The bus eventually arrived at Bromma. Arno checked in. After handing in his suitcase and pocketing the receipt, he was led out onto the tarmac where a SAS DC-4 was waiting. It was a twin-engine, propeller-driven plane with nose wheel. Arno nodded approvingly to the flight attendants, sat down comfortably in his place and remembered how his most memorable plane ride had ended: with a crash. But that was then. The Junkers 88 in question flew over the combat zone of Saxony in 1944. Now it was 1958 and peace.
At last the plane started, taxied to the end of the runway, stopped, revved up, ran off and lifted. The trip to Munich took three hours. It was noisy and the plane lacked a pressurized cabin but Arno preferred this from taking the train all the way. Moreover, they served refreshments on board; this, he thought, was the height of luxury. With a soft drink in hand he looked out over the expanse of clouds and saw fairytale castles in the distance, shimmering gold and azure in the hazy distance. He had fallen through such air once. Fallen and yet survived. He wondered vaguely if the pilot of the 88 had survived the war? Would he even recognise him if they met in a German street? Would Arno punch him? Perhaps his long stay in hospital was how he had survived the war? Perhaps he would buy him a drink!
Once in Munich Arno took a taxi to his hotel. Having checked in, showered and changed he called Bauer. A secretary said that everything was green, the meeting would be held as scheduled, Arno was free and at home. The firm, Cicero AG, was situated in the city’s middle zone.
Arno took a taxi in the overcast daylight, a black Mercedes 180, diesel. When he arrived the office turned out to be a two-storey structure with glass front and brick gables, very modern. The surroundings consisted of industrial sidings, a petrol station and a motorway some 500 metres away. It could have been a little greener, wouldn’t mind a few trees, Arno thought as the son of the woods he was.
He went into the building. Via a corridor, he came to the office in question. A blonde secretary received him, asking what she could help with. Arno said in German:
“I’m Arno Greif. I have an appointment with Mr. Bauer.”
“Ah, wait a minute,” she said. She rang the intercom. Soon a door opened and Bauer came out. He was as he always had been, tall, sturdy and round-faced – and now even a little more portly. He smiled and greeted Arno cordially. They even embraced.
“Feldwebel! You’re alive!” Bauer said and showed him into the office, a neat room with hazel plastic panels, a large desk, a bookcase and a sofa in green leather. They both sat down and Arno said:
“Yes, I’m alive. And you, Unterfeldwebel!”
“Indeed I am. But now I’m the boss here and I want you onboard the ship. How do you feel about that?”
“I’m ready to work for you,” Arno said, “being your loyal servant. Aber natürlich.”
Bauer was his old sunny self, the happy man who quickly would become serious and ready to strike. And serious he was when he spoke about his security company. In the conditions offered Arno could work with almost anything he wanted: surveillance, investigation, management consulting, personnel issues, personal protection – just choose. So he did, Arno became a glorified right-hand man working with now this, now that, a sort of top consultant, able to take on almost any job after a brief instruction.
The entire building they were in belonged to Cicero AG. Bauer had twenty employees, of whom five were top agents, smart people who worked with issues such as bodyguard security, security systems (fences, alarms) and work on cases where the police had closed the investigation, or things that the police never investigated in the first place. The latter were cases of the type, “I suspect my wife of having an illicit love affair, can you look into it for me?” This wasn’t particularly heroic but it was ‘operational’. It was a job mainly on the move, not ordinarily done from behind a desk.
Arno came to work operationally in Bauer’s firm, Cicero AG. He was a jack of all trades, a roving scout and investigator, a private recon operator, always on the go. He could combine the less inspiring cases of the type “checking up love affair” with other ones, like gathering facts about unexplained thefts, all sorts of things in fact.
As for Bauer, Arno had a cordial conversation with him in the office at their first meeting. Then they went down town for a session at a decent restaurant. They talked about war memories: Kamenets-Podolsky, Belarus, Poland, Hungary… They spoke of Wistinghausen and Battalion Wolf and of fallen comrades, they talked about StG and MP, and they talked about howls in the night and smoke on the horizon and marching columns having walked away and into history.
36
Munich
It was a day in June 1960. It was, more precisely, a Friday. Arno was something of a workaholic but right now he had the weekend free after a busy work week. He was still prepared to venture out if the phone rang – if Bauer wanted him to check out this or that urgent matter in relation to some surveillance job. But for now, as mentioned, Arno was free. He had cycled to work. He didn’t take his grey VW; it was such a beautiful weather. He had cycled three kilometres from his small villa to Cicero AG in the middle zone, in the area between the city proper and the suburbs. Arno now rented his own house after living on top of Bauer’s garage during his first time in the country. He had no major problems with the Bavarian or Federal authorities; the basic tenet was that he was allowed to work in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Federal State of Bavaria. He still held German citizenship.
Arno had been sitting in his office almost throughout the whole day. He had worked in Germany for over eighteen months by now. He had resigned from the Swedish Army and broken up with Solbritt.
Arno had quickly decided to stay in Germany. He wrote to Solbritt as early as November 1958 to tell her that he would stay there. This pretty much ended their relationship. He wrote that she could keep the apartment and most of the equipment there. Arno only asked that she send his books.
To end a relationship by mail is not ideal, and Solbritt didn’t accept it. She travelled to see him in February 1959 and asked to continue being his partner. But Arno had tired of her. Why, he didn’t know. She was simply history. She didn’t give him energy any more. Eventually Solbritt accepted it all and went home again. She kept the apartment; it was rented so this was no sacrifice to him. But she never sent him his books. This grieved him a little. He could gradually find new copies of his beloved books – In Stahlgewittern and so on – but they were in editions other than those he had owned and read as a young man. It was, somehow, not the same. “The media is the message” to some extent.
This was a minor issue but it grieved him nonetheless. The bottom line is that relationships, and breaking up from them, always is a drag.
This day in June 1960, Arno had worked in the office on various things. He generally enjoyed himself at work, whether it was at the desk or out scouting. Everything was related to operational work. And now, satisfied with his week’s work, he was on his way home. The road went over a large grass field. To the left was a swampy lake, fringed by reeds. To the right was a small, grass soccer field, used for inter-company tournaments and suchlike.
He crossed the field on a cycle path, parallel to the football field’s goal end. Beyond it lay the residential area where he lived.