The Story of Henri Tod

by William F. Buckley

  “To whom?”

  “To me. The night before he was shot. A sealed letter, kept in the envelope with my birth certificate and baptismal papers, with a note to Mother that she was to hand me the letter, unopened, on my twenty-first birthday. I saw the letter last September. The day before I asked you about this car.” Caspar was back on the sofa, his head on Claudia’s lap. His voice was at once childlike and august. “What happened was that I sniffed out the key to the locker one day when Mother was out. So, of course, I looked inside, and found all that stuff, including the master keys to this car. Then I saw the letter. And, of course, I opened it. Mother was away for a week, with Uncle Walter, at some state function. The last line of my father’s letter said he wanted me to know the truth, but that if at the time I read the letter my Uncle Walter was still alive, and if my mother was still alive, I was not under any circumstances to divulge its contents to my mother, as it would only make personal and political problems for her.

  “My problem then was to come up with a dummy letter, because often Mother had said to me that when I was twenty-one I would see a letter from my father. Her curiosity about it was terrific. So, using Father’s typewriter, I faked a letter. I began by saying that he would pretend to have handwritten a letter from the prison, but in fact he was writing it at home but before going to trial, in case he did not have an opportunity later on. Then I just copied everything in his letter, the kind of thing you would expect a father, the day before his death, to write to a five-year-old son. And, of course, left out the important parts.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No problem at all. On my birthday in May, Mother just cried, and said how beautiful the letter was, and how Father had really been an innocent victim, but that in that postwar atmosphere it hadn’t been possible to distinguish the true Nazis from the mere professionals, and so on. I didn’t tell her what I thought, which is that the leading Nazi survivor is her brother, my Uncle Walter.”

  Claudia said nothing. But she began to cry. Caspar, alarmed, took her into his arms. “Claudia, Claudia, why? What?”

  “They did it to my oldest brother too, and what I told you about my father being killed in the war isn’t true. He was taken on—one of your father’s railroad cars—to the camps. My father’s crime was that at the town meeting at Leipzig he gave a speech against the practices of the occupying Soviet troops. He was gone the next morning. We never heard from him again, or about him.”

  Caspar sat up, but without releasing her hand. He pressed it. “Do you know, Claudia,” he smiled, “I do believe that you and I are security risks! When I become prime minister, you will be my commissar, in charge of the Railway Division of the German Democratic Republic.”

  They heard a moan from the bedroom. Claudia went quickly. Henri’s face looked flushed. She turned to Caspar.

  “I’m going for a thermometer and some medicine.”

  “No. I’ll go.”

  “Caspar, quiet. In the first place, I work in the railway headquarters. In the second place, I would not fit any description of the man they are looking for. In the third place, if they do find me, I know what to say and how to say it, about what I’ve been up to.”

  Caspar smiled, and let his hands down from her arms. “Which, right after you get back, will prove to be correct.”

  They took the routine precautions as she walked down the steps of Berchtesgaden and, knowing where and when to turn, was soon in the alleyway of the office building. There were more guards than usual. She showed her pass. “I need to get some papers from my office,” she said simply to the sergeant who looked at her card, and she walked into the building, and out the rear door. Not to the all-night pharmacy, where an order for antibiotics at that hour might raise suspicion, particularly when she had no doctor’s prescription, but to the apartment of her former roommate, Margret Nilsson, who worked in the hospital as a nurse and kept in her house a little of everything. And a lot of what Claudia had needed almost daily since coming to know Caspar during that placid week in that sylvan setting, so far from the impacted grisliness of the offices in which they spent their working lives.

  To Margret, Claudia confided that she needed a little help “for this reason or that.” Margret, while not probing the confidences of her friend, was as ever loquacious about her own concerns. She readily consented to get the prescription and have the blood analyzed. “Oh Claudia, I am so very much in love. Yes, a doctor. Unfortunately, he is married. I don’t know what I will do if we can’t live together, forever.”

  Margret’s leisurely rhythm as she described her passion did not synchronize with Claudia’s pressing need. But after an hour she had the prescription, her ex-roommate’s doctor-lover’s signature nonchalantly forged on a prescription blank from a pad Margret kept at home. Claudia did not wish to appear indifferent to Margret’s passion, but she managed, soon, to kiss her good night and get on with her desperate business.

  16

  At exactly five minutes after four in the afternoon a tall man wearing a fedora and a brown suit stepped out at Arnswalder Platz, carrying a briefcase. He turned west purposefully and began a measured stride, looking neither right nor left. He had walked one block when a 1958 Trabant pulled up alongside him. A man seated in the back seat opened the car window and said, “Mr. Jerome?” The man carrying the briefcase stopped and said, “I am a porter from the Hotel am Zoo. I was instructed by a Mr. Jerome to give you this briefcase. He regrets he could not deliver it himself.” The porter handed over the briefcase and walked away.

  Captain Gouzenko clenched his teeth, and to the driver said, “Go up Pasteurstrasse for one block. Turn right on Greifswalder. Keep the radio on alert. If we are being followed, we will be notified by the time we reach Bernhard-Lichtenberg. If we are not being followed, then go back to Hildestrasse.”

  Dmitri Gouzenko opened the briefcase. It was empty, except for a single envelope through which a yellow toothbrush protruded at either end. Gouzenko deliberated for a moment whether to open the missive himself or wait and let Colonel Ustinov open it, but decided to go ahead. He took a penknife from his pocket, slit the envelope open along the narrow side, and pulled out a letter.

  “My dear F:

  “The suggested rendezvous is unsatisfactory, for reasons I leave to you to imagine. The next time I visit in East Germany it will not be at the invitation of a stranger.

  “I am, as you may or may not believe, not a floating exchequer for Mr. Henri Tod. I certainly hope that his sister will be freed, and unofficially I have agreed to accept Mr. Tod’s commission to act as his intermediary in effecting his sister’s repatriation. (Mr. Tod does not question the authenticity of the photograph.) But of course the details will need to be worked out, and we shall have to know that your plans are feasible.

  “Inasmuch as I do not plan to visit East Berlin, and you evidently do not desire to visit West Berlin, I agree to meet you in Vienna. If you desire such a meeting, telephone the concierge at the Hotel am Zoo and tell him you wish the concierge to advise Mr. Jerome, when he calls in, that Mr. Frank (I am contributing four more letters to your name) will meet Mr. Jerome as planned. I have checked the schedules, and there should be no difficulty in arriving in Vienna by Thursday late afternoon. You may proceed by plane or by train, as may I. When you reach Vienna, call the concierge at the Hotel Regina and ask if Mr. Jerome left an envelope for Mr. Frank. Mr. Jerome will have done so. The envelope will indicate where I will meet you, and at what time. I shall not have a colleague along, and you are not to have one along either. I will have with me a briefcase, but this one will have 25,000 marks as a gift from the International Association to Benefit Refugees from Nazism Imprisoned by the Soviet Union. Another 25,000 will be yours when Miss Tod reaches West Berlin.

  “Oh yes. Spectrographic analysis reveals that the toothbrush is now contaminated, and so I return it. If you decide not to go to Vienna and wish to communicate further with me, write in care of the White House. They always know where to reach me.r />
  “Yours truly,

  “O.”

  Ustinov, in his clandestine office at Blockhouse H, on reading the document confessed his surprise to Dmitri Gouzenko and rang for Felix Zimmerman, who appeared twenty minutes later looking suave and suspicious. Ustinov leaned back in his chair. “I just don’t understand it. The reconstruction we made, confirmed by your wife Clementa, about Tod’s relationship with her simply does not explain Tod’s indecisiveness. He seems almost blasé about her turning up alive. I’d have expected almost immediate action.”

  “Do we know that Tod has seen my letter?” Gouzenko asked.

  “It would seem to me inconceivable that such a discovery would be kept from Tod by his American friends. And Tod is reported here as having verified that the picture is that of your wife. Of course, she has changed; perhaps Tod has changed. But I would be surprised. The question now, of course, is do we go along?”

  “Sir, if I may say something here,” Gouzenko spoke. “They don’t know for certain whether Mr. ‘F’ is KGB or a mercenary. Our response at this point is surely going to incline them in one or the other direction. If we don’t go to Vienna, they’ll—”

  “Of course we will go to Vienna,” Ustinov interrupted.

  “I was going to say, Colonel, that the only reason not to go to Vienna is if we conclude that they are not interested in Clementa, and that is inconceivable. And if we don’t go, they’ll conclude it was definitely a KGB operation, that Clementa is safely in Soviet hands and we’re simply using her as bait for Tod. In that case, unless Tod is willing to exchange his own freedom for Clementa’s, which isn’t likely—he presumably wants to enjoy her company—the whole operation will stall. Among other things, Tod would first need to convince himself about Clementa’s condition, and on that point we couldn’t be very reassuring.”

  “You are saying if we don’t go, they’ll conclude they haven’t been dealing with an independent operator. I agree. But what do we think we can get out of the Vienna rendezvous? Other than the money?”

  “Well, Colonel, I could maybe stand a chance of stringing him along. I could go and tell him that I worked at the Vorkuta labor camp, that I got to know his sister, who has been in that camp for fifteen years but is not under sentence at this point. I could say that she is a little amnesiac but otherwise quite normal. And that it would be possible for me to return to Vorkuta, and plot with her to effect her release by marrying her. He may even know about Article 118.”

  “Article 118 does what? Remind me.”

  “It permits ‘rehabilitated prisoners’ to leave a camp provided a) they have a family to return to, or b) a job that also provides living facilities. My line—and I think he would swallow this—is that I am willing, for fifty thousand marks, to go back to Vorkuta, take out wedding papers, and bring his sister to East Germany. From there, as we all unfortunately know, it is easy enough to get her into West Berlin.”

  “On what pretense would you tell him you could get her into East Germany from Russia?”

  “Colonel Ustinov! You forget that I live, and am employed, in East Germany. Ever since leaving the camp, I have worked for the Amtorg Trading Corporation in Potsdam. Remember?”

  “Yes, yes. I remember your cover story. So then?”

  “So then my wife brings in Henri Tod.”

  “Where? How?”

  “There are a variety of ways, sir. One of them that appeals to me I would need to discuss with my wife before elaborating. But you must agree we have lost nothing. I go to Vienna for two days. I return with 25,000 marks. In a week or so we arrange to fly my wife in from Moscow. We proceed from there.”

  “You are quite certain your wife will cooperate, Gouzenko?” Zimmerman broke in.

  “I am quite sure my wife will cooperate, Herr Zimmerman.”

  “Very well.” Ustinov put his initials on a form on his desk. “Fill it out yourself, and get to Vienna. If you bring back Blackford Oakes’s head, I will put you in for a promotion. Bring the money to me.”

  “And I’ll take it from you, Leonid.”

  “You get half, Felix.”

  “We must get Tod,” Ustinov turned to Gouzenko. “We most certainly must. That business Saturday on Aristophe Spender. The gall of it! And leaving word at the bar. They might as well have left calling cards.”

  “We nearly got one of them.”

  “What good does it do nearly to get someone?”

  “Good for the morale, sir.”

  “Yes, I suppose. Good for the morale. Check with me as soon as you get back from Vienna.”

  17

  Henri Tod sat on the large fore-and-aft sofa, its back to one of the train’s windows, his left forearm lightly slung, his arm wrapped snugly to his side by the dressing that went right around his chest. It was Thursday and nearing seven in the evening. He and Caspar were listening to the little shortwave radio. It featured, in the local news, Ulbricht’s speech to the GDR parliament, in which he announced that henceforward the border crossers, the hated Grenzgänger, the East Berliners who worked by day in West Berlin, would be required to register with East Berlin authorities and obtain permission to continue working in West Berlin.

  The foreign news spoke of an interview Khrushchev had granted to the English ambassador in which Khrushchev had warned pregnantly of the awful dangers of nuclear war. Khrushchev had, meanwhile, publicly announced that the next scheduled phase in Soviet demobilization had been postponed indefinitely, and that he planned to increase the Soviet military budget by one third. Tod switched to the BBC World News, which mentioned the two Khrushchev items, and also that Chancellor Adenauer planned to visit West Berlin in a few days and had made a statement to the effect that the East German government was showing signs of panic because of the thirst of its own people for freedom. The BBC went on to sports events, and Henri turned the radio off. It had been a strenuous passage to the relative serenity they now experienced.

  By the time Claudia had got back to Berchtesgaden, well after midnight of that Saturday, the wounded visitor had begun to show signs of mounting fever. He ranted and he sweated and he tossed about on the Führer’s ample bed. Caspar was at his side when Claudia entered with a wet towel, stroking his head and occasionally using force to keep Tod from ejecting himself from the bed.

  “He’s gotten a lot worse, Claudi,” Caspar whispered.

  “I have a thermometer, and penicillin, and something Margret gave me to help the stomach. But how will we take his temperature? He will bite the thermometer in two.”

  “Let’s see if we can get it under his arm. I’ll hold him down.” Caspar put his whole weight on Tod’s good shoulder. For a moment he lay quiet, but as Claudia was about to insert the little glass cylinder in his armpit, suddenly Tod swung his wounded side over. Quickly she withdrew it.

  Caspar said. “We might be able to do it up his backside. But listen, Claudia.” He reached over and took the thermometer from her hand and put it back on the side table.

  “What really is the point? We know he has a fever. We have the only medicine he’s going to get—the penicillin. Unless we take him to a hospital. And if we take him to a hospital, it may be that we are only curing him for the purpose of getting him shot. So let’s forget about the temperature until he has cooled down or—” Caspar no longer looked like a grown boy. “If we cannot save him we cannot save him. You know how to give the injection?”

  Claudia nodded.

  Together they turned him around. Caspar lowered Tod’s shorts, and Claudia inserted the needle. For another hour Tod thrashed about in bed. Caspar and Claudia resolved on a watch system. She went off to the salon to sleep on the settee. Caspar, a book in hand, sat on the edge of the bed, alternately reading and wiping the perspiration off Tod’s face. Once he changed the sheets. At four in the morning, he woke Claudia.

  It had been so for nearly twenty-four hours. Late on Sunday they succeeded in taking his temperature. It was 105 degrees, and he was delirious. They resolved that on the Monday, Cas
par would take sick leave; on the Tuesday, Claudia would do so. Their parents need not know, as they never called to speak to their children at work. They forced themselves to discuss the possibility that the man would die, and even focused on the problems of removing his corpse. It was a long two days.

  When on Tuesday afternoon Caspar returned to Berchtesgaden, he found Claudia beaming. “Oh, Caspar, he’s come out of it! His temperature is down to 101! And he is talking. Just a little. And he took some soup. His eyes are very sad, and he looks afraid.”

  “Did you ask him what the police want him for, Claudi?”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t do that. Come and speak to him.”

  She took Caspar by the hand down the corridor, past the staff quarters, to the bedroom. Caspar entered it. Henri Tod was lying in bed, his eyes intelligent for the first time since he had fainted.

  Henri began to speak. “I wish to … thank—”

  Caspar interrupted him. Tod was speaking with difficulty. “Be quiet, friend; it is not right for you to make an effort. Not yet. You are getting better. Just tell us. What shall we call you? What is your name?”

  For a moment Henri Tod’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. But then, his head sliding back on the pillow, he whispered, “My name is Heinrich. I am pleased to meet you.” With that effort, he closed his eyes, and was asleep.

  On Wednesday morning Henri was talking, his temperature down to 100, and he assured them that he could easily look after his needs while they went off to work. They left a thermos of hot soup for him at his bedside, and reminded him to take the extra pills Margret had given Claudia. When they returned in the late afternoon Tod was asleep, but it was a serene sleep from which he woke instantly, announcing that that night he wished to join them at dinner. Claudia insisted on taking his temperature again, and when she read it she did not restrain her yelp of joy. It was very nearly normal.

  They helped him from his bed, and for the first time in four days Henri Tod ate, however lightly. He did not have the strength to participate energetically in the conversation. He listened to them, and listened to the radio, and sometimes he smiled. He said he was feeling at once very weak and very much better. Caspar offered to massage him and he submitted, stretched out on the settee. Claudia volunteered to catch him up on the news developments of the past few days, and attempted to do so from memory. It was while she was reciting the litany that it came to her suddenly, with unmistakable clarity, that the young man in Berchtesgaden with them was Henri Tod. The most wanted man in East Germany; undisputed leader of the most fervent movement of mostly young Germans, East Germans and West Germans, in the recent history of the divided country. This was the man the paper and the radio had said was mysteriously missing, and might perhaps be hiding out in East Berlin.… She looked at Caspar, who was massaging as close as he could come to the back of Henri Tod’s shoulder without causing pain. He looked up at her, acknowledging her signal. She pointed to the bedroom.