I hadn’t known about the gold and platinum connectors. If it was true and the computers could be salvaged at scale, tons per month, the plan was indeed shrewd. I said so, and Anselm looked pleased.
“Good,” he said, “because I want you to develop a process for reclaiming value off the circuit boards. I’ll give you a workspace here in Munich and an open checkbook. Order whatever equipment you need. I’ll pay you well for your time, and at the end of this enterprise I want a report telling me exactly what steps are needed to deliver gold, platinum, palladium, and the rest. Whatever will sell on the secondary markets.”
Kraus opened a drawer and removed four glass vials. “This one’s gold,” he said, placing the first vial on the desk. “This one is platinum. Here’s silver, and finally palladium.” He gave me that same appraising look. “I bought these last week, two troy ounces apiece. In five years there will be hills of computer junk; in ten, small mountains; in fifteen, Himalayas. I need a process for extracting value at scale. You built a damned fine dive platform. I’m confident you can do this.”
I wasn’t. “I’m no chemist,” I said.
He had invited me to a job interview I’d never sought. In fact, it felt more like an anointment than an interview because Anselm had made up his mind. Something, I realized, had been decided about my fate while I was away in Paris and Hong Kong.
“I don’t really care about the particulars of what you studied, Henri. I bet on people. You’ve got a technical background, and your platform is all the proof I need that you can see a project through. I’m confident you can deliver.”
“A process,” I said. “You need a chemical process for isolating precious metals.”
“I’ll pay you well. The job will keep you in the neighborhood for the summer, at least. Then, who knows?”
I wanted to make sure he understood. “I took exactly one seminar in chemistry.”
“We know,” said Schmidt. “We checked your course roster at Écoles des Mines. If chemistry isn’t your core competency, you can learn it. Look, you made it into that university, so you’ve got brains. We know you’re ambitious. And your great-grandfather was Jules Henri Poincaré. You’ve got excellent bloodlines. We know all this and have made our decision. Do you realize who’s making the offer and what is being offered—what this could become, young man?”
Kraus gave me no room to consider.
“This plan will work if you can make the process regular, knowable, and manageable. That’s the thing. Discover a process that gives me measurable yields, that gives me thousands of these vials a year, and I will create a new subsidiary of Kraus Steel. Things lead to things, Henri. Small assignments become large ones. I’m in the business of placing bets on people, not on resumes.” He found the magnifying glass and bent over a circuit board. “And I’ve placed my bets. What do you say?”
We heard a crash. On looking up I saw one of the men I met on Terschelling, Franz Hofmann, the old stringy one, standing beside a marble pedestal in pieces on the stone terrace. Schmidt and I followed Anselm outside.
“Uncle Franz,” Anselm said. “Are you okay?”
“It moved!” said Hofmann. “It moved before I bumped it. Did you see it move? This wasn’t my fault, Anselm. Look, it’s shattered. Oh . . . in so many pieces. Let me pick them up. Get me a can. Do you have cement? Any cement? Or glue? I could—”
“It’s all right, Uncle. Please, sit. It’s nothing.”
In fact, it likely wasn’t nothing. The chiseled pedestals and planters on the terrace looked to have been a matched set stripped from some Tuscan ruin. Schmidt took him by the hands. “Let’s go, Franz. We’ll find you a seat.”
“Who’s he?” Hofmann lifted a trembling finger in my direction.
Schmidt half walked him, half danced him to a chair. “March, Franz. One foot in front of the next. Step, step. There’s a good soldier. Come now.”
Hofmann pointed again.
“It’s fine, Franz. Henri’s a friend of the family. Don’t be upset.”
“I don’t like him. I met him once, and I don’t like him.”
Kraus turned to me with an apology and walked me inside. “He was magnificent until last year. Franz worked on the line at our furnace in Duisburg until a stroke ruined him. He was one of the originals, you know. Maybe it was in 1948 or 1949 when my father took him on. Just like Viktor and Eckehart, he’s never not been around. Speaking of which, Viktor told me about your own loss. I’m sorry for that. I swear, if you gave me a contract for eighty good years, then zip”—he made a cutting motion at his throat— “I’d sign in a second. No pain, no decrepitude, just gone.”
“There’s always arsenic,” I said.
“That’s the problem, Henri.” He thought it over. “Most people won’t kill themselves. When you’re on this side of the grave, some life is better than no life. You can’t see the indignity of your own decline even when you shit your pants every day. Tell me, who’s going to kill you when you need it most? Who’s going to kill that old man? Me? My affection gets in the way. But I assure you he wouldn’t mind if someone shot him.”
I cleared my throat.
Back at the computers, he pressed me to accept his offer, which was when Liesel entered the room wearing a sundress, her hair freshly washed. She kissed my cheek and looped an arm through mine.
“Anselm told me he’d be roping you into something. Watch out. Everything he touches turns to gold.”
“Don’t stare at her,” said Schmidt, joining us. “You’re not sixteen.”
“We’ll assume two months, Henri. I’ve got a mixed-use building in Dachau with some office space, a few apartments, and a rough warehouse. You’ll set up there. My assistant will give you all the details.” Kraus checked his watch. “Enjoy dinner, you two.”
We turned to leave.
“Yes,” I said, looking back.
They paused, not understanding.
“I accept your offer.”
Kraus and Schmidt roared at what they thought was a good joke. Given what I’d seen of their model yard in Hong Kong, I was going to turn them down. But Liesel’s arrival tipped the scales. Alec didn’t need me on the platform. I was waiting to hear on fourteen proposals, and didn’t dare submit any more on the chance that some, or most, would be accepted. That much new business could put us out of business. So I had the time, and Kraus had just given me a reason to stay in Munich for the summer.
Still, I dreaded what Kraus thought a computer salvaging operation might look like at scale. Would he locate it in Hong Kong? Schmidt had gone there with computers. But the customs agent had asked about a visa to enter the People’s Republic. They were planning a new kind of breaking yard, I supposed, this one well out of view from prying eyes.
ON THE terrace, Liesel said, “Don’t listen to Viktor. It’s sweet, the way you look at me.”
I very likely blushed.
“Anselm’s very particular about the people he brings on. If you’re working with him, you must be good.” She opened a gate, and we crossed the garden into the shadow of Otto’s Stuka.
“That or I’ve got an in with a member of the family.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” she said. “If you had no talent, Anselm wouldn’t—”
“But the Lutine helps?”
“That helps. You did build the platform. He couldn’t stop talking about it.”
Liesel had grown up on the estate. To her, the Stuka sculpture was likely as invisible as a familiar couch or table. To me, it looked like what it was: a war machine that delivered death from above. Not even the engineer in me could find beauty in it.
“Let me show you the Isar River from the edge of our property,” she said. “There’s a hill. You’ll like the view. . . . Then we’ll walk through the English garden, past the pagoda. There’s a fine little restaurant I know. It’s such a beautiful time of year, Henri. I want you to like Munich. Over dinner, you can tell me everything about your trip to Hong Kong.” She leaned into me. “Every detai
l. Did you see the shipyard? I’ve never been, but my brother’s very proud of it.”
I returned the pressure of her arm on mine. I had hoped to avoid, or at least postpone, an accounting of my trip. I gave her the short version. “I learned a lot—more than I expected,” I said, and left it at that.
We reached the forest and found the trail that led through their woods to the public garden. It was where she learned to cross country ski and use a compass, she said. “I love these woods. Papa was always working or traveling, but I spent good years here. Anselm and Theresa wanted me to come back, after University. Can you imagine me at twenty-two, bringing a man back to my brother’s house on Saturday night?”
My pulse ticked up. I didn’t know if it was resentment at the thought of her with someone else or the discovery that she was no stranger to the bedroom arts. We followed the trail through a stand of oaks, the late spring sun streaming through the trees. The season had taken firmer hold here in the south. Large swaths of forest floor were covered with blue-flowered periwinkle. The family’s groundskeepers had cleared the underbrush, so that one could look in every direction and find what in Europe passed for old-growth forest, oaks and beech trees with broad girths and splendid canopies.
The estate might have been an archduke’s hunting preserve long ago. Otto had bought it after the war, when the old families were ruined and desperate for cash.
The trail led up a hill. Our breathing was heavier, and I caught myself thinking about straining with her in other ways.
Liesel had fantasies of her own, it turned out. When we reached the crest, she gave me a moment to consider the view. Below us, I saw the public garden and the gleam of the Isar. She tugged at my sleeve and walked me to a stand of pines.
“Here,” she said. “This would be a nice spot.”
“For what?”
“For what we’ve both had on our minds since hiking on the flats. . . . What’s been on your mind, Henri? You’ve had a long week to think about it.”
A bed of pine needles lay between us.
She stepped near.
“I could tell you exactly what I’ve been thinking.”
She touched my hand. “Later, tell me anything you want. For now, show me.”
I was done with words and imagining. We kissed. I dropped to my knees and lifted her pleated skirt, letting it fall around my shoulders. I held her in a dim light, a tent of my own making. I inhaled her bouquet and kissed the down of her thighs. She pressed herself into me, and I breathed like a man who’d held his breath for too long.
fifteen
Liesel slid a hand onto my abdomen. The sun streamed through the windows as we sat on a couch, covered by a sheet. Dust motes floated in the light. The vendor on Mandistrasse, which bordered one edge of the Englischer Garden, was already sizzling bratwurst. In the distance, I could just see the peak of the famous pagoda. It was early, but the beer drinkers would be lining up soon.
With its steel and blonde wood and Nepalese rugs, the apartment looked like a spread in Architectural Digest. Liesel had divided the double-height warehouse loft into two floors, with the sitting and dining areas open to the full height of the loft. Glass and steel beams dominated, with large white walls reserved for oversized art. It was Euro-chic, the reclaimed upper stories of a bombed-out turbine factory.
I had been speaking with Alec every day or two to exchange progress reports. I knew he rose early, so with the phone on my lap and Liesel curled at my side I placed the call. It still amazed me that I could pick up a landline and, via a switching station in the Netherlands, reach him on a barge at sea. I waited through the clicks and whistles, eager for updates but just as eager to tell him about my work for Anselm. When he answered, I spilled the news in a torrent. He was pleased.
Alec’s news was also good.
“The dive team found three cannons,” he said. “We’ve hoisted them onto the deck. At the moment they’re encrusted with limestone at the fat end. That’s where the ship’s name would be, or a fleur-de-lis. Hillary’s put—”
“The conservator?”
“Yes. She put one of the cannons in a chemical bath, but limestone sets like concrete, and it may take months to dissolve. I’m for chipping it off now, but she won’t hear of it. We’re prospecting, Henri! The news gets better.
“The Argentines visited this week, and we’re set. They want a duplicate of our barge. We’re selling them the specs and they will oversee construction. All you need to do is visit a few times over the next year, look wise, and collect money. How’s your Spanish?”
“Serviceable. That government is a retread of the Third Reich. Really, why would we do business with them?”
“I grant you the junta’s a bunch of thugs. I knew you’d be sensitive, so I asked and they said the dive on the Preciado is strictly a cultural affair. They assured me that whatever they haul up is going into a museum. Just hold your nose and go, would you? Their money is good, and our cash flow is not exactly the best just now.”
This was true.
“Alec,” I said. “There must be better ways.”
“This is not a discussion, Henri. I asked about it, they answered. It’s a fucking cultural expedition. You’re going. Charm them, accept the check, and come home.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“No, you’ll do it. And now for some truly alarming news.”
I sat up.
“You left some notes here . . . on one of the procedure checklists. Three lines that you crossed out a half-dozen times. It’s a goddamned poem, Henri, and it’s awful. It is your handwriting. Don’t deny it.”
“That was supposed to be private.”
“Why?”
Liesel straddled me. “What’s supposed to be private?” She had leaned her head against mine and heard him.
“Are you there, Henri?”
“With a friend, yes.”
“That friend?”
The best way to take a friendly beating is in public, all at once. I held the receiver up so we both could listen. “Full disclosure,” I told her, “is the foundation of any relationship. Liesel Kraus, meet Alec Chin. Alec, Liesel. Speak up, Alec. We’re all just dying to hear.”
He cleared his throat. “No title. Here goes:
The festive ballroom.
Sunlight and shimmering birch.
I see her. Liesel!
“A haiku? Ms. Kraus, you’d better take care. He’s known you two weeks, and already he’s writing bad poetry. It’s a very bad sign.”
You didn’t. She mouthed the words.
“Alec, it’s not that bad. It sounds better in Japanese.”
“You don’t speak Japanese.”
“It’s Sunday. Don’t you have something better to do?”
I hung up.
“Shimmering birch?” she said, kissing me. “I like it. No one’s ever written me poetry.” She pulled the sheet over us, then slid onto the floor.
“Your knees,” I said. I passed her a pillow.
“No, not that one. My mother embroidered it when I was born.”
I looked, but the string of letters didn’t add up to her name. A B L v K.
“The A is for Antonia,” she said. “I like Liesel better.”
“And the B?”
“My mother’s maiden name. Shh. Sit back and close your eyes. I’m busy.”
IT WAS the best Sunday of my life. We lounged and made love and napped throughout the day. When we were hungry, I shuttled between the street vendor and the apartment, carrying bratwurst and sodas.
I endured one odd moment, though. Before breakfast, I left Liesel sleeping to investigate noises I heard coming from the living room, where I found a young woman in a maid’s uniform dusting furniture. I’d forgotten that Liesel told me to expect Dora. As I pulled the bedroom door closed behind me and introduced myself, I was the more bashful one. I’d thrown on a robe Liesel had left and, bare legged, nothing beneath but the suit I was born in, felt all but naked before this stranger. I was
embarrassed for another reason, too. No one ever cleaned my apartment but me. My parents cleaned their own apartment. With Dora standing there in her black dress and white apron, I felt suddenly, strangely, like apologizing.
“Good morning, Sir. May I get you some coffee?”
I started to plump pillows on the couch and straighten papers.
“No, no. This is my job. Sit, please. Coffee? Will Miss Kraus be up soon?”
Her frankness was disconcerting. She knew what I was doing there. I knew she had a job to do. No doubt, she needed the money. But it was no easy thing for me to sit and let her tend to me. Finally she disappeared—to wash the kitchen floor and wipe down the counters.
I settled down to read the biography of Liesel’s father, which lay conspicuously on a coffee table. Steel and Service: The Life of Otto von Kraus was a hefty book with plenty of photos, some of Liesel and Anselm as children. I’d been at it for thirty minutes when the bedroom door opened and a yawning Liesel found me. She wore a silk robe cinched loosely at the waist with the Kraus logo at its breast.
She nodded at the book. “What do you think?” Without even looking to the kitchen, she called, “Dora, coffee, please. And grapefruit juice. Not the bottled kind. Fresh squeezed, if you would.”
In fact, I had formed an early opinion of the biography, having read fifty pages. It was a puff job written to make Otto von Kraus look heroic. Insider histories generally make founders into saints or geniuses. Still, the Kraus story intrigued me. Even allowing for exaggeration and the smoothing of rough spots, Kraus Steel had played a role in saving Europe from Soviet domination after the war. Without his tens of thousands of girders and beams and trusses at good prices, Europe could not have been rebuilt. Without durable buildings and bridges, no postwar economy could have put people to work. And without work and at least a dream of recovery, no idea would have been potent enough to resist the communist vision of the greatest good for the greatest number. Stalin would have won.
The Tenth Witness Page 7
