In August of 1937, Harro’s friend Werner Dissel is arrested for, according to the Gestapo report, “cultural Bolshevist activities,” “communist subversion of the Wehrmacht,” and “negligent betrayal of military secrets.” These are serious allegations, the result of Dissel’s “reconnaissance about military activity for Franco-Spain” coming to light. It concerns the two tank regiments near Neuruppin, the ones he had also told Harro about at the Air Ministry casino. In Dissel’s notebook, the Gestapo finds Harro’s name and contact details.
Will Harro be dragged into the affair as well? Things are suddenly precarious when he receives a summons to the Gestapo office for the purpose of clearing up some questions. He can assume that Dissel has kept quiet about the conversation at the casino. But it’s imperative that Harro does not compromise himself, given the possibility that the two of them could be interrogated jointly.
Just as four years prior, when he was supposed to attest to the ostensible suicide of Henry Erlanger, he ascends the stairs of the dark sandstone building opposite the limestone RLM headquarters, though this time he’s a well-groomed member of the Luftwaffe in full battle regalia—a rapier and a 6.35-millimeter Haenel-Schmeisser pistol in his belt.
Harro enters the room where the questioning is to take place. He knows how thin the ice is he’s walking on, but he’s able to appear relaxed, friendly, and open. As Harro suspected, Werner Dissel is also there. He greets his friend warmly, smiling and acting at ease. He asks the officer whether he is permitted to smoke and whether he may offer the arrestee a cigarette. The Gestapo cop won’t be outdone by Harro’s congeniality: “Yes, by all means,” he answers, as if it goes without saying.
Harro holds out his full pack of cigarettes to Dissel. “Would you object if I gave him the whole lot?” he now asks the policeman with a sideways glance.
“Of course not.”
“Would you like to examine them first?”
“Certainly not—we wouldn’t even think of it.”
In a consoling tone, Harro says to Dissel: “Things won’t be so bad. You’re not the only one this ever happened to.”
Dissel understands the intimation, and while he tries to pull a cigarette out, he discreetly examines the pack and finds some hidden writing. In tiny block letters beneath the silver paper it says: EXTRA FONTANA TERRA INCOGNITA.
Harro offers him a light. Dissel inhales the first puff and thinks intently about the words Harro put there. Fontana—that probably means Neuruppin, the birthplace of the writer Fontane. And extra could mean extraterritorial, as in outside Neuruppin—where the tank regiment is. Terra incognita can only mean that the Gestapo hasn’t discovered Harro’s part in the whole thing. Now Dissel knows that he can confidently continue to remain silent about the meeting at the Air Ministry casino. Rarely has a cigarette tasted better.
After Harro leaves the room, Dissel is asked: “Why, you muddlehead, didn’t you confide about this to your friend, an exemplary German officer?”
“Yeah, I should have,” Dissel answers. “But I didn’t want to burden him.”
Harro heads back to his limestone castle in a good mood. This time he’s outsmarted the Gestapo. They’re not as clever as they think they are, he concludes, as he closes the door to office number 5148 behind him.