The Hour of the Cat (46 page)

“Mr. Dunne, you should know that my wife was a Communist but made no mention of it when she entered the country.”

“I was a member of the Spartacist League, during the uprising of 1919,” she said. “We hoped at the time to bring about a true social revolution in Germany. I was arrested by the Freikorps.”

“And tortured,” her husband added.

“But not murdered, as several colleagues were. I stayed in the Party, a largely inactive member, until 1930, when the Nazis began to explode in popularity. The Communists made it clear they were as intent on bringing down the Republic as the Nazis. They thought that if Hitler assumed power, it would be a step forward. I protested that policy, yet I didn't formally resign, and my husband is correct: I didn't mention my Party membership when I entered the country. We were afraid of being sent back.”

“Somebody here in Yorkville informed on her,” Franz Ignatz said. “It could have been a Bund member or maybe an active Communist seeking to punish a former comrade who had the audacity to question the Party. The FBI said the omission was a very serious matter.”

“There was more trouble after that,” Mathilde Ignatz continued, playing with the lock of hair, curling it in the same nervous, distracted way as before.

“This time, I'm afraid, it was my fault. I acted on my passions, not my intellect.”

“It wasn't a question of being at fault. Before we are doctors, we are human beings. It is wise never to forget that, Franz.” She put her hand over her husband's.

“I posed as a pharmaceutical salesman and went to see Sparks. I saw him as a manifestation of all our misfortunes, and here he was enjoying comfort and success. It was stupid of me. Once I got in to see him, I started yelling and threatened to expose him. He tried to quiet me down, even wrote a check, which I ripped up and threw at him. I left just as his chauffeur arrived, a thuggish-looking
Sturmabteilung
type. He tried to grab me, but I pushed him aside and left.”

“A
Sturmabteilung,
” Anderson said, “is a Nazi Storm Trooper. They were the vanguard of Hitler's takeover but have since given way to the SS.”

“Yes, Mr. Dunne, I'm sorry. Here in Yorkville we often mistakenly assume that everyone understands what is taking place in Germany.”

“I'm learning,” Dunne said. “I had my own run-in with Bill Huber, Sparks's chauffeur.”

“Huber, that's him! Unfortunately, my encounters with him didn't end at Sparks's office. Several nights later I was on the dais of an anti-Nazi meeting at the Moravian Church. A squad of Bundists broke in and a fight ensued. Huber was with them. The lights were extinguished. Several shots were fired. One grazed my neck.”

“My husband barely escaped with his life, Mr. Dunne.” Mathilde Ignatz leaned forward until her head almost touched her husband's knee. She seemed in pain. “It's as though we can't get beyond their reach, even here in New York.”

Anderson made a small smacking sound as he sucked on his exhausted pipe. He relit it. “At that point, I advised the Ignatzes to withdraw from public view. Their lives, I believed, were in danger, and involvements in any violent incident could only aggravate their troubles with the immigration authorities.”

“You didn't report it to the police?” Dunne asked.

“We didn't want to bring more attention to ourselves.”

“Sparks tried to hire me to find you. He claimed he was being blackmailed.”

“A lie!” Franz Ignatz stood.

“It's obvious that Mr. Dunne didn't take the job,” Anderson said. “Once he located you, Huber would have undoubtedly killed you, then done the same to him. Or perhaps Sparks would have tried to make it seem as though Dunne was the murderer. I suppose there were those in the police who'd have welcomed that.”

“One for sure,” Dunne said.

Mathilde Ignatz pulled the hair so tightly around her finger that the tip turned red. “You don't believe Sparks is dead, do you, Mr. Dunne?”

“Not till I see the body.”

“I'm glad to hear that. You are free to share with anyone what Franz and I have told you. But, please, no mention of our names. We want to be left out of this.
Please.
”

“My wife's family is still in Germany. Two sisters and a brother.”

“We're trying to get them out of Germany and mustn't endanger their exit.”

“Mr. Dunne can be trusted to do the right thing.” Anderson knocked the bowl of his pipe on the table for emphasis. “I wouldn't have brought him if I believed otherwise.”

“We understand that, of course. But time is so short now. It's as though destiny itself is marching in step with Hitler, as though no one has the will to stop him.” Mathilde Ignatz grimaced and bit her lip. She lit another cigarette and inhaled. Her face relaxed. Whatever pain had seized her seemed to abate.

“The Czechs won't let him get away with his bullying and bluster.” Franz Ignatz thumped his fist into his palm. “They'll stand up to him, just watch.”

They sat in silence. A thin, lonesome breeze fluttered the window shades. The room's shadows seemed to protect it from the ovenlike temperatures that had the rest of the city on broil. In the kitchen, a cuckoo left his clock and called out the hour.

“My God, look at the time!” Franz Ignatz went over and switched on the radio. He moved the dial around. “Listen! CBS is carrying it live. Hitler's speech at the Party Congress in Nuremberg.” A high-pitched voice screamed in German. There was a thunderous roar of approval. Franz Ignatz translated. “Hitler is warning the French and British not to support the Czechs. He says Germany isn't afraid of war!”

Mathilde Ignatz dropped the stub of another cigarette in her coffee cup. “I can't bear any more of that man's ravings. Excuse me, gentlemen, I'm going to lie down.”

Anderson and Dunne left Franz Ignatz alone, sitting next to the radio, head bowed beneath a transatlantic uproar of
Sieg Heil
s! In the lobby, before they stepped into the street, Anderson said, “I should like to hire you to help find Sparks.”

“No need. I've hired myself. But if we're going to work together, you better tell me who you work for.”

“Myself.”

“And you've never met Sparks?”

“Not face to face, not yet. But I've watched what he represents grow and grow while decent, intelligent men fail to recognize it for what it is. I've witnessed terror take over an entire government. If Sparks is exposed, it will become harder for America to keep its eyes closed.”

“Tall order.”

“Then let me add a short one. Mathilde Ignatz is the most brilliant person I've ever encountered. Her research, which might have advanced our knowledge of the human brain several decades, was confiscated and destroyed. Her job was given to a certified quack. She's been hounded out of her own country. People she thought were her friends have turned their backs. And now she's been diagnosed with stomach cancer. If I can do anything that gives her hope that one day the man and movement that have taken away her home, family, country, and livelihood will be overthrown, I will do so.”

“Come by my office in the a.m.”

 

 

Dunne walked up 86th Street. The Yorkville Casino was shut tight. Not a Bundist in sight. The sidewalks were filled with people out for a drink, a stroll, a breath of air. He found himself searching their faces the same way he had when he'd first learned that his sister Maura had been discharged from the state hospital in Buffalo. She must have come back to the city, he thought. It was the only place she knew. Unable to find any paper record of her, he sometimes walked aimlessly, on the distant possibility he might encounter her. It didn't happen, not then, not now.

He kept looking at the faces. Few took notice of his stare. Those who did ignored it. A typical mix—delivery boy, mechanic heading home, swarthy sailor with a plump blonde on his arm, Jew at his newsstand, traffic cop with the red, scoured face, woman with the shapely gams—they passed in anonymous pursuit of ordinary ambitions, sex, food, sleep, fun, the need to make a buck.

Life in the ceaseless hustle of a New York evening.

Busy. Noisy. Horny. Unequal. Unfair. Unfinished.

Life worthy of life.

“The world is made of iron, you can't do anything about it, it comes rushing up at you like a steamroller, nothing to be done about it, there it comes, it rushes on . . . and nobody can escape.”

—ALFRED DÖBLIN,
Berlin Alexanderplatz

“C
OLONEL OSTER IS INSIDE waiting for you.” Corporal Gresser stood at attention by his desk. Canaris handed him the notes he'd taken in his meeting with General Wilhelm Adam, commander of Germany's western defenses. Canaris had transcribed in outline the facts that General Adam had laid before the Führer during his inspection tour of the so-called West Wall. He omitted Adam's summation of the Führer's character:
I saw this man's lack of education, his inability to face reality, his lack of knowledge of foreigners, his fanatic mentality and his mendacity.

Oster sat behind the desk, smoking.

“I see I've already been replaced,” Canaris said.

“It's not you who's about to lose his place, but him.” Oster nodded at the requisite picture of the Führer on the opposite wall. He put out his cigarette and stood.

“Stay where you are.” Canaris went over to the window. A breeze rippled across the tree tops along the canal. Below, an elderly gent with a soldier's bearing consulted his watch and scanned the street for a tram.

“It's on,” Oster said as he sat once more. Canaris could see that Oster was acting out of exhaustion, not impertinence. Pale and slightly rumpled, an uncommon sight, he had the look of someone who hadn't slept in several days.

“Another strike?”

“A coup.”

Canaris said nothing. He thought for a moment he recognized the old timer waiting for the tram. But when the man removed his homberg to wipe his bald pate with a handkerchief, Canaris realized he was mistaken. The man consulted his watch once again and tapped his walking stick against the curb, impatiently.

“You're skeptical.”

Oster's tone was that of a schoolboy wounded by a teacher's cutting remark. It annoyed Canaris, the way Oster looked for his approval. He kept his gaze out the window.

This morning's summary of the foreign press contained a recent editorial from the
Times
of London raising the possibility that Czechoslovakia might be made more homogeneous “by the cessation of that fringe of alien populations who are contiguous to the nation to which they are united by race.” If the
Times
was reflecting the thinking of His Majesty's Government, which it often did, it seemed British resolve was rubbery, at best. Canaris guessed that Oster had been too preoccupied to read the summary.

“You are right to be so, I suppose, but the pieces are falling into place this time.” Oster reported that General Erwin von Witzleben, commander of the Berlin military district, had signed on. He would guarantee that the Führer's special bodyguard, the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler, was neutralized, and he would order the Potsdam Division to take control of the city's police stations, radio transmitters, and telephone installations. Halder, Beck's successor, was also on board and would see to it that the government quarter was sealed off. Göbbels, Himmler, and Heydrich would be arrested, and the offices of the SD and Gestapo occupied.

“I believe you've omitted one person,” Canaris said.

“An elite force under Captain Friedrich Heinz will secure the Reichschancellery and take the Führer into protective custody.”

“Heinz is a thug.”

“He's bitter over the murder of Ernst Röhm and the purge of the SA. He's hungry for revenge.”

“He'll kill his prey.”

“Perhaps.”

“And then you'll have to kill him.”

“When it's done, and Germany is rescued from war and the corruption of the regime exposed, the nation will be grateful.”

The papers on the desk were almost scattered by a wayward gust from outside, but Oster caught them in time. He used Canaris's lighter as a paperweight.

“What if the rat decides it's not the right time to fly?” Canaris asked.

“What?”

“Remember the fable you told me? The cats rebel at the last hour, when the rat tries to lead them over the cliff. Suppose there is no war. Suppose the Allies offer him what he wants. What then?”

“He will give the French and British no way out. He intends to march into Prague and nothing will stop him.”

Oster continued to catalog the details of the planned coup. Canaris was impressed by its thoroughness. The precise timetables for deployment and execution had been carefully worked out, nothing left to chance, except of course the yet-to-occur mistakes, misinterpreted instructions, muffed signals, missed schedules, which, along with the immeasurable, inevitable human elements of fear, stupidity, and betrayal, couldn't be factored in. If it went badly, they would all share the same fate, no matter the degree of involvement. The lucky ones would be able to take their own lives. The rest would face interrogation, torture, and a death sufficiently gruesome and humiliating to discourage other would-be conspirators.

Down in the street, the old man stopped a policeman. He shook his walking stick in the direction from which the tram should be approaching. Canaris sensed his frustration, even surprise. How was it possible that the inviolable timetable should suddenly be violated? Such irregularities were not supposed to happen, not in Berlin. The policeman watched with the old man for a moment, then shrugged, as if to say, Nothing is for certain, not even in Berlin. He resumed his patrol.