by John Gardner
They were with Passau for a good half hour before the burn, gradually leading up to the point where the plight of Jews in Germany, Austria, and now Poland, became clear.
“It’s not good for Jewish people, now. Under the new regime,” Bukholtz said, almost out of the blue. “You know this, Maestro?”
“Of course.”
“So the future is not good for the Packensteiners you left behind in the town from which you took your name.” This was Haaven. “Well, they’re not all Packensteiners now, are they? David’s still the same, but Rachel and Rebecca, they’re married. You know all that. The letters you’ve written show us that you really want them to come out. To come here, to America, land of opportunity.”
“In my innocence, Herb, I thought these two had contact with my cousins. That they were talking about helping to get them out.”
To the two Germans, in September 1939, Passau said, “You’ve seen my letters. They showed them to you? You can help?”
“We’ve seen the letters, yes,” Bukholtz said.
“They didn’t show them to us, but we saw them,” from Haaven.
“Yes, we can help,” Bukholtz continued.
“They didn’t show … ?”
“We had a peep at them. Before they were delivered. No mail from overseas, for known Jews, is left unopened before it’s delivered.” Bukholtz gave Passau a weary smile. “We get to see the letters first. This is how we know about you and your desire to make certain your three cousins—and their families, of course—stay safe.”
“We can help.” Haaven did not smile. “We can help if you will help, Mr. Passau.”
“I’ll do anything. You can get them out? Get them to me?”
“Not quite yet. There they are.” This was the moment they dealt the photographs onto the desk. “And, I’m afraid, there they stay. If you do not agree to what we suggest, then they will stay there permanently. I doubt if you’ll even find their graves if and when you come back to your Fatherland.”
“What d’you mean, if and when I … ?”
“Do as we ask, and they will be safe. You have assurances. From us.”
“What is it I can do? How can I do anything?”
They explained that, in the event of America coming into the war, on the side of Britain and France, Louis Passau could do a great deal.
“You can be a secret ambassador for us.”
“You can give us information. Information vital to the Third Reich.”
“But America’s not going to come into the war. The majority of people, and the majority in Congress, favor an isolationist policy.” (“See, Herb, what an innocent I was?”)
That could change, they said. In fact, they were ninety-nine percent certain it would change. “Your President isn’t exactly sitting on his hands at the moment. Give it a year. Maybe two years. America will be forced to enter the war. After that, you can be the greatest help to us.”
“If I agreed to this, you’d let them come out?”
“Not for a while. Regard them as hostages. They’ll be well taken care of.”
“Let them out and you have a deal.”
Bukholtz stood up, walked to the desk and tore up each of the photographs, sprinkling the confettilike pieces back onto the desk. Haaven rose. “A great mistake, Mr. Passau. You could have saved their lives. You won’t hear from us again.”
Bukholtz nodded, “And you won’t hear from your cousins either.”
“Wait! Stop!” They were at the door, pausing, turning their heads to look at him. “What assurances would I have, should I agree?”
They came back into the room and told him that he would get at least one letter a month. “From each of them.” Bukholtz smiled. “They will be postmarked and dated. You will know they are alive. The war shouldn’t last very long in any case. Germany is more prepared than you can imagine.”
“We don’t ask a great deal.” Bukholtz shrugged.
“Just the occasional favor.” Haaven smiled.
“But what could I do?”
They sat down again and told him. Should America go to war, he would be part of the war effort, that his orchestra would be in demand, that he would be asked to give concerts, tour bases, meet people. Already he had an entrée to President Roosevelt and other important people. If war came, he would have friends and acquaintances in very high places; he would hear things—not just about troop movements and such like, but about morale, about how people were thinking, how the generals were thinking.
“Also how the private soldiers are thinking.” Bukholtz had become very friendly. “This is also important in war: to know how the soldier in the ranks is thinking. You would be of inestimable value to the Third Reich. Your own Jewish descent would get lost in the files. When it’s all over, you will be a friend. Germany will rule Europe. That is the destiny of the German people. You will be a German again, with no restrictions. We will see to it.”
Passau did not even hesitate. “I’ll do what you ask.”
Fifty-two years ahead, he sat staring into the rain. Herbie thought that the Maestro’s face showed no sign of remorse. “So, you did just that?” he asked.
“Sure I did it. They had me tied in knots.” He stopped, choked a little. If Herbie did not know him better he would have believed the old Maestro was really touching private emotion, showing some kind of contrition, but he had plenty of cause to be cynical about Passau’s motivations. Music, he had decided, was the only source of passion and genuine feeling in the man’s complex makeup.
“I …” Passau began again, as though he had trouble with his larynx. “I really thought that agreeing was in my best interests, and would save my family back in Germany—Austria, wherever. Already, Jews coming out of Germany were telling tales so horrible people thought they were exaggerating.
“At the time I believed it would come to nothing—what I promised. That America could never be involved in what was going on in Europe. Most Americans really did believe that we wouldn’t get into the war, that isolation was the answer. I never thought that …” He trailed off. Perhaps, Herbie thought, the memory of his first betrayal of his country really had got to him.
“But it did …” Kruger began.
“Almost straightaway, they gave me work, gave me things to do.”
“They give you a comic name and all that stuff?” Herb asked.
Passau nodded, then smiled. “I was Unternehmen—a business concern. That, the writer who blew the whistle—Stretchfield … ?”
“John Stretchfield, yes.”
“… That he got wrong. Said I was code named ‘Dorn’—in English a thorn.”
“I’m German by birth, Lou. I know what it means.”
“Sure you do. About the only thing Stretchfield did get wrong.”
“I read the book. Pretty convincing.”
“Yes, well, I got things to tell you about him, also. But that comes later.”
Herbie nodded. Passau would only take one step at a time. Nobody could budge him from giving the events in his own exact chronology. “Okay, so you were Unternehmen. What then, Lou?”
“They said all would be explained to me. I would get a call. There were trigger words—I even forget now what they were.” He turned towards Kruger, a smile spreading over his face, hands extended. “So there I was, the only Jewish Nazi spy in the business.”
“We all have to start somewhere in this trade.” Kruger tried to match the old man’s attempt at levity. “They left you, then soon got in touch again.”
“Sure, they left the office. Me? I was in a state. I called Sylvia in and banged her there and then on the carpet.”
“And kept your tryst with Harriet? Tryst, that is right, yes?”
Passau was not up to the word games. “I spent the afternoon with Harriet. Did I tell you she was also married by then? Big guy in real estate. Forget his name now. Anyhow, I drove up to Woodstoke Hall—Rhinebeck—that night. Spent the weekend with Veronica. Remember all that as clear as yesterday. Funny,
huh? Remember that, but can’t remember the code words. She was very loving, my wife, that weekend. I needed love. Didn’t want to be alone. Monday I went back to New York. We had a heavy schedule; many rehearsals, lot of concerts. In thirty-nine I was also trying to get the opera company off the ground. What later was known as Opera at the Center. Dropped into work. Two weeks later I’d just about forgotten the whole thing. I was working and living a very—what would they say today?—a very high-profile life. Parties, dinners, mixing with people who were big names. As I say, two weeks later I pretended it had gone away, and what could I do for them anyway?”
“Then the telephone rang, Lou?”
“Sure. Then the telephone rang. Call to arms. For the Third Reich, to keep my cousins safe.”
“How’d they run you, Lou? How’d they train you—they had to train you; I know the business too well.”
“Yeah.” Big sigh. Off-loading his conscience. “Two women. In his book—the Hitler’s Unknown Spies thing—Stretchfield only mentions a guy called Loddermann. I met him, maybe twice, and I guess his name was on the file Stretchfield came across. In fact, I know it was. The women didn’t figure in any of the reports. Two of them, Flora and Irene. Never knew their real names, except I saw Flora one time after the war. At some reception, on the arm of a tycoon. Boy, she went white as a sheet, as they say. Like she’d seen a ghost. I think she figured I was going to blow the whistle on her.” He began to ramble, and Herbie whipped him back into line.
“Come on, Lou. 1939. What then?”
“There were codes. Telephone codes, to set up meetings, like I said. I got quite good at it. Used the Lexington Avenue apartment. Good cover. See, Herb, I learned the words: good cover, me meeting girls at the place on Lexington.”
“Sure, great cover.” Herbie thought of what Art had told them. Years later, Passau was to meet Ursula at the place on Lexington. Very good cover, down the years, working for two opposite ideologies. Jesus, Louis Passau, Master Spy.
They—the girls—had taken Passau through what amounted to some elementary tradecraft. “I didn’t have the time for that shit, Herb. I wanted my cousins and their families safe. I just said I would do my best.”
“And they wanted, what?”
“Straightaway they wanted anything I could get from my so-called friends in the administration, about how America might be helping the British. What could I give them? I made stuff up. Herbie, through the entire war I only saw the President twice. That is twice to speak to. My power was on the podium and with my orchestra. Sure, I met people. Later I was at military bases. I met generals and privates. I met folk who had their fingers on the pulse of the nation. Of all the allied nations.”
He threw his head back and laughed, loudly for a change, and there was genuine humor there. Herbie heard it, and in a way rejoiced.
“To read the chapter on me in Stretchfield’s book, you’d imagine it was all cloak and dagger, glamour. It wasn’t like that, Herb.”
“I know it.”
“My war was mainly fought from the podium. I conducted music, for money and for the joy. Also for the American people. The other was a sideline, as though it didn’t really matter. I don’t think I gave them anything they couldn’t have discovered from other places. Yet, when Stretchfield unveiled the information he had on me, it looks like I betrayed America big time.”
“What did you give them, Lou?”
Instead of answering, Passau gave a thumbnail sketch of his view of World War II. After the terrible day in December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he wrote to the President asking how he could help in the war effort. Back came a terse note—
My Dear Passau,
Just keep playing wonderful music. Music is an international currency and this is where you can be of most help. I have sent your note on to the appropriate channels and you might be able to assist in keeping up the morale of our young men.
The appropriate channels had eventually come through to him. Would he consider a series of concerts on military bases at home? Later they might even ask him to travel overseas. In the spring of 1942 the Passau Orchestra of America undertook their first tour of bases within the continental United States.
“I tell you, Herb, I was scared. These were boys, young men, cannon fodder mostly. They danced to Glenn Miller. I wondered how serious music would go down in camps and on bases. I thought—I remember—that I might have to turn to the audiences and say, ‘Now, me and the boys would like to play a number by that popular composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.’” He laughed again, the same humor bubbling across the room.
“To my surprise, the audiences were good. They listened, were appreciative. Some came to see me after and told me how much the concert had meant to them. They were good times and always, in the Officers’ Club, there was talk.”
“Some of which you took back to Flora and Irene?”
“Yes.” Curt, the humor flushed down the tubes. Did he possess a conscience after all? Herbie wondered. So he asked what kind of information?
“Oh, it’s so long ago. It’s difficult to remember.”
“Come on, Lou. This is your confession. What kind of information?”
A sigh. Silence. Mouth open then closed again.
“Lou?”
“Okay. Okay. Yes, I gave them the names of outfits training. What kind of thing they were doing. I gave them the names and numbers of American units going to the Pacific and then to Europe. Number of airplanes. All that kind of stuff. They probably knew already. …”
“Not necessarily, Lou. You must take some responsibility. You gave them sensitive information.”
“It didn’t seem like it at the time.”
For three years—1942 to 1944—Passau spent about four months of the year touring United States’ bases. He routinely gave concerts all over the country, and also took the orchestra to the Pacific theater of operations. In 1943, he visited England. The rest of the time was spent working very hard at the Center in New York. Organizing, rehearsing, performing concerts and, from 1943, opera. He had three assistants, a designer and a stage director for the opera company.
“What did you bring back from the Pacific, Lou?”
“Same kind of stuff. Names, numbers, airplane types, morale, readiness, ships.”
“And you passed on all that to the girls.”
“Sure, most of it.”
“Busy life, Lou.”
“I tell you, Herbie, you know you’re in the right job when the drudgery is also fun. Yes, sure, busy life.”
“Must’ve been hell on your second favorite occupation.”
“My what … ?”
“Your sex life.”
Passau gave a tight little smile. “Sylvia went off to work in a factory. Harriet became a WAVE. My sex life was my wife. We got very close in those years.”
“Your wife and the girls: Irene and Flora.”
“Sure. From time to time. Tell you the honest truth, Herbie, I couldn’t get involved with them. Not on the same level like with Harriet, or even Sylvia.”
“And you felt no conscience in selling out your country?”
“Nothing I gave the Nazis was of great importance.”
“How could you tell?”
“I could tell, okay?”
“And what about the trip to Europe?”
“The first one? England?”
“The second one’s public record. Gave yourself brownie points with the second one, Lou.”
“Okay, the first one. 1943?”
“That’s it. What’d you give them from the 1943 tour?”
“Same kind of stuff. Met Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton. Even Churchill. Asked me to play “Land of Hope and Glory.” Also Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Give me dinner out at that country place. Churchill got a little drunk at dinner and started spouting Shakespeare at me. ‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ I was part of the warp and weft of history, right?”
“So it would seem. Stretchfield says you had contact wit
h the man Loddermann.”
“Before we left, yes. Only times I saw him. Once before going. Once after I came back.”
“Tell me about the first time.”
“Sure, yes. I went to meet Irene. Instead of Irene there was Flora with this guy she introduces as a friend. Loddermann. No first name. Nothing.”
“This was in the place on Lexington?”
“Yes.”
“And what did Loddermann want to talk about?”
“Buildup. Allied buildup in England. For the invasion.”
“Stretchfield says you gave vital information. Told the Germans of all those fake armies. All the stuff to make them think the landings would be in the Calais area. In Hitler’s Unknown Spies, he says you provided detailed intelligence on the diversionary stuff.”
“If I did, they took no notice, right? After D-Day they paused; they still believed the main assault would be in the Calais area, not Normandy. I told them nothing of that, but they didn’t listen if I did tell them.”
“You’re confusing me, Lou.”
The Allied forces in the United Kingdom had built up a huge feint in late 1943, right up to June 1944. Using radio signals, dummies, scraps of other information, they misled the Germans, making them believe that vast invasion forces were being built up in the southeast of England, signaling an attack by the obvious, shortest, route across the English Channel—the area around Calais. Many still claimed the German army in continental Europe knew it was a ruse, yet in the days that followed the invasion—Operation Overlord—the Germans failed to commit their best armor to the battle raging in Normandy, fearing a second assault along the Pas de Calais.
“What’s to confuse? It’s straightforward.”
“You’re saying you gave them nothing on the real buildup?”
“I knew nothing of the buildup. Stretchfield’s got his nose in the wrong place. I’ll tell you later. Okay?”
“So what did you bring back? What did you give to Flora and Irene?”
“Nothing significant.”
“And to Loddermann?”
“Ah.”
“Lou! Come! On!” Broken up into single words. Shouted.
