13 Tuesday, August 18, 1970 1963-64 The call from the State Criminal Office came while he was in the shower. The desk clerk took the message and relayed it to him. Dr. Wilner was to see Kriminalkommissar Stracke again at his convenience, but the sooner the better. After breakfast he hailed a taxi outside the hotel and asked to be taken to the Hölderlinplatz without giving a specific address. The driver dropped him at the first corner of the square. He was again greeted by Fräulein Bothe, the same secretary as the day before, but on this morning she was wearing the shortest miniskirt Miki had yet seen. She didn’t quite have the body for it; her thighs and calves were slightly on the thick side. But, Miki asked himself rhetorically, who am I to criticize women’s bodies when I am married to Brigitte? And Fräulein Bothe looked good enough. “The Herr Kriminalkommissar will see you now, Herr Wilner,” she said, and opened the door of the inner office for him. He passed through it, and she closed it behind him. The inspector stood up behind his desk and, as Miki approached it, reached out his hand to him. “Good morning, Doctor Wilner,” he said as they shook hand. “How are you?” “You know better than I do,” Miki said with a little laugh. “Yes, in a way. Please sit down.” As they both sat, he went on, “I am very glad to tell you that the charges against you have been found, as we expected, completely groundless.” “Can you elaborate, Herr Kommissar?” “Of course. First of all, our handwriting expert has determined that the signature on the threatening letter is not yours, and one of our colleagues in Hamburg, after examining your typewriter with your kind permission, has also determined that it is not the one on which the letter was typed.” “I told you that.” “Yes, of course, but we have to do our work. Second, the Bulgarian Petrov has admitted under questioning that it was not you who hired him to kill Hemme, but a woman, who he said was young and pretty, and who told him that, in case he was caught, he should tell the police that he had been hired by Michael Wilner, and that would get him clear. He was surprised when that didn’t work. We believe that he was set up to be caught.” “Is there any information about who the woman might be?” “Not really. His description of her doesn’t match anyone that we have any knowledge about, but we know that the last place where he was imprisoned is Israel, so we believe that there is a connection there.” “The Mossad?” “Possibly.” Wheels began to whirr in Miki’s mind. “This is very interesting,” he said. “About a week and a half ago, a pretty young woman from Israel came to visit me, claiming to be my daughter from a… well, a fling that I had when I lived there as a very young man, a boy really. By an amazing coincidence, a few days later I met with a teacher that I had in those days, and she clarified that this young woman could not possibly be my daughter. In fact, if this business here in Stuttgart hadn’t come up, I would be in Israel right now, investigating the matter. Now it has become even more interesting.” “Do you have any leads?” the inspector asked, evidently intrigued. “Yes,” Miki said, deciding not to elaborate for the moment. “And would you like to go on with your investigation?” “Of course. As soon as possible.” “You realize, Doctor Wilner, that you may be in some sort of dangerous situation. There seems to be a plot designed to harm you.” “Yes, I know that. Since my book came out, I am not very well liked in certain high-ranking circles in Israel.” “We would like it if you did some snooping on your own,” the inspector said conspiratorially. “But we would have to find some way of protecting you. I will hand this matter over to my colleague, Kriminalkommissar Hagemann, our liaison with Interpol. I hope that by this afternoon we will have something worked out. If you don’t mind, then, please stay in Stuttgart. I assume you haven’t checked out of your hotel yet.” “No, of course not.” “Would you mind staying there until we contact you?” “It’s fine. But I have an errand to run.” “That’s no problem. If necessary, we will leave a message for you. And thank you, Dr. Wilner. I am looking forward to our cooperation.” “Thank you for your help, Herr Kommissar.” “Would you like to be driven back to the hotel?” “No, thanks. I know my way back, so I will walk, or take a streetcar, or a taxi. *      *     * While Miki Wilner saw Kennedy’s West Berlin speech on television, he was in Berlin on the night – it was midday in Texas – when Kennedy was shot dead, and he joined the throng of Berliners that gathered to mourn the man who had declared himself to be one of them, at the very place where he had done so. The summer tour of Kiss Me, Kate had been a striking critical success, but not a commercial one, since the ticket prices had to be kept low in order to attract an audience that was unfamiliar with American musicals on stage. In order to recoup the tour’s losses, the company, which was a partnership of the four principal actors, settled down in the autumn for a long run at a commercial theater on the Kurfürstendamm. With Brigitte now, in effect, living in Berlin, Miki spent as much time there as he could. He had arranged to write a series of articles about Berlin: about the wall, and about the state of mind of West Berliners, ordinary and prominent, whom he managed to interview. Among the prominent were Willy Brandt, who thanked him for his article of five months before; Otto Rosenberg, the Gypsy leader who had survived Auschwitz; and the film producer Artur Brauner, a Polish Jew who survived the war in the Soviet Union, and who was making a name for himself by producing Westerns based on the novels of Karl May, and mystery and horror films based on the works of various writers, mostly British. Miki was, by this time, not surprised that Brauner’s first words to him were, “So you’re Brigitte Wilner’s husband!” In the course of his conversation, in a mixture of German and Yiddish, Brauner went on to tell Miki that he always had parts for beautiful young actresses, that he had given Senta Berger and Sabine Sinjen their start, and he had also hired Romy Schneider, Karin Dor, Elke Sommer… And would Brigitte be interested? “I don’t know,” Miki said. “We keep our professional lives separate.” “All right,” said Brauner, “I will ask her directly.” “She will probably have you talk to Hetty Goldschmidt,” Miki said. “In that case,” Brauner joked, “I had better keep my hand on my wallet.” After the assassination Miki wrote, in quick succession, three articles about Kennedy’s legacy, dealing respectively with the New Frontier (including the Peace Corps), civil rights, and Vietnam. Shortly thereafter the Auschwitz trials got under way in Frankfurt, and he began to cover them sporadically, interspersed with his work in Berlin, and specifically when higher-ranking officers such as Lucas, Scherpe and Schlange were being tried. His first trip was by interzone train, but the journey was so slow, uncomfortable and tiring that he switched to flying. Before long, the round trips by Lufthansa between Tempelhof and Frankfurt were like a routine commute to him. *      *     * He ended up walking the entire two kilometers or so back to the Unger, but with interruptions. He had noticed in his previous rides between the hotel and the State Criminal Office that the Linden Museum, said to be one of Europe’s great ethnological museums, was approximately halfway. He had never been there, and since had a little time, he decided to make a short visit. He limited himself to two departments, North American Indians and the Islamic Orient, in keeping with his main journalistic interests. He was a fairly frequent visitor to the Hamburg Ethnology Museum – the director, Hans Fischer, was an acquaintance of his – so that not much of what he saw was unfamiliar to him, but the visit was a pleasant distraction. After about three quarters of an hour he felt hungry. He resumed his walk, stopped for a quick lunch at a snack bar, and went back to the hotel. As he approached the desk in order to pick up his key, he asked the clerk where he might find a photocopy machine. “Do you mean Xerox?” the clerk asked. “Yes, of course,” Miki said. “We have one in the office. I’d be glad to make you some copies.” “But it’s twenty pages, and I need two copies.” “No problem, Doctor Wilner. Just give me ten minutes, please. I suppose that what you have here is an article.” “Yes, as a matter of fact.” “Well, it’s an honor to be of help to a distinguished journalist like you, Doctor Wilner.” He went up to his room to get the essay and brought it down to give to the clerk for copying. With the copies made, he went back to his room and left them there while he put the original back in the briefcase. Briefcase in hand, he took a taxi to the Klett building, asked the driver to wait while he went upstairs and handed the typescript to Paeschke’s secretary – who turned out to be a plain-looking but pleasant woman close to fifty, with a round face and red hair – and went back to the hotel. There was no message for him. He went back to his room to wait, taking his copy of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten with him. He had already read the news pages and opinion articles over lunch, and there was not much of interest in sports on a Tuesday, so that he turned to the entertainment section. He saw that Fellini’s Satyricon, which had opened in March but had closed in Hamburg before he and Brigitte had a chance to see it, could still be seen in Stuttgart. He decided tentatively that if, depending on the afternoon’s developments, he felt like seeing a film in the evening, this would be the one. *      *     * Miki did not find out that Artur Brauner had asked Brigitte to test for a part in one of his films, or that she had agreed, until early in the spring, when her run as Lois Lane ended and she told him that she would not be getting the film part, so that it was time for them to return to Hamburg. It was to be a coproduction with a French company, Brauner had told her, and the French had insisted on one of their own for the part. But Brauner in turn had insisted that Brigitte give him another chance, and Brigitte had agreed. “Are you sure you want to work in the kind of film that Brauner makes?” Miki asked her, unable to suppress a disapproving tone. “No, I’m not sure,” Brigitte answered peevishly, “but do I ask you whether you want to cover such-and-such a subject? For example, that you did not want to cover the Eichmann trial but the Auschwitz trial was okay?” “But I explained it to you,” Miki said. “Don’t you remember?” “Yes, of course, I remember. But you volunteered the information; I didn’t question your judgment. I was glad that you went to Cannes with me, not to Jerusalem, but if you had made a different choice I wouldn’t have questioned it.” “Touché,” Miki said. “Hetty thinks that working for Brauner couldn’t possibly harm my career, and it might help it, not to mention that the money is good.” “Speaking of good money,” Miki said, “I got an invitation from Merkur to weave my articles about America and about Kennedy together into a long essay that I will probably call The Kennedy Age. Paeschke, the editor, complimented my writing style, and they pay well. Not by your standards, of course…” “Congratulations,” Brigitte cut him off. The growing disparity between her income and his was something that, as he well knew, she did not like to be brought up, and for him to do so now was a faux pas that he regretted. “I like your writing style too,” she went on, “ever since that first letter you sent me from Israel. I reread it occasionally when we’re apart.” She had mentioned, a number of years before, the fact that she had kept his letters from Israel, but now it was… how long? Thirteen years! Why think of money when such a wonderful, enduring love was theirs! Brigitte had not told him what part Artur Brauner had offered her, nor, in all likelihood, would she do so unless he asked, which of course he would not do. But he suspected that it might have been a Western, in which she would probably have been the beautiful white woman desired by desperadoes or threatened by savages or both. Starting in the preceding year, a continual series of German-made Westerns – filmed in Italy or Yugoslavia – had been appearing in cinemas, most of them based on the novels of Karl May, and a good many of them produced by Brauner. On the closing night of Kiss Me, Kate, Miki made a point of seeing the show again, and found his wife, alias Lois Lane, as fresh and exciting as ever. When she sang True to You, Darling, in My Fashion, though it was in German, the memory of the night at the Plaza Hotel filled his whole being. *      *     * It was mid-afternoon when his telephone rang. A seemingly young woman, who identified herself as the secretary of Kriminalkommissar Hagemann, asked him to come to the State Criminal Office as soon as possible. The woman who courteously ushered him into Hagemann’s office, evidently the one who had called him, was indeed young, not as pretty as Fräulein Bothe but attractive in a modest, old-fashioned way, as though the sixties had passed her by. She wore her light-brown hair in a ponytail, a freshly ironed white blouse and a skirt whose hem was about ten centimeters below the knee. “Good day, Doctor Wilner,” the inspector – a burly, sandy-haired man with a bushy mustache, looking almost English – said after shaking hands. “Let me get right to business, if it’s all right with you.” “It’s fine with me, Herr Kommissar.” “Here is our plan, then. The day after tomorrow it will be announced that you have been arrested. You will go to Israel, but disguised and under an assumed name. We will provide you with… let’s see… a wig, a beard, and dark glasses, which you will need anyway in Israel. We have found that when someone is well known, it doesn’t take much to achieve a disguise.” “I know. I am married to someone well known, who travels incognito all the time.” “Of course. We will also provide you with a passport, and a driver’s license in case you need to rent a car, but no other document. No credit card, so that you will have to get travelers’ checks once you have your new passport, but make sure you use them up. Or else get cash, preferably US dollars. What would you like your name to be?” “Etzel Andergast,” Miki blurted out without thinking. The inspector looked up at him, seeming nonplussed. Miki wondered if Hagemann, who was a fairly young man, was familiar with Wassermann’s novels. He doubted it. “All right, Herr Andergast. You will be a German tourist, and you speak no Hebrew, only German and English, or possibly French. Your birth date will be your actual one, but your birthplace will be Stuttgart, and your residence will be at a fictitious Stuttgart address. We should have everything ready for you to leave the day after tomorrow. When would you like to come back?” “Let me see… I have an engagement a week from today, on the twenty-fifth, so I would like to be back at home on the twenty-fourth, Monday, just as I was originally going to do.” Kriminalkommissar Hagemann looked at some papers on his desk. “So you were,” he said. “And via Zurich – that should work. You will need to make a stopover there for debriefing and for you to change identities again. As soon as we hear from the Swiss, we will announce that you had been cleared and released the day before, and had traveled to Zurich on personal business. Now, as regards time, this leaves you Friday, Saturday, Sunday – three whole days – in Israel, and it means you will have follow your leads with great speed. But then a mission like this, unless it’s carried out by professionals with unlimited time, works best when it’s done fast, before the leads evaporate.” “I understand that. I’ve done a little bit of investigative journalism.” “We know. What will happen on your return is that when you land in Zurich, a policeman will make contact with you. He will pretend to arrest you and take you the airport police station, and there you will be debriefed and become Michael Wilner again. Then you can fly back to Hamburg, perhaps a little later than originally scheduled. There will be no need for you to come back here; we will contact you if it’s necessary. Is all that clear?” “I think so.” “Do you have any questions?” “Well, the false beard: how will it be attached?” “It’s a material that sticks to the skin, like a Hansaplast, but can be pulled off with a little tug, if, for example, you need to shave or to reveal your identity in private to anyone while you are undercover. It only hurts a little bit, for a split second. But you don’t need to take it off, for example, when you take a shower. When you come back on Thursday, you will get more detailed instructions.” “What about the time between now and Thursday?” “We will need to do some work this afternoon, to fit the beard and wig and take photographs. We also need your signature as Etzel Andergast. But, if you would like, you can take the night train back to Hamburg to spend the day with your gracious wife, and especially to explain to her what will be going on, confidentially of course, and not telling her any more than is absolutely necessary. Tomorrow night you can take the train back to Stuttgart, and you will be met at the station. I will be there myself.” *      *     * Following their return to Hamburg, Miki continued his periodic round trips to Frankfurt, but by train once more. By leaving home at seven in the morning, he could catch a train that would get him to Frankfurt shortly after noon, in time for that day’s afternoon session of the trial, which was held in the audience hall of the Römer. It was almost next door to where he and Brigitte were married. Brigitte learned that, while she was in Berlin, Hetty had negotiated a contract for her with ZDF, the recently formed second television network, to act in a series of vaguely related short films (one of which was based on a story by Balzac) to be shot at the NDR studio. The series was to run under the collective title The Thirty-Year-Old Woman, which happened to be the title of the Balzac story. Filming would begin in August, but preproduction work would go on intermittently through the spring and summer. Miki’s work on the Kennedy essay was also intermittent. It turned out to be no simple matter of cutting and pasting his articles. There was much duplication among them, since he could not expect the reader of one necessarily to have read the previous ones, but in the essay the duplication had to be eliminated. It also took some mental effort to shift his focus between the atrocities that he heard described at the trial – and that triggered his own wartime memories – and the achievements of John F. Kennedy. The only link was the potential for atrocities that the Vietnam conflict held, and he chose not to dwell on that. He did, however, write a concluding section discussing Lyndon B. Johnson’s potential as the steward of the Kennedy legacy. Judging from the progress on the Civil Rights Bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate, he thought that the prospects were favorable on the domestic front. But Johnson lacked any experience in foreign affairs comparable to Kennedy’s, and it seemed unlikely that he would know how to handle an international crisis as deftly as Kennedy had dealt with Khrushchev over Cuba and Berlin, or that he would be able to maintain Kennedy’s risky intervention in Vietnam without sliding into war. He finished the first draft of the essay just as the debate in the Senate was beginning. A few days after he had sent the typescript off to Stuttgart, he sent an addendum that explained to German readers the peculiar American parliamentary procedure known as filibuster. Shortly after the essay was published, American students began to protest against their country’s military involvement in Vietnam. At Die Zeit, analysis of the conduct of American international policy was the exclusive preserve of the Countess, but young people’s movements were in Miki’s domain, and he wrote an article wondering if sentiment against a potential war in Vietnam might drain energy from the campaign for civil rights, or if the two movements might coalesce – as he hoped – into a broad, global drive for peace and human rights. Now, such a movement would be something worth writing about. *      *     * The clerk at the Unger had no objection to Miki’s leaving his bag behind the desk until it was time for him to board the night train for the return to Hamburg. He walked to the station to check the timetable. Once he determined which train he would take and booked a sleeping-car compartment from Frankfurt to Hamburg, he called Brigitte from a public telephone to tell her of his arrival time (he would take a taxi home, he said, since it would be quite early in the morning) and to reassure her that everything was all right. Brigitte listened almost in silence and asked no questions. During one pause she said, “I love you,” and at the end, “Till tomorrow, my treasure.” After a leisurely dinner, for which he had the Swabian specialty called Geschmälzte Maultaschen – ravioli filled with sausage meat and spinach, fried with onions and served with potato salad, washed down this time with red wine – at the same friendly tavern as the previous evening, he still had over three hours to kill before the train. A perfect length of time for seeing Satyricon. From what he had read about it, it also seemed that it would be the perfect film for the surrealistic situation that he now found himself in. And so it proved to be. There was even an actress, playing a prostitute, who was remarkably reminiscent of Ora. Her fully exposed breasts were just what he would have imagined Ora’s to be, had he allowed himself to mentally undress the young woman whom he had believed to be his daughter. Before boarding his train he bought the current copy of Der Spiegel, which he read on the way to Frankfurt. But once he was settled on his berth at the Frankfurt station, the bizarre images from the film took hold of his mind, and he welcomed them. *      *     * During the summer of 1964 Miki’s trips to Frankfurt became less frequent. The questioning of the witnesses and the evasive answering of the accused were becoming repetitious, and he no longer felt the need to be present at most sessions. Other matters were claiming his journalistic attention. The United States Senate finally passed the Civil Rights Bill after a twelve-week filibuster, and a few weeks later Johnson signed it. Things were finally looking up for civil rights in the country that proclaimed itself the champion of democracy. But in the meantime two young Jewish men who had gone to Mississippi to help Negroes register to vote, and a Negro who worked with them, went missing, with foul play suspected. Miki wrote an article about the contradiction between theory and reality in America. On the day that their bodies were found, it was reported that two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin were attacked by the navy of North Vietnam. Massive American retaliation followed. Miki found that his fears about Johnson’s inability to keep the United States out of war – as he was promising to do in his campaign against Goldwater – might be justified. But when he wrote about the murdered civil-rights activists he once again mentioned Vietnam only obliquely, relating the two student movements, and wondering if the antiwar campaign might claim victims of its own.