The Arms Maker of Berlin (31 page)

“Remember anyone named Martin Gollner?”

“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 cafe 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.”

“And you stand by that statement?”

Kaplan shrugged, but seemed uncomfortable.

“Well, weren’t you under oath?”

“The statement came from a chat with an investigator. No oath necessary.”

“What about the board of inquiry?”

“Yeah. I took an oath then.”

“And?”

“I was asked to read the investigator’s statement into the record. Then they asked me whether the statement reflected fully and accurately my comments to the investigator. I said yes, because it did.”

“But they never asked if the statement was true?”

“Can’t say that they did.”

“Well, I’m asking you now. Was the statement true?”

Kaplan looked toward the door, as if expecting Doris to either rescue him or tell him to get a move on. He fidgeted in his chair.

“Mind if I see your credentials?”

Nat showed him. Kaplan nodded, then glanced briefly at Berta. He didn’t seem to want to deal with her at all.

“Here’s how it went. We were on our way back from the job that night, before we ever had a single beer, when Gordon said he’d left something behind. He didn’t say what, and I didn’t ask. But he went back to get it.”

“The container?”

“Maybe.”

“Had he done anything that day to draw attention to any particular box?”

Kaplan placed his hands on his thighs, as if bracing himself.

“I remember he was thumbing through some folders, counting them, when all of a sudden he stopped and got this look in his eye. A cold anger, I guess you’d call it. For a while I thought he was about to lose it. When I asked what was wrong he mumbled something and just sat there. Then he shuffled through a few more items, taped up the box, and put it on the pile.”

“What did he mumble?”

” ‘The bastard.’”

” ‘The bastard’? That’s it?”

Kaplan glanced at Berta.

“I believe the full quote was ‘The cocksucking bastard,’ but, yep, that was it.”

“Did you know who he was referring to?”

He shook his head.

“Did you ask later?”

“You’re a lot more thorough than that investigator, I’ll say that. Yes, I asked later. He just gave me some code name, which didn’t mean a damn thing to me then and would mean even less to me now.”

“Do you remember it?”

“I’m not positive, but it was something scientific, or technical, and then there was a number. Like ‘Milligram.’ Or ‘Magnum.’”

“Followed by a number?”

“Yeah.”

“Could it have been ‘Magneto II’?”

Kaplan looked up abruptly, with a light in his eyes.

“That was it. Exactly.”

“You said he shuffled through a few more items?”

“He pulled out some of the papers and read through ‘em. He did it with a couple of folders. It made me uneasy, but what the hell. Nobody had exactly told us
not
to, so I didn’t say anything. Then, like I said, he sealed it up and logged it in the ledger. Just the way I testified. And for the rest of the afternoon he was very quiet.”

“Why’d you lie for him?”

“I told you. I didn’t. Everything I said under oath was true. Or technically true.”

“But you lied to the investigator.”

“Well, that was different. Some fellow came to ask us about everything, and before I knew it Gordon was giving his version of how we’d both gone straight to a bar and then crashed in our bunks. It wasn’t like I was going to call him a liar right there in front of this guy. So when the fellow wrote out the statement, I signed it. We both did.”

“The investigator interviewed the two of you at the same time?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that was damn stupid.”

“I thought so. But believe me, at the time this was not a big deal. We’d just won the war, and a lot of people were already more worried about the Reds than a few leftover Nazis, or a bunch of old paperwork. The so-called board of inquiry was just three guys at a table. There were a dozen items on the agenda, and we were in and out in ten minutes.”

“Anything else you didn’t tell the investigator? And, believe me, I’m not good enough to figure out what it might be, so you’re going to have to help me.”

“You hear that, Murray?” Doris again, from the next room. “Either you tell him what you told me, or I will.”

This drew a smile from Kaplan, who seemed to have decided, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Maybe one thing,” he said coyly. “About that girl of his. Turns out, she wasn’t dead. But I guess to Gordon she might as well have been, ‘cause she’d gotten hitched.”

“She was married? How do you know?”

“The week we went home I’m walking through the Barenplatz and I see her, the one from the picture, sitting on a bench plain as day.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. So I called her by name. Sabine. She looked right up.”

“What’d she say?”

“She wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Put her head down like she wanted me to get lost. But I couldn’t just let it drop because, hell, Gordon was all torn up. So I said, ‘Hey, Gordon’s been looking all over for you.’ Then she started to cry. So did the baby.”

“She had a
baby?
”

“Tiny thing. Couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I was about to apologize when this guy runs up. Local man, forty if he was a day. Tells me I better scram, ‘cause he don’t care who won the war, I’ve got no business bothering his wife and child.”

“Wow.”

“Yep. That was pretty much my reaction.”

“Did you tell Gordon?”

“Never had the heart. Besides, once I had time to think about it, I figured he already knew. Funny thing was, I recognized the guy.”

“Sabine’s husband?”

“Heinrich Jurgens. Ran a little hotel where we used to billet interned airmen before a prisoner exchange. I’d handled those arrangements, so I recognized him right away. Fortunately he didn’t remember me or he might have made trouble. That was the last thing I needed a week before shipping out.”

“Jurgens? Was that the name of his hotel?”

“Sure was.”

Nat reached into his pocket for the matchbook he’d been carrying like a rabbit’s foot. It was a little worse for wear, and the cardboard was limp from Florida humidity. But the white lettering on the red cover was still boldly legible. He handed it to Kaplan, who eyed it as if it was a crystal ball.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Yes,” Berta added, an edge to her voice. “Where
did
you get that, and when?”

Oops.

“Gordon left it for me, in the same box with the key to the storage locker.”

“There was a box?” Berta said.

Their eyes met. The Florida room was suddenly a very chilly place, and at that moment they both knew their next destination. They knew as well that they wouldn’t be making the trip together. From here on out it would be a race. She was probably already regretting she had even told him about the spyware, and he was certainly regretting showing her the matchbook.

“So was this a help?” Kaplan said, suddenly feeling left out.

“An immense help,” Nat said.

To his right, Berta hastily gathered her things. She rose and headed for the door. Nat rose, too. Kaplan, sensing the meeting was speeding toward an abrupt conclusion, stood shakily and extended his right hand.

His grip was weak. Nat figured he had reached the fellow just in time. Few of the old ones remained, and a year from now their numbers would be smaller still. Kaplan opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the slamming of the front door.

“Well, now,” he said. “Was it something that I said?”

“She gets that way sometimes.”

They listened to her car start up and roar away. Nat was perturbed but not panicked. It wasn’t like she could grab a flight to Bern in the next half hour. But he needed to secure a reservation on the next available plane. It crossed his mind to even phone ahead to the Hotel Jurgens, but he decided against it. No sense risking scaring them away. But he could have kicked himself for not having waited longer in the lobby during his previous visit. For once, his instincts had failed him.

Shortly afterward he said good-bye to the Kaplans, giving Doris an affectionate peck on the cheek and even praising her shrimp salad while Kaplan rolled his eyes. But Nat figured she had earned it.

Halfway back to the Sea Breeze, a police cruiser rolled up behind him, flipped on its flashers, and pulled him to the curb. Nat watched in the mirror as the officer threw open the door of the cruiser, crouched behind it, and poked a gun barrel around the side.

“Step out of the car, hands above your head!” the officer shouted. “Do it now!”

Nat obeyed awkwardly, moving slowly.

“Turn and place your hands on the roof of your car, and don’t make a move!”

No sooner had he done so than the policeman yanked both arms behind his back and cuffed him, painfully, with the metal bands jamming hard against his wrists. Not again. Was this Berta’s doing? The result of some dirty trick? For that matter, was this fellow really a cop?

All he knew for sure was that in the race to Bern he had just fallen well off the pace.