The prisoner’s eyes seemed to swim around, looking for something that wasn’t there. At last he said, “It came about accidentally. I’d been in prison, Welzheim Concentration camp, for six months, accused of distributing seditious pamphlets in defense of the church, when a man from the SS came in to review my case. When he pointed out that all my father’s pleas to get me released had been turned down, I thought all was lost and they’d thrown away the key. But then he told me how he might devise a way out for me if I would listen. Having thoroughly reviewed my work for the church, and the notoriety I’d gained as a Youth Group leader, he went on to tell me that the very things I’d been arrested for made me an ideal candidate for serving in his organization. Namely, the SS. Why waste my talents rotting in a prison cell when I could put the zeal with which I’d served the Church to work for the war effort? His very words were, ‘A fanatic like you will make an ideal member of our organization.’ I asked him how he proposed to put this over with his superiors, and he just said, ‘Leave it to me’”
“The name and rank of this man?”
“Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Stumpff.”
Geli swallowed, keeping her head down. Across the space through which this prisoner couldn’t know her, she took him into her heart.
“And you did leave it to him,” Mattei said.
“Yes. I had my doubts, not knowing how much weight he carried as a relatively low-ranking officer, but it seemed to me my last and only hope for getting out of prison.”
“Interesting. In other words your eventual decision to go along with him presented itself as an attractive means of escape – one you could not afford to refuse.”
A silence fell.
Geli looked up to see Kurt staring at Mattei before he said, “I believed that, by accepting, I would then be able to follow through with desires I had already thought out.”
“Which in the words you stated in your report was to join the SS with the object of spying to further your religious ideals.”
“Yes, to carry on an active fight but at the same time learn more about the aims of the Nazis and their secrets.”
“Would it be fair to say that the act of getting into the SS would please your father – a judge in Stuttgart and a convinced National Socialist? His maverick son would finally be brought into the fold.”
“If that was so,” Kurt said, “it simply happened.” He spoke more clearly, now, as if the truth depended on it.
Mattei ramped up his caustic tone. “But then of course the pressure would be off. Now that you had come to your senses and could become a member of the Party in good standing.”
“I was excluded from the Party in 1939. My father was unsuccessful in his attempt to get me reinstated.”
“All the better reason for you to make him proud of you by joining up,” Mattei said with a glance at Geli.
She lowered her eyes.
“By letting my father believe what he wanted to, I would then be able to move more freely.”
Mattei tore off his spectacles with one hand, used the other to drum his pencil on the desk, as he might knock mud off his shoes. “Let me take you now to November of 1942, when you’d become head of the Technical Disinfection Branch for the SS Hygiene Service in Berlin. You state in your report that you, personally, were chosen to transport the cyanide from one part of Polish territory to another. Why did they pick you to do this when you were stationed in Berlin?”
“That was entirely a matter of chance. My name was put forward by an officer of the Chemical Department to whom the authorities had addressed themselves.”
“Why would they send an officer from Berlin to Kolin, in Czechoslovakia, to pick up the cyanide for transport to Poland, when it would have been so much simpler to instruct an officer already in Poland to do this?”
“I was considered a specialist in cyanide disinfectants.”
“Did you receive a written or an oral order for your mission, and what were its terms?”
Geli didn’t look but thought he must have sighed, just then, with all this was taking out of him: the truth that didn’t have to leave its colors in the depths of where she knew it had been his. She hadn’t seen him look her way. Safety felt too dangerous for her to make a sound.
“I received an oral order which was confirmed to me forty-eight hours later by a written order. The terms of the written order were approximately as follows: I order you to procure 260 kilos of potassium cyanide and transport it to a place which will be indicated to you by the driver of vehicle number such and such, assigned to this mission. I chose Kolin because I knew that cyanide was manufactured there by much the same method as it was at Dessau. From the deliberately odd character of the technical questions I asked the foreman at the potash plant in Kolin, the other people working there were able to grasp the enormity of what their product was going to be used for. I did this to get rumors spread among the population. We then set off by truck for the camp near Lublin, called Belzec.”
“Yes. The mission during which you state that you were able to dispose of several canisters of cyanide by ordering them buried before you reached your destination. How were you able to accomplish this without arousing suspicion from your superiors?”
“They trusted me because I’d done a good job for them in other areas, one being the purification of drinking water in the SS camps. They weren’t inclined to question my expertise in matters they knew nothing about. Being considered an authority on prussic acid and toxic gasses, I could easily have a whole shipment of the cylinders destroyed, giving damage due to decomposition as the cause. That was why I hadn’t the slightest scruple in accepting the mission that was put to me.”
“So in this instance, how were you able to explain your actions?”
“Through the people at the warehouse in Kolin, I’d learned that the containers of cyanide we would be transporting were old. Their practice was to use up their oldest supplies first. When potassium cyanide ages, it begins to decompose. It can’t be safely utilized except as a disinfectant. I had to let some of the containers through, claiming avoidance of waste, so they would take my word for why I buried the rest. On that occasion I accidentally splashed my sleeve with some of the acid, and had to tear it off.”
“And you reported this?”
“Yes, by way of explanation to the camp commandant, a man named Wirth. He was not unduly concerned about the incomplete delivery. I got the impression that he would have applauded it if Captain Stumpff had not been there to mourn it. They held opposing ideas about which method should be utilized. Wirth argued for the older diesel exhaust, while Stumpff came down on the side of the more toxic poison Himmler favored.”
“We’re talking about the same Stumpff whose intercession got you out of Welzheim.”
“Yes, as it happened.”
“So you were reunited with your benefactor, the very man to whom you owed the start you’d got with the SS three years before.”
“Entirely by chance. He was as surprised to see me as I was him.”
“Pleasantly?”
“I don’t know. In front of Wirth he made no mention of having known me in the past. I thought it best to play along with that.”
“Yet both of these men took your word for why you deemed it necessary to dispose of the poison.”
“They had no reason not to.”
“Almost as if you really were the person you were pretending to be.”
“I had to seem to be exactly who they wanted me to be. That was the only way I could go on. Stumpff had a stake in me. Up till then I’d come to think of my involvement with him as a barrier to my past that might otherwise work against me. Now I wasn’t so sure.”
“Why?”
“He took a very different view of what I’d taken it upon myself to do, but didn’t let Wirth know that he was ‘disappointed,’ giving away our past acquaintance. Wirth put me in for a commendation, while Stumpff berated him for taking lightly any setback in the implementation of Himmler’s brainchild
.”
“With what result?”
“That I could thank the bad blood between these two for getting on Wirth’s good side, but Stumpff - from then on I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder for him.”
Mattei sucked in his breath, squaring his shoulders. “One thing about this incident sticks in my craw. What did you expect to accomplish by undertaking such an action when you knew it had to be in vain?”
“I didn’t know that. I only knew I had to do something.”
“Which you were reasonably sure you’d get away with.”
“I had to gamble that I would.”
“You did get away with it, but how many lives do you suppose you saved as a result?”
Geli looked up at Mattei’s smug face. She should be pleased: another German taken down a peg. She saw the naked girl she had competed with, that night, for a place beside her shallow grave in Kurt’s heart. She gulped a sob, her hand flew to her mouth too late.
Mattei swung his face toward her. “Are you all right, Madame?”
She flashed him a quick twisted smile. “Yes, yes,” she whispered impatiently.
“Are you sure?”
She kept her eyes down, nodding as she fluttered a dismissive hand at him. There it was out, now, like a bird from a cage and she kept her face buried in the weight she’d gained, the blowsy clothes, too blonde to be half Italian, eyes smeared behind her glasses. He’d know her voice, but maybe not. Now suddenly she didn’t know which one she wanted it to be. She felt ashamed, but fought it back. It shied like a dog she kept telling to go home, but it wouldn’t. She heard a page being rustled back.
Mattei cleared his throat. “How much thought, 1171, have you given to the expedience of witnesses?”
Kurt didn’t say anything.
She peeked up from under her glasses just as he began to blink as if he couldn’t see what he was trying to say.
“Shall I repeat the question, 1171?”
“No, sir. I didn’t see much hope of reaching any of the witnesses I could think of.”
Mattei took a few steps out around his desk. His voice was unctuous, slithering off his tongue as if he were in court. “Let’s give hope a rest for just a moment and get down to brass tacks. In your capacity as the ranking officer on this convoy out of Kolin, you would have had a driver.”
“I had a sergeant by the name of Hugo.”
“Were you on good terms with him?”
“I liked him, but avoided friendliness. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. He had to think of me as who I seemed to be, so I observed the rule that officers and men were not to fraternize.”
“Now when it came to your order to your men to bury the cyanide, there would have been no telling if he’d thought that you were sabotaging your own job.”
“If so, it would have gone into the same hole as the cannisters.”
“But he was there. That much he would remember.”
“If you’re thinking of him as a witness -”
“Not out of the question, any more than Wirth or Stumpff, who could be only too willing to come forward, since the stakes due to the war are over.”
“I don’t know what became of Wirth. I was told that Stumpff was killed by partisans.”
Geli looked up at the side of his face. De Vos must have said that, she thought. In her mind she saw Stumpff’s fat, dead face, pooling blood there on the carpet. That mutual acquaintance dead in the secret separating her from Kurt by fifteen feet.
Mattei blew a sigh. “There remains the question of your wife. You might want to reconsider your instructions to Major Guingand. You’re not doing her any favors by refusing to see her. You’re going to need her.”
“She doesn’t know enough to be of any use. I never told her things that the Gestapo could torture out of her in case I was picked up.”
“The war is over, 1171. The time for secrecy is over.”
“I don’t want her to know I’m here,” Kurt said adamantly.
“Don’t be a fool, Langsdorff. You’re digging your own grave!”
All at once Kurt’s back heaved, he lurched forward coughing into his fist. With a shudder he threw himself back against the chair and tipped it tottering onto two legs. His hands flew out and slapped the desk and brought the chair back onto all fours with a clump.
Mattei stood there, frozen with a strange fascination. The door swung open, banged against the wall and Corporal Dax came through wide-eyed, crouching in a defensive stance. “Sir! Stand back, sir!”
Geli was on her feet. Then she was on the move.
Kurt had both hands up in front of Dax. She didn’t know how close she was to Kurt until she stopped and started to back up, and Kurt was saying to Mattei, “Forgive me, sir. It’s only -”
Dax brayed shrilly, “Control yourself, 1171!”
Mattei put up one hand, speaking quietly as if he’d come out of a coma to say, “Where am I?”
“This will be all for today, Dax. You may take the prisoner back down, now.”
“You bet I will, sir! Get over here, you -” Dax snatched Kurt by the arm, hauled him out of the chair and hurriedly escorted him out, skidding in the doorway to reach back for the door.
By the time it slammed Mattei was walking toward the window, lighting up a cigarette.
Geli looked down at the smears of mascara on her fingers and slid them along her hips. She was mad and wanted to get out of there. “If that’s all, sir -”
“Damn!” Mattei exploded. “I forgot to give Dax that talking-to I – ah, well. Another time.” He turned, scissoring his cigarette as he blew smoke through his nose.
“So what did you think of this 1171, Mlle Miroux?”
“Think of him? Good Lord, sir. I don’t know. I don’t listen much, just write.”
“I thought you were in distress there for a moment.”
“Distress? You don’t mean -” She almost laughed out of her nerves strung tight. “Oh, that. I might be coming down with something. You know how sometimes you can’t hold back a sneeze.”
Mattei nodded perfunctorily as he laid sloe eyes on her.
“What’s the matter with you today, Mlle Miroux? You don’t seem yourself.”
“Why, I don’t know, sir. Nothing that I -”
Mattei broke off a brittle smile.
“It is deplorable, isn’t it, how those creatures down there have to wallow in their own filth as if the darkness and the walls weren’t enough. Lieutenant Dronne hasn’t heard the last of this.”
She looked up, making her eyes go soft. “I do believe this 1171 needs a doctor, sir, more than a shower. He seems to be unwell.”
“Think so? Don’t tell me you’re going soft on them,” he said with a kind of runaway smirk.
“Not them, sir.”
“So then you mean 1171. Him.”
“Well, yes. Oh, never mind, Monsieur.” She tore her face away with a fey toss of her head, picked up her handbag and started for the door. “I feel exhausted, sir. I’m going if you don’t mind.”
“Got a ride waiting down there in another jeep, perhaps?”
She stopped abruptly, making herself laugh. It came out shrilly, like a theatrical cackle. “Oh, don’t be silly! You think I stick my thumb out for every jeep that comes along?”
Mattei shambled toward her, reddening as he puffed on his cigarette. He said sheepishly, “These Germans, you know. The lies they think they can get away with. I suppose in some ways it’s our fault.”
She stared at him. “How so?”
“They know the deck is stacked against them, so they have to go one better than the truth.”
“You sound as cynical as I am,” Geli said.
He looked at her quizzically, cocking his head. “How do you feel, Mlle Miroux, after all you’ve been through?”
“I don’t -”
“Don’t tell me you have no opinion, after listening to them day in and day out. Even though it all seems to blur, and you have to throw the whole soup out because
you can’t find the fly.”
“Monsieur, I’m only here to write things down. Whatever I think doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t let excuses hold you back. You haven’t in the past.”
She tossed her head and forced a little breath of laughter through her nose. “What I’m not getting paid for, Monsieur, is none of my business. But I do wonder sometimes -”
“Yes?”
“Well, those prisoners down there – do you ever torture them?”
He gave her a long look held thinly by a smirk. “That sort of thing is not encouraged, although I can’t speak for the jailers. Many of them had relatives murdered by the Nazis. Why?”
“Oh, nothing, sir. Curiosity.”
“Ah. Care to elaborate on that?”
“Oh, no. Not here, sir. Not now.”
He took a long drag on his cigarette, eyes raking her up and down.
“What about some other place?”
“What for, Monsieur?” she said coyly.
“I’d be glad to show you, if tonight wouldn’t be too soon.”
In the silence tears stung the back of her eyes and she swallowed, tasting salt. Here Kurt had come and gone, tripped and fallen into her heart like a child she must bear alone.
“Well, I don’t know. If you can’t get away -”
Maybe Fifi all unknowing, wouldn’t really care.
He shrugged. “I work rather late in my office almost every night, you know.”
“All work and no play. Hard to get out of the rut, here, n’est-ce pas?”
Smoke from his cigarette embraced her like a garland. The scent of it was him, his longing burning up and putting what was left of it around her shoulders.
He said, “There is bistro I know. Quite some distance from the Rue de l’Odéon. Probably too far to walk.”
“The farther the better, Monsieur. Just tell me where and what time. I’ll be there.”
25
They were to meet at the Bistro Dumonde in Montmartre, at 8 o’clock that night. She went home first, so she could dress. She didn’t want the two of them to be seen walking the streets together.
She was right on time when she walked in out of the gathering dusk. Two men sat beside each other at the bar. They turned to look at her, eyes prowling, and she returned their smiles.
The Knife-Edge Path Page 19
