He thoroughly despised this reckless fellow Scanlon. The man admitted he was a killer. He said that was what he does. So, why should Von Lindemann think Scanlon’s OSS would prove to be any different than the Gestapo or SS? Would the Americans be more benevolent conquerors than the Germans? Would the heady rush of power prove any less seductive to them than it had to his own people? It would take time to know the answers, and Paul Von Lindemann had no desire to wait that long to find out. However, he had his orders. To a Von Lindemann, even a broken one, it was a matter of honor; so he would obey.
“Incidentally,” Von Lindemann added, to further aggravate the American, “that car which pulled up in front of the bookshop was a pre-war Maybach, a rare old gem. As you may or may not be aware, there is only one car like that in Leipzig and it belongs to Chief Inspector Dietrich of the Gestapo. There is no mistaking the car or the man, I am afraid. And if the car was there, so was he. If he was there, he was in charge, and if he was, it was you that they were hunting. There was no bad luck involved or any random search. He would not come out in the middle of the night for nonsense like that. No, he knew you had come and he knew where to find you. That means you have a leak. Someone gave him that information.”
Otto Dietrich! Scanlon broke out in a cold sweat at the name. “This operation came up very fast in London,” he said. “Only a handful of people knew about it and they are at the very top. So if there was a leak, it is here at your headquarters or out at the Institute.”
“No, Captain. If there was a leak at our end, I would have been dancing at the end of a piano wire days ago and you would already be lying on one of those tables in Herr Dietrich’s basement, spilling your guts. So, I assure you, the leak must be in London.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Otto Dietrich sat behind the wheel of his vintage Maybach, waiting patiently for his SS troops to finish surrounding Georg Horstmann’s bookshop, pleased by the prospect he would soon have the elusive American OSS Captain in his grasp again. He ran his fingers across the decorative hand-tooled leather on the car’s dashboard and smiled. Made in 1932, she was sleek and black, with twelve cylinders of chrome-plated power and elegance. In her day she was the very finest that German craftsmanship had to offer.
His father had been an automobile mechanic. He was a cold, brutal bastard to his sons; but young Otto always marveled at how delicate and tender those rough, grease-stained hands could be when working on the engine of a fine automobile. Even as a lowly police recruit living in a Spartan, cold-water flat above his father’s garage, Otto dreamed of owning a car like this. It was the kind of thing that would make heads turn when he drove by — even his father’s. In the late 1920s, owning an automobile of any type was an impossible dream for a humble police patrolman who could barely pay for a second uniform. Ten years later, the price of a fine piece of machinery such as this had dropped to two exit visas for a Jewish banker so desperate to leave Germany that he would have given anything. Unfortunately, Dietrich’s mechanic father had drunk himself to death long before the Chief Inspector acquired the Maybach, denying him the gratification of driving past the old bastard’s shop. Now, the war was slowly grinding to a very bad end, and he knew he would be forced to give up this marvelous old automobile and the absolute power he had used to obtain it.
Before that happened, though, Otto Dietrich had one small piece of unfinished business to attend to: US Army Captain Edward Scanlon. Dietrich had been humiliated when Scanlon’s terrorist friends broke into his Gestapo headquarters two months before and shot their way back out with the young American Captain in tow. He bristled as he remembered how his friends at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin kept reminding him of the humiliating incident, and humiliating Otto Dietrich was an exceedingly dangerous thing to do. It made things very personal. After Scanlon broke out of jail, Dietrich went on a rampage, tearing the old city apart looking for the American and his accomplices. Unfortunately, his only consolation was to personally put three bullets into the Englishman Kenyon. Dietrich was a good shot with his small caliber Mauser pistol, but hitting Kenyon from over a hundred yards with three of four shots from a pocket gun was as much a sign of his towering rage as his expert marksmanship. If it had been Scanlon, he would have hit him with all four. In the weeks that followed, Dietrich threw his net far and wide and rolled up much of the Communist spy network in Saxony, but even that coup could not settle his score with Scanlon. Soon, however, I shall put a painful end to your meddling, my young American friend, he swore.
Otto Dietrich was not alone in the front seat of the old Maybach. In the dim shadows of the far corner sat the Steiner woman, trying to melt into the seat cushions and into a wet pool of her own despair. When the quiet night was suddenly torn by a burst of gunfire from the alley behind the bookshop, she bolted upright. They both knew the distinctive sound of a 9-millimeter Schmeisser machine gun. “You bastard, you said you would take him alive!” she accused in a hoarse, angry voice.
“No, I said I would try, my dear. I said I would try, but it does not sound as if your young paramour intends to cooperate. How unfortunate,” he said in a syrupy voice as he reached over and laid his hand on her thigh.
Her eyes flared as she pushed it aside. “If they hurt him, you will not last five minutes after the Russians arrive. I will kill you with my own hands. I swear it!”
“My, my,” he smiled innocently, knowing that the angry bitch meant every word. “We seem to be forgetting our place. After all, you were the one who told me where to find the venturesome young American tonight.”
“Remember what I said.”
“His fate is entirely up to him, not me,” Dietrich held up his hands in feigned innocence. “I want him alive every bit as much as you do,” he replied, as he looked her over from head to foot. She was an interesting piece of work, he thought. “And you place a lot of confidence in the Russians. When we reach Moscow, you shall see whom they listen to; and you will wish you had been a bit more… shall we say accommodating with me.”
She glared at him, her cold-blue eyes filled with hate. “I know how to hide sharp nails and razor blades. Touch me again and you will never live to see tomorrow, much less Moscow.”
“Comrade Beria would not like that very much,” he smiled like a hungry alligator.
“You will never know. You will be dead.”
Adjusting his French cuffs, he looked out the window. “We shall see,” he said confidently. “Women are like cats, you see. Offer them a warm, dry spot near the fire, and they all come running soon enough. I never need to use force.”
“No, you are the kind who likes to watch.”
“Not usually, but in your case I confess I made an occasional exception.” He smiled as he saw her hands ball themselves into tight, angry fists. “Cry all you want. I chose to make the best of a bad situation, while you persist in bearing your little grudges.”
“You saw what they did to me. You stood there and watched.”
“Oh, you do not appear all that worse for the wear, not for someone who is now four months pregnant.” He smiled as her head snapped around, and she glared at him. “The doctor told me, my dear. Surely, you do not think there is such a thing as medical secrets or ethics in the glorious Third Reich, do you? The real question is, what will Comrade Beria do when he hears one of his top agents got knocked up by the opposition, by an American spy, no less?”
“You bastard!”
“Oh, be nice to me, my dear. You are the one who will need the help when we reach Moscow, not me.“ He knew she would have gone for his eyes right then, if they had not heard more gunfire in the alley. “Well,” he sighed, “it appears I must go rescue your young gladiator before he gets himself hurt.”
That said, Dietrich opened the car door and walked away into the night. He knew she would be there when he got back, because she had nowhere else to go. Her orders from Moscow were specific. Unfortunately, Dietrich’s confident bravado was only masking an awful truth. Germany was steadily losing this wa
r. If he listened hard, he could hear death’s heavy footsteps chasing him down at that very moment, faintly at first, but they were growing louder as each day passed. If Heinrich Himmler got so much as a whiff that he was dealing with Beria, of all people, Dietrich would find himself hanging from a meat hook in Spandau Prison or lined up against the wall in his own headquarters building’s courtyard. It was common knowledge that the Reichsführer himself was making overtures to anyone and everyone on the Allied side who might save his own delicate pale-white skin, but that was a privilege he reserved for himself. Himmler had better men shot for much less, so the Chief Inspector had to walk a very fine line.
Initially, he thought the Americans might offer an attractive alternative, but so far they had proven to be a very puritanical and unforgiving lot. Dietrich was a senior Gestapo officer, which put him near the top of their Most Wanted List. Since 1933, he had been catching criminals, foreign spies, Communists, Socialists, Jews, homosexuals, “enemies of the state,” and any other gutter trash that got in his way, and he had developed a very bad reputation for being exceptionally good at it. If they caught him, the Americans would stage one of their show trials, complete with judges and lawyers, just as the Nazis had done with the July 20 plotters; and they would hang him just as surely when it was over. No one put on a grander show than the Americans did, but Dietrich did not intend to stay around for the final curtain to fall. The British had been another choice, but they were a nation in slow decline and would have little use for someone with his unique talents, even if they could afford him. Besides, Churchill was a vindictive old sod, and he was never a man one could trust.
That left only the Russians. They were a very different breed than the Americans or the British. He expected they would arrive in Leipzig first, and Ivan was still a bit peeved over things Herr Himmler’s men had done in the east. The Red Army would simply gun down anyone they found wearing SS silver and black or a Gestapo trench coat — no questions, no formalities, and no show trials. More importantly, like an old elephant, Ivan might be slow and plodding, but he never forgot. German medical researchers said that a Russian’s pea brain was taken up about equally by memory, anger, and lust. For all of his dim-wittedness, however, Ivan could occasionally be pragmatic. Dietrich smiled, thinking of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. It proved that you could cut a deal with Ivan, provided you had something Ivan wanted; and Otto Dietrich intended to have that something.
For the Chief Inspector, that something would be the jet airplane designers at Volkenrode. Their research institute fell within his Gestapo district. Months before he made it his business to learn everything he could about them and what they did out there. More importantly, on a trip to Berlin in February he happened to see one of their new jet fighters tear into an American bomber squadron high over the city. Yes, the Russians would know all about the jet airplane by now, and Otto Dietrich knew that handing it to them was his best hope to avoid the hangman.
Finally alone, Hanni leaned back in the car seat and closed her eyes. She was suffocating and wanted to scream. “Liebchen, Liebchen,” she moaned. “Why did you come back here?” It had only been two months since they broke him out of Dietrich’s headquarters and saw him safely off to England, but she already knew she was pregnant by then. She suspected it soon after they left that barn, but she decided not to tell him. Edward could be a sweet dear, and she loved him deeply; but he was a complication she could ill afford, then or now. He was right about one thing, however. Returning to Leipzig had been a suicidal miscalculation for her, and it would soon be for him as well. She should have gone to ground with a Communist party cell in Dresden or Meissen, but she refused to even consider that. Maybe it was the need to have her child born here in what would soon be a free Leipzig. It had never simply been another city full of quaint old buildings to her. It was the cradle of German socialism and her father’s personal shrine. It was his Rome, Jerusalem, and Mecca. It gave the world August Bebel, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and “Red Rosa” Luxemburg, all of his heroes, patron saints, and martyrs. As the hour of its liberation drew near, if he could not be there to see it, Hanni knew she must. That was why she stayed — to witness the birth of something new and good born from all the pain, violence, and destruction.
In the beginning, in the hours immediately after they caught her, Otto Dietrich had no idea who she was. Was she just another young, attractive German blonde? Even if she was involved in the Communist cell, he assumed she was merely a minor player, perhaps a new recruit, or someone’s mistress but little more. Leipzig had a tough, disciplined party that dated back more than thirty years; but it was male. Like every other Communist party cell in Germany, they were pawns of Moscow. Everyone knew of Beria’s sexual proclivities and that he, like all the others in the Moscow hierarchy were inveterate anti-Semites. Who then would expect Beria to put a young woman in her twenties in any position of responsibility, and a Jew on top of that. Impossible! The NKVD was no different from the Gestapo in that regard. They might keep her around for sport, but not for anything important.
When Scanlon escaped to England, Otto Dietrich launched a massive manhunt that nearly tore the old city apart. Over the next few weeks, he managed to snare dozens of deserters, petty criminals, and the scattered remnants of what had once been the city’s massive Socialist and Communist networks. That included Georg Horstmann, a handful of other old men, their radio, a cache of small arms, and a young blonde girl. Dietrich had battled their type for twenty years and knew the old men would die before they talked; but the young girl — that was another matter. He vowed he would have her singing in a matter of hours, not that he suspected she knew very much. The Reds were too clever by half to permit that. Still, he was in no mood to be patient or to be forgiving. She might have overheard bits and pieces, and something was better than nothing.
“Give her to the guards,” he ordered as he looked down at her, already stripped naked and tied to a table. “When she starts to talk, let me know.” Normally the mere threat was enough, but this one continued to glare up at him with those defiant, bright-blue eyes. That should have been a clue, he thought later; but at the time, he could only laugh at what he thought was a lame attempt at heroics. “In a few hours they will lose interest and she will be beyond caring; then she will tell me what she knows.” How sad, he thought as he looked down at her splendid body. It was like opening a coconut with a fire axe; it got the job done, if one did not mind a bit of waste.
That afternoon, in a routine but thorough search of her apartment, his men struck pure gold. They found a black leather wallet hidden beneath the floorboards under the sink in the kitchen. When he opened it, Dietrich saw a polished brass badge with a red enamel star, sword, and sickle on it. It was an NKVD officer’s badge! He had never seen a real one, but he knew all too well the awesome power it commanded. To the Red Underground, it was the whispered voice of Josef Stalin himself, striking terror into a generation of Russian peasants every bit as much as his own thin, nickel-plated Gestapo medallion had to his own countrymen. To top it all, the identity card accompanying the badge had her name and photograph printed on it. Amazing, he thought, and how utterly diabolical.
He gazed at her wallet and considered the infinite possibilities it opened up for him. The only place they issued these was in Moscow at NKVD headquarters from the hand of that sly old Georgian fox Lavrenti Beria himself. The little blonde bitch was no mere courier; she ran the whole damned network, he now realized. That was the moment when a plan sprang into his head, and he issued orders to stop the axe before it completely destroyed the coconut. His tricks and schemes usually evolved over time from bits and pieces of half-formed ideas, but not this one. It popped into his head so completely and perfectly formed that he could only marvel at its simplicity and its beauty. Hanni Steiner, her brass badge, and her network’s radio would be Otto Dietrich’s ticket out of hell, and the last chance he might get to save his neck from the hangman’s noose.
“Have Fraulein Stein
er cleaned up,” he ordered his disappointed goons. “Get her some new clothes, some food, and send her back to her cell. Then send the doctor to see her and leave her alone. From now on, I shall deal with her personally.”
Later that night, after the doctor told him the interesting things he had discovered, the Chief Inspector visited her. She sat on the floor in the far corner with her knees drawn up to her chest, her face battered and swollen. However, as the Chief Inspector entered, her eyes focused on him, radiating enough heat and anger to scorch the walls. Dietrich stepped closer and towered over her. Reaching down, he slowly stroked her blond hair until her arm lashed out and knocked his hand away.
“Excellent,” he said contentedly and backed away. “The last thing I wanted was to find a vegetable in here.” Her hands trembled and she was whimpering. “Ah, the violated woman,” he commented abstractly as he toyed with her. “I always find them uniquely attractive, you know — sad, vulnerable, hateful, perhaps a bit more humble, but very much alive.” He watched her eyes, knowing how powerful the weapon of humiliation could be when used on a woman. Her spirit might have been badly trampled, but he could see it was not broken. There were flashes of angry pride in those bright, blue eyes, as they burned with a raw intensity. Dietrich made a mental note not to trust her around sharp objects or a loaded gun. He opened his arms and sang, “I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, because we had that silly fight,” mocking her. “That is Frank Sinatra, the American crooner, and we both know how much you like dark-haired Americans, do we not, Fraulein Steiner?” he said, watching her eyes. If looks could kill, he thought, if looks could kill.
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