A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “I ran into a friend after I received the paperwork for Röhm’s body, but—”

  “A friend?” His emphasis was insulting.

  I looked at him, puzzled. “Yes, an old friend. But I would rather talk about—”

  “Of course you would.” He poured himself a glass of wine. He did not offer me one. “But I want to talk about your old friend.”

  “Why?” I was exhausted, and nearing the end of my patience. Whatever upset him, he had no right yelling at me. I poured myself a glass of wine and glared at him.

  “I had a late tea with a client at the Adlon today.” He drained his glass.

  We would have to have this out. But I could not tell him about Sefton. I trusted Boris with my life, but it was not my place to trust Sefton’s life to anyone. I stalled for time. “Bankers know how to live.”

  “I saw you there, eating with another man.” He refilled his glass.

  “My old friend.” Even though I understood why he was upset, and felt guilty, I was angry that he thought I was doing something as foolish as having an affair. I had enough to worry about without that.

  “You drank three glasses of wine, then disappeared into the elevator that goes to the rooms with your old friend.” He gulped another swallow of wine.

  “You are wasted as a banker. You should be a private investigator.” In the same situation I would have trusted him. Perhaps.

  “You did not come back down for two hours.” His tone was clipped. He finished his wine and poured a third glass. At this rate he would be drunk in no time. “I waited.”

  I remembered the businessman Sefton had mentioned. “I see.”

  “Is this man the reason you are in Berlin?” He lifted his chin, as if readying himself for a punch. “Explain yourself.”

  An order. But he knew that I did not follow orders. Ever. “I should not have to.”

  “Shouldn’t have to?” He drained his glass again.

  “My actions are my business. Not yours. Just this morning you said that you had no right to question me. Even if you had, have we exchanged promises of fidelity?” Anger seeped into my voice. I could not draw him into my dealings with Sefton. The less he knew, the better things would be for him if any of us ended up in an interrogation cell, a too-likely fate.

  He slapped both palms flat on the table. It rang like a shot. I jumped, and a sharp pain shot from my ribs. My eyes watered. That was enough. I would not be afraid of him.

  “Dallying in hotel rooms with other men is not my business?”

  “Only if you are the one dallying.” I regretted that as soon as I said it.

  He stood and paced the room. Four steps, turn, four steps, turn.

  “Boris, I am sorry, but I cannot tell you what I was doing.” My voice sounded placating, a tone with which I was unfamiliar. I did not usually have to placate. And I did not like it.

  “If you won’t tell me what you were doing, tell me what you weren’t.” His voice had a tone of angry command that reminded me of my father.

  “I assure you that I was not doing what you seem to think. I cannot tell you more.”

  “Can’t tell me or won’t tell me?” He did not believe me.

  “It amounts to the same thing in the end.” I touched his warm forearm. “Please, Boris, it is for your own good. You must trust me.”

  He froze and gave me the same cold stare I had seen in front of Moabit courthouse, one of the first times that we had met. Just like then, he looked at me as if I were a stranger, and a stranger he did not much care for. “Must I?”

  “No.” I sighed. I was not the kind of person to salvage this relationship, beg for forgiveness, and tell him everything. Probably the reason I was thirty-five and unmarried, as my mother would have pointed out. “I suppose you do not have to trust me.”

  I stormed up the stairs. I did not want to be in the same house with him for another minute. When I picked up my suitcase, my rib twinged again, and I bit my lip.

  He stopped me at the top of the stairs. “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  “Do you have anywhere to go?”

  “I can look after myself. I have managed for years without you. I can manage tonight.”

  And to think that I had been imagining a future with him on my way home.

  He ran his hand through his thick hair. Dark shadows rested under his eyes.

  “Stay,” he said.

  I fought back an overwhelming urge to flee. Part of me wanted to walk out the front door, and be on my own again. I knew how to walk that road.

  He held out his hand. “Please.”

  I took the new road, the harder road. His hand felt colder than usual, but his grip was firm.

  14

  For the first time, we slept on opposite sides of the bed. Or perhaps he slept. I spent most of the night staring at the wall, angry that he did not trust me, but angrier at the circumstances. He had every right to be suspicious when he saw me go into another man’s hotel room. I understood that he wanted to know the full truth of my life. But I had to protect him, and protect Sefton. I could not pull Boris into the dangerous morass of my life. But if my life was one giant morass, where was he to stand?

  Early the next morning I rolled over to study him in the soft light. His measured breathing told me that he slept, although he was a light sleeper. The lines of anger on his face had relaxed. His jawline was still strong, but wrinkles around his eyes and mouth had deepened since I first met him, only three years before. What burdens did he carry? Did he have as many secrets locked away as I? Would I ever find out? Or were we incapable of spending more than a few nights together at a time, and doomed to keep the most important things hidden from each other?

  What had happened with Trudi? He had only told me in barest outlines, but I knew it must have hurt him deeply when she left. Even if the groom had not been a Nazi, it would have been a blow. He had doubtless waited years to walk her down the aisle in a white dress and give her away to a man that he could trust. And he had been robbed of that. He had not lost her as completely as I had lost Anton, but he too had lost the future he had planned for himself and his child.

  I longed to stroke his dark hair off his forehead, trace the lines around his eyes and mouth, but I did not want to wake him and start another fight. Instead I slipped out of bed, performed a hasty toilet, and left. Perhaps tonight we would be calmer, and I could explain.

  To avoid Frau Inge, I waited until I heard her moving in the kitchen, then slipped out the front door without breakfast. I stopped at a tea shop on my way to Lichterfelde and my appointment with Frau Doppelgänger. She was not someone to face on an empty stomach. I filled out the forms carefully, knowing that a single misplaced word could cost me days. Frau Röhm had been thorough in her letter and provided the details I needed.

  I nodded to the stone sentries and walked up to the imposing brick building. A breeze too warm for this early in the morning swept across the courtyard, promising a day as hot as the one before.

  A line of women snaked out from the door, although not as long as yesterday’s. I smiled apologetically as I moved past. I made my way down the battered halls of the former military school. What would my father say if he saw me in the halls of his old school, come to retrieve the body of a man shot for high treason?

  What would have become of my brother had my father lived? Would he have been forced to tread these halls, to learn to kill? I missed him. Ernst would have had advice about Boris, certain that I could solve our problems with outré undergarments.

  At quarter past nine I rapped on the wooden door to Frau Doppelgänger’s office, feeling like a child sent to the headmaster.

  “Come in!” Frau Doppelgänger’s voice carried through the thick door. Had she been a man, she would have been a natural on the parade ground.

  I entered the room and crossed to her desk, forms in hand. “The forms for Ernst Röhm.”

  She snatched them out of my hand and read, expression signaling her desire
to find something wrong or missing. “These seem to be in order.”

  She stamped a form and handed it to me. A receipt. I stuck it into my satchel.

  “When can I expect to have his remains?”

  “Two weeks, at the earliest.” She stamped the tops of each form. “Some of those cleansed have been buried at Perlacher Cemetery in Munich. If your Röhm is among them, you will not be able to retrieve him.”

  “Surely his body could be exhumed?” I said, through gritted teeth. I did not like her calling him my Röhm, and I did not like the thought that he might never be returned to his mother.

  “You would have to petition the cemetery. But it would be highly unusual.”

  “I believe that the entire matter has been highly unusual.”

  She lowered plucked eyebrows. “Nevertheless, you must wait two weeks to find out his status. If necessary, you may file an exhumation form then.”

  She dropped my forms atop a mountainous pile. Dealing with Hitler’s death machine had become a time-consuming job.

  “Thank you for the information,” I said, more to prevent my forms from disappearing into the pile, than because I was grateful.

  She inclined her head in a tiny nod. “One more thing.”

  “Yes?” Perhaps she had found a way to expedite the release of Röhm’s body. Perhaps a bribe would work. She did not seem the type, but perhaps she was new at it.

  “This is highly irregular.”

  “Indeed?” Considering what passed for regular, irregular might be just the thing. What would be an appropriate amount?

  “You should be grateful that I made the connection. It was only by the purest chance.”

  “Connection?” My stomach dropped. Any connection she made about me could not be good.

  She retrieved a large set of keys from her pocket and unlocked her drawer. “At the cost, it must be urgent.”

  My heart pounded, but I feigned calm. “The cost?”

  She withdrew a familiar yellow envelope. A telegram. I relaxed.

  “This came to this office this morning, for a Hannah Vogel.”

  It must be from Röhm’s mother. No one else knew I was here, except Boris and perhaps Sefton. Neither would send me a telegram. “Probably from Frau Röhm. About her son.”

  She pressed the yellow envelope into my palm. “We are not a telegram drop office. If another one comes, we will discard it.”

  “I apologize for the inconvenience.” My fingers itched to open the envelope, but I had no intention of reading it in front of her.

  She escorted me out of the office with such an air of indifference as to the contents of the telegram that I suspected she must have already opened and read it.

  “Auf wiedersehen,” I said before she closed the door. Another woman waited outside. Her red-rimmed eyes stared at me with a total lack of curiosity. She had time for no troubles but her own.

  I slid the telegram into my satchel. It would be foolish to read it in a Nazi stronghold. I hurried down the long hallway.

  I had almost reached the front door when a familiar high-pitched voice stopped me. “Fräulein Vogel,” it said.

  I froze.

  I composed my face, grateful that he stood behind me and could not see my fear.

  “Kommissar Lang.” I turned to face a small thin man with perfect military bearing. He had not changed since he had interrogated me three years ago about the death of my brother, except that he wore an immaculate black SS uniform and his dark hair was cut shorter. His boot-black eyes were still bright. His square face looked relieved.

  “Hauptsturmführer now. In the SS.”

  “Congratulations.” I felt inane saying it, but it was protocol. He was such a proper man, it was hard not to respond in proper fashion, something he was certain to use to his advantage.

  “Walk with me.” He stepped forward and slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow. I almost flinched, but caught myself. I must be careful with him, as always. Should I run? I doubted that I could outrun him. As if he read my thoughts, his grip on my hand tightened.

  “Of course,” I said, as if it were an ordinary request, as if I always went for strolls with former police officers who had interrogated me until a doctor ordered them to stop because I was retching uncontrollably. Now that the Nazis held power, no doctor would intervene. I was in for a pleasant stroll.

  We walked out the front door in step. I bet he was quite a marcher at rallies. The women in line looked at him with worry and hatred, but he seemed unaware. Probably inured to it.

  “I have been searching for you for three years.” We went down the front steps.

  “And now you have found me.” I was not happy to know that the SS had been searching for me for one minute, let alone years. No good could come of that.

  “That is merely a fortuitous accident.” He smiled. We crossed the stone tiles, navigating over dark lines onto lighter colored squares as if we crossed the playing field of a game. A dangerous game, and I did not know the rules.

  “How did you know I would be here?” Suspicion rang in my voice.

  He turned his head to face me without breaking step. “I asked to be notified if anyone came to claim Röhm’s remains. I did not expect it to be you.”

  We strolled together past the sentries and into the street. My heart hammered in my chest. He had been notified by Frau Doppelgänger. Had she read the telegram? If so, had she told him the contents? I wished I had read it immediately so that he did not have that advantage over me. He had enough already.

  If it contained news of Anton, Lang might know that Anton was Röhm’s long-lost son. If the Nazis knew that living proof that Röhm had sired a child was in Germany, they would bury such an inconvenient fact to make it easier for them to pursue their crusade of having cleansed Röhm for homosexual debauchery. But surely if the telegram was from Frau Röhm she would be circumspect?

  A horse clopped by on the street, an unfamiliar sight in a world that had changed over to automobiles. His glossy chestnut coat shone. Instead of a soldier, an SS man rode him. The rider caught sight of us and raised his arm in the Hitler salute. Lang released my arm and saluted back. “Heil Hitler!”

  I used the opportunity to step away from him.

  The horse cantered off, one rider as good as another. I thought of Anton. Because of his insistence on riding bareback, we had been through three riding instructors. I could think of no logical reason to force him to use a saddle, so I kept interviewing instructors until we found a retired vaquero who kept horses and agreed to give him bareback lessons if he used a saddle every other lesson. I liked how, to Anton, riding was about friendship between the rider and his horse, not a performance for court, a ritual of hunting, or a prelude to riding in military formation. I wanted him to be unlike his father, and unlike mine.

  Lang gestured in front of him, and we walked again. He moved protectively so that he stood between me and the street. An old-fashioned gesture, the man walking on the street side to protect his companion from traffic or getting mud splashed on her skirts by a passing horse and carriage. Boris always did the same.

  “What happened three years ago?” he asked, voice soft, quite different from his last interrogation. Perhaps he had learned skills in the SS. I shuddered to think what they might be.

  I took a deep breath, trying not to let the pain it caused show on my face. I owed him no explanation, but treating him like an enemy, even though he was, was foolish. I could risk no foolish mistakes. “I apologize for the way I . . . left things three years ago.” That was true. I regretted being on the run from the police on top of everything else. “I was frightened for my life, even in police custody.”

  “You left precipitously, which anyone can understand,” he said with a smile intended to be soothing.

  I tensed. He would only soothe me to lull me into something.

  “Yet you did not return after Herr von Reiche was killed.” He paused. “Why?”

  I waited. I had nothing unincriminating
to say. We strolled down the street in the warm sunshine, past the tea shop where I breakfasted earlier, thinking that Frau Doppelgänger was the only opponent I would face.

  “Because, I believe, you were tied in with Röhm.” His palm cupped my elbow, as if afraid I might bolt.

  “Oh.” I did not want to admit more links to Röhm. This was not the time to be in his circle of friends. What was in the telegram?

  “At first I thought that you lied to me at the hospital and that you were, in fact, the mother of his child.” He looked at me expectantly, as if he thought I would answer. We both moved aside to let a woman push a pram down the sunlit street.

  “That would be a natural assumption.” He had heard Anton call me Mother, and he knew that Anton was Röhm’s son. I wanted to give nothing away. The woman pushed the pram into the tea shop, and I longed to follow.

  “After I did a more thorough research of your background—” He tightened his grip on my elbow. “—I found no record of you ever being hospitalized for childbirth.”

  I imagined the hours he must have spent poring over hospital records. “Not all children are born in hospitals.”

  He inclined his head. “True, but Anton Röhm was. I uncovered a different birth certificate for him, one that did not list you as his mother. An Elise Karlson, who was admitted to Steglitz Hospital on the day Anton was born, was his true mother. As I’m certain you are aware, she was a prostitute and died of an overdose shortly before you fled Berlin.”

  “I see.” I did not see. With his typical thoroughness, he had uncovered Anton’s true birth certificate, not the fake one I had been presented with. He knew more about Anton than I. But why was he telling me?

  “So the boy is merely your foster son. I believe that you and your brother were caring for the boy before Röhm took him.”

  “Your attention to detail in a three-year-old case is most impressive.” We passed off the street into a leafy park. I kept pace, although I longed to stay where people could see us.

  “It interested me. You interested me. A woman linked to Röhm.”