“What kind of stories?”
“You are interested in lies? I thought you were historians.”
“Sometimes even a lie contains a grain of truth.”
Molden shook his head in irritation.
“What did Visser say about Kurt Bauer?”
“Same sort of claptrap he said about every German. That Bauer was mixing with Gestapo bad guys. Cooking up plots. Hell, he was a boy barely eighteen. Not that youth ever kept any Germans from behaving badly. Bauer was lost here, mooning about with nothing to do. Probably left a girlfriend behind, that’s what I always said.”
“How did you happen to get a look at him?” Nat asked.
“Easy. He met with Icarus. Several times.” Another swallow of beer. Another mustache. Then he laughed. “Bauer didn’t like our man Icarus one bit, I can tell you that! But of course Visser only took that as a sign that Bauer must be up to no good.”
“And you’re certain he was wrong?” Berta asked.
“Oh, as you say, there is often a grain of truth. The Gestapo contact, for example. You couldn’t be a German in Bern without having the Gestapo look you up, especially if you were as prominent as Bauer. Naturally they wanted to know his whereabouts. But by that late in the war I would say he was the one with more influence in that relationship.”
“How so?” Nat asked.
“Well, this was late ’44. Even the Gestapo knew the war was lost. Their people here were well beyond the orbit of Berlin, and they weren’t interested in fighting to the last man no matter what the Fuhrer said. A few began placing their bets on the Americans. Some of them probably figured Bauer would be a good middleman for meeting Dulles. But people like the Bauers were already too preoccupied with looking out for themselves.”
“Of course they were,” Berta said. “And the Bauers came out of it quite well.”
“People like them always do, and with good reason. They’re more interested in making money than ideology. So you see? Visser was a lying shit.”
“But even you said Bauer didn’t like Icarus,” Berta said. From her aggressive posture, you could tell she wasn’t thrilled with Molden’s conclusion that Bauer was an okay guy.
“This is true. And the feeling was mutual. You saw it in their body language whenever they met. Shoulders turned away from each other. Never face-to-face, unless it was confrontational. Visser wasn’t exaggerating that part.”
“Bauer must not have been that much of an opportunist,” Nat said, “if he couldn’t even bring himself to butter up a small player like Icarus.”
“He felt he had been pawned off. He wanted an audience with the big boss and thought if he sulked enough they might let him see Dulles himself. When that didn’t work he tried making big promises to the errand boy.”
“What kind of promises?”
Molden shrugged.
“I don’t know for sure. I only have theories. Offering to spy on his Gestapo contacts, perhaps. Or his Nazi friends. Stuckart was also in Bern by then, you know.”
“Wilhelm Stuckart?”
“Wilhelm’s son, Erich. He arrived in late ’44, toward the end of summer. He and Bauer were school chums.”
Well, this was news. Wilhelm Stuckart was a high official in the Nazi Interior Ministry, best known for cowriting the Nuremberg laws, which codified German anti-Semitism. He was also one of fifteen muckety-mucks who attended the Wannsee Conference in 1942, where the murderous Reinhard Heydrich laid out the basis for the “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question. Stuckart was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg but got out of prison in 1949. He died four years later in a suspicious car accident.
Nat hadn’t even known Stuckart had a family. But Berta seemed to know all about Erich. Nat could see it in her eyes. Perhaps it was one of her jealously guarded secrets. She was watching Molden carefully, as if worried about what might spill out next.
“What was Erich Stuckart doing in Bern?” Nat asked.
“Same thing as Bauer. Trying to cut deals for his family. Leaving messages for Dulles and anyone else who would see him. Visser, of course, claimed Stuckart had bigger plans, and was hatching them with Bauer.”
“Did Icarus know about Stuckart?” Berta asked.
“Who can say for sure?”
Nat sensed that at times Molden was still covering for past shortcomings. Maybe he had been a lousy spy. To watch him now, tucking into his
“Even if Icarus had known about Stuckart,” Molden continued, “why should he have cared? There were other operatives assigned to the likes of Stuckart. And by then, of course, Icarus had far bigger concerns in Adelboden.”
“Adelboden?” Nat asked.
It was a town in the Alps, about an hour south of Bern. By the end of the war, its hotels had been overflowing with interned American airmen who hadn’t been lucky enough to get jobs like Gordon’s.
“Yes, Adelboden. Did you not know about Icarus and his little Fraulein, his pretty little waitress?”
“I’ll be damned.”
“You knew this?” Berta said. Her tone was accusatory.
“Not really. But there was a memo in the archives from Gordon to Dulles, ‘The Case of the Pretty Waitress.’ All about some Swiss damsel in distress in Adelboden. I copied it, but I didn’t think it meant much at the time.”
“Oh, she was quite important to him,” Molden said. His smile was a leer.
“Wasn’t she charged with something?” Nat asked.
“The security police believed she was helping American airmen escape. She supplied them with civilian clothes, and on her holidays she drove them to Luzern, where they made their way across the border into France.”
“Do you remember a name? The memo seemed to make a point of not mentioning it.”
“Good for Icarus. Purposely keeping her out of the official record. Yes, I remember her well, and in the end we all agreed she was a pretty good egg. She did all right for herself with tips, of course, but she never charged a penny for taking anyone to the border. That’s one reason the charges were dropped. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Icarus intervened. He got some American lawyer to take her case.”
“And her name?” Nat prompted again.
“Sorry. It was Keller. Sabine Keller.”
“You’re joking.”
“You know of her?”
“Not really. But I have seen the name.”
Amazing, Nat thought. Sabine Keller. The signature in the book Gordon had put under lock and key. Even Berta looked startled. Nat now recalled the most striking thing about the “pretty waitress” memo-its affectionate tone. Gordon had not only given her the benefit of the doubt, he had taken her side. Quite a contrast to his dismissive reaction to other sob stories. No pity for anyone until the pretty waitress came along, toting her Swiss murder mystery with a wild-flower tucked between the pages.
“At first we were a little surprised when Icarus started spending so much time down there,” Molden said.
“You were surprised by love?” Berta asked, oddly animated. “The oldest and strongest emotion in the world? How could that have surprised you?”
Such an unlikely question, coming from her. Nat wondered what could have triggered it. Molden also seemed taken aback, but he recovered with a shrug and a sip of beer.
“Then maybe it is true what they say about us Swiss, that we are a cold and precise people, a nation of watchmakers. Whether or not he was in love, I cannot say for sure. But it certainly made my life easier, because my bosses didn’t care in the least about the doings of some mooning young couple. So it was always a breeze for me
