“Hans, you seem quiet. You are half German and even Holland is German now. Are you not proud? We will save the world.” Josef had noticed that Hans was looking away from the group, eyes fixed on a bush outside the dining room window.
“Pardon?”
Franz calculated his explanation. “Those red front commies threaten everything everywhere. We have to organize against them. Not only in Germany, but can you imagine what will happen to U.S. businesses if the commies take over?”
Mr. Fischer observed his sons and prospective son-in-law carefully.
Hans’s response was satisfactory. “Yes, I know. The Communist trade unions almost ruined my father.”
Josef continued, “Right. Even the great Charles Lindbergh recognizes that Hitler is the solution.”
Mr. Fischer still stood at the table, carving fork and knife in hand. The leg of pork was now dismembered, and Gretchen placed a plate of roast meat, sausage, potatoes and sauerkraut in front of him.
“My Hans has a wonderful appetite and this is a true feast.”
At this moment Hans had no appetite at all. He looked down at his plate of food, now an enemy to vanquish. He lifted his knife and fork, took a small bite of his potato and offered “Mahlzeit! Guten Appetit!”
“Lindbergh–yeah we’re going to need some real flyers all right. Maybe he needs to go talk with the English. They don’t seem to know what’s what. Windsor needs to get the Royals lined up. They’re half German, but George is a pain in the ass.”
Hans decided to let curiosity replace his anxiety. “So, Franz, what do you do?”
“Do?”
“For your job.”
“Oh yeah. We work for Sperry in Long Island. It’s some Dutchman’s project. You ever hear of Carl Norden?” Hans smiled. Apparently Johann Fischer and both of Greta’s brothers worked for optics companies. He began to breathe more easily hoping they would find common ground, maybe in a nice discussion of how we look at things. He would fit in just fine. But he did not know Carl Norden.
“Actually I do not. But a lot of Dutch work with optics.” He decided not to try to bluff his potential brothers-in-law. “Who is Mr. Norden?”
“Some important Dutchman.”
Josef explained, “Yeah, we’re his bodyguards. Norden can’t even go to the john without two guys at his back. But we can get the keys.”
Greta was looking down into her lap.
Franz took a piece of sausage, began to chew and commented, “You know she’s in nursing school right?”
“Well, sure.” He couldn’t stand to look at Franz, who now wiped a bit of grease from his lip and smiled.
Hans was confused. Why in the world would their work and Greta’s schooling be connected? Greta squeezed his hand under the table. He needed to keep quiet during this curious conversation. Obviously Greta and her brothers knew something about a Dutchman who he had never heard of. He carefully cut apart the sausage and took a small bite to see what it was. The sausage was fresh, and he began to eat it with some sauerkraut, threading the fermented cabbage onto the tines of his fork. He pushed the roast pork to the side of his plate.
“Aren’t you going to eat mother’s roast pork? It’s our favorite.” Josef’s fork was raised in mid-air as he impaled a boiled potato. He shoved the entire thing into his mouth.
“Oh yes, but I save the best for last.”
Greta looked at her mother. “Hans is a very patient man.”
Trudy nodded her approval at Hans’s restraint. Clearly he would exert the same patience with Greta, and that was a good thing for the girl. He continued to listen to the conversation between the men. Josef was speaking. “Yeah, they got planes, but their bombers can’t hit anything. I’ll be working nightshifts in August.”
Franz’s fists thumped into tabletop. Josef winced. The kick had hit a bruise on his ankle. “Do you know what a Norden bombsight is?”
“Not really.” Hans wondered why this was important to them.
“Norden’s new bombsight could change everything.”
“Like what? No one is bombing anybody.”
“Europe is at war.”
Hans looked down, shocked, then faced Josef. “But America isn’t in a war. And Europe has not recovered from 1918.”
Mr. Fischer spoke up. “And what, young man, is the lesson we have learned? If Germany had won, there would have been no Communists, no Great Depression. Europe is just beginning to recover. Hitler will bring us back to glory that has not been seen in a thousand years.” He wiped his mustache, folded his napkin and placed it into the silver ring. Leaning back into his chair, he said, “I only wish Norden had come to work at Bausch and Lomb. That would have made this so much easier.”
Hans was now very interested in the conversation.
Josef peered into his face, straight into his eyes. He didn’t dare look down, and was unsure how he should meet Josef’s gaze. He settled on a spot on the wall, right above his challenger’s forehead.
Franz broke into the discussion. “Here is the deal. This Norden guy has developed a bombsight that you can aim, and it’ll stay stable in a moving aircraft. Blam! You can actually hit your target.”
“Precisely.” Josef played off his brother.
Franz continued, “You can hit a moving boat, even a submarine if you can find it.” Their bragging was getting on Hans’s nerves. This was not the time for a conversation of the relative advantages of war versus peace. Peace in their minds meant Nazi domination. War was unthinkable. Hans’s stomach felt like a cement mixer.
“Yeah, the RAF is going to outfit Canadian planes with it.”
Hans deliberated. He had to make sure he was hearing things correctly. “So you don’t want the Canadians to have it?”
Franz laughed. Han’s ignorance would be useful to them. “We can’t stop the Canadian order. The sights will be installed in RAF planes. But Germany needs them so that we can bomb the dog shit out of England. Norden should have stayed home. If he had remained in Holland, he could be a German citizen now.”
“We Germans need to stick together. We’re going to celebrate Greta’s graduation from her nurses training in another few months. Papa hopes to pull some strings so she can get posted to the Red Cross in Geneva. Beautiful neutral country. Nice place for a honeymoon. She’s gonna carry a book to Geneva for our ‘uncle’.”
Hans stiffened. There were no buddies in this room. He had stepped into a den of wolves.
“I have no plans to return to Europe.” Apparently Greta had been talking openly with her family about marrying him, which meant that, if he proposed, the answer would be “yes.” Dammit. Why were women so naive about political consequences? She had never said her brothers were Nazis. They were born in America.
Greta’s brow furrowed and her eyes met her brother’s. “I have no plans at all.” Her face was crimson.
Hans turned and addressed her mother, a quiet woman who had worked for hours to prepare this debacle of a dinner party. “Frau Fischer, this is a wonderful feast, one I will remember for a long time.” His broad smile and wide eyes charmed the hostess nearly as much as they had charmed Greta. He needed to think. Greta and her mother began to clear the dinner dishes, and he didn’t want to talk with her brothers any more. He followed Mr. Fischer to the living room. “So, what I would like to know is, what do you see in a piece of wood? Or is it something about the grain and the light that tells you its story?“
Johann Fischer beamed, “Sometimes when I walk in the forest, I hear a story, and then I see the tree that will tell the story. That’s how I found the big pieces for the columns.” The conversation lulled as they both shied away from discussing Hans’s plans with Greta. Greta peeked out from the swinging kitchen door, and the women joined them.
Hans smiled broadly at his prospective father-in-law. “I’m not an artist like you, but maybe your family would en
joy a professional portrait?” Trudy began to tuck in a few loose ends of her hair, beaming. She removed her apron. “I can enlarge the photos at the shop, and make you something that would be nice to frame. A remembrance for all of us.”
Greta added, “Yes, mama, let’s do! He takes pictures of regular people and makes them into movie stars.”
Hans armed himself, implementing a plan on the fly. He picked up his leather camera case, unsnapped the lens cover and fiddled with some dials. “Let me get all of you in front of the mantel.”
Mr. Fischer took his place at the end of the mantel, his hand resting on the head of a carved deer. Greta eagerly lined up her parents and brothers in front of the fireplace, and Hans took photo after photo, of the whole group, the parents, the siblings, and of individuals, both full face and in various profiles. “Young man, you truly are an artist.” Hans smiled graciously, appreciative of the attention and the compliment.
After dinner Greta suggested an evening walk. A setting sun hit spray from the waterfall so that the early evening drops of water looked like a scattering of diamonds. Diamonds. He felt the little box in his pocket. The air cooled as they approached the water. Looking down into the cataract of the river, he envisioned an endless whirlpool straight into the underworld. The river was not pleasant; it was treacherous. Greta’s brothers were thugs and her father was fighting a war that had been lost more than twenty years ago. She could probably be changed, but he could feel his dreams sliding down a cliff and crashing into the river.
Her voice interrupted his reverie. “It’s a chilly evening – my hands are cold.”
“Sorry, I was just thinking. Here, I have some gloves with me. They’re not very thick, but they’ll help.” Slipping them on, she took a deep breath and turned toward him with worry in her eyes. Her gloved hands reached across the distance between them, but he did not take her hand.
Shivering, she pulled her arms across her chest into a self-embrace. “I’m so cold.”
“Do you want to go inside?”
Her hair began to glow in the evening sun. He would give anything to remove just a few hairpins and let it fall. But what would her mother think?
“– No, it’s beautiful out here, I want to…. I’m just cold. Besides, I can only handle my brothers in small doses.”
He removed his tweed jacket and set it about her shoulders. “They certainly are…. interesting.”
“My brothers are bullies. The German Bund is just a boys club with good beer. Those guys threaten all sorts of things, but they are cowards.”
“Even cowards can do dangerous things.”
“Thank God the U.S. will not get into Germany’s wars ever again.”
“Greta, Canada is only thirty miles away from us, and they have joined the war with Britain. Holland, Belgium, and France have fallen. London is under attack, and God only knows what is going on in Eastern Europe.” He began to narrate the headlines of the past two weeks. “You’re right. Let’s not talk about that.” Her ears were open, but she wasn’t listening.
“Listen Herzchen, I’m going to have to take the late evening bus back to Rochester. It turns out I cannot stay through the holiday. They want me to come to work in the morning, an important order of photographs that must be delivered by 4:00 p.m. tomorrow. I wouldn’t have taken the overtime, but … they are for a famous star.”
She looked at him, completely stunned. This was not the weekend she had planned, or the future she imagined. “Who is the star? Why are they coming to Rosenbaum’s?”
A guilty flush moved from the back of his neck, up over his ears, and across his wide forehead. His eyes focused on a tree that stood across the yard, and over her head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to mention the name. The director is an old friend of his, and these are private photos, more like art photography. I haven’t even opened the roll yet, so I don’t really know anything else.”
“So, you’re going to be looking at photos of some scantily dressed movie star all day?” She strangled her words to avoid drowning in her own spit.
“Greta, I wanted to see the fireworks with you, too. I even bought a roll of color film. I didn’t want to tell you before dinner, but I’ve got to go in about 40 minutes.”
“Shall I have my brother drive you?” He stiffened. “I guess not, huh?”
“Sweetheart—Herzchen—you are too kind. It’s a ten-minute walk to the bus station. Let me just pick up my camera and say good night to your parents.” He took her hand to walk back to the house. “We will see each other in just a few days.” Now he was the one with cold hands.
The dark evening on the bus was not what he had planned. By now he should be holding his girl in his arms and making plans for a bright future. As the bus approached Rochester, he couldn’t think of what to say or do. Maybe Greta was right, and her brothers were harmless bullies trying to make an impression on him. This would not be the first time he overreacted when he sensed danger. Fear is an odd emotion. You can’t see it, hear it or touch it. Sometimes the fear sets in before there is evidence of a real threat. He tried to clear his head and identify a little evidence before he condemned them. Why did he think that the Fischer brothers were malevolent?
He needed to find out if it was even wrong for them to be Nazis. America had freedom of speech, so maybe it was acceptable to admire the Germans. Canada was committed to fight with Britain, but the U.S. was not in the war. However, it was wrong for them to plan a theft and to involve their innocent sister. Where does one go with rumors of a crime that hasn’t been committed yet? He wandered out into the bus terminal, staring blankly at the walls with their transportation schedules and posters. The posters had not changed in months, but he had never really paid attention to them. The FBI “Warning” Poster caught his eye. He had probably read it before while he was waiting for a bus, but tonight it had new significance. He wasn’t quite sure what a Federal Bureau of Investigation was, but maybe he should speak with someone at the FBI if he could find an office.
Late into the night, he sat at the desk in his upstairs room and wrote down as many details as he could possibly remember. If he reported the Fischers, he would lose Greta. If he married her, they would be his brothers as well. He had time to make a decision. The gangsters on the wall of the post office were accused of every type of murder and mayhem. Those losses of life would pale if the Germans got hold of the bombsight plans. Over and over he woke to the nightmare of a world in flames.
In the morning, he went straight to the Post Office on West Main Street, near City Hall. They had directories of Rochester, and perhaps he could find out about the FBI there. He still wasn’t sure whether his concerns regarding the Fischer brothers were urgent, or even true. Franz and Josef had not even committed a crime, at least not yet.
Chapter Nine
Rochester N.Y.
July 1940
“Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail.” ~ U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson, 1929
Agent Mike Hicks shoved a stack of papers into a file. Memos were piled all over his desk, and he had to conduct a briefing about a slew of new tasks to be dumped on the FBI. He hated wasting staff time on this. Goddamn FBI didn’t seem to know what they were supposed to be doing any more. For 10 years he had been kicking down doors and shoving criminals through the walls. Mike stood five feet eight inches and tipped the scales at 220; he never met a door that could hold him back. The reward for his work of cleaning up gangsters was a desk job, wearing suit jackets that strained at the shoulders and collars that tugged at his short neck. He was pushing forty, and some silver hairs peppered his short sideburns.
This morning he was skimming a printed document from President Roosevelt asking that he drop everything and focus his attention on “Silver Shirts.” For God’s sake, didn’t the President have anything better to do than snoop into a bunch of social clubs throughout upstate New York and into the Midwest? Wh
at the hell was the German American Bund? Some friendship organization of mechanics and sausage makers. He had once gone out for a swell Oktoberfest evening at a beer hall, gotten drunk and groped a chunky girl in a dirndl. Couldn’t help it. Her tits popped out of the top of the blouse, and they looked good enough to eat. Dammit.
So the gist of the memo was that some friendship organizations in the U.S. were getting political, but not U.S. political. They were getting involved with the commies and some were getting involved with the fascists and Nazis. Happy Independence Day. God, what a mess. Who cares as long as they don’t break the law? Just a bunch of goddam loudmouths. But, laws were being broken. There had been several cases of assault and battery and disturbing the peace, but nothing serious. This should be local police stuff. People were jittery enough about all the crap in Europe and Asia. The last thing he needed was every nutcase for miles around pounding down the doors and accusing their neighbors of treason.
A postal clerk entered the small room, an interruption to his interruptions. “Mike, there is a gentleman here to see you. He’s waiting at the service counter and says he has an urgent message for the FBI.”
“What does he want?”
“He says it is a matter of National Security, and that he has been advised to speak only to you.” The clerk peered curiously through his wire-rimmed glasses at the pile of papers on the desk and noted the U.S. executive office seal. “He has an accent.”
Oh good grief, a foreigner. Why the hell was the FBI assigned to deal with foreigners? Couldn’t we find enough American crooks? “Who is he?”
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