Free The Human Pool by Chris Petit Page B

languages, and her knowledge of Germany and Switzerland.
    Mother said she measured the seriousness of Mr Dulles’s intentions by the out-of-the-way restaurant of indifferent quality where he insisted they dine so no one would overhear, rather than somewhere more their style. Mr Dulles was nothing if not a social creature. Over dinner he explained that it would be their job to provide Washington with accurate information about relations between Switzerland and the Third Reich.
    As a lawyer in peacetime he had represented many German and Swiss clients, and it would be his business to maintain contact with them while Mother monitored Switzerland’s secret trade with the Germans and established clandestine links with occupied countries. Mother took that to mean that Mr Dulles would go to parties while she did the hard work.
    We talked several times about that evening, and she could still recite the menu (with a shudder) after so many years, as well as most of the conversation.
    Mother suspected someone very smart was behind Mr Dulles’s appointment. Mr Dulles was a very clever lawyer, with a keen eye for the loophole. He proved knowledgeable at explaining how Swiss banks and businesses were flouting the rules of neutrality and acting on behalf of German companies. He relished his involvement in the war, and insisted upon the widest possible reading. Did Mother understand, for example, the implications of Japan’s recent entry into the war for China and Germany? (For all his willingness to treat her equally, she found he talked down to her in matters of business.) Mother could rattle off verbatim the answer to Mr Dulles’s question: Germany relied on China for tungsten, essential to aircraft manufacture, but as of December 1941, and Japan’s new alliance with Germany, trade between China and Germany ceased because the existing conflict between China and Japan, dating back to 1937, placed Germany and China indirectly at war.
    Mother, who was capable of showing off with the best, said that Germany would have to get its tungsten from another neutral source such as Portugal, and had the satisfaction, as she put it, of watching Mr Dulles’s ‘jaw drop’.
    In many ways Mr Dulles found his match in Mother. She was quick to understand his reading of the war, not in terms of politics or ideology, but in relation to essential raw materials. Tungsten, manganese, and chromium, as well as more common commodities like iron ore, oil, and diamonds, were what won wars. Trade, not troop movements, was what Mr Dulles called the bottom line, which is why the role of neutral countries like Switzerland would always be crucial.
    In her way Mother was ahead of Mr Dulles. She told him that it was her understanding that the German war effort without Swiss help would last no more than two months, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Mr Dulles lost for words twice in one evening.
    Her source was, ironically, a man she had met at a party, though the deduction was her own. The man in question was a German diplomat. He and Mother had become social friends, and, even before her meeting with Mr Dulles, he had intimated that he was against Hitler and for America, and interested in maintaining and developing personal relations in spite of their new status as enemies. I believe he went on to become one of Mother’s most informative agents.
    I would appreciate in return any memories you have of my mother. I find it a great source of consolation reading about her. It helps dull the awful sense of injustice at her incapacity. I am sure I can speak for Mother when I say that we both look forward to our meeting with you and we trust you have a safe and comfortable journey.
    Yours sincerely,
    Beate von Heimendorf

Hoover
    ZURICH
    BEATE VON HEIMENDORF SPOKE as she wrote, in perfect, formal English. She was waiting at the head of the platform, as she said she would be, a tall, supple-looking woman in her late fifties, wearing a