Then, as if to make it clear he wasn’t faulting the current leadership, or the German national character, Reinhard Bauer proceeded to analyze the situation from the point of view of an industrialist. Perhaps he saw it as another opportunity to further his son’s education, because he then took out pencil and paper and began toting up precise columns of numbers. Production quotas and available raw materials. Shortages across the board. Here was the reason Germany could no longer win, he said. Because they could no longer outproduce the American and Russian makers of guns, planes, and ammo.
“Do you remember all those men who came here from America during the Olympic Games?” he asked.
Kurt nodded, holding his tongue. The Bauer companies had thrown a reception in 1936 for a delegation of manufacturing tycoons from the American heartland. At the time, Berlin had been putting its best face forward for a skeptical world. Every street was clean. Bums and ne’er-do-wells were swept from view. The Americans, to a man, had spoken enviously of the orderly nature of the new regime. No unions, no strikers, and no one stirring up the rabble. Everything worked, and everything ran on time. FDR could learn a thing or two from Hitler, they gushed.
But now those same men were working overtime to make sure Berlin was reduced to cinders, so of course defeat was inevitable.
“What that means, Kurt, is that if you really want to go running around with young girls who insist on speaking their mind, then all you have to do is wait. Because it will only be a matter of years, or even months, before the fighting will end. Understand?”
“Perfectly.”
He then stormed upstairs to his books and phonograph records, and refused to accompany his father to a reception at the home of a Siemens executive.
As the months passed, Kurt kept expecting the pain to fade. He had always recovered quickly from such things before. But he couldn’t shake his deep sense of loss over Liesl. Nor did it help that he sometimes glimpsed her at the university. Once he called out her name, but she didn’t even glance back. Now, with winter returning, the pain of estrangement was as fresh as ever.
Other aspects of his life, on the other hand, were only getting more complicated. His biggest worry was that he might soon be a soldier. He had just turned seventeen. As Erich’s father had predicted, there was talk of lowering the age of conscription. With an entire army surrounded at Stalingrad, it seemed likely any day.
In addition, a pall of worry had fallen over the Bauer household. Manfred hadn’t been heard from in weeks on the eastern front, and there was a new cloud over his sister Traudl’s prospects for marriage. Two grim fellows from the SS Racial Office had visited ages ago to collect family genealogical information. They were supposed to have completed their background check in three months. But it had now been eleven months, and the case was still on hold due to unspecified complications. Reinhard refused to discuss it, and Kurt’s mother grew deathly silent every time Traudl brought it up. The would-be bride, at least, was making the most of the delay, by hoarding enough fabric coupons for their seamstress to make the grandest possible dress. And she never had to fret about the safety of her prospective groom. Bruno Scharf had been posted to the coast of France, and his letters spoke glowingly of a farmhouse billet with fresh eggs and a cellar full of wine.
But the strangest and most troubling development had come to Kurt’s attention that very morning, when his father had again taken him aside for a chat. Reinhard had returned the previous night from a visit to some of their suppliers in Switzerland, where the family had a factory near Bern.
Kurt shut the door behind him as his father instructed, figuring he was about to be subjected to a rehash of Reinhard’s efforts to ensure speedier and more bountiful deliveries. It soon became clear that something more momentous was in the works. At first the elder Bauer did nothing but pace. When he finally came to rest in his desk chair, his face was ashen.
“Kurt, the things I am about to tell you must not pass beyond these walls. Not to anyone, under any circumstances. Not even your mother is to know. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must promise.”
“I promise.”
Reinhard took a deep breath and planted his hands on his knees.
“Do you remember a man I once brought to the house to introduce to your brother, an investment banker, Gero von Gaevernitz?”
“Vaguely. Wasn’t his father some kind of professor?”
“Yes. Years earlier, but correct.”
An indistinct image of a handsome-even dashing-fellow in a double-breasted suit with short, wavy hair came fleetingly to mind. His mother had been charmed by the man, but he remembered little else. In those carefree days Kurt hadn’t been expected to pay attention to such callers, so he hadn’t.
“Well, he’s in Switzerland now, and I am afraid he is not a supporter of our current government. But he is nonetheless a useful man among the Germans there, and last night I met with him. Or, rather, I met with one of his representatives.”
“He is in business there?”
“No. Well, yes. It’s rather more complicated than that. I suppose the polite term for his new line of work would be that he is an information broker. He collects bits and pieces, makes introductions for his clients, that sort of thing.”
“Who are his clients?”
Reinhard cleared his throat and smoothed a wrinkle on his trousers.
“The Americans, mostly. Or exclusively, perhaps.”
Kurt was shocked.
“So he is in the intelligence business. A spy. And you met with him?”
“With his representative.”
“Does that really make a difference?”
“No. Not if anyone here ever found out.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because I plan to see him again, next time I go back. This time it will be Gero himself. And at some point, if you’re not sent off to war, I’m hoping that you may also have a chance to meet him. Assuming, of course, that I can arrange a travel pass, so that you can accompany me across the border.”
For a man who had been so appalled by Liesl’s mere words, this news was beyond astounding.
“Dad, what exactly are you saying?”
“That I have begun planning for our future. The family’s. The company’s. And, frankly, the Fatherland’s. These people running our country now…” He paused, fully aware that he had entered uncharted waters. “Well, I think we all know they’re not going to survive much longer. When the war ends, they’ll be gone. The Allies will insist. And when that happens, we’re going to want-need-friends among the Allies. People we can talk to, and who might be willing to trust us. The Russians? Forget it, unless you’re a Bolshevik. The Americans are our hope. Those men you met during the Olympic Games, people like them. And people like Gaevernitz, who, by the way, is a dual citizen. He’s American, too.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He wasn’t exactly advertising it back then. But it’s why he fled the country, about a year ago.”
“And he’s spying now for the Americans?”
Kurt’s father winced at the word, but he nodded.
“My long-term goal is to meet with Gero’s boss, although some elaborate arrangements may be required. If I do, I will try to reach some sort of understanding. For later.”
“What sort of elaborate arrangements?”
“Middlemen. Secure locations. Evidently these things are quite complex. They have to be, I suppose, because the Gestapo and the Abwehr have people all over Bern as well. You see them in rail stations, hotel lobbies. All types from all sides, right there together. It takes some getting used to, I must say. You can’t just meet people out in the open.”
“And when you have this meeting, what sort of things will you tell them that a spy would want to know?”
Another wince.
