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
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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! Hal-Furs_9781400066025_3p_all_r1.qxp 3/26/08 9:29 AM Page 248
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bach 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 Bluebird, 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
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."
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"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,
&nbs
p; 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."
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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
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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.
Halbach circled the trestle tables, then offered his hand. "Good
evening, Johannes. Your wife said I would find you here."
Elter returned the greeting, a smile frozen on his face.
"Can we speak for a moment?" There was no conspiracy in Halbach's voice, but, in a pleasant way, he meant privately.
"We can go upstairs," Elter said.
"Don't be too long," the stockbroker said. "We are electing officers tonight."
"I'll be right back," Elter said. Coming directly from work, he
wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht corporal.
Halbach, heart pounding, followed Elter up the stairs to the
vestibule. The church beyond was empty, the altar bare. It had been
Lutheran once but now, in line with the dictates of the Nazi regime,
was home to a rather secular denomination known as "German Christian." Elter waited until Halbach climbed the last step, then, his voice
low and strained, said, "What are you doing? Coming here like this."
"Forgive me," Halbach said. "I had to come."
"Has something changed? Are you now free to go anywhere?"
"No, they are after me still."
"You could ruin me, Julius. Don't you know that?" Elter's face
was ashen, his hands trembling.
"It was Otto who sent me to see you," Halbach said.
Elter was stunned. "He's alive?"
"He is," Halbach said. "For the time being."
"Where . . . ?"
"I mustn't say, but what's happened is that he's fallen into the
hands of foreign agents."
Silence. Finally Elter said, "Then that's it."
"It need not be. But they will turn him over to the Gestapo and, if
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they do, he'll be forced to tell what he knows. And that will be the end,
for me, for you, for all of us who are still alive." Halbach let that sink
in, then said, "Unless . . ."
Elter's voice broke as he said, "Unless what?"
"It depends on you. On you alone."
"What could I do?"
"They want information, from the office where you work."
"That's espionage! Who are they?"
"They are Swiss, or so they say. And they offer you two things if
you comply: a Swiss passport, in a new name, and five hundred thousand Swiss francs. So you must choose, Johannes, between that and
the Gestapo cellars."
Elter put a hand on his heart and said, "I don't feel well." Down
below, the lights went out and another train began its run, the locomotive tooting its whistle.
Halbach reached out and rested his hand on Elter's arm. "This
was inevitable," he said, not unkindly. "If not today, tomorrow."
"My God, Julius, why do you do this to me? I was always a faithful friend."
"Because of that, I do it."
"But I don't have information. I know nothing."
"Trash. That's what they want. Papers thrown away in the wastebaskets."
"It's burned! Every bit of it, by the janitors."
"When?"
"At nine in the evening, when they come in to clean the offices."
"You must do it before nine."
"But there's too much; how would I carry it out of the building?"
"They want only the material from the section that works on plans
for war with France: three days of it. Leave the rest for the janitors."
"I thought you said they were Swiss."
Halbach grew impatient. "Oh who knows what these people are
up to, they have their own reasons. But the money is real, I know that
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personally, and so is the passport. Here, have a look." Halbach
reached into his jacket and handed Elter the Braun passport.
Elter looked at it, then gave it back. "I don't want to leave Germany, I have a family."
"That's up to you. Your money will be in an account in Zurich.
You'll be given the number and the passport on Friday. You'll have to
put in a photograph, but they will tell you how to manage that."
Elter looked suddenly weary. "I don't know what to do."
"Do you want to die, Johannes?"
Elter's voice was barely audible. "No."
Halbach waited. Finally, Elter shook his head, slowly, sickened by
what life had done to him. "Friday, you said?"
"At the Hotel Excelsior. In the Birdcage B
ar. Come in civilian
clothing, put the papers in a briefcase. Seven-thirty in the evening. Can
you remember?"
"Seven-thirty. The Birdcage Bar."
Halbach looked at his watch. "Walk me out, Johannes."
They left the vestibule and stood for a moment in the doorway of
the church. Across the street, Mercier was sitting behind the wheel of
the Renault, clearly visible with the driver's window rolled down.
"Is that one of them?" Elter said.
Halbach nodded. "Old friend," he said, "will you still shake
hands with me?"
Elter sighed as he took Halbach's hand. "I never imagined . . ." he
said.
"I know. None of us did. It's the wisdom of the gods--to keep the
future dark."
In the car, Mercier watched the two men in the doorway. The one
in uniform turned, and stared into his eyes with a look of pure hatred.
Mercier was holding the camera below the window; now he raised it,
looked through the viewfinder, and pressed the button.
*
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Mercier wasted no time. His valise and Halbach's suitcase were
already in the trunk of the Renault. Now he wound his way out of
Kreuzberg and onto the road that ran north to Neustrelitz. Beside
him, Halbach leaned his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.
"Not very far, is it?"
"Three hours, no more than that."
"Will he be at the bar?"
"I trust he will. Do you agree?"
"I'm not sure. He'll think about it, try to find a way out. And then
. . . well, you'll see, won't you."
A fine spring night. The road was dark and deserted and Mercier
drove fast. It was 11:30 when they reached the city of Rostock and, a
few minutes later, the port of Warnemunde. At the dock, the ferry--a
ferry from a cartoon; its tall stack would pump out puffs of smoke in
time to a calliope--was already taking on passengers, headed across
the Baltic to the Danish port of Gedser. Just up the street, at the edge
of the dock, a customs shed held the border kontrol, where two passengers waited at the door, then entered the shed.
"Shall I walk you through the kontrol?" Mercier said.
"No, I'll manage."
"There's one last train for Copenhagen tonight, on the other side.
Of course, once you're in Denmark, you may do whatever you like."