by Yehuda Avner
Gottfried looked at the man of moderate height sitting in the center of the front row. That man, giggling and slapping his thigh at some joke, issued orders to an entire nation. He sent armies to take away people’s countries. He commanded prime ministers and presidents to attend on him at the Chancellery. He ordered that Jews be stripped of their rights, their homes. Soon their lives would be forfeit at his word, Gottfried knew. But now, this madman would have to sit in silence and stillness. He would listen, and feel the assault of Gottfried’s beautiful music on his soul. Not because Gottfried had any hope that it would cure him, or drain him of the murder lust that ran through his veins. Just so that, for a few minutes, Gottfried would force Hitler to understand that creation, not destruction, carries all the power of the universe within it.
One day, a vengeful enemy army would approach and Hitler would contemplate his end, and as he swallowed his cyanide capsule or raised a gun to his head this lunatic would hear the strains of the Stradivarius rising out of his memory to claim him, and he would realize that the true final solution was love, and great art. That message was all that an artist could bring to the universe, and Gottfried was content with it. He wasn’t a general or a politician. Not even an ambassador. This was the démarche he carried to the world, and it found expression in the melding of musical notes scribbled across a page more than a century ago by Ludwig van Beethoven with the artistry of a Jew named Wilhelm as he played the score on his violin. The British prime minister had waved a piece of paper and said it meant peace in our time. No, Gottfried thought. Listen everyone, here is peace.
He played Beethoven’s Romance in G Major. The only presences in the room were the long-dead maestro, who had written the work when he broke off his engagement, to spare his beloved the indignity of marriage to a deaf man, and Gottfried, who brought his own tragedies to the performance. There were others in the room. The person he loved more than any other, his Countess, and the one he most reviled, the Nazi Führer, were there. So was Furtwängler, waiting in his chair to accompany Gottfried in a Mozart violin sonata after the Beethoven piece. But the room was so full of music that nothing else seemed real. The A-dominant-seventh that took the piece into a melancholy D minor, the laboring half-steps that returned the piece to the romantic theme, the sweet high passionate notes—all this emptied the villa of that dreadful madman’s evil.
There was movement to his left. A young SS officer quietly approached the end of the front row. He whispered in Eichmann’s ear. A nod from the seated man, and the young officer left the room.
Gottfried moved into the coda.
Chapter 41
The SS guard handed the identity papers through the window of the BMW to Brückner and snapped his heels. Brückner drove the car through the gate and down the drive, stopping in the small turning circle in front of the villa. Dan jumped out and ran with Brückner between the columns of the entry portico. A young SS officer greeted them with a Nazi salute. Brückner returned it hurriedly. Dan didn’t respond. The SS man stared at him with surprised blue eyes.
“Where is the Countess von Bredow?” Brückner demanded.
The young officer turned his attention from Dan. “This way, but keep your voice down. Herr Gottfried is performing now. The Führer is listening.”
They crossed the oval foyer under the curving stairway. The SS man almost padded along in his jackboots. He opened the double doors.
The transcendent refrain of Gottfried’s violin weaved toward Dan as though it came on the heartbeat of a man whose struggles were all behind him. Who had found peace.
He isn’t going to kill Hitler, Dan realized. Gottfried truly did want only to play for the dictator. To show him the beauty that was being run out of Germany by his insane policies. He relaxed a little, but only as much as the Israeli ambassador could upon arriving unannounced in a room that contained the head of the Gestapo and the German Führer.
The SS officer pulled the double doors behind them. A sudden draught gusted past them and the young man’s hand slipped. The locks snapped shut, the noise like a shout over the melancholy finale of Beethoven’s Romance.
Hitler’s eyes shot toward the door. With his receding forehead and wide cheekbones, he looked like an aggressive eastern peasant glaring out of his hovel at some wanderer come to beg a potato, defensive more than furious. He recognized Brückner, his adjutant, and made a questioning, affronted face. Then he noticed Dan and a flash of confusion passed over his features. He couldn’t place the newcomer, it seemed.
Gottfried played the final notes of the piece, quiet, falling tones that reflected devastating losses, of Beethoven’s hearing and of his fiancée.
At the back of the room, Countess von Bredow rose from her seat. She moved slowly along the wall, her eyes fixed on the Führer.
When she reached the front row, she raised her hand. She aimed the Luger at the dictator in his chair.
Hitler was still turned toward the newcomers. Suddenly his face transformed. He had recognized Dan. The Israeli ambassador. A Jew. “You,” he roared, rising to his feet.
The Countess’s bullet slammed into the chair where Hitler had been sitting only seconds before. It shattered the wood and bore into the leg of his Naval adjutant in the second row. The officer screamed and tumbled forward.
Hitler bellowed hysterically to the SS men around him. “Kill the bitch.”
Heydrich and Eichmann came to their feet. A dozen military men rose from among their womenfolk, scrambling to unholster their weapons.
“Exterminate the traitors.”
Brückner ran across the room and hurled himself at the Countess before she could shoot again. He took her off balance and shoved her against the wall. She dropped the pistol.
The SS men raised their weapons hesitantly as the Führer’s adjutant held the assassin still.
Gottfried emerged from the capsule created by his music and saw what was happening. He tossed aside his Stradivarius and rushed forward. Furtwängler threw himself from his piano stool and scrambled toward the violin as though it were an endangered life.
All attention was on the Countess. It seemed the Nazis had forgotten all about the virtuoso performing for them. Quietly, Gottfried grabbed the Countess’s fallen Luger from the floor.
“Wili.” Dan hissed to him. “Put the gun down.”
The momentary glance Gottfried gave him was commanding. It directed him toward the violin, as if he were ordering the ambassador to save what could be saved. The instrument, not the musician.
Gottfried reached Brückner. He frowned softly, pityingly. “I’m sorry.” Then he smashed the butt of the pistol across the young man’s jaw. Dan realized that Gottfried’s apology hadn’t been for the blow—that would protect Brückner, make it clear that he had fought against Hitler’s assailants. Instead it was a doomed man’s remorse for this sudden farewell to his son.
The blow also galvanized the SS officers. As Gottfried reached the Countess and stepped in front of her, the first bullet took him in the shoulder. The second pushed him back against the wall. Gottfried staggered and fired the Luger, but the shot went into the ceiling. A volley smashed into him and he went down.
Heydrich edged quickly past the dead man. He leaned over the Countess. She looked up at him with defiance and hate. He laid the muzzle of his pistol against her forehead. She pressed up toward the gun and closed her eyes. He fired. Her blood spread across the prone figure of her son.
Chapter 42
Shmulik checked his watch as he sat in the dark interior of the Adler Trumpf. The limo was cold. Or maybe it was just his blood. Gottfried was going to play a Beethoven romance and a Mozart violin sonata. The first piece would be over about now. The Mozart would take another ten minutes. Hitler would return this way soon after. His limo would come almost to a halt at the sharp corner that led onto the narrow bridge out of Wannsee. He glanced at Yardeni. When the time came, the agent would go to the far side of the road and wait behind the hedge with his machine gun.
Shmulik had no illusions about how the night might end for himself. A cyanide capsule lay tucked between his left lower molar and his cheek. But he couldn’t bear to think that either of these boys would die. He and Devorah had no children. Richter and Yardeni were his sons. He had brought them here, into danger. He would see that they got away.
“How long?” Richter asked from the backseat. He was to take this side of the road with a pistol and two grenades. He’d wait for Yardeni’s shots to halt the Führer’s car, then he’d go in close, shoot out the side window with the pistol, and toss in the grenades.
“Ten minutes to position.” Shmulik shrugged his heavy shoulders. So stiff. The plan was good enough. It was what they had intended to do at the bridge over the Spree until the British bomb destroyed the von Bredow mansion. The bridge would have slowed Hitler’s car, but this tight corner would bring it almost to a halt. It was a better location, but there had been little time to anticipate potential problems. He wasn’t a spiritual man, but Shmulik’s senses were disturbed by more than simple nerves. He felt like saying some kind of farewell to these two young boys in case it all went wrong. He opened his mouth to speak.
A shot sounded in the quiet night.
“Son of a whore,” Yardeni said. “That came from the villa.”
“Did it?” Richter opened the window.
Another shot, and then a loud volley, six or perhaps seven pistols all at once.
“I think you’re right, Aryeh.”
Shmulik got out of the car. In the darkness of the blackout, the lake and the channel under the bridge were like infinite pools of nothingness.
“Are we going ahead, Shmulik?” Now Richter was out of the car too.
Shmulik looked through the windscreen. Yardeni had his hand on the starter. He didn’t think the operation was a go. He was ready to get out of there.
Shmulik knew he should give the order to abort. Gunshots in the villa where Hitler sat would at the very least put his bodyguards on high alert. Surviving an assassination attempt—if it was an attempted hit that they had just heard from the villa, and if he had survived— would make Hitler more cautious than ever. But the deportations had started. Jews were dying. He should have killed Hitler months ago and he might never get another chance.
Engines started up along Am Grossen Wannsee. Hitler’s people were leaving the villa.
Shmulik beckoned for Yardeni to get out of the car. The two Mossad men huddled round him. He put his big hands on their shoulders. “I don’t have to tell you why we do this, boys. I only have to tell you—I’m proud of you. Go.” He turned away quickly so they wouldn’t see his emotion.
The cars roared out of the villa’s gates a half mile away.
Richter knelt beside the hedge on the near corner. Yardeni had reached the middle of the narrow road when he turned back. “Don’t let them take me alive, Shmulik,” he said.
“Do your job.” Shmulik took his Schmeisser submachine gun from the rear of the car.
Hitler and his escort approached down the lane.
“Shmulik?” Yardeni called again.
“It’s okay. They won’t take you. Get in position.”
Yardeni went to the rear of an empty milk truck across the street. He crouched behind it.
Hitler’s convoy arrived. There was only one car. The other engines belonged to three motorcycles with SS riders, two in front and one in the rear. Shmulik saw them approach from his position behind the trunk of the Adler Trumpf. He touched the grenades in his pocket. He would use them if Richter didn’t succeed. The cyanide capsule in his cheek seemed to vibrate, calling him.
The first two motorbikes slowed at the corner. Yardeni rose and sprayed them with machine-gun fire just as the Führer’s car reached the hairpin. The bikers both went down, as planned. But one of them leaned back on his throttle, trying to speed up and escape even as he died. The bike slewed out from under him and spun across the narrow lane.
Yardeni was focused on the car. He didn’t see the heavy bike in the darkness. It swept into him and crushed his leg as it pulled him to the ground. His head struck the rear fender of the milk truck.
Hitler’s car threaded between the two fallen bikers. Richter ran from cover and leapt onto the running board. He raised his pistol to shoot out the glass.
The third outrider sped up to him. Richter hadn’t seen him. Shmulik cursed himself. He should have given his boys a count when he saw the vehicles approaching. This was about to go wrong and it was because of him. His stomach felt like ice. He called to Richter. “Another bike.”
Richter turned as the last biker brought up his pistol. The shot took the Mossad man in the neck. As he went down he pulled the pin from his grenade. The SS biker dropped on top of him and grappled for the grenade.
Another pair of engines sounded, coming down the lane from the villa. Shmulik went for Hitler’s car, focused on the man who had to die. He had his grenade ready in his left hand. He raised the Schmeisser to shoot out the window.
Richter’s grenade exploded. It smashed through the body of the SS outrider. Shmulik felt shrapnel cut into the muscles of his legs and he fell to the ground.
Hitler’s car jerked away from the fallen motorbikes. Its rear wheels thumped over the bodies of Richter and the SS man. It sped onto the bridge and away.
Shmulik was on his back on the sidewalk. Yardeni whimpered in the darkness. “Shmulik, help me.”
The other cars grew louder. There were more than two now. Perhaps four of them approaching.
Shmulik pushed himself to his feet with the machine gun. His left leg felt absent, as though it had been amputated. He limped past the corpses of Richter and the SS outrider. To Yardeni. The young man was trapped by the motorbike.
Bellowing with pain, Shmulik lifted the bike off him. He dropped it aside, took a look at Yardeni, then turned his head away. The boy’s legs were crushed and flattened, bleeding hard. The arteries in his thighs must have been severed.
Yardeni saw the wounds and grabbed at Shmulik’s trouser leg. “Go, Shmulik. Get out of here. I’m done.”
“You’re not finished until I say so.” Shmulik put his machine gun over his shoulder. He lifted Yardeni and slung him over his shoulder. He resisted the urge to scream at the pain in his own leg. Yardeni’s cries turned to sobs, as though he could no longer disguise his youth. Shmulik snarled and whimpered at once. It was as if his own son were dying in his arms. If only the boy would pass out, beyond the pain. But instead, Yardeni pounded his fists against Shmulik’s back.
“Put me down. I’m going to die. Just let me shoot some of these bastards before I do. It’ll give you time to get out of here.”
“Shut up already.”
The first of the approaching cars slowed through the gears before the corner. Shmulik made for the driveway behind the Adler Trumpf. He opened his mouth to whisper to Yardeni. Suddenly the young man jammed his fingers into Shmulik’s mouth. He scrabbled inside a moment and came out with the cyanide capsule.
Shmulik coughed and choked.
Yardeni put the capsule in his mouth. “You thought I didn’t know about the cyanide? I know you better than you think, Shmulik. I’m going to kill a few of these sons of whores and then I’m going to bite this pill. But you’re leaving now.”
Shmulik glanced at the lane. The car halted and doors opened. Voices—surprised, shocked, angry. German officers, come to examine the scene.
He laid Yardeni on the roof of the Adler Trumpf. He took the boy’s hand and kissed it. He limped through the bushes behind the car.
As he reached the shore of the lake, he heard a rattle of gunfire from Yardeni’s Schmeisser. A few screams, some more shots. Then silence.
Shmulik shivered. He waded into the freezing water of late fall. He felt as if the blood from his wounded leg would turn the entire lake red. He struck out slowly, as the voices of more Germans arriving at the failed ambush echoed through the night.
Forty minutes later, he crawled across the beach on th
e other side of the lake and disappeared among the trees of the Grunewald.
Chapter 43
Heydrich wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Eichmann hovered around his boss in a state of near panic as the Wehrmacht staff and SS guards hauled the corpses of Gottfried and the Countess across the floor. Eichmann blanched and turned away from the wide smears of blood left by the bodies as they were dragged away. Dan heard Heydrich say something about “this concert” and “a mistake,” and saw fear turn Eichmann’s face still paler. It appeared the blame for the evening’s events was being laid at the door of the lower-ranked man.
Eichmann was not about to let it remain with him. He spun around toward Dan. “Arrest this man,” he called.
A big SS Scharführer grabbed Dan’s arms and pulled them behind his back.
“Damn you, Lavi,” Eichmann said.
“This is nothing to do with me.” Dan was glad that the SS man was holding him. It covered the shaking that overcame him now. “In any case, you can’t arrest me. I’m the ambassador of a neutral country. Diplomatic immunity—”
“Silence. You’re lucky I don’t just march you into the garden and shoot you right now. Take him to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”
The Gestapo headquarters. Dan’s legs shook. He kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want Eichmann to hear the fear that would be evident in any word he spoke.
Brückner groaned. He lifted himself from the floor, rubbing his bruised jaw. He stared at Dan and the SS man who restrained him. “You didn’t know, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
Eichmann slapped Dan across the face with his gloves. The SS guard shoved him through the hallway to the entrance.
The front drive could hardly have displayed greater signs of panic had Hitler actually been killed. Through the chaos of departing cars and jogging guard details, a Mercedes pulled up. Draxler jumped out. He ran up the steps, breathless, and stopped when he saw Dan under guard.
