It sounds like you're giving me to her as a gift, something to cheer her up. He thought Walter was smiling but couldn't be sure. Is she really a countess?
She's Ukrainian. Married a Polish count.
Killed in the war.
Yes, a hero. They sent his wife here, trained in military intelligence. Vera Mezwa was the most important German agent in America.
How old is she?
I don't know. Older than you.
Is she attractive?
What difference does it make what she looks like? She's going to hide you.
Jurgen believed a woman with the name Vera Mezwa, a countess, a German espionage agent, could not be as boring as Walter. He was ready to move on.
Chapter Fourteen.
Vera Mezwa's eyes and Jurgen's eyes met on the same level. She took his hand, stepped close and kissed him on one cheek and then the other, Jurgen feeling her lips brush his skin and they were eye to eye again, Jurgen knowing she was glad to have him here but not making a show of it. He could tell by the way she took his arm saying, Come, let's sit down and be comfortable, her English bearing the hint of a Slovak sound. He had known Ukrainians in Hamtramck, a part of Detroit, who spoke English trying to sound American. She said, Tell me what you like to drink.
Her manner confident, the leader of a spy ring, but with a wonderful scent that softened her before his eyes. He saw her lying on a bed naked and imagined muscle beneath the curves of her body, but with the breasts of a bodybuilder, and could tell she dyed her hair, preferring the raw tint of henna and a deep-red lip rouge, quite startling against her pale, powdered features. She was a handsome woman in the style of Central Europe and he liked her immediately.
Whatever you're having, Jurgen said, confident it would be a drink with alcohol.
Her heels brought her eye to eye with him, her age would be somewhere in her late thirties, perhaps forty. Her age didn't matter to either of them. The living room furniture was formal, dull. Jurgen imagined it already here when she moved in. They took cigarettes from a silver dish, Vera lighting them with her Ronson, Vera sitting with him on the sofa, Vera facing him, her legs drawn up in a wool skirt, a shade of rose that matched the sweater she wore and was loose on her body, nothing beneath the sweater, pearls displayed in the open neck. Her head raised and she was looking past Jurgen.
He turned enough to see a young man wearing a white apron over his T-shirt and red neckerchief standing in the room waiting, his hands on his hips, shoulders somewhat slumped, a slim young fellow standing relaxed as he waited.
Vera said, Bo, the vodka in the refrigerator, please.
Jurgen watched him turn without a word and go off through the dining room. He believed the young man wore his full head of blond hair in bangs and over his ears in the style of Buster Brown.
Bo's my houseman, Vera said, Bohdan Kravchenko. He was my husband's steward aboard ship when my husband, Fadey, was running the blockade during the siege of Odessa, June to October 1941. Perhaps you know already Fadey's ship was sunk and he went down with it. Bo was in my employ when Odessa fell to the Romanians you pushed ahead of your troops. An Einsatzgruppen, one of your death squads, found him and put him in a labor camp with Jews, Communists, Romas, and made him wear a pink triangle that identified Bo as a homosexual. The Jews' color was yellow.
Jurgen said, He escaped?
Finally, Vera said. But first Bohdan gave all his food each day for ten consecutive days to an inmate, a man who somehow was in possession of a butter knife and didn't know what to do with it. Bo honed the small knife on a stone until he had the edge he wanted. He cut the throat of a guard who made him kneel down and open his mouth and the SS thug would try to piss in it from two meters away. Bo crept into the guards' barracks, found the pisser sleeping and sliced open his throat, and two more while he was at it, without making a sound. He would have been shot whether they found he killed the brutes or not, they were shooting everybody. We left Odessa I brought Bo with me to Budapest dressed as a woman and finally to America as part of the agreement I made with the German espionage service.
Vera stubbed out her cigarette and lighted another.
Listen to this. One night at the Brass Rail, downtown, he tells the sissies he's getting drunk with he works for a German spy. The Federal Bureau hears of it. They ask Bohdan would he like to work for them, become an agent of the United States and spy on me. Or, be locked up as an enemy alien and sent back to the Ukraine after the war. Bo hopes someday to become a citizen of the USA and he said yes, of course, and asked how much they would pay him. They asked him how much he valued his freedom. That was his pay. He tells me about it, he's going to spy on me. I asked him, 'What are they giving you, a medal?' No, nothing. I said, 'Why don't you become a double agent and spy on them for me?' I said, 'Don't we have a good time together? Don't I let you wear my jewelry?' It's all costume. We make up things he gives them that sound to be true, so they'll keep him in their employ. But they already knew things about me. That I was recruited by Miss Gestapo herself, Sally D'Handt, a famous agent for the Germans. That I went to spy school in Budapest and was accepted into Division One of Abwehr, the Intelligence Section. How could the Federal Bureau know all this about me? I was impressed.
Bohdan came to them with a frosted bottle of Smirnoff and aperitif glasses with stems he carried upright between his fingers. Bo, I'm telling Jurgen what you do for the Federal Bureau. Bo places the glasses on the cocktail table.
We love making up stories to tell them. How I overhear Vera talking on the phone about saboteurs planning to blow up the tunnel to Canada.
And the Ambassador Bridge, Vera said.
Bo filled the three glasses and sat across the cocktail table from Vera and Jurgen, close enough to pick up a vodka, drink it off and pour himself another.
Vera said, Tell Jurgen what you'd do if you were Walter.
If I had to go through life looking like Himmler? I'd cut my own throat. With a butter knife I have, a keepsake. He winked at Jurgen.
Be nice, Vera said. Captain Schrenk is to be held in respect. She said to Jurgen, If Bo turns the music on and asks you to dance, tell him thank you but you'd rather not. Bo sometimes is impulsive.
With the kind of impulses she likes, Bo said.
Jurgen watched Vera drink a shot of vodka, refill the glass and turn to him. What are you waiting for?
He raised his glass, took the swallow of vodka and let her fill the glass again.
You know you bombed Odessa to rubble.
I've never been to Odessa, Jurgen said.
You know what I mean. Our home escaped the Stukas be- cause we lived three kilometers east of the harbor. You marched in pushing the fucking Romanian Fourth Army ahead of you to do the dirty work, and what did you find? Nothing. The fucking Russians had gone, taking everything they could carry. It's what they do, they're looters. They used to check out of hotels with towels in their bags, pictures if they can pry them off the walls. The Romanians are another story. They come to Odessa and begin murdering Jews. They shot them, they hanged them from light poles on the main streets. They put them in empty storage buildings, as many as twenty thousand, locked the doors and machine-gunned them through holes they made in the walls. Then they set the buildings afire and tossed in hand grenades. Do you believe it? In case any of the Jews were still alive.
Bo said, Tell about the Death Squads.
The SS, Vera said. The war came to Odessa and my life changed, from one of relative leisure to the appearance of leisure. She gestured. This home. My husband was in the shipping business, coastal freighters that traded among ports on the Black Sea. Fadey got along with the Soviets, gritting his teeth, offering bribes when his bullshit wasn't enough. He had only complimentary things to say about Josef Stalin, that pockmarked midget. Do you know how tall he is? The Russians say five foot six. Oh, really? He wears lifts in his shoes or he'd be no taller than a five-foot pile of horseshit. It's the reason he's killed ten million of his own people. His mother sent h
im to a seminary to become a priest, but God rejected him.
She kept talking, Jurgen listening.
I told you the siege began in June 1941? My husband Fadey became a blockade runner like Rhett Butler. Slip out of Odessa and cross to Turkey, neutral at that time, and return with guns and food supplies. Turkish wine also, I couldn't drink. Fadey was with elements of the Soviet fleet. Stukas dove on them and sank two destroyers, Bezuprechnyy and Besposhachadnyy, also a tugboat and Fadey's ship. He put out to sea and I never saw him again, my husband, taken from my life.
Jurgen waited a few moments.
The Germans killed your husband?
Or was it a Soviet gunboat sunk his ship?
I was told your husband was a Polish cavalry officer, killed in action.
That's the story they gave me. I arrive in Detroit the widow of a Polish count no less, who met his end heroically, fighting tanks with horses. I come with social position, one that's more acceptable than the widow of a Black Sea gunrunner. I asked at the spy school if the count knew what he was doing. They wouldn't say. I asked if there was such a person. They still wouldn't tell me. On my passport I'm Vera Mezwa Radzykewycz, Countess. Do I look royal?
Indeed, Jurgen said. But the widow of a gunrunner isn't a bad story. It could have attracted support.
I told you I was contacted in Budapest by Sally D'Handt, a turncoat Belgian who became a spy for the Germans. Now she recruits for military intelligence, gathers lost souls into the Abwehr. You've heard of Sally? She's famous. Jurgen shook his head as Vera said, Blond hair like Veronica Lake's, very theatrical. She told me with great solemnity it was a Soviet gunboat that sank my husband's ship. She said they were ordered to because the repulsive Josef Stalin didn't trust anyone.
Did you believe that?
The Soviets were always at us. Sally asked if I had ever been to America. Yes, when I was a girl. Would I like to go back now, during the war? I said I would love to. Now the turncoat Belgian cunt actually made tears come to her eyes, she's so moved. Close to crying as she tries to smile to show her joy that I agree to come here. It's the look Joan Fontaine gives Cary Grant in Suspicion when she realizes he loves her. Or, the look that says the moment the camera stops rolling she and Cary will be in her dressing room fucking each other's brains out. It's that kind of look on Miss Gestapo's face as she murmurs, 'Vera, you are exactly the woman we need to gather intelligence from the very arsenal of our enemy, the city of Detroit.' Or did she say, 'the so-called Arsenal of Democracy'? Now I'm not sure.
Vera shrugged in her loose sweater. Now she decided to have another cigarette.
From Budapest I came to Detroit by way of Canada. I took the place of an agent who turned in her own spy ring once the FBI began picking on her, Grace Buchanan-Dineen. She called herself 'Grahs' and was the only agent I know of, besides Ernest Frederick Lehmitz, who used invisible ink in messages to her contacts. Lehmitz reported on ships leaving New York for Europe until he was caught and sent to prison.
Jurgen said, Was this Grahs's house?
Vera smiled. That would be funny, wouldn't it? The German spy house. No, Grahs lived downtown, on the river. I was given the house on a lease that runs until June of this year You have only two months?
Wait. I was given a five-thousand-dollar bank account and a thousand a month to cover expenses.
That sounds rather generous.
Last year it was reduced to five hundred a month. This year the checks have stopped coming, the last one was in February.
Jurgen took a cigarette from the dish. Vera reached toward him snapping her lighter.
You're out of funds?
Don't worry about it.
What will you do?
She looked at Bohdan. We talk about it.
Constantly, Bo said, pouring a vodka. I tell Vera to become a rich man's concubine and I'll be the eunuch.
You're not German, Jurgen said to her. Why are you working for German Intelligence?
She hates Russians, Bo said.
I dislike them. The only part of this war I don't mind, Vera said to Jurgen, you and the fucking Russians killing each other. I'll tell you something. In 1940, '41, all the young grenadiers in newsreels looked sexy to me. You were attractive, proud of yourselves, you had ideals you believed in. You sang, you marched, you sang while you marched. I remember thinking this was very bad light opera. But the upbeat mood of it was catching. I liked the purity of it, a new Germany full of healthy young men and women with Nordic features and platinum hair. In that crowd I knew I'd stand out like a film star. But, did I want to trade one police state, Stalin's, for another? Have to be so careful of what I say? How can I look at the super-Nazis goose-stepping down the street and not think them ludicrous? I thought, Well, the Germans are a strong, self-willed people, they won't stand for Adolf and his gang too long, having the Gestapo in their lives. After the war it will change back to the way it was.
What about the killing of Jews, Jurgen said, do the people accept it?
They turn their heads.
But they know about the death camps.
They can only wait until Germany is beaten and Adolf is tried before a world court. Everyone knows the end is coming. I hear: we can't win. We should settle for peace now and try it again in ten years. I hear: America will demand unconditional surrender. Germany will have to give up the land it stole, the countries. Give up everything, or the Russians will be turned loose on them.
Jurgen was shaking his head. We won't have a choice.
I try to rationalize, Vera said, how can I work for this war-loving, Jew-baiting Fnhrer? I see a story about Henry Ford and learn he's critical of Jews. He warns of the international Jewish conspiracy, which I take to mean communism, what else. We know he's opinionated. Henry Ford believes sugar on grapefruit causes arthritis. But in his factory he's a genius. Why is he so against Jews, as a race? I think he resents Jews because they tend to be smart. He knows that some of them, like Albert Einstein, are even smarter than he is. He won't admit it so he condemns all of them as a race.
I read about Ford, Jurgen said, before the war and was quite surprised.
My point is, there are a variety of prejudices against Jews. Henry Ford was a pacifist while America was neutral, Vera said. He refused to build aircraft engines for England. Two years later he's producing an entire four-engine bomber, a Liberator, every hour of the working day. It's what they're doing at Willow Run, putting together more than one hundred thousand different parts to make a bomber. To make a Ford sedan took only fifteen thousand parts. That's the kind of information I store in my poor brain. The Willow Run plant is more than a half mile long. It's put together with twenty-five thousand tons of structural steel. Ninety thousand people have jobs in that one plant. At Chrysler, on the other side of Detroit, they make tanks by the thousands. Packard and Studebaker make engines for planes, and Hudson makes antiaircraft guns to shoot down the other side's planes. Nash does engines and propellers and General Motors makes some of everything America needs to make war. They can produce three million steel helmets Vera snapped her fingers like that, at a cost of seven cents each.
Now we have to admit, Jurgen said, we didn't come close to judging them correctly, as an opponent.
Your Fnhrer was too busy strutting before the world to notice, Vera said. Do you know what I've been doing, what my contacts used to ask for? They wanted the names and locations of companies that produced light metals. They believed if we could destroy all the aluminum plants in America they wouldn't be able to produce bombers. They wanted me to stop the Allies from bombing Germany. They're going crazy over it, bombs dropping on them twice a day. Abwehr Two are the saboteurs. They were told in directives, 'For God's sake, cut the fucking source of power to the plants. Turn them dark, quick.'
Were any of them successful?
You would have read about it.
No major feats, like stealing the Norden bombsight?
That was 1938, the year Fadey and I got together. I tell them about a
fast new welding process at Fisher Body. At the Chrysler arsenal they've reduced the finishing time on antiaircraft guns from four hundred hours to fifteen minutes. I ask if they want details and get no reply. They're down in their bomb shelter.
How do you send it?
I want to tell them to subscribe to Time magazine. Himmler was on the cover again in February, his third appearance since April twenty-fourth, 1939. Walter will frame it, hang it on the wall. Himmler will hate the piece but order a hundred copies . . . I give the information I send say it's about the location of a new Alcoa plant I give it to a man who comes by when I call a number. He goes off somewhere and transmits the message in code to a German shipping company in Valparafso, Chile, and from there it's sent to Hamburg.
How do you remember April twenty-fourth, 1939?
Vera has a fantastic memory, Bohdan said, but has to see the words or figures written.
If you tell me something I should remember, Vera said, I write it down so I have something to look at when I wish to call it to mind.
No one spoke for several moments. In the silence Jurgen could hear, very faintly, Glenn Miller's String of Pearls on the radio in the kitchen. He said, There's a federal agent, a marshal by the name of Carl Webster, who's after me.
Yes, I read that in Neal Rubin's column, Vera said. You're the one he's after?
Jurgen said, I thought Walter would have told you about him. Walter lives in his own world.
If Carl knows about Walter, he knows about you.
You're on a first-name basis with this policeman?
We know each other.
And you think he'll come here looking for you. Would you care to give yourself up, the war nearing its end?
No, I wouldn't.
I don't blame you. But if your friend wants to search my house, what do we do with you?
I'll leave, Jurgen said.
Vera took her time. She said, Let me think about it.
It was quiet again, a silence beginning to lengthen, as Bohdan said, Well, now we're coming on to teatime.