The Arms Maker of Berlin, page 11
She looked up, saw Nick, then patted the spot beside her on the couch.
“Have a seat.”
“I thought you hated cognac?”
“I hate fires, too. They were always another excuse for him to get drunk. I guess it’s my idea of a tribute. Or maybe I thought it would help me commune with his soul.”
“Any luck?”
“My vision’s a little blurred. That’s a start.”
But her speech was crisp. Either she was taking it slow or Gordon had previously made a dent in the bottle.
“Pour me one of those,” he said, as much to prevent her from finishing it as to keep her company.
The first sip explained her craving. The pleasant blend of heat and grape instantly reproduced the essence of a firelit winter evening with Gordon Wolfe. By the second swallow Nat wouldn’t have been surprised to see the old fellow step from the shadows to began regaling them with some favored tale.
Viv’s thoughts must have been on a similar track, judging from her next remark.
“He told me once that he visited the bunker, you know. In Berlin, after the war.”
“Hitler’s bunker?”
She nodded.
“With Dulles himself. Just the two of them. A Russian officer gave them a tour. The furniture was still intact, right down to the bloodstained couch where he’d shot himself.”
“You’re kidding? How come I’ve never heard this? Gordon never told anybody.”
“He told me.”
“Yeah, but …”
“You mean, how come he never used it to show off? Or impress people in the department? Or get laid at some conference?”
“I don’t think Gordon ever did too much of that.”
“Maybe not after you met him. But there were a lot of things he never talked about, considering what a blowhard he could be about other stuff.”
So Gordon had toured the Führerbunker with Dulles. If true, it was quite an exalted excursion for someone who, by his own account, had been the lowliest of clerks.
“The doctor thinks it might have been an overdose,” Viv said.
“Hitler’s suicide?”
“Gordon’s death. He thinks Gordon might have been trying to make up for the doses he had already missed. Playing catch-up with his digitalis. It’s been known to happen.”
“How many pills were left?”
“Plenty. But I don’t know how many there were to begin with. Any way you add it up, the FBI killed him. They didn’t need to lock him up. It was pure spite.”
Nat didn’t know how to respond, so he let it go and waited for the smooth current of cognac to carry her further downstream.
“That fellow Holland was around this evening looking for you,” she said a while later. “Said you were looking over the documents with a Swiss girl.”
“She’s German.”
“Same difference. Can’t trust ’em, either way.”
Now where had that come from?
“Speaking of people you can’t trust,” Nat said, “I was talking to Turner, the local cop. He mentioned a break-in here a few weeks back.”
She nodded.
“The man’s an idiot, but he’s right. Gordon was all in a tizzy till he decided nothing important was gone. They hit our house in Wightman, too.”
“The same people?”
“That’s what Gordon figured.”
“How come?”
“He never said. But he seemed pretty certain. That reminds me. He left something for you. First thing he checked after the break-in. He kept it hidden under the insulation.”
“What is it?”
“Some box. He wouldn’t say what was in it. But after the break-in he showed me where he kept it. Said if anything ever happened to him, he wanted you to have it. Said you were the only one who’d know what to do with it.”
“Something to do with his work?”
Nat tried not to sound too excited. Who knew, maybe it was the four missing folders. Quest begun, quest ended. Just like that.
“He didn’t say. You want it now?”
“Might as well.”
She smiled.
“Figured you’d say that. Peas in a pod on that kind of thing.” She stood slowly and unsteadily. “Trouble is, this is my third drink. I can’t make it up those hideaway steps without breaking my neck. If you’ll do the climbing, I’ll talk you through it. Come on, I’ll get a flashlight.”
She fetched one from the kitchen, and they went down the hall to a cooler part of the house, where the night air coursed through screened windows. Nat pulled a lanyard from the ceiling to lower a folding staircase, which creaked as he climbed. He poked his head into stale air the temperature of midsummer as Viv handed the flashlight up to him. The beam fell first on a cardboard box with the title of Nat’s first book printed on the side. It was a publisher’s shipment of twenty-four copies—a significant number, considering that fewer than a thousand were ever printed. Nat opened a flap and got another surprise. Only four copies remained, meaning Gordon must have handed out quite a few.
“Found it yet?” Viv called out.
“No. You said it’s beneath the insulation?”
“Just to the left of the opening, between the first two joists.”
The insulation was foil-covered and fleecy pink. Nat rolled back the nearest strip like a blanket from a doll’s bed, and there it was—a square wooden container twice the size of a cigar box. It was heavier than he expected and smelled of machine oil. Emblazoned on top in German script was the name of a gun shop in Zurich: “W. Glaser, Löwenstrasse 42.” That alone might have meaning, he supposed.
“Got it!” he shouted down the steps. “Gangway.”
The contents slid and rattled as he descended. Definitely something besides paper in there. They went back to the couch to open the box by firelight. It felt like a séance, with Gordon’s spirit watching over their shoulders. Nat suppressed a shiver.
“Here goes.”
He pried open a rusty hasp and lifted the hinged top. The first visible item was the peaked cap of a German officer, with a patent leather brim and gray wool top, plus the customary emblem featuring a silver eagle perched on a swastika.
“What do you think?” he asked. “War trophy?”
Viv knitted her brow.
“No idea.”
“Why would he want me to have it?”
Collectors of Nazi memorabilia gave Nat the creeps, and Gordon had known that.
“Do you think he picked it up in the bunker?” she asked.
“Maybe. No note. No name on the hatband, either. Just a size, in centimeters.”
He set it aside on the couch. Four other items remained.
The largest was a small bottle of brown glass, girdled by a tightly folded sheet of paper attached with a rubber band. The band broke the instant Nat tried to remove it, and he carefully slipped off the paper. The bottle was about three quarters full. He shook it. Some sort of powder.
“This look familiar?”
Viv shook her head.
The paper, coming apart at the folds, was a memo dated September 1945, four months after the end of the war, addressed to “BB-8.” The sender was “GW,” presumably Gordon Wolfe, at a time when he would have still been based with U.S. occupation forces in Berlin while clerking for Dulles. It had a numbered series of instructions, one through four. Nat read the first one:
1. There is enclosed a bottle of secret ink powder which you requested in connection with your North Africa-Near East operation. This ink is secure against any known enemy censorship or ink-developing technique. The powder is shaving talcum with the secret ink ingredient mixed in it. For cover, it could actually be used as shaving talcum if necessary.
The next three instructions told how to mix the powder with water or distilled spirits—vodka and gin were recommended—to make the ink, and then how to use it.
Nat wondered anew if Gordon’s duties hadn’t been more important than the man had let on. He was also intrigued by the idea of Gordon being in touch with a “North Africa-Near East” intelligence operative, especially in light of what Willis Turner had told him about the FBI’s hunt for visitors of Middle Eastern origin. There was certainly no other connection that Nat knew of between Gordon and that screwed-up part of the world.
“Secret ink?” Viv said, peering at the memo. “That’s a new one.”
“Maybe I’m supposed to use it.”
“It’s what Gordon should have used to write that damn review of your book.”
“Thanks for saying so.”
“What’s next?”
“Looks like an OSS lapel pin, stuck on his ID card. Dated October 5, 1943.”
“The day he joined. A month after they crash-landed.”
“Wow. Dulles moved fast.”
“They were pretty shorthanded in Bern.”
He picked up the next item in the box.
“Know anything about this matchbook? It’s from the Hotel Jurgens in Bern. Is that where he lived?”
“No. He had an apartment, down by the river. Never heard of that place.”
He set it aside. The last item was a key, wrapped with a rubber band along with a white business card and a plastic swipe card with a black metal stripe. All three looked relatively new. The business card was for Matt Boland, manager of U-Store-Em Self Storage in Baltimore.
“Must fit a storage locker,” Nat said, his interest growing. Another possible resting place for the four missing folders. Assuming, of course, that the FBI was right in claiming that Gordon had stolen them to begin with. “What do you make of all this?”
Viv frowned and put aside her drink. Then she lit another cigarette and inhaled with what seemed to be an extra degree of vehemence. Something about the assortment of objects was making her uneasy. She narrowed her eyes and picked up the business card.
“Baltimore,” she said. “I lived there during the war.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Worked on the Liberty ships. A regular Rosie Riveter. Had an apartment in a row house on Brady Avenue in Fairfield. Rough little area. Most of the neighborhood still had dirt streets. Gordon and I stayed there a few months after he came home, in early ’46, and this address is practically right around the corner. Otherwise? No idea.”
They stared at the card a while longer. Viv picked up the German hat.
“Maybe my metric conversions aren’t so great, but I’d say this is Gordon’s size.”
He waited for more, but she was silent, frowning.
So what did they have here? Clues to a riddle? Cryptic signposts that would lead to the “legacy” Gordon had alluded to in his last rambling phone call? That would certainly fit with Gordon’s fondness for the elliptical, the coy. Or maybe it was nothing but trivial memorabilia, meaningful only to Gordon. One last cosmic prank played by the teacher on his eager, gullible student. The first step in finding the correct answer seemed obvious enough: See if the key still fit anything in Baltimore. As for the rest, who could say?
“Another thing,” he said. “While I was up in the attic I saw a box of my first book.”
She smiled.
“He ordered it the day it was released. He gave them out as little favors to visiting colleagues, or people who hosted him for lectures. He was quite proud of you.”
“He never told me.”
“He wouldn’t have. He was just too damn stubborn. Or maybe afraid is a better word.”
“Afraid?”
“Didn’t you ever notice the way he inched up to the line with so many people, trying to be their friend, only to back away at the last second? Like the risk just wasn’t worth it. Even with me, in a way.”
“Not with you.”
“Oh, yes. After the war, anyway. I know you don’t believe me when I say he came back a changed man, but he really did. I figured maybe he’d seen one of his buddies blown to pieces in one of those flying coffins. But, well, you read the piece in the Daily Wildcat.”
“Then maybe it wasn’t the war. Maybe it was just his true nature emerging as he grew up. It happens, Viv. When people aren’t kids anymore, they no longer have to try and please everybody. Maybe that’s just the way he was.”
She stared at him a few seconds, seemingly on the verge of tears.
“That’s probably the cruelest thing you’ve ever said, Nat. I guess you’ve earned the right. But spare me that kind of honesty in the future, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s me. Maybe it’s too early to be poking around in all this stuff. Besides, you never knew him like I did. That’s the real pity. No one did. All the little things he’d let slip out from time to time, like the story about the bunker. It never happened when he was being a professional. In his work he was always so guarded. Even with you.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. When he signed on with the OSS he took an oath of secrecy, and that meant something. I met some of the others at reunions. They’re the same.”
“Maybe so.”
Although Nat had his doubts. Oath or not, once you became a historian your goals were the exact opposite of a spy’s. You no longer kept secrets; you brought them to light. Gordon had preached that as passionately as anyone.
“Or maybe …” Viv said, hesitating. “Maybe it was a woman. I’ve always wondered.”
“You can’t really believe that?”
“We weren’t married yet when the war started, even though we had talked about it. Of course we made all sorts of promises when he left. ‘Don’t sit under the apple tree’ and all that. But it wasn’t like he was in a trench somewhere, especially once he landed in Switzerland. Wine, women, and song, from what I’ve read.”
“Weren’t you able to tell from his letters home?”
“He couldn’t send any. Or get any, either. Not with the borders closed. After his plane went down I didn’t even know he was alive until the Red Cross told his parents he’d landed in Switzerland. We were pretty much cut off for more than a year.”
“Did you ever ask after he got back? About a woman, I mean.”
She shook her head.
“Too afraid he’d tell me, I guess. But I did find something once. A book.”
“Some kind of journal?”
“No. A novel. He said it was a Swiss murder mystery. It was in German, so who knows what it really was?”
“That’s your evidence?”
“There was a flower inside, pressed between the pages. And a girl’s name was on the inside cover.”
Hardly on the level of lipstick on the collar. Viv was probably overreacting based on Gordon’s later infidelities.
“He probably picked it up in a secondhand shop when he was bored out of his mind. The girl could have been a previous owner.”
“That’s what he said. But explain the flower.”
“A bookmark. He was reading in a field, or a park, and never got back to it. I’ll give it a look if you want. Put your mind at ease that it wasn’t some sappy romance.”
“I never saw it again. For all I know, he threw it away.”
Hardly an act of the lovelorn. But Nat held his tongue. On this, of all nights, Viv was entitled to give free rein to her emotions.
“My advice to you, Nat, is that if you ever have an important question to ask someone you love, then ask it. Don’t wait for the right moment. ’Cause one day you wake up and you’re all out of moments.”
There were tears on her cheeks. She leaned closer and Nat held on, feeling her muffled sobs. When she pulled away her face was splotchy, but she managed a weak smile.
“Maybe you’ll get to the bottom of all this. You and the FBI, looking for those missing folders.”
“Did Holland tell you about that?”
“Only because he thought I might know something. As if I’d tell him. No chance, after the nasty things he said about Gordon. But I’d tell you, of course.”
“And?”
She shook her head.
“No idea. All I know for sure is that the old Gordon has been dead much longer than the one you knew. Maybe that’s what you’ll find hiding in those folders—the old Gordon.”
“I’ll let you know.”
She nodded and picked up the glass of cognac. Then she thought better of it and set it back down. When she next spoke, all the energy was drained from her voice.
“Help me to bed, will you? I’m kind of tired.”
Viv took his arm and wobbled toward the bedroom. He tucked her in, the way he had once tucked Karen in as a child. She shut her eyes and took his hand. For a harrowing moment he was convinced she had decided to die, and would do so then and there. But within seconds she was sound asleep.
Her other hand still held a cigarette with a drooping column of ash. Nat gently took it from her fingers and stubbed it out. Yes, Gordon was a drunk, but Nat wondered how many times the old fellow must have kept Viv from burning down the house. Like most enduring couples, they had developed an unspoken symbiosis. How long would Viv last now that Gordon’s half of the survival equation was missing? He made a mental note to check up on her when he could. It was the least he could do for Gordon.
He walked quietly back to the living room and again looked over the items from Gordon’s strange bequest. Mere trivia? Nat doubted it. Especially after hearing of Gordon’s trip to the Hitler bunker. The items had the feel of encoded knowledge, a gift from one historian to another, and Nat felt the first stirrings of an excitement that he hadn’t experienced in ages. Gordon, who in life had done so much to damage his zeal, was now reawakening it in death. Already Nat felt fiercely proprietary about these objects. Maybe he shouldn’t tell Berta about them, or anyone else. It was, in other words, the usual dilemma of the treasure hunter. Who else could be trusted with the map?
He tucked the box under his arm and strolled out into the night, too restless to simply drive back into town. Moonlight illuminated the trailhead that Gordon and he had walked so many times before, and visibility was so good that Nat decided to enjoy the smells and sounds of the night forest before heading back. It would feel good to stretch his legs after such a strange and exhausting day.
