by Jana Petken
“That’s exactly why you can’t go as yourself. You belong to the Reich now.”
Paul was still puzzled. “I thought my exit would be easier because I’m in the SS, not harder.”
“You were wrong. If your Hauptsturmführer Leitner is as bad as you say, I guarantee you’re already on his radar. The Gestapo and SS don’t only have records of Jews and dissidents. They compile lists of possible troublemakers with asterisks next to their names. You’ll never get out of Germany without a signed pass, and he doesn’t sound like the man to give you one.”
Paul grew thoughtful. What had seemed like a simple train ride to the Swiss border had turned into a life or death operation. He had lied to his father and was lying to Max, which hurt terribly. His plan was to accompany Judith to Switzerland and then return, for despite what he’d witnessed at Brandenburg, he’d decided not to abandon Germany or its citizens. “I never thought about it that way,” he mused aloud. “Do you have another extraction plan up your sleeve?”
Max nodded. “You’ll go into Switzerland using my identity documents.”
“If I do that, who will you be?”
“Don’t worry about me. I have my exit strategy covered. There are more ways of getting out of Germany than through Switzerland. You’ll be using my Swiss passport under the cover name of Rolf Fischer, a German watch salesman from Zurich. I have friends at both the German and Swiss checkpoints. It’s amazing what the gift of an expensive watch can do, especially in wartime.”
Paul’s nervousness was growing every time Max spoke. “I wish I had your blasé attitude to life. I don’t think I’d sleep at night if I knew half of what you were up to. Give me your word you’re not putting yourself in unnecessary danger because of me, and mean it, otherwise I’m not doing this.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die, mate. I’ve never lied to you, and I’m not going to start now. Believe me, it’s more of a risk going to France than coming here nowadays.”
“All right,” Paul said. “Being you shouldn’t be too hard – and who will Judith be?”
“She’ll emigrate as herself. The Nazis are still technically permitting emigration from German territories, Jews included. Granted it’s become a lot more complicated in the last year or so, and the paperwork can take up to a year...”
“Well that’s no bloody good to her, is it?” Paul interrupted. “Judith could be gassed and burnt to ash by then...”
“Calm down. Brandt won’t be going through any official channels. He’s a cantankerous old git, but he’s still one of the best forgers in the business.”
Paul was still not convinced, but he was wise enough to know he had to stop questioning his brother’s judgement. “Okay...”
“Paul, if you want this to work you need to listen, follow my instructions and stop thinking the worst is going to happen, because if you think like that for long enough, it will.”
Paul nodded. “What do you need?”
“Does Judith own property?”
“No.”
“Good. Tell Brandt that as soon as you see him. It will cut the paperwork by half. You’ll have to provide him with the necessary sponsors’ names and addresses. You’ll need two. Give him Aunt Cathy’s and our cousin George’s.”
“We can’t do that!”
Max chuckled at Paul’s earnestness. “We’re at war with Germany. The Nazi party are hardly going to write to Chislehurst in Kent for confirmation. They probably won’t even read the names. This whole emigration process is about stealing money from Jews and making sure the rich ones don’t leave Germany with their wealth intact.” Max rubbed his thumb and forefinger together to exaggerate his point. “Jews with money, Paul, that’s who the bureaucrats are interested in, not who they’re going to live with in Britain or Timbuktu.”
Paul was reassured, but if he were honest, he didn’t fully understand the emigration mechanisms. “I still don’t get it, Max. Wouldn’t it be easier to allow the Jews to leave the country than killing them? I can’t, for the life of me understand why they’re making emigration harder for them.”
“Germany is not the only country involved here,” Max responded patiently. “Switzerland is bursting at the seams with four million inhabitants of their own. Imagine the mess it would be in if it took every single refugee fleeing Nazism. The Swiss are resisting Adolf Hitler as much as they can, but they’ve been forced to choose between making compromises and complete surrender to try and stave off a German invasion. But it’s more than that with the Swiss; they’re not that keen on Jews either. I’ve seen signs outside cafés in Zurich saying no Jews allowed. Some transport is restricted to them and they can’t even sit on certain benches in Zurich’s park.
“A couple of years ago the Swiss authorities wanted to restrict the number of immigrants from Germany. They even went to Berlin to discuss it with the Reich, and because of those meetings all Jews now have their passports stamped with the letter ‘J’ so the Swiss can recognise them and keep to their lowered quotas. Look, Paul, hundreds of Jews have been turned around already even with the proper paperwork, and I can’t guarantee that your woman friend will get through the Swiss checkpoint.” Max nudged Paul. “You must like her.”
“It’s not about romance, Max,” Paul said. “Like I said, I feel responsible for her safety.”
Paul paused, wondering what other questions he’d face. “What else will Brandt want to know?”
“Information about her family members, living or deceased, bank manager, doctors, and if there are any police arrest warrants.”
“She’s on the hospital admittance list.”
Max waved him away. “They won’t be interested in that, but they’ll want to know about her father. You said he was arrested almost two months ago, but is it possible he’ll turn up at some point?”
“No, I found out he was shot in prison. Judith doesn’t know. The Gestapo never informed her of his death.”
Max looked appalled.
“Jesus, Max, I didn’t know it was all going to be this complicated, and we haven’t even talked about how you’ll leave Germany.”
“Let me worry about that. Just make sure that you and Judith get into the Swiss checkpoint office at the same time. As I said, the guards know me, and if she’s with you when you go through, they’ll turn a blind eye to her. I’ll give you a couple of watches before you leave – and, Paul, you’ll need to wipe that worried look off your face. The Swiss guards will know something’s up if you don’t act like the happy chap I am.”
Paul dragged his pessimistic thoughts away to concentrate on more pressing matters. “How much time do you think I’ll have before Leitner will notice I’m missing?” he asked.
“No one will know you’ve left,” Max said. “I’ve been playing with an idea that might just buy you all the time you need.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Paul, drenched from a thunderstorm that had followed him all the way back to Berlin, looked up and down Herr Brandt’s street. It was mid-afternoon, and a couple of hours before the factories and shops closed and the streets became crowded with people going home.
“Knock four times in succession and then slide the piece of paper I gave you with the code name under his front door,” Max had instructed Paul in the car. “And for God’s sake, make sure you’re not being followed. If you think for a second that someone is on your tail, don’t go in. You have to be sure.”
Paul crossed the street, took one more look around and then walked up the four stairs to Brandt’s door. Nobody was lurking about, and why would they in this bloody downpour?
Brandt paced the room in his slippers. His shaggy old head shook from side to side and his combed over hair fell like a curtain down one side of his face. One hand overlapped the other at his back, and he grumbled under his breath as he walked. “Your brother’s going to get himself killed. You do know that? I told him not to go through with it this morning when he came here before you showed up and tried to knock my door down. But, oh, no, Max
had London’s approval, he said. It was his real mission, he told me.”
“Max was dishonest and sneaky,” Paul said, surprised and disappointed in his brother. After he’d told Max that he was training with an SS Captain by the name of Leitner for the next week and wouldn’t be treating patients, Max had struck.
“He made his ludicrous new plan appear spontaneous, as though he’d just thought it up after he’d seen me in uniform and had been forced to change his extraction plans,” Paul explained. But it had nothing to do with being on an SS watch list, Max had seen an opportunity to spy on the hospital, the SS, and the staff that worked there.
When Max had described his plan to Paul, he’d asked for a scribbled map of the hospital complex, and for the punch-card that the staff used to record them entering and leaving the buildings. He’d wanted to know where the guards were posted and had even laughed when he, Paul, had said that there were no guards outside the tunnel connected to the morgue’s exit. “Well, that makes sense. Apart from the orderlies, no one will come out of there alive,” Max had joked.
“I’m very unhappy about this. I should have had the guts to stop him,” Paul sighed.
“Yes, you should have, but he would have worn you down until you agreed. Max is too good a spy to have looked that gift horse in the mouth and walk away. When you think about it, it’s an ingenious way of getting first-hand intelligence. We’re at war, boy, and it’s not every day an agent can mingle with the enemy – he’s you, you’re him – Herr Gott! It’s perfect.
Paul glared at Brandt’s offhand attitude to what was a very serious business.
“Ach, c’mon, don’t look so surprised,” Brandt then said. “Did you think his office had allowed him to come on an expensive and dangerous mission to Berlin just to rescue you? You’re nothing to them.”
Paul’s face reddened further. “I didn’t think I was,” he retorted.
Brandt slowed his pacing and eventually came to stand in front of Paul. “It’s just as well Max is good at his job. You’re an idiot, a trusting idiot, to boot, which is even worse. You could have got all three of us arrested this morning with your banging on my door and dressed the way you were. Did you not stop to think that my nosey neighbours might gossip about an SS officer being in my house?”
“No.”
“No, that’s right, you probably didn’t. Well, luckily for me they haven’t come to my door yet, but they will. One of the housewives will turn up with biscuits and invite herself in for a cup of tea and then she’ll get around to asking if you had come to see me because she’s already asked everyone else in the street and didn’t get an answer. You’re a liability.”
“All right, that’s twice you’ve told me how stupid I am and what a nuisance I’ve become.” Paul could understand why Herr Brandt was furious. “Herr Brandt, you might find it strange, but I didn’t see this scenario coming. A year ago, we weren’t at war, and I never thought I’d have to take Max up on his offer.” Paul slumped in a chair and pushed his wet hair back from his forehead. “When he suggested he could get me out of Germany if I had to, I thought he was being overly dramatic and went along with the conversation just to shut him up. I’d had a few tumblers of Scotch at the time.”
Paul accepted a mug of tea and sighed as the hot liquid went down his throat and warmed his stomach.
“Why do you need to get out of Germany?” Brandt asked him
Paul felt his skin burn. He’d make a terrible spy. “I don’t want to talk about it, suffice to say I can’t toe the Nazi Party line.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Paul gulped down the tea and sighed, “Both,” he said. He then explained Judith’s situation, omitting the part about the euthanasia programme, and for a moment he thought he saw Brandt’s eyes softening. Perhaps he was wrong, for when the old man spoke it was with a combative tone.
“When you eventually meet up with Max in Switzerland, you tell him from me that I’m going to need more help if these extraction requests keep coming. I’m good at my job, but I’ve only got one pair of hands on me, and they’re arthritic. And I can’t walk up and down Berlin’s streets every day like I used to because of my varicose veins.”
“Will you not be seeing Max again?”
Brandt ignored the question. “Right, no more talking. We’d better get started.”
Paul followed Brandt from the living room to his kitchen, separated by an arched wall. Brandt went into the pantry and then surprised Paul when he pushed open another door to reveal a cubby-hole. Standing at the door, Paul was instantly transported into his imaginary world of espionage, and for the first time, he felt more excited than afraid.
“Well, get in here,” Brandt snapped as he disappeared into the dark hole.
Brant twisted a bulb hanging from a wire across the ceiling above a desk. Illuminated, Paul saw just how narrow the space was. He guessed it had originally been the other half of the pantry, now bricked up. A desk was strewn with a mountain of blank documents, ink, and official government stamps. Above it, maps of Berlin and Germany were pinned to the wall. Overcome by curiosity Paul asked, “How did you get into all this spying stuff?”
Brandt continued to sort through the documents, and without lifting his head replied, “I hate the Nazis – can’t stand fascism. As soon as I saw Hitler getting involved in that Spanish Civil War, I knew Germany was planning a conflict of its own – he wasn’t showing off his new weaponry for the Spaniards’ benefit,” he let out a disdainful grunt. “All those daft people thought he was helping the Spanish Fascists out of the goodness of his heart, but I knew he was using that war as a practice run for Poland. I might be old, but it was as clear as day to me. I’m an old soldier and a patriot. I fought for this country in the big war, almost lost my life on numerous occasions.” Now he lifted his head and looked at Paul. “And I never thought I’d live to see the day I was ashamed of Germany, and all the foolish people who follow that conman with his populist speeches about world domination; you wait and see, he’ll be the death of us all.”
Taken aback by the venom in his voice, Paul asked, “How did you meet Max?”
“I was a geography professor at Berlin University. I spent time in England in the twenties and went back as a visiting professor from time to time. I taught Max at Oxford in his first year. That’s all you need to know about him and me. It’s time you answered my questions about this Jewish woman of yours.”
******
Paul left Brandt’s apartment at three o’clock in the afternoon, after being assured that the papers he needed for Judith would be ready within forty-eight hours. Brandt had more or less confirmed it by arranging to meet with Paul in Berlin’s Potsdam Platz to pick up the paperwork two days hence.
Paul was still curious about Brandt’s involvement with MI6 and wasn’t convinced that the old man worked alone in Berlin. He seemed to know what he was doing, but it wasn’t realistic to presume that he had the weight behind him to personally sign off on official medical, police, and law court documents. It had also struck him as odd when he’d mentioned ‘walking up and down the streets of Berlin to get to where he had to go,’ which could mean he had contacts in certain government branches.
As Paul drove through Berlin’s centre, he thought about the incredibly dangerous work that Brandt and Max were doing. According to Max, Brandt had been successful in getting people out of Germany, not once but numerous times, and if that were true he was either a genius, a man taking advantage of sloppy German bureaucracy, or he was a spymaster using inside help in ministry departments.
“What are you doing here?” Laura gave Paul the once over, staring for a particularly long time at his working man’s clothes. “And what on earth are you wearing now?”
“Where’s Judith?” Paul grinned after giving his mother a peck on the cheek.
Laura asked Paul to sit at the kitchen table while she made tea. He sat but was itching to see Judith. “I’ll go get her. I’ve got good news for her, and she should be here
to hear it.”
Laura’s hand pushed down on Paul’s shoulder as he started to rise. “No. Paul, wait. I don’t know what happened, but after you left this morning I took her breakfast upstairs … God, this is awful, just terrible. I went into her room, and she’d … well, she wasn’t there. She must have left the house before you did.”
Paul looked up at his mother’s pale face, her trembling lips and eyes filling up. “She’s gone? How did she manage to leave without us knowing? His voice trailed off, and as his mother’s news fully hit him, he thumped the table with his fist. “She must have heard Papa and me shouting at each other. I need to look for her, she won’t last a day out there on her own.”
“Your father drove around the neighbourhood for hours, Son. As soon as I’d told him, he jumped in his car and went out to search for her. That was nearly eight hours ago.”
“She might have gone back to her flat. I’ll start there.”
Laura sat and put her hand on Paul’s arm. “No, dear, I don’t think you should. You see, Judith left a note on the hall table. She wrote it on the back of a tram ticket. I don’t know what it means. All it says is I don’t want your help. Goodbye.
Paul patted his mother’s hand, certain now of why Judith had left. “This is my fault. Father and I went too far this morning. She probably heard him accuse me of killing Hilde, her sister.”
“I had it out with your father after you left, and I told him that was a preposterous thing to say about you – I warned you both to keep your voices down, but did you listen? You’re as bad as each other when you get going – like two peas in a pod.”
Paul felt the lump in the back of his throat as he watched his mother stir the pot of tea. “Mother, about Judith’s sister…”
“No, Paul,” Laura spun around, stopping Paul from continuing. “I can’t hear any more about that hospital of yours. This country has gone to the dogs. We all saw it coming, but we, your father and I, never thought the Führer would follow through on some of his more outlandish pledges. No right-minded person could have envisaged Hitler becoming the monster he is. My blood boils when I think of the hordes of women in Germany who screamed his name at his rallies, like he was a God or one of those film actors on the screen. He was an actor all right, with his charm and promises – I hate him and his Nazis, Paul, and I could shake your father for having dealings with them – c’mon, let’s have a cuppa.”