The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow Read online

  I got up and went to get my purse.

  “Where are you going?” Heinrich followed me to the hallway.

  “I’ll try to do something for Max,” I whispered to my husband so Ursula wouldn’t hear me.

  “I’ll get her and Greta out of the country. She won’t go by herself.”

  I nodded and kissed him goodbye.

  “I love you, darling. Good luck.”

  “I love you too, sweetheart. Please, be careful.”

  _______________

  Ernst opened the door and grinned seeing me at such late hour.

  “What, you can’t stay away from me even for several hours?” He playfully raised an eyebrow and let me in.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m here for business.”

  “My business hours are from nine to five. Now you can either go upstairs, take your clothes off and make yourself comfortable in my very comfortable bed or come back tomorrow morning.”

  “Do you ever think about anything except sex?!”

  He looked away and tapped his chin with his finger several times pretending to think over my question.

  “Not really, no. Not when you’re standing in front of me in that thin dress, and I know what’s under it, and especially when I start thinking of how I’m going to take it off and—”

  “Ernst! A friend of mine has just been arrested!”

  He grunted and rolled his eyes.

  “Fine. Come to my study, let’s talk.”

  Ernst was sitting in his chair and listening to my story, nodding from time to time. When I finished, he explained that there was nothing he could do till the next day as he’d have to look into Max’s detention report and see how bad his case was.

  “The Führer wants to hang everybody after what happened, and it’s understandable. I’d start hanging people too if someone from my staff put the bomb under my desk.” Ernst smirked and looked at Hitler’s miniature bronze bust on his desk top. “I’ll try to get your friend out, but he’ll have to disappear for the time of the trials to avoid unnecessary questions.”

  I stopped pacing around, walked up to Ernst and leaned on the desk next to him.

  “Maybe he should leave the country altogether? Heinrich is already taking Max’s wife and daughter to Switzerland tonight.”

  He contemplated it for a minute, and then shook his head.

  “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea. If, let’s say, I make him leave on some… I don’t know, certain trip concerning SD-Ausland where he works, that’s one thing. But if he just runs together with his wife, then he’ll be announced the enemy of the Reich for leaving his position in the time of war, and the Gestapo will go after his closest family members. Does he have brothers or sisters? Are his parents still alive?”

  “Yes and yes. All his male relatives are in the military too, together with his father. And he has two sisters I think.”

  “See? He can’t leave,” Ernst concluded and then suddenly snapped his fingers. “But I just got a brilliant idea of how to use him in our common interests.”

  “Common interests?”

  “Yes. Right now our good friend Schellenberg is certainly hoping that everyone is so distracted with the failed coup d’état and the preparation for the People’s trials that he can go back to his shady business with your American friends absolutely unnoticed. Meanwhile I’ll send, what’s his name again? Stern?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll send Stern to Switzerland together with your husband – since he’s the head of the Department D responsible for the espionage in the American sector – on the plea of investigating some suspicious activity involving American officials. Schellenberg will have to back down together with whoever he’s representing in those negotiations, but if he won’t, I’ll show him certain pictures he didn’t know he was posing for, and let him understand that if doesn’t stop playing his games with me, those pictures will end up on the Führer’s table.”

  I smirked.

  “The plan is good, but I think you came up with it to send my husband away and not because you’re so concerned about Schellenberg.”

  “How could you even think so?” Ernst exclaimed in fake indignation, giving me his sincerest look he was capable of. “It’s a pure coincidence, I would never do anything like that on purpose!”

  “Can’t trust you, lawyers! And lawyers, who control the Gestapo, even more!”

  “I am so hurt!” This time he even pressed his hand to his heart. “That’s what I get for acting out of best intentions! Being suspected of something so despicable!”

  “You can stop it now, Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner! Movie people from Hollywood are already on their way to award you with your Oscar as the actor of the year!”

  Ernst flashed me a smile, bowed mockingly and leaned back onto his chair.

  “I have another motive behind the whole scheme… But I have to admit I’m playing blindfolded this time.”

  I was patiently waiting for the further explanation. Ernst looked at the floor, completely hiding his eyes behind his dark eyelashes.

  “And if I’m right, we’ll be able to make Reichsführer take our side in persuading the Führer to stop the extermination program.”

  Chapter 5

  Berlin, September 1944

  With Heinrich gone for over a month already I had to report to Ingrid about all the current affairs. Because of our mutual if not animosity than resentment for sure, I would have rather dealt with her ‘husband’ Rudolf, but he was in a hospital with concussion after a bomb hit the bank where he was working. Tonight I was listening to the concert in which she participated, but instead of enjoying Wagner I was preoccupied with my own very unsettling thoughts.

  Last month the allied forces liberated Paris. On the Eastern front the situation was not better, especially after the Soviet soldiers liberated the first concentration camp they came across – Majdanek – and their hatred for the Nazi regime and everyone representing it, tripled. I remembered my own reaction when I first saw the inside of Auschwitz and learned of the ‘Final Solution’ directive, which was responsible for the extermination of more than five million Jews, leave alone gypsies, prisoners of war and our own Germans, who became political prisoners for different, sometimes absolutely made up, reasons.

  Sometimes the Gestapo would throw people in jail with no reason at all, and Ernst even had to issue a special directive, prescribing all the inmates to be documented and let go if the officers couldn’t point out the reason for their incarceration. I remember how he was throwing papers at some petrified Gestapo agent’s face, yelling out the names of the people whose pardon was granted by him, the Chief of the RSHA, while they were all long dead, killed by the ruthless butchers of the sinister Amt IV.

  A person’s life lost its value a long time ago, and we, the Germans, somehow got used to the thought that the next one arrested could be anyone of us; but I could only imagine the horror of the Russians when they saw what our government were doing to those ‘unfit’ people they so easily excluded from their new Thousand Year Reich. I would loathe the nation that allowed something like that as well. Little did they know that the ordinary people had as little idea about what was going on in their own country as they, the liberators, did.

  After the concert the American counterintelligence agent left her cello in the car and offered to take a walk with me in a little park near the concert hall. I gave her the new information about the capture of the allied airmen, the so-called ‘terror fliers’ who were aiding the French Resistance with fighting, and asked Ingrid once again if her superiors gave their answer concerning the possible negotiations. She answered something evasive, and I once again thought that she might be hiding something.

  “I can’t trust you now that you’re sustaining such a close relationship with the Chief of the RSHA,” Ingrid openly told me a couple of months ago. “Who knows if you’re a double, or shall I say, triple agent now?”

  I sharply drew in cool September night air, trying n
ot to react to Ingrid’s insincerity this time. Last time I completely lost it.

  “You were the one pushing me into this relationship so you’d be able to get more information! Have you forgotten about it already?!”

  “No, I haven’t,” she answered in the same cold, emotionless tone she always used with me. “You were advised to ‘work’ with him, with no feelings attached. And you turned what was supposed to be a professional liaison into a full blown romance. How can you blame me for not trusting you now?”

  I had so many things to tell her, to scream at her face, but I ended up saying nothing at all.

  Ingrid kept her hands in the pockets of the light coat she was wearing on top of her concert dress.

  “Do you want me to give you a ride?” Everything else aside, she had impeccable manners.

  “Thank you, that would be nice.” Since Heinrich needed a car in Switzerland, he took ours, and I had to use Ernst’s driver when it was possible.

  I settled in my seat next to her and told her the address I was going to. Ingrid raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re spending the night by your lover’s?”

  “Yes,” I answered indifferently and checked my make-up in a small mirror.

  “Can I give you a piece of advice? As an older woman to a younger one. Or as an intelligence agent to… ” She glanced at me and slightly shook her head. “Don’t get too attached to him. You two have no future. He has no future; as the Chief of the RSHA he’ll be tried by the military tribunal if he chooses to stay in Germany, and most likely after everything his Office has done, the outcome would not be in his favor, if you understand what I’m trying to say. I mean well, I feel bad for you because you’re too young for all this and you got confused and lost in it without even realizing. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “Ingrid?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know you mean well and I appreciate your effort to care. But next time, please, keep your advice to yourself, will you? I apologize if it sounds rude.”

  “Why, not at all,” she answered surprisingly nicely. And then added, with a different tone in her voice. “I was in love too once, I understand.”

  I started feeling guilty for being so harsh with her and tried to somehow fix the situation.

  “What happened?” I asked politely, sincerely hoping for a story with a husband and three kids waiting for her back in America.

  “He got killed in the Great War.”

  I closed my eyes. I hated her for saying that and hated myself a thousand times more because I didn’t want to listen.

  But it all didn’t matter in the end when I’d see his smile as he would open the door to me, with the usual glass of cognac in his hand, so incredibly irresistible in his half-opened shirt. Sometimes the music was playing loud in his living room, and he’d meet me singing some popular song without a trace of an accent. Oh, he could speak Hochdeutsch like the noblest Prussian aristocrat when he wanted to, but preferred to annoy all the Germans, despising his Austrian descent, sounding as ‘Austrian’ as he could, sometimes switching to an upper-Austrian dialect that they could hardly understand.

  Still singing, he would put away his glass, offer me his hand, close the door with his foot and dance with me right in the hallway. Quite often he’d listen to the BBC or an American radio, and we would dance to the prohibited jazz like in some American movie.

  Sometimes we’d pour the whole bottle of shampoo into the bathtub and stay in it together, drinking champagne and feeding each other fruit until the water would get cold. Then we’d move to the fireplace and sit next to it, wrapped in one big blanket, look at the fire and enjoy the silence. We didn’t have to talk at moments like those, we somehow always knew what the other one was thinking.

  Then Ernst would pick me up from his lap and carry me upstairs, and we’d make love, fall asleep and make love again, until one of us would realize that we overslept for work again.

  Our mornings were always hilarious. We’d run around the house trying to find where we left pieces of our clothing the night before, getting scorned by Elke, Ernst’s housekeeper, who would yell for the tenth time that the breakfast was getting cold. We’d quickly stuff the food in our mouths without even sitting down, drink burning coffee in one shot and run out to Ernst’s car, by which his driver was always waiting at attention, no matter what time it was.

  Halfway to the office Ernst would remember that he forgot his papers in his study, and we’d burst out laughing like two silly kids with no care in the world. Yes, that was the reason why I didn’t listen to Ingrid. We were too happy together, and I couldn’t care less what would happen tomorrow.

  _______________

  “Otto, it’s the Reich Main Security Office building, we have a cafeteria you know, you don’t have to chew right in front of my table!”

  My unexpected outburst almost made the Austrian choke on his sandwich.

  “It never bothered you before,” he answered with a full mouth, sounding a little offended. “And there’s no one in the anteroom anyway.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “What’s the point then?”

  “You with your food and Ernst with his constant smoking are making me sick!”

  “Sick?”

  “Yes!” I angrily snapped at the officer, who did not really deserve it, and started to change paper in the typing machine.

  I was just going to apologize and explain that I was having a bad day, when Otto all of a sudden blurted out, “Well, maybe you, you know…”

  “What?” I raised my eyes just in time to see him take another huge bite and nod at my waist.

  “Pregnant.”

  I blinked at him several times while he kept chewing on his sandwich as if nothing happened.

  “What did you say?”

  “You’re a little snippy lately. And complaining about the smells making you sick. My wife was like that when she got pregnant.” While I was sitting there speechless, Otto finished his lunch, wiped his hands on the handkerchief and got up. “But maybe I’m wrong. I’m not a doctor after all.”

  The diversionist smiled, slightly patted my shoulder on his way out, and closed the door after himself. I was anxiously trying to remember when I had my last period. I even took the calendar out of the drawer and rubbed my forehead going through the dates. The beginning of August, long after Heinrich had left to Switzerland. Yes, that was it, because Ernst kept complaining that he had to deal with ‘that’ just when everything was finally so perfect and my husband was out of his way. I chuckled and then broke into cold sweat realizing that it was the end of September. At least three weeks late. I grunted and covered my face with my hands.

  “Otto, the goddamn doctor!”

  “Excuse me?” Georg, Ernst’s adjutant, who had just entered the anteroom clearly didn’t catch the meaning of my last phrase.

  “Nothing. I have to leave for about an hour, it’s urgent. Can you cover me, please?”

  “Of course.”

  I smiled in appreciation and almost ran to the nearest hospital. At the reception I had to wait longer than I expected because all the doctors were busy with the patients they just received after another bombing. By the time one of them finally invited me into the examination room, I almost gave myself a nervous breakdown.

  “Yes, you’re pregnant.” The doctor confirmed my worst fears with a smile and took his glasses off. “About six weeks, I’d say. Congratulations. Your husband will be very happy.”

  My husband will shoot me in the head. Together with the father of my baby, I almost replied. Unless I’d shoot that ‘father’ first!

  As soon as I got back I let Georg go for a break in gratitude for minding the office and was standing by the table separating new reports into different stacks when Ernst came back from the Reich Chancellery. I was standing with my back to the door and thought that it was Georg, until he hugged me from behind and kissed my neck.

  “Mm, sugar, you look so pretty today,” he purr
ed into my ear. “I was thinking about you during that never-ending conference and about what I’m going to do to you when I come back…”

  “You already did everything you could!” I slapped his hands on my waist and turned around, ready to murder him right there. “I warned you, I told you to be careful, but did you listen? No! You never do, you dirty, horny animal!!! Well, good job, I hope you’re happy!”

  “What?..” Obviously confused with my behavior and angry speech, Ernst blinked at me several times.

  “I’m pregnant!!!” I yelled probably louder than I should have and quickly glanced at the door.

  “You… really? Good!”

  He had such a conceited look that he immediately reminded me of my grandmother’s cat: ‘yes, I did jump on the counter, threw the jar with sour cream down on the floor and ate it all. And I am not ashamed. And will most certainly do it again.’

  “Good? That’s your reply?!”

  “Why? I’m happy. Aren’t you?”

  I tried my best to remain angry, but couldn’t. I actually was happy. Ridiculously happy.

  _______________

  Linz, Upper Austria, October 4, 1944

  I didn’t want to go but he made me. He physically took me out of the house and put me into the car, after walking over to my closet and picking out several dresses I might need. I had nothing else to do but comply – it was his birthday after all, and he wouldn’t leave me alone in Berlin where the bombs started to fall more and more often.

  “Your wife is going to be there,” I tried my last argument on the way to the military airport. “How am I going to look her in the eyes?”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  Berlin was seeing us off with a nasty grey rain and cold wind. Linz welcomed us with sunshine and piercing blue sky and bright spikes of mountain chains, translucent air and silence. I almost forgot how it sounded – the silence; after constant rumble of the planes, after muffled explosions and the vibrating ground, sirens and distant artillery, that silence seemed almost unnatural.