Dan Fesperman: The Arms Maker of Berlin

“It is you,” the old man said, breathless. “Liesl. My dearest!”

Bauer reached out a hand, but Liesl backed away, repelled. There was no way she was going to let him touch her, and you could see that it wounded him deeply. Berta, too, had been halted in her tracks. It was clear to Nat that she had recognized her Oma’s best friend and, having heard Liesl’s name, she was now adding up the rest of the story, stunned by its implications.

“Yes, Kurt. It is me,” Liesl said. “I have told our story to this young man. Hannelore’s story, too. She was the grandmother of that young woman over there, the one with the camera. Anything else you’ll just have to learn by reading about it. And by then, of course, everyone will know.”

Bauer was too dumbfounded to answer, as if he was still trying to reconcile this vengeful old woman with the girl he had once loved. Liesl turned toward Berta.

“Put your camera down and come here, unless you never want to escape your past, like this bitter old man here. If you come with me, I think we will have a great deal to talk about.”

Liesl held out her hand. Berta nodded, and obeyed as if in a trance. They linked arms and turned to go. Liesl called out to Nat over her shoulder.

“I will see you back at the car, Dr. Turnbull.”

Berta nodded toward him, the barest hint of a smile. Gratitude or relief, he couldn’t tell which. She was still stunned to silence, yet also aglow, as if she had not only finally found her answers but also had been pleasantly surprised to discover that there was more than just death at the heart of things.

As for Bauer, he remained speechless and staring, his open mouth as rigid as that of a corpse. He was an old man rooted to his memories, unable to reconcile any of what he had just seen. Turning slowly, he watched the two women climb into the taxi, the younger one helping the older. Yes, it was Liesl, so stooped and bent-his age, his era, and, also like him, fading now beneath the burdens of their shared past, a history that had at last come to claim him.

At the very moment when the door of the taxi slammed shut, the bouquet fell from his hands. The flowers were still bundled in wet newspaper, his final tainted offering upon a girl’s empty grave.

January 2008

New semester, first day of class. Professor E. Nathaniel Turn bull scanned the creaking rows of the lecture hall for early arrivals.

One eager lass had already snatched a syllabus and taken a seat up front, but the telltale lines of a stowaway iPod betrayed her true intentions. Last-minute texters hovered by the door, bent to the task like scriveners to their ledgers. A cell phone’s forbidden galaxy tune twinkled in a backpack.

It was 7:56 a.m., not the best of time slots for a debut course. Half the arrivals still had damp hair from their morning showers. Some were already stifling yawns.

Nat could hardly blame them. The name of the course certainly wasn’t sexy: History 225: Modern Germany, a Case History. The department had given him only half an hour to come up with a twenty-five-words-or-less description for the spring catalog, and even then it had only slipped in as a typewritten insert: An assessment of the Third Reich’s lingering aftereffects on postwar Germany, told through the life story of resister-turned-collaborator Kurt Bauer, the noted industrialist.

Only twenty-seven takers for fifty slots, but Nat wasn’t worried. Reviews would be glowing. Word would spread. By next fall they would have to move him to a bigger room, especially after the book came out over the summer.

His greater concern this morning was whether any of his invited special guests would show up, including a particular student who was a procrastinator by nature. Ah, there she was now.

Karen flashed him a daughterly smile and settled into a seat toward the back. Finally, he would be teaching in a style that wouldn’t shame her. Not that he expected to win her over completely to his favorite subject. He couldn’t help but notice the dog-eared Complete Poems poking from her backpack.

She had phoned at six thirty that morning with a verse to get him off on the right foot:

Mine enemy is growing old,

I have at last revenge.

The palate of the hate departs;

If any would avenge ,

Let him be quick, the viand flits,

It is a faded meat.

Anger as soon as fed is dead;

’Tis starving makes it fat .

Good stuff, he told her. And as he sipped his breakfast coffee afterward he contemplated the import of those words for Gordon and Bauer, for Berta and Liesl, and, well, for every player in this saga that had consumed him for the better part of the previous eight months.

Nat had his own role, of course, although as a professional evaluator of such things he was certain his own would never turn up in any official accounting. Because, for all of the supposedly great material the FBI had gathered from Bauer’s storehouse of nuclear secrets, Holland confessed later that much of it had already exceeded its shelf life. During Bauer’s last few years of laying low, the various shadowy vendors, suppliers, and middlemen of the atomic marketplace had apparently moved on without him, re-forming and re-channeling their networks. Meaning Bauer had been peddling a stale loaf indeed.

That meant, in turn, that Nat hadn’t exactly saved the world for democracy.

But he had triumphed handsomely in his own small theater of operations, the realm of academia where Gordon and he had toiled for so long. A prolific bout of further research and furious scribbling had attracted a decent advance from a publisher, followed by an even more lucrative sale of translation rights to a German publisher. Kurt Bauer’s name was about to be immortalized, although not in the way the old fellow wanted. Once again, it was the broken parts that had proven to be the most interesting.

For a while Nat had worried that the man would seek vengeance. But the scorn of a resurrected Liesl seemed to take all the fight out of him. Bauer didn’t even pursue his court case against Berta, much less any vendetta against Nat. As for the Iranians, if anything they were probably glad to see the old man get his comeuppance, since he had goaded them into a disastrous competition over damaged goods.

That freed Nat to handle and dispense the information as he saw fit. The hardest part was breaking the news to Viv.

He invited her over for dinner the night after his return from Berlin. Karen, who had quickly warmed to Viv after her close encounter with the would-be burglar, was there to cook the meal and soften the blow. After coffee Nat gently sat Viv on the couch and uncorked a bottle of Pierre Ferrand, Gordon’s favorite cognac. He withheld the “Dear Jane” letter from Bern, but told her the rest.

There were tears, of course, but by the time he drove her home she seemed grateful for the knowledge, if only because it meant she hadn’t been the one failing time after time for all those years, whenever Gordon had receded into his drinks or his anger.

“Maybe I should meet her someday,” she said of Sabine.

“Maybe,” Nat answered. “The way Sabine sees it, you won. You ended up with Gordon, changed man or not.”

“But she got a son.”

BERTA AT FIRST RESISTED his offer to collaborate on further research for the book. Even after she accepted, Nat had to move heaven and earth to secure a visa for her, and the National Archives would still have nothing to do with her-not that he blamed them.

She helped tie up loose ends in other areas, and her work was spirited, energetic. She even exhibited a newfound tact in dealing with several of their trickiest sources. All along, she stayed in close touch with Liesl. Nat never asked about the nature of their conversations, and Berta never volunteered any answers.