Huber's Tattoo

by Quentin Smith

“It’s from Berlin!” the nurse said.

  Huber grabbed the parcel from her and rushed over to a small steel trolley in the corner of the room. He opened it hastily, revealing an envelope addressed to him and marked CONFIDENTIAL, together with dozens of tightly packed small white medicine boxes.

  “There are another five boxes outside, Doctor,” the nurse said, turning and hurrying out.

  “What does it say?” Oskar asked as he removed one of the medicine boxes to study.

  Huber opened the letter.

  Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Eugenics

  and Human Heredity

  Brain Research Unit

  Berlin

  Sturmbannführer Rolph Huber

  Heim Hochland (Project Unit)

  Steinhöring

  Bavaria

  3 April 1939

  Dear Rolph,

  I have been able (only with considerable persuasive effort) to acquire 1000 doses of Prontosil for you. I doubt I will get any more as the military is stock-piling vital supplies following the invasion of Czechoslovakia and in anticipation of another major offensive on the eastern front this autumn. (This is highly confidential by the way.)

  I most sincerely hope the sulpha helps Matron Gudrun back to health. Please use it sparingly because I don’t think Göring will allow us any further supplies.

  Sincerely,

  Standartenführer KV Bauer

  Direktor

  Huber wanted to weep with relief and felt his chin wobbling as he finished reading it to Oskar.

  “We have the sulpha drug, Rolph! This is excellent news, my friend, excellent!” Oskar grabbed Huber’s coat lapels in a moment of sheer exuberance. “I will start administering it to Gudrun immediately.”

  Huber took a deep breath. Suddenly overcome with emotion, suppressed over days of anxious abeyance, he hoped it was not too late. He looked down at Gudrun’s ailing body: hold on, my love, please hold on – just a little longer, he prayed.

  Fifty-Seven

  “Are you all right?” Natasha placed her hand on Henry’s arm as they sat beside each other in Schröder’s disorderly living room-cum-shrine. Around them dozens of flickering candle flames danced lazily and oozed faintly grey wisps of smoke.

  Henry looked deeply into her eyes.

  “I always knew there was something… unusual about my past. I just never, not even for a moment, imagined it could have been quite so sinister.”

  Schröder rattled cups and saucers in the small kitchen off to one side. Having poured a generous glass of schnapps for each of them – emptying the bottle – which they drank without so much as a murmur or a splutter, he retired to make coffee. The aromas of a strong Bavarian brew soothed the air and helped to make the unusual decor of Schröder’s house seem more homely, as well as minimising the feline odours.

  “You knew you were born in Steinhöring, didn’t you?” Natasha whispered to Henry, her eyes never leaving his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Henry shrugged.

  “I could not risk Bruce finding out. He would have whipped me off the case faster than the Flying Scotsman.”

  “You don’t trust me?” she said.

  Henry stared into her grey eyes. Even at such close quarters it felt comfortable, very comfortable.

  “Of course I trust you. Is that misguided?”

  Natasha flinched, feeling a pang of guilt. Did he know, she wondered?

  “No, no! You know how I…” She stopped herself.

  Henry squeezed her hand in his.

  “I felt ashamed, somehow, that my past would reveal something not befitting the man I have become.” He paused, exploring the fine detail of her eyelids and eyelashes. “Can you understand that?”

  “Did you know about Lebensborn?” Natasha asked.

  Henry sensed the implication behind her question. His sergeant needed to be able to trust him. He wanted Natasha to trust him as a man, too.

  “Incredibly, no, I didn’t.”

  He could see that she believed him and felt relief, despite the beginnings of what promised to be another fierce headache creeping around his brain.

  “Do you have any ibuprofen on you?” he said, rubbing his temple.

  “Did you not bring any?” Natasha reached for her bag and rummaged through it.

  “I don’t know where it is.”

  “Coffee!” Schröder announced, balancing three mugs in an awkward grasp as he burst cheerfully into the living-room. If he sensed that he had intruded on a private moment he did not let on.

  “Does your visit help your investigation at all, Inspector?”

  Henry sipped at his coffee, which was strong and very hot.

  “Guter Kaffee, Dieter,” he said, raising his mug approvingly. He contemplated Schröder’s question.

  “I need to link the victims to something specific here in Steinhöring. What they have in common will hopefully provide clues to a motive and thereafter possibly lead us in the direction of their killer. You mentioned that not everyone at Heim Hochland was tattooed.” Henry winced as another stab of pain shot through his head.

  “Ja. I have never heard of any children from any of the other Lebensborn homes being tattooed. They were very well fed, yes. They were bathed twice a day, yes. They had plenty of sunshine and good medical care, yes. They were so much bigger and healthier than the other children in Steinhöring when the Allies marched into town in 1945, yes. But tattoos, no, these they did not have.”

  Schröder slurped noisily at his coffee and welcomed a cat on to his lap, stroking it absently as he surveyed the candles around his room.

  “Do you know why I make all these candles and light them all the time?” Schröder allowed a hanging pause, emphasizing his divulgence. “I tell you, it is for all the forgotten victims of Lebensborn. How an ideal with such high… how you say… ambitionen?”

  “Ambitions,” Henry prompted.

  “Ja, high… erm… ambitions could be so… misguided.” Schröder shook his head disconsolately. “I hate them for what they did to me and my life. I hate them for what they did to people like Lars, how they have ruined his life and so many like him. People are ashamed to be Lebensborn children. Can you understand this, Inspector?”

  Henry blushed as he felt the gaze of both Schröder and Natasha upon him. He buried his face in the mug of aromatic coffee. The throbbing, crushing headache was intensifying.

  “Can you imagine what it is like to live with a tattoo on your head, marking you as a piece of meat – like a branded cow – for some special reason that you do not know, or understand?” Schröder said.

  Henry looked down at the floor and closed his eyes. They had begun to moisten with tears, perhaps from the headache, perhaps from the emotion of the afternoon.

  “Yes, I can,” he surprised himself by saying.

  There was a silence in the room broken only by the occasional purr of a cat and the ticking of a Bavarian cuckoo clock on the wall.

  “Are you all right, Inspector?” Schröder asked.

  “He gets terrible migraines,” Natasha explained, placing her coffee mug down gingerly next to a smoking candle on a side table. “I think I should get him to the hotel.”

  Schröder nodded, though he was frowning.

  “Is someone smoking a cigarette?” Henry asked, sniffing the air with half-closed eyes.

  “It’s the candles,” Natasha said.

  “I will call a taxi for you. To Ebersberg, ja?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Natasha said.

  “Hotel Gasthof Huber,” Henry added, before clutching his head and insisting, “No, it is definitely tobacco I can smell.”

  Schröder was on the phone speaking rapidly in German. Natasha began to rub Henry’s neck, carefully avoiding the fresh and tender scar.

  “Can we please return in the morning when the Inspector is feeling better?” Natasha asked, looking up at Schröder as he turned around from the telephone.

  “Of course. I have something very special to show
you, ja? It is… very interesting… shocking even… and you must see it.”

  Fifty-Eight

  Steinhöring, December 1944

  Another snow-encrusted, mud-spattered bus lurched to a halt outside Heim Hochland, watched by Gudrun and two of her nurses. The wheel arches of the bus were packed with brown, almost blackened snow and ice.

  “Where on earth are all these children coming from?” Gudrun said in exasperation, hands on the hips of her starched white uniform.

  The doors of the bus creaked open and dozens of tired children, some as young as three or four, poured out on to the gravel drive, most clutching a small bag or an item of personal value like a teddy bear, but little else. Their breath misted on contact with the icy winter air.

  “Call Sturmbannführer Huber right away, please,” Gudrun said, her voice now more authoritative, her eyes narrowed.

  The children assembled in a group facing her as a uniformed soldier approached with a clutch of papers in his grasp.

  “Where am I supposed to house all of these children?” Gudrun said, raising her hands in frustration as the soldier stood before her.

  “They are just my orders, Sturmbannführer.” He held out the papers and offered her a pen. “Please sign here, and here. There are thirty-seven children. You may count them if you wish.”

  Gudrun sighed and acknowledged receipt of her sixth delivery of children in as many days. Heim Hochland was bursting at the seams with children sleeping everywhere: head to toe in beds, in between beds, in the main lounge, even in the great hall.

  “They have not eaten,” the soldier added, as an afterthought.

  Suddenly he stiffened, turned and saluted as Huber drew rapidly closer.

  “What is going on, Rolph?” Gudrun said to him. “We cannot just keep accepting more children. We have no more room.”

  Huber placated her with outstretched arms, dismissed the soldier and then placed an arm around Gudrun’s waist, guiding her away from the children towards the gardens.

  “They are being sent here under Reichsführer Himmler’s direct orders.”

  “What!” Gudrun said, pulling away from Huber to face him.

  Huber nodded.

  “Himmler is closing all of the other Lebensborn facilities across the Reich and sending the children to us in Steinhöring.”

  “Why?” Gudrun shook her head incredulously.

  Huber glanced around, checking for people within earshot. In the garden a few children played with snowballs while a handful of nurses and mothers sat on the icy benches chatting and watching over them. The sky was blue with thin stratus clouds way up in the heavens and a dusting of snow covered everything in the garden, like icing sugar on a Stöllen. In comparison to the reality of life in the rest of the Reich, Huber reflected, it looked idyllic.

  “The war is going badly, Gudrun. The British and Americans have pushed right across France. They are gaining the upper hand in the Ardennes and if they overcome the Wehrmacht’s last stand then they will surely advance on Berlin.”

  “No!” Gudrun said angrily, shaking her head and pulling away from Huber. “It cannot be true!”

  “It is! I have seen the communiqués. All the Nazi leaders are trying to cover their tracks now, destroying records…” Huber looked about with a confused expression on his face. “Himmler is dismantling the Lebensborn programme as we speak.”

  Gudrun raised a hand sharply to her mouth, paling visibly. She turned, walked in a circle and stopped in front of Huber once again.

  “Not the Lebensborn programme? Tell me it is not true.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

  Huber nodded gravely.

  “What will become of us?” Gudrun said, her indignation replaced by apprehension.

  Huber placed his hands firmly but gently on her shoulders, pulling her ever so slightly closer to him.

  “We are safe here for now, the children are safe. We have nothing to fear.”

  Gudrun began to weep.

  “Listen to me; we have done nothing wrong,” Huber said slowly.

  “What about the kidnapped children from Poland? When they find out…” Gudrun began, fear in her eyes.

  “We did not kidnap them. They were delivered to us and we looked after them extremely well, as though they were native Aryans,” Huber said, shaking his head in denial.

  Gudrun stared into his defiant eyes with trepidation etched into her face.

  “And the project babies?” she said quietly, biting her lower lip as her eyes darted about nervously under Huber’s assured gaze, partly hidden behind the snowy garden reflected in his gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “The oldest of the project babies, those from Bauer’s early work, are now reaching thirteen, fourteen years. Two are already pregnant. We are just beginning the creation of the second generation. Now is when we will truly advance the science of selective breeding. I am not ready for it to shut down yet,” Huber said, regret evident both in his words and the creases on his face.

  “Is there nothing that can be done?”

  Huber sighed.

  “Bauer is trying to secure passage for the project babies and for us further south, perhaps into Austria.”

  “Us?” Gudrun raised her eyebrows.

  “You, me and Oskar, all the G1s and the nurses, of course.”

  “What about Bauer?”

  “He will remain in Berlin at KWI. He is an academic and should not be troubled by the Allies. He says he will ensure continued funding for this project through KWI and its many fervent supporters and benefactors across the Reich. The end of Hitler and the war will not necessarily be the end of our ambitions.”

  Gudrun turned to look at the children assembled on the gravel. The bus had left and they stood in a clinging cloud of vapour from their collective breathing, eyes downcast, frightened and above all, alone. They did not look like the elite of German society, the cream of Aryan selection: they reminded her of outcasts, refugees in their own homeland.

  “How many of these children are there across the Reich?” Gudrun said in a hushed tone, sniffing away the last of her tears.

  “I don’t know,” Huber admitted. “Probably thousands.”

  For a brief, agonising moment he imagined his own son, Gustav – tall, blond and athletic, the embodiment of Aryan desirability, the pinnacle of racial purity – standing amongst the band of unwanted children on the gravel. No past to fall back on and an uncertain future ahead of him.

  “I’m going to phone Bauer,” Huber said. “Give them something to eat.” He squeezed her shoulder affectionately, turned and walked away briskly towards the unit.

  Gudrun stared at the children, fighting back the urge to burst into tears again.

  Fifty-Nine

  Henry suffered greatly with his headache that night. Natasha had massaged his head and neck for at least an hour, during which Henry, lying prone on his king-sized Gasthof Huber bed, had simply moaned now and then, his arms twitching occasionally as though he was trapped in a nightmare, fighting off demons, like St George taking on the dragon.

  At one point he had complained again about being in a smoky room, that he could smell cigarette smoke. Then he had fallen into a fitful sleep and Natasha had left him and gone to find something to eat. She was starving, despite the heavy meal of Bratwürst and potato mash at the Bräuhaus earlier that day.

  When she returned to Henry’s room later, he was gone. Initial panic and concern quickly gave way to exhaustion and in the grip of oppressive fatigue she accepted reassurance from her previous experience of this odd event in Carsac that he would probably return in time. She resolved to wait for him. What else could she do?

  Her phone rang, startling her from growing weariness. She fumbled eagerly with it, but it was not Henry.

  “Sergeant, are you able to talk for a few minutes?”

  It was Superintendent Bruce. Natasha frowned and switched the phone between hands.

  “Yes, sir. What is it?”

  “Is Webber there?”

>   “Er, no, not with me,” she said.

  Silence.

  “Is everything OK, Natasha?” Bruce said, as if sensing that it was not.

  “Yes, sir, everything’s fine. We had a long day and we’re… exhausted.”

  “Uh-huh. Listen, I have something very important to tell you.”

  Natasha’s heart leapt into her throat. Henry was not around if she needed him and she feared having to lie about his whereabouts to Bruce.

  “I asked Professor Guinney, the scientist up in Durham, to send all the skin specimens to us for Dr Longstaff to examine again, because there is a fifth, unaccounted specimen. Did you know anything about it?”

  Natasha closed her eyes tightly. This is what she had been dreading, being caught out in her collusion with Henry.

  “No, sir,” she lied.

  “Thing is, I mentioned this to Dr Longstaff and he immediately told me who the extra specimen came from.”

  Natasha covered her face with her free hand. There was a pause on the line. Was he baiting her, she wondered?

  “Who, sir?” she said, knowing full well who it was and suppressing waves of guilty nausea that twisted her insides.

  “It comes from Henry. He asked Longstaff to remove the tattoo on the back of his neck.”

  Natasha did not know what to say. She breathed slowly and cautiously, not wanting Bruce to hear her and pick up on her discomfort.

  “Natasha?”

  “I’m here, sir. I’m just… shocked. Are you sure?”

  “This must be why Henry was so desperate to be sent to Steinhöring.”

  “Why is that, sir?” she said, playing along but astonished at the instinctive ease with which she committed perjury. She was a police officer – why was she protecting Henry? Was it worth it? Was Henry worth it? She could feel her heart beating in her chest.

  “Because he obviously knew that he comes from Steinhöring, the same as all the other victims with tattoos. Natasha?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, feeling that at any moment she would be dragged under by the growing deception.

  “Is Inspector Webber in danger?” Bruce paused. “I am worried that he could be a possible target. What concerns me is the number of common factors he now shares with the victims to date.” Bruce stated it somewhat bluntly, Natasha thought, but there was no other way to voice what they both feared.