The Fifth Column

by Andrew Gross

  “Why?”

  “Because the Bosch,” she shrugged, “they’ve taken everything from me.”

  Her eyes averted downward and I reached across the table and touched her hand. “I’m Jewish,” I said. “And I lost a brother too. In the Spanish Civil War.” I told her about Ben, and how I felt a bit responsible.

  “Your brother fought in Spain?” she asked, surprised.

  “For the Republicans, of course. He was really a fellow of principle. A doctor. I think you would have liked him.”

  “There are heroes all over your family,” Noelle said brightly, I think referring to my dash into the street to rescue her papers. “To your brother, then.” She raised her glass.

  “And to your parents,” I added. All I had was my cup of coffee. But it was enough. “I hope you find out they’re okay.”

  “Thank you very much, Charles. I do too. Do you mind if I call you Charles?”

  “No, Charles is fine. That’s what my mother calls me.”

  “I see you don’t drink?” she asked with an air of curiosity. “We French, we wouldn’t know how to eat supper without a glass or two of wine.”

  “I used to. Not so much now,” I said, hedging a full explanation. A topic for another time. “Maybe one day I’ll have a toast with you.”

  “I will look forward to it.” She smiled.

  “As will I.”

  I hadn’t felt so at ease with another person since my early years with Liz. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel the basic joy of human connection. Of someone interested in me. Who treated me with kindness and warmth and not judgment for what I had done. I said, “Maybe I can speak to someone at the college and see if they can help you continue with your studies.”

  “Is that possible? If you could, I would be in your debt forever,” Noelle said, her eyes bright and alive.

  Brickman still had some clout at Fordham. “I’ll give it a try.”

  “I am very glad to have met you, Charles Mossman,” she announced, and nodded.

  “And I, you, Noelle.”

  “So now, please tell me about your daughter.”

  I had a photo of us in my wallet and I brought it out. “She’s great. She draws like a champ and loves to do puzzles.” How grown-up she had become. How she lived in a brownstone in Yorkville with my wife. My soon-to-be ex-wife. “In fact…”

  It was clear from what she had told me that she had no love for Germans. They had imprisoned her parents and killed her only brother. I felt sure I could trust her with what was going on.

  “In fact … I have a little situation,” I decided to share with her. “There’s this couple that lives next to door to them. They’re Swiss, or at least that’s what they claim to be.…”

  “What do you mean they claim to be Swiss?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” I decided to spill the beans, “if they were straight from Berlin.”

  “Berlin?”

  “That’s right.” I laid out the story of the Bauers.

  I didn’t see any reason to hold it back. I’d done all I could on the matter. It was out of my hands now. And it would be nice to hear someone else’s view on it, a European, even from strictly a moral perspective of what to do.

  So I went through it. All of it.

  “It’s hard to say.” Noelle listened to my story intently. “Swiss, German, even French, the borders are all not very far apart there.”

  “All right, I admit that. But then why would they need a transmitter,” I asked, playing my trump card, “if they’re indeed Swiss?”

  “A transmitter?” Noelle said, shocked. “You didn’t tell me that. You mean, to signal someone.”

  “Why else, I figure.” I told her about what I’d found in the closet, deciding for now to leave out the details of exactly how I had come upon it, which didn’t sound so dashing in America or France. “Apparently, they’re not illegal, still … It’s not even a crime to be a Nazi sympathizer here in America. We’re not at war. I mean, look at Charles Lindbergh. To you French he’s a hero, but you know he visited the German High Command in 1938 and even received a medal from them. But for most people, getting back to the Bauers, the telephone seems to work just fine unless you have matters you want to keep secret.”

  “What matters?” She leaned forward as if I was telling her a great spy story.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure.” But I told her about watching them go into the Nazi meeting at the German beer hall, though I painted it as more coincidental, that I had simply come upon them on the street and saw them go in. “It doesn’t sound like people who share the same view of Germans that you do, does it? Masquerading as the kindest, sweetest couple in the world. My daughter can’t get enough of them. And it would hurt her terribly if they were proven to be something else. My wife tells me to just stay out of it. She’s got her head in the sand. But I’m certain … I’m certain I’m right about exactly what they are. It all adds up, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. Yes. The way you tell it. In France this would not be allowed to go on without a discussion.”

  “I even went to the police.”

  “Le milicia. You did?”

  “Turns out, there’s a hundred cases just like this they’re already following up on. They even showed me the file. Most of them are cranks, of course.”

  “Je ne sais pas, cranks, Charles?” she asked, shrugging.

  “Sorry. Meddlesome grandmother-types who hear noises next door. Or crazy people. They just don’t lead anywhere. I don’t know what to do now. I’m not crazy, am I?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think you are crazy, Charles. The Abwehr have their tentacles in many countries. I assure you. I have seen it firsthand.”

  “My brother was killed in such a way. By one of his own staff, who was actually an enemy saboteur. Anyway, I can’t just go around making accusations not backed up by fact. I’m afraid I’ve got some things in my past.”

  Noelle looked at me sympathetically. “We all have a past, Charles. In war, we all do.”

  “These things are big, Noelle. I’m actually afraid to tell you.”

  “But you can tell me,” she said, touching my hand.

  “You’re sure? You won’t think less of me?”

  “You have my word.”

  So I did. I told her about what happened in the bar two years ago and my time in prison. Which was also why I no longer was teaching at the university, I had to admit. Or married. Or drank alcohol, I finally said.

  “Oh, I see.”

  I waited. I half expected her to get up and excuse herself and leave.

  But she didn’t leave. She stayed. In fact, she reached out and took my hand in hers. Softly. And I felt real tenderness in it. How long it had been since someone actually touched me that way.

  “I know this must be very painful for you, Charles.”

  “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t see that kid. When I’m not haunted by his face, and wish there was a way I could make it up to him.”

  I wrapped my thumb around her fingers.

  “But there’s not. He’s dead. I tried contacting his parents several times, but they’re not interested. All I can do is live my life the right way now. And this is part of it. Doing what’s necessary. Though I have to be careful. I can’t make any untrue accusations. It will finish me. With Liz. And Emma.”

  “Look, you offered to help me, Charles.” She took in a breath. “Maybe I can help you as well.”

  “Help? How?”

  “I may know someone too. Someone in this line of work you are looking for. In fact, he works for your own State Department.”

  “The State Department?” My eyes widened with surprise.

  “Yes. In Washington, D.C. He is a friend of mine.”

  “How do you know this person?” I asked. Someone who had only been in the country six months, having this kind of contact?

  Noelle’s eyes shifted downward. “The circumstances of how I got here were not st
raightforward either,” she said. “We all have things in our past. Getting to this country required some assistance. He helped me with my visa to remain here. He has many contacts. I am sure he would know precisely what to do with what you know. If you can trust telling him?”

  “Let me think about it,” I said. A high-ranking contact at the State Department. I had better be one hundred percent right in whatever I accused the Bauers of.

  “I promise, Charles, he is discreet as well as resourceful. You will see.”

  I was dying to know what she was keeping to herself—what lay behind the veil of this beautiful woman. We all have things in our past. But she had fled from a country at war. A refugee. Things happen in war. And it wasn’t my business.

  “I promise he will know what the right thing is to do. Will you talk with him?”

  I looked at her. Her wide eyes locked on me. Emerald and liquid. Her innocent face said all it had to about earnestness and trust. The truth was, with my past, I didn’t have anyone else to go to.

  “Why not?” I nodded. I’d wanted what I knew to reach the right people, and this beautiful, mysterious girl, in this country for only months, how fitting she would be the one to get me there. “How did I get so lucky as to bump into you?” I said, and smiled. “I guess we have kind of a pact then.” I put out my hand to shake.

  “Yes, a pact.” Her smile was broad and beaming. I think she felt joy, real joy, that I would even trust her. “We can help each other, Mr. Charles Mossman.”

  “To each other.” I lifted my water glass. We shook hands.

  19

  At exactly eight P.M. that same night, the Boston Philharmonic radio program went on RCA and Willi Bauer adjusted the knob of the transmitter to the correct frequency.

  Over the sweet tones of Tchaikovsky (String Concerto in D Major), a message came in from the embassy in Canada in a series of staccato beeps, and he meticulously jotted them down.

  Not the Swiss embassy, of course. In truth, there was nothing even remotely Swiss about the Bauers other than their passports.

  But from the German legation in Ottawa.

  From a source inside the embassy known to them only as Freddy, who was in direct contact with Admiral Canaris’s office at Abwehr headquarters in Berlin.

  And with their chief spy apparatus in the United States.

  These were the remnants of the Duquense group. Who had passed secrets from the Nordon plant in New Jersey and even the United States Military Academy itself, on their new Sherman tank design and the Nordon bomb site back to Germany.

  The Bauers’ so-called customers—actually accountants and engineers—were in the employ of these companies.

  Many had been rounded up, but a second cell was still in operation. Willi and Trudi’s cell. With an even more important mission to perform. Once war was declared. Which was inevitable.

  Willi took the numbers down and just as quickly Trudi referenced them against the Darwin book, which was the key. One by one she leafed to the indicated pages and located the appropriate lines and words.

  Soon she had it all written out in German. Onkel Teddy kommt immer noch planmaessig an von London. Uncle Teddy still arriving from London on schedule.

  Just as planned. The same date and time. What they’d already transcribed from a similar message just a month ago. The one Charlie had stared at in the trash. That Trudi had failed to destroy completely:

  128 3 7. 14 12 3. 0300.

  We’ll be drinking lots of beer together, the message continued. Which, of course, meant something important to them as well.

  Finally, when there were no beeps to come, Willi tapped back that the message was received.

  “Two weeks.” Willi looked at Trudi with satisfaction. “And we’ll be fully operational.”

  “Yes, it’s all going as planned,” Trudi said.

  Operation Prospero.

  Now there were only the beautiful notes of the Tchaikovsky in the background. They prepared to put the radio back in the trunk.

  “It’s time to move this out of here,” Trudi said, indicating the transmitter. “Just in case. We can’t be too careful.” They had still not determined if Charles Mossman had rummaged through the closet, given the misplaced key.

  “Maybe to the brewery,” Willi said. There were a hundred places they could conceal it there. “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes, tomorrow,” Trudi agreed.

  She tore off the message from the pad. Tore off the sheet underneath it as well, as Willi’s heavy hand had slightly indented the message onto the following page. She ripped the two pages into strips as Willi struck up a match and lit them.

  “Shall we?” Together, they watched the strips burn to ash in the ashtray.

  “This time,” he patted her arm with a smile, “we will watch them burn to the very end.”

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

  Trudi’s gaze flashed toward Willi. They always lived with the fear of unexpected visitors, but now, since this business with Emma’s father, even more. And with everything about now, at just the wrong time.

  Trudi grabbed the transmitter and took it into the bedroom, while Willi broke up the charred embers of the burnt message into unrecognizable ash. Then he ran and dumped the ashtray into the garbage.

  “Yes, in a minute!” he called.

  Trudi came back out and they each gave the other a look of reassurance as Willi went to the door. “Yes, who is it?” He brushed the wrinkles out of his vest and unlatched the door.

  To his relief it was little Emma in her pajamas. And Liz.

  “By all means, come in, come in…,” he said with a smile.

  “We didn’t mean to bother you,” Liz said. “I hope it’s okay. Emma just wanted you to see what she made at school, before she went to bed.” It was a drawing of a green valley with snowcapped mountains and a pretty blond girl in a long skirt.

  “It’s Heidi,” Emma said.

  “My goodness, how beautiful!” Trudi exclaimed. “And just like I described it to you.”

  “Wunderbar!” announced Willi, clapping his approval.

  Emma beamed.

  “And maybe some hot chocolate before bed?” Trudi said. “For the deserving artist.”

  “Can I, Mommy?”

  “Sure, honey, I don’t see why not,” Liz said.

  Trudi headed to the kitchen. “Right in here, my darling.”

  On her way, Emma’s eyes seemed drawn to the hall closet, which was open. To the steamer trunk inside it, the top of which was open too.

  “With a dollop of schlag just to put an exclamation point on it,” Trudi said.

  Then Emma said something that made Willi turn and Trudi come back out. And then look at each other. Out of the mouths of babes, Trudi thought. Their question answered.

  Emma was pointing toward the open trunk. “Did you ever find my daddy’s hat?” she asked them.

  20

  “Mr. Mossman…” There was a knock at my boarding room door.

  My tiny room. The few clothes I had filling up the small closet. The handful of books on the night table. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Dos Passos. A shared bathroom down the hall. “Call for you. Downstairs.”

  I rolled off the bed and threw on a shirt. I went downstairs to the one telephone used for the three boarders here. I didn’t receive many calls. My lawyer. A teaching prospect or two that never panned out. My boss at the store. I hadn’t given my number out to too many people. I was hoping it was someone replying to my applications for a teaching job.

  “Hello?” I got on with anticipation.

  “How could you, Charlie?” Liz’s voice said, with ire in it.

  “How could I what?” I said, though in fact I suspected what she was referring to.

  “Involve Emma in this insane little game of yours.”

  “What game, Liz?” Though I hardly had to ask the question, and waited for her to lay it on me.

  She said, “We were across the hall at Willi and Trudi’s earlie
r tonight. Their hall closet was open. Emma looked in it and you know what she asked them…?”

  My stomach plunged like a heavy weight tumbling from the top of a skyscraper.

  “She asked them if they had found your hat, Charlie.”

  I sucked in a breath and winced as if a bolt of pain shot through me. “Shit.”

  “Your daughter, Charlie … You used your six-year-old daughter as what, a prop to break into our neighbors’ apartment? You can’t stop yourself with this irrational suspicion you have of them. And who do you have to bring into it, but Emma.… You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Charlie.”

  It stung.

  And I barely had an answer.

  “That’s not exactly the way it happened, Liz,” I said, stammering to defend myself. “I didn’t break in. At least not like you say. The door was left open. And I didn’t bring Emma in with me. She happened to come in later while I was in there. I swear. And as for the hat, I had to come up with some excuse so as not to get her any deeper involved.”

  “In covering up this unfounded vendetta of yours … Then you break into a locked trunk of theirs. Do you know they could call the police on you? Do you know what the consequences would be of that?”

  “I do know.” I exhaled and sat down in a chair. I didn’t have much to say in defense of that one.

  “Don’t you have some condition of your parole that speaks to the commission of a crime? You could go back to jail, Charlie. And for the record, I just want you to know, the fucking trunk was open when we got there. They showed me what was inside. Nothing. Just some old blankets and sweaters. Unless you think they’re actually hiding something from us now. So my six-year-old doesn’t turn them in.”

  “Then they emptied it, Liz, ’cause there definitely was something in there when I looked. A radio transmitter. I saw it with my own eyes. You could even ask Emma. She saw it too. And for the record, I actually already went to the police.”

  “You did what?”

  “What was I supposed to do, Liz? This isn’t a game, as you call it. It’s real. Just tell me, why don’t you, why anyone would need a radio transmitter except to send or receive messages they don’t want anyone else to read?”