go of old habits, abandoning caution and allowing himself to get caught.
Yet that was what he’d been ordered to do. He could hardly believe it, though the message was clear. The messengers were people he’d seen that first night, when he’d been recruited; he didn’t know their names but assumed Jaap had counted on him to remember their faces, a double-safe measure, along with the tchaj, to confirm where the order was coming from.
Then there was the matter of the envelope.
He’d tried to open it furtively while the picture taking was in progress, though he’d been obliged to stand dumbly and to smile on command and to strike a series of cheerful poses until the Bugatti woman decided the little game had served its purpose. She and her partner went back to their table and resumed their vacuous nattering. The four companions sat down over the remains of a late breakfast with, it seemed to Oskar, a new tension between them. They’d had a distraction, which was over now, and nothing had changed. Should he tell them otherwise? First he’d see what was in that envelope.
“I don’t like this place,” said Lena. “I think we should get out of here.”
His first impulse was to flinch—she was speaking too loudly, and in English—but then he remembered: Draw attention to yourselves. Do it quickly.
“And go where?” said Hagen, not unkindly, a real question. “We’ve just come from”—sweeping a hand—“out there.” He lowered his voice. “Here at least we can sit for a while.”
Oskar drew the envelope out of his pocket. It had been opened already, the flap torn in such a way that he could glimpse a wrinkled document inside, seemingly an ordinary letter. And something else, bulkier. He gave the envelope a little shake and a little booklet with a stiff paper cover came sliding into view. A passport. And not a German passport, as the cover was cherry red, faded from exposure. What am I now? he wondered. He forced the opening a little wider. He was Swiss.
“For how long, though?” said Clair. “All day? If we’re going to be here that long, I’d want to be doing something. Not just sitting around.”
Oskar began to feel hopeful. That things were slipping out of his hands came, to his surprise, as a relief. He settled back and tried to focus on Clair: He needs to be recognized, the young woman had said. Well, here you are, then: a long-haired teenager talking not just in English but distinctly American English. That must be almost as bad as Russian. He glanced at the lady with her novel—but no joy there: she seemed engrossed in the predictable story line.
“What would you like to do?” Hagen asked.
“I don’t know.” The boy sounded bored and petulant. “Let’s see, what are the choices? Get a room, call a taxi, jump off the cliff. It’s a tough decision.”
Lena smirked. “We can probably narrow it down. I guarantee there’s no telephone in this place—so, no taxi for you.”
Clair laughed, changing in an instant back to the innocent off on an adventure, impervious, carefree.
Oskar tugged at this thought like a string, draw attention, to him especially, and it led him back to the last time he’d felt anything like carefree himself, and Clair had been the center of attention then, too.
“It’s a shame,” said Oskar, hearing something strange in his own voice but pushing on with it, “you didn’t bring your flute.”
Clair scowled. “Yeah, well. We had to leave in kind of a hurry.”
“Can you sing?”
The others looked at him oddly. Hagen seemed to be trying to read his thoughts, and for all Oskar could tell, he might have succeeded.
“Of course he can sing!” Hagen said. “Like an angel, I bet.”
Clair blushed. But he was smiling.
“Angels don’t sing, do they?” Lena asked. “I thought they just stood around with their harps.”
“You know nothing about angels,” said Hagen. “Didn’t your parents…well, perhaps not.”
“I’ll have you know,” said Clair, “I was the soloist for three years running at Easter Mass. They kept thinking my voice would have to change by the next year, but it kept on not changing. And I kept getting better, so they had to keep me as soloist. The third year, they made a recording. My father bought a million copies as Christmas presents. I don’t believe he’s actually played it, but he gave a copy to anyone he ever met.”
Was there a wistful tone in his voice? Pe
rhaps so, since Hagen laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What can you sing?” said Oskar.
“I can sing anything. What I know is the standard repertory for boys’ choir. And a little Cole Porter, especially the racy parts. And ‘Gloomy Sunday,’ but I can’t sing that. ‘Gloomy Sunday’ makes me cry.”
He said this so simply that Oskar knew it was a glimpse of the boy’s heart. Momentarily blinded by the pure flash of it, he felt amazed that Clair, at eighteen, could still say such a thing out loud. He couldn’t recall having ever been quite so innocent or, at any rate, so unguarded—but in Germany you learned from an early age, mostly by observing those around you, that speech was like dancing, a studied act. You could do it gracefully and even take pleasure in it, but only after you’d mastered the rules, the careful footwork. Clair hadn’t ever heard about that; he still believed it was all right to be who you were and say what you thought.
Keep believing, Oskar thought, at least a few minutes longer. “Sing something, then,” he told him—trying to make it sound like a friendly challenge, not a desperate entreaty.
Clair looked back at him, poised on some inner threshold. What was going on here? Some joke he wasn’t in on, something weird and German that he didn’t understand?
“I’d like to hear you sing,” said Hagen quietly.
That pushed him across. He rose to his feet, maybe from habit, and began to sing in a strong countertenor, clear as the May sky:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
Lena was clapping in delight, Hagen looking on with taut attentiveness. Oskar barely took notice; he was busy scanning the terrace, tracking the reactions of the bystanders, which so far looked gratifying. No one could possibly ignore a thing like this.
“More, more!” called little Herr Bugatti.
His partner overbid him: “On the chair! Stand on the chair!”
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