The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesperman

who had arrived with the other prisoner. Gordon stood, then stooped toward Nat for a final word.
    “Actually, there is one thing you can do. Tell your Mr. Holland that as long as he’s going to all this trouble, maybe he should give me some protection. This place is wide open.”
    “Protection from what?”
    “Her, for starters.” He nodded toward the mystery woman in the peasant blouse, who to Nat’s surprise had moved to the front row just across the aisle. “She’s a damned nuisance. But it’s the others that really worry me.”
    “What others?”
    “Holland will know. Just tell him.”
    Typical Gordon. Playing up the drama for all it was worth, now that he was the center of attention. The cop led Gordon away before Nat could ask more, and the old man’s age showed in the stiffness of his first steps. Nat thought he heard a sob from Viv in the back, but Gordon was grinning as he went out the door.
    Nat turned, half expecting Holland to be glaring in disapproval. But the only person paying any attention was the young woman, who looked away quickly, as if she had been eavesdropping. Maybe she was his federal minder. He tried staring her down, but she kept her eyes averted, and he was too intimidated by her looks to introduce himself.
    When he stood to leave, he was mildly disappointed that she didn’t follow. Oh, well. If she really was with the FBI, he supposed they’d be meeting soon enough.

FIVE
    O NLY HOLLAND and the two agents from the diner were at Gordon’s house when Nat began reviewing the files. No sign of Viv or the mystery woman. Agent Neil Ford had vanished, presumably to wherever he’d come from.
    “I’ll leave you to your work,” Holland said. “Let me know of any special needs.”
    “Peace and quiet should do it.”
    “And do you have a camera? A notebook?”
    “Uh, yeah. Both.”
    “Sorry, but you’re to lock the camera in your car until completion. Keep note taking to a minimum. Anything you write down belongs to us.”
    At least they couldn’t confiscate his memory. Another reason to proceed slowly.
    For all his eagerness, the first hours were tedious. The archive was cluttered, as such things usually are, with grunt work—German press summaries, translations of Nazi speeches from Radio Stuttgart, interoffice correspondence over matters so trivial that they had become irrelevant within days. So far, not a single mention of the White Rose.
    But here and there were tantalizing glimpses of people and events that Nat knew about, and he paused to savor them. It wasn’t just scholarly indulgence. It was the only responsible way to proceed, lest he miss an obscure but previously unknown connection to either White Rose activities or the Scholls.
    Nat was reasonably familiar with the major players of wartime Bern—the spies, businessmen, and diplomats that Dulles and his pickup team of operatives had mingled with. In one folder he spotted a reference to a meeting between Dulles and Gero von Gaevernitz, a debonair German financier who spent the first years of the war shuttling between Bern and Berlin while piling up an impressive hoard of intelligence.
    Fearing for his safety, Gaevernitz left Germany for good in late 1941 to take refuge in Bern, where he became a confidant of Dulles. They met almost daily at the spymaster’s ground-floor flat at Herrengasse 23, and Gaevernitz often arranged introductions with visiting Germans willing to pass along information. Switzerland’s wartime blackout made it easy for clandestine visitors, who approached a back entrance via an uphill path through terraced gardens overlooking the River Aare. As an extra precaution, Dulles talked the locals into removing the bulb from the streetlamp that illuminated his doorway.
    Dulles’s status was an open secret. That was the way he wanted it, calculating that the best way to join the spy game was to let it be known that he was open for business. It was one reason the British never put much stock in his