The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  Her daze evaporated; fury coiled in her. My God! The newcomer Schmidt was the one receiving accolades. A man who was consorting with a traitor.

  ~ * ~

  Frau Singer had left the cemetery as fast as she could walk in the snow and slush. Her heartbreaking farewell was over. She wouldn’t be coming here again. Paul would understand. A tramcar arrived almost immediately, she signalled it to stop and boarded it.

  She stared out the window at the passing streetscapes. This morning she’d felt unwell, had wondered whether it would be possible to make the trip to Weissenssee. After an early lunch, she’d felt a little stronger but knew that it was an illusion. There’d been a definite physical weakening in recent days, and she’d made a new decision; one plan had been abandoned and now another stood in its place. Really, despite Judge Rubinstein’s assistance, it had been the only realistic alternative. All her life’s journey had been in Berlin. All her memories were here.

  The two men at the cemetery had made her apprehensive; however, that was only one reason why she’d hurried away. Time was running out.

  Today, despite the misty distances, she was seeing the city with a special clarity; farewelling nooks and corners from her childhood, her adolescence. Each breath she drew seemed noteworthy. A fragrant memory came: the scent of the pine trees on the breeze in her beloved Grunewald.

  Beneath her fur coat she had dressed in a favourite green dress. She wore no jewellery, every last piece had been given away except for her wedding ring. Since her girlhood Frau Singer had had powers of predestination that had both excited and satisfied her. This morning she’d seen the future. Turning away from her husband’s grave, she’d known that she must hurry. The sly sound of time running sifted in her brain. She thought: There’s no time to spare, Paul, is there?

  ~ * ~

  Ex-judge Rubinstein passed warily through side streets. It was after 5.00 pm and darkness had fallen. He generally kept off the streets in daylight, but not today. Already electric lights were on in most buildings, and office workers moved across the lighted windows - denizens of a world remote from his own.

  Concealed in a special pocket in his coat was the Swiss passport for Frau Singer. An excellent job. The forger was an engraver who’d also turned a master’s hand to bank notes. From one of his few remaining sources, the judge knew that the man was creating pound sterling notes for the Ministry of Propaganda. Rubinstein’s heart had been going like a hammer when he’d slipped into the fellow’s street, but the artisan was as precise with his appointments as he was with his work; the Jew had never seen anyone else on his visits.

  Sleet speared down in icy splinters. The grimy overweight facades fronting the streets laid an extra burden of apprehension on him. A nondescript man had given him a suspicious look when he’d come out of the house in Neve. Not Gestapo, but probably a block spy. He’d hurried away without a backward look. He wouldn’t return. He twisted his head to check behind him, slitting his eyes against the sleet pricking like needle-points into his face. A nervous reaction and a waste of time. If they found him they’d seize him, not follow. Well, he had his insurance policy.

  When they find me, he corrected grimly. He’d given the police agencies the slip too many times for them to risk losing him again. At some point, he expected to lodge a claim under the policy.

  At 6.20 pm, he stood beside the wet glistening trunk of a tree on the corner of Rankestraat, diagonally opposite Frau Singer’s building, and examined the intersection, taking in each entrance, each tree trunk. Then he studied each motor car parked close by. It’d begun to snow and white flecks quickly sparkled in his beard.

  She was expecting him at 6.30 pm. She’d leave the city tonight. The booked rail ticket was also in his pocket. The en-route and border checks were more probing now. She was a brave and resourceful woman, yet she was seventy-eight. Would she remember the cover story relating to her fictional Swiss life?

  His apprehension for her journey, as much as the dangerous present, were tightening his throat, drenching his armpits. No amount of experience inured you to this kind of fear. He flicked the snow from his beard with his fingertips, stepped away from the tree and crossed at the intersection. Now, the janitor. Mostly he’d come here at hours when she’d retired to her flat. Once, she’d peered suspiciously after him but she was greedy for her monthly packet of marks.

  He stepped into the foyer. The office was in darkness and he let his breath out silently. Lazy, as well as corrupt. On his rubber soles he went up to the second floor. This place was always steeped in silence. On his handful of visits, the only other person he’d seen was the young Reichsbank woman. And Herr Schmidt. Had he been able to warn the secretary? The low sound of music came from the Reichsbank woman’s flat, electric light shone under her door. He was appalled, then resigned. She should’ve left Berlin . . .

  The door to Frau Singer’s flat stood open a fraction.

  Rubinstein halted a few paces away, staring at this. He listened for sound inside. Nothing suspicious. Nothing at all. Just a cold air current wafting down the staircase from the upper floors onto his face. He moved forward, pushed open the door, and stepped into the hall.

  Something was wrong. Perspiration trickled on his face. He left the door open and moved across the hall to the salon doorway, and peered in.

  Frau Singer was sitting in her chair before the Biedermeier bookcase. At a glance he knew she was dead.

  Rubinstein exhaled again, this time a thin gasp, though he’d seen many deaths in the past year.

  He moved to the dead woman’s side and stared into the wide-open eyes. An envelope was on the small table. He picked it up. Addressed to him. Not sealed. He opened it and took out the single sheet of notepaper. His eyes flicked over the lovely handwriting.

  My dear Judge,

  I am terribly sorry to give you this shock. I’ve decided that this is the best way. I’m unwell — my poor heart — and I feel it would not stand the journey. I’ve thought deeply about many things. I find that I cannot leave my beloved Berlin, my darling Paul. You’ve been so good -will you do one more service for me? Dispose of the phial you find beside me and phone Doctor Gerber to come. I wish my children and my friends, now scattered by this wind that has arisen, to learn it was a heart attack. There is a valise of bank notes in my wardrobe. Please use it as you will. My dear, dear friend, God be with you and your family . . .

  Rubinstein gazed down at her face, he’d been hearing her voice as he’d read the words. He turned away. This phone wouldn’t be listened to by the Gestapo. He rang through to the exchange and asked for the number Frau Singer had written beside the doctor’s name. He spoke to a nurse.

  The doctor would come shortly. He hung up and returned to her side. Lightly he brushed the eyes closed with his fingertips. He slipped the phial into his overcoat pocket. Cyanide. It looked the same as the one sewn behind the lapel of his suit coat. His insurance policy.

  Head to one side, he listened again for sounds beyond the walls of the flat. Below, a tramcar rattled and hissed past. He began to move faster. He went into the bedroom and retrieved the valise. He looked at the contents. Wads of bank notes. She must have withdrawn this quantity over a long period. He snapped the valise shut and hurried out.

  In the door to the hall, he took a last look at the salon. Frau Singer had made her decision and it must be respected. He was no longer religious, yet he felt confident that, for her, she’d gone to a better place.

  He snibbed the door-lock so that it would remain unlocked for the doctor, then pulled it closed.

  A car braked hard outside the building. Another. He froze— instantly the instinct for danger wired into his brain was vibrating crazily. Car doors slammed. But no voices. Heavy footsteps crossing the foyer. Valise in hand, he turned and, as silent as the shadow he’d been in the street, ascended the staircase to the fourth floor. Holding his breath, he peered down between the curve in the balustrade into the stairwell, and saw four black overcoated men, stark again
st the dirty grey steps. Men of menace. Foreshortened by the height, they looked like the grotesque figures in the fun-park mirrors of his youth.

  He looked around, searching for a place of concealment.

  Two doorbells sounded below. Frau Singer’s as well! A pause.

  ‘Open up! At once! Geheime Staatspolizei!’ No answer. Two solid bangs and the sounds of doors crashing back. Angry shouting, pounding feet.

  Rubinstein saw the unmarked door, almost unnoticeable in the poor light of the top floor landing. He crossed to it, quietly opened it. A cleaner’s room: small and narrow; brooms, mops and buckets. A large packing case at the back. He switched on a light, edged his body in and drew the door shut. With difficulty he moved to the rear. There was a small space between the packing case and the back wall. For a moment, he thought of removing the single light bulb from its socket. Instead, he turned off the light, then squeezed himself into the space and crouched down. He calculated he was hidden from view. It would be all over for the Reichsbank woman. His hand closed on the butt of the revolver in his overcoat pocket.

  ~ * ~

  22

  F

  RAULEIN BRANDT left the bank at 5.30 pm, angry yet eager for the evening ahead. The chief auditor was coming at seven and, while the maid would do the preparatory work, she’d cook the dinner herself. She was serving the duck, her hometown speciality.

  Gazing hard out the tramcar’s window at the passing streets, she thought: I will spring open this provincial interloper’s story— this esteemed Party member who has wormed his way into the president’s favour. Who’s been discovered meeting a woman who’s a traitor!

  Angrily, she relived the humiliating scene in the president’s inner sanctum. She could hardly believe what had happened. When she arrived home at 6.20 pm, with steely determination she set this aside. She removed her street clothing and hurried into the kitchen. Putting on an apron, she began to work with the ingredients the maid had readied on the table, while the buxom woman uncorked wine and laid the dining table.

  After her disastrous meeting with the president, she’d telephoned the man in Zurich who’d failed to ring her at 1.00 pm. Her vicious remarks had shocked him. Having relieved her feelings, she’d given him orders for the shipping of the gold to Berlin, then hung up on his appalled silence.

  But she could not keep that scene out of her mind. Demeaned and humiliated! She, who’d won her senior position against all the odds - a woman manager in the Reichsbank! My God! No-one was going to take that away from her. Her thoughts raced ahead as she worked: Anna von Schnelling in deadly trouble . . . It’d be a wonder if the mild-mannered auditor was involved with that traitorous and doomed group, yet, in a short time, he’d become close to the little aristocrat. Shocks and surprises everywhere. It was going to be a night for discovery. She would make it so.

  Fortunately, she could make this dish blindfolded.

  ~ * ~

  Travelling by tram through Schoneberg, Schmidt had mixed emotions: reluctance to be coming, on the one hand, curiosity, on the other. It was undesirable to offend Fräulein Brandt. Von Streck’s information on Fischer’s death came back to him. Certainly, she was close to that sinister Gestapo official. But were they responsible for Fischer’s murder?

  Schmidt studied his serious, bespectacled face, reflected in the tramcar’s dark window - the face of a man on a knife-edge. Tonight he must be fully on guard.

  He turned his head to examine his fellow passengers. A rugged-up, unhappy looking lot weighed down by winter, by an infinity of cares. It would only get worse. The blonde secretary’s face materialised in his head. In the flesh he didn’t expect to see her again. He realised how bereft that made him feel. What could her cousin do to get her to safety? A dangerously ill man, yet obviously one with some resources.

  He alighted at the stop indicated on the note, and for a few minutes walked dreary streets following Freda Brandt’s directions.

  ‘This is it,’ he muttered, peering up at a narrow brick building of six storeys. Bathed in a streetlight, his upturned face looked as tight and shiny as a mask. He climbed the steps into a small vestibule. Flat 2.

  ~ * ~

  ‘Good evening, Herr Chief Auditor.’ Standing back in her hall while the maid held open the door, Freda Brandt appraised Schmidt. Black overcoat and homburg. No change from the on-duty persona. She had put on a black dress with a low-cut, scalloped neck. The flawless complexion of her face and décolletage was luminous in the discreet lighting. The ultra-efficient manager of the bank had, as if touched by a wand, turned into the sophisticated German woman photographed in smart magazines. Her hair fell, smooth and gleaming, to her shoulders.

  Schmidt took in the transition, bowed, removed his outer garments and passed them to the maid. He had a strange but strong sensation that he’d dived into a murky pool; that, in his single-eyed vision, this woman was a waterlily afloat and glowing on its black surface. He admitted to himself that he was dazzled.

  The door shut behind him; to his ears the sound had an ominous finality.

  The room he entered was surprisingly untidy. At the far end, a table with white napery and sparkling silver and glass struck a different note.

  ‘Champagne, mein herr?’

  ‘This is very good of you, fräulein.’

  She smiled and led the way to a couch. ‘Are you married, Herr Schmidt?’

  A straight-from-the-shoulder Nazi’s question, yet asked with a coquettish flick of her eyelashes. He avoided making eye contact. ‘I’m divorced.’

  ‘Ah, then you will enjoy a home-cooked meal.’

  She was pouring champagne into two fluted glasses. She handed him one. The bottle crunched back into the ice-bucket. Dexterously, she twirled a glass in her fingers admiring the wine’s colour, then held it at eye-level for a formal toast. ‘My personal welcome to the Reichsbank, Herr Chief Auditor.’

  Schmidt bowed his head.

  She shot him a look. ‘The Czech gold in Zurich is coming to us within the week. What do you think of that?’ She’d appropriated the detested Funk’s phrase.

  ‘Very good news. Congratulations.’ He raised his glass. Her voice was less triumphal than he would have expected.

  ‘Ha! Congratulations!’ She peered at him. ’I’m the one who found out its existence, tracked it down for the Reich.’

  ‘A great service,’ Schmidt said.

  ‘I’m glad you think so, Herr Schmidt. Others aren’t so complimentary.’

  Schmidt feigned surprise and stared into his glass. President Funk had not dispensed praise. Predictable. He’d read the dwarfish president’s sarcastic comments on some of her memoranda.

  ‘But, we’ll wait and see,’ she said grimly She leaned forward, displaying her creamy upper breasts. ‘What about your own great service to the Party? I’m eager to hear about it.’

  ‘My small service.’

  ‘You’re too modest. The president is impressed.’

  He shook his head. ‘Fräulein, I’ve given an oath of secrecy.’

  Tension was rising in him, responding to the pressure he was absorbing; her pressure to know about him.

  ‘Oh! Of course!’ She sat back, her sumptuous body bouncing on the cushions. ’It’s the greatest honour to serve the Fuehrer, the Reich. We, in our official positions, have been touched by the greatest good fortune.’

  She smiled.

  What did he read in her eyes? Rampant idealism or rampant personal ambition? Schmidt sipped the wine. The maid was placing soup plates on the table. Fräulein Brandt stood up, towering above the seated auditor. ‘Come, now you will have your treat.’

  When they were seated she said, ’You’re to attend the Propaganda Leadership course?’

  He thought: She’s watching my every move. ‘Reich Minister Goebbels has a key role in the shaping of the Reich. His policies should be studied.’

  She nodded eager approval. He spooned soup. Everything was a waiting game. Tossing her head and moving her hands, she began to tal
k about the wonderful Winter Relief programme.

  Schmidt listened politely. According to his watchful eye a large portion of the funds appeared to finish up in the pockets of Party officials rather than those of the needy.

  The soup plates were removed. They ate the duck served by the plump maid, whose breath wheezed as she leaned over them.

  ‘You will enjoy this. I’ve cooked the dish since I was a girl.’

  Politely Schmidt chewed, swallowed a mouthful, and complimented her.

  ‘And this!’ She poured white wine into his glass. ‘From a vineyard on the edge of my hometown.’

  Schmidt sipped, nodded more approval, although it was sweetish. She dropped her eyes, quickly looked up. ‘Do you know that Anna von Schnelling’s in trouble?’