The Swiss Courier: A Novel (30 page)

Bill Palmer didn’t need to memorize the rendezvous point.

Head down, he listened to the cadence of his well-worn boots pounding the pavement as anticipation built in his heart. These steps were leading him out of Davos, he reminded himself. He retraced his route from the previous night to the empty alley behind the Heiz Bäckerei.

“There you are. Right on time.” Willy Mueller, still in uniform, tucked his service cap into his waist belt and straightened up from where he leaned against the rear wall of the bakery.

Willy smiled and pumped Bill’s hand, but thoughts of J.J. and Sam caused Bill to feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. He attempted to smile back but knew his attempt was weak.

Willy frowned slightly, then turned and knocked on a wooden garage door. When the door didn’t open right away, he glanced at his watch. “We’re a little early I suppose.”

Bill glanced around. “Positive there isn’t any problem?”

“Easy now. We’re not doing anything wrong—just a couple of buddies hanging out like we have since you arrived here.”

“I know, but now . . . well, everything’s different.” Bill pressed his fingertips to his temples.

“Still bothered by your buddies getting picked up? At least they didn’t get shot.”

Bill weighed his words. “Three months in Wauwil. They’ve probably been processed already and tossed into the general prison population. You hear all sorts of awful things about that slammer.” He shook his head. “Hope they can survive on bread, water, and gruel.”

“Yeah, makes our potatoes and cheese look like your New York steaks and California salads. Too bad Andreas couldn’t warn them in time about the ambush. The Swiss like order, so when Allied airmen step over the boundaries, the authorities must act swiftly and surely. As an example to others.”

“I see your point, but the thought of being stuck here in the mountains for another winter got to some of us. It seems useless to be here . . . useless waiting out the war.” Bill looked at his watch. At this moment, in Wisconsin, Katie was gearing up for the lunch crowd at her parents’ diner. He missed her horribly, but he reminded himself that after tonight, he might see her very soon.

Willy looked at his watch too. “Let’s try this again.” He knocked on the garage door firmly—too loudly for Bill’s comfort. Yet as Bill scanned the streets, he still saw no one.

This time the paneled door rolled to the right side, revealing Fritz Heiz, the bakery owner, and the beaming face of Andreas Mueller, also dressed in uniform. “Great to see you, Bill, but hurry up,” Andreas said. “We don’t have all day.” Bill and Willy stepped inside, and Herr Heiz moved quickly to close the garage door behind them.

Bill’s eyes adjusted to the twilight inside the loading dock. An older man huddled over a roadmap draped across the black hood of a four-door sedan.

“Ernst Mueller,” said the man with ruddy cheeks, dressed in a dark suit without a tie. “But you can call me Ernie. I’m the twins’ father.”

Bill noticed the family resemblance in the pronounced eyebrows and wide forehead. Just the way Ernie Mueller said his name told him that he was an American native.

“I guess I don’t have to ask you who won the World Series last year,” Bill joked.

“Baseball news travels slowly around these parts, but I’m aware the Yankees beat the Cardinals in the Fall Classic. What else do you want to know? That DiMaggio hit safely in fifty-six games in ’41?”

Bill raised his arms. “Okay, you’re an American. What exactly do you have planned for me?”

“You like to fly?”

“Sure. That’s why I’m here in Switzerland.”

“I’ll tell you more on the drive. I shouldn’t say too much around the boys anyway.”

Ernie waved his sons over to his map. “I’m figuring four hours to Dübendorf. What do you think?”

“I’ve never driven there from here,” Willy said. “Sounds right to me, though.”

Andreas nodded his agreement. “Before you get to the Zürichsee, cross the lake at Rapperswil,” he suggested. “You don’t want to go all the way around the Lake of Zurich and through Zurich. Taking this shortcut to Dübendorf will save you a half hour or forty-five minutes.”

Bill couldn’t believe this was really going to happen, but when Willy and Andreas said they could get him out of Davos—in a matter of hours—he was willing to accept the risk inherent with an escape attempt. Whatever their father asked couldn’t be too difficult.

“Very good.” Ernie folded up the accordion-pleated map. “Time to go. Hop in, everyone.”

Bill was puzzled. “The twins are going with us?”

“Following the escape attempt last night, the Swiss military set up a roadblock just outside of town. We’re not leaving anything to chance, so you’re going into the trunk and I’m taking the boys with me to the checkpoint. I need them to chat with the guards about their visiting father.” Ernie Mueller dug into his right pocket for a set of keys and opened up the rear hatch. A pair of twenty-liter jerry cans took up half the trunk space.

“Gas for the drive back,” Ernie explained. “Here, give me a hand.”

Bill helped move the jerry cans behind the driver’s seat. “What kind of car is this?”

“She doesn’t look like much, but she’s a ’35 Peugeot.” Ernie motioned a cordial invitation to the rear trunk. “Okay, in you go.”

Bill removed his fleece-lined flight jacket and set it down where his head would lie. He scrunched his body into a pretzel to squeeze into the tight trunk.

Ernie tucked the airman’s long legs into the cubbyhole. “Sorry. It might be a little snug, but—” He slammed the trunk door.

Flecks of light seeped through pinholes in the trunk, settling Bill’s anxious stomach a bit. As they got under way, Bill learned that the shock absorbers were shot—every bump in the road jostled his kidneys and other internal organs.

Five minutes later, the Peugeot approached the checkpoint. Bill heard Andreas and Willy exit the vehicle, jabbering in Swiss-German. From the bantering tone, no one seemed too interested in searching the car belonging to the father of two Swiss Army colleagues.

After fifteen minutes of bouncing on the soft axles, Bill heard the Peugeot growl through three downshifts before rolling to a stop. When the trunk opened, the late summer sun had set behind the towering Alps, casting shadows across highlands dotted with slate-roofed chalets and penned pasturelands.

“Where are we?” Bill asked.

“Just outside of Klosters.” Ernie had parked the sedan on a dirt path behind a rustic barn adjacent to pastures surrounded by wooden fence rails. Several chestnut horses and brown cows occupied themselves with chewing moist Alpine grasses.

Bill sniffed the air. The faint odor of rotten eggs caused his nose to twitch. “What’s that smell?”

“The sulfur baths in town. The medicinal springs were a tourist draw before the war. The locals swear by them for gout, rheumatism, and chronic arthritis. Jump in the front seat with me. We have a schedule to keep.”

Ernie steered the car back onto the paved road that led to the valley floor. Once out of town, he confidently accelerated out of the downhill turns as the two-lane macadam hugged an outcropping two thousand feet above the Landquart River, a narrow sluice of angry white water that would eventually join the mighty Rhine. On the more treacherous curves, Bill noticed that the “guardrail” was nothing more than a series of stone blocks, each about a foot square, separated by a yard or two. About the only thing those blocks would do is rip off the engine’s oil pan if they went careening over the cliff, Bill thought.

“Don’t worry,” Ernie said, as if he was reading Bill’s mind. “I’ve been driving these Alpine roads for years.”

“You always speed like this?” Bill asked.

“Just when there’s a flight to catch.”

Bill took his eye off the precipice and turned toward Ernie. “So that’s what you do for a living—race car driver?”

Ernie laughed. “No. I make furniture during the week and pastor a church on weekends.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember the twins mentioning something about you running a church. They asked me if I wanted to join their Bible study on Tuesday nights.”

“Did you go?”

“I wouldn’t receive a medal for perfect attendance, but yes, I showed up on occasion. All those ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ bored me before, but those boys of yours explain the Bible well, so I did get something out of it. They talked about Psalm 91 this week and how it relates to every soldier in the military these days. Willy even got us to memorize a few lines, like ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.’ I didn’t understand what the last part meant until Willy explained that even though others will drop like flies around us, no harm will touch us when we trust in God.”

“So have you placed your trust in God?” Ernie asked. “Sorry, the preacher in me has to ask.”

“I’m working on it. Maybe I should with this cockamamie mission I’m volunteering for. What exactly will I be doing?” Now that the rubber was meeting the road, Bill’s interest— and anxiety—about “singing for his supper” came to the fore. He operated under the maxim that anything too good to be true usually was just that.

“Well, I was told that plans could change, but here’s what I know.” For the next few minutes, the pastor sketched out the parameters of Bill’s responsibilities. He didn’t stop talking, not even when he came upon sputtering tractors and punched the gas to overtake them.

Bill nodded his understanding of the overall plan. “Sounds like the Mueller family is out to save the world. We have your sons talking me into participating in this daredevil rescue, you driving me to the rendezvous point, and your daughter waiting for me to arrive.” He smiled to indicate that he shouldn’t be taken entirely seriously.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Ernie said. “First of all, Andreas and Willy were asked who the best pilot in Davos was, and your name topped a short list. I happened to be drafted today to drive into the mountains and pick you up. As for Gabi, she’s working for the same people you’re working for, in a way. She was picked for this mission because of her language skills, because she’s proven herself, and because she’s trusted. You’re in good hands.”

Ernie flicked on the lights as the twilight hour merged into darkness. The switchback-heavy road gave way to longer straightaways as they dropped altitude. “Remember this route from when you arrived?”

Bill shook his head. “After processing, the interned pilots and I boarded a train in Zürich. Once we hit the mountains, a storm socked us in.”

“Well, we’re traveling through a part of Switzerland that hasn’t changed much for hundreds of years, except for a couple of posh resort villages like Klosters and Davos. The farmers around here are a tough lot, scratching out a living.”

“No doubt it’s pretty around here, but this sort of life would be too simple for me.”

After four more hairpin turns, they arrived at the valley floor, where the road leveled out and ran parallel to the Land-quart River. Bill visibly relaxed. “So I’ve been thinking . . .”

Ernie accelerated into third gear as the road straightened out. “About the plan, right?”

“No, the plane. Just how am I supposed to get one?”

“Steal it.”

Bill shifted in his seat. “Instead of trying to kipe a plane, why don’t we ask the Swiss Air Force if we can just borrow one of our P-51s sitting on the tarmac?” he asked with a hint of sarcasm. “We can promise to bring it back.”

“Listen, I wish things were that simple, but P-51s are single-seat fighters. We need something that’ll carry three people.”

“That’s okay. I’m not checked out on the P-51 anyway. So that leaves us with something like a B-17, but I can’t land a heavy bomber on German soil without attracting notice.”

“Of course. That’s why we’re still working on that part of the plan.”

“Where’s the pickup again?”

“Just south of Heidelberg.”

“How far is that?”

“Two hundred and fifty kilometers or around 150 miles each way. Not far at all.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Suddenly, the reality of the mission landed on Bill’s shoulders. The preflight jitters that rumbled through his stomach during morning briefings reminded him that once again he was being called to put his life on the line. Bill hadn’t experienced that uneasy feeling in months, but this time around, a blending of boldness and confidence calmed his nerves. What was that line from Psalm 91 that Willy made the class memorize?

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress:
my God; in him will I trust
.

Bill had the feeling he would be tugging on that trust before the night was over.

Bruno Kassler dipped the crunchy Bavarian pretzel into a dollop of Dijon mustard and regarded the six piles of manila folders stacked on his desk. How many field reports had he scanned for clues since morning? One hundred? Maybe more.

Kassler took another bite of the pretzel and leaned back in his chair. What he really wanted was a stein of Weizenbock— a pale, sour wheat beer that matched his mood, yet he knew he would need all of his faculties in the hours ahead. His shoulders tensed at the dearth of information he’d received from local Polizei bureaus. Even the smallest lead could point him toward Joseph Engel.

Until something broke, however, all he had were the detailed reports arriving in dribs and drabs to Gestapo headquarters. Meanwhile, Himmler’s deadline loomed: just twelve hours until his departure on the Berlin Express. Once he stepped into the first class compartment, it would be
his
turn to travel on a one-way ticket. He knew the price for failure: a choice between blowing his brains out by his own hand or standing on the gallows’ trap door with piano wire cinched around his neck.