The Nazi's Wife

by Peter Watson

  That wasn’t how I saw the results of my efforts over the previous few days, not at all. Still, unlikable as Hobel was, he had a case. I knew a great deal about the von Zells, more than anyone else and probably more than I would ever need to know. But I was still a “million miles,” from the gold coins.

  “I don’t agree, sir,” I said vigorously, deciding that what was needed was a bit of bluster. “I’ve explained why I think Mrs. von Zell knows where her husband is and I think my reasoning is sound. I don’t imagine for a minute that I can just amble over to Mondsee and expect her to tell me what we want to know. But if I can have a few weeks”—Hobel twisted again, as if in pain—“if I can have a week or two,” I repeated in a stronger, more self-assured tone, “then I believe I can force her, or trick her, or persuade her, to at least acknowledge that she knows where her husband is, that she has access to him, however indirect. I know enough to be able to convince her, I think, that we know that she knows. Once she understands that she will realize that we are not going away.”

  Hobel looked interested at this line of reasoning, so I pressed it.

  “All the other interrogators have been in too much of a hurry. This is a case that has to be built up slowly but insistently. If I turn up for a few days in a row, she will realize, or come to realize, that I won’t go away until she cooperates. It won’t work overnight—she’s too strong. Too many of us have failed already. But it will work, eventually. I know Eisenhower must be impatient for results. But my way may be the only way that will work. Remember, Bloch’s form of torture failed miserably. I need a week, maybe two, possibly three. To make a nuisance of myself.”

  Those bulging greasy eyes fixed on me. Hobel was calculating just how rude he could be. His hidden teeth chewed away at his inner cheek, gyrating rhythmically, side to side. He opted for the frontal attack.

  “I don’t like you, Wolff. I don’t like you as an individual and I don’t like the type of person you represent. Fucking European intellectual. If my own career didn’t depend on this fucking case, I would be reveling in your failure. As it is, I’m stuck with you. You haven’t fucked up enough yet for me to fire you. You’re still Eisenhower’s baby. But you saw that newspaper clipping I sent you, the one about the three renegades captured on the lake near Geneva. Anything else like that, Wolff, and you’re finished. I will fire you before Eisenhower, or Wren, ditches me. There’s no way you are going to survive this if I don’t. Is that fucking clear?”

  Yes, I thought, it fucking well is. But I said nothing. I just stood up. I’d bought time and, under the circumstances, that was as much as I could hope for. I saluted and left the room without speaking. In the outer office the secretary looked up eagerly to see just how bruised I was. I grinned, blew her a kiss and laughed wickedly as her face fell.

  Sammy looked up as I slumped into my seat. I held up one hand with my fingers crossed. “I’m still on the case. Just.”

  “The omens are better,” he said in the grave manner he reserved for good news. “Atlantic Insurance failed to fall this morning—the tide has been stemmed.”

  “Oh yes?” I mumbled. The aggression I felt toward Hobel had left me sapped of energy. “Terrific. But I haven’t actually made anything yet—right?”

  “Can’t have everything,” Sammy said. “Be grateful the slide has stopped.”

  “I suppose Confederate Paper went up again.”

  “But only a cent,” he announced cheerfully as he left me with my head in my hands.

  I had been with Hobel nearly a half-hour and it was almost six o’clock. The office was winding down. Saturday’s dance was still the main topic of conversation, for Hobel had hired a band that did imitations of Glen Miller and managed to seduce a company of women infantry who were stationed not too far away to attend. For the time being, therefore, he could do no wrong in the eyes of most of the men.

  Sammy returned and began packing up. He suggested a drink in the mess, but I told him to go on ahead, that I would follow in a few moments. I still had one more piece of tricky navigation that day—my wife’s letters.

  Alone in the office, I slit them open with a Swiss army knife I had picked up years ago. All thought of a drink went out of mind—for they were unnerving. In the first letter Nancy wrote that she had fallen in love with a sailboat manufacturer; and in the second that she had found a lawyer—here was his name and address—and he would be handling her end of the divorce. Just like that. No preamble, no buildup, no discussion. No second chance. I didn’t expect the relationship to get a second chance and perhaps I didn’t mind the divorce anyway. But, a failure is a failure, and combined with the rest of the news that day, I suddenly felt very lonely. Looking back, I wonder if those curt, unaffectionate, businesslike letters from my wife had anything to do with what happened later. They were in such marked contrast to the letters Konstanze had written and received.

  PART THREE

  KONSTANZE

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1

  The next day I met Konstanze for the first time. It was April 4. The morning was even warmer and brighter than on the preceding days and I sat on the hotel terrace taking my time over breakfast. Across the roofs of the old town, the Gaisberg rose impressively, poking into the sun, which had not yet cleared its rim. The day promised to be glorious.

  Afterward I put down the top of the BMW and decided there would be no need even for a neck scarf. It was not a long drive to Mondsee. The road chased a broad valley, curving steadily to the left, following the river Fuschl. In those days it was more a lane for farm vehicles, narrow, winding, slow and flat—perfect for bicycles, I thought, remembering the letters. Horses and mechanical tractors existed in about equal numbers at that time, each as slow as the other, and I had to pick my way around both several times before I glimpsed the lake.

  It was a pretty village, when I came to it. The first thing you saw was an area of formally planted trees on the lakeshore, making it look more French or Swiss than Austrian. There was a long, crude canoe—a hollowed-out tree trunk—on show near the water’s edge. An historical monument, I suppose. A white wood and glass conservatory of some sort stood on a point, drawing the eye. Numerous small jetties ran around the northern curve of the lake, trodden by the slapping feet of hundreds of mallards, moorhens and other ducks.

  From the shore area an avenue, or boulevard, led into the village itself, the houses beginning where the trees ended. Almost immediately the street widened into an irregularly shaped market place, with a cafe and shops. All the houses lining the market had shutters and were painted in bright, primary colors. The church was set back, basking in a relatively new coat of sand and cream-colored paint. It was much larger than I had expected.

  I stopped the car outside the church and went inside. Since Mrs. von Zell was deputy organist, I knew someone here would be able to direct me to her house. The church was ornate but remarkably light considering the amount of black stucco that adorned it. As an art historian I was very familiar with white stucco work but had forgotten how dramatic black moldings can be, especially when lined and highlighted with gold. It was like being inside a big box of chocolates.

  I entered the church under a gallery and as I walked into the nave the huge organ became visible above and behind me, an impressive engine of black pipes. I stopped to admire it as the sunlight threw high beams across the tubes, stippling the far wall with broken shadows and colored patches from the stained-glass windows.

  A woman was cleaning the steps that led to the high altar and she was only too happy for an excuse to break from her sweeping. To get to the von Zells’ house, I was told, I had to go back the way I had come, along the boulevard which led back to the lake. I was to turn left at the end, away from Salzburg and follow the shore road, which led south along the east side of the lake. The house was easily recognizable, the woman said, because it had a swing outside, for Dieter, dangling from a tree. It was no more than a kilometer away.

  The shore road was pretty and narrow,
with sudden, open glimpses of the lake. Many of the homes, to the left of the road, away from the water, were set back a bit on a slope, with the mountain behind them. These had better views, and most of them had small summer houses, or huts, on the right-hand side of the road, on the lake. These were for swimming and boating, tea parties and fishing hideaways. The von Zell house was no different, though slightly larger than most. The summer house, like the main building, was wooden, not painted but skinned with a thick, clear varnish, so that it gleamed in the sun.

  I didn’t stop outside the house but drove on for a couple of hundred yards to where there were some trees between the road and the lake. I parked the car, switched off the engine and sat for a moment or two. I fished out my pipe and found a patch of grass among the trees quite close to the water’s edge. I had to be very relaxed when I met Mrs. von Zell. Not only did I need to give the impression that I was totally in command of myself, which, since my wife’s letters, was something less than the truth, but I also had to make it seem that I had all the time in the world. That my interrogation of her was quite unlike the ones which had gone before. I was here, and here I would stay until I got what I had come for. I needed to pretend that I had that kind of personality, the kind that is undisturbed and undisturbable.

  For now I needed to wind down, to let the sensations of the day before wash out of me. I leaned back against a tree and lit my pipe. I could smell the lake from where I was and listen to the irregular smack of the waves as they beat against the beach. Twenty yards out two trout slapped the surface as they sucked in flies. There was a light, warm breeze and the smell of cut grass, or cut something, in among it, over and above the tang of the lake. Behind me the road was empty.

  I waited until I had finished my pipe. I wasn’t looking forward to what I was about to start. Here, in what was quite possibly the most soothing spot I had ever found, I had to—well, I had to drag on the war in my own particular way. I was tidying up the war and, in the process, harshly interfering in the life of a woman who, under different circumstances, I felt sure I would like. It was, in a way, crazy.

  I knocked my pipe out on a tree, got to my feet and, leaving the car where it was, walked back along the shore to the von Zell house.

  There was a wooden balcony running the length of the house on the upper floor and a few steps, also wooden, leading up to the main door. The garden was large, with a low, unpainted fence around its perimeter. Three trees threw hundreds of tiny shadows onto the grass. The child’s swing, red and peeling, hung forgotten in the almost still air.

  As I unclipped the latch on the gate I could see a piano in one of the rooms to the side of the house, as well as wine bottles in racks. This would be the wine and music room I had read so much about in the letters and which the von Zells had brought with them when they moved from Munich.

  My boots scraped so loudly on the wooden landing that I didn’t need to knock on the door. I had been heard and footsteps inside the house moved toward me. To my surprise, a small, leathery woman with dark hair opened the door; she must have been a housekeeper. She had never been mentioned in the letters.

  She scrutinized my uniform as if she had never seen an American soldier before and scowled.

  “Is Mrs. von Zell at home? Please.”

  She shook her head, jerkily, from side to side, like a rook or raven looking for worms. “No.”

  “Has she gone far?”

  “No.” She paused, determined to be no more helpful than she needed to be. “She’s in the village.”

  “When do you expect her back?”

  “Very soon.”

  “Then I will wait, if I may.”

  She said nothing but simply turned around and walked back into the house, leaving the door open. I closed it behind me as she led the way into a sort of study cum sewing room. There was a rocking chair, covered with curtains, bedcovers and other bits of cloth, and a small, upright, very uncomfortable-looking wooden chair by a fireplace. I was invited to sit on that.

  “Mrs. von Zell does not allow smoking in here,” said the old woman and went out.

  I looked around the room. There were a few photographs—Bloch had not taken them all—including a large one of Rudolf with Dieter and another print of the picture I had seen in the library at the Schloss Haltern in Koblenz: Rudolf and Eric together. There were also a number of maps on the walls, of rivers: the Mosel, the Loire, the Elbe and the Danube. This last I examined carefully, especially its path through the Wachau region. No one else knew about Rudolf’s passion for wine, or his interest in the vineyards of Austria, so there might be some sort of cryptic mark on the map. It would mean nothing to the casual eye. There was: a small circle, drawn in smudged pencil, around a town called Krumau. It was at the foot of a small lake, no more than a swelling in the river Kamp, about eighty kilometers from Vienna, and right on the edge of the wine-growing region.

  I sat on the chair to think. God, it was uncomfortable. I don’t think my spine had ever been so upright. What did that circle mean? That I had been unlucky but right all along, that von Zell was hiding out in the wine region? How could I find out without arousing suspicion? At least I now had a location for Saul Wolfert to concentrate his search. I wouldn’t tell Hobel about this latest find. Instead, I would quietly ask Wolfert to check it out. If and when we got something positive, I would tell the major.

  I heard noises outside. A child speaking and a woman laughing. I also noticed for the first time that the room I was in had a door which opened directly on to the side of the house. It was through this door that I could make out the approaching voices. I did what I could to compose myself.

  I realize that I have not properly explained my feelings on that day when I first found myself in Mondsee. I was nervous because I had never interviewed a woman who had access to vital information. I was not, in theory, affected by her sex. Women, I believed, could be guilty of the same crimes as men, but I had never had to face a woman in quite these circumstances. I was, therefore, apprehensive. Also, having read the correspondence, I did feel somewhat guilty. I knew that I had no choice, but my actions were still quite reprehensible. I was not proud of what I had done. What made it worse was the knowledge that I would be unable to resist using the information I had, should the need arise. So, in a way, I resented Mrs. von Zell, Hobel, the war, for putting me into such a bind. I wished that my two hunches about Rudolf von Zell had come to something. By this stage, what with Major Hobel’s hostility, my professional pride had been dented and I was smarting for results. If, therefore, I could crack Mrs. von Zell, making use of knowledge I had gained from the correspondence, then I could satisfy some of the boiling motives inside me and further justify my indiscretion and assuage my guilt as well.

  Underneath these more specific feelings ran two deeper, general ones. I had left Germany as an anti-Nazi and had joined the U.S. Army enthusiastically, as soon as it would have me. In 1946, therefore, as far as the Nazis were concerned, I suppose I was a bit of a zealot, and so were a lot of people. I say that here because, since then, I think tempers have cooled. Finally, there were the general feelings I had about human nature and I wanted to see whether they applied to Mrs. von Zell. She had been a tragic, melancholic young woman and appeared to have changed into a mature, composed mother. Was that change real? I suppose I held the view that people do not change fundamentally, that with Konstanze the earlier woman lay not far underneath.

  From the distance of time I can also admit to myself that as I heard her footstep outside the door there was another emotion inside me. Until that moment I had never met her though, in a way, I felt I knew her quite well. I had never been in a situation where I knew so much about a person, possessed so many intimate details before I met them. I had never known so much about someone who didn’t want me to know those kinds of details. My reading of the correspondence was supposed to give me an advantage over her and so, in a sense, it did. Yet what I knew about Konstanze I liked and it gave her an advantage over me. Before
we met she didn’t even know I existed; yet I was already half in love with her.

  The door banged open and, as I have said, the sunlight splashed in. Within the room swirls of dust rose lazily in the straw-colored beams.

  She was taller than I imagined, more erect, yet her features were softer than they appeared in her photographs. Under the oatmeal-colored cloak she wore, her figure was that of a woman, not a girl.

  Her distaste for me was quick to appear. She saw absolutely nothing to smile about when her son crashed into her legs, spilling the groceries.

  As calmly as I could, I wiped the spittle from where it landed on the collar of my uniform. She and I remained frozen and I do not know how long we would have both stood like that had not the housekeeper, hearing the commotion, stepped into the room from the kitchen and, without a word, taken the eggs from Mrs. von Zell and led the boy away.

  Left alone, I wanted to do something which would ease the tension but also stress, right from the start, that I had power and time. Slowly, deliberately, I began to fill my pipe. I knew that she didn’t allow smoking in the room. She knew that the housekeeper would have told me that. Still, I took out the tobacco pouch and scooped bundles of leaves into the bowl.

  She stood there, not moving except for her heavy breathing. Behind her the door was still open, the sunlight streaming in. I remember thinking that she must have washed her hair that morning for it was slightly unruly and gave her a ragged, flickering halo of gold where the sun caught the edges.

  It sounds perverse to say, but I was encouraged by the fact that she had spat at me. It had never happened to me before, but I had heard of it happening to other interrogators. And, strange as it may seem, it was not always the disaster it at first appeared to be. The ideal with any new interrogation is to get the person to react, to communicate with you. The person who just sits there impassively is the worst, the cleverest. Because they give you nothing. So, in spitting at me, an extreme act in any language, at least Konstanze was reacting. And two important things follow from this. One, the person who does the spitting feels guilty, in however small a way. Two, things can only improve. Konstanze and I had started off in the worst possible way, but now that we had touched bottom, we could only go up.