Vienna at Nightfall

by Richard Wake

  I walked a block from the station to pick up the car I had hired for what I described to the owner as an overnight visit to St. Gallen, paying for two days in advance plus a third day as a deposit. The identification I used for the transaction was all fake, obtained quickly and at great expense after visiting the man in the office down the hall from mine, the office that assisted Jews seeking a way out of Vienna. The conversation didn't total more than about 100 words, total. I explained what I needed. He told me the cost. I paid. He stood me up against a neutral background and took my picture. "Come back tomorrow night at about 6." That was it.

  Now I was driving to Cologne. It was an eight-hour trip, give or take, over uniformly good roads. I crossed the border into Germany soon after Basel, with nothing more than a stamp in the passport book and a wave on the Swiss side and only a quick chat and another stamp on the German side. Then it was really a nice ride -- through Freiburg and Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Mainz, and Koblenz. I stopped for the night in Bonn, about 20 miles south of Cologne. This is where my meeting with Herr Bader would take place, nearer to his home than the steel mill. He said it would be an excuse for him to skip a day at the office and spend most of it with his wife, still convalescing from the heart attack. It would give me a free evening, as Bader was in no mood for nocturnal entertainment. And it would give me a chance to remain out of Vogl's range of vision, given that I checked into the hotel with my new passport. My real name would not show up on the nightly Gestapo report of new hotel guests.

  We met at lunch, did our business in about 15 minutes as we drank our coffee and picked at our strudel, and spent the rest of the time reminiscing about Otto. Bader clearly missed him. They had worked together for 35 years. His steel mill was our first German client, and the two businesses and the two men had matured together. Bader wasn't a Nazi, but he was careful. We just didn't talk about it, probably because he didn't know me very well. I wonder what he confided in Otto.

  I had about three hours to kill after lunch before I would drive into Cologne. I had rolled the plan over in my head a hundred times during the drive from Zurich, to the point where I was seeking any kind of distraction. As I wandered upon the Beethoven museum, located in the house where he grew up, it seemed as good a distraction as any.

  The woman sitting behind the desk at the front door seemed thrilled to have a visitor. I'm pretty sure I was the only person in the place as I wandered from room to room over a couple of floors and a couple of houses that had been joined. It was mostly kitsch and crap but, whatever, it passed the time. And as I was leaning down to look at some sheet music in a glass display case -- for what purpose, I don't know, seeing as how I don't read music -- I suddenly felt the presence of another visitor in the small room. It was Major Peiper, in civilian clothes.

  I looked at him, shocked but maybe not so shocked. "If you're looking to get laid in here, I think you're going to be disappointed."

  "I'm just looking for inspiration."

  "From Beethoven? Really?"

  "A complete hound. A fucking legend, apparently. Although they don't play that up in any of the exhibits. It's more of a local knowledge kind of thing."

  Peiper pointed, and we walked to another room, farther away from the front desk. This was the ear trumpet room, with a couple of examples of the devices Beethoven used to try to improve his hearing. Whispering seemed somehow appropriate.

  "I'd ask how you found me, but it doesn't really matter."

  "We just followed the old man. You told us you were going to be meeting him, and it just seemed easier to do it that way."

  "So what's the big secret?"

  Peiper told me. He said that there was a pretty solid rumor that Schuschnigg was going to call for a plebiscite in the next couple of days, an up or down vote by the Austrian people on the question of continued Austrian independence from Germany. At which point, the night in the bar in Schottenfeld suddenly began to make sense. I told Peiper about the hush-hush government printing job that Leon had sniffed out.

  Peiper's face fell. "Ballot papers. Shit. I was hoping maybe it was just a rumor. That printing business adds a layer of credibility to it. Shit."

  "Why shit? Schuschnigg will win. He might win really big."

  Peiper looked at me like I was a stupid school kid. "Don't you get it? Hitler will go crazy when he hears -- and for that very reason. His whole narrative is that the Austrians want to be part of the Reich. Well, not the whole narrative -- he can still hang on to the bullshit about Nazis being persecuted. But the big justification is that we're all one big Germanic happy family. He can't have a vote that says otherwise."

  "So you think --."

  "I don't think -- I know. Or at least I know in my gut. The German army is coming in, ready or not -- and we're not ready. We don't have a plan except for some fucking training exercise called 'Case Otto.' I swear to God, we would get stopped in our tracks by a loud fart. But the Czechs, your people, are both gutless and delusional, which is a fatal combination. And Mussolini, he could turn us around with a glare -- but I think Hitler has that taken care of. So we're going to waltz in. Just watch. That vote is never going to happen."

  "So what do you want me to do?"

  "Tell your people -- but it's not going to matter. They're already crawled up in the fetal position, Benes first among them. He's hopeless. They're all hopeless -- they still think the French are somehow going to save them. Smart people with no street smarts, all of them. So go home and tell them. And maybe say a prayer that this all just a fucking fever dream of mine."

  47

  Wednesday night. This was my only chance. I was counting on Vogl being a man of fastidious habits. I was praying that his workday had not intervened. Because this really was it -- I wouldn't be back for six months, and whatever nerve I had mustered would be dissipated by then.

  My hired car was parked across the street and down a couple of hundred feet from Bischoffshausen, the cafe where Vogl told me he played chess and drank on Wednesday nights, his only drinking of the week. He told me about it the night I first met him, in the Dom Hotel lobby -- into Bischoffshausen at 7:30, home by 10, right around the corner from the hotel. I was in the car and waiting at 7, scanning the street, praying that Vogl would park in the small street behind the hotel and walk from there down the alley next to Bischoffshausen. I had looked at it before and it must have been where he was talking about when he said, "It's a 30-second walk from the back of the hotel." It was an essential part of the plan, that alley. And right at 7:30, it was from that alley that Vogl emerged, turning right and opening the cafe door.

  So, it was happening. Part of me couldn't believe it, but the rest of me couldn't consider backing out. It was a good plan. I kept repeating that to myself like a mantra. It wasn't just blind vengeance, even though it was. It wasn't crazy just because it seemed impossible to kill a Gestapo captain in the middle of Germany. Because it wasn't impossible. It was a good plan.

  While I thought, I patted the knife in my pocket. It was a beauty, a flick knife from Solingen in Germany. The handle that concealed the blade until it was summoned with the push of a button was sheathed in brown leather, worn down over the years in places but even more handsome as a result. It was Otto's knife. I never saw him carry it -- I think he used it as a letter opener -- but it always sat on the desk in his apartment. And if it was the movie cliche of all time to kill Otto's killer with that knife -- and it was -- well, fuck it.

  If the plan wasn't foolproof, it was entirely sane. I would be waiting at the far end of the alley at 10, near to where it joined the little street behind the hotel, which wasn't much more than an alley itself. Vogl and I would meet, me smoking a cigarette before going into my usual hotel. Vogl would not be alarmed by my presence, and maybe a little tipsy. He would reach out to shake my hand. I would reply with the flick knife, straight into his throat. That's the area I would attack, bare skin not covered by his coat, first his neck and then his head. He would be stunned. It would not take a minute. The only
risk was somebody ducking into the alley to take a piss.

  I thought about planting an envelope with some money on the body, to suggest it might have been a private Gestapo shakedown that had gone wrong. I thought about unbuttoning his pants and yanking them down to his ankles, as if it had been some kind of illicit encounter. But in the end, I decided against any embroidery. Don't waste time. Just kill him and walk -- back up the alley, nice and comfortable, across the street, down to the car and away. The Dutch border was only about 50 miles to the west, just past Aachen. With any luck at all, I would be out of Germany before they found the body. The odds of somebody stumbling on it weren't that great. His wife probably wouldn't call work looking for him for at least an hour. The Gestapo night crew would take at least a few more minutes after that before rousing themselves to go out and check. It would be some time after that before any kind of organized search for the killer would begin. And there would be every reason to believe it had been a local grievance because Vogl dealt with local people. That's where they would start investigating, not at the Dutch border. This was going to work.

  I sipped schnapps from a flask as I sat in the car. The street was dark and there was nobody out. Between 7:30 and 9:30, only two cars drove past. I closed my eyes at one point and woke with a start, but a look at my watch told me it hadn't been a minute. In that short time, though, I felt this flicker of photographs stream through my subconscious, of Otto and Hannah and Henry and Leon and even Johanna -- I was surprised at that -- and of me in two particular places: hiding in that barn during the war, and peeking through the window of that classroom door.

  At about 9:45, I got out of the car, crossed the street and walked toward Bischoffshausen. As I reached the alley, I ducked, walked halfway down, and took a piss against the wall. If anyone had happened upon the scene, they would think nothing of it.

  Buttoned up, I headed toward the end of the alley, where it met the little street behind the hotel. There Vogl's car was, the big black Daimler. I stood at the end of the alley and began to smoke. It was a habit I had given up 15 years earlier, and it actually dawned on me that Vogl might have noticed I had never smoked in his presence before, not even after dinner that first night I met him. But I could live with that contradiction -- it wouldn't register with him right away, and he wasn't going to have much time to think about inconsistencies or anything else.

  Standing there, smoking, checking my watch every 30 seconds, the adrenaline rose and the hand that held the cigarette shook. I really was doing this. I thought of Otto for a second, and how he would crucify me if he knew what I had planned. Otto did not do vengeance. And Otto did not take personal risks. But if I could tell him, I would say that, yes, I was doing this because of him -- but I was also doing it for myself.

  After standing there for a few minutes, I decided that standing on the street behind the hotel and not in the alley itself made the most sense. Just a step or two around the corner, leaning casually against the brick wall, finishing a last smoke before heading back into the hotel -- again, if anyone came upon me, they wouldn't think twice.

  I leaned then, left shoulder on the brick wall, facing the alley about two feet ahead, smoking. The night was quiet. Then I heard someone, first footsteps in the alley, then a soft whistling. I couldn't make out the tune. I looked at my watch quickly. It was 9:55. This had to be Vogl.

  I tried to look casual. I decided I would walk into the intersection between the alley and the street and then turn on my heel, as if pacing as I finished the cigarette. The whistling had stopped but the footsteps grew louder. I fingered the flick knife in my pocket. I did not look down the alley -- easy now, relaxed, casual, not to appear as if I were expecting to see anyone, no less Vogl. I threw the cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out, prepared to turn and head back for the hotel's rear door, fully expecting to be stopped by a shout of, "Alex, is that you?"

  What stopped me instead was a blow from behind, and then a handkerchief held over my nose and mouth, and then sleep.

  48

  The cell was lit by an overhead fixture. The walls were plaster painted white, amplifying the light. The bunk was just a mattress on the floor, the straw spilling out of the sides. I fully expected to see bugs crawling on the bed, and on me, but I couldn't see anything when I finally opened my eyes, not with any degree of focus. I was in a kind of fog, much worse than the worse hangover.

  Where was I? I could tell I wasn't in the cellar at EL-DE Haus -- this cell was different, everything about it, size, shape, and including that there was no writing on the wall -- but, other than that, I had no idea. The last thing I remembered was being in the alley, hearing the whistling, waiting for Vogl. I don't remember seeing him. Whatever was done to me, he didn't do it -- at least not physically. But he probably ordered it.

  But then, why wasn't I in EL-DE Haus? If Vogl had somehow sniffed out my plan -- and I really think that was impossible -- why wasn't I in Gestapo headquarters in Cologne? Maybe someone saw me sitting in the car and became suspicious, but they would have called the police, and I would have been cuffed and arrested, not knocked down and then, I think, drugged. When I was hit, it was on the shoulder, not the head -- at least my shoulder is what still hurt. And I remember a kind of chemical smell on the handkerchief that was clamped onto my face. The fogginess was likely a hangover from whatever was on that handkerchief.

  I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how long I had been in the cell -- day or days, night or nights, no clue. I had a vague sense that I woke up at one point and that I was laying down in the back of a car, but it might have been a dream. I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything -- except, that is, that I was fucked.

  Leon had warned me. Grundman had warned me. Groucho had warned me. But here I was, too smart for my own good, loading on the self-pity. Then the key turned in the lock of the cell door. A guard I did not recognize came in carrying a tin tray with a cup of black coffee and two slices of brown bread.

  "Good, you're awake. Eat up, use the facilities," he said, pointing to the bucket in the corner. "Try to make yourself look presentable. The tribunal is in 15 minutes."

  Then he was gone, the door clanging shut. Tribunal? That sounded like a military court, but what did any of this have to do with the military? The truth was, what did they possibly have me on? Nobody in Germany knew the details of my plan, or that there even was a plan. All I had done was loiter in an alley, smoking a cigarette, behind a hotel where I was well-known, where I had been a guest twice a year for the last 15 years. If they caught Major Peiper, and he talked, then I had a problem. But even then, even if that had happened, how had they found me so quickly? Peiper didn't know where I was going. And I had driven around Cologne for over an hour before parking across the street from Bischoffshausen. There's no way anybody was following me.

  None of it made a lot of sense. But it didn't matter because, after about 10 minutes, the guard was back and I was cuffed, hands behind my back. We left the cell, crossed an interior courtyard of some kind and headed into a different part of the building. It was night, but I still didn't know what day it was.

  The room we entered was kind of a mock courtroom, with a table on the right, a table on the left, and a third table on a raised platform in front of them and between them. In the back, there were about a dozen chairs in two rows. I was directed to sit in one of these chairs, with the guard standing beside me. There was no one else in the room, except for a couple of other guards.

  I turned and looked at my guard, with a questioning shrug. He looked right through me.

  In a minute or two, the door opened and Vogl walked in, accompanied by another man in a Gestapo uniform. They sat together at the table on the left. Vogl didn't look at me. He didn't even look in my direction.

  A minute later, two more men walked in, also in uniform but not Gestapo. It took me a second, but then I recognized one of them -- General Fritz Ritter from the Abwehr, Uncle Otto's old running buddy, the guy who I had met at dinner in Nuremberg. We
made eye contact, but only for a second. Friend or foe? I thought friend, but I couldn't tell for sure. It was a swift glance, and his face betrayed nothing.

  What the hell was this? What had I gotten myself into? I just had no idea. I couldn't even imagine. But then came the order, "All rise." And so we did, as the man who would sit at the table on the raised platform entered the room and climbed onto his perch. I didn't know him, but I knew him. Everybody in Germany knew him, everybody who had ever seen a newsreel in a movie in the last five years, everybody who had heard his slavish, almost cartoonish speeches in praise of Big Adolf.

  "All right, let's get to it," he said, oddly fidgeting. The judge, or whatever you wanted to call him, was Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer.

  49

  It is hard to overestimate what those newsreels meant -- and we saw plenty of them in Austria, given that the government needed to play nice with Germany to get Austrian films distributed in the Reich. They took our crap films, we took their crap newsreels. That was the deal.

  So we saw all of Hitler's top henchmen on a pretty regular basis. Mostly, you were left with snapshot impressions, one-liners to describe them. Goebbels was a little weasel. Himmler was an evil worm. Goering was just a fat fuck. But Hess was different, a bit squirrelly, kind of a nut. The other guys seemed like operators. Hess seemed slavish by comparison, the truest of true believers, without an original thought of his own. Whether it was true or not was beside the point. That was the impression.

  And now, sitting in the same room with him, I couldn't shake that notion. He was up on that platform, clearly annoyed to be there, foot tapping, both hands on the table in front of him, fidgeting with a coin. He had no paperwork before him. He was accompanied by one aide, dressed in civilian clothes, who sat in a chair back by the door and immediately began reading the Volkischer Beobachter, the Nazis' favorite rag. The headline screamed, "The Shame of Vienna." I could only guess about what atrocity they had concocted.