by Alex Gerlis
‘We aren’t Germans,’ the older man said as the four of them sat around the kitchen table. ‘You should understand that we are on the same side as you. I will tell you what we know and then you will tell us what you know.’
He opened a packet of cigarettes and placed it in front of him. Hanne reckoned he was in his fifties, his eyes red with exhaustion.
‘We know you’re on the trail of a Nazi escape line – the Kestrel Line – which is connected to Villach. We know the Kestrel Line is organised by an Austrian Nazi called Wolfgang Steiner and that his son Friedrich is one of the fugitives on it. We know too that there is a possibility that Martin Bormann is also on it. We’re aware that you’re working for the British. We’ve been watching you since you arrived here and we believe you may have a lead – we suspect you think the house you were watching in the woods may be connected to the Kestrel Line. This is all correct?’
Hanne said nothing. A younger woman had come into the room and sat down. All four now watched Hanne closely. ‘Can I ask who you are?’ she said eventually.
‘I’ll tell you who we are and you will answer our questions.’ It was the woman who’d just come into the room. Although she was the youngest of the four, she had an air of authority about her. ‘My name is Marija, this is Branka.’ She pointed at the other woman and then towards the two men: ‘Edvard and Jožef. Your name is Hanne, isn’t it?’
Hanne nodded.
‘Are you on your own in Villach?’
‘Not quite.’
‘With your husband?’
She shook her head.
‘We’re Slovenian partisans – members of Osvobodilna Fronta Slovenskega Naroda, the Liberation Front of Slovenia, which is part of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army. You may have heard of our leader, Tito: the Yugoslav partisans were the most successful resistance organisation in Nazi-occupied Europe.’
The others nodded and Marija paused as she lit a cigarette. ‘The Nazis divided Slovenia into three zones – one controlled by the Germans, one by Italy and the other by Hungary. It was a brutal occupation, especially in the German area. The centre of that was Maribor, which is the second largest city in Slovenia and is where we’re from. Maribor traditionally had a large German-speaking minority and the Germans wanted to turn the area into a German one. The oppression of the Slovenes was dreadful.
‘The Gestapo in Maribor was based at Kersnikova, and I don’t think I need to tell you how cruel they were. Many civilians were murdered. In the summer of 1944, a new Gestapo officer by the name of König arrived at Kersnikova. There is no question he was the worst of the lot.’
‘The man was a psychopath.’ It was the first time the younger man, Jožef, had spoken.
‘Every Gestapo and SS officer who served in Maribor was a war criminal, and those who were still alive at the end of the war are now in our custody.’
‘Apart from König,’ said Jožef.
‘And he’s the one we want most.’ Marija paused and angrily stubbed her cigarette out on a saucer. Edvard leaned over the table and spoke in a quiet voice.
‘In November, König arrested three seventeen-year-old girls he spotted walking on the street. He claimed they were involved with partisans – this was quite untrue, but he concocted some flimsy evidence against them and used that as a pretext to keep them in custody and interrogate them. The girls were all very pretty, and we’re convinced that was his motive for arresting them. From what we gather, he raped all three of them over a three-day period and then shot them.’
The room was silent but for the sound of a dripping tap and the wind whistling through a cracked window.
‘Their bodies were found in a wood outside the town. At around the same time, König left Maribor,’ said Branka, her German more hesitant. ‘So you can see why we want to catch him.’
‘Once the war was over, a Yugoslav mission was established in Berlin, and through them we’ve tried to find König, but we could discover no trace of him. As far as we could tell, König was an assumed name. But recently there was a breakthrough: our mission in Berlin was told that König was in fact Friedrich Steiner, who’d served as a Gestapo officer in France and the Netherlands and was wanted by the British for the murder of their agents.’ Marija nodded as she finished talking.
‘Which brings us here,’ said Edvard. ‘Tell us why you were interested in that house.’
Hanne didn’t think she was in a position to hide anything. She told them how they knew the Kestrel Line had some connection with Villach, and about Frau Winkler and the house near Sattendorf. ‘I needed to check it was the right place; when I saw it was guarded and looked very secure, I realised it must be. My intention was to return with British troops. Then you came.’
‘Then we came indeed. But what you did was very reckless, Hanne. We have spent the war fighting the enemy, risking our lives every day. We know how dangerous it can be. You were on your own, you were exposed, and had we not found you, the Germans would have done.
‘Edvard, please don’t lecture me about the dangers of operating in enemy territory!’ Hanne’s voice was raised and the four looked up at her. ‘I worked for the British in Denmark, then I was a prisoner of the Gestapo and spent two years in a concentration camp. I know what danger is, thank you. I knew what I was doing. You may well have alerted the Nazis yourself turning up like that. You should have left me to it.’
The Slovenians apologised one by one.
‘All we want is the man Steiner: in return, we’ll help you to find where the Kestrel Line ends. Who knows who else you’ll find there – maybe even Bormann himself?’
‘Where do you think the Kestrel Line goes from here?’ Hanne had calmed down and the atmosphere in the room had changed. It was clear they were now on the same side.
‘Look…’ Jožef pulled a map from his pocket. ‘We’re here, just south of Villach. The Nazis chose this place well: we’re only five miles or so from the Slovenian border, but more importantly from their point of view, maybe seven miles from Italy. My guess is that the Kestrel Line ends there.’
‘Across the Gailtal Alps,’ said Edvard, ‘the natural habitat of the kestrel.’
* * *
Prince left Vienna as dawn broke over the city, a muted light filtering through the black clouds as the sun rose from the east. The rain was so heavy it felt as if the waters of the Danube had been whipped up and were being sprayed over the southern suburbs as the Red Army staff car picked its way through the bomb-damaged roads. Gurevich sat in the back with Prince, toying with an unlit cigar and wiping the condensation from the window with a leather-gloved hand.
‘It still looks like a battlefield, doesn’t it, my friend? I’m told the campaign to take the city was particularly bitter – our offensive was mostly from the south, round here. It would explain why the place looks like Berlin. I almost feel at home!’
They picked up the pace as they drove through Wiener Neustadt, continuing south through the Soviet zone. Just after the small town of Friedberg, the car turned off the road, driving along a narrow track through a wood and pulling into a small clearing, where it parked alongside an unmarked black Daimler. Iosif Gurevich told his driver to leave the car and turned to look at Prince.
‘I do what I can to help you, I hope you understand that. I feel an obligation to you – we are friends, I can trust you.’
Prince said he was very grateful, but the Russian hadn’t finished. ‘I’m not naïve; I’m a Red Army officer – a commissar. I know that politics matters and dictates the relationship between our countries, and of course my loyalty will always be to the Soviet Union. But I see no reason not to help you as a friend when I can – when our interests happily coincide. I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again: I will return to Berlin, but my future may be uncertain. I just want you to know that you can trust me, and all I ask is that maybe one day you will ask after me.’
‘Of course, I—’
‘But use your discretion, please – it may not look good if p
eople know I have a British friend!’
They embraced, and Gurevich told Prince the other car would drive him to Klagenfurt; he’d better get a move on.
Just before noon, the Daimler stopped in a side street in the centre of Klagenfurt. The driver – a heavily built man with notably thick eyebrows and bloodshot eyes – turned round and spoke for the first time, in a deep voice: walk along this block, take the first left and then turn right – the building you want will be ahead of you. You’ll spot your flag.
The building was the headquarters of the Field Security Section, and within minutes of announcing himself at the guard post, Prince was in Major Stewart’s office.
‘Where the hell have you been, Prince?’
Prince said he’d taken a roundabout route.
‘I don’t think people like you appreciate quite what havoc you wreak. Poor old Cuthbert at Munich has had something of a nervous breakdown. He’s being blamed for losing you. What’s this about you hitching a ride on an American plane to Vienna?’
Prince said that was for another time. His priority now was to get to Villach and find Hanne.
‘Oh, don’t worry about her, she’s fine – turned up at the FSS headquarters there very pleased with herself and with a group of bloody Slovenes in tow. She wants to be damn careful – these Slovenes think Carinthia is theirs by right, and we can’t be seen being too helpful to them. She thinks she may have found a house being used by the Nazis, but once she heard you were on your way, she decided to wait for you. I’ll go with you, Prince; can’t have you going freelance again, can we?’
‘We’d better get a move on then.’
‘Hang on. There’s a telegram for you from a chap called Bartholomew. Seems it’s urgent.’
Chapter 23
Germany, December 1945
Wolfgang Steiner had planned to remain in Berlin for a few days after meeting his contacts there in October. His intention was to leave no stone unturned in his search for Martin Bormann. He still believed there was a good chance the Reichsleiter was alive: Bormann was smarter than most people he knew, and he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it turned out he was hiding in a cellar somewhere, being protected by a sympathiser, patiently biding his time until it was safe to make his next move.
He remained convinced that the absence of any news on Bormann’s whereabouts had to be a good sign. If he’d been captured by the Russians, the Americans or the British, they would quickly announce it – as they would if his body had been found. In Mitte and elsewhere in the Soviet sector, they sold a newspaper called Deutsche Volkszeitung, which was a communist publication but seemed to devote a good deal of coverage to the fate of important Nazis. Steiner scoured it daily but saw no mention of Bormann.
But his meeting with Willi Kühn had unsettled him. The schoolteacher had asked too many questions, and there was something about his manner that had made Steiner suspicious. Kühn may well have been a childhood friend of Bormann’s, but Steiner hadn’t detected much sympathy: he’d seemed curious about Bormann rather than concerned. As a result, Steiner had left Berlin the following day, travelling by bus and by foot and arriving three days later at the farm near Eggenfelden. He was relieved to find that Ulrich and Friedrich were no longer there.
‘They left perhaps two days after you did,’ Frau Moser assured him. ‘The younger one, he didn’t even say goodbye or thank me. Manners don’t cost anything, do they? Their parents should teach them manners.’
Steiner said nothing: they’d been gone for a week, so he reckoned they’d be a safe distance from the farm by now.
‘Did my cousin Jens telephone, by any chance, the one from Essen?’
Frau Moser assured him he hadn’t. There were no messages for him.
Steiner was exhausted after his journey, and all he wanted was to have a bath and go to bed, but he had something more important to do first. He unlocked the cellar door and moved the crates and old bicycles out of the way. Then he lifted the boxes of empty bottles and placed them on the floor, and removed the four leather suitcases from under the large tarpaulin, checking them thoroughly to make sure they each had the right number of notebooks and rolls of film in them.
Once he was satisfied that everything was in order, he locked them again, replaced the tarpaulin and put the boxes back on top.
He’d give it a few more weeks, and if there was still no sign of Bormann, he’d put his own plan into operation, as he’d intended all along.
* * *
As October had turned into November, Wolfgang Steiner had begun to have mixed feelings. Of course he still wanted Martin Bormann to be alive, and he felt a duty to help him escape on the Kestrel Line. There was no doubt that with Bormann safe, some kind of victory could be salvaged from humiliating defeat, although he also knew that rescuing the Reichsleiter would be perilous in the extreme: he would be putting himself in enormous danger. And as November moved on and a harsh winter gripped the farm, he wondered how much he really wanted to risk his life. He knew it was likely that Friedrich and Ulrich had made their way to safety. He questioned how much of an obligation he now really felt to Bormann.
And then there was the question of his original plan, the reason why he’d photographed so many documents and compiled the notebooks in the first place, and why he’d gone to the trouble to find the farm. He’d put the plan on hold until he knew about Bormann, but now he didn’t want to wait much longer.
On a dirty Monday afternoon in early December, he locked himself in the cellar and took out the leather suitcases again, counting the 218 rolls of film that he’d meticulously logged in a ledger. He selected a handful of films, writing a list of their contents on a separate sheet of paper:
Roll 12/41: persons convicted of sexual offences, Berlin area, Jan. – June 1941
Roll 8/42: senior personnel, Luftwaffe Intelligence Directorate
Roll 22/42: names and addresses of senior NSDAP officials, Düsseldorf
Roll 6/43: names and address of clients arrested at (male) brothel, Spandau
Roll 17/43: General Staff and Senior Army Group F (Bayreuth)
Roll 20/43: NSDAP members: details of bank accounts with Bank Leu, Zurich
Roll 6/44: names of officers, II SS Panzer Corps
Roll 19/44: list of scientists, Peenemünde rocket development facility
He checked that each film was properly sealed in its small metal canister and then sowed them all into the hem of his overcoat. He thought about taking a couple of the notebooks but decided they’d require too much explanation. If these films didn’t interest them, nothing would.
From the lining of one suitcase he retrieved his old identity papers, including his Parteikanzlei pass. In Munich he’d be Wolfgang Steiner once more.
* * *
He left the farm early the following morning, walking across the fields to Eggenfelden and catching a bus from there to Mühldorf.
He arrived in Munich early in the afternoon, the journey not having taken as long as he’d expected. It meant he had more time to kill than he’d anticipated, which at least allowed him to find a bed for the night.
He found a bar on Landwehr Strasse, north of the Theresienwiese, where Friedrich had stayed. It was the kind of area where the right amount of money would mean that the requirement for a guest to register could be overlooked. The bar keeper told him he had some rooms upstairs. Do you want one on your own or are you prepared to share?
Steiner said he’d prefer one on his own and handed over what he considered to be a small fortune. The room was on the top floor, more of an attic than anything else, with bare floorboards and a cracked window. The bed was hard and dusty, the sheets looked as if they’d not been changed in a while and there was a smell of mice. The bar keeper must have sensed Steiner’s disapproval. At least you’ll be safe; no one will know you’re here.
He remained in the room for an hour, but the mice got the better of him, and in any case he wanted to eat. He headed south, and on Lindwurm Strasse found a café, th
ough that was a generous description of a gloomy, hollowed-out shell of a building with a few tables set amongst the rubble.
He sat in the corner and avoided looking at the other customers. He made a bowl of soup and some chunks of black bread last an hour before deciding to leave. His plan was to walk around, making sure he kept on the move and hoping to reach his destination once it was dark. He began to brood: it wasn’t too late to abort his trip, and the more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether he was actually insane. It was as if he was surrendering for no good reason. A plan that had been so carefully thought through in Berlin during the war – which had seemed to be so clever, and even flawless – felt very different here in Munich.
As he walked the short distance from the café to Sendlinger Platz, he felt uneasy, putting that down at first to nerves before becoming aware of a presence behind him. When he turned round, there was a man no more than a foot or two from him.
‘Wolfgang, you devil! What the hell are you doing here?’
Steiner stepped back and blinked. The man looked very familiar, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall his name.
‘Don’t you remember me – it’s Gustav, Gustav Wagner. Surely you know me!’
‘Of course – Gustav: how are you?’
Wagner gripped Steiner’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. ‘I can’t believe I’ve bumped into you of all people: talk about this being my lucky day!’
Wagner was one of Steiner’s former ‘clients’, as he liked to call them. He’d been the Gauleiter of the area north of Bremen – the local political leader, a role with a good deal of influence – but had spent too much of his time abusing the privileges of office. He’d made contact with Steiner when he was accused of stealing party funds. Steiner had negotiated a solution: Wagner would admit to an accounting error, pay back the money and then accept a transfer to Poland, always an unpopular posting. The last time he’d seen him had been in February in Berlin. Wagner had told him he’d been in Budapest: I helped organise the transports to Auschwitz, I signed a lot of death warrants.
