He prowled the length of the concourse examining faces agitatedly.
He strode through a security detail to the area where great crowds had gathered to attempt to get onto the two remaining trains. If Johann and his family came to the station they would have to pass through this point to escape. He would wait for them. He limped through the crowd, his physical appearance attracting furtive glances. Dieter knew that he was being stared out, but he quite enjoyed the sensation: A limping, disfigured SS officer struck even more terror into the multitude than a physically competent version.
The volume of the crowd around one of the platform entrances rose the closer he got to it. People standing shoulder to shoulder barged into each other to get farther to the front. He imagined that they were all trying to get the attention of whoever was making the decisions—eyes bulging with desperation, the smell of fear in the air, each of them willing to kill the others for a chance to avoid being present at the city’s dreadful demise. He was excited. He hadn’t felt this way since he had been in the east. This was just another aspect of the struggle—the fight for those on the home front was as intense and demanding as for the combatants facing the Soviets only a few miles to the east.
He was conscious that he was dragging his foot behind him slightly as he moved toward the crowd. He saw an old man hold back his wife, who had been oblivious to Dieter, so that she wouldn’t cut in front of him. As she raised her eyes, she flinched. Dieter moved on, amazed that in a city where there was so much that was awful, he could cause someone to recoil.
When he reached the crowd in their multiple layers of clothes he didn’t even have to say anything in order to be given passage; his very presence was enough to make the multitude step aside, as if they were able to sense the menace behind them. He worked his way through the bodies, toward the front and…
Was that them?
He thought at first that perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him. There was a tall SS-Sturmbannführer at the gate. This was hardly surprising. But there was something about the way that the guards were looking at him that made it seem as if there was an ongoing exchange that was not collaborative—the SS officer was arguing with the guards, who looked as if they were becoming agitated. Dieter continued to move forward and kept his eyes on the scene, while casting around for other clues.
He noticed two women, incongruous in brand-new clothes, waiting by the officer; their bodies were tensed as if scrutinizing every word of what was being said. He moved closer, the anticipation speeding his pace. He felt exhilarated, alive to possibility again.
He got closer, and there was something else.…
The SS officer’s uniform looked… wet. Dieter could see only the upper part of the man’s body, but it seemed that his tunic was plastered to his torso and his hair was slick with damp.
Dieter inched forward, the density of the crowd slowing his progress as he approached the entrance to the platform. With every step the pace of his heart increased with expectation.
Was it?
The SS officer turned to the right to look at the woman next to him.
Johann.
In his eagerness, Dieter began to wade through the crowd now, shoving people as he went. He lost sight of his quarry as people moved before him. He anxiously pushed forward, knowing that his time had come. The women were there still. He was only yards from them now. As the crowd scattered before him he saw Anja and Nadine watching, horrified, as he approached. It was all he could do to restrain himself from smiling.
Nadine slipped her arm through Anja’s and faced Dieter wordlessly. There was defiance in her eyes but, for the first time, Dieter could see defeat as well. He had them. He had won.
Just as he was savoring his triumph, Dieter felt something sticking in his ribs: the cold metal of the barrel of a pistol.
“You were always late, Dieter,” Johann said.
Dieter turned his head slightly to look at his half brother, who was standing to his side and slightly behind him.
“What is it you are intending to do, Johann?” he asked. “This place is full of troops and police officers. I am an SS officer with the Reich Main Security Office working for the Gestapo. You will not leave this building alive.”
“You are someone with a gun barrel pressed against your vital organs,” Johann said. “You will do as I tell you.” His voice was low and quiet, as if the conversation were nothing out of the ordinary.
“And for how long do you expect this to continue?” Dieter asked calmly.
“Until my wife and niece are on that train,” said Johann, his eyes flicking toward Anja.
“Johann…,” Anja said, her face heavy with worry.
Johann smiled at her briefly, but Anja felt bereft, like she had swallowed a bag of stones. This was Johann’s plan? To put her and Nadine on the train while he remained here in Berlin? Surely this ran counter to everything they had been striving for. It couldn’t be that Johann was thinking of upending their agreement—meet here at Lehrter Bahnhof and leave the city.
“But, Johann…,” she started again.
“The women get on the train, no strings attached, or I blow your liver all over those soldiers,” Johann said, jerking the gun forcefully into Dieter’s ribs. “That’s the deal if you want the briefcase and what was in the security box.”
Dieter looked at Anja, perhaps hoping for dissent, but she remained silent.
“What makes you think that I can get them on the train?” he said.
“You’re assigned to the Gestapo, aren’t you?” Johann said. “The army might have military authority here, but the Gestapo is a civil institution. You have the power to overrule them. Do it.”
“That explains why you’re still standing here…,” Dieter said. “It’s a shame that my old field uniform doesn’t carry the same weight. An SS uniform is a powerful thing, but at the very moment you need it to carry you to freedom it proves useless.”
“It’s not my freedom I’m thinking about,” Johann answered, pushing the barrel into his half brother. “Get the women on the train.”
Dieter remained silent. The intimacy of the moment, considering the pandemonium that surrounded them, was oddly thrilling.
“Very well,” Dieter said. “Surrender and the women shall go.”
Johann felt Anja grasp his arm tightly. He wanted nothing more than to cling to her.
But he had to tell her to leave.
He glanced over at Nadine. The girl’s eyes filled with tears. He shook his head ever so slightly; he wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he would see her again before too long, that he wanted only one thing more than to be with her and Anja, and that was for the pair of them to be far, far away. His future was inextricably linked to theirs, but it was Dieter who had a hold over their destinies in Lehrter Bahnhof. Johann would take his chances with Dieter if the trade-off would ensure their survival.
“Then do it,” Johann hissed at him, pushing Dieter forward toward the guards.
The voice was so familiar to Johann, but for those who hadn’t grown up with Dieter’s growl, it could cause alarm.
“Which one of you decided to disregard the request of the Sturmbannführer?” he snarled, shoving a piece of paperwork under the noses of the soldiers. “This document, signed by Standartenführer Keller of the Reich Main Security Office, gives me full authority over all ranks of the army in my capacity as an investigator of a matter of national security. Disregard it at your peril.”
The three guards looked at each other before the one who had confronted Johann spoke up.
“We are following orders,” he explained.
“This is why you are still a sergeant,” Dieter replied dismissively.
“Sir,” the guard started. He addressed Dieter fearfully. “We are doing all we can to follow our orders to maintain control within the station.”
“That’s not my concern,” Dieter said sneeringly.
Johann felt his arm being squeezed. It was Anja. He turned and their eyes
met.
“What are you doing?”
“You have to go,” Johann said.
“You do too,” Anja said firmly, her eyes wild.
Johann looked at her as kindly as he could. He met his wife’s eyes with his hand still on the trigger of his pistol in case Dieter decided to renege on their agreement.
“You have to go, Anja,” Johann said. Dieter was shouting at the guards now, gesticulating wildly. “Take Nadine as far as you can. Be safe.”
He wondered if it might be the last time he would see her.
“I won’t go without you,” Anja said. Her knuckles were white from squeezing his forearm.
He paused before he spoke.
“But you have to,” he said gently. “You have to do it for me.”
He thought about the ruined city outside. He was the opposite of some of those buildings: On the surface he appeared undamaged, impervious to whatever had been thrown at him. Inside, the entire structure had broken down. He felt near to collapse.
“You have to come,” Anja implored him, her eyes wide and passionate. The two of them were brusquely interrupted by Dieter. Johann couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the guards—who had raised their weapons to prevent a mass rush for the train—were waving Anja and Nadine through the temporary barrier with their rifles.
Anja and Nadine looked at Johann imploringly. Both of them were frozen, paralyzed by the decision they had to make. The eyes of the crowd and the guards were on them. Dieter remained still, a gun in his back.
“I don’t want to…,” Nadine started, her eyes filling with tears.
“Johann, this doesn’t make—” Anja started to say.
Johann felt everything within him fall apart. There was nothing inside but dust. He looked at his wife and niece and knew he had to save them from themselves. If they delayed much longer the opportunity would pass—the guards would become suspicious, Dieter could have a change of heart, there could be an aerial attack.…
“Don’t you hear the soldiers!” he snapped. He summoned every bit of military authority he could find. “Go!”
Anja and Nadine appeared momentarily stunned by his outburst.
“Move! Now! Before we decide to change our minds!” he shouted at them, his throat closing with emotion. Anja released his arm, realizing she had to maintain the fiction. She led Nadine hurriedly toward the front of the queue, glancing back just once, her face set hard with determination.
By the time she and Nadine were near the barrier Johann was no longer able to speak, the sensation of loss was so strong within him. He watched as they hurried toward the platform. He held his nerve, refusing to wave or show emotion for fear of undermining their escape. He watched them squeeze onto a train—the loves of his life, anxious and desperate, leaving the city they had lived in all their lives, to be borne on a dangerous journey to an indefinite destination. He had no idea how he would ever find them.
He held the pistol in his half brother’s back until the train—thundering and filthy—had pulled from the station. Many of the people in the group around him had become hysterical at not having been allowed to board the train, screaming and shouting angrily at the guards and at the indifferent gods above.
Johann tapped Dieter on the shoulder. His half brother turned slowly.
“It’s over,” Johann said, and handed him the pistol and briefcase.
31
Dieter took the weapon from Johann and checked that it was loaded before turning it back on its owner.
“Why didn’t you just kill me?” he asked, his eyes narrowing distrustfully.
“A shoot-out would not have helped my family,” Johann replied with loathing. “I would have done it joyfully otherwise.”
The crowd had cleared a space around the two men—the largest area not occupied by a human being in the station.
“So what now?” Johann asked.
“You know the answer to that,” Dieter said flatly. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Johann examined his half brother’s face. The wounds appeared to have become infected. He could see clear fluid on the surface of his burned skin in several places. The man was a walking miracle—when Johann had first seen him, he hadn’t expected him to survive. Now, several days later, surviving a phosphorous grenade had served only to increase his spite.
“Out,” Dieter said, gesturing toward the station exit with the handgun. People stood and stared at the scene: an SS officer apparently marching another out of the building with a pistol at his back.
A soldier approached Dieter and asked him if he required help. “Another traitor?” he asked casually.
Dieter didn’t respond.
“We have rope,” the soldier offered.
Johann continued walking. He didn’t regret giving Dieter his gun; it was the bargain he had struck in order to secure Anja and Nadine’s passage on the train. He thought of them on their way west, and prayed that the train would be given safe passage. Surely the Allies must know the carriages were full of civilians? Eradicating the few Nazis on board could not be worth slaughtering hundreds of innocents.
He knew Dieter would not keep him alive for long; if he was locked up in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße the cell door would be opened next by an infantryman speaking Russian or Ukrainian.
No, it was just the two of them now: half brother versus half brother, neither owing the other anything, both of them with nothing but loathing for the other. Johann knew that this encounter was intractable. He determined to go along with whatever Dieter was planning; there would be a moment when he was distracted or not paying attention. Johann would come at him then.
Dieter marched Johann out of the building and into daylight. Feeling the cold breeze against his face, Johann told himself to focus. He had to forget Anja and Nadine. He had to remember that they had escaped the city. He had done what he had promised to do. Now he must survive himself. A group of teenagers holding shovels walked past, on the way to dig fortifications, a tank trap maybe. He wondered what had happened to the boy Lukas. He hoped that he would return to his hideout, that someone else would find him and care for him.
“Over there,” Dieter snapped at Johann, directing him to a clearing on one side of Washingtonplatz where a building had once stood. It had been hit early in the war, and the rubble had been removed. Now it was a dusty plot of ground specked with patches of weeds. The only object nearby was a Kübelwagen, which had been left carelessly on the edge of a large puddle. Johann couldn’t help wonder if all Berlin would resemble this dismal spot once the Soviets had finished with it. The few survivors would be the only ones able to interpret the bleak landscape littered with occasional traces of what had once been there.
Was this desolate place where Dieter planned to finish matters? Johann didn’t doubt it. Eleven years after killing Nicolas, his half brother would leave him dead among the wreckage.
Johann walked slowly. He had never been so acutely aware of his back: At any second he expected a bullet and then blackness.
He needed to find a route of escape, a way of keeping Dieter from pulling the trigger.…
Johann heard Dieter’s footsteps come to a halt. Now came the reckoning. He closed his eyes tight and thought of Anja and Nadine.
“Turn around,” Dieter ordered. Johann breathed again. He pivoted heavily and looked at his half brother. The sight sent a shudder through him. As menacing as he was, Dieter looked physically ruined. There was a bloody cut on his forehead, the part of his face that wasn’t burned was sagging, his body was slumped sideways, and his eyes were swollen with exhaustion. Yet within them, Johann detected a believer’s zeal. His conviction in what he was doing was pure, his willingness to do the unspeakable undiminished.
Johann had absolutely no doubt that Dieter would kill him. His sole focus was to prolong the encounter; every minute, every second he lived longer would give him more opportunity to turn the tables.
“What are you to do, Dieter?” Johann asked.
“With you?” Dieter s
coffed. “What do you think?”
“I mean when the Soviets come,” Johann continued. There was a rumble of artillery in the distance, sending an eerie growl over the city.
“What does it matter to you?” Dieter asked. Johann noticed a small, wry smile creep into the corner of his half brother’s mouth. “How ironic that the great objector, the champion of freethinking, Doctor Johann Schultz, should be found dead wearing the uniform of a Sturmbannführer,” he said. “It seems that your sensibilities were not entirely offended when it suited you.”
“I wear it through necessity, not choice,” Johann countered. He glanced around, searching for the nearest piece of cover, should he find a way of distracting Dieter.
“You and your moral high ground,” Dieter said. “It always held you back.” He lowered the gun. Johann knew that this was no sign of reconciliation; it was because he was exhausted. Dieter was too far away to rush him—his half brother would have plenty of time to raise his pistol and shoot if he made a move.
“As interesting as this discussion is…,” Dieter said, seemingly drained. He waved the pistol around as if dismissing what had been said, then added, “We are here for another reason.”
“Tell me,” Johann said.
“Where are the contents of the box?”
“Oh, yes, the box,” Johann said, furrowing his brow.
“You stole whatever was in it,” Dieter said. “It is my birthright too.”
For a moment Johann forgot the twisted disquiet inside him. He was able, momentarily, to think of a matter beyond Anja and Nadine’s departure and his own survival. Dieter wanted to know what was inside the box.…
Johann smirked, shaking his head.
“You laugh…?” Dieter said quietly. Then, in a blinding rage, he hobbled over toward Johann, the pistol raised. He pressed the barrel of the gun hard enough against Johann’s head that it left a deep mark. “You would leave me that letter about my father’s death, as if it were nothing?”
The Nero Decree Page 35
