Darkness into Light Box Set

by Michael Dean

  Kunde spoke softly, with great respect. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We kill him.’

  Glaser took his pipe from his mouth, shocked. ‘Ello! No!’

  Von Hessert laughed, a little shrilly.

  ‘Bravo, Ello!’ Kaspar said. ‘Is there any wine?’

  ‘I ... thought of poison,’ Ello said, ‘but it’s so difficult to get him alone and ...’

  ‘A bomb would be better,’ Kunde said.

  ‘Really? Oh, what a relief! Will you ...?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kunde said. ‘I’ll do it for you. The communists are finished and the Sozis are useless. So I’ll do it alone. It’s always better that way.’

  Ello felt a rush of happiness. ‘Oh, but I can help you. I can tell you about his plans; tell you where he will be. He still goes to the Ostaria without his bodyguards, for example. I can tell you when he’ll be there.’

  ‘And what about the other people in the Ostaria?’ Glaser said. ‘Do they not matter? Are innocents to die, too?’

  ‘You are putting my family at risk even discussing this here,’ Lotte Glaser said angrily, to Ello. ‘Kaspar, you must not breathe a ...’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Mama,’ Kaspar interrupted her. ‘Herr Kunde, Ello. Please let me help. I can run messages. I can find out information.’

  Ello smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Kaspar,’ she said, her eyes wide. She touched her top lip with the tip of her tongue.

  ‘Ello, that’s enough!’ Lotte Glaser said, really angry now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lotte,’ Ello said, standing. ‘As Sepp said, we really should be leaving.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kunde said, standing, too. ‘Forster and his men will be here soon.’ He turned to Glaser. ‘They will ask you about your meeting with Schwarzmüller. Max Troll, the one they called Theo, will have told them everything.’

  ‘I know,’ Glaser said.

  Kunde walked round the table and clapped his fellow Swabian on the shoulder. Glaser smiled at him. Kunde turned to Ello. ‘We should continue this discussion,’ he said. ‘But I dare not go back to the room I was staying in.’

  ‘I have a room at the university,’ Ello said. ‘Let’s talk there.’ She turned to her brother. ‘And you are going back to Prielmayerstrasse,’ she told him. Then she took Kunde by the arm. ‘Come on. Get a move on.’

  Chapter Nine

  After the von Hesserts and Sepp Kunde left, Gerhard, Lotte and Kaspar Glaser sat in silence round the table. So much had happened ... Glaser was thankful that for once Kaspar did not chatter. Then Magda arrived back from a BdM tennis tournament. She was wearing her uniform. As she busied about the room, she affectedly and tunelessly sang a BdM song under her breath:

  Youth, we are the future soldiers.

  Youth, we do the future deeds.

  ‘Herr Rinner has narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo,’ Glaser said. ‘Did you by any chance betray his whereabouts to anybody at your Nazi club?’

  Magda stopped singing and stood there, feet planted apart, with her tennis racquet in its green cover across her body, as if she were about to defend herself with it.

  ‘Gerhard, is it worth it?’ Lotte said wearily. She looked exhausted. ‘Frankly, I’d rather not know.’

  ‘Well, excuse me!’ Glaser yelled. ‘But if my own flesh and blood has betrayed one of the bravest men in Germany, and jeopardised the only chance we may ever have to record what that lunatic Hitler is doing, then I would like to know. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘Go and have a shower, dear,’ Lotte murmured to Magda.

  ‘You did tell someone at the BdM, didn’t you?’ Glaser said, ominously quietly.

  ‘Yes, I did. So what?’ Magda said, staring at him.

  ‘Oh, Magda!’ Lotte put her head in her hands. She looked about to cry, but didn’t.

  Kaspar strode over to his sister and made to hit her, with the flat of his hand, but couldn’t. Lotte did not try to stop him.

  Glaser’s face was blank. ‘You are too young, at the moment, to look after yourself, Magda,’ he said. ‘But as soon as possible, I want you out of my house.’

  ‘Your house?’ Lotte said. ‘And do I have a say in who lives here and who doesn’t?’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘You’re wrecking this family, you ... you ...’ Kaspar shook his head, unable to finish his insult.

  Lotte waved an arm at him. ‘Kaspar. You’re not helping, darling. I know you mean to, but ...’

  ‘Why is she so stupid?’ Kaspar yelled at his mother, waving at Magda, red in the face.

  ‘We are really clever people – Papa, you, me. How did this cretin become part of this family? Was she an accident?’ Kaspar turned back to his sister, still seeing his mother’s horrified face, but unable to stop himself. ‘I wish you had never been born.’

  Magda screamed and ran into her bedroom. Kaspar burst into tears. ‘Midge,’ he said softly, using her baby name. He stared after her. ‘Midge, I didn’t mean it.’

  There was silence. Glaser expected Lotte to go after Magda, but she didn’t. ‘I can’t believe she did it,’ Glaser muttered.

  Lotte gave a deep sigh.

  There was a thunderous banging on the door of the flat. They had got into the building without using the bell, to give Glaser as little warning as possible. Kaspar let them in.

  *

  Six armed, uniformed SS and two plain-clothes Political Police were led by Chief Inspector Forster.

  ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’ Forster said with a sneer, looking from Glaser to his wife and son.

  Magda’s screaming sobs were clearly audible from her room.

  Forster faced Glaser. ‘Heil Hitler, Dr Glaser,’ he said, giving a Hitler salute. ‘We need to search your flat. I think you know why.’

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Glaser muttered, avoiding his gaze.

  The SS and Political Police scattered and started searching the place. The search was deliberately destructive. Papers in the bureau were screwed into a ball and thrown on the floor. Lotte’s harmonium was tilted on its side and banged. Lotte got up and went into Magda’s room without a word. One of the Political Police followed her.

  Kaspar moved to an armchair to watch them. He remembered a thriller he had read: when the police are searching a room, they always look at the suspects, who cannot help glancing at the place where the money, or the jewels, or whatever, has been hidden.

  Kaspar stared with fixed intensity at Kokoschka’s The Emigrants, facing him on the wall. Like all Glaser’s paintings, it was an expert reproduction, from the Hanfstaengl Art Company. Forster ordered it taken down. There was nothing behind it.

  Kaspar repeated his performance with the reproduction on the right-hand wall: Kirchner’s portrait of a young girl, Marzella. When two SS had taken that down, too, and found nothing, Forster glared at Kaspar, his face contorted with fury. Glaser looked almost as angry, at the provoked manhandling of his paintings. The youth, slopping in his armchair, met Forster’s gaze with a practised look of innocence.

  Magda screamed piercingly from her room. Kaspar sat up in his chair, his fists clenched, and got a warning wave to stay put from Forster. Lotte’s voice came through from the open door of Magda’s room: ‘You can leave that alone. It’s private.’

  An SS-man came into the drawing-room with a battered school exercise book. He handed it to Forster. ‘Looks like some sort of diary, sir,’ he said.

  Forster sat in an armchair and opened it. Lotte and Magda came back into the drawing-room. Magda was streaming tears; her mother had her arm round her. Magda’s BdM uniform, Glaser noticed, wasn’t impressing the SS.

  ‘It’s a young girl’s private diary,’ Lotte said evenly to Forster. ‘When you have satisfied yourself of that, perhaps we can have it back.’

  Forster ignored her. He settled to read, with a twisted grin, while the search of the flat continued around him. ‘I love him so totally,’ Forster read aloud from Magda’s diary, to guffaws from the SS, as they continued rummaging and
throwing things about. Magda, to their great delight, howled in her mother’s arms. Kaspar clenched his fists again, but Glaser motioned him to be still.

  ‘I count the hours until I see him,’ Forster’s mocking reading continued. ‘It’s only then that I truly come alive. He is so handsome, but it is more than that. He is kind and funny and a genuinely good person.’ Forster waved the exercise book in the air. ‘Who is this marvel?’ he asked Magda.

  ‘Have you got a daughter, Chief Inspector?’ Lotte asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ Forster said. ‘She’s a good National Socialist.’

  ‘Actually, so is Magda.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Forster repeated to Magda, who was still sobbing. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘It’s a boy at school,’ Lotte said. ‘It’s a harmless crush, as most teenage girls go through. You are doing your cause no good by humiliating a fifteen-year-old child. Have you nothing better to do with your time?’

  Forster widened his twisted grin and looked into Magda’s diary again. Kaspar thought and spoke instantaneously. What he said cost him his sister’s friendship for ever, and saved his father’s life. Magda never believed it was not said in revenge for her betrayal of Herr Rinner, but in fact the quick-thinking youth had realised Lotte’s deception would not last much more of Forster reading the diary. He had also correctly calculated the effect of the von Hessert name. He spoke solely to stop Forster tormenting his sister any further.

  ‘My sister is writing about Rüdiger von Hessert,’ Kaspar said to Forster. ‘You know? Cajetan von Hessert’s son? She is very attached to Rüdiger, who is a family friend, as well as a close colleague of my father’s.’

  Magda’s howls redoubled. Forster shot Kaspar a shrewd look. He knew Rüdiger von Hessert was at the Ministry of Justice, but not that he and Glaser had any particular connection. As Kaspar had intended, Forster was more circumspect now he knew about the von Hessert connection: the search was conducted with greater care and Glaser was treated courteously when they took him away for interrogation.

  But the main effect of Kaspar’s revelation was to connect Glaser to a known suspect, who was already under surveillance – Rüdiger von Hessert. Forster now believed he had underestimated Glaser. Glaser, he thought to himself as they headed for the Wittelsbach Palace in a police car, was far more dangerous than he had once supposed.

  *

  The second Chief Inspector Forster and his men were out of the door with her husband, Lotte sprang to the telephone. Her voice was strained but steady. Ignoring the probable bugging of the phone, she telephoned the Ministry of Justice at Prielmayerstrasse, asked for Rudi, and told him what had happened. She told him to tell Ello.

  Magda returned from her room, while her mother was still on the telephone.

  ‘How are you?’ Kaspar asked his sister.

  She ignored him, curling up in one of the chintz armchairs, almost in a foetal position, sucking her thumb. The front of her BdM uniform was damp from spittle and tears. When the call to Rudi was finished, Lotte perched on the wide arm of the armchair. She put her arm round Magda.

  ‘You see the sort of people they are, darling?’ Lotte said, stroking Magda’s plaited hair.

  Magda took her wet softened white thumb from her mouth. ‘If the Führer knew what they just did in his name, those people would be in disgrace.’

  She shook herself free of her mother’s embrace, stalked back to her bedroom and slammed the door.

  Then, in the silence, breathing deeply, she reaffirmed her faith by repeating the BdM oath – which she knew by heart:

  You Führer are our commander,

  We stand in your name.

  The Reich is the object of our struggle.

  It is the beginning and the Amen.

  Your word is the heartbeat of our deeds,

  Your faith builds cathedrals for us.

  And even when death reaps the last harvest,

  The crown of the Reich never falls.

  Chapter Ten

  Glaser sat facing Heydrich, who was behind his desk, beneath the Vietz portrait of himself as a fencer. Forster was perched on one of the plush chairs, sideways-on to Glaser. There were no guards. They were not felt necessary.

  ‘Who was at the meeting you had with the communists at Rottenbucherstrasse?’ Heydrich asked.

  ‘I don’t know; they used codenames.’

  ‘You didn’t recognise anybody?’

  ‘No.’

  Forster spoke. ‘So, you didn’t recognise Sepp Kunde, despite having interviewed him at Dachau?’

  ‘Yes. Kunde but nobody else.’

  ‘Please don’t lie, Dr Glaser,’ Heydrich said. ‘You, of all people, should co-operate with an investigation by the legitimate authorities. You are a man of the law, are you not?’

  Glaser nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am.’

  ‘But you made common cause with a felon,’ Forster said. ‘That’s what Kunde is.’

  Glaser half turned in his seat, so he was facing the Chief Inspector. ‘What do you mean by common cause?’

  ‘Who do you think gave the communists your name?’

  ‘No doubt, Herr Kunde did. But without my permission. Have you asked Herr Kunde if he was responsible?’

  ‘We will,’ Heydrich said, ‘when we catch up with him.’

  Forster winced. Glaser gave the faintest of smiles. Heydrich had just told him Sepp Kunde was still free. This was vital. They would have tortured Kunde; he would have talked; they would know everything. But with Kunde free, Glaser thought he could see a way out.

  ‘What did the communists want?’ Heydrich asked.

  ‘Money.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  Glaser was mindful that they already knew what had been said at the meeting, from the spy Troll: ‘I told them I had no access to money. I gave them the name of someone who had. Erich Rinner. I said a meeting could be arranged.’

  ‘So you co-operated with them completely?’ Forster said.

  ‘No, I deceived them completely. I am a lifelong anticommunist. I was brought to that place against my will, at knifepoint. Having been kidnapped, I simply strung them along, in order to get out of there as quickly as possible. Erich Rinner is in Prague.’

  Glaser tensed, but it was quickly obvious, as he had gambled, that the Gestapo had not shared Magda’s information with the Political Police, so they had only Troll’s word – from him – that Rinner was in Munich.

  ‘Did you report your contact with these traitors to the authorities?’ Heydrich asked.

  ‘You know I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they threatened to kill me if I did.’

  Forster shot him a look of amused admiration. ‘So you were not just about to go to the Asam House, when Kunde warned you?’ he said.

  ‘The Asam House?’ Glaser’s look was one of pure incomprehension. ‘I know nothing about the Asam House.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Kunde?’ Forster asked.

  ‘At the meeting at Rottenbucherstrasse.’

  Forster looked at Heydrich, shrugging, meaning there was nothing else to ask. He didn’t believe a word Glaser had said. Kunde had warned him away from the Asam House meeting; Forster would have staked his children’s lives on it. But he had no evidence, and without evidence he was not going to arrest a man he had found out, just in time, was close to the von Hesserts. After the fiasco at the Asam Church, things were going badly enough for him as it was.

  ‘Herr Glaser,’ Heydrich said, leaning back in his chair, his squeaky voice rising. ‘Are you aware of the deliberations of the Reich Commission for Population Questions?’

  Glaser stiffened. ‘No.’

  ‘Under the chairmanship of Dr Lange, the commission is preparing a Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, which will come into force soon. It will be enforced by the new Hereditary Health Courts. I think you may be able to see how this may concern you?’

  Forster laughed unpleasan
tly, and stared with mockingly exaggerated attention at Glaser’s artificial leg, stretched out in front of him. Glaser went pale but said nothing.

  ‘As I say,’ Heydrich went on, ‘nothing has been published yet, but I do know from Dr Lange what the provisions will be. The forced sterilisation of a variety of categories will be enacted. Let me see ...’

  Heydrich checked that Forster was watching him. Forster gave a sycophantic leer of support. ‘The feeble-minded will be forcibly sterilised. Schizophrenics, too. And manic depressives. Those with Huntington’s chorea. Those with genetic blindness, deafness or alcoholism. And ... I know there’s something here that affects you, Glaser. What is it now? Oh yes, the mentally and physically handicapped.’

  Forster snorted a sardonic laugh.

  Heydrich let loose a few goat-like brays, then continued. ‘You see, the care of the handicapped already costs the Reich one billion Reichsmarks per year. And they and the inferior races are breeding faster than those of pure blood. A situation which cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely, without damage to the racial stock. Do you not agree?’

  Glaser thought of Hitler’s family: The word was that his sister Ida was an imbecile. Another sister, Paula, was simpleminded. She had a job licking envelopes all day. His aunt, Johanna Pölzl, was a hunchback, and schizophrenic.

  But even as he thought these things, Glaser knew he was being brought down to their level. He was seeing Hitler’s family the way Heydrich was seeing him. And that was wrong. Wasn’t it?

  ‘Nothing to say, Glaser?’ Heydrich said.

  Forster gave another burst of sycophantic laughter. Heydrich joined in, braying away. Then he suddenly stopped. He leaned forward over the desk.

  ‘Can you have sex, Glaser?’

  ‘I’m not answering that.’

  ‘Glaser, there is a button on my desk here. I am about to ring for troopers who will lower your trousers and we will answer the question for ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘Thank you. What happened to your leg?’