“She is your cousin. Jutta K?hler, maiden name Braun. You grew up together near Aachen, Germany,” said the agent, not explaining how he knew who Jutta was or that Helene had sent her money. “She has two daughters, a husband, and an elbow that has been broken twice. So answer the question. Did you send Mrs. K?hler eight thousand dollars?”
“Yes, I did. Yes,” Helene replied, flustered. She looked at her husband, who was quite aware that she had sent the money. He had allowed it, in fact, since he was the one who earned and meticulously managed all the household’s money. “But I did so legally. It was when I was on a trip to New York,” she reminded Franz. “I sent it through the German consulate there. If it was meant for anything corrupt, why would I have sent it through the consulate?”
Smith shook his head.
“I don’t care if you sent the cash by paper airplane. Your cousin, as I’m sure you are aware, is a member of the Nazi Party,” he said. “You supporting her financially is you supporting them.”
“A Nazi? No. Jutta is just a housewife. The wife of an elementary school teacher. She makes her own clothes and bakes bread for the church every Sunday. She has never done a thing out of turn in her life,” said Helene, starting to panic. “Her husband lost his job because he wasn’t in the party. Jutta was in need of money, and we have it to give. Why should I not send some to her? I could not refuse her. Franz?” she said, looking desperately at her husband.
“Wasn’t in the party?” asked Smith. “He’s since joined. Probably got his job back, too, and not needing your money anymore.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Lange, you’ll be leaving with us right away,” said Jakobsson, cutting the conversation short. “We will come back for your son in the morning. Pack your things tonight,” he told Christian. “And don’t even think about running.”
“For him?” said Helene, her eyes full of tears. “But he must come with me!” she screamed, pulling him closer.
“He can’t,” Jakobsson barked. “He’ll be going to the Milwaukee Children’s Home.”
“But you don’t need Christian!” Helene protested, her shock edging toward hysteria. “You can’t take him! Franz, do something!” she shouted.
“We aren’t arresting your son. Control yourself,” said Smith. “He’s a minor, so he can’t live here alone, can he? We’ll bring him to the Children’s Home in a few hours. And he’ll stay there until . . .” His voice trailed off, and Christian knew that Smith didn’t know anything more definite. Until the war ended? Until he turned eighteen? “Until” was open-ended for him now.
“But you can’t put him there! In that awful place with those street children!” said Helene, growing more frantic. The ribbon on her neckline had slipped totally open, exposing her ample flesh.
“I don’t think you understand, Mrs. Lange,” Smith said, his voice more sympathetic than Jakobsson’s as he eyed her body.
“She understands perfectly,” said Franz, putting his hand on Helene’s back. “She just doesn’t want to be separated from her only son, and neither do I. Can’t there be another way? I am contributing to the war effort for this country, my adopted country. If you arrest me, what will happen to my company and all my employees? Have you considered that?”
“We’ve taken care of it,” said Smith. “Spoke to a second in command. Or was it a third? Whoever it was, he assured us he’d keep your company running. Maybe better than you’ve been running it.”
“But where are my parents going?” Christian broke in, finally finding his voice while his father looked as if he might choke over what he’d just heard.
“Prison, for now,” Smith said, with his back turned to him.
With that, he deftly handcuffed the elder Langes, not letting them hug their son before their arms were locked behind them.
“You can’t arrest me like this,” Franz protested, twisting his hands. “You haven’t followed any sort of protocol.”
“There is no protocol,” said Smith. “You, as a German citizen, have no rights at all. That’s what happens during war.”
“We will take this,” said Jakobsson, unplugging the expensive E. H. Scott radio in Franz’s study.
Helene, despite her handcuffs, suddenly turned and began to walk up the stairs. Smith instinctively reached for her arm to stop her but she shook him off and kept going, screaming about the upstairs radios. He hurried after her, grabbing her arm firmly, but Franz shouted in a panic.
“Leave her! She’s pregnant!”
“Suddenly every German woman is fragile and pregnant,” said Smith, stopping on the stairs and reluctantly letting go of Helene.
“She is pregnant!” Christian confirmed, running to his mother.
“Yeah, I got it, she’s pregnant,” said Smith, not even glancing at Helene or her neckline after he succeeded in getting her back downstairs.
Christian gripped her shoulders and thought of the night his parents had told him about the baby. They had called it the happiest of accidents, as doctors had always told Helene that after Christian’s difficult birth she would not be able to have more children. But here she was, in her forties, pregnant again.
He kissed her wet cheeks, draped her coat over her shoulders, then watched as his parents were pushed toward the door.
The sun was just starting to lift over the horizon as the agents walked Franz and Helene out of the house. The neighbors were not in their beds anymore, were no longer breathing their collective breath. They were driving their cars slowly down the road, noses to the windows, watching Franz and Helene Lange being taken away by the FBI. And in the light of day, they would watch as their son was driven away, too.
CHAPTER 2
EMI KATO
JANUARY 1940–MAY 1941
Despite her fluency in English, Emi Kato had never been drawn to America. “A country as old as a toddler?” she’d said to her father in 1938 when he disclosed that they might be posted there after Vienna. “I won’t like it—not enough history. Strange accents,” she’d added, as they sat surrounded by an icy winter day in Vienna and the warm comfort of their large eighteenth-century apartment and its three marble fireplaces. “Why not Paris?” she suggested. “I’ve always wanted to live in Paris.”
“I speak English and German, like you,” he’d reminded her. “They will never send me to Paris. You’ll have to find your own way there. Maybe in the freight hold of a banana boat,” he said, eyeing her wrinkled white school shirt. After teasing his daughter playfully for a few moments, pushing her to try an American accent, his tone grew serious.
“If I am sent to Washington, we will go,” he said. A year later, they were in the nation’s capital.
Emi had never set foot in a place as untamed as America and though she wouldn’t admit it to her ever-curious father, she was intimidated by the vastness of such a country.
“You? Your English is perfect. I’m afraid no one will understand me,” said Keiko on the boat over, one of the most luxurious they’d traveled on yet. “British English with a Japanese accent and grammatical errors. I won’t even be able to buy bread.”