[26]

Next morning Freddie Minto lectured on The Origins and Effects of the Adversary System. It was a good talk, one of the best, full of medieval history and modem politics, a fascinating venture into scholarship and speculation about the differences in English and continental trials: trial by combat, trial by jury, the Anglo-Saxon boiling down of disputes to narrow issues as opposed to the wide-sweeping Roman search for ideal justice; the advocate-dominated trial versus the judge-dominated trial; the judge as umpire versus the judge as independent investigator; the English quest for a verdict as against the continental quest for "the truth"; the development of the two-party system in England and America as an outgrowth of the adversary trial system. . . .

We listened spellbound. At the end of the lecture a dozen hands went up. Now it was not the other Americans who asked questions; it was the Germans and Dutchmen and Italians. As the bell rang and the crowd moved into the dining hall for the coffee break, Freddie was surrounded by a cluster of students, all vying for his attention.

Eduard Onderdonk touched my elbow. "Anders, can you walk with us in the park for a few minutes?"

Harald von Liss was already standing on the terrace, his hands in his pockets, staring across the lake. It was a gray morning. Bulging lead-colored clouds shrouded the top of the Untersberg and a cool wet wind blew across the water. Wearing a hat, a suit with a vest and a raincoat, Liss seemed ready to go to his office in Stockholm.

"An excellent speech by Professor Minto," he said as we came out of the Schloss. "A most interesting analysis."

Onderdonk agreed. "Perhaps he is not regarded as a scholar by the others, but he has the temperament to make things interesting. You were right, he is a splendid teacher. Let's walk out to the statue so we can talk."

We followed him across the garden, through the dripping boxwood maze and out to the gravel path along the lake. No one said anything until we reached the reclining goddess. The bench was wet, so we did not sit down.

"Look here, Anders," Onderdonk began. "I told you that Liss had some suspicions about Dr. Pressburger and that he had written for more information. Now he has received another letter and he has agreed to tell you what it contains."

Liss looked grave and worried. He always looked grave and worried, but he looked more so now as he withdrew an airmail envelope from his leather billfold. The paper he unfolded was tissue-thin and limp as cloth; I could see the Three Crowns of the Kingdom of Sweden. He took a deep breath and began to make a formal statement: "Mr. Anders -ah, Graham- you will understand that here I have not an official report but a personal letter from a friend . . . a friend who is employed by - who has a position with a branch of our government that is concerned with obtaining information, but my government has no involvement in this matter, no interest of any kind in this matter, and so I may commit a great . . . unwisdom? a great mistake to discuss this with you. But Onderdonk has persuaded me that it will do no harm, that you can be relied upon-"

"Don't make a speech, man!" interrupted Onderdonk. "Tell him what the letter says."

Liss sighed, folding and unfolding the letter. "Yes. All right, I will do so. It seems there are two Pressburgers, two brothers originally from Berlin. Erich and Theo. They were both in Sweden for a time. Erich remained in Sweden throughout the war, married a Swedish girl, remained also after the war, then returned to West Germany, to Kiel, in 1952. There he became a professor in the faculty of law."

"And the other one?" I asked.

"The other one, in 1936, went to Spain, to fight in the war."

"To Spain? That's this one! This one was in Spain, he knew my father in Spain."

"Yes, I think so. This is the brother, Theo, but he says he is Erich, the professor from Kiel."

"But why does he do that? What purpose--?"

"Aha, let him tell you," said Onderdonk.

"You have heard of the Thählmann Battalion?" asked Liss. "You know what that was?"

I shook my head.

"Well, you have heard of the International Brigades, men who came from all over the world to fight against Franco, to support the Republican government in Spain. This Thählmann Battalion was one unit in the Brigades, a very tough one, made up of German Communists. Ernst Thählmann was a leader of German Communists. They were a very good outfit, fought hard in many battles, had heavy casualties. Theo Pressburger was an officer in the Thählmann Battalion. The Fascists won the war, and in the fall of 1938 the International Brigades were dissolved and the people in them were sent home. Of course these German Communists could not go home, most of them walked into France, where the French put them into prison camps. In the end, most of them were captured by the Nazis. After France fell, in 1940."

"You mean Theo Pressburger was captured by the Nazis?"

"No," said Liss. "He was not. He was lucky. He escaped to Mexico. And from Mexico he went to Russia. And in 1945, he came back to Germany with the Russian armies."

"And now?" I asked. Both of them were looking at me so intently that I knew something else was coming.

"And now," said Harald von Liss, savoring the moment, his icy features betraying a trace -but just a trace- of an enigmatic smile. "And now he is political secretary to Walter Ulbricht!"

"Jesus Christ," I said.

It was beginning to rain again, a soft slanting summer rain that dappled the surface of the lake.

Liss took a deep breath and began another speech "We are of the opinion -Onderdonk and I are of the opinion- that this Schloss, the American Academy in Europe, will lose its value to both America and Europe, if it should become known as a rendezvous for any sort of political negotiations--"

"Well, of course it would!" I exploded. "That's been the whole point all along, it's not political, it's not the kind of place where nobody is sure who anybody else is, where people can't feel free to say what they think. . . ."

I was startled at the degree of my own anger. My voice was shaking. I was breathless with fury -still unfocused, still not quite sure what or who I was angry at, but suddenly conscious that something terrible had happened, that everytlhing -the gardens and the Schloss and the lake and the mountains behind the clouds were somehow different.

"I think always of Peter Devereaux," said Onderdonk.

"Yes," I said. "I do too.'

"But the management of the Academy must know this, must know that they have the wrong Pressburger." Liss looked questioningly at us, and Onderdonk and I looked at each other. Then we both shook our heads.

"You don't think so?" asked Liss. "Mr. Rasmussen doesn't know this?"

"I'll bet you anything he doesn't. Nor does the Board of Trustees, back in New York."

"That I find hard to believe," said Liss. "Somebody must be making these arrangements."

"Oh, somebody is making the arrangements. all right," I said. "Somebody who has been making the arrangements for a long time." I knew that I should be as frank with them as they had been with me, but somehow I could not tell them who had obviously cooked up whatever was going on here, and so I just thanked them and said that I would do what I could and left them standing there in the rain.
 

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Map
Summary

Preface

BOOK I
1961 - A Point of View
[1] The annual meeting of the stockholders of the Boatwright Corporation
[2] What are you going to do about Boatwright and what are you going to do about yourself?
[3] Have we learned anything this evening, Doctor?
[4] Producing results?
[5] Alexander's Feast
[6] How'd you like to go over to Salzburg for a month with me?

BOOK II
1947 - An Island
[7] You're not going to Berlin. You're staying here.
[8] All right, we're the Military Government.
[9] The Americans are teaching us to be democratic instead of fascistic.
[10] Well, this is Fasching.
[11] Letters after Ash Wednesday
[12] Say Boris is at Schloss Fyrmian.
[13] THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN EUROPE - Prospectus for the First Session
[14] Learn to think of people as individuals.
[15] Parlez-moi d'amour, redites-moi des choses tendres.
[16] Not one thing left to show that you've ever been on earth? - "Sources of Soviet Conduct"
[17] A Countess, a Prussian Officer and a Ländler
[18] Now this part of your life is over and I'm sending you home.
[19] A father who's too busy to watch his son die. - The Spring of 1961
[20] I cannot sell Schloss Fyrmian to the Academy.

BOOK III
1961 - A Change of Air
[21] The first thing I saw was the Festung Hohensalzburg far in the distance, silhouetted against the shadowy curtain of the high mountains.
[22] Next day at the Academy we got to work - Graham, you know what Fleischer did?
[23] Im weißen Rößl am Wolfgangsee
[24] Brockaw writing a thesis on Austrian baroque architecture? - Boatwright Corporation and Boris Fleischer, plaintiffs
[25] You know there a Mr. Devereaux? Mr. Armistead Devereaux?
>[26] I think always of Peter Devereaux.
[27] It sounds like an act of desperation, and it won't hold up in court.
[28] In those Oklahoma Hills WHERE AH WAS BOW-AHHHN!
[29] ... that we should meet again like this . . . I think perhaps there is a reason.
[30] "Is there here an American by name of Brockaw?"
[31] This is Boris Fleischer!
[32] "Does Hans work for Gehlen?" Paola shook her head. "More the other way around."
[33] Won't you please come home? Everybody needs you, I most of all.
[34] With this Waffenstillstand you have time now.
[35] You're going to regret this for the rest of your life!
[36] We Europeans would not do it. None of us. - People think you need medical attention.
[37] Will they trust you?
[38] Some things about the U.S.A. are perhaps rather important, and to us impressive.
[39] You're going to need a good lawyer.


version: March 2, 2004
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Arthur R.G. Solmssen, Joachim Gruber