The Swiss Courier: A Novel (39 page)

Gabi found herself crushed under Bill’s body. She could barely breathe—and her mind failed to comprehend what had just happened. She was just starting to regain her composure when she noticed—through the wooden slats—two German soldiers striding past the truck, approaching the rear.

German soldiers? Fear and confusion gripped her. All her mind could process was that there had been a firefight—an ambush—but the Germans must have beaten the partisans back.

The German soldiers nudged their fallen comrades with their rifle muzzles.

“Jean-Pierre?” Helmut cried out. “Pascal? You saved us!”

In the moonlight, Gabi felt detached from reality—out of sorts. She couldn’t put this together . . . the soldier hauling himself onto the flatbed looked exactly like . . . no, this couldn’t be, but there was no mistake. “Eric? Is that you?”

The soldier pushed back the brim of his German helmet, revealing a shock of red hair. “Gabi—you’re safe!”

Eric Hofstadler gently untied the knots constricting Gabi’s hands, stood, and pulled her up and into his arms. She kissed his face as tears blurred her gaze.

“Eric, it’s really you.” She touched his face. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Eric again squeezed her close. Then he leaned back and wiped a tear from her cheek. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to have you in my arms.”

The watch store owner cleared his throat. “So, your real name is Eric.” Helmut reached out to pat Eric’s shoulder. “Although I’m sure I’ll still be calling you Jean-Pierre ten years from now. And what’s your real name, Pascal?”

All eyes turned to look at the second soldier boosting himself—with less agility—onto the back of the truck.

Gabi covered her mouth in surprise. “Dad! What are you doing here?”

“The same reason you’re here.” He grinned. “Doing my part to defeat Adolf Hitler.”

Gabi dropped Eric’s hand and embraced her father, allowing the emotion of the last twenty-four hours to flow from her eyes and wet his uniform.

After an appropriate wait, Helmut tapped “Pascal” on the shoulder. “I was hoping you’d set up a roadblock. But you old goat—you never told me a thing.”

“Helm, listen, I couldn’t, and now you know why. But one thing I do know is that Joseph Engel’s disappearance has stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

Ernst Mueller let out a low birdlike whistle, and four partisans wearing berets came out of the foliage to approach the truck.

“Nice shooting, guys,” Ernst said, removing his Wehrmacht helmet. “We have a boat to catch, but first, I need you men to go back into Waldshut. Frau Emden is being held at the store . . .”

The skiff—heavily loaded with six persons—touched Swiss soil at 12:42 a.m. The crossing had taken only three minutes. The welcoming party included some of Eric’s buddies from the apartment overlooking the Badischer Bahnhof—as well as another American.

“Mr. Dulles!” Gabi exclaimed.

The American spymaster accepted her hand and held it. “Gabi, it’s so good to see you. I can’t tell you what it means to me that everyone returned safely. You are a remarkable young woman. And so is that young man next to you.”

“Very kind of you, sir,” Eric replied in Swiss-accented American English. He wrapped his arm around Gabi’s waist and pressed his left hand on her hip. “When we heard the Junkers had run out of petrol, I didn’t think I’d see the person I love more than breath itself, ever again.” He smiled and leaned over to kiss Gabi—

“Wait one minute, buster.” Gabi pulled away from Eric, feigning anger. “You’re a fraud! You knew how to speak English all this time!”

“Well, I’ve been learning from your father. I guess that was part of my cover.”

Gabi burst out with a laugh. “What else do I need to know about you?”

“That I can’t live without you?”

“I think I knew that!” She gave him a quick hug.

Allen Dulles cleared his throat. “Can you introduce me to Joseph Engel?”

“Yes, of course.” Gabi stepped over to pull Joseph away from Eric’s friends and her father, who were swapping stories.

“Mr. Engel, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said properly in German.

Joseph dropped his leather satchel to the ground to shake hands with the OSS chief.

“A pleasure, sir. I can’t believe I escaped.”

“Indeed, you have. On behalf of the United States of America, I welcome you to freedom . . .”

Inside the ornate chapel abutting the Schloss Bottstein castle, the jam-packed crowd rose in unison to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

“That’s our cue,” Ernst Mueller whispered as he extended his right arm to his daughter. “This will be the only time I get to do this.”

“Daddy, don’t start—” Gabi blinked back tears.

She took a deep breath and allowed her father to lead her down the aisle toward the man whom she had so badly underestimated for years. Her throat constricted slightly at the thought of the treasure she had in Eric Hofstadler, too long obscured by her immature naïveté. She drank in the sight of the one who had won her heart.

Her eyes shifted from Eric to Bill Palmer—back in Switzerland on a three-day pass—as the best man playfully nudged the groom. Eric’s awestruck face broke into a broad smile.

When father and daughter reached the wedding arbor, Gabi slid her hand out of her father’s arm as he straightened into his pastoral bearing. He took three more steps into the chancel and turned around to face her.

“Who gives this bride?” he asked, his chin lifted in formality.

Ernst Mueller immediately stepped down to rejoin his daughter, sliding her hand into the crook of his arm as he turned to face the empty podium. “Her mother and I do.”

The audience tittered, and Gabi rolled her eyes, knowing the thoughts of every Swiss in the audience:
That’s an American for you
.

As he motioned for Eric to accept Gabi’s hand, he retook his place in front of the beaming couple. Together Gabi and Eric knelt beneath the flower-covered arbor.

Ernst cleared his throat. “
Meine Damen und Herren
, we are gathered here today in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony . . .”

“How’s my Swiss courier?” Allen Dulles, dapper in a top hat and silver-and-black vested suit, approached Gabi with a beaming smile.

“I really do think this is the happiest day of my life.”

“My heartfelt congratulations. May I take a look?” The American leaned over as Gabi held out her left arm, adorned with a glittering diamond setting on her ring finger. The wedding reception—in a refurbished monk’s cellar in the castle basement—was winding down after a delightful dinner for the wedding party.

“I still can’t believe it.” Gabi brought her left hand up to gaze at the ring, as if she couldn’t believe such a beautiful diamond was hers. “Wasn’t that nice of the Rosenthal family?”

“Yes, they were quite grateful to receive the pouch of diamonds that you ‘liberated’ from that safe in Weil am Rhein. Nice of them to include a diamond ring as part of your reward.”

“How did you locate the family?” Gabi strained to remember the difficult morning of nearly nine months earlier.

“Remember that folder in the safe?”

Gabi nodded.

“Inside that folder was correspondence from brothers and sisters living in the States,” Dulles continued. “It was a simple matter to track down members of the extended family, most of whom lived in New York City. They were in the diamond business too, as it turns out. Like I said, although the Rosenthals were devastated to learn that their relatives were murdered in the death camps, they were most appreciative of your bravery.”

Dulles reached for Gabi’s elbow and steered her away from other well-wishers. “They asked me to personally forward this to you.” He extracted a letter-sized envelope from his inside breast pocket.

“What’s this?”

“Take a look.” The American spymaster maintained a face of equanimity.

Gabi slipped a lacquered fingernail under the envelope’s flap. Her eyes widened as she withdrew a check made out in her maiden name containing more zeros than she had ever seen on a check.

“This can’t be happening,” she said, her face as white as her bridal gown. The amount on the green check drawn on the New York Bank and Trust: $50,000.

She threw her arms around Dulles and squeezed his neck, startling her boss. “How can I ever thank you?”

“Don’t thank me,” Dulles said. “I was told by the Rosenthal family that this represents a 10 percent finder’s fee in recognition of your honesty and your good-faith effort to return the diamonds to their rightful owner.”

“But this is a fortune!” Gabi shook her head in disbelief.

“Yes, it is, but I know you and Eric will use the money wisely.”

Gabi examined the check one more time, as if she expected to awaken from a dream at any moment. “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Dulles, except how incredibly blessed Eric and I are . . . for
everything
. . . at a time when the world is picking up the pieces after the German surrender. It’s hard to believe V-E Day happened only ten days ago.”

At that moment, her new husband returned with two long-stemmed glasses of white wine.

When Gabi spilled the joyous news, he nearly dropped the half-filled glasses of Dezaley.

“Looks like you’ll be able to buy another dairy farm,” Dulles said.

“Actually, I think I’m getting out of the milking business— thanks to the promotion you gave the both of us,” Eric said.

Dulles waved him off. “Believe me, if anyone deserved to be put in charge of the Swiss section, it would be you and Gabi. Postwar Europe needs people like the two of you and Benjamin Becker.”

Eric’s face brightened. “How is Benjamin doing?”

“As you know, he remained undercover with the Gestapo and performed many valiant deeds on our behalf right up to when our forces liberated Heidelberg in March. I would imagine that he will be invaluable when the war trials start. In many ways, this is just the beginning for good people like you and Benjamin. Sooner or later, we’ll have to deal with the Soviets.”

“Thank you for your confidence in us.” Gabi flashed a winsome smile. “Speaking of invaluable, have you heard from Joseph?” She remembered the letter she had received from him at Easter time. The return address was an APO military address, but the postal stamp said Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Dulles smiled. “He’s doing well. I can’t tell you where he is exactly or what he’s doing because it’s top secret, but you may hear from him—or about his work—very shortly.”

Their boss let the thought hang in the air. “So where are you going on your honeymoon?”

Gabi and Eric looked at each other and smiled.

“We thought about some place in the mountains,” Eric said. “You know, Davos sounds like a nice place to go this time of year.”

We have many people to thank for their insight, advice, encouragement, and edits regarding
The Swiss Courier
. First of all, I (Mike) must toss a large bouquet of Edelweiss toward my wife, Nicole, a Swiss born in Basel and proficient in five languages. Nicole laboriously read version after version of each chapter, and she was a great source for the Swiss-German and German dialogue. And Tricia offers a mountain of thanks to her husband, John, for all his love, support, and showing her what love is all about.

Bill Palmer, an Englishman married to a Swiss (his wife, Andrietta, was our maid of honor), has flown planes for nearly forty years and was a Swissair pilot for twenty-five years. The Palmers live near Zurich, and Bill was especially helpful with the technical aspects of flying the Junkers Ju-52 plane as well as coming up with ideas for the departure from Dübendorf and the crash-landing in Germany, which is why we named a central character after him. Bill consulted with Hans Moser, who has actually flown the Junkers Ju-52. John Zublin, an American pilot whose grandfather was Swiss, also helped with the flight sequences.

J. L. Thompson dazzled us with his editing skills and deserves kudos, as did Amy Lathrop, Tricia Goyer’s editorial assistant.

Dawn Saunders and her twelve-year-old daughter Sydney read the manuscript as it was being written and always asked where the next chapters were. Tom Anderson, the author of
Verdict: Jesus Christ Is Who He Said He Was
, also cheered us on. Tom, in his late seventies, said he’ll never forget where he was when he learned the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor: he was a schoolboy delivering newspapers that Sunday morning.

Brenda Stoeker, wife of Fred Stoeker of
Every Man’s Battle
fame, had eagle eyes for spotting typos. A pair of Swiss, Philip Dejaris of La Croix sur Lutry, and Carol Bieri of Geneva, gave us an “inside Switzerland” look, as did Stephan Stücklin of Basel. Rick Myatt, my pastor and my coauthor on my first novel,
By the Sword
, passed along timely advice, as did Jon Shafqat and Bill Farrington.

Urs Winkler, a longtime friend of mine who lives in Spiez, Switzerland, and heads up the World Vision office in Switzerland, organized an interview with his eighty-five-year-old mother, who was a teenage girl living in Riehen, Switzerland, during World War II. Martha Winkler described what it was like growing up within a few hundred meters of the German border, as well as wartime deprivations experienced by the Swiss.

Eddie Welch, whose brilliant mind was part of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and who also worked on the hydrogen bomb, proofed the sections on Werner Heisenberg and the German atomic bomb project.

Anne-Marie Hämisegger with the Basel Tourist Office was especially helpful with the history of the Mittlere Brücke bridge spanning the Rhine River.