by Joseph Kanon
There was a shout from the street, a bar argument that had moved outside.
“Border towns are like this. It’ll be different in Mexico City,” Ben said, wondering if it were true.
“Better food,” Kaltenbach said, looking at it. “Imagine living in such a place. Stealing tires.”
Ben stared at the scarred table top, remembering a wrecked Horch abandoned in Jagerstrasse, tires gone, gold on the black market. Children selling K-rations, as slippery as the kids outside. Where he was sending Kaltenbach. But where Kaltenbach wanted to go.
“It’s an odd feeling,” he was saying. “No one knows I’m here.”
“None of us,” Liesl said. “You could disappear here.” She met Ben’s eyes. “If someone were looking for you. You could-just go. Anywhere. Be safe.”
“Unless you wanted him to find you,” Ben said, looking back at her.
“You could stop.”
“Not now. He won’t stop. I’d always be looking over my shoulder. You can’t live that way.” He touched her hand. “And there’s Danny. Do you want me to walk away from that?”
She raised her head, her eyes wider, as if she were startled to find him there.
“What are you saying?” Kaltenbach said, not following their English.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, sitting up. “Just how it’s like before. When we got out.”
“This place?”
“Yes, everything. How worried I was. What if they turn us back? And then at the border, how easy and you thought, it’s a trick.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Kaltenbach said.
“Then a drink to celebrate. Like this. Everything,” she said, facing Ben again.
“And how calm he was, your brother. Well, and you. ‘My old man.’” He grinned. “But not this,” he said, gesturing to the beer. “Do you think they have schnapps?”
“They may call it that, but it won’t-”
“You can’t celebrate with beer. Not something like this.”
They were another hour, sipping a harsh, burning brandy with a Mexican label, Kaltenbach getting sentimental but not yet maudlin, Liesl smiling to herself as he talked.
“And you’ll come to see me. How far is Berlin? Imagine the neighbors. A movie star. In old Kaltenbach’s flat. Everyone looking, just behind the curtains. You remember the courtyards, how everyone knew your business? Nothing said and they know everything. So you’ll come. Look at you. Since a child. You don’t forget these things. Your mother, so protective. Everything for you, for Hans. Everybody but herself. And then she couldn’t protect you anymore.”
Liesl reached across the table. “Heinrich.”
“Yes, I know, I know. Don’t speak. Like Hans. But then, you know, we begin to forget. They go away from us.” He turned to Ben. “Can I say something to you? Your brother was very brave. I know. This thing, maybe it’s hard for us, but we can’t pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t talk about it, it goes away, but then they go away, too. Look at Hans, he never talks about Daniel now. It reminds him. Once it’s there, in your head-”
“What does he mean?” Ben asked Liesl.
“My mother was anxious. She had pills for that. So one night too many. Maybe an accident. We don’t know, Heinrich,” she said to him. “Not for sure.”
“Ach.” He waved his hand. “So it’s not for sure. And that’s why Hans won’t talk about it. But it’s in his head.”
The kind of idea that can lodge there, Ben thought, so you come back to it, over and over. Use it. Something people don’t want to be sure about, a car off the road, a fall, something they’d rather not see, not even laid out in a pattern. A convenient way to make people look away.
“He talks about it to me,” Liesl said quietly.
“Forgive me, it’s the schnapps. I don’t mean anything by saying this.”
“I know.”
“But your brother,” Kaltenbach said, switching tack. “That was someone. Right past the guards, not a drop of sweat. Always an answer. ‘Who’s this?’ The signature, you know, hard to read. ‘Petain.’ On a laissez-passer. Imagine, Petain. But they believe him.” He cocked his head, looking at Ben. “I used to think, so different, but now I see it. Not the looks, something else. Don’t you see it, Liesl? Doesn’t he remind you?”
She looked at Ben for a second, then finished her glass. “It’s late,” she said, standing up.
At the hotel there was a message in Ben’s box.
“Someone’s here,” Liesl said, apprehensive.
But it was only a flyer from a bar down the street, offering the first drink free.
“Stop worrying,” Ben said, handing it to her.
“Think how easy it would be to do here. Who would know? Somebody in the alley. Another one.”
They were in the hall now, Kaltenbach opening his door.
“So good-night. Thank you again.” He hugged Ben, clamping him on the back, then kissed Liesl. “You’ll knock?”
“Get some sleep,” Liesl said softly. “Lock the door. You, too,” she said to Ben as they moved down the corridor. “It’s not safe.”
“It is tonight. We’re off the map. For one night, anyway.”
“And then what?” She stopped at the door. “He’s so old,” she said, nodding to Kaltenbach’s room. “All of a sudden.”
“You just haven’t been looking.”
“No, no one has.” She touched the bandage on his nose. “How is your rib?”
He shrugged.
“The brandy will make you sleep. You must be tired. It’s not easy, all this.”
He kissed her forehead. “Easier than getting over the mountain.”
She looked at him, eyes darting across his face, suddenly tearing up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it twice.”
“What, the border?”
“You. Him, now you. What if it happens again?” She ran her hand over her eyes. “It’s the brandy. Go to sleep.”
“It’s going to be all right.”
“How do you know?” she said, her head still down. “Was it all right for him?” She started shaking, fighting back more tears.
Ben put his hand to her cheek. “Stop.”
“It’s too many parts. I can’t do so many.”
“Which one do you want?”
She sniffed, a stifled laugh. “War bride. That’s what I want. Turn here, feel this. Be that. Not these. Heinrich’s memory. Your-your what?” She raised her head. “I can’t do it twice.”
“I’m not him.”
“No,” she said, her head sinking again, her voice breaking. “No one is.”
She began to shake harder, pitching forward with sobs, trying to stop by gulping air, so that for a second he thought she might be sick. And then she was letting go, her shoulders suddenly slack and drooped, as if her body were sliding away from her. He put his hands on her arms, holding her.
“Now I do this,” she said. “After all this time. All this time. My god, what a place.”
He followed her glance down the hall, the dim sconces and fraying carpet.
“Ssh,” he said, letting her forehead fall on his chest, a child who’d just tripped, cut her knee.
“Do you know what he said? When I asked him to stop the work? Do you want me to walk away? The same words. You say it and he’s saying it.” Blurted out in a rush, unscripted. “All day he’s there. Still there.”
She started shaking again, and he put his arms around her, holding her, but then the words came back and this time he listened, went still, the smell of her suddenly different, someone he had never held before. He tried to think of her somewhere else, their own time, but his mind went blank because he saw that she had never been there, already taken, somebody else’s. He drew in a breath, stunned by how fast it had happened. Maybe this is how you died, without warning, without the chance to hold on. One minute it was there and then it wasn’t.
She moved her head back, as if she had felt the shift, too, some flutte
ring away, and looked at him, biting her lower lip. For a minute neither of them moved, letting the air settle.
“It’s not your fault,” she started, but that seemed wrong and she stepped back, her hand over her mouth. “It’s late. I’m not making sense.”
Rewinding, pretending it hadn’t happened. But too late. “No one is.” Spoken out loud, there, everything different.
“Where’s your key,” he said, a disembodied voice.
“I can do it. I’m sorry.” She was wiping her face. “It’s just-I don’t know. Some foolishness.” But still looking at him, seeing something go out of his face, irretrievable. “Too much brandy.” She put her hand up to his neck, just a touch, uncertain, then turned with her key.
“Lock your door,” he said.
In his own room, still dizzy with it, he stood smoking and looking out the window, the room dark except for the weak pool of light by the reading lamp. There were a few people below, moving in and out of shadows, a car radio playing. Why didn’t it all look different? Everything had changed in a beat and no one in the street had the faintest idea.
Broch had already organized the plane.
“Anna will meet you in Mexico City, so someone you know. There’s a group there, they can help you with the arrangements. Did you have any trouble at the border?”
“No. They didn’t even look.”
“Yes, it’s like that. If you want to stay, of course, you need a permit. You might consider Mexico for a while. It’s not a bad place.”
Broch was short, with thinning hair and a soft German accent, Bavarian or even Austrian.
“You mean here?” Kaltenbach said.
“Well, Mexico City. But of course there are business opportunities here.”
He wore a rumpled tropical suit and Mexican sandals, and Ben imagined him in cafes arranging shipments, border-town business, one eye to the door.
“No, I want to go home,” Kaltenbach said.
Broch looked surprised at the word, but didn’t say anything, then took Ben aside. “Are they looking for him? The authorities?”
“No, no, it’s all right. Nothing illegal. No risk to you.”
“I only ask-” He looked back at Kaltenbach, now huddled with Liesl. “Everyone here is waiting for a quota number. To get in. But he leaves.”
“Can you get him to the airport? We should go.”
There were more hugs, Kaltenbach looking wistful. Liesl had stayed near him all morning, solicitous, but also shy of Ben, watching him with side glances, unsure of things.
“So I’ll see you in the Kino, ” he said to her. “Ten feet high. Make a sign, eh? Like this.” He touched his eyebrow. “Then I know you don’t forget.”
“I won’t forget,” she said, brushing his lapel.
“And you, my friend,” he said to Ben. “I can never repay you.”
“Just don’t tell anyone how you got here. Our secret.”
“Who would ask?”
“They’re going to interview you. You know that. The prodigal son.”
Kaltenbach looked away. “It means wasteful, you know. Maybe it’s true. Wasted years. It’s not serious here. It’s too much sun, I think.” He looked up at the hot Mexican sky, already a bright reflecting tin. “We need clouds sometimes. But what choice was there?”
In the car Liesl was restless, checking the passport in her bag, then turning back to the dusty streets lined with open stalls. When they stopped at a corner a woman in a peasant skirt rushed over to sell them a ceramic Madonna.
“I hate it here,” she said.
“We’re almost out.”
“I saw you give him money,” she said.
“He’ll need it. You think this is bad.” He nodded to the street. “I wish I thought we were doing him a favor. Here we go.” The crossing booths were now just down the street. “Got your passport?”
“Just once, not to be nervous. I think they’re going to send me back. Every time.”
“Don’t worry about the Mexicans.”
“No, them.” She looked toward the American gates. “My own,” she said, ironic. “And with this head. So much to drink last night.” Putting it behind them, one glass too many, the evening hazy and vague. “How do I look?”
He turned. “You look fine.”
But different, as if he had changed glasses, the exact same features subtly altered, a shift in definition. She seemed unaware of it, her skin just as it always was, her hair falling loosely on her shoulders, the way she had looked yesterday. But something had been said and now he saw it through a different lens, everything the same but different.
The Mexican guard barely glanced at their papers, but the American flipped through her passport. “Buy any smokes? Liquor?”
“No.”
“You been away how long?”
“Just overnight.”
“Purpose of your trip.”
“Tourism,” Ben said, deliberately not looking at Liesl, letting the guard do it. An unmarried couple.
He took Ben’s ID card. “Just a minute,” he said, turning in to the booth.
“What’s wrong?” Liesl said under her breath.
“Nothing.”
The guard was on the phone, then he was back. “Okay, pull up over there.” He pointed to a building on the right.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Just pull up over there,” he said, beginning to walk beside the car, still holding their papers.
Two men in suits hurried out. Ben put the car in gear and headed slowly to the building.
“Oh my god,” Liesl said, her voice panicky.
“It’s probably just a spot check,” Ben said, a willed calm.
“Check for what?”
“Get out of the car,” one of the men said. “Hands on the car,” he said when Ben stepped out. The other began to frisk him.
“What’s going on?” Ben said. “Is there some trouble?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“What you have to tell us.”
“You want the cuffs?” the other man said, but the first shook his head.
“Tell you about what?”
The man flipped open a wallet to show an FBI badge.
“Let’s start with espionage.”
AMBUSH
They separated them, taking Liesl down the hall, her eyes startled and jumpy, like a deer’s, and leading Ben into what seemed to be a lounge for the border guards, a big coffee urn in the corner. He sat at a table across from yet another agent answering questions, not complaining or hesitating, because he saw that was expected, the air hostile, and hoping the questions would tell him what had happened. All he knew was that the letter he’d given Riordan had set off an alarm in the Bureau, still ringing. After a while the questions began to repeat themselves, as if asking them again would produce different answers. But the agent was no longer bristling, settling in for the long haul. He offered Ben a coffee.
“Is this where you tell me I have the right to call a lawyer?”
“You don’t have any rights.”
“How about a cigarette then? That allowed?”
The agent put an ashtray on the table.
“Now can I ask you a question?”
“No.”
“You seem to forget. I called you. You wouldn’t be here at all if I hadn’t given you the letter. Last time I heard, we were on the same side.”
“So what’s the question?”
“Who are they? The names.”
The agent said nothing.
“Not even a day and you’re here jumping on me. I didn’t know the Bureau could act that fast. So they must mean something to you. They pop up in the files, or did you just know?”
He shook his head. “I can’t- You don’t have clearance.”
“Dennis didn’t-”
“Dennis doesn’t have clearance, either. Not even before. Not now.”
“Just you. Even though I’ve already seen them.”
“So why
ask? Who do you think they are?” the agent said, turning it around.
“Communists.”
“Hardly,” the agent said, unexpectedly amused. “Let’s hope not, anyway.”
“Then how is this espionage?”
The agent looked at him over the rim of his coffee cup. “You’re in the Army. Know what an order of battle is?”
“Organization. Commanders in the field.”
“This is a kind of order of battle, okay? It’s important, that’s all I’m going to say. We need to know where it came from.”
“So do I.”
The agent raised his eyebrows.
“I think somebody on it killed my brother. Who, by the way, in case nobody told you, used to work for you.”
“I know that,” he said tersely.
“Which makes it all the worse, is that it? You think he was a spy, your own guy?”
The agent put down the cup, not responding.
“Neither do I. So you want to know two things: where it came from and where it was going. It didn’t end with Danny. What was he going to do with it? Anyway, he’s dead. And it still came. So who was it for? The only person you know it wasn’t for is me or I wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place. You following? Where it comes from I don’t know-that’s for you to figure out. But whoever it was on this end maybe I can help you with.”
The agent stared at him. “Help us how?” he said finally.
“Well, let’s talk about that. But first, can I assume that I’m not under arrest and we can start this over? Or do you want to keep grilling me?”
“For two cents I’d-”
“Except you’re flying blind here. I’ve been listening. You came all this way. Let’s talk.”
“Talk,” the agent said, his voice low, dragged out of him.
“First, Liesl. You’re not going to charge her, either-she knows less than I do-and you’re probably scaring her to death.”
“She was his wife.”
“Was,” Ben said. Is.
“And Mexico?”
“We were giving a friend a lift. Nothing illegal.”
“Dennis says-”
“Dennis isn’t even allowed to know who we’re talking about. And if he’s already told you about Kaltenbach, you know about Mexico, so we’re wasting time.”