The Tenth Witness

by Leonard Rosen

  He felt the heft of the report and approved. “Do I have a reasonable prospect for success in salvaging gold?”

  “You do,” I said. “But read the section on safety.”

  He skimmed the report, and I reread the Times article, one of the three copies he’d placed on his desk. The reporter had focused almost entirely on the events at Chittagong, but he referenced the mine collapse, and in the final paragraph hinted at a broader investigation underway into Kraus’s Third World facilities. It was a horror show and, for once, Anselm seemed dwarfed by events. A portrait of Otto Kraus loomed above the fireplace in his office, his right hand grasping a bar of steel and his left resting on a globe of the world. I couldn’t have worked with those eyes pinned on me.

  He looked up from my report. “A gold salvage could be Chittagong all over again. More accidents, more headlines?”

  “It doesn’t have to be. But, yes, it could.”

  He thought for a bit. “I’m not breaking a single law, you know. Not in Uganda, not in Bangladesh, not in any of my facilities worldwide. I’ve directed my lawyers and managers to observe all local labor and environmental regulations. We’re compliant. We’ve broken no laws.”

  “I understand.”

  He walked to the window, where he could see Friedrich piloting the Stuka. “These countries beg me to open my facilities, Henri. My yards bring cash to their economies. I give their people something to do other than scratch the dirt trying to feed their families on a few miserable rows of corn and milk from swaybacked cows. I’m helping, you know.”

  He wanted to believe it. He turned back to the lawn and watched his son. Franz Hofmann shuffled and tapped across the patio with his cane. He saw Anselm and waved, then called: “That sprinkler head’s fixed. Good as new!”

  Anselm thanked him.

  “The old ways are gone, Henri, and I don’t think it’s always for the best. Children don’t learn at their father’s knee these days.” He waved to Friedrich. “When I was his age, I was walking the factory floor with Otto. The men would take off their caps and bow.”

  “Why?”

  Anselm turned abruptly.

  “Those were difficult days, and the workers knew damned well he was doing the best he could for them. He was more than their employer. He was their leader and protector. That made a huge impression on me—the respect they showed my father. There were soldiers everywhere. These men were scared, of course, but they loved their work. Even I could see it. Now I spend my life in an office, and I’d need to get in a car and drive for hours to the nearest steel mill. In those days, I could open the window and smell smoke from the stacks. You should go to Salzgitter one day. It was a child’s paradise.”

  What world was he recalling? I could barely hold back from shaking Anselm into an honest account of the war. Otto’s adoring laborers were slaves. One was named Isaac Kahane. They removed their caps because those who didn’t would get rifle-butted in the gut.

  I stood in his office achingly close to Isaac. Earlier that week, I had tried to contact the remaining witnesses who’d signed the affidavit. I reached no one. Too many years had passed, and they were gone. Yet here I stood with someone who had lived at the Reichswerke and breathed the same polluted air that Isaac breathed. Surely, Anselm the man knew what Anselm the child could not: that those hollow-eyed souls in their funny, striped uniforms had no love for his father, or for any part of a system that had destroyed their world.

  “I learned at Papa’s knee,” he said.

  In fact, I didn’t think so. Whoever that man in the portrait was, whether or not he ultimately saved lives, as director of a mill built on slave labor he had to walk the factory floor and look his Jews and Slavs and gypsies in the eye before flushing them down the toilet. Nazis did that, and I doubted Anselm’s soul was black enough.

  “Will you teach Friedrich the business?” I asked.

  He turned away from the window and thought for a moment. “What would I do, bring him to watch me in my office, sitting behind a desk? These days, Kraus Steel is located everywhere but Munich. Nothing real happens here any longer.”

  “Then take Friedrich to Chittagong,” I said. “Let him see what you do. Let him learn at his papa’s knee.”

  He studied my expression. “You’re being ironic. Say what you mean.”

  I had said it. With all my heart I wanted Anselm to take him. I wanted the child to see that hellhole and ask: Papa, why are these men in rags? I wanted the misery of his own workers to shake Anselm back into himself, the other self I had seen and admired. But I knew he wouldn’t be taking Friedrich to Bangladesh or his other yards anytime soon.

  He folded the newspaper on his desk, obscuring the face of the boy who’d been crushed. “The Times article missed the obvious,” he said. “Dangerous work is dangerous. People get hurt. You join the army and go to war, you expect casualties. If you work in a mine, you expect cave-ins. Breaking yards are inherently dangerous places, Henri. No one’s holding a gun to these people’s heads. They choose to leave the farm and break down ships. We pay them. We’re legal. But even so, on occasion, accidents happen.”

  “They do,” I said. “You’re right.”

  He handed me a check for the completed report and I left quickly, mourning the loss of this man. I didn’t want to believe he’d accepted death as a price of doing business. This was Anselm the CEO speaking. Where was the man who raced across the open sea on Blast Furnace, laughing like a child, the one who danced his daughter around the ballroom at Löwenherz?

  From the cast of his eyes and his weariness of spirit, I knew he was suffering. His justifications had a rehearsed feel, as if he were presenting them to a group of investors. He wasn’t lost completely, I decided. He couldn’t be. Otherwise, what was left for Friedrich to learn at his papa’s knee? That with work dispersed across a wide world in the most desperate of places, a factory owner no longer had to look anyone in the eye before flushing the toilet? Anselm didn’t believe it, and surely he didn’t want Friedrich believing it.

  thirty

  “Treasure!” they cried. “A treasure ship!”

  The look on the faces of Friedrich and Magda as they climbed onto the barge was nearly reason enough to have built it. What compares to the wonder of a child? Through their excitement, just as through their father’s weeks earlier, I saw the barge anew.

  “Show us! Are those really cannons? Can we touch them?”

  Liesel’s reaction was barely less winning. She laughed for their joy and for her own; and after taking a brief inventory of the sheds, the crane, and a sluice that was pouring tons of sand through a screen as we climbed aboard, she glanced my way with profound approval. I felt a surging affection for her.

  Theresa had been timid on Blast Furnace during the crossing from Löwenherz. On the barge, she continued to wear her life jacket and insisted the children wear theirs. For his part, Schmidt looked unimpressed. For all the enthusiasm he’d expressed earlier, he was oddly solemn.

  Alec emerged from the crew’s quarters with a clipboard, binoculars, and a floppy hat that shielded him from the August sun. He was talking with the conservator, Hillary Gospodarek. They headed our way, and I thought I saw him place a familiar hand at the small of her back. I managed the introductions as Friedrich and Magda, losing patience, demanded to climb on the cannons and then see the treasure.

  Gospodarek extended a hand to both children and set off with Theresa, Liesel, and Schmidt. When they were out of hearing range, Alec pressed me for news about the trip to Argentina. I had put him off, earlier, when I called to update him on our new contracts.

  “How good was Buenos Aires?” he asked. “Excellent or superb?”

  I told him about the madres and the taxi driver.

  “Let me guess, Henri. You walked away from it. If we hadn’t just gotten these other contracts, I’d throw you off this barge.”

  As would have been his right. But I had a vote, too, and I wanted him to understand: “Alec, they drug some of th
e people they kidnap and drop them out of helicopters at sea. While they’re alive. That’s what they’ll fund with the gold from the salvage. I couldn’t let us be a part of that.”

  “What planet were you born on?” he said. “The generals will get their gold with or without our help. Better that it’s with. If you’re so bent on foiling them, get the money and fight some other way.”

  “With my personal navy and air force?”

  “Write an article or a book. Scream all you want, but take the money first.”

  I produced Anselm’s payment for the completed lab work. “It evens out in the end,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure, because I couldn’t tell which pocket Anselm had taken that money from: earnings he intended to make from the gold salvage, which he might or might not choose to run as a toilet? Or present earnings from Chittagong and Uganda, which were toilets? I had no way of knowing. I could have been purer-hearted and refused the check, but it turned out I wasn’t that pure. I accepted Anselm’s money because we needed it. And I accepted it because I didn’t want him or Liesel thinking I held myself above them.

  But I was holding myself above them. And what friendship, or marriage, could endure that?

  Alec stared at the check.

  “He paid you this for two months’ work?”

  “Plus the initial check. Generous, right?”

  “No. It’s stupidly generous. What’s with this guy?”

  We heard squealing across the barge, where Gospodarek let the children climb on the cannons. Liesel and Theresa helped them to balance while Schmidt watched the crane operator, who swung a long, oxidized rail over a growing pile of metal.

  “We found a submarine,” said Alec, pointing to the crane. “A U-boat, if you can believe that, blown open from the inside. Two explosions, forward and aft. Our divers came up so excited I went down to see for myself.”

  “You?”

  “It’s shallow enough so that if the scuba gear failed, I could get to the surface. No decompression issues on this dive.”

  “But you’re terrified of water.”

  “I had a personal guide.”

  “Dr. Gospodarek?”

  He said nothing.

  “What did you find?”

  “I didn’t go into the sub. For a rookie, it’s too dangerous, too many cables and lines drifting around. But the divers tell me there are bones inside. It’s terrible, when you think about it.”

  Alec had made some calls and discovered that Germany maintained a submarine base in Hamburg during the war, not even a day’s sail from Terschelling. Those subs left their pens for the North Sea en route to the Battle of the Atlantic with a mission to sink troop and supply ships. The sea lanes north of Terschelling must have swarmed with submarines.

  “What no one understands,” said Alec, “is why a U-boat would get caught in such shallow water. A storm pushed the Lutine onto the shoal. There’s a category for that. But the sub would have to have motored in, unless she was disabled at sea and the tides pushed her.

  “Geoffrey, our Brit, is on it. He’s contacted a German naval office with U-boat records. We don’t have a definitive ID yet, and the guys are still looking on their off hours. One team comes up from the Lutine, but instead of resting they get fresh tanks and go right back down to the U-boat. Meanwhile, there’s nothing but buttons and porcelain coming off the Lutine, and Hillary is the only one who isn’t pissed. Lloyd’s came and went with their film crew. They’re about ready to pull the plug if we don’t start hauling up gold within a few weeks. Which is fine with me. We’ve got plenty of other work now.”

  Liesel, Theresa, and the children entered the conservator’s shed with Gospodarek. Schmidt remained on deck, watching crew members remove the sling from the railing they’d hauled up. He walked over to the pile of metal to inspect it, arms clasped behind him. He headed for Gospodarek’s shed just as the children emerged, running to him.

  “Opa, we held a gold bar!”

  Their grandfather made a show of excitement, but when we met at the crew’s quarters, the air had gone out of him. “We’re looking for something on the U-boat with an identifying number,” said Gospodarek. “The submarine lies about twenty-five meters east of the Lutine. We’ve got precise coordinates and are supposing the German navy will want to conduct its own dive. But we hope to give them a definitive ID so they can notify the next of kin.”

  “The ID could come when?” said Schmidt.

  She shrugged. “This afternoon. Or never. There’s no telling. But from a conservator’s standpoint, I hope we can nail this down.”

  Schmidt was clearly moved by the pile of twisted metal. Perhaps he was recalling his own painful episodes thirty-five years earlier. I decided against asking him how he spent the war. On any side of a conflict, death had to be respected for the absolute, irreclaimable loss it was. Whether he fought with the Wehrmacht or my father fought with the Partisans, I imagined that cradling a dying comrade was much the same for any soldier. Blood is blood; and the mystery of where life goes when the body rattles is beyond our ken no matter which flag drapes the coffin. I figured he was a soldier and left it at that.

  Friedrich was hopping in place with joy at having held real gold. “Pirates’ treasure!” he cried. “I held pirates’ treasure!”

  In fact the gold wasn’t stolen and didn’t belong to pirates, but he didn’t need to know that. Dr. Gospodarek grinned and said nothing to change his mind. I liked her for it.

  Before we left, Alec pulled me aside. “This Liesel Kraus. She’s all right.”

  “Writing any bad poetry of your own?”

  Dr. Gospodarek was laughing with the children.

  “Very funny.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Then yes, as a matter of fact. I began something just yesterday.” He cleared his throat. “‘The man stood on the burning deck, his feet were raw with blisters.’ I can’t seem to find an ending, though ‘deck’ rhymes with ‘Gospodarek.’ What do you think?”

  “I think spending two months in close quarters has agreed with you.”

  He showed me a weather map.

  “Henri, the sea’s calm today, no wind. Freaky calm. The barge feels like we parked it on the Champs-Élysées. But in three days, we’ll get a middling storm.” He pointed to a wavy line, a low-pressure system. “Next week, we’re looking at its big brother. To the west of that, in Greenland, there’s a system too large to fit on this map. Plus, I’m following three storms moving across the continent. If any of these meet up, I’ll evacuate.”

  “You should.”

  “It’s been a shitty summer for weather,” he said, grasping my hand. “But hey, the Lutine’s just about played out. Lloyd’s has its raw footage for a documentary and a few gold bars for a display case. Hillary’s got her buttons and brass fittings to study. I’ve got Hillary, you’ve got Liesel, and the divers have their U-boat. I’d say it’s time to get the hell off this barge.”

  IN BED that evening, Liesel propped herself on an elbow. “Now I know why my brother is so impressed with you.”

  “It’s my personality. People say so all the time.”

  “It’s your brain,” she said, poking me. “My brother and Viktor are both tickled you used our steel as anchors. You say the barge rides up and down on them?”

  “At the four corners, that’s right. Looped with chains.”

  “So the barge could just float off the anchor beams?”

  “In a Biblical event, it could. Short of that—”

  I threw a sheet over me and propped myself up. Ever since finishing the biography of her father, I’d been puzzling over something. “It must have taken a lot of money to start the steel mill,” I said. “I know the Reichswerke survived the war, but it was idle for two years. Where did your father get the money to fire up the furnaces? The fuel and the ore alone must have cost hundreds of thousands. Maybe more.”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  I shrugged. “I was just thinking about it, driving up he
re.”

  “Viktor.”

  “Viktor?”

  “Papa knew steel and Viktor had money. They formed a business—a two-thirds, one-third split in ownership. Otto tinkered with new processes and won contracts. Viktor managed production and labor. He’s still in charge of that, the labor end of things. He hasn’t done such a good job, has he? Anselm’s speaking with him about that.”

  We kissed.

  “The children love you,” she said. She laid her head on my chest.

  I combed her hair with my fingers. “It was a good day, wasn’t it?”

  The curtains lifted into the room, the sea sheet-glass calm.

  “Walk with me onto the flats in the morning, Henri. Low tide’s at five. We’ll get out and back before anyone wakes up. I need to go. I want you to come.”

  “How could you need to go?”

  “I’ll explain when we’re out there.”

  So we rose before sunrise and made straight for Terschelling harbor. When we reached the docks, a glimmer of light had lit the east and we could see that the Wadden had retreated to wherever it went at low tide, leaving an absolute wilderness of raw, muddy seabed.

  “Just a short trip out and back,” she promised. “A kilometer each way.”

  I could only laugh again at my first steps. My feet sank, and the mud sucked at me as if I’d offended it.

  Liesel tuned her radio to a frequency monitored by the coast guard and placed a call. On a second radio, she raised the lighthouse keeper.

  “Ditmar, is that you? Liesel here. Going out from the harbor onto the flats, due south off the ferry landing for a kilometer, then home again. One hour out, one hour back. Will check in every thirty. Out.”

  “Enjoy the morning,” came a crackling voice. “And tell your brother he owes me a beer. The Dutch kicked Germany’s ass at the World Cup. Over and out.”

  I followed her, struggling to keep pace.

  “Papa insisted that Anselm and I be able to come out here alone,” she said. “We all went on hikes together, and when Papa died Anselm took over my training. I was thirteen when he brought me down to the harbor at low tide and told me to walk until we couldn’t see each other. My instructions were to stand out here alone for ten minutes, then return. A year later, I crossed to the mainland by myself. I study the maps every summer and recertify as a guide, even if I don’t lead any hikes. The tidal creeks change, you know.”