The Honest Spy

by Andreas Kollender

  Fritz pointed at the bedroom door. Walter nodded.

  When Fritz walked in, Käthe was lying on her stomach in bed, her forehead resting on her fist. Fritz sat down next to her, the bed springs squeaking.

  “I could just scream all the time,” Käthe said.

  “Then at least one of us would be telling the truth.”

  She turned on her side and pulled up her legs. Fritz had often seen his Katrin lying in bed like that.

  “You need to start laughing again, Käthe.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. Go dancing with Walter. There’s still plenty of dancing going on in this crazy Berlin of ours. Just dance.”

  Käthe used her index and middle finger to do little waltzing steps on the pillow.

  “Forward, side, together; back, side, together,” she muttered. “They first came during the night of June 7 and 8, 1940. Then January to March of ’43. They unleash death from the skies, Fritz. Death. And fire—people inhale that fire.”

  She stared at the covers and stroked the linen like one would a child’s cheek.

  “Käthe?” he said. “Käthe?” She was vanishing right before his eyes, even though he could see her and his hand was resting on her shoulder.

  As Fritz stepped out onto the street, a boy in uniform with bright-blond hair approached. Fritz rushed up to him and held out his arms. “Horst, my boy!”

  Horst Braunwein clicked his heels together and thrust his arm into the air ramrod straight.

  “Heil Hitler, Uncle Fritz.”

  Fritz’s breathing constricted. He wanted to hug the boy but Horst pulled back, his glance and his eyebrows conveying resistance.

  “Horst. It’s nice to see you. Crazy running into you like this.”

  “Thanks. You too, Uncle Fritz.”

  Fritz reached out for the young man’s shoulder. Horst pulled back again.

  “Everything all right, Horst?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Remember us going fishing in Camps Bay?”

  “In South Africa? They’re the enemy, Uncle Fritz.”

  “Come again?”

  “The enemy.”

  “But it was nice, though, wasn’t it?”

  Horst’s face became expressionless. Looking at him, Fritz felt a strange sense of separation, as if the boy were standing on the opposite bank of a river.

  “Your parents are upstairs,” Fritz said. “Your mother’s not doing so great, Horst.”

  “She shouldn’t let herself go around like that.”

  “She is your mother.”

  “I have to go now, Uncle Fritz. Heil Hitler.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

  Fritz trudged through the colorless, cratered wartime streets. Now they’ve wrecked our kids too, he thought. He sat down on the running board of a rusted-out car and looked around. In the early years of the war, Berlin had been a city of women, the men having all gone off to kill or to die, or to become crippled. Now more and more, women and children were being sent away from the city, and the men he encountered wore uniforms and were seeking things the war had already taken away. Nearby, a red swastika flag had fallen from where it had been hung. It lay on a double-decker bus, shrouding it like a casket.

  It was weeks before Marlene showed up in the Office again. Fritz had made a habit of patrolling the Visa Department’s hallway twice each day, hoping to hear that laugh again, or to catch at least a glance of her.

  Then one day, she appeared. Fritz saw her walking down the hall and stood still, keeping a file folder clamped under his arm and waiting until she passed by.

  “Good day, Frau Wiese.”

  She stopped and eyed him, her brows raised in amusement. “Do we know each other, sir?”

  “Unfortunately, we do not,” Fritz began. Well done, he thought, pleased with his response. She asked how he knew her name, and he told her he’d taken the liberty of asking Frau Hansen.

  “Aha,” she said. Fritz noticed that there were black freckles in the blue of her eyes. Her nose was straight as a ruler and her hair was the color of chestnuts.

  “And why were you asking for my name?”

  “I hate to keep seeing you without knowing your name. It’s just not right.”

  “Well, now you do, so take a good look.”

  “May I invite you to coffee this Sunday?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I am. Come on.”

  “This is moving pretty fast.”

  “Time isn’t something we can take for granted these days.”

  With the tip of her index finger, Marlene pushed a strand of hair off her forehead. When she smiled, paper-thin creases appeared at the corners of her eyes. Two soldiers marched past her. Somewhere, a door slammed.

  “A nice watery wartime coffee this Sunday, Frau Wiese? In our rather battered Berlin? Can I at least hope you will consider it?”

  She turned her face away slightly and watched him from the corner of her eye. Say yes, he thought. Come on, gorgeous.

  “Coffee is always nice,” he added.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We could get something else if you’d like.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It would make me very happy.” Make him very happy? What was he even saying?

  Marlene smiled. “It would, huh?”

  Back in his office he tossed the folder onto the desk with a flick of his wrist, danced a few waltz steps, and pumped his fists. She’d said yes.

  A few days later they were sitting in a café on Mommsenstrasse. Marlene had removed her hat. Her hair was the color of fox fur, copper, and the setting sun.

  She was telling him about her job at Charité Hospital, and about the internationally renowned work on creating prosthetics being done by her employer, the professor.

  “He operated on his hemorrhoids,” Marlene said.

  “Come again?”

  “My professor. He prettied up that little asshole. Himmler, I mean.”

  “By that little asshole, do you mean the man himself, or are you using it as an anatomical term?”

  “Take it how you will, Herr Kolbe.”

  “They should have shown that story in the newsreels.”

  They laughed. Only two other tables in the café were occupied. Outside, gray heaps of debris were piled along the sidewalk, a rough path beaten through them.

  “The demand for prosthetics is growing,” Marlene told him. The professor traveled a lot, she said, and knew a bunch of the Nazi bigwigs personally.

  “Is he a Nazi, Frau Wiese?”

  “A rather accomplished one.” She gazed out the low window onto the street, buried in rubble. “The man is truly good at what he does. He helps people. I help him.”

  “You get his travel papers from us at the Office. That’s lucky for me.”

  Marlene lowered her head a little and turned away, smiling. Her nose looked a little broader from that angle. She took a small case from her purse, sprung it open, and pulled a cigarette out from beneath the elastic band. For the first time in his life, Fritz regretted not owning a lighter. Marlene waited a moment and Fritz patted at his jacket pockets stupidly as if a box of matches might appear. Marlene pushed her lighter across the table. Fritz clicked it and held his other hand around the flame unnecessarily as he moved it toward Marlene’s face. Her lips were pale, and there were charming little creases at the corners of her mouth.

  Fritz could only imagine how lovely she might look holding both a cigarette and a wineglass with the same hand. He called for the one-armed waiter and ordered her a glass of red wine.

  “But I still have some coffee,” she said. “You are a strange bird, Herr Kolbe.”

  “They used to say that about me in Africa.”

  “Africa? Do tell!”

  She listened for a long time as Fritz recounted his memories. The streets outside turned grayer and grayer, the few other patrons left the café, and the waiter stood behind the bar, holding his arm across his body. Fritz did no
t mention a word about Katrin. His memories followed along two tracks, each leading away from the other. As he spoke, he realized that perhaps he should be more careful, that he was trusting this strange woman far too much, telling her too much, and that on no account should he dare reveal to her—even though he really wanted to—the plan he would soon be putting into action. In this country, a person couldn’t trust anyone anymore. Not even a man like him could be trusted.

  Marlene held her wineglass in the same hand as her cigarette, the white paper reflected in the swirl of red.

  “Don’t go getting your hopes up,” she said, “thinking that I always do what another person wishes.”

  “That wouldn’t be a hope—it would be a concern.”

  When they were finished, she didn’t want him to escort her home. They said good-bye out on the street. After a few steps, she turned to him once more. He was certain she knew he’d be watching her go.

  “I’m married, Herr Kolbe.”

  He wanted to say something, but didn’t know what.

  “This has been such a lovely wartime afternoon,” she said.

  “I can think of nothing better, Frau Wiese.”

  She smiled. “Now you’re talking. I would not object if you should invite me again.”

  Fritz bowed. They were a sturdy, not-too-tall man in a suit and tie as always and a woman in a hat and mended dark-blue suit, standing among the collapsed buildings of a rotting city.

  He watched her go. After hours spent in her company, he now felt even lonelier than before. Even if he had seen some small hints that he might be able to trust her eventually, he simply could not tell her about his plans.

  7

  THE FIRST TRIP

  Berlin and Bern, August 1943

  One day at the Office, two things happened almost simultaneously. First, a grumpy von Günther bounded into Fritz’s office and tossed onto his desk more files intended for the burn barrel, then Frau Hansen knocked at his door and waved a piece of paper at him.

  “You have a courier trip coming soon,” she told him. “Berlin–Bern, Bern–Berlin. Lovely weather guaranteed. Say hello to Switzerland for me, Herr Kolbe. No bombs . . . my goodness, no bombs!” She placed a hand to her breast as if she needed to clutch something, and sighed.

  That same evening Fritz called Eugen Sacher in Bern and told him the date he would be coming. “Listen, Eugen, tell your contact at the British embassy that an official from the Foreign Office is coming to Bern—with top-secret Nazi files for the British Secret Service.”

  The sound of a cough came over the receiver, then the line crackled. Eugen had probably dropped the phone, Fritz thought. Now that he was actually speaking the words, he felt his knees go weak. He sat down and pressed a fist to his forehead, as if trying to hold on to his decision with a firm grip and keep it crammed inside his head. He heard his name spoken incredulously.

  “Fritz! Fritz, they’ll kill you.”

  Fritz wanted to say that they wouldn’t catch him, but the words, buried under mountains of fear and doubt, would not come out.

  “You don’t know a thing about this stuff!” Eugen shouted. “It won’t work. Come to Switzerland—then just disappear. I’ll hide you somewhere till all this crap is over. But don’t be crazy. Top-secret files? Across the border? Fritz, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Would you hide me?”

  “Of course. I’d pick you up with a car somewhere in Bern. I’m a respectable citizen of good standing, beyond suspicion. No one would look for you with me.”

  Fritz hadn’t even considered the possibility of going underground in Switzerland. He’d been too busy thinking about those swastika-bearing files. Sacher surely had a large wine cellar where he could disappear, but it was too late for that. Fritz could only laugh about it now. Do what is right and have no fear.

  “Eugen, listen to me. The day before I arrive in Bern, make contact. That’s all. The Brits will agree right away. They’re good people. Churchill is the best man they could have in times like these. Eugen, old friend, you have to do this. You must do it for me. Now is the time when everything we do matters, when all the talk that comes so easily to people in peacetime means something.”

  “I have a wife and children, Fritz. I . . . I’ll call you back.”

  There was a click and the line fell silent. Fritz sat on the kitchen chair as if nailed to it, pressing the handset to his temple. He wanted to climb on his bike and ride to Marlene’s, to look up from the street and see if any sliver of light was coming from her apartment, maybe even ring the bell. But what could he possibly say to her?

  He stood his globe next to the telephone. There, in a spot next to the broad, arching, bright-blue expanse of the Atlantic, was Katrin. How big must his daughter have grown to be by now? Was she still so slim, her features so dainty and skin so fair below her cap of black hair? He ran his index finger from West Africa to the north, toward Europe. Germany–Switzerland; Berlin–Bern. Only a couple of inches. He’d journeyed far greater distances in his time. But this was no regular journey.

  The telephone rang. Fritz placed his hand on the handset, feeling its sleek surface, then picked up. All he said was “Yes,” saying it like a question instead of the exclamation he’d meant to shout.

  Eugen told him he would do it.

  Fritz grabbed the Allgäu landscape by the frame and carefully set it on the floor. The light from his window shimmered like gold dust on the matte-gray door of the safe. He turned the dial and pulled on the handle to open it. Inside was a stack of top-secret files and assorted pages, some corners dog-eared. Suddenly the walls of his office seemed to shift farther apart, and the room spun around him before lurching back again with a jolt.

  He took out a few files and removed some papers from their cardboard covers with the red stripes. He wrapped the documents around his right calf, fastening them tight with string he had at the ready, before pulling his trouser leg back down. All this took less than a minute. Fritz felt thousands of disembodied eyes watching him. As if not quite fathoming what he had just done, he started to type a cover letter for an inspector heading to the Eastern Front. He made so many mistakes that he ripped the page from his typewriter and threw it into the wastepaper basket. The documents felt heavy against his leg. Keep calm. Keep calm. Come on now.

  He turned out the lights in the office and stepped into the corridor, hoping not to run into anyone. His colleague Havermann said hello and struck up a conversation about music again, but it was so irritating, so odd, that Fritz found himself stammering, “What? What?” Havermann laughed and placed a hand on his shoulder. Two women from the Visa Department walked by, looking at him and smiling. Why were they all still here at this hour?

  At the end of the hall leading to the Wilhelmstrasse exit stood Müller, reading a telegram. “Heil Hitler. You look as pale as you did back on the ship from South Africa, Herr Kolbe. Not doing so well? Think of our men at the front.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Herr Kolbe,” Havermann whispered. “Tell me, do you know Dvořák’s New World Symphony?”

  Fritz dressed himself in an ironed white shirt and black suit, and then added a dark tie and dark hat. He wanted to look as stern and serious as possible. He had arranged to have the document boxes for the German diplomatic mission in Bern brought to Anhalter train station, and von Günther had given him a briefcase with sealed documents.

  Fritz could feel the documents along his right calf. He had pulled his stockings up over them.

  “I’ve vouched for you, Kolbe,” von Günther said. “You do know that everyone sent on a courier trip undergoes a thorough check? I declared you absolutely trustworthy and completely beyond suspicion. Even so, I won’t be able to do a thing for you if those documents don’t arrive safely in Bern.”

  “Yes sir, Herr Ambassador.”

  “Give von Lützow my best. He’s always happy to hear any news from Germany—he doesn’t know how good he has it in Switzerland. Between you and me, a posting there is absurdly c
ushy, yes? Well, then. Heil Hitler.”

  “Hi Hitler,” Fritz replied. He couldn’t help leaving off the l, just subtly enough that no one seemed to notice—von Günther certainly didn’t. The tiny acts of resistance counted for something too. “Herr Ambassador,” he added.

  Charité Hospital wasn’t far from the Office, on the opposite bank of the Spree. Fritz asked for the office of a Marlene Wiese. He climbed the stairs and walked past operating rooms and a cabinet of preserved hands and intestines, past Hitler portraits and charts of human bodies shed of skin. Through the door he heard the staccato clacking of a typewriter and her voice, in response to his knock, saying “Come in.” Marlene didn’t turn around right away. She sat leaning slightly forward, bent over a page that was curling out from the typewriter. She was wearing a white blouse and he could see the clasp of her bra through the fabric. She’d tied her hair in a ponytail. Observing her from behind like this, without her watching him, made him feel both nervous and happy.

  “I came to say good-bye,” he said.

  She moved her face away from the paper, an invisible bond seeming to sever within her, and looked at him.

  “Herr Kolbe.”

  “A work trip to Switzerland. Can I bring you back anything?”

  “Chocolate?” She offered him a seat and asked if he had time for a cup of watery coffee. He didn’t, he said, but would take one anyway and could run to the train station after—he was still in good shape. Marlene left the office for a moment. Fritz looked around. There were prosthetic legs in one corner—metallic constructs with ball joints and leather parts. In a vase on the desk were dried flowers. It touched Fritz that Marlene still had that pale bouquet, its stems so flimsy that the slightest bump might break them. Old maps hung on two of the walls.

  “My husband is a cartographer,” she said when she came back and found him standing before the maps. I don’t want to talk about your husband right now, he thought, but didn’t say it. Right now I want to lock this door, lift you onto the desk, rip off your blouse, push up your skirt, remove your panties, and make love to you. Tomorrow I might be a prisoner of the Gestapo. He didn’t say any of that either.