The Nero Decree

by Greg Williams

  Johann thought of the uniform, the fear it could generate.

  “Step aside,” he ordered the people at the back of the huddle. Their attention was entirely consumed by what was happening in front of them.

  “Step aside!” Johann snapped at them. There was a part of him that loathed what he was doing, but his determination was such that he was focused on getting to the officials holding up the queue. People moved aside, their voices quieting as an SS officer came between them. Beyond the guards at the platform edge he saw a train that already looked to be fully loaded. Officials hurried about the platform shouting orders into carriages; steam billowed from the chimney of the engine.

  Johann saw the faces of the guards—unyielding and skeptical—before him. He decided to go on the offensive.

  “We have places on the train,” he said to the guards. “Who is in charge here?”

  An army captain stepped forward.

  “That would be me,” he said.

  “I have authority from the Reich Main Security Office to board this train with these two women,” Johann said.

  “With the greatest of respect, Sturmbannführer, the SS has no authority here,” the captain said. “The army is in charge.”

  “I was told by Oberst Reinhard himself that I would be allowed to board a train,” Johann continued.

  “Where are your documents?” the captain asked, extending his hand.

  “This is my point,” continued Johann self-assuredly. “Such is the urgency of our journey that there has not been time to issue emergency documents.”

  “Then I can’t let you on the train,” the captain replied. Johann could tell that he was playing to the crowd of people, none of whom wanted to see others allowed on the train.

  “What do you expect me to do?” Johann asked. “Do you want me to return to the Ministry and ask Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner himself?”

  “No one is able to travel without the correct paperwork, sir,” the soldier said. He cast a glance at the crowd behind Johann. “I’m sure that you understand that.”

  Johann fixed the soldier with a menacing glare. “You should think carefully before making this decision,” he said. “There will be no second chances for you if you get this wrong.”

  Johann could feel those in the crowd pressing around him, Anja, and Nadine; it was as if they wanted to force the three of them away from the barrier. With them gone it would mean three fewer people trying to get on the train, which appeared to be primed to go—officials were closing doors and squeezing the last few people on board.

  The soldier looked unyieldingly at Johann.

  “I don’t think there are going to be second chances for most of us,” he said grimly.

  Johann glanced at Anja and Nadine. They were stranded in Berlin.

  30

  He had sensed that there was something wrong all along.

  When Lukas saw the body of the boy hanging from the lamppost, he knew that nothing good could come from Johann bringing him to that place. He had spent months holed up in his hideout for this very reason. The streets were unforgiving. Whether you were a soldier, an old lady, or a young boy, something terrible could happen to you in an instant. A piece of shrapnel could pierce your skull, a building might collapse on you, or someone could slip a noose around your neck. There were countless ways to die in Berlin. Avoiding each of these endings was something Lukas prided himself on.

  The face of the boy twisting in the wind haunted him. Lukas had no idea how the lad had ended up like this. All he knew was that it could be him. They had killed most of the men, so now they were starting on the boys. He had seen others with signs around their necks, their heads lolling sideways and their hands tied behind their backs.

  There would be others—he was sure of that. He would make sure that he was not one of them.

  So when he saw Johann, a canvas sack over his head, being led down the steps from the building, he was not surprised; this was the type of thing that happened every day. He had felt another emotion in addition to fear—anger.

  He liked the way Johann had treated him. He had felt connected to another human being again after months of stealthily moving about the city shunning interaction. He knew that a visit to the NSV would provide him with care, but it also meant being sent to a home for orphans. He was better off on his own; he didn’t want to have to rely on a soul. Soon the war would come to an end. Beyond that, who knew? What he was sure of was that he wouldn’t be put in an institution and left to rot. They would have to leave him swinging on a lamppost before that happened.

  He had waited until the truck containing Johann had pulled away before crossing the street. Diesel fumes hung in the air. He stood on the sidewalk and watched a woman—he assumed it was the hanging boy’s mother—come out of her house carrying a chair and a knife. She placed the chair next to the lamppost and climbed on it, but even with the added height, her head only reached his knees. She encircled the part of the body she could reach with her arms and clung onto it.

  Lukas suddenly felt embarrassed: He was intruding. He needed to leave this woman to her private heartbreak. He had begun to move away, his boots abruptly disturbing a brick from a pile of rubble. The woman looked up, her grief interrupted. She continued to sob, but the noises were muted now, low and involuntary.

  “Hello,” Lukas said somberly.

  The woman nodded at him, unable to find any words. The two of them looked at each other for a few moments, the breeze blowing dust over both of them.

  “You should be gone,” the woman said. “It’s too dangerous in the city. Where are your parents?”

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Lukas said, swallowing hard.

  The woman closed her eyes as if trying to expel the thought from her mind. Lukas walked back across the street and toward the building—he would move through the city, avoiding the streets where he could.

  “Come back!” the woman shouted. He couldn’t tell whether it was aimed at him or the boy in the noose, as he didn’t turn around.

  It took Lukas less than an hour to reach Lehrter Bahnhof. He had grown skilled at moving along the quickest and least populated routes.

  The station appeared to still be functioning. Like dozens of other places in the city, there were people camped outside; whole families sleeping, cooking, and washing among injured and dying soldiers. The smell of decay and sickness hung in the air as powerfully as the sulfur, smoke, and brick dust from the bombings. Several bodies had been left wrapped in gray blankets to be collected by the civil authorities. He felt safe in such numbers. Soldiers and policemen would assume that he was part of one of the families. He could move swiftly through the crowds without being noticed, and if he was challenged, he would be able to disappear into the throng. This was as safe as it got in Berlin, he reasoned.

  Lukas moved into the station. He would recognize Johann’s family when he saw them. He remembered Mrs. Schultz from the bakery—she would come in during the afternoon after she had finished teaching to buy bread for dinner and sometimes pastries or a cake at the weekend. Lukas had always thought that the girl—Nadine was it?—was their daughter, not their niece. He had seen her in the street, on her way to school with friends, but had always been too scared to talk to her; older girls had little time for younger boys.

  He wanted to tell them what had happened to Johann. He wanted to warn them so that they could choose to leave. He imagined the SS were taking Johann to Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. He would be killed or sent to a camp, if they were still able to transport people with the Soviets closing in. Lukas had remembered Johann telling him before they set out for Moabit that he had a fallback arrangement with Anja and Nadine: They would meet at Lehrter Bahnhof and escape west. Lukas wanted Anja and Nadine to be able to do that, even if Johann couldn’t. There was no point in waiting for Johann now.

  He passed through the doors and into bedlam. There were people everywhere, many of them shouting, running, or pushing. Fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty w
ere etched on every face, as if imprinted by the unforgiving Berlin rain. A few sat—powerless and feeble—on suitcases and bundles of belongings, apparently reconciled to their fate. Most of them wore extra clothing as a way of carrying possessions; some women were wrapped in two coats, and there were men with jackets and coats over knitwear and multiple shirts. Lukas could almost smell the torment and anxiety—the train represented a final, desperate roll of the dice. Failing to get on a locomotive would mean, within days, facing Soviet artillery falling from the sky and infantry kicking down doors.

  Lukas looked around. How would he ever pick out Anja and Nadine from the crowd? Finding two individuals among the teeming masses was nigh on impossible—there were too many people swirling about him, a multitude of faces glimpsed only for a brief moment. There was a chance, of course, that Anja and Nadine weren’t even able to come to the station, that they had been killed, injured, delayed, or arrested. But in a city where everything had been transformed, where there were few fixed points any longer and where a simple human exchange was a marvel, Lukas wanted to make a connection.

  Finding Anja and Nadine could make Berlin seem like a decent place once again, a city where he could go to school, play with his friends, and help his parents in the bakery.

  Lukas wriggled his way to one end of the concourse, maintaining a wary eye on any soldiers or policemen he encountered. Such was the scale of the unfolding drama that the security forces were oblivious to him. He searched the faces of those overwhelmed or worn-out souls slumped at the edges of the frenetic activity and tried to process snatched glimpses of waves of refugees, their faces etched with defeat and—uncommonly—with the faintest glimmer of expectation.

  He was tired by the time he reached the far end of the station. The effort of pushing his way through the swarm caused him to pause and lean against a wall. He had no idea how he would find them, even if they were in here. He looked over to where most of the people in the concourse were heading and realized that there were great clusters of humanity gathered near the entrances to the platforms.

  He resolved that, if Anja and Nadine were among the thousands of restless, fretful people clamoring to board the train, he would find them. The crowds grew tighter and harder to move among when he got closer to the platforms. He could feel the level of anxiety became feverish.

  There were voices all around him.

  “Excuse me!”

  “Do you mind!”

  “I have to get through!”

  “My family is waiting for me in Münster!”

  Lukas whirled around. In every direction, he saw people who had once been dignified, productive members of society reduced to wrestling with each other to get on trains that were already full, might not run, and could suffer aerial attack the moment they left the city.

  Bewildered and confused, Lukas searched the crowd. Johann was a prisoner of the SS, and Anja and Nadine were nowhere to be found. He was bumped and shoved. His feet were trodden on. As the crowd buffeted him he felt himself losing his bearings, lost and alone in a city in disarray.

  Holding the briefcase under his arm, Johann turned to Anja.

  “We need to try the second train,” he said, nodding along the platform where the other locomotive was preparing to leave.

  “Do you think there’s any point?” Anja asked. “We don’t have documents. They won’t let us through.”

  Such was the pandemonium around them that, although they were crushed next to each other, they were forced to shout. Johann put a protective arm over Nadine’s shoulder as she was jostled by two large women barreling through the crowd.

  “You want to stay here?”

  “Of course not,” Anja said, thinking that Johann meant they should remain in the middle of the mob.

  “Let’s try the other platform,” Nadine said to Anja. “Look at this place. We have nothing to lose.”

  “Come on then,” Anja said, leading the way. She thrust herself between two men, presumably Party officials, who were waving red cards over their heads in order to get the attention of the soldiers at the gate, who beckoned them forward. A hand rose out of the air and attempted to snatch one of the passes, but its owner pulled it away in time and quickly buried it inside his coat.

  The crowd thinned a little once the three of them escaped from the immediate vicinity of the platform. Each of them adjusted their clothes slightly, which had been pulled out of place by the crush of bodies. Johann piloted Anja and Nadine through the swarm toward the other platform. As he walked through the frantic multitudes, he realized that, quite literally, every person in the station was trying to do the same thing.

  You can no more escape death than you can prevent those you love from passing, he thought to himself. He had seen it on the battlefield and on the surgeon’s table. There is an end for all of us.

  “It’s the same situation,” Nadine said as they approached the platform. She was right: an unruly crowd was gathered around the entrance.

  “Coming through!” Johann shouted. He plunged forward into the crowd, dragging Anja and Nadine behind him. He had decided he would get them onto the train by sheer force of will.

  The crowd parted unwillingly for the SS officer, and there were even a few muttered comments about “golden pheasants,” but Johann’s field-gray uniform was still enough to move them in front of the three bedraggled soldiers who controlled access to the train. Behind them, through clouds of steam, Johann saw groups of people loading bags and loved ones onto carriages. The sight made him focus all his energy and desire—they were agonizingly close to escaping Berlin.

  “I have orders from the Reich Main Security Office,” Johann began as severely as possible. He would not let them question his authority. “We have been authorized by emergency edict to obtain passage on this train.”

  “Where are your papers?” the soldier said.

  “Do you question the authority of the SS?” Johann said sternly.

  “Sir, we have simple orders that expressly forbid anyone getting on the train other than those with the correct documents.”

  “My commanding officer, Oberst Reinhard, has spoken with your commander,” Johann continued, “and authorized an exception.”

  The soldiers looked at each other. Johann sensed that they doubted themselves in the face of his authority. The uniform was doing its work again.

  “Well, how many of you are there?” one of them asked.

  Johann hadn’t had a chance to answer before another of them, who had frowned at his companion’s question, spoke up. Like the soldier on the other platform, he spoke loudly, for the benefit of the crowd, which had settled for a moment to hear the exchange at the gate.

  “We are unable to authorize passage onto the train for anyone other than those with the correct authorization.”

  “But we have authorization,” Johann said. “From the Reich Main Security Office.”

  “Sturmbannführer, unless you have the correct paperwork we are unable to let you through,” the soldier insisted.

  Johann stood tall, his eyes boring hard into the men.

  “Do you understand what you are doing here?” Johann said. He wanted to unsettle them. To make them doubt their actions.

  The men looked unmoved. The crowd behind Johann was almost silent.

  “Yes, we understand our orders,” the soldier said eventually. “I suggest that you address any further comments to the ranking officer at the command post.”

  As if to underline their comrade’s comments, the other two soldiers took their weapons from their shoulders to show that they were ready to use them, if necessary. Johann couldn’t help wondering if they actually had any ammunition. He stood and stared at the enlisted men for a moment before turning and looking at Anja and Nadine, their faces ashen and dejected.

  “Let’s go,” Anja said, aware that the crowd was becoming restless. Johann stood still and returned his gaze to the guards. Beyond them the train emitted a high-pitched whistle.

  “Come on, Unc
le,” Nadine said, her voice raised for those watching them. “We can get the paperwork.”

  He looked over the guards to the train beyond. He saw the driver talking to one of the conductors, who looked at his watch. They were preparing for it to leave. And while he knew that his mind should be ruthlessly focused on the present, he was distracted by thoughts from the past. His recollections were colored by the previous days; the extremity of the experience had caused a dense layer to calcify over the rest of his recollections. He pulled away as if viewing his life from a great height. He remembered his father and his university years. And he remembered first meeting Anja, how she had touched something elemental in him. He recalled her kindness and her toughness during the years before the war, her stern refusal to entertain the slightest compromise to the way she conducted her life, despite the risks of not being seen to publicly embrace Nazi ideology. And he thought of Nadine, the scared, traumatized child who lit up their lives despite the collapse of all else about them.

  The driver climbed up the steps of the locomotive as the final few carriage doors thudded closed.

  He was back in the moment.

  He would not let it end like this. He would get them on the train whether the guards would allow him to or not.

  “Don’t worry,” Johann said. “You will leave Berlin—I promise.”

  An army sergeant cursed Dieter as the Sturmbannführer pulled up outside the station and splashed him with rainwater from a puddle. Dieter, usually fastidious about respect for rank, ignored the man and ran from his vehicle into the station, shoving people as he went. Time was short; he must stop Johann and his family from escaping and retrieve whatever it was that his half brother had taken from the security box.

  Pushing his way through a stream of people, Dieter was oblivious to the confusion around him. He had seen shivering survivors of the flooding of the U-Bahn during his journey from the bank to the station. The civil authorities had persuaded the SS to open the gates to release those who had managed to squeeze onto the steps or otherwise avoid the deluge. He would not be surprised if Johann and his family were among them; his half brother’s determination and appetite for survival was admirable—equal, perhaps, to his own. Even so, Dieter would ensure that the station was where they suffered their final reckoning.