The Arms Maker of Berlin (19 page)

When they suggested lunch, Molden steered them toward a cafe in the sunny Barenplatz, only blocks away. They took a table bordering the square, where vendors sold vegetables and cheeses beneath colorful awnings. Molden and Nat ordered tall glasses of lager and platters of
Rosti
—fried potatoes piled high with melted cheese and two eggs, sunny-side up. Berta got mineral water and a salad.

“What were conditions like during the war?” Nat asked, still hungry for atmospherics.

“Well, there were all the shortages. The bumpkins in the hills didn’t have much beyond their kitchen gardens and their cows. Cheese on the table, morning, noon, and night. But here? Not so bad. And there was a strong sense that we were the last light left on in the whole house of Europe. Everyone else had rolled up their awnings and put things under lock and key. Hiding under the bed until the last bomb fell.”

“While you fellows partied on.”

“The ones with expense accounts did, anyway. I mean, look at Dulles. The man had
gout
. All of us laughed about that. But for a young fellow like me, it was a strange way to come of age. Working in a trade where nobody was who he said he was and everyone had something to hide.”

Berta sighed and gave Nat a look that said, “Enough small talk—this fellow could drop dead at any moment.” Nat reluctantly took out his notebook.

“Something tells me you’re going to ask next about that slippery American I followed for two years.”

“How’d you know?”

“Well, he was one of only three people I was assigned to, and he was the only American. Plus he damn near cost me my job. Him and that fucking German. No offense to you, my Liebchen.” He winked at Berta.

“You may say whatever you wish about my countrymen from that era,” Berta said. “But to which one in particular are you referring? Kurt Bauer?”

“All in good time,” he said, sipping his lager. It left a foam mustache on his gray stubble. “First I must tell you about my adventures with Icarus.”

“You called him that, too?” Nat said.

“We knew his real name, of course. Gordon Wolfe. He made it easy to find out, the way he operated. Sloppy and reckless, at least at first. Always in a hurry.”

No wonder Dulles had sent the laundry list of advice.

“Give me an example.”

“Well, the thing with the phone, for starters. Back then Swiss phones didn’t cut off when you hung up. That made it possible for the central exchange to plug in to almost any room, using the phone as a microphone. The only way to stop it was to unplug the phone between calls. Dulles discovered this right away, of course. But not Icarus.”

Molden told a few more tales like that. Slipups and bumbles that made his job easy. But with experience, Icarus became increasingly elusive. Berta, who seemed impatient with the talk of tradecraft, tried to move the conversation forward by mentioning the name of Kurt Bauer’s Swiss shadow.

“Your colleague Lutz Visser,” she said. “Did you work with him much?”

Molden flicked his hand dismissively, as if to shoo a fly.

“Visser is dead. And good riddance. An overbearing liar. Spinning so many stories about every German he tailed that toward the end they just put him on a few Belgians and let him say whatever he pleased.”

“What kind of stories?”

“You are interested in lies? I thought you were historians.”

“Sometimes even a lie contains a grain of truth.”

Molden shook his head in irritation.

“What did Visser say about Kurt Bauer?”

“Same sort of claptrap he said about every German. That Bauer was mixing with Gestapo bad guys. Cooking up plots. Hell, he was a boy barely eighteen. Not that youth ever kept any Germans from behaving badly. Bauer was lost here, mooning about with nothing to do. Probably left a girlfriend behind, that’s what I always said.”

“How did you happen to get a look at him?” Nat asked.

“Easy. He met with Icarus. Several times.” Another swallow of beer. Another mustache. Then he laughed. “Bauer didn’t like our man Icarus one bit, I can tell you that! But of course Visser only took that as a sign that Bauer must be up to no good.”

“And you’re certain he was wrong?” Berta asked.

“Oh, as you say, there is often a grain of truth. The Gestapo contact, for example. You couldn’t be a German in Bern without having the Gestapo look you up, especially if you were as prominent as Bauer. Naturally they wanted to know his whereabouts. But by that late in the war I would say he was the one with more influence in that relationship.”

“How so?” Nat asked.

“Well, this was late ‘44. Even the Gestapo knew the war was lost. Their people here were well beyond the orbit of Berlin, and they weren’t interested in fighting to the last man no matter what the Fuhrer said. A few began placing their bets on the Americans. Some of them probably figured Bauer would be a good middleman for meeting Dulles. But people like the Bauers were already too preoccupied with looking out for themselves.”

“Of course they were,” Berta said. “And the Bauers came out of it quite well.”

“People like them always do, and with good reason. They’re more interested in making money than ideology. So you see? Visser was a lying shit.”

“But even you said Bauer didn’t like Icarus,” Berta said. From her aggressive posture, you could tell she wasn’t thrilled with Molden’s conclusion that Bauer was an okay guy.

“This is true. And the feeling was mutual. You saw it in their body language whenever they met. Shoulders turned away from each other. Never face-to-face, unless it was confrontational. Visser wasn’t exaggerating that part.”

“Bauer must not have been that much of an opportunist,” Nat said, “if he couldn’t even bring himself to butter up a small player like Icarus.”

“He felt he had been pawned off. He wanted an audience with the big boss and thought if he sulked enough they might let him see Dulles himself. When that didn’t work he tried making big promises to the errand boy.”

“What kind of promises?”

Molden shrugged.

“I don’t know for sure. I only have theories. Offering to spy on his Gestapo contacts, perhaps. Or his Nazi friends. Stuckart was also in Bern by then, you know.”

“Wilhelm Stuckart?”

“Wilhelm’s son, Erich. He arrived in late ‘44, toward the end of summer. He and Bauer were school chums.”

Well, this was news. Wilhelm Stuckart was a high official in the Nazi Interior Ministry, best known for cowriting the Nuremberg laws, which codified German anti-Semitism. He was also one of fifteen muckety-mucks who attended the Wannsee Conference in 1942, where the murderous Reinhard Heydrich laid out the basis for the “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question. Stuckart was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg but got out of prison in 1949. He died four years later in a suspicious car accident.

Nat hadn’t even known Stuckart had a family. But Berta seemed to know all about Erich. Nat could see it in her eyes. Perhaps it was one of her jealously guarded secrets. She was watching Molden carefully, as if worried about what might spill out next.

“What was Erich Stuckart doing in Bern?” Nat asked.

“Same thing as Bauer. Trying to cut deals for his family. Leaving messages for Dulles and anyone else who would see him. Visser, of course, claimed Stuckart had bigger plans, and was hatching them with Bauer.”

“Did Icarus know about Stuckart?” Berta asked.

“Who can say for sure?”

Nat sensed that at times Molden was still covering for past shortcomings. Maybe he had been a lousy spy. To watch him now, tucking into his
Rosti
, Nat could easily imagine him wearying of the chase on a nice spring day opting instead for a
Bier
and
Schnitzel
at some establishment like this.

“Even if Icarus had known about Stuckart,” Molden continued, “why should he have cared? There were other operatives assigned to the likes of Stuckart. And by then, of course, Icarus had far bigger concerns in Adelboden.”

“Adelboden?” Nat asked.

It was a town in the Alps, about an hour south of Bern. By the end of the war, its hotels had been overflowing with interned American airmen who hadn’t been lucky enough to get jobs like Gordon’s.

“Yes, Adelboden. Did you not know about Icarus and his little Fraulein, his pretty little waitress?”

“I’ll be damned.”

“You knew this?” Berta said. Her tone was accusatory.

“Not really. But there was a memo in the archives from Gordon to Dulles, ‘The Case of the Pretty Waitress.’ All about some Swiss damsel in distress in Adelboden. I copied it, but I didn’t think it meant much at the time.”

“Oh, she was quite important to him,” Molden said. His smile was a leer.

“Wasn’t she charged with something?” Nat asked.

“The security police believed she was helping American airmen escape. She supplied them with civilian clothes, and on her holidays she drove them to Luzern, where they made their way across the border into France.”

“Do you remember a name? The memo seemed to make a point of not mentioning it.”

“Good for Icarus. Purposely keeping her out of the official record. Yes, I remember her well, and in the end we all agreed she was a pretty good egg. She did all right for herself with tips, of course, but she never charged a penny for taking anyone to the border. That’s one reason the charges were dropped. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Icarus intervened. He got some American lawyer to take her case.”

“And her name?” Nat prompted again.

“Sorry. It was Keller. Sabine Keller.”

“You’re joking.”

“You know of her?”

“Not really. But I have seen the name.”

Amazing, Nat thought. Sabine Keller. The signature in the book Gordon had put under lock and key. Even Berta looked startled. Nat now recalled the most striking thing about the “pretty waitress” memo—its affectionate tone. Gordon had not only given her the benefit of the doubt, he had taken her side. Quite a contrast to his dismissive reaction to other sob stories. No pity for anyone until the pretty waitress came along, toting her Swiss murder mystery with a wild-flower tucked between the pages.

“At first we were a little surprised when Icarus started spending so much time down there,” Molden said.

“You were surprised by love?” Berta asked, oddly animated. “The oldest and strongest emotion in the world? How could that have surprised you?”

Such an unlikely question, coming from her. Nat wondered what could have triggered it. Molden also seemed taken aback, but he recovered with a shrug and a sip of beer.

“Then maybe it is true what they say about us Swiss, that we are a cold and precise people, a nation of watchmakers. Whether or not he was in love, I cannot say for sure. But it certainly made my life easier, because my bosses didn’t care in the least about the doings of some mooning young couple. So it was always a breeze for me when Icarus went courting. I had some nice outings, down there in Adelboden.”

“When did all this take place?” Nat asked. “The memo was from July of ‘44.”

“He really wasn’t down there much until November. But by Christmas, well, I am surprised he kept his job. A shame, really, because by then he had gotten quite good. Bad for the Americans, but good for me.” He raised his glass in tribute.

“So is that how Icarus almost cost you your job? Some minder found you lazing in an Alpine cafe?”

“Oh, no. He disappeared on me. I lost him completely.”

“For how long?”

“For the rest of the war. He went down to Adelboden one night just after the New Year, walked into her door, and, poof, I never saw him again.”

“So this was in January of ‘45?”

“Yes.”

It was the same time Gordon had disappeared from OSS account books and official correspondence. His name hadn’t resurfaced until late April, in Loofbourow’s cryptic memo alluding to Gordon’s presence in a Zurich safe house, due to someone or something called “Fleece.” Eight days later, the war in Europe ended.

During the same blackout period, Kurt Bauer had been terminated as an OSS source. And Erich Stuckart had also been in the neighborhood at the time. Bauer’s file had then been sent straight to the top of the OSS—or would have been if it hadn’t disappeared, perhaps courtesy of Gordon.

“Any theories on where he went?” Nat asked.

“I argued at the time that he must have decided to escape. Along with his girlfriend, of course. She certainly would have known how to help him pull it off.”

“Except Gordon kept working for Dulles. In Germany, during the occupation.”

“So I heard, as did my bosses. That’s when they nearly fired me. They were convinced I must have missed something major.”

“And what do you think?”

“Maybe I did. Like I said, he was good by then.”

“Did the name Fleece ever come up? Either as a code name or an operation?”

Molden shook his head.

“No. Is that what he was up to?”

“I don’t know.”

They sat in silence a moment, the three of them drifting with their thoughts. Sensing that the conversation had nearly run its course, Nat took a shot in the dark.

“Tell me, Herr Molden, in all the time you followed him, did Icarus have any favorite mail drops? Any secret places where he liked to stash things?”

Berta moved forward in her chair, and Molden seemed to sense the sudden tension. He swiveled his eyes from Nat to Berta, then broke into a broad grin. He milked the moment by swallowing the last of his beer.

“You’re looking for something, aren’t you?” he said. “Is that what this whole thing is about, something Icarus left behind? Is this some sort of treasure hunt?”

Berta narrowed her eyes, but Nat didn’t mind. Maybe the old fellow had been a decent operative, after all, if he was this perceptive.

“Might be,” he allowed. “So?”

“No place special, I’m afraid. The one mail drop I knew of was in an old church, a small chapel that burned down maybe twenty years later. So that wouldn’t help you.”

“What about a place called the Hotel Jurgens?”

Berta perked up at this new reference and shot Nat another accusatory glance. Well, too bad, because she was certainly still holding back items.