The nominal inspection of the train was a responsibility shared by the Border Police and the Railway Police. The Gestapo was present as much to see that the others did their jobs properly as it was to personally inspect the train and its passengers.
Regulations required that the conductor of every train prepare and furnish a passenger manifest, identifying each passenger by name and listing his or her seat or compartment. Wahl’s first duty was to take the manifest and compare it with a list of persons furnished, via Stuttgart, by Berlin.
These were people believed by headquarters to be likely to try to leave or enter Germany illegally. He was of course expected to make sure the Border Police searched the passenger manifest for names of people who were fugitive from German law, and whose names were provided by Berlin on a separate list, through regular–as opposed to Gestapo–channels.
But it had been explained to him that he was really looking for people whose names would not be on any list. Spies do not identify themselves.
In the first of the three first-class wagons-lits on the train, something caught Wahl’s eye.
There was nothing that he could put his finger on. It was a gut feeling.
He had learned in school that gut feelings were not to be dismissed as unprofessional. There was even a proper word for them, intuitive. He had been told that over time he would be able to “intuit” something illegal, to “sense it intuitively.” Something didn’t ring true about the young Swiss who was alone in the first-class compartment.
In Wahl’s professional judgment, it was unlikely that the young Swiss was a spy, or any other kind of an enemy of the state. He was too young for that, he didn’t look like a spy. What he was, Wahl thought, was a healthy young man of German blood who because of a line drawn on a map was able to sit safely on the sidelines while his brothers were dying in Russia to protect European culture. And it was entirely likely that in his luggage there would be a dozen or so twenty-one jewel Swiss watches.
Wahl decided to have a look at the young Swiss’s luggage. He would examine it politely, of course, but with more care than the Border Police had examined it. And perhaps ask a few polite questions.
It would be nice, he thought, if he could make an arrest on his very first day of unsupervised duty. And especially nice if it was this “neutral” German Swiss for smuggling contraband.
He made his way to the first car of the three first-class wagons-lits and, without knocking, slid open the door to the compartment.
The young Swiss was standing up, in the act of putting one of his suitcases on the luggage rack. Or taking one of them down. He looked just a little nervous.
“Guten Tag, mein Herr,” Wahl said, correctly. “Passport, please.”
“It’s already been examined,” the young Swiss said, “by the Border Police.”
“Passport, please,” Wahl said impatiently.
The young Swiss shrugged and took the document from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and handed it over.
Wahl carefully compared the photograph in the passport with the young Swiss’s face. It was without question him. He asked the ritual questions, date and place of birth, address, and occupation, and the young Swiss without hesitation replied with answers that matched the information on the passport.
“You’re going to Sweden?” Wahl asked.
“That’s right.”
“What is the nature of your business in Sweden?”
“I can’t really see where that’s any of your business,” the young Swiss replied.
Wahl took his Gestapo identity disk from his pocket and displayed it in the palm of his hand.
“Gestapo, mein Herr,” he said. “I decide what is my business.”
“I’m an electrical engineer,” the young Swiss said. “In the employ of Carl Farber und Some. I’m going to our Stockholm office.” Wahl nodded curtly.
“Take your luggage rom the rack, please,” he said.
“That’s been examined, too,” the young Swiss said.
“I wish to examine it again,” Wahl said.
The young Swiss shrugged. Annoyance was all over his face.
There were three pieces of luggage on the rack.