by Michael Dean
He nodded and said, ‘Grüss Gott, Kunde’ curtly.
Sepp Kunde sat, pushing the case under the table, next to Glaser. He ordered a Dinkelacker beer. They sat in silence until it appeared, in a grey half-litre clay mug. Kunde eyed its mass of foam approvingly, then took a huge swig, tilting his head back. His Adam’s apple moved spasmodically as he swallowed.
Finally, he banged the mug down. ‘So. How’s things, Gerhard?’ he said.
‘Fine.’
‘If I give you an address in Munich, can you remember it without writing it down?’
‘I think I can manage that. Yes.’
‘Türkenstrasse. Number ninety-four. The name on the doorbell is Limmer.’
Glaser nodded. He badly wanted Kunde to go. He had never carried a suitcase the size of the one now nestling against his artificial leg. After a lot of thought, he had brought the ebony cane with him, mainly because he was reluctant to abandon it in Ludwigsburg. But he was unsure if it would be a help or a hindrance. He wanted to use the walk to the ticket office to experiment with case and cane. He was apprehensive and wanted to get on with it.
Kunde, however, was in no hurry, or so it seemed. ‘The dynamite is in a false-bottom of the suitcase,’ he said. ‘There’s some space at the top, though not much.’ He nodded at Glaser’s parcel. ‘Hey – give me that. I’ll put it in the case for you now.’
Glaser nodded. He handed the dish in its flapping brown paper to the communist, feeling the familiar mix of anger and helplessness when people undertook routine tasks for him. Kunde put the dish on top of the high false bottom of the case, relocked it, then pushed it back under the table.
‘Here’s the key to the case,’ he said. ‘You might get away with a superficial search, if they don’t suspect you.’ As they both knew, the Nazis had been checking all but the most local of trains, looking for couriers and subversive material, since the summer. ‘Bringing that parcel was maybe not such a bad idea,’ Kunde added.
Glaser, the tyro conspirator, accepted his undeserved praise with a nod. He doubted he would remain undetected after even a superficial search, with or without his parcel. To his relief, Kunde’s next few massive swallows emptied his mug, which he left upside-down on the table. He banged the table with his knuckles.
‘Gerhard, my fellow Swabian, you will understand what I mean when I say I hope we never see each other again?’
Glaser was getting really fed up, not only with the diminutive communist, but with this cloying Swabian brotherhood stuff. He thought of himself as a lawyer first, a family man second, and a German third. Being Swabian meant little to him, apart, maybe, from the outstanding food and wine. It occurred him that he loathed communists not only intellectually, but aesthetically. They got hold of one simple idea and hammered it into the ground, over and over and over again. It was amazing how ugly and one-dimensional that made them.
‘I, too, hope we never meet again,’ Glaser said, with complete sincerity.
Kunde stood, gave Glaser a long firm handshake, man to man, or Swabian to Swabian, and struck one final blow in the class war by making no attempt to pay for his beer when he left.
Glaser called the waitress over. He paid for Kunde’s beer and for his own food and drink. She did not give him a glance, as he walked out with a case he had not come in with.
But even before he reached the heavy double-doors at the exit, he realised he just could not balance himself with both case and cane. The cane stopped him leaning to the left, to compensate for the weight of the case in his right hand. He was constantly nearly toppling over to the right. He detoured to the toilets and abandoned the cane in a cubicle.
The unhindered walk to the ticket office was more successful, as he learned to rebalance himself. He was dreading the steps to the platform. In the event, he stopped at the foot of the stone stairs, simultaneously inviting and dreading assistance. Sure enough, a concerned elderly woman in black, in an elaborate brimmed hat, ordered her husband to carry the case up for him. The husband had a gold Party pin at his lapel. He huffed and puffed, banging the case down at the top of the stairs, to show his resentment at the task. Glaser managed a suitable expression of gratitude.
*
Trains on the branch line to Stuttgart were frequent. When the next one came, he half threw the case up the iron platform-step and followed it. He kept it next to him for this much shorter part of the journey. The vineyards at the Ludwigsburg end of the route reminded him of the Trollinger the von Hesserts had served, that first time he was a guest in Ello’s room.
At Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, Glaser coped with disembarking from the local train, and the walk, and the steps to another platform, to await the Munich long-distance. But the platform was packed solid with travellers. The train was due in twenty minutes. He found a place on a bench and sat down.
The train was late. As it stopped, and the first passengers disembarked, everyone on the platform swarmed forward, pushing and shoving, barging past the disembarkers. Glaser was swept along in the crowd, to the steep steps, then up into a carriage, just about keeping his balance.
Inside, as he had planned, he put the case up on the luggage rack and sat two or three seats up from it, where he could still see it. The case was quickly surrounded by other peoples’ luggage. An enormous rucksack belonging to a middle-aged man in hiking clothes was half on top of it. The hiker must be on the way to join a hiking group or club of some sort – all hikes now had to be authorised; hiking alone was illegal.
Glaser leaned back, exhausted, in his seat. He was sweating, but dry mouthed. At least the weather was reasonable. He did not think he could have coped with the slippery surfaces rain brought.
He was lucky to have found a place. Not only was every seat in the train quickly occupied, travellers were jammed up against each other, standing in every available inch of floor-space.
This, Glaser felt, was either very good or very bad: Nazis doing a document check might give up quickly, from sheer discomfort. On the other hand, if they had suspicions, they were likely to order everybody off the train, while they conducted a search. Glaser knew this happened regularly. The delays and cancellations it caused were one reason the trains were always so crowded, and always late.
Glaser noticed how many travellers around him were in uniform, of one sort or another: SA, soldiers, Hitler Youth, a few SS or SD, even a group of BdM girls about Magda’s age. It was like a troop mobilisation. People often compared these times with August 1914. That sense of excitement. The war was not over, after all. The new Germany, under Adolf Hitler, would continue it, and the last battle would be our victory. Glaser groaned aloud at the thought.
The first names the train passed through were typically Swabian: Esslingen, Plochingen, Göppingen. Glaser did not wish to leave them behind. He felt as if he were being taken from his past into an unwelcome present. He thought of Lotte, not as she is now, but as the tall, graceful, Titian-headed teenager; Lotte Bachhuber, as he had first known her.
The train headed south before it turned east. There was a check at Memmingen station. Glaser saw them on the platform, out of the window, through hissing white steam from the train. Gestapo. He was in a middle carriage. Two of them boarded from each end. At a major check like this, he knew they would be searching luggage, as well as checking identity cards.
Now what? He could fetch his case and disembark – a traveller heading for Memmingen. But he must do it quickly, or it would be obvious he was evading the check. He had not found out if there was another train after this one. He cursed himself for his carelessness.
He glanced down the platform. Passengers and their luggage were being taken off the train; cases were being opened, travellers interrogated, lists checked. He had slipped his followers in Munich, outside the Ministry of Justice. Surely his name was on the wanted list?
At that moment, the middle-aged hiker claimed his rucksack from the overhead luggage rack, straining past fellow passengers.
‘Excuse me,’ Glaser calle
d out. ‘Can you give me my case? It’s next to your rucksack.’
The hiker, hectic and bad-tempered from being buffeted by his fellow passengers, glared at him. But by now Glaser had stood and was making his way through the crush. His handicap was evident. Most people assumed he was a wounded war veteran, like so many others. The hiker’s expression softened.
With a show of strength, he swung the case through the air. Its balance was clearly not what he had expected. Glaser failed to take it from him cleanly. It fell on the floor, banging against a woman, who dutifully screamed. A young man in a Hitler Youth Leader uniform picked the case up and returned it to Glaser with a smile.
Glaser followed the hiker, who barged a way through to the carriage door, bellowing ‘Excuse me!’ non-stop, although there was clearly no hurry. People were still being taken off the train. It would be detained for a long time – perhaps for hours. The platform was already crowded, a scene of chaos. Each pair of Gestapo men was engulfed by a growing circle of travellers, most with luggage, waiting to be checked.
Glaser made his way along the platform toward the station exit. He was expecting a challenging shout every step of the way, but none came.
*
Outside Memmingen station there were, to Glaser’s relief, three black taxis. He commandeered the first, calculating how far he could ask to go. The driver stowed the case in the boot. Glaser sat in the front.
‘Heil Hitler!’ he said, as the driver took his place again behind the wheel.
‘Heil Hitler! Where to?’
‘Landsberg-am-Lech,’ Glaser said. He realised it would be safer to have a cover story, so he started chatting. ‘Take me to the fortress,’ he said. ‘I’m a lawyer, prosecuting some of the scum we’ve put away in there.’
‘They don’t need lawyers,’ said the driver, as he pulled out of the station. ‘Straight to the executioner’s axe with the lot of them. That’s what I say.’
‘Hey!’ Glaser said. ‘You’ll put me out of a job, my good man.’
The taxi driver laughed. Glaser made patriotic chit-chat for the rest of the drive. He was surprised how easy it was: Hitler is like a sculptor, Glaser told the driver. He pulverises the figurines of tiny warring factions into their constituent raw clay, then reconstitutes one huge noble Aryan figure from that clay. The driver hadn’t heard that one. He nodded approvingly.
He himself, Glaser said, was from Stuttgart. ‘Not a single shop in Stuttgart,’ he went on, ‘is now Jewish owned. Everything is cleaned up – Judenrein.’ The driver nodded approvingly.
Eventually, they stopped outside a high-walled building which looked like a sanatorium. Glaser had never seen Landsberg Fortress before. He glanced curiously at the stone archway leading to the prison, as the taxi driver hauled his case from the boot.
He could be standing right where the Party photographer, Hoffmann, had taken his photograph of Hitler on his release from Landsberg: a saturnine Hitler stood sideways on to the photographer’s car, in belted mackintosh and plus-fours, hand hovering – as so often – over his groin.
Stranded outside the fortress-prison, with his case, Glaser had no idea what to do next.
He was reluctant to ask for help at the gatehouse, next to the archway. After a few minutes, another taxi appeared, bringing visitors. He thankfully hailed it on its way out, telling the driver he was heading for Munich. The driver took him to Landsberg-Nord station. He caught the next local evening train.
It was half empty. Glaser looked for travellers who might be workers. He found a couple, in blue overalls, and got into conversation. Feeling more of a heel than he had with the taxi driver from Memmingen station, he invented a colourful story about his war wound, and how he had been awarded an Iron Cross first class for his bravery. When the train arrived at Munich Hauptbahnhof, he asked them if they would carry his case to a taxi. It was the first time he had ever asked for help in this way. They were happy to oblige.
Walking slowly, Glaser let the one carrying the case get ahead, talking fast to the other one. With his suitcase loaded, he told the driver to go to the top of Türkenstrasse.
He watched the taxi out of sight before he rang the Limmers’ bell. An old man opened the door and wordlessly let him in. When he unlocked the suitcase, in the Limmers’ tiny main room, the dish his mother had given him was smashed to tiny pieces. As far as he could tell, the dynamite was fine.
Chapter Twelve
When Sepp Kunde reached Munich, tired, hungry and footsore after walking by night and sleeping in woods and hedgerows by day, the elderly Limmer parents welcomed him as a hero. They installed him in their now absent son’s bedroom.
That same night, at midnight, Kunde walked to the site of the future House of German Art, at the top end of Prinzregentenstrasse. A construction resembling an open-air theatre was being built for the opening ceremony. As Ello had said in her telephone call to him at the Linde, the white granite block was in place, and it was unguarded. It was on a shallow black stone platform, large enough to take the Party Bonzen and eminent guests.
Kunde stepped onto the platform. Even a small man like him could bend comfortably over the granite block. He looked into it. It had already been hollowed out at the top, to accommodate the scroll in its steel tube, which Ello had told him Hitler would place in it.
After it had been placed, plaster would no doubt be poured on top of it. Kunde quickly measured the block with a tape-measure, memorising the dimensions.
*
Back at the Limmer place, Kunde slept like a dog for twelve hours, then sat motionless for a while, before starting work.
Georg Limmer’s old bedroom was bedecked with pennants from a former Red Football Club and Red Cycling Club. There were also some Reemtsma cigarette cards of footballers, on the dresser. As a boy, Kunde had collected sets of Reemtsma cigarette cards himself. He had sent up for the album and meticulously pasted them all in, on the kitchen table of the cottage in Poppenweiler.
But he regretted it now. Ello had told him the owner of the cigarette company, Philipp F. Reemtsma, was a Nazi capitalist of the worst sort. He had put up a sizeable chunk of the twelve million Reichsmarks for the House of German Art. An industrialist called Flick and her own father had put up most of the rest, Ello had said. Reemtsma, Flick and Ello’s father, Cajetan von Hessert, would all be guests of honour at the ceremony.
Happy and absorbed, Kunde sat cross-legged, tailor-fashion, on the floor. He was surrounded by his tools: an assortment of wood planes, hammers, set-squares, tin shears, graving tools, a pad saw, a precision ruler, scissors, pliers, wood clamps, rasps and fine wood files. As well as the dynamite, he also had clock movements, insulated wire and a six-volt storage battery.
The battery was to supply electricity, as a hissing fuse was out of the question. A pistol shot would have been possible, but would have been his death warrant as well as Hitler’s. He had the precise time of Hitler’s speech from Ello. It was to begin at two-thirty on Octoberl5th.
The primary mechanical action of the bomb was a fifteen-day Westminster alarm clock. A series of cog-wheels and levers, soldered to the back of the movement, would activate the timing device, set to three o’clock. At that time, it would move a lever. This in turn triggered a system of springs and weights to launch a steel-tipped shuttle, which would strike the percussion cap of a rifle round, minus its bullet, embedded in the dynamite. By the time the dynamite blew, Kunde intended to be safely in Austria.
As he worked, he entered a familiar world where the soothing necessity of precision excluded all else. It was a world free of people, whose unremitting evil and venality never ceased to disgust him. But after a few hours, for the first time in his life, his concentration wavered.
He was making the plaster to paste over the top of the bomb. It was a finicky non-technical job, not one he particularly enjoyed. He had to blend the plaster to the exact colour of the granite. And while he was doing this, he had carnal thoughts of Ello. They made him tumescent at once. Then he became aw
are of a strange inner warmth which until now he had felt only as a result of precision working. He was plagued by a restlessness entirely alien to him. It was accompanied by a yearning to see her, to be in her company. He fought it down, but it scared him.
He hoped to install everything in one night. Carrying the bomb to the site was, he reckoned, the most dangerous part of the operation. In a battered rucksack, he packed some clothes and toiletries on top of the various components of the bomb. Wearing a worn dark-blue suit, a brown pullover and black shoes, he bade the Limmers goodbye and set off.
*
It was a moonless night. He had chosen his route through the streets with care, walking in a huge circle almost as far as the Victory Gate, so he could approach the site from the north, through the Englischer Garten. He arrived just after midnight. He was fresh, having taken plenty of sleep during the day, and content and at peace with himself.
He deepened the existing hollow in the granite block patiently, using steel hand-drills of different diameters. To save space, he had abandoned plans to have a back-up clock. They would just have to hope Hitler’s phenomenal luck finally deserted him. Working by the light of a torch wrapped in a blue handkerchief, he started to place the mechanism in the granite block. The explosion could be timed up to fifteen days after starting the clock.
He packed the clockwork mechanism, sealed with insulating material, inside a wooden box lined with cork. It was completely sealed except for two holes, through which he fed the ignition wires attached to the detonator. Then he attached the detonator to the dynamite.
A piece of plywood, cut to the dimensions of the block, was placed over the bomb and a layer of plaster applied over it. The colour was a perfect match. At the end of it all, a faint ticking from the Westminster clock was audible, even through the box lined with cork, but only if you put your ear next to the granite block.
Kunde admired his handiwork. There was enough dynamite to blast the granite block to pieces, killing everyone on the raised stone platform. Fortunately, Hitler could not be seen in public with Ello. She would therefore be in the wooden grandstands, twenty metres away. Anybody back there would be safe. So even Glaser’s bourgeois squeamishness was being catered for: No paintings damaged, only Nazis and Nazi sympathisers killed.
