by Richard Wake
I just wasn't really that worried. I'd survive if the Germans came. If I couldn't hack it, my family would take me back in Brno, God help us all. I also had some money stashed in a couple of bank accounts, in Zurich and Paris, enough to make a fresh start, even if I couldn't get Otto's money out. There were options.
But now, if I accepted this offer, this summons, everything would be at risk—including my freedom, and maybe my life. It was a small risk, granted, if all I was doing was bringing back a few sheets of paper hiding in my briefcase amid hundreds of pieces of paper. Small risk, maximum penalty.
The man sipped his coffee and said, "So when do you leave for Cologne?"
"Sunday. It's three cities. Nuremberg for two days, Monday and Tuesday. Frankfurt for a day and a half, then Cologne for two more, Thursday night and all day Friday and Saturday. Overnight train back on Saturday night. The Orient Express."
"I know that."
"So why did you ask?"
"Making conversation so you can take your mind off of the fact that you're about to piss your pants."
"I knew you were a charmer. So, your plan is to sweet-talk me into doing this?"
"My plan is to finish my coffee and send a message to my boss in Prague telling him that you're either in or that you're a chickenshit. So which is it?"
My new friend, a complete asshole whose name I did not know, was right. I had spun this a million different ways in my head but that's what it came down to: Was I in or was I a coward? I was torturing myself, all the while wishing that I just possessed even a slice of that thoughtless decisiveness that Leon lived. Whether it was a woman way out of his league or four thugs jumping a Jew on a street corner, it didn't matter—Leon was all in while I was always a step behind, calculating the odds and the consequences.
"I'll die younger, but I'll have more fun," is what he always told me, usually when we were drinking afterward, and he was nursing some sort of wound, physical or otherwise.
So this was my chance. I'd had others—I’d fought in a war, for fuck's sake. I always came out looking okay, but I was never really a hero. I wasn't a total coward, but I was always slow, always calculating. Don Quixote never got near the Danube. My father's son.
I looked across the table at my sullen, burned-out friend. "Explain to me again why this is so important. I mean, we all know Hitler's coming. What's the point?"
"The point is that our army is better than you think. And the point is that the German army is worse than you think. And the point is that these are facts that need to be continually updated and verified so that the politicians, if they ever decide to grow a pair, can understand our chances of holding him off, the Corporal, and maybe embarrass him, and maybe convince the French pussies to honor their treaty because the big bad Nazi wolf maybe isn't so scary after all."
"But if Hitler takes Austria, Czechoslovakia will be surrounded. It won't matter. And he's taking Austria if he shows up with three old men on horseback armed with broomsticks and a bugle."
"Exactly. Which is why now is so important. Maybe we can make a late mutual defense deal with the Austrians. Maybe we can organize military maneuvers near the Austrian border that will scare Hitler a little. Maybe we make a show of strength that makes him reconsider for a little while. We're playing for time here, and to embarrass the French pussies into living up to their obligations. But I'm telling you more than I should, although it's all just common sense if you can read the newspapers and a map. So, are you in?"
I sat there and stared at him, but not really focusing on him. I saw my father, and I saw Otto. I saw Leon and the doctor stitching him up in the emergency room. I saw Ulrich Bain in front of Goldberg's Delicatessen and, mostly, I saw Herr Grundman in the quarry. His was the face, more than any, that I couldn't shake.
"I'm in," I said.
"Good. Someone will contact you, or not. Just go about your business. You'll never know until it happens."
15
I had time for a quick walk over to the museum to say goodbye to Johanna before the trip. It was hard to know what to say. Because I was putting whatever we had begun to build together in jeopardy, too, and I didn't feel like I could tell her about it.
It was bad enough that Leon knew, although I was pretty confident he wouldn't tell anybody, not even Henry. On the one hand, I very much wanted to tell Johanna because it would burnish my reputation as a brave doer of good. But I very much didn't want to tell her because she might blab. And also—and this was the real reason—I wasn't sure she would approve. I wasn’t sure she was all that interested in doers of good.
It wasn't that she was an outright anti-Semite. It was nothing like that. But when I told her about our fight to rescue the Jewish kid, there was no disgust for the injustice, or concern for the kid, or disrespect for the police or the Nazis. Instead, what she said was, "I guess boys will always be boys, even when they are men." And then she kissed me on the forehead, and then down lower than that, and we really didn't talk about it anymore.
I just didn't know. The title her family had, and didn't have. The money her family had, and didn't have. Her father's flick of the nose. There was a little bit of an edge there. We saw one of the socialist newspapers that still got smuggled in now and then—somebody had left it on our chair in Demel—and Johanna said, "Who would honestly believe these lies?" But that's just politics. Henry hates the socialists, too, and I'd trust my children's lives with him if I ever had any. Before they were outlawed, even Leon wasn't a big fan: "They figure they have us Jews in their pocket because we have nowhere else to go, and they take advantage of it. Intellectual shitheads." So what did it mean that Johanna hated them, too? Anything?
The point was, I didn't know, and I kind of didn't want to know. Someday, but not that day.
"So is the magnesite king of Central Europe all packed?" I didn't even have to see her face to see the smirk. I loved it.
The museum had a small canteen next to the gift shop. The place was dead. The only other person there was grabbing a coffee to take back to her office, it appeared. She came over, Johanna introduced us, and I immediately forgot her name. She barely stopped walking, but did manage to say, "That was quite a proposal."
"Early days yet. Just an idea."
After she walked away, I said, "Proposal?"
"For a new exhibition. It's daring."
"I didn't think they did daring here."
"We'll see."
She offered no other details. We had a cup of coffee and didn't say much. We were getting more comfortable with the silences, which was good, because I was suddenly conversationally paralyzed, so preoccupied with what was about to happen on the trip, so conscious of not revealing anything to Johanna. It felt good just to say goodbye.
Walking back home along the Ringstrasse, I was thoroughly preoccupied. My most persistent daydream was of a waiter handing me an envelope containing secret military assessments along with my bill after lunch one day in some clandestine hole in the wall in Frankfurt. The other recurring dream was of a Gestapo agent banging on my hotel room door later that same night. The dreams were like an entry at the racetrack, one following the other. I swear, I had lost 10 pounds since the whole thing started.
Soon I was walking past the Hotel Bristol. I usually remembered to cross the street, or detour around it, but with the daydreams, I just forgot. The reason for the detours was because the Bristol was home to the German tourist office in Vienna. The office had one of the hotel's big display windows, which for years had been full of beautiful Aryannesses, skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, or demurely taking the waters in Bad Godesberg, or not so demurely busting out of dirndls as they hoisted massive steins of beer for Oktoberfest in Munich. Not anymore, though. The window had become an enormous shrine to Hitler. There was a big framed photo of him, and that was it, and people gathered around it at all times of the day and night, noses pressed against the glass: men and women, old and young, and not just the teenaged boys who used to gather for a closer inspection of t
he dirndls. It was worse at night, as the portrait was lit by a spotlight, the illumination of evil. People sometimes left small bouquets of flowers; it had become a shrine. A hotel employee came out to tidy up and clean the smudges off of the glass twice a day.
This day, it was quiet—an older couple, holding hands, just staring. The man actually took off his hat like he was in church and didn't put it back on until they walked away.
How do you defeat that? The question, along with the mental picture of that old couple, stuck with me for hours—through the taxi ride to the station, and the porter setting me up in my compartment, and a solo dinner that was more about the wine than the food, and the dose of valerian and the Agatha Christie novel to help me sleep. Eventually, I did. The train arrived in Nuremberg at 8 a.m., right on time.
16
The place was dark. These places were always dark, wherever they were, in whatever country. There was a kind of international language spoken by the designers, understood by all, in the layout of these places: understated entrance off of the street, formally dressed man to greet you inside the door, booths around the perimeter with single candles on the tables, red the dominant color of the furnishings, a three-piece combo lit by a small spotlight, a small dance floor marked by dull floor lights around the perimeter, but dark everywhere else, dark in all of the spaces in between. It was part of the illicit ambiance, that and the single corridor off of the main room, the corridor that led to the rest, the entrance invariably marked by a red velvet curtain and guarded by a bricklayer in a monkey suit.
I was seated in one of the booths. My client, Thomas Scherer, was with me, along with Trudi and Gretl, no last names required. There wasn't a lot of heavy lifting involved on this night. Dinner, drinks, stumble past the man in the tuxedo. Trudi and Gretl appeared at the table within seconds, and Trudi and Gretl's hands found our laps beneath the table a few more seconds after the drinks arrived. This wasn't complicated. It never was, except when I heard Scherer start bragging to Trudi about the steel mill he owned, and about the important work he did in building up the defense industries of the Reich, as if she were the type who needed impressing.
I removed Gretl's hand and slid over in the booth, put my arm around Scherer's neck and yanked him close so that I could whisper something. I caught Trudi's eye and winked. I looked at Scherer with a conspiratorial smile, as if we were about to begin plotting the time when we would walk toward the red velvet curtain.
"I'm ready now," Scherer said, almost giggling.
"You didn't tell her your real name, did you?"
"No."
"Or the name of the company?"
Terror suddenly contorted his face. A couple of years before, he had done the same thing, the same bragging, and he told the girl that night the company's name—and the girl came looking for him at the office a while later, pestering and then threatening. I had to make a special, unscheduled visit to Cologne, to pay off the girl to keep her quiet, and to pay off the owner of the club to make sure he worked to keep her quiet. In my expense report, I called it an "emergency consultation regarding unexpected demand at Scherer Steel." And, yes, in thanks, my good friend Thomas did agree to increase his magnesite order by 20 percent on the spot.
"So, did you?"
"No," Scherer said, and the terror was replaced by the same drunken smile. "No, I didn't mention it. She doesn't know the name. I'm good."
"Try to keep it that way. Why don't you dance for a while?"
"Can't dance right now," he said, winking and pointing quickly at his lap.
"Okay, okay. But stick to safe conversation subjects. Compliment her looks. Tell her she has nice tits and see where that goes."
We both laughed out loud, big guffaws, two aging fraternity brothers drunkenly prowling. And as Gretl and I made our way to the dance floor, I tried to keep up the inane conversation while scanning the room, looking one by one into the dimly lit booths, trying to figure who it might be.
The Nazis closed down a lot of these places. Or, rather, they closed the most conspicuous of these places and then made a great show of it. But while Nazis might have been Nazis, they still liked sex as much as anyone. They merely demanded discretion—and, if you talked to enough of the doormen, payoffs to local police were also a requirement. Looking around, peering into the dark booths, I could make out at least a few military uniforms.
I hadn't been approached anywhere on the trip—not during the stay in Nuremberg or the time in Frankfurt, not in the train station or at the hotel in Cologne the previous day, not in the restaurant or the first café tonight. I was leaving for home the next day.
"You seem distracted. Perhaps I could better get your attention—" Gretl smiled, and her eyes darted quickly toward the red velvet curtain. On many nights, I had made the walk down a dark corridor like the one here, but not tonight. I would wait for Scherer and Trudi to shamble off and make my goodbyes while they were busy—and by goodbyes, I meant I would leave the money for Trudi and Gretl with the tuxedo at the front door.
"Maybe in a bit," I told her. As we got back to the booth, we saw that Scherer and Trudi had been joined by a man in a Luftwaffe uniform. He stood to introduce himself, but it was awkward in the booth, and I told him to stay seated. He said his name was Major Peiper, and then he and Scherer smiled and winked. Fake names all around, then.
Gretl, sensing fresher meat, slid in quickly next to the good major. I was suddenly the fifth wheel, but I was okay with that. I hated to admit how much these trips took out of me. I was only 37 and had been doing this for more than a decade, and while the travel seemed to be in my blood, it could sometimes be exhausting, especially the final day or two. I wouldn't mind getting to bed, alone, with the long train trip home to Vienna still ahead.
Before the major got himself too entranced in Gretl's handiwork, I managed to find out that he and Scherer knew each other through "business." I assumed that the Luftwaffe was a client of the steel mill.
After another drink, I began plotting my exit. Every client was different, but Scherer liked to have me stay until he made a decision about the red velvet curtain. But then there was the Gretl question. The money I left at the front door would be different if Gretl took the major down the corridor or if she didn't—and there was no question that I was now paying for both of them, whatever happened. It was all the cost of doing business. Maybe I would just pay the full rate for both of the girls and let the tuxedo pocket the difference if the major chose not to partake.
This was all going through my head when the major excused himself to use the restroom. Trudi was fully engaged with Scherer, and Gretl slid over and joined her, two sets of hands now exploring. This had not been Scherer's thing in the past, but he appeared to be considering the notion. All I was thinking about was the four-block walk back to the hotel in the sleet and a nice warm bed. And when the major returned from his piss, he signaled to Scherer that it was time to head for the red velvet curtain, and what lay behind it.
They all got up. I shook hands with the men and promised Scherer that I would expedite the updated contracts once I returned to Vienna. Money for the evening was not mentioned, the arrangements understood by all. After they had left, I slugged my drink, put down the glass and began to grab my coat and hat from the nearby rack when the major returned to retrieve the pack of cigarettes he had left on the table.
He looked at me and said, "It's an envelope taped to the bottom of the sink in the bathroom."
17
Like most people who travel a lot, I had my routines and my preferences—favorite hotel, favorite restaurant, all of that. In Cologne, the restaurant was the Brauhaus Sion, where the two waitresses—mother and daughter—wore dirndls and the sauerbraten was the best I had ever tasted. The hotel was the Dom Hotel, a big place near the cathedral that catered to businessmen and their needs. In my case, that meant a large room with a view of the cathedral, and it also meant the delivery of a typewriter on the last day of my stay.
After years of exp
erimenting, the last day of a three-city trip was a workday in the hotel for me. The paperwork was excessive and could bury me if I wasn't careful. There also were notes that I made during conversations with clients, documenting the information for new orders and timetables for delivery and such. The typewriter was my method for making those notes legible so they could be acted upon by Hannah when I got home. I taught himself to type after frustrating her for years with my indecipherable handwriting and haphazard shorthand. It just felt better to sleep in after a night out with the client, and then get the detail work done so I could relax on the night train.
I had slept in and had a room service breakfast that was actually lunch. I finished typing at five and packed everything back into the briefcases—in the middle of which was shoved a small envelope containing several strips of microfilm.
I wasn't anxious about it at sometimes and paralyzed by the thought of it at others, which I found a little bit odd. Then again, my contact had warned me, "Half of the time you're going to feel like the almighty sheriff in one of those American westerns, and the other half of the time, you're going to feel like one of the wounded outlaws hiding in the barn." I didn't get it when he said it, but I did when it was happening.
On the last night, I always ate in the Dom's dining room. The train wasn't until 1:30 in the morning, so it was a leisurely meal, good for a hotel. Then it was to the front desk to order a taxi for one o’clock, and then to a chair in the back corner of the lobby, where one or two drinks would get me so far, and then a shower and a change of clothes would get me the rest of the way, and then the taxi and the train would get me home.
I was into the second schnapps and had not thought about the microfilm in half an hour, I realized, when I saw a man in a black trench coat walk into the lobby. He removed his hat, spoke briefly with the bell captain, and then began walking in my direction, passing one table, two tables, three tables, and not stopping. It was soon quite clear that he was coming to speak to me.
