The Swiss Appointment Read online

  “Oh well,” she said, wondering how to reply. “Rather you than me.”

  Was that too distinctively English a phrase, she wondered? She must not give herself away. She had to be more careful.

  “Thank you so much for your help,” she said, rising in her seat. “I think I’d better turn in.”

  “Miss Schneider!”

  She turned and saw M. Gruber, pushing his way towards her through the people who had gathered in the bar during her conversation.

  “Excuse me,” she said, extricating herself from Best. “Herr Gruber, how good to see you. Is there anywhere more private we can talk?”

  *

  Gruber was sweating when they reached the street and hailed a taxi.

  “Miss Schneider,” he said again as he settled onto the back seat and gave the driver instructions about where to go. “Miss Schneider, I must apologise in the most profuse terms. My colleague, Herr Krieg, is an upright man, but he gave you a mistaken impression of my country and our attitudes to the future. I was most disturbed at the impression he must have given you. We do not think of ourselves in these terms, except perhaps for a small band of people, most of them running the government. If the Nazis come, we will fight for our country, and it is only by showing them that we are prepared to die that we can prevent them coming at all. General Guerin speaks for us and we are right behind him.”

  “So why are you supplying the Germans with chronometers? I don’t get it,” she said, whispering. She hardly wanted to risk the driver overhearing. “Supplying the Nazis, that is? Why? Can you explain?”

  “I know, I know – and we are aware of this anomaly. This injustice. Especially since our government has signed an accord with the Nazis that they will continue to supply them to one side and not the other. And for some reason, the British have not protested. It is most strange, Miss Schneider. I want to hear precisely what Dr Wittgenstein’s concerns are and then, together, we will find a way to address them. I am here to help.”

  Xanthe felt this might be the best time – if not to play it exactly – then at least to make people aware that she had a trump card.

  “Thank you so much, Mr Gruber. I have to tell you that my understanding is that the damage to the British side from this particular component – if you and I fail to persuade Krieg and his supporters to stop its supply – would be considerable, and precipitate action may follow against the company.”

  Gruber went pale.

  “What do you mean? You mean some kind of violence? That would be most unwise – the Swiss are deeply stubborn people. We really don’t want to provoke them.”

  “Of course, nobody wants it to come to that. We just have to make something happen. That’s all.”

  *

  Only forty-eight hours after her train journey through Spain and France, Xanthe was once again on the move. Extraordinary, she said to herself, and exhausting too. She steeled herself and reminded herself that she was feeling determined. She glanced at Gruber sitting next to her on the train to Berne, still sweating, still apparently prepared to go the extra mile to defend Swiss national integrity.

  “What we need to do is to give them an excuse to comply,” he said. “And I know just what to do.”

  “Oh yes?” said Xanthe. “What’s that?” They had already discussed, then dismissed, the need to prevent the Nazis from sourcing the specific chronometers the Lorenz company needed from anywhere else in Nazi Germany – (they agreed that, if the chronometers were available inside Germany, the Nazis would have gone there first). She had said nothing about why this mission was so important. But she had picked up a defensiveness in his remark, as if the most important item on Gruber’s to-do list was to reassure her – as if he feared she would personally plant the explosives if he failed.

  Clearly, Gruber had an inkling that she was not just here as an emissary from the Wittgenstein family.

  “We will talk to the senior managers today,” he said. “And you will find them very receptive. But they will need an excuse to help and so I suggest that we also talk to the key people on the shop floor.”

  “You mean ferment a strike?”

  This was so obviously not what he meant because Gruber went bright red.

  “A strike? Certainly not, certainly not. I simply want to explain what we need, and I think you will find the workforce is most sympathetic. You see, Miss Schneider…”

  “Oh, please call me Xanthe.”

  “Thank you,” he bowed a little in his seat. “You see, Xanthe, we are not a disunited nation, though it might sometimes seem otherwise. I am a lieutenant in our militia. When we last mobilised, when the Germans reached the French border and we believed they would try to sweep into Switzerland via Berne, I had to get into my uniform and take up my position on the front line. I am prepared to fight. I am not just a businessman. You know, we have the slogan: ‘For one Swiss, two Germans’. I remember, as I took my rifle out of the house, my young daughter clung to my hand – she is nine. I was filled with dread; I didn’t believe I would see her again. All I could say was, ‘God bless you!’”

  Herr Gruber was so obviously moved that Xanthe found tears were springing, unbidden, to her eyes. She knew all too well about leaving young children to go to war. With a huge effort, she deliberately pushed Indigo out of her mind.

  “Thank you, Herr Gruber. I do understand.”

  “We might not win,” he went on. “But it would be costly for them, and once we were pushed back, we could carry on the fight from the Alps. They would not forget Switzerland.”

  The train drew into Berne station, a concrete modernist platform. They found a taxi. The city seemed bright compared to London but also somehow constrained, Xanthe felt.

  “I tell you this because we all have responsibilities, even civilians. I myself have a list of people that I must arrest – Nazis and so forth – if there is an invasion.”

  Soon the taxi was drawing up alongside a very ordinary-looking warehouse near the river. The brass plaque on the door read “Scherzinger Verlag”.

  “And now, Miss um… Xanthe. If you would stay here for a few moments, I will prepare the way. I will be like your John the Baptist, n’est-ce pas. I shall make your way straight.”

  Then, for the first time since they had met, M. Gruber gave her an unmistakable grin.

  *

  Xanthe sat alone in the taxi, watching the snow begin to settle on the windscreen. The driver had disappeared to a nearby bar. She felt she had spent a lifetime there.

  “How did it go?” she asked as the door opened and M. Gruber sat back inside. But it was not Gruber. It was a tall man, dressed in a heavy Mackintosh, with wire-framed glasses and a very severe haircut.

  “Fraulein Schneider,” he said. It seemed to require no answer. This was no question.

  Xanthe said nothing but reached for the car door on the other side.

  “I advise you not to get out. My colleague is on the other side of the car, and you will not get far. In any case, my purpose is only to give you a friendly warning.”

  This is hardly the first time you have been cornered by a Nazi policeman, Xanthe told herself, struggling to stay calm. In any case, either Gruber or the driver would return at any moment. Unless, of course, they were in on the same project.

  “It is simply to say that we know who you are. You are Xanthe Schneider, formerly of the Chicago Tribune and wanted in Berlin in connection with the death of one of our bravest officers and on other charges, including espionage.”

  Stay calm. Stay calm, Xanthe told herself.

  “I am fully aware that you are a citizen of a neutral power. I cannot have you arrested – though if circumstances change, I certainly will do. This is also neutral territory. But it is not far to drive this car over the border with Germany, where we could consult the charges against you at our leisure.”

  “My colleague will be…”

  “Do you understand what I am saying, Fraulein?”

  Xanthe opened her mouth, but nothing c
ame out.

  “Very well. I shall take that as an agreement. The reason I wished to speak to you now is simple. We know what you are doing here.”

  Xanthe’s mind was racing. Could they know? Is it just intelligent guesswork – or were the British authorities so obsessed with their own cryptography that they had not noticed the other side was also cracking their codes the other way?

  “I am here as an accredited correspondent for the New Yorker. I’m writing about Switzerland at war.” There was her voice. She knew it had been there somewhere.

  “I am prepared to believe you, Miss Schneider. On condition that you finish your article quickly and that you immediately abandon your other plans – to disrupt legal trade between a neutral country and the Reich.”

  “I don’t know what…”

  Of course, she realised. Paul Wittgenstein’s cables had not even been enciphered. There had been no great feat of cryptology – the Nazis had just put two and two together.

  “Because, if you continue along the course you are threatening to take, then you will be considered an enemy agent – you will be committing an act of war in a neutral nation – and there will be no need to take you over the border. We will simply ask the Swiss authorities to act accordingly. Now, nod if you understand me.”

  Xanthe nodded. “But…” she protested.

  The door opened and the man was gone. A flurry of snow swirled into the taxi and the door banged behind him.

  “Was that your friend? Has he gone again?” it was the driver.

  “No, no,” she said vaguely, trying to remember the German for “thank you for being patient”. Or even the French. She was clearly going to have to trust Mr Gruber.

  V

  Berne, December 1941

  “Samuel Johnson wrote that when you are being hanged in the morning, it concentrates the mind wonderfully,” she wrote in her notebook. It was Dr Johnson, wasn’t it? She felt sure there had been some kind of crossword clue along those lines many years ago, but she could always check later.

  “No such deadline affects the Swiss, but they are now surrounded by Nazi allies so that their minds are similarly concentrated. And it is not a comfortable experience.”

  She looked down at her handiwork and was not terribly happy with it. It was all a bit wordy – how would Liebling do it? Still, it would do for the time being, as an intro for her New Yorker article.

  She sipped the glass of wine she had armed herself with. There were shortages of almost everything across Europe, she knew, but apparently there was no shortage of wine in Switzerland. In fact, they appeared to be determined to drink it all before the Nazis arrived.

  Yet it was also extremely hard to concentrate, now that the Nazis knew who she was – probably even knew what room of what hotel she was staying in. She had taken the precaution of asking them at the reception desk not to reveal her room number, and she had locked her door and heaved the cupboard against it, but she knew that was not going to be enough.

  Two questions kept coming into her mind. First, what did the Nazis actually know about her mission here? Second, in order to answer that, how did they know? Assuming there was no leakage from London, they could have intercepted Paul Wittgenstein’s unwise letter to Gruber, in which case they would know only the most general things. Or similarly, they could have intercepted the cables between Wittgenstein and Krieg, or heard the basic information through a contact in either of their offices. What details had they included? She simply did not know.

  She knew that Geneva and Berne were both stuffed with agents and spies, pretend journalists and remittance men. She had deliberately made no mention of precisely which piece of equipment was important to her since she arrived – or before, come to that. The chances were, she believed, that they knew which company she was targeting – yet she also knew that they made a range of different chronometers for a range of different electronic products. Unless she talked in her sleep – which was not completely impossible – they would not deduce any connection with Lorenz.

  And with a bit of luck, she would also be on the next train to Lisbon first thing on Monday morning.

  So why was she worrying?

  The answer was that the meeting between Gruber and the officials from Scherzinger seemed to have been ridiculously anodyne. They had apparently barely mentioned anything, either about chronometers or about war exports.

  “The correct thing to do in these circumstances,” the general manager had said, “would be to summon the board. Herr Wittgenstein owns forty-nine per cent of the shares. If he has any support among the other shareholders, then – if we can – we will comply with his wishes. Otherwise, we cannot comply. In the end, the situation is simple.”

  The manager had trailed off. It had all been a little underwhelming, to have such decisions reduced to dull voting arithmetic. Yet Gruber had asked her to be patient, and she had been.

  There was a knock at the door of her hotel room. Xanthe froze.

  “Come in,” she hissed. One of the maids put her head around the crack in the doorway which was all the cupboard allowed.

  “Mademoiselle, there is a visitor for you downstairs. He says it is important. I have refused to tell him your room number, as you instructed.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “My apologies, Mademoiselle. I have not that information.”

  For goodness sake, she said to herself. She grabbed her notebook and her coat,heaved the cupboard away from the door and opened it a crack. Nobody was in the corridor. Why had she not brought a pistol?

  She knew somewhere there were some backstairs, and – yes – there they were, through this service door. Checking first up and down, she went through. On the ground floor, there was a back door out into the courtyard and then onto the street. It was still snowing, a little fitfully now, and she struggled to put her coat on.

  There was nobody in the alleyway out the back as she stepped through the gate into the slush and walked quickly to the front of the hotel. A large black car sat by the entrance on the opposite side of the street, but – if they were looking for her – they were looking for a young woman coming out, not going in.

  As she walked up the steps, she heard her name whispered behind her.

  “Miss Schneider?”

  She swung round without thinking. It was Gruber, and there was a large man with him. Both backed into the shadows.

  Xanthe was cross. She was tired and nervous.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed as she reached them. “I think I’ve gone as far as I can today. I’ve had a visit from a Nazi official, and I must leave on Monday…”

  “I know, I know,” said Gruber. “My profuse apologies to you. I have someone you must meet.”

  Xanthe looked around. The big man was gone.

  “Where is he?”

  “Mr Lalonde is meeting us in a quiet café round the corner.”

  “Well, I was afraid you blew my cover by calling me just now. Tell me where to go and I will be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Good. It is the Café Guillaume Tell and it is on the street parallel to this one, only five minutes from here. Go to the bar, say you are a friend of Max, and they will show you where to go.”

  She waved to him briefly and watched him trudge off through the falling snow. Then she went back inside. At the reception desk she said loudly that she was turning in for the night, and that she should not be disturbed. She hoped somebody would overhear.

  She took her coat off and as soon as she was upstairs, put it straight back on again and slipped back down by the service stairs for a second time. Then she walked quietly out of the back door. This time, she turned left instead of right and found herself in the small, dark street at the back of the hotel where she was staying.

  A couple came towards her carrying a small Christmas tree.

  “Bonjour, monsieur et dame, pardonez-moi. Je cherche le Café Guillaume Tell.”

  It was not far away. There seemed to be nobody following h
er as she walked through the door into the café and asked for Max.

  “Ou est M. Gruber?” she asked as soon as she was alone with M. Lalonde.

  “He is waiting for you outside.”

  Xanthe was irritated by these slightly heavy-handed precautions.

  “I took care to make sure I was not followed. I hope he is not too cold – or putting himself in any kind of danger on my account. My name is Xanthe. We haven’t been introduced, I’m afraid.”

  How English I have become, she said to herself.

  “Enchanté, Mademoiselle. My name is Eugene Lalonde. I am, I think you say in English, the shop steward and the foreman at the factory you visited today. Let me fetch M. Gruber and we can get down to business.”

  No, not more wandering around! Xanthe was losing patience, aware of how little time she probably had before she was likely to encounter the Nazi in the raincoat again.

  “I’m afraid we have had too much coming and going already. Let’s quickly talk things through and then we can go and find him together.”

  “That is acceptable to me, Miss Xanthe. I know something of what you want, and I have drawn up this list. You must understand that it is difficult for the managers to stop supplying the Nazis by themselves. They need an excuse, and this is where I come in – I can provide such an excuse. There is a strong feeling among the men who work with me that it is wrong to supply the Nazis with weapons that could soon be used against us.”

  Xanthe understood.

  “Perhaps you don’t know what your components are used for?”

  “I have guessed that you would not have made this dangerous journey for general reasons, or because of principles, but because there are particular companies that you have concerns about, and maybe particular products. This is a list of the companies we supply in Germany.”

  He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket, smoothed out the creases and set it on the table in front of Xanthe.