He turned the key in the ignition and the engine started. He sat for a moment. There was no going back now. Deserting meant almost certain death: The Feldgendarmerie, the unforgiving military police, were summarily executing all soldiers discovered separate from their units. If they found him, he would be killed immediately.
He made to put the car in gear.
Just then there was a rapping on the window. Through the condensation, Johann saw that it was one of the guards who watched the visitors’ vehicles and the perimeter of the facility. The Kübelwagen was in gear—he could just put his foot down and go, but Johann wanted to slip away with as little fuss as possible. He needed to get a head start on the inevitable pursuers who would come after him to regain the briefcase. He wound down the window.
“Yes, Gefreiter,” Johann said, with the haughtiness he knew an SS officer would use to address a common soldier. The man made a German salute. Johann noticed that the cuff of his coat was frayed and filthy.
“Good morning, sir,” the soldier said. “I am very sorry to have to make this request, but we have strict instructions—I need to see your papers.”
“My papers?” Johann said severely. “Surely not.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“This can’t be necessary,” Johann said sternly.
“I have my instructions, sir,” the Gefreiter said, holding his ground. He was scared of Johann’s uniform, but was now casting his eyes around the car. “Were there not two other SS men with you when you arrived?”
“That is no concern of yours,” Johann said. “The operations of the Reich Main Security Office are not to be questioned.”
“I understand that, sir,” said the soldier. Johann hoped that the man would give up. Surely he didn’t want to push this confrontation any further. But the soldier stood there stubbornly, examining the Kübelwagen. Johann reached around and felt for the Walther P38 pistol on his hip and pulled back the hammer in anticipation. He stared at the soldier evenly.
“I am sorry to have troubled you, sir,” the soldier said eventually.
Johann nodded and began to wind up the window. He was free to go.
Just then he saw another man walk around the front of the car and begin to berate the Gefreiter. Johann couldn’t move the car because the two men were arguing in front of it. He saw that the other man was an Obergefreiter, the Gefreiter’s ranking officer. Maybe he had seen that the soldier hadn’t examined any of Johann’s documents. The Obergefreiter was angry—his face was flushed and flecks of spittle were coming from his mouth. He marched around to the driver’s window and rapped on the door.
Johann had to leave.
He put his foot down. The Gefreiter dived out of the way as the car skidded forward, with Johann praying that it would find enough traction on the sodden earth to move him forward. The wheels spun momentarily and then the car lurched ahead, before fishtailing wildly, as if it were being driven on ice. Johann heard small-arms fire behind him as he skidded up the lane toward the exit. He thought: The guard post on the road will have heard the gunfire. As he rounded a corner he saw the two guards running toward the car, their weapons raised. Johann pulled the car to a halt and jumped out.
“Quick!” he said to the guards. “There were shots near the perimeter!”
The guards looked at him, their chests heaving from the exertion of running in greatcoats. They saw only the uniform of the Reich Main Security Office, not the terrified human being wearing it.
“Very good, Sturmbannführer,” one of them said, and they ran down the lane toward the hospital. The guards were so absorbed with getting to the sound of the shots that they didn’t notice the car race toward the exit of the complex. Within a few moments, the Kübelwagen was no longer visible on the country road that led from camp.
Johann was gone, driving westward, the battered briefcase and a map next to him on the passenger seat, hope and fear filling his heart in equal measures.
6
Anja had woken up late. Recently her nights had been so troubled, so incomplete, because of the bombing, that she had broken her lifetime practice of early rising and could now be found in bed past nine on the weekend. Thankfully, this morning, Nadine had come in to wake her with a cup of warm water. How Anja longed for a proper mug of coffee. She hadn’t had one for—what?—over four years. The damned rationing had killed her taste buds. She wondered if she would ever taste fresh fruit again. She pined for a peach or a strawberry. My goodness, even an apple, like the ones that used to be shipped from Bodensee, would be a delight.
Nadine had sat on Anja’s bed for a few moments. The girl was used to spending time with her aunt in the morning, and Anja’s late rising disrupted their routine. Anja had kissed Nadine, as she always did, before encouraging the girl—tall, pale, blond, the Aryan ideal—out the door. How funny that the people who produced such a specimen of Nazi approval should be victims of the state’s unremitting unraveling of families.
“I’m not sure if the streetcar will be running,” Nadine said, wrapping a purple woolen scarf around her neck. “I might have to walk.”
“Then you’d better get moving,” Anja said, pulling on a sweater. She heard her niece fussing in the hallway with the family dog, a Jack Russell named Flöhchen, who snapped playfully. Flöhchen had arrived with Nadine when her parents had been taken away. Anja and Johann hadn’t had to plead with the authorities for the dog’s life, unlike that of their niece.
“Come on, you’ll be late,” Anja said, moving from the bedroom down the corridor in her slippers. The floor had been too cold for bare feet for months.
“I’ve got plenty of time,” Nadine said. “I’m a fast walker, when it’s cold.”
“I’ll see you this evening, sweetheart,” Anja said.
“Boiled ham for dinner perhaps?” Nadine joked.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Anja said with a smile, closing the apartment door. She listened as Nadine’s footsteps disappeared down the staircase. Anja cursed herself for sending the girl out of their apartment, but she reasoned that she was as likely to find herself on the end of an incendiary device from a British Lancaster at home as she was at school, and there was an excellent shelter at the girl’s school. Nadine had refused to be shipped to the countryside as part of the Kinderlandverschickung program. Children from the neighborhood had been relocated to the Sudetenland, or Saxony or Silesia. Nadine wasn’t alone—the majority of Berliner children were still in the city. Many had gone away but became homesick and returned. Some, like Nadine, were even able to continue their schooling.
Anja was heading to her job as a teacher every day herself. She reasoned that carrying on a normal life was the only way that the two of them could remain sane. She knew, though, that the time was coming soon when it wouldn’t be possible to walk the streets. Within weeks—maybe even days—she would have to take Nadine and escape west, as she had agreed with Johann.
They said the roads west were guarded to prevent mass escape. Yet, according to what was being broadcast, and what she saw on the newspapers read by those on the streetcars and buses that were still running, there was every chance that the Wehrmacht would manage to triumph against the Red Army.
The rumors were different. According to whom you spoke, the Americans were due to take Berlin within days. Or the Americans had stopped their advance at the Ruhr. Or the Soviets were already across the Oder. Or Hitler had developed a miracle weapon that would vanquish the enemy armies on both fronts. Or Hitler was dead. The only consensus that Anja could detect was simple: Make it stop. The bombing, the killing, the heartbreaking letters from the front, the decimation of the city. Berliners were exhausted. More than five years of rationing, denouncements, air raids, darkness, and crushing loss had wrecked the physical and mental strength of those who were left to face the final days of the Third Reich.
Anja went to the kitchen and turned on the stove. She waited for a moment until the blue flame burst alive. She could hardly believe it. They might live in
the last apartment building in the city to have gas. They hadn’t had heat for the past two winters, so—although it was strictly forbidden—Anja had used the oven to warm the apartment. Coal was now as rare as gold.
She heated some water in a pan and washed her face, enjoying the warmth on her skin. Anja fixed her hair and made some porridge—she had waited in line for over an hour and a half yesterday after hearing that Michelson’s grocers had oatmeal. How she yearned for a little honey to sweeten it.
On her way out of the building she checked the mailbox for a letter from Johann, unlocking it with a small brass key she kept in her purse. Anja closed her eyes and reached into the metal box, her hand feeling the sides before reaching the bottom.
Nothing.
Another pleasure deferred. Anja had almost given up on hearing from him; such was the irregularity of letters from the front. She moved into the vestibule and examined herself in a mirror before stepping onto the street. She had seen Johann three months ago, but she wondered if he would recognize her now—she had aged so much this winter. She was frazzled. Spent. Burned out. But she continued to fix her hair and turn up for work as neatly dressed as she could manage because she couldn’t think what else to do.
For the time being she would continue getting up in the morning, cleaning the apartment, and making improvised meals for Nadine, and she would not think too hard about Johann—if she didn’t think too hard, she reasoned, the time apart would pass sooner. She prayed that she would answer the door one day and there he would be. But she now considered that unlikely. She thought it more probable now that if Johann came home at all, she and Nadine would be long gone to the west.
That day the school was visited—as it had been before—by officers of the Staatspolizei, who ordered a boy in Anja’s class, Lars Ziegler, to report for Volkssturm duty at a depot near Schönfeld the next morning. Anja had contained her anger at the men, but had left them in no doubt about her feelings. The boy had come to say goodbye to Anja at the end of the day. He had offered his hand, but she had stepped forward and embraced him instead. She wanted to tell him to go and hide.
When lessons were over, she hurried to the grocer’s. In the queue she befriended the woman behind her. The two of them made a pact. Anja would go to the baker to see if there was any bread while the woman waited at the grocer’s for lentils. They swapped ration cards—this way each of them would only have to wait in line once.
By the time Anja got home it was dark outside. She went directly to the kitchen and breathed a sigh of relief after turning the tap and lighting the oven: They still had water and gas. Every day it seemed more extraordinary—half of the people she knew had neither and were relying on hand pumps. In Berlin! Even three years ago this was unimaginable. Now people were overwhelmed by happiness if they managed to find a lump of coal that had fallen from a passing train.
She looked to see if Nadine had put a letter from Johann on the dresser, even though she didn’t really expect one. Old habits die hard. Flöhchen fussed around her, occasionally yapping with excitement.
Anja had a couple of old potatoes and an onion she had bought on the black market. She had been saving it, but today, after seeing Lars taken by the Gestapo, she needed to eat well. And Nadine needed it. The girl had the appetite of an adult. Anja fried the onion in the glutinous margarine that she had still not adapted to eating, despite years of enduring the stuff, and then added the lentils and potato. If she topped up the water there should be enough to keep them going for a few days. Beyond that, who knew? Anja couldn’t believe that she would ever find herself in a position where she would be pining for Eintopf—the mysterious Nazi concoction of vegetables, broth, and mystery meat that the whole nation, from the Führer to the street sweeper, was supposed to eat once a week.
Nadine appeared at the kitchen door, stretching.
“That smells nice,” she said, petting Flöhchen.
“Have you been sleeping?” Anja asked.
“Yes,” Nadine replied. “I dozed off doing my Latin homework. The smell of the onions cooking woke me up. I thought I was dreaming.”
“And it’s not just onions,” Anja said proudly. “We have lentils and potatoes as well.”
“Tonight we eat like kings.” Nadine smiled, stooping to pick up Flöhchen.
“Did you finish your homework before you fell asleep?”
“I have a little more to do. Vocabulary,” Nadine explained. “I will do it after supper.”
“Good. I have some sewing to do. We can sit and listen to the radio together.”
“If there isn’t an air raid,” Nadine said.
How tired Anja was of spending her nights at the shelter, or packed into Friedrichstraße U-Bahn station. She almost wished the RAF would just drop a bomb directly on their building so she wouldn’t have to climb from her warm bed, get dressed, and shuffle down the street in the darkness, apologizing to people she bumped into in the dark.
“Set the table, will you, please?” Anja called to her niece.
Nadine put down Flöhchen then stretched up into the cupboard and pulled down two bowls and plates and placed them on the table.
“No bread,” Anja said, prompting Nadine to put the plates back.
“Tante, what will happen when the Soviets come?” Nadine asked.
“I don’t know,” Anja replied. This was the truth.
“What do you think will happen?”
“No one really knows, sweetheart.”
“What do you imagine?”
“I imagine that they will kill all the Nazis and that we will have a new government and judges and that the city will be rebuilt. We will have shops, and cinemas, and parks again. It will take time, though. Or maybe the Americans will come. Things might not get much better for a long time. But then Onkel Johann will be home. And we will be together again. As long as we have that we can look after each other.”
Nadine put a couple of glasses down on the table and folded her arms.
“Do you think we should leave?”
There was a pause while Anja considered what to tell Nadine. She decided that the girl was old enough to be told the truth.
“Your Onkel and I talked about it,” Anja said carefully. “I hear that it is still possible.”
“I think we should try,” Nadine said quickly.
“Nadine,” Anja said, “it might not be…”
“I know…,” Nadine said. “But the girls at school—there are all kinds of rumors going round about the Soviets.…”
Anja swallowed hard. She too had heard the stories coming from the east of mass rapes and sadistic violence. The reports traveled among the women in the ration queues. The Red Army was having its revenge for what had been done in the east by the Nazis.
“There are all sorts of rumors going round, my dear,” Anja said, stirring the soup. The potato had almost broken down. She blocked out a mad rush of hunger—if she could only wait a few minutes longer, the meal would be all the more delicious.
“Tante, you know what I’m talking about,” Nadine said.
Anja turned and approached the girl, laying her hand on her shoulder.
“If they come, we will outwit them. We will escape or we will hide,” she said resolutely. “You don’t need to worry—that’s my job. You’re too young for such concerns.”
Nadine had finished laying out the cutlery but returned to its drawer and pulled out another item. Anja saw the glint of a large chopping knife in the candlelight. Nadine leaned her hips against the table and examined the stainless steel. The sharpener had come last week and Anja had had no money to pay him, but it was sharp enough.
“My parents didn’t see it coming when the truck came for them,” Nadine said firmly. “It was in the night. We left the house in our nightclothes.” She sounded pensive, lost in her recollection. Then she looked up at Anja and stared directly into her eyes, sending a shiver through the woman. “But I will be ready for them this time. Any Ivan who comes near me…” Nadine brandished t
he knife. “And if I can’t get them first, then I will make sure that they will not get their pleasure.”
Anja saw that the girl was serious: She would rather take her own life than live with pain and humiliation.
“Nadine,” Anja said. “I swear that you will never be in that situation.”
“How can you know?” Nadine asked dismissively.
“Because I will never allow it to happen,” Anja told her. The girl nodded gently. She might not have believed that it was the truth, but she knew that the sentiment was well meant. Anja turned to stir the soup. Flöhchen watched her patiently.
With her aunt’s back turned, Nadine removed the knife from the drawer, went to the hallway, and placed it in the pocket of her coat.
She would leave nothing to chance.
7
The ambulance carrying Dieter crawled up Wilhelmstraße past the ruined buildings of the government district. The driver negotiated a fresh pile of rubble on the corner of Zimmerstraße, near the headquarters of the Air Ministry. He remembered the fanfare when it had opened in 1936—the Nazis claimed it was the biggest office building in Europe. It had been hit by the RAF, but was in far better condition than most of the structures in the area.
The driver had refused to look left out of superstition as he had passed the Reich Main Security Office on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße: Too many people had ended up shackled in its basement. Little did he know that the man in the back of his ambulance had spent the better part of a decade doing its work. He rounded a motionless streetcar (the vehicle was stationary because of an electricity outage), passed the long-abandoned British embassy, and headed over Unter den Linden—bomb damaged, like an aristocrat who had taken a life-threatening beating—and through the entrance to Charité Hospital, its red brick buildings and timbered gatehouse still, miraculously, untouched by the bombing. The driver had heard that some of the hospitals in Berlin had had vast red crosses painted on their roofs—a plea to the Allied bombers.
The Nero Decree Page 7
