Spies of the Balkans

26 December. Berlin.

Only the wealthy could afford to live in the Dahlem district of Berlin, a neighborhood of private homes with gardens. The houses were powerfully built, of sober stone or brick, often three stories high, sometimes with a corner tower, while the lawns and plantings were kept with the sort of precision achieved only by the employment of gardeners. However, in the last month of 1940, hidden here and there-one didn’t want to be seen to acknowledge shortage-were the winter remains of vegetable gardens. Behind a fieldstone wall, a rabbit hutch. And the rising of the weak sun revealed the presence of two or three roosters. In Dahlem! But the war at sea was, in Berlin and all of Germany, having its effect.

At five-thirty, on a morning that seemed to her cruelly cold, wet, and dark, Emilia Krebs rang the chime on the door of the Gruen household. She too lived in Dahlem, not far away, but she might have driven had not gasoline become so severely rationed. When the door was answered, by a tall distinguished-looking gentleman, Emilia said, “Good morning, Herr Hartmann.” That was Herr Gruen’s new name, his alias for the journey to Salonika.

He nodded, yes, I know, and said, “Hello, Emmi.”

Emilia carried a thermos of real coffee, hard to find these days, and a bag of freshly baked rolls, made with white flour. Stepping inside, she found the Gruen living room almost barren, what with much of the furniture sold. On the walls, posters had been tacked up to cover the spaces where expensive paintings had once hung. The telephone sat on the floor, its cord unplugged from the wall-the Gestapo could listen to your conversation if the phone was plugged in. She greeted Frau Gruen, as pale and exhausted as her husband, then went to the coat closet in the hall and opened the door. The Gruens’ winter coats, recently bought from a used-clothing stall, were heavily worn but acceptable. They mustn’t, she knew, look like distressed aristocracy.

Emilia Krebs tried, at least, to be cheerful. The Gruens-he’d been a prominent business attorney-were old friends, faithful friends, but today they would be leaving Germany. Their money was almost all gone, their car was gone, soon the house would be gone, and word had reached them from within the Nazi administration-from Herr Gruen’s former law clerk-that by the end of January they would be gone as well. They were on a list, it was simply a matter of time.

Frau Gruen poured coffee into chipped mugs but refused a roll. “I can’t eat,” she said, apology in her voice. She was short and plump and had, in better times, been the merriest sort of woman-anyone could make her laugh. Now she followed Emilia’s eyes to a corner of the living room where a green fedora-like slouch hat rested on a garden chair. “Let me show you, Emmi,” she said, retrieving the hat and setting it on her head, tilting the brim over one eye. “So?” she said. “How do I look?”

Like a middle-aged Jewish woman. “You look perfect,” Emilia said. “Very Marlene Dietrich.”

The hat was meant to provide a kind of shadow, obscuring her friend’s face, but if the Gruens, traveling as the Hartmanns, ran into difficulties, it would be because of the way Frau Gruen looked. Their papers, passports and exit visas, were excellent forgeries, because resistance friends of Emilia’s had managed to link up with a Communist cell-they left anti-Nazi leaflets in public buildings-and with this very dangerous connection had come one of the most desirable people to know these days in Berlin: a commercial printer.

Emilia and the Gruens drank their mugs of coffee in silence, there was nothing more to say. When they were done, Emilia said, “Would you care for company on the way to the tram?”

“Thank you, Emmi,” Herr Gruen said, “but we’ll go by ourselves, and say farewell to you now.”

And so they did.

They left early, seeking the most crowded trains, and they were not disappointed. During the run to Dresden, two and a half hours, they stood in the corridor, packed in with people of all sorts, many with bulky parcels and suitcases. Their own luggage was a simple leather valise, packed for the eyes of customs officers. On this leg of the journey they were ignored, and the passport control on the German side of the Czech border was perfunctory. They were on their way to Vienna, part of the Reich, and so were most of the other passengers. Not quite so smooth was the entry control on the other side of the border-by then it was two-thirty. The officers here were Sudeten Germans, newly empowered, and so conscientious. One of them had a good long look at Frau Gruen, but was not quite so discourteous as to mention that he thought she looked like a Jew. He stared, but that was it, and so failed to notice the thin line of perspiration at her husband’s hairline-on a frigid afternoon. But their papers were in order and the officer stamped their visas.

Vienna was a long way from Prague, some eight hours on the express train. Here the Hartmanns were in a first-class compartment, where passengers were rarely subject to unscheduled security checks by Gestapo detectives. One didn’t want to annoy powerful people. The Gruens, in preparatory conversation with Emilia and her friends, had determined that friendly chitchat was dangerous, better to remain silent and aloof. But certain travelers, especially the newly prosperous, felt that first-class status was an opportunity to converse with interesting people and were not so easily turned aside. Thus a woman in the seat across from Frau Gruen, who said, “What takes you to Vienna?”

“Unfortunately, my wife’s mother has passed away,” Herr Gruen said. “We’re going for the funeral.” After that they were left alone.

A useful lie, they thought. How were they to know that this woman and her mouse of a husband would be on the Leverkusen, the excursion steamer to Budapest?

In the war of 1914, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires had fought as allies. After surrender in 1918, Hungary became a separate state but Germany, with a new war on the horizon in the late 1930s, sought to rekindle the alliance, courting the Hungarians in the hope they would join up with Hitler in the planned conquest of Europe. We must be friends, said German diplomacy, accent on the must, so commercial links of all sorts became important. For example, the round-trip excursion steamer that sailed up and down the Danube between Vienna and Budapest. True, it crossed the border of the Reich, but not the border of national amity. It was fun. A band played on the dock in Vienna, another on the dock in Budapest. The food aboard the Leverkusen, even in time of rationing, was plentiful-as much potato as you liked. Not that there wasn’t a passport control, there was, beneath great swastika banners, but the Austrian SS men kept their Alsatian shepherds muzzled and at a distance, and the officers, on the border with a new ally, were under orders to be genial. “The ice on the river is not too bad, not yet,” one of them said to Herr Gruen, who for the occasion wore a Nazi party pin in his lapel.

“One can be glad of that,” Herr Gruen said, with his best smile.

“You’ll have a jolly time in Budapest, Herr Hartmann.”

“We expect to. Then, back to work.”

“In Berlin, I see.”

“Yes, we love it there, but, always good to get away for a bit.”

The officer agreed, stamped the exit visa, raised his right arm, and said, amiably, “Heil Hitler.”

“Sieg Heil,” said the Gruens, a duet. Then, relieved, they climbed the gangway.

Standing at the rail of the steamer, watching the passengers as they filed past the border control, was the woman from the train and her husband. “Isn’t that …?” she said. She had to raise her voice, because the oompah of the tuba in the dockside ensemble was particularly emphatic.

“It is, my dear.”

“Very curious, Hansi. He said they were going to a funeral. In Vienna.”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear properly.”

“No, no. I’m sure I did.” Now she began to suspect that the pleasure of her company had been contemptuously brushed aside, and she started to get mad.

Poor Hansi. This could go on for days. “Oh, who knows,” he said.

“No, Hansi,” she said sharply. “They must explain themselves.”

But, where were they?

The Gruens had taken a first-class cabin for the overnight trip to Budapest and planned to hide there. Hunger, however, finally drove Herr Gruen to the dining room, where he ate quickly and ordered a cheese sandwich to take back to the cabin. As he left the dining room, here was the woman from the train. Her husband was nowhere to be seen, but she was sitting on a lounge chair just outside the door and rose when she saw him. “Sir,” she said.

“Yes?”