The Story of Henri Tod (6 page)

He smiled at Sophie, and said good morning. She returned the greeting and led him past the sitting room and dining room to the study. To the study of Henri Tod, who was sitting in his easy chair, reading the East Berlin daily. Tod motioned Blackford to a chair and said, “My sources have informed me that Gromyko met with Thompson yesterday, and the day before. And now the Soviet Foreign Minister and the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union have agreed that their principals will meet. Early in June.”

Tod spoke in English with only a trace of a German accent, though the British accent was pronounced. He was dressed in gray flannel pants and a crew-neck wool sweater. His face was Semitic in general appearance, olive-skinned, long fine nose, brown eyes, his hair dark, lank. His teeth were pearl-white, his words were intensely articulated, but quiet in modulation. Blackford had struggled yesterday to recall whose voice Tod's reminded him of, but gave up after a while … Was it the man in
Casablanca?
Ingrid Bergman's husband, what's-his-name?

“The Bruderschaft certainly gets around. I am crestfallen that you have not ascertained the exact place and day in which they are going to meet.”

Tod smiled. “The exact date has not been set. But it will be early in June.”

“Where?”

“Vienna. Khrushchev wanted Helsinki, but Kennedy held out for Vienna. Thompson stressed that after all, Vienna has been faithfully neutral, and therefore Khrushchev shouldn't object. Kennedy has got a memo from Secretary McNamara on the Berlin situation, but I don't know what's in it. Yet. Now, Blackford, what do you have for me?”

“Nothing you don't know. The military people—General Watson, Colonel von Pawel—are waiting for Washington to formulate a range of responses. Maybe the McNamara report you're talking about will flesh out policy. As things now stand, our people don't know what the exact response is going to be to whatever it is Khrushchev and Ulbricht come up with. And we're supposed to tell Washington exactly what it is that they
are
going to come up with. If you want the truth, Henri, I think it's this simple: The United States does not
have
contingency plans addressed to the sealing off of the Berlin border. Our contingency plans, I think, relate to grander stuff. A Communist ring around West Berlin. Isolating the city again; 1948. Does the Bruderschaft have contingency plans?”

Blackford only half playfully referred to Tod's organization of secret young operatives as though it were a foreign army.

“Let's go to lunch.”

Several things about Henri Tod became clear to Blackford in the weeks that followed, during which they were so frequently together. The breadth of Henri's operations went far further than those of Blackford. The Bruderschaft he had organized was on the order of a resistance movement. And for that reason, no formal affiliation with official Allied operations was permissible. The Bruderschaft, indeed, engaged in activities in East Berlin and East Germany that were plainly unlawful under Communist law, and would have been even under Western laws, had they applied. But the Bruderschaft and Allied intelligence agencies had very much in common a desire to know one thing, namely what did Khrushchev intend to do in and around Berlin; and when did he intend to do it? How the West would respond was of course of vital interest to Henri Tod. But he never gave the West's representative any reason to believe that he would be bound by the West's conclusions in this matter. Henri Tod therefore desired a certain explicit alienation from Western operations; and Western operators desired an equally explicit alienation from the operations of the Bruderschaft. This dichotomy figured in the relations between Henri Tod and Blackford Oakes, and Blackford was formally careful not to inquire into the operations of the Bruderschaft, even as Henri drew the line carefully in his questions to Blackford. But the obsessive question being the one that brought them together—What would Khrushchev do?—there was much to share, and reason to spend many hours together.

Blackford saw in Henri signs of the disciplinarian. But it was not gratuitous, reflecting rather his sense of what was expected of him, not least of what he expected of himself. There was, Blackford noted one evening when the conversation digressed, a haunting distraction there. Something that lay in the back of the mind of Henri Tod. Conceivably, not even Tod knew exactly what it was, or exactly what hold it had on him. The devotion to him of his colleagues was not only an act of gratitude for the spirit he represented—the unity of free Germans—but a recognition of Tod's personal courage. He regularly put himself on the duty roster, engaging in dangerous activity, armed always with the cyanide capsule in the event he was captured. But he would be detected in acts of personal kindness. There was the widow of young Ochlander, who had been captured, tortured, and executed. Although she had removed, with her young son, to France to live, she regularly received personal letters from her late husband's leader, and these she took to copying and sending to her husband's closest friends. They in turn gave the letters discreet circulation. And in them Henri, who had known the widow only slightly, gave evidence of his great reserves of sympathy, of his desire to assuage suffering, of his determination to convince Hilda that her husband's sacrifice had made an important contribution. Several times when a member of the society, fighting for his life in a hospital bed or—when the nature of the operation that had caused his wound kept him from a hospital—lying in a safe house, tended to by Bruni or by other doctors brought in, the companion posted to sit by the patient during the night would, at two or three in the morning, look up to find Henri Tod, silently entering into the room, who would nod the attendant out. “Go and get some sleep. I will stay here.”

Blackford at first only admired Henri Tod. But very soon after, he began to like Henri Tod. In the end he would come to love him. And now he accepted without resentment the boundary beyond which Henri would not admit him. It was primarily, Blackford reflected, a professional boundary. And Blackford was right in supposing so. Because Henri Tod had vowed many years ago that he would not again impulsively reveal information that should be kept secret; not again, that once having been more than a lifetime's ration.

6

Henri Toddweiss (they called him Heinrich in those days) and Clementa (Clementina) had always shared the same bedroom, and did so even now, aged thirteen and eleven. It wouldn't be until the following year that they would get separate quarters, their mother said: so it had been in her own family, and in that of her husband. Henri and Clementa had privately sworn never to sleep other than in a single room. Moreover, they swore according to the sacred rites of a society so secret that it had only two members, Henri and Clementa, and even beyond that, so secret that no one else in the entire world knew of its existence, not even Hilda, who knew most things about her little charges, and in whom they confided most things. But not about their society.

They called it The Valhalla, because everyone who was a member of it was, if not quite a god or a goddess, a king or queen. Clementa, when she was ten, had presided over the coronation of Henri, and it had been a most solemn occasion, conducted in the bathhouse outside the swimming pool at Pinneberg, where they lived then. And the very next day, King Heinrich had presided over the equally ceremonial investiture of Queen Clementa. Each now had a staff of office, for which purpose they had taken two golf clubs from a discarded set of their father. Clementa had complained that her wand was unwieldy, but Henri had reassured her that she would grow into it: so at least twice every week, usually on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays, they convened the royal court—not, during the summers, in the bathhouse, which was otherwise engaged. But their court was mobile, and met sometimes in the attic, sometimes outdoors, in the little glade at the end of the property. On such occasions they heard petitions from their subjects, discussed matters of royal moment—for instance, whether Hilda should postpone the hour at which she turned off their reading light. Always, they would refer to themselves with proper respect. “Is Queen Clementa satisfied with the service Her Majesty is getting, or does she desire King Heinrich to behead anyone?” “Sire, I would not go so far, but Stefan [Stefan was the groom] I think should be given forty lashes, because he was not properly dressed yesterday when Her Majesty went to the stable to ride.” King Heinrich would write in his notepad, and move his lips as he spelled out the sentence he would mete out: Stefan, 40 lashes.

Every Saturday morning they were given their spending money, and in recognition of Henri's seniority he got two marks, while Clementa got only one mark fifty. But Clementa knew that she could confidently expect to find, that Saturday night under her pillow, an envelope with twenty-five pfennigs. And, written on the envelope, with crayons of different hue, a note. Last week's was,
His Majesty King Heinrich has ordered that this purse be put at the disposal of Her Majesty, the Queen
.

The messages would vary. And once, when Clementa was eleven, she found on the envelope a note advising the Queen that her purse this week would come to only twenty pfennigs, because His Majesty had seen her eat an American hot dog at the school picnic, and at age eleven the Queen should know that Jews do not eat hot dogs, under any circumstances. But the King added that he did not intend to report the infraction to their parents.

They didn't know what time it was that night when Hilda roused them. They had been asleep, and it was dark outside—it might have been eleven in the evening, or four in the morning. Hilda had turned on the lights and quickly placed on their beds a set of clothes and told them to get dressed instantly, not to utter a single word, that she was carrying out the instructions of their parents, and that the success of the enterprise absolutely required that they utter not a single word. “We will talk later,” she said.

Confused and bleary-eyed, but with a sense of adventure, they dressed, and looked at each other, exchanging The Valhalla signal pledging secrecy to their proceedings. Hilda had two suitcases in hand, and outside a car was waiting. Not one they had ever ridden in before, or even seen before, and the driver was a stranger to them and spoke not a word, even as Henri and Clementa kept their silent pact. What was distressing was the near ferocity with which Hilda embraced them, each in turn, as she shoved them into the car. “I will see you tomorrow,” she said. But when the car drove off Clementa whispered to Henri, “Hilda was crying!”

“Shh,” Henri said, removing himself to the corner of the seat. By the time they reached Tolk, a two-hour drive, it was dawn. Clementa began to cry, and so the spell was broken as they drove, finally, into the little farm where they were met by the Wurmbrands.

Mrs. Wurmbrand told them that they would be staying here at the farm for a while, that such were the instructions of their parents, who would be absent for a spell, but soon they too would come. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wurmbrand had said, they must refer to their hosts as Aunt Steffi and Uncle Hans. Now they must go to bed, and she would talk to them more later in the morning.

If asked when did he and Clementa realize that they would not again be seeing their mother or father—or Hilda—Henri could not answer. For the first few months, Aunt Steffi simply kept postponing the day on which they could expect to see their parents. When, after the first fortnight, Clementa had asked why her parents had not written a letter, Aunt Steffi said curtly that where her mother was, there was no post office. At the time, Henri had not known how to interpret this retort. Aunt Steffi was kind, but not demonstrative—but this time she had put down the telephone in the kitchen during dinner, after an exchange of only a couple of minutes, during which she had contributed practically nothing except to say, “Yes … Yes … I understand … Yes.” She had then, inexplicably, leaned down and embraced first Clementa, then Henri, and had left the kitchen so quickly that, though Henri could not absolutely swear on it when he and Clementa discussed the episode, he thought she was in tears; certainly there had been a noticeable heaving of her bosom. By the time Henri had reached age fourteen, he had guessed that that was the conversation at which Aunt Steffi had got news of his parents' annihilation. When he was fifteen he would find out: at Belsen.

In those early days, Uncle Hans told them that the war had brought on a number of difficulties and hardships, and that it was important to take certain precautions. For instance, under no circumstances must they discuss politics, not with anyone. This instruction Henri found extremely easy, because he didn't know anything about politics, except that there was a war going on, and Hitler was the head of the country, and Henri was quite certain his father didn't like Hitler. A few weeks later, Uncle Hans told them he was going to enroll them in the little school at Tolk. He told them that—“now listen to me very carefully”—they were to pass as orphans, the children of a Danish mother and Uncle Hans's brother. Their parents had died in a car crash when they were very young children, they had been brought up by a cousin near Hamburg, and when that cousin died they had been brought to Tolk. Their surname was Tod.

This deception they managed without difficulty, and without difficulty they mingled with the children, most of them, like Uncle Hans, sons and daughters of farmers. The schoolmaster, after two months, was called away to serve in the army, and passed along the teaching job to a widowed sister, who was a proficient disciplinarian. Her attention gravitated toward students in whom she detected curiosity, and before long Henri was reading special books assigned by her, and handling English with considerable fluency, as was Clementa.

And so it was that, gradually, the profile of Nazi Germany transpired in his mind, and Henri gradually came to know what it was all about. He and Clementa were Jewish; they were being protected, for some reason he did not know, by “Aunt” Steffi and by “Uncle” Hans, and if it were known that they were in fact Jewish, they would be taken away, perhaps to wherever it was that their mother and father had been taken. All this he passed on to his sister, but only after he had thoroughly digested the data and it had become clear to him that Clementa could take the news with fortitude.