The Austrian: Book Two

by Ellie Midwood

  “Are you going to arrest me?” she asked, still without any fear in her voice.

  “No, I am not.”

  She beamed at me. “So I was right then. Good.”

  “Don’t ever say it to anybody else. Ever,” I warned her in a stern voice.

  “Don’t worry, Herr Gruppenführer. I would have never said it to anyone besides you. And I never will.”

  “You barely know me to say such dangerous things.”

  “I know you well enough to say them. I know that you’re a good man, unlike them. And I said it so you know that I know it. I know that you’re a kind man.”

  “And how do you know it, Frau Friedmann?”

  “I can see it in your eyes. You have the kindest eyes… on the face of a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “Frau Friedmann.” I smiled, picked up her hand and kissed it. “How do you expect me not to start imagining things after what you just told me?”

  She giggled mischievously and gave me a one shoulder shrug. I couldn’t let go of her hand for the rest of the evening.

  Chapter 5

  Nuremberg, April 1946

  The time that we spent alone after dinner was always the quietest part of the evening. Most of us, the war criminals incarcerated here, were occupying our restless minds with reading a book, while some, according to Henry, were just lying on their cots and staring at the ceiling, waiting for the lights to go off. I belonged to the first category, so I was completely immersed in some spy story, which Henry had generously lent me, when the former Reichsmarschall Göring’s powerful voice called me out from his cell.

  “Kaltenbrunner!”

  “Yes?” I shouted back after a pause, much surprised that such insubordination of the prison rules – we weren’t actually allowed to communicate across the hallway – went without a single remark from the guards.

  The extravagant former second-in-command and the hero of the Luftwaffe, with his insolent tongue and complete despise of any rules whatsoever, mostly caused unexplainable fascination not only among the guards, but even the general population – German, and even British and American. Henry had told me with barely masked astonishment about the volume of ‘fan mail’ Göring was getting from all over the world; not that the Reichsmarschall was allowed to read any, but the fact that the defiance and insolence which he showed in the court during the proceedings gained him such popularity was worth noting.

  All of the psychiatrists spent most of their time with Göring, trying to understand the mystery of the newly born phenomenon which Göring had started – a fascination with the Nazi regime. How people, who were still licking their wounds after what the leaders of that regime had caused, could start expressing their support of one of the vilest of these leaders, saying things like, ‘Good for you, Göring!’ and ‘Keep going strong, Göring, you got this!’ was beyond any understanding. It was as if his boldness and charisma only countered all the millions of lives that were lost to the regime that he was a part of.

  “He is a fascinating person, really,” Dr. Goldensohn admitted once, after I asked him what he thought of the former Reichsmarschall. “He is a really nice guy to talk to, when we talk about trivial things that is. He loves telling me about his hunting escapades, tennis, and his Luftwaffe days when he became an ace… And yet, being so seemingly nice and good-humored, he doesn’t have any qualms about what he did. He’s not ashamed at all, and still openly curses out the Wehrmacht resistance. He even told me that if Himmler hadn’t killed himself then he would have killed him, just so we couldn’t put him on trial, even though he personally despised the man. It’s as if he puts his army principles of honor, which tell him to protect the ones of his kin no matter how atrocious their crimes are, above human morals and even conscience itself. As if his conscience only concerns itself with what he presumes to be morally acceptable, and not the rest of humanity… And yet, despite the atrocity of his very words that he speaks so openly, he emanates such a powerful aura that people unwillingly want to follow and submit to him… I find myself fascinated by him. Now, how is that possible? It’s just wrong… It is utterly terrifying, but somehow it’s impossible not to admire his inner power. It’s like a hurricane that wipes whole towns out of its way; it’s impossible to take your eyes off it.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed with a sad smile. “It was impossible to keep one’s eyes off the Nazi regime from the very first day. That’s how I found myself fascinated by them, wanting to follow them. And then the others started following me. It was mass madness, doctor. We knew exactly where this was going and yet couldn’t stop ourselves. It didn’t matter what they were saying, you’re right. We didn’t listen sometimes… only watched them, as you so correctly put it, fascinated. People are always fascinated by unrestrained power, and that’s why history always repeats itself. We’ll always be following leaders who emanate that power, no matter how morally wrong it may be and what consequences it may bring.”

  “Hopefully, this time, after this war, it won’t happen again.”

  I shook my head slowly, a sad smile touching the corners of my mouth. “It will happen much sooner than you expect, doctor. And no country, no matter how much it prides itself in being open-minded and democratic, isn’t immune to it.”

  Göring’s voice distracted me from my thoughts once again, shouting from his cell, “Remember, when you sent Schellenberg to me? In 1943?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, maybe you were right after all.”

  I didn’t reply to that confession, which no doubt everyone in hearing range would see as mysterious. Only I understood it, and grinned. I did send Schellenberg to him, so the latter could probe the Reichsmarschall on the matter of the possibility of negotiations with Western allies – without the Führer knowing of course. Schellenberg returned two hours later, sniffled, shrugged his narrow shoulders and pursed his lips. Just by the way he didn’t lift his eyes up to mine, I knew the outcome of the conversation.

  Reichsmarschall Göring was too comfortable in his little castle, filled with newly obtained antiques, and jewelry, all confiscated from the ‘enemies of the Reich’. Dotted throughout the household were crystal vases filled with gems, in which ordinary middle-class citizens usually kept fruit or bonbons. He had only patted Schellenberg condescendingly on the shoulder, playing with his marshal’s baton in his other hand as he sighed contentedly, his eyes slightly clouded with the morphine he grew so dependent on. He replied that it was all nonsense and of no interest to him. The allies would never conquer the Germans, he said, so all this was nothing to worry about.

  Now, sober from his addiction, stripped of all his crosses and the insignia that he had been so meticulously collecting, he repeated once more through an open window of his cell, “Maybe, you were right after all. Maybe, you were.”

  He then added suddenly, with that old contempt and defiance that had never left him, “Ach, to hell with it, still! I don’t give a damn about my life. They won’t hang me anyway, you hear me? Reichsmarschalls don’t get hanged, they leave on their own.”

  His words rang through the open window of my cell. Too bad I wasn’t a Reichsmarschall, I thought.

  _______________

  Vienna, February 1940

  I opened the window in my office, letting the fresh frosty air inside. It had finally stopped snowing. I sat on the windowsill letting the cold cover me with its invisible blanket and chill me to the bone even through my woolen uniform. I liked the cold, for it was proof that I could still feel something, if not inside, than in my body at least. I was always prone to these melancholic moods in late fall and winter, when the nights were so unfairly longer than days, and the sun, like a cool Nordic beauty, would condescendingly show its favor to the earth on rare occasions, blinding, but so useless in its glory.

  I put my arm out the window and started throwing the fresh snow from the outside part of the windowsill, smirking bitterly at Otto’s last words which he had said to me before leaving for his training camp for th
e Waffen SS.

  “I don’t know how you can take this office. I want to hang myself from the chandelier every time I come here. You don’t even do anything anymore. You just sit here putting papers from one stack to another. How have you not gone mad from boredom, that’s what’s interesting.”

  “I prefer it this way.” I smiled at him then. “I wanted my country to go back to its old glory, and I think I succeeded. We’re a part of the great German Reich now. My job is done, so I’ll just sit back and let my superiors do whatever they want.”

  “You’ll drink yourself to death soon.”

  “There’s nothing else to do here. And besides, I prefer to drink myself to death in my warm, comfortable office instead of sleeping in a snowdrift like you’re going to do with your Waffen SS. What’s gotten into you? Why Waffen SS?”

  “Ach… I want to live!” Otto replied with a dreamy expression.

  “That’s quite an interesting idea of living – going to the front.”

  “The front is exactly the place to live. Only facing death can you appreciate the value of life, when every second can become your last.”

  “I don’t need to risk my life every day to remind myself that I’m alive,” I replied. Otto just looked at me and didn’t say anything in return.

  Now, looking out of the window at the bloody sunset I understood the meaning of his silence. I was dead already, dead at thirty-six years old, with nothing to live for. I reached for a cigarette pensively, trying to analyze with the precision of my cold lawyer’s mind why I felt like I was suffocating in this office, and not only in the office, but in my grandly furnished apartment, in my brand new car, in this city that I thought I loved. Why did nothing matter all of a sudden? Why did nothing make sense?

  I didn’t share my thoughts with anyone naturally; depression was not only frowned upon but thought to be a mental weakness. If detected, Melita’s office quickly signed orders for forced sterilization. I searched for the brandy bottle behind my back without taking my eyes of the bleeding sky. Better self-medicate myself then, I smirked cynically, eying the half-empty vessel before taking several burning gulps.

  Everyone had left me. Otto had enlisted in the Waffen SS, Melita had been working in Berlin for a few years now, and my only ray of light in the complete darkness, my newfound treasure with her ever-changing expressions, my Frau Friedmann, had left me too. She appeared for a short-lived moment like that capricious February sun from behind the lead-filled gloomy clouds, bathed me in her cold affection and disappeared with an enigmatic smile, ruthlessly and without regret. Maybe Otto was right about that, too – longing for a Prussian beauty was as senseless as trying to find warmth in a fluffy cloud of shining snow, like many soldiers were doing now, pressing themselves into its deceiving embrace. It lured you into its comforting peacefulness, to cover you softly and snuggle you tightly, gently but without regret, until your heart stopped beating.

  I pressed my forehead to the icy window and dug my fingers into the little snow pile on the window ledge outside, until the cold turned my fingers numb and made my bones ache. Maybe Otto was right about everything. Maybe I should go to the front too. Maybe I would find some meaning there…

  A knock on the door and my adjutant’s voice distracted me from my unhappy thoughts. I frowned at him when he entered without getting my consent first but didn’t make a motion to get up from where I was sitting or to at least try to hide the bottle.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Herr Gruppenführer, but you have an appointment with Obersturmführer Höttl.” Getting no reaction from me, he shifted from one foot to another and cleared his throat. “He’s waiting in the antechamber. Shall I invite him in or…?”

  I shook my head slightly to clear it from the alcohol that wasn’t getting me drunk anymore but only helped to numb the unbearable dullness surrounding me, and got up from the windowsill.

  “Yes, invite him in.” I closed the window and went to the table to stub the cigarette in the ashtray. “And bring us both coffee too.”

  “Jawohl.”

  My adjutant clicked his heels and disappeared behind the door. I put the brandy bottle away and sat in my chair, combing my hair with both hands, going back to my official self.

  Obersturmführer Dr. Höttl appeared in the doors escorted by my adjutant, and greeted me with the usual salute and a sharp click of his heels. I nodded at him and gestured for him to take a seat opposite me.

  He was a very young man, in his mid-twenties, but already slightly heavy set. His round face evidenced a healthy glow that showed he was probably too fond of kaiserschmarren – traditional Viennese pancakes. With his uniform cap placed neatly on his lap, Höttl smoothed his dark, wavy hair with a nervous gesture and said, “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Herr Gruppenführer. I do appreciate your time.”

  My time? I have no idea what to do with this time.

  “Certainly, Obersturmführer. Are we colleagues?”

  “Pardon me, Herr Gruppenführer?”

  “Your doctorate.” I gave the nervous fellow an encouraging smile. “Are you a lawyer?”

  “Oh.” He blushed slightly and responded with a wary smile. “No sir, I’m afraid I’m a historian.”

  “Why afraid?” I laughed. It was both baffling and amusing to me each time a new person was introduced to me, how intimidating they found me to be. I suddenly recalled Frau Friedmann’s remark about my face being that of a cold-blooded murderer. She told me that I had the kindest eyes though. I guess women see something that men can’t.

  Höttl meanwhile gave me an uncomfortable one shoulder shrug and another guilty smile. My adjutant walked in with a big silver coffee tray and placed it carefully on the table. After he filled both cups with steaming Arabica, I motioned my visitor to help himself to both the drink and the raisin biscuits.

  “So, what brings you here today, Obersturmführer?” I asked him, putting sugar and whipped cream in my cup. When I first started dating Lotte, she would always make me the famous Viennese coffee in her father’s coffee house. I left her, but was so used to her coffee that I couldn’t take my drink any other way now.

  “I, ahem, came to ask for your protection, Herr Gruppenführer,” he replied quietly, reddening to the roots of his hair.

  I noticed an SD marking on his left sleeve. My gut feeling immediately alerted me that it had something to do with Heydrich.

  “My protection?”

  “Yes. Everyone speaks so highly of you here, in Austria.” I smiled inwardly, both from the unexpected compliment and that my compatriot had called the country by its original name. “I was born in Vienna, and even though it’s such a cosmopolitan city, people are very fickle here and aren’t afraid to speak their mind. But everyone I asked, amongst my colleagues here in the Viennese office, agree on one thing: that there is no fairer leader than you that I could address in my dangerous situation.”

  “Obersturmführer, I don’t compliment girls whom I want to ask on a date like this.” I laughed as the poor fellow reddened even more. “You really seem to be in a dangerous situation. What is it that you’ve done to your Berlin superiors that you must seek asylum in our poor Austria? I hope it has nothing to do with the recent attempt on the Führer’s life?”

  The poor man almost choked on his coffee and, with eyes wide open in terror, rushed to persuade me in the opposite. “No, of course not, Herr Gruppenführer! I would never even… partake in such a vile crime! It goes against all… no, I assure you, sir, I would never even think of going against—”

  “I’m not saying that you were in any way connected with that insane artisan, who placed that bomb in the column, Höttl.” I laughed again. “I was implying that you, as an SD agent, was participating in the investigation and messed something up, that’s all. Trust me, I know firsthand how Reichsführer and Heydrich can be when something goes wrong.”

  He seemed a little relieved by my explanation and nodded.

  “My position is too insignificant to participate in such
an important investigation, Herr Gruppenführer. But my situation… does have something to do with Gruppenführer Heydrich.”

  How did I not see that coming? I smirked.

  “Continue, please,” I encouraged him again, stirring the cream in my coffee with a small silver spoon.

  “A week ago I was called before him and informed in an official manner that I am to face an investigation and a trial in the higher SS court for my unreliability as a Party member and an SS man.”

  “Why? What have you done?”

  “Nothing, sir. Except for my strong attachment to my religion,” he replied, eyes downcast as if in shame. “I was raised in a strong Roman Catholic household, and I have heard that you’re Catholic as well—”

  “Not anymore,” I interrupted him in a cold voice. “I’m a Gottgläubig. I left the church in 1935.”

  To everyone who asked me of my decision, I always referenced an official Party doctrine and their preference of the German pagan religion to all of the conservative churches. The truth was that after Bruno’s men executed Father Wilhelm, who I so carelessly confided in about my role in the former Austrian leader Dollfuss’s assassination, I couldn’t bring myself to step through the doors of the church ever again. I had nightmares for a good year; nightmares where I was stricken by lightning as soon as I stepped inside the church, or even worse, that horrible creatures were jumping on me from behind the pews and tearing into my flesh with their fangs. That’s why I liked drinking myself to sleep; alcohol made the nightmares disappear, both during the day and night.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Höttl mumbled without looking up from his coffee, shifting in his seat uncomfortably.

  “No need to apologize. I have nothing against the Catholic Church, Obersturmführer. I left it for personal reasons.” I looked down in my cup, wishing that brandy was inside it instead of coffee, and drank it in one shot. “So, what does Gruppenführer Heydrich have against your spiritual inclinations?”