Getting Theo out of custody took longer. Millie called Harry Sutton, and he came quickly, but it was almost ten that night by the time Sutton’s jeep dropped Theo at his quarters with orders not to budge until further notice. Theo thanked Harry grudgingly, then came around the vehicle to cross the street to his flat and stepped into the beams of the headlights. The bloodstains on his trousers bloomed in the light like deadly flowers. She turned away from the sight, but she couldn’t block out the image of Theo’s boot connecting with the man’s head again and again and again. It had been running in her mind all day, like a newsreel that wouldn’t stop. She saw Theo’s foot swinging back, coming forward, the man’s body jolting with the force of the blow, blood spurting, and Theo’s mouth snarling curses.
“I need a drink,” Sutton said when the jeep started away from Theo’s building, “and if you don’t, there’s something wrong with you.”
She said she did and didn’t tell him about the looping newsreel. He’d heard enough details of Theo’s assault from the MPs.
They went to the officers’ club with the art deco murals where Theo had taken her the first time they’d had dinner. It had survived the decadence of the Weimar Republic and the deceptively scrubbed depravity of the Third Reich, but it was beginning to show wear under the Occupation. Someone, unloosed by alcohol or homesickness or both, had scrawled “Kilroy Was Here” in a bottom corner of one of the murals.
“The man was a guard in Sachsenhausen,” she said when they were settled across from each other at a table beneath the two tangoing women in diaphanous gowns. “Anna recognized him.”
“So you all kept saying. But there are protocols for that sort of thing, and beating the hell out of a man in a public square that just happens to be the biggest black market in town is not one of them.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“The camp guard or Wallach?”
She’d meant Theo, but Harry’s mention of the camp guard started the newsreel looping in her head again. Now there was a soundtrack. She could hear Theo as well as see him. He hadn’t been shouting curses. He’d been howling numbers. Kick. One. Kick. Two. Kick. Three. She wasn’t sure how high he’d gotten, but she knew that if the MPs hadn’t pulled him away, he would have kept going until he’d reached eighteen.
“I meant what’s going to happen to Theo. I assume the guard will get what he deserves.”
“He’ll go on trial, if that’s what you mean. But I wouldn’t be so sure of just deserts. For every sadist like that guard, there are probably two or a couple of dozen garden-variety opportunists. They survived under the Nazis and they’ll figure out how to survive in a new regime. All they have to do is stop singing ‘Deutschland über Alles’ and start whistling Dixie. And that goes for this guard too, if you wait a few more years. The new Germany we’re supposedly building on the foundations of democracy isn’t likely to be too different from the old one built on Nazism or fascism or totalitarianism or whatever the hell you want to call it. I’ll put money on the same cast of characters running the show.”
“That’s encouraging. What about Theo?”
“With any luck, I can call in some favors and head off a court-martial, but Theo’s days in the denazification business are over. He’s a good man, when he doesn’t let his anger get the better of him, but I can’t afford him here. Especially now.”
“Why especially now?”
He hesitated.
“My lips are sealed.”
He still hesitated.
“Look at it this way. If you tell me, each of us will have something on the other.”
“What do I have on you?”
“You can tell people how I disgraced myself all over your shoes.”
“There are some who’d say the disgrace would have been in not getting sick at the realization. Besides, if nothing else, you got me to shine my shoes.”
“So I noticed. What were you about to tell me?”
He glanced around the room.
“Nobody can hear you above that damn oompah band. I can barely hear you. Besides, no one cares. They’re all too drunk or amorous or calculating their poker or bridge hands.”
He leaned toward her. “Do you remember the first morning you walked into my office, and I warned you about what is known in official channels as excessive zeal? Or behind closed doors by the Krauts and more than a few of our own people as too many returning German Jews out for a pound of flesh?”
“I haven’t taken a knife to anyone yet.”
“Except the Frauleins, but I wasn’t talking about you. There’s an order kicking around headquarters.” He glanced around again.
“You can’t stop now.”
“General Clay’s office,” he said finally, and his voice had dropped again. “That’s how high up it is. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you.”
“New directives about who qualifies to work in denazification. It’s all stated in properly oblique terms. ‘All officers must have been citizens for at least ten years.’ ‘No renewal of contracts of anyone who was not a citizen prior to 1933.’ And my favorite, ‘In carrying out these orders, officers must refrain from discussion of the subject.’ In other words, the Krauts have got through to the brass. No more dirty Jews sitting in judgment of the still-master race. But don’t let the word get out.”
“I guess the only thing that surprises me is that I can still be surprised.”
“Look on the bright side. This time they’re just firing people, not hauling them off to camps.”
“When should I start packing?”
“You shouldn’t.”
“My contract isn’t up for another nine months, but I’m sure the Army can find a way around that.”
He drained his drink and signaled the waiter for another. “You’re not going anywhere. First of all, the order hasn’t come down officially. Yet. It’s there, but it hasn’t been issued. The brass knows it’s a bombshell. Secondly, if and when it does, we’ll find a way around it. For starters, I’ll point out that they won’t have much of a department with only our good gentile Yalie, Jack Craig, in place.”
“Jack and you to run the show and train the new people.”
“Pardon me?”
“Surely they wouldn’t reassign you. Even the anti-Semitic brass can’t believe in guilt by association.”
“Try guilt by birth.”
“Are you telling me Harry Sutton is a Jew?”
“I just assumed you knew. Or guessed, given our preponderance in the department. Harry Sutton started life as Hans Sutheim. And before you get on your high moral horse, Meike Mosbach, I wasn’t trying to buy gentile. I just didn’t like being German. Any more than you did apparently, though I always wondered why you didn’t change the last name as well. Figured your future husband would do the trick?”
“I figured it would hurt my father too much.”
He sat looking at her for a moment. “The Nazis took care of that particular problem for me in ’33,” he said finally. “One of the first casualties at Dachau. Quite an honor, don’t you think?”
“Yet you turn yourself inside out trying to be fair to them.”
He polished off his second drink. “Sometime I’ll tell you about that too. Maybe. But I’ve done enough undressing in public for one night. Not to mention spilling military secrets.” He signaled for the check. “I just thought I ought to warn you about the order.”
“Thanks. From now on, I’ll be on my best behavior. But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said as he paid for the drinks. “Where did Hans Sutheim pick up such a posh English accent?”
“From Victoria Sutheim. Nee Victoria Ayer.”
It was the first time she’d thought of his being married. He didn’t wear a ring, but then few men over here did. They weren’t eager to broadcast their marital status. Besides, wedding bands were worn on the third finger of the left hand. Then again, people didn’t usually acquire accents from spo
uses, though she’d known a secretary at the magazine who had sounded like a cross between Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf. When Millie had asked where in France she’d grown up, she’d said Northeast Philadelphia, but her husband came from Rouen, and she’d rolled the r like a growl.
“Your wife?”
“My mother. She was an English nanny to a German family. Until they found out she was a Jew as well as a Brit and tossed her out. That was before the First War. It wasn’t as bad then, but being a Jew in Germany has never been all beer and skittles. She had to find a new job so she answered my grandfather’s ad for a secretary. He hired her. My father fell in love.” He stood. “And the rest is my history.”
On their way out of the club, she couldn’t help stopping and turning her head to look at him again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to get used to you as Hans Sutheim.”
“You mean as a Jew?”
“Awful as that sounds, yes.”
“Why? Because I don’t practice? Neither do you. Because I don’t believe? Do you? But even with all that, or rather without all that, I’m still a Jew.”
“Because the world forces you to be?”
“Yes, but not the way you mean. Because the world forces me to choose to be. As long as it’s a crime or a shame or even a disadvantage to be a Jew, I’ll be one.”
She went on looking up at him in surprise. “I never thought of you as quixotic.”
“I’m not. Just stubborn.”
They came out of the club into the Berlin winter. Snow had begun to fall again. Big wet flakes swirled around them. She turned up the collar of her coat. He switched on his flashlight. The beam caught a GI and a girl huddled in a doorway.
“It never stops,” she said as they started down the street. “Even in the snow.”
“Can you think of a better way to keep warm?”
She hated the fact that he could joke about it, but she didn’t want to fight with him, not now, not after their conversation in the club, not after what he’d done for Theo. The thought of Theo started the newsreel in her mind again. The boot against the head. The body jolting from the force. Theo spitting out the numbers. How could similar experiences twist two men into such different shapes?
Eleven
She was surprised when Harry came striding into her office the next morning. He usually sent Fraulein Schmidt with a summons. It wasn’t a matter of pulling rank. At least, it wasn’t only a matter of that. He hated running the gauntlet of Germans who snapped to attention every time he stepped into the outer office. She wondered if last night’s drink was going to change their working relationship.
He took a piece of paper from the folder he was holding, leaned over, and put it on her desk. “Take a look at this.”
“Something to do with Theo?”
“Take a look,” he repeated.
She picked the piece of paper up off her desk and skimmed the first few paragraphs. It was a character reference. She hadn’t seen one before, though she’d heard about them. They were known as Persil letters after the popular cleaning agent because the intent was to whitewash the German petitioning for clearance. They were usually written by an individual’s priest or minister, attesting to an immaculate soul as well as an unflagging dedication to the church and a long history of good deeds. Occasionally they came from Jews, citing kindness and protection offered during the Nazi years. Whether the letters were true was anyone’s guess. The ones written by clergy might have been well-intentioned, even sincere, or merely opportunistic. The ones written by Jews were more puzzling. Perhaps some were true. There must have been Germans who tried to help their Jewish countrymen. But many must have been put-up jobs. So the real question was what would make a Jew fabricate a letter like that?
She looked up from her desk. “You think this is bogus?”
“Look at the signature.”
She glanced down at the letter again. “Respectfully submitted, Frau Sigmund Altschul.” Her head snapped up.
“Did she ever mention a Herr Huber to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
He took another piece of paper from the file and handed it to her. “Herr Huber’s address before the war and during it was the building where Frau Kneff and your cousin lived, until your cousin was dispossessed. The timing is just suspicious enough to suggest that he was the one who took over her flat.”
“Then why would she write the letter for him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“I was planning to take her some things from the PX tonight. I’ll ask her.”
“Don’t.”
“She’s still in need. Whether the letter is true or not. Maybe more so if it isn’t. Maybe that’s why she wrote it.”
“I didn’t mean don’t take her things. I meant don’t ask her. It’ll only scare her. Falsifying information like this is as serious as lying on a Fragebogen. We’ll take care of it ourselves. Once we’ve defused the situation, whatever it is, we’ll talk to her.”
She sat staring at him.
“Don’t look so surprised, Millie. I’m not the s.o.b. you think.”
“I never thought you were an s.o.b.”
“Only a German-lover, which sounds suspiciously like that reviled figure from the last regime, Jew-lover. But back to Herr Huber. How would you like to pay a visit to the Documents Center, which just happens to hold the Zentralkartei of the NSDAP?”
“The what?”
“The central membership register of the entire Nazi Party.”
“I can translate, thanks, but what exactly is it?”
“A Who’s Who of infamy. Every member of the party, no matter how high up or how minor, signed a card. Two actually. When someone joined, duplicate cards were made, the member signed both, the first was kept in the local registry, and the second was sent to the central office in Munich. So those song and dances we get about I never joined, someone else signed me up are pure bollocks. Every last Jack of them, and Jill, had to fill out the application and sign the card in person.”
“You’d think the officials would have destroyed them when they knew the Allies were getting close.”
“They tried to. That’s the best part of the story. Hitler didn’t believe he was losing the war but plenty of his officers did. Needless to say, they didn’t want their meticulously kept records falling into Allied hands. So some prudent soon-to-be-ex-Nazi arranged for a convoy of trucks to transport them under armed guard to a paper mill in the Bavarian boondocks. The orders were to pulp every last record immediately. Unfortunately, or fortunately for us, the owner of the mill dithered. Maybe he was anti-Nazi. Maybe he, unlike the Fuhrer, knew the Allies were on the way and wanted some leverage. Whatever his motives, he kept coming up with excuses. First he pleaded he had no fuel. The authorities sent some. Then his machines kept breaking down. He was playing a dangerous game, but it paid off the day the Seventh Army rolled into town. When the men came across all those sacks with official Nazi labels, they were over the moon. Gold bullion. Stolen loot. Even German schnapps and French champagne would have been a boon. Instead out came eight and a half million index cards. Every one of them ended up here in the Documents Center. So I think our first order of business is to head over there—it’s not far—and find out if there’s a membership card for Herr Gerhart Huber.”
* * *
She had expected a forbidding concrete barracks. The jeep, driven by Private Meer, who had no trouble watching his language in front of Major Sutton, pulled up in front of a half-timbered villa not unlike dozens of others in Zehlendorf. The only difference was the barbed wire double fence, the klieg lights, which were just going on in the gathering dusk, and the heavy military guard. Inside the building, they had to show passes at several checkpoints before they were led down a narrow winding staircase to the basement vaults. She pulled her coat closer. The air in the vaults was as frigid as outdoors, and clammier.
“How many you looking
for, Major?” the sergeant who was leading the way asked.
“Just one. Herr Gerhart Huber. Date of birth 8/19/01. Place of birth Oranienburg.”
“Site of one of the first, if not the first concentration camp, eh?” the sergeant said as he guided them through a labyrinth of metal filing cabinets.
“True,” Harry said, “but that’s not what we’re looking for.”
“Sure he was a party member, sir?”
“Let’s just say I have my suspicions.”
The sergeant stopped in front of a filing cabinet, bent, and pulled out a drawer near the bottom. Millie stood watching as he walked his fingers through the files, hesitated, and pulled one out. He glanced at the contents, then shook his head. Gerhart Huber all right, but wrong d.o.b.” He bent again, replaced the file, pulled out another, and opened it. “Here’s your boy, sir. Dyed-in-the-wool. Member in good standing since ’32.” He handed the file to Harry, who studied it, then passed it to Millie. As she stood staring at it, she felt as if she were going down another rabbit hole. What had Anna done to survive? What did this man have on her? But then who was she to ask that question?
“Can we get a copy of this?” Harry said.
“I can have one of the girls snap a photo. While she’s at it, would you like a tour of our other treasures from the glory days of the Thousand-Year Reich? The SS files starring Heinrich Himmler and his band of merry murderers are something to see. Then there’s the Fuhrer’s very own card. We keep that in a special safe.”
The Living and the Lost Page 11
