The Arms Maker of Berlin (13 page)

“Are you guys experts on relationships now?”

“You’ll see.”

Holland smiled and slipped out of the car. Nat waited for the Suburban to drive off, so the agent wouldn’t be tempted to follow. Then Nat, too, headed down the mountain. Ten minutes later, weary and dazed from the long and emotional day, he slowly climbed the stairs to his garret.

He opened the door to find Berta Heinkel waiting on the bed in the dark.

She was awake, eyes glimmering in the moonlight. Just as in his dream, she wore a short nightgown of white silk. Sleek and smooth, like her skin.

So much for keeping her at arm’s length.

ELEVEN

N
AT SWITCHED
on the light to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. In the instant glare from the overhead bulb Berta threw an arm across her face and pulled up the sheets.

“I tried to reach you,” she said through her fingers. “I was scared. There was nowhere else to go, so I came here.”

“Scared of what?”

“Someone had searched my room. I think they were looking for the memory chips.”

“You sure it wasn’t just the innkeeper tidying up? These B&Bs are pretty finicky.”

“They’d picked the lock. Things were missing from my suitcase.”

Nat saw her suitcase now, lying open on the floor. The nightgown wasn’t the only silky item. She had packed well for this kind of scene. He was tempted to sit on the bed, then thought better of it and opted for the chair, still clutching the wooden box. Maybe it was that Berta’s ambition made him wary, or that Gordon had called her a damned nuisance and then dropped dead. Or maybe it was that he would have enjoyed nothing better right now than to snuggle up next to her on the bed.

Her eyes had adjusted to the light and she looked better than ever. Shoulders bare, except for the white silk straps. Hair in suggestive disarray.

“You’re good at this, aren’t you?” he said.

“Good at what?”

“Manipulating people.”

He had expected to get a rise out of her, but she took it in stride.

“I can be. When there’s something I want badly enough. But not with you.”

“How do you see that?”

“Because we both want the same thing. You might just as easily manipulate me.”

He smiled, admiring her skill.

“Holland returned our cameras, by the way. I don’t know if you were able to tell yet from our work this afternoon, but you were right about the boxes. Four folders are missing. The feds have asked me to find the missing items. On their tab. Interested?”

She nodded, but surprised him by showing no sign of excitement.

“Where do you think we should start?” she asked.

The sheet slipped farther down her torso, showing some cleavage. Healthy tone to her skin for this early in the spring, yet no hint of a tan line. Of course, topless sunbathing wasn’t exactly taboo in Europe. Nat cleared his throat, hoping to also clear his head.

“I was thinking Baltimore.” He figured that would get a reaction, but her face remained blank. He opened the old box in a way that kept her from seeing the contents, and pulled out the key. “This fits a storage locker there. It’s our first stop.”

“All right. Are they paying my way, too?”

“Long as I’m in charge.”

“Good. I’ve maxed out my credit cards. We’d better get some sleep. Shall you take the floor, or I?”

Well, he supposed that answered one question.

“Throw me a pillow.”

She nodded and complied, somehow managing to make the toss without letting the sheet drop a stitch farther. Then she lay back down and shut her eyes. Oh, definitely no manipulation going on here, he thought, smiling to himself as he turned out the light.

As he tried to get comfortable in the dark, he wondered anew what it was that drove her. Scholarly zeal, of course. All the best historians were competitive. But there had to be something more. He was about to drift off when she spoke up from the bed.

“I have some names I can share. Old contacts of Gordon Wolfe’s and Kurt Bauer’s, people who might have once handled the records, or have some leads.”

Throwing him a bone. It was a start.

“Living or dead?”

“Living. In Bern and Berlin. We can visit them, now that we have a budget.”

“Great. But with any luck the trail will end in Baltimore.”

Her silence told him she thought otherwise, which troubled him because it suggested she knew more than she was letting on. He had better check out her credentials, first chance he got. Until then, or until she opened up more, perhaps “arm’s length” was indeed the best policy. Funny how sensible that sounded down there on the cold, hard floor.

TWELVE

N
AT’S GREAT HOPES
for Baltimore died with the swipe of a card, the turn of a key, and the opening of an iron door. There before him on the concrete floor, looking lost and forlorn in the five-by-five storage locker, was a single item, barely bigger than a fist. It was wrapped in bubble plastic and smothered in tape. Definitely not the missing folders.

Berta said nothing, but Nat sensed an I-told-you-so chill.

At least they hadn’t wasted much time getting there. He had planned on using Sunday to drive Viv back to Wightman for a Wednesday memorial service. She instead decided to wait on her sister, which freed Berta and him to catch a midday flight from Albany to Baltimore. They drove straight to Fairfield, rattling down its potholed lanes among the rail yards and chemical plants of an industrial waterfront. Fittingly, they wound up briefly on Tate Street, where Viv and Gordon had lived after the war. Only one house remained on the block, and it was boarded up. The trail ended at a fenced compound with a “U-Store-Em” sign out front. Nat bounded from the car, but his excitement was short-lived.

“Well, let’s see what it is,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

He slit the tape with a car key and unwrapped the plastic. Inside was an old book with a red cloth cover and a German title,
Der Unsichtbare Henker (The Invisible Hangman)
, by Wolf Schwertenbach. Was this the crime novel that had made Viv so jealous? He doubted Viv had been familiar with the author, but Nat certainly was. Wolf Schwertenbach was the pen name of the late Paul Meyer, a Swiss diplomat who during the war opened a secret back channel between the Swiss and German intelligence agencies. He was also an OSS source who met Dulles several times. But none of that seemed to explain why Gordon had gone to the trouble of putting the book into storage.

The publication date was 1933, although this was a 1937 printing. Nat checked inside the front jacket. Sure enough, a girl’s name was penned in cursive in an upper corner, just as Viv had said. “Sabine Keller.”

“Noir pulp by a hack diplomat,” Berta said. “Not even a first edition. You might get five euros for it. Shall we go?”

“Hold on.”

Nat flipped carefully through the brittle pages. No hidden note. No scribbles in the margins. No cryptic inscriptions from the famed author. But on page 186 he found the very wildflower Viv must have seen. Crushed yellow blossom, bent stem. Nothing special, like edelweiss. Just a buttercup plucked from a field. He left it in place, feeling that somehow Gordon would have preferred that.

“Shall we go?” Berta repeated.

“Let’s see who’s on duty.”

They walked to a small office. A big fellow with a buzz cut and a weight lifter’s build looked up from a cramped desk behind the counter.

“Would you be Matt Boland?” Nat asked, using the name from the business card.

“That’s me.” He seemed surprised to actually be speaking with a customer.

“Do you keep records of customer visits?”

Boland shook his head.

“For some people that’s half the point. You’re not a cop, are you?”

“I’m here for a friend. So you have no way of knowing when somebody would have last visited locker 207?” Nat held up the key and swipe card.

“If that key belongs to you, wouldn’t you know?”

“It was a colleague’s. He died yesterday.”

“Sorry.”

“His name was Gordon Wolfe. Ring a bell?”

“Can’t say it does.”

“Have you got the paperwork for 207?”

“How do I know you didn’t steal that key?”

Nat pulled out the FBI letter of introduction and placed it on the counter.

“Maybe this’ll help.”

“You said you weren’t cops.”

“We’re not. Let’s just say we’re working on contract.”

“Is this some kind of terrorist thing?” Boland was getting into the spirit of things.

“Something like that.”

“Cool. Why didn’t you say so?”

Boland crossed the room to a set of gray drawers, where he retrieved a yellow invoice.

“What’d you say the name was?”

“Gordon Wolfe.”

“Wrong guy.”

“With an address in Wightman, Pennsylvania? 819 Boyd Circle?”

Boland glanced down.

“Yeah. Home phone?”

Nat rattled it off, and for good measure recited the number for Gordon’s cell.

“Three for three. In that case, who the heck is ‘Gordon Bern-hard’?”

“Bernhard?”

“That’s what it says.”

“Hold on a second. I’ll be right back.”

Berta sighed with impatience while Nat went to the car. He returned with one of Gordon’s books that Viv had given him that morning and opened it to the author photo.

“Is this the man who called himself Gordon Bernhard?”

“Absolutely. He was in here a couple weeks ago.” Boland stepped to a wall calendar, where he ran his finger across a row of days. “May seventh, to be exact. The Monday from hell. We had a power outage later that afternoon, which always screws things up and gripes out the customers. Mr. Bernhard needed a new swipe card. He was probably the only customer that day who wasn’t screaming at me.”

The timing put Gordon’s visit only a few days after the gotcha story broke in the
Daily Wildcat
, the one that had sent him heading for the hills.

“Have you got a surveillance camera with a view of 207?”

“We’ve got cameras covering every part of the building. Want to check it for the seventh? It’s a digital system, stored on a hard drive.”

Boland called up the log on a PC. The door of 207 showed up at a great angle from camera 4. Boland easily found the right day slid the time bar back to the approximate hour of Gordon’s visit, and scanned forward on high speed until a blurry figure darted in and out of the frame. Then he backed up, slowed down, and there it was, a black-and-white image of Gordon Wolfe from behind, as if they were peeping over his shoulder from the ceiling. He was empty-handed, except for the key. He turned the lock, went inside 207, and shut the door behind him. The time signature read 1:12 p.m.

“So by this time he’d already stopped by for the new swipe card?” Nat asked.

“Correct. Said his old one wasn’t working.”

That meant Gordon had put the new swipe card in the box in the attic during the past week. He had certainly been attending to a lot of old business lately. Tidying up. Getting ready for something.

Boland scrolled ahead. Gordon reemerged at 1:38, still empty-handed.

“What the hell?” Nat said. Had Gordon just spent twenty-six minutes visiting a taped-up novel? “Any way to slow that down?”

“Sure.”

Boland scrolled back. This time Gordon exited in slow motion.

“Hold it! Back it up to when he opens the door, then freeze it. There, do you see it?”

Just behind Gordon’s right leg was the right edge of a box, the size of the ones found at the Wolfes’ summer home. By now even Berta was riveted.

“He left without them,” he said. “He must have come back later.”

“Couldn’t have,” Boland chimed in. “Like I said, we lost power right after that. The swipe card system went down, so I had to let people in manually the rest of the day. I’d have seen him.”

“I guess he could have come back some other day,” Nat said. “But if not, then he was right about one thing. Somebody planted those boxes at his house. Could you rerun his exit one more time?”

Boland nodded, and they watched again.

“Something’s funny,” Nat said. “Have you got any shots from farther down the hall?”

“Sure. Camera 5.”

“Let’s see ‘em. Arrival and departure.”

Boland complied. Gordon arrived at the bottom of the screen at 1:12 and walked slowly up the hall, staying on camera for eleven steps. At 1:38 he reappeared in the opposite direction, but with an altered gait. He paused halfway to hitch up his pants.

“Does it look to you like he’s limping?”

“Yes,” Berta said. Now she was leaning forward intently. “Run it again.”

Boland wrinkled his nose at the sound of her accent. She obviously didn’t fit his idea of who should be working for the FBI. But he did as she asked.

“Maybe he stiffened up while he was on the floor, looking at everything,” Nat said.

“No,” Berta said. “It’s something else.”

They watched again.

“It’s like his pants were bothering him,” Nat said.

Then it came to him, a bolt straight from memory.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “It’s just like George Wood.”

“You’re right,” Berta said in amazement.

“Woody who?” Boland asked. By now he was as engrossed as they were.

“George Wood,” Nat said, unable to resist the urge to teach. “Code name for an old German spy named Fritz Kolbe. During the war he smuggled documents out of the Foreign Ministry by taping them to his thigh and carrying them all the way to Switzerland by train. All Gordon had to do was make it to the parking lot.”

“But why not just take them out in a briefcase?” Berta asked.

“Maybe he knew someone was watching him. Either way, if he hid them up at the summer house, I suppose the FBI will find them soon enough.”

“No!”

“Afraid so. Holland said they’d be making a thorough search as soon as Viv left. They’ll take the place apart board by board before they come up empty.”

“Scheise!”

“Hey, I thought you were working
for
the FBI,” Boland said warily.

“Like I said, contract employees. If an agent comes up with the goods first, we’d, uh, lose our commission.”

“Oh.”

“Gordon’s rental agreement—how old is it?”

Boland checked the invoice.

“Wow. Way before my time. Nineteen seventy-eight.”

“Place looks newer.”

“They’ve modernized a few times, but this was one of the first self-storage joints in the city. He must have been one of the original customers.”

Seventy-eight, Nat thought. Probably around the time bulldozers started knocking down the neighborhood to make way for industry. He had a feeling those boxes had been sitting around Fairfield, one way or another, for quite a while.

T
HEIR NEXT STOP
was the National Archives, right down the road in College Park. They had two days to search for leads before returning to Wightman, so Nat had booked a pair of rooms at a Holiday Inn. An impatient message from Holland was waiting at the front desk when they checked in: “Where are you? Please call.”

Berta took her key and announced curtly that she would be eating room service and retiring early. Hot and cold, this strange woman. Or maybe just cold, now that she had secured Nat’s cooperation. Just as well, considering his first order of business. Holland could wait. It was time to check up on Berta’s credentials.

He quickly found her name on the Web site of the history department at Berlin’s Free University. The thumbnail bio matched what she had told him. Several published papers were referenced. Most concerned the Berlin activities of the White Rose. A slender thread of scholarship, even by the eccentric standards of historians. Berta’s grandmother must have told her some great tales to get her this hooked.

Surprisingly, there were almost no other online traces of Berta or her work. No quotes in the media. No speeches or seminars. It told him two things: She didn’t crave attention, and she kept to herself.

Next, he Googled Kurt Bauer. Holland was right. It took about ten minutes to figure out why the FBI must be interested in helping the man.

Nat was already familiar with the family’s industrial dynasty. The Bauers were a sort of junior version of the Krupps—not as rich or colorful but nearly as well connected—by virtue of their long-standing ability to produce weapons for emperors and despots the world over. Kurt entered the picture during the postwar years, when he took over management of the company in his early twenties, an impressively callow age for an arms merchant. The company’s rise from the ashes was a prototype of West Germany’s “economic miracle,” which had been nurtured by the Western Allies as a hedge against communism.

Today most people knew the Bauer name from coffeemakers, televisions, and aircraft components. But it was the company’s dealings in a more arcane line of products that had attracted the FBI’s interest. Or so Nat concluded from a series of hits on Web sites tracking nuclear proliferation.

In the 1970s a shipment of Bauer jet nozzles was used to help enrich uranium for South Africa’s nuclear bomb program. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Bauer plants provided isostatic presses, vacuum furnaces, and specialized tubing to shady middlemen, who in turn funneled the parts to Libya, Israel, and Iraq.

Most of the Web sites had an axe to grind, and several tried to imply that Kurt was an unreconstructed Nazi. It didn’t take a professional historian to see that their case was half-baked. Kurt’s dad, Reinhard, had certainly been a card-carrying member, and he had employed slave labor in his wartime factories. But even Reinhard joined the Party late, which suggested opportunism more than zeal. It was the same reason he later tried to curry favor with Dulles—because it was good for business. If the man were alive today he would probably be working for an outfit like Halliburton, cutting deals with dictators and then helping to engineer their downfall. Whatever paid the bills.

Other critics tried to damn Kurt by association with his older brother, Manfred, who had served with a Wehrmacht unit implicated in some atrocities on the eastern front. But Manfred was killed at Stalingrad, and Kurt himself had been too young for the army during most of the war. According to the sketchy biographical record on the Internet, the Bauer family fled to Switzerland when Kurt was eighteen. That must have been when he met Gordon, if Berta’s information was credible. Maybe the archives had the answer.

It was in more recent decades that the Bauer nuclear dealings had become most interesting. In the late ‘90s the company supposedly helped ship heavy water to North Korea and Pakistan. That transaction linked Bauer for the first time to A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s A-bomb program and an infamous supplier of nuclear know-how to several rogue nations. The Bauer-Khan partnership continued through further transactions in parts and technology, according to the proliferation Web sites. Each deal was more damning, but Bauer’s role became progressively harder to pin down. As a result, investigators for the German government hadn’t yet laid a glove on him.