“Well, how did you like your surprise?”
“I must admit, you outdid yourself, Herr Himmler.”
Laughing, he opened the door for me and helped me get back in the car. For a second I felt ashamed that just half an hour ago I was more than convinced in his sinister motives. Dr. Kaltenbrunner did care about me after all, and I realized that I shouldn’t had been listening to all the repulsive stories about him in the first place. He grinned at me before starting the car.
“I never suspected that talking about killing someone would get you so excited.”
“What? I’m not excited!”
“You’re excited like a kid on Christmas, look at your eyes. You’re very happy that he’s going to die.”
I looked away trying very hard not to smile but couldn’t help myself. He was right; indeed, I was extremely happy that in the trunk of his car was the man who would help me revenge for my brother and baby. I was happy. It was a disgusting feeling, being so happy about somebody’s death, and I was very ashamed of myself. But ashamed in a way like a child who secretly steals candies from the cabinet while his parents can’t see. It was very wrong, but it felt so goddamn good.
I leaned back in my seat, already openly smiling at Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner. He was smiling too.
“I never suspected that you had such a dark side in you, my darling. But I like it. I like you evil.”
“I’m not evil. He deserved it, that’s all.”
“Yes. That’s what I always say.” I saw how his eyes sparkled when he said it. “We’re very much alike, my darling. We’re the nicest people… until somebody ‘deserves it.’”
“I bet you had way more people who ‘deserved it’ on your way than I ever will.”
“Don’t forget that I’m seventeen years older than you. And let me assure you that you started way earlier that I did. When I was twenty one, I was busy with my law studies, not with planning a murder. You’ll go far, my evil friend.”
Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner laughed again and started the car, and I got lost in my thoughts. Was I really like him? Was I really evil? What if he keeps justifying all his actions by the same principle I did, that someone ‘deserved it?’ Suddenly I got scared of myself and hoped to get home as soon as I could, so Heinrich would tell me that I was good, that I wasn’t evil and that there still was hope for me.
Chapter 2
The nation was celebrating the Führer’s birthday today, and it started to seem that this evening would never end. Yet another speaker was praising the Reich’s leader for the past fifteen minutes, and I desperately wished they were serving drinks here. Judging by Heinrich’s face, who was sitting next to me in this huge concert hall filled with the Reich military and political elite, he was thinking the same. I slightly pushed him with my elbow.
“How about some champagne when it’s all over?” I whispered in my husband’s ear as quietly as I could. He chuckled.
“I was thinking to start with double whiskey!”
I suppressed my laughter, and Heinrich meanwhile leaned to my ear and whispered, “How about we sneak out for five minutes and make out in the hall instead?”
“Standartenführer Friedmann, you’re absolutely awful!”
“I’ll go first and then you follow me in a minute. I’ll be waiting for you in the hallway behind the curtains.”
“Alright.”
As soon as he left I looked around, hoping that no one would notice our quick disappearance. It was a very daring thing to do, especially on such a big occasion, but I was ready to take a risk to get a scolding from any of our superiors if they happened to catch us outside. We were finally starting to get back to the way we used to be before the tragic death of my brother and the loss of our baby, which absolutely devastated us both. We had finally got rid of the black clothes and started to learn how to laugh again, how to enjoy life and how to look in the future with hope. After all, we still had each other, and nothing would ever change that.
I looked at the front row where all of them were sitting: Reichsführer Himmler, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels with his wife, General Goering and the leader of the Reich himself – Adolf Hitler. Obergruppenführer Heydrich was sitting behind them with his pregnant wife. I silently hoped that the ceiling above them would collapse and crush them all. When did I start wishing people to die on such a regular basis? That’s definitely not how my parents raised me, I chuckled.
After a minute I quietly got up and made my way out, trying to attract as little attention as I could. As I was walking down the hallway where Heinrich was supposed to wait for me, somebody grabbed my waist from behind and yanked me to one of the dark niches with tall statues inside; it was my husband. He pulled me behind the curtain covering the niche, turned me around and pressed me against the wall, making us completely invisible to everybody.
I felt like a school girl making out with her boyfriend in a school yard when the teachers don’t see; it felt so silly and exciting at the same time that I started to giggle. Heinrich started laughing too, trying to hush me at the same time.
“Stop it, somebody’s going to hear us!”
“I’m sorry, I just can’t help it. We’re two grown-up people, who work in the Reich Main Security Office, and what do we do on our Commander-in-Chief’s birthday? We make out in the hall like two teenagers!”
“Screw the Commander-in-Chief!” Heinrich whispered, trying not to laugh too loud. “Let’s have sex right here just to make a point!”
“Heinrich!” I tried to make my laughing husband stop pulling up my skirt. “We are not having anything here!!! Are you crazy?”
“Nothing like having sex with my Jewish wife on the Führer’s birthday!”
“Heinrich, I’m serious! Stop! We’re going to get shot!”
“I say, let’s go on the stage and do it in front of him!”
“Heinrich!!!”
Still play-wrestling with him, I was laughing hysterically now. I almost forgot how it felt, to laugh like that until the tears started forming in the corners of my eyes and my stomach started hurting from laughter. I was so grateful to my husband for reminding me how great it was. We were both sitting on the floor now, squeezed in a tiny space between the statue and the wall, our knees pressing into each other. We weren’t laughing anymore, we were just looking at each other, smiling. Heinrich took my hand in his and kissed it.
“You don’t even know how happy it makes me to see you like this, Annalise. I thought that I lost you after all that happened.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t say that!” I pressed his hand to my heart and then pulled him closer, tightly hugging him. “You can never lose me, I’m your wife and I love you more than anything in the world!”
“I know. I love you too.” He was gently rubbing my back, kissing my shoulder, neck and face. “I love you more than life, Annalise. I don’t know what I would do if you would leave me.”
His words almost broke my heart. So that’s how he felt all this time while I was so preoccupied with nursing my revenge plans. That’s what he was thinking every time I was away in Vienna. That’s what he thought was going on. I was so consumed by my own feelings that I never even thought how much I was hurting the most important man in my life. What a horrible wife I must be!
“Heinrich, love, I’m so sorry for everything!” I took his pretty face in my hands and started covering it in kisses. “I’m sorry I was so selfish! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you from the very beginning. But you really wouldn’t be able to do anything and I didn’t want to drag you into all this.”
“Annalise, what did you do?”
“I asked Dr. Kaltenbrunner to help me kill Heydrich,” I finally whispered after a pause.
“What?!” Heinrich looked at me in awe. “What have you done?! Are you insane?! You actually asked him that?!”
“Heinrich, I had no choice! I was so devastated because of Norbert and… the baby and… I swore on their grave that I would kill him. I couldn’t help it, honey, I�
��m sorry! I was so mad, I had such hatred in me, I wasn’t afraid of anything. I just wanted Heydrich to pay for everything.”
“Do you even understand how serious it is? If you try to assassinate a political figure of his rank? He’s more powerful that Himmler now! If he dies and they find out that it’s you two who’s responsible, they are going to hang you both together on the first gates! Oh God, I should have known! I knew that you were up to something, but this!” Heinrich shook his head and then put both his hands on my shoulders. “You will go back to Vienna next weekend and you will tell him that you’ve changed your mind. Tell him not to do anything.”
“It’s too late.”
“What do you mean it’s too late?”
“He can’t do anything now. The man who’s preparing the whole operation is in Czechoslovakia. And I don’t even know what he looks like.”
Heinrich was sitting quietly and looking at me. I took his hands in mine again.
“Don’t worry, my darling, Dr. Kaltenbrunner thought everything through. He would never take such a risk if he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of success.”
“Promise me that in the future you will tell me about everything. Everything. I’m your husband, not him.”
I willingly nodded.
“I promise, darling. No more secrets. Please, forgive me.”
He shook his head and gently brushed my cheek with his hand.
“You’re not guilty of anything. You were very upset and weren’t thinking straight. I’m sorry that I wasn’t as supportive as I should have been. I guess I didn’t realize how hard it was on you. I made you go and ask the Chief of the Austrian Gestapo for help. What a good husband I am!”
I smiled thinking how I was blaming myself for being a terrible wife just five minutes ago. After three years of marriage Heinrich and I had become so incredibly close that we had started to even think alike.
“Kaltenbrunner wasn’t trying to take advantage of the situation with you, was he?” Heinrich suddenly asked after a pause.
“Oh God, no. He was actually very courteous and polite.”
“It’s surprising to hear such positive attributes together with his name.” Heinrich chuckled.
“He’s always a gentleman with me. I wouldn’t deal with him if he wasn’t.”
“He doesn’t do charity, Annalise. One day he might ask something in return.”
“Well, then I’ll have to ask somebody else to kill him.” I grinned at my husband. “Now let’s go back inside before everybody starts looking for us.”
Before getting up he leaned closer to me and kissed me one more time. I felt much better after I told him everything. No more secrets between the two of us, I promised myself, never again.
_______________
Berlin, May 1942
Ingrid, an American Secret Service agent who’d been leading an undercover life with her ‘husband’ Rudolf for almost seven years now, was pacing around their spacious living room. She always paced when she was thinking something over or when she was nervous, I’d noticed it by now. It helped her concentrate and think clear.
“I don’t know about it, Heinrich.” She shook her head at my husband, standing at the window with a glass of brandy in his hand. “I think it’s too dangerous. Too compromising. You can get caught.”
The reason why both husband and wife were so invincible for the all-seeing Gestapo for such a long time was this exact quality of theirs: they both were incredibly cautious. And what my husband had in mind was everything but a safe operation: he wanted to break into the office of the Chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, during the annual party held for all the commanding staff of the Reich Main Security Office, install a microphone under his desk and falsify the latest orders for the execution of the Soviet prisoners of war, which were arriving to the country in tens of thousands now.
The problem was that Herr Müller’s boss, Obergruppenführer Heydrich, disregarded all the rules of the international war codes and demanded the immediate execution of all the Soviet commanding officers of more or less higher rank, considering them a menace to the security of the Nazi regime just because they belonged to the Communist Party, which in his eyes was even a bigger crime than being a Jew.
Heinrich, who had already copied Heydrich’s facsimile with a little wax press (while the latter was cleaning up his uniform after Heinrich, pointing something out on the map spread on the table, ‘accidentally’ spilled Obergruppenführer’s coffee), was hoping to steal the lists of the POWs from Müller’s desk, attach the beforehand typed order (stamped with Heydrich’s facsimile) to send them to the working factories instead of Mauthausen, also known as Knochemuhle or the ‘bone-grinder,’ the camp especially classified as the toughest camp for the ‘incorrigible’ political enemies of the Reich.
Gruppenführer Müller had a known weakness for vodka, and by the time he’d come back hungover to his office the next day, he most likely would be relieved to find out that Obergruppenführer Heydrich had already taken care of the POWs and most likely wouldn’t trace where they had been sent to. After all, if an order carried Heydrich’s signature, Heydrich could send them to the Moon if he wished, and no one would blink an eye. The perks of the centralized power was doing my husband a big favor – no one would ever check or question their superior’s orders. And that’s why he was so sure that the case was worth taking the risk.
“Ingrid, we are talking about almost two thousand people here, who are currently on their way to Austria. And that party is a God’s gift to us, everybody’s going to get so drunk that they won’t even understand what happened. It’s such an easy thing to do.”
“How are you going to get into his office unnoticed? The guards always remain on their posts in the hallways, party or no party.”
“Through the window. My office is on the same floor, I’ll just have to walk on a ledge around the corner and I’m there.”
“Someone’s going to notice you from the outside.”
“His office is on the fourth floor, Ingrid. Do you think those guards down there walk around looking at the roofs all the time? They couldn’t care less, especially when their superiors are getting drunk inside. They will probably bring some booze and get drunk too.”
Rudolf finally got up from his chair and went to the bar to freshen his drink.
“What about the microphone, Heinrich? Don’t you think he’ll notice it?”
“Of course he’ll notice it eventually. But in the meantime we’ll be able to hear every single thing he says, both in person and on the phone. And you know that even a couple of days of such conversations in the Chief of the Gestapo’s office are priceless.”
“He’ll know someone from the office installed it there.”
“Rudolf, how many people work in the RSHA? Hundreds. He won’t be able to screen them all. Of course he’ll check the immediate staff members who have access to his office, but it won’t lead him anywhere. Besides, I’ll install it inside the bottom drawer, on the top of the box, and it’ll take him ages to even notice it. I’m telling you, it’s a winning proposition. Let me do it.”
Rudolf and Ingrid exchanged looks. I could swear they could communicate without words. Finally Rudolf broke the silence.
“Alright, Heinrich. Do it. But if you feel that something – anything – doesn’t feel right, abort the operation right away and get out of there. Drop everything and go. We can’t risk losing such a valuable agent as you are.”
“I’d say that my life is a fair price to pay to try to save two thousand lives.” Heinrich smiled.
He was never afraid of anything, my husband. And the more people his office killed, the more he wanted to save. I couldn’t be more proud to call myself his wife, even though my heart was aching every time he would do something extremely dangerous. If something happened to him, I wouldn’t be able to live. I couldn’t imagine my life without this man.
“No, it’s not.” Ingrid crossed her arms on her chest. “Yours is way more valuable than
those two thousand. If they die, nothing will change. If you die, we lose our best agent within the RSHA. You’re the only one, Heinrich, and I hate to say it, but you’re irreplaceable. So please, keep it in mind. You’ll be way more helpful to all the other people we can help in the future if you play it safe. No dangerous tricks, be so kind.”
“No tricks, I promise.”
“Who’s going to handle the transcription of the conversations in Müller’s office?”
“Adam will, of course.” Heinrich seemed to be a little surprised by the question. “He’s the savviest kid we’ve ever had. He deserved a medal just for not getting caught with the radio for the past two years!”
“Yes, he’s a smart kid.” Rudolf nodded. “Let him do it. And tell him to bring all the transcriptions to us. The ones that we consider important, we’ll give back to him so he can send them to our friends at home.”
“Do you want me to do the coding?”
“No, we’ll do the coding ourselves. You do your job in the office and look eager. Annalise will help us if we need something, right?”
I nodded.
“Of course I will.”
“Then it’s settled. Sunday after the mass, when you stop by for a tea, we’ll give you the microphone to install. We’ll be able to get it by then.”
Heinrich was a Catholic, and after we got married I started going with him to the Catholic Church instead of the Protestant one, where I used to go with my parents. Of course we didn’t go there to pray; it was a good excuse to meet with our fellow agents without causing any suspicion. But I still liked the church, I liked how peaceful it was, how grand, how holy. For me, a Jewish girl who’d never been to a synagogue in her life in order to keep a multi-generation Aryan image, it was the only house of God where I could talk to Him. It didn’t really matter how that house looked like as long as He could hear me. This time I would pray for Heinrich to be safe.
The Girl from Berlin: Gruppenführer's Mistress Page 3