Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

Berta sighed and gave Nat a look that said, “Enough small talk-this fellow could drop dead at any moment.” Nat reluctantly took out his notebook.

“Something tells me you’re going to ask next about that slippery American I followed for two years.”

“How’d you know?”

“Well, he was one of only three people I was assigned to, and he was the only American. Plus he damn near cost me my job. Him and that fucking German. No offense to you, my Liebchen.” He winked at Berta.

“You may say whatever you wish about my countrymen from that era,” Berta said. “But to which one in particular are you referring? Kurt Bauer?”

“All in good time,” he said, sipping his lager. It left a foam mustache on his gray stubble. “First I must tell you about my adventures with Icarus.”

“You called him that, too?” Nat said.

“We knew his real name, of course. Gordon Wolfe. He made it easy to find out, the way he operated. Sloppy and reckless, at least at first. Always in a hurry.”

No wonder Dulles had sent the laundry list of advice.

“Give me an example.”

“Well, the thing with the phone, for starters. Back then Swiss phones didn’t cut off when you hung up. That made it possible for the central exchange to plug in to almost any room, using the phone as a microphone. The only way to stop it was to unplug the phone between calls. Dulles discovered this right away, of course. But not Icarus.”

Molden told a few more tales like that. Slipups and bumbles that made his job easy. But with experience, Icarus became increasingly elusive. Berta, who seemed impatient with the talk of tradecraft, tried to move the conversation forward by mentioning the name of Kurt Bauer’s Swiss shadow.

“Your colleague Lutz Visser,” she said. “Did you work with him much?”

Molden flicked his hand dismissively, as if to shoo a fly.

“Visser is dead. And good riddance. An overbearing liar. Spinning so many stories about every German he tailed that toward the end they just put him on a few Belgians and let him say whatever he pleased.”

“What kind of stories?”

“You are interested in lies? I thought you were historians.”

“Sometimes even a lie contains a grain of truth.”

Molden shook his head in irritation.

“What did Visser say about Kurt Bauer?”

“Same sort of claptrap he said about every German. That Bauer was mixing with Gestapo bad guys. Cooking up plots. Hell, he was a boy barely eighteen. Not that youth ever kept any Germans from behaving badly. Bauer was lost here, mooning about with nothing to do. Probably left a girlfriend behind, that’s what I always said.”

“How did you happen to get a look at him?” Nat asked.

“Easy. He met with Icarus. Several times.” Another swallow of beer. Another mustache. Then he laughed. “Bauer didn’t like our man Icarus one bit, I can tell you that! But of course Visser only took that as a sign that Bauer must be up to no good.”

“And you’re certain he was wrong?” Berta asked.

“Oh, as you say, there is often a grain of truth. The Gestapo contact, for example. You couldn’t be a German in Bern without having the Gestapo look you up, especially if you were as prominent as Bauer. Naturally they wanted to know his whereabouts. But by that late in the war I would say he was the one with more influence in that relationship.”

“How so?” Nat asked.

“Well, this was late ’44. Even the Gestapo knew the war was lost. Their people here were well beyond the orbit of Berlin, and they weren’t interested in fighting to the last man no matter what the Führer said. A few began placing their bets on the Americans. Some of them probably figured Bauer would be a good middleman for meeting Dulles. But people like the Bauers were already too preoccupied with looking out for themselves.”

“Of course they were,” Berta said. “And the Bauers came out of it quite well.”

“People like them always do, and with good reason. They’re more interested in making money than ideology. So you see? Visser was a lying shit.”

“But even you said Bauer didn’t like Icarus,” Berta said. From her aggressive posture, you could tell she wasn’t thrilled with Molden’s conclusion that Bauer was an okay guy.

“This is true. And the feeling was mutual. You saw it in their body language whenever they met. Shoulders turned away from each other. Never face-to-face, unless it was confrontational. Visser wasn’t exaggerating that part.”

“Bauer must not have been that much of an opportunist,” Nat said, “if he couldn’t even bring himself to butter up a small player like Icarus.”

“He felt he had been pawned off. He wanted an audience with the big boss and thought if he sulked enough they might let him see Dulles himself. When that didn’t work he tried making big promises to the errand boy.”

“What kind of promises?”

Molden shrugged.

“I don’t know for sure. I only have theories. Offering to spy on his Gestapo contacts, perhaps. Or his Nazi friends. Stuckart was also in Bern by then, you know.”

“Wilhelm Stuckart?”

“Wilhelm’s son, Erich. He arrived in late ’44, toward the end of summer. He and Bauer were school chums.”

Well, this was news. Wilhelm Stuckart was a high official in the Nazi Interior Ministry, best known for cowriting the Nuremberg laws, which codified German anti-Semitism. He was also one of fifteen muckety-mucks who attended the Wannsee Conference in 1942, where the murderous Reinhard Heydrich laid out the basis for the “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question. Stuckart was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg but got out of prison in 1949. He died four years later in a suspicious car accident.

Nat hadn’t even known Stuckart had a family. But Berta seemed to know all about Erich. Nat could see it in her eyes. Perhaps it was one of her jealously guarded secrets. She was watching Molden carefully, as if worried about what might spill out next.

“What was Erich Stuckart doing in Bern?” Nat asked.

“Same thing as Bauer. Trying to cut deals for his family. Leaving messages for Dulles and anyone else who would see him. Visser, of course, claimed Stuckart had bigger plans, and was hatching them with Bauer.”

“Did Icarus know about Stuckart?” Berta asked.

“Who can say for sure?”

Nat sensed that at times Molden was still covering for past shortcomings. Maybe he had been a lousy spy. To watch him now, tucking into his Rösti , Nat could easily imagine him wearying of the chase on a nice spring day opting instead for a Bier and Schnitzel at some establishment like this.

“Even if Icarus had known about Stuckart,” Molden continued, “why should he have cared? There were other operatives assigned to the likes of Stuckart. And by then, of course, Icarus had far bigger concerns in Adelboden.”

“Adelboden?” Nat asked.

It was a town in the Alps, about an hour south of Bern. By the end of the war, its hotels had been overflowing with interned American airmen who hadn’t been lucky enough to get jobs like Gordon’s.

“Yes, Adelboden. Did you not know about Icarus and his little Fräulein, his pretty little waitress?”

“I’ll be damned.”

“You knew this?” Berta said. Her tone was accusatory.

“Not really. But there was a memo in the archives from Gordon to Dulles, ‘The Case of the Pretty Waitress.’ All about some Swiss damsel in distress in Adelboden. I copied it, but I didn’t think it meant much at the time.”

“Oh, she was quite important to him,” Molden said. His smile was a leer.

“Wasn’t she charged with something?” Nat asked.

“The security police believed she was helping American airmen escape. She supplied them with civilian clothes, and on her holidays she drove them to Luzern, where they made their way across the border into France.”