So what now? He pressed the frame to his forehead, feeling himself begin to sweat, verging on tears. He swore and hammered the desktop with his fist. Germany. Beethoven, Schiller, Schubert, Kleist. The Baltic Sea coast with its seaside resorts of Binz and Sellin; the Alpine region of Allgäu; Hamburg and Berlin, that brilliant shining city of Berlin. His friend Walter Braunwein and Walter’s wife, Käthe, had been sending him postcards from Berlin for years—Fritz had asked them to send cards instead of letters so that he could get a look at the capital. He could see the avenue Kurfürstendamm full of cars, buses, and well-dressed pedestrians; the cafés on Friedrichstrasse full of people and glittering glasses; that friendly doorman at the Hotel Adlon. As he looked at the postcards, he could practically hear the kids squealing at Wannsee Lake, its water spiked with the triangles of little sailboats. Beginning in 1936 the motifs had begun to change, with the addition of swastikas flying from buildings and uniformed men appearing among the individuals in the pictures.
Another photo on his desk showed Walter and Fritz together with two black men on a safari in South-West Africa. Those were the good old days. The sun reflected off the faces of the four in the photo, finding plenty of room to shine on Fritz’s high forehead. Walter was leaning toward Fritz a little and appeared to be saying something to him, while the two hunting guides laughed into the camera.
At one point during the safari, Fritz had trained his sight on an antelope with coal-black eyes but hadn’t fired. Walter had asked him what was wrong. Fritz lowered his rifle, placed a hand on his shoulder, and told him that Katrin had made him promise not to shoot.
“Why go on a safari then?” Walter asked.
“It’s just as lovely without shooting,” Fritz replied.
Walter had watched the antelope dash onward through the savanna, leaping wildly at first before proceeding all lissome and spindly legged. After a few seconds, the glittering sunshine and fine dust swallowed it whole.
Walter, his old friend. He lived back there, in Germany, and worked in the Foreign Office.
A year before, Walter, Käthe, and their son, Horst, had come to Cape Town for a visit. They’d ridden along the coastal highway in Fritz’s Horch cabriolet from the consulate, Käthe in the back between Horst and Katrin. She and Katrin kept pressing their hats to their heads to avoid losing them in the breeze. Katrin was laughing the whole time, and Fritz kept turning to watch her until Walter warned him to keep his eyes on the road.
During their picnic Fritz tried to talk to Walter about Germany, but Walter wouldn’t engage him. Later, back home, Fritz tried him again at dinner. Walter pressed his lips together and avoided his stare. Käthe told Fritz he should just let it go. It had been a while since Fritz took a good look at Käthe. She was pretty. At times the corners of her mouth twitched, and whenever Fritz started talking politics she threw Walter a threatening glance.
The next day they drove north of the city, into the green valleys between Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and Devil’s Peak. Katrin and Horst leaned their backs against Käthe and hung their bare legs out of the car. Fritz would have liked to just keep on driving like this, on into the center of the African continent, following the explorers’ routes through deserts and jungles, and then prolong their hearty idleness back in Cape Town with evening strolls along the sea. Yet he could tell that something wasn’t quite right between them. Fritz didn’t want their time together to be spoiled by differences of opinion or arguments; he saw his friends too seldom for that. In Cape Town he had plenty of acquaintances—his shoemaker, the flower lady in New Market, several waiters in the cafés in Darling and Adderley—but no actual friends.
Walter did at least answer his question about von Ribbentrop. “A pompous ass. If you end up back in Germany and run into him at the Office, don’t forget the von. The man puts utmost value in that von before his name. Most important thing you need to know.”
Horst, ash-blond and even taller than the last time Fritz saw him, reminded Fritz that he’d promised to take him fishing.
“Very well then,” Fritz had said, and found gear for him and Horst to cast from the surf: heavy rods and good weights for sending the lures far out over the waves. Around midday the boy got hungry and devoured the sack lunch Ida had made them. Afterward, they sat in the warm sand and talked about sports. Fritz asked Horst how he liked Germany nowadays.
“Oh, I don’t know, Uncle Fritz. A lot has changed,” Horst said, adding, “You know we haven’t even caught one fish?” Fritz said they should keep at it then. “But with you it’s just as fun not catching anything,” Horst said.
Fritz laughed. “We’ll get one eventually,” he said.
On the evening of their final day, Fritz went strolling with Walter along the sea, their shadows long and the sand gray in the dwindling light. It was the first time during this visit that Fritz had been alone with his friend. Walter was a head taller than Fritz. For a high-level Foreign Office official, he looked oddly unkempt. The part in his brown hair was tousled, as if heavy winds blew over him wherever he went.
For a moment, Fritz sensed that old trust they had shared, and he again asked how things were in Germany. Walter buried his hands in his trouser pockets, looked out over the sea, and shrugged. Many men ended up talking more when their wives weren’t around. Walter, Fritz knew, was a different person when Käthe was sitting next to him in all her beauty. So Fritz tried again, just one word: “Germany?”
“To be honest, Fritz, I’m really not sure. I still can’t comprehend it. It’s like people are drunk on it. It is impressive, in its way.”
“Drunk on it? Damn, Walter. Will there be war?”
“He won’t go that far.”
“What about the Jews?”
Walter rubbed his forehead and let out a deep sigh. They continued along the beach. Fritz could sense his friend’s desolation, his indecision. Walter looked to the city’s lights, then to the now-dark ocean rushing onto the sand. A feeling of immense powerlessness washed over Fritz.
Walter said he could see that Fritz liked it in Cape Town, that it truly was beautiful. “But it’s got nothing over Ireland. Living there’s the way to go, Fritz. In better times, especially.”
Fritz laughed. “You and your Ireland,” he said. “Someday, someone will understand whatever’s between you.”
Walter looked out at the water again. “Let’s go swimming, old buddy,” he said. As they undressed, the wind cooled their skin and heightened their awareness of being present in their bodies. They ran toward the waves and screamed like little boys when the cold water broke over them. They planted their feet to withstand the waves, then threw themselves headlong into the sea when the sand slipped out from beneath their feet.
“We’ll make it through all right!” Walter shouted.
“Of course we will,” Fritz responded with water in his mouth. They fell into a favorite old challenge: first one to make it to the buoy. They crawled through the waves, eyeing each other’s faces as they swam, each one trying to slash through the water faster than the other. They slapped at the buoy’s metal shell right at the same time, Fritz panting out that he had got there a second faster, Walter protesting the claim.
“Did so . . .”
“No, you didn’t . . .”
“I did . . .”
“Nope. How about a tie?” Walter proposed. Fritz said they could both agree on that. Walter’s wet shoulders glowed white in the emerging moonlight. He looked happy.
The Braunweins departed the next day.
In the evenings Fritz would come home from the consulate to find Katrin sitting on the sofa with her legs pulled up to her chest. Ida was often in the room with her, trying to play with her or bringing her books to read, but Katrin only stared at the wall where Fritz had hung a map of the world.
“What is it this time?” Ida asked him now. He didn’t know, he said. But he could guess, and he felt as if he were in an insulated cell where he could hear nothing but the pumping of his own blood.
“I’m not leaving you,” he told Katrin.
“Promise me?”
“Yes, dear. I could never leave you on your own. That just won’t happen.”
She jumped into his arms, and he squeezed her little body as hard as he could. There was no more wonderful feeling in the whole world.
“A bunch of Boers insulted me on the street,” Ida told him. “I was scared, Herr Kolbe. One of them was wearing a swastika armband.”
“What else did they do to you?”
“Nothing, Herr Kolbe. With all due respect, do you know what I wish? I wish that South Africa would declare war on your Germany too.”
“It’s no longer my Germany, Ida.” Fritz let Katrin down.
“Would it mean more war?” Katrin asked.
Ida ran fingers through her hair. “Come now, honeybun,” she said. “None of that has anything to do with you or your Papa.”
“That remains to be seen,” Fritz said.
On September 6, three days after the British and French declared war, a delegation of two uniformed and two civilian-clothed men marched down the corridor of the consulate toward Biermann’s office. Fritz watched as one of the men shoved open the door to Biermann’s office without knocking.
“Herr Consul!”
Then the door was slammed shut from the inside.
“What’s that all about?” asked young Heinz Müller. He’d been wearing a swastika armband on his scrawny arm for a couple of days now.
“What do you think? Use your brain once in a while, for God’s sake.”
Müller stammered something unintelligible. Fritz apologized—he hadn’t meant it to come out the way it sounded.
The four men left Biermann’s office after only a few minutes. They strode down the corridor to the front door, a rectangle sparkling with light. One of the uniformed men had his hands balled into fists.
Fritz watched the men go, the sunlight swallowing them up. He walked into Biermann’s office gently. He might as well have been stepping over shards of glass.
The old consul sat leaning to one side. He was sweating. Fritz had never seen him disoriented before. The world was breaking apart, more and more, piece by piece.
“We’re both persona non grata now, Kolbe. South Africa has declared war on Germany. We must close down the consulate.” Biermann pulled himself up from his chair. “We have to go back.” He went to stand at the window and pointed to Table Mountain, its crown flat as if sliced off. “A strange hill, that. I liked Cape Town very much. So did my wife. You and your daughter liked it here too, didn’t you?”
The use of the past tense annoyed Fritz and made him anxious. “I still like it,” he said. “Katrin and I like to take the trolley buses up and down Darling Street or Adderley, past the parks and all the shops with their awnings, then on down to the sea. We love the sun. They have plenty of that here.” He walked over and stood next to the old man. “I’m not going back to Germany, Herr Consul.”
Biermann straightened up military-style and pointed his index finger at Fritz. It was a gesture Fritz wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
“Now you listen to me. My grandfather was a diplomat, my father likewise. I have influential friends. My word means something. I will go face what’s happening in Germany. And I guarantee you,” he said, balling up his fist, “I can do far more than you might think. I have contacts around the world. I know Molotov personally and others. I will do something, I will try to save what can still be saved. And I can. I can do it, you understand? But how do you think all that will look in Berlin if my closest colleague, my own vice-consul, goes sneaking away? If he lets himself be interned in Africa or ducks out in the South-West? You’ll be undermining my reputation. You’ll weaken my influence. You know very well how the men now calling the shots back there will react if my best man stays behind in Africa. You can’t do it, Herr Kolbe. It’s irresponsible.”
“My daughter, she . . .” Fritz’s love for her sapped his voice.
“You must leave Katrin here. You can’t take her with you. Not there.”
Fritz’s heart seized up. He turned away and stared at the floorboards.
“She will understand, Herr Kolbe.”
“She’s fourteen. I promised never to leave her.”
“She cannot go to Germany.”
“No. Not ever.”
“But you, Herr Kolbe? You must. If you are not there by my side when we return, then I’m powerless. Then it’s all over.”
Biermann opened a cabinet in his desk, pulled out a bottle of cognac and two brandy glasses, and poured them drinks. He let the liquid swirl in the glasses, a time-honored ritual never to be abandoned, not even now. It stirred Fritz, this tiny moment with its hint of fading fortunes. Inside him everything tightened up; his thoughts grew dim and muffled.
Biermann ended the conversation by inviting Fritz to join him for dinner, and after he left the consul’s office, Fritz prepared the consulate for closing. He made phone calls and gave instructions, without really hearing anyone. He didn’t bother with the radio messages from Germany.
He spent the evening as if in a trance under the gaze and gentle words of Biermann and his wife, Therese. In the end, he knew one thing only: the two of them had persuaded him to return to Germany. On this night, amidst the aromas of braised vegetables and roasting meat, with a pleasant breeze coming through the window, he recalled for the first time in years the words his father had told him to take with him on his life’s journey: Do what is right and have no fear.
As he stood out on the balcony, clutching the railing, Biermann’s wife came and stood next to him. She steadied herself on her cane and lit up a cigarette.
“You’ll certainly see her again, Herr Kolbe. We won’t let these philistines call the shots. Trust in my husband. Between you and me? He’s quite the old warhorse in his way. His word carries weight.” She poured Fritz a whisky, declaring that moments like these demanded one more swig than usual, even if her husband did hold a different opinion in this one respect. “Sometimes,” she confided, “he keeps himself a little too under control.” She laughed. “Don’t forget, Herr Kolbe: the German news we’re getting is propaganda. On the ground in Berlin, things can’t truly be as bad as what we’re reading. People just aren’t like that.”
Slightly drunk and now furious, Fritz drove out of the city back to Camps Bay. He lay next to Katrin on the bed. She was breathing evenly through her straight little nose, her black hair spread out on the pillow like a fan. She muttered something and rolled her head. He touched her thin upper arm gently and, leaving his hand there, attempted to sleep.
The next morning he arrived early at the consulate. He read all the teleprinter messages that had come in overnight, then went downstairs to the little walled courtyard. He looked straight up the white-lacquered flag mast into the bright-blue sky. The swastika flag hung limp and motionless like a cadaver. He drew his pocketknife and cut through the cord. As he marched back to his office, the flag spun to earth and piled up on the lawn like a mountain diorama.
Without thinking, his head buzzing strangely now, he entered the radio and decoding room, opened the safe, took out the leather folder of radio codes, and wrote them down on his notepad before returning them to the safe. After that he called the British consulate from his office and invited a Mr. Carlsroupe, whom he knew well from his Cape Town years, to come over for a drink later that evening.
At nine a.m. the trucks that Fritz had scheduled dropped off moving crates with Reich eagles branded on them. As the staff began to arrive, he issued orders, urging them to hurry things up. When a flustered young Müller ran down the corridor, shouting, “The flag’s been cut down! Our flag!” Fritz admonished Müller to get to work; they were on a deadline. Anyway, Fritz added, he should stop worrying about that flag because he was going to see enough of them soon in Germany.
“I most certainly hope so, Herr Kolbe.”
What is wrong with this kid? Fritz wondered. Not long ago he was admitting how
afraid he was. A few days later he’s wearing a swastika armband. And now this.
Fritz first phoned his friends Werner and Hiltrud in Swakopmund, then spoke with the representative of a shipping line—a Dutch one, since German ships were no longer allowed to pull up anchor and leave Cape Town. He packed his photographs in old newspaper and wrapped his globe carefully, stowing it in a standing position for stability. He felt in his inside jacket pocket for the page of radio codes he’d copied.
That afternoon he left the chaos of the consulate and closed the top on his Horch—he’d always driven with the top down but didn’t want to anymore. A troop of mounted soldiers was coming up the street, the horses’ hooves clacking loud and metallic on the pavement. The soldiers halted at the consulate entrance and the captain shouted an order. As if a switch were turned on, the horses and men pivoted to face the consulate and stood stock still. Fritz drove cautiously past the soldiers, between the art deco buildings, parks, and florists, up to Bay Drive. At the highest point of the street, he pulled over and looked down at the surging ocean, the sky beyond it a radiant blue. Berlin was over six thousand miles away as the crow flies, yet it had effortlessly consumed the consulate and its men, now with swastikas on their upper arms, men whom until recently he’d considered reasonable human beings.
He climbed out of his car and breathed in the warm wind. Earlier, Biermann had again spoken to him at length.
The Honest Spy Page 3
