saves me is that with Hitler in the Sudetenland, Germany gains three and a half million people-all but seven hundred thousand of them ethnic Germans-easily four army divisions, the way we think, plus industrial capacity, raw materials, food, you name it. This adds up to one more big, strategic headache for Russia and, when all is said and done, that’s my business, and I’ve been in that business since 1917-it’s what I know how to do. So they’ll want to keep me around, at least for the time being.”
“And me too, they’ll want to keep around.”
“Oh very definitely you. After all, you operate an important mine for us-without you and your brethren the Directorate can produce nothing. We manufacture precision tools, at least we try to, but where would we be without iron ore? Which brings me to what I came here to talk about, I didn’t drag myself to some beach in Denmark just to get a pocketful of dirty pictures.
“The background is this: Hitler has the Sudetenland, we know he’s going for all of Czechoslovakia, we think he wants more, a lot more. If the OTTER material was significant, it’s now crucial, and the Directorate is going to have its way with this man whether he likes it or not. To that end, we’ve determined to send you to Berlin. This is dangerous, but necessary. Either you can talk OTTER into a more, ah, generous frame of mind or we’re really going to put the screws on. In other words, patience now exhausted. Understood? “
“Yes.”
“Also, we want you to deliver money to the RAVEN network, to RAVEN herself. Take a good look at her; you’re going to be asked for your views when you return to Paris. The Directorate has faith in Schau-Wehrli, please don’t misunderstand, but we’d like a second opinion.”
“Will Goldman supply passports for the trip?”
“What passports? Don’t be such a noodle. You go as yourself, writing for
“One.”
“Only one?”
“Why were you sent all this way? The ‘third country’ meeting is usually reserved for special circumstances- you taught me that- and I haven’t heard anything, anything official that is, that couldn’t have been communicated by wireless. Am I missing something?”
Abramov inhaled deeply and acknowledged the impact of the question with a sigh that meant
“And if not? “
“That’s not the decision, so don’t be too curious. Now I used a car to get here, but I want you to leave first. You’ve got about a half-hour walk back into Aarhus, so you’ll forgive me if I pass you on the road like I never saw you. Last word: again I remind you to be very careful in Berlin. Your status as a correspondent protects you, but don’t go finding out how far. When you contact agents, follow procedure to the letter. As for all the chaos in Moscow, don’t let it get you down. No situation is as hopeless as it appears, Andre Aronovich-remember the old saying: nobody ever found a cat skeleton in a tree.”
They said good-bye and Szara struggled up the soft sand to the top of the dunes. Looking back, the sense of the scene as a painting returned to him. Sergei Abramov, umbrella hooked on one forearm, hands thrust in pockets, stared out to sea. The autumn seascape surrounded him-crying gulls, incoming waves, the rustling beach grass, and pale-wash sky-but he was alien to it. Or, rather, it was alien to him, as though the idea of the painting was that the solitary figure on the shore was no longer part of life on earth.
27 October 1938.
Such visions did not leave him.
A fragment of bureaucratic language,
The dining car on the Nord Express to Berlin was nearly deserted, the vibrations of stemware and china at the empty tables far too loud without the normal babble of conversation. An elderly waiter stood half asleep at his station, napkin draped over one arm, as Szara forced himself to eat a lukewarm veal chop. When the train approached the border, an officious porter came through the car lowering the window shades, presumably denying Szara and one other couple a view of French military fortifications.
And the passport control in Germany was worse than usual. Nothing he could exactly put his finger on, the process was the same. Perhaps there were more police, their sidearms more noticeable. Or perhaps it was in the way they moved about, bumping into things, their voices a little louder, their intonations not so polite, something almost exultant in their manner. Or it might have been the men in suits, sublimely casual, who hardly bothered to look at his documents.
Or was he, he asked himself, merely losing his nerve? There had been no horrid Chinese food in Brussels this time. He’d spent hours in the back office of Stefan Leib’s cartography shop, where Goldman had inflicted on him a series of exhausting, repetitious briefings that often lasted well past midnight. This was a different Goldman, leaning over a cluttered desk in the glow of a single lamp, voice tense and strained, breath sharp with alcohol, slashing pencil lines across a street map of Berlin or explaining, in sickening detail, the circumstances in which Dr. Baumann now found himself.
The situation for German Jews had deteriorated, but far worse was the form the deterioration took. There was something hideously measured about it, like a drum, as some new decree appeared every month, each one a little worse than the last, each one inspiring, and clearly meant to inspire, its victims with a terrifying sense of orchestration. Whatever ruled their destiny simply refused to be placated. No matter how precisely and punctually they conformed to the minutiae of its rules, it grew angrier and more demanding. The more they fed it, the hungrier it got.
In April of 1938 only forty thousand Jewish firms remained in Germany; all others had passed to Aryan ownership, sometimes for a nominal fee, sometimes for nothing. Those businesses that remained under Jewish control either brought in foreign currency, which Germany desperately needed to buy war materials or, like Baumann Milling, were directly connected to rearmament efforts.
In June, Jews had to provide an inventory of everything they owned, with the exception of personal and household goods.
In July, a glimmer of hope, a conference on Jewish emigration held at the French spa town of Evian, where representatives of the world’s nations met to consider the problem. But they refused to take in the German Jews. The United States would accept only twenty-eight thousand, in severely restricted categories. Australia did not wish to import “a racial problem.” South and Central American countries wanted only farmers, not traders or intellectuals. France had already accepted too many refugees. Britain claimed not to have space available, and immigration to British-controlled Palestine was sharply curtailed to a few hundred certificates a month since Arab riots and ambushes-beginning in 1936-had created political difficulties for those who favored letting Jews into the country. In addition, British access to oil in the Middle East was based on the maintenance of good relations with the Arab sheikdoms, and they were in general opposed to Jewish settlement in Palestine. Of all the nations convened at Evian, only Holland and Denmark would accept Jewish refugees who could leave Germany. By the end of the conference, most German Jews understood they were trapped.
The decrees did not stop. On 23 July, all Jews were required to apply for special identification cards. On 17 August it was ordered that Jews with German given names would have to change them- male Jews now to be known as Israel, females to be called Sarah. On 5 October, Jews were forced to hand in their passports. These would be returned, they were told, with an entry identifying the holder as a Jew.
As the train sped through the Rhine valley toward Dusseldorf, Szara raised the window shade and watched the little clusters of village lights go by. He consciously tried to free his mind of Goldman’s briefing and to concentrate on the likelihood of seeing Marta Haecht during his time in Berlin. But even in his imagination she lived
