The Austrian: Book Two Read online

  I did see her later that night in Pairs, after I started thinking that I would die of boredom in the middle of the reception in the banquet hall of the Ritz, held for all the officials. I was aimlessly floating from one group to another, desperately longing to find at least someone Austrian, who wouldn’t be so goddamn sober and stuck-up like these haughty Prussians, of which the military elite of the Reich unfortunately consisted. Heydrich’s long face and the dirty looks he was giving me every time I picked up another flute of champagne from the tray that waiters were carrying around obviously didn’t contribute to the improvement of my mood. After listening for ten minutes about the supremacy of light artillery over heavy artillery during short marches in the muddy weather, I barely suppressed a yawn and decided to retreat to the bar, further away from all the generals and their entourage, who were boring the life out of me.

  That’s where I found her, my breathtaking beauty in the black dress, staring at her cognac on the rocks with hatred as if it was at fault for her ruined mood.

  “My husband brought me here,” she admitted with a smirk after we shared the first shot of whiskey. “He knows how much I hate going to all these political meetings, but he still drags me along, and then just leaves me all by myself.”

  What a moron this Friedmann is, I thought, moving my bar stool closer to her. She noticed, but didn’t seem to mind. If I were her husband, I would never leave her alone. I would have her on my arm at all times, proudly showing my most treasured trophy to all these high-ranking martinets. I would give all my awards, in addition to my Honor Sword and Honor Dagger with Reichsführer’s personalized engraving, my SS ring and cuff-links – all those things, now useless and unwanted – just to have her instead. My whole military career, yes, that too. When she was looking at me with those eyes, like she did that evening, I could give up everything for her.

  I think I even told her that, after the fifth glass of brandy, with my hand on top of hers. I was whispering something so adorably silly about how beautiful Austria was in the spring, and how I would kidnap her one day and lock her in one of the hunter’s huts in the middle of the meadow, bathing in the green, away from everyone’s eye, and she would be mine forever. She laughed, and then suddenly looked at me very seriously and asked me quietly, “Do you like your job, Herr Gruppenführer?”

  I admitted that intelligence was very interesting at times, when you had to play virtual chess with your opponent on a board that you couldn’t see.

  “No.” Annalise shook her head slowly and frowned. “I mean the Gestapo part.”

  I thought of what to say for a moment, and then answered, as honestly as I could. “I’m trying to be involved with the Gestapo part as little as possible, Frau Friedmann.”

  She was looking at me so intently with her blue eyes that if I lied, I wouldn’t have been able to hold her gaze.

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Frau Friedmann?”

  She finally gave way to a warm smile. “I was… just wondering.”

  “About what?”

  She shook her pretty head once again and then slowly lifted her hand to my face. I immediately stopped not only moving, but breathing altogether as well, afraid to make a move that would scare her off and interrupt those seconds of pure ecstasy that I would carry in my heart for the rest of my life. I was both astonished and delighted at how natural her touch felt, and it took all my self-control not to grab her right there and then, to steal her away from her husband, and from all these people around us and the whole world.

  Her warm, delicate fingers outlined two of the deepest cuts on my cheek, and for the first time in my life I understood how those desperate students, who were refused entry into the fraternity and were unable to participate in fencing competitions, could pay barbers to scar their faces so as to impress the ladies. I felt that I could slash my other cheek with my razor in that instant, just so she would touch it, too. I realized after that thought that I was a sick, insane madman, but I was blessed in my insanity.

  “Where did you get these from?” Annalise asked, smiling, studying my dueling scars with her hand with such natural curiosity, as if I were already her property. I probably was… or became, at that very moment.

  I leaned as close as I could to her, barely getting a hold of myself so as not to kiss her right there, and whispered in her ear instead, “I’ll tell you if you swear not to tell anyone. It’s a big secret.”

  “I swear,” she replied, still not taking her hand away.

  “I’m the Reich’s most terrible fencer.”

  She started laughing of course, and I together with her, but Heydrich’s voice right above my ear ruined the moment, like he always did.

  “What did I tell you, Friedmann?” The Chief of the RSHA addressed his subordinate behind his back, while eyeing the two of us with his arms crossed on his chest and a disgusted smirk in its usual place. “Our celebrated leader of the Austrian SS at his best, trying to seduce your wife.”

  Surprisingly, Standartenführer Friedmann didn’t say a thing while his boss and I went on with our usual sarcastic rhetorical duel, and only stood behind Heydrich’s back looking at his wife’s shoes. I noticed that Heydrich was scrutinizing her as well, with an interest that I didn’t like at all. I frowned, replied something outright rude to him and handed Annalise back to her husband so he’d take her somewhere, anyplace far from Heydrich’s squinted eyes and his slight smile. I had seen him stare at his victims that way before, in the Gestapo interrogation rooms, when he was deciding what additional torture would surely break them.

  Friedmann saluted the both of us, and with horror nipping at the back of my neck with its frozen grip, I watched Heydrich smirk viciously at me and follow the husband and wife out to the hallway and the elevator. He gave me one more victorious look before disappearing out of sight. The next day, when the two of us were escorting Reichsführer Himmler to yet another meeting, he whispered to me, spitting out words which sent shivers to my spine. “I think I found your little ballerina, whose necklace you so reverently carry on you all the time. A.M. Annalise Meissner.”

  “Friedmann,” I corrected him, already admitting my own defeat, just out of some last power. “Her name is Annalise Friedmann.”

  “Her husband gave her that necklace when she was still a Meissner. I did my research. I told you I would find her, Kaltenbrunner.”

  “And now what?” I growled at him.

  Heydrich smiled his devilish smile. “I’m still thinking about it. I have so many options, you know, as Chief of the RSHA. The Gestapo have a file on her, maybe I’ll do something through them… On the other hand, it’s a shame to kill off such a pretty girl. Maybe I’ll make her into my mistress instead.”

  I sneered. “Don’t flatter yourself. She wouldn’t give you a second look.”

  “If she’s so friendly with you, she’s obviously not too picky.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Reinhard.”

  “Ach, you’re getting angry?” He smiled at me almost cheerily. “That’s good. I like that. Only when you’re really angry, can you show all that you’re worth. Honestly, you’ve been boring me recently with your indifference. I’m so glad the angry Ernst is back, like in the good old days, when you were still power hungry and fearless. Like with Dollfuss.”

  After those last words, which he hissed with pleasure into my ear, did I catch his wrist and twist it as hard as I could, while Reichsführer’s back shielded my actions perfectly away from everybody’s eyes. Heydrich only flinched slightly and smiled wider.

  “I’ll make you into the most merciless murderer that ever walked the Earth, Ernst.” I twisted his wrist harder, but he didn’t seem to feel the pain at all. “Maybe I will kill your girl, just to make you suffer and crave revenge. It’s when you crave revenge that you are truly capable of what your conscience would normally refuse. That’s how we made the angry masses follow us so easily, that’s why we threaten our own subordinates to make them angry, and that’s when they show the best result
s. The biggest war has started, Ernst. The stakes are too high for me to allow you to be such a pathetic drinking nothing. You are a damn good chief of the intelligence if I do say so myself, and I need you to be angry to complete our ultimate goal – to conquer the whole of Europe. Your Fatherland and the Führer needs you angry. He thinks that you’re far too soft, especially with the Jewish policy, and we can’t afford mercy and softness when it comes to conquering our enemies. I promised him that I’d make you into something worthy again, and I will before I die.”

  “You will most certainly die if you touch her, you psychopath!” I hissed back through gritted teeth, turning his wrist almost to breaking point.

  I felt a nudge in my ribs and only then noticed that he had managed to get his gun out of the holster to shove it into my side, while still looking straight ahead, smiling.

  “My only advice to you, Ernst, is to watch your opponent’s moves when you attack next time. Blind, head-on rage will never let you win. Outsmart your enemy.”

  He turned to me and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Outsmart your enemy,” he repeated.

  I don’t know why I suddenly recalled his insistent gaze and those words here in Nuremberg, while taking my scheduled walk in the prison courtyard, counting the last days of the last summer of my life. Maybe it was providence, or some other superstitious thing that I never believed in, but something made me notice a small stick fall from the tree a few steps ahead of me. Why I noticed that stick and walked closer to it is still a mystery to me. Only it wasn’t a simple stick, as I noticed after I approached it. It was a pen, a regular pen that somebody had likely thrown in my way with certain intentions. I hadn’t the slightest idea who and why, but the former head of intelligence in me told me to pick it up, and so I did, casually crouching next to it and pretending to fix my shoe laces. Stealing a glance at the closest guard, who, luckily, was busy fighting with his lighter that refused to light, I picked it up and immediately hid it in my sleeve.

  I got up with the same indifferent look, casually put both hands into my pockets and, knowing that the search at the doors would reveal my newfound treasure right away, tore a tiny hole inside my pocket with the pen’s tip and let it slide inside the lining of my jacket. Satisfied with my hiding arrangements, I carefully raised my eyes to the prison building, searching for the person who might have thrown it. And then I saw him. That son of a bitch who I was ready to kill for giving himself up for whatever reasons he had – my best friend Otto Skorzeny, waving at me vehemently with one hand while holding onto the bars of the window with another. How he managed to reach the window that was almost at ceiling height in his cell, was another unresolved mystery; the first and biggest one was why he went through all these pains in the first place.

  Otto craned his neck, obviously checking the surroundings, and, making sure that no guards were looking his way, started making signs with his free hand, pointing at me, making writing motions and then mysterious circle ones. I frowned and shrugged slightly, indicating that I didn’t understand what he wanted me to do with the pen. Otto made an exasperated face and then, after looking around once again, quickly stuck both hands through the bars, hanging on his elbows only and twisted both hands in the opposite direction as if twisting wet material, only very fast… or opening something.

  “Open it?” I whispered to myself since he was obviously too far to hear me. I stole a quick glance at the nearest guards, who were all wearing bored expressions, having done the same routine day after day and therefore not paying any attention to the prisoners at all. I pointed at my pocket where the pen was hidden and made a motion as if I were opening it.

  Otto broke into the widest grin and nodded several times eagerly, then showed me a thumb up – clearly an American habit he had probably learned during his incarceration – before disappearing from the window so as not to reveal our little conversation that had thankfully gone unnoticed. Outsmart your enemy. Heydrich’s words echoed through my mind again as I went through the gates back to my jail, a quick search not revealing anything. Back in my cell, after returning my shoes to the guard and changing into jail slippers, I immediately went to the bathroom area – the only spot invisible to the guards’ eyes, and opened up the mysterious pen. As my cold and shaking fingers twisted the metallic tip, I almost sang to myself inside.

  Chapter 9

  Linz, October 1940

  “What are you singing, Hansjörg?”

  Reichsführer Himmler had generously given me two days leave for my birthday, which I decided to spend with my family as I hadn’t seen them for over two months. The first thing that unpleasantly surprised me, as soon as I stepped through the door, was my five year old son Hansjörg, who, instead of running up to hug me like he always did, greeted me with a Nazi salute and a loud ‘Heil Hitler!’

  Lisl, my wife, smiled at the boy adoringly, while wiping her hands on a towel. “Isn’t it nice how they teach them now in kindergarten?”

  I let her kiss me on the cheek, all the while studying my son. My three year old daughter Gertrude ran out of the kitchen where she was playing on a blanket spread beside her mother, and I caught her in my arms. My son still stood rigidly at attention like a little soldier.

  “Hansjörg, don’t you want to give your Papa a hug?” I asked the boy. Only then did he break into a wide grin and run up to me as well.

  “They teach them respect and obedience towards anybody wearing a uniform, relative or no relative,” Lisl went on explaining Hansjörg’s strange behavior.

  “Aren’t they a little too small for that?”

  “On the contrary. The earlier they teach them the Party doctrine and its principles, the better.”

  “Better for whom?”

  “For the Party, for the Führer and for the Fatherland. For everybody.”

  I was hoping that the saluting was all that they had taught him, but later that night, after all the guests had already left and I was waiting for Hansjörg to brush his teeth to put him in bed, I heard him singing a familiar tune and walked into the bathroom.

  “Hansjörg?” I called out to him again after he didn’t hear my question the first time. “What are you singing?”

  “It’s the Deutches Jungvolk hymn. I’ll be six in January, so four more years and I can join them! And then four more years, and I’ll be a Hitlerjugend member!” he exclaimed excitedly, his toothbrush in one hand and his eyes sparkling.

  “Why do you want to join them so much, Hansjörg?” I asked warily, leaning on the wall. It was still difficult to process that I left him as a typical carefree child at the end of July and then two months later, only one of which he had spent in kindergarten, I come back to find a newly devout Nazi. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how they were able to bang it all into my son’s head so fast. He had never shown any interest in anything like this before.

  “Because then I will be wearing a uniform like you, go to the meetings like you, learn how to fight and even have my own dagger. I’ll be studying hard and I’ll excel in everything, and they will give me a sieg rune emblem, and then I’ll grow up and join the SS too.”

  “Just to wear a uniform and a dagger?” I smiled at him. Maybe it wasn’t hopeless yet, and it was just a childish fascination with everything war-related. I mean, which boys didn’t like that sort of stuff?

  “No. To fight the enemies of the Reich,” he replied seriously.

  “What enemies?” I frowned. It had suddenly started to sound a little more serious than I had initially thought.

  “The biggest enemy of the Reich – the Jew,” Hansjörg proclaimed with the same eagerness they probably demanded from the young boys during class.

  “The Jews are all gone, Hansjörg.”

  Confusion furrowed his little brow.

  “Well… then the Poles. And…” He looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember what the teacher had said. “Yes, the Bolsheviks! The Bolsheviks I will fight.”

  “Do you even know what a Bolshevik means
?” I chuckled unwillingly. It was both sad and amusing, to hear him repeat things, the meaning of which he didn’t even comprehend.

  My son shook his head embarrassingly and lowered his eyes. “No. But I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

  I swallowed a lump that all of a sudden choked me up for a second, upon witnessing the sincerest expression of a child’s love and admiration.

  “You don’t want to be like me, son,” I said quietly, lifting him up and kissing the soft dark hair on his temple. “Even I don’t want to be like me.”

  Hugging me by the neck Hansjörg looked at me in confusion. “But everyone in my kindergarten is so jealous of me because my father is the leader of the SS… how come you don’t like that you’re the leader of the SS?”

  I opened my mouth and only then realized that I didn’t know what to reply.

  “Do you want to go to the park tomorrow?” I asked, changing the subject from one which I didn’t even know how to discuss with grown-ups, leave alone a little child.

  “No. Can we drive to the mountains instead and you can teach me how to shoot? Everybody in my class will die if I tell them that I learned how to shoot a gun! Please?”

  “No, Hansjörg. You’re far too small for that.”

  “Please? I’ll be careful, I promise.” He made his best begging eyes at me.

  “How about I teach you how to play chess instead? You’ve always wanted me to, and I never had time. I think you’re big enough to play with me.” I winked at him, in the hope of switching his attention to something less violent than guns. Thankfully it worked, and his face lit up once again with enthusiasm.

  “Will you really, Papa?”

  “Tomorrow, first thing in the morning.” I barely contained a sigh of relief, putting the boy to bed. Exhausted with excitement from the eventful day, Hansjörg fell asleep as soon as his eyes closed. I was sitting on the side of my son’s bed, watching him sleep and imprinting in my memory his still innocent features, before they filled his head with dogmatic nonsense, hardened his heart with unquestionable obedience and discipline, and made him into yet another mindless, cold-blooded follower – just like they had already done to me.