Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

“Don’t worry,” Holland said. “This shouldn’t take more than a day or so. Then we’ll put every means at your disposal to get moving as fast as possible, to any destination. Provided you behave in the meantime. I’m tired of having to rely on other people to bring you in. At least so far you’ve still been warm and breathing. Next time, I wouldn’t count on it.”

NEIL FORD SEEMED PLEASED as always to see Nat. The agent waved through the windshield as he pulled in behind Nat’s car on the way back to the Sea Breeze. A second agent was with him.

By now, Berta was almost certainly winging her way across the Atlantic, and when Nat reached the motel he glumly climbed the stairs to his room. He mixed a stiff drink from the minibar, then flicked back the curtains to see if the FBI was really watching.

There they were, two Eagle Scouts in a black sedan. He turned away from the window and surveyed the room. Clothes on the floor. Laptop open. Gordon’s box of keepsakes atop the TV. Time for another look, especially now that the matchbook had turned out to be important.

He emptied the contents on the bed and inspected them with renewed interest: a vial with powder for making invisible ink, complete with printed instructions typed in 1946 by Gordon himself; a German officer’s cap, which may or may not have been Gordon’s size; plus the key that he had already used at the storage locker and the matchbook from the Hotel Jurgens. Then there was the old crime novel that had belonged to Sabine Keller, Gordon’s Swiss miss, with a dried flower for a bookmark.

He studied them awhile, as if hoping for a message. Nothing. Nor did they offer any help in eluding FBI agents.

“So, tell me, Gordon,” he asked aloud. “How would an old OSS man get out of this fix?” He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. “Too bad I never got any of your training, or maybe I’d know.”

Or maybe he did, seeing as how there was more than one way out of the room. Nat stood and slid open the glass door to the balcony. He looked down. A long drop, but it was sandy at the bottom, with a path heading straight to the beach. Better still, no one was watching the back. The problem was how to get down without breaking a leg.

Moments later he decided upon the solution, feeling sheepish if only because it was such a cliché, borrowed from innumerable cartoons and comedies and damsels in distress. Bedsheets. The only thing available. So he packed for departure, carefully placing Gordon’s items back in the box and tucking it between his shirts, and then he went to work. The Sea Breeze linens were so flimsy that he doubled them up to support his weight, twisting together the top and bottom sheets. That meant the line would come up short. He would have to jump the final seven or eight feet to the sand. So be it. He slid open the balcony door and tied one end of the sheets to the railing.

He then dropped his suitcase over the side and slung his camera bag and laptop over his shoulders, bandolier style, one on either side. Feeling like a novice alpinist about to tackle a mountain well beyond his technical skills, he then slung a leg over the rail and awkwardly climbed to the other side while gripping the sheets for all they were worth.

His feet slipped, and for a moment he dangled like an oversized spider, bumping his face against the railing. He steadied himself by bracing his soles against the balcony. Once he felt secure, he slid his left hand down the sheets, then his right, all the while bouncing his toes against the railing as he dropped.

After he’d lowered himself farther, his feet slipped below the bottom of his balcony and he again dangled free, thighs bumping the overhang. But he continued to grunt his way down to the limit of the makeshift line. When he let go he jumped outward to avoid catching his feet on the railing of the balcony below. Fortunately no one was in the ground-floor room, and the view from the beach was blocked by a row of dunes.

He landed heavily and toppled onto his suitcase. But nothing seemed broken, and he was elated to have made it. He grabbed his bags and lumbered across the dunes. From there it was only a quarter mile to the fishing pier. Fishermen and beachcombers stared curiously at this fellow hauling luggage up the strand, but he paid them no mind. When he reached the pier he dropped two quarters into a pay phone and dialed for a taxi. Then he ducked into the tackle shop to wait for its arrival.

Two and a half hours later, Nat boarded a flight to Miami. Judging from the earlier-scheduled flights, he guessed Berta would arrive in Zurich around seven the next morning, meaning she could reach Bern as soon as eight thirty by train. Nat’s connection out of Miami was due to land shortly after noon. At least a four-hour advantage for Berta. And that was assuming he made it out of the country before the FBI discovered he was gone. He settled into his seat, ready for the chase.

Basel, Switzerland — May 16, 1944

First it was the prickly Swiss border officials who harassed him, with their careful rules and smug neutrality. They kept him waiting in a locked room for five hours.

Now the besieged Kurt Bauer faced a new indignity: a wiseass American flyboy, barely older than he was. The man swaggered into the room and, without even stating his name, began asking questions. When Kurt resisted, the fellow grinned dismissively and offered cigarettes, as if a mere pack of Luckies could set everything right.

Not that Kurt was in a position to refuse. Alone and on the run, he needed allies. He accepted the proffered pack with a muttered “Danke” and began arguing his family’s case, just as he had done with the Swiss.

“My father must be allowed into the country. Can’t you make them see that? He has a factory here and possesses valuable information. Every second he is refused entry puts him in greater danger. For all I know he is already in the hands of the Gestapo. And didn’t the Swiss tell you? It’s not you I asked to see, it’s Dulles. Those were my father’s precise instructions. Only Dulles will do!”

Maddeningly, the flyboy smiled and shook his head.

“Go easy on that name. For one thing, it won’t get you very far with them.” He nodded through a glass partition toward a bored Swiss official, who stared dumbly at a mounting pile of paperwork. “It also won’t get you very far with Dulles. He doesn’t like having his name bandied about in public.”

“It’s gotten me this far, hasn’t it?”

“Only because you lucked into the one guy here who knows what he’s doing, so he gave me a call. Besides, I wouldn’t call this progress. A customs inspection room in Basel isn’t exactly a luxury suite at the Bellevue.”

He was certainly right about that. The border post, drab and sterile in the best of times, had become a wartime way station for the lost and the stateless. It was a wretched scene-dim, overcrowded, and smelling of desperation; a wet-wool stench of herded people on the move, trapped in the chute between sanctuary and slaughter.

During his long wait, Kurt had watched a number of distressing episodes, overhearing every shouted exchange through the glass partition. An elegant woman in furs and jewelry disappeared through a door only to emerge an hour later sobbing and practically naked. But at least they waved her through. A shabby Frenchman was forced to open a steamer trunk containing a hoard of gold fixtures and knick-knacks, including several menorahs. Since he wasn’t a Jew, it marked him as a thief and scoundrel. The trunk got in. He was arrested. A ragged family of seven erupted in an indecipherable Slavic tongue after the mother and three daughters made it through and the father and two sons didn’t.