The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow

by Ellie Midwood

  The Girl from Berlin

  Book Three

  War Criminal’s Widow

  Copyright 2015 Ellie Midwood

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Chapter 1

  Berlin, February 1944

  I carefully touched the inside of my lip with my tongue. The bleeding had stopped, but the side of the mouth where he’d hit me was still throbbing. My wrists, still tied together, were already numb. I was looking at the two men standing in front of me in the cold basement of the Reich Main Security Office – or simply the RSHA – building, also known as the Gestapo jail.

  Just several hours earlier I was filing the documentation for the Chief of the RSHA, SS Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner – the first man standing in front of me. Now, I was brought here on charges of espionage, conspiracy, high treason and God knows what else. All the charges were neatly put together in a file by the ruthless Gestapo agent, the second man standing in front of me – Ulrich Reinhard. He was smiling menacingly. Ernst wasn’t.

  Ernst. Erni. My Erni. “I love you,” he told me, after he hit me on the face and right before he dragged me out of my house by the scruff of my neck to bring me here. I know you do. I love you too.

  “So what shall we do to her?” Reinhard was rubbing his hands in anticipation. He has been after me for years, and the only reason why he was trying to somehow contain his excitement and had not put his hands on me yet, was the presence of the Chief of the RSHA in the interrogation room. “She must know a lot. She’ll tell us everything. She has nowhere to go now.”

  “She had already told me everything.”

  I did. Everything, from the beginning to the end. I told him that I was born from Jewish parents, that my ancestors came from Poland almost a hundred years ago after anti-Semitic raids in their country, and had paid big money to obtain new, German identities. That I married Heinrich, an SD officer, who happened to be a counterintelligence agent working for the Allies, and that I joined their team because I wanted to help my people. Because the Nazi Party was evil. Because Germany would collapse soon and drown in its own blood, and that it would be the Führer’s fault.

  He didn’t want to listen to me first; for too many years he had been bounded the oath he had given together with the other young men like him. My Honor is Loyalty. Standing in the middle of the night, shoulder to shoulder, tall, strong, the military elite of the Reich – the SS – they rose their right hand, and in the light of hundreds of torches they swore their loyalty, not to their Fatherland, not to the government, not to the army, but to their Führer. The Führer knew everything. He showed them the way. He was going to create the new Thousand Year Reich, and he told them that they were the first men at the dawn of the new civilization. He told them that he needed them to make it happen. And they believed him. And they swore to follow him even to the death.

  How could one Jewish girl turn the merciless, almost seven feet tall Aryan giant to her side, I thought, sitting next to him on the bed. We were both still naked; it was our first time. Well, the first real time when he knowingly slept with a Jew. Before he never hesitated to lock me, his personal secretary, in his office and to put me on his table, right on top of the top secret documents. But I was an Aryan in his eyes then. At least I looked like one, with blond hair and blue eyes.

  For almost five years he was trying to get me as his mistress, and now that he finally had, it was too late to stop. He was an addictive person, my Erni, to cigarettes, to alcohol, to his Führer… and now to me. I touched my broken lip again. I told my Erni everything because I loved him, not because he made me. But Reinhard didn’t know that.

  “Shall we just execute her then?” The Gestapo agent didn’t hide his disappointment that he wouldn’t get a chance to ‘work with me’ after his boss supposedly did the job. At least it looked like he did. Ernst refused to hit me at first; I made him do it. “You aren’t thinking of saving this traitor’s worthless life and sending her to the camp, are you?”

  Concern reflected in his steel blue eyes when he looked at me and then back at the Chief of the RSHA. The thought of me living one more day was disgusting to him. Disgusting and shameful, because a long time ago he fell for me too, he fell for the filthy Jew, who on top of everything refused his, pure Aryan’s, advances and made him lose his position in Berlin, when he tried to take by force what he couldn’t get otherwise. My husband was the one who made Reinhard’s transfer to the front possible. Reinhard had to ‘work’ really hard and to round up and execute thousands of innocent civilians to get his position back. Even the Chief of the Gestapo, Gruppenführer Müller himself, saw the ‘potential’ in the young executor and took him under his wing. Now, Reinhard could finally get his revenge.

  “No, I don’t. But I don’t want to execute her here either.”

  “Excuse me, Herr Obergruppenführer? I don’t understand…”

  He understood, he understood everything perfectly. He just wanted Ernst to say it.

  “This file that you have on her… Have you shown it to anybody, other than Gruppenführer Müller?”

  “No, of course not. I asked Gruppenführer to delegate the case to me personally, and I was reporting on the progress only to him.”

  “You understand that if we decide to execute her, we’ll have to point out the reasons… She was working in the RSHA when Heydrich was still in the Office. How stupid are we all going to look if we admit that we hadn’t noticed a spy right under our noses? The whole office, first the former Chief of the RSHA Heydrich, then the Chief of SD-Ausland Schellenberg, then the Chief of the Gestapo Müller, then me at last.” Ernst smiled at Reinhard so genuinely that I couldn’t help but admire his acting talent. “What do you say if we do it quietly, somewhere discreet, where no one will even find her body… together with this damn file? I’ll talk to Müller and explain everything to him, he won’t mind. And you can take up the free position of my assistant and become my second, actually, even my first adjutant? The raise will be significant too, of course.”

  Reinhard was beaming with joy.

  “I would be honored to, Herr Obergruppenführer!” He breathed out excitedly and clicked his heels.

  “Good. Let’s not waste any time then. I know just the place to take her.”

  They both looked at me again. Reinhard was smiling. Ernst was smiling too.

  _______________

  We were making our way through the woods for almost twenty minutes, after Ernst left the car on a side of the road and announced that the rest of the way we’d have to make on foot; the snow was too deep for the car to get through. I was glad that I was wearing knee high military boots, but even they didn’t stop the snow from getting inside. My feet were soaking wet, and on top of everything I was freezing in my thin woolen uniform – all I was wearing, unlike the two men walking in front of me in their overcoats. Nobody had said a word since we left the car, and the croaking of ravens was the only sound breaking the silence. Finally we found ourselves next to a small frozen lake surrounded by woods.

  “We’re here.” Ernst stopped to light a cigarette.

  Reinhard was looking at him expectantly. I know that he was hoping that his new boss would allow him to shoot me personally. Ernst decided not to disappoint him.

  “Take her to the bank of the lake and make her kneel in front of you.”

  Reinhard gladly grabbed me by the arm and threw me on the snow at the frozen bank of the lake. Now all I could see was ice
in front of me.

  “Any last words, Jew-girl?” Reinhard asked me mockingly.

  “Go to hell,” I answered, without turning around. He smirked, but surprisingly didn’t hit me.

  “Take your gun out and shoot her at the back of the head at my command.” Ernst’s voice, quiet but firm behind my back.

  I closed my eyes and tried not to think that he might have changed his mind.

  “You have to trust me,” he said earlier in my house. I stretched my hands out to him so he could tie them together.

  “I trust you,” I answered.

  I trust you with my life. But even if you decide to take it from me, I won’t be mad at you. I’ll understand. It would only mean that you love your Führer more than me. But even that is not your fault.

  “It’s easy to love your friends.” My grandmother would teach me something from the Torah when I was a little girl. “But try to love your enemies…”

  I did. I loved my worst enemy.

  “Ready? Take aim.”

  The air was so thin and crispy that I heard both a quiet click next my head as Reinhard took the safety off his gun, and Ernst blowing the smoke out. But the command to shoot never followed, only the shot itself, loud and clear, without any warning. Red dots of blood sprayed the snow in front of me, and then I heard the sound of a body falling in the snow. I slowly turned my head. Ernst was standing over Reinhard’s body still holding a gun in his gloved hand. The white snow under the Gestapo agent’s head was slowly turning red.

  I didn’t move until Ernst came up to me and helped me get up.

  “Did I scare you?” He smiled at me, untying my ice cold hands. “I’m sorry, I had to make him believe that I was really going to execute you.”

  “I know.”

  “You must be freezing!” He took his overcoat off and put it on my shoulders, making me almost drown in it. But no coat warmed me like his hands, when he hugged me tightly, and the thought that he still chose me over his Führer. It was terribly wrong to kiss each other next to the dead body, but we still did.

  “What are we going to do to him now?” I nodded at the dead Reinhard. “And how are we going to explain everything to Müller? He knows everything, he’ll get us both hanged…”

  “He won’t, as long as we have somebody more powerful on our side.”

  “Who?”

  “Reichsführer Himmler, for example. With his love of conspiracy I have just the story to tell him. The only thing I need from you, Annalise, is to tell me exactly where Josef’s body is.”

  “And what about him?” I looked at Reinhard again. “Shall we just leave him here?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly how we need him. And now let’s go see Reichsführer before Müller starts worrying about his late protégé.”

  He took my hand in his, and we started making our way back to the car.

  _______________

  Heinrich, who had just come back from France, was getting paler and paler as I was telling him the whole story while we were driving from the airport.

  “So this is it? We’re compromised?”

  I could tell by his look that he was confused that we were actually still alive.

  “Not really. Well, Dr. Kaltenbrunner knows everything, but the way he presented everything to Reichsführer, we have nothing to do with the counterintelligence.”

  “How is it possible?”

  “He completely twisted the story from Reinhard’s file and made it seem like Reinhard falsified all the information. As a matter of fact, he was lying to Himmler with such inspiration that I almost believed him myself.”

  It was true. No wonder, because Ernst was a brilliant lawyer with a natural talent to turn facts to the needed direction that he made even Reichsführer himself eat the story from his hand.

  “Reinhard killed Josef himself, and tried to make that girl Rebekah believe that Frau Friedmann was the murderer, clearly in the hope to get rid of my secretary.” Ernst was walking in front of Himmler’s table as if we were really in the courtroom and he was presenting my case. “Reichsführer, look at her! She’s a tiny girl, how could she possibly strangle a healthy man twice the size of her? And do you know what gave Reinhard up? When I asked him why he was so sure that Josef was dead and didn’t leave the country, Reinhard bragged to me that he was following Frau Friedmann’s car the morning when she supposedly killed Josef, and could point out just the place where Josef’s body is.”

  “How do you know that he didn’t follow her?” Reichsführer still wanted the facts. Ernst was more than happy to personally testify to my defense.

  “Because the night before that Frau Friedmann had fallen from the stairs, and was sound asleep when I came to check on her after her husband informed me that she wouldn’t be able to come to work. I was actually with her that morning.”

  “That lying bastard!” Genuine indignation from Himmler’s side.

  “Yes! And it gets even better, listen to this. Reinhard also tried to incriminate my loyal Frau Friedmann saying that she supposedly went to Zurich with fake papers to meet with an American intelligence agent. But he didn’t know that it was me, who sent her there with a fake passport for a special mission concerning operation Bernhard. And the ‘American agent’ was merely an emigrant from the US looking to work for us, the Gestapo. That was Reinhard’s mistake number two. I’m sorry, but it gave me enough reasons to shoot him right there.”

  “You still could have arrested him…” Just a faint reproach, sounding more like a scolding from a loving parent than from an irritated chief.

  “I didn’t want to take a risk, Reichsführer. After all, he was armed and clearly not too stable mentally if he, with maniacal obsession, devoted the time that he was supposed to spend fighting the real enemies of the Reich on a personal vendetta against one innocent woman. If he’d realized that I caught him lying, God knows if I’d be talking to you right now.”

  Fascinated by the final sentence, pronounced in a solemn tone, Reichsführer Himmler slowly nodded, stretched his hand to his subordinate, and the two men exchanged handshakes. What a speech, Dr. Kaltenbrunner! Looks like you just won another case.

  “I don’t blame you at all, Obergruppenführer. You did everything right. And don’t worry about Müller, I’ll talk to him myself at dinner tonight.”

  I couldn’t help but smile recalling how brilliantly the Austrian got us both out of the rope.

  “I still don’t understand…” Heinrich parked the car by our house, but didn’t want to go inside so we could talk discretely. “Why would he risk his career, more than that, his life, to help… the enemy of the Reich? The Jew? Why didn’t he take you to jail after he learned the truth?”

  “Would you want me to be in jail?”

  “No, of course not! It’s not what I meant.” Heinrich shook his head. “But he’s a fanatical Nazi, who believes in his Führer’s cause unconditionally. And on top of it, a well-known anti-Semite. Why would he help you?”

  I shrugged slightly, without looking at my husband.

  “You said it yourself before, he likes me.”

  “No. No, liking is not enough in this case. He liked you when he thought that you were Aryan. But after you told him that you were Jewish, after you confessed that you were working for the Allies… How is it even possible that he didn’t shoot you right there?”

  “He was going to,” I answered simply. “At one point he was aiming a gun at my head.”

  “And why didn’t he pull the trigger?”

  “I don’t know. He just couldn’t.”

  I didn’t like where the conversation was going. Heinrich was staring at me hard, and I still couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.

  “You’re not telling me something.”

  “I told you everything.”

  “No. It doesn’t make sense. I know him. He would have killed you. He wouldn’t risk his life for a Jewish girl.”

  “You risked yours, and many times,” I hardly whispered the last argument i
n my defense.

  “That’s different. I was protecting my wife. And who was he protecting? Just a…” Just a secretary, I was waiting for him to finish his thought. But he didn’t say anything. He finally understood. “His mistress. Right?”

  I didn’t say anything, and Heinrich nodded to himself confirming his guess. I closed my eyes, and then covered my face with my hands because I couldn’t stand his look.

  “I thought it would eventually happen.” I heard him sigh next to me. “Just didn’t want to believe it.”

  If Ernst were my husband, he would have started yelling, smashing everything in sight, accusing me of all deadly sins and threatening to kill both me and my lover… Heinrich sounded disappointed, hurt and disappointed, and it was a thousand times worse. The thought that I had betrayed my husband, my sweet, loving husband in such a cruel way, was heartbreaking. How could I possibly hope that he’d never know nothing? I felt smaller than a mouse in my shame, and couldn’t help bursting into tears.

  “Heinrich, I’m so sorry, darling! I didn’t have a choice! That Christmas night, when you were copying the maps in his office and I was waiting outside, he showed up so unexpectedly, he wanted to go inside, and the only thing I could think of to stop him was… I kissed him. I was trying to protect you, sweetheart, but then he… If I all of a sudden pushed him off, he would have understood everything. And after that night he just assumed that… It was too late to do anything. Heinrich, please forgive me, I love you more than anything, I would have never hurt you on purpose… Please, darling, I’m begging you, say something!”

  But he just sat there quietly, looking at the street in front of him, not even blinking.

  “Heinrich, please, talk to me.”

  I tried to cover his hand with mine, but he pulled it away from me. I lowered my head even more, swallowing hot tears that were burning my throat. I never felt more rejected and miserable in my life. And I deserved every second of this humiliation. I did it to myself.