There was no card for Johann Schultz. Satisfied that he was right that his half brother Thomas’s name was indeed a fiction, he pulled a box containing the letter M toward him. He flipped through the cards.
Found it.
There he was: Thomas Meier, born July 21, 1918. Charlottenburg, Berlin. But wait…
He read it again and it still didn’t make sense.
There, on the card, the word “Orphan.”
Dieter put the card down and massaged his temples. He was exhausted. He was injured. There was too much going on to make sense of. Clearly he was losing his mind. After a few moments, he pulled the card up to his eyes and took another look at it. There it was again, the word “Orphan.”
He rifled through the box; surely there must be another Thomas Meier. The name was not that uncommon. It was not impossible that there was someone with the same name as his half brother who had been born on the same day. His fingers prized at the cards to make sure that two of them had not somehow become joined together. He rummaged through to the end of the box and then went through it again. So many names beginning with M, surely he might have overlooked one. Or maybe a distracted archivist had placed one back in the wrong order.…
But no.
There was a single card with his half brother’s name written on it.
What did this mean? He immediately went to the box where he would find his own card. He leafed through, spurred on by the discovery. There it was: Dieter Schnell. Name, birth date, birthplace, and…
Dieter flinched. The same word: “Orphan.” He put the card down and paced along the rows of files, his head spinning.
This was not possible. Had he lost his mind since he was injured? Were the memories he had of his childhood and that of his half brother fictions created by the trauma of battle? This made no sense.
He returned to the table, his boots crunching on the crumbling concrete floor. He looked at both cards. There was no question. The word “Orphan” appeared on both in the place allotted for the names of their parents, their mother and their different fathers obliterated from history. It made absolutely no sense to him. It was feasible that yes, a mistake could be made on one card, but for both of them to have been the subject of a clerical error was surely not possible.
He felt a twinge of excitement; this had been done on purpose. There was a secret to discover.
He examined them again and noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Placing the cards next to each other, he could see that they were of exactly the same stock. He fanned some of the others out and examined them. Each had slight differences in color, texture, size, the way the rulings lay upon them, but his and his half brother’s cards were exactly the same. And there was another similarity: Whereas the makeup of each of the other cards was slightly different—the keys of the typewriter falling in slightly different ways, the point at which the names or the other particulars were typed varied slightly—these two cards were identical. He laid one on top of the other and compared them—the words fell in exactly the same places in exactly the same way. The cards were the exactly the same size, texture, and color.
They seemed to have been written at the same time by the same typewriter.
His head spun.
Was it really the case that two people born a few years apart would find themselves having their details typed by the same bureaucrat in the same way using the same types of cards? In addition, he had been born in a different district from Johann, so how likely was it that two administrators in different offices at different times would type official documents in exactly the same way? Not impossible, but very, very unlikely.
Dieter took a deep breath. His chest and neck ached. Clearly, he thought, these two documents had been produced by the same person and, it seemed highly probable, were produced at the same time.
Who?
He walked toward the exit, passing by the archivist. The man was standing at the door as if he were about to go out to promenade through Potsdamer Platz on a Saturday afternoon. He nodded at Dieter, but the SS man was lost in thought and hurried up the stairs to his waiting car without even the briefest acknowledgment.
The two cards were in his pocket—both he and his half brother were now excised from the public record. Neither of them officially existed.
The NSV office where the housing records were kept was chaos. The place was besieged by bombed-out people clamoring for somewhere to stay and food tokens. Dieter commandeered the attention of a large woman in a tweed jacket who appeared to be in charge and insisted that she prioritize his request. She gave him a look of disdain. Dieter could tell that she was one of those rare creatures who was completely unintimidated by his uniform.
“What is it?” she asked eventually in a way that suggested she would take care of it just to see the back of him.
“I need an address for Frau Anja Welge,” he said. “Urgently.”
“It’s all urgent,” the woman said to him before disappearing to the back of the premises. Dieter watched crowds of desperate people being helped by a group of seemingly unflappable, prudent women. A young boy sitting on a bench pointed at him and asked a question. Perhaps he was fascinated by Dieter’s injuries. His mother shifted him around so that he was no longer facing Dieter. The woman in tweed reappeared five minutes later with a scrap of paper.
“There is no record of her being bombed out,” she told him. “The most up-to-date address we have is this…,” she said, handing it to Dieter. “It’s the official address of her niece too.” Dieter took the paper and examined it. “There’s no guarantee that the place is still standing, though,” said the woman, before engaging with an old couple who had been patiently standing at the counter with two cardboard suitcases. The old man had fragments of masonry in his thin, brittle-looking hair.
“How far along Invalidenstraße is this?” Dieter asked, but the woman either couldn’t hear his words or chose to ignore them.
As he picked his way toward the apartment block where his half brother’s wife had once lived, Dieter could tell that there was little point in searching. There were families camped out in the rubble, people salvaging belongings, and workmen trying to repair broken mains. All was chaos and destruction.
“This was number 52?” he asked an old man with a cart who appeared to be salvaging scrap metal.
“The next building,” he said. “They’re all gone, though.”
Dieter stumbled forward, sending pieces of glass from a picture frame flying as his boot caught it accidentally.
“Be careful,” the old man said. “These places are a devil for tetanus.”
Dieter persevered. He could make out the shape of the next building. Some of it remained, but it was uninhabitable. Floors sloped to the ground at precipitous angles, the remains of ordinary lives visible within—crushed furniture, pictures on walls, curtains flapping in the wind. Part of one floor remained stubbornly horizontal despite its supporting wall having been destroyed. It appeared to have been cantilevered. A sole armchair remained in place. Was this where Johann sat? Which apartment was it that his half brother and his family had called home? The address on the card suggested that it was the second floor. Dieter wished he could sift through the wreckage to look for clues.
Around him, pieces of paper fluttered in the wind. Each contained a message to loved ones. “Helena and Gretl are living with Cousin Helmut.” “Petr, we are safe. We have gone to Brieselang and are with Maria.” “For the attention of the Hauser family: Lottie and Inge are looking for you. Are you with Harold?” Fragments of information about splintered lives. Dieter scrutinized every message before moving on to the versions that had been chalked up on the remaining masonry.
He walked across the building, sometimes having to stand on piles of rubble in order to read the messages. There was nothing that he could decipher. He moved back to survey the entire building, standing on a shattered wooden beam. There was a clue here that would lead him to them—he just needed to open his eyes and recognize
it. He tried to look afresh, to consider whether there was anything he’d missed. He realized that there was one wall that was running perpendicular to the front of the house. It must have been an alleyway at some point. It was now mostly full of rubble, but there were a few feet into which people could walk. He stepped from the beam and slid himself into the former alleyway. There were half a dozen messages left in different hands. His eyes scanned for familiar names.…
He found one: Johann. Not the entire word, but enough.
He read the script hungrily. “J. We are all right. We are with your friend.” The message was cryptic. Why hadn’t she revealed which friend they were with? Surely it would have made sense for her to reveal more information. Dieter’s mind raced. He told himself to calm down: this “J” might not even be Johann. The letter J wasn’t, after all, an uncommon first letter of a name. But the enigmatic nature of the message made him think that he was onto something. Whoever had written it was holding something back. All the other notes had been clear about whom the message was for, whom it had been left by, and where they had gone. Whoever had left the communiqué for “J” hadn’t left his or her name, had been purposefully obscure about where they had gone, and hadn’t left any form of signature.
Dieter pulled a pencil from within his jacket and copied the message into his notebook, then folded it away and began to walk back through the rubble to his staff car. If the message was for Johann, then the author assumed—or knew—that Johann would inevitably come to this place. He was expected in Berlin.
For the first time he felt like he was getting closer—as if finding his half brother wasn’t just a possibility but an inevitability. He now had to fathom who this friend of Johann’s might be who was harboring his wife. His driver held open the door for him and he got into the car. As they headed back to Prinz-Albrecht-Straße he watched the streets pass by and remembered how many of them contained memories for both him and Johann. Their identities were woven into the fabric of Berlin.
Dieter was sure that Johann would return—he couldn’t not. And when he did, Dieter would be waiting for him.
“Anything?” Kuefer asked as Dieter took off his overcoat and placed it on the ancient wooden coatrack behind the door of the office.
“He’s coming back,” Dieter announced. “I want a twenty-four-hour watch from Gestapo officers on his apartment block. I located the address, here.”
Kuefer took the piece of notepaper he was offered and picked up the phone and checked to see if he could get a line. He watched as Dieter sat down at his desk and settled into his chair.
“He’s coming,” Dieter said impassively. “I know he is.”
“Let me call operations,” Kuefer said.
Kuefer’s finger became hot from turning the dial—he must have tried at least two dozen times—before he managed to get a line through to the Gestapo duty officer for the appropriate section. Kuefer suspected that he’d been asleep from the hazy way he answered the phone. His voice came into sharp focus once he realized he was speaking to the office of Sturmbannführer Schnell. The Gestapo feared little, but since its secret police had come under the control of Himmler, the SS had treated it as a subsidiary.
“Don’t be fooled,” Kuefer stressed to the person on the other end of the line. “Schultz is likely to be wearing the uniform of an SS officer. He is impersonating Sturmbannführer Schnell.”
Kuefer replaced the handset in the cradle.
“There will be someone watching the apartment within the hour,” he said. Dieter said nothing. The right side of his face glowed from his desk lamp. In the dark room—the shadows were forgiving—it didn’t look like he had been disfigured.
“Looks like an hour,” Kuefer repeated.
“I heard you the first time,” Dieter said.
“Do you want anything?” Kuefer asked, before descending into a coughing fit that lasted a minute. “There is some water left in the pot,” he added after catching his breath.
Dieter shook his head. He continued to sit at the desk silently. Kuefer pulled some paperwork—another roundup of criminals—from his tray and signed an order for them to be shipped to Oranienburg. He checked through the names, the tip of his pencil tracing down the paper as he verified them against reports from the arresting officers. The process took about ten minutes. He looked up once he had finished. Dieter remained at his desk, motionless. It was eerie. There was the sound of footsteps and voices outside. Kuefer started racking his brain to think of an excuse to get out of the office. There must be some errand that he could run.
The phone rang, interrupting his strategizing.
“Yes,” Kuefer said.
It was a female voice.
“I have Oberst Reinhard for Sturmbannführer Schnell,” the operator said.
“Put him through,” Kuefer answered, waving to Dieter. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I have an Oberst Reinhard for you?” he said.
Dieter snatched the receiver.
“Sturmbannführer Schnell,” he announced.
“Good afternoon,” the Oberst replied. “I understand that you are heading up an investigation into a Doctor Johann Schultz.”
“Indeed,” Dieter replied. “We have reason to believe that he is responsible for the theft of important documents and is headed back to Berlin.”
“Your information is incorrect,” the Oberst replied. Dieter felt his hand tighten on the telephone. The man’s tone was arrogant.
“And why is that?”
“Because Schultz is already in Berlin,” Reinhard answered.
“Oh, really?” Dieter replied skeptically. “And what’s the source of your information?”
“There is no source,” the Oberst continued.
“With due respect, sir, I can hardly be expected to run an investigation on rumor—”
“You’re misunderstanding me,” Reinhard said, cutting him off. “He was in my office in Mitte only yesterday morning.”
“Yesterday morning?” Dieter asked. “You’re sure?”
“He was wearing your uniform,” Reinhard said dismissively.
Dieter clenched his teeth. He remembered trying to comfort an injured comrade while they were sheltering in a ditch. As he had arrived to help the man, he had slipped on something. He looked down to see it was the man’s entrails. Being spoken to in this way by a bureaucrat who had never left his office made his blood boil.
“There is more,” Reinhard said self-importantly. “It seems that not only has Schultz committed capital crimes, but he has also committed treason.”
The colonel paused for effect, enjoying the moment—he could tell that Dieter ached to know more.
“He attempted to send out a message through the Army High Command communications channel that sought to overturn the Demolitions on Reich Territory decree.”
Dieter closed his eyes. The theft of the briefcase already meant that his time in Poland was a disaster; it was hard to believe it could get worse.
“The express wishes of the Führer,” Dieter said, incredulous. He could barely force himself to ask his next question: “Was he successful?”
“Thankfully not,” Reinhard said, the relief palpable in his voice. “A quick-witted operative in the communications center sensed that there was something amiss and inserted the incorrect call sign. Without that the system protocols don’t come into effect.”
Dieter felt a wave of contentment wash over him. Johann had failed. His attempt to derail the Nero Decree had been in vain.
“I will need to interview you in person,” he told Reinhard.
“I understand,” Reinhard replied dryly.
Dieter made an appointment for that afternoon and put the phone down.
He took a deep breath, reached into his pocket, and rubbed his thumb across the edge of the cards he had taken from the Standesamt.
He had been right: He knew his half brother would come. Ten years on from Nicolas’s arrest, they would face each other in the city of their birth as it collapsed a
round them. Johann would try to prevent the implementation of the Nero Decree, but he was destined to fail. They would leave nothing for the Soviets.
One day soon it wouldn’t be the cards that he was touching in his pocket—it would be the key.
“Kuefer,” Dieter said. “Call operations again. Tell them that the fugitive Schultz is in possession of a briefcase and a key. They are of the utmost importance and must be recovered.”
“Right, sir,” Kuefer said, snatching up the handset.
“And one other thing,” Dieter continued.
Kuefer looked up at his superior.
Dieter could not risk Johann revealing the identity of his half brother, if he was captured.
“The rules of engagement have changed,” he said. “Tell them to shoot to kill.”
19
Johann moved quickly through the shadows. After what had happened at the Ministry, they would be coming for him. He passed north through Mitte and over the river. The carcass of the Reichstag loomed to his left like an ancient monument. The Allies had no need to bomb it—the Nazis had burnt it down long before. Few buildings on the south side of the Spree were undamaged; many were still occupied. Those who survived the coming Soviet revenge would inherit a city so ruined that there was little hope of returning to the life they had before the madness had begun.
A couple of old men stood on the bridge in ragtag uniforms. Johann suspected that they were supposed to be checking identity cards—he had heard that one of the many anxieties suffered by Berliners was that guest workers and slave laborers from the east would act as fifth columnists. Many had already been confined to their quarters for fear that they would rise up and do the Soviets’ work for them. But the old men ignored Johann, who nodded severely in their direction to maintain the deception of his uniform.
The Nero Decree Page 20
