by Greg Iles
After one week I met the other students. I cannot express the shock I felt. In one room in one night I saw the faces of not only famous Party Gauleiters and Wehrmacht generals, but also the most celebrated personalities of the Reich. At last I knew what my mission was. Hermann Göring had not forgotten my resemblance to Rudolf Hess; it was Göring who had given my name to Reinhard Heydrich, the SD commander responsible for the program.
There were many students at the Institute. Some completed the program, others did not. The unlucky ones paid for their failure in blood. We were constantly reminded of this “incentive. ” One of the most common causes for “dismissal” from the school was the use of one’s real name. Two slip-ups were forgiven. The third guaranteed erschlessen (execution). We were known by our “role” names, or, in situations where these were not practical, by our farmer ranks—in my case Hauptmann.
I trained in an elite group. There were eight of us: “Hitler” (3 “students” studied him); “Göring”; “Himmler”; ” Goebbels “; “Streicher”; and myself—“Hess”.
The training for our group lasted one year.
During that year I had four personal interviews with Deputy-Führer Hess. The rest of my training was accomplished through study of newsreels and written records. During our training, several of the “doubles” for the Party Gauleiters left the school to begin their duties. Apparently their roles did not require so much preparation as ours.
At the end of the training period my group was broken up and sent to various locations to await duty. I was sent first to Grünau, where I was kept in isolation, then later to a remote airfield at Aalborg, Denmark. I repeatedly requested to be allowed to see my wife and daughter, but by this time Germany was at war and my requests were summarily rejected.
I spent my time in solitude, reviewing my Hess materials and occasionally being visited by an SD officer. I did have access to newspapers, and from them I deduced that Hess’s position in the Nazi hierarchy seemed to have declined somewhat in favour of the generals
since the outbreak of war. I took this to be the reason I had not yet been assigned a mission. I must admit that, in spite of the hardship of the duty, I was very proud of the degree to which I could impersonate the Deputy Führer. During my final interview with Hess at the school, he was so shocked by my proficiency that his reaction verged on disorientation. Actually, a few of the other “students” had honed their skills to a finer edge than my own, but what happened to them I have no idea …
Natterman removed his spectacles, put the papers back into his briefcase, then closed and locked it. “A rather detailed story to be made up out of thin air, wouldn’t you say? And that’s only the first two pages.”
Ilse was smiling with satisfaction. “Very detailed,” she agreed. “So detailed that it destroys your earlier argument. If this ‘double’ was so meticulously trained to imitate Hess, he certainly wouldn’t make factual mistakes as obvious as missing Hess’s birthday, or eating meat when Hess was a vegetarian. Would he?”
Natterman met his granddaughter’s triumphant smile with one of his own. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that since I first translated the papers. You’re quite right: a trained double wouldn’t make factual mistakes like that—not unless he did so on purpose.”
Ilse’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Just this. Since the double remained silent for all these years, he could only have done so for one of two reasons: either he was a fanatical Nazi right up until the end, which I don’t accept, or—and this is supported by the papers—the fear of some terrible retribution kept
him from speaking out. If we accept that scenario, Number Seven’s ‘mistakes’ appear to me to be a cry for help—a quiet but desperate attempt to provoke sceptics to investigate his case and thus uncover the truth. And believe me, that cry was heard. Hundreds of scholars and authors have investigated the case. Dozens of books have been written, more every year.” Natterman held up an admonishing finger. “The more relevant question is this: Why would the real Hess make such mistakes?”
“Because he was crazy!” Ilse retorted. “Everyone’s known that for years.”
“Everyone has said that for years,” Natterman corrected.
“Hitler and Churchill started that rumour, yet there’s not one scrap of evidence suggesting that Hess was unbalanced right up until the day he flew to Britain. He trained months for that mission. Can you seriously believe Hitler didn’t know that? Hess was eccentric, yes. But mad? It was the men he left behind who were mad!”
“Hess could have written those papers himself,” she argued. “If Hess didn’t know Latin when he went into Spandau, he certainly could have learned it during his years of imprisonment.”
“True,” Natterman admitted. “But unlikely. Did you note the quote from Ovid? High-flying language for a self-taught student. But that’s verifiable, in any case.”
Ilse tasted her tea. It had gone cold. “Opa, you can’t really believe that the Allies kept the wrong man in prison all these years.”
“Why not? Ilse, you should understand something. These papers do not exist in a vacuum. They merely confirm a body of evidence which has been accumulating for decades. Circumstantial evidence, testimonial evidence, medical evidence—”
“What medical evidence?”
The professor smiled; he loved nothing more than a willing student. “Evidence unearthed by a British army surgeon who examined Number Seven while he was in Spandau. He’s the man who really cracked this case open. My God, he’ll be ecstatic when he finds out about these papers.”
“What evidence did he discover?”
“A war wound. Or a lack of one, I should say. This surgeon was one of Hess’s doctors in Spandau, and in the course of his duties he came across Hess’s First World War record. Hess was wounded three times in that war—the worst wound being a rifle bullet through the lung. Yet when the surgeon examined Number Seven, he found no scars on the chest or back where that wound should have been. And after looking into the matter further—examining the prisoner’s X rays—he found no radiographic evidence of such a wound. There should have been scarring of the lung, caused by the force of the bullet and other organic particles tearing through it. But the surgeon found none. He had quite a bit of experience with gunshot wounds, too. He’d done a tour of duty in Northern Ireland.”
Natterman chuckled at Ilse’s bewildered expression. “You’re surprised by my knowledge? You shouldn’t be. Any German or British historian could tell you as much.” He laughed. “I could give you twice as much speculation on who started the Reichstag fire!”
“But the details,” she said suspiciously. “Dates, medical evidence … It’s almost as if you were studying the case when I called you.”
The professor’s face grew grave. “My dear, you have obviously failed to grasp the monumental importance of this find. These papers could shake the world. The time period they describe—the forty-four days beginning with Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain and ending with Hitler’s invasion of Russia—represents the turning point of the entire Second World War, of the entire twentieth century. In the spring of 1941, Adolf Hitler held the future of the world in his hands.
“Of all Europe, only England still held out against him. The Americans were still a year from entering the war. German U-boats ruled the seas. If Hitler had pressed home the attack against England with all his forces, the British wouldn’t have stood a chance. The Americans would have been denied their staging post for a European invasion, and Hitler could have turned his full might against Russia with his flanks protected.” Natterman held up a long, crooked finger. “But he didn’t invade England. And no one knows why.”
The professor began pacing the kitchen, punctuating his questions by stabbing the air with his right forefinger. “In 1940 Hitler let the British Army escape at Dunkirk. Why? All through the fall of 1940 and the spring of ‘41 he delayed invading Britain. Why? Operation Sea-Lion—the planned invasion of Britain—was a
joke. Hitler’s best generals have admitted this. Churchill publicly taunted Hitler, yet still he delayed. Why?
“And then the core of the whole mad puzzle: On May tenth, Rudolf Hess flew to Britain on a secret mission. Scarcely a month later”—Natterman clapped his hands together with a crack—“Hitler threw his armies into the icy depths of Russia to be slaughtered. Ilse, that single decision doomed Nazi Germany. It gave Churchill the time he needed to re-arm England and to draw Roosevelt into the war. It was military suicide, and Hitler knew it! For twenty years he had sworn he would never fight a two-front war. He had publicly proclaimed such a war unwinnable. So why did he do it?”
Ilse blinked. “Do you know?”
Natterman nodded sagely. “I think I do. There are dozens of complex theories, but I think the answer is painfully simple: Hitler had no choice. I don’t believe he ever intended to invade England. Russia was his target all along; his own writings confirm this. Hitler hated Churchill, but he had tremendous respect for the English as a people—fellow Nordics and all that. I think Hitler put off invading Britain because he believed—right up until it was too late—that England could be neutralized without firing a shot. I think certain elements of the British government were prepared to sign a peace treaty with Hitler, so that he would be free to destroy Communist Russia. And I believe Rudolf Hess was Hitler’s secret envoy to those Englishmen. The moment Hess’s presence in England was made public, Joseph Stalin accused the British of conspiring with Hitler. I think Stalin was right.”
The professor’s eyes blazed with fanatical conviction. “But neither Stalin, nor all his spies, nor a thousand scholars, nor I have ever been able to prove that! For nearly fifty years the truth has lain buried in the secret vaults of the British government. By law the relevant Hess files are to remain sealed until the year 2016. Some will never be opened. What are the British hiding? Whom are they protecting? A secret cabal of highly placed British Nazis? Were there powerful Englishmen—even members of the royal family—who were so afraid of communism that they were ready to climb into Hitler’s bed for protection, no matter how many Jews he slaughtered?”
Natterman punched a fist into his palm. “By God, if these Spandau papers end up proving that, the walls of Parliament will be hard put to withstand the firestorm that follows!”
Ilse stared at her grandfather with astonishment. His passion had infected her, but it could not blot out the worry she felt for Hans. Yet somehow she couldn’t bring herself to confess her fears to the old man. At least debating the fine points of conspiracy theories helped to pass the time quickly.
“But if the prisoner was a double,” she said, “how could he fool his Allied captors? Even an actor couldn’t hold out under interrogation.”
Natterman snorted scornfully. “The British claim they never professionally interrogated him. And why should they? They knew Hess was a double from the beginning. They held him incommunicado in England for the first four years of his captivity, and they’ve been playing this ridiculous game ever since to cover up the real Hess’s mission. The American government supports Britain’s policy right down the line. And the French have never made a fuss about it. They have their own skeletons to hide.”
“But the Russians,” Ilse reminded him. “You said Stalin suspected a plot from the beginning.”
“Perhaps the double didn’t fool them,” Natterman suggested.
“Then why wouldn’t they expose him!”
Natterman frowned. “I don’t know. That’s the conundrum, isn’t it? It’s the key to this whole mystery. There are reasons that the Russians wouldn’t have talked in the early years. One is that certain alleged Anglo-Nazi intrigues—between Hess and the Duke of Windsor, for example—took place on Spanish and Portuguese soil. If such meetings did actually occur, Moscow would have known all about them”—Natterman grinned with glee—“because the MI-6 officer responsible for the Spanish desk at that time was none other than Kim Philby. What irony! The Russians couldn’t reveal the Windsor-Hess connection without exposing the Philby-KGB connection! Of course that only explains the Russian silence up until 1963, the year Philby fled England. The real mystery is what kept the Russians quiet during the remaining years.”
Ilse was shaking her head. “You make it sound so plausible, but it’s like a huge house of cards…. It’s just too complex.”
“I’ll give you something simple, then. Why did the British never use ‘Hess’ for propaganda during the war? They locked him away from the world and refused even to allow him to be photographed. Think about that. England and Germany were locked in a death struggle. Even if ‘Hess’ had refused to cooperate, the British could easily have released statements criticizing Hitler that were supposedly made by Hess. Think of the boost that would have given English morale. And the negative effect on the German people! Yet the British never tried it. The only possible reason I can see for that is that the British knew they didn’t have the real Hess. They knew if they tried to use ‘Hess’ against the Nazis, Joseph Goebbels could jump up and say, ‘Fools! You’ve got a bloody corporal in your jail!’ or something similar.”
“If that’s true, why wouldn’t the Nazis have said that from the beginning?”
Natterman smiled enigmatically. “Hitler’s reasons I cannot divine. But as for the other top Nazis—Göring, Himmler—they were only too glad to be rid of Hess. He was their chief rival for Hitler’s favours. If the Führer, for his own reasons, was content to let the world believe that his lifelong friend and confidant had gone insane, and was a prisoner of the British, Hess’s chief rivals would have been only too glad to go along.” Natterman rubbed his hands together. “Yes, it all ties up rather neatly.”
“So says the great professor,” Ilse said dryly. “But you’ve missed one thing. Even if the Allies had reasons to keep quiet, why in God’s name would the double—even if he had agreed to such a mission—keep silent for nearly fifty years? What could anyone threaten him with? Solitary confinement in Spandau Prison must have been a living death.”
Natterman shook his head. “You’re a clever girl, Ilse, but in some ways frighteningly naive. Soldiers aren’t asked to agree to missions; they’re ordered. In Hitler’s Reich refusal meant instant death. You saw the word Sippenhaft in the papers?”
She nodded. “What does it mean? ‘Clan punishment’?”
“That’s close enough. Sippenhaft was a barbaric custom that Himmler borrowed from the ancient Teutonic tribes. It mandated that punishment be visited not only upon a traitor, but upon his ‘clan.’ After Graf von Stauffenberg’s abortive attempt on Hitler’s life, not only the count but his entire family was executed. Six of the victims were over seventy years old! That is Sippenhaft, Ilse, and a more effective tool for ensuring the silence of living men has yet to be devised.”
“But after five decades … who would be left to carry out such a sentence?”
Natterman rolled his eyes. “How about one of those bald neo-Nazi psychopaths who roam our streets at night with brickbats? No? Then how about these ‘soldiers of Phoenix’ that Number Seven mentions? He certainly seems terrified of them. And don’t forget this: at the end of the war, close to forty divisions of Warren SS remained under arms throughout the world. That’s more than a quarter of a million men! I don’t know how many Death’s-Head SS survived, but what if it were only a few hundred? Just one of those fanatics could wipe out a man’s family, even today. I fought in the war, and I could easily shoot someone down in the street tonight.” Natterman glanced at his watch. “And that is my final word on the subject,” he announced. “I must go.”
“Go?” Ilse said uneasily. “Where are you going?”
Natterman picked up his briefcase. “To do what must be done. To show up the arrogant, self-righteous British for what they were during the war—no better than we Germans.” His eyes sparkled with youthful excitement. “Ilse, this could be the academic coup of the century!”
“Opa, what are you saying? Those papers are affecting you just l
ike they did Hans!”
Natterman looked sharply at his granddaughter. “Where is Hans, by the way?”
“At the police station … I guess.” Ilse tried to summon a brave face, but her mask cracked. Hans had been gone far too long. “Opa, what if they know what Hans did … what he found? What would they do?”
“I don’t know,” he answered frankly. “Why don’t you call the station? If Hans’s superiors don’t know about the papers, it can’t hurt. And if they do, well … they’ll be expecting your call anyway, won’t they?”
Ilse moved uncertainly toward the phone in the living room, then snatched it up.
“Listen very closely,” Natterman cautioned. “Background voices, everything.”
“Yes, yes … Hello? May I speak to Sergeant Hans Apfel, please? This is his wife. Oh. Do you know where he is now?” She covered the mouthpiece with her palm. “The desk sergeant says he knows Hans but hasn’t seen him tonight. He’s checking.” She pulled her hand away. “I beg your pardon? Is this the same man I spoke to earlier? Yes, I’ll be home all evening.”
Natterman shook his head violently.
“I’m sorry,” Ilse said quickly, “I have to go.” She dropped the phone into its cradle.
“What did he tell you?” Natterman asked.
“Hans stopped in to answer a few questions, but left soon after. The sergeant said he wasn’t there longer than twenty minutes. Opa?”
Natterman touched his granddaughter’s quivering cheek. “Ilse, is there some place in particular Hans goes when he is under stress?”
Ilse held out for a moment more, then the words poured out of her. “He talked about showing the papers to a journalist! About trying to sell them!”
“My God,” said Natterman, his face white. “He wouldn’t!”
“He said he wouldn’t. But—”
“Ilse, he can’t do that! It’s crazy! And far too dangerous!”
