Munich Signature

by Bodie Thoene

  Complaint committees were formed.

  “They might have allowed us to dock in London if there were not so many schleppers onboard.”

  “Do you know what I paid for this? I demand a cot!”

  The rabbi of Nuremberg finally summed up the situation. “What did it cost us to get here? Everything! Once, some of us were rich. Once, some were not so rich, nu? Now we are all the same—poor. Early or late, we are all on the same ship. We are all passengers on the Darien. Neighbors. Family. Friends and enemies. Together now we are from Darien.” He shrugged. “Only God knows who was rich and who was poor. And to Him it makes no difference. Such a sense of humor He has, nu?”

  Captain Burton, however, finally settled the matter. Elusive and mysterious behind the grimy glass of the bridge, he issued orders that overruled the protests of the Complaint Committee. Belowdecks—from one end of the beam to the other—five hundred canvas hammocks had been hung. Women and children and the elderly would sleep in the hammocks. Young healthy males would sleep on the open deck. Tarps would be rigged to shield against the weather.

  This was the law of the sea. This was tyranny.

  “This is fair,” declared the rabbi of Nuremberg. Every man on the Complaint Committee was assigned the task of helping women and children and the elderly to the hammocks below. After that, rich and poor, early and late, they worked together to rig the tarps that were to be their homes.

  ***

  “I will see you in the morning.” Klaus bent to kiss each of his girls good night. Two children to each hammock, they festooned the compartment like living bunting. Little Ada-Marie shared her mother’s hammock. Trudy and Gretchen slept feet to feet, while Katrina and Louise swung in the hammock above them.

  “When will we see you, Papa?” Gretchen looked worried and Ada-Marie lifted her chubby arms for one last embrace.

  “When the breakfast bell rings we will eat our porridge together,” Klaus promised. Gretchen made a face at the thought of the porridge served in the ship’s galley. “Until then,” Klaus continued, “I will think of my little caterpillars snug in their cocoons beneath the deck.”

  He turned to Maria and kissed her. A look passed between them. Klaus would have lain down beneath his wife’s hammock if it had been permitted. But it was better this way. The rabbi of Nuremberg was right. It was fair for the men to camp beneath the stars while the women and children were snug belowdecks.

  “At least we got in the stern,” Maria said. “In the bow the hammocks swing every time we hit a swell. It is nice here.” She felt tearful having to give up Klaus for all these suspended strangers. Many were seasick, and the hold smelled of vomit and sweat. It was not really so nice, but she would not form her own complaint committee.

  “You will be warm here.” Klaus bent very close to her face and touched her cheek with one hand and her swollen belly with the other. “Better for the children. Even this little one, eh?”

  Maria put her hand on his as the baby kicked. “He says, ‘Good night, Papa.’”

  Klaus kissed her softly and then made his way past the three tiered rows of hammocks to the steep steps.

  “Good night, Papa!”

  “Good night.”

  “Sleep tight!”

  The voices of dozens of other children followed fathers and brothers up the metal ladder. Each with a different tale—some once rich, some not so rich—they were all one story now.

  ***

  For the first time Shimon saw the face of the doctor. “Herr Doctor Freund,” the captain called him. “See if you can get a little of this down him. Eighty proof. My own stock. Maybe it will help him sleep.”

  Dr. Freund leaned close to Shimon. He held a small glass of amber liquid in his hand. Sad brown eyes gazed hopefully through small round glasses. His head was bald except for a wreath of gray hair that circled from one ear to the other. “Drink this, my friend.” He held the cup to Shimon’s lips. “It will help some.”

  The scent of the whiskey was strong. Shimon battled the queasiness of his stomach as he sipped the liquid and coughed, then sipped again until it was gone. It burned his mouth and throat, searing a path to his stomach. Shimon tried to speak. He let his eyes wander from the face of Dr. Freund to the paper lilies that had been placed on the shelf opposite his narrow bed. He remembered the sweet concern on the faces of five little girls. “They were real,” he managed to say.

  The doctor caught his meaning. “Yes. They are real.”

  “I thought I had died . . . angels.”

  “No, you did not die. And they are little girls. They are the daughters of the woman who heard you in the vent shaft.”

  “The shaft . . . the fire . . . for a time I thought I was in hell. But this cannot be hell, can it? Not with children so sweet.” Shimon gulped the air as a new fear assailed him. “Are you taking me back? Back there?”

  “No. You are free, my friend. We are all free now!”

  “Free.” He said the word as though it were gold dust in his hand, as though his breath might blow it away.

  “You are aboard the freighter Darien. A freedom ship to take us far from the Nazis.”

  “I am Shimon Feldstein.” Shimon closed his eyes and repeated his own name.

  “Shimon Feldstein.” Dr. Freund straightened slowly. “You must set your mind on living. This is not heaven. It is not hell. It is the Darien.”

  ***

  Murphy could not remember ever having been so miserable. This long night was worse than the loneliness he had felt when he thought Elisa had stood him up at the Musikverein in Vienna. It was worse than the months he had dreamed of her when there was no hope that she would love him. Now that she did love him, now that he knew firsthand what that meant, the agony of this senseless separation was almost more than he could bear.

  Mechanically he had tucked Charles into his bed in the adjoining room. Somewhere from deep in his memories of childhood, he had remembered that kids need to pray before they go to sleep. His own mother had prayed with him, and both Elisa and Anna had spent a quiet moment at the bedside of Charles each night. So Murphy managed to mumble a self-conscious prayer; then when Charles had gazed soberly into his eyes, Murphy had prayed earnestly for Elisa: “Hold her tight for me tonight, Lord, and bring us together again soon.”

  The prayer had been a concession to Charles, but it did somehow make Murphy feel better. Closer to her. Grateful that God was looking out for her. As Charles smiled at Murphy with his eyes, Murphy wondered which one of the two of them was more lonely. He propped the cello case open before he slipped out of the room. He wished that Elisa’s violin were also in the stateroom. He would open it. He would touch the strings and think about her.

  He opened her trunk instead, and the soft scent of her perfume wafted up and filled his senses. It was too much. He closed the trunk again, unable to bear such a vivid reminder of her. He looked at the still-made bed. This night should have been different. The thought made him ache. He slumped down in the chair and loosened his tie and hours later fell asleep out of sheer misery and exhaustion.

  ***

  Albert Sporer had not counted on the precise justice of the Prague government. His trial, while quietly conducted by the Czechs, was loudly denounced in Germany. Day after day the papers carried the horrendous reports that an “innocent” Sudeten Czech of German racial stock was being defamed and persecuted and tortured and now, finally, he was to be shot.

  The verdict of the jury was unanimous. Albert Sporer was not only a Nazi and a traitor to the nation of Czechoslovakia, he was a proven murderer as well. His attempted assassination of President Beneš in May showed what sort of means and methods he would resort to for the sake of his dreams of Aryan superiority. Sworn witnesses who had fled Austria in terror the night of the Nazi invasion spotted his photograph in the newspaper. They came forward to testify that they had seen this man at the border, that he had not only brutally beaten a number of refugees but had summarily executed a man who tried to escape. The pros
ecution brought forth evidence that Sporer had been involved in a number of other crimes in Austria, all of which had been calculated for the ultimate fall of that nation.

  As each member of the jury mouthed the word Guilty, three million Germans living in Czech-Sudetenland cried, “Innocent!” The failure of Sporer’s attempt to murder Beneš had been a bit of a disappointment to Hitler. However, the tumultuous riots that were now rocking the Sudetenland because of Sporer’s sentence of death caused him great joy privately and great anguish publicly.

  Each day the Führer shouted his threat over the radio. Each day tension and violence between racial Germans and the Czechs increased. Here and there, men and women on both sides were killed. In Prague, President Beneš called for martial law in the Sudeten territory. Troops from the Czech Army patrolled the area. Their German countrymen battled them in Brno at a cost of nine Nazi lives. They formed their own Free Corps to combat martial law. Swastikas were painted on the sides of buildings and bridge abutments. Heil Hitler! Free Sporer! Down with Czech oppressors! was painted on the boulders that lined the mountain highways of Sudetenland.

  Sporer was of more service to Hitler in his dying than he had been in his living. He marched defiantly to the post at the back of the parade ground. He handed a note to his Nazi attorney, smoked one last cigarette, declared loudly that his death and those of other Czech-Germans would be avenged by his comrades across the border; and then, cursing God and the priest and the Jews and the Czechs, he was shot.

  Photographs of his body, riddled with holes and slumped at the post, were published and widely circulated in Germany. What a triumph this was for the Führer! Now the headlines raged: Czech Sadism Rampant! Sudeten Germandom Under the Knotted Whip of Prague Soldiery! Czech Militia Ravages Sudeten Germans! Organized Criminal Bands Attack Germans in Sudetenland! This was the hour of the Führer’s greatest triumph in propaganda. Czech Terror Becomes Unbearable!

  Carefully orchestrated by the Nazi propaganda machine, suddenly President Beneš and the government of Prague became the villains and the aggressors. It was almost forgotten that Albert Sporer had attempted to assassinate the leader of Czechoslovakia, that he had been happily involved in the torture and murder of other innocent people. Suddenly Sporer was a great hero of the Aryan race.

  At the demand of the Nazi government, Sporer’s body was shipped to Berlin. There he was given a state funeral. In pagan ritual, his right arm was cut off, and at the hour of midnight, it was offered up to the German gods on a burning altar! Hitler strode onto a stage and addressed ten thousand SS men who had assembled to pay homage. He raised his head and sniffed the air: “What is that scent that hovers over us? It is the smell of flesh—the flesh of a German, here sacrificed and offered up to the glory of the greater Reich. We shall not forget! We shall avenge!”

  The roar of voices rose up with the smoke from Albert Sporer’s right arm. The god of Germany raised his hands. He was pleased with the offering, pleased with the praise. “Heil Hitler!”

  16

  My Fair Lady

  Himmler had chosen subordinates for Gestapo work from among those who had exhibited the strongest loyalty for the ideals of the Aryan race. Not that these men themselves were ideal Aryans. Some were weak-eyed, as Himmler was. Many were narrow-chested, small of stature, swarthy in complexion. Not physically suited for the SS units, which required men of strength and Aryan looks, the Gestapo agents were picked for their mental devotion to the perfection of things German. They were ordinary. They had perhaps more to prove than those more perfect physical specimens. What they lacked in looks, they made up for in cruelty. Without flinching, they were capable of torturing a victim to the brink of death—but only to the brink, only enough to get the information they required. After this was accomplished, death was administered quickly with a bullet in the neck.

  Such men had no fear of God or man or justice. They might as easily torture a priest or a nun as a common Jew. Nazi law was the only religion they cherished. Every man among them had proved his loyalty to the Führer from the first.

  From among these ordinary Gestapo men, Himmler chose one to handle the matter of the failed assassination of Czech President Beneš.

  Georg Wand at first glance had the appearance of a bank clerk or a shopkeeper from Unter den Linden. His face was thin, pock-marked from acne he had suffered as a youth. His eyes were brown, as was his thin hair. The eyebrows were too thick and met in the middle. He did not smile often, but when he did, a glint of gold from his capped right front tooth was quite obvious. His body was also thin, his nose prominent; when Himmler had first seen him, he had commented that Wand had the look of an asthmatic, malnourished Jew.

  Because of this ordinary, even homely appearance, Georg Wand had much to prove. Of course his Aryan pedigree was impeccable back to 1800. Yet this search of his ancestors had not seemed like enough for Wand, so he had gone back another hundred years. Clean, clear, and perfect Aryan blood flowed through his veins. He was proud of this, but even such an exceptional lineage had not allowed him to be a part of the SS. Some said that Georg Wand carried his pedigree in his pocket next to his wallet and his Gestapo identification. If the prostitutes of the Berlin red-light district refused him for fear he was a Jew, he showed them his wallet, his pedigree, and his Gestapo identification before he finally had them shipped off to Dachau.

  It was well known that Georg Wand did not like women. This made him especially useful in the prisons where women were interrogated. Where a man with less to prove than Wand might hesitate, this exceptional Gestapo agent proved his loyalty to the Fatherland time and again.

  For all these reasons Himmler called him into his office following the ceremony for Albert Sporer. Had there been tears in the eyes of Wand as the smoke from Sporer’s arm had risen up? If Wand ever had a friend, Albert Sporer had been it. Sporer had brought him into the Gestapo. Wand had been with him in Vienna.

  Himmler removed his gloves and tossed them onto the desk. He adjusted his round spectacles, preferring not to look at Wand’s face. “Well, sit down, Georg. We have things to discuss.”

  Georg clicked his heels and obeyed. He did not reply, but sat in silence until Himmler passed him a copy of Sporer’s last message. It had been decoded earlier, and Wand studied it with interest, even with some astonishment. In the letter two names had been deciphered. One name was that of Otto Wattenbarger. The other was that of Elisa Murphy. Of course the Gestapo had already marked Elisa Murphy as the one who had somehow discovered the plot and then warned Beneš. Her picture had been in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic.

  “Well, what do you think, Georg?” Himmler tapped his fingers on the desk blotter. “You know Otto Wattenbarger, don’t you?”

  “A good fellow.” Wand scratched his head. “Hard to believe he is involved with anything.” He scanned the message again. “You see here, not even Albert was certain if Otto was a traitor. This woman . . .” He picked up the newspaper from the file and studied her face. “Very beautiful. Involved with Otto?”

  Himmler shook his head. “Otto is being watched, of course. If he is involved with anything, we shall know it soon enough. But the woman . . . there can be no doubt she was in the service of Prague.” He picked up a pen and tapped the file with its point. “The woman we have no doubts about. Quite foolish of the Czechs to publicize her involvement. Of course we knew even before Sporer sent the message, but I think there is more to do than simply have her killed, don’t you?”

  “You want me to find out who was her contact? Where the leak is?”

  “It might have been Sporer himself. We cannot discount that possibility. He might have been attempting to blame Wattenbarger for his own indiscretion with her.” He strained to look at the photograph again. Shoulder-length blond hair, slim yet shapely, fine features. “You know Albert was weak-willed when it came to women of such Aryan beauty. He was always asking me to give him time with the young women in the Lebensborn program. In fact, he actually fathered at least tw
o sons for the Führer. His life is not wasted.”

  Georg Wand had never been allowed to participate in the Aryan breeding program because of his stature and appearance. He resented the exclusion from such service, but he did not let Himmler see how the topic galled him.

  “Was this woman a part of the Lebensborn, then?” Wand swept over the photo and imagined what perfect children such a specimen would bear.

  “No. Never. She was a violinist in Vienna. We have asked around. Questioned the appropriate people. She left Vienna after her marriage to an American and was not seen there since. She left Prague with her husband and a child. Hans Erb followed her in London. Followed her and her husband to the docks of Cunard Lines in Southampton where she boarded the Queen Mary for America.”

  “And?”

  “Hans was delayed, as was Elisa’s husband. She boarded the ship but somehow managed to get off it.” Himmler passed yet another message to Wand. “As you see, Hans wired that the husband and the child are on the ship, but the woman is not.”

  “She is still in England?”

  “That is something I wish you to find out.”

  “I will begin with the Cunard Lines. Hans is still following the husband?” He frowned. “Have Hans check for telegrams. A simple matter.”

  “He will stay with Herr Murphy in America in the event she shows up there. She is our point of contact, the strongest link we have in this chain.”

  “Why do we not simply interrogate Otto?”

  “If we do not find her, then that is our alternative, of course. But what a pity to lose a loyal Nazi in Austria. She will, of course, tell you if Otto is involved. Then there will be time enough to deal with him.” He chuckled. “We are certain of her treachery . . . and with that in mind I want you to use all your powers—your extraordinary powers with her as a woman, Georg.”

  Georg Wand looked again at the lovely woman in the news photograph. This was an assignment he would enjoy. He smiled, and Himmler saw the glint of the gold tooth.