by Alex Gerlis
She spotted the man shooting a glance at the woman, who was looking directly at the nun and hardly reacted, other than in the way she was supposed to.
‘I don’t know Ascona. I visited Locarno as a child but that was many years ago. Gerd, do you know that area at all?’
Her husband hesitated before he realised this was his cue to give his expected answer. ‘No, we tended to visit Neuchâtel when I was a child.’
The nun nodded knowingly. Every reply they’d given had been correct, word-perfect. There was no phrase to indicate anything was wrong. She felt a sense of relief now. Her work was almost done. The British couldn’t ask any more of her, could they? Maybe she could ask Mother Superior for a transfer – Salzburg perhaps? There was a small convent there and surely the British couldn’t find her in Salzburg.
‘Come closer and listen very carefully to what I have to say.’
Over the next half hour she told them about Hubert Leitner. He was, of course, well known to Rolf, though he didn’t let on to the nun he was Austrian. She explained how she’d moved him from a safe house that was no longer safe in the 18th District to one in the 2nd District.
‘Now I’m passing on responsibility for him to you,’ said Sister Ursula. ‘I’ll visit the safe house to tell them you’ll be visiting and you’re to be trusted, then I’ll have no further involvement. I’ll give you the address now and all I ask is you wait at least a week before visiting. Before you go, you’re to tell London and they’ll pass on instructions about what they want you to do with Herr Leitner.’
***
When the nun was satisfied they fully understood what they had to do, she left – but only after giving them a warning. ‘You won’t see me or hear from me again, you understand? If you happen to see me in the street or elsewhere, ignore me. Resist any temptation to try and find me or contact me. It’s for your safety. And mine.’
Together, Katharina and Rolf watched her as she left the apartment block and made her way back up Ungargasse towards the Innere Stadt.
‘Is this man really as important as she made him out to be?’
‘Perhaps more so, to be honest,’ replied Rolf. ‘I couldn’t tell her I knew much about him, but he’s easily the most important non-Nazi politician in Austria. It’s remarkable he’s safe and in hiding. I can quite understand why the British want him looked after. What I don’t understand, though, is why we’ve only found out about him now. Surely they must have known about him when I was in England – or, at the very least, Basil could have told us about him.’
‘Maybe it’d have been too risky for the British to tell us before we arrived,’ said Katharina. ‘What if we were caught and interrogated, and told the Nazis about Leitner? That would’ve been disastrous for the British – Leitner would’ve been captured. From their point of view, it was much safer for us to know nothing until we arrived. You look shocked Rolf.’
‘I am. It makes us sound as if we’re… I don’t know… dispensable?’
Katharina patted him on the knee. ‘I think it’d be a mistake to think otherwise.’
Chapter 11
Vienna, April 1944
By the time Rolf and Katharina arrived in Vienna in early April, Viktor had been in the city for almost three months. But by his own standards he’d been most unproductive: staying alive and remaining undiscovered by the Nazis preoccupied him. He’d planned to stay with Irma for just a couple of nights, but that stretched into early March.
Life in the pretty apartment just off Schulerstrasse was easy and gave him little incentive to move on. He justified his lengthy stay with Irma by the conditions in Vienna: they were far worse than he’d imagined. From what she and Paul the plumber told him, no one could be trusted. Any old comrades who were somehow still free kept their heads down. Irma knew fewer of them, but Paul said he’d occasionally pass someone in the street and they’d look terrified.
‘And do you know what?’ said Paul. ‘So am I. I’m terrified that maybe one of these people is a V-person, a traitor, an informer. I’m terrified they’ll know I was active in the party and will betray me to the Gestapo. Please don’t look at me like that, Viktor, it happens. We’ve lost hundreds of comrades, more likely thousands. My only hope is that my party days were a long time ago and since then I’ve been in the Wehrmacht – and being invalided out is a real bonus, I can tell you. Thank God for that Red Army bullet! I do nothing to arouse suspicion…’
There was a long silence, during which Viktor stared at Paul, who was trembling and on the verge of tears.
‘Except come here,’ said the Russian.
Paul nodded. Viktor knew full well that, given half the chance, Paul the plumber would never visit the pretty apartment just off Schulerstrasse again, but he did so out of some kind of loyalty to Viktor and respect for Irma.
This conversation took place every time Paul visited (‘Viktor, the neighbours will wonder what on earth is going on with my taps,’ Irma would say). And each time Viktor would prevail upon him. ‘Paul, please do me one favour: go to Brigittenau, no one knows you there, do they? Hang around the bars near the factories; ask if anyone needs a plumber. Buy beers for people, I’ll give you the money. Then listen. Sooner or later someone will say something indiscreet or give you cause to think they could be of help. Then I can go up there.’
That went on for weeks. Paul would come back the following week and explain he’d found no joy in the bars of Brigittenau or whichever district Viktor had last sent him to. Viktor was no fool: he doubted Paul was going anywhere, it was too dangerous and he was clearly too afraid. He didn’t blame him.
He knew his best course of action was to leave the apartment and move to one of the working-class suburbs in the north of the city where the KPO had been strong. At the end of February he made his first tentative moves: he visited the labour exchange in Favoriten and was relieved to find that Otto Schneider’s papers were all in order. The service could still be relied upon to do some things well. Otto Schneider was a native of Vienna who’d spent much of his life in Germany, where he’d worked as an electrician. According to his papers, his last place of employment had been a naval dockyard in Hamburg that had been destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. He’d returned to Vienna for the first time in years for a visit, he told them, even though he no longer had family here. He thought that rather than return to Hamburg, perhaps he could find work here?
Moscow had counted on the fact that they’d be so desperate for an electrician they wouldn’t question his identity too much – and they were right. Otto Schneider obtained all the right papers and, at the beginning of March, moved out of Irma’s apartment to a room in a boarding house in Floridsdorf, in the 21st District. One of the KPO Central Committee had said they were employing French workers at the large locomotive works there and that some of them could be communists. So Viktor had let slip in one of his interviews at the labour exchange that he’d worked as an electrician at a locomotive works in Dresden and a few days later the elderly lady whom he made a point of seeing every time he went to the exchange informed him he was going to work at the locomotive works in Floridsdorf. ‘You start on Monday: be punctual and work hard. Heil Hitler!’
‘Heil Hitler!’ replied the Soviet agent.
***
When Viktor had arrived back in Vienna there was one person he knew he ought to contact. Uncharacteristically, he kept putting it off. It was partly because he distrusted this person and knew getting in touch with him would be fraught with risk. But there was another reason: it would mean descending into a sewer even he found distasteful.
Viktor would be the first to acknowledge that as a secret agent he inhabited a world of subterfuge, crime and deceit – one wrapped in shadows and constant menace in which none of its inhabitants could claim to be very high up any moral order. Nonetheless, this underworld did have a hierarchy. At the top were people like him, secret agents and suchlike. Bank robbers and fraudsters came fairly high up too and as for murderers – well, it depended on whom they’d murdered.
But there was no doubt as to who came at the bottom: the rapists, the child sex offenders and the pimps. And Wilhelm Fuchs fitted neatly into all those categories.
But he was the kind of contact Viktor needed in every city: someone resourceful who could get their hands on whatever he needed, for whom everything had a price and who rarely asked questions. He’d first come across Fuchs in ’34 or ’35. He’d never actually been deceived by him, but he didn’t trust him. On his last visit to Vienna in ’37 he discovered that Fuchs had now developed a specialised service that was apparently doing very well. He procured children – boys and girls – for men to sleep with. If he can do that, Viktor had reasoned, he can get hold of what I need.
He’d finally found Fuchs again at the beginning of April. He spotted him in Albertina Platz, behind the opera. Tall and slightly stooped, managing to look both nervous and confident at the same time, Fuchs was sharing a cigarette with a sweet-looking boy of no more than 15. Viktor approached the pair from behind.
‘Get lost,’ he said to the boy. ‘If I see you with him again you’re in trouble.’
The boy ran away and Fuchs looked long and hard at the Russian, blowing a cloud of smoke into his face. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Where are my guns?’
Fuchs shrugged. ‘That was a long time ago. So much has happened since then. There’s a war on, you know? Has that been reported in your papers?’
‘I want them.’
‘I don’t have them.’
‘I paid for them.’
‘I can give you a refund if that’s what you want, after I’ve deducted my costs.’
Viktor followed Fuchs as he strolled along into Augustinerstrasse. ‘I insist you give me those guns,’ he said. ‘I paid for two semi-automatic pistols: Steyr-Hahns – and the ammunition.’
‘What are you going to do – sue me? Go ahead. This city’s under different ownership now. I’m amazed you had the nerve to come back, I’ll give you that.’
‘If you don’t give me my guns, I’ll…’
‘… You’ll do what? Go to the Gestapo? They’re some of my best customers! Listen, I may be able to get my hands on the guns: give me a phone number and if you get a call saying the candlesticks have arrived then meet me outside that shop over there an hour after my call. That’s the best I can promise.’
He was pointing at an ornate antiques shop that seemed to specialise in silver.
***
Walking back to Ungargasse from the Prater Park that Sunday afternoon Katharina and Rolf agreed a plan. She’d visit the church in Favoriten on her own during the week: a woman praying on her own by a religious statue would attract less attention.
‘Once we have the key, you go to Café Demel to find Fuchs,’ she told Rolf.
The following day Katharina waited until mid-morning before leaving the apartment and walking through the Botanical Gardens to Favoriten Strasse. She took her time, admiring the gardens and pausing by shop windows on the way, so that by the time she reached the tram stop she was certain she wasn’t being followed. The tram took just 10 minutes to get to the stop nearest to the church of St Anton of Padua and the only other person to alight at that stop headed off in another direction.
Katharina had ceased to be a practising Catholic in her late teens when she’d exchanged Jesus Christ for Karl Marx, but the church had taught her well. As she entered the church, she placed a scarf over her head. A service had just finished and a few people were leaving while another dozen remained in their pews, quietly praying or waiting to take confession. Katharina knelt and crossed herself then sat down, taking a prayer book from behind the seat in front of her. Anyone watching her would see she was entirely familiar with what to do and, for a few minutes, she enjoyed the calm of the church. Gradually the numbers inside diminished. An elderly priest bustled past her and smiled, and a man in uniform sat down at the end of her row but didn’t so much as glance in her direction.
She stood up, crossed herself again and slipped out of a side entrance, where she found herself in a peaceful if untended garden. She’d memorised the diagram carefully and knew where to find the statue of St Anton of Padua. A man and a woman in their sixties had just finished praying beside it and moved away as she approached. Looking around, she saw she was on her own and knew she needed to move fast. From her shopping bag she removed the metal spike Rolf had bought in a hardware shop. She dropped to her knees and bowed her head: anyone approaching from behind would hopefully see only a woman praying fervently. She worked out the line from the statue and swept away the leaves before poking the spike into a point that seemed to approximate the ‘x’ on the sketch. After three or four attempts there was an unmistakable contact with something metallic. She took out the small trowel and in less than a minute removed the metal tin. She quickly replaced the earth and swept the leaves back into position.
She was back at the apartment by lunchtime. She washed the trowel and spike, and put them in a box under the sink then sat at the kitchen table and opened the tin. Inside, wrapped in oilskin, were two keys. One was longer than the other and was clearly for the padlock. The other was the one for the safety deposit box, the same as the one drawn on the diagram: made of brass and quite chunky with the ‘CA-BV’ logo of the bank on the hub and the engraved numbers ‘49/2’.
On the Thursday morning, having already agreed with Herr Plaschke he could come in later in return for working during his lunch break, Rolf left the apartment at the normal time but walked through the Innere Stadt to Café Demel on Kohlmarkt, in sight of the Hofburg Palace. Being so close to the seat of Nazi power, the narrow streets in the area were teeming with men in uniform.
He remembered being taken to the café by his grandmother as a treat, though he suspected it was more for her than for him. As a young child the formality of the place was off-putting, the cream cakes only just making the visits worthwhile. He hadn’t visited the café since he was 10: the dreadful year when both of his parents were killed in a car accident, along with his older sister. The elderly aunt with whom he was sent to live on the edge of the city in Liesing would have regarded a visit to Café Demel as an indulgence, as she did most things other than prayer and hard work.
… He never arrives before 9.00 but is always there by 9.30… they’d been told by Basil Remington-Barber in their briefing. Rolf arrived at the café at 8.55.
He sits at a small table on its own towards the back, in front of the kitchen. Rolf spotted the empty table and found one nearby, but with a good line of sight. He ordered a coffee and one of the pastries he remembered from years ago and waited. Tall, thin, wears round spectacles, looks younger than his 35 years. At 9.10, a man matching that description walked past him and sat at the table towards the back, in front of the kitchen. He didn’t acknowledge the waitress, but nevertheless a pot of coffee appeared on his table, along with an ashtray.
Rolf waited five minutes before removing the neatly folded piece of paper he’d been given by Remington-Barber from his wallet and asked a waitress to give it to the gentleman in the corner. ‘I noticed he dropped it as he came in.’
Rolf watched carefully as the waitress handed the note to Fuchs, pointing in his direction so as to show who it was from. Fuchs read the note with as little interest as he would the bill. As far as Rolf could tell, not once did he glance in his direction. Instead, he drank another cup of coffee and smoked two further cigarettes before casually standing up, placing some change on the table and very quickly glancing in Rolf’s direction: just the slightest of nods as he left the café.
Rolf followed. Fuchs strolled down Kohlmarkt, pausing to look in the window of a shop that sold antique silver, and a bit further along he showed some interest in the old maps on display in another window. At the end of Kohlmarkt, Fuchs turned left into Bognergasse and from there walked into Am Hof, the vast square where they used to hold antique markets and that Rolf had often visited with Frieda on a Saturday morning. Another memory. This morning though the square w
as empty of stalls and there were few people about. Those that were seemed to be hurrying in one direction or the other. At the far end of the square was an antiquarian bookshop and Fuchs stopped by it, flicking through a pile of second-hand books displayed on a trestle table, watched over by a large portrait of Hitler in the window.
Rolf stopped by the table too. Fuchs then turned to him, a broad smile on his face. ‘My friend! How are you? It’s so long since I’ve seen you! Come, let’s talk.’
And with that he placed his arm around Rolf’s shoulder and steered him away from the bookshop and towards the middle of the square.
‘Where’s Baumgartner?’ His tone was threatening. He took out a cigarette and lit one, struggling to do so in the wind. He offered one to Rolf, who shook his head.
‘Just take one for fuck’s sake,’ he said sharply. ‘It looks more natural. Where the hell’s Baumgartner?’
‘He’s not here. He asked me to come on his behalf.’
‘But where is he? I’ve been waiting for that bastard to show up for years. Do you have the keys?’
Rolf nodded and took out his bunch of keys, showing Fuchs the chunky brass one and the longer one. Fuchs looked satisfied as he carefully inspected them.
‘That’s something, I suppose. I was convinced he’d conned me. Did he give you the instructions?’
Rolf nodded.
‘I’ve been desperate for that box,’ said Fuchs. ‘Baumgartner said it’d be a few months at the most. I’ve been to that shop a few times but each time Johann refuses to help. He says he must have both keys because, without them, he’s no chance of being allowed to open the safety deposit box. I still don’t trust Baumgartner and I won’t until that strongbox is opened. Is he alive?’
Rolf nodded.
‘I wondered if he’d been in prison, the man is so untrustworthy,’ said Fuchs. ‘Look, I don’t want to wait any longer and I’m sure Johann doesn’t either. Tomorrow morning we’ll meet outside the shop and go in together at 8.30, when he opens up. There are never any customers there for the first half hour or so. We should be in and out in a few minutes. You’ll take your share and I’ll take mine, and we never need see each other again. Just one thing though – I want more of the money because Baumgartner’s waited so long. And I want the photographs and the guns. You take some of the money and the jewellery.’
