The Austrian: Book Two Read online

  “He says that it makes me unreliable as an agent and as a soldier. He says that it is imperative for every SS man to have faith in God, but in a Germanic God, who favors only the Germanic race, while the Catholic doctrine that I so blindly follow – those are his words – is highly corrupted by the Vatican, the only purpose of which is to avert me from the only spiritual leader I should be devoting myself to, the Führer Adolf Hitler.” Höttl swallowed hard, lowering his head as if a heavy burden of guilt, or fear, was pressing him down. “Gruppenführer Heydrich put an ultimatum before me: either I leave the church altogether, or he puts me in jail together with the rest of the religious ‘fanatics’ as he called them.”

  He drew in sharply and looked up at me at last, with unmasked desperation in his eyes. “I refused. I don’t know if he has issued a warrant for my arrest yet. That is the reason of my visit today, Herr Gruppenführer. You are my last hope. I heard Reichsführer Himmler and Obergruppenführer Dietrich mention your name on several occasions, and it seemed to me you have their respect and ear. I was hoping that if you could only write a small note to either of them, testifying in my defense… I understand how audacious it may sound from my side as you don’t actually know me, but… as a faithful Catholic to a… former Catholic, I thought my word would have some value to you so you could mention my name before them. I am willing to work for the greatness of the Reich, and I assure you that my spiritual inclinations will never be in the way of fulfilling my duties…”

  Höttl’s voice trailed off, and for the first time I sensed the falseness in his tone.

  “Why did Heydrich make such a fuss about it then?” I slightly squinted my eyes at him. “There are a lot of Catholics working in SD, and it’s very rare that someone has problems concerning their faith. Unless it does interfere with their direct duties.”

  Judging by how quickly Höttl turned red once again, I guessed that my words hit their aim. I chuckled slightly, thinking that it was fortunate for the poor fellow that he was working in the SD office in Berlin; with every emotion written on his face he’d make the lousiest infiltrated agent in history.

  “Gruppenführer Heydrich wanted to transfer me to Gruppenführer Müller’s Amt,” he confessed almost inaudibly. “The Gestapo. I said I couldn’t… Counterintelligence is one thing, but that… I would never…”

  I nodded several times, to my own big surprise sympathizing with Höttl. Without suspecting it, he reminded me of myself, only two years earlier, when I was doing everything possible and impossible to stay as far from the sinister Department IV as I could. Heydrich knew how to break people and make them do whatever he wanted them to do, and the more uncomfortable they were in the new position, the more he would pressure. I felt a pinch of envy toward Höttl that he had at least stood up for himself and his beliefs, when I had succumbed to my new fate almost disgustingly willingly. He was afraid for his soul though; mine was already lost, so what would I care?

  I felt Höttl’s intent gaze on my thoughtful face. I smiled and voiced the decision that came so surprisingly easily to me.

  “I promise you, Obersturmführer, that I will do everything in my power to help your situation. As a matter of fact, instead of writing a note, I will go to Berlin and I’ll speak to Reichsführer about you.”

  Höttl blinked at me several times with his mouth agape, until a beaming smile replaced his shocked expression, comprehending my words at last.

  “Thank you, Herr Gruppenführer!” Forgetting all military etiquette, Höttl jumped from his seat and reached over the desk, longing to shake my hand. I gladly offered it to him, and he squeezed it tightly with both of his sweaty palms. “Oh, thank you! You don’t understand how much I appreciate… Thank you!”

  “Don’t thank me yet, Obersturmführer. We still don’t know what the outcome will be. And before I go to Berlin, I suggest you stay here in Vienna until I inform you of our departure. I’m thinking in two days we’ll be able to leave. You’ll travel with me.”

  “Thank you, Herr Gruppenführer,” he repeated once again, almost reverently. “All those people were right about you. You are a most fair and honorable man. I will never forget that you offered your help to a man in need, a man you didn’t even know. God will repay you one day for your kindness.”

  Höttl quickly looked away, as if ashamed of his last words, and so did I, uncomfortable at such praises which were alien to me. I had lost my chance for salvation a long time ago, but maybe I could still help one who wasn’t as much a sinner as I was.

  _______________

  Nuremberg prison, May 1946

  “I tried everything in my powers to help you, Herr Obergruppenführer.”

  “Who do you think you’re addressing as Obergruppenführer, Höttl?” I smiled sadly at my former loyal subordinate, who had finally been allowed to visit me in my cell. “Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner is dead. There is a war criminal Kaltenbrunner, but he’ll soon be dead, too.”

  He’d walked into my cell with his shoulders hunched as it is, but after my words he lowered his head even more, biting his lip in exasperation.

  “They wouldn’t allow me to testify in your defense in person, Herr Ober…” He caught himself calling me by my old title again and looked at me inquisitively, as if asking what he should be addressing me as.

  “Call me Ernst, Wilhelm.”

  He had just opened his mouth, but still couldn’t allow himself such familiarity.

  “Dr. Kaltenbrunner,” he finished his sentence at last with another inquisitive look in my direction.

  “That’ll do just fine.”

  Höttl shifted in a shaky chair. Not that the MPs were short of normal chairs that wouldn’t make threatening screeches every time someone sat on them, but they purposely provided us with ones that wouldn’t hold a man’s weight if one stood on them, to minimize the risk of us hanging ourselves from the ceiling pipes; like one of us, Ley, had already done, before the trial had started.

  I envied Ley a little. At least he had the guts to do what the rest of us contemplated doing for too long, until they stripped us of any and all means of following through with our desperate intentions. Now it was too late.

  “You saved my life, and I failed you so,” Höttl muttered almost to himself, without lifting his eyes from the floor.

  “No, you didn’t. It’s not your fault. You did all you could. Your affidavit was the only thing that made me smile during the hearing. I do appreciate what you did for me. Don’t blame yourself for anything. The outcome of my case was decided a year ago. They want to hang me, and they will.”

  He eyed me for a while, biting on his lip.

  “Are you afraid, Dr. Kaltenbrunner?”

  I pondered his question for a while, and then shook my head slowly.

  “No, Wilhelm. I was, but not anymore. I came to terms with it. I know I’ll die soon, and I learned to accept it. What’s the use in meaningless worries?”

  “It’s not fair,” Höttl barely whispered.

  “Yes, it is. I deserved it.”

  “No, you didn’t. Not you! You’ve always fought honorably against them, against Himmler himself, against—”

  “Wilhelm, please, don’t,” I interrupted him softly but firmly. “You’re opening old wounds that I’ve been trying to ignore. I don’t want you to speak highly of me. I’ve learned that it’s much easier to deal with my fate when I’m hated by everyone. It will be much easier to step on the gallows thinking that there will be no people crying for me. Please, leave it that way.”

  We both went silent for a while, until I said quietly, “It’s my son’s birthday today. He’s one year old, can you imagine? So big already.”

  Höttl seemed puzzled. “I thought Hansjörg was eleven?”

  “No, not Hansjörg. I have another son. Ernst.” I instinctively touched my jacket, where, in the inner pocket next to my heart, I carried my most treasured possession. “Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes, of course! I never knew that…”

>   He got up from the chair and sat next to me on the narrow cot. I took the picture out of my pocket and gave it to him.

  “It was taken last year. He was only three months old. I don’t even know what he looks like now.”

  Höttl smiled fondly at the picture.

  “He looks just like you.”

  “Yes, he does.” I smiled too and then sighed deeply, trying to get rid of the dull pain which numbed my chest every time I thought of the two of them – Annalise and my son. Knowing what the outcome of my trial would be, I made myself lock them both out of my mind, persuading myself that she’d already forgotten about me, that she was safe with her husband Heinrich, that she’d move on with her life after my execution and be happy. And my son… my son had never even seen me. He would be raised by his stepfather and would never regret not knowing his real one. That would be best for the both of them.

  “Is that..?” Höttl inquired in surprise, getting a better look at the woman in the picture.

  “Yes, that’s her,” I admitted quietly. He knew Annalise as my personal secretary but never as my mistress. Nobody did in the former RSHA office, except for Schellenberg, but even he could only guess about the true nature of our relationship.

  “Congratulations,” Höttl smiled again and shook my hand.

  “Thank you. Don’t tell anyone, will you?”

  “No, of course not.” Höttl pressed my hand suddenly and muttered, more to himself than to me, “I wish I could do something… Anything.”

  Chapter 6

  Berlin, February 1940

  I wish I could do something to him, anything, just to make him suffer. How dare he put his nose in my business? I clenched my jaw and squeezed the wheel tighter, anger heating up again at the memory of Heydrich’s victorious smirk.

  He lost to me in the fight that night, but something was telling me that the real battle was ahead. Heydrich was suspiciously silent as I was talking to Reichsführer about Obersturmführer Höttl’s case. Höttl himself was sitting quietly in the chair next to me, nodding to whatever I was saying and agreeing to all the remarks that Himmler was making. Heydrich meanwhile was observing the three of us with a piercing gleam in his eyes, resting his head on his hand against all the usual etiquette. I hoped that the Chief of the RSHA wouldn’t be present, but Reichsführer insisted on Heydrich’s attendance, since it was him who had initiated the prosecution of the ‘unreliable’ SD agent Höttl.

  “Is this agreeable with you, Reinhard?” Himmler addressed his black-clad protégé after I proposed to leave Höttl in his position instead of transferring him to the Gestapo, but lower him in rank in reprimand for disobedience instead of incarceration.

  “No, Reichsführer. I’m afraid I don’t find such a punishment harsh or satisfactory enough.” For some reason he was looking me in the eye instead of his superior, but then a barely noticeable smirk tugged a corner of his mouth up. He didn’t care about Höttl; it was a personal power struggle between the two of us at this point.

  “Punishment for being a Catholic?” I arched my brow.

  “Punishment for devoting one’s faith to something else but the Party and the Führer,” Heydrich replied coolly, slightly squinting his blue eyes.

  I leaned to the back of the chair and crossed my arms on my chest. “So you disagree with Reichsführer’s opinion, Gruppenführer Heydrich?”

  “I wouldn’t dare. Reichsführer asked me a question, and I answered.”

  Himmler meanwhile was watching our polemical duel with a slightly amused smile, clearly in no rush to interfere. I had known him long enough to be well aware of his another habit: to bait two of his subordinates, with more or less equal abilities, to see who would come out the winner. That was his own way of finding his new favorites. I was in no way interested in taking up Heydrich’s position of being Himmler’s confidante, and kept playing this game of his only because I had promised Höttl my protection.

  “I understand your sentiments concerning this case, Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner,” the Chief of SD continued. “After all, you both belong to the same faith—”

  “I left the Church, Gruppenführer. A long time ago. I’m surprised that you, the most informed person in the Reich intelligence, missed that.”

  “Quite the contrary, Gruppenführer. You proclaimed that you left the Church, but you never officially filed the papers to the Vatican demanding that you be excluded from the Catholic Church. Of that I am very well informed.”

  Himmler’s adjutant, Peiper, a strikingly handsome young man who Himmler had grown so fond of that he had prolonged his adjutancy from three months to a year, stuck his head through the door, informing Reichsführer that the chief of the Gestapo, Müller, had just brought some papers that demanded his immediate attention. The always secretive Reichsführer decided to meet Müller in the anteroom alone, leaving the three of us in his office. As soon as the door closed behind him, I turned to Heydrich.

  “All right, Gruppenführer. Let’s make a deal.”

  “A deal?” He seemed amused. “What kind of a deal?”

  “Is this conversation being recorded? I suggest you turn the device off, or someone might accidentally hear something very compromising.”

  Heydrich’s expression momentarily changed from gleeful to scowling. He bore into me with his eyes for a moment, but then slowly rose, walked over to Himmler’s desk and flipped an invisible switch under it.

  “Go ahead, Kaltenbrunner.”

  I smirked and nodded at his uniform.

  “How about the tape recorder in your pocket?” I took a wild guess just to test him. With an even deeper scowl he took a small black recording device out of his jacket and, making sure I saw it, he pressed the button and stopped the tape.

  “Smart move.”

  “What about him?” A nod in Höttl’s direction.

  I got up and motioned my head in the direction of the window, in the furthest corner from where the desk stood, inviting Heydrich to follow me. As soon as we were far enough away that Höttl would not hear us, I took out my cigarette case, but Heydrich clasped my wrist with an iron grip.

  “Reichsführer doesn’t like it when anyone smokes in his office. Especially you. He doesn’t like you at all. Nobody does here. What the hell do you, a pigheaded Austrian moron, think you’re doing, coming here and interfering with my office’s business?!”

  I looked at his hand still on top of mine, collecting all my efforts to keep my emotions under control, and asked, “Are we going to fight or talk? Either one works for me. I can always tell you my proposition while you sit by the wall with a broken nose. Ask your Gestapo people, I have a killer punch.”

  “Are you threatening me?” He narrowed his eyes even more.

  “Warning you. Better let go, I’m not famous for my patience either,” I grumbled through gritted teeth.

  He finally released my wrist and I demonstratively dusted off my cuff, before putting the case back into my pocket.

  “Well?” Heydrich demanded impatiently.

  “Well, you agree to what I proposed concerning Höttl and we part ways like two best friends.”

  “And why would I do that?” He sneered.

  “I don’t know. Maybe so I don’t leak a certain document to the foreign press.”

  “What document?” Heydrich inquired haughtily, looking me up and down contemptuously. “You don’t have access to any important documents, idiot.”

  “You wish you were right, don’t you?” I replied sweetly. “How about a certain release form, signed by the camp Kommandant, together with the agreement of non-distribution of any information, for thirty Mauthausen camp internees, who disappeared in strange circumstances directly prior to the supposed attack of Polish troops on Germany?”

  I noticed with great pleasure how pale Heydrich had suddenly become.

  “You didn’t really keep any documented proof, did you? God, you’re even stupider than I thought! You will go to whatever place you were dumb enough to hide them and destroy th
em immediately!!!” He hissed in fury, with visible effort toward keeping his voice down from Höttl.

  I smiled, studying my nails. “Sorry, can’t help you here. They’re in Switzerland, at an attorney’s office. Can’t tell you the name, but hope you understand my reasoning. Neatly packed together are my statement about the events, preceding the very suspicious Polish attack, and my witness’s statement, Otto Skorzeny’s. And in case something happens to me or him, the attorney is instructed to release them immediately, to all the biggest foreign press agencies. Checkmate, Reinhard.”

  He flinched at the familiarity, his hand reaching for his holster without him even realizing. I sadly thought that he was probably consumed by the same demons that I was, which took control of him each time he was in fury. I loathed him with all my heart, and yet I was so sickeningly like him in this respect.

  “Go ahead, shoot me,” I said calmly, suddenly wishing for him to do it. Maybe I needed to be shot, like a rabid dog. Maybe we all did.

  Something changed in his whole demeanor, as if the flames engulfing him just a second ago, plainly visible in his eyes, had changed at once into ice cold indifference as he lowered his eyes to the floor, and a content and almost angelic smile changed his face again. He glanced at me, and I saw the devilish grin back in its place on his face

  “No, I don’t want to ruin Reichsführer’s carpet, Kaltenbrunner.”

  As if by magic, Himmler walked in at the mention of his name and stopped in the middle of the room, only now noticing the two of us in the furthest corner with his shortsighted eyes.

  “What are you two conspiring about there?”

  “Nothing, Herr Reichsführer,” I replied instead of the suspiciously quiet Chief of SD. “Gruppenführer Heydrich has just agreed with my proposal concerning Obersturmführer Höttl.”

  “You did?” Himmler looked at his protégé in surprise.

  “Yes, Reichsführer, I did,” he agreed calmly. “Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner brought up certain arguments that I found quite convincing.”