Then he tells them, “Will Priest had been following us for a few days. An informant in Berlin had tipped him off that certain people were getting restless about Fritz Kolbe. There were no details, as usual. He couldn’t tell who was in the other car. He fired at them. The car was found a day later, completely burned, with no trace of the occupants.
“For a long time Will tried to find out who had been behind the attempt. The Gehlen Organization suggested it could have been an accident, a hit-and-run. In any case, no one attempted any investigation whatsoever. All they said was that they were glad no one was killed. My God: to this day, I still don’t know who tried to kill Marlene and me. I have no idea. Somewhere out there are people who do know; there are people out there who tried to do it.
“Soon after that, the pressure on me increased in Germany yet again. I didn’t stand a chance anymore in my homeland. Then Eugen Sacher came along, and he—”
“Helped pick you back up?” Veronika asks.
“That’s a tough thing for a man to admit,” Fritz says.
“You’re forgetting one thing, Herr Kolbe: you can do it. You are doing it.”
A great wave of fatigue was hitting Fritz, making his arms and chest feel weak and his vision turn poor.
“Stay here tonight,” he says. “I have to go to bed now. Take the two beds upstairs.”
His bedroom is so small there’s only a narrow path around the bed. Fritz stares into the darkness, listening to the wind and the sound of trees moving outside the open window. As he breathes in the fresh air, he thinks of his love for his Marlene Wiese with her silver leg and of Katrin, who at some point received the obscure and anonymous message that she should not believe certain things she might hear about her father, delivered with a package full of tins that held samples of dirt from Berlin, Paris, Bern—and the Wolf’s Lair.
He’s up long before his young guests and makes breakfast, then drinks a cup of coffee outside. The sun is shining; the green of the valley stretches out and rises high up the hillsides.
When Wegner and Veronika come to sit with him, Fritz holds back a grin. He is almost certain he heard the two of them in the night—not completely certain, but close.
“The sun’s shining,” he says.
“Can I take a photo? Of you here, out in front of the cabin?”
“Sure.”
After Veronika fetches her camera Wegner stands beside her, their shoulders touching: a young couple watching Fritz. They whisper to one another and laugh. Fritz can feel the cabin’s timbers at his back and the sun’s warmth on his face. He smells the coffee and the land. He hears the camera clicking. Wegner sits down with him while Veronika gazes at the countryside.
“I will take my time, Herr Kolbe. I’m going to write a first-class article—you can be sure of it. And before I publish it, I’ll send it to you. Agreed? I have big hopes for this article, but I want to get your approval first.”
“Fine, Herr Wegner. I’m not sure where I’ll be, but Eugen Sacher will always know how to get in contact with me.”
A half hour later, Eugen Sacher’s car rolls to a stop before the dilapidated gate. Eugen climbs out, removes his hat, and laughs. He and Fritz look at each other. Eugen opens his arms and stands there, giving a look that both begs pardon and demands to know.
“All finished?” he asks.
“All finished,” Fritz says, blinking at Eugen because of the sun. “These two here”—he nods at Veronika and Wegner—“they knew a bit more than they were supposed to.”
Eugen holds up his hands. “I only gave them hints, Fritz. So what now?”
“I’m climbing up that mountain there,” Fritz says. “You stay here and cook something decent, something good and hearty. When I come back this evening, I’ll be hungry, Eugen. Very hungry. Tomorrow you can take me with you to Bern. Then I’m taking the train to Berlin. I’m going to go get Marlene. I love that woman so much that there’s enough love for the both of us. I’m going to get Marlene out of Germany. We have to be together.”
“Germany needs time to heal,” Veronika says.
“Yes, it does,” Fritz says. “After all that.”
He slaps at his thighs and looks at the three of them, one after the other.
“One more thing: I’m finally going to call Katrin in Africa. She’s going to get along so well with Marlene. What was it that Marlene always said? Live. We will live.”
AFTERWORD
Fritz Kolbe died in 1971 in Bern. Three Americans attended his funeral and laid down a wreath. The inscription on the ribbon did not mention that the wreath was sent by the CIA.
Fritz Kolbe married a woman he met in Charité Hospital during the war. She could have been named Marlene.
He never again settled in Germany after the war. He didn’t appear on any of the lists of German resistance fighters.
In the mid-1960s the President of the German Bundestag, Eugen Gerstenmaier, “exonerated” Fritz Kolbe from all accusations of treason—partially at the prompting of Allen Dulles. Nevertheless, Gerstenmaier did not inform Fritz Kolbe directly but instead sent word to a friend of Kolbe’s who lived in Switzerland, possibly the man named Eugen Sacher in this novel.
In 2005, after French journalist Lucas Delattre published his biography of Kolbe, then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave a speech about Kolbe and named a hall at the Foreign Office after him.
Allen Dulles stated that he would never have become head of the CIA if it were not for Fritz Kolbe, and said furthermore that a truly great espionage novel needed to be written about Kolbe. I don’t know if I’ve done that. This novel is likely not written in the way Allen Dulles would have wanted it.
The double agent that the head of British MI6 in Bern thought he had in his sights was the most famous double agent in the history of espionage: Kim Philby. He was the one who knew of Fritz Kolbe’s activities while the war was still on.
General Gehlen became the undisputed head of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, the successor to the Gehlen Organization. He ran the BND until 1968 and helped countless men with questionable Nazi pasts find posts in West German intelligence.
This novel would never have been possible without information from the aforementioned Kolbe biography by Lucas Delattre, A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: The Extraordinary Story of Fritz Kolbe, America’s Most Important Spy in World War II (2005). Nor would it exist without the help and support of friends, confidants, colleagues, and strangers: Lily, Ben, Heidi, Matthias Fieber, Rainer Christiansen, Alexander Häusser, Angelika Wollermann, Timon Schlichenmaier, Julia Kaufhold, the staff of the political archive at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, my agent Lars Schultze-Kossack, his assistant Lisbeth Körbelin, and the team at my German publisher, Pendragon Verlag. For the English translation: Kathrin Scheel of This Book Travels foreign-rights agency, and my translator Steve Anderson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 Friedrun Reinhold
Andreas Kollender was born in Duisburg, Germany, and studied German literature and philosophy. He has worked as a builder, a salesman, and a bartender, and now lives in Hamburg as an author and teacher of creative writing.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © René Chambers
Steve Anderson is a translator, an editor, and a novelist. His latest novel is Lost Kin (2016). Anderson was a Fulbright Fellow in Munich, Germany. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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