Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

“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.”