Arrival

24 February 1941—Brenner Pass

Back on the farm when I was Fred Brown, I wished for a life of adventure and today I wake to the nightmare reality of the dream as Frederich “Zelly” Zellner, Zelly thought. He inhaled deeply the frigid Alpine air, slipped from the bed, and wrapped a throw blanket around his nakedness. Eying the diplomatic pouch on the table, he decided—if I’m to spy, I might as well start.

He listened for a snore from his traveling companion, Vincente Testaneuvo, to ensure he was still sleeping. When it sounded, Zelly angled a wingback chair toward the potbellied stove and stoked two logs through the grate. As the railcar brightened and warmed up, he opened Vinny’s leather bag with his lockpick.

Extracting a sheaf of papers, he read them in the stove’s light. The German pages were easy, as that was one of his native languages, but the Italian records forced him to guess words beyond his school studies. Only one paper intrigued him—an agreement pledging the Italians would join Germany’s attack on Greece. He considered its implications for the war as he restored the pouch.

The eerie sense of being observed made him shiver. A peek at the bed revealed Vinny completely covered by the thick duvet, including his head. He scanned the luxurious Pullman belonging to Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italy’s Foreign Minister. Something shiny reflected light from the middle of a mahogany-paneled wall—an eye. The hole closed quickly with a scraping sound, becoming a small knot in the wood. The porter who came with the fancy railcar was watching me, he concluded. In fascism, isn’t everyone a spy?

He recalled when Vinny and three men—he nicknamed them the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker—had recruited him straight out of high school. In May 1940, he became an American secret agent headed for Germany. The Third Reich was just ahead of the locomotive. The old country of his parents. A place he’d never been.

The land where I’m to spy.

Where you must fit in… or die.

As the son of immigrants from the German-speaking community in Fredericksburg, Texas, his mission was to become part of the SS at eighteen. Like a mole, he would burrow deep into Nazi society and awaken to aid America in the coming war. For nine months, he had trained for the job with Vinny, an Italian from Brooklyn, New York. Vinny was his handler in the realm of espionage, posing as a cultural attaché at Italy’s embassy in Berlin, a posting that included traveling in the unique coach.

Zelly thought he should feel guilty at reading Vinny’s consular secrets, but shrugged it away. Every small piece of information might have value, even unexpectedly, and the paper about an attack on Greece was a candidate.

He detected a change in the locomotive’s noise and a flattening of the train’s slope. Recalling the route map, he judged that the Rome-Berlin Express had neared the summit of the Wipptal Valley, high in the Alps, a place known as Brenner Pass.

As the stove burned low, the bedcovers looked inviting, so he slipped beneath them and poked an icy foot against Vinny. In German, he whispered, “The porter peeked through a knothole.”

Vinny shrugged.

Adrenaline from his first spy act wouldn’t let Zelly return to sleep.

Vinny didn’t catch me.

But the attendant did. You snooped on your friend. What will he think?

There’s no need for him to know.

Thirty minutes later, the scraping sound came again. Zelly sprung from the four-poster bed with the arrogant haughtiness Vinny had taught him. He barked Italian orders at the paneling’s knot. “Gabinetto! Fretta!”

Vinny jumped at the shout as the cabin door flung open. The porter hurried to pull the chamber pot from the cabinet, and Zelly and Vinny sprinted to the porcelain bowl. Zelly stretched his foreskin before pissing, as Vinny had coached. The American habit of retracting it wasn’t something a Nazi would do—one of many habits requiring relearning for life in Germany.

Their streams splattered everywhere, sending the attendant for a mop. When he came back, Zelly sneered and said, “Put more wood on the fire.”

As the worker stoked the stove, Zelly demanded, “Breakfast, washing water, and clothes.”

They waited, wrapped in bedclothes, in the wingback chairs. Vinny’s elbow grazed the diplomatic pouch, resulting in Zelly’s smile. The servant looked like he had something to say as he brought a tray of rattling cups and assorted pastries. He placed it on the table between them and poured coffee.

Vinny snagged a cream-filled cannoli and dangled it from his lips like a cigarette. In German, he asked, “Sleep well?”

“Hungover from the Fiano di Avellino that Primo served for my birthday.” Zelly dunked a chocolate brioche in his java.

“Enjoying being eighteen?”

“Could have been better.” Zelly winked.

“Carlotta didn’t like your anteater?”

Zelly blushed at the teasing about his long foreskin. “The chaperone kept it from appearing.”

“Since I’m twenty-one, Isabella and I didn’t require an escort.”

Zelly understood the hint—those girls weren’t at Primo’s party but from training in San Antonio. He took this as a lesson in making conversation with someone eavesdropping. “After the two of you sneaked off, I had only the wine for company and performed my duty to finish it.”

The porter brought a bowl of warm water and towels and offered Vinny a shave. While Zelly washed, he surreptitiously studied the man’s razor techniques, knowing that he would start shaving soon. In the mirror, he examined the soft fuzz on his cheeks as he compared himself to his friend.

Both were slightly less than two meters tall and lean. Farm labor had toned Zelly’s muscles more than Vinny’s city-boy-next-door physique. Zelly’s undercut blond hair and blue eyes made him look like a Nazi recruiting poster. Vinny’s black locks were in a pompadour, towering above his dark brown eyes and hooked nose.

With the shave finished, Vinny washed. “Teaching Carlotta the dance surprised me. It enabled her to guess your background.”

Zelly accepted the rebuke as a warning. In San Antonio, he had taught her the Texas Two-Step, unknown in Germany. Tiny mistakes—the wrong music or a different way of pissing—could be fatal in the Third Reich.

Vinny scooped blond hair from Zelly’s forehead, revealing a lipstick smudge. “That’s closer than you hinted. How many kisses did you snag?”

“I don’t share my lurid secrets, but I lost count at twenty-seven when the wine kicked in.”

The porter brought their freshly laundered clothes—a winter-blue Hitler Youth uniform for Zelly and a brown Merino wool suit for Vinny. Zelly marveled at the martyr’s badge on his uniform pocket—a simple golden party pin but with a black wreath of mourning.

The porter checked his pocket watch. “2:45 AM and we’re approaching Brennaro. Expect an hour for customs and border control.”

After they dressed, the man pulled their luggage from the armoire and placed it by the door. When the train slowed, Zelly inhaled deeply. As the steam brakes hissed, he remembered practice time was over.

What am I doing here? An American, a Texan named Fred Brown. Dad fought for the U.S. Army in the Great War’s trenches—the one to end them all. And I’m joining one that hasn’t started.

In months, blitzkrieg finished Poland, Holland, and France. You listened to Churchill’s Dunkirk speech on the shortwave you built. You are Frederich Zellner, a Nazi boy. Sieg heil.

They shoot spies, don’t they?

When the train stopped, Vinny shrugged into his trench coat, and Zelly wore his jacket and ski cap. The carriage door opened to the frigid, brutal wind and mountains of snow everywhere. Vinny went down the steps towards the wooden decking.

The porter delayed Zelly for a moment. “I will report what you did.”

Have I already made a fatal mistake?

Weather colder than the worst ice age in Texas slammed Zelly’s face. When Vinny noticed the wince, he said, “Zelly, welcome home.”

Once distant threats became real, instantly scary. The swastika flag hung over the station’s door. Armed with automatic weapons, Wehrmacht troops surrounded the platform. A leashed German Shepherd sniffed Zelly and snarled.

Can the dog smell an American?

Fit in… or die.

How can I?

A second train waited on another track. Since the railroad gauges didn’t match, passengers swapped trains. As travelers to Italy left the station to board, those bound for Germany rushed inside. Before Zelly and Vinny reached the door, a Gestapo officer burst through, almost bowling them over.

He pointed at the departing locomotive and blew a whistle. “Stop them!”

Following the officer’s gloved finger, Zelly spotted two hunched figures bounding through snowdrifts, chasing the last car.

The agent saw the double-diamond pips on Zelly’s shoulder. “Sergeant, apprehend them.”

Zelly sprinted across the wooden platform with boots pounding like kettledrums. Plotting an intercept angle, he vaulted into a thigh-deep snowdrift. Running through them required leaping from one heap to another.

“Shoot them!”

Without a weapon other than his Hitler Youth Knife, Zelly continued pursuit. He sucked for air and his lungs burned—a sea-level boy sprinting in high mountain snow. In closing with the pair, he discovered one figure was a woman carrying a bundled baby.

“Juden!” The Gestapo called.

Realizing they would never catch the train, the family veered for a stand of pine trees. The man took the bundle and led his wife toward the woods.

The single bulb on the station’s pinnacle extinguished, and blackout curtains darkened the windows. Around Zelly, the snowfield shone with a blue phosphorescence reflecting the stars and moon. He lost the runners as their silhouettes blended with tree trunks.

Bullets sprayed from an unseen machine gun, so he slowed to avoid the field of fire.

The couple tumbled to a drift. The snow seemed black when Zelly arrived, but the flicker of a flashlight showed it was crimson. He spotted movement in the pile at his feet. Flailing arms and kicking legs cast aside the blanket and swaddling clothes, revealing a Jewish boy. The baby’s fresh circumcision was still red and swollen.

Nine months ago, Zelly was clueless about circumcisions because he and all his friends had foreskins. Then, the Army introduced him to Carl Gettler and Bob Silberman, boys from Wittenberg, his pretend hometown. They taught him about life in National Socialism, shared their stories, and showed him the cuts of the mohel.

Still, tales of Germany’s treatment of Jews were no preparation for the dead bodies at his feet. The automatic weapon had mangled the couple unbelievably, splattering blood and tissue over the snow. During his training, he had killed a man, but this scene made his stomach revolt. Blinking away tears, he reached for the baby. As the flashlight’s glow approached, the infant smiled and quieted.

The Gestapo centered the light on the child. “Kill him.”

Murder a baby? The thought shell-shocked Zelly.

“Stomp his head,” the agent ordered.

When Zelly hesitated, a slap stung his cheek like a million needles. Surprised, he stared at the Gestapo’s black gloves and recognized his snot when the man flicked it away. The words of Dr. Otto, the candlestick maker of his recruiters, came to him. ‘German boys obey without question.’

“Trample him.”

I must be a perfect Nazi and live up to my uniform. Follow his order.

Zelly raised his leg, willing his boot to stomp.