The Nero Decree

by Greg Williams

  “Is there something wrong?” hissed Ostermann into his ear.

  Johann took a deep breath and forced his eyes wide. He had to focus. He needed to pretend that this was just another patient, just another Sturmbannführer with bad injuries—burns that, should they become infected, could be the end of him. Ostermann was next to him, suspicious and predatory.

  “This man is a hero of the Reich,” he said menacingly. “A recipient of the Iron Cross and a Black Badge for the Wounded.” Johann checked the second buttonhole of the officer’s tunic. There was a red, white, and black ribbon and below it a black oval badge embossed with a helmet marked with a swastika.

  Of course. This had been Dieter’s destiny.

  “If he doesn’t survive there will be questions raised about your competence,” Ostermann continued.

  Johann turned and glared at the Obersturmführer.

  “Let me do my work,” Johann said.

  And while Johann had barely slept for days, had not eaten a proper meal in months, had not voiced a cross word or stuck his head above the parapet for years, his dread had nothing to do with his physical degeneration: His alarm stemmed from a night in June 1934 when he watched as SA thugs dragged his father from the family home.

  Johann Schultz was a name of convenience, the one that he’d used to gain a scholarship during the entrance exam to the Berlin University medical school a decade before.

  Dieter might have come a long way since his days as a street brawler, but eleven years after consigning his stepfather to Oranienburg concentration camp, the Sturmbannführer’s tenuous hold on life was dependent on his surgeon half brother, formerly known as Thomas Meier.

  3

  “So, Oberstabsarzst,” Ostermann inquired, edging nearer Johann, “what is your prognosis?”

  Johann kept his hands moving, trying to disregard the identity of the person he was treating.

  “Speak up, Meier,” Ostermann persisted.

  Johann felt like he had been dealt a heavy blow to the solar plexus. He wheeled around and stared, wide-eyed, at Ostermann.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I merely want to know…,” Ostermann said impatiently.

  “No, what did you say?” Johann repeated.

  “I said, ‘Speak up, Schultz.’” The SS man’s voice was terse, his eyes hard. He was trying to control Johann, but Johann could sense that Ostermann was as full of dread as he was. This was no routine treatment. Two officers accompanying another into triage was virtually unheard of.

  “Oh…,” Johann said, looking away. In his exhausted, paranoid state, his mind was playing tricks on him. He paused momentarily before nodding an apology to Ostermann, who remained motionless. “I’m sorry, I…”

  “The Oberstabsarzt forgets himself,” Ostermann said, bristling with tension.

  Johann continued to work on Dieter. He told himself to drive fear from his mind. He had to think of his half brother as just another patient. Johann needed to do what he had done for years and switch off the part of his mind in which Dieter constantly lurked, the section of his brain where he would always be seventeen-year-old Thomas Meier.

  Eleven years of flight. Over a decade of reinvention, holding down dark fears and shouldering the formidable burden of guilt for what had happened to his father. Johann had done everything he could to leave his identity as Thomas behind. He had not breathed a word of it to anyone—not even Anja. Yet his unconscious had never allowed him respite—he saw his father’s pleading face in his dreams almost every night. During hours of daylight he went about his business with his memories buttoned down as tightly as he could manage. Johann knew that Dieter would be out there searching for him, and should his half brother find him he would bring harm upon him. He would be in a camp within hours. So he carried on with his life as best he could, hoping to be left alone to work and to love. He would not betray himself.

  Johann pushed other thoughts from his mind and fulfilled his role as a doctor. He wouldn’t let his half brother’s barbarism affect that which Johann held dear: his ability to heal. After treatment Dieter was stretchered to a private area that had been commandeered by Ostermann. The SS had no jurisdiction, but everybody did as they were told.

  Johann returned to his billet once he had signed Dieter’s paperwork. But exhausted as he was, he couldn’t find it within himself to rest. Images of his father continually flashed through his mind. Johann had worked tirelessly to bury the memories of his former life, had done all he could to build an existence from the darkness of Dieter’s hateful dogma.

  He had become Johann Schultz not out of choice, but from necessity. To continue with the burden of what had happened—how he had just watched as they took away his father—had seemed impossible. He needed to change skin. And as Johann, he had met Anja, the woman who had shown him that there was indeed beauty and kindness in the world.

  Johann paced around the doctors’ quarters, drawing irritated glances from those off-duty officers who were trying to sleep. He smoked furiously, lighting each cigarette from the butt of another. It had come as no surprise to Johann to see the repellent uniform upon his half brother. The SS was, after all, the height to which those of Dieter’s disposition aspired. But fearful as he was, Johann was nevertheless fascinated and intrigued that someone who shared his own blood could search out such darkness.

  Why was he here? Intelligence officers surely had no business being so near the front line at this point in the war. He could imagine what Dieter had done over the past decade, but Johann wanted to know more—as if, by immersing himself in his half brother’s black-hearted ways, he could fully understand the horrifying times he found himself living in.

  Johann burst outside and walked toward the checkpoint that served as the entrance to camp. He had stopped for a moment to light a cigarette when he heard the squelching of boots behind him.

  “Oberstabsarzt!” came a voice. “Oberstabsarzt!”

  He recognized the voice. That creep Lehman was waddling through the mud toward him. There was nowhere Johann could run. As much as he needed to clear his mind, to try and process what had happened, he would have to be as civil as he could manage.

  “Oberstabsarzt, I need a moment of your time,” he said, straightening his back.

  Lehman’s bonhomie had vanished. A terrible fear swept through Johann: They know.

  Dieter has communicated who I am. At the very best I will be taken somewhere and worked to death. More likely I will be executed here and now, my body smothered with the lime and buried in a pit beyond the outhouse.

  “I see,” Johann said. He was defenseless. He rarely carried his P38 pistol with him. He weighed up Lehman. The man looked strong, but maybe Johann could wrestle the Oberscharführer’s gun from him and escape into the fog before he could summon help. Lehman leaned into him, his sweaty upper lip trembling slightly.

  “My leader, Sturmbannführer Schnell,” Lehman said. “What are your thoughts?”

  Johann was overcome with nausea. He didn’t want to think about Dieter.

  “I did what I can,” Johann said.

  “So he will live?”

  Johann shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Lehman pointed at Johann accusingly. “Then we must get him to Berlin,” he said. Johann detected a fevered tone to Lehman’s words. He sounded frantic. Both he and Ostermann seemed much more anxious than was usual for soldiers pondering the fate of a fallen comrade.

  “We haven’t been able to move any patients for a few days,” Johann explained. “Air travel isn’t safe and we don’t have enough trucks.”

  Lehman continued to stand with him, staring off into the distance. It dawned on Johann that the SS man was looking for companionship.

  “You will wait for Sturmbannführer Schnell?” Johann asked.

  “We shall see,” he said. “The Obersturmführer is awaiting further orders.”

  Even the communications systems are failing, Johann thought.

  “Yes, I understand,” Johan
n said, lighting another cigarette, hoping that it would calm him.

  Lehman cast his eyes around and drew a small circle in the mud with the toe of his boot.

  “We have strict orders,” he said quietly. “We must be gone tomorrow. We are supposed to rendezvous with another unit tomorrow night. At a farm between here and Berlin.”

  An alarm went off inside Johann’s head.

  “Part of your mission, eh?” Johann said, as charmingly as he could muster. He would discover Dieter’s role if he kept flattering this pudgy little man. He had just opened his mouth to ask another question when Ostermann popped out of a nearby tent.

  “Oberscharführer!” he shouted. Lehman flinched like a dog caught in the act of defecating on a carpet.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “We must stay here tonight,” he said, his voice diminished by the moisture in the air as he approached Johann and Lehman. “We leave tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lehman answered. “I will make all necessary arrangements.”

  Ostermann approached the pair of them and raised himself up on his toes. Johann found himself stepping back.

  “Well, well,” Ostermann said. “We have a nice little kaffeeklatsch here.”

  Lehman, a successful survivor of the system, sensed the potential danger.

  “We were just discussing the status of the Sturmbannführer, sir,” Lehman said, glancing at Johann to let him know that it was his turn.

  “Yes,” Johann said. “I’m afraid that it’s touch and go. We can only hope.”

  “The Oberstabsarzt would do well to remember, as we face our nation’s gravest hour, that there is always hope,” said Ostermann as if he could read Johann’s mind. “Hope is named the Führer.”

  “Yes,” Johann said, “I am full of hope.”

  But, he thought, hope isn’t always enough.

  Dieter might die.

  But he might not.

  There was no harm in helping his half brother on his way, once he had learned Dieter’s secrets.

  That night, although he was on duty, Johann watched the officers’ mess closely. He noticed that Ostermann and Lehman had a bottle of schnapps with them. Johann kept watch on the two SS officers as they drained the bottle and grew louder. Around midnight, Ostermann stumbled to bed. Johann immediately ran to his billet and pulled his last bottle of schnapps from beneath his cot and hurried back to the mess. Lehman, his face red, his eyes glassy, his hair plastered to his head with sweat, and his tunic unbuttoned, was rousing his body from the bench.

  “Oh, no,” Johann said to him as he approached the table. “Surely you’re not turning in for the night?”

  “Ah, Oberstabsarzt, a pleasant surprise,” Lehman replied. “Yes, I have no choice. Ostermann will skin me alive if I stay out late.”

  “He’ll never know,” Johann said. “I just saw him stumbling off somewhere. Probably trying to find some more to drink.”

  “Or a girl!” Lehman said, clapping his hand on Johann’s shoulder.

  “No need to stay out late,” Johann said. “Come on, I’ve just finished my shift. Let us have a drink to Sturmbannführer Schnell.”

  “What have you got there?” Lehman said, pawing the bottle. “My, my… this looks good.”

  “The finest peach schnapps,” Johann said.

  “Then it would be churlish not to toast the Sturmbannführer,” Lehman said, flopping back onto the bench.

  Johann sat opposite him and poured two large measures.

  “Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps,” Lehman announced, holding up a chipped glass. The men drank. Johann was mindful of being seen in the mess. If Henke caught him drinking on duty there was every chance that he would be put on a charge, Soviet attack or no Soviet attack.

  “The Sturmbannführer must be a very brave man,” Johann said, pouring Lehman another measure and playing on the SS man’s hero worship.

  “Oh, yes, he’s brave, all right,” Lehman said. “And hard. Ruthless. He’s what you might call an ideal SS man. He’ll see this thing through to the end.”

  Lehman took another drink. Johann noticed that the Oberscharführer wasn’t wearing his service pistol. He probably imagined it was unnecessary in a field hospital.

  “I apologize, doctor,” he said. “I didn’t mean the end, you know, in that way. We will never give in. We will be victorious despite the current…”

  “Relax, Lehman,” Johann said, playfully punching him on the arm. “We’re all friends here. I know what you mean.”

  Johann watched the portly man. There was opportunity here—as he had hoped, Lehman’s tongue had loosened. He decided to take a gamble.

  “So Ostermann told me about the briefcase,” he said.

  Lehman’s bonhomie withered and his face turned thunderous. Johann had blown it. In trying to call Lehman’s bluff, he had miscalculated and exposed himself. The SS man took another gulp of schnapps and then attempted a refill. He slopped as much on the table as in his glass. After taking a breath he placed his hands on the rough wooden bench and pushed himself so that he was standing. Johann braced himself. Lehman swiveled his head around to see who was nearby, his face troubled.

  “Come with me,” he said, and stepped outside. They walked for some time, until they reached a line of trees. There was nothing here. Just darkness.

  “You’re from Berlin?” Lehman asked.

  “Yes,” Johann replied.

  “You still have family in the city?”

  Johann hesitated. Would his mistake cost Anja and Nadine too? He reasoned that, even if he didn’t reveal the information, the Gestapo would be able to track them down within hours.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “I thought so,” Lehman said. “I can tell a Berlin accent.” He trembled with the chill and fastened a couple of buttons. “Look, I think that you’re a good sort.”

  Lehman paused—perhaps he had already exposed himself too much. “I can trust you, Schultz, can’t I?”

  “Of course,” Johann said. “Anyway, who is going to listen to the word of a doctor over an SS officer?”

  This seemed to embolden Lehman.

  “Yes,” he said. Johann couldn’t see him in the darkness, but he knew that he had assuaged Lehman’s fears. “You see, Schultz, the people are scared of the Soviets. And rightly so—they are beasts. But what they don’t know about are plans from within.”

  “You mean the Führer’s miracle weapons?” Johann said, playing the fool.

  “No, no,” Lehman said. Johann could just about make out Lehman stepping nervously from foot to foot. “Where’s that schnapps, eh?”

  Johann thrust the bottle into the darkness. Eventually Lehman’s outstretched hand made contact with the vessel, and Johann heard the clink of the bottleneck on the rim of the SS man’s glass.

  “Where does your family shelter from the air raids?”

  “In the tunnels of the U-Bahn at Friedrichstraße station and the bunker on Reinhardstraße,” Johann said. He thought about Anja and Nadine huddling in the squalid darkness, the condensation on the ceiling being shaken from the roof by the aftershocks.

  “I visited Berlin once,” Lehman said. “We came as a group. Our local SS unit—this was back in the old days, you know. We were part of a parade and then we took in the sights. The museums, the river, the cathedral, the zoo, Schloss Charlottenburg… It was beautiful. Of course, they wanted to show us all the new buildings, but it was the old Berlin that I liked, the Berlin of the German Empire.”

  Lehman sighed. Johann didn’t know where this reminiscence was going. Why had Lehman asked about his family? And why on earth had Johann told him about Anja and Nadine and where they sheltered? He must be more drunk than Johann thought.

  Johann heard Lehman coughing. He wondered if he might be vomiting from all the booze, but he realized that the SS man was sobbing quietly. He snorted a couple of times, then spat, clearing the mucus from his nose. There was absolute stillness. Johann couldn’t recall such quiet.

 
; “I think that it’s over,” Lehman said.

  “The war?” Johann said gently. He felt Lehman slowly giving in.

  “Not just the war,” Lehman said eventually. “Everything.” He sighed. “This country. Us.”

  “Come, come…,” Johann said. “We will rebuild. We will reestablish what is great about this country, we will—”

  “You just don’t understand, do you?” Lehman interrupted him. “Why would you? After all, I only heard about it twelve days ago. What we were doing—it wasn’t just our main mission. There was something extra they had us do. An executive order. Right from the top.”

  Lehman stopped talking. Johann held his breath. Surely this was it.

  “I should be getting back…,” the Oberscharführer insisted.

  Lehman made to move, but Johann put his hand out and pushed it against the SS officer’s chest. He would not be denied after coming so close.

  “What don’t I understand, Lehman?”

  “I’ve had too much to drink,” Lehman snapped.

  “Come on, Lehman,” Johann whispered. “It’s just you and me, two soldiers talking.”

  It was hard to discern Lehman’s face in the dark, but Johann thought he could make out the man’s resolve melting a little.

  “We have orders to ensure that all units on the front and behind it comply with an executive directive from the Führer himself.”

  “But what is it?” Johann demanded more firmly than he should have. “And what has it got to do with Sturmbannführer Schnell and you being here?”

  “Enough!” Lehman said, and broke away from Johann. He started to stumble back toward the mess, which seemed a long way away now.

  “We were surprised to see officers from the Reich Main Security Office arrive,” Johann said, trying to calm him. “That’s all.”

  Lehman stopped.

  “And we were surprised to come here,” Lehman said. “It wasn’t part of the plan, but Ostermann and I thought it in the best interests of Sturmbannführer Schnell.”

  “You did well, Lehman, you did well,” Johann said. “Without your bringing him here he would already be dead.”