“He shot himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did. Couldn’t take it anymore and put a gun to his head. He was drinking a lot, Annalise told me. She saw him for the last time when she went to the camp for an official inspection, together with Heydrich. Annalise’s brother was a gentle soul, just like she is, and not capable of any violence at all; now imagine what he had to see every single day during his so-called service. And he was Jewish on top of it, with fake papers, but still a Jew, you understand? His own people there, I can only imagine what hell he was going through every day… Annalise asked Heydrich to transfer him from the camp to the front, but he refused. Out of spite, probably, because usually they gladly transferred anyone to the front, if they were ready to throw themselves at the Russians. So Norbert Meissner shot himself, the poor, innocent fellow. The camp took him, too. It made no difference that he was wearing an SS uniform. Annalise was not in a good state when she came to me, trust me. I mean, who in their right mind would outright ask the chief of the Austrian Gestapo to murder the chief of the German one?”
“She probably trusted you.”
“I don’t think she trusted me yet then. I think she was very desperate. And yet, I agreed to everything she asked me for.”
“Has the thought ever occurred to you that Heydrich might have sent her to you to compromise you?” Agent Foster’s eyes twinkled as he suggested it with a smile.
“Otto warned me of the same thing.” I smiled back. “No, it never occurred to me. It didn’t make sense, that is. If he really was her lover and he had sent her to me, why hadn’t he saved her brother then? It was simply illogical.”
Yes, that idea was illogical, but the other one that the American was asking me about, was anything but. Heydrich was still alive when I went to Berlin to attend a conference with Reichsführer and him, and after which the chief of Amt IV, or the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, appeared at the doors and politely asked me to follow him down to the Gestapo jail in the basement of the RSHA building, so we were hidden form unsuspecting eyes. When I inquired as to the reason and got the reply that they had arrested a certain SS-Helferin Friedmann, my heart dropped for a second, fearing that Heydrich had discovered our plan and was going to have us both executed after a quick cross-examination. However, Gruppenführer Müller dismissed my concerns with a single phrase.
“Espionage and high treason, can you imagine? Her fingerprints were found on a radio belonging to one of the Resistance members. I’m surprised at how she was able to hide it from her husband for so long. He’s working here, in SD-Ausland as well. I don’t know if you two are acquainted though.”
“We are,” I muttered in a voice that sounded raspy for some reason. With every step I took down to the basement the more it dawned on me, the fact that she was working for the enemy this entire time, that she had lied to me for whatever malicious reasons she had, compared to which even her inexistent relationship with Heydrich seemed less disgusting. I walked inside the interrogation room barely holding the fury which engulfed everything inside me, with every new heavy breath.
She sat there, at the table, in her official uniform and glanced all over me with not a single shade of fear in her eyes. I was certain that she was guilty after that fearless look she gave me, the look of a caught criminal, who already knows his fate and smirks in the face of death. I still don’t know how she talked her way out of it, alone with me in the interrogation room, not even restrained like the rest of the criminals were prescribed to be, her delicate hands resting serenely on her lap. What a difference from when I met her the last time in the same interrogation room.
“Did you try to get a confession out of her?” Agent Foster’s voice distracted me from my memories once again.
I studied my nails for a moment before answering. “Yes, I did. I actually held my dagger next to her throat.”
“What did she do?” The American’s eyes widened instinctually.
I smiled, thinking that it wasn’t just him who was so astonished with certain dark secrets of mine and Annalise’s relationship. “She kissed me. Completely ignored the dagger at her neck, and kissed me, as if it was the most natural thing to do. I know what you probably think; that we’re both not right in our heads, falling in love with each other against all the odds. I sometimes wonder myself if I only dreamed it all.”
I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that. Sometimes it all felt like a dream, her unexplainable power over me, with which she directed me towards what I had never followed through on my own – a political assassination against the Chief of the RSHA himself. I killed in her name, not with my own hands, but I did, and when Heydrich was officially pronounced dead, suffering complications after the attack from the Czech resistance, I pledged my unspoken allegiance to my new blue eyed leader with an enigmatic smile. It was much easier killing in her name; unlike the Führer’s, her requests at least made sense and didn’t make me suffer from severe conscience attacks.
On the day of Heydrich’s pompous funeral, I gave Annalise her golden necklace back; a last hopeless gesture trying to rid myself of her overpowering charms, so I would be able to run away back to my Austria and hide away from her, because if I didn’t I knew that I would be lost to her forever. Who knew if she really was a spy? Gruppenführer Müller was certain she was, frowning upon my decision to clear her name once again after she somehow convinced me of her innocence, with her cool Prussian words and deceivingly warm lips.
And so I ran and hid, once again concentrating on my work and nothing else, and firmly decided to suffer over my unrequited and so devastatingly one-sided affection just the right amount of time as any respectful grown man could. Only my decisions and my emotions had parted ways a long time ago, and every single goddamn day I was thinking of her, as I was hiding my face in my hands in the middle of some utterly important case. Someone’s secretary would come too close to hand me papers, and carelessly leave a trail of the same French perfume that she used, the smell of which, mixed with the natural intoxicating aroma of her skin seemed to be forever imprinted in my memory. She branded me worse than fencing swords did, with those pieces of memories, when I would wake up in the middle of the night from yet another dream in which I held her close like I did in Berlin, or in jail, with my hands everywhere on her body, finally claiming what was mine. I shouldn’t have touched her at all, like I should have never touched my first cigarette. I couldn’t breathe without them now, even though every new drag was killing me slowly. I had a strange premonition that it would be the same with her.
I ran away from her then, after the funeral, having completed my duty. On my way home I suddenly stopped my car, thinking that I had forgotten something there, in the Reich chancellery. I patted my pocket and dug into it, indeed finding something missing. The lighter was still there, together with my cigarette case, but her necklace, that I had grown so strangely attached to, was gone. And something else was gone, too. I looked back and realized that I had left my heart there also, in her delicate gloved hands.
Chapter 11
Eastern Poland, November 1942
I looked back and interlaced the fingers of my gloved hands. I was on pins and needles all the way to Reichsführer’s headquarters, to which he had summoned me very unexpectedly. Since Heydrich’s assassination, every time he summoned me, without bothering himself with announcing the reason, I would break into a cold sweat, thinking that I had been discovered at last as the perpetrator of his beloved protégé’s murder.
The first time I entered his office and saw Heydrich’s posthumous mask staring back at me through its closed clay eyes, I could barely utter a word. Himmler had ordered it to be made from his most ardent subordinate’s face and placed it on his desk for some wicked and perverted reason. I was honestly thinking that he did it on purpose just to taunt me, so I would break under his piercing gaze and confess to everything. Instead, I collected myself, looked Himmler straight in the eye and asked for his further orders. He tilted his head to one side, squinted sligh
tly, and smiled crookedly. I did my best not to give myself away by swallowing a lump of fear in my suddenly dry throat and just kept staring back at him stubbornly, as if my very life depended on it. Reichsführer smirked once again, nodded approvingly and proceeded with talking about something absolutely irrelevant to the dead Heydrich and our former feud. To this day it’s a mystery to me, his behavior, and how he never officially asked me about anything. I am still convinced that he suspected that I had something to do with the assassination, and, yet, instead of executing me for it, he decided to promote me instead. It was truly an animal world, the Reich, where only the strongest were allowed to survive. It seemed like killing the ultimate predator somehow placed me on top of the food chain; at least according to Himmler. I see no other reason for why he never expressed his suspicions on my account.
Himmler’s silence took my peaceful sleep away from me, though, that’s for sure. In the course of six months I started drinking even more, slowly developing paranoid ideas of how he might attack me when I least expected it, or that he was waiting out for something; something that, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out. Even now, on the train which was slowly treading its way through occupied Poland and closer to the frontline, I was drowning my fears that suddenly came back after another unexpected call, in cognac, and even Georg’s occasional glances didn’t have any effect on me.
“He doesn’t like that,” my adjutant whispered under his breath, hiding his eyes after stealing yet another glance at my flask – meaning Himmler of course.
“I know.” I sighed and turned back to the fogged window, tracing the frosty outlines with a finger of my gloved hand. How could I admit to my immediate subordinate, who looked up to me and respected me as some sort of ultimate power, that I was afraid to meet Reichsführer SS sober? “Trust me, his opinion of my drinking is the least of my troubles.”
Georg gave me another inquisitive look, but I only shook my head with a smile, silently telling him not to pay attention to the drunken ramblings of his superior. Just my luck, as if to prolong the agony of the wait, the train stopped in the middle of a snow-covered field. I sent Georg away to find out about the reason, and, to keep myself away from my uneasy thoughts, I took a deck of playing cards and started laying them out on the seat, hoping that solitaire would distract me from my musings. As I was placing cards one after another, I noticed that my hands were shaking.
Georg came back in less than five minutes, explaining that our unplanned stop was a military necessity: a train with troops, headed to the Eastern front, had to be let through first. I silently wondered if Otto was possibly on it. I was worried about his fate after he didn’t reply to my last letter.
Finally we made it to headquarters, and I was immediately admitted to the Reichsführer’s tent, where he met me in a jovial mood. He still scrunched his nose as I approached him to shake his hand, even though I had brushed my teeth thoroughly and poured a good handful of cologne on my neck and face to mask the smell of cognac.
“Fascinating,” Himmler said, looking me up and down and chuckling. “If you didn’t smell like a small liquor factory, I would never have guessed that you were drinking. How do you function so perfectly well even after consuming such lethal amounts of spirits?”
“I am firmly convinced that it’s my natural state now, Reichsführer.” I replied jestingly as well, masking my fear with a nonchalant good-humored attitude. “I’m thinking that my body runs on coffee and alcohol just like your tanks run on gasoline.”
“I sincerely hope that I’m not making a mistake with my decision to promote you then.”
After that quite unexpected announcement Reichsführer Himmler went by an imposing table that occupied a big part of his temporary tent, and motioned me to follow him. I concentrated my attention on his every gesture, trying to guess his real motives. Recently I hadn’t done anything remotely impressive or worthy of promotion, and, therefore, I immediately sensed something suspicious in Himmler’s words.
“Well? Aren’t you going to say something?” Himmler’s eyes twinkled as he asked me that, while looking for some papers amongst the stacks of documents and reports on his desk.
“I apologize, Herr Reichsführer. I am… a little overwhelmed by the news.” I finally managed to squeeze some words out of myself. “Truly speaking, I didn’t expect such an honor.”
“Why not?” he asked matter-of-factly. “Haven’t you been working hard enough?”
“I believe I have,” I replied carefully, still trying to understand his motives.
“Why are you so surprised then?”
I gave him an awkward one shoulder shrug and smiled guiltily.
“Don’t you have anything to ask me at all, Ernst? About your new position maybe? About where you’re being transferred to?”
My heart dropped at those last words of his.
“To the front?” It came out so shamefully pathetic that I felt even guiltier than before.
“Come now, Ernst, why would I send you to the front?” Himmler’s laughter came out so natural that I almost believed him. “No, I have better use for you, my boy. You see, after Reinhard’s tragic death, I found it extremely difficult managing both the whole of the SS and the RSHA with all its intelligence on top of it. It is impossible for one man, even one as hardworking as myself, to be in a hundred different places at once, deciding hundreds of different problems. I need someone to replace Heydrich. After quite a long discussion with the Führer, and after considering several candidates for the position of a new Chief of the RSHA, we both came to the conclusion that you would be the perfect choice. You have been the head of the Austrian intelligence for a fairly long time, you know the work, and you managed just fine with the Gestapo as well. So, in my opinion, with your extensive knowledge of the RSHA’s inside work and your impressive experience, you should be the one to take up that position.”
Cold sweat dampened my shirt inside, despite the freezing November cold, and I suddenly started feeling sick.
“You look pale, Ernst,” Reichsführer noticed with concern. “Are you not feeling well?”
“No… I think I had too much to drink…” I mumbled, feeling like a streak of sweat had slowly moved down my face. This was far worse than the front, than all the fronts put together could ever be. “Will you excuse me for a minute, Reichsführer?”
“Most certainly, Ernst.”
I almost ran out of his tent, forgetting the usual salute, and almost knocked Georg over, who was waiting for me at the entrance. I rushed to hide behind the nearest tree, away from all of the passing army officials. Sheltered from any possible witnesses, I threw up until dry heaves started hurting my empty stomach. My adjutant, loyal to the point of ridiculousness, was running around me like a mother hen, asking a million questions when all I wanted was to be left alone.
“Georg, go away!” I finally barked at him with a raspy voice. “I’m not dying. I had too much to drink, that’s all. Now, leave me in peace before I break something!”
“But you never get sick,” he answered, looking at a loss and a little offended. “And I have seen you drink much more than that! Maybe you’ve poisoned yourself with something? Maybe some spy on a train put something in your food? Please, Herr Gruppenführer, allow me to call a doctor before it’s too late! What if they tried to kill you like they did with Gruppenführer Heydrich?”
“Don’t mention Heydrich, I beg you!” I pleaded with him as another sharp pang of pain pierced my stomach at the sound of the dead man’s name, and Reichsführer’s idea of replacing him with me to continue all the dirty job the two were doing again entered my thoughts.
“Shall I call the doctor then?” Georg asked again, leaning over so as to be on the same eye level as me. I managed to straighten at last – he together with me, still looking into my eyes like a dog – and then slid down the tree right in the snow.
“No. Just bring me water, will you?”
“Right this instant, Herr Gruppenführer!”
&nb
sp; Georg ran off to fetch me water, and I sat in the snowdrift, feeling no strength to get up, even though a couple of Wehrmacht higher officials had already given me several inquisitive gazes. Still having my arms wrapped around my stomach, I admitted with sadness that my adjutant was right: I never got sick. The last time I did was after I shot a man through the neck; Engelbert Dollfuss, the former Austrian chancellor. Only, now Himmler had decided to make me into a permanent murderer, just like Heydrich was. Heydrich’s vicious dogs from the Gestapo, dressed in leather, Melita’s horrors from the experimental camp, the Warsaw ghetto with typhus and dead bodies lying in the open, executions, torture and every single thing that Heydrich occupied himself with such thorough meticulousness, stood there, in front of my eyes, and I could swear that I heard his laughter from the underworld, for it was me now who was to pick up his mantle and continue the bloody work. And it was me who brought it on myself, with my own hands. I wrapped my arms around my knees and buried my face in my lap, begging myself not to start crying in front of everyone.
Georg appeared before me with a glass of water, and almost physically dragged me upwards from the snowdrift. He dusted off my overcoat, and, after taking the empty glass back from me, inquired once again if he should call a doctor. I slowly shook my head, moved him out of my way and made the first determined step towards Reichsführer’s tent. When I walked inside, I had already mustered enough courage to stand up to him, no matter what reaction it might cause. If he decided to send me to the front instead after what I was going to tell him, so be it. I would rather die than feel like I felt after taking Dollfuss life, only multiplied by a million, day after day, in Heydrich’s chair.
The Austrian: Book Two Page 16
