The Führer Must Die

by Victoria Andre King

  “Margit was asleep when I got back and out the next day when I woke up, that was a blessing; I thought maybe my luck was changing. I sat on the bed and waited, constantly checking the clock but it was still early afternoon. I did something strange, used my keys to Margit’s apartment. I finally had an opportunity to peruse her space at my leisure, and that violation of her privacy almost made me want her again. I took the bottle of brandy from where she’d hidden it under the sink, poured myself a glass and began to rifle through her bookshelf, or should I say play shelf. It was almost touching seeing her unrequited ambitions there, neatly lined up in a row. Of course I passed on the dark Scandinavians and Russians, but that operetta was actually entertaining. I chuckled as I slipped Hannah’s ‘Der Blaue Engel/Professor Unrat’ in its place; I guess Margit’s theatrical background just made it somehow appropriate. I took her play—only slightly uncomfortable about the fact that it had her name written inside the front cover—and the bottle of course, back to my room and got resolutely drunk, drunk and waiting. I started to masturbate to pass the time but couldn’t do that either. Margit would be coming home to be serviced and I would need all the appetite I could muster to handle it. I don’t know why but that evening I spanked her, and she responded like I was the only man who had ever understood her.

  “I finally escaped, got to the BürgerBräuKeller early. There was nowhere else to go. It was 8:00 p.m. and the dining rooms were still busy. I walked through carrying my suitcase, overcoat buttoned up, trying hard to be nonchalant. Music and party noises grew louder as I got closer to the ballroom. When I arrived at the door I found that a dance was in progress. I bought a ticket and went up to the balcony. I spent several hours watching the dancers and waiting for them to leave. They were all young, dancing waltzes out of an operetta, or in small groups plotting their next intrigue at the top of their lungs. They all looked rigidly cheerful. I didn’t know if they were happy, but they were very alive and made the night seem crisp and clear. I looked over the girls, finding the flaws in their features or the cheapness of a dress, but then I stopped myself.

  “I suddenly felt old, which was silly too. Thirty-six isn’t old; it isn’t young either but statistically only women get old, while men on the other hand just get more interesting. Ulrich had said that, but he must have heard it somewhere else. The memories the situation called up weren’t pleasant; my mind skipped back fifteen years. I’d played the zither very competently but without adding flourishes or trying to show off. I tried to remember the music. It had been mostly folk songs, all with the same stomping beat and almost the same melody. I couldn’t remember any of them, only the sound of feet pounding out the rhythm on the floor. I felt very tired.

  “The dance was breaking up, the dancers leaving, the girls chattering and the boys grunting reassurances. The musicians were packing up, some of them leaving their instruments on the bandstand. I suddenly wanted to handle the bass. Perhaps, in the middle of the night, I could come down and play for a while. It had been such a stupid idea that I began to giggle. I lingered another moment in silence with a lonely smile watching the girls leave, and then went back to the storeroom to wait. The door to the ballroom was unlocked. I thought about that, but nothing happened. More information was needed but I was too tired to worry, too tired to feel fear. I sat down resting my elbows on my knees; seemed like I could feel them beginning to heal. I waited. There was nothing to think about and nothing I wanted to remember. I fondled myself through my pants, a childish vice but I’d grown up too fast so I figured I deserved indemnity; while I wondered if I’d ever actually been young, I fell asleep without realizing it.

  “When I woke up it was almost 4:00 a.m. I grabbed the suitcase and rushed out to the balcony. Sitting down in front of the pillar I clawed the door open, opened the suitcase, and took out the detonators. That moment I switched into slow motion. I carefully fit them into depressions in the explosives and taped them in position. I lifted the metal box containing the clock works. The trip wires dangled from it and I swept them back over my shoulder until the box was in position and I could connect them to the detonators. I adjusted my position, switching to my knees and guided the box forward into the cavity. It wouldn’t fit. I eased it in at a slight angle working it from side to side between my hands, but it still wouldn’t fit. The box was a fraction of a millimeter too big, horizontally and vertically. I put the box down and wanted to curse but when I opened my mouth the only sound that came out was the hoarse raging scream of a trapped animal. I tried to modulate it into words, to control it, but my voice tore away from me in a vast open-mouthed groan. Then I leaned my head against the pillar and cried like a baby.

  “In the end it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. When I left in the noon crush I checked and re-checked the date below the headline at a newsstand. It was only November 6th. I still had nearly two whole days.

  “I arrived at the carpentry shop and immediately set to work at the rear table, cutting the joints of the box deeper with a pair of borrowed tin snips, bending it into shape and trimming it down. Luckily there had been enough play in the dimensions that I didn’t need to find a way to reduce the contents as well. Franz didn’t ask any questions, as I said he had his admirable qualities; he wasn’t stupid however, though he was almost everything else, and he had suddenly passed the point of suspicion to the realm of real terror. Anything he might be told would involve him further so, of course, Franz said nothing and asked nothing. I worked quickly and it took less than two hours so there’d been nothing to worry about after all.

  “That night when I pushed the box into the hollowed section of the pillar, it fit perfectly. I removed it again and opened the lid to get at the clocks. I took the neatly folded clipping from my wallet and read it one more time. It said that the Führer always started to speak at 20:10 and finished at 22:20. I subtracted 20:10 form 22:20 and got 130 minutes. I divided 130 by two to get sixty-five. Sixty-five minutes after 20:10 made detonation time 21:15. It was 02:45 on the morning of November 7th; I quickly did the math. Had the box fit the previous night then the trip wires would not have been long enough; I would have had to come back anyway. I quickly made the necessary adjustments: in forty-two-point-five hours the bomb would detonate.

  “I closed the lid. I picked up the apparatus and slid it back into its scabbard in the pillar. I connected the trip wires to the detonators and fit them into the explosives, it was suddenly absolutely and totally real, the only reality I knew and I looked at it hungrily, fingers twitching, but there was nothing left to do. I closed the trapdoor with slow-motion grace and studied the result. The edges of the door were still invisible, hidden among the corrugations and fluting of the pillar. There was nothing left to do and that was painful at first but it gradually turned into something else. I stood up, stretched my arms in a Y toward the ceiling and bent my head back waiting for ecstasy. It was a pagan gesture, something totally unheard of for my theretofore very Lutheran self. It was a gesture I had never seen or even imagined before but it seemed quite natural. The ecstasy came and turned into a rapture that made thought impossible, it felt like talking to the angels and, had I concentrated more, they might have even answered me.”

  “Why three clocks?” Nolte’s anal interjection was like a bucket of cold swill heaved in his face.

  Georg gazed around him, trying to get his bearings after his reverie. “One might have failed, or even two. I thought I had said that.”

  “What did you do then, Georg?” asked Nebe, reasserting the fact that he was actually in charge of the interrogation.

  Elser looked up at him with doe eyes. “I left, what else was there to do?”

  “And that was on …?” A prissy question but predictable.

  Georg seemed confident. “November 7th, it had to be.”

  Nolte couldn’t restrain himself. “And you had no way of knowing that the Führer wasn’t coming?”

  Georg looked from one to the other with suddenly growing uncertainty. “No, I didn’t k
now he wasn’t coming, or rather wasn’t supposed to come. Can anyone finally tell me what actually happened?”

  Nebe signaled to Brandt to stop typing. “His old fighters had written him that letter,” said Nebe, “saying that it was a change in fundamental procedure and, for that reason, it would be taken to mean a basic change in the status of the Party. And saying that, they were sure he would agree that this kind of internal confusion was an undesirable distraction at a time when the war effort was being extended, or something to that effect. There were also expressions of personal loss and a disordered collection of arguments that gave the impression of hysteria, which was the primary reason why he finally came in the end. He didn’t want them to be a nuisance while he was busy invading England. The invasion had been postponed because of the rain. You can’t have an invasion without air support and the cloud cover was too thick for the pilots to see the ground. Of course they didn’t know anything about that in Munich, they simply knew that the weather was bad. They had expected that to work to their advantage. They had even hoped that the Führer might stay overnight for the parade, but that wasn’t the way it happened.”

  “And how do you know all that?” asked Nolte, indignant as always.

  Nebe savored his colleague’s discomfort a moment. “It’s my job after all. I do still have a few friends in Berlin.”

  “Fascinating,” Georg said supportively.

  “Thank you,” said Nebe. “But let us return to your saga. You say you ran. Munich is only sixty kilometers from the Swiss border. So where exactly did you run to?”

  Georg lowered his eyes in shame. “My sister’s house.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake!” Nolte made to lunge for him but Nebe raised his fist so Nolte turned and kicked a chair instead.

  Brandt looked desperate. “Can we stop?”

  Nebe nodded and gestured to Nolte to fetch the guards. Nobody had the courage to say another word and Georg was left to gaze around anxiously until his bearers whisked him back to his cell.

  NOVEMBER 16TH, 1939

  NOLTE AND BRANDT STRODE DOWN the corridor toward the office, Nolte testing yet another theory. “Maybe their relationship was incestuous?”

  Brandt stared at him. “What kind of sick family did you come from?”

  Nolte ignored the jibe. “It would explain why she was repeatedly willing to put up with his freeloading.”

  Brandt was not convinced. “They are Aryan Lutherans!”

  Nolte simply shrugged and Brandt shook his head hopelessly.

  As they entered the office they stopped short. Nebe was already there drinking coffee with Georg, there was a chessboard set up between them. It meant nothing to Brandt but Nolte bit down on his lip; Nebe’s King was in repose. Nebe addressed them stoically, “Places, gentlemen.” He nodded to Georg to begin.

  “So it was the late afternoon of the 7th. I walked through my sister’s yard carrying my tool case and suitcase, full of my underwear, socks and old sweaters. It would be a respectable gesture after all of her hospitality and I had no use for them. It wasn’t that I expected to get caught, getting rid of old things just felt right, part of the ceremony of leaving myself behind. Werner and son were out at some rally and it was Anna-Sophie who answered the door.

  “‘Georg, what are you doing here?’ She was past the suspicion stage and simply alarmed to see me. It might have had something to do with Werner.

  “‘Anna-Sophie …’ I eased through the door sideways and she stepped back a little to let me pass. ‘I’m leaving you whatever clothes I don’t want to have to lug around as well as what’s left of my tools.’

  “She was terrified. ‘What will you do? How can you find a job without your tools?’

  “I smiled at her, and it was an honest smile it really expressed what I thought I was feeling at the time. ‘It’s too difficult to care for them moving around. Besides, the way things are going I’m sure I’ll just have to retrain again in another skill anyway.’

  “She leaned back against the wall. ‘Georg, what have you done?’ She sounded like she was crying and trying to sing at the same time.

  “Her question suddenly reminded me of my son and the answer came to me in a flash, ‘Got a girl in trouble.’ I watched for the reaction and saw that my choice had been exactly the right reply.

  “There was no more anger but also no more doubt. ‘This time will you marry her?’ Her stout resolution was admirable, or at least would have been under other circumstances.

  “I was resolute in my own way. ‘No.’ I didn’t explain. She was convinced that men were by nature irrational, so I really didn’t need reasons.

  “‘Don’t tell me it was that nice girl you brought out here?’ I couldn’t even remember when or who that had been, seemed like a past life.

  “‘No, someone you don’t know.’ She tried to slap me but I blocked her arm. ‘I’m going to need some money. I’m down to my last ten Reich marks.’

  “She stared at me as though she didn’t recognize me and was trying to remember who I was. Then she jumped from in front of me and ran through the house crying, stumbling up the stairs, covering her face with her hands, and keening. I picked up my cases and followed her. She ran into the bedroom and knelt down by the bed. At first I thought she was praying, but actually she was pulling out a box she had hidden under it, obviously a family trait. She opened it and grabbed out a fistful of money and thrust it at me. She closed her eyes and resorted to self-conscious theatrics so the worst was over. I made no move to take the money so she looked up and started counting the bills in her hand. ‘Is thirty marks enough?’

  “‘Plenty.’ I took it and wadded it into my pocket. We stayed like that, me standing and her kneeling, watching each other and waiting for one to think of something to say.

  “‘When will you be home again?’ she asked.

  “I kissed her forehead tenderly. ‘This isn’t my home, it’s yours; but I thank you.’

  “That seemed to upset her even more. ‘When will you be back then?’ The cords under her neck were tightening again. I didn’t really know so I couldn’t answer. ‘Never?’ she said. That might have been a relief, perhaps the only words that would have made her happy.

  “‘Yes, I suppose it has to be never.’ There was another silence but that was finished too. I did an about-face and walked out of the house.

  “I caught the last train from Stuttgart to Konstanz, then walked the two miles to the border. The moon was waning but still bright, running behind high narrow clouds, it seemed to flash on and off as the clouds riffled by in front of it perfect weather for sneaking across a border. The light was off for about three seconds at a time, just long enough for a person to move from one clutch of trees to the next, even if the border was being watched, and it would be better if it was, the guards would say that they’d been watching the crossing continuously and that no one had gotten through. I saw that school house 100 meters from the border and detoured to pass in front of it. I’d hoped that the customs guards would be looking over my head at the border crossing and as such would not see me.

  “The building shut up for the night. The windows and shutters were closed. It seemed to be some kind of government home for children; I looked around but there were no other buildings except for the one behind me. The guards might have been hiding behind the trees but there really seemed to be no reason for them to be doing that, it was a cold night. I walked straight toward the border. There was no logical way they could stop me. If I had heard shouting, I’d have started to run. It would have taken an expert marksman to bring me down, zigzagging among the trees in the erratic moonlight, not to mention that every expert marksman in the Reich was being put to use elsewhere. I figured it was a pretty safe bet.

  “There were no shouts. I walked up to the border and stopped. Suddenly there was no rush. I wondered if I had forgotten something. Once in Switzerland I wouldn’t be able to make myself turn back. That moment there on the border was my one chance to think it all through
from the beginning, sped up by internal simulation, but I had forgotten nothing. Or had I?

  “I realized right then that I had made one oversight. The escape had never been part of the master plan. It had always appeared easy so there had been no reason to dedicate any thought to it. When I used to live in Konstanz I had crossed the border so many times that it seemed almost impossible not to be able to cross the border; ergo, there was nothing to plan. That was my mistake. I’d created a future I couldn’t actually imagine, but I was carried forward into it step-by-step by the process of preparation. There I was with the future behind me and there was nothing to do but wait. It was like waiting for combat orders, nobody ever gets used to it, just scared.

  “My life had been at stake all along but that was different. The danger was point blank, hard edged, in front of me. It would be comparatively easy to handle because there would have been something to do about it. There would still have been a next step in the plot to carry me forward and out of it. Suddenly there was nothing to do but wait. I thought of the thirty something hours ahead and time lost its continuity. It split into a sequence of identical empty moments of nothing to do but wait. A repetition that changed so little it seemed to be happening in progressively slower motion. It ended in a fixed wax museum pose, staring into the knowing smirk of my next fat, cunning landlady. My stomach knotted and the taste of sauerkraut came up into my mouth. I gulped it back down and blinked. The moonlight was smooth and steady because even the clouds had stopped moving. There had to be something that I could recheck.