by Michael Dean
Heydrich nodded judiciously. ‘Chief Inspector?’
‘Troll’s right. He’s done well.’
The informer licked his lips.
‘You’re sure they don’t suspect you?’ Heydrich said to Troll.
‘Quite sure.’ Heydrich gave him a stern look and Troll added, ‘Herr Oberführer.’
‘All right,’ Heydrich said. ‘The Asam House meeting it is. And we’ll see who else we fish up in the net.’
Chapter Seven
Sepp Kunde’s father pulled buckets of ore up and down by rope in a factory, from morning to evening. That was his life. On his way to work, he used to see the local landowner’s carriage pulled by four grey horses, when only two were needed. What he told his twin sons, Sepp and August, was this: ‘Character is determined neither by wealth nor by position; devotion to duty alone is the mark of true nobility.’ The young Sepp grew up with a holy respect for the vast, silent heroism of the labourer.
When Sepp was twelve years old, he developed blood poisoning in his left arm, after falling on a bottle while he was playing. He was confined to bed for almost two years. The solitude helped him break the shackles of being a twin. After that, he felt August could go his own way, the more so when that way involved a life of crime. When August attacked a woman, Sepp told him he no longer considered him a brother.
Women were Sepp’s only companions. From the age of fifteen, he asked any woman he desired to make love with him. Many agreed to do so. He never made promises in order to have his way. He held fast to the belief that to tell a woman you love her, when you do not, is low and despicable. But afterwards, he would thank her for the bounty of her beauty and her body. He would kiss her hand. Then he would say goodbye.
As he grew to maturity, Sepp came to believe in the brotherhood of all men across the artificial boundaries of nation. When war came, he refused to fight against working men from other countries. But the parish council put up a poster with the names of three boys from his village who they would send in his place if he refused. So he had to go. After the war, he went to Munich to find work. He also hoped to escape August, but his twin had made the same decision.
In Munich, August continued a life of crime. Sepp fought for the Councils Republic. After their defeat, he worked as a clockmaker and a cabinetmaker, then opened his own locksmith shop. Working alone best suited his temperament. But he kept certain papers, including forged identity documents, to help the communists. The Nazis found them, closed his shop down, and sent him to prison – to Stadelheim.
He was in Stadelheim, for a while, at the same time as August, who had murdered a man in the course of a theft. Shortly after his release, Lange had found him a job at the Weintraub Gallery, in return for agreeing to undergo tests at his hospital.
When Herr Weintraub was murdered, Sepp was briefly returned to Stadelheim, then Dachau. When they released him from Dachau, he got sucked back into the Schwarzmüller Group, because they needed him so badly, though he had intended to leave. When the idiots kidnapped Glaser, he would have welcomed the chance to walk out, when he threatened to.
He was still convinced that the only way to stop the Nazis was to kill Hitler, and he had been thinking about ways to do it. A bomb was the answer, he believed. He had been planning its construction, but he lacked information about where to plant it. So for now he continued to work with the Schwarzmüller Group. But he intended to go it alone soon.
*
Kunde hurried from the Sendlinger Tor along Sendlingerstrasse. It was raining in sheets; he was soaked to the skin. He remembered another occasion in the rain. Max Troll standing staring into a doorway, while newspapers were delivered to the old Red Gymnastics Club. And men leaving that club being arrested, and driven away by the Political Police, who must have been waiting.
He had suspected Troll for a long time, but he had no proof. A just man did not pass on suspicions when he had no proof. But he intended to check out this meeting in advance, to see if Max Troll was betraying them.
He believed he had plenty of time. His watch showed just after one-thirty. The meeting had been fixed for three o’clock. If, as he suspected, this was a trap, he reckoned the Gestapo would take up position from two o’clock, or so.
He ducked into the Asam Church, intending to go out the back, into the cloistered gardens, then through to the Asam House. The church was exceptionally narrow, dimly lit and layered with what Kunde regarded as obscene luxury. There was a white marble balustrade, then salmon-pink pillars flanking encrusted gold starbursts over not just one altar, but two. For above the first altar was another balustrade, then the second altar, above which was a round yellow window, like an artificial mockery of the natural sun.
Kunde wondered how much blood and sweat of decent working men had gone into the construction of this elaborate hall, whose very purpose was to cow and deceive the workers into giving yet more docile labour for the benefit of the rich. Then he heard a noise.
The heavy wooden door near the altar, which led to a passageway through to the Asam House, opened. He ducked down into the choir stalls, just as Forster came in.
Butcher Forster, they called him. The man who had hunted down the original leaders of the communist resistance in Munich, leaving them with that useless mummy’s boy of a plasterer, Franz-Xaver Schwarzmüller, in charge.
Kunde crouched, tucking himself behind a carved wood misericord. His jerkin and shirt were steaming from the rain in the sudden warmth. He could hear Forster walking up and down, and he cursed himself for a fool, trapped and unable to warn Schwarzmüller and Glaser. Then he nearly betrayed himself by laughing aloud – Forster started praying.
Kunde put his head round the side of the choir stall to see the broad back of Forster, encased in a mackintosh, kneeling before the altar, praying for the successful outcome of his afternoon’s work: the arrest of the communists and Social Democrats. Forster then prayed for his family; for his wife, Christa, and his children, Helga and Erwin. He finished with a prayer for the safety of his Führer, Adolf Hitler. Then he stood up and crossed himself.
Kunde put his head down again and heard Forster barking instructions. An SS guard appeared at the door leading to the Asam House. Another guard stood at the main church entrance, the one Kunde had just come through – leading back into Sendlingerstrasse. Forster left. Kunde was trapped.
He settled down in his hiding place and glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes to two. He curled into a ball and waited. Eventually he heard the door to the Asam House slam. The guard had gone into the passageway, probably for a cigarette. This was the guard who would certainly have seen him, if he had moved from his hiding place. The other one did not have the same direct line of vision.
Kunde took a chance that this other guard was not looking along the nave towards the altar at this precise moment. He straightened up, left his hiding place and walked toward the guard, as if he had just come from the Asam House. His luck held. As he swaggered down the nave, the guard noticed him for the first time.
‘Herr Forster wants you,’ called out Kunde, his voice echoing to the high ceiling.
The SS guard gazed blankly at the communist. He was a callow, swarthy youth, with fruity spots dotted on chin and cheeks. ‘OK,’ he said uncertainly. He started to move away, down toward the altar, then stopped. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘Max Troll,’ Kunde said, without breaking step.
He kept walking. The guard hesitated again, then nodded and walked off. Outside, the rain had stopped. Kunde checked his watch. Two-thirty. If Forster had his wits about him, he would realise his operation was compromised, as soon as the guard reached him. Would he move to arrest everybody now? Or would he still wait at the Asam House?
A little way down Sendlingerstrasse, there was a bicycle leaning against the facade of a building. Kunde took it, and set off fast to Haidhausen, where Schwarzmüller lived. He was afraid Lange’s coal gas experiments may have damaged his lungs, but the deep breathing seemed to be restoring
them. Kunde had been a member of a Red Cycling Club in his youth; he made good time.
Schwarzmüller was just setting off for the Asam House. Kunde caught him in the street, outside the front door of his building.
‘Schwarzmüller!’ Kunde called to him, breathless. ‘It’s a trap. Warn the others.’
Franz-Xaver Schwarzmüller looked startled. ‘It’s too late,’ he said.
‘Warn as many as you can,’ Kunde shouted. He turned the bicycle round.
It was the last time anybody saw Schwarzmüller alive. The plasterer left Germany for Moscow that evening. As soon as he arrived, he was arrested and sent to a labour camp, along with every other German communist who made the same journey.
Chapter Eight
Kunde crouched low over the handlebars, racing style, and pedalled for all he was worth to Glaser’s address in Galeriestrasse. There, he threw the bicycle down in the gutter, and furiously rang Glaser’s bell. Nothing. He tried the outside door of the block of flats. It was locked. He cursed and railed against the fates. Then he rang Glaser’s bell again, out of sheer defiance. As he was turning to leave, a big, red-faced, jolly-looking youth opened the door.
‘Gerhard Glaser!’ Kunde shouted, breathless from the ride. ‘Is he still there?’
‘Yes, he is,’ the youth said. ‘Would you be Herr Kunde?’
‘Yes, I would,’ Kunde said, gasping.
‘Come in, sir, please,’ said the youth. ‘You’re in luck. Herr Rinner was late, or we would have set off by now. My name is Kaspar, by the way.’
Kunde ignored the hand he offered. He followed Kaspar into the Glaser family flat, on the ground floor. Kaspar had a rolling gait, like a boxer, but he moved clumsily. There was something of his father’s forthright, almost naive, decency about him. But even at this early stage, Kunde discerned a buffoonish quality, too, absent in the father.
In Glaser’s drawing room there were two women: Frau Glaser was statuesque, with green-grey eyes, auburn hair and full breasts. The other woman, the one seated at the table, was a sensual creature, with hennaed hair. As Kunde came in, she looked wide-eyed at him, then looked away, with a half-smile. He knew she would make love with him, if he could create the opportunity.
Next to her, von Hessert looked much the worse for wear, since Kunde had last seen him at Dachau – nervous and strained, with much of his composure gone. ‘Hello, Kunde,’ he said, in that aristocratic drawl of his.
Kunde did not trouble to reply. He sat down at the table. ‘The meeting is a trap,’ he said without preamble. ‘One of the communists is an informer.’
There was a murmur of consternation. Kunde lay his head down on his arms on the table and rested. Exhausted from the bicycle riding, he dozed for a few seconds. When he looked up again, the brunette was looking at him, highly amused. She was obviously intelligent, which is neither here nor there as far as love-making is concerned. Her dark good looks reminded him of a Vicki Baum heroine. He was aroused by her – tumescent.
Introductions were made, round the table, after the bourgeois manner. The girl was introduced as Fräulein von Hessert. Kunde asked her first name straight off, looking her in the eye. She laughingly said he could call her Ello, immediately using the du form. So far so good, thought Kunde. The one with the attaché case was introduced as Herr Rinner.
‘I’d better go,’ Rinner murmured.
He was distracted, but not, Kunde thought, afraid. He had an air about him. Kunde began, reluctantly, to respect him.
‘You should not go back to your lodgings, Herr Rinner,’ Kunde said. ‘Or any address connected to the Social Democrats that they might know about.’
‘I know,’ Rinner replied. ‘The Gestapo came for me at the Bayerischer Hof yesterday.’
Kunde frowned. ‘Are you sure they were Gestapo?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Not Political Police?’
‘No. They introduced themselves as Gestapo. Our people stalled them long enough for me to make my escape. But it was close. I could take nothing with me.’
Kunde nodded. ‘That’s interesting. It’s not Troll’s doing, then. Our communist informer.’
‘How do you know?’ Glaser asked.
‘Forster was running the Asam House operation,’ Kunde said. ‘Forster is Political Police, not Gestapo. And, anyway, if Rinner had been arrested yesterday, it would have wrecked the Political Police operation today.’
‘So who betrayed Herr Rinner?’ said Kaspar. Everyone ignored him.
Glaser went white. ‘Was there much of value in your room, Erich?’ he asked. It was obvious to everyone in the room that he was changing the subject.
Rinner shook his head. ‘No. I had hardly started on the next Green Report. And there are no names there for them to find. I know better than that.’ This last was said with a glance at Kunde, the amateur to the professional. Kunde’s opinion of Rinner continued to rise.
‘Do you have anywhere to stay tonight, Herr Rinner?’ asked Frau Glaser.
‘He can’t stay here, sad to say,’ said Kaspar. ‘Magda is out at the moment, but she’ll be back soon.’
‘Who is Magda?’ Kunde asked him.
Kaspar grinned. ‘My sister,’ he said. ‘But then we all have our cross to bear.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Kunde frowned, disliking him even more. He thought him a clown.
‘Kas-par!’ Frau Glaser said. She smiled at her son and he smiled back. Kunde thought she had a truly lovely smile.
‘I wouldn’t dream of imposing, in any case,’ Rinner said.
Frau Glaser stood. ‘I’m phoning my sister.’
Glaser started to protest, but she ignored him. The Glaser telephone was on a telephone table in the corner of the room. The company were silent, with everybody listening to the telephone call.
‘Hello. It’s me. How’s things?’ Frau Glaser was silent, nodding as she listened to the answer. Then she said, ‘How are you placed for an overnight guest? ... Yes. Thank you. One coming soon, then. Goodbye. And take care.’
She rang off, having mentioned no names. Kunde approved. There was a rumour that the Gestapo were bugging all the telephones, and it was probably true.
Frau Glaser turned to Rinner. ‘Herr Rinner, you can stay with my sister, Katya. Katya Bachhuber. She is not known to the authorities. You should be safe there for a while.’ She smiled at Rinner, then gave him her sister’s address.
‘My thanks to you, Frau Glaser,’ Rinner said. He left, with ornate goodbyes and handshakes, which sent Kunde’s opinion of him down again.
As soon as he was gone, Ello spoke. ‘I know we must leave soon,’ she said. ‘But there was something I wished to put to the people at this meeting, which will not now take place.’ She was speaking directly to Kunde.
‘And that was?’
Ello looked serious. ‘I know Hitler quite well. In a manner of speaking, I am his lady friend.’
‘Are you now?’
‘Yes.’
There was silence in the room. Von Hessert favoured everyone with a cheesy grin. Kaspar was gazing at Ello. Only Frau Glaser looked a little cool. Ello was obviously weighing up Kunde’s reaction to her news. His reaction was that the day was looking up, in more ways than one. Ello continued, but only when she was good and ready. Kunde raised an eyebrow. She was a woman of true independence; one could respect such a woman.
‘I am also a psychology student, Herr Kunde,’ she said.
‘Call me Sepp.’
‘Very well. Sepp. And I’ve known Hitler since girlhood. So I’ll tell you what makes him tick, shall I?’
‘Please do.’
‘Right. Well. To keep it simple ...’
‘You don’t need to keep it simple, Ello. Working men aren’t necessarily stupid.’
There was an uneasy silence. Kunde didn’t take his eyes off her. Getting her into bed depended on winning this.
She dropped her eyes. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Good.’
The bri
efest of pauses. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Apology accepted. Please continue.’
She nodded. ‘As well as being a psychopath, Hitler is an artist-savant ...’
Kunde interrupted. ‘How do you know what he is?’
‘I got him to draw,’ Ello said. ‘The key is his architectural drawings, not the watercolours. They are done using eidetic memory, and at speed. They are perfectly in proportion. He draws the same subject again and again, starting with small detail and working outward. The buildings he draws have strong linear perspective, often multiple perspective, using colour to fill in defined areas only, like the yellow on his drawing of the Old Residence. All this is typical of autistic artist-savants.’
‘Can you be sure?’ Glaser said.
‘I’m ... reasonably sure of the diagnosis.’
‘But if he’s autistic, wouldn’t he be ... I don’t know, stupid?’ Kaspar asked.
Ello shook her head. ‘Not at all. Most autistic savants have average or above-average intelligence.’
Kunde stared at her, fascinated. ‘So, how did he get like that?’
‘I can’t be completely certain. But probably when his father beat his mother while she was pregnant with him, it caused circulating testosterone to become neurotoxic. That’s also what made him a psychopath. We can’t know the exact nature of what has been destroyed in him. He is a severely damaged being, but it is more a question of what is missing than what is wrong. Much, perhaps everything, that makes us human is simply not there. He is not, in the fullest sense of the word, a human being at all.’
There was complete silence in the room.
‘Can a person not be human?’ Kaspar asked.
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘Then what future is there for Germany?’ Glaser said.
Ello shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘Hitler over-evaluates his short-term goal, the achievement of power, to such an extent that nothing else is left for him, or of him. If he does not achieve total power, he will commit suicide, as he keeps threatening to do. But we cannot rely on that. He craves his own death, but also the deaths of others. And this will not change. He is at the extreme end of the changeable – unchangeable axis.’
