23 
23 Inviting in her thin, white hotel maid’s dress, despite her grim face, Trudi waited for me in a sidewalk café at the upper end of the Open Market. We had met there often before, indistinguishable I suppose from the scores of other young GIs with equally young, blond fräuleins. It was another glorious summer day. The market echoed and reechoed with young laughter. Winter and death had been put behind. Temporarily.
I kissed her lightly. “Sorry if I went too far in the Untersandstrasse last night.”
“You understood and respected my modesty, Karl. You were wonderful.”
The way she saw it, I was incapable of any wrong.
“Sit down, Trud, we have some serious work to do.”
She nodded, waiting for my words.
“First of all, your friends in Stuttgart, they are close friends, you can trust them?”
“Of course.”
“You know where they live?”
“Certainly.”
“I’m afraid it will be necessary to bring you and your mother and sister to them tonight. Will your friends take you in on such short notice?”
“Naturally.”
“Are you as confident as you sound in those answers?”
She touched my hand. “Yes, Karl. But you must not risk yourself.”
“I don’t intend to risk anyone.” I picked up my coffee cup and then put it down again. My stomach was protesting that I was risking far too much. “There is some danger, I will not deny that, but much less danger than you have survived before. It is important that you and your mother and Erika obey all my instructions perfectly. Do you understand?”
“Jawohl.” She smiled.
“You are not to tell them our destination. Is that understood? . . . Good. Are they working tonight? . . . No? That helps. At eighteen hundred tell them that they must put on the best American clothes they have. They may bring one small bag each. Pack whatever is most valuable and anything American which might hint that you have a friend in the military. Understand? . . . Fine. Leave everything else. Don’t worry about money, that will be arranged. I want the apartment to look like a German refugee room from which nothing has been removed, as if the three of you might return any minute. Got it?”
“Ja.” Her eyes bore into mine.
“Good. At twenty hundred proceed to the alley where we first met, beneath the Oberpfarrekirche. I’ll be waiting in the Buick. Climb in and we leave. Any questions?”
“Papers?”
“They have been arranged.”
“Truly?” Her youthful face exploded with joy. A passport to paradise.
“Truly. But you must tell no one, say good-bye to no one, talk to no one unless you have to. Insist that your mother and Erika do exactly what I have told you. Do not go back to the Bambergerhof for anything you might have left there. Do not leave your room between eighteen hundred and twenty hundred. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Any more questions?”
“I worry about you.” She touched my hand again.
“Don’t.” I smiled like a cowboy hero—Randolph Scott or maybe Joel McCrea, a sturdy WASP this time. “It’s going to work out all right. It’ll be a few weeks before we can see each other, that’ll be the hardest part for me.”
“For me also.”
“One more thing.” I had a brilliant idea, or so I thought. “Do you have an extra picture of your mother and father and you two from maybe ten years ago that you could leave someplace?”
“Surely. Perhaps in the little box on the table.”
“Great. . . . And, remember, do not tell your mother or sister where they are going. Do not mention the papers. Tell them that my orders are most strict. I will explain all in the car. Okay?”
“Okeydokey, Herr Yankee.”
I didn’t eat any lunch.
By now the reader of these pages, being wise and more experienced than was that callow lad playing Galahad or the Rider in the Dom in Bamberg, anno Domini 1947, has doubtless perceived the potentially catastrophic omission of which I was guilty.
In August the days are shortening rapidly in Europe, but there is still much more light than darkness. We would be driving in twilight or dusk most of the way to Stuttgart. I’d be returning in darkness, maybe in time to see the dawn. Even if I was delayed, there would still be time for the operation to be launched on schedule.
As long as I could sell the schedule to Clarke.
Then I walked over to the Residenz for a truly tricky part. It had been on my list of options and I had debated whether to try it. General Meade was not the kind of man whom you could easily fool, even if in this case he might not mind being fooled. I would not lie to him. I hope the reader notes that I rarely lie, but I certainly deceive—being skilled in Jesuit casuistry, albeit trained by the Dominicans.
Captain Polly had left some letters on my desk to type. I polished them off quickly and brought them and the carbons up to her. I noted with some relief that Lieutenant Nan was not around. I would hardly have made my next move if she was.
“Good morning, Captain Nettleton, ma’am. Staff Sgt. Charles C. O’Malley wonders if the captain persists in her request for personal information about Sergeant O’Malley?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Chucky?” Her face betrayed the look of your Irish woman when her patience with a recalcitrant male is about to reach its limit.
“You’ve forgotten?” I tried to sound as if I were devastated.
“I have forgotten what?”
“That you wanted to see the Clancy kid’s picture. Well, that’s all right.” I turned to leave.
“You have it with you?”
“Well, yes.”
She almost snatched the picture out of my hand. It was Rosie in her peach-colored prom dress, smiling and happy (pure fakery at the time).
“Gosh, Chuck,” Polly said softly. “Is she really this gorgeous?”
I peered over her shoulder as if I were unfamiliar with the picture.
“Perhaps more so,” I said judiciously.
“Are you in love with her?”
“There’s some debate about that.”
“No wonder you don’t have any fräuleins on the line. . . . Do you plan to marry her someday?”
My stomach protested that question. “We’re too young to think about that, Polly.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“You can never tell what might happen.” Not if I can help it.
“What’s she like?”
“Typical Irish matriarch in the making—contentious, opinionated, outspoken, strong-willed.”
“Ah?” Polly tilted her nose up in the air, ready to fight.
“Well, she’s also smart and sensitive and generous and loyal and lots of fun.” She drinks too much, but I was not going to say that.
“What more do you need? . . . What’s her name?”
“Rosie, ah, Rosemarie.”
“Fits her. She’s lovely, Chuck.” Polly handed the photo back to me. “Be good to her.”
“I’ll try. . . . Tell your man that I’m out here.”
What was the purpose of that little skit? Damned if I know. Not all my sneaky games have purpose.
I was ushered into General Meade’s promptly.
“What’s up, Chuck?” He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, a sign that he was relaxed and thinking about golf.
“We have a pretty good lead on the Wülfe family, General, sir.”
“Uhm.” He leaned forward. “What is it?”
“There is a German family living over a bakery on the Untersandstrasse. A woman and two daughters. The father is apparently dead. They seem to fit the description pretty well.”
The general’s relaxation vanished. He leaned forward intently. “We’ll have to confirm with the fingerprints.”
The fingerprint records would always follow them. The Schultzes would have to avoid being fingerprinted for the next two years until the new German Republic (Federal Republic—Bundesstaat, it was being called) came into existence and its citizens were not subject to deportation at the whim of the occupying powers. But even now they’d be pretty safe. Despite Interpol, there was no central fingerprint file among the occupying powers, especially with the Russian zone.
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you propose, Chuck?”
“To organize a team to apprehend them this evening, sir, with Agent Clarke’s permission, of course.”
“That seems reasonable,” he sighed. “I can’t say that I’m delighted at the prospect.”
“No, sir.”
“All right, son, carry on.”
“Yes, sir.” I saluted and left.
No lies. The general had not asked me why I was not planning to move on the Wülfes at once. I didn’t think he would because as a good humanitarian he would not like the smell of what we were doing. But, if he had wanted an immediate search, it would have taken me several hours to find Agent Clarke. By the time I found him, it would be too late.
General Meade was a humane and intelligent man, sensitive to the needs of his troops, open to change, flexible enough to act on the unorthodox (but mistaken) notion that I was both a brave man and a brilliant investigator. But it would not have occurred to him to ask whether turning three women over to the Russians on the flimsiest of charges was as immoral as sending Jews to concentration camps—not as massive a cooperation in evil and surely not a cooperation in murder whose only justification was religion and ethnicity. Yet once you have crossed the border by sending one innocent person (or one person for whose guilt there is no evidence) to torture and death, you have joined the ranks of the guilty. The general would have been horrified if I had suggested that to him, and I was not about to do so. He thought of himself as a good man.
I wondered myself whether, if I had not been personally involved, I would have refused to have anything to do with such a sin. I hope—and I still hope—that I would have refused.
In any case, instead of confrontation about moral issues and simple humanity we would evade the problem, maybe, by one of Chuck’s slick schemes.
At lunchtime, I drove the Buick back to the Vinehaus and packed it with all the things I would need for the trip, especially the maps and some fruit and a couple of thermoses of water. In my mailbox I found a letter from Rosemarie.
Just what I needed now.
I stuffed it in my pocket. I would have to answer. Rosemarie needed my letters.
Before I drove back to the Residenz, I checked the bar at the Bambergerhof, to make sure that Rednose Clarke was not there. If he wasn’t and General Meade asked me during the afternoon why I had not yet organized the raid, I could truthfully say that I had been unable to find Agent Clarke. If I could find him at noon, then I’d need another explanation. Perhaps I shouldn’t risk a return to the Residenz, but it would help if I was seen by everyone there to be hard at work. Well, moderately hard since I was part, after all, of an army of occupation.
The plan was too clever by half, too many cute little tricks that were the result of too much time to plan. I was worrying about the gnats and ignoring the beams.
I inspected the bar carefully. No sign of Agent Clarke. Good.
No, perhaps not so good. I thought about it and had another of my bright ideas. I left a note in his box. “I will report to you in the bar at six, sir. I believe we might have located the people for whom you are looking.”
Even if he didn’t check his box, the note would serve as evidence that I had tried. I marked the fact of the note in the little black book in which I was jotting down the details of my search for the Wülfes.
Two gumshoes trailed me back to the Residenz. What the hell was eating them? Was Sam Houston Carpenter just harassing me for the fun of it?
The first thing I did at HQ was to type up my notes from the little black book in the form of a journal to be submitted at the end of the operation. It presented our efforts as a paragon of responsible investigation, hindered only by the bizarre behavior of Agent Clarke. There were, need I say, no lies in it.
I rose from my desk to bring the journal to General Meade. I stopped in my tracks. That was being too eager. Save the journal for tomorrow.
Then I turned to Rosie’s letter.
Dear Chuck,
I’m writing from Lake Geneva where Peggy and I are staying for a week or two under the watchful eye of Mrs. Riordan. Not that there’s all that much for her to watch. The boys up here are real drips. Peggy and I both agreed that it would be much better if you were here because we could at least fight with you and that’s always fun.
So we swim and sail and play tennis and read. Peg is getting much better at tennis but I can still beat her. We’ll have to teach you how to play when you come home.
Peg is reading Farrell now and loves it. She claims all the characters live in our parish too. I’m plowing through Main Street, which is dumb.
Your description of the party at Captain Polly’s was wonderful. It did convince me that I will not try to come to Bamberg to see you. I’d be so out of place with those people. But you must be having a wonderful time showing off to them. Shame on you for eating so much caviar!
And the nerve of that Captain Polly! How dare she wonder what I look like! DON’T show her my picture—if you have one there, which I’m sure you don’t.
Seriously, she sounds very sweet and someone has to take care of you since your mom and Peg and I are not there.
Whom should I read next?
I do miss you, Chucky, though when you get home, I know we’ll keep on fighting.
Love,
Rosie
How do I answer as complex and intricate a letter as that—so much said indirectly and so much more implied. I had no time. I was about to go on a mission. I put the letter aside.
Then I knew I had to answer it.
Dear Rosemarie,
First of all, you would fit in all too well at one of Captain Polly’s parties. They’d forget all about the punk with the wire-brush hair that brung you. I’m glad you decided not to come here mostly because it still isn’t safe, but partly because you’d upstage me.
As for Captain Polly being my mother, I will have to contend with a sibling soon because, amidst universal rejoicing, she has announced that an heir or heiress to the Nettleton clan is forthcoming. They’re leaving here before Christmas.
Alas, too late comes your (I suspect insincere) prohibition against showing your picture to happy Polly. She demanded that I show her one such and I had no choice but to obey because she is my superior officer. So I did show her one of the more dazzling exercises in my photographic skill from the prom night (about which I suppose the less said the better). She was most impressed as I knew she would be. The picture was easy enough to find because it has hung in an appropriate frame in my room at the Vinehaus Messerschmitt.
I don’t claim you as my girl because I have no right to do so. But I’ll admit that I do not deny the impression that some have that such is the case. I hung the picture for the same reason I showed it to Captain Polly. To have a picture of someone like you makes me look good—as a photographer of course but for other reasons too.
You should read Faulkner next. Then Graham Greene. The former is tough, but worth the effort. The latter is a convert who, mostly because he has never lived in a place like St. Ursula, doesn’t quite understand Catholicism.
Shortly you will receive a pound of caviar from me—beluga, I’m told, the best. (Ask the good April, who is an expert on such matters.) I’ll tell you the story of how I got it some other time. It is, however, quite legal. Well, more or less. I’m enclosing a picture of the Biergarten Geyersworth (that’s the Schloss Geyersworth in the background). Actually the place is far more degenerate than it seems.
I paused in my typing. I had to say something about fighting with her. I would probably survive the next eighteen hours without any trouble. But if I didn’t, should I not say something more?
I thought of the letter I memorized up in the Bohemian Alps. It should be on the record, whatever my fears. I sighed. I didn’t want to write it, but I should.
I sighed again and typed it in.
As for fighting, I don’t want to fight with you anymore. It stopped being fun long ago. I’m sure we’ll argue, but no more fights.
Maybe I’ve grown up a little here in Germany, not much, but perhaps just a little. So, I want to apologize to you for all the times I was rude or sarcastic to you. Maybe you know that it was just a silly little game that both of us played, but I was the one that kept the game going and I’m sorry. I hope we can be friends when I return.
I thought about writing those words up in the Bohemianwald and never did work up the courage to do so.
We’ve got an operation going now. It’s not particularly dangerous, but I’m not very brave. By the time you receive this letter it will be over, and unless you have read bad news in the press, I’ll be fine.
Love,
Chuck
I sealed it and threw it in the mailbox as I left. I wished a minute later I hadn’t sent it. But then I was glad I did.