“And how was Tuttlingen?”
“Loud. The Americans came. There was a battle.”
“At the bridge, yes.”
“It was very frightening.”
“How did you get from Konstanz to Tuttlingen?”
“I hired a private car.”
“I thought petrol was all but impossible to find.”
“The man I hired took care of that. I paid a fortune, but I don’t know anything about it.”
“Why do you look so uneasy?”
Repp realized he wasn’t doing well. He thought his heart would burst or shatter in his chest. He tried not to swallow or blink.
“I don’t care to miss my train, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Use the French, please.
Repp said the French word awkwardly.
“Yes, thanks.”
Repp knew he’d been a hair from calling the man
“May I go now?”
“And what’s your rush? Hurrying to get to the wonderful Swiss climbing?”
“There are avalanches this time of year, Captain.”
The captain smiled. “One other thing. I notice a curious designation on your passport. It’s the first Swiss one I’ve seen. Here, it says ‘R-A.’ What can that mean?”
Repp swallowed. “It’s an administrative category. I know nothing about it.”
“It means ‘Race — Aryan,’ doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you Swiss went in for that sort of thing.”
“When you are a little country next to a big country, you try and make the big country happy.”
“Yes. Well, the big country is not too happy these days.”
“But the Swiss are. The Swiss win every war, don’t they?”
“I suppose so, sir,” said Repp. His mouth tasted sour.
“Go on. This is ridiculous. Pass, get out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” Repp said, and scurried off.
It was like a sudden transit to wonderland: People pink and gay, crowding, chunky, prosperous. Just a few miles, a fence, a bitter officer overzealously guarding his gate and this, a whole other world — Kreuzlingen, Konstanz’s Swiss suburb. Repp struggled in the dangerous intoxication of it. He tried to locate deep within himself a primordial sense of righteousness, or abiding moral discontent. But he was too bedazzled by surface charms: goods brightly wrapped in shopwindows, chocolates and all kinds of foods, beautifully dressed women who were totally oblivious of their appearance, fat kiddies, banners flapping out of windows, private autos purring down the street. A holiday air prevailed: had he blundered into some quaint Swiss festival?
No, the Swiss were celebrating war’s end too. Repp darkened as this knowledge made itself clear to him. A fat mama with two children seemed to materialize out of the crowd along the sidewalk.
“Isn’t it wonderful,
“Yes, wonderful,” he agreed.
They had no right. They weren’t a part of it. They had not won a victory, they had not suffered a defeat. They had merely profited. It made him sick, but though he felt like a pariah among them, he pressed ahead, several blocks down the Hauptstrasse, into Kreuzlingen’s commercial center, then took the Bahnhofstrasse toward the station. He could see it ahead, not a huge place like the Berlin or the Munich monstrosities before the war, but prepossessing on its own scale, with glassed-in roof.
Glass!
All that unbroken glass, glittering whitely among the metal girders, acres of it. He blinked stupidly. Were there trains there that actually chugged through a placid countryside without fear of American or English gangsters swooping down to rain death from the sky? Almost in answer to this question, a whistle shrieked and a puff of white smoke rose.
A block yet from the Bahnhof itself, he arrived at an open-air cafe, the Cafe Munchen.
They’ll change that name by noon, he thought.
A few tables were unoccupied. Repp chose one and sat down.
A waiter appeared, a man in white smock with attentive eyes.
“Ah,” a little startled, “coffee, I think,” almost having said “real coffee.” The man withdrew instantly and reappeared in seconds with a small steamy cup.
Repp sat with it, letting it cool. He wished he could stop feeling nervous. He wished he could stop thinking about Margareta. All the hard business was over, why couldn’t he relax? Yet he could not seem to settle down. So many of the little things of the world seemed off: the Swiss were fatter, cheerier, their streets cleaner, their cars shinier. It was impossible to believe that with the money he’d be a part of all this. He could have a black shiny car and dress in a suit like this and have a thousand white shirts. He could have ten Homburgs, two hundred ties, a place in the country. He could have all that. What lay ahead was only the operation itself, and that was what he was best at.
He tried not to think of After. It would come when it came. If you looked too far ahead you got in trouble, he knew for a fact. Now, there was only room for the operation.
Across the street, he saw a small park, green under arched elms, and in it benches and gym apparatus for children. Strange that it was so green so early; but then, was it early? What was the date? He’d been keyed to the surrender, not the date. He thought hard: he knew he’d crossed the bridge into Konstanz May 4; then he’d been sealed up with Margareta — how long? It seemed a month. No, only three days; today then was May 7. Yet the pale sun had urged bud growth out of the trees and lay in pools on the grass, which itself was green and not the thatchy stuff of earlier.
In the park, two blond children played on the teeter-totter. Repp watched them idly. Surely they were Swiss: but for just a moment he saw them as German. Uncharacteristically, he began to feel morbid and sentimental about children. Today of all days. Yet these two beauties — real Aryan stock, chubby, red-cheeked — really represented something to him: they were what might have been. We tried to give you a clean, perfect world, he told them. That awesome responsibility — a major cleaning action,
“A pretty boy and girl, eh, Herr Peters?”
Repp turned. Was this Felix? He hadn’t used the approach code. Repp looked at a man about his own age, with acne-pitted face, in a pinstriped suit. Felix? Yes, Repp had been shown a picture of the same fellow in Berlin. Felix was just the code name; he was really a Sturmbannfuhrer Ernst Dorfman of Amt Via, SD Foreign Intelligence.
“Hansel and Gretel,” said Felix. “A fairy tale.”
“Yes, beauties,” agreed Repp.
“May I sit?”
Repp nodded coldly.
“Oh. Forgive my manners: did you get the Tuttlingen Signature?”
“Without difficulty.”
“Excellent.” Felix smiled, and then confided, “A silly game, no? Like a novel. In Berlin, they think business like that is important.” His cool eyes showed amusement. But the man’s cavalier attitude bothered Repp. “And how was the trip?”
“Not without difficulties.”
