The Girl from Berlin: Gruppenführer's Mistress

by Ellie Midwood

  Ingrid was staring at me for some time without blinking and then finally asked, “I’m sorry, what kind of relationship are you in with him?”

  “What kind of question is that?” I answered coldly, genuinely offended by Ingrid’s hardly veiled insinuation. “We met several times on several different occasions, that’s all.”

  “So you’re telling me that you, hardly his acquaintance, came up to him and said, ‘Excuse me, Herr Gruppenführer, you arrested a friend of mine for high treason, could you please have him released?’ And Kaltenbrunner, the man who they call ‘little Himmler of Austria’ for his sadistic nature, said, ‘Yes, why not, I do that on a daily basis, let out political enemies who I swore under my oath of an officer to prosecute and exterminate.’ You understand how hard it is to believe in, right?” Ingrid crossed her arms on her chest.

  Heinrich suddenly laughed, making both agents turn to him now.

  “He’s in love with her, that’s all,” he finally said in answer to the Americans’ inquisitive looks. “And Annalise uses it in her advantage.”

  “What?” Ingrid raised her eyebrows. “Is it true?”

  “No, of course not.” I gave my still smiling husband a stern look. “He’s not in love with me, he’s just being nice.”

  “Kaltenbrunner being nice, that’s something you don’t hear every day, or shall I better say, never.” Heinrich laughed again. “He’s clearly in love with you, and is trying to make you like him by pretending to be good.”

  “Wait, do you really think Kaltenbrunner is in love with Annalise?” Ingrid asked again.

  “Absolutely. I can bet any money on it. He was looking at her with big interest the very first time he met her, on our wedding day. And since then he’s been trying to get her attention in any possible way. Once he even offered her, even though he didn’t say it openly, a vacant position of his mistress in Vienna. Maybe I shouldn’t say ‘vacant’ though, because he’s quite a pathological ladies man, and in addition to the official spouse has another couple of girlfriends on the side. But I’m quite sure that for Annalise he would get rid of them all in a split second. It looks like she really got to him.”

  “And you’re very happy about it,” I concluded sarcastically.

  “He’s in love with you, but I’m the one who’s married to you, so yes, it makes me very happy.” Heinrich chuckled.

  “You’re a very evil man, you know that, Heinrich?”

  “Stop arguing, you two! Let’s be serious now.” Ingrid clapped her hands to attract our attention. “If he’s really in love with her, we can use it in our advantage. He’s a very powerful man, even though his main sphere of influence is Austria, but we still can work something out.”

  “Excuse me, I guess I hit my head so hard recently that I forgot how I changed my legal name to Mata Hari.” This time it was me who crossed my arms over my chest.

  “But it’s a brilliant idea, if you think about it,” Rudolf interfered. “Right now, when we can’t do anything in the office, Kaltenbrunner would be not only a perfect source of information for you, but also can help with some action. If he agreed to let out one inmate, he might agree to let out twenty. Why not try it?”

  “How stupid do you think he is?” I asked him.

  “Stupid, or shall I say, in love enough to let you out of jail twice, the last time after an accusation of espionage. And don’t forget catching you one time with the suspicious suitcase and not even looking inside.” My husband was clearly enjoying this. I shook my head at him.

  “Well, perfect then!” Ingrid smiled for the first time in the evening. “I say it would be simply irresponsible not to use such an opportunity!”

  “What do you suggest I do, start sleeping with him for the sake of your, not even my, government?!” I almost yelled at her in indignation.

  “No, of course not,” she answered. “Just keep being very friendly with him, borderline flirty. Let him think that he might have a chance with you if he keeps being nice. And play that card for as long as you can.”

  “And what do I do when he starts asking something in return?” I raised an eyebrow at the American agent. She shrugged.

  “Nothing. Remind him that you’re married and walk away.”

  I turned to Heinrich.

  “Are you going to just stand here, listen to all this and consider it fine?! Your wife flirting with another man, you don’t see anything wrong with it?”

  “To me the more you torture the guy, the better, I think it’s very funny actually. He deserved it.”

  For a second I was very tempted to tell my smirking husband how exactly Dr. Kaltenbrunner made Adam talk in the interrogation room, and see how funny he’d find it after my story, and how close after that he’d let the leader of the Austrian SS get to me in the future.

  “All of you clearly have no idea what you’re even talking about and what kind of a man you’re talking about. I’m done with all this.”

  With those words I picked up my purse from the table, turned around and left.

  Chapter 7

  Zurich, August 1942

  My mother wouldn’t stop wiping her tears while holding my hands, as my father was driving us home from the train station where they picked me and Heinrich up just half an hour ago. We hadn’t seen each other for over three years, and I couldn’t help but notice what a toll Norbert’s death and the life in hiding took on them: Papa was even thinner and was almost all grey, and Mama’s pretty face was crossed with prominent lines right above her nose and on the sides of her mouth. I was terribly upset to see them like that; they both were only in their mid-forties.

  Mother kept repeating how happy she was that Heinrich and I could finally visit them, and how lonely they felt in Zurich living all by themselves. They were so used to living as a big happy family with relatives visiting on weekends, with friends stopping by for dinners quite often, with neighbors knowing each other, and now they had to become almost hermits, with one child living in a different country and another one dead, with no means of communication with other relatives in order not to accidentally incriminate them if it comes to that, making no new friends just because there was a chance that they could sell them out to the undercover agents of the Gestapo.

  Moreover, they were basically living off the money that Heinrich systematically sent to them, even though my father tried making a living working from the house and helping a local law office by organizing and writing up paperwork for the lawyers, and Mama typing official letters for the same office and a couple of others. It wasn’t that they were struggling thank God, but deep inside I knew that it was my father’s self-esteem that was hurting him the most. From being a successful lawyer in the heart of Berlin with a personal law firm and quite an impressive income, he now had to rely on his son-in-law to pay his bills. All of his assets were still in the bank of Berlin, since the official version of my parents’ departure was Papa’s poor health; if he’d taken all of the money out of the account, an investigation would follow right away.

  Their apartment was very nice, even though terribly small compared to our old family house with several bedrooms, a vast library, study, dining room, enormous kitchen where old Gryselda, our loyal housekeeper, was always making something incredibly delicious. In the haste of their departure my parents had to let her go with a lot of tears and emotions from both sides, recommending her services to my father’s old partner, Dr. Kauffmann. But Gryselda just shook her head and explained to my parents that they were her family, and she wouldn’t be able to work for anyone else. She’d saved a lot of money from the generous salary my father had been paying her, and she could live the rest of her days without thinking of taking up a new job. I wanted to visit her on Christmas later that year, but her landlord informed me that the sweet old lady died just a month prior to that.

  During the dinner that Mama cooked all by herself, she was asking us about all the people she knew, about Grandma, about the government and the war. After I told her that I had quit ballet a
long time ago and started working for the RSHA, both my parents went suddenly very quiet. I felt guilty that I had to lie about it for so long, but it was definitely not a telephone conversation and I didn’t want to bring it up that way.

  “Honey, we read the newspapers here, the international ones,” my father started carefully. “They’re writing absolutely terrifying things about those kinds of government organizations. They say that they’re responsible for the extermination of over one million Jews already. Is it true?”

  I looked away and didn’t want to reply at first; after all it was indeed the RSHA that was responsible for the extermination program, but my parents still deserved to know the truth.

  “Yes, it is.”

  They both were looking at me in hardly masked shock. I could almost read an unspoken question in their eyes: ‘And you’re working for those people?’

  “It’s not our office though who’s dealing with the deportations and the extermination program. It’s the Gestapo,” Heinrich hurriedly clarified. “We mostly deal with international affairs. And Annalise is just an office worker anyway, all she does is sends teletypes and makes coffee, that’s about it.”

  I gratefully smiled at my husband for that. At least he spared them and didn’t say anything about my radio operator functions, which were far from harmless for the Allies. But it was a part of my job and a price that I had to pay to continue with my counterspy activities, of which I still unfortunately couldn’t inform my parents.

  “But it is absolutely horrible! Goebbels and Himmler themselves promised that the German Jews would be merely resettled to a certain territory chosen for them, and won’t be harmed in any way. And now they’re putting them all in camps and killing them?” My mother couldn’t believe the horrific fact.

  “Well, they lied, Mama. Just like Hitler lied about his pacifistic politics in the late 30’s, and then started the most blood-shedding war the world has ever seen. They all lie. About everything.”

  “Why did you start working for them then? You’re Jewish yourself and now you’re technically helping them put other Jews to death. You know how it’s called in legal terms, daughter? An accessory to the murder,” my father concluded with a stern face.

  I sighed. I shouldn’t have brought up the whole topic at all, should have just kept lying that I was still dancing. Now my own parents think that I adopted the Nazi doctrine and walk around with a swastika on my left shoulder.

  “Richart, I’ve already told you that our office doesn’t have anything to do with the camps, and especially SS-Helferinnen staff. They are merely secretaries, that’s all.” Heinrich tried to pacify my father, but got a completely opposite reaction.

  “SS? My daughter is a member of SS too?!”

  “It’s a women’s SS, Papa, it’s quite different from the main one. And I had to join it, it was an order from the former RSHA Chief, Heydrich.”

  “Oh God, I’m going to lose both of my children to this war! My Norbert, my only son has already died, and now they want my daughter!”

  My father covered his face with both hands in desperation. I had no idea how stricken by my brother’s death he was, and how hard he would take the news of me belonging to the SS, even though SS-Helferinnen was in no way near the regular SS.

  “Papa, please stop killing yourself. Nobody’s going to take me, they won’t send me to the front or anything, it’s just mandatory for all the secretaries who work in high security offices to become a member of SS, that’s all. A pure formality, that’s all it is. And the good news is that I’m working right next to Heinrich.”

  I tried to smile at least at my mother, who looked very worried as well.

  “Mama, I promise, I’m not doing anything dangerous. Or horrible, Papa. Just sending teletypes and making coffee, as Heinrich told you. So please, let’s change the subject and talk about something else. How are the theatres here in Zurich, any good?”

  We had to be in the office in Berlin the next day, so we could only stay for a couple of hours, during which we spoke about everything except the Nazis or SS. Already on the way home Heinrich shook his head at me and smiled.

  “You became such a good liar, you’re starting to scare me.”

  “I had the best teacher.” I grinned at him, and then looked out of the window. I started to scare myself too, because even Heinrich had no idea what was going on inside of my head. I had become a terrific liar.

  _______________

  That Friday Heinrich and I were going to the opera with Max and Ursula. Even though we lived quite close to each other and even worked in the same office (at least with Max), we often had lunches and dinners together, but it was a long time since we all dressed up and made, as Ursula called it, ‘a social appearance.’

  She was right in a sense, putting on a long silk dress and wrapping my neck in several layers of pearls certainly felt nice compared to my official uniform I was obliged to wear every day. I even let my hair down, and, hardly tying it in a low tail, let it lay on one side of my shoulder. I had always considered my waist long hair one of my main assets and proudly displayed it despite the envious looks from the other female opera house patrons, who in majority had short hair according to the fashion.

  We had already taken our seats when I suddenly remembered that I left my purse in the car, and to my ‘luck’ Heinrich had just left our balcony to bring both Ursula and me champagne. I excused myself and went outside, making sure to be quick not to miss the third bell. I grabbed my purse from under the passenger seat where I left it, closed the door and was just going to turn around when someone suddenly grabbed my elbow. I instinctively yanked my hand out, trying to see the face of a poorly dressed young man standing in front of me.

  “Shhh, it’s me, Adam.”

  Even in the light of the lampposts I couldn’t see him clearly, but his voice left me no doubts. It looked like Dr. Kaltenbrunner did keep his promise after all. I hugged him and smiled.

  “Adam? What are you doing here? Are you alright?”

  I had to ask the last question because he looked anything but alright, with a thick beard covering his face, uncut hair and worn out clothes. It looked like he’d lost a lot of weight too.

  “I’m fine, I was living in slums, trying to find you for the past month, but you were out of the country I guess.”

  “Yes, I was in Paris with Heinrich, gathering some intelligence for Standartenführer Schellenberg. Are you coming from the camp?”

  “Mauthausen, yes. What a terrible place, I have to tell you. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was sent to Dachau first, but then they transferred me to that one, I don’t know why.”

  “I asked Gruppenführer Kaltenbrunner to let you out. It’s thanks to him that you’re free now.” I smiled at him again. “But I promised him that you’ll leave the territory of the Reich and will never come back, so come tomorrow night by my house, I’ll prepare clothes, money and papers for you so you can leave immediately.”

  Adam frowned at me.

  “I’ll go only if you go.”

  “What? Adam, I can’t go anywhere, I have a husband and work to do. And why would I go anyway? They dropped all the charges against me, my resume is perfectly clean.”

  “I’m not talking about your resume, I’m talking about that bastard and what he did to you. Don’t you understand that he’s not going to leave you alone?”

  “Adam, he wasn’t acting in his right mind, he already apologized a million times and would never do such a thing again.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Of course he did.”

  “And you believe him.”

  “He let you out as a gesture of good will, didn’t he now? Yes, I believe him.”

  “That’s interesting. He told me the completely opposite.”

  Adam was looking at me with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “The night when he ordered the camp Kommandant to rele
ase me, they were having a party at the Kommandant’s villa. So when I was brought from my barrack to the back entrance of the villa, Kaltenbrunner went outside to say a few words to me. He let the guard go, and I was left alone with him. He was very drunk, he lit a cigarette and laughed when he looked at me.

  ‘Here you are, Jew-boy,’ he said. ‘Or shall I call you lover-boy? Still in love with my girl, aren’t you? You’re lucky that she’s so good and asked for you, otherwise you would have long been dead, you Jewish piece of trash.’

  He then came up very close to me and blew the smoke into my face. ‘I’m letting you out on one condition, Jew. You board the first train and get your sorry ass out of the Reich immediately. Understood? And don’t even think about going back to Berlin, and especially, let me emphasize it so it imprints into your tiny mind,’ he tapped my forehead with his index finger several times. ‘To never even think about getting close to her, do you get it? If I see you near her ever again, and the whole Nazi Germany territory I consider still too near, I’ll break your dirty neck personally with these very hands. Are we clear on this matter?’

  I nodded, because he seemed to get more and more aggressive as he spoke. ‘Remember, Jew, she’s mine. Mine! And only the thought that you’re nursing some kind of romantic feelings for her is insulting to me. So do yourself a favor if you want to live to your twenty-fifth birthday, get out of the country and never come back, especially for her. She belongs to me and to me only.’

  He then stared at me a little longer and then whistled to a guard. Kaltenbrunner gave him my release papers and told him to let me outside and that I’d have to walk to the nearest town to board the train. I almost hadn’t eaten anything in two months, and I think that he found it very funny.”

  Adam paused for a moment and then asked me again, “Well, do you believe me now? He won’t leave you alone, Annalise. You have to come with me, we can go to New York and stay there till at least the war ends. My father will take care of us, and I’ll start working too, you won’t have to worry about anything.”