THIRTEEN
THE VOICE of Gordon Wolfe spoke from the printed page, and Nat was stunned by its disclosure. Now the voice was laughing, the old man enjoying a postmortem chuckle over the little joke he’d played only moments before his death.
“Sly old bastard,” Nat muttered to himself. “So this is what you meant.”
The occasion called for a celebratory shot of Gordon’s bourbon. Alas, food and drink were forbidden in the vast reading room of the National Archives. But no rules could keep out the ghosts, which always flourished in this haunted chamber despite a picture-window view onto a sunny suburban forest.
The document before him was an OSS employment form that Gordon had filled out on October 5, 1943. To Nat’s surprise, it included code names, countersigns, and secret ID numbers, hardly what you’d expect to find on a job application for a clerk or translator. The line that had just spoken to Nat was on the “Agent’s Check List,” an item that asked the applicant to provide a “Question and Answer by which agent may identify himself to collaborators.”
Gordon had offered this: “Q. Where did you have dinner the last evening you were in Washington, D.C.? A: The Metropolitan Club.” It was an eerie echo of his jailhouse exchange with the paramedic two mornings ago. Faced with death, the stricken Gordon Wolfe had journeyed back in time to his first day on the job as a spy.
For Nat, this was the thrilling beauty of research—an addictive power to commune with the dead. Better than a Ouija board, this stuff.
“See this?” he whispered, sliding the paper toward Berta.
She read it, nodded, then turned back to her own work. It was already apparent that only a reference to the White Rose or Kurt Bauer would get a rise out of her. Well, tough luck, because Nat was determined to build a new dossier on Gordon as part of their quest.
Nat was no stranger to declassified OSS archives, but his previous work had focused on OSS contacts with the German resistance. This time he was venturing into less-familiar territory, so he had sought out archivist Bill Staley, a genial old gnome who had been guiding prospectors into these shadowy mine shafts for decades. Staley knew not only where the gold was but also who had buried it, and with what brand of shovel.
“Young Turnbull,” Staley said, greeting him in the reference room. “Welcome back.”
Nat turned to introduce Berta, but she was gone. The latest in a series of antisocial moments since their arrival downstairs.
“Sorry to hear about Gordon. I saw his obituary in this morning’s Post.”
The New York Times had also run a story. Mercifully, neither mentioned Gordon’s alleged thievery or the fact that he had died in jail, although the Times did refer to the brouhaha over his embellished military record. Holland must have worked overtime to keep a lid on things, and Nat wondered why.
Surely if Berta’s source at the archives had heard about the arrest, then Staley must have, too. But the man’s face betrayed no hint of recognition, only the doleful mien of someone who has endured yet another death of a valued contemporary. The ranks were thinning fast for the wartime crowd.
“I’m here because of Gordon,” Nat said. “I’m looking for materials from his OSS days.” Realizing that sounded awkward with the man not even buried, he added, “I’m speaking at his memorial service. Thought I might fill in a few blanks.”
“I don’t know much about his work in Bern. Mostly clerical, I think. Only person to ever show any interest was some college kid about a year ago. Foreign exchange student. Not sure if she came up with anything. Wouldn’t have anything to do with me once I pointed her in the right direction.”
Probably Berta. No wonder she was laying low. It would also explain her lack of enthusiasm for this track of research. But why hadn’t she shared her results—or lack of them—rather than letting him waste time covering the same ground?
Staley first checked the finding aids, thick volumes cross-referenced by name, place, and subject. None listed a single mention of “Wolfe, Gordon.”
“Could he have had a code name?” Nat asked.
“Doubt it. But we can check the OSS master list.”
That search also came up empty. Nat was on the verge of moving to the next topic when Staley raised a finger.
“We got a new batch of declassified material a few weeks ago. Those always yield a few new identities. It’s still indexed under CIA numbers, but I’d be happy to check.”
“Lead the way.”
That was where they struck gold, taking even Staley by surprise. On a list of seven previously undisclosed code names, “Icarus” turned up next to Gordon’s name.
“I’ll be damned,” Nat said. “Wonder why they took so long to declassify that?”
“Bottom of the pile?”
“You really think it’s that simple?”
“No.” Staley smiled. “But it’s what they’d want me to say.”
With the new point of reference, fresh leads were suddenly abundant, including the Icarus personnel file. It, too, was part of the new batch of material, meaning that probably few, if any, historians had seen it.
Nat and Berta filled out requests for the materials they wanted, and a young librarian hauled out a pair of squeaking pushcarts piled with narrow gray boxes, just like the four that had turned up in Gordon’s summer home. Berta and he set up their cameras and tripods on adjoining desks and hunkered down.
The Icarus file held Gordon’s employment form, the one with the reference to the Metropolitan Club. A stack of attached memos offered the flavor of Gordon’s earliest assignments.
Routine stuff, mostly. Dulles sent him to meet with a shadowy young émigré from France who was offering information in exchange for passage to the United States. Gordon’s report concluded the fellow was a con man.
“Agreed,” Dulles scribbled in the margin, initialing it with his trademark “AWD.”
Some assignments came to Icarus via Zurich operative Frederick Loofbourow, an interesting fellow in his own right. A U.S. commercial attaché on leave from an executive job with Standard Oil, Loofbourow was right out of the Dulles mold of gentleman spy, with posh digs on the Zurich waterfront.
Nat then came across a memo dated October 29, 1943, which stopped him cold. By that time, Nat knew, Dulles had been preoccupied with his new star source—German diplomat Fritz Kolbe, alias George Wood, the fellow who had taped all those stolen documents around his thigh. Thanks to Kolbe, for example, Dulles knew well in advance about the ill-fated July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. To clear the board for meetings with Kolbe, Dulles pawned off some of his lesser sources to other operatives, including Icarus. And one of those sources was Reinhold von Bauer, Kurt Bauer’s father.
“Henceforth, 543 to handle Magneto,” Nat read. He recognized Bauer’s code name from the stolen files he had reviewed for the FBI.
Gordon, as operative 543, didn’t seem impressed by what Magneto had to offer.
“Magneto continues to insist on relocation to Switzerland,” Gordon wrote. “I repeated your insistence that he is far more valuable to us in Berlin. Claims family is under pressure from personal circumstances, but would not elaborate. Said his son can also help us. Told him I would await your advisement.”
“Cannot meet him at present,” Dulles replied. “Stick to your guns. AWD.”
A promising lead. But when Nat turned the page the trail went cold. Staring up at him was a canary-colored sheet of cardboard with the words “Withdrawal Notice, Access Restricted.” Below, in smaller print, was the usual boilerplate: “Now Filed in CIA Job No. 79-003317B. Four items have been withdrawn because they contain security classified information or otherwise restricted information.”
The withdrawal was dated three weeks ago, the very day the rest of these materials had become public. Someone had gotten cold feet at the last second. Holland? Although the FBI and the CIA still weren’t exactly pals, maybe the Agency had asked for some last-minute sanitizing. And that made Nat think of Steve Wallace, a CIA archivist he had met years ago at a history seminar. Wallace, a decent source if used sparingly never revealed classified information. But he sometimes nudged you in the direction of other materials, already public, that gave you what you needed. Nat opened his laptop to shoot Wallace an e-mail. Then he showed Berta the withdrawal notice.
“I’m finding those, too,” she said with a frown. “But look at this.”
She handed him a tattered clothbound notebook with the letters “H-P” inked on the spine. It was a Dulles logbook, stuffed with detailed alphabetical listings for his sources and contributors. “Magneto” had his own page of dated, typewritten notations.
Nat had been through that very logbook years earlier. But at the time he hadn’t known Magneto’s identity. No one else would have either, unless they’d had access to the information in the stolen boxes that had turned up at Gordon’s.
Nat read the first paragraph, which included a boldfaced addition:
Source Magneto is a German businessman with excellent connections in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Resourceful, intelligent, hitherto reliable. Source’s son connected with the German underground.
“And look on the very next page,” Berta said.
It was headed “Magneto II.” It began with a physical description from an interesting source:
Would put his height at 511,” full head of hair clipped short and brown. Typical Prussian features, well built although reduced by recent privations. Eyes wide apart, blue-gray, frank in expression. Unworldly but has acquired ease in conversation through his recent travels. Shape of head oval, ears medium but stand out slightly from head. (Icarus, 05/24/44)
“You think Magneto II is Kurt?” Nat said.
“Has to be.”
The logbook contained only two other citations for Magneto II. The first, a bit ominous in its abruptness, was dated only three months before Germany surrendered:
Relationship terminated. (02/10/45)
The last entry was dated five months after the surrender. Dulles wrote it the week he departed occupied Germany to return for good to the United States:
Magneto II file to storage. To be transferred to 109. (10/8/45)
Nat didn’t need to look up code number 109. It belonged to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, chief of the OSS. Whatever information the agency had collected on Kurt Bauer, someone had decided it needed special handling by the nation’s reigning spymaster once the war was over. Unless, of course, the file never made it to Donovan.
“I’m betting that a Magneto II dossier is one of the four missing folders,” Nat said.
“My thoughts, too.”
“We should make copies,” he said. “But we’ll need a permission tab.”
“I’ll get one,” Berta said.
Nat turned next to Gordon’s expense filings. There were a few surprises. The first was that he had stayed at the Bellevue Palace during his first three nights in Bern. It was the city’s finest hotel. Yet another indicator that Dulles had expected great things. During his first week of employment Gordon bought a bicycle license and a monthly rail pass, which gave him some mobility. In January 1944 he moved up to the next level, so to speak, by purchasing a 1937 Ford Tudor sedan for 3,500 Swiss francs and splitting a monthly gasoline ration with two other operatives. He also bought one of the requisite tools of the World War II spy trade, a Minox miniature camera.
But it was the last page that produced the most astonishing item. In December 1944 Gordon bought a Walther .38-caliber pistol and ammunition, for 201.65. The seller was the W Glaser Waffen Shop, L?wenstrasse 42, Zurich. Nat recognized the name and address from the box Gordon had left him. Where was the gun now, he wondered? And why had Gordon needed one in peaceful old Bern?
Oddly, that was the final expense report in the file, even though Gordon had kept on working for Dulles for another five months of the war, plus several months afterward in occupied Germany. Had the other vouchers been lost? Removed? Moments later Nat happened upon another possible explanation, in a Loofbourow memo from April 30, 1945, the date of Adolf Hitler’s suicide: “543 has been moved to Mrs. Carroll’s house on Seestrasse. In light of Fleece, I see no further need for his immediate services.”
Was Fleece a source or an operation? Or perhaps something else altogether? Nat looked around for Berta to ask if she had seen any such reference, but she was still getting authorization to make copies. He checked the finding aids with Staley, who had never come across the term. There was no reference anywhere to “Fleece.”
He did find another mention of the “Mrs. Carroll” on Seestrasse, in a message from Dulles to Loofbourow from several years earlier: “Go ahead and rent the space in Zurich from Mrs. Carroll for use in case an agent is ‘traveling black.’”
In other words, the address was a safe house. Meaning they had put Gordon under wraps during the final days of the war. Strange. Switzerland hadn’t been a place where lives were often at risk.
Nat’s thoughts were interrupted by a woman’s shout from across the room.
“Come back here! Turn around!”
He looked up to see one of the librarians pursuing Berta, who was walking briskly toward the exit. The librarian, a tall woman with long arms toned by years of hauling boxes, broke into a run and clapped a hand on Berta’s shoulder. The reading room, normally cloaked in contemplative silence, was instantly abuzz.
“I knew it was you!” the librarian shouted. Nat stood up just as Berta looked toward him, face forlorn. She ducked a shoulder to free herself, but the woman held on.
“Security!” the librarian shouted. “Someone call a guard!”
“Don’t touch me!” Berta shouted, yanking back as the woman held firm. Nat bounded toward them. The librarian’s fingers were making white marks on Berta’s skin. Researchers in every corner stood to get a better view. Others drifted closer like kids toward a schoolyard brawl. Forget the dead voices of history—this was live action.
A security guard hustled into view, keys and handcuffs jangling.
“This one’s a thief,” the librarian said, finally releasing her grip. “Caught her in the act a few weeks ago, and now she’s back. Please escort her from the building, but search her first. Strip her if you have to.”
“Hold it, now,” Nat said. “I can vouch for her.”
“Should I call PG County police?” the guard asked, ignoring Nat.
“Not if she’s clean. Just take her card and kick her out. In fact, take her card now.”
Berta grudgingly handed over her ID and looked sheepishly toward Nat as the librarian read aloud the name.
“ ‘Christa Larkin.’ No wonder you got in. The real name’s Berta something, isn’t it?”
So that’s why she had been keeping her head down. Yet even now her expression was more defiant than shamed.
“I’ll meet you out front,” she said to Nat. He nodded, dumbfounded.
“Not out front,” the librarian said. “You’re leaving the property entirely.”
Nat wanted to challenge that, but the crowd of gawkers had grown, so he watched in silence as the guard led Berta away. Nat waited for the crowd to break up before following the librarian back to the service counter. The Icarus personnel file was still in his right hand.
“Could I have a word?” he said in a low voice. The tall woman abruptly looked up.
“Aren’t you Dr. Turnbull? I’m surprised you’re keeping such disreputable company.”
“Look,” Nat whispered—heads were already turning—“I don’t know what went on before, but I can assure you she wasn’t here today to steal anything.”
“Sure she wasn’t. Why else use a fake ID. Last time she tried to take an entire folder.”
“Maybe it got mixed in with her papers.”
“It was stuffed beneath her blouse, tucked in her jeans. She would have made it, too, if the guard downstairs hadn’t been staring at her boobs. He saw the green cardboard between her buttons.”
“A whole folder?” Her words had knocked the wind out of him.
“Just like the one you’re holding. In fact—”
Her mouth dropped open.
“This one?” he asked.
“For ‘Icarus.’ Yes. It had just been declassified.”
No wonder Berta had been so dismissive of his findings. She’d already seen them. But why steal a file that you could copy? To sell it? Possibly. Or maybe she wanted to make sure no one else ever saw it.
“I should probably take that off your hands, sir,” the librarian said.
“I, uh, need to make some copies first,” he said weakly. Fortunately she nodded.
He headed to his desk before she could change her mind. It now seemed important to get as much done today as possible. By tomorrow who knows what sort of orders would have come down from the archival overlords. He was now guilty by association.
As it turned out, though, the only item of interest for the rest of the day came not in a folder but in an e-mail message from CIA archivist Steve Wallace, who replied to Nat’s earlier request:
“Hi, Nat. Job No. 79-003317B currently too hot to touch. Sorry. As for the four items which I understand you have already seen, I may soon have further info, but only if you’re willing to swap. Watch this space.”
So Steve knew all about the boxes found in the Adirondacks and wanted to arrange a quid pro quo. Nat could live with that. It sounded like there might be high-level disagreement over the handling of these materials, and he wondered why.
HE FOUND BERTA WAITING in the shade of the bus shelter on Adel-phi Drive, well off the premises. She began talking before Nat was even within twenty yards. Perhaps she saw the look in his eye, the one that said this had better be damned good or you’re finished.
“It was all a stupid mistake. I was in too much of a hurry that day. I was desperate.”
“Obviously.”
“My camera was broken, the copy machines were tied up, the place was closing in ten minutes, and I had to catch a flight. I didn’t even have a chance to see if anything was worth copying. My grant was running out and the whole trip was crashing. It was stupid, all right? I was going to mail it back once I made copies. But it wasn’t like there was anything worthwhile. You saw how I reacted when you showed me. I couldn’t care less.”
“Finished?”
She nodded.
“Of course you couldn’t care less, because you’d already seen it. And if it’s so unimportant, then why did you try to make sure no one else would ever see it?”
“It wasn’t like that. I told you.”
“Yes, but you’re a liar.”
Her face creased and she began to cry. He had expected that, but was nonetheless unprepared. Because all of it—her embarrassment, her shame, and now her sorrow—seemed genuine. Maybe her lame explanation was at least partially true. He’d certainly heard sillier tales of misconduct. Researchers did strange things while caught in the grip of gold fever, especially when facing the cruel limitations of closing hours and dwindling grants. Even so, pulling a stunt like that at the National Archives was on another level. It was a place where you were monitored not only by tigress librarians but also by surveillance cameras. You weren’t even allowed to wear a sweater or overcoat, or bring in a bag or briefcase. Every piece of paper from the outside was stamped and inspected upon entering and leaving. Berta’s actions bordered on professional insanity.
“If you don’t believe me, I understand.” She wiped away the tears. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
“How’d you get the new ID?”
She fumbled in her bag and showed him a fake New Jersey driver’s license. Christa Larkin, of Hackensack.
“When I came here last week I went to the security station and had them make me a new ID, like I was visiting for the first time. Then all I had to do was avoid that bitch who’d nailed me before.”
Nat would have liked to check the date of her new archives ID to at least verify that part of her story, but the librarian had confiscated it.
“You’ve seen how obsessive I get,” she said. “It always rubs people the wrong way.”
“I know. It’s a disease. I’ve had it myself.”
“Let me know if you ever find a cure.”
For the first time in days she offered the beginnings of a smile, then quickly shut it down, receding back into the role of uber-Berta.
“Well, I do know this,” Nat said. “Another screwup like this and we’re finished.”
“I’ll prove myself. And I am still in good standing with the archives we’ll need to check in Bern and Berlin.”
“Whoa now. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
“Not really, no. Look, I’ll show you.”
He half expected her to produce a stolen document from her blouse. Instead, she retrieved her camera and found an image for him.
“It’s a memo, newly declassified, from a Swiss source to the OSS. He was feeding them information on the local flatfoots.”
The “flatfoots” were the Swiss operatives who kept tabs on Allied and Axis spies. By war’s end, the Swiss had arrested more than a thousand people on espionage charges. The memo Berta had found—to Loofbourow in Zurich in December 1944—said that operative Icarus and source Magneto II had drawn increased Swiss scrutiny due to a recent flurry of clandestine meetings. Their local shadows were then mentioned by name in hopes that no (Dulles) could persuade the Swiss to back off, especially with the war winding down. So there it was, further evidence linking Gordon Wolfe and Kurt Bauer. The names of the Swiss operatives were Gustav Molden and Lutz Visser.
“Molden’s and Visser’s surveillance reports might be in the State Archives in Bern,” Berta said. “I have a source there. And Molden is alive.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I had to do something while I was waiting. So I went online with a wireless connection and found a Gustav Molden, age eighty-eight. He lives within blocks of where he was working during the war. The age is right, and he’s the only Gustav Molden in Bern.”
Yes, she was beyond help all right. Banished to a bus bench and she had kept right on working. And with impressive results, no less.
“Switzerland, then. Okay, I can buy that. But why Berlin?”
“Martin G?llner.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Remember when I said in the Adirondacks that I had a few names for you? He’s one of them. He was Gestapo, a junior investigator. During the war he interrogated Kurt Bauer. I’d like to know what was said, wouldn’t you?”
Nat spent all of five seconds deliberating.
“I’ll finish up here tomorrow,” he said, “while you pursue more overseas leads. The memorial service is in Wightman on Wednesday. Can you leave that night for Bern?”
“Do I look like I have anything else to do?”
“Maybe we should we try reaching Molden and G?llner, set up an interview.”
She shook her head.
“A call could scare them off. We should just show up.”
Obviously she, too, had experience in tracking ghosts. Best to sneak up on them whenever possible, an approach that Gordon Wolfe had always favored.
Nat then heard a faint echo of Gordon’s voice inside his head, laughing lightly and offering encouragement. Death had done wonders for the old boy’s disposition. He hadn’t sounded this welcoming in ages.