The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow Page 6

“Of course not!”

  “Then why would he suspect that?”

  “That’s what I’ve been asking myself for the past hour. But that’s not even the main question that interests me. What is more curious about all this is that why would that sleazy waste of life that calls himself the Chief of the Intelligence warn Annalise about Müller’s investigation?” Ernst blew out a cloud of smoke and frowned at something in the distance.

  “Because they used to be on friendly terms?” Otto suggested.

  “No. People like Schellenberg don’t have friends. They have people they can use for certain purposes and dispose of them when they are not needed anymore. He told Annalise all that knowing that she’s going to tell me everything. But why? Why would he warn me through her about Müller?”

  “He couldn’t fight his feelings anymore and finally realized that he’s secretly in love with you?” Otto said with a dead serious expression on his face.

  “What?!” Ernst almost dropped his cigarette, and I started laughing.

  “What? You’re a very handsome man, you know.”

  “Move the hell away from me to the other side of the bench, please. You’re spending too much time with your diversionists in the mountains, and I’m starting to wonder what you guys are doing there all by yourselves, if you start talking like that.”

  Otto finally dropped his game and raised both hands in the air in fake surrender, laughing.

  “Hey, hey, no dirty insinuations, please! I’m just playing with you. I don’t know what to tell you, you’re the brains here, I’m the one who follows the orders. Tell me to kill that idiot, and I’ll do it gladly. But if you want me to help you with understanding his logic…”

  He shook his head and shrugged apologetically.

  And then a thought suddenly crossed my mind. “I remember that he was telling me once that the best defense is offense.”

  “What?” Both men turned to me; I felt like I just stumbled upon something very important.

  “Best defense is offense. That’s one of his favorite tactics, I know it from working with him,” I continued. “It means that you have to attack first in order to keep the suspicions away from yourself. He told me about the investigation not because he wanted to warn us, but because—”

  “Because he wants us to concentrate on a non-existent threat!” Ernst finished for me. “That’s right! Schellenberg wants us to start thinking that we’re under constant surveillance and make us lay low to distract us from what’s really going on.”

  “What the hell are the two of you talking about?” Otto was already tired from turning his head from me to Ernst and back.

  “Schellenberg wants me to think that I’m being investigated for the negotiations with the enemy when in reality—”

  “He’s the one who’s negotiating with the enemy!” We finished in unison.

  “Are you two serious?!” Otto looked genuinely astonished.

  “That’s the only logical conclusion.” Ernst shrugged. “That scheming bastard knows that I can’t stand him and that I’m constantly watching what he’s doing. So he decided to team up with Müller and to intimidate me through Annalise in order to proceed with the possible negotiations, while I’ll be supposedly keeping quiet trying to figure out what incriminating action I’ve done that I’m being suspected of treason. That’s the motive he had for trying to get me out of his way by the hands of the British agent in the Protectorate, which we couldn’t figure out! But after that plan didn’t work, he thought of this new one.”

  Otto finally understood everything. “That son of a bitch! What are you going to do now? Confront him in the open?”

  “No.” A sinister smile touched the corners of Ernst’s lips. “No. That’ll be too simple. Two can play this game. I’ll let him think that I’m in the dark about what’s going on and then grab him right when he least expects it. Red-handed.”

  “You’re one evil man!” Otto didn’t even try to hide his excitement. “I idolize your evil genius!”

  “What can I say, I’m the master of evil.” Ernst gave his fellow Austrian a little wink. “But I’m going to need your help.”

  “I’m all at your service!”

  “Good. I’ll need you to find a woman, an agent, who’d be loyal to us only, preferably Swiss, not good looking, one who’d never stand out from the crowd. Do you have anybody that fits the criteria?”

  “I do, but you have strange tastes, my friend…”

  “Stop with the jokes, I’m being serious here. Most likely Schellenberg will be having those negotiations on the territory of Switzerland, he’s not stupid and wouldn’t want to incriminate himself here, in Germany. Have her follow him like a shadow while he’s still in Berlin, and I’ll make sure to give you his destination point when he decides that it’s safe to go to Switzerland. And I have a feeling that it’ll happen very soon…”

  _______________

  Of all his qualities Ernst had one peculiar feature: if he didn’t like somebody, he made sure to do his best to let that person know it. That’s why now, sitting at the top of the table with Müller and Pohl – the man in charge of the concentration camps system – reading out their reports to him, he was staring hard at the Chief of SD-Ausland, who by all means was trying to escape that stare, but in vain.

  As an invited stenographer I was sitting by the window with a notepad on my lap and shifting my eyes from Schellenberg, who seemed to be getting more and more uncomfortable, to Ernst, whose grin was getting wider and wider as if he was sensing the young man’s nervousness.

  “Herr Obergruppenführer?” The Chief of the Bureau for Economic Administration Oswald Pohl addressed Ernst, who seemed to be ignoring not only his entire report but also the following question concerning the ‘lending’ of camp prisoners to some factories inside Germany for slave labor.

  The Chief of the RSHA finally stopped tormenting his subordinate Schellenberg with his staring and lazily turned his head to Pohl. “What is it?”

  “I just wanted to know your opinion on the matter…”

  “My opinion on the matter is that if someone needs more workers, I will gladly lend them some of my immediate staff.” The Austrian leaned back onto his chair, smiling with pleasure at how Schellenberg jerked his head up from his papers. “Some of them need to do more manual labor, because without physical exercise they start scheming too much.”

  Pohl and Chief of the Gestapo Müller exchanged quick looks. Walther Schellenberg lost his always perfect composure and swallowed nervously, frowning.

  “Excuse me, Herr Obergruppenführer,” he said with hardly masked agitation in his voice. Ernst was the only person who could make him lose his cool, and he hated him even more for that. “I don’t understand what you’re implying.”

  “Who said I was talking about you?” Ernst raised his eyebrow, reached for his coffee and took a slow sip. Taking his sweet time, he picked up a little biscuit with caviar from the silver plate in front of him, and was enjoying his snack without taking his eyes of the Chief of the Intelligence. “Or you have reasons to feel guilty?”

  “No, I do not, Herr Obergruppenführer. That’s why I am so confused with all the constant accusations from your side.” He sounded really offended now.

  “Accusations?” Ernst laughed. “No, my little friend. If I had any accusations against you, we would be talking in Gruppenführer Müller’s ‘office’ downstairs, in the basement.”

  Müller shifted in his chair uncomfortably, clearly having no desire to get in the middle of the confrontation between the Chief of the RSHA and the Chief of SD-Ausland; siding with Schellenberg against the Austrian probably didn’t seem like such a good idea to him anymore, judging by his quickly averted eyes.

  Realizing that he was on his own, Walther Schellenberg decided to play the offended victim’s card to the end and straightened out in his seat.

  “If you have something to tell me, Herr Obergruppenführer, I’d prefer to hear it as it is. I don’t find it tasteful to throw un
grounded insinuations against me in front of the others.”

  Ernst burst out laughing.

  “Tasteful? As you constantly point it out yourself, I’m Austrian, Herr Schellenberg. We don’t give a fuck about ‘tasteful’!”

  “I’m sorry, Herr Obergruppenführer, but I can’t stay here and serve as subject to your attacks! I am asking for you to excuse me from this meeting.”

  “Go ahead.”

  The amused Chief of the RSHA followed the young man with his eyes, as he saluted all the officers and hastily stormed out of the conference room. After the door closed behind Schellenberg, Ernst took a nice stretch, interlaced his fingers behind his head and leaned back onto his chair looking more than satisfied with himself.

  “Nothing like a good laugh during the lunch, huh, gentlemen? So, where were we? Slave labor? One just got away, Oswald, you’ll just have to go get him yourself! He’ll make up for twenty Jews, I swear! We just have to apply the energy he spends on his conspiracies to something more constructive!”

  Still laughing, Ernst gave me a wink and grabbed another caviar biscuit. Müller finally looked up at him.

  “Herr Obergruppenführer, would you like me to… follow up on something… concerning Oberführer Schellenberg?”

  “Follow up?” Ernst masterfully faked a surprise on his face. “Why, are you suspecting him of something?”

  “No, Herr Obergruppenführer. I thought, you did.”

  “Me? No.” Ernst gave the Chief of the Gestapo a hard look, but then quickly changed it into an almost genuine smile. Understand it like you want. Maybe I know about you two, and maybe I don’t. But either way, you won’t be sleeping too well at night from now on. “I just like messing with that kid. It makes me feel good.”

  _______________

  Berlin, July 20, 1944

  Otto Skorzeny was indeed the most devoted soldier to his Austrian friend. All Ernst had to do was to set the goal and sleep soundly, knowing that his loyal Otto was doing everything possible and impossible to achieve that goal. Same thing happened this time, when the smiling from ear to ear diversionist appeared in the doors of the anteroom waving a thick package he was holding.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he greeted me with a wink. “Is our friend busy?”

  “You know that he’s never too busy for you, Otto. I’ll let him know that you’re here.”

  Ernst motioned us both inside and told us to close the door behind, looking inquisitively at the package Otto brought.

  “Is that what I think it is? The report?”

  “Better.”

  The Austrian intentionally slowly strutted to his boss’s desk and dropped the sealed file on the wooden surface with the look of a magician demonstrating his favorite trick.

  “Voila!”

  I walked up to the desk as well and was waiting impatiently while Ernst was tearing the paper open. Inside there were multiple pictures of Walther Schellenberg, the Chief of SD-Ausland, shaking hands and talking to certain western allied countries representatives, judging by their clothing. The ‘westerners’ didn’t look familiar to me at all, but that was quite understandable too: even if the Allies were having talks with us, Germans, they wouldn’t want to send anybody who’d be easy to recognize, in order not to compromise themselves.

  “Aha. So the Soviet partners weren’t even invited to the tea party, huh?” Ernst was smiling even wider than Otto now. “Which means that our friend Schellenberg is hoping to sign a peace treaty with the Western Allies only, and what seems logical in this case, to try and persuade them to fight together with us against the Soviets. I wonder what the Americans and the British said though. You don’t have an audio for that by chance, do you?”

  “Are you serious?!” Otto gave his friend a dirty look. “I give you the finger and you want to bite off the whole hand! For your information, I was hanging off the roof risking my life taking those pictures for you, and the security in that hotel was very impressive, I gotta tell you. And now you want the audio too? Maybe I should have asked them to sign the confessions for you?”

  “I just asked, stop your hysterics, lady!”

  “Who’s that?” I pointed to the man on the picture, breaking another play-fight between the Austrians.

  “That’s the right hand of William Donovan, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, but not Allen Dulles, his official protégé who everyone knows; that’s his other helper, Brian Thomas, the shady figure behind everything hush-hush.”

  “They weren’t there officially,” I concluded.

  “Of course not. Just testing the ground probably, without their superiors knowing.”

  “How is it possible?” Otto inquired.

  “The Office of Strategic Services is like our SD-Ausland basically, but unlike us Donovan isn’t really reporting about all his activities to the President. Don’t forget, he’s the guy from Wall Street and has enough money to buy all the influence he wants. The OSS is his new favorite toy, he has more than enough resources to do whatever he wants with that right hand, the OSS, when the left hand – his own government – won’t even suspect what’s going on. And if the negotiations go in a direction suitable for the US, he’ll report about this initiative of his to the President and will look like a daring hero.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “It certainly is.” Ernst kept looking through the photos. “But while all is clear with the Americans, my next question is who’s behind the negotiations from our side? The Führer would have a fit if he found out, so who sanctioned it? Schellenberg is definitely too small of a fish to initiate such meetings, he has no power in his hands.”

  “Nobody does except for the Führer.” Otto shrugged.

  “Right. But the Americans came to talk to somebody whose authority they trust. Someone, who is just below the Führer, but close enough to step up if something—”

  The phone call interrupted the Chief of the RSHA’s thoughts. He picked up the receiver and froze in his seat after hearing the voice on the other end. Otto and I exchanged looks while Ernst was talking to someone in a grave voice. After he hung up he turned to us and quietly said, “The Führer has just been assassinated. He might be dead.”

  _______________

  What was going on in the course of the next few days could be described only as total chaos. The main conspirators – Claus von Stauffenberg, his adjutant Werner von Haeften, General Friedrich Olbricht and Colonel Albrecht von Quirnheim – were executed by the firing squad on July 21, after their attempt to kill Hitler by placing a bomb under the table in his conference room failed. The bomb did explode, but by some strange coincidence the hardwood table top shielded the Führer and saved his life.

  As soon as it was announced on the public radio several hours after the assassination that the Führer was alive and only slightly wounded, I immediately remembered Heinrich’s words that the conspirators would never succeed. The Wehrmacht Resistance, led by brave Claus von Stauffenberg, didn’t get a chance to take over the power in their hands because of their indecisiveness, and many of the members preferred to commit suicide than be publicly executed by the Führer’s order. The investigation of the plot was delegated to Ernst directly, and he had to lock himself up in his office for several days. Schellenberg and his negotiations had to be put aside.

  It was the first peaceful evening after that horrible week, and Heinrich was working on some papers in his study while I was reading a book on a little sofa next to him. But then loud banging on the door caught us off guard; it was Ursula.

  “They have just arrested Max,” she said in a shaky voice. “He told me to take Greta and leave immediately. What shall I do?”

  The reprisals were only gaining their full force, and now they concerned our closest friends.

  We made Ursula drink three glasses of straight whiskey to stop the tears she’d broken into as soon as she started telling us how the Gestapo handcuffed her husband as if he were an ordinary street criminal.

  “After so many
years of loyal service,” Ursula kept repeating, from time to time bringing Heinrich’s handkerchief to her sky blue eyes, now all puffy and red. “How could they… But he’s at fault too, I understand, he should’ve listened to me when I was telling him to stop it with those people! What are they going to do to him now? Is there anything we can do? Is there anything you can do?”

  She held her breath looking at Heinrich expectantly. He lowered his eyes.

  “Heinrich?” Ursula put her hand on her chest, struggling with words. “They’re not going to execute him, are they? Please, tell me they’re not… He didn’t do anything, just went to a couple of meetings, that’s all…”

  “Ursula, do you have any family abroad?” Heinrich asked in a soft voice, instead of answering her question. She didn’t know it yet, but under the law of ‘the blood fault’ the Führer ordered the immediate family members of the conspirators to be arrested and convicted as well.

  “No…” she hardly whispered and swallowed hard. She finally started to comprehend the severity of the situation.

  I kneeled on the floor in front of her and took my best friend’s hands in mine. I hated to see her like that and was feverishly thinking of what could possibly be done for Max.

  “Ursula, why don’t you take Greta and go to Zurich? Stay with my parents for now, they’ll be more than happy to take you in.”

  “I’m not leaving Max,” she answered with determination in her voice.

  “I promise he’ll be fine. We’ll get him out.”

  I was probably saying the biggest lie to her at that moment, but I needed her to run while she still could. According to the law they’d most likely send Ursula to one of the labor camps, and she wouldn’t last a week there, I knew that; not with her delicate hands that never knew any work, not with that carefree life she always led. And Greta, that little angel with curly blond hair and a face of a doll, as a minor she’d be given up for adoption to one of the childless families and probably lost forever to any relatives who’d try to find her later. No, I couldn’t let that happen.