Liberated

by Steve Anderson

  “It didn’t make sense, I’m afraid. He gave me a name. So, from here? My first task is to verify, identify—try to find out if any were German locals, soldiers, even Nazis. If any are local civs or had been then it’s definitely our jurisdiction.”

  The major nodded. He turned another page.

  “They looked like they were tortured,” I added. “Not a pretty sight.”

  “Dreadful. Well, bring them in and ID them. We’ll get some locals to do the lifting.”

  “That’s just the problem, sir. They’re not there anymore. The corpses, I mean. I left for help but decided to turn back for them and they were gone.”

  Membre looked up, grinning. He slapped at the desk. “See, now there you go! That’s the way it’s going to be here. Could have been anyone, those corpses. Could’ve been refugees did it.”

  “Refugees? They’re too weak, hungry to do that kind of work.”

  “Fine, but, the sad fact is we just don’t know what these people are capable of, and I mean any of them.”

  What had I expected? A shiny metal? A shot of CO wisdom? I wanted to leave, but I kept my feet planted. “Also, I met the CIC agent on the way in, sir. A lieutenant colonel name of Spanner.”

  Membre’s head popped up. “Oh? Right. We wouldn’t be here nice and safe if it weren’t for CIC. That’s my feeling.”

  Did he even have a feeling? He hadn’t even asked what Abraham’s name was. So I didn’t mention the train. Why bother? The major knew nothing about it, I was guessing. He certainly didn’t ask. He went back to turning his pages and his face slackened, all serious now like it should’ve been when I told him about the corpses. His eyes darted along and glittered. “I’m reading up on church matters. Fine church here, they say. Sure was a handsome sight coming in, I tell you that. Just glorious. Bet they have a fine display chamber here somewhere. They all have those here. Know that? I did. Brocade vestments, jeweled chalices and such, maybe even a reliquary. Yes, that really would fortify a man, don’t you think?”

  I was raised Lutheran and could give a hoot if this was Catholic country. Yet here we were taking over an enemy town and all my new CO wants to do is go tour the old church? He could tour all he wanted. The parish priest, Father Plant, was one of the “brown priests.” He had kissed up to the Nazis and even flew the swastika at mass. So it wasn’t surprising that the brown Father Plant and his curates and whole rotten retinue had fled the coop weeks ago.

  Meanwhile, three poor souls had been tortured to death, and this major was blaming refugees?

  I didn’t need the CO. I needed to know what made this Heimgau burg tick, and that meant knowing the people. My historical backgrounders, typed by an anonymous German émigré in some faceless MG bureau, had given me a decent start: “Heimgau Town survives as one of many rural townships within the Alpenvorland, that green wonderland north of the Bavarian Alps. The town prevails as the Kreisstadt (county seat) of the Landkreis (surrounding county), which is also named Heimgau. The town houses the offices and courts, churches and schools, and main merchants. Though one must not forget the local artisans. Long ago the area profited from the traffic of a major Roman road. Ever since, through strife, and famine, and scandal, the artisan industry and the handicrafts have thrived here, producing such varied pieces as painted toys and figurines, fine art recreations, furniture … to observers, Heimgau is exactly what it appears to be: smallish and isolated, devout and conservative.”

  That afternoon I set up an interrogation post in the cellar of City Hall. I was hoping the prospect of thorny questions down in that dank catacomb might help bring out the secrets. I set up a line of empty crates as chairs. I had electricity, so I hung a work lamp above me. Then I called down those few Heimgau officials who hadn’t fled or committed suicide, which was easy enough—they had decided to come out of hiding and were waiting patiently inside an upstairs restroom.

  They had on natty dark suits and debriefed me with heads lowered. The big Nazis had hightailed it, they confirmed, the police had done the same, all the schools had been closed for months. Only the train station had been bombed. Water, electricity, and phone lines were a mess—it was true. But they weren’t concerned, because the Amerikaner come well prepared, and they nodded in agreement at that, oh, yes.

  “I found corpses. Three. All men. Dumped in the Heimgauer Strasse.” I described them. I didn’t mention Abraham and his number tattoo. That would only spook them, clam them up for now. “Civilians perhaps? Locals gone missing?”

  The men exchanged glances. One shook his head, and another shrugged. All studied their feet with the intensity of men counting money.

  I offered each a Lucky and then asked again, losing the tough-mug act. Yet I got the same response, this time with smiles. So much for the magic of Virginia tobacco.

  “What about recent records? Local loyalists, resisters? Missing persons?”

  More shrugs. Records were destroyed, they said, burned on orders of the SS.

  “And the morgue?” Though I had already checked that, it was empty and spotless.

  This brought a laugh. “Herr Kapitän, surely you know the morgue is now the only place in all of Germany where there are no dead.”

  “Then what about a fellow named Abraham?”

  That wiped the smiles right off. A name like that could not be explained away. The glances returned, and they went back to getting PhDs in studying their feet. One of them had scrunched up his face in thought. His gray hair had receded to the back half of his head in fluffy plumes that made him look like some ancient record keeper, all that was missing were the reading glasses on a chain.

  “You,” I said to him. “Out with it.”

  “There’s nothing to come out with, sir. There may have been such a man, but it would have been years ago.”

  “A Jewish man, you mean.”

  “Yes. There were some here in the county. It’s been years. You would need a last name. You would need those records, any records. And without seeing a face, who can know?” He held up his hands as if to say, what good was it? For what?

  Without a face. Under that hood. What a thorough idiot I was for not looking. “Right. I get you. I’m on my own,” I muttered.

  I finished with the town buck passers. I was taking a break out on the square when an unmarked three-quarter ton truck pulled up and unloaded the six CIC GIs from Dollendorf, including Colonel Spanner’s big lug sergeant, Sergeant Horton. Children had gathered and they tugged at the GIs’ trousers and Horton tossed them licorice and Hershey’s. It was good to see someone getting the people to loosen up. If a palooka like that could manage it, so could I.

  Colonel Spanner had Horton. I needed my own man, I realized.

  Back down in the cellar I read more reports and backgrounders, smoked another butt, and decided on my final interview. It didn’t take long to fetch the man. He worked in the building.

  The cellar door screeched open. A stocky fellow in blue worker overalls descended the stone stairs, taking blunt steps that would’ve been a fighter’s jabs had those feet been fists.

  “Good day, Herr Winkl,” I said in respectful High German. Uli Winkl was the City Hall Hausmeister, a building master being a cross between a building’s janitor and a super, depending. For every one of these who was a snoop or a toady, a good many more sang their own tunes.

  “Servus,” Winkl said, sticking to the Bavarian greeting. He sat on the corner of a crate as if crouching. He had a sturdy face and stout neck that the long shadows of my overhead lamp couldn’t narrow. I offered him a Lucky. He shook his head at it, the first German to do so.

  I told Winkl about the corpses and the four officials’ reaction.

  Winkl began to speak. He stopped.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Your Abraham, sir. He could have been from here. But in the end, in the last few years, there was no one like that here in town that I know of.” Winkl’s eyes searched the room.

  “There’s something else? Take your time.”r />
  Winkl began again: “Sir, in the last days, when the SS were still here, some Heimgauers disappeared.”

  The local SS stuck it out to the end in many towns, always expecting some miracle that would keep them in their showy uniforms, some sacred immunity that would let them play the bully forever. But that was always before our troops passed through.

  “No, this is different,” I said. “What I saw, it happened later. Their blood was fresh.”

  “That’s all I can tell you. You ask me. I tell you.”

  So the man was wary. Who wouldn’t be? I could play along. “You know what I think? You don’t stand for hokum, do you?” I said. Winkl shrugged, waiting for my hokum to end. I continued: “I am the Public Safety Officer for Heimgau, you see. And it’s come to my attention that you were a policeman here, before.”

  “Yes, that is true. But it was well before. Before the Nazis.”

  “How long have you served City Hall? A good twenty years, counting the cop work? Seen a lot of change here, have you?”

  Winkl snorted. “One could say that, ja.”

  “And you’ve become a keen judge of how things operate around here.”

  Winkl eyed me, his lips tightening, face hardening up. “I would not feel comfortable, unlike others, informing like that—”

  “It’s not informing, and it’s not a question of if you decide to or not. Still, I’d prefer that you agree.”

  Winkl said nothing. He looked down, at his strong hands.

  “Go on,” I said. “We’re just talking here.”

  “You’re not a specialist at this, are you? The Public Safety is new to you.”

  One smart guy, my man. I had to chuckle. “We don’t always get what we want, do we? Look, I’m doing this my own way. I don’t want you to spy. This will be just between you and me, a partnership based on trust, not rules. There’s no politics here, no … ideologies. No ‘isms’ at all. Think of it like this: You’re not going to the enemy or to the Amis or whatever we are to you. You’re going to me.”

  Winkl’s eyebrows raised.

  “You come straight to me and only me when you think something’s fishy, and I’ll do my best to correct it. Promise. What do you say? I’ll throw in a carton of Lucky Strike for good measure.”

  Winkl dared a grin. “And a couple bars of the Hershey’s?”

  “Done.”

  “Then I agree.”

  “Good.” So far, so good.

  “Tell me something about you,” Winkl said. “You are an Ami, that’s certain, but you are also German, yes? Your accent’s too good to be from school lessons.”

  “My parents are German. I was born here.” I stopped there. I didn’t want any local buttering me up and especially not on account of my Deutsch. Colonel Spanner himself had warned me of that. “Good? Clear on that?”

  “Yes.” Winkl looked to his lap.

  “Let’s just keep this moving, shall we? Now, my directives say I have to ask this: Have you ever been a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party or any other affiliated organization?”

  Winkl laughed, shooting spittle. “The pigs threw me in Dachau for weeks back in ‘37. Morons mistook me for my brother Udo, who was a Communist. Go and put that in your notes.”

  “Excellent. I mean, you know what I mean.” I stood and held out a hand. “Herr Winkl, congratulations. I am appointing you Temporary Police Chief of Heimgau.”

  Winkl’s face paled. He shot up, knocking over his crate.

  “It’s only for a few weeks. You’ll help me announce curfews and proclamations till the major finds a full-time Bürgermeister. Then we’ll find a new chief. Short-time gig is all it is.”

  Winkl kept shaking his head. He trudged in a circle, in and out of the light, glaring at his toppled crate like he wanted to stomp it to splinters.

  Of course, it was not the response I wanted. But then I recalled my backgrounders: Heimgau’s geographic isolation had always spared her that influx of outsiders who deluged a town in times of trouble. This time, though, Hitler’s fine mess would bring in the newcomers and Heimgauers had to dread it like they had the plagues of centuries before.

  “Otherwise?” I added, “I’ll have to run things myself until we find someone who’s qualified. Say, some German refugee Joe Stalin expelled from the East, or what we in English call a ‘Displaced Person.’”

  “A what? What’s that?” Winkl tried the English word, but only sputtered his P’s and S’s.

  “A Displaced Per-son. DP for short. Get used to that word. That’s what my authorities are calling all those your Führer brought into Germany and imprisoned here against their will. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Concentration camp inmates, to be sure, but nearer to Heimgau what we have mostly are men who were being worked to death. Former forced laborers. Slavics, mostly, Russians, Yugoslavs. And not too happy about it either. Many we’ll be repatriating—sending back home—but that could take a while and meanwhile? Not too happy.”

  Winkl’s eyes had glazed over with worry. He righted his crate and sat back on it. “If it’s like you say. But for a few weeks only.”

  “Excellent.” I handed Winkl a list. “Now, pass these rules on to the townsfolk. Make up some nice big signs for them, post them around. First, though, gather all keys for the jail and the police station—”

  The cellar door flew open. Major Membre plowed down the steps. Winkl sprung to attention, his face pale. Membre had a riding crop that he held out as if to strike Winkl.

  “What are you doing down here?” Membre said to me.

  “Interviews, sir, for Public Safety.”

  “And you?” Membre shouted at Winkl, who looked to me to interpret.

  “He would be the one being interviewed,” I said to Membre.

  “That man needs to be out manning the courtyard, and p.d.q.. We need new tallies. I’ve got a proper cameraman out there.” That morning Major Membre had instructed Winkl to gather every icon and object of Nazism inside City Hall and pile them up outside for destruction. They already had a great mound of party pins and armbands, SA standards and tin SS daggers, swastika clocks and even kids’ play-sets of Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels. Out there, throngs of Heimgauers were battling hunger and jitters and nostalgia to please their new Major-Conqueror in his Nazi Kitsch Destruction Drive. It was one way to get the people back out on the streets. Not to be outdone by their zeal, the major was sure to add tally tables and graphs and glossy photos to his report of the big event. “We’re losing the moment,” Membre went on. “Don’t you see?”

  “One moment, sir.” I told the major about naming Winkl Temporary Police Chief. There was no one else. So find someone else to play junk collector, I wanted to add.

  “That right? Ha!” Membre slapped the crop against his thigh. “You should like that,” he said to Winkl as if Winkl understood. “Folks here been kicking you around long enough.”

  Winkl could only grimace. I dismissed my new chief, and he gave me a hurried half-bow on his way out.

  “Hey, lookie there. I think he likes you.” Major Membre bounded over and, to my surprise, lit the fresh Lucky hanging from my mouth. “Custodian becomes Police Chief. Rags to riches. It’s a swell angle.”

  “Thanks. I saw the troop truck. What’s new up there?”

  “That Sergeant Horton is such a frontline ruffian, but he knows the drill. He says that CIC agent of ours will pass through any day, to check in. Spanner’s the name? Say, speaking of, let’s give his men a poker game tonight after curfew. Set it up, will you?”

  “Spanner is the name. Yes, I will.” Because I sure have nothing better to do, I wanted to add. I also realized I could bank a few points with CIC Agent Spanner by hosting his men.

  “Swell, then.” Membre went over to a high cellar window and, gazing out, released a deep and satisfied moan, like that of an aching and grimy man sinking into a hot bath with suds. “Ah, yes. You never asked where my billet is. You know where my billet is? Bet you’re just dying to know. Are
n’t you?”

  “Okay. Where’s your billet?”

  “The castle. There’s fine quarters up there, just swell. You’d think it’s all old cold stone and dust up there, but no. Oh, no.” Membre wagged a finger at the window as if talking to his castle, which I knew from our backgrounders: Hohenheimgau Castle, high above Heimgau Town, had once housed a respected bishopric, including seminary, monastery and chambers. By the 1930s only the small monastery was still operating up there, the few aging monks remaining aloof from local Nazi authority, never blessing yet never challenging while down below in town the brown priest Plant was spiking his many sermons with increasing doses of vitriol. “But there’s so much more, more of the church up there, more everything,” the major added.

  This day, I had to admit, was suddenly a long one and my patience thinning fast. Sure, Major, I was thinking, you got your schön little town, and on top of it, practically crushing it, sits a humongous, stinking, deadly gorilla with the curiously long name of Catastrophic Nazi World War. And the gorilla’s latest newborn bastard? Those three dead tortured you could give a hell about.

  “This town’s like a museum, it really is,” Membre droned on. “All of it. A lovely, sumptuous exhibit, chock-full of fine art. This is an artisan town. Did you know that?”

  “It says so in the backgrounders.”

  “The what? It’s different when you see it all. It really is, I must tell you. You have to understand …” Membre paused. He turned from the window showing hard, dark eyes. “Now you listen, Kaspar. These here people here, they brought this on themselves, and we don’t owe any of them a damned thing.”

  Four

  WE OWE THESE PEOPLE NOTHING, my blowhard CO had said. Did he mean poor Abraham too? I wanted to ask him that, but I let it go. We owed people. We even owed the conquered Germans something. We needed to show them a proper alternative to this vile regime they themselves had let destroy their nation, and what better way to kick things off than find and prosecute whoever tortured and killed those three men? This is what they needed to hear, and good: Listen up, sad sacks of Heimgau: You yourselves can and will repair what you were dealt and did deal yourself. Total defeat doesn’t have to be a free-fall in a dark well. It could also bring the first grabs of a tough climb up and out of that very well.