by Richard Wake
18
Put it this way: If UFA was looking for someone to play a Gestapo captain in its next widescreen blockbuster—The Knock at 3 a.m.—then this was their man. No screen test necessary.
"Captain Werner Vogl. May I join you?"
As if I had a choice. Had anyone failed to answer any question in the affirmative since he first put on that uniform? It was a question I wished I had the guts to ask him out loud.
"And how was your dinner, Herr Kovacs? I've always been partial to the medallions of pork in a black cherry sauce."
So he knew my name. He smiled when that dawned on me. So much for my poker face. The waiter arrived.
"I was about to order a drink. Can I tempt you?"
"Sorry. Still on duty for a few more hours. I try to limit myself to once a week when I play chess at Bischoffshausen on Wednesdays. It's a nice place—do you know it? It's right around here, maybe a 30-second walk from the back of the hotel. In by 7:30, home by 10. Anyway, you go ahead. Your train isn't for, what, five hours?"
So he knew my name, and he knew when I was leaving. I felt my hand begin to shake. I ordered another large schnapps.
"Yes, the Orient Express. It's my favorite train, even if I spend most of the journey asleep. It arrives in Cologne at 1:28 a.m., departs at 1:38 a.m.—but you already seem to know that. There are always a few passengers having a last drink in the dining car before bed. So many interesting people."
I was regaining my conversational sea legs. I could talk travel all day, to anyone—hotels, restaurants, trains. I loved trains. I could compare the quality of berths and dining cars depending on point of origin—food was best on trains starting in France, but berths were cleaner and more comfortable in Germany and Austria, for instance. Most of all, I loved talking about the mysterious luxury of the Orient Express.
"I once met a professor from London who was headed to Bucharest to meet up with a former student who was involved in a plot to take a shot at King Carol. I read the newspapers for weeks afterward but never saw a word about it. I always wonder if he was kidding me."
Vogl listened, but not all that attentively. But that was okay. Bored was more than all right with me. Part of me thought I was going to be able to talk my way through this because that was my living, talking my way into and out of things: late deliveries, price increases, whatever. So why couldn't I handle a pleasant few minutes with this guy, just because he was wearing a black uniform? But then it dawned on me: Maybe the reason he wasn't really listening to me was that his job was just to keep me busy while his partner—they all have partners, don't they?—was searching my room.
I was downing my schnapps and thinking about catching the waiter's eye. Then Vogl suddenly leaned in conspiratorially and said, "Are there ever opportunities for female companionship on the Orient Express?"
I’d been taking that train twice a year for the last dozen years, and I had one story. Truth be told, it wasn't even on the Orient Express but an overnighter from Berlin. But it is a great story, one of my go-to stories with the right audience, a story about a mother, a daughter, separate visits to my compartment, all under the unsuspecting nose of their husband/father. Or, as I always ended the story, "Or maybe he knew and just didn't give a shit."
It always got a laugh. It got a laugh from the good captain. But then it was on to business.
"So what brings you to Cologne?"
I caught the waiter's eye and then dove into the great and glorious story of the Kovacs family magnesite mine. I actually had three different versions of the story that explained my professional existence. I used the 20-second version when I was talking to an attractive woman, always ending with, "But enough about mines. How about yours?" It was stupid, but most of them at least giggled. Then there was the two-minute version for men who seemed genuinely interested. Then there was the five-minute version, with explanations of mining depths and maximum temperatures and the latest research on proposed new uses, which I unfurled when I was trying to get rid of somebody in a social situation by boring them into submission. Vogl was getting the full five-minute recital. The problem was, after three minutes, he was still nodding along with every point I made.
I kept thinking about his hypothetical partner as I droned on from memory. The microfilm was in a small envelope. It was stuck amid about 200 pages of contracts and delivery schedules in the one briefcase. I’d started the trip with about 500 pages in each but was down to about 200 in each. Maybe I should put all 400 in one case and leave the other one empty. I always balanced them off for, well, balance when I walked with them, but maybe combining made sense. I didn't know.
I was about done with the five minutes. Almost everybody I had ever subjected to this long explanation had thought up an excuse to leave before I got to the part about the difference between light burnt and dead burnt, and which works best in a furnace, but Vogl was still hanging in. I didn't have much left. So I went where I always went—getting the other guy to talk about himself. But, really, how many people make conversation with a Gestapo agent by asking, "So, are you from here? Married? Children?" Well, I did.
Vogl was from Koblenz, as it turned out. He had a wife and a five-year-old daughter. He liked chess. As he talked, though, he suddenly became distracted again. I looked over his shoulder, toward the elevator, and saw the door closing and someone with a dark trench coat walking toward the hotel exit. The partner? Could be. But Vogl's back was to the elevator when the guy got off, so whatever was distracting him wasn't that. Then, for whatever reason, Vogl stood and made his excuses and left.
I was pretty sure I was physically slumping in my chair as I watched Vogl leave through the hotel's front door. I looked over my shoulder to see what might have distracted Vogl. There was nothing there, except for the enormous mirror that gave him a view of the entire lobby, including the elevator doors.
19
Up the elevator and down the hall, I kept telling myself that they would have grabbed me on the spot if somebody had searched my room and found the microfilm. I couldn't assume they had found anything. I couldn't assume they even searched the room. What did a black trench coat even mean? I mean, come on—I owned a black trench coat.
I opened the door and took a small step inside, almost on tiptoe. The light was on. Had I left the light on? I couldn't remember. I had turned on the desk lamp when I was typing, but the overhead light? I just didn't remember.
I closed the door and scanned the room, still hesitant to take a step. My typing was in a pile on top of the typewriter, where I left it. Looking into the bathroom—no light on in there—my shaving kit was packed up and on the sink as before. My suitcase was open on the rack at the foot of the bed, re-packed. The two briefcases were on the bed, both unlocked and unlatched, both open. Check.
The briefcases were all I was worried about, specifically the one with the small bit of green ribbon on the handle. That was for the last client on the trip, the other one for the first, or first and second clients. I riffled through the papers, looking for the small envelope containing the microfilm. I didn't see it. I took out the stack of paper, riffled again, and the envelope fell out on the bed. It was still sealed.
I put it all back into the briefcase and exhaled for the first time. My Czech contact, whose name I still didn't know, had warned me, "There's a fine line, just a filament, between awareness and paranoia—try not to cross it. Be aware. Don't be paranoid." It was good advice. Of course, it was easy for him to say. I was the one who just received a hearty hidey-ho from the Gestapo.
The fact that I couldn't find the envelope when I was specifically looking for it told me that I had nothing to worry about. At the same time, though, I had whined enough before I left that my contact gave me a way to hide it even better.
When I got to the station it was after midnight, but the place was far from sleepy—not bustling, not precisely, but the café was open, and the newsagent, and the wine store. That was my stop, after dropping my bags with the porter and hanging on to the on
e briefcase with the green ribbon. I had practiced the line, over and over, and could deliver it flawlessly, if I do say so myself. I walked into the empty shop, and the man behind the counter acknowledged me with a nod, and I said, "I'm looking for a nice German wine for my Slovak father."
I felt like winking, to make sure he got it. I settled for earnest eye contact. But there was not a hint of acknowledgment on his part, just a quick search of the shelves behind the counter, the grabbing of a bottle that he then presented to me.
"You must try this Riesling from Rüdesheim. It is one of our best."
That was the recognition code. Hot damn. I really was a spy.
The Orient Express arrived exactly on time, naturally. About a dozen people boarded with me. It always gave me a thrill, that train, and it did that night, too. The feeling was more of elegance than opulence, of old money and hushed conversations to which I would never be privy, but which I could pretend to be understanding as I caught small snippets in passing. There were plenty of people on the train like me—businessmen with healthy expense accounts—and the truth was, those were the people I tended to end up talking to. We all seemed to gravitate toward each other as if the practice of commerce provided us with a magnetic sheen that drew us together. But it was the rest of them—the old couple that had the look of faded royalty, silently eating a late snack; the two swarthy 30-year-olds in ill-fitting suits, maybe Italians, maybe Turks—that stuck in the imagination.
When I got to the compartment, I fished into the briefcase for the envelope and then, taking the wine bottle, fiddled with the cork until the secret compartment revealed itself. I took the tiny strips of film—two of them—out of the envelope, doing my best not to smudge them with fingerprints, and inserted them into the void, then replaced the loose bit of cork and jammed it back in with my thumb. Even if it fell out, there really wasn't anything to see. Then I burned the envelope in the little metal sink in the compartment, as instructed, put the bottle in the other briefcase, and went for a drink in the dining car to calm myself down.
I didn't feel like talking to anyone, and I didn't. Sleep came easier than I’d thought it would. Breakfast was breakfast, although even the coffee on the Orient Express tastes better. The border crossing into Austria was at Passau. We would get there around 11 a.m. For years, the train would stop and the German border agents—there were always two of them—would knock on the door of the compartment, check the passport, ask if there was luggage. I would point to it, they would nod, the passport would be stamped, and that would be it. They would finish, the train would run for about five minutes, and Austrian border agents would get on and repeat the process.
But for at least the last two years, everybody and their luggage had to get off at Passau, walk up to two German border guards sitting at a table, and go through the same process. The inspections were just as cursory, performed by inspectors who looked just as bored, and the stamps in the passports looked just the same. Other than taking three times as long and being a boon to the waiting porters on the platform, who worked for tips, it seemed like a complete waste of time. Of course, this would be the first time I ever came across the border armed with a wine bottle fortified with what I presumed were German military secrets, so there was that.
It was, as always: a line of passengers, and luggage, and porters, shuffling up to the table. Greetings, what was the purpose of your visit, anything to declare, glance at the bags, nod, stamp, next.
"Guten tag. What was the purpose of your visit?"
"Business appointments in Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Cologne."
The truth was, this guy had not been listening to anyone in the line ahead of me, but he suddenly really wasn't listening to me. He was on his feet, walking away from the table, back over near the platform. He had my passport in his hand, open to my picture. He consulted with another guy who was holding a clipboard. The guy looked at the passport, then down at his list of names. He nodded.
My guy returned and handed me the passport. "Herr Kovacs, to my colleagues, please. It is just routine—and have the porter bring your luggage."
He pointed over to his right, about a hundred feet away. A doorway to a room, a man standing at attention, armed with a machine pistol. The black uniform was unmistakable. He did not look bored. I did my best to affect a shrug and a smile as I began to walk over. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure he was following, the porter suddenly looked worried, probably about his tip.
20
The Aryan specimen opened the door as I approached, standing at attention again just inside. "Come in, with the luggage," he said.
I was first, holding the briefcase with the wine bottle. The porter was next, with my suitcase and the other briefcase, the one with the papers and the green ribbon around the handle. The muscle signaled with a flick of his head that the porter could leave. He did not dawdle.
"Wait here." Then the door was closed, and I was alone.
It was a makeshift kind of space, with a bit of a cave quality to it—you didn't have to stoop over, but the ceiling was just a little bit low, and the back wall was cement. Maybe it had once been used for storage. The only light was from a single bulb overhead. A small wooden table and two chairs were the only furniture. I sat, waiting.
I had played this out in my head a hundred times over the last few weeks. I just kept telling myself to act the way I had acted the other time they had looked through my bag. It was last year, coming back from Leipzig. The same kind of setup, pretty much, except there wasn't a guy with a clipboard and the second table was also out on the platform, not in a separate room. That one seemed more random. I tried to remember how I acted with that Gestapo agent—I think he was a second lieutenant. I was just, well, normal, I guess—not angry at the delay, not guilty because there was nothing to be guilty about, kind of friendly, not overly friendly, just answer the questions.
The door opened. I stood up. "Herr Kovacs, I am Sturmhauptführer Rabel. Please be seated."
Sturmhauptführer. Another captain. Shit.
He held out his hand. I gave him the passport. He pulled a notebook from his pocket and began to write. "I understand you were here on business. Can you please explain in some detail where you were and who you met with?"
I began, explaining the magnesite sales business, and all of my clients, and taking him on the trip from Nuremberg to Frankfurt to Cologne. I left out the part about how I pretty much had to carry Herr Feldmann of the Nuremberg Steel Works and drop him into a taxi to take him home, and the club in Frankfurt where I had to pay off the maître d' to keep him from calling the cops on handsy Herr Lindemann. I also left out the part about collecting the small envelope taped to the underside of the porcelain sink in Cologne.
"This magnesite—it seems an important material for manufacturing, and perhaps national security. Do you have many contacts with the military?"
"I have some, yes. The steel mills who are our clients are all private business concerns, but many of them have military contracts. Probably most of them. As a result, when I meet with my clients, I sometimes come into contact with military personnel. They can sometimes explain better than the client what is needed in the manufacturing process."
I stopped talking. Rabel continued to write. Then he looked up. "And any military contacts on this trip?"
I thought I had danced around it, but no. Any military contacts on this trip? The only one was the guy who passed me the microfilm.
"Let me think back, just to be sure," I said, buying a few seconds.
In the half-assed training I was given by my Czech contact, one thing I remembered him saying was, "Don't lie if you don't have to." He had talked about how life is full of coincidences, and odd little events that defy rational explanation, and not to get caught up lying about meaningless things just because you think they look bad.
"The lies are the hardest thing to keep track of," he said. "Only lie when it matters."
So where did the major in the club fit in? I could tell the tr
uth—that I was in the club with Herr Scherer, and that the major was a friend of Scherer's who we ran into, and that I left them soon after as they continued their evening. It was all true and as innocent as it sounded—except for, well, you know.
But the sturmhauptführer was sitting there, writing. He probably had dozens of those notebooks, stored in his office, organized by date, the information cataloged for easy retrieval. He probably went to his office every day and reviewed the latest entries in order to take the appropriate actions. To put Scherer's name in that notebook, however innocent the story, was to put him in the Gestapo's sights. Then again, maybe he was already in the Gestapo's sights—in which case, my bringing up his name would attach more suspicion to my name. Then again, lying about an innocent contact could also hurt me if they ever found out about it. For all I knew, they already had found out about it. I mean, why did Vogl come to the hotel? Why was my name on that clipboard?
In the end, I went with my gut, making a show of searching my memory.
"Nuremberg . . . no. Frankfurt . . . no. Cologne . . . no. No, no military this trip."
Rabel wrote some more. His face betrayed nothing. He might actually be the one guy on the planet who could successfully lie to his wife. I sat there, trying to keep my breathing even. He got up, pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, opened my suitcase, and began to paw my dirty underwear. His heart wasn't in the task—it was all pretty cursory. You would have thought he’d have an underling for such work.
Gloves off, briefcase next. He looked in at the stack of paper, a couple of hundred pages, and riffled through it without attempting to read even one of the pages. He now seemed as bored as the border guard outside.
