The Ambassador

by Yehuda Avner

  “Just like that. Wave a magic wand and Hitler’s dead. Problem solved.”

  “Not a magic wand. Me.”

  “You’re going to kill the Führer?”

  “First of all, don’t call him that. He’s their Führer. He’s not the Führer. And yes, I’ll kill him.”

  “If Ben-Gurion asks you to do it, you’ll kill him. That’s what you mean, right?”

  Shmulik stared at the dark road ahead. The Gauleiter of Berlin, Joseph Goebbels, had instituted a blackout to protect Berlin in the utterly unlikely case that France and Britain should send bombers. The Allies had yet to order a single soldier into Polish or German territory.

  “Shmulik, what are you planning?”

  The Mossad man sighed. “I’m planning on a long bath. I feel like I’m covered in shit every time I go out in this damned city.”

  They pulled across Unter den Linden. The Nazis had replaced the linden trees on the central pedestrian walk of Berlin’s grandest boulevard with arcades of white columns, each topped with a gold eagle. Swastika banners ran three floors high from each building all the way to the Brandenburg Gate. Dan put a sympathetic hand on Shmulik’s shoulder.

  They crossed the Spree and pulled up at the embassy in silence. Draxler glided to a halt behind them. He jumped out of his Mercedes and leaned over the hood to light a smoke. “Good evening, gentlemen. At least your prime minister managed to escape in time. Maybe you should’ve run away with him.”

  Dan felt Shmulik’s rage at the insolent Gestapo man. He took his elbow and pulled him into the embassy. Once inside, Shmulik headed for the basement.

  So, Shmulik fantasized that a single bullet might solve his problems. Then it falls to me, Dan thought, to think things through responsibly. Until Ben-Gurion decided what to do, Dan had to maintain the balance here in Germany. He was responsible for saving the lives of millions of people. For every trapped Jew who yearned to reach the one country where he was truly welcome and would be given refuge. They all looked to Dan Lavi now. In the coming months he would either fail them or save them.

  Dan had no idea how he would do it, but he would not disappoint the spirits he felt hovering in the cold air of the embassy lobby. He shivered as he shut the door. Behind him, Draxler’s cigarette glowed in the blacked-out street.

  Gottfried came into the lobby. “Any luck?”

  “No. Eichmann wasn’t there. Where’s Anna?” Dan headed for the stairs to his living suite.

  “She’s not up there. She’s in the basement.”

  Dan frowned and changed direction. Gottfried hurried back into his office.

  Dan squeezed past Devorah’s code desk. Shmulik was dictating a message for his wife to send to Tel Aviv.

  “She’s in there.” Devorah jerked her thumb at the door of the shooting range.

  Dan went into the gallery and saw Anna. She hugged a small woman in a worn overcoat. A hefty man unpacked a suitcase on a camp bed in the corner. Anna turned to her husband. Her mascara had run with tears.

  Arvid Polkes turned and dropped a pile of underwear on the camp bed. His wife Bertha came hesitantly toward Dan.

  “Please,” she said. “We have nowhere else to go.”

  Part II

  State boundaries are made by man, and are changed by man.

  Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

  Villa Marlier, site of the Wannsee Conference, 1942

  Chapter 21

  Berlin, July 1941

  Hitler clapped his hands onto Heydrich’s upper arms and clasped them. As with all his gestures, it was awkward, like an estranged father struggling to bond with the children who loved and feared him. He stared closely into Heydrich’s eyes. The Obergruppenführer saw that Hitler was trying to transmit some of his power, the mysterious genius that was beyond even himself to describe. He wanted Heydrich to possess just a little of it, for what he required him to do.

  Heydrich knew his own strengths and he needed no others, but it was smart to please the Führer, so he made his eyes glow with a new fervor. He prepared himself to be told of a new mission, evidently one of great significance. The room was empty of generals and adjutants and Chancellery officials. He was alone with the Führer but for his commander, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, at the map table.

  “They didn’t think it could be done,” Hitler said, fluttering his hand at the corridor as he moved toward Himmler. “The chiefs of the general staff. The field marshalls. The military college people.” Tiny flags dotted the map on the table, representing the current deployment of troops on the Russian campaign. Hitler drove his fist onto the table, grinding the cities of the Ukraine and Belorussia beneath his knuckles. “But even so it’s not quick enough.”

  “My Führer.” Himmler drew up his weak chin.

  Heydrich knew that the gesture was meant to convey to Hitler the man’s pride in German achievements. But Himmler was always an open book to him, despite his show of inscrutability. He was nervous. Like Heydrich, he saw that Hitler meant to divulge something big, something that only the SS could handle. “Our troops are moving at a rate no other soldiery could match. Your campaign is masterstroke upon masterstroke.”

  People said that Himmler’s brain was named Heydrich. At times like these, Heydrich felt a little insulted by that. The Russian campaign was going well enough, but Heydrich knew of the intelligence reports suggesting the Soviets had far greater forces at their disposal than anticipated. The Panzers would have to slow down soon for lack of fuel, too.

  Hitler folded his arms and nodded in acknowledgement of Himmler’s sycophancy, but his voice betrayed impatience. “The campaign progresses well. That’s true. But I need a faster solution to the Jewish problem.”

  “As our men advance, my Führer, detachments of SS are exterminating Jewish saboteurs who have sneaked behind the lines.” Himmler gestured with his small, pale hands toward Heydrich.

  The Einsatzgruppen task forces Heydrich had sent in at the rear of the advancing army found every Jew guilty of sabotage. Entire villages, executed.

  “That’s not enough.” Hitler spread his arms and leaned over the map. Siberia taunted him with its vastness. He poked a finger at the expanse of the taiga. “I wanted the Jews to go there. One of the reasons we undertook this campaign was to conquer land where we could dispose of the Jews. To send them to Siberia and leave them to fend for themselves, or starve. But certainly for them to be cleared out of Europe and the territory of the Reich once and for all.”

  Heydrich clicked his heels. “The Central Office for Jewish Emigration continues to work full speed with the Israeli embassy, my Führer. The Israelis have an endless appetite for emigrants. They also continue to maintain a neutral position in the war, thanks to your brilliance in dictating an ultimatum to Ben-Gurion.”

  “Quite so.”

  “As the Reichsführer-SS points out—” Heydrich bowed to Himmler “—our task forces in the east are disposing of Jews in considerable numbers. Those who are not killed are fleeing from fear of capture.”

  “But there is something more that we must discuss.” Hitler drew a long breath, his eyes lowered to the map. The SS men waited. It was coming, the confidence he wished to share, the mission he had for them, emerging from their leader’s vision of the future by which the world would be forever remade.

  “Emigration is not a plan that can fulfill the destiny of the German people. Even were you to take every Jew from Europe and send him to the Middle East, our task would not be complete. To cleanse Europe of Jews is merely the first task before us. Once the war is won, we must dispose of the Slavs, the Poles, all non-Germanic peoples. So now we ship a few million Jews to the Middle East. But where are we to send thirty million Slavs?”

  Heydrich saw it now. The Jewish question was an audition for the SS. They must prove themselves with the Jews, to win the responsibility of carrying out the Führer’s ultimate aim of clearing all alien peoples from German living space.

  “The criminal Jewish race remains within the t
erritory of the Reich. Emigration is merely a stop-gap solution. It is clear to me, despite the success of our campaign in the east, that we will not have Siberia for another year, and even when it is in our possession it cannot represent a final solution. Meanwhile these Jews consume more than their fair share of food and resources. We cannot afford to delay a truly final solution of the Jewish question.”

  “We can increase the pace of emigration to Israel,” Himmler offered.

  Heydrich heard the fear in Himmler’s voice. The man was weak. He hadn’t opened his mind to the tremendous purity and insight of the Führer’s words. Perhaps he couldn’t. More than ever, Heydrich felt that fate had marked him out to be the Führer’s successor. The one man hard and strong enough to lead his race to the fulfillment of their destiny.

  Hitler shook his head at Himmler’s comment, stroking his chin like a philosopher in deep thought. “There must be an ultimate reckoning, gentlemen.” He spoke quietly, glaring at the map as though hoping the ferocity of his vision might burn away entire cities. “There must be physical extermination.”

  Himmler’s knee jerked back and forth with nervous excitement. Heydrich closed his eyes briefly, savoring the moment, like a wine waiter approving a fine choice of Riesling. When he opened them again, Hitler’s glare was focused on him. It was like a blessing from a father to his heir, he thought.

  “It shall be done, my Führer,” he said.

  Chapter 22

  Berlin, September 1941

  The dark windows and stone columns of Kurfürstenstrasse 116 were brushed with industrial grime. The facade looked like the face of a psychopath, a thin smile disguising the ugliness within. Dan Lavi crossed the street to the former Jewish charitable commission that now housed the Reich’s Central Office for Jewish Emigration. It seemed to him that he trod on invisible bodies, some lifeless, others still crying out to him. He passed the black-coated guards from the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler standing at attention in the doorway, wondering that they didn’t stab at him with the bayonets on their rifles. Surely they were trained to sniff out the genetic enemies of the Aryan race.

  The Hauptscharführer at the reception desk recognized him. Dan had made at least one visit to this office every week since its chief had transferred from Vienna in late 1939, charged with repeating in Berlin the success he had had in facilitating the emigration of Jews from the old imperial capital. Still he waited, making Dan tell him the purpose of his visit to Office IV-B4.

  “A personal meeting with Sturmbannführer Eichmann,” Dan said.

  “Go up.” The Hauptscharführer shot out his arm and barked, “Heil Hitler.”

  Dan headed for the stairs.

  Adolf Eichmann greeted Dan with a conceited smirk and a raised eyebrow, like a matinee idol in a publicity shot. He flicked a riding crop at his boots and lowered them from his desk, but remained seated. Though Dan was not particularly tall, he was clearly tall enough to make the Sturmbannführer self-conscious about his own lack of height.

  Eichmann gestured to the gramophone on the filing cabinet. The record revolving on the spring-drive played the delicate chaconne by Bach that Dan had heard performed by Gottfried. “Do you know this one?”

  Dan remained standing. “I do.”

  “The recording was a gift to me from the Obergruppenführer. From his personal collection. He plays it almost as well as this. Almost. He’s a very talented violinist.”

  The Obergruppenführer. The General. Reinhard Heydrich, tall and blond and head of the Security Service, of the Gestapo and the Kriminalpolizei. He played the violin? Well, of course he would, wouldn’t he, Dan thought. Heydrich fenced with great poise too. He was as accomplished and intelligent as Hitler was pedestrian and banal. Dan wasn’t sure if that made him worse or just— different—in his evil. He forced an ingratiating smile and a comment to flatter the ego of the man across the desk. “I’m sure he couldn’t outplay you.”

  “I’m a very good violinist. But be assured the Obergruppenführer outplays everyone,” Eichmann replied. “Is this not fine German music?”

  “Fine.”

  Eichmann sighed. “You’re all business, as usual. You’re too much of a German, Herr Ambassador. We Austrians know how to enjoy life’s finer pleasures, even when under great stress. When I was in Palestine I found the people there less given to hurry than you. I wonder if you ever really lived over there.”

  Dan had heard this kind of thing before. Eichmann liked to talk about Austria because he had grown up in Linz, the same town as Hitler, and attended the same high school some years after its most famous student. He had also spent a couple of weeks in 1937 masquerading as a journalist in Palestine, until the British discovered his SS affiliation and deported him. He considered himself an expert on Jews and Jewish life and often displayed to Dan how little knowledge it took to be considered a specialist by the Nazis. Really what Eichmann knew was how many Jews there were, and how many ships or trains it would take to move them out of the Reich.

  And, of course, his personal experience in Palestine had made him familiar with deportation.

  “We Israelis like to think of ourselves as New Jews, Herr Sturmbannführer,” Dan said. “Whatever you thought of us during your Palestine sojourn, you would find us a different people now.”

  “I doubt it. Some characteristics never change. You’re just too close to the subject to see it clearly, as I do. Well, I shall accommodate your preference for haste. We have much to do.”

  Dan took a thick file from his briefcase. He laid it on Eichmann’s desk and turned it toward him. “The applications and our approvals.”

  “Very good.” Eichmann surveyed the six inches of paper stacked in the file, each page representing a German Jew requesting permission to leave the Reich for Israel. He ran his finger down the statistics on the weekly summary page at the top. He lifted his gaze and nodded toward a memorandum in his tray. “Take a look at that, while I read over these figures.”

  Dan picked up the sheet of paper. The memo came from SS Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, head of the Security Service in Posen, the Polish town from which much of western Poland was administered by the Germans. He read with such horror that the paper seemed to burn his fingers.

  There is a danger this winter that the Jews can no longer all be fed. It is to be seriously considered whether the most humane solution might not be to finish off those Jews not capable of labor by some sort of fast-working preparation.

  Eichmann plucked the memo from Dan’s shaking hand. “You see the kind of thinking I face, Herr Ambassador. If it were not for me, men like Höppner would resort to their ‘fast-working preparations,’ whatever they might be.”

  “He can’t mean…. What does he mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it. He is an administrator out in the field. He doesn’t see the bigger picture, as I do, here at the center of power. Rely on me.” The smirk this time was not vain. It glimmered with malice. “We are a great team, are we not, Herr Ambassador?”

  Dan cleared his throat. He knew why Eichmann had shown him the memo from Poland. To remind Dan of his importance. To demonstrate that he needed him—the Jews needed him. And that Dan had no friends, and that there were few enough in the SS who wouldn’t rather see him dead.

  “We are, indeed,” Dan said. “A great team.”

  An untersturmführer with thin blond hair knocked at the open door and clicked his heels. Eichmann beckoned to him. The young lieutenant glanced sidelong at Dan as he brought a sheet of paper with a handwritten message to his commander.

  Eichmann grabbed the paper. Dan read the angular script in the moment it took the Nazi to lean back in his chair and take it out of his sight. Heydrich wanted to see his underling. The slightest of trembles in Eichmann’s hand rustled the paper. Heydrich frightened everyone.

  “Is there an answer, Maestro?” the lieutenant asked.

  Eichmann placed his hands flat on the desk to stop them shaking. His staff called him Maestro for his virtuosity
on the violin. Had Eichmann attempted to play the simplest tune now, the bow would probably have fallen from his grip.

  “Cancel everything,” Eichmann said. “We will prepare the statistics for the Obergruppenführer as he requests.”

  He collected himself as the lieutenant went out. He returned to Dan’s file, but he was distracted. He put his hand to his forehead.

  “New responsibilities?” Dan hated making conversation with Eichmann, but the man was in charge of Jewish emigration. His stamp on the papers in the file rescued Jews from the poverty and persecution that was their lot now in Germany and everywhere else under Nazi control. Almost all of Europe was in Hitler’s hands—Greece and the Balkans, Belgium and Holland, France, Norway and Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria. In June, German forces had driven into the Soviet Union and seemed likely to reach Moscow by the time winter set in. Since Hitler delivered his ultimatum to Ben-Gurion at the start of the war, Dan had buttered up the anti-Semite across the desk from him, appealing to his vanity, declaring admiration for his bureaucratic skills, professing the kind of flimsy friendship that exists between a salesman and his client. He was thankful that the British had insufficient troops in the Middle East to make good on their ultimatum to invade Israel unless it joined the war against Germany. British forces in North Africa which might otherwise have driven up through Sinai to Israel were being pressed hard by the Nazis’ Afrika Korps under Generalfeldmarschall Rommel. But Dan never forgot that a few British victories in the Western Desert would leave Israel vulnerable to them. The ultimatum remained in place. It might be activated any time. Until then, he had to work fast. With this SS officer.

  Eichmann put aside Heydrich’s note and sighed. “Turn off the music, please. I simply must concentrate now.”

  Dan lifted the heavy needle and took the record from the turntable. He read the label at the center. The recording was from 1933. Bach’s beautiful piece being performed by Wili Gottfried. The lacquered disc seemed to quiver in his hands as if the grooves had been scored with Gottfried’s rage. He turned to find Eichmann staring at him in stupefaction. He was holding one of the emigration requests toward Dan, shaking his head in disbelief.