by Richard Wake
"I asked him about May 10th," she said. "And you know what he tells me? I can give it to you exactly, a direct quote. He says, 'May 10th is just a single date. The calendar is full of them. We must be prepared for all of them.' Jackass. He didn't say that. I said that. Fucking jackass."
"May 10th is just a date, one of many," I said. "The Ardennes is just a point on the map, one of many. Shit. When you prepare for everything, you prepare for nothing. We are so doomed."
"You hearing anything from your side?"
"Not a word," I said.
It was hard to know what might get their attention at this point. We had the Ardennes location from three different sources and the May 10th date from two. Short of a personal letter with the invasion plans, signed by Adolf himself, I don't know what else we could give them, or what else would make the French and British generals move.
They had completely ignored the Denmark and Norway information. I mean, if they warned either country, it sure didn't show up in the military defense efforts. But this was different. This was France. This was the whole goddamned game. How could they not see? I mean, how could they ignore it? Did they really just sit around and drink sherry and talk about Verdun all night?
"Christ," I yelled. We had been walking in silence for about a block, and it must have seemed to Manon to have come out of nowhere.
"I'm sor--"
"Forget it," she said. "I do it in the office all the time now. I get so worked up in my head about the fact that they won't listen, and I just become this cauldron. I let out a 'shit' the other day that startled one of the secretaries -- she kind of half fell off of her chair. But she's really just a secretary in the trade mission, so why would she get it? All she's worried about is arranging the next lunch with the vineyard association from Bordeaux."
"Lucky her," I said. "Clueless and drunk at lunch."
When we arrived at Cafe Fessler, we walked in on what appeared to be a celebration. Gregory was popping open a bottle of champagne, and he and Henry and a couple of the fossils where grabbing glasses. Gregory saw us and shouted.
"Alex! Manon! Come here now. It is the greatest day."
"Liesl had the baby! A girl!" Henry shouted. And then we all hugged, together and in every combination. I even hugged a fossil and then suppressed the feeling that I really needed to wash my hands in the bathroom.
She was a little more than two weeks early, but mother and daughter were fine. Henry had driven her to the hospital and had seen the baby, but after a quick visit, Manon was already asleep, and the nurses told him to come back in the morning.
"Seven pounds even," Gregory said. "A nice, big girl."
He was starting to cry. We had been there a few minutes before I realized that I hadn't asked the baby's name.
"Sylvie," Gregory said, and then he was bawling, just convulsed by tears, paralyzed by them. Sylvie had been his wife's name.
After a while, Henry was well past his customary one drink and in a silly fog. He stumbled off to bed early. The fossils sat around with Gregory and told him their Pop-Pop stories. I was going to stop in the bathroom and then head home with Manon when Gregory saw where I was going and walked along with me as if heading for the kitchen that shared a hallway with the toilets.
He reached into his pocket and handed me a folded piece of paper.
"This came last night from London, right at midnight," he said.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I figured it could wait."
"And you wrote it down?"
"Read it. There's no danger."
The message was as devastating as it was short:
Information received and appreciated. Nothing here changes.
G
There were so many things I was feeling, so many things I wanted to say. Nothing here changes. With those three words, Groucho had expressed my helplessness and my hopelessness. Nothing here changes. The only good part was that it seemed as if he was on my side, on our side, and was as frustrated as we were. If your lot in life is to shout into the wind, I guess it was better not to be doing it alone.
I looked down at the paper again, then tore it into little pieces. I pushed open the bathroom door and then turned back toward Gregory.
"I'll flush this," I said. And then I hugged him -- as a thank you, and as congratulations, and because I needed to hug somebody.
"It is the greatest day." As the words escaped from my mouth, I immediately felt guilty. I wish I had meant them.
44
The decision to try my luck in Paris came slowly over the next few days, and then the drip-drip-drip just spilled over the rim of the cup. No one was listening. Time was running out. I had a friend in Paris, Leon, a journalist with journalistic connections. It might have been far-fetched, but it was all I had.
Manon's initial thought was that it was a waste of time.
"You're better off staying here," she said. "I mean, there's no way I could go with you. And I don't know how many connections Leon might have -- you don't know, either. It's just a complete shot in the dark."
"If you hadn't noticed, it's getting pretty fucking dark."
She smiled. "What do you think, you're going to crash Gamelin's dinner table at Maxim's and convince him that they're coming through the Ardennes? You're going to draw it all on the tablecloth, just push the dishes away and start sketching. It's mad."
"It's all I have." Then, after a minute, "But what about the gold? That's a story he could work on and write. Publicity might mean something there. You have to admit that."
"I'll concede there is a chance there," Manon said. "But based on my boss, the idea that my people would lift a finger to try to stop them is a fantasy. And the Swiss are so brazen, I really don't think it will matter. I don't think it's possible to embarrass them when you're talking about the family business. "
"The family business?"
"Making money," she said.
"I still have to try."
"I know." She kissed me on the head, like a mother kissing her child before sending him off to school. Then we just sat there in her flat, side by side on her couch. We fell asleep there, my arm holding her, her head on my chest.
The next morning, I told Marta I was taking the night train to Paris. She grabbed the diary and her pen, expecting a few details for the record. I offered none. She waited.
"It's a personal trip," I said, finally.
"Then you'll be making your own reservations," she said.
"Already done."
"When will you be back?"
This was Monday, May 6th. I would be in Paris on the 7th and 8th, and probably the 9th -- but no later. I needed to be back here on the invasion date, whatever the outcome of my adventure.
"Back on the 10th, Friday," I said.
"Cancel everything between now and then?"
"I'm not sure there's anything to cancel," I said. She looked down in the diary and saw I was right. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get there but, finally, I had the upper hand in the conversation. With that, Marta marched out.
I finished up a few things and then walked to my flat to pack a small bag. I took a quick trip to the MCMIX fountain, just to check, and there was no yellow chalk mark. Part of me thought I should contact Brodsky, to let him know I was leaving town. But he would just be even more cynical about my chances than Manon was, and I wasn't in the mood.
The taxi to the station left me there about an hour before the train's scheduled departure. The conductors and porters would start to allow people into their compartments about 30 minutes before it was leaving time. That left me some time for a coffee, which I was about to order when a familiar voice spoke over my shoulder.
"Two coffees, paper cups, please." It was Peter Ruchti.
I was oddly glad to see him.
"I can afford to pay in this place," he said. We took the coffees and walked into the massive train shed. Ruchti pointed to an empty bench, where we sat.
"You have time for a chat," he sai
d. I looked at my watch reflexively, even though I knew I had nearly an hour.
"A few minutes," I said.
"I would ask where you're going, but I'm not in the mood to be lied to."
"Paris," I said.
"Business or pleasure?"
"I have a friend there."
"That doesn't answer the question but never mind. There's something I need to tell you."
I just looked at him, as expressionless as I could manage.
"Who's Werner Vogl?" Ruchti asked.
Suddenly, I don't think I was expressionless anymore.
"That bad?" Ruchti said.
"I don't know what you're talking about." A weak bluff.
"If that's how you want to play it, that's okay with me. Have a nice trip." Ruchti began to stand. I reached for his arm, and he sat back down on the bench, which suddenly felt a little colder.
"Vogl is a Gestapo captain, or at least he was," I said.
"Still is," Ruchti said.
"He and I have a...history."
"So I gathered."
"Is he here? In Zurich?"
"No," Ruchti said. "At least, not yet."
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He said it was his transcription of a telegram that was received that morning in the German legation.
"One of their quote-unquote trade representatives walked it over to my office at lunchtime. He brought the actual telegram, let me see it and copy it, asked me if I could help."
Ruchti handed me the paper. It said:
Please facilitate inquiries into the whereabouts of Alex Kovacs, a Czech national. Believed to be in Zurich recently. Any and all information appreciated. Priority.
Capt. Werner Vogl, Gestapo HQ, Al. Szucha 25, Warsaw
Priority. Just great.
"I played dumb," Ruchti said. "Isn't very hard for me -- and besides, those assholes think we're all either incompetents or idiots or both. But that won't stop them for long."
"They already have me in their census book."
"One hand doesn't know what the other is doing sometimes, even in the great Hitler machine. But they'll be coordinated fairly quickly."
"But even if they figure it out -- when they figure it out -- I'm in Switzerland. There's nothing they can do to me, right."
"I wonder if the kid who got the bullet through the eye on Rennweg thought nobody could do anything to him."
"You still don't know who did it, though," I said. "Or why."
"No, not exactly. It's not as if it was some damned lover's quarrel, though. And you and I both know that it wasn't the good guys."
Ruchti stopped for a second. The coffee was already cold.
"Are you in that much trouble with this guy?" he said.
"Yeah. More than you can imagine." I thought about telling Ruchti the story, then decided against it. I just didn't have the energy. Besides, it's not as if him knowing why Vogl wanted to exact his revenge would make a difference either way in whether or not Vogl succeeded.
"Thanks," I said, and I meant it. Ruchti might just have been worried about keeping his playing field clean, but he didn't have to seek me out to tell me about the telegram. He might even help me out in a pinch if it came to that.
But that would happen later, if at all. Vogl was still in Warsaw, and I was getting on a train to Paris. It was an entirely alcoholic journey, as it turned out -- I even bought the last half-bottle of Hennessy from the bartender and took it back to my compartment. But if I slept, I don't remember.
Part IV
45
We had spoken a few times over the telephone, but I had not seen Leon in nearly two years. So it seemed only natural when I spotted him there, sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe, a bottle of wine already opened and poured, that the first words I would say to him would be, "A fucking beret? Seriously?"
"The mademoiselles, they like -- what can I say?"
"And glasses? Since when?"
"They're plain glass."
"The mademoiselles?"
"Oui, oui," he said. "Now come here and give me a proper hug, you fucking asshole."
Leon, Henry and I met during the war, fighting for the honor of the archduke, or something. We were just kids then, but came back to Vienna and remained the closest of friends. For years and decades, I could never manage to get serious with a woman, and I hated my father and brother back in Brno, so that left Leon, Henry and Uncle Otto as my only family.
Between female conquests, of which there were hundreds in the quarter-century I had known him, Leon had managed to carve out a nice career in journalism. He started covering cops and then society bullshit at one of the Vienna tabloids, Der Abend, the society bullshit consisting mostly of drinking free Champagne at museum openings and spelling the rich people's names correctly. He managed to turn that into a job at one of the serious newspapers in Vienna, Die Neue Freie Presse, where his society connections morphed into political connections. The highlight of his career was the break he got on the story of the timing of the German invasion of Austria -- I was the source. Of course, within hours of its publication, he was slouched down in the front seat of a car, driven by Henry, that was speeding through a border checkpoint into Czechoslovakia as Nazi bullets registered their disapproval. In the car, he had a copy of the newspaper with his big scoop bannered across the top, but he had no career anymore -- and no passport besides.
The Czechs then agreed to give Leon a passport and ship him to Paris as part of the deal I made with my former/current employers. His French was better than average -- the frauleins liked it as much as the mademoiselles, it seemed -- and he had a contact at a Paris newspaper, one of the correspondents who used to populate his favorite Vienna hangout, Cafe Louvre.
"What's the paper like?" I said.
"Better than Der Abend, not as good as Die Neue Freie Presse. But they let me have my head. They're even calling it a column now -- or a regular feature, with my name on it. It's called 'Fresh Eyes,' and it's supposed to be a foreigner's take on different aspects of French life and culture. Twice a week, no heavy lifting."
"What was the last one about?"
"Well, a lot of them are serious. I did one where a bunch of deputies tried to explain to me how having a government that falls every 10 seconds isn't such a bad thing -- that got a lot of attention. But the last one was about the history of the culture of perfume."
"I bet you did a lot of fucking sniffing around for that one," I said.
"My specialty," Leon said.
We drank the bottle and caught up. I told him about Henry and Liesl's baby, and about Manon. He told me about his latest, whom he claimed "can get both ankles behind her head without so much as a strain." Every few minutes, the reason for my trip popped into my head, but I kept forcing it out. We were in Paris in 1940, but we could have been in Vienna in 1930, and I didn't want to let that go.
"Come on," Leon said, after paying the bill.
"Where to?"
"The Paris version of Cafe Louvre."
We grabbed a taxi and, in a few minutes, were dumped out at a place called La Pluie, on Saint-Germain. The architecture was all different, as was the menu -- there was no schnitzel for two marks, for instance -- but you could just tell it was a newspaper bar. The foreign correspondents were all different but the vibe was the same -- lots of drinking, lots of half-formed opinions about the events of the day being tried out on each other, a wariness among competitors but also a collegiality.
"Does it work the same as Vienna?" I said.
"Pretty much. They're all scared of getting beaten on a big story so they tend to stick together and write the same shit. That protects them all. But the problem for them is, lots of newspaper executives show up in Paris. It was a haul to get to Vienna, and it was cold, so their wives didn't really want to go, which left the correspondents on their own a lot more. Here, they occasionally have to actually produce something enterprising for the boss. They can't just sit in here all day and rewrite the local papers. Although the
re's still plenty of that."
"So what do they think about the war?"
"That it's coming. Just look at them, all sticking together. You can tell they're getting worried about getting scooped."
It was time to tell Leon what I knew. We got drinks and took a table as far away from the correspondents as we could, and I began talking. I might have spoken for an hour straight, with barely an interruption from Leon. I laid it all out -- my increased role with Czech intelligence, my frustration with how they seemed incapable of acting on the information that we brought them, and the key points: that the invasion would come through the Ardennes, and that it would come on May 10th, this Friday, three days away.
In the midst of all of that, I also told him about the Nazi gold and the implications for the war. Leon seemed much more interested in that. He stopped me several times and went into reporter mode, asking me for clarifications and specific details, and to separate my theories from demonstrated facts.
"That would be a big fucking story," he said.
"But what about the invasion? Hitler's attempt to dominate the entire continent of Europe? Not big enough for you?"
"I could never write that one. First, they would never believe I had the proper sourcing for it. But even then, I don't know about you, but I'm not going to be the person responsible for panicking an entire nation. I mean, what if it's wrong? I believe what you're telling me, but Hitler is crazy. He could change his mind tomorrow. I can't touch that one -- but I know a military guy you can talk to about it."
It is what I hoped for all along, just an audience with someone who might listen and who maybe could make a difference. There was still time -- not much time, but still some. I don't know how long it took to move an army, but even a couple of days' head start toward the Ardennes had to help. I don't know -- it could be the difference between success and failure.
