by Yehuda Avner
Because of your anti-Semitic laws, Dan thought. “What kind of employment are you sending them to? How were they selected? Are there among them people who have requested emigration to Israel?”
Eichmann made his face register mild shock. “What do you take me for, Lavi? If you have filed papers for emigration on behalf of some Jew, why would I go to the bother of sending him east? Once you have them, they are off my hands, and that’s my aim. Furthermore, this morning’s transport is intended to create housing for Berliners who lost their homes in the British bombing.”
“You’re stripping these deportees of their homes?”
“They won’t need them where they’re going.”
“It’s their property.”
Eichmann steepled his fingers. “The Reich’s leadership considers that it is because of the Jews that this war is being fought. The Jews started it—”
“Surely you don’t believe—”
“Don’t concern yourself with my beliefs. I’m telling you the answer to your question. That’s all. The Jews started the war and so they must pay the price.”
“I suppose they have to pay for their train tickets to the east.”
Eichmann looked puzzled at Dan’s sarcasm. “Of course. Four pfennigs per kilometer of track. The SS must pay the Reichsbahn for the use of its trains and for its track. Jews must reimburse the SS for this outlay, particularly as we are transporting them to gainful employment.”
“Four pfennigs?”
“Half price for children. Look, you’re making quite a fuss over about four thousand people. You and I have seen to the emigration of tens of thousands of Jews to your state. Look at the big picture, Lavi.”
“Each of those people you’ve sent away is a Jew and ought to be given the option of emigration before they’re deported as slave laborers.”
“Slave laborers? I forbid you to use such a term. When work is found for them, they shall be looked after very well. You will see.”
“When work is found? I thought they were deported because you needed them for the new factories. Now you’re telling me they don’t have work to go to?”
“Work is the aim. It shall be found for them. Work makes you free. This is our belief and we shall impress it upon those Jews who have been lounging without jobs here in Berlin for the last several years. In the meantime, they will be sent to the Lodz ghetto to await instructions.”
“A ghetto?”
“Don’t worry about them, Lavi. The Führer wants all Jews out of Europe. For the time being we have need of these people as potential workers, but you’ll get your hands on them in the end.”
Get your hands on them. Eichmann’s phrase disturbed Dan. It made it seem as though he was acting with as little concern for the humanity of the Jewish refugees as the Nazis. As though they were merely instruments of strategy, to be shipped to Israel and distributed to farms and factories and military units.
“Now, Lavi, I really must get back to work.” Eichmann opened the next file on his desk. “I have a lot to get through before the concert for the Führer.”
Dan felt relieved that at least on this matter Eichmann wouldn’t get what he wanted. “You will have to cancel it.”
“Explain yourself.”
“The Countess von Bredow’s home was destroyed by a bomb last night.”
“Gottfried?”
“Survived.”
“Thank God.” Eichmann surveyed the paperwork spread across his desk and murmured, “I shall have to find another location for the concert. It may take a few days, perhaps a little longer.” Then he clapped his hands. “I know of just the place. Tell Herr Gottfried the SS will be delighted to host him.”
Chapter 37
Shmulik’s staff were hunkered down by the remains of their document fire in the garden of the embassy. The gray sky drizzled a weak rain. Dan walked across the soft grass. “Any luck at the station?” he asked.
Shmulik shook his head. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, gave it a last glance, and torched it with his cigarette lighter. He tossed the paper onto the hump of charred files.
“Sorry that you had to burn everything up for nothing.” Dan crouched beside him. “Better safe than sorry.”
“We’d have needed to destroy everything soon anyhow.” Shmulik stood up and took a spade. He turned over the documents to be sure they were all ruined.
“You’re ready to do it?” Dan said. “You’re ready to kill him?”
Shmulik did not answer.
Dan grabbed at the tail of his jacket. “Look at me when I’m talking to you. You’re going to bring the whole of the Nazi security forces down on us. They’ll take us away. At best, they’ll kick us out of the country. They might just kill us. How can you be so sure that killing Hitler would stop the Nazis anyway? What will happen to all the people we could still save?”
“The British bombers nearly brought the entire building down on us last night.” Shmulik stepped on the edge of the spade to drive it into the pile. “Then where would your poor refugees have been? And, yes, it would’ve been the end of my plans too. That’s why I have to get things done as soon as I can. Waiting doesn’t help anyone. It only makes it more possible that we’ll be found out and stopped, or that a British bomb will put an end to us before we get a chance to act.”
“We have to think of another way.”
Shmulik sneered as he lifted a wad of charred paper and flipped it over, nudging it around to see if any memos or messages remained intact. “I sent Ben-Gurion an update about what’s happening in the east. I gave him locations from my resistance contacts. Told him where the camps are being constructed.”
“The labor camps?”
“Let’s hope labor camps is all they are.”
“It couldn’t be for….” But Dan was through with making excuses for the Nazis. It could be for anything, and he and Shmulik knew it. They had both seen the Zyklon B document. Jews would be sent for extermination.
“Ben-Gurion contacted the British. Asked them to bomb the rail lines to the camps. That’d stop the construction materials getting to the camps. It’d also prevent the Germans from shipping Jews out there.” Shmulik dropped the spade and leaned on the garden fence. “But they won’t do it.”
“Oh God. Why not?”
“For one thing, we haven’t declared war on Germany, as they demanded we do in their ultimatum. Most importantly, though, it doesn’t accord with their war aims. Those railways are not a military target.”
“But the same railways are used by German troops going to fight the Russians, Britain’s allies. And these slave labor camps are for military manufacturing, we can assume. They’re not going to be making lace underwear, for God’s sake.”
Shmulik’s voice was low, exhausted. “Your balancing act hasn’t worked, Dan. You’ve tried to make the Germans happy and to keep the British off our backs. But events are moving fast—faster than you can sign the transfer papers.”
“What did Ben-Gurion say? Am I to halt the emigrations?”
“Speed them up, he says. Before it’s really too late. Get out as many people as you can. Until they come for you.”
Chapter 38
The embassy filled with desperate Jews every day that week. The trucks that had taken their neighbors away in the early morning galvanized even those who had been paralyzed by fear, or who had clung to the hope that the Nazis would never actually deport them. Dan enlisted Anna to guide people through the forms they needed to fill out for Eichmann’s office. Gottfried exhausted himself at his desk in the back of the building, constantly surrounded by a voluble crowd. The excitement was so different from the happy tumult his presence used to provoke at concerts. Even Richter and Yardeni were forced to assume the consular duties which were usually only covers for their Mossad roles. Dan hoped their involvement with the emigration process might hold up the assassination of Hitler and the awful consequences he feared.
He barely lifted his eyes from the mass of paperwork, or rose fro
m his office chair, except to comfort some broken man. The women were tougher, he noticed—or at least they recognized the need for strength and purpose, despite the emotional turmoil seething within.
As darkness descended on Berlin at the end of another day, Dan stamped one more application and then looked up to find that he was alone in his office for the first time since the roundups. It had been three days of constant work. The pile in his in-tray remained substantial, but he thought he could spare a few minutes to stretch his legs. He went into the lobby. Richter and Yardeni were gone. Anna was at the desk by the door. She seemed barely awake.
“You’re our security guard now?” Dan tried to smile, but the absence of the Mossad men worried him. Was tonight the night that Shmulik would attack Hitler?
“You could do worse. Everyone’s scared of America coming into the war. Besides, I can do a good tough guy.” Anna spoke with her best clipped James Cagney accent. “Anyone tries to get by me, I’ll push a grapefruit in their face.”
“You’re a real public enemy.”
He went to Gottfried’s office. The desk light illuminated a spray of papers, but there was no sign of the first secretary. He walked back to the lobby and asked Anna, “How’s the Countess?”
“The bruising on her ankle is going down nicely. She and Wili went out for some air a while back.”
“If they can breathe in Berlin, they must have some kind of natural gas mask built into their systems.” He bent to kiss his wife’s cheek and touched her neck. “How about you?”
“I’m all right. I guess I’ve just had so much to do since they started taking people away that I haven’t had a chance to really think about what’s happening.” She stood and pulled him to her. She was shaking almost imperceptibly, like the shifting blue outline of gas burning on a stove.
“We’re going to be fine, sweetheart,” he said. “No matter what happens, you and I are going to be together. That’s all the protection I need from the world.”
“That’s sweet.”
It’s stupid, too, he thought. He could hear Bertha Polkes chopping vegetables in the kitchen. He hadn’t been able to defend her husband. The world could strip away anyone’s protection. Many of the people who clamored for his signature on their emigration papers had once been wealthy. Some had been powerful. None had been able to guard themselves against the assault of pure madness.
A fist battered against the door of the embassy. Anna gasped in fear. Dan stared at the dark wood. The blows fell faster. He ushered Anna toward his office.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Open up, God damn it. It’s Brückner.”
Dan unlatched the door. Hitler’s adjutant stumbled inside, angry and agitated.
“Where are they?” His greatcoat flopped open and when he pulled off his cap his hair was damp with sweat.
“Do you mean the forms for emigration to Israel? I’m glad you’ve come to terms with your Jewish heritage, Herr Hauptmann Brückner.”
“Don’t toy with me, you bastard. A moment ago I thought my…my aunt was dead. The Gestapo man outside says she’s alive.”
“Your aunt? You mean, your mother. And your father. He was in there too.”
“I got back from East Prussia an hour ago. Why didn’t you alert me about the bomb?”
“I assumed you had other sources of intelligence. Besides, your parents are unhurt.”
“Where are they?”
“They were here, but they’re not now. They’ve gone.”
“Where to?”
“To get some air. We’ve been busy this week, thanks to your Führer’s orders for the deportation of Berlin’s Jews.”
“That’s his office, right?” Brückner strode across the lobby to Gottfried’s room and went in.
Dan followed him quickly. “This is a diplomatic facility. I insist that you—”
“There must be something here that can tell me where they are.”
“I told you, they’re just taking a walk.”
Brückner went around the desk. He shuffled the papers clumsily.
“Don’t touch those.” Dan shoved the German away from the desk.
Brückner pushed back at him, but Dan stepped away and let him stumble against the filing cabinets.
“What the hell are you looking for, Brückner? Wili will be back soon enough, and your mother will be with him.”
Brückner became still. He glared at Dan with sudden focus. “You’ve hidden them. Where have you taken her?”
“I’m not the one who’s taking people.”
Brückner rushed at him. “Where is she?” he shouted.
Anna came to the door. “Dan?”
The men wrestled against the desk.
“Stay out of here, Anna,” Dan called.
“Where is she?” Brückner’s voice was raw. He bawled the words over and over, raging and sobbing.
When he pulled himself together, he wiped his eyes against the sleeve of his gray Wehrmacht coat. “I saw the house…the rubble…”
Dan straightened his tie. The German officer wasn’t the first person he had seen collapse in desperation and fear for a loved one that week. His stock of sympathy was severely depleted. He watched him with a stiff, resentful jaw.
Anna touched the young man’s shoulder. “She’ll be back soon,” she said. “You can wait here.”
“Thank you, Madame.”
“After all, Wili can’t go more than a half hour without checking that his Stradivarius is safe.” She grinned.
Brückner sniffled a polite laugh. “Yes, you’re quite right, of course.”
Dan glanced around the office. Gottfried’s violin wasn’t in sight. He must have put it in a cupboard, away from the crowds that came through here during the day. Still, the presentiment of danger he’d experienced when he saw the Mossad men were gone returned to him now. It made him open the stationery cupboard and look inside. No violin. He went to the adjoining documents room. Nothing there either.
The Stradivarius might be in Gottfried’s bedroom on the third floor. Even as he rushed up the stairs, Dan knew he wouldn’t find it. The Countess’s home lay in ruins. But Gottfried was determined to play for Hitler.
In Gottfried’s bedroom, pillows were set in a triangle against the bed’s headboard, where the Countess had rested while her injured leg recovered. The cloth suit bag in which Gottfried kept his tuxedo lay across the bed. Dan rushed over and saw that it was empty. There was no violin in the room. On the vanity lay a cardboard box the size of a bag of flour. The blue label had been ripped away and the side pulled open. Nine-millimeter cartridges had spilled out of the box onto the glass tabletop. Dan didn’t have to count them. There would be enough missing to fill the magazine of a Luger.
As he dashed down the stairs, Dan’s heart seemed to beat as loud as his footsteps. Gottfried would play for Hitler. Not in the Countess’s demolished house, but somewhere else. And after he played, he would kill him.
“Where’s your Führer tonight?” he yelled as he descended the last flight of stairs.
Brückner came past Anna into the lobby. “He’s gone to a dinner in Wannsee.”
“Dinner with whom?”
“Obergruppenführer Heydrich. At a villa by the lake.”
Wannsee was a suburb southwest of Berlin, within the interlocking system of lakes and inlets off the River Havel, about ten miles from the embassy. Dan remembered Eichmann’s remark that the SS would be glad to host Gottfried’s concert. It had to be there, tonight. He checked the drawer of the security desk in the lobby. The Luger was gone. He opened the front door and turned to Brückner. “Can you get me into Heydrich’s villa?”
Chapter 39
Brückner sped his BMW through the quiet evening streets toward Wannsee. Dan imagined Shmulik preparing for the assassination. Hiding somewhere out in the wealthy suburb. He’d have an escape plan, surely, if things went wrong. For the first time, Dan realized that by trying to prevent Hitler’s assassination, he might be betraying
Shmulik, handing him over to the Nazis. But the sidewalks were filled with the Jews of Europe, watching and silent, their faces expectant. Shmulik would give up his life for Israel. What about you? Dan asked himself. Would you give up Shmulik to save these souls who follow you through the dark?
The long hood of the cabriolet nosed over the bridge into the village. The car slowed almost to a halt as Brückner made the hairpin turn along the lake. From the passenger seat, Dan caught a glimpse of a black Adler Trumpf limo. It was pulled backward into a driveway. Its lights were out. It was the same car the embassy used, but it bore regular plates, without diplomatic designations.
Brückner rounded the curve and sped onto Am Grossen Wannsee, the leafy street on the edge of the water down which stood the SS villa.
He pulled the BMW up at the iron gates. A pair of SS men strode toward each side of the car. Brückner brought out his Wehrmacht identity card and his Chancellery pass for Hitler’s office. He slipped Dan’s diplomatic pass and identity card under them.
“You’re not on the list,” the SS man said.
“I wrote the list, Scharführer. And it’s Herr Hauptmann to you.”
The guard was only mildly impressed by Brückner’s forceful attitude. The SS didn’t care for the army. He picked at his front teeth and gave the cards another look.
“Sturmbannführer Eichmann is inside,” Dan said. “Am I correct?”
The SS guard went to work on his back teeth. He shrugged.
“Tell him I’m here with urgent information.”
The guard jerked his head toward his comrade. The second man sauntered to the gatehouse.
“Wait here,” the guard said.
Chapter 40
Heydrich concluded his introductory remarks and moved away from Gottfried, clapping politely. The small group assembled in the banquet room of the Wannsee villa joined in the applause. Tall bay windows framed the virtuoso as he brought the Stradivarius to his shoulder. It was his moment.
