The Nazi's Wife

by Peter Watson

  There were no dogs, or sudden movements, no sign of anyone making a run for it, and when I finally banged on the gate, it took a full two minutes for someone to answer. I knew, because I counted; I was obsessive about things like that. Eventually the gate was pulled back laboriously by a man in his fifties. His hair was still dark but thinning rapidly. Yet, he was slim, a man who kept himself in fine fettle.

  I introduced myself, showing him my orders signed by Eisenhower. I asked, “And is there anyone else here, besides you?”

  “Only my wife, Annemarie. She is upstairs.” He spoke with what I judged to be a southern, a Bavarian accent. They were, he said, joint housekeepers.

  “When is the family expected back?”

  He shrugged. “They’ve been gone since the bombing. Who knows?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Eric was killed here. Now the Baroness can’t bear the Schloss. They are all living in Hamburg.”

  “When … how … did Eric die?”

  The housekeeper looked up at the smashed towers. “Eric’s bedroom was up there. A bomb hit the side of the gorge in late ’44. The top of the castle was blown away—Eric with it.”

  So von Haltern had been dead already some months before von Zell used his name. That didn’t mean he wasn’t here, hiding.

  “How many of the family are in Hamburg?”

  “The Baroness, her daughter, who was widowed early in the war, and Mrs. von Haltern’s niece from Augsburg. Her husband is in a camp in England, shot down over Coventry.”

  So they took in friends.

  I explained that my orders empowered me to search the castle. The housekeeper made no attempt to resist, but simply stepped aside to allow me through the gate.

  Inside was a cavernous stone hall, vaulted and poorly lit. Several strapping pictures lined the walls, with those lugubrious frames reserved for ancestors. Uninviting wooden benches were flanked by spindly, wrought-iron tripods which had once held flowers or cathedral-sized candles but were empty now. It all felt like a crypt.

  At the far end of the hall some stone stairs disappeared upward, through an arch and toward a light; it was in this direction that the housekeeper led me. It was already obvious that the castle was too big for me alone to search properly. If von Zell was here he would have no problem moving around, avoiding me for hours on end if need be. I would just have to look for signs, for clues that he was, or had been, here.

  The stairs, when we reached the top of them, opened onto a living room with acres of flowered carpet, a fireplace the size of a proscenium arch and three tall windows that must have given spectacular views of the Rhine in the right kind of daylight. In normal times this must have been the formal hub of the house. The pictures in this room were more numerous and smaller, more intimate: equestrian paintings, men with beards and medals, that sort of thing. The fire in the grate was out and sheets were drawn over the sofas. There were no flowers, but also no dust. The housekeepers were either conscientious or afraid the family might come back at any minute. The room felt cold and there was no lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke—no one had been here for some days at least. Through this main room lay the dining room. Here, too, sheets had been thrown over the furniture; the sideboards were bare and the candlesticks put away. Pride of place on the wall went to a rather new-looking picture of the entire family. I recognized Eric, his sister, her husband, presumably, the two parents, some dogs.

  Beyond the dining room a small, rather steep staircase led down, I assumed, to the kitchen.

  “We’ll look there later,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  The next floor was altogether more intimate and lived in and I realized that, even when the family was here, the lower floors were probably rarely used. This next floor contained a library, stacked with books in carefully carved wooden shelves, some leather armchairs and sofas, many soft electric lights, a small fireplace which had recently seen a fire and all the paraphernalia of such a heartwarming retreat: photographs, tubs of bulbs, magazines, boxes of pencils, stacks of paper, knickknacks. This was a room I had to return to and examine in more detail.

  On this same floor was another, smaller, dining room, with space for no more than eight people. There was a bathroom and a music room with a piano and, of all things, a harp. Obviously, everyday life went on in these rooms when the family had no visitors.

  From then on it no longer made sense to talk of floors. The bedrooms of the castle receded into the towers and turrets, or were scattered, apparently at random, among the numerous gables and eaves. By my count, and, as I have said, I was obsessive about such things, there were eighteen bedrooms, not counting the two destroyed turrets. Most of them had not been slept in for years—not, I suspected, since the war began.

  Nor was there any sign of a hurried departure from these rooms. The housekeeper and his wife used two—one as a bedroom and one as their own living room—but, those apart, there genuinely was no sign of life.

  It was the same in the kitchens downstairs. Supper had been laid for two and a breakfast tray—also for two—was already set out. The wine cellar, the boiler room, the washroom were all as they should have been, or so it seemed to me. In the billiard room there was a wooden cover on the table and this time there was dust on the cues in the rack. I could not believe that von Zell—or anyone for that matter—was in hiding in the Schloss.

  I asked the housekeeper to show me back up to the library and to leave me there for an hour. I suggested that he and his wife enjoy their supper and that he then come back for me. He was easily persuaded and disappeared.

  I slumped into one of the big leather armchairs and tried not to think about food. All I’d had that day was a light breakfast and a sandwich for lunch. I should have eaten something at the truck stop where I had dropped off the corporal, but I hadn’t. I took out the pipe that I carried with me in those days; it gave me something to do with my jaw.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for in the library; I just hoped I would pick up something useful by rummaging around. In the months I had been attached to the art recovery unit I had found it endlessly fascinating, if a little macabre, to delve into the private papers of former Nazis. And chilling too. There was something … unnatural almost about the way men who in their military lives took part willingly in the most unimaginable atrocities and yet at home seemed to be exemplary husbands and fathers. It suggested something unnerving about human nature, that human beings are capable of sustaining, and indeed flourishing, with the most awful division in their lives, so that we are all, if you like, as split inside as the most warped schizophrenic. It was something I didn’t want to think about. It suggested that the very existence of the Nazis, the fact that they could happen, was a warning to all of us about our deeper, hidden nature. The fact that Hitler had dredged up something that should have been left undisturbed made me loathe him and his cronies more than ever.

  I examined the books on the shelves: they were mainly literary works—many German authors, of course, but English and American too. I noticed with interest that this family had made no attempt to hide Jewish books. There was a complete set of Proust and Freud’s Introductory Lectures. The von Halterns, it appeared, were civilized and not anti-Semitic.

  The photographs in the room turned out to be of little use: lots of people I didn’t recognize and a few of Eric, who, it seemed, had never married.

  I did, however, find something to interest me among a pile of magazines on one of the tables. It was an old edition of Words & Wine, a curious magazine that existed in Germany in the thirties and which was mainly devoted to literary affairs but also carried articles about drink, presumably on the basis that writers tend also to be drinkers. The issue I picked up contained an article on “The Wines of Austria” and the authors were Eric von Haltern and Rudolf von Zell. It was not a long article but it contained a lot of local references and, to me, appeared authoritative, being devoted to a history of the Sylvaner grape, a native, so I read, of Austria.
The article also argued the merits of the three grape-growing areas of the country—Weinviertel, Wachau and Styria, concluding that, in the opinion of the authors, Wachau was the best.

  I went through the article a second time and then sat thinking. Published in 1939, the piece had probably been written some time before that. Nonetheless, such was its detail that the article carried the implication, for me, that von Haltern and von Zell knew Austria extremely well; possibly they had good friends in the wine regions.

  As I sucked away at my pipe a possible scenario began to form in my mind. Von Zell had used von Haltern’s name before, as an alias, that much we knew for certain. Von Haltern was dead but his papers and documents might have survived the bomb that killed him. Was it possible, I asked myself, that von Zell might, just might, have taken Eric’s identity permanently and be living under his name in Austria, working in the vineyard of a friend he had found while researching the article for Words & Wine? He knew about grapes, after all, so he would not appear out of place.

  There were other things to be said for this plan, the more I thought about it. Wachau was one of the nearest wine-growing areas to Germany and, indeed, to Mondsee, where von Zell’s wife was living. The conduit, to Spain and Portugal, had to begin somewhere in south Germany or western Austria so that might point to the Wachau also. Another thing struck me. If von Haltern and von Zell had done the research for their wine article together, in say 1938 or even a little earlier, people whose acquaintance they had made might not have remembered who was von Haltern and who was von Zell. So, if von Zell had turned up at one of those vineyards after the war, and found some winegrowers sympathetic to him, they might genuinely believe he was Eric von Haltern.

  I looked around the room again. Now that I was, so to speak, primed, I began to notice a number of things that reflected von Haltern’s interest in wine: there were plenty of books on the subject, a small collection of corkscrews on one of the bookshelves, pamphlets on corks, bottles of various shapes. I had not a shred of direct evidence to support my Austrian vineyard theory, but as I took in the odds and ends scattered around the library, the wine paraphernalia, the cleverer the idea seemed to me and the more convinced I became.

  It was too much of a long shot to investigate myself but it was something Maurice Ghent or Saul Wolfert could organize from Vienna, which was much closer to the Wachau.

  Maurice or Saul? I was just weighing the options when the housekeeper reappeared. I knocked out my pipe into the fireplace and got to my feet.

  “Which hotel do you suggest I stay at in Koblenz?” I asked. It was a little past nine.

  The warm scent of good food clung to him, reminding me how ravenous I was. “The Mosel is the most comfortable, and not too expensive. It’s by the Market Bridge.”

  He was right. The Mosel was very comfortable and, more to the point, boasted a restaurant that was still open when I arrived at about ten o’clock.

  Since I was so famished, and the restaurant was about to close, dinner came first, and by the time I was through with that, it was too late to get Sammy, Maurice or Saul on the phone, as I wanted to do. The next morning I was up at 5:30, so my calls had to wait again until much later.

  I left the Mosel too early for breakfast and parked the BMW along the road leading from the Schlosshaltern just before dawn. Once more I was starving and I hadn’t shaved, but I had to double-check that the Schloss really was clear. I judged that if I had been mistaken the night before, and von Zell was there, he would move on next day as soon as it was light. He would be prudent and would not risk my coming back.

  Dawn was at 6:17. We tended to know that sort of thing in the Army in those days. It was cool, with a skein of river mist drawn over the road and adjoining fields, as if it were caught up in the branches of the low trees. But you could tell the mist would go as soon as the sun gathered muscle. It seemed much more than forty-eight hours since I had enjoyed a similar but less lonely dawn with Inge and Elisabetta.

  For an hour or so, nothing moved at the Schloss. Then, around seven, the housekeeper came out and walked across to what I now realized were stables. I sat up and focused my binoculars. But I was disappointed: he merely released two chestnut-colored ponies into a paddock which, in the dark of the night before, I had not noticed. They trotted about, sneezing steam into the cold morning air. The housekeeper returned to the Schloss and I imagined the breakfast tray I had seen laid the night before now loaded with hot bread and jams and boiling coffee.

  Another hour—8:30 nearly—and the housekeeper’s wife appeared on a bicycle. She had placed what looked like a leather shopping bag in the basket on the front and was presumably headed for Koblenz. She rode by the BMW without turning her head.

  I waited two more hours, until just after the housekeeper’s wife had returned, riding much more slowly now that the groceries were weighing her down. If von Zell didn’t show soon I had to assume that he wasn’t hiding in the Schloss.

  By eleven the sun had burned off the mist and the countryside was cheering up minute by minute. My stomach was beginning to complain again that it had been neglected for too long. When the church on the other side of the river sounded the hour, I gave up. Von Zell wasn’t there. I switched on the ignition, started the engine and headed the BMW back to the Mosel for some hot soup, sausage and, if they would allow me the use of a bathroom, a shave.

  2

  After my shave food came first—and not simply because I was pinched with hunger. For some reason I have always found it easier to think while eating by myself. Whether it is the raised level of blood sugar in my veins or else the marriage of mustard with a hot sausage, I can never be sure, but once I have a beer at my elbow and something savory in front of me my mind clears amazingly.

  First, I decided against calling Saul Wolfert, just yet anyway. Maurice was a friend as well as an old colleague and was not unused to looking for Nazis in hiding, whereas Wolfert had experience at finding U.S. Army types. I could rely on Maurice to do as I asked, whereas Wolfert was still a relative stranger and, by now, might have all sorts of other things to do. Perhaps, at a later stage, if Maurice got nowhere, I would call on Saul. But not until. That was my first mistake.

  Maurice, when I got through to him, was his usual bantering, Noël Coward self. “Well, if it isn’t the famous Professor Wolff himself. I have all your clippings, dear boy, from the Vienna papers. You better have some children quickly, and then some grandchildren, so you can show off to them. You’re a hero here, dear boy. And your picture is in all the rags. I’ve even met girls who claim to think you are good-looking. Apparently you look like Gregory Peck, whoever he is.”

  “Yes, yes, Maurice.” It was flattering and I couldn’t help smiling. But I was embarrassed too. “How are you?”

  “A little under the weather this morning, to be totally candid. I tell you, Walter, the coffee bars here are most misleading. All they seem to serve is brandy.”

  “I feel sorry for you, Maurice, I really do.”

  “Well, the war is over, dear boy. Can’t work all the time. And the uniform seems to go down so well here, Walter. With the girls, I mean.”

  “What about the Kunsthistorisches? Aren’t you supposed to be helping them?”

  “Of course, of course. All in good time. Who do you think I was getting this hangover with? Boden, senior curator. And a brandy connoisseur, if last night is anything to go by. I dread to think what his head is like today.”

  I was clearly missing all the fun. “Sorry to be so dull, Maurice, but I need your help.”

  “Of course you do, dear boy. Of course you do. One second while I refill my coffee cup.” He shouted to someone for “reinforcements”—everyone was “dear boy” to Maurice. Then he was back. “Now, Walter, you have my full attention.”

  As I related my story to him, he made loud appreciative noises, as Noël Coward would probably have done, a bit like an old queen. But Maurice was shrewd and I did not need to spell out my conclusions—he was there ahead of m
e.

  “So you think this character, Rudi von what’s-it, is hiding out in the Wachau with false papers—correction, with real papers but someone else’s, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “I think he may be living as Eric von Haltern.”

  “You’ve no idea how many vineyards we are going to have to search, I suppose?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “So we don’t know how many men we will need?”

  “Not yet. Perhaps you could take advice, or make a quick reconnaissance yourself.”

  “Hhhhmmmnn.” I could hear him swallowing his coffee, deliberating. Then, being the friend he was, and not just a disinterested or competitive colleague: “Okay, dear boy. We’ll do what we can. In between brandies, of course.”

  I told him I would eventually make my way back to Salzburg, after one or two other sorties I had planned, and that I would call him from there.

  “Salzburg?” he sang the word as if the “burg” part had all five vowels in it. “Isn’t that where S. Hartt, Esq., is stationed?”

  I confessed it was, and that I was sharing an office, or at least an operating theater, with the great man.

  “Splendid! Splendid! An opportunity for sport, dear boy.”

  My heart sank. “Sport” was Maurice’s shorthand for a gamble. He was a great gambler, and a not unsuccessful one. Fortunately, I had managed to steer clear of his craze so far.

  “Have you any spare cash, dear boy? This is an opportunity not to be missed.”

  I was cagey but also surprised. It was unlike Maurice to want to borrow money. Not his style at all. And in any case he was a clever gambler—he didn’t usually need money.

  “I have a little saved, Maurice. If you’re short, I could maybe—”

  “Borrow money, dear boy! Who do you think I am—one of Mr. Stalin’s socialists? No, no, no. I am afraid I took a thousand dollars off one of your compatriots only the other night, some poor Midwesterner who thought that only cowboys could play poker. Now I have all this cash sloshing around in my wallet and it’s about as useful as a nun in a submarine. No, no, no. As they say in your Navy, dear boy, ‘Now hear this.’