The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  Sack nodded. He understood that she hadn’t called the guards because she wasn’t one hundred per cent certain; daunted by the fellow’s tricky resourcefulness; fearful that it might backfire on her.

  He said, ‘It might not be as black and white as we think.’ Now he was recalling the fellow’s SS visitor.

  ‘You must question him!’

  ‘I will. But be a little more patient. I’ve commenced inquiries that should clear the way for it. Until then, it’s too dangerous for both of us. I don’t think you understand just how dangerous.’

  ‘Christ! He’ll get away with it again.’

  ‘No. Like the Jew today, he’ll finally run into a dead end. The machinery against him is unbeatable.’ He spoke with weary patience.

  The Reichsbank manager stared down at him. Was Schmidt hiding the woman in his flat? She hadn’t told Julius about her stab of intuition. He treated her like a novice in these matters. First thing tomorrow she’d go out to the traitor’s flat and demand entrance — cut through his procrastination with her stronger spirit.

  Exhaustion set in. His head collapsed on his chest; in his brain, bullets were humming by, and bodies were sprawled on floors in torchlight.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Freda said. ‘You can stay here.’

  ~ * ~

  41

  T

  HE CATHEDRAL was dusky in the afternoon light, the congregation heavily clothed against the cold emanating from the massed stone surfaces; the organ was roaring into the heights — dragging their chilled human hearts in its’ wake. But his eye was fixed on the ranked faces of the children’s choir, shining in the gloom like gardenias, on Trudi’s in the middle of the second row. His eye swept to the left and found Helga, fur-hatted, intent on their daughter. The singing lifted away with a purity that made him gasp. Everyone was standing up. Helga was staring at him, a smile on her face, which at first he thought was sad, then saw was proud.

  Schmidt started awake, raised his head. Blurrily, in the electric light of his bedroom, he made out Anna’s face. She was standing by the bed, watching him. She was fully dressed. ‘It’s still early,’ she said.

  The dream had gone. He sat up, rubbing his eye.

  She was the photograph in her new passport: her blonde hair swept up, wearing the spectacles that gave her the studious look of a university student. Fräulein Helene Schreiber from Zurich.

  ‘Anna, that is very good.’ He breathed the words as if not to disturb the image. She gave him a tight but warm smile. He threw back the covers. Another dream - the last vestiges of the woman in her nightdress, in his arms - was shredding to pieces in his head. He thought: Forgive me, Helga, but it’s not a simple matter.

  It was after 6.30 am and the dawn was still an hour or more away. She would leave the flat at 7.00, meet the doctor at 8.15; the train was scheduled to depart at 9.00. They should quit the flat quickly, the Gestapo’s preferred time was first light. Overnight they would’ve been investigating the agent’s murder.

  Hurriedly he washed and shaved in cold water. Dressing, he felt the tension tighten around his chest like a steel band. He must leave. She must. He felt the perilous present surrounding them like a sea sewn with black-painted acoustic mines. There was nothing more he could do for her. Everything was in the hands of the Swiss doctor, sundry officials of the Third Reich, and fate. No time for breakfast. She’d repacked her suitcase and put it beside the front door.

  He said, ‘If they’ve assigned a new man to follow me, hopefully I’ll lead him away.’

  The time of parting was upon them. ‘Dear Franz, until we meet again,’ she said, taking his hand. She released it, stepped forward and kissed him on the lips. Drawing back her head, she gazed into his face. ‘I pray you’ll be reunited with your wife and daughter.’

  He was amazed. He’d not mentioned his family to her. Had he talked in his sleep? He swallowed. Don’t linger. Go. He turned and left, as though jumping into the ice-cold streams of his youth from the dry and warm bank. The flat’s door clicked shut behind him. ‘God speed,’ he murmured, repeating her cousin’s message for himself.

  He was in the platz, his heart cold with despair, but his face set to a future without the Reichsbank secretary.

  ~ * ~

  Freda Brandt, eyes wide open but strained from lack of sleep, rode a tramcar that would transit the city and go out to Savigny Platz. It was 6.40 am. She’d be there in about twenty minutes. The thick yellow water vapour swirling before her eyes blotted out the streetscape. Her gloved hands were gripped together, her breathing rapid. With an anonymous group of rugged-up early risers and early starters, this was a journey into the unknown.

  Her sleep had been fragmented. Several times she’d started upright, worried what the hour was, even though she’d set the alarm for 5.30. Her mind had been hyperactive, excitement simmering in her. At 5.00 Julius had left, waking her yet again.

  Now, if her conviction was right, what a coup, to expose the auditor as the protector of a fugitive! To turn her in! The loathsome president would sit up and take notice of this!

  She moistened her lips with a flick of her tongue. What might he do when cornered? She’d hardly thought of this. His cold-minded cunning had sent two Party members to their deaths. She’d have to take the utmost care. She must match his deviousness at every point; the tricky, handsome traitor. Her desire for sex with him had totally vacated her mind.

  Most of the passengers disembarked in Wilhelmstrasse, and newcomers heading to work in the eastern districts came aboard. She willed them to move with more alacrity. Fifteen minutes later, the tramcar rattled into foggy Savigny Platz. Freda was tense with impending action. Julius was as cautious as a hausfrau. Never mind. More prestige for her. She straightened her body, raised her chin, preparing for these enemies of the Fuehrer. It was all on her shoulders. ‘Germany Awake!’ The Fuehrer’s favourite slogan rang encouragement in her brain.

  ~ * ~

  Anna stepped out into the street, blinking, even in the meagre slivers of daylight now appearing. Her heart was beating like a small hammer. Franz’s departure had shocked her more than she’d shown. But now she had the world again! Her mouth was dry. A wild animal emerging from hibernation to danger. She thought: We’re all animals now, hunters or prey Franz Schmidt’s flat had been a godsend; however, being imprisoned there had made her feel non-human and stripped of independence. I will escape, she breathed in the frosty air. Mother, father, be with me.

  Gripping the suitcase, she hurried across the platz. A tramcar was approaching and she quickened her pace. Minutes later, seated at the front, she looked straight ahead, oblivious of the misty Tiergarten streets as if she’d already made her escape from the city.

  She knew she must leave the tramcar at Leipzigerstrasse. They were nearly there. She stood up, gripping a strap for balance. The tramcar drew to a stop and she stepped down. Quickly she began walking to the taxi-stand in Wilhelm Platz, part of the crowd already bound for offices and shops. The multitude of footfalls on the cold pavement drummed in her head. Meeting no eyes, she headed for Wilhelm Platz.

  She came around the corner near the Hotel Kaiserdorf. You are Fräulein Helene Schreiber from Zurich, she whispered.

  A line of taxicabs waited.

  ~ * ~

  Freda Brandt was warm with excitement, her eyes riveted on the small blonde woman floating ahead amid the anonymous overcoated figures like a featherweight ballerina. They had her! Starting forward, the Reichsbank manager cannoned into a small man, and sent him reeling into other overcoated bodies. ‘Fräulein!’ he shouted in a winter rage. Focused on the diminutive figure ahead, Freda Brandt never heard it.

  Freda had arrived as Savigny Platz at 6.55 and hurried to the address she’d memorised. For several minutes, she watched Schmidt’s building from the shelter of a nearby doorway, assessing how to proceed. What if he had a gun? The Gestapo agent detailed to follow him was dead. Julius said another agent had been assigned. Where was he? Frantically, she looked around
. Nothing. Damn Julius! She’d stared at the doorway and bitten her lower lip. Surely the auditor wouldn’t have left for the bank yet? Then Freda had blinked and peered at the woman carrying a suitcase who’d emerged from Schmidt’s building. She didn’t recognise the Reichsbank secretary. Then she’d gasped. Different hair, glasses — that hat. But her! Jesus. Her intuition had been brilliantly correct. They had this woman. And the auditor. Chief Auditor Schmidt was finished! She’d almost rushed from her doorway to seize the fugitive. There was no question she could overpower the traitor, but the small woman had moved rapidly out into the platz. Freda Brandt began to follow If she tailed her she could uncover a nest of them. Her excitement now under control, she’d hurried after the secretary and squeezed into the back of the tramcar.

  This wasn’t so easy. The fugitive remained ten metres ahead, moving fast even with the suitcase. Damn! Pedestrians were present in shoals. She must grab her if it looked like she might get away. Through the bobbing heads she glimpsed the taxi-rank ahead. My God.

  Fräulein Brandt began to run, weaving through the closely packed stream of bodies, then swerved off the footpath into the roadway. From nowhere, the walking stick shot between her legs. She screamed with shock as she plummeted forward and fell on her knees, skidding on the icy cobblestones. Burning pain — blood squirting from shredded flesh.

  ‘Julius!’The second scream came from the razor-sharp agony and from another shock as she saw the taxicab swing out from the kerb.

  Anonymous figures were gathering around her, making sympathetic sounds.

  ~ * ~

  Anna was unaware of the commotion a few metres behind her as the taxi pulled out into traffic; five minutes later it turned into the concourse before Anhalter Bahnhof, and in a sedate convoy of its kind, drove up to the main door. The driver set her suitcase down, touched his cap as she paid him. A snippet of old-fashioned courtesy in the new, steel-plated existence. During the brief transit she’d felt back in her past, safe in the worn leather interior. Here was the world she’d been in hiding from.

  She turned and walked in through the giant aperture: a small figure, with the hat brim snapped down over the brow of her lovely face, the corners of her mouth twitching with nerves. She was moving almost in a trance, heading for the big clock and Herr Doctor Lobe, a man whom she hated with all her heart. From loudspeakers, a mind-shaking stentorian announcement: Munich, Nuremberg, Potsdam departures: nine-fifteen, nine-twenty, nine-thirty. The hiss of releasing steam came in a second wave of sound.

  Smoke and grit whirled in the air with a pungent stench.

  She swayed slightly, dizzy. A deep compulsion came down on her to turn around and hurry back to the flat on Savigny Platz— to retreat from this frightening world. But there was no going back; the Gestapo would be waiting. She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand.

  The clock was out in the wasteland — suspended from the roof - its giant black hands jerkily moving minutes. ‘Steady,’ she breathed. Uniforms everywhere. Black and brown and grey. Who were the watchers among them? They’d be there, scrutinising faces, searching out signs of fear and guilt, those in plain clothes the dangerous ones.

  There! The red scarf. The Swiss who’d been the star turn at Elisabeth’s tea party that frigid Saturday, the elegant and personable doctor from Zurich, waited beneath the clock, a perspiring travesty of that confident individual.

  Anna stepped out of the crowd, put down her suitcase, and embraced him. ‘My dear cousin,’ she said.

  ‘Fräulein,’ he gasped, whirling to her, and shrinking back from her touch.

  ‘Cousin,’ she whispered against his cheek, her hand gripping his arm. She released him. His eyes were bulging. His brow was covered with droplets of perspiration and his body smelled of it. His face muscles flickered as he fumbled for her suitcase. Her heart fell as she took in his condition. Not an auspicious sign for their journey to the Reich’s frontier. Was he planning to betray her? Even if not, with this stark lack of composure, he might well do so.

  ~ * ~

  At Gestapo headquarters three kilometres away, Sack had been at his desk since 6.00 am. The few hours sleep hadn’t refreshed him. Even if Freda had demanded it, he doubted if he could have performed last night. He’d been exhausted following the daytrip down south - and the stand-off with the Jew. A Jew who would fight! The whole day had exhausted his energy and his nerves, and the carefully phrased report he’d dictated on yesterday’s murder of the agent from his section had been a lousy first task for the day.

  He pressed a buzzer and sent the typed report on its way. The dead agent’s wife had been trying to speak to him but there was no time for that.

  He got up from his chair. Outside was dark and dismal. The sausage he’d eaten last night at the bahnhof seemed to be still fermenting in his digestive tract. He grimaced. The auditor had been in his dreams. Tantalising him. One moment within reach, the next beyond it. He rubbed his chin. A master of deception, as had been vividly depicted by his southern Gestapo colleague and the paedophiliac banker. He returned to his desk and took a sip of cold coffee. Uggh! He spat it back into the cup.

  Freda was being driven mad with what she considered his inertia. What a capacity she had for seeing things in black and white! Nonetheless, he wouldn’t make a move against Schmidt until he was certain of his ground. Certain about von Streck. And for this he must see for himself the transcript of the Wertheim trial, and the investigation file. Put it beyond doubt that they were impregnated with lies; sticky with the special plenipotentiary’s traitorous fingerprints. Would Vormann locate it? Would he deliver it to a man he hated? Sack’s jaw tightened. He’d better. He’d give him a few more hours.

  Buhle entered. ‘Sturmbannfuehrer, the von Schnelling woman and her cousin the Abwehr captain —’

  ‘Yes?’ Sack frowned. Mopping up the dregs of the ‘Tea-Party Case’ had high priority at the ministry. Those bastards were addicted to unfinished business. An SS major had been detailed to telephone him daily to discuss progress, apply pressure. He’d been informed that the Reich Minister saw it as an especially virulent example of treason. As if he didn’t know! It was because of their upper-class status. Strict and noteworthy punishment had to be meted out. The baroness had escaped the net; the Reichs-bank secretary and the Beck woman could not be permitted to.

  ‘Anything less than one hundred per cent destruction of the group will be failure,’ the SS man had shouted down the line, transmitting his own pressure to Sack. A desk-banger, Sack had thought with contempt.

  Buhle cleared his throat. ‘Sir, regretfully, no trace has been found of either fugitive.’

  Sack stared at his subordinate with the scathing look he’d perfected. ‘Detail more men. Take them from Strasser’s section. You’d better get results, my fellow. And note, the captain’s not technically a fugitive. He’s required for questioning.’

  The untersturmfuehrer withdrew Ah, Strasser dead. There was a little light in this day There was the possibility of considerable light, he told himself with fresh determination. If you can root out von Streck and Schmidt, and deliver their heads on a plate to Herr Himmler.

  The telephone rang, startling him.

  It was a nearby hospital; a female voice speaking. ‘Sir, Fräulein Freda Brandt has been injured and asks you to come. Immediately.’

  Sack jumped to his feet. ’Injured? What? How serious?’

  The voice was cautious, respectful. ’Not too serious. She was attacked in the street. The wounds are light but she’s in shock.’

  Sack grimaced. ‘Tell her I’m on my way.’

  ~ * ~

  Major Hoffmann also had spent a sleepless night. Anna’s situation was poised on the edge of an abyss. And Eugene’s. Not to mention his own. But he wasn’t worried about himself. He’d gone to bed for a few hours but, after tossing and turning, had got up and made coffee. Shocking him, Eugene had left the clinic last night and seen Schmidt. Then had come to his flat after midnight. They’d talked for a half-hou
r about the plan for Anna.

  The major had given the distressed officer brandy. The tragedy of Elisabeth was a deadness in his friend’s eyes; now he’d been unable to say a proper farewell to Anna. Hoffmann understood his despair; Eugene wouldn’t see her again. He, at least, had that possibility.

  The major had turned on the radio, and adjusted the volume up. He’d put his mouth close to Eugene’s ear. ‘As you know, we’ve a few microphones in the Interior Ministry. A rather interesting conversation was picked up between an official there and a Gestapo sturmbannfuehrer, Sack. They were colleagues in the Prussian political police. Sack’s after a file relating to a trial that took place last November. It resulted in the conviction and execution of two members of the Party working in Bankhaus Wertheim, who allegedly stole Party funds. Schmidt blew the whistle on the pair and von Streck, behind the scenes, set up the prosecution.