Fulcrum of Malice

by Patrick W O'Bryon

Horst von Kredow fumed, his jaw clenched as tightly as his fists. Leaving the basement cells in Gestapo headquarters, he stormed up to Reinhard Heydrich’s formal office and demanded an immediate meeting with the chief of Reich security, who left him cooling his heels in the antechamber for a quarter hour before finding time to speak.

  “Horst, how good of you to drop by.” Heydrich nonchalantly lit a cigarette and offered one to Horst. “All settled in downstairs?”

  Von Kredow declined with a shake of the head. He was doing his best to rein in his fury, but couldn’t bring himself to utter pleasantries. “I am told you released my prisoner Richard Kohl.” Horst found his hands trembling. “The man’s a danger to the Reich, irresponsible on all counts and a flagrant liar, and I personally intend to make a lesson of him for others here at Gestapa.”

  “Come, Horst. Take it easy, have a seat and we can discuss the matter.” Heydrich sat behind his polished desk and leaned back in the chair. “Allow me to be frank with you. I know things haven’t been easy since you lost your wife and child to the terrorists a few years back. That’s why I gave you free rein in France. You were in no condition for the bureaucratic rigors required here in the Reich Security Office. But believe me when I say that you have done an excellent job in counter-intelligence. Those terrorists and traitors you returned to Berlin have provided outstanding information, and I thank you for it.”

  Von Kredow tried to temper his anger. “I intend to give you the same results here, Reinhard.”

  Heydrich seemed disinterested in Horst’s reassurance. “Tell me this—did you ever locate the monster who allowed that lovely wife and young son of yours to drown in the Rhine?”

  Horst hesitated. Had Kohl spilled his guts to Heydrich to win his release? He never should have given the weakling a day to simmer in fear and regret! He should have killed the bastard when he had the chance, but now he had to focus on the matter at hand. “Sadly, no, despite our best efforts to track him down. That treacherous Frenchman still runs free, but I intend to bring him to justice when time and duty allow.”

  “Exactly my point—time and duty foremost, right? Listen, Horst—I find myself on a short fuse right now, what with needing to bring Prague in line. I need reliable people here who think before they act, and I can’t afford to leave my offices here in a shambles.” He ran one finger along the smooth blade of his engraved letter opener, admiring its sheen. “This isn’t France, Horst—this is Berlin, and I insist that my security services work diligently and without distraction.”

  “The punishment of traitors isn’t a distraction, is it?” Horst gripped the chair arms in frustration, wishing he needn’t restrain his words.

  “It’s obvious you’re upset with Kohl’s release, but I fear you’ve allowed some personal dissatisfaction to get in the way of an important Reich matter. If I had time, I would personally delve into the error of his ways. But the Führer needs every trained asset who understands the American mentality. Donovan’s SOI operatives are beginning to cause us some problems. Richard Kohl knows how these Americans think, how their government functions, all vital information in understanding the weaknesses of a future enemy. We’ll face them on the battlefield soon enough. They’re already in flagrant disregard of so-called neutrality with their support of the Allies, and that means we’ll need men like Kohl to help with countermeasures. Do I make myself clear?”

  “But sir, the man disregarded my direct orders for the sake of self-aggrandizement!”

  “If we filled our cellar with everyone around here who put personal gain ahead of an order, we’d quickly run out of basement cells, don’t you think?” Heydrich released that despicable braying laugh of his. The Jewish goat! “Look at the broader picture, Horst. I’m leaving soon to put right the Czech situation. I brought you here to manage what I’ve built in Berlin, not put it at risk, and personal vendettas and disputes will make your success impossible. Have I bet on the wrong horse?”

  Von Kredow forced calm. “Not at all, Reinhard.” He attempted a smile. “As always, I do as you say.”

  “We’re clear, then.” Heydrich rose from his chair and Horst recognized the dismissal. “Here’s my suggestion—you are not yet fully accustomed to how things have changed in your absence. Travel and distance drains a man, you know. Kohl returns immediately to his intelligence work in Paris, so he’ll be out of your hair. You will let him be, and that’s my direct order, understood?”

  “Of course, Reinhard.”

  “If he continues to cause us problems, I’ll be the first to know and can turn you loose on him, but absolutely nothing without my direct command. Meanwhile, spend this next week at that fine home with the view of the Wannsee. Take the Canaris files with you, relax over a few drinks and some good food, put that brilliant analytical mind of yours to good use and find me something I’ve missed to use against Canaris and his Abwehr.”

  Horst nodded. “Allow me to offer an alternative suggestion, Reinhard. It fits right in with your recommendation. What if I get some rest down in the Ruhr while looking into something that might point directly to Canaris’ treason?” Horst hoped this would be the clincher. “I believe he may be involved with one of Donovan’s spy teams.”

  “All in good time, Horst, all in good time.” Heydrich crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and took von Kredow by the elbow, guiding him across the red carpet. “But for now, I must say no. I want you here in the city and available the moment I call. Meanwhile, I insist you get rest and recover from that last run-in with the French saboteurs. No insult intended, but you still appear a bit under the weather. When next we meet, you’ll be back in the game and prepared for the most challenging of tasks, understood?”

  Horst understood all too well but saw no point in further argument. He was momentarily side-tracked, his hands tied, if only for the moment. Heydrich would have an eye on him, so he would demonstrate his loyalty. Then, when time and opportunity permitted, when Reinhard was in Prague, he would show the strength of his own will.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Berlin, Germany

  27 September 1941

  The citizens of Niedermühlen took pride in their community. The flower boxes overflowed with red blooms, the water fountain splashing on the square remained reasonably clean, and the shutters on the houses were all neatly painted. But nothing could prevent the surrounding foundries and industrial plants from polluting the sky with smoke and ash, casting a pall over the small Ruhr town.

  Argent sat on the Wattenauerstrasse, the main thoroughfare linking the prison dormitories and the huge ordnance complex to the north of town. He watched absent-mindedly as a layer of gritty dust gathered on the café table wiped clean only an hour earlier. Attempts to accelerate the passage of time by reading local papers failed in a matter of minutes. He ate with no appetite, his stomach in knots since arriving in town three days earlier.

  It hadn’t been easy spotting Marita in the crowd of exhausted women trudging home after a long shift. The street was barely lit and the prisoners so shabbily dressed they all looked alike. He had matched their pace from the dark side of the street until her column passed beneath a streetlamp. Marita appeared even smaller in those ugly clogs, plodding along in the dark, her step uneven, her shoulders hunched. Walking near the end of the column, she quietly encouraged a woman stumbling along ahead of her.

  Two days had passed since that first glimpse, and the delay was killing him. Dressed as a civilian, he had taken a room in the Gasthaus zur Post. According to his travel papers, a soldier on leave. He told the owner he was vacationing here since travel to Ostpreussen was too problematic to risk a visit home on so short a leave. Even he found the story unconvincing.

  His wait for Lemmon had been fruitless. The Personals in the Berlin newspapers contained all the agreed-upon code words, so twice daily Argent had taken the local bus to the Essen train station to wait beneath the clock at the pre-arranged times. The American agent never showed. It was a frustrating ritual, and Argent had finally had enoug
h. He’d done his duty to Rolf and Lemmon, but seeing Marita slogging to work and back again to the barracks tortured him. That night he would act.

  His plan was simple. Two armed guards led the parade of prisoners, another two brought up the rear. Each night she marched near the end, so he planned accordingly. Having Lemmon’s help might have been useful, but he was now determined to go it alone. He’d walked the entire route several times and believed he had the ideal solution.

  At the city hall the column made a turn onto the Rathausplatz. Directly across the square was a narrow alleyway where he would wait and watch for her approach. Just behind the city hall was a labyrinth of narrow streets where they could quickly disappear together under cover of darkness. He memorized the path to his getaway vehicle, the old Ford truck of a local grocer who—for a sizeable bribe—agreed to leave the key in the ignition, a tarp and woolen blanket in the cab, and his mouth shut for eight hours before reporting the rust bucket stolen. Behind the seat, Argent hid a few items of her clothing he’d brought from her Paris apartment.

  Without Lemmon to distract the guards, Argent would have to time things perfectly. At the moment Marita made the turn onto the square, the rear guards would still be at least ten meters back on Wattenauerstrasse. For a minute or two she would be out of their sight. The blackout conditions would allow him to remain virtually invisible until the moment he spirited her away.

  The guards shouldn’t miss her until evening roll call at the dormitory. By then he and Marita would be well underway to Essen and freedom. Rolf’s forger had fabricated a Swiss passport for Marita and an exit visa to leave the Reich for her “homeland.”

  Already ten-thirty, the air cold and still. He shivered in the alleyway and longed for a smoke, but knew the cigarette would shine like a beacon from his hideout. He paced up and down the tight passage, unconsciously memorizing each paving stone beneath his feet.

  The radium dial of his wristwatch showed a quarter to eleven, and still no sign of the workers. Two hours overdue. He should have heard long ago the tramping of feet in the darkness, the calls of the guards keeping the women in line and moving along. Instead he heard little more than each frustrating quarter hour tolling high on the city hall tower.

  What could be keeping them? He wandered briefly onto the square and stared toward the industrial complex. Smoke tumbled from the distant stacks silhouetted against the sky. A skinny dog nosed around the gurgling fountain. He returned to the hiding spot to wait. He wanted to pound his fist against the wall in frustration. Instead he sat with his back to a dust bin. Easy, easy, he told himself. Give it time. Just some delay at the plant—she’ll come soon.

  By midnight several more excursions into the square had confirmed no movement in the street. He began to consider postponing until the next night. For whatever reason, the workers weren’t coming, and he saw little purpose spending more time in the cold, driving himself crazy. He heard a few sirens far to the north. At a quarter past twelve he would call it quits. Tomorrow he’d have to bribe the grocer again and pray the man hadn’t changed his mind, given the clearly suspect nature of his requests.

  Argent found a new spot on the damp cobblestones, his eyes tearing from the constant strain of watching for movement. Then he was certain he heard it—the shuffle and thump of feet approaching in the distance. And almost immediately, the distant thunder of an air raid from the direction of Essen and moving closer. The narrow patch of sky above seemed to glow a bit brighter. He was up and moving when something hard jammed into his back and he heard a low growl: “That’s far enough, mein Herr!”

  He pivoted, dropping to his haunches, knocking aside the man’s gun arm while slamming a blow to his gut. The assailant grunted and parried, rising with the pistol lodged at Argent’s belly. All at once the sky lit up with searchlights and a nearby siren screamed its alarm. Argent kneed the attacker in the groin and he went down. Tracer fire webbed the sky overhead before the alley returned to black.

  Beneath the siren’s wail—three long blasts, the warning signal—people rushed from all directions onto the square, a flurry of frightened voices and air raid wardens shouting over the din. The column of women was at a standstill, giving way to the civilians anxious to enter the shelter below the city hall. With only moments to act, he could waste no more time on the bastard who’d tried to rob him. Pulling out his Browning, he released the safety. The prisoners were now waiting outside the cellar, the guards preoccupied in all the confusion, and he could see Marita. A better moment would never come to grab her and run.

  Racing onto the square, he heard a pop and felt a searing pain across his flank. He stumbled, his left hand grabbing his side and coming away wet and clammy. He found his footing and kept on moving, dodging an older couple but refusing to look back, Marita his sole focus. More explosive bursts rattled his body, now from front and rear, and a blinding flash brought him down. He thought it was a British bomb, but then he saw someone approaching, rifle raised to fire again, and Argent knew the certainty of his own death.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Niedermühlen near Essen, Germany

  27 September 1941

  Colder weather made each day’s march even more demanding. Only a few lucky women had a coat or shawl. The prisoners’ ragged clothing contrasted sharply with the neatness of the workplace. Marita’s companions were equally mismatched, some dredged from the lowest criminal milieu—thieves, murderers, swindlers. A few were chronically manipulative and cruel. Others suffered her own fate—condemned to hard labor for crimes ranging from using forged ration cards to hiding a Jewish boyfriend or husband—that is to say, for any crime against the Reich not quite worthy of summary execution.

  And then there were the Polish, Ukrainian and Balkan girls, many still in their teens. They paid the price for belonging to a “subhuman” race occupying territory vital to Germany’s Lebensraum. Torn from their families, the girls endured unspeakable cruelties on their way to the factories that drove the Reich’s conquests, or to brothels set aside for foreign workers. Marita cringed at stories told in broken German or translated by multilingual inmates. When all else failed, they used sign language to clearly express the degradation of their young lives. Marita’s personal suffering paled in comparison.

  Physical contact was forbidden. In rare unguarded moments a girl might touch Marita’s hand in passing or lean into her, and she knew they longed for the comforting touch of mothers or sisters they would never see again. In self-recrimination for failing her own family, she was determined to do whatever she could to ease their plight.

  For the first two weeks in Germany she had housed in an actual prison. The newcomers entered a concrete structure upon arrival, where male guards forced them to strip naked and spread their legs over a drain. The men poured a greasy de-lousing agent over their bodies, laughing all the while at their humiliation. Next she found herself assigned to a cell designed for six but holding nine. She slept on a filthy pallet on the floor. The meagre rations of gruel at breakfast and thin soup in the afternoon were often stolen from her bowl.

  All new arrivals were subject to the brutality of the career criminals. One woman took a particular dislike to Marita, labeling her a French whore. The assailant grabbed at what was left of her hair, shorn before the mortifying delousing. When the scuffle ended with new bruises to her belly and throat, she found her bowl contaminated with urine, a gift from the assailant’s companion. She’d taken to gulping down her meal before the bully could get to her ration.

  Her transfer to a dormitory nearer the ordnance plant was a blessing. While the barracks were old and the sanitary facilities poorly maintained, she had an upper bunk and the cruelest offenders had remained behind in the prison. The breakfast fare, better and cleaner than that in the prison, still left much to be desired, but she learned quickly that the midday offering in the plant cafeteria would give her needed strength.

  She’d lost weight from her slender frame. The frayed dress and stained pinafore seemed more
suited to the ragman’s wagon than to daily wear.. She thought nostalgically of the beautiful clothes she had worn for years and yearned for the woolen overcoat she would never see again. Each morning she forced her swollen feet into wooden clogs. The left shoe was one size larger than its mate, giving her a shuffling gait as she marched. A wad of newspaper in the toe aggravated the blisters she rubbed raw daily. She jokingly wished for red paint to give the footwear a fashionable look.

  After breakfast—bread and barley coffee, and once a week oatmeal gruel with a dab of margarine—the women made a rushed latrine visit before lining up for roll call and their march to the plant. Their route took them through the center of the small town of Niedermühlen. The well-maintained storefronts and houses amazed her, the flowerboxes blooming with geraniums, the shopkeepers washing down the sidewalks with water clearer than what flowed from the dormitory taps. Mothers pushed baby carriages and old men met and greeted with a tip of the hat as German life continued at its ordered pace. The town burghers paid little attention to the parade of workers, far too common a sight to interest anyone.

  Marita spotted her reflection in a shop window, a hobbling crone with a bandanna on her head, shoulders stooped with exhaustion. How vain she had been back in Paris, checking her makeup and admiring her fashionable dress in the shop windows of Montmartre! She quickly wiped away tears of self-pity.

  Many women suffered, their arms covered in open sores from the white phosphorus used to fabricate the incendiary bombs. Despite the gloves and eye shields provided at the factory, accidents occurred almost daily. After a week, Marita’s arms were also burned from exposure to the caustic chemical. One afternoon something had gone very wrong in the huge workroom adjoining hers. Popping and sizzling, white smoke and biting stench, women crying out in panic, an alarm sounding, first guards and then medics on the run. The injured left the building on stretchers, their faces and upper bodies heavily swathed in bandages. That night several women missed the trek back to the barracks, but the ranks soon filled again with new recruits.