The Swiss Appointment Read online

  “Now, look down this list, Mademoiselle Xanthe. Do you see the particular client that concerns you here?”

  She only needed to glance at the list, and there it was. C. Lorenz AG, Berlin.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Now, I will tell you what we will do. We will instruct our shop floor not to work on German contracts which could be used for military purposes. But if you will be so good as to indicate the contracts that most concern you – and you do not need to explain why – then I will make sure that if we do continue with that particular contract, that we will do so only slowly and haltingly.”

  Xanthe looked at Lalonde. He was not good-looking and he had a scar down one side of his face. She felt a wave of gratitude towards him.

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You cannot, but I am a sergeant in the militia, and I love my country. Here are my military identity papers.”

  Xanthe looked at them. They could have meant anything. She really had no choice, and she knew it only too well. She should not reveal this particular detail under any circumstances, but she could barely achieve her objective without doing so. She could hardly interfere with the production process in person, even if the managers feared she had explosives in her baggage.

  “Ok then, show me your list again.”

  Once more, Lalonde spread out the list. His hands were long and delicate, those of a craftsman capable of dealing with the intricate workings of watches.

  “You must understand, Miss Xanthe, that we are highly skilled. We are a highly educated workforce, we know what we are doing. And we know why we are doing it.”

  Then she pointed at the name Lorenz.

  “And may I ask, how important is it?” he asked.

  “It is extremely important. For reasons I can’t say, the outcome of the war may depend on it.”

  “Very well, then,” said Lalonde. “It will be good to take this responsibility. To make our contribution.”

  “One thing though,” she said, suddenly nervous. “It is important that we do not give away to the Nazis that we know about this component. So could you go slow on two or three others too?”

  “Very well. I understand. And now, let us go and find our friend.”

  *

  They walked out into the crisp frozen air and down the back street towards the main road. She shook with the anticipation of success.

  “Monsieur Lalonde, I hope you don’t mind but it may be best if I am not seen in your company, so I will go on ahead.”

  He bowed his head.

  “Farewell then, Miss Xanthe. You are a brave lady, and I salute you.”

  There was no sign of Gruber by the time she reached the Kochergasse main road and she doubled back, indicating to Lalonde what she was doing. Where was he? Was Gruber the type to just disappear?

  She could see out of the corner of her eye that Lalonde was getting agitated too.

  What was that? She U-turned and looked down the alleyway from which she had emerged less than half an hour earlier, leading to the back door of the Hotel Bellevue Palace. There seemed to be a bundle of black clothes lying in the snow. She raced over. It was Gruber.

  “Is he dead? Oh, don’t let him be dead?” she wailed to herself out loud. “He’s got a nine-year-old daughter too…”

  Then there was a blow to her head, and she blacked out.

  *

  She came round quickly and for a moment, could not work out either where she was or what was happening. She was on the ground in the snow and aware of a painful cold. Her head throbbed. But all around her were the sounds of some kind of struggle, with the occasional hissed swearwords in French and German. Someone fell on top of her, digging their elbow into her back. She tried to crawl out of the way.

  Then there was a shot and the sound of running feet. Then someone was lifting her gently to her feet. To her great surprise, it was Krieg.

  “Herr Krieg, what’s happened…?”

  “Pray, do not distress yourself, Fraulein Schneider. You are a guest in my country, and I will not let—”

  “—These gentlemen have bravely stepped in to prevent your kidnap, I fear,” said Lalonde. “And now, we must look after M. Gruber.”

  It took a few moments, and the phrase “these gentlemen”, for Xanthe to realise that there were now three men at her side, panting and exhausted. Lalonde and Krieg, but there was a third, Spanish-looking man in a sharp suit and sporting a large Zapata moustache.

  He bowed to her.

  “Señor Santa Cruz, at your service.”

  She tried to stand but buckled for a moment and was held by Lalonde. A searing pain seemed to pierce her eyes.

  “Sir, I apologise that I seem unable to stand. I am so grateful for your help.”

  “Miss Schneider. Your courage is commendable, and I salute you. If ever you find yourself in difficulties again, you have only to shout for Santa Cruz.”

  “Thank you, sir. I hope to repay you someday.”

  He bowed and walked determinedly in the direction of the hotel. As he did so, the pile of clothes that was Gruber twitched and turned its face upwards. They could see his bloodied and bruised face. He had evidently taken quite a beating.

  Krieg shouted after Mr Santa Cruz. “Can you go ahead into the hotel and ask them to call a doctor? We will carry him in.”

  “Can you stand, Mademoiselle?”

  “I think so,” said Xanthe. “Yes, I can.”

  The two men reached down and lifted the inert shape of M. Gruber, while she held his head, and laboriously they moved towards the service entrance. By the time they reached it, Señor Santa Cruz had done his work, and staff came out to meet them. Someone had telephoned the manager.

  There he was in a pompous pin-striped suit, clearly of Swiss design.

  “In the side room, if you don’t mind,” he said, sidling up to Lalonde. “We don’t wish to alarm the guests.”

  It was too late. The guests, who were milling around, seeking excitement, gasped as they saw Gruber’s bruised face.

  “A street accident,” said the manager loudly. “No need for alarm. We have called for the doctor.”

  On a couch in the side room, M. Gruber looked as though he was coming round. He held his head and blew out of his lips in pain. Xanthe knelt at his side.

  “Oh, M. Gruber, thank goodness you’re alive!”

  Some of his teeth were clearly missing.

  “Who was the Spanish man?” asked Xanthe.

  “I don’t know,” said Lalonde. “He came to our assistance, just as we came to yours. We may owe him our lives. Those thugs were armed.”

  The assistant manager brought a flannel and a bowl of warm water, and Xanthe began to delicately wash the blood from Gruber’s face.

  “I’ll do it really gently,” she said. “Ooh, sorry!”

  It was hard to tell what he was trying to say, but judging by some gesticulation, it was clear that Gruber wanted to say something to her. He looked increasingly frantic, with the blood congealing on the wounds on his head. She knelt down next to him to hear him. He was obviously still in great pain.

  She put her ear closer to his lips. It was difficult to make out anything except that – judging by the effort – he wanted to tell her something important.

  “Xanthe,” he said. “Listen to me. You must leave. Now.”

  Then he fainted.

  *

  Berne appeared to have closed for Sunday, and – given what M. Gruber had said – it made sense to stick to crowded areas. So Xanthe was sitting in the wooden pews at the back of Berne Minster, the great arched gothic cathedral at the heart of the Protestant world, as well as at the heart of the city. She had heard that Pastor Karl Barth was due to preach, and she knew that, as well as getting out of Switzerland the next morning, there was one more task to do, one more duty to perform, and that was for her editor. She needed to research the article she had promised him and which provided her with her cover story.

  She had arrived earl
y, taken her place at the back and was able to watch the burghers of Berne file in and along the pews, judging them to be better off – at that moment at least – than anyone else in Europe. They looked almost well fed, though she knew how tight the rations were, and – judging by the number which was arriving for church that morning – they were also nervous about the future. As indeed they should be, given their predicament.

  She had been led to believe that the Swiss were on the smug side, but that was another misconception. This was actually the last free outpost of continental Europe, and that freedom was in some doubt.

  “Who is the conscience of Switzerland?” she had asked Gruber when she had first met him.

  “There is no doubt,” he said. “It is Dr Barth.”

  Then he had told her the story, how Barth had been sacked from his job in Berlin because he would not swear allegiance to Hitler. How his sermons provided the nation with a theological backbone against Nazism, and how his friends in the Confessing Church were standing up to the Nazis in Germany.

  “And he wrote The Epistle to the Romans. If you have time to go to Basel, you must hear him preach.”

  Xanthe felt sure that had actually been St Paul, but she said nothing. And so when Dr Barth had travelled to Berne that very Sunday, she felt – not just that the minster may well be the safest place to be – but that she must go.

  The words washed over her. It was dour and unimaginative as a service. It kept her mind wandering backwards and forwards over the momentous events of the past few days. She had gone over and over her decision to point to the word Lorenz, and she still kept on coming to the conclusion that she had been right to do so.

  Because this had been an unplanned extension of her original mission, she had been given no advice or briefing on the obvious question – what, if they were prepared to do something, could the Wittgenstein family actually do? And how could they act without some basic information about exactly what it was that needed doing? Yes, Paul Wittgenstein’s letter to his banker had been useful, but it had been unexpected. Why had Fleming not thought ahead? It must be the usual English middle-class ignorance about business, which was a kind of hidden snobbery – she said to herself – never acknowledged, which allowed them to claim they didn’t know where anything had come from. The result was that she was left without effective instructions. She did not know enough about the world of business to know what to ask.

  Dr Barth, in his black robes, walked slowly up the stairs to the wooden pulpit, his untidy grey hair blowing slightly as he did so. There was a rustle of expectation from the pews.

  “Meine Damen und Herren,” he said. Xanthe’s German had been getting a little rusty, stashed away, unused, in the corner of her brain for nearly a year and a half. This was going to be a struggle.

  “We are called, you and I, to be the body of Christ in the world,” he said. “And my text today is the Gospel According to St Matthew, chapter sixteen, verse eighteen: ‘On this rock, I shall build my church’. We do not preach enough, perhaps, in our protestant nation, about the church and what it is, except that we are called to be Christ’s body. But let me tell you what bodies do – and note that St Paul did not say we were called to be the mind of the church. No, my friends, bodies do not primarily think, they do not contemplate, and certainly not when the forces of evil are on the march. What bodies do is they act. They do. People bear witness with their own bodies. This is the essence of my message today…”

  Xanthe looked around her. The congregation was completely focused on him. One man, who risked everything by standing up to the Nazis and survived – and was presumably now top of their list for arrest if they were to arrive over the mountains. He gave the congregation hope, it appeared, helped them feel they were not riding out the war, but resisting.

  “When I left Germany, as many of you know, this was the sermon I preached,” said Dr Barth. “We cannot hope that Hitlerism, which is such a threat to us, will go away all by itself. We cannot pretend we are somehow neutral in the struggle between good and evil. We cannot expect somebody else to do all the work. That is what we mean by a Confessing Church.”

  This is good, inspiring stuff, thought Xanthe. She edged out of her pew and along the pillars at the side of the nave, and at the end of the sermon, she made a dash for where Barth was sitting and shook his hand. The sober and sombre members of the congregation clearly felt this kind of behaviour bordered on the crass, but she took no notice.

  “Dr Barth,” she breathed. “I’m writing about Switzerland and the war for the New Yorker magazine, and I was wondering if I could ask you… that is to say, ask your advice? I’m afraid it’ll have to be this afternoon because I’m leaving Berne tomorrow.”

  For a moment, she feared she had shocked him too. But he grinned back conspiratorially. The congregation was preparing to pray.

  “And what is your name, my dear?” he whispered.

  “My name is Xanthe Schneider.”

  “Well, Fraulein Schneider, I should be delighted to help. I am staying tonight at the presbytery. Perhaps you could come round before dinner, and we can talk. I don’t believe now is the best moment.”

  She thanked him and took down the address. Then she suddenly felt nervous again. She shouldn’t have made herself so visible, even in this crowd. She glanced at the bowed heads of the congregation. There were a number of them staring at her, and it was impossible to read their expressions – curiosity, disapproval, active malevolence? She couldn’t tell. There were one or two tough-looking types in raincoats, but really they could perfectly well be loyal Swiss burghers or Nazis as far as she knew. She would have to survive a few hours unscathed, keeping away from the hotel and staying in crowded, restrained places, like the minster, and – if she did that – she might just make it.

  The main problem was that her belongings were still in her hotel room and goodness knows who was watching her there. She just needed to get in unseen, barricade the door for the night, then get packed, check out and go.

  She had planned to visit M. Gruber in hospital, but perhaps she’d better not.

  *

  “Tell me, Miss Schneider, do you believe that Jesus wants us to do what we are told by the governments of the world?”

  They were borrowing the study belonging to whoever lived at the presbytery. Xanthe did not know who this was because Dr Barth himself had opened the front door.

  Wasn’t there something about rendering unto Caesar? Xanthe thought. She was feeling emotional and wanted to be honest.

  “I’m afraid, Dr Barth, that I’m not a good Christian. I haven’t gone to church for some years. Since the war began, I’ve doubted – I suppose – that God can possibly be active in the world.”

  “Ah well, I have some sympathy there. You know I lost my youngest son some months ago?”

  Xanthe’s heart went out to him. To lose a son…

  “Was he killed in action? I know there have been incidents, fighting, even here.”

  “No, it was a climbing accident but no less pointless, or so it seemed to me. I only tell you this because I need you to know that I’ve also been forced to search my heart as well, to see God’s purpose in the accident – just as we all puzzle to see God’s purpose in this terrible war. And the truth is that we see darkly through a glass, that is what they say – I’m not sure of the translation in English. We can’t know. We certainly don’t know.”

  Xanthe stared at the open fire, flickering in the grate and began to feel sleepy. For a moment, she must have dozed off.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Dr Barth, you’re not boring me at all. Only I feel so comfortable listening to you and sitting here, and I’m so far from home and… oh well…” She trailed off.

  “Where is your home, my dear?”

  “Well, I come from Cincinnati, Ohio. But my home, I suppose, is where my family is, and I have a child in a small town in England.”

  She could imagine him glancing at her wedding finger to see if she was married, but there was
no disapproval.

  “My dear Xanthe,” he began, but there were noises outside the door and they were becoming intrusive.

  “Let me just see outside what the commotion is,” he said.

  Moments later, he was back with a couple of young men in a state of high excitement.

  “Xanthe, you must come and listen to the wireless next door. It seems that the Japanese have attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbour.”

  VI

  Berne, December 1941

  It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the queues of exhausted and hopeful refugees were gathering, as usual, outside the American legation in Sulgeneckstrasse. Her train had been due to leave for Geneva at this time, but since the borders had been closed, there seemed little point in catching it.

  It had been little more than twelve hours since she had hurried into the parlour of the presbytery to find the clergyman who lived there and his family – Dr Barth’s hosts – gathered around the wireless set, listening to the BBC news in English on the European Service.

  “The long-awaited aggression threatened by Japan in the Far East has begun with an aerial attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbour in the Pacific,” said the newsreader. “Reports are still coming in, but the situation so far is that Tokyo says they have declared war on the United States, and a number of American battleships have been sunk or badly damaged…”

  Then came the bombshell. “Germany and Italy are expected to declare war on Britain and the United States within hours,” said the newsreader. “A communiqué issued by the German Foreign Ministry supported the Japanese action and said that the behaviour of the United States was threatening world peace.”

  As she settled down to listen quietly and compulsively, the gravity of the situation suddenly felt overwhelming, and she burst into tears. The clergyman and his sons were very kind, especially given that they had no idea who she was or what she had been doing in the house. They held her hand and helped her blow her nose and wiped her eyes with great kindness.

  Was she upset because her own land was threatened and her own navy had been so severely wounded? Or was it the relief that her adoptive country would probably now survive, given that the mighty USA, with its huge productive capacity, would be fighting alongside them after all? She was not sure, but the occasion felt momentous. Whichever it was, she found it hard to stop sobbing while Dr Barth held her hand.