Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

“This business you’re pursuing. I won’t pretend I know what it’s all about, but maybe it would be best if you left me out of it from here on. I do thank you for the lunch, though.”

From then until they dropped him off at his apartment, Molden was wary and watchful. Exactly how he must have carried himself during the war, Nat figured. Back when nobody was who he said he was and everyone had something to hide.

Back when Bern was the spy capital of Europe.

What Nat never could have known or learned, no matter how many old documents and code names he dug up, was what took place when Gordon Wolfe met Sabine Keller.

Nor could he ever have known that Gordon’s final conscious thoughts, only seconds after the old man wryly offered his OSS countersign to the jailhouse doctor, were of that very moment sixty-four years earlier when he first laid eyes on Sabine.

Such are the limitations of history, and also of espionage, because even the masterful Allen Dulles had no inkling of what befell his young flyboy operative on that July afternoon.

Gordon saw her before she saw him. She was sprawled in tall grass on an Alpine riverbank in the valley town of Adelboden. He had come looking for her in response to a written plea from an American airman, a lieutenant who appreciated her efforts on behalf of his compatriots and thought she was getting a raw deal from the Swiss. Not much of an assignment, really, but they sent Gordon because he knew the ways of these flyboys.

He checked first at the hotel where she worked-and where the lieutenant was billeted. The proprietor said she was on break, but he could probably find her eating lunch down by the river.

Moments later, that was indeed where he spotted her. She was reading, as luck would have it, a Wolf Schwertenbach novel with a red cover. Her feet tucked beneath her. Her hair was pulled to one side, and her head was tilted down toward the book to expose a fine, graceful neck.

On his way into town, Gordon had stopped at a café for a pint of lager. He did it to steel himself, because this wasn’t going to be pleasant business. His instructions were to tell her she was on her own, that the Americans could do nothing for her. But the beer had put him in a mellow mood, and the sun was so warm that he had taken off his leather jacket and slung it across his shoulder. And so he approached her casually, almost jauntily. Anyone watching might even have suspected he was her lover, coming to surprise her.

She must have heard his footsteps swishing through the high grass, because she turned suddenly and, sensing his buoyant mood, smiled up at him with the fullness of her beauty. Her light brown curls were golden in the summer sun.

“Fräulein Keller?” he asked, his voice nearly catching in his throat.

“Ja. Bist du der Amerikaner?” Immediately employing the familiar verb, which further disarmed him.

“Ja.”

“I speak English, too, if you prefer. Is it bad news that you bring me?”

Maybe it was her smile, or her expression of benign resignation, as if she were quite content to let him decide her future. Whatever the reason, Gordon changed his mind on the spot and decided to hell with orders.

“No. It’s not. I can’t guarantee anything, of course, but I’ll do what I can.”

She nodded, as if that outcome, too, was all in the natural course of things. It only endeared her to him more. He extended a hand to help her stand. But first she plucked a small yellow flower and pressed it into the book to mark her place, which he saw was page 186.

Her face came up to his shoulder, and her hair smelled of grass and sunlight and wildflowers. He knew instinctively that if he were to embrace her, her body would fold neatly into his, a perfect fit. After all the whores and hangers-on he had encountered here-and occasionally sampled-Gordon Wolfe knew then and there that he had come home. The realization frightened him, considering all that he had left behind in the States, and the important promises he had made. This was just a fairy-tale episode in a land of myth, right? Another freak happenstance in this magic bubble of neutrality.

He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and she must have wondered why. Perhaps she attributed it to the beer on his breath. But she did not let go of his hand, because she, too, had fallen under the spell of the encounter. So together they walked back up the riverbank to the hotel where she worked, to begin seeing what he could do about straightening out her future. Because now it was his future as well. Of that he was certain.

Ordering the second bottle of wine was a mistake. Nat realized that the moment Berta suggested they take the rest of it upstairs to her room. And not just any room, but a big one with a fine view, low lighting, and a soft queen-size bed at the luxurious Bellevue Palace. The sort of room that might have had a thumb tab for “Seduction” in the leather-bound guide to its amenities.

When reserving their accommodations earlier, Nat had chalked up his extravagance to his quirky urge to follow in Gordon’s footsteps. He also liked the idea of taking advantage of the FBI’s generosity. But as he swayed against Berta’s shoulder in the rising elevator he wondered if ulterior motives had also been in play. Because when the waiter began hovering with their bill as the night turned cool on the hotel terrace, it became all too easy to assent to Berta’s request that they head someplace warmer. That was when he decided the second bottle was overkill.

Not that he and Berta hadn’t earned the right to celebrate. Her contact at the Swiss Archives paid off nicely, letting them copy every surveillance report from Molden and Visser. Who knows what treasures might lie in wait in the details? While that alone wasn’t earth-shattering progress, between it and their lunch with Molden they believed they were forming a clearer picture of the Gordon Wolfe-Kurt Bauer backstory. Even if that didn’t lead directly to the missing files, they realized over dinner that it might lead to something equally valuable-the information that had prompted Gordon’s blackmail to begin with. Why worry about finding Gordon’s stash of copied secrets if you could unearth the secrets themselves?

They reached that triumphant conclusion just before Berta suggested that they enjoy the rest of the wine upstairs. She said it in an offhand tone, but Nat was immediately wary and excited, especially after having seen her in action that afternoon.

In dealing with the clerk named Karsten at the Swiss Archives, Nat had instinctively assumed the role of asexual, disinterested colleague while Berta set the tone. She went to work on the poor dupe with unwavering eye contact and a series of small touches to his forearm, his shoulder, and his knee as they sat side by side, reviewing a microfilm index. The fellow responded by letting them stay an hour past closing time to make copies. By the end of their session he was helping slide documents into place beneath their cameras.

So be on your guard, Nat told himself, as the elevator door opened to their floor. Yet he couldn’t suppress a thrill-as well as another characteristic response-when she tucked her arm under his as they strolled to her door.

Berta immediately threw open the window, with its bluff-top view of the River Aare. She leaned exultantly into the cool night. Fresh mountain air, from the peaks of the Berner Oberland.

“Look at that!” she said, holding out her glass for a refill. “If the morning isn’t hazy, we’ll be able to see the Eiger and the Jungfrau.”

Was she saying they would both be waking up here? Nat’s room was across the hall, with a view of an air shaft. He tried shoving his imagination onto another track by thinking of Gordon and wondering what the young airman’s first impression of this hotel must have been. Had he, too, been with an attractive young woman?