The Arms Maker of Berlin

TWENTY-SIX

Nat didn’t calm down until two hours into his flight across the Atlantic. A call from Holland an hour after the break-in hadn’t exactly helped matters.

“Where were your men?” Nat asked right away.

“We had just canceled the detail. When a week passed and no one came poking around, we figured they must not be interested. If it’s any comfort, it was your papers they wanted. They weren’t after Karen.”

“I guess that’s why he came through the window, chasing her.”

“He thought she was a nosy neighbor. He didn’t even know anyone was home.”

“What are you, his attorney?”

“Look, I’m sorry. We screwed up, but it worked out. We even got your phone back. Any way you look at it, it’s another player off the board.”

“But how many are still on it?”

Silence.

Nat hung up before Holland could ask for an update. The news of his trip to Florida could wait. Holland’s German surrogates were probably still following him anyway.

Karen, at least, was now safely accounted for. Nat had asked Viv Wolfe to take her in for the rest of the evening, and Viv had seemed grateful to have someone else’s needs to attend to.

“Just keep her away from Gordon’s cognac,” he said. “On second thought, maybe she could use a shot. I’ve talked to her mom. She’ll come by for her at noon.”

“Susan, you mean? As in, your ex-wife and the woman I’ve known for twenty years?”

“Yes, Susan. Karen will be staying with her in Pittsburgh till I’m back for good. Hopefully with some better goddamn security.”

“You never should have relied on those people, Nat. Not that they’ve stopped keeping an eye on me, of course. Every time I go to the bank it’s like a presidential motorcade.”

Karen, for her part, tried to act like the whole thing had been some wacky summer adventure. But Nat wasn’t fooled. She was even too flustered to come up with an appropriate verse-although not for lack of trying. As she spoke by phone from the back of a police cruiser, Nat was amazed to hear her turning pages of a book.

“Did you actually take The Complete Poems with you when you left the house?”

“It’s the one thing I had time to grab before I jumped out the window.”

“Next time try for a butcher knife.”

He finally mastered his own emotions about the time the stewardess brought his second complimentary drink-he had upgraded to business class, figuring the FBI owed him at least that much. But his day never quite got back on track. When he landed in Miami he discovered that his connection was canceled and another flight wasn’t available for hours. He didn’t pull into the parking lot of the Sea Breeze Motor Lodge in Daytona until almost midnight. Jet-lagged, he then slept until 10 a.m.

He awoke to realize that the room was a bit more depressing than he’d bargained for, with rust spots and torn wallpaper. At least there was a balcony with a sliding door to let in the salt breeze and the sound of the breakers, and when he flipped back the curtains there were no lurking Iranians or prying lawmen. Just him, alone with his rattled nerves and a lingering sense of foreboding.

Or so he thought until he left for breakfast.

Standing on the breezeway was Berta Heinkel, smoking a cigarette and wearing an unseasonable sweater. She spoke before Nat could recover from the shock.

“What time are you going to see him?” she asked.

“How long have you been here?”

“Since seven. Answer my question. When is your appointment with Murray Kaplan?”

“How in the hell do you know that name? When did you fly over? How’d you even know where to find me?”

“Like you said, I am a woman of many talents. I simply put one of them to use. Haven’t you wondered why your laptop is so sluggish?”

It took him a few seconds to add it up.

“Jesus, what did you do, put something on that farewell e-mail?”

“A spyware program that sent me your keystrokes. But at least I have the decency to tell you. I’ll even clean it out for you. Interested in breakfast?”

Amazing. She was better than either the FBI or the ham-handed Iranians. And as he watched her trying to maintain her coolness, he couldn’t help but have mixed emotions. Sure, he was angry. But he also pitied her. She looked tired, beleaguered. The cloud of cigarette smoke lent her features the wispy grayness of an apparition, some Euro ghost far removed from its usual haunts. He was beginning to understand why, now that he knew more about her background as a zealous teen. She had been duped by the state into believing that snooping was not just okay but a civic duty. Then her grandmother had died before she could apologize, or maybe even before she realized that she should apologize. Bad enough to have done that at all, much less having it revealed to all your West German colleagues. And now she was broke, homeless. Yet here she was anyway, ready to resume the chase.

“Well? Are you hungry or not? And I really will fix your laptop for you. But only if I’m allowed to sit in on your talk with Kaplan. I’m following you out there, either way, so you might as well let me.”

Nat shook his head, half in amazement, half in exasperation.

“C’mon, then. The appointment’s at noon. We’ll talk about it while we eat.”

The best they could do was a Denny’s, but at least it wasn’t crowded. And was it his imagination or was the fellow at the next table the same guy he had just seen back at the Sea Breeze? At least he wasn’t Middle Eastern, and there was certainly no law against eating at the same place as another motel guest. Maybe he was an FBI tail. Or maybe Nat was just getting paranoid.

Berta left to use the washroom, and Nat took the opportunity to phone Willis Turner for an update. He got a recording instead, and when he started to leave a message the tape ran out. Typical, he supposed, but it left him a little unsettled. Mickey Mouse town or not, Turner didn’t seem like the type who went very long without checking in.

“Hand me your laptop,” Berta said as she slid back into their booth. He hesitated. For all he knew, she would install something even more intrusive. “You can watch, if you like. Maybe you’ll even learn something.”

He took her up on the offer and moved to her side of the booth, looking over her shoulder as she worked. He was mildly unsettled to find that he still found it arousing to be this close, bunched up against the softness beneath her sweater.

She tutted at the state of his security software.

“You’re about three years overdue for an update. You made it way too easy for some snoop to get in.”

You should know, he thought, wondering again what must be in her Stasi file. Their eggs arrived just as she finished, and he moved back to his side of the table with a sense of relief.

“Tell me the background on Kaplan,” she said.

“Don’t you already know?”

“All I learned from your keystrokes was that you Googled his name and made travel arrangements to come see him. In that sense, I suppose I am still at your mercy.”

He considered telling her nothing and then asking the Kaplans not to let her in. But a scene like that would probably scare them off.

“He was an OSS man in Bern. All I know is that he worked with Gordon in shipping the records. If any funny business went on, maybe he’ll know.”

Shortly before noon they drove out to Candalusa, Berta following Nat in a rented red Chevy. Kaplan’s house was long and low, white stucco and jalousie windows, with a carport at one end. They headed up the sidewalk, scattering a gecko. A short, lively woman with gray hair in a bun answered the door. Looming behind her was a tall, paunchy fellow with a slight stoop. Both were tanned to the point of leathery.

“Doris Kaplan,” she said. “And this is Murray. Oh, there are two of you!”

“Nathaniel Turnbull. And this is Berta Heinkel, my, um, graduate assistant.”

“So you want to talk about Gordon Wolfe,” Murray said. “I had a feeling somebody might be calling about him as soon as I saw his obit. We used to live in New York, and still get the Times. This is about those records, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah. Mostly.”

“I’ve been telling Murray for years he ought to get this stuff off his chest,” Doris said.

“Maybe I don’t have anything to get off my chest,” Kaplan said, not looking pleased.

“Oh, maybe not, Murray. But you two make yourselves comfortable. Then we’ll see.”

She led them to a Florida room in the back, wall-to-wall windows, all of them cranked open, with a view of a canal behind the back lawn. A rowboat that had seen better days was overturned in the grass.

“Lemonade or iced tea?” Doris asked.

“Tea, please.”

Berta nodded in agreement. So far she hadn’t said a word. Maybe she was worried about her accent. To some American vets it was an instant turnoff.

“And I hope you brought an appetite, ’cause I’ve got fresh shrimp salad.”

This, at least, was a subject Kaplan could warm to.

“Caught the shrimp last night. You just hang a Coleman lantern on the dock and dip a net. Twenty years ago you could fill it in ten minutes, but the water’s not what it used to be. Wouldn’t matter so much if you didn’t have to watch for gators. One of ’em got a jogger just last week. Young lady down by the golf course.”

Berta glanced with alarm toward the canal, as if a gator might emerge any second.

“Sounds creepy,” Nat said.

“Florida’s creepy,” Kaplan replied.

“But you came from New York?”

“I was a dentist in Queens.”

“That’s not where I would have pegged the accent.”

“Grew up in West Virginia. Hartwell Springs. My dad kept the books for the local mining company. We were the only Jews in town. It’s where I met Doris.”

As if summoned by her name, Doris carried in a tray laden with plates, forks, a bowl of gloppy-looking shrimp salad, and slices of white bread. She set it on a folding TV table. Kaplan waited until she was gone before commenting.

“Sorry ’bout all the mayo. Doris has a very high opinion of Miracle Whip.”

But it wasn’t bad, and Nat was grateful that at least one of the Kaplans was already in their corner. Murray might need some coaxing.

“So, where would you like to begin?” Nat said.

“I went over all this business of these missing records a long time ago, with an OSS board of inquiry. Gordon did, too. They swore us to secrecy, I might add.”

“It’s been more than fifty years. You’re free to speak now.”

Doris piped up from around the corner.

“See, honey? I told you that was the case.”

“Yeah, well, there’s things besides secrecy laws. Loyalty to your friends, for one.”

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Nat said, “I think he really would want you to talk to me.”

“You did say some nice things about him at the service. I looked up the coverage on the Internet.”

If Kaplan had gone to that much trouble, he probably also knew about their falling-out, so Nat decided to level with him.

“We had our problems toward the end, but when it came to history we were always after the same thing.”

Kaplan nodded but said nothing.

“How long had you known him when you two were assigned to this records detail?”

“He’d come on board in late ’43, the first of our flyboys. Dulles liked him ’cause his German was good. I’d been with the OSS about a year. I was in dental school there when the war started, and I got stuck when the borders closed. I met Dulles on a train to Geneva and he offered me a job on the spot. I figured, what the hell, serve my country while I’m biding my time. Worked out pretty good, I guess.”

“Did you work with Gordon much?”

“We downed a few beers now and then, but professionally I hardly ever saw him.”

“Is that because he was out in the field a lot?”

“That was part of it, I guess. Plus those months in the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“He never mentioned his leg injury?”

“I, uh, always thought he got that from a flak wound.”

“Hell, no. He came down without a scratch. Healthy as a mule. This was toward the end of the war. Some half-assed infiltration operation that went FUBAR on him.”

“Infiltration? Into Germany?”

“That was the word around the legation. Don’t know if it was true. I was never privy to that stuff.”

Finally something to flesh out some of the cryptic items from the National Archives.

“This operation, was it called ‘Fleece’ by any chance?”

“Coulda been. Never heard a name, though. All I know is that everyone said it was a cock-up from the get-go, and that he came back with a pretty nasty wound.”

“From a firefight?”

“Can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Doris shouted the question from the next room.

“Can’t, dear. And you’re not helping. Let the young man ask his questions.”

“So you don’t know any more details, like what it was about, or who was involved?”

“That’s right. None of that was in my bailiwick.”

“Does the name Kurt Bauer ring a bell? Or Erich Stuckart?”

“Neither.”

He said it without hesitation. Nat studied Kaplan’s face and concluded he was telling the truth.

“So Gordon never mentioned either of them to you later?”

“Not to me.”

Doris piped up again.

“How ’bout to anyone else?”

“Honey, please!”

Nat offered a smile of commiseration, but hoped she would keep it up. She seemed convinced her husband had something to hide.

“Okay, so Gordon was in the hospital. Do you remember the dates?”

“Must have been around February of ’45. Got out around the end of April. Yes, that’s right, ’cause it was the day Hitler shot himself. The news had just come in over the radio.”

The dates matched perfectly with the Loofbourow memo that had mentioned Gordon’s transfer to the Zurich safe house.

“I guess he must have healed up pretty good, because in July, of course, we both went into Germany as part of Dulles’s staff. For the occupation forces.”

“What were your duties?”

“I was deskbound. Pushing papers. He was out in the ruins, poking around. Beyond that, who knows? None of those guys ever said.”

“Remember anyone named Martin Göllner?”

“No.”

“Ex-Gestapo?”

Kaplan shook his head.

“So then you went back to Bern in, what, October?”

“Yep. And that’s when they put Gordon and me on the records detail. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, because by then I was itching to go home.”

“I guess everybody was.”

“Not Gordon. He applied for another hitch as soon as we got back to Bern. The new station chief had arrived, and everybody figured the OSS would just keep rolling along. Truman didn’t dissolve it till later.”

“Gordon wanted to stay full-time? You’re sure?”

“Oh, yeah. Positive.”

“Did he say why?”

Kaplan shrugged and assumed a pained expression. He took a long swallow from his iced tea and lowered his voice.

“Tell me. Is Gordon’s wife still alive?”

“Yeah. Her name’s Vivian.”

“Right. I think he mentioned her once or twice. And, well, I dunno, I just wouldn’t want any of this getting back to her.”

“No reason it has to.” Nat turned toward Berta. “Right?”

“I have no interest in this aspect of the account,” she said.

Kaplan seemed taken aback by the accent, but didn’t comment. Instead, he peered toward the door, as if determining whether his wife was still listening. He leaned closer.

“Truth be told, there’s a lotta stuff from back then I wouldn’t even want Doris to know. We were horny young bucks a long way from home, if you know what I mean.”

“I get the picture. So it was a girl, then? That’s why Gordon wanted to stay?”

“Yep. And she’d gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“Once we came back, anyway. He went looking for her almost every day, showing her picture around town.”

“Sabine Keller?”

Kaplan seemed surprised.

“Now how in the hell did you know that?”

“Research.”

“You sound just like Gordon. He was always pretty cagey about his sources.”

“Did you know her?”

“No, but he showed me her picture. She was pretty. Apparently he hadn’t been able to find her since he’d gotten out of the hospital.”

“So she’d been missing for almost seven months. Wasn’t she from Adelboden?”

“That’s right. Out in some valley in the mountains.”

“Did he look there?”

“Hell, he looked everywhere. Anytime he had a day to spare. Zurich, Geneva, all over Bern. Then, a few days after we got put on the records detail, he stopped. He came in one morning and you could see it in his face. It was like somebody had shut out the lights.”

“What happened?”

“He said she was dead.”

“Goodness. How?”

“I didn’t ask, and it was pretty clear he didn’t want to talk about it. A week or so later we finished. A month after that they interviewed us about the missing stuff. Then they sent us home. I guess he must have withdrawn his application to extend.”

Nat was amazed. At least now they knew why Gordon had held on to Sabine’s book-a sentimental attachment, nothing more. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t help them find the missing records. Time to zero in on that aspect. He wondered if Kaplan would clam up.

“So this work you two did-handling the records-tell me what the drill was.”

“I’ll tell you what I told the OSS board of inquiry, what, fifty years ago?”

“More like sixty. Sixty-one, to be exact.”

“Hell, I’m old. Well, everything was already sorted by subject. The folders were numbered, and so were the boxes. All we were supposed to do was make sure every folder was present and accounted for and filed in the right order. We logged the box number on a ledger, and every four boxes went into a bigger container, which we then labeled for shipment via diplomatic mail. We then logged the numbers for those containers on a shipping manifest. Paperwork galore, but I guess that’s the government.”

“So the four boxes that went missing, they were in the same container?”

“Correct. That’s how it showed up on the ledger, anyway.”

“Where did you send everything?”

“Some containers went to Dulles’s law office in New York, some went straight to OSS headquarters in Washington. The rest went to the National Archives.”

“Who decided the destinations?”

“That was above our pay grade. I have no idea. Presumably some of the information was a little more ‘active’ than the rest.”

“Go on.”

“Not much else to say. We locked up at the end of every workday and first thing the next morning somebody came by to collect the containers we’d packed the day before, for shipment overseas.”

“Who kept the keys?”

Kaplan hesitated.

“Gordon.”

“They must have asked you about the day you packed up the missing container.”

“They did.”

“And?”

“Same routine as always. Nothing unusual.”

“Did Gordon go back after hours?”

“They asked me that, too. I told them Gordon and I went to dinner, drank a few too many beers at a café down on Kornhausplatz, and then crashed at our room. We were both pretty gassed. When I woke up the next morning Gordon was right where I’d seen him last, half dressed in the other bunk, snoring like a band saw. It’s all in my statement.”

“And you stand by that statement?”

Kaplan shrugged, but seemed uncomfortable.

“Well, weren’t you under oath?”

“The statement came from a chat with an investigator. No oath necessary.”

“What about the board of inquiry?”

“Yeah. I took an oath then.”

“And?”

“I was asked to read the investigator’s statement into the record. Then they asked me whether the statement reflected fully and accurately my comments to the investigator. I said yes, because it did.”

“But they never asked if the statement was true?”

“Can’t say that they did.”

“Well, I’m asking you now. Was the statement true?”

Kaplan looked toward the door, as if expecting Doris to either rescue him or tell him to get a move on. He fidgeted in his chair.

“Mind if I see your credentials?”

Nat showed him. Kaplan nodded, then glanced briefly at Berta. He didn’t seem to want to deal with her at all.

“Here’s how it went. We were on our way back from the job that night, before we ever had a single beer, when Gordon said he’d left something behind. He didn’t say what, and I didn’t ask. But he went back to get it.”

“The container?”

“Maybe.”

“Had he done anything that day to draw attention to any particular box?”

Kaplan placed his hands on his thighs, as if bracing himself.

“I remember he was thumbing through some folders, counting them, when all of a sudden he stopped and got this look in his eye. A cold anger, I guess you’d call it. For a while I thought he was about to lose it. When I asked what was wrong he mumbled something and just sat there. Then he shuffled through a few more items, taped up the box, and put it on the pile.”

“What did he mumble?”

“ ‘The bastard.’”

“ ‘The bastard’? That’s it?”

Kaplan glanced at Berta.

“I believe the full quote was ‘The cocksucking bastard,’ but, yep, that was it.”

“Did you know who he was referring to?”

He shook his head.

“Did you ask later?”

“You’re a lot more thorough than that investigator, I’ll say that. Yes, I asked later. He just gave me some code name, which didn’t mean a damn thing to me then and would mean even less to me now.”

“Do you remember it?”

“I’m not positive, but it was something scientific, or technical, and then there was a number. Like ‘Milligram.’ Or ‘Magnum.’”

“Followed by a number?”

“Yeah.”

“Could it have been ‘Magneto II’?”

Kaplan looked up abruptly, with a light in his eyes.

“That was it. Exactly.”

“You said he shuffled through a few more items?”

“He pulled out some of the papers and read through ’em. He did it with a couple of folders. It made me uneasy, but what the hell. Nobody had exactly told us not to, so I didn’t say anything. Then, like I said, he sealed it up and logged it in the ledger. Just the way I testified. And for the rest of the afternoon he was very quiet.”

“Why’d you lie for him?”

“I told you. I didn’t. Everything I said under oath was true. Or technically true.”

“But you lied to the investigator.”

“Well, that was different. Some fellow came to ask us about everything, and before I knew it Gordon was giving his version of how we’d both gone straight to a bar and then crashed in our bunks. It wasn’t like I was going to call him a liar right there in front of this guy. So when the fellow wrote out the statement, I signed it. We both did.”

“The investigator interviewed the two of you at the same time?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that was damn stupid.”

“I thought so. But believe me, at the time this was not a big deal. We’d just won the war, and a lot of people were already more worried about the Reds than a few leftover Nazis, or a bunch of old paperwork. The so-called board of inquiry was just three guys at a table. There were a dozen items on the agenda, and we were in and out in ten minutes.”

“Anything else you didn’t tell the investigator? And, believe me, I’m not good enough to figure out what it might be, so you’re going to have to help me.”

“You hear that, Murray?” Doris again, from the next room. “Either you tell him what you told me, or I will.”

This drew a smile from Kaplan, who seemed to have decided, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Maybe one thing,” he said coyly. “About that girl of his. Turns out, she wasn’t dead. But I guess to Gordon she might as well have been, ’cause she’d gotten hitched.”

“She was married? How do you know?”

“The week we went home I’m walking through the Bärenplatz and I see her, the one from the picture, sitting on a bench plain as day.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. So I called her by name. Sabine. She looked right up.”

“What’d she say?”

“She wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Put her head down like she wanted me to get lost. But I couldn’t just let it drop because, hell, Gordon was all torn up. So I said, ‘Hey, Gordon’s been looking all over for you.’ Then she started to cry. So did the baby.”

“She had a baby?”

“Tiny thing. Couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I was about to apologize when this guy runs up. Local man, forty if he was a day. Tells me I better scram, ’cause he don’t care who won the war, I’ve got no business bothering his wife and child.”

“Wow.”

“Yep. That was pretty much my reaction.”

“Did you tell Gordon?”

“Never had the heart. Besides, once I had time to think about it, I figured he already knew. Funny thing was, I recognized the guy.”

“Sabine’s husband?”

“Heinrich Jurgens. Ran a little hotel where we used to billet interned airmen before a prisoner exchange. I’d handled those arrangements, so I recognized him right away. Fortunately he didn’t remember me or he might have made trouble. That was the last thing I needed a week before shipping out.”

“Jurgens? Was that the name of his hotel?”

“Sure was.”

Nat reached into his pocket for the matchbook he’d been carrying like a rabbit’s foot. It was a little worse for wear, and the cardboard was limp from Florida humidity. But the white lettering on the red cover was still boldly legible. He handed it to Kaplan, who eyed it as if it was a crystal ball.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Yes,” Berta added, an edge to her voice. “Where did you get that, and when?”

Oops.

“Gordon left it for me, in the same box with the key to the storage locker.”

“There was a box?” Berta said.

Their eyes met. The Florida room was suddenly a very chilly place, and at that moment they both knew their next destination. They knew as well that they wouldn’t be making the trip together. From here on out it would be a race. She was probably already regretting she had even told him about the spyware, and he was certainly regretting showing her the matchbook.

“So was this a help?” Kaplan said, suddenly feeling left out.

“An immense help,” Nat said.

To his right, Berta hastily gathered her things. She rose and headed for the door. Nat rose, too. Kaplan, sensing the meeting was speeding toward an abrupt conclusion, stood shakily and extended his right hand.

His grip was weak. Nat figured he had reached the fellow just in time. Few of the old ones remained, and a year from now their numbers would be smaller still. Kaplan opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the slamming of the front door.

“Well, now,” he said. “Was it something that I said?”

“She gets that way sometimes.”

They listened to her car start up and roar away. Nat was perturbed but not panicked. It wasn’t like she could grab a flight to Bern in the next half hour. But he needed to secure a reservation on the next available plane. It crossed his mind to even phone ahead to the Hotel Jurgens, but he decided against it. No sense risking scaring them away. But he could have kicked himself for not having waited longer in the lobby during his previous visit. For once, his instincts had failed him.

Shortly afterward he said good-bye to the Kaplans, giving Doris an affectionate peck on the cheek and even praising her shrimp salad while Kaplan rolled his eyes. But Nat figured she had earned it.

Halfway back to the Sea Breeze, a police cruiser rolled up behind him, flipped on its flashers, and pulled him to the curb. Nat watched in the mirror as the officer threw open the door of the cruiser, crouched behind it, and poked a gun barrel around the side.

“Step out of the car, hands above your head!” the officer shouted. “Do it now!”

Nat obeyed awkwardly, moving slowly.

“Turn and place your hands on the roof of your car, and don’t make a move!”

No sooner had he done so than the policeman yanked both arms behind his back and cuffed him, painfully, with the metal bands jamming hard against his wrists. Not again. Was this Berta’s doing? The result of some dirty trick? For that matter, was this fellow really a cop?

All he knew for sure was that in the race to Bern he had just fallen well off the pace.