by Alan Furst
“I know of no such problem. And it wouldn’t matter if I did.”
“No, of course not. I wasn’t going to say anything but I did worry about it, and then, when I chanced to see you this morning, I thought I’d better mention it. Before anything else happens.”
“You were right to do so, Sturmbannfuhrer. Did he tell you what he had in mind, before you went to Warsaw?”
“He didn’t. We were just going to have a good time, as I said.”
“And you were how many?”
“Three.”
“You don’t name your other friend, but I guess I can understand that.”
“I will if you order me to, sir.”
“No, let it be.”
“I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news.”
“For the good of the service, you had to be. And much better that I know about it, because, if he blows up again, and it becomes known, I’m the one who will suffer.”
“Will you confront him, sir?”
“I don’t plan to, at the moment.”
“Because, if you do, I would respectfully ask you not to say how you came to learn what he did. We have friends throughout the service, and I don’t trust Voss to keep silent.”
“You needn’t worry about that, and I would ask the same of you. This is one of those incidents that is best managed quietly.”
“You can depend on me, sir, to keep it that way.”
Gluck slouched sideways in his chair, an official burdened with one more problem on a day when there would be many more. He met Willi’s eyes and said, “I appreciate what you’ve done; I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you. And, if some day you need a friend, let me know. I’m not an ungrateful man.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Of course it is the end for your friend Voss, sad to say, at least in this organization. He will be returned to duty in the SS; trust them to find something more suited to his … his particular character.”
“I am sorry to hear that, but perhaps it’s for the best. This kind of behavior can’t be tolerated.”
“Not by me, it can’t.”
A growing silence, end of conversation. Willi stood and considered a Heil Hitler, but sensed that Gluck was one of those officers indifferent to such gestures, so squared his shoulders, came to attention, and saluted with his voice. “Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer.”
“You are dismissed, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer,” Gluck said. “I will need to use the telephone.”
21 April, 10:15 A.M.
Tesin railway station. Halbach was prompt to the moment, the remnants of his fugitive life in a cheap suitcase, briefcase clamped beneath his arm. Then the two of them, the French aristocrat and the Nazi professor, boarded the 10:32 train to Prague. It would not be a long trip, just over an hour, but time Mercier meant to use, if he could find a vacant compartment. This was, with a tip to the conductor, available, and, as the train got under way, Halbach wondered aloud why they were going to Prague.
“In Prague there is a certain photographic studio, run by a discreet gentleman, who will take your passport picture. The service is expensive, but the photograph will be properly affixed to your new passport. It is a service much in demand, lately.”
“I’ve known such people,” Halbach said.
“Also in Prague, a private bank-a very private bank-called Rosenzweig, principally a Jewish bank. Does that offend you, Herr Halbach?”
“Not at all, I don’t care about the Jews. Hitler’s a fanatic on the subject, and, time was, we thought that might be the end of him, but to date he has his way with them.”
“The Rosenzweig Bank will accept your Swiss francs, no questions asked, and transmit them to a numbered account at a bank in Zurich.” Mercier reached into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper on which he’d copied, very carefully, the number sent to him by de Beauvilliers. “You’ll want to keep that safe, and I would memorize it as well, because this is an anonymous account. Similar arrangements have been made for your friend Elter.”
“When will I have the passport?”
Mercier handed it over. “A new life,” he said.
“As Herr Braun, I see.”
“A common name.”
“My fifth or sixth. It will serve.”
“Do you have a family, Herr Halbach?”
“I did. A wife and child.”
“They can travel with you, on this passport.”
“No, that’s finished, that part of my life. After the murders of ‘thirty-four I had to go underground, so I sent them away. For safety’s sake I no longer know where they are, nor do they know where I am. Whatever might happen to me, I could not bear the idea that they would share my fate.”
“And Sergeant Elter?”
“He does have a family: a wife, three children.”
“You knew him well?”
“Well enough. When you work secretly, there is endless time to kill, waiting for this, waiting for that, so people talk. He’s a common enough fellow, Pomeranian by birth, a steady family man. Perhaps his single distinction is a commitment to politics-he loved the party, it was a second home to him. It meant, to Elter, the raising up of a defeated nation, the return of pride, the end of poverty. Poverty is a dreadful business, Herr Lombard, a bitter thing, and particularly hard on those who’ve known better times. Every day, a small humiliation. It is, to the French, la misere, the misery, and that’s the proper word. Elter was an idealist, as was I, but it did not destroy him. He escaped, because he never held a high position in the Front. And he was never betrayed.”
“Still, he could be, no?”
“I suppose it’s possible. Under interrogation a fellow member might say his true name, but there are not many left who know it, I’m one of the last.”
“You may have to remind him of that, Herr Halbach.”
Perhaps Halbach believed he would be asking a favor of his former comrade, but now the price of Swiss francs had been quoted. “Tell me about him,” Mercier said.
“In his forties, precise, finicky. Bald, with a monk’s fringe, eyeglasses, not at all remarkable, the office clerk. Much absorbed in hobbies, as I recall, stamp and coin collections, model trains, that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps a dog? He walks at night?”
“He had a bird. A little green thing-he would whistle to make it sing.”
“You last saw him when?”
“A year ago, he came to Czechoslovakia to report to Otto-they’d discovered a spy in the organization. Two of our people almost arrested by the Gestapo. They shot through the door, the Gestapo shot back, and taunted them as they died.”
“How did he know that?”
“A neighbor.”
“Was Elter in the war?”
“Not in combat. He was a supply clerk, in the rear echelon. And a clerk he remains at the General Staff office, in charge of buying paper and pencils, typewriter ribbons, paper clips, and what have you, and keeping track of it all. They may be Germany’s great warriors, on the Bendlerstrasse, but, if they want a pencil, they must ask little Elter.”
“Does he gamble, perhaps? Visit prostitutes?”
“Gamble? Never, he pinches every pfennig. As for prostitutes, maybe now and then, when things are difficult at home.”
“Herr Halbach, here is an important question: do you believe he will cooperate with you, as an old friend, seeking his help?”
Halbach took his time, finally saying, “There must be a better reason, I fear.”
“Then we will provide one,” Mercier said.
The photography studio was in a quiet residential district, a small shop, dark inside, with a little bell that jingled merrily when the door was opened. Inside, painted canvas flats with a hole for the jocular customer’s head, allowing him to be photographed as a golfer, a clown, or a racing car driver. Halbach’s photo was added to the passport in an office at the back of the shop, where a radio at low volume played a Mozart symphony. It was a well-used passport, with several entry and exit stamps, that gave t
he bearer’s profession as “sales representative” and so completed Halbach’s cover identity. Mercier was relieved to see that the photographer worked with infinite care, consulting a notebook that specified the proper form for every sort of document used by the the nations of the continent. When the job was done, the man addressed Halbach as Herr Braun and wished him good luck.
Next, a men’s clothing store where Halbach was outfitted, the sort of suit, hat, and raincoat appropriate for a representative of the fine old Solvex-Duroche company. He now looked prosperous, but he was still Julius Halbach, not only homely but distinctive. Mercier fretted over this but could do nothing. False beard? Wig? Tinted spectacles? No, theatrical disguises would make Halbach look like a spy, surely the last thing Mercier wanted.
The people at the bank, a large room on the fourth floor of a commercial building, were genteel and all business-this was simply the transmission of currency, and Mercier suspected it went on all day long. They did not ask to see a passport, simply wrote out a receipt, having deducted their commission from the amount to be wired. As Mercier and Halbach descended in the elevator, Mercier handed over a hundred reichsmark, to use as pocket money, and told Halbach to rip up the receipt and, when opportunity provided a trash can, to throw it away. After lunch, they took the train back to Tesin, then crossed easily into Poland. There followed another train ride, to Katowice, where they stayed at the railway hotel.
On the morning of 23 April, a taxi took them to the outskirts of the city, where, at a garage that was little more than an old shed, Mercier bought a car. Not new, but well cared for, a 1935 Renault Celtaquatre, a two-door saloon model. Not too bad from the front-a fancy grille-but the bulbous passenger compartment ruined the look of the thing. “Very practical,” the garageman said, “and the engine is perfect.” Mercier drove around the corner and removed the last two items from beneath the false bottom of his valise: a Swiss license plate and the accompanying registration. After changing plates-he had to work at the rusty screws with a coin-they drove into Germany.
They stopped only briefly at the German border kontrol, two Swiss salesmen traveling on business, but Halbach stiffened as the guard had a look at his passport. “So now we spend an afternoon looking at the scenery,” Mercier said, as the striped crossarm was lowered behind them. But Halbach was not to be distracted, he sat rigid in the passenger seat, and Mercier could hear him breathing.
A good road, heading north to Berlin; all the roads in Germany were good now, a military necessity for a country with enemies east and west. Mercier drove at normal speed; it would take some six hours to reach Berlin, and he did not want to arrive in daylight. Halbach maintained his brooding silence, lost in his own world. Earlier, with a new life ahead of him and one last mission to be accomplished, he’d been expansive and relaxed, but now came the reality of Germany, and it had reached him. For Mercier, it was not so different from the drive to Schramberg-town after town with signs forbidding Jews, swastika flags, uniformed men on every street. The symbols of power, raw power, the state transcendent. Halbach ought to be used to it, he thought-he was, after all, a member of the Nazi party, a left Nazi but a Nazi nonetheless-but now it meant danger, and the possibility, the likelihood, that his new life would be destroyed before it had barely begun. Once again, he would lose everything.
A typical April day for Central Europe, changeable and windy. The skies darkened, raindrops appeared on the windshield, the wipers squeaked as they rubbed across the glass. From Gleiwitz they traveled north to Breslau, a three-hour drive. As they crossed the Oder, the sun broke through the clouds and sparkled on the dark current. On to Glogau, where Mercier stopped at a cafe, bought liverwurst sandwiches and bottles of lemonade, and they had lunch in the car. When they stopped for gas in Krossen, the teenager who worked the pump stared at Halbach, who turned away and pretended to look for something in the glove compartment. At dusk: Frankfurt. Mercier’s knee began to throb-too long in one position-but Halbach, it turned out, had never learned to drive. Mercier got out and walked around the car, which helped not at all. In the center of Frankfurt, a policeman directing traffic glowered at them and waved angrily: move! Halbach swore under his breath. A coal delivery truck broke down in front of them, the driver signaling for them to go around, and Mercier almost hit a car coming the other way. He was sweating by the time they reached the western edge of the city. Then, finally, at 7:30, the eastern suburbs of Berlin.
“Where do we stay?” Halbach said. “The Adlon?”
Berlin’s best, and just the sort of place where Halbach might encounter somebody from his past. Dangerous, so de Beauvilliers, or his trusted ally at 2, bis, had specified Der Singvogel, the Hotel Blue-bird, out in the slum district of Marianfelde. Mercier had never been in Berlin. Halbach had visited a few times, but the Tubingen professor of Old Norse was useless when it came to directions. They stopped, asked for help, got lost, but finally found their way to Ostender Strasse, parked the car, and, baggage in hand, entered the Singvogel.
“My God,” Halbach said. “It’s a brothel.”
It was. To one side of the reception desk, a blond Valkyrie with rouged cheeks, wrapped tight in the streetwalker’s version of an evening gown, was flirting with two SS sergeants, splendid in their black uniforms and death’s-head insignia. One of them whispered in her ear and she punched him in the shoulder and they both had a merry laugh. The other SS man took a long look at Mercier and Halbach. Drunk, he swayed back and forth, steadying himself with a meaty hand on the counter. He turned to the woman behind the desk and said, “Such fancy gents, Traudl. Better see what they want.”
Traudl was big and flabby, with immense upper arms that trembled when she moved and chopped-off hair dyed jet black. “Staying the night, boys?”
“That’s right,” Mercier said. “Maybe a few days.”
The SS men whooped. “That’s the thing!” the drunken one said. “Get your prick good and red!” He caught Halbach staring at him and said, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“The girls are in the bar,” Traudl said, before this went any further. “When you’re in the mood.”
“Watch out for the skinny one,” the Valkyrie said. “I know that type.”
Traudl looked at the keys on the board behind her. “I give you thirty-one and thirty-seven …”
“Maybe they want to share,” the SS man said, his voice suggestive.
“… five reichsmark a night, pay now and I’ll show you upstairs.”
Mercier paid for three nights and Traudl led them to the staircase. She more skated than walked, her carpet slippers sliding over the scuffed linoleum floor.
The rooms were cubicles, partitions ending a foot below the ceiling, with chicken wire nailed over the open space. “Toilet down there,” Traudl said. “Enjoy yourselves, don’t be shy.” She gave Halbach a big wink and pinched his cheek. “We’re all friends here.”
Mercier had worked in worse places-by candlelight in muddy trenches-but the Singvogel was well up the list. It was the SS men, Mercier suspected, who led the songfest in the bar below, starting with the Horst Wessel song, the classic Nazi anthem, and moving on to the SS favorite, the tender “If Your Mother Is Still Alive….” Only a prelude. As the night wore on, the bordello opera was to lack none of its most memorable moments: the breaking glass, the roaring laughter, the female screams-of mock horror and, once, the real thing, God only knew why-as well as the beloved duet for grunts and bedsprings, and the artful cries of the diva’s finale.
Still, they had to work. It helped that Halbach knew where Elter lived, in a tenement in the Kreuzberg district. It was also time, at last, to tell Halbach what he needed from the I.N. 6 office. “But only two contacts, between you and Elter,” he said. “Of course we must be especially careful the second time, when documents will be delivered. If you are betrayed, that’s when it will happen.” Downstairs, the shouts and crashing furniture of a good fight.
“That will bring the police,”
Halbach said.
“Not here. They’ll take care of it.”
They listened for the high-low siren, but it never came. “Remember this,” Mercier said. “It is Hitler and his clique who want to take the country into war, but there could be nothing worse for Germany. Remind Elter of that. His work on our behalf will provide information that can impede their plans, which would be the highest possible service to the German people. If war comes here, they are the ones who will suffer.”
“Yes, the moral argument,” Halbach said sourly, not at all convinced.
“You know what to do if it doesn’t work.”
And, to that end, the following afternoon, Mercier and Halbach left the hotel and drove to the central area of the city, where the former bought a camera, and the latter made a telephone call.
24 April, 6:20 P.M.
In darkness, but for the lights twinkling on the station platform, the train clattered down the track. A freight train, eight cars long: two flatcars bearing tanks, an oil tanker, a mail car, its lit windows revealing canvas bags and a brakeman smoking a cigar, and finally a caboose. The train sped past the station-the stationmaster held a green flag-slowed for a curve, then accelerated down a long straightaway, through a field with grazing cows. Smoke rose from the stack of the locomotive, which blew its whistle, two mournful cries in the night. Ah, the railway crossing. The bar came down; a produce truck waited on the road. Then a sharp grade, climbing to a bridge that crossed a stream, a descent, and a long curve, which led to another station. The train slowed and rolled to a perfect stop beneath a water tower.
There followed a moment of appreciative applause, and someone turned on the lights. “Well done,” said a man with a beard, squatting down to examine the locomotive at eye level. Others agreed. “Quite perfect.” “A good run.”
Johannes Elter said nothing. Only stared, wide-eyed, at the apparition in the doorway, which searched the room, then waved to him. The weekly meeting of the Kreuzberg Model Railway Club, in the basement of a local church, was one of the few pleasures in his humdrum existence, but now, even here, his past had returned to haunt him. “A former acquaintance,” he explained to the man beside him, a stockbroker with an estate in the Charlottenburg district.
