The Boy from Berlin

by Michael Parker

  Mason was not making any progress with the senator, and Babs could see that her husband was holding back. He was a notorious flirt, and most of their lady friends enjoyed the usual banter between them. But this was different; the senator was being aggressive, almost. Babs wondered if this was more of a job interview than a friendly dinner party. She was certainly leading the conversation.

  She cleared her throat discreetly and stood up. ‘I’ll just clear these things away and bring the coffee through. Perhaps you two would like to retire to the lounge. We’ll take coffee in there.’

  As Ann and Gus got up from the table, Babs controlled her frustration and growing anger by getting on with the task of clearing the plates and making coffee. But she made sure she was quiet enough to follow the conversation in the other room.

  ‘Have you ever blocked anybody from the Senate?’ Mason asked her.

  She nodded. ‘When it has suited me.’

  ‘Do you base that on politics, personalities or what?’

  ‘Rarely politics, Gus. If I don’t like the bastard, he doesn’t get in. It’s as simple as that.’ She laughed. ‘But I’ll deny ever having said that.’

  He understood how mendacious politicians could be when it suited them. Ann Robbins was no different. ‘You’d have the newspapers snapping at your heels like a pack of wolves if they thought that of you,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘They’d have to catch me first.’

  ‘You keep yourself fit then, Ann?’ he asked. ‘Do you use the gym?’

  She shook her head. ‘I prefer jogging. I like to run down by the lake.’

  He arched his eyebrows in a show of surprise. ‘Aren’t you bothered by people coming up to you at all?’

  She shrugged. ‘If they can run and ask me questions at the same time, it will help to get them fit.’

  They both laughed as Babs walked in with the coffee. At last, Babs thought to herself, things were warming up.

  ‘Ann tells me that she likes to go jogging down by the lake,’ Mason said to his wife.

  Babs’s expression changed. ‘I do as well. I’ve never seen you though, Ann.’

  Robbins shook her head in a short, sharp movement. ‘I’m always there at six in the morning. I like to get out in the early morning air. Not so many people about either.’

  Babs chuckled softly. ‘Too early for me, I’m afraid. I usually get there about 9.30.’

  She was still holding the tray of coffee cups. She put it down on the coffee table and poured a cup for the senator.

  ‘Perhaps we should run together one day,’ she suggested.

  Robbins ignored the offer, but smiled thinly and turned her attention back to Gus Mason.

  ‘As I was saying, Gus, getting into the Senate is not as easy as you might imagine. It isn’t just powerful backers that you need, but powerful friends too.’ She let the last statement sink in like a heavy stone settling on soft mud until it slowly disappeared from view. ‘And those friendships are not easily come by; you have to work at them.’

  Mason believed her advice was filled with innuendo, and it irked him to think she might be suggesting a liaison. He glanced at Babs who had a fixed expression on her face, holding back on what could be a fairly explosive temper. He decided to change the subject. Or at least steer the senator away from the idea of working his way into the State Senate by way of Ann Robbins’ bed.

  In the end the evening turned out to be something of a disaster for Babs and her husband. Once Senator Robbins had left in her car, they turned and faced each other in the drive as it disappeared into the night and shook their heads.

  ‘It didn’t work, did it Gus?’

  ‘No.’

  They stepped up on to the porch and stood there for a while listening to the sounds of the night. The moon was up and throwing its soft light everywhere. It could have been romantic.

  ‘She’s going to block you, isn’t she?’

  He didn’t say anything at first but continued to stare into the night.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘She’s going to block me.’

  Babs’s features hardened in the shadows. ‘There must be some way to stop her,’ she muttered.

  ‘Some way,’ he replied grimly, ‘even if it means getting up early and taking up jogging.’ And with that he spun on his heel and went back into the house.

  TWO

  THE YOUNG WOMAN paused and put her pen down. The small voice recorder was still recording quietly on the table between her. She noticed that Babs would keep picking at the folds of the rough skirt she was wearing. Probably a thing about being confined, she decided. It was no wonder; the prison cell felt pretty bleak and restraining. How different, the young writer thought, to Mason’s previous life where glamour and power went hand in hand.

  ‘What about the German guy?’ she asked, referring to a large pad that she had placed beside her.

  Babs tossed her head back. ‘Oh, the German guy,’ she repeated. ‘Gunter Haman. I never knew he existed.’ She stopped and looked across the cell at the young writer. ‘Never heard of him. Never met him.’

  ‘But he was the one who started it all really, wasn’t he?’

  Babs shook her head. ‘No, there were others. What Haman did was an act of penitence. He had no way of knowing how it would end.’ She closed her eyes briefly and remembered how utterly appalled she had been at the disclosure of Haman’s innocent involvement. He would have had no idea what he was about to start.

  Gunter Haman opened his eyes in the darkness of his bedroom and thought once more about the dream. It had come again, but this time with remarkable clarity. Before this the images had been a little vague and confused, melding with pictures of the present. Although it was clearer, it still troubled him.

  He could hear his wife breathing softly beside him, and turned his head to one side so that he could just make out the shape of her head on the pillow. Beyond her, on her bedside table the digital clock display showed that it was 4.30 in the morning.

  He yawned and blinked his eyes to clear the dryness from them, and as his eyelids closed, so the images came flooding back. He could see the young woman’s arm beginning to scorch as the flames took hold and blistered the skin. The number tattooed crudely on her arm blurred and charred, vanishing in a moment. But although the number had disappeared quickly, Haman would never forget it; 180328. It was his date of birth: 18th March 1928. Sixty-seven years ago.

  When Haman had first seen that number, it meant nothing to him other than it was the date of his birth, but over the years he had come to understand. Now it poured over him like a flood, and swamped him with a pervasive and damaging feeling of guilt.

  He sat up, threw the covers back and swung his thin legs over the edge of the bed. With his arms supporting him, he sat there staring down at the floor, seeing nothing except the woman’s burning arm.

  ‘What’s up, Gunter?’ Her voice was thick with sleep.

  He turned his head a little to one side and answered his wife’s mumbled question.

  ‘Nothing, a bit of indigestion, that’s all.’

  He felt his wife move as she propped herself up on her elbow.

  ‘You having that dream again?’ she asked, reaching out a hand and touching him gently on the shoulder.

  Haman turned and looked at her in the darkness. ‘Go back to sleep, sweetheart; I’ll be OK.’

  His wife moved away from him and switched her bedside lamp on. The room was immediately flooded with light.

  ‘I’ll go and make us some coffee,’ she told him and clambered out of bed. As she fastened her dressing gown around her generous proportions, she looked at him with genuine concern. ‘It’s happening too often, Gunter. You need to talk about it.’

  Haman reached for his dressing gown which was hanging from a hook behind the door, and put it on. His wife shuffled out of the bedroom, turning the main light on as she went through the open door. Her grey hair, usually well groomed, was now a little unkempt. Haman smiled at the untidiness, but at leas
t his wife had a great deal more hair than him.

  They sat on opposite sides of the table in their well-appointed kitchen, sipping their coffee. Haman’s wife put her cup down.

  ‘How many times have you had this dream?’

  Haman shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Angela; ten times, twenty maybe.’ He shook his head and spilled his coffee. ‘Damn!’

  Angela reached over the table and put her hand on his arm. ‘I’ll do it.’

  He watched as she got some kitchen roll and mopped the spilled coffee. She took his cup from him, wiped it and put it down on the table.

  ‘Sorry, Angela.’

  ‘Never mind about that,’ she told him as she sat down again. ‘Now, about this dream.’

  He put his hands to his forehead for a moment as if he was about to burst into tears. Then he lowered them and straightened up.

  ‘You know I served in the Hitler Youth.’ Angela nodded; she knew his history. ‘My last few weeks were spent in the Reich Chancellery.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I was just a kid.’ He sighed and drew in a deep breath. ‘They told me I had one last job to do; one last task that would serve the Fatherland.’

  ‘Yes,’ she interrupted, ‘you’ve told me about that many times.’

  He fixed his eyes on her, the woman he loved and had loved for over forty years. Would she be able to cope with the truth, he wondered? Or would she look on him as some kind of Nazi butcher?

  ‘But not the last time,’ he responded, making up his mind to tell her and hopefully to ease the burden. ‘Not the last time,’ he said again.

  She picked up her cup. ‘What last time?’

  He cast his eyes down and looked forlornly at the table top. He knew he had to open up, to share his own, perceived guilt with her.

  ‘Angela,’ he began, ‘the world believes that Hitler and Eva Braun died together in the Chancellery.’ He looked up at her, shaking his head. ‘But that isn’t true. Eva Braun did not die. She wasn’t even there.’

  Angela’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open. Haman put his hand up.

  ‘Well, she was there, but not when Hitler was shot. She was taken out of the room.’

  Angela peered at him, her eyes half closing. ‘By you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, somebody else.’

  ‘But what about…?’

  He nodded briskly. ‘I know; what about the two bodies?’ He could feel himself trembling slightly as he began to recall those last moments. ‘They brought a young woman in. She was about the same height and build as Fräulein Braun. She was forced to kneel beside the body of Hitler.’ He stopped for a moment to gather his thoughts and to compose himself. ‘She couldn’t have known what was about to happen because she was blindfolded. They shot her in the back of the head and arranged her body next to the Führer’s.’

  ‘You saw all this?’ Her voice was a whisper.

  He nodded. ‘I was then told to burn the bodies and to make sure they couldn’t be identified. It was for the sake of the Fatherland, they said. I was on my own.’ He looked into his wife’s eyes, searching deep into her soul. ‘I was barely seventeen years old, Angela. Seventeen.’ Tears began to roll down his face. ‘I poured gasoline over them. It had been left there for me. When it was done I lit a piece of paper with a cigarette lighter they had given me. I tossed the paper on to the bodies and …’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘The flames just erupted.’ He was silent for a few moments. ‘And then I saw the number on her arm.’

  ‘Number?’

  ‘A tattoo. A number on her arm. I didn’t know what it meant, not then. But it was the date of my birth – 180328. I couldn’t take my eyes away, even when her flesh burned and the number disappeared.’ He reached across the table and took Angela’s hand. ‘The dream has scared me, Angela; scared me to death. It’s as though the dead woman is pointing the finger at me; as though she is saying “this is your fault; your responsibility”. Then I see the flames burn her flesh away and the tattoo with it.’

  Angela put her hand over his and kept squeezing it as though she was gently kneading bread dough. He could feel her trembling and the pressure from her fingers was growing stronger. He drew his hand away and studied the look of astonishment on her face.

  ‘I’ve lived with that all those years, Angela, but could never bring myself to tell anyone.’

  ‘But you were a mere child, Gunter,’ she said softly, shaking her head. ‘Nobody would have blamed you.’

  ‘It wasn’t the blame or the guilt that stopped me from telling the truth. I was simply carrying out orders as any soldier would.’

  ‘Tosh!’ she said suddenly, straightening up. ‘You were no more than a boy scout; soldier indeed!’

  He smiled. ‘I thought I was a soldier.’ He said nothing for a while; just looked at his wife.

  ‘I’d almost forgotten about it,’ he went on, ‘you know; managing to keep it at the back of my mind. Until the dreams started.’ He lifted his eyes until he was looking over the top of her head, looking at something far off, something dredged from the deep recesses of his mind. ‘Until the dreams started,’ he said again.

  ‘Do you think you should talk to someone about them?’ she asked.

  He smiled again and shook his head gently. ‘I’m talking to you, Angela. I don’t need anyone else.’

  ‘But the dreams are bothering you,’ she pressed. ‘That can’t be good for you.’

  He shrugged and took a mouthful of coffee. ‘I need to find out who she was,’ he said as he put his cup down. ‘I think that’s why I’m having the dreams.’

  Angela’s mouth fell open. ‘Don’t be silly, Gunter. Why on earth do you want to know who she was? And how would that help anybody? It certainly wouldn’t help that poor woman.’

  ‘For some reason Angela …’ he paused, trying to pick his words carefully, ‘I feel that someone should know what happened to her; someone who was part of her family.’

  ‘If she was a Jew, Gunter, she wouldn’t have a family; they killed them all.’

  He arched his eyebrows and gave her a rather condescending look. ‘Sweet Angela, you’re right of course, but there are always miracles and somebody could have survived. It has happened.’

  ‘And you think this would stop the dreams?’

  ‘It might help.’ He got up from the table and took their cups across to the coffee pot. He filled both cups and returned to the table, setting them down. ‘It’s as though the woman is reaching out to me in the dream.’ He sat down. ‘I’m sixty-seven years old now, Angela. Only God knows how long I have left. But if I could find out who she was, I believe I would go to my grave a happy man.’

  ‘A kind of redemption?’ she offered. ‘Rather silly, isn’t it?’

  He chuckled. ‘Some redemption; I was never brave enough before, and now most of the guilty ones are dead I decide to set out on some kind of crusade.’ He chewed his bottom lip. ‘Do I sound like a coward?’ he asked.

  Angela reached over the table and took his hand. ‘No, never a coward.’ She leaned back in her chair, pulling her hand away. ‘So how will you go about this crusade at your age, and what will you do when, and if, you find out who the poor woman was?’

  He nodded towards the small room he used as a study, his ‘indoor shed’ as his wife called it. ‘I’ll go down to the public library, see who I need to contact, what I have to do.’

  ‘What about the people who were in the Chancellery with you? Won’t they be able to help?’

  He laughed. ‘If they’re still alive, they’ll all be over a hundred years old.’ Then he shook his head and lapsed into deep thought for a moment. Eventually he looked up. ‘I’ll make a start in the morning.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Well, later, anyway.’

  Angela knew then that Gunter would begin his quest as soon as he had had his breakfast and showered. Once he had his teeth into something, he was something of a Rottweiler and wouldn’t let go. She just hoped he would meet a dead end on this one and let the whole thing drop. But
more importantly she hoped that it would get the dream out of his mind and there would be no harmful consequences.

  She hoped.

  It was some time before Gunter Haman learned about the International Tracing Service in the town of Bad Arolsen. He had had many false starts, but soon discovered the facility by doing a search in his local library at Aachen. He used the new service known as the ‘Internet’. It was in its infancy but the librarian was very helpful and Haman’s search was reasonably short. The International Tracing Service, known as the ITS, was just a couple of hours’ drive from Buchenwald, which was just a few miles from the town of Weimar after which the early German Republic had been named, later to become the Third Reich. He made an application to the ITS to search through the records of those people who had perished in the concentration camps.

  When Haman had submitted the application, it had taken a great deal of time for a reply because of the nature of the bureaucracy that controlled the centre. It was headed up by eleven different nations, and each one had to agree to a search application before it could be issued. It meant several weeks of waiting for Haman, but he had learned to become patient.

  While he waited for a reply, Haman began other, local searches. It meant he had been away from his wife now on many occasions over the ensuing weeks, and it was beginning to tell on him. He had visited many places in his quest while he waited on the ITS. He realized that it was one of the best kept secrets of the post-Holocaust era, and was under intense pressure to open its doors to the general public. He phoned his wife whenever he was too far from home to return in the evening, and every day she insisted he give up his search and return home. But Haman always refused because he felt his hardship could never match the hardship endured by those unfortunate people who had been incarcerated behind the wire at all the notorious concentration camps in Europe. And incarcerated by his own people too.

  When he finally received the reply he had been waiting for, Haman hurried to the tracing service centre. At the reception desk, he found a smart young woman. She seemed the opposite of what he expected to find. She looked up at him and smiled as he showed her his written permit. He asked what he had to do and where he should begin.