“Goodness, Herr Kolbe,” Veronika says. “You must be, I don’t know . . . you must be ready to explode. Did you ever see Horst Braunwein again?”
“Never. I have no idea what became of him.”
“Then there’s von Günther,” Wegner says. “His reason for providing you with a car was rather scandalous, wasn’t it?”
Fritz grins and pours schnapps. He puts some logs on the fire, leaves the stove hatch open, and looks around the table. He grabs his old Berlin map, crumples it up, and throws it into the flames. The dry paper ignites in seconds.
“Here’s von Ribbentrop,” Veronika says.
Fritz throws him into the fire.
“Gehlen?” Veronika asks.
“Not Gehlen. He’s still alive.”
“Von Günther? And the photos from the Foreign Office receptions?”
“Those too, yes.” Fritz takes the photos from her and tosses them into the fire.
“Von Günther’s motive was scandalous, yes,” he says, “and also surprisingly normal.”
Fritz cursed when von Günther told him about von Lützow’s death. He hadn’t wanted that. Those poor girls. That poor man. Yet another dead body in the wake of Fritz Kolbe alias George Wood, Kappa spy.
“Does anyone know why?”
Von Günther shook his head.
“He didn’t need to shoot himself over that.”
“What is that, Kolbe?”
“How should I know? The enemy getting near, or whatever.”
“Be that as it may,” von Günther said. “You know that I know about your relationship with Marlene Wiese, and you know that I know she’s married. You are also aware that I have always trusted you and appreciate the work you’ve done, and I think I can rightly say that things haven’t gone too badly for you with me as your superior. And about that little act I put on back then, in front of von Ribbentrop, well, let’s wipe the slate clean, all right?”
So von Günther remembered the moment too. Could it have been embarrassing for him after all?
“Say it, Kolbe. It wasn’t—isn’t—so bad being my personal aide, am I right?”
“If you say so, Herr Ambassador.”
“How is the lady?”
“She’s working in Charité Hospital. So, not exactly well.”
“You do know that my wife has left the city with the children. Well, there is a . . .” Von Günther scratched at one of the splotches on his face. “There is someone else still here, whom I wish to get out of Berlin, yes? A . . . a person, Herr Kolbe. A person I’m intimately involved with.”
Von Günther’s cheeks were turning red. He’d placed himself at Fritz’s mercy, revealing a part of his personal life to his aide, to his outer office man, something he’d never done before. Most likely, he had no choice. He probably couldn’t fly the coop himself, the pressures being too great, surveillance too tight.
“It’s a work trip, yes? I’m about to hand you some documents which you’ll then deliver, once you’ve dropped off the lady, to Lindau on Lake Constance. The Office has a little branch there. You’ll drop the lady off near Lake Niedersonthofen—I have friends there—and drive on from there. All the paperwork is in order. Officially, you’ll be working for me in Lindau.”
Von Günther didn’t once look at Fritz. He sucked on his cigarette greedily and pointed at the office walls. “Just why is there no portrait of the Führer hanging in here? Goddamn it. I’ve let you get away with quite a lot, Kolbe. Don’t forget that.”
Von Günther went into his office and slammed the door.
Fritz rushed over to the Charité. Most of the buildings still standing were just façades riddled with holes. Many had been baked by fire so often, he wouldn’t dare lean against them. Burned-out and looted cars rotted along the shattered streets; the contents of households lay covered in gray dust atop piles of debris. Many of the ruins had been hung with signs: “We’re all still alive. Headed south,” or “Open for business down in the cellar.” Some of the streets were clogged with glassy-eyed refugees, and foreign forced laborers were clearing paths, their backs crooked as they shoveled. At the temporary bridge over the Spree an antiaircraft gun was positioned with its scratched-up barrel aiming into the skies.
All the prosthetics had vanished from Marlene’s office. Two filthy bandaged soldiers lay on the floor smoking bent cigarettes. Fritz asked them about Marlene, but the men said they hadn’t seen a woman and they’d been lying here for an eternity already and no one was caring for them. After fifteen minutes of searching for her, he asked several nurses where she was. No one knew. He grabbed a doctor by the arm. “Marlene Wiese? Where’s Marlene?”
“Who?”
“The professor’s assistant.”
“Don’t know her, man. Now leave me alone.”
He wandered up and down the stairs checking makeshift rooms that were separated only by blood-spattered tarps, but he couldn’t find Marlene in the stinking, groaning chaos. He returned to his office in distress, packed up a few things, and pedaled home. In his apartment he threw a suitcase onto the bed and stowed his mended editions of Antigone and Michael Kohlhaas inside along with the tins of earth samples for Katrin. He wrapped his globe in layers of newspaper.
Marlene came home early that evening. Fritz ran up to her and hugged her so tight she nearly fell to the floor. “Where were you?”
“Operating, Fritz.”
“The whole day?”
“The whole year. Maybe longer. I have no idea.”
She sat in the kitchen and lit up a cigarette. “It’s all shit now, Fritz. Truly. Just shit.”
“I know. Shall I make you some tea?”
“Do we have any coffee?”
“Enough for one cup.”
Marlene took out the clips in her hair and tossed them onto the table. She let her head hang. She told him she’d spoken with the professor. He supported her decision, had nothing against her leaving—on the contrary, he even advised her to. The time for contemplating and for making complicated decisions had passed. And Marlene was simply getting too tired, too distraught, to stay.
“I’m coming with you, Fritz. Let’s head south. No bombs are falling out in the country. And nurses are needed everywhere.”
“What about your husband?”
“I haven’t thought about him for weeks, not for a minute. Not one time. That’s the way life goes sometimes. Yesterday, I got a letter from him. He’s fine. I do know that he’s hoping to find some way of giving himself up to the Americans real soon.”
“For a moment, I was hoping—”
“Stop, Fritz. Let it go. This fucking war. Do we have anything left to eat?”
“A loaf of bread and a few slices of sausage. Even a few tablespoons of butter.”
“He knows.”
“What?”
“My husband. Gerhard. He said in his letter that he could tell that time you came into my office in the Charité. He knows. He’s taking it hard.” Marlene buried her face in her hands and sobbed. She stammered the name of her husband. Gerhard. “We spent so much of our lives together. He’s such a good man. He cried so hard when our boy died.” The stretch of kitchen floor between Fritz and Marlene seemed to grow ever longer. Fritz held out a hand to Marlene, but he didn’t touch her. She was crying about another man and for her dead son.
“You know what else he wrote? To us?”
Fritz crossed his arms, then let them drop again. He reached out to touch Marlene’s wet face.
“He wishes us well. He says things all would’ve been different without this war. But my God, Fritz, he wishes us well.” Sobs shook Marlene’s body. Fritz had never felt so distant from her. He fought an urge to leave the apartment.
“Marlene?”
He slowly moved over to her. He opened his arms, stood before her, and placed his arms around her body, first gently and then ever tighter. He knew that this moment would determine, finally, if she were his or not. Marlene removed her hands from her face, pressed her cheek to h
is, and embraced him.
Fritz could smell the blood and despair of the Charité in her hair and on her clothes. With water being rationed and most water lines destroyed, a bath was out of the question. But he could still heat up a big pot of water and add a little soap so that she could wash herself. He fixed her the bread and cup of coffee he’d promised.
She would be his wife. His Marlene. They would travel south and, from there, relocate someplace outside Germany, through some connection Will would establish without the great Allen Dulles ever knowing about it. He remembered that blue sky over Africa. Perhaps Katrin was gazing up into the sky of his dreams at this very moment.
“Will you be mine, Marlene?”
She looked at him and nodded.
Two days later a Mercedes was dropped off in front of the Office. The driver came into Fritz’s office, threw the keys on the desk, and left.
Fritz drove the car to the Kurfürstendamm. How many hundreds of times had he ridden his old bicycle along this same route? Now the bike was nothing but a twisted pile of metal, the chain come off, the bell gone. After the last air raid he’d gone over to the destroyed U-Bahn entrance, where his bike had been chained, and found what remained of it. He had been sad for a moment, strangely and incomprehensibly so, since he hadn’t realized this bike meant something to him. How absurd, he’d thought. Along the edge of the cratered square, corpses were being dumped onto a truck like sandbags, and here he was feeling shaken up over a bike.
Once he had loaded up the car with his things from the apartment, he drove back to the Office. Marlene was sitting on the steps out front, smiling at him. She was wearing a blue overcoat and a hat, and the way she sat there among those crumbling walls and slopes of stone and debris was to him the picture of life itself. He took her into his office, where he stashed his notes inside his jacket and overcoat, shoved all necessary papers into his briefcase, and then looked at the clock. The woman was supposed to meet them there at eleven and she knew the score, von Günther had said. The ambassador was traveling to Salzburg again, but he also promised to meet with Admiral Dönitz to, as he put it, “get everything ready.”
Frau Meiner was of medium height, modestly dressed, and friendly. The three of them introduced themselves anxiously, shaking hands but not looking at one another.
“Well, then,” Marlene said, “let’s go for a little joyride.”
Frau Meiner smiled. “I won’t be a burden on you two,” she said. “And luggage, well . . .” She held up her tiny suitcase.
“That’ll get better again too,” Fritz said. He looked around his office one last time. So many years. He would never come back, not to this office, not to this Berlin. He went over to von Günther’s office, opened the desk cabinet, and pulled out an unopened bottle of Napoléon Cognac.
“Your . . . uh, Herr von Günther won’t object,” he said.
The corners of Frau Meiner’s mouth curled up timidly. “Go ahead and call him my boyfriend, Herr Kolbe. That’s what he is. Whether he comes personally to take me south or not.”
Marlene placed a hand on her arm.
Fritz carried the woman’s suitcase out and loaded it into the car. Then he went back in again. At his typewriter, he depressed the SS key so that its hammer was sticking upright. Then he bent it with all his strength, the metal turning white where it almost snapped. He took down his Allgäu picture, laid it on the desk, and added the scribbled figure of a man to the landscape, a dark square figure holding out an arm to his side. He tried making the second figure more rounded, but didn’t succeed. This second tiny figure had an arm out too; the two were holding hands. As he stepped out into the corridor, he found Müller standing there, hands on his hips. He looked even thinner now, quite fragile, his shoulders as bony as ever.
Fritz held up his papers. “Official trip, Müller.”
“I’ll need to verify that, Herr Kolbe.”
“Then call von Günther. And hold down the fort.”
“Heil Hitler.”
Fritz began to leave, then turned to the man one last time.
“Were you there, Müller? On the Louisiana?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Fritz laughed. “Even now, you still won’t answer?”
“Hail victory, Herr Kolbe.”
“Exactly, Müller. To victory.”
As Fritz came out onto the street, he saw Gisela standing with Marlene at the car. She wore a wool cap over her curls. Frau Meiner was standing to the side, giving the two friends room to talk.
“Can we take her with us?” Marlene asked.
Before Fritz could reply Gisela said she knew it wasn’t possible. “It’s not so bad. I’ll stay here. Things are coming to an end, but there will be a new beginning. I’ll be fine, Marlene.”
“Watch out for yourself, Gisela,” Fritz said.
“And you watch after this lady here. She’s something real special.”
“I know.”
Marlene and Gisela hugged while Frau Meiner sobbed. She wished Gisela the best of luck.
14
ON TOWARD THE SUN
“Then we left Berlin,” Fritz says. “Or what was left of it. It must have been horrible when the Russians marched in after that and the senseless house-by-house fighting began.” He spears a piece of cheese and a little radish. “Still time for another beer,” he says.
Wegner nods. He’s down to the last few pages in his notepad, and he’s circling things again.
“To me it felt like we were driving toward the sun. All the terrible things really seemed to be finally coming to an end. It would have been so nice too if they had.”
He goes outside. It’s dark and stars hang in the sky, and the mountain peaks glow as if painted a bright white. Below, a few dots of light move along the stream like grains of salt. The bottles he pulls from the well are cooler than the ones he took in the daytime, and he goes back into the cabin. He feels quite good; he feels freer now. He knows that there’s still one big hurdle left to clear, yet he senses that he’s finally prepared for it.
“I think I’m getting a little tipsy,” Veronika says.
“And I still have to drive after this,” Wegner says.
“The roof loft has two little sleeping areas,” Fritz says. “So, drink one more beer with me. I’d like it if you stayed.”
“Marlene’s been gone a long time,” Veronika says.
“She likes being in the city,” Fritz says.
He starts organizing his papers, folding them, stacking them according to subjects.
“I found that whole situation with Frau Meiner pretty amusing,” he says. “A person gets a certain idea in their head. When you hear about someone’s having an affair, you always think it’s this amazing woman, say someone highly attractive or noticeably younger than the man, or alternately, some dolled-up old cow. But Frau Meiner was von Günther’s age and quite inconspicuous actually, a very pleasant person. I tried to learn how and where she met von Günther, but I didn’t want to be indiscreet. We came through the journey just fine. The Gestapo stopped us once. My papers didn’t mean so much to men like that. We argued. Then I managed to get one of them to call naval headquarters. He actually got von Günther on the line. We were allowed to drive on after that. We dropped off Frau Meiner at Lake Niedersonthofen. She wished Marlene and me all the best. She said we were a nice couple.”
Now comes another hard part, Fritz thinks and rubs at his eyes. He can hear Frau Meiner’s words as if they were spoken just yesterday. He sees her waving at them as they drive away. Even though people come out of the house to greet her, she looks lonely and deserted.
“Marlene and I drove on. When we reached the Allgäu region, I remember stopping in a meadow at one point. We looked all around us. We could hardly believe it. Not one single bomb crater, no antiaircraft guns, no military columns anywhere. Marlene laughed. She was happy. She got out and skipped across the meadow, waving at a cow. I was so overcome with joy, I thought the cow might wave
back any second. We found shelter for the night on a farm. Nice people. They set out bowls of fresh milk for us, fried eggs, apples from their stocks. We hardly knew such things existed anymore. It was glorious. Life, Marlene called it. We got our own tiny room. It smelled like dung heaps and mountain air. We clung to each other the whole night.”
He drinks a gulp of beer.
“Why do people barely notice those brief moments of happiness?” he asks. “If we hadn’t remembered happiness existed, we would’ve perished in that war. Marlene was always thinking of happiness somehow. It was the framework for her life. I love that so much about her.”
“How come I never hear men talking about women like this?” Veronika asks.
“The man you let kiss you one day will talk about you like this,” Fritz says.
“It’s true,” Wegner says. He stares at his beer bottle.
Veronika gives him a sidelong glance. “That would be nice,” she says.
“We arrived in Lindau the next day. I went directly to our field office there. It was a joke. There were two people working in one room—under that stern gaze of Adolf Hitler. One was completely intimidated; the other acted the big Nazi. He was a real loudmouth, an honorary SS man, just the kind von Ribbentrop liked. I didn’t stick around long. Marlene was waiting for me at the harbor, sitting under the stone lion statue there and looking out over Lake Constance. A boat was patrolling the lake using a spotlight, and soldiers were watching the banks. I hadn’t told her about Will’s plans. That evening we set off from Lindau. My papers helped—we were only stopped once . . .
“I notice I’m telling this faster and faster, that I’m trying to reach the ending—a supposed ending that turned out to be nothing of the sort . . .
“Marlene and I were granted some time together before the war struck once again. At the arranged location, a rowboat was waiting out on the water. I didn’t see him at first, but I heard his voice. It was so familiar to me, so closely bound to the life I’d been leading in the Nazi Reich.
The Honest Spy Page 32
