In this boneyard of Nazi memory where I make my living, we daily come across everything from death lists to the trifling queries of petty bureaucrats. Our place of business is known simply as the Federal Records Center, and it is housed on the first floor of an old torpedo factory down by a rotting wharf on the Potomac.
I am told that elsewhere in this cavernous building there is a Smithsonian trove of dinosaur bones and an archive of German propaganda films. But on our floor there is only paper, box after box of captured documents, with swastikas poking like shark fins from gray oceans of text. The more papers we move, the dustier it gets, and by late afternoon of each day the air is thick with motes of decomposing history. Sunbeams angling through the high windows shimmer like the gilded rays of a pharaonic tomb.
Seeing as how the war ended thirteen years ago, you might figure we’d have this mess sorted out by now. But, as I’ve discovered lately, lots of things about the war aren’t so easily categorized, much less set aside.
My name is Bill Tobin, and it is my job to decide which papers get tossed, declassified, or locked away. The government hired me because I am fluent in German and know how to keep a secret. I’ve worked here for a year, and up to now the contents have been pretty much what I expected—memos from various Nazi ministries, asking one nagging question after another: Have Herr Muller’s new ration coupons arrived? Must we initial every page of every armaments contract? How many Poles should we execute this Saturday?
What I didn’t expect to find—here or anywhere—was the name of Lieutenant Seymour Parker, a navigator from the 306th Bomb Group, U.S. Army Air Force. Yet there it was just the other day on the bent tab of a brown folder, our latest retrieval from a mishmash we have begun calling the Total Confusion File, mostly because we never know which ministry letterhead will turn up next.
At first, seeing Parker’s name was a pleasant surprise, like having an old pal visit from out of the blue. After reading what was inside, I was wishing he hadn’t dropped by.
It’s been fourteen years since we handed Parker over to the Germans in the spring of 1944, along with three other American flyboys. It was part of a prisoner exchange. The Germans had agreed to ship our boys home via occupied France. We gladly would have done it ourselves, of course, but at the time I was working for the OSS in Switzerland, a neutral country surrounded by Axis armies. To put it bluntly, we had no way out, and neither did the U.S. airmen who regularly parachuted into Swiss meadows and pastures after their bombers got shot up over Germany.
So we escorted Parker and the others up to the French border at Basel and then watched as a haughty SS officer in black ushered them onto a train bound for Paris. From there they would make their way to Spain, to be turned over to American custody for the voyage home.
I had helped Parker pack for the trip. His duffel was filled with cartons of cigarettes, and his head was stuffed with secrets. The former were for handing out to Germans along the way. As for the latter, well, that was more complicated.
It was the last time I saw him, and from then on our crew in Bern rarely mentioned his name, because surely everything had gone according to plan. Kevin Butchart had volunteered as much a year later, on the same afternoon the radio broke in with the happy news that Hitler had blown out his brains in Berlin. Someone else—I think it was Wesley Flagg—happened to ask if anyone knew what had ever become of Parker.
“Didn’t you hear?” Butchart said. “He’s back home in Kansas. Down on the farm with Dorothy and Toto, and didn’t even have to click his heels. Whole thing went off without a hitch.”
Since then, I had thought of Parker only once—last summer, while watching my son play Little League baseball on a leisurely Saturday. It was a key moment in the game. The best player on his team, one of those natural athletes who you can tell right away has a college scholarship in his future, was rounding third as the opponent’s shortstop threw home. Runner, ball, and catcher arrived at the plate simultaneously, and there was ajar-ring collision.
The catcher, a pudgy kid with glasses who had been flinching on every swing, took the impact square in the gut and went facedown in the dirt. A.s he righted himself and pulled off his mask you could see the conflict of emotions on his face—a rising storm of tears that might burst loose at any moment, yet also a fierce determination to tough it out without a whimper.
To everyone’s surprise he held aloft the ball, which had never left his mitt. The umpire called the runner out. The catcher then nodded for play to resume even as tears rolled down his dusty cheeks.
Something about the kid brought Parker to mind. He, too, had that contradictory bearing—flinching in one moment, stoic in the next—and for the remainder of the afternoon I was weighted by an inexplicable gloom. I wrote it off as yet another flashback, one of those anxious moments in which you realize yet again that the war still hasn’t left you behind. Then I mixed a crystal pitcher of gimlets for my wife and me, and by the following morning I’d forgotten all about it.
Not long afterward, I was offered my current job at the Records Center. The pay wasn’t great, but it sounded a hell of a lot more interesting than signing invoices at my father-in-law’s shoe factory in Wilmington, Delaware. So we packed up and moved to a rented town house in Alexandria, Virginia.
When I came across Parker’s file, I was standing in one of those golden beams of late sunlight as I pulled the last batch of documents from Box #214. My plan was to knock off early and take my son to the movies. Then I began to read, and within a few paragraphs I was transported back to the afternoon in early 1944 when I first met Parker aboard a Swiss passenger train.
Switzerland was the strangest of places then. Hemmed in by the Axis, its studious neutrality had turned it into an island of intrigue. On the surface it was Europe’s eye of the storm, an orderly refuge from gunfire and ruin, a place where weary émigrés could catch their breath and tend their wounds. Bankers still moved money. Industrialists kept cutting deals.
But playing out beneath this facade was a gentleman’s war of espionage among the snoops of all nations, and at times it seemed as if everyone was involved—émigrés, bankers, washed-up aristocrats, deal-hunting factory barons, and, of course, the Swiss themselves, who were trying to curry favor with the Americans even as they sweet-talked Hitler into not sending in tanks from the north. Everyone had information to offer—some of it dubious, some of it spectacular—and, as I discovered firsthand, the competing intelligence agencies were all too happy to vie for them by every means at their disposal.
On the day in late March that I met Parker, I was accompanied by the aforementioned Kevin Butchart. We were lurching down the aisle of a swaying train car, bound for Adelboden from Zurich via Bern.
The view out the windows was of an alpine meadow—cows and early spring wildflowers—but our attention was focused on the passengers. Several freshly arrived American airmen were on board, looking tired and dispirited. They had dropped from the skies after their B-17 had limped into Swiss airspace, following a bombing run over Bavaria. Butchart and I had come to scout them out as they made their way to an internment camp. We were hoping to find just the right one for use in an upcoming operation.
We knew we had to tread lightly. Even though the country was filled with spies, espionage was illegal. Swiss gumshoes regularly kept an eye on us, and we would be recruiting an operative right beneath their noses.
The flyboys had to mind their manners as well. The Swiss had already interned more than five hundred up in Adelboden, a resort town in the Alps, where they played Ping-Pong, read paperbacks, hiked around the town, and ate cheese three meals a day. The restless ones who tried to make their way back to the war by escaping into occupied France risked detention at a harsh little camp called Wauwilermoos. It was run by a supposedly neutral little martinet who would have done Hitler proud. Strange people, the Swiss.
I tugged at Butch art’s sleeve.
“How ‘bout him?”
I pointed at a stout fellow in a leather flight jacket who was munching on a chocolate bar from his escape kit.
“No way,” Butchart answered. “Look how worn the jacket is. He’s been at it for ages. And stop pointing. I saw your minder in the next car back.”
I glanced behind me for the bearded Swiss gumshoe whom I called Alp Uncle, mostly because I didn’t know his real name. Nowhere to be seen, thank goodness.
Butchart herded me along.
“Keep moving. We’ve only got an hour.”
He was pushy that way, one of those short, muscular fellows whose aggressive movements can quickly get on your nerves. But as an employee of the U.S. legation’s military attaché, this was his show, so I nodded and kept moving.
When Butchart wanted to engage you in conversation he came at you like a boxer, cutting and weaving, as if looking for an opening. Any suggestion that his point of view was flawed prompted an immediate counterpunch. He jabbed at your weak spots until your opinions were on the mat. I had learned not to pick these fights unless I could deck him with the first sentence, or unless we were in the presence of a superior officer, when he tended to pull his punches. For the moment I was inclined to defer to his judgment.
He tugged at my sleeve.
“There’s our boy. Next compartment on the right. Skinny guy with red hair. See him?”
About then the train lurched into a long descending curve, wheels squealing, and there was a sudden improvement in the scenery out to the right. A tall blonde milkmaid with braided hair was carrying buckets toward a barn. Wolf whistles and applause erupted in the railcar. One of the flyboys slid open a window and yelled, “Hey, good lookin’!”
Then he was shouted down.
“Close the fucking window!”
“It’s freezing in here. You outta your mind?”
“But it was Heidi!” the offending airman protested. “Only she’s all grown up!”
Heidi, indeed. My own experience with local women had already provided ample proof that the natives were friendly, even though in this neck of the woods most of them spoke German. But it could be dangerous to let the hospitality fool you.
“Any sign of Alp Uncle?” Butchart asked.
I turned, scanning the car.
“Still out of sight.”
Lately our minders seemed to be losing interest. We first noticed it after the German defeat at Stalingrad. The worse things went for the Wehrmacht, the more lenient the Swiss got with the Allies.
I eased closer to our target, but Butchart grabbed my sleeve.
“Never mind. Scratch him.”
“Why?”
“Scar, back of his neck. Saw it when he turned to look at Heidi.”
“So?”
“So it was probably a major wound, but he went back up anyway. Not our man. We’re looking for Clark Kent, not Superman.”
Butchart and I had been chosen for this assignment because we knew exactly what these fellows had been through. We, too, had come to Switzerland on crippled bombers that couldn’t make it back to England.
I am not ashamed to admit that for me it was a welcome development. It had occurred the previous fall during my seventeenth mission. Seventeen doesn’t sound like much until you’ve tried your first one—a terrifying ride through flak bursts and the raking fire of Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. As a starboard waist gunner in a B-17, it was my job to shoot down these tormentors, a strategy roughly as effective as pumping a Flit gun at a sky full of locusts. If you’re lucky you get one or two. The rest eat their fill.
On my sixth run I was sprayed by the entrails of the port gunner when a 20-millimeter shell exploded in his midsection. On the eighth my gun jammed, and I spent the next two hours watching helplessly as bandits blew holes in the skin of our plane. On the fourteenth we ditched in the Channel but were rescued from rafts. Three of our crewmen drowned. After each trip it took me hours to warm up, and all too soon the mission day routine became unbearable: Rise at two a.m. for the briefing. Swallow a queasy breakfast. Inhale gas fumes and the sweet scent of pasture grass while you loaded up in the dark. Then eight hours or more in cramped quarters, freezing most of the way, while people tried to kill you from every angle. After a while the throb of the engines was the only thing you could still feel in your hands and feet. Staticky voices shouted their panic and pain in your headset. Out the gun port you saw carnage everywhere—your colleagues’ bombers smoking and then spiraling, spewing black dots as crewmen ejected. That could be me, I always thought, falling toward a field in Germany.
Until finally one day it was me. Three of our four engines were out, and Harmon, our pilot, was nursing us south toward the Swiss border. When he gave the order to bail, we weren’t yet sure we had made it. The rest of us jumped while Harmon fought the controls. Fighters were still in the neighborhood, so I didn’t pull the rip cord until I was below a thousand feet. Even then, as soon as the canopy opened I heard a Messerschmitt buzzing toward me from behind. I turned awkwardly in my harness and waited for the flash of guns. None came. The plane roared by, close enough for the prop wash to rock my chute. Only then did I notice the large white cross on its side—the Swiss air force, welcoming us with their German planes.
That left me feeling pretty good until I watched our plane hit the ground in a ball of flame and black smoke. Someone else said Harmon jumped just before impact, but his chute never opened.
Swiss soldiers rounded us up. They boarded us overnight at a nearby school, and the next morning they put us on a train for Adelboden, where we were supposed to be billeted in an old hotel. But that’s when I lucked out. The man who would soon be my new boss came across me napping in a rear compartment. Apparently what caught his eye was a dog-eared copy of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon splayed across my chest. I awoke when I felt someone picking it up, and looked into the blue eyes of an older gentleman with a pipe between his teeth. The pockets of his overcoat were stuffed with newspapers. He took a seat opposite me and began speaking American English.
“Any good?” he said, holding up the book.
“Not bad.”
“I’m Allen Dulles, from the American legation.”
We chatted long enough for him to find out I was fluent in German and had spent two years in graduate school. He then surprised me by suggesting I come to work for him. I was flattered, but I needn’t have been. I learned later that Dulles had made it into Switzerland only hours before the country’s last open border was closed, cutting him off from reinforcements.
That meant he had to be creative about finding new employees. Stranded American bankers and socialites were already on his payroll, so it was hardly surprising he would take an interest in me once a bunch of American airmen literally began dropping to him from the skies. I told him I liked the idea, and he said he would see what he could do. Two weeks later I was summoned to his office in Bern.
Only then did I learn I would be working for the OSS. It was the closest thing we had to a CIA, but I had never heard of it. I decided it must be a little out of the ordinary when the job application included an “Agent’s Checklist” that asked me for a countersign “by which agent may identify himself to collaborators.” They also gave me a code name, an ID number for use in all official correspondence, and a desk in a windowless office in an old brick town house on Dufourstrasse.
Most of my duties involved translation, but I suppose that officially I was a spy, unless there is some other name you’d give a job in which the boss sends memos on tradecraft and insists that you call him 110, or Burns, or whatever the hell you wanted as long as you never used his real name. That first meeting on the train was the only time I felt comfortable calling him Mr. Dulles.
So there I was, then, with Butchart on the train, trying to recruit someone else the same way that Dulles had recruited me, except we were seeking an altogether different sort of prospect.
“What about him?” I said, pointing even though Butchart had asked me not to.
“Where?”
“Last compartment on the left, by the window. The guy with glasses.”
The fellow in question looked like one of the younger crewmen, but it was his wariness that caught my eye. While most of the others wore a weary look of relief, this one still had his guard up. There was also a softness to his features, and a little boy wonderment as he stared out the window. You could tell he had never seen mountains like these.
“He’s got potential,” Butchart said. “Navigator, I’ll bet.”
“How you figure?”
“The glasses. Must have a special talent or they’d have never let him in the air corps, and they’re always short on navigators. Keep an eye on him while I check the next car.”
I did just that. A few seconds later Butchart returned, shaking his head.
“I’m liking your navigator more and more.”
“Want me to take him aside?”
“Wait ‘til we’re almost into the station. In the meantime I’ll let his CO know. I’ll also grab the Swiss officer in charge and start greasing the skids.”
“What will you tell him?”
“Same thing Colonel Gill told them when he hired me. That I’m from the military attaché and we’re short on staff and looking for volunteers.”
By now you may be thinking this isn’t exactly the most glamorous spy mission you’ve ever heard of, but it definitely beat what I had been doing up to then. Dulles had confined me to office duty, and I was going stir-crazy. It wasn’t so much that I craved excitement as that I needed distraction. At least twice a week I was still dreaming about being back in the bomber—the bed rocking as if shaken by a flak burst, a high-altitude chill creeping beneath the sheets. I’d wake up exhausted, hands numb, as if I’d just returned from an all-night mission. Frankly, I was worried about going ‘round the bend if something didn’t come along soon to occupy my mind.
Butchart had heard I was eager for action, and he had suggested I meet his boss, Colonel Gill, who kept track of intelligence matters for the military attaché. He said they might have a special job for me.
I told him to give it a try, and it must have worked, because the next evening Dulles summoned me to his place on Herrengasse. I went after dark, which was the drill for just about everybody who went to his house. He had the ground-floor apartment in a grand old building that dated back to medieval times. It was in the heart of all those arcaded streets in the old part of Bern. Gumshoes kept an eye on his front door, so visitors like me entered through the back, after approaching uphill through terraced gardens overlooking the river Aare.
It was always a treat visiting Dulles. He had a maid, a French cook, some mighty fine port, and plenty of logs for the fire. He also had a couple of mistresses, a Boston debutante married to a Swiss banker and an Italian countess who was the daughter of the conductor Toscanini. Dulles was probably the only warrior in the European Theater of Operations who suffered from gout.
Not that he looked much like a Lothario. He was very much the old-school gentleman, all tweeds and pipe smoke, with an understated grace that immediately put you at ease. He was a hell of a good listener—which is probably what the ladies liked—and on any topic he zeroed in right away on the stuff that mattered. Glancing into his lively blue eyes when his mind was fully engaged was like peering into the works of some gleaming piece of sophisticated machinery, an information mill that never stopped running. Those newspapers in his pockets were no mere props. He devoured all knowledge within reach and chewed it over even as he engaged you in small talk about, say, the virtues of your university, or the quirks of some mutual acquaintance. Try to slip some half-baked thought past his field of vision and he’d seize upon it like a zealous customs inspector, and you’d end up wishing you had kept prattling on about your alma mater.
When the maid showed me in, there was a fire on the hearth. Dulles was knocking at the logs with a poker.
“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing to a decanter of port on a side table.
Someone had left a bowler hat next to it, and I figured there must be another guest waiting elsewhere in the house. Dulles confirmed this suspicion when he dispensed with the usual pleasantries and got right down to business.
“I hear your services are in demand by Colonel Gill.”
“Yes, sir. A little something to get me out of the office.”
Dulles smiled and nodded.
“I know you’re restless, but I do plan to get you out on the beat before long. Still, maybe this will offer some useful practice. Stretch your legs a bit. So you have my blessing if you’re so inclined, even if they do think of themselves as our competition. That’s not my view, mind you, but some of those Pentagon fellows seem to have a chip on their shoulders as far as we’re concerned. So mind your step, Bill. And don’t let them try anything fast and loose with you.”
“Any reason to think they might?”
“Not really, other than Gill himself. He’s bucking for promotion, which always makes a man a little dangerous. Sometimes in a good way, I’ll allow, but you never know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Bill.”
“Yes?”
“Even if you say yes, if the first step is squishy, don’t feel as if you have to take the second one. Don’t let pride shame you into doing something foolish. Perfectly fine by me if you bow out. Just don’t tell them I said so.”
Early the next morning, Butchart ushered me into Gill’s office. Gill had set up shop in the back of a legation town house on Dufourstrasse, with a view onto a lush narrow garden. He stood behind a big varnished desk, a tall, trim fellow going gray at the temples. He offered a big handshake and spoke in a smoky baritone, which made for a powerful first impression. The starched uniform and all the ribbons didn’t hurt, either.
Butchart stayed in the room after introductions, which was a little annoying although I wasn’t about to say so. Gill referred to him by name instead of rank. Maybe that was his way of signaling that the meeting was off the books.
“Kevin here tells me you’re a little unhappy over in Allen’s shop. All cloak and no dagger, I hear.”
“Maybe I’m just impatient.”
“A man is entitled to impatience when there’s a war on. It’s no time to be sitting behind a typewriter. Not that I can promise you much dagger, either, I’m afraid. But at least you’ll be out in the field.”
“Yes, sir. Sergeant Bu . . . uh, Kevin said you had an assignment in mind?”
“I do. You’d be working it together. Are you familiar with the prisoner exchange that occurred a few weeks ago, those six American airmen we sent up into France?”
“Yes, sir. Did something go wrong?”
“Quite the opposite. Worked like a charm. All six are currently back in the States awaiting reassignment. Apparently the Germans were happy to get their six men back as well. From all accounts they’re amenable to doing it again. But were you aware that your boss, Mr. Dulles, arranged the whole show?”
I wasn’t, and it must have shown in my face.
“I didn’t think so. Well, he did. And he was quite clever about it. Secretive, too. Even my bosses didn’t know what he was up to until a few days ago, and that didn’t go down so well in Washington. When some civilian wants to put their soldiers at risk, they prefer to be told in advance. Of course, now that it has turned out so well, they’re wisely keeping complaints to a minimum. And, frankly, it has opened up an opportunity for a similar effort by us. Which is where you and Kevin come in.”
“So it was some sort of operation?”
“Oh, yes. Unbeknownst to us, two of the airmen were functioning as OSS couriers. Apparently Dulles had gathered a lot of information on German troop movements up along the Atlantic Wall. He figured it was too hot to send out by wireless, even by code, so he drilled it into these two fellows instead. Strict memorization. Gave the lessons himself.”
In those days it was no secret to anyone that the invasion of France was coming soon, and that’s why information on German troop strength along the French coast was at a premium.
“Sounds like a smart idea,” I said.
“It was. The only problem is that he left the job half-finished.”
“How so?”
“Well, think of it for a minute. In the intelligence business, the only thing better than passing along a lot of good information is convincing the enemy that you actually have a lot of bad information. That way, they’re more likely to miscalculate when they try to guess where you’re going to come ashore.”
“So you’d like to load up a couple of prisoners, too, except with a lot of bad information?”
“Exactly. One is all you need, in my opinion. Then, of course, you find some way to make the Germans suspicious enough to haul in your fellow for questioning. Of course, that means you have to choose just the right man for the job. One who will tell them what they want to hear, but in a convincing enough fashion.”
“A good enough liar, you mean.”
“Exactly. And what do you suppose would be the best way to make our fellow a good enough liar?”
“Training?”
“Only if you have months or even years at your disposal. We don’t have that luxury. We’ve only got weeks, if that. So I’ve come up with an alternative. Send in a novice. Just don’t tell him he’s carrying bad information. That way, he believes in the material enough to make it convincing.”
“If he talks.”
“Exactly. Which is why you have to pick just the right fellow. Not a hero, or someone who will keep his secret to the bitter end. Someone a little more, well, malleable. A weaker vessel, if you will.”
“Someone who will break under pressure?”
“And preferably not too much pressure. Which is why Kevin and you are perfect for the job. You’ve experienced firsthand what these airmen go through, and you know their state of mind when they arrive. More to the point, you’ve seen firsthand the ones who can’t cut it, the ones who break under pressure.”
Like me, I almost said. I could have told him all about my latest nightmare, but I doubt he would have understood.
“So what do you think?” he asked. He seemed quite pleased with himself.
I thought the idea was dubious, and I recalled Dulles’s advice. Maybe it was time for me to bail. Or maybe Dulles had offered an easy escape merely to test me. Bow out now, and he might keep me deskbound for the rest of the war. You never knew for sure what was going on in a mind like his.
So, despite my reservations, I decided to say yes. But first I had some questions.
“How will we make sure the Germans pick him up?”
“I’m afraid that aspect of the operation is above your pay grade, Bill.”
It rankled, but it was the right thing to say, even though Dulles would have just winked and said nothing at all. But Colonel Gill, as I would soon discover, could never pass up an opportunity to impress you, even when he should have kept his mouth shut. And just as I was about to reply, he began elaborating on his statement in a way that obviously was intended to show the genius of his grand design.
“Surely a smart fellow like you shouldn’t have too much trouble figuring out how we’ll do it,” he said. “Let’s face it, the Germans are all over town. You can’t even have a drink at the Bellevue without bumping into half the local Gestapo. So maybe we will have to arrange for a few well-placed leaks. A slipup here and there. Just enough to let them know that our man might be of interest to them as he makes his way through their territory. That’s the beauty of it, you see? No need to run too tight of a ship in the run-up to zero hour. The only real need for precision is in picking the right man for the job.”
“But then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say they take our man in for questioning. Pressure him. He talks, tells them everything, just like we want. Then what? Is he still exchanged as a prisoner?”
“Oh, we’ll make it all work out, one way or another. If worse comes to worst, he’ll end up back where he started, as a captive.”
“Except in German hands, not Swiss.”
“Your concern is admirable, Bill. But have you been over to Wauwilermoos lately? Pretty brutal, I’m told. I’m sure there are some German stalags that would be an improvement over that rat hole. It’s wartime, Bill. Besides, anyone who volunteers will know the risks. If he were the hard type, the type to fight to the bitter end, then I’d say okay, you have a point. But this is the beauty of our operation. With the right man, the right temperament, the risk is minimal. So it really is all up to you. Or to you and Kevin, of course.”
Translation: Failure would be on our heads, and mostly on mine. By recruiting an OSS man, Gill had arranged for a fall guy who could be laid at the feet of Dulles, his rival. If it succeeded, he could claim he knew better how to use OSS personnel.
I said yes anyway. I can be stubborn that way, especially when I sense that an opportunity, no matter how chancy, might be the only one to come along. And a few days later there I was, entering a train compartment to talk to the young man who we had decided was our hottest prospect.
* * * *
“Morning, Lieutenant. I’m from the American legation in Bern and I have some questions for you. The first thing I need to know is your name.”
The young airman looked suitably intimidated and clutched his escape kit to his chest. But he answered without first asking for my name, which I took as a good sign. Easily cowed by authority I surmised, even though he carried a decent rank of his own.
“Lieutenant Seymour Parker. Emporia, Kansas.”
“Navigator, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“I know a lot of things. Come with me, please. We’ve got some more questions for you.”
“Are you an officer?”
“Like I said, I’m with the legation.”
“But the Swiss officers said ...”
“They’ve been notified. So has your CO. Let’s go.”
He looked around at his seatmates, who shrugged. I got the impression they hadn’t known one another long, or else they would have risen to his defense.
Parker rose awkwardly. A long flight in a Fortress stiffened you up, especially when followed by an uneasy night of sleep on a Swiss cot in an empty schoolhouse. He followed me meekly up the aisle to where Butchart was waiting, just as the train was pulling into Adelboden. We had arranged for the legation to send down a car and driver, which seemed to impress him. Butchart and I sat on either side of him on the backseat of a big Ford.
If I had been in Parker’s shoes, I would have been asking a million questions. He tried one or two, then stopped altogether when Butchart told him brusquely to shut up. If we had been Germans posing as Americans we could have hijacked him every bit as easily. Butchart looked over at me and nodded, as if he was thinking the same thing.
The roads were clear of snow, and we made it to Bern in about an hour. We said little along the way, letting the pressure build, and when we reached the city we took him to an empty back room in one of the legation offices. Seeing the American flag out front and hearing other people speaking English seemed to put him at ease. We shut the door and settled Parker into a stiff-backed chair. The first thing Butchart asked was how many missions he’d flown.
“This, uh, this was my first.”
Perfect, and we both knew it. Enough to get a taste of terror without growing accustomed to it.
“Some of your crewmates looked pretty experienced,” I said.
“They are. I was a replacement.”
“So what happened to you guys up there?” Butchart asked. “You fuck up the charts or something, get everybody lost?”
Parker reddened, and for the first time defiance crept into his voice.
“No, it wasn’t like that at all. We were in the middle of the formation and took some hits. Didn’t even reach the target. We came out below Regensburg with only two engines, and one of those was smoking. Lieutenant Braden, he’s our pilot, asked me to plot a course toward Lake Constance.”
“Well, you did that part okay, I guess.”
Butchart then eased up a bit by asking a few personal questions. He companionably pulled up a chair next to Parker’s and started nodding sympathetically as the kid answered. I say “kid,” but Parker was twenty, the son of a wheat farmer. He was a third-year engineering student at the University of Kansas, which explained how he had qualified for navigator training.
As he spoke it became clear that he was a man of simple, innocent tastes. He liked to read, didn’t smoke, preferred soda over beer, and didn’t have a serious girlfriend. Up to the time of his arrival in England he seemed to have believed that his hometown of Emporia was the center of the universe, and his college town of Lawrence was a veritable Athens. The most important bit of intelligence to come out of this part of our chat was that he had spent the previous summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.
“A lifeguard, huh?” Butchart sounded worried. “You volunteered?”
“Sure.”
“And went through all the training?”
“Well...”
“Well what?”
“I was kinda filling in. All the regulars had enlisted, so there really wasn’t time for me to take the courses.”
“Sorta like with your bombing mission?”
“I guess.”
Parker went meek and quiet again, as if we’d just exposed him as a fraud.
“Can I ask you guys something?”
“Sure,” Butchart said.
“What’s this all about? I mean, I know you mentioned something about a job. But what kind of job?”
“A onetime deal. A mission, provided you qualify. You’d be sent home on a prisoner exchange. But you’d have to memorize some information for us to pass along to the generals once you got back to the States. Facts and figures, maybe a lot of them.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I’ll bet. And in return you’d get a free trip home. Not bad, huh?”
He smiled at that, then frowned, as if realizing it sounded too good to be true.
“But why me? There are plenty of other guys who’ve earned it more.”
“Do you always look a gift horse in the mouth? Did you turn down the lifeguard job?”
“No, but. . . “
“But what?”
“I dunno. Something seems kinda funny about the whole thing.”
I tried to put him at ease.
“Look, you’re a navigator, which means you probably have a head for numbers and memorization. So there you go. You said it yourself, you’d be good at it.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
Butchart spent the next few minutes going over the preparation that would be required. He also described the likely route home—up through occupied France in the company of German escorts from the SS. Parker’s eyes got a little wide during that part, and Butchart nodded at me in approval.
“So let’s say you get caught, Parker. Let’s say that halfway through this nice little train ride to Paris, one of those Krauts gets suspicious and takes you off at the next stop for a little questioning. What do you do then?”
“You mean if I’m captured?”
“No, dumb ass. You’re already captured. That’s why you’re part of an exchange. But let’s say they decide to check you out, grill you a little. What you gonna tell ‘em?”
“Name, rank, and serial number?”
“Yeah, sure. But what else?”
“Well, nothing, I hope.”
Butchart got in his face like a drill sergeant.
“You hope?”
“Okay, I know. Or know I’ll try.”
“C’mon, Parker, you can level with us. You really think you could handle some Gestapo thug getting all over you? What would you tell him?”
“I like to think I wouldn’t say a damn thing.”
“You mean like if they try this?”
Butchart slid a knife from his belt. Then he grabbed Parker by a shank of hair and pulled back his head. Before the kid even realized what was happening, Butchart had put the flat of the blade against the white of Parker’s neck—steel on skin, as if he were about to peel him like a piece of fruit.
Parker swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. For a moment I thought he was going to cry.
“Whadda you doin’?”
“Checkin’ you out.”
Butchart yanked Parker’s head lower while holding the blade steady. Sweat beaded at Parker’s temples, and his eyes bulged. When he next spoke his voice was an octave higher.
“I’m not the enemy, okay?”
“Oh, yeah? How do we know that for sure?”
Another tug on his hair, this time eliciting a sharp squeal of pain.
“You coulda been a plant, put on that train to fool us. Or to infiltrate all our other boys and steal their secrets. Air routes, evasion tendencies, stuff about the new bombsight. How come nobody in your compartment acted like they knew you?”
“I’m new!” he said shrilly. “Nobody talks to replacements!”
Butchart abruptly released him and put away the knife. Parker sat up and tried to collect himself, but it was no good. His skin was pale gooseflesh, and he was swallowing so fast that his throat was working like a piston. He touched the spot where Butchart had held the blade. There were still red marks from Butchart’s knuckles. A little cruel, no doubt, but I guess it was necessary.
Butchart turned toward me and nodded, and I knew without a word that it was his confirmation signal.
“I’ll tell Colonel Gill,” he said, rising from his chair.
“You mean I’m out?”
It wasn’t clear if Parker was relieved or disappointed, which for us only enhanced his suitability.
“No,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “You’re in. You passed with flying colors.”
“You’ll start your training tomorrow,” Butchart said. “Tobin here will go over the timetable.”
We had two weeks to bring him up to speed on all the garbage information Colonel Gill wanted drilled into his head. Figuring that his taskmaster needed to be just as committed to the “facts” as his clueless student, the colonel assigned a sergeant from his staff named Wesley Flagg to handle the learning sessions.
Flagg was the perfect choice—pleasant, good-hearted, and as sincere as they come. Flagg’s earnestness drove Butchart crazy, enough that he assigned me to keep tabs on the lessons. But as far as Colonel Gill was concerned, Flagg’s greatest attribute was that he never questioned orders. Even if Flagg were to suspect that the information was flawed, there was virtually no chance he would have raised a fuss. He would simply assume that his superiors knew best.
Parker was a fast learner. Every time I asked Flagg for an update, he gushed about his pupil’s ability to handle a heavy workload. But for all his boasting I sensed an unspoken uneasiness about Parker’s fitness for the job. Flagg dared to bring it up only once, asking, “Are you sure Colonel Gill has signed off on this guy? I mean, Parker’s great with the material, but, well. . .”
“Well what? He’s the colonel’s top choice.”
“Nothing, then.”
He never brought it up again.
The night before the exchange was to take place, Butchart asked me to take Parker his consignment of cigarettes. All four of the airmen were getting several cartons to help them spread goodwill along the way. They also might need to bribe some petty bureaucrat, even though the SS would be their official escorts.
Parker was billeted at a small hotel in the center of Bern. Conveniently—as far as we were concerned—it was just down the block from an apartment rented by a pair of Gestapo officers. Presumably they had passed him in the streets by now. He still wore his uniform from time to time, and they would have wondered right away what he was up to.
OSS operatives who worked for Dulles were taught that when meeting contacts it was best to disguise their comings and goings and to rendezvous on neutral ground. In Parker’s case I was instructed not to bother, even though it put a knot in my stomach simply to walk into the hotel’s small lobby and ask for him by name. A man was seated in the lobby on a couch. I didn’t know his name or nationality, and I didn’t ask.
Parker was restless, as anyone might have been on the eve of such an undertaking. But somehow he was not quite the same as the fellow I remembered from a few weeks earlier. Was my imagination playing tricks on me, or had he lost some of his callowness as he settled into his new role?
He finished packing in almost no time, so I asked if I could treat him to a beer.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I probably won t be able to sleep much either way, so I might as well try to do it with a clear head. But there is one favor you can do me.”
“Sure.”
“Tell me, is there something funny about this operation? Something that, well, maybe no one has mentioned?”
I made it a point to look him straight in the eye, as much for myself as for him.
“There are always aspects of operations that aren’t disclosed to the operatives. It’s for their own protection.”
“That’s all you’re allowed to say?”
As he asked it, his face was like that of the catcher in my son’s Little League game—vulnerable yet determined, timid yet willing to go forward, come what may For a moment I was tempted to tell him everything.
But I didn’t, if only because the advice I had just imparted was true. It was in his best interests not to know. For one thing, the truth would have devastated him. For another, the Germans would have read his intentions immediately. And while it’s one thing to have the enemy catch you functioning as a secret courier, it’s quite another to be caught operating as an agent of deception. Setting Parker up for that fate would have been tantamount to marching him before a firing squad.
So I tried offering an oblique word of advice, hoping that when the right time came he would recall my words and put them to good use.
“Look, if for some unforeseen reason push does come to shove, just keep in mind that it’s you who will be out there taking the blows, not us. So go with your own instincts.”
It only seemed to puzzle him. Finally he smiled.
“Maybe I should take you up on that beer, after all.”
“Good enough.”
He drank three, as it turned out, the first time in his life he had downed more than one at a sitting, and it showed in his wobble as I escorted him back to the room. He turned out his light just as I was leaving.
The actual exchange at the border was almost anticlimactic.
Oh, the SS man showed up, all right, just as he had for the previous swap engineered by Dulles. I suppose he was appropriately sinister with his swagger stick and stiff Prussian walk, and certainly for the way he snapped his heels and offered a crisp Nazi salute along with the obligatory “Heil Hitler.”
It definitely got Parker’s attention, but I don’t recall it striking much fear into me. Or maybe I’ve rewritten the scene in my memory, having watched countless Hollywood versions that have turned the officer’s dark gestures into costumed parody, complete with cheesy accent. I suppose I’ve always wanted to regard him as a harmless stereotype, not some genuine menace who still had a war to fight and enemies to kill.
Whatever the case, Parker offered me a wan smile over his shoulder as he lined up with his three fellow airmen and stepped aboard the train. They were all a bit nervous, but to a man they were also excited about the prospect of returning home.
I got back to Bern late that night. A taxi dropped me at the legation so I could report that all had gone well. But Butchart and Colonel Gill weren’t there, and neither had left word on where to reach them. Only Flagg was waiting, eager to hear how his pupil had fared.
He smiled after I described the scene at the train station.
“I’ll admit that for a while I had my doubts,” he said. “But you know, by the end I was feeling pretty good about it. Parker’s the type who can fool you. Hidden reserves and all that.”
“You really think so?”
“Oh, yes. And he was such a fast learner with the material that I even had time to teach him a few escape and evade tactics. Just in case.”
“Good thinking,” I said weakly.
We said good night, and I walked across the lonely bridge to my apartment. I was exhausted and it was well past midnight, but I don’t remember getting a moment of sleep.
Two days later a French rail worker, one of our contacts with the maquis, reported through the usual channels that Parker had been removed from the train at the third stop, well before Paris. No one in our shop said much about it, especially when there was no further word in the following days.
Soon enough I was busy with new assignments. If Dulles had been testing me through Colonel Gill, then I must have passed, because he began making good right away on his promise to get me out and about.
The extra distractions were welcome, and within a few weeks I was no longer dreaming of Messerschmitts and butchered comrades, although Parker’s guileless face did swim before me from time to time. Then came the day when Hitler shot himself. Flagg popped his question, Butchart supplied the reassuring answer, and from then on I had no more dreams of Parker. I was content to let him reside in my memory as a quirky sidelight of the war years. At least, I was until coming across his folder at the Records Center.
It was a thin file, with only four typewritten pages inside. But what really caught my attention was the Gestapo markings across the sleeve. As I steeled myself to read it in the sunlight of 1958, it occurred to me that soon there would be little need for fellows like Parker. Only months earlier, Sputnik had fallen to earth after its successful voyage. Bigger and better replacements were already on the launchpad, and, if you believed the newspapers, the chatter in intelligence circles was that half the work of spies would soon be obsolete. Both sides would soon be able simply to look down at enemy positions from high in the sky But in 1944 we had people like Parker, good soldiers who did as they were told, even when they were told very little.
By the second paragraph I learned that Parker had been considered a probable spy almost from the moment he had boarded the train. By the fourth paragraph I learned they had grilled him for twelve hours, off and on. The details were scanty—they always were in these reports when the Gestapo was pulling out all the stops—but I was familiar with enough eyewitness accounts of their usual tactics to fill in the blanks: Force them to stand for hours on end. Let them pee in their pants while they waited. Beat them, perhaps, and, if that didn’t work, beat them harder, or threaten them with a firing squad.
Spy was the word the report kept using, over and over. Twelve hours of this, yet Parker, the veteran of only a single combat mission over Germany, held out. Flagg’s judgment proved correct. He had hidden reserves. In fact, he had done us all one better. Lieutenant Parker had tried to escape.
It happened early on the following morning, the report said, right after the sentry left the room for a smoke. The officer in charge okayed the break because the subject had been at his lowest ebb. And at this point in the report, perhaps to cover his ass, the officer allowed himself the luxury of a detailed description of the subject’s physical state: one eye swollen shut, bruises about the face and chest, shins bleeding, apparent exhaustion due to sleep deprivation. Yet no sooner had the sentry made himself scarce than Parker had somehow managed to overcome the interrogating officer and throw open the door.
He made it about twenty yards before the gunshots caught him. He then survived another two hours before dying of his wounds. The reporting officer seemed resigned to the idea of being reprimanded for his lapse in judgment, which had led to the loss of a potentially valuable prisoner before any useful information had been extracted.
By then my hands were cold, my feet as well. I sighed deeply, shut the folder, and looked up at the clock. It was an hour past our usual closing time, and my assistant was eyeing me curiously from his desk. He was anxious to leave. What I needed was a stiff drink, although this time a pitcher of gimlets wasn’t going to be enough. But first I had one more bit of business here to take care of.
I carried the folder to a table next to my assistant’s desk. For a moment I hovered over the burn box. As I prepared to drop in the report for destruction, I like to believe that I was not guided chiefly by an instinct of self-preservation. I was thinking as well of Parker’s parents, perhaps still on their farm near Emporia. Having a son of my own now, I wondered what it would be like to hear that your only child had died while protecting secrets that he wasn’t supposed to protect, that he had failed in his mission by being too brave and too strong.
But I couldn’t bring myself to let go of the folder.
“Sir?” my assistant asked. “Is something wrong?”
“This one belongs with the OSS stuff.”
“Classified?”
I paused, still hovering.
“No. In fact, I’d like it to get some circulation. You go on. I’ll prepare the translation and a distribution list and have it ready for you to send out copies in the morning.”
He was gone within seconds, and I settled back at my desk with the folder still in hand. The list came immediately to mind. Colonel Gill and Butchart, wherever they might be, would receive copies. Dulles, too, down at his big desk in the director’s office of the agency we now called the CIA. Or perhaps each of them already knew, and always had. In that case, they needed to know that others had also found out.
But what about Parker’s parents? I would spare them the gory details, of course, but they at least deserved the gist of the story, beginning with that first meeting aboard the train. The most important part, however, would be the summation, and I already had one in mind: Your son didn’t tell the Germans a word. Not one. In fact, he did exactly as we asked, even if not at all as we had planned. The ball never left his mitt.