The Swiss Courier: A Novel (24 page)

Nice touch, Ada
. His brother-in-law had serendipitously replaced a scenic watercolor from Gerhard Richter with a portrait shot of der Führer’s piercing visage and toothbrush moustache—an inch of hair that symbolized bottomless evil.

As he strolled behind the others, Leo felt as if his skin was being jabbed by a thousand needles, and he was sure that his pounding heart could be seen through his chest wall. Outwardly, he smiled and maintained an indifferent countenance, yet his mind raced with the knowledge that the next few moments could determine the fate of a young physicist who happened to live in the wrong place at the wrong time—as well as a half-dozen of Leo’s closest family members and friends.

It wasn’t just Joseph Engel in the Gestapo’s pincer grip. The penalty for harboring a Jew—a
hunted
one, no less—was a one-way ride on the Jewish transport trains heading east. Too many of his flock had disappeared this way.
Not again,
dear Lord . . . help us now
.

The pair of policemen stepped into the dining room. They glanced around but bypassed the canted china hutch and three rows of Baronet dinner and dessert plates displayed behind beveled leaded glass doors. They followed the house layout, moving into the kitchen, and opened a pantry door as well as a broom closet.

“Where are the bedrooms?” Captain Stampfli shot Adalbert a piercing glance.

“The master bedroom is around the corner, and we have three bedrooms upstairs,” Adalbert replied in an even voice. “Very good.”

An inspection of the downstairs master bedroom yielded nothing. In the bathroom, the captain pulled back a shower curtain that partially wrapped around a porcelain tub and even lifted the toilet seat.

They moved to the stairs, and the ominous thump of hard-leather boots, pounding each tread, echoed throughout the wood-frame house. In the first bedroom, the junior policeman looked under the bed and opened an armoire, the only source of closeting in the room. Nothing warranted further inspection until Captain Stampfli approached the wooden nightstand and opened a small cabinet door, where a ceramic chamber pot was stored.

“That’s for Trudi’s mother,” Adalbert explained. “The poor woman finds the stairs treacherous at night.”

The Polizei captain scrunched his nose and quickly closed the door. After inspecting the second bedroom and finding nothing of interest, the group moved to the last room down the hall—a sizable bedroom that overlooked the driveway and entrance to the farm. Leo dared not make eye contact with Ada or Trudi.

The
Schlafzimmer
, like the others, was as neat as a pin. Two twin beds, each covered by a fluffy duvet, looked as though a Berlin chambermaid had made them up. The lieutenant got down on his knees and looked under the beds, then opened an armoire opposite the curtained window. A smattering of shirts, skirts, and pants belonging to both sexes filled half the wardrobe. Underneath the clothes were a stack of books and a leather satchel.

The lieutenant was about to close the door when he took a second look at the satchel, well worn from years of use. He grabbed the shoulder strap, yanked it from the armoire, and rummaged through its contents before pulling out one of the notebooks. The lieutenant thumbed through several pages and then handed the dog-eared notebook to Stampfli.

The police captain flipped it open, then his eyes rested on a random page.

“What have we got here?” Stampfli asked.

“Oh, that’s my nephew’s.” Adalbert took a step closer to the captain. “Some old school notes. Wilhelm was studying math at the University of Heidelberg until he was called into the Army. He’s serving the Fatherland on the Western front. Last I heard, he was driving a Panzer when the Allied hordes hit the Normandy beaches. We haven’t received a letter from Wilhelm since the invasion, and the entire family is worried sick—”

Trudi choked back a sob and buried her face into her husband’s shoulder. A silence fell in the room.

“I’m sorry,” Stampfli said. “Maybe you’ll receive good news soon.”

“Captain, you may want to look at this.” The lieutenant held up a black wallet he found in the satchel.

“Of course, Wilhelm’s.” Adalbert naturally reached for it, but the lieutenant pulled his hand away.

How did the wallet get in the satchel? Leo considered that question while sensing a change in mood sweep through the bedroom.

“I’ll take a look at that.” Captain Stampfli stretched out his hand and accepted the leather wallet from the lieutenant. He opened the billfold and found a pair of 10 Reichsmarks notes and several coins in a small pocket. He rifled through the rest of the wallet and extracted bits of paper and official documents, which he set on a pinewood nightstand.

His eyes alighted on a sepia-toned photo of a young man in his early twenties, black hair parted on the left side, dressed in a wool suit for some sort of formal occasion. The subject’s face was small since the photographer had taken the full-length shot inside some sort of studio.

“That’s Wilhelm at the Uni,” Ada announced proudly. “His great desire is to teach math some day.”

The captain grunted his acknowledgment. His fingers scanned the rest of the papers: a handful of receipts, a monthly pass to ride the Heidelberg tram, circa 1943, and an expired identity card with Wilhelm’s photo on it. Stampfli took a second glance at the Ausweis before setting it down.

“Alles ist in Ordung,”
he said.
All is in order
.

The captain turned to the two brothers. “Meine Herren, here’s my card. If you see anything suspicious, or come across this Joseph Engel, you are to notify me immediately. Any delay will be dealt with harshly by the authorities. Do you understand?”

Both men nodded.

“In that case, I bid you farewell.” With a click of his boot heels and a Heil, Hitler! salute, the captain and his lieutenant pounded down the stairs and retreated to their black sedan, where the third officer was waiting for them. Leo and Adalbert watched the Opel Kapitän depart from the second-story bedroom.

It wasn’t until the black sedan exited the property that Leo breathed a sigh of relief. “That was close. But tell me—how did that wallet get into Joseph’s satchel?”

“When the Polizei’s car arrived, I suddenly remembered that Engel had left his satchel on his bed,” Adalbert replied. “I grabbed Wilhelm’s wallet from where he laid it on the piano, ran upstairs, and made the switch while Trudi engaged the Polizei.”

“Where did you put Engel’s wallet?”

“Right here.” Adalbert reached for his left-side back pocket and presented it to his brother-in-law.

“Were you crazy? You could have gotten us killed!”

“Leo, someone very close to me told me one time that all you have to do is ask and you will receive. I asked for God’s protection, and I received it. See, I listen to your sermons. Aren’t you glad?”

Pastor Leo found Wilhelm sitting on a low-slung fence rail as the burnt-orange sun hung just above the horizon. The sturdy farmhand had returned to whittling a piece of white birch when the pastor approached.

“Something has come up. Did you make eye contact with any of those policemen? Think hard.”

“Just the third policeman who walked around the house. While you were tied up inside, I chatted him up a bit. I didn’t learn much except the entire Reich is looking for Joseph Engel.”

Leo explained what had happened in Engel’s bedroom and his brother-in-law’s swift action. “They saw your wallet— your photo. Ada and I think you should leave tonight. For all we know, the three cops could be putting two and two together right now. Sound like a plan?”

“This is awfully sudden.” Wilhelm ran a hand down his face.

“I know. The times we live in, but we must stay one step ahead of the Gestapo. Listen, before you pack your things, do you want to say goodbye to Joseph?”

“Sure, that would be nice. We forged a friendship during our escape through the checkpoint. Normal, I think, when you come
this
close to capture.” Wilhelm held up a hand with a small gap between his thumb and forefinger. “I think Joseph’s come a long way in the last twenty-four hours. Lord knows what I’d be thinking or feeling after learning I was born Jewish.”

“Good man. Let’s go find Joseph. The rest of us have some work to do before it gets dark. We have to get that field cleared by tomorrow night.”

Leo called out to the others, directing them to return to their work. They picked up their wooden rakes and returned to the alfalfa field, a rectangular plot that measured a half kilometer in length and 100 meters in width. Under a twilight sky, the pungent smell of the fresh-cut alfalfa greeted their nostrils. They returned to where they had raked the cutting— which was drying fast—into a straight line.

“The coast is clear,” Pastor Leo said in no particular direction. “You can come out, Joseph.”

From one of the tall piles, Joseph Engel pulled himself to his feet and brushed off stray strands of straw.

“They came, didn’t they? Just as you predicted.”

The pastor nodded, although he was not about to tell Joseph or the group that the information from Becker had been spot-on—door-to-door searches of the outlying farms south of Leimen.

“All I know is one thing, Joseph. We need to get you out of here in a hurry. But it’s too dangerous to move you just yet.”

The sizzling aroma of tangy, fresh-grilled bratwurst from an outdoor vendor caused Jean-Pierre’s stomach to grumble as he paced back and forth under the weather canopy on Gleis 3, where he awaited the arrival of Allen Dulles on the 8:37 express train from Bern. Something dramatic must have happened for Mr. Dulles to leave Switzerland’s capital city and request an evening meeting with him.

Beyond the Basel SBB Bahnhof, the sound of two distinct bells—marking thirty minutes after the hour—chimed from the Basler Münster, the fourteenth-century sandstone cathedral bathed in diffused rays of soft-amber light at this twilight hour.

Basel, as any local like Jean-Pierre knew, had two train stations. The Basel SBB south of the Rhine was the terminus for all intra-Swiss traffic as well as trains arriving from France. The Badischer Bahnhof north of the Rhine straddled the triangular border point—the Dreispitz—for Switzerland, France, and Germany and was the terminus for passenger trains arriving from the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

Tonight would be the first time Jean-Pierre would meet Allen Dulles without Pascal at his side. Since being recruited by Pascal nearly a year earlier, his mentor had been working with him on his English vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence construction. For an entertaining way to speed up his learning, Jean-Pierre read Perry Mason books, the whodunit mysteries by Erle Stanley Gardner, that were gathering dust in Pascal’s library.

A couple dozen Swiss businessmen in three-piece suits meandered about the train platform, studiously ignoring the rambunctious children trying to evade their harried mothers’ attempts to control them. Jean-Pierre ignored the chaos and studied the bold face of the Mondaine clock hanging from a wrought-iron post. When the red second hand, with an exaggerated dot on the long end, reached 58 seconds, the minute hand jumped to the next minute—in this case, 8:37. After a half minute, the train’s iron-red locomotive came into view and rolled to a stop.

The angular Allen Dulles, his graying hair topped with a Baldwin fedora and an unlit pipe stuck in his mouth, stepped off the first-class rail car, gripping a faded leather briefcase in his right hand and a compact travel suitcase in his left. He lowered his head and joined the stream of departing passengers. Jean-Pierre, dressed in a tweed business suit with his hands in his pants pockets, barely glanced at Mr. Dulles as he swept by. When the American spymaster had advanced fifty meters past his reconnoiter point, Jean-Pierre swung into the rear of the horde, marching toward the massive barrel-like roof above the train station entrance.

As he followed, Jean-Pierre occasionally stopped and concentrated on the masses headed for Schützengraben, the boulevard fronting the Basel SBB train station, to see if Mr. Dulles was being tailed. Satisfied that no one but himself was following the Big Cheese, he closed the gap, maintaining a respectable distance. Dulles quickly turned left onto Elisabethan Strasse. After two blocks, Mr. Dulles ducked into their meeting point—the Drei Könige, or Three Kings, restaurant.

Jean-Pierre pushed against the restaurant’s heavy wooden door and stepped inside what had been a guildhall in medieval times. The restaurant foyer received natural light from a half-dozen stained glass windows that rivaled those found in the Münster’s Romanesque vaults. Ancient beams accentuated the ceiling trusses, and pewter plates and mugs adorned the ocher-colored walls.

As Jean-Pierre’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, a waiter in a white shirt and black pinstripe tie hoisted an oversized tray covered with several entrées to his shoulder. The restaurant employee strode by, and Jean-Pierre’s eyes—and nose—identified the saddle of venison accompanying a bed of dumplings and juniper berry sauce. Once again, his stomach expressed an audible complaint from hunger.

The maître d’ escorted Jean-Pierre to a red-leather booth in the rear of the main salon, where Allen Dulles perused a boarded menu. The American stood to shake Jean-Pierre’s hand as he offered him a seat.

“Thank you for coming on short notice,” Dulles said. “Nobody followed us?”

“I don’t believe so, sir.”

“Excellent.” Dulles handed Jean-Pierre another menu. “Feel free to order anything you want. Eat hearty. It’s one small way my country can show its appreciation for what courageous folks like you are doing. Oh, which reminds me of something . . .”

Dulles reached underneath the table for his briefcase and set it on his lap. A side pocket held a padded envelope wrapped with a rubber band. “I normally handle this part with Pascal, but since you’re here, you can pass this along to him. You’ll find 5,000 Swiss francs and a thousand U.S. dollars—all cash. We know you have bills to pay, which is why we take care of our own.”