The Girl from Berlin, #1

by Ellie Midwood

  “I don’t think you’re going to do anything, lady. As a matter of fact, you look pretty helpless to me. I can’t say that I don’t like it.”

  “What typical SS behavior!”

  “How about some not very typical SS behavior?”

  “What do you have in mind, Herr Standartenführer?” I don’t know why I even asked that because he was already unbuttoning my white silk top. “Heinrich, seriously, what are you doing?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” He whispered into my ear, pushing me closer to the desk. “I’m going to have sex with my Jewish wife on my SD office desk right under the Führer’s portrait. I hope he’ll enjoy it!”

  “Heinrich! No!” I loudly whispered at him, trying to stop him from undressing me, even though I definitely liked the idea of having sex on the desk of an SD office. “Your adjutant can walk in at any minute!”

  “He can’t walk in until I tell him to.” He was already taking the skirt off me, leaving me only in my underwear and unbuttoned top.

  “Heinrich, you’re insane! We’re going to get arrested!”

  “Only if we get caught.” He grinned at me and removed his gun, placing it on a desk next to me. “So we better not lose any time.”

  I had no idea what had gotten into my husband, who didn’t even bother to take off his uniform jacket, and it was now scratching the skin on my chest as he was thrusting inside of me with enough force to make me dig my fingers into his uniform cloth. I wasn’t pushing him away, I wanted him closer, wanted him to press my back even harder against his desk, even though tomorrow I’d most likely find several bruises from both the desk and the metal crosses on his chest. My husband wasn’t always a gentle lover, but I liked him even better this way.

  I was biting my lip, trying to remind myself that I wasn’t in my bedroom and couldn’t make any sounds, but the stronger Heinrich’s grip on my thighs was, the harder he moved, the more I was losing control over myself. I didn’t care if his adjutant was going to hear us anymore, I didn’t care if there really was a microphone in Heinrich’s office, I started moaning louder and louder until he pressed my mouth shut with his. I grabbed his neck and wrapped my legs around his waist, allowing him to go even deeper. He was moving faster now, and I had to bite on my finger not to scream.

  “Heinrich, please…” My legs started to shiver and I knew that very soon I wouldn’t be able to keep quiet anymore. But he didn’t listen to my pleadings. He never did. Instead he just pressed both of my hands down and was basically raping me now, his own wife in his own office, dressed all in black; a typical SS officer. I had no idea what was wrong with me that it was driving me so crazy, but I lost all control over myself, closed my eyes, and screamed out his name. He pressed my mouth shut with his hand and kept moving, stronger and stronger, deeper and deeper until he was finally done with me. The heavy weight of his body on top of me was making it hard to breathe, but I still didn’t want to push him away. His hot shallow breath was burning my neck, and I was enjoying every second of it.

  “You’re such a dirty animal,” I told him when he finally opened his eyes and looked at me. He replied with one of his grins and finally got off me, allowing me to at least put my skirt back on.

  “You ripped my stockings.”

  “I’ll buy you new ones.” He put his uniform in order and put his gun back on his belt. “Hungry?”

  “I’m starving!”

  After we finished with lunch in less than five minutes, I was getting ready to leave to complete the last stage of our weekly (and sometimes daily) routine. As I was leaving Heinrich’s office, Mark asked us if we enjoyed our lunch. By the hardly masked smirk on his face, I knew right away that he had heard everything that had happened on his boss’s desk.

  “Oh, shut it, smartass.” Heinrich, unlike me, clearly wasn’t embarrassed. “You wish you could bring your wife here for lunch.”

  After that he gave me a purposely loud kiss on the lips. “I’ll see you at dinner, dear.”

  Now all I had to do was to go to a little park nearby and feed the birds with the crumbs and bread sides, supposedly left from our lunch. “Feeding the birds” was the last and probably the easiest part of the well-rehearsed and always perfectly timed operation. After I was done with the “feeding,” I would have to throw away an “empty” paper bag, which would be picked up precisely one minute after by a man emptying garbage containers. The man of course was one of my husband’s connections, and it would be him who would deliver the, hidden at the bottom of the bag, passports back to the owner of the house whom I saw only hours earlier.

  Then the latter would pass the passports to one of his connections, another German family with which a Jewish family was staying. And after that – freedom. They could freely walk to the train station, buy a ticket, and not to be afraid of being arrested. If you had an SD stamp in your passport, it was like a ticket to the moon, you could go as far as you wanted. I only saw those families on pictures in their passports, but I always prayed that all of them would make it safe to the other side, while we stayed to help as many as we could.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m thinking to quit ballet.”

  Heinrich raised his eyes from the newspaper he was reading and frowned at me. “Why? What happened?”

  I was trying to start this conversation with him a long time ago, but only today I woke up feeling one hundred percent sure that my decision was right. And a sunny Saturday morning seemed like a perfect time to break the news to my husband.

  “Well, first of all it takes up too much time from our ‘job.’ Sometimes I can’t meet your people on time or see you at certain days in the office, and all this causes delays for those families. You know, both they and whoever is hiding them are risking their lives every single minute and time is precious for them.”

  Heinrich slowly nodded with a pensive look on his face but didn’t say anything.

  “And second of all…” Second of all, Gretchen was making my life a living hell, but I wouldn’t say anything to him about it. The first day when I returned to the theatre after the whole necklace incident, she caught me in one of the long corridors, and God, was she furious.

  “Do you know that I almost got put in jail because of you, you dirty Jew?!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, let me pass.”

  “Oh yes, you do. Do you know that the Gestapo people brought me to jail, and Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner was yelling in my face for about twenty minutes nonstop for my so-called ‘false’ accusations? False?! He wouldn’t even let me talk at all! What the hell did you, dirty Jew, do, to make him believe you? Did you fuck him or something?”

  “I didn’t fuck anybody, Gretchen, move and let me go.”

  “You must be really good at it if he took your side. Just like your husband did, when you got yourself in trouble with Ulrich. By the way, does he know that his dirty Jewish whore wife fucked the General?”

  I was really done listening to her and walked past her, pushing her with my shoulder because she wouldn’t move.

  “We both know the truth, you Jewish whore!” she screamed behind my back. Since then she would remind me of what I supposedly “did” at every chance she had.

  “And second of all?” Heinrich’s question brought me back to reality.

  “Right, second of all.” Here comes the most difficult part. “Second of all, Heinrich, and I want you to listen to me very carefully before you call me insane and refuse to even discuss it with me. I know that you just lost your radio operator, and I want to replace him. I already thought it through, and it only makes sense. I’ll be able to send the messages right after I get them from you, no middle men, just think how much time you’ll be able to save. The sooner your people in the States get them the better, right? Besides, you won’t be throwing a shadow on yourself while meeting with your connections to deliver a message, instead it’ll be just you and me, husband and wife. Tell me now it’s not the perfect plan?”

 
“It’s not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s insane, and you’re going to get yourself killed. Stamping the passports is one thing and being caught with a radio is a completely different one. And that’s exactly the reason why I’m constantly losing my men: the Gestapo is able to intercept our signal in minutes, and then that’s it. Done. The fifth guy already.”

  “Did they kill him?”

  “No. As soon as they started breaking into the apartment where he was working, he took a cyanide. Thank God. It sounds very wrong, but… you know what I mean. At least they couldn’t find out anything.”

  It did sound extremely dangerous; I was not going to lie. And if caught, I don’t think that all my looks and flirting would do any good.

  “You said that the Gestapo are able to intercept the transmitting signal within minutes. So the operator has at least five to ten minutes to send it, and get away with the radio, no?”

  “It depends on how close they are. Let’s say someone in East Berlin intercepts the signal from West Berlin, they send the car, but the operator might be gone by then. But if they happen to be right next to the house you’re working in – and that’s exactly what happened to my last guy – there’s no way you’ll get out.”

  “What if you drop the radio? Is it so important to constantly keep one and the same, or it doesn’t matter which one you use?”

  “Well, in the case of an emergency of course you can drop it, but… normally operators are not advised to do so because you have to understand how difficult it will be to get a new one after you get rid of the old one.”

  “Let me do it then.”

  “Didn’t you listen to what I just said? It’s a Russian roulette game, Herzchen.”

  “I did. But let me at least do it until your American friends set you up with a new operator. You have nobody now, do you?”

  Heinrich was frowning and biting on his nail, a habit that seemed to surface every time he was under stress. I noticed it a long time ago. Sometimes he would sit by his desk, his gaze fixed on something in the distance with a pen between his teeth, or a letter opener. It seemed like biting was helping him think and make decisions. And now he made another one.

  “I will let you learn how to operate the radio because you’re right about the emergency situations like the one that I’m in now, with no radio whatsoever. So in the future if I lose yet another one, you’ll be able to send something for me that really needs to be delivered on time. But in all the other cases, you won’t even touch it. I can’t risk my wife’s life for some other country. Deal?”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “Then it’s decided. You keep dancing for now, I know how much it means to you, but I’ll still have you meet the people who I’m working with directly here in Berlin. They both have been living here under false identities for years now, but they’re both American Intelligence agents. Ingrid will teach you the Morse code and the basic principles of operating the radio. She wanted to replace the guy who I lost, but her superiors wouldn’t let her do that. She has a fake life built so carefully and perfectly that risking it all would have been madness. Even I sometimes have no idea how she manages to connect so many people with each other: Austrian Underground, French and British spies, people from Holland, Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia… it almost seems like she knows everybody. And always has a plan.”

  I didn’t like the fact that he was speaking so highly of some other woman, who I had never met in my life, and for the first time since we got married I actually felt jealous. It surprised me a lot. It’s not because he praises her like that, I told myself, it’s because they’re like big kids playing their spy games and wouldn’t let me participate because they think I’m too little. I’ll show them little.

  Berlin, May 22, 1939

  * * *

  I will always remember this day because that’s when everything went wrong. The ringing phone caught me at the doorway when I was leaving my house. I was supposed to meet Ursula at a café and after a quick lunch we were supposed to go shopping. But that never happened after I picked up the phone. It was my mother, and she was crying. They just got the paper. Norbert was being drafted into the army.

  In just half an hour I was sitting with them in the kitchen, my mother still in tears, my father was paler and thinner than usual, and Norbert. My big brother Norbert. My tall, handsome Norbert, with a picture-perfect, future Nazi soldier face. At least that’s what they thought.

  “I don’t understand, why now? We’re not even at war with anybody yet.” I was still confused and hoping that the paper, which I was holding in my hand, was a mistake.

  “‘Yet’ is the correct word, princess.” Even though I was a married woman now, my father was still calling me pet names. “Did you hear the news on the radio today? Hitler signed the pact with Mussolini.”

  “I didn’t hear anything. What does it mean?”

  “It means that they’re officially allies now. And why would you make such a pact with anybody if you’re not planning a war?”

  “War with who, Papa?”

  “Poland, of course. Austria was the easiest part, and they managed to overthrow its former government with only five hundred SS soldiers.” I knew that. And I also had a personal acquaintance with those five hundred SS soldiers’ leader – Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner, who was behind the whole Anschluss operation. “Then our troops marched South-East and this time it was a small army. Neither Great Britain nor France did anything. And now the Führer wants Poland, but this time he knows that it’ll be the last straw, and most likely if we attack Poland we’ll find ourselves at war with three countries: Poland and the allies. That’s why they’re drafting young men into the army, girl. Do you see it now?”

  I did. And more than anything I would hate to have my Jewish brother fighting for a victory of the Nazi regime. My mother started crying again, silently wiping her tears with a wet handkerchief. Norbert seemed very indifferent to everything around him, as if it didn’t concern him at all.

  “Norbert,” I called his name. He raised his blue eyes at me. “Do you want me to talk to Heinrich? Maybe he can do something? He knows a lot of people and maybe he can get you into a position here, in Berlin. That way you at least won’t have to go to the front.”

  He shrugged. “I’d rather go to the front and fight against the real enemy than stay here and kill innocent people.”

  His words cut me like a knife. That’s exactly what he’s thinking of Heinrich. That’s what my whole family is thinking. As if sensing my emotions, Norbert leaned forward and took my hand in his.

  “I’m sorry, Annalise, I didn’t mean it to come out that way. I know how much you love your husband and how much he loves you. I don’t think he’s a bad man, I just think he has a bad job, that’s all. I wouldn’t be able to do it. Don’t worry about me, I’ll just go to the front and will try my best not to get killed.”

  He winked at me with a smile that had remained the same since he was a little boy. He still was. Only twenty-three and not even married yet. So if he dies there will be no one left from him. Why am I thinking about this? What an awful, terrible thought! He won’t die. Of course, he won’t. He’s my only brother, and I love him. He can’t die.

  “Richart, I can’t take it anymore!” my mother cried out. “I will not sit here and listen to my only son talking about getting killed! And you, you, with all your arguments and explanations, it won’t solve anything! Talking will not help us! Get him out of this God forsaken country!!!”

  “Ilsa.” My father was staring at her hard. “Please.”

  “Please what, Richart? Please watch how they will take your son and do nothing? You did it so many times before for the people who you didn’t even know, why won’t you get your own son out?”

  “Papa? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, princess. Ilsa, let’s talk about it later.”

  “Later? There won’t be any ‘later!’ ‘Later’ my son will be gone! Get. Him. Out!!!
Talk to Josef, or I will.”

  “Who’s Josef?”

  “Nobody, sweetie. Ilsa, you’re upset, please go upstairs and I’ll bring you that heart medicine we still have left from Dr. Kramer.”

  “Will someone tell me what’s going on here?”

  I said it so loud that they both got quiet right away. And then Norbert answered my question.

  “Papa’s working for the Underground.”

  “Norbert!”

  “What?” My brother shrugged while I was still sitting there with my mouth open. “She would have found out sooner or later. I don’t think it’s fair that you’re keeping a secret from your own daughter. But now that she knows, why don’t you just tell her everything? Don’t worry, she won’t go tell her husband on you.”

  I looked my father in the eyes, but he looked away. He took a deep breath and started talking. Talking about the beginning of the oppressions and how he lost his sleep. He couldn’t sleep because he had a bed to sleep in, while his fellow Jews were robbed of their property. He couldn’t eat because a German housekeeper was serving him his dinner on fine china while people in ghettos were starving. He couldn’t stand going to the Party meetings anymore because the “Jewish problem” seemed to be the only thing they could talk about.

  When they approached him in a church for the first time, he was happy. They said he could help a lot of people. They said, as a lawyer, he could falsify a lot of papers for them. Marriage certificates, birth certificates, property ownerships, legal name changes, notarizations… he agreed to all of it. I was listening and thinking how reckless he was in his desperate desire to finally be useful, to stop his conscience from burning him like red-hot steel every time he saw another truck pull up and take more people; men and women, young and old, like cattle, to be killed. He knew where they were taking them. He was a member of the Party. He knew it all.

  He’d already made a lot of mistakes. I knew of them from Heinrich’s words, they were not professionals, these Underground people, they weren’t trained, they weren’t soldiers, just regular people acting on instinct. There were many of them all over Germany, but there was too little they could do without the proper organization, equipment, and at least some structure. That’s why they were constantly getting caught by the Gestapo, who were laughing at their efforts to put up a fight against the Nazi regime. The Gestapo didn’t even really bother with them because they didn’t consider the Underground a serious threat. But it didn’t mean that they didn’t kill every single one of them when they caught them.