The Swiss Spy (11 page)

Now they had destroyed it.

That night, he had the dream for the first time.

***

On
a foggy winter’s afternoon in the middle of January, a tall man with a stooped
bearing that gave him a misleadingly academic air left his office at the
Reichsbank on Werderscher Markt in the centre of Berlin, by the canal. It was 5.30,
somewhat later than most other people he worked with. The later he left work,
he reasoned, the later he would arrive home and that suited him fine.

Gunter Reinhart had developed a habit of leaving the
enormous complex through different exits on different days. Had someone been
observing him, which they would have no cause to do, they might be suspicious. But
he did not vary his routine for reasons of security; the truth was far more
prosaic than that. It afforded him the opportunity to take different routes
home and on each of those routes lay various bars, where he could further delay
his arrival there. At least it gave him something to think about during the
afternoon.

There was no point in leaving through the
Unterwasserstrasse exit because beyond that was the canal. He liked the
anonymity and slightly rougher edge to the bars round Leipzigerstrasse, but
that was further from home. Leaving through Französischestrasse meant heading
towards the Unter den Linden, which one could never accuse of offering
anonymity. He would, he decided, leave through Kurstrasse and find somewhere to
stop off around Jägerstrasse.

These days, stepping out into the street after dark
was like descending into a tunnel. Reinhart had mixed feelings about the
blackout that descended upon Berlin at dusk. On the one hand, it conferred an
atmosphere of privacy on the city. You felt you were in your own world. On the
other, there was no question it made life more difficult. There were no street
lights, buildings were dark and the trams moved around like ghost trains. Cars
had just a small strip of paper over their headlights. Any lights that were
allowed were covered in blue paper, while low-level red lamps marked danger
spots such as roadworks. Then there was the phosphorous paint: gallons of the
stuff liberally sloshed on the pavements and road surfaces to give pedestrians
and drivers some chance of knowing where they were. The effect was quite eerie
and unsettling. Berlin at night looked as if it was deserted. There were
reports of numerous traffic accidents and people being killed from walking into
things or falling over in the blackout. The sister of one of the secretaries in
his office had died when she stepped off the platform at Kaiserhof station. And
then there were the rumours. Berlin thrived on rumours anyway; they had been
part an essential part of its pre-war diet. Now, rumours were disseminated in
more hushed and guarded tones. The latest was that a murderer was taking
advantage of the blackout and had already killed a dozen young women. There had
even been oblique references to it in the newspapers. Naturally, the police
said they suspected the person responsible was Jewish; or Polish; or both.

The few people who moved around the city at night
did so tentatively, as if wading through water. Some had taken to whistling or
coughing constantly so as to alert others to their proximity and thus avoid
bumping into them. But that was something of a forlorn hope: it was impossible
to avoid other people.

Even though this was a route he knew very well, on
nights like this, when there was no moonlight, Gunter Reinhart could not find
his bearings. Just after the intersection with Friedrichstrasse, he came across
a group of men silently beating up a man on the ground. He paused for a moment,
taking in the surreal nature of what he was witnessing before he decided to
cross the road. He had learned to keep well away from trouble. Suddenly, a long
black car swept passed him and stopped. Very quickly, the man who was being
attacked was bundled in.

Six months previously he would have been shaken to
the core by what he had seen, but now it was quickly forgotten. He was more
concerned with finding somewhere to drink. Looming out of the dark, he spotted
the dim blue-covered sign for
Das
Potsdamer
Taverne
, a bar he used to visit at least
twice a week, though recently it had become something of a favourite haunt for
a group of young SS officers. Given that the whole point of going to the bar
was to relax, they were the last people he’d want to find in there.

He walked slowly down the steep steps to the
basement, clutching on to the iron railings and keeping a careful eye on the
dabs of phosphorous paint on the steps. The bar had a low ceiling which caused
him to stoop. Through the blue-brown cigarette smoke he could see perhaps half
a dozen other customers spread out: all alone, all smoking, all drinking
quietly, all sitting as far as they could manage from each other. Like him,
they were avoiding going home. There was no sign of the SS, or indeed anyone
else in uniform.

The barmaid caught his eye as he waited to order a
drink.

‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t seen you for a
while.’

‘A week perhaps? No more than that. I was in here
last week.’

The kind of conversation repeated in bars around the
world, between barmaids and husbands who would rather not go home.

She was a friendly girl with broad shoulders and
hair that looked as if it had been dyed yellow. His wife, in her usual waspish
manner, would describe her in the unlikely event of her ever meeting her by
saying that she had seen better days, but she had friendly eyes and a seductive
voice, with a distinctive Bavarian accent. She kept glancing at him as she
pulled the beer, her eyes darting around. He started to move away, hoping to
find a seat on his own. She held up her hand.
Wait a moment.

When she had finished serving another customer she
leaned over to talk quietly to him.

‘A man was in here asking about you.’

Eight words no-one wanted to hear in Berlin in 1940.

‘What man?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve never seen him here before. He
was very polite and well-spoken. A Berliner definitely: wore a nice coat.’

‘When was this?’

She leant back as if trying to calculate the answer.

‘Last Thursday, I think: and then again yesterday –
Monday.’

Gunter Reinhart pulled up the stool next to him and
sat on it. This was bad news. Who could possibly be coming into a bar to ask
about him? People knew where he worked and where he lived.

‘And what did you say?’

‘He seemed like a nice man, but I didn’t want to say
much. On the other hand, I didn’t want to lie. I just said you come in here
every so often: about once a week these days. Was that alright?’

Not really.

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Wait’. The barmaid knelt down and emerged with her
handbag, which she rummaged through. ‘Here, I’ve found it. He said that if you
come in, I’m to give this to you.’ She handed him a book of matches with
Das Potsdamer
Taverne
on the front. He looked at it for
a while, puzzled.

‘Open it.’

Neatly written inside were two dates.

Den 8 Juni 1901

Den 4 Oktober 1929

‘Are you alright?’

Gunter Reinhart was evidently not alright. The hand
holding the book of matches was shaking and the other was gripping the bar
tightly. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. He could feel his chest
tightening.

‘Pardon?’

‘Are you alright? You look shaken.’

He put the matches in his top pocket and drank most
of the glass of beer in one go. He pushed the empty glass towards her and
nodded for her to refill it.

‘I’m fine, thank you. Did this man say how I could
contact him?’

‘He said he’d be here at six o’clock every Thursday
and Monday night until he was able to meet up with you.’

Reinhart stayed in the bar for another hour and
three more beers before he decided to walk all the way home to Charlottenburg. It
was a long walk, but he needed the time to compose himself. He crossed Hermann
Goring Strasse, which people would quietly joke was almost as wide as the man
himself, and into Charlottenburger Chaussee, the Tiergarten an enormous void on
his left.

Despite the brisk night air and absence of British
bombers, he found himself becoming increasingly tense rather than composed. He
had continuously checked the dates before leaving the bar. There was no
question about them.

Why on earth would someone write the down the birth
dates of his first wife and his eldest son, especially now they were no longer
in Berlin?

***

The
following morning, Reinhart took extra care on his journey into work to ensure
he wasn’t being followed, not that he was sure what he was meant to do. He was
a banker: his knowledge of subterfuge was limited to the world of finance. He
could move funds from one bank account to another without leaving a trace, but
he had no idea how to walk from one place to another without being spotted and,
in any case, he towered above most other people. It wouldn’t be hard to follow
him. When he arrived at the Reichsbank he casually enquired of his secretary –
maybe a bit too casually – whether anyone had been asking for him:
perhaps
over the past few days?
His secretary assured him that no-one had been
asking after him. She looked appalled at the very thought that someone might
have enquired of him and she would not have passed the information on.

His head of department informed him that Funk wanted
to see them both the next morning: he wanted an urgent and up-to-date report on
some of the new Swiss bank accounts. ‘You’re not to worry,’ he assured his head
of department. ‘The information will be ready.’ Pulling it all together was at
least a distraction for Reinhart, but it did mean his head of department fussed
around him for the rest of the day. He was a rotund man whose suit was always
too tight, with bad breath and clothes that reeked of mothballs. He had been
promoted from his natural level as an assistant bank manager somewhere near
Magdeburg simply due to a longstanding loyalty to the Nazi Party and as a
consequence was now utterly out of his depth.

The next day – Thursday – followed a sleepless night.
The meeting with Walther Funk proved to be but a two-hour distraction, even
something of an amusement. The President of the Reichsbank, who doubled as
Hitler’s Minister of Economics, was someone else who’d been promoted because of
service to the Nazi Party rather than any kind of financial competence or
knowledge. Reinhart produced a series of complicated balance sheets and lengthy
lists of transactions. Funk was impressed and confused in equal measure, but
unable to own up to the latter.

The afternoon went slowly and, as the sun
disappeared over Berlin, Reinhart wondered whether he was being led into a
trap. Maybe he had been a bit too clever by half. Maybe he’d upset one too many
of the Nazi Party bosses at the top of the Reichsbank, who felt they had cause
to distrust him.
Gunter Reinhart, the man who knows everything about the
Swiss accounts: time to put him in his place.

Das
Potsdamer
Taverne
was as quiet as the previous night. He nodded at the barmaid
and she smiled, slightly shaking her head:
not yet.

There was a tiny table wedged into
a corner behind the bar, and Reinhart took a seat there. He waited as the bar
became quieter and was just
wondering how long he should stay
when he caught sight of a man who looked vaguely familiar and seemed to be
glancing in his direction. The man remained at the bar, toying with a glass of
beer. A few minutes later he appeared at Reinhart’s table.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’

Reinhart was almost certain this man was a friend of
his first wife’s family, a lawyer – specialising in banking and finance, rather
intelligent and a bit too liberal for his liking: Catholic. First name Franz,
if he remembered correctly. He doubted, though, this was the man who had gone
to such lengths to meet him. After all, bumping into an acquaintance in the
centre of Berlin was hardly the most remarkable of coincidences. The man
produced a packet of cigarettes, took one out and placed it in Reinhart’s hand.

‘Would you like a light?’

Reinhart hesitated. The man reached into his pocket
and found a book of matches, one with
Das
Potsdamer
Taverne
on the front. As he opened it he
casually angled the packet so that Reinhart could clearly see it. Again, two
dates were handwritten on the inside of the packet.

Den 8 Juni 1901

Den 4 Oktober 1929

This time it was in the unmistakably familiar
handwriting of his first wife. The man shifted his chair even closer to
Reinhart and when he spoke again it was in a quieter voice.

‘You remember me, Gunter? Franz Hermann. Just act
normally, don’t speak too loud or too quietly. Smile occasionally.’