by Michael Dean
Rauter leaned over and took the paper, just as Rost van Tonningen was reaching for it.
He glanced at the names. ‘That satisfies me,’ he said. Van Tonningen started to speak. ‘Case closed, van Tonningen!’
The NSBer snapped his tight little mouth shut, like a turtle.
‘However, Hirschfeld,’ Rauter continued, ‘there was another issue I wanted to raise with you. If this issue is not concluded satisfactorily, van Tonningen’s desire to visit you in a KZ may be fulfilled sooner, rather than later.’
*
Rauter took his time, looking Hirschfeld in the eye. ‘Off your own bat, Hirschfeld, you offered the shipyard workers building the Arminius more money. Would you like to know their latest response?’
Hirschfeld licked his lips. ‘I know there have been incidences of non-co-operation.’
‘Non-co-operation?’
‘Sabotage.’
‘Are you aware of the results of the Arminius’s first sea-trials?’
‘No.’ It was not in Lambooy’s report. It meant that the Production Manager had gone over his head, to Rauter. No doubt with encouragement.
‘Then I’ll tell you,’ Rauter said. ‘The Arminius is expected to have a speed of 30 knots. At its first sea trial, it was expected to reach 20 knots, top speed. I am informed that the cruiser struggled to reach 10 knots. Any idea why that was, Hirschfeld?’
‘No. But I assume from the tone of this interview, Herr Rauter, that the cause was sabotage. And that for some reason you are holding me responsible.’
‘Correct! Sabotage it was, Hirschfeld. The propellers had been over-filed. This is an act of sabotage that is particularly difficult to detect. It was an expert job.’
‘And an act of sabotage that causes maximum damage,’ van Tonningen chimed in.
‘The propellers have been rendered effectively useless. New ones must be forged from scratch, in Essen, then brought here. The delay will be considerable.’
‘Which leaves us with the Arminius at anchor in wet dock, on the Ij, while we mark time. Reichsführer Himmler is furious. A fury, Hirschfeld, that will soon make itself felt among your Jews, that I promise you. So what do you intend to do about it?’
‘I am not an engineer. Neither am I responsible for production at the shipyard. You have two choices: You either back Lambooy in finding the culprits responsible for the sabotage, or you fire Lambooy, and start again with a new Production Manager. If you decide on the latter course, I will happily advise on Lambooy’s replacement.’
‘I bet you will,’ van Tonningen muttered.
‘Enough!’ Rauter banged a fist on his desk. ‘You will address the shipyard workers again, Hirschfeld. You will tell them that if there is one more act of sabotage – just one – work on the Arminius will be transferred to Bremen. This will render all the shipyard workers unemployed, and therefore liable to deportation to the Reich for forced labour. The saboteurs themselves will be shot. If we cannot ascertain exactly who they are, a representative cross-section of the workers will be shot. One in ten. That is the message you are to deliver, Hirschfeld.’
Hirschfeld was pale, but composed. ‘Very well, Herr Rauter.’
‘I believe that is all, Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said.
Hirschfeld stood up to leave.
Van Tonningen gave a strange high-pitched giggle. He was leering, his mouth twisted. ‘No, I believe there was something else, Herr Rauter,’ he said.
Hirschfeld stopped. They were playing with him. It was like a comedy double-act at the Tip Top.
‘I’m sure there was something else,’ van Tonningen said, overacting. ‘Something else …’
He was sounding more and more odd. Hirschfeld shot him a curious glance. The NSB leader started chewing the clenched knuckles of his right hand, trying to suppress his giggling.
‘Sit down, Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said. ‘There’s somebody I want you to meet.’ Rauter threw a switch on his desk and spoke into the intercom that connected to his outer office. ‘Send Major Giskes in,’ he said.
The intercom crackled, Rauter’s door opened and a middle-aged man in SS uniform walked across Rauter’s extensive office, stopping when he reached Hirschfeld. He held out his hand.
‘Hermann Giskes. I’m in the Abwehr – military intelligence.’ He looked cultured. Likeable.
Hirschfeld shook his hand. ‘Hans-Max Hirschfeld. Secretary General for Trade and Industry.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
Giskes gave van Tonningen a nod – he clearly knew who he was – and drew up a chair on Rauter’s side of the desk.
Rauter spoke to Hirschfeld. ‘Major Giskes wishes to brief you on an Abwehr operation, with which we at Sipo/SD are assisting.’
Giskes nodded. He spoke to Hirschfeld as if briefing someone of equal rank from another department. He looked uneasy in his ill-fitting uniform – Hirschfeld knew the Abwehr often wore civvies. His soft Rhineland accent reinforced the unmilitary impression.
‘Herr Hirschfeld, not so long ago, we captured a Dutch agent working for the English SOE, by the name of Huib Lievers. We persuaded him to co-operate, to the degree that we could relay information from his transmitter back to N Section, SOE, in London. So far, we believe we have been able to block his attempts to embed signals in his messages, secretly warning the SOE of his capture. Either that, or London have been reassuringly lax. But at any rate, we are sure that they are not, so to speak, on to us.’
Hirschfeld nodded.
Giskes went on. ‘We then used Lievers to capture more agents, who we also played back to London. We have now reached, so to speak, a saturation point. We have six German operators working flat out, sending whatever information we wish to London, in the name of Lievers, and twenty other SOE agents. We cannot train any more radio operators, and to protect the health of those we have, we have had to ask London to slow down activity in the Netherlands. We are quite sure that all Allied espionage activity in Holland is completely under our control.’
Hirschfeld went white. He nodded again.
‘So far, as well as a lot of disinformation, we have used our control to request gun and ammunition drops, and some explosives, which we have captured. Plus more transmitters. English transmitters are superior to ours, and we can do with them. We also ask the SOE for drops of 10,000 guilders, now and again. We tell them the agents are running out of money.’
‘Get to the point, Giskes,’ Rauter murmured.
‘Zu Befehl, Herr Obergruppenführer, Giskes gave the faintest of smiles. ‘We now wish to send London a list of economic targets to bomb. Factories set up to support the war effort, and so on. These factories will of course be fictitious. We will be constructing some cardboard edifices, visible from the air, in rural areas. We want you to supply credible data, based on real factories, and what they are doing. The reason for the data having a basis in reality is, I think, obvious.’
Hirschfeld nodded. He licked his lips. ‘And when the allies have the data …’
‘They will send bombers, Herr Hirschfeld. And as we can control the date, the time, the location, and even the route, our Luftwaffe will then shoot down every last one of them. We believe we can seriously weaken their Bomber Command.’
Van Tonningen chuckled delightedly and rubbed his small, well-shaped hands together, as if they had chilblains, which in fact they had.
‘Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said. ‘You will send your data first to van Tonningen at the Department of Special Economic Affairs. He will check it, then forward it to Giskes, here.’
Giskes looked surprised, but did not object.
‘Yes,’ Hirschfeld said.
There was silence for a moment.
‘This is top priority war work, Hirschfeld. You are to drop everything else and get on with it. On van Tonningen’s desk in, shall we say, twenty-four hours?’
Hirschfeld nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Major Giskes – Hermann – thank you for coming down.’
Rauter shook hands with Giskes, who s
trolled out of the room with his unaffected, unmilitary bearing.
‘You stay where you are, Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said. ‘There is further use we wish to make of you.’
*
Rauter opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a ragged copy of a badly stencilled text. Hirschfeld recognised it as one of the many underground newspapers. He caught sight of the Dutch royal crown, flanked by the words NEDERLAND and ORANJE
‘Have a listen to this, Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said, conversationally. He passed it to van Tonningen, who read it aloud, in Dutch:
The Central Office for Hide and Leather in the Keizersgracht, nominally under the collaborator van der Leeuw, is to increase production of army boots for the Moffen to 100,000 this year. The first batch of the necessary agents have just arrived at our docks from south –east Europe. They are being unloaded from the freight- ship Hipper, as I write. As if this wasn’t bad enough, it also means that all shoe production for us Dutch – remember us, we are the inhabitants of the Netherlands? – will be quietly stopped. Maybe the Moffen think we all wear clogs. Details of how our agricultural produce is being diverted to Germany, so we all starve – remember the ducks? – will appear in our next issue.
Hirschfeld had fought this measure for weeks, arguing for parallel production of all clothing items between civilians and the German army. But, finally, he had had to give in to it. He was shaken, because the information was so new; he had not even taken it to his office. He had been working on it at home, in the evening. Also, the piece bore unmistakeable fingerprints of Manny – the sarcasm, the way the author could not resist at least one first person reference. How had Manny got hold of this? Else? Oh no! Surely not...
‘You’re not blaming me for the leak of information?’ Hirschfeld looked Rauter in the eye.
‘Who else?’ Van Tonningen said.
Rauter ignored him. He adopted a tone of slightly pained reasonableness. ‘Hirschfeld, I think you are misunderstanding our attitude, here. We have no objection to you having contacts with the underground, or the resistance, or whatever these laughable bands call themselves. We’ve happily turned a blind eye. But now, we would like to make better use of these contacts. That’s all.’
‘I see.’
‘We know from one of the agents we are playing back to London, that the infiltrator known as Jan Veen, is in fact Robert Roet. That’s the man who fathered a bastard on your whore of a sister, Hirschfeld. The same bastard who killed one of our Ordnungspolizisten. So where is he, Hirschfeld, that’s all we want to know?’
‘How would I know?’
‘You didn’t know he was in Amsterdam?’
‘How could I know that?’
‘By listening to Radio Orange. His codename, beetroot, was among those read out after a speech from the Dutch queen. Incidentally, you and your sister might as well stop wasting your time listening to the coded messages on Radio Orange. We are now controlling everything they send.’
‘Herr Rauter, this is absurd. Why are you accusing me like this?’
‘Do you deny that you illegally possess a wireless set, Hirschfeld?’ said Rost van Tonningen. ‘It’s an offence for which you can be deported.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Fine. We will all sit here and wait, while I have my WA troopers get it down from your attic and bring it here. Herr Rauter will you please ring …’
‘OK, OK. I have a wireless. So does half the population of Amsterdam. You can’t deport us all.’
‘No,’ van Tonningen said. ‘But we can deport all the Jews.’
Hirschfeld ignored him and looked at Rauter. ‘I knew Robert Roet was coming, but I have no idea where he is. He would hardly tell me, would he?’
‘No,’ Rauter said. ‘That’s true. But he would probably appear if he thought your sister was in danger, would he not?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Oh, I think he would. From what we know of him, he’s an adventurer, at heart.’
Van Tonningen gave one of his increasingly odd bursts of laughter. ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said. ‘Let’s put your sister in danger, Hirschfeld.’
Rauter joined in the laughter. ‘At any rate, she’s perfectly safe for now,’ he said. ‘She’s in my outer office.’ Hirschfeld gave a retching cough. ‘Let’s bring her in, shall we?’
Rauter switched on the intercom to his outer office, and had Else brought in by his male secretary. Hirschfeld swivelled round in his chair. His sister was staring, taut with fear. He greeted her because he wanted her to hear his voice, to somehow reassure her.
‘Hello, Else,’ he said.
‘Sit down, Fräulein Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said. Calling a woman of Else’s age Fräulein, and not Frau, as a courtesy title, was a subtle insult – especially from a meticulously polite Austrian. Else appeared not to have noticed. Hirschfeld did.
‘We wish to ask you one or two questions.’
Else sat next to Hirschfeld, and nodded tensely. She avoided looking at her brother.
‘We are interested in the whereabouts of Robert Roet,’ Rauter said, in the same conversational tone he had used earlier.
‘I don’t know where he is.’ Else replied, in German.
‘Have you seen him recently?’
‘No. We … we are separated. I haven’t seen him for many years.’
‘Did you know he was coming to Amsterdam?’
‘No.’
Rauter glanced at van Tonningen, who smirked.
‘Does Robert Roet have any contact with your son, Emmanuel Roet, known as Manny?’
‘No.’
‘You’re quite sure of that?’
‘ I … As sure as I can be. Yes.’
‘Your son is a murderer, Fräulein Hirschfeld. He killed one of our policemen and subjected the corpse to one of your grotesque Jewish rituals. When we searched your home, earlier today, you denied all knowledge of him. Where is he now?’
‘He must be in hiding somewhere. I don’t know where he is.’
‘Herr Rauter!’ Hirschfeld said, firmly. ‘Neither Manny nor Robert would risk their lives, and put us in danger, by telling us where they are. Surely this is only common sense?’
‘Indeed, Hirschfeld, indeed. But just supposing you were meeting Manny and
Robert. They are quite likely to have made contact with each other, we think. Where would you meet them?’
Hirschfeld shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Alright, at a café.’
‘Which one?’
‘ Say, the Bodega.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Corner of Little Marken and Jodenbree Straat.’
‘Good,’ said Rauter. ‘But before we complete the arrangements, there is something I’d like you to listen to, Fräulein Hirschfeld.’ Rauter flicked the switch on the intercom and barked ‘Tape recorder.’
The secretary appeared with his arms wrapped round the bulky machine. He plugged it in. The spool of tape was clearly already in the position Rauter required. He pressed the play button and Hirschfeld’s voice crackled out over the office. It was the recording made at Salon Kitty, the brothel in Berlin.
Hirschfeld was giving sexual instructions, explicit and obscene, to an obviously willing, but slightly bored woman, who occasionally requested clarification of what she was to do, or say, or what role she was to play. Hirschfeld’s instructions were in German, the requests for clarification in Dutch. The sounds of the sex itself painted a vivid picture.
Else started to cry.
‘Rauter, for heaven’s sake! Switch it off!’ Hirschfeld yelled.
‘Be quiet,’ Rauter said, his eyes never leaving Else’s face.
Rauter let the tape play to the end. ‘Now you know the sort of man your brother is,’ he said, softly, to Else.
Else nodded.
‘Do you know who your brother is fucking now, Fräulein Hirschfeld?’ Rauter said, matter of factly. Else was silent. ‘Tinie Emmerik. Your son’s girlfriend. He’s got her set up in a pit in the J
ew Quarter.’
Else looked at Max, for the first time. ‘Tinie?’
Hirschfeld, his mouth dropping open, nodded that it was true.
‘Oh, Max! How could you?’
Van Tonningen roared with laughter. ‘How could you, Max?’ he hooted ‘How could you? Very easily, I should think. You see what sort of vile pervert your brother is, mevrouw Hirschfeld?’
‘Now, Hirschfeld,’ Rauter said. ‘You are going to visit Tinie Emmerik. You are going to convince her that you need to meet Emmanuel and Robert Roet. You will say that you are in touch with a resistance group, that can help arrange an explosives drop. Is that clear?’
‘Yes,’ Hirschfeld said.
‘You will arrange a meeting at the Bodega. My secretary will give you the day and time. Clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Max, don’t do it,’ Else screamed. ‘Not both of them, please! I couldn’t bear it!’
‘Else …’ Hirschfeld was close to tears. ‘I have no choice.’
‘Indeed, you have not. Your sister will stay here until you make contact with Tinie Emmerik. If you warn Fräulein Emmerik, or fail to set up the meeting, your sister will be flogged, then shot.’ Rauter flicked the intercom again. ‘Take her to a cell,’ he said to his secretary.
Else, still crying, was led away.
13
When Manny and Tinie arrived back from Schiedam, they were jabbering away together, deliriously happy. They took no precautions at all – riding their bicycles up to the coal-shed hideout, even ringing their bells, loudly proclaiming themselves.
Once inside, the bicycles stowed, they sat on Manny’s bunk bed together, holding hands. Manny said to Robert and Joel that he would tell them about Schiedam, while Tinie went home, to get washed and changed. Robert cautioned against Tinie going home.
‘We’ll send someone first, to see if the coast is clear.’
‘Why?’ Manny said. He felt invulnerable.
The rest of the knokploeg were due to arrive for unarmed combat training with Robert. Captain Roet was passing on what he had learned during his SOE course. When they came, Robert sent Lard Zilverberg to Tinie’s room, to see if it was being watched. Robert thought highly of Lard. He appeared slow of thought and movement, with his outsize head and hands, an ox of a man, but Robert had come to respect his talents, and trust his judgement.
