“The Russians will steal it if I don’t.”
“Will you fetch the doctor?”
“What is he, a spy or something?”
“He is my husband.” The forceful way in which she spoke convinced the farmer. Placing his own bundles beside the bicycle, he said, “See, I trust you, even if you don’t trust me.”
When the doctor arrived, a pale thin man, he asked, “Are the police after him?”
“An SS man shot him for no reason.”
“God damn them,” the frail doctor said. He inspected Dieter’s wound, then looked up at the farmer. “This man could die if he’s not attended.”
“He can come to my place,” the farmer said, so he and Liesl watched as the doctor skillfully extracted the bullet and medicated the resulting gash. Handing Liesl a vial of medicine, he said, “Three days’ rest, he’ll live.” Before leaving, the doctor looked in all directions, then returned home by a different route.
[97] For three days the Kolffs hid with their bicycle at the farm west of Neustrelitz, talking incessantly with the owner, a sardonic man who had seen many fortunes rise and fall in his lifetime: “Germans down now, never lower. The war’s lost. Somebody will shoot Hitler soon. Then we’ll get the Russians and the damned Allies.”
“Why do you hate the Allies?” Dieter asked, not confiding that he was in search of them as saviors.
“The bombings. Have you seen Berlin? Hamburg? I hear rumors that Dresden has been wiped out. One hundred and fifty thousand dead in one night. The Allies, too, are monsters.”
Then he became reflective. “I know what you’re doing. Running away from the Russians in hopes that the Allies will capture you. And I wonder what you guard so carefully in that bundle on your bicycle. I’ll tell you what it is, documents you hope to sell to the Allies. I’ll bet you’re from Peenemünde, aren’t you?”
When Dieter refused to answer, he asked, “What awful things were you up to? I never saw such secrecy. But don’t worry about running away to join the Allies, because I’m going to do the same thing. They’re bastards, all of them, but at least they aren’t Russian.”
His wife would not leave the farm, but he had no hesitancy in leaving her, and on the last night he explained why: “I know Germany, the good Germany. Can you believe, sitting here tonight on the edge of ruin, that within ten years we’ll be one of the most powerful nations on earth? And why? Because of people like you two. The husband very intelligent. The wife very courageous. I liked the way you looked after your man, little girl. You could run this country. A damned sight better than Hitler ran it.
They were off, a wounded man, an elderly farmer, a would-be housewife and two bicycles. The farmer insisted that the Kolffs ride the bicycles, at least until Dieter recovered from his wound, and in this way they tried to move south to Berlin, but always they were stopped. At the interrogations the farmer said, “This is my son, wounded on the Russian front, and my daughter. We’re joining my brother in Frankfort.”
“You can’t move down this road,” the guards said, so, [98] invariably, the trio were shunted westward until they came to the outskirts of Wittenberge, a small town on the right bank of the Elbe River.
“This is a famous place,” Dieter told his wife. “Martin Luther started here ... at the doors of the cathedral.”
The farmer, a good Lutheran, burst into laughter. “All you bright boys say that. And you’re all wrong. This is Wittenberge with an e. Wittenberg without the e is miles and miles upriver. Martin Luther never saw this Godforsaken place.”
When they were inside the town, walking about to see how best to spend the few marks they allowed themselves each week, Dieter suddenly stopped in horror and leaped behind a pillar, for there, coming straight at him, was General Funkhauser, attended by three SS men. When the pompous, pudgy commander lost Peenemünde, having allowed its principal scientists to escape, he was demoted to officer-in-charge of the Wittenberge District, which the Russians would soon be attacking. It was his task to conscript every able male and arm him for the defense of the town, because if Wittenberge fell, Berlin would be exposed on the north. Dieter, guessing that something like this was afoot, sank deeper into the shadows, allowing the powerful and vengeful man to pass.
When he returned to Liesl and the farmer, he was shaking, and they thought he had been attacked by a fever, but after he took a drink of wine and sat for a moment he informed them of their peril: “General Funkhauser is in charge of this town, I’m sure of it. I saw him striding along with three of his SS men, and if he even hears of us, we’re dead.”
With the greatest circumspection, the farmer went into the heart of town to make inquiries, and he returned with doleful news: “Every male is now a member of the defense army, under command of General Funkhauser. We must all report at once or be shot.” In the silence he studied Dieter, then asked bluntly, “Are the papers valuable?”
“They can save our lives,” Dieter said.
“Then we must sneak out of here.”
With great ingenuity the farmer organized a plan whereby the three of them, with their two bicycles, could edge their way to the south of Wittenberge, but as they [99] moved through the dark night an SS guard detected them and fired. The farmer was killed. The Kolffs were arrested.
In the morning they were hauled before General Funkhauser, and Dieter was astonished by the changes he saw in the man: because of anxiety and meager food he had lost more than twenty pounds and now had a neck like ordinary humans; also, his eyes seemed more compassionate, and Dieter remembered how Funkhauser had been repelled by conditions at Nordhausen. He’s becoming a human being again, he thought. He knows the war’s lost, and will soon be quitting Himmler and his gang. Alone with Liesl he whispered, “Do everything possible to keep him confused. He may save our lives.”
The interrogation started badly: “Well, our hero from Peenemünde. The little man who has a silver medal from Hitler himself. What evil tricks are you up to this time?”
Dieter stood silent, remembering that since this unpredictable man had once tried to have him executed, there was a likelihood that the sentence would now be carried out. Funkhauser, obviously uncertain of himself, was encouraged by Dieter’s cowering. Tapping the knapsack which lay on his desk, he asked sardonically, “And what is our little man stealing from the Third Reich? Secret papers? Could they be the ones I was looking for after the death of General Breutzl?”
Keeping his eyes fixed on Dieter, he shoved the knapsack at him. “You open it. Show me what secrets you were going to sell to the enemy.”
With fumbling hands, Dieter dug into the knapsack, producing a few papers. “What are they?” Funkhauser asked in his silky voice. When Kolff made no reply, the general screamed, “Are they the secret papers of General Breutzl? Of course they are. And what do they deal with? Germany’s secret weapons.” Whenever he said the word secret he lingered over it, as if, like Hitler and Goebbels and the German public, he believed that some mysterious force would still save the nation.
Dieter, realizing that Funkhauser had incriminating proof of everything he charged, could only remain silent, awaiting judgment. It was harsh: “He and his wife. Spies and traitors. Shoot them.” He stomped from the room, leaving Dieter alone with two husky SS guards, who led him [100] out into the hallway, where they grabbed Liesl, throwing her behind her husband as the death march to the courtyard began.
It was a warm day at the beginning of March and the sky was that wonderful Prussian blue which seemed half-dawn, half-midnight. Staring at it and remembering the days when he first bicycled to the Koenig farm to court Liesl, he wanted to take her hand, to console her, but the guards, now augmented by three riflemen, kept them separated. So he had to be content to look back at her, and he was relieved to see that she was marching to her death without panic. She even smiled at him as if to say that since they had been goaded into making their choices, there should be no lamentation.
When they were stood against the wall, Dieter asked in a
quivering voice, “May I kiss my wife goodbye?”
“Go ahead.”
“Liesl, it was short ... but very good.”
“I love you, Dieter.”
They kissed, and then of their own accord, as if their punishment was the inevitable consequence of their own actions, they resumed their places against the wall, and the three soldiers planted their feet wide apart and hefted their rifles. For an awful moment Kolff and his wife looked into the shining barrels, and Dieter, the engineer-mechanic, wondered: How can three shoot two? Something might go badly wrong. Then he saw, kneeling on the gravel, a fourth man with a machine gun, and in a curious way he was satisfied. The SS were doing it right.
But in the split second before the command “Fire!” General Funkhauser ran into the courtyard, sweating, and shouted, “Take them back to their cells.”
“We have no cells,” an SS man shouted back.
“Keep them in a closet. And guard them.”
The closet in the town hall of Wittenberge was seven feet wide and three feet deep, with no light and very little air. They had to find a place for themselves among brooms and mops, but there were several workmen’s smocks on which they could sleep. They were kept in this dismal place for what seemed like a week, although it could have been more. They were fed miserably, never had enough water to drink, and were allowed out only to go to the bathroom, one at a time, under heavy guard.
[101] “He’s confused about the papers,” Dieter guessed.
“A guard told me as we went down the hall, “Germany’s defeated. Everyone is closing in upon us.” He was almost crying, as if it were unfair.”
“We must do nothing to anger them, Liesl. They’re in a trap, too, and they know it.”
On what seemed to them the eighth day, General Funkhauser brought them both to his office, an ornate affair, rather handsome in its display of the symbols prized by a provincial town. There was the engraving of Bismarck, crisp and clear in its fine black lines, the colored portrait of some local general, and the huge photograph of Hitler, menacing and fatherly at the same time. And there, on his desk, was the knapsack.
“Are these papers what I think they are?” Funkhauser asked, and instantly shrewd Liesl deduced two facts: the General was in desperate trouble, like all of Germany, and he had grown to believe that somehow these papers could save him.
Calmly she said, “They could save your life when the Allies come. But they have meaning only if Dieter is alive to explain them.” She would hook their lives to his, for she knew that otherwise he would shoot them in the back when the Allies approached.
“They look like plans for a rocket,” Funkhauser said, riffling the papers.
“Sssssh!” she warned. “They cover a weapon so secret that only Hitler and General Breutzl knew the full details. And Dieter.”
When Funkhauser looked at the inoffensive little man he could not believe that Kolff could have been privy to some great secret, but then he remembered that when he and Dieter had visited Hitler at Wolf’s Lair … “He did take you aside at the end, didn’t he?”
“This is something entirely different,” Dieter said.
“You think the Allies would want to bargain for these papers?”
“That’s why Von Braun sent them out secretly,” Liesl said. “With the one man who could explain them.”
“Wait!” Funkhauser snapped, his beady eyes narrowing. “Von Braun and all the other leading scientists are at the underground works at Nordhausen. Why aren’t you there, with them, if you’re so important?”
[102] “I’m not important,” Dieter said, “but the papers are, and Von Braun knew that I was the only one who could deal with them.”
In some irritation the general instructed his guards, “Lock them up,” but when they were alone m the darkness Liesl assured her husband: “He’s worried. The Russians have him worried. And we have him worried. He won’t shoot us now.”
Early next morning General Funkhauser summoned them to his office and dismissed the guards. Without preliminaries he moved from behind his desk, stood with the Kolffs as if they were his equals, and pointed to the knapsack. “Could we deliver these papers to the Americans?”
“Those were my orders,” Dieter said.
“From whom?”
“From Baron Wernher von Braun,” and as he uttered this influential name, he automatically reached for the knapsack, bringing it to his chest as if it were something he must cherish. Funkhauser jerked it away and clutched it himself.
“We’ll take it through the lines to the Allies,” he said. Then, looking with some contempt at the Kolffs, he added, “I can speak a little English, you know.”
They were a curious trio as they wound their way toward the triangle formed by Hamburg, Bremen and Hanover. General Funkhauser was always in the lead with a small bicycle which he had commandeered and to which the precious knapsack was tied. He had been afraid to use an SS automobile lest it attract too much attention and perhaps cause his arrest, and it never occurred to him to let one of the Kolffs use his bicycle, for he was a general, made so by Hitler himself, whom he was now abandoning.
Usually Liesl rode the Kolff bicycle, but she kept close watch over Dieter, and whenever she detected that the wound in his shoulder was causing serious discomfort, she dismounted and made him ride. They ate poorly, slept wherever they halted, and smelled horrible, but they noticed with some amusement that General Funkhauser was quite vain of his appearance, so that no matter how dusty his uniform became, he took pains to keep it as neat as his fatness would permit.
He was proving to be a remarkable man, able to adjust [103] to anything. Such food as they obtained was due to his ability to forage on land that seemed completely barren. He would eat anything-a stray duck, fish caught by some farm boy from the family pond, a sheep shared with sixteen, crusts of stale bread from a village bakery-and was willing to concoct whatever story was necessary to cover the situation. Dieter was his younger brother and they were heading to the family shop in Bremen. Liesl was his daughter, searching for the husband who may have survived the bombing of Hamburg. But wherever they went, he listened to the rumors of war, and when he learned that British troops were advancing in the north, he led his refugees south: “No German is ever smart enough to deal with an Englishman.” When villagers told him that a French unit was about to take Bremen, he scurried away: “The French eat well and live miserably.”
But no matter where he led his dusty entourage, they saw the ruin that had overtaken Germany. It was heartbreaking, whole towns wiped out in one night’s bombing, a village on which three accidental bombs had fallen, farms burned and deserted. Once they stopped at a scene of desolation, and Funkhauser screamed at the heavens, “Goering, you fat beast, you promised me we would never be bombed.”
Tears came to his eyes as he thought of Hamburg. He had not actually seen his devastated city but had heard from those who had watched the Funkhauser homes bombed to fragments and then burned. Sniffling, he looked at the Kolffs beseechingly and asked, “What country deserves punishment like this? What did we ever do wrong?” And each day, more firmly, he turned against both Hitler and Himmler, even cursing them when he saw some especially hideous wreckage.
He had always been a man to change his loyalties quickly. As a lad he had listened approvingly when his liberal father praised the German Republic, but in 1931 he had switched easily to the youthful Nazi party, seeing in it the salvation of his Fatherland. He had served for a while in the army of Ritter von Leeb, whom he then considered to be the finest German he had known, but when differences arose between Hitler and his generals, he sided completely with the Fuehrer and assured his associates that the generals, especially Von Leeb, who had failed to [104] capture Leningrad, were asses lacking in military genius. When the bad days of the war approached, he saw clearly that Heinrich Himmler was the only man who had a clear vision of both the past and the future, and he threw his energies totally into the service of that master conniver. Most eagerly
did he work to undercut the army and the regular police, and now, at last, when isolated units of the SS were supposed to hold forlorn outposts like the town of Wittenberge, he awakened to the fact that Himmler was really a psychopathic megalomaniac, a phrase he had heard one of his young assistants use to describe Winston Churchill, and he was abandoning him, as proper Germans should.
On two different occasions he had ordered Lieutenant Kolff to be shot, and for good reason, yet here he was with Kolff and his peasant wife, ducking and dodging through the rural bypaths of a defeated Germany. It was insane, but he felt sure that something would work out, as it seemed always to do.
He was not careless where the Kolffs were concerned. Always at night or at the beginning of any crisis he kept his bicycle close to his side, the knapsack where he could touch it. He also kept his revolver on the ready, and he had begun to contemplate various clever ways by which, in the moments of surrender to the Americans, he could dispose of these two. The more he saw of Liesl the more he distrusted her, a silent, inscrutable type who could be plotting anything. And as for Dieter, it was clear that he was a South German oaf with a sparse mathematical ability and not much more. It was inconceivable that the Americans would want that one.
But until he reached the Americans, he needed the Kolffs, and so he was generous with them. If he refused to share his bicycle, he did divide all food equally with them. He was jovial when the weather turned bad and they had to plod through mud, and incredibly ingenious in devising stories which brought them always closer to the American lines.
On one such foray he heard that an American army had captured Nordhausen, and for some time he sat disconsolately on the ground beneath an evergreen, apart from the Kolffs. Then he turned to face Liesl: “Did Dieter ever tell you about Nordhausen?”
[105] “He said it was horrible.”
“It was. A taste of hell. When did I first realize that Germany was doomed? When I stood in those caves at Nordhausen.”
“Why did you permit them?”
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