The Cold War Swap

We crossed the street and entered the cafe. The bar was immediately in front of the door. To the left of the door were three booths. The rest of the cafe was taken up with chairs and tables. A couple sat at one. Three solitary drinkers brooded into their beer and a coffee drinker read a newspaper. The barkeep nodded at us and said good evening.

“We are expecting a friend to meet us,” Padillo said. “Herr Maas.”

“He is already in the back—through that curtain,” the barkeep said. “Would you like to order now?”

“Two vodkas,” Padillo said.

I led the way through the main room and pushed aside the curtain. Maas, still clad in his heavy brown suit, sat facing us at a round table. A goblet of white wine rested in front of him, next to a new brown hat. He rose when he saw us.

“Ah! Herr McCorkle,” he gurgled.

“Herr Maas, Herr Padillo.”

Maas gave Padillo’s hand the standard shake and bustled around, pulling out two chairs for us to sit on. “It is a real pleasure to meet you, Herr Padillo. You are a man of considerable reputation.”

Padillo sat down at the table and said nothing. “Have you ordered drinks?” Maas asked. “I have told the bartender to give you the best. It is my treat.”

“We ordered,” I said.

“Well, it has been a busy, busy day for you, I would say,” Maas said.

We said nothing and the bartender came in through the curtain and deposited our drinks on the table. “See that we’re not disturbed,” Maas ordered.

The bartender shrugged and said, “We close in an hour.”

He left and Maas picked up his wineglass. “Shall we drink to a successful venture, my friends?”

We drank.

Padillo lighted a cigarette and blew some smoke up into the air. “I think we can get down to business now, Herr Maas. What’s your proposition?”

“You have seen the map I gave Herr McCorkle?”

“I saw it: it could be anywhere. Or it couldn’t be at all.”

Maas smiled blandly. “It exists, Herr Padillo. It does indeed. Let me tell you something of its history.” He paused to take a sip of his wine.

“It has romance, treachery and death. It is quite a fascinating melodrama.” Maas sipped at his wine again, produced three cigars, offered us each one, smiled understandingly when we refused, put two of them back into his pocket, and lighted his own. We waited.

“Back in September of 1949, a sixty-two-year-old widow whom I shall call Frau Schmidt died of cancer. Frau Schmidt left her single valuable possession, a somewhat-bombed-scarred three-story house, to her favorite son— Franz, I think I shall call him—a mechanical engineer who worked at that time for the American Army in West Berlin. Housing was at a premium in both East and West Berlin, so Franz moved his family, consisting of himself, his wife, and a four-year-old son, to his late mother’s house. It was old, but it had been well built back in 1910 or 1911.

“There was virtually free passage between the East and West Sectors in those days and Franz Schmidt continued to work for the Americans. On the weekends he renovated the house. He received a small subsidy for his efforts from an agency of the East Berlin government. By 1955, Herr Schmidt was working for a private consulting engineering firm in West Berlin. Without much difficulty he managed to remodel his house completely, from basement to roof, installing new plumbing and even electrical-heating apparatus. It became his only hobby. Sometimes, I understand, Herr Schmidt considered moving to West Berlin, but he would have suffered a tremendous loss on his house and as long as he could travel freely from the East to the West Sector he saw no real reason to move.

“The Schmidt family made friends in their new neighborhood. Among them was the family of Leo Boehmler, who had been a Feldwebel on the eastern front during the war until he was captured by the Russians. He reappeared in East Berlin in 1947 as a lieutenant in the Volkspolizei. By the time that the Boehmler family had become friends with the Schmidt family, it was no longer Lieutenant Boehmler but Captain Boehmler. But even a captain’s pay could not match that of a mechanical engineer employed by a prosperous firm in the West Sector, so I have good reason to suspect that Captain Boehmler was a trifle envious of the Schmidt’s fine house, their small car, and the general prosperity that surrounded the household, where the captain, his wife, and their pretty young daughter were often guests for real coffee and cakes.

“Schmidt was proud of his work on his house and insisted on showing it in detail to the captain, who, while devoutly of the Communist persuasion, could not prevent his mouth from watering at the modern trappings and innovations that Franz Schmidt had installed. The Boehmlers lived in a small apartment in one of the hastily built piles of flats that were thrown up in 1948. While it was much better than what most citizens of East Berlin had, it was a slum compared with the Schmidts’ fine residence.

“By 1960 or thereabouts, Franz Schmidt’s son Horst was a young man in his middle teens, and he was becoming interested in young girls—or, to be more specific, in one girl, the daughter of Captain Boehmler. Her name was Liese and she was six months younger than Horst. The parents of both children looked on the romance as—let me think of the American phrase—puppy love, but by 1961 Liese and Horst were spending most of their time together. Captain Boehmler had no objections to his daughter’s making a good match with the son of a prosperous engineer, even though the engineer remained steadfastly disinterested in politics. And while Franz Schmidt was avowedly without politics, he was something of a realist, and when the time came he saw no reason why it could not prove useful to have a daughter-in-law whose father was an ambitious officer in the Volkspolizei. So little family jokes were made about the romance and Liese blushed prettily and young Horst stammered and did all the things adolescents do when they are the butt of an adult joke.

“Then one fine August day in 1961 the wall went up and Herr Schmidt found himself without a job. He talked the matter over with his good friend, Captain Boehmler, who suggested that it would be easy for him to obtain suitable employment in the East Sector. Engineer Schmidt found employment readily enough, but he also found that he was making only a fourth of what he had made in the West. And things that he liked—such as good coffee,