Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

“Did you work with Gordon much?”

“We downed a few beers now and then, but professionally I hardly ever saw him.”

“Is that because he was out in the field a lot?”

“That was part of it, I guess. Plus those months in the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“He never mentioned his leg injury?”

“I, uh, always thought he got that from a flak wound.”

“Hell, no. He came down without a scratch. Healthy as a mule. This was toward the end of the war. Some half-assed infiltration operation that went FUBAR on him.”

“Infiltration? Into Germany?”

“That was the word around the legation. Don’t know if it was true. I was never privy to that stuff.”

Finally something to flesh out some of the cryptic items from the National Archives.

“This operation, was it called ‘Fleece’ by any chance?”

“Coulda been. Never heard a name, though. All I know is that everyone said it was a cock-up from the get-go, and that he came back with a pretty nasty wound.”

“From a firefight?”

“Can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Doris shouted the question from the next room.

“Can’t, dear. And you’re not helping. Let the young man ask his questions.”

“So you don’t know any more details, like what it was about, or who was involved?”

“That’s right. None of that was in my bailiwick.”

“Does the name Kurt Bauer ring a bell? Or Erich Stuckart?”

“Neither.”

He said it without hesitation. Nat studied Kaplan’s face and concluded he was telling the truth.

“So Gordon never mentioned either of them to you later?”

“Not to me.”

Doris piped up again.

“How ’bout to anyone else?”

“Honey, please!”

Nat offered a smile of commiseration, but hoped she would keep it up. She seemed convinced her husband had something to hide.

“Okay, so Gordon was in the hospital. Do you remember the dates?”

“Must have been around February of ’45. Got out around the end of April. Yes, that’s right, ’cause it was the day Hitler shot himself. The news had just come in over the radio.”

The dates matched perfectly with the Loofbourow memo that had mentioned Gordon’s transfer to the Zurich safe house.

“I guess he must have healed up pretty good, because in July, of course, we both went into Germany as part of Dulles’s staff. For the occupation forces.”

“What were your duties?”

“I was deskbound. Pushing papers. He was out in the ruins, poking around. Beyond that, who knows? None of those guys ever said.”

“Remember anyone named Martin Göllner?”

“No.”

“Ex-Gestapo?”

Kaplan shook his head.

“So then you went back to Bern in, what, October?”

“Yep. And that’s when they put Gordon and me on the records detail. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, because by then I was itching to go home.”

“I guess everybody was.”

“Not Gordon. He applied for another hitch as soon as we got back to Bern. The new station chief had arrived, and everybody figured the OSS would just keep rolling along. Truman didn’t dissolve it till later.”

“Gordon wanted to stay full-time? You’re sure?”

“Oh, yeah. Positive.”

“Did he say why?”

Kaplan shrugged and assumed a pained expression. He took a long swallow from his iced tea and lowered his voice.

“Tell me. Is Gordon’s wife still alive?”

“Yeah. Her name’s Vivian.”

“Right. I think he mentioned her once or twice. And, well, I dunno, I just wouldn’t want any of this getting back to her.”

“No reason it has to.” Nat turned toward Berta. “Right?”

“I have no interest in this aspect of the account,” she said.

Kaplan seemed taken aback by the accent, but didn’t comment. Instead, he peered toward the door, as if determining whether his wife was still listening. He leaned closer.

“Truth be told, there’s a lotta stuff from back then I wouldn’t even want Doris to know. We were horny young bucks a long way from home, if you know what I mean.”

“I get the picture. So it was a girl, then? That’s why Gordon wanted to stay?”

“Yep. And she’d gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“Once we came back, anyway. He went looking for her almost every day, showing her picture around town.”

“Sabine Keller?”

Kaplan seemed surprised.

“Now how in the hell did you know that?”

“Research.”

“You sound just like Gordon. He was always pretty cagey about his sources.”

“Did you know her?”

“No, but he showed me her picture. She was pretty. Apparently he hadn’t been able to find her since he’d gotten out of the hospital.”

“So she’d been missing for almost seven months. Wasn’t she from Adelboden?”

“That’s right. Out in some valley in the mountains.”

“Did he look there?”

“Hell, he looked everywhere. Anytime he had a day to spare. Zurich, Geneva, all over Bern. Then, a few days after we got put on the records detail, he stopped. He came in one morning and you could see it in his face. It was like somebody had shut out the lights.”

“What happened?”

“He said she was dead.”

“Goodness. How?”

“I didn’t ask, and it was pretty clear he didn’t want to talk about it. A week or so later we finished. A month after that they interviewed us about the missing stuff. Then they sent us home. I guess he must have withdrawn his application to extend.”

Nat was amazed. At least now they knew why Gordon had held on to Sabine’s book-a sentimental attachment, nothing more. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t help them find the missing records. Time to zero in on that aspect. He wondered if Kaplan would clam up.

“So this work you two did-handling the records-tell me what the drill was.”

“I’ll tell you what I told the OSS board of inquiry, what, fifty years ago?”

“More like sixty. Sixty-one, to be exact.”

“Hell, I’m old. Well, everything was already sorted by subject. The folders were numbered, and so were the boxes. All we were supposed to do was make sure every folder was present and accounted for and filed in the right order. We logged the box number on a ledger, and every four boxes went into a bigger container, which we then labeled for shipment via diplomatic mail. We then logged the numbers for those containers on a shipping manifest. Paperwork galore, but I guess that’s the government.”

“So the four boxes that went missing, they were in the same container?”

“Correct. That’s how it showed up on the ledger, anyway.”

“Where did you send everything?”

“Some containers went to Dulles’s law office in New York, some went straight to OSS headquarters in Washington. The rest went to the National Archives.”

“Who decided the destinations?”

“That was above our pay grade. I have no idea. Presumably some of the information was a little more ‘active’ than the rest.”

“Go on.”

“Not much else to say. We locked up at the end of every workday and first thing the next morning somebody came by to collect the containers we’d packed the day before, for shipment overseas.”

“Who kept the keys?”

Kaplan hesitated.

“Gordon.”

“They must have asked you about the day you packed up the missing container.”

“They did.”

“And?”

“Same routine as always. Nothing unusual.”

“Did Gordon go back after hours?”

“They asked me that, too. I told them Gordon and I went to dinner, drank a few too many beers at a café down on Kornhausplatz, and then crashed at our room. We were both pretty gassed. When I woke up the next morning Gordon was right where I’d seen him last, half dressed in the other bunk, snoring like a band saw. It’s all in my statement.”