Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

“Which reminds me. I got another one of those funny hang-ups from your cell. Same guy. You really should, like, cancel the number. I mean, he could cost you a fortune.”

The news made him angry. Where the hell were Holland’s people? He tried to keep his voice calm for Karen.

“Well, at least you’ve got Dave to keep you company.”

“Dave drove home to Cleveland. So don’t worry, you can rest easy.”

“Actually, I was kind of hoping he’d stick around.”

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“I don’t like it that you’re there alone. Have you thought about visiting your mom until I’m back? Especially if I have to go off for a while?”

“Already trying to get rid of me?”

“No. It’s not like that at all.”

“You sure? I mean, you haven’t really been a full-time dad in like, what, five years?”

“No. Truthfully. I’ve been looking forward to this all semester. Just do me a favor. Lock the dead bolt till I’m back, and keep an eye out for anybody who might be paying a little too much attention to you or to the house. If they’re in an unmarked black Chevy, it’s probably just some federal people, making sure my stuff isn’t disturbed. Anybody else, let me know right away.”

“You’re making this sound dangerous.”

“I’m probably overreacting. But if I stay on this job much longer, maybe we’ll have to make other arrangements. Just for a while. Look, I’ll be back Tuesday night, so sit tight until then. And I hope you can go to the memorial service on Wednesday. I have to speak, so I’ll need the moral support. I might not be showing up alone, by the way. There’s this, uh, German researcher traveling with me.”

He was grateful she couldn’t see him blush.

“I’m guessing from your tone of voice that the German is a woman. And maybe even kind of hot?”

“Not hot. Just obsessed. Worse than me, even.”

“A perfect match.”

“Easy. Risky business, dating colleagues.”

“Risk is what makes it interesting.”

“You’re too young for us to be having this conversation.”

“But not too young to give you advice, especially when I’m the one with the boyfriends and you’re all alone.”

He was about to ask why “boyfriend” was plural when he heard her flipping pages. The ever present Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, no doubt. Karen’s Holy Bible.

“Why do I have the feeling you’re about to quote some verse?”

“Because I am? Here it is. Poem 1377. From her ‘Life’ series.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Well. Are you going to read it?”

“Too embarrassing.” She giggled. “Besides, it will be more effective if you look it up later. It’s the perfect message to sleep on, especially if your German is there with you.”

“Separate rooms. And she’s not my German.”

“Well, read it anyway. And don’t worry, I won’t talk to any strangers.”

He tried to laugh. But it was far too easy to imagine her alone in the house. She’d be standing in the kitchen with the curtains open and a single light on, visible to anyone in the backyard. Those old mullioned windows, which you could unlock simply by smashing a single pane. He resisted the urge to phone Holland, lest the man conclude he had gone batty. Rest easy, he told himself. The feds are on the job.

Just before climbing into bed he fired up his laptop to track down the poem. He was hoping vainly for a bit of daughterly encouragement, or maybe a little solace over the death of a friend. But, no, Karen had of course become fixated on Berta.

Even so, he had to smile at the poem’s ring of truth. It was obvious that Karen knew him all too well in spite of their years of estrangement, and as he scanned the words he imagined her reading them aloud, embarrassed or not, in a tone of amused irony:

Forbidden fruit a flavor has

That lawful Orchards mocks-

How luscious lies within the Pod

The Pea that Duty locks-

Forbidden fruit, indeed. This assignment had it by the bushel, and not just in the form of Berta Heinkel.

For one thing, Nat couldn’t help but wonder if he was about to play one of those hidden roles in a momentous affair-the sort of obscure but significant action he always enjoyed unearthing years later. It was quite a temptation for a historian, this idea of a cameo upon the stage of his own discipline.

But it did seem to violate some unwritten rule of the profession. And he, as well as anyone, knew how often such actions, no matter how well-meaning, produced unintended consequences. He was also aware of the typical fate of influential minor players. The reason history tended to forget them was that they were so often erased by the very forces they set in motion. Blotted out, like the names in a classified document.

Nat folded up his laptop and slid beneath the sheets, but he didn’t fall asleep for hours.

The voice of Gordon Wolfe spoke from the printed page, and Nat was stunned by its disclosure. Now the voice was laughing, the old man enjoying a postmortem chuckle over the little joke he’d played only moments before his death.

“Sly old bastard,” Nat muttered to himself. “So this is what you meant.”

The occasion called for a celebratory shot of Gordon’s bourbon. Alas, food and drink were forbidden in the vast reading room of the National Archives. But no rules could keep out the ghosts, which always flourished in this haunted chamber despite a picture-window view onto a sunny suburban forest.

The document before him was an OSS employment form that Gordon had filled out on October 5, 1943. To Nat’s surprise, it included code names, countersigns, and secret ID numbers, hardly what you’d expect to find on a job application for a clerk or translator. The line that had just spoken to Nat was on the “Agent’s Check List,” an item that asked the applicant to provide a “Question and Answer by which agent may identify himself to collaborators.”

Gordon had offered this: “Q. Where did you have dinner the last evening you were in Washington, D.C.? A: The Metropolitan Club.” It was an eerie echo of his jailhouse exchange with the paramedic two mornings ago. Faced with death, the stricken Gordon Wolfe had journeyed back in time to his first day on the job as a spy.

For Nat, this was the thrilling beauty of research-an addictive power to commune with the dead. Better than a Ouija board, this stuff.

“See this?” he whispered, sliding the paper toward Berta.

She read it, nodded, then turned back to her own work. It was already apparent that only a reference to the White Rose or Kurt Bauer would get a rise out of her. Well, tough luck, because Nat was determined to build a new dossier on Gordon as part of their quest.

Nat was no stranger to declassified OSS archives, but his previous work had focused on OSS contacts with the German resistance. This time he was venturing into less-familiar territory, so he had sought out archivist Bill Staley, a genial old gnome who had been guiding prospectors into these shadowy mine shafts for decades. Staley knew not only where the gold was but also who had buried it, and with what brand of shovel.

“Young Turnbull,” Staley said, greeting him in the reference room. “Welcome back.”

Nat turned to introduce Berta, but she was gone. The latest in a series of antisocial moments since their arrival downstairs.

“Sorry to hear about Gordon. I saw his obituary in this morning’s Post.”

The New York Times had also run a story. Mercifully, neither mentioned Gordon’s alleged thievery or the fact that he had died in jail, although the Times did refer to the brouhaha over his embellished military record. Holland must have worked overtime to keep a lid on things, and Nat wondered why.