her garage, nobody using it. Father and son both dead.”
“Is a Wasserford vase really Waterford vase?”
“I think so. She mentioned the bud-vases several times, Englischerkristal für die blumen, she said. Sehr schön.”
She’s going to give the Mercedes to you?”
“She will sell it to me, a very cheap price for her son. For Stalingrad. It does her no good there in the garage, gives her the bad memories every week when she starts the engine, to make sure it still runs.”
“How much?”
“A thousand Deutsch Marks. I immediately said yes, a thousand thanks, Frau Mueller.”
“That’s two hundred fifty dollars. Do you have that?”
“No, of course not, but I have an idea.” He put his finger to his lips and looked sideways.
Callard’s scheme was to sell cigarettes on the Black Market. We all knew that there was an active exchange in the village nights of Bad Issel. A carton of cigarettes, for which we paid one dollar at the PX, brought ten dollars down in the village. That was forty Deutsch Marks. We only needed to sell ten cartons, he said.
Follum said, “But that’s only four hundred marks.”
Callard answered, “I have a little tucked away from another enterprise.”
I said, “I don’t want to be involved in the Black Market, Callard. And I speak for Follum, too. It’s highly illegal and too risky. A life sentence in the stockade.”
“No problem, my betters taught me how to disappear into walls when needed, to blend with the night, to creep around the corner. I’ll do all the undercover work. Just buy me your monthly allotment of four cartons each. I’ll use two from my allotment, and, there we have it, four hundred marks plus my stash makes a thousand.”
Weeks ago Follum and I had talked about how it would be to have a car, to be able to drive away from Bad Issel on weekends, but an enlisted man could not make a dent in such a purchase. My pay was sixty dollars a month, Follum’s fifty-five. Here was the possibility of partial ownership, just for giving up the cigarettes that neither of us smoked.
I said, “Callard, we’ll do it for full half-ownership, a quarter for Follum and a quarter for me.”
“Where did you learn to bargain, Bradford? So harshly with such a dear friend? Very unlike what I know of other gentle West Texans.”
I knew that now was the time to press our advantage. “Half the time we get to use the car without you. Fair?”
He considered for a few seconds, then said, “Fair.”
We bought our month’s quota of cigarettes the next weekend and gave them to Callard. He reported back later about his dealings in Bad Issel. He asked around the village fountain before taking any cigarettes down there. An old man told him that the market was designed to confuse the authorities, to make a trail the polizei cannot follow.
A potential seller went into the Issel Stube and ordered a glass of beer, asking if the accordionist could play the third verse of Lilli Marlene. This signaled that there were three cartons for sale. The fifth verse would mean five cartons. The waitress would be shocked and say it was forbidden to play that song, but she would ask. If the market was in operation that night, she said yes when she returned with the beer, Alles ist gut. Of course, the accordionist would not really play it.
Then, after a spell, the seller walked outside and across to the village fountain where a woman with a cane sat waiting. Without breaking stride, he must deposit his cartons, wrapped in brown paper, into the shoulder-bag that she briefly opened. The seller continued on quickly away in the opposite direction from the woman, who hobbled off with her fat satchel safely under one arm. This led the seller to the church door, deep-set and in the shadows, where a man or perhaps another woman paid him thirty marks. They parted without conversing. If other people loitered around the fountain, there would be no market. If there was a full moon, there would be no market.
Callard said, “It took me four trips up and down the hill, but here it all is.” He had a stack of mark notes, our contribution and his own. Follum went with Callard on Sunday to buy the Mercedes from the widow in case his mechanic’s expertise might be needed to get it going again. By late afternoon, they pulled into the usually vacant slot marked “Enlisted Parking” in the forecourt of Schloss Issel. They had detoured by the Bad Issel cemetery to snip the last of autumn’s roses, now fragrant in the bud-vases. We drove triumphantly around Bad Issel, turning on and off the headlights in full daylight, running the windshield wipers on dry glass and lightly honking the horn.
He said, “I told Frau Mueller that the vases would always have roses for Stalingrad. Tonight I will drive to the Krakow Klub. All my dear Polskis will come out to the curb and admire. I’ll have my absolute pick.”
I said, “Don’t forget, half the time is for Follum and me.”
“Such a waste. The pride of Stuttgart could be yours with a single honk.”
“Drive carefully, Callard. We want our half back, undented.”
FLECKS OF CRIMSON
But don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden:
your Father had an accident there;
he was put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor.
–Beatrix Potter
CAPTAIN MCQUIRE ASKED, “DO you have a sport jacket and a pair of slacks, Bradford? Ones that you brought from stateside when you came?”
“Yes, ma’am”
“Do you have plans for the week-end?”
Even though I feared that the McQuire was asking me out for a social event, I told her no. I hoped it was not a reception at the consulate, thin-lipped functionaries in the overheated salons or a concert performance of Wagner going on past midnight. Everybody knew that McQuire loved music and missed little of importance at the concert hall.
“Splendid, then. We’ll courier some documents to Zurich, down there on Saturday, back by Sunday morning. You know about courier duty, don’t you, Bradford?”
“Somewhat, ma’am. But not all the details.”
“I’ll catch you up on the train. Be ready to leave at o-eight-hundred on Saturday. Wear your jacket and slacks, and a tie. No suitcase, no identity papers, no laundry marks.”
That sounded ominous; nothing to identify the body. What I did know about courier duty was limited. Communications in Europe in 1957 were unreliable: telephone lines to Berlin went through Russian-held East Germany and were presumed to be tapped at multiple locations. Lines south to Switzerland could not be verified past Donaueschingen and those to France went through the Black Forest, where there were many opportunities for unwitnessed splicing. Any form of radio was impossible because scrambling devices could not be trusted. Important Army documents were required by regulation to be delivered by hand, an officer and at least one enlisted aide, two aides in matters of highest security. Couriers left Schloss Issel every day in all manner of dress, like centurions on horseback with rolled parchments from Rome.
That evening at the club I asked Callard about courier duty. He said that McQuire was annoyed with him after their trip to Luxembourg, so she had been trying out replacements. I was merely the newest replacement.
“Why was she annoyed?”
“I can’t say. She’s ruthless with her favorites; like Tiberius, she throws them over with the first flicker of boredom.”
“I’ll take care that the emperor is amused, then.”
“Tread lightly near any cliff, my friend.”
The next morning the plain gray sedan met us at 0800. McQuire was in civilian attire, a checkered black and white suit with a salamander brooch,