This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 Greg Williams
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
ISBN-13: 9781477808719
ISBN-10: 147780871X
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906100
For my girls.
CONTENTS
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
NUREMBERG TRIAL
JUNE 20, 1946
Testimony of Albert Speer, the former Reich minister of armaments, when questioned by his lawyer, Hans Flächsner:
Flächsner: Herr Speer, were orders given to destroy industry in Belgium, Holland, and France?
Speer: Yes… Hitler had ordered [at the beginning of July 1944] a far-reaching system of destruction of war industries in all these countries.… Army Command West was responsible for carrying out these orders… I informed [the commanding general] that, as far as I was concerned, this destruction was senseless… and that I, in my capacity as armaments minister, did not consider [it] necessary. Thereupon no order to destroy these installations was given. By this, of course, I made myself responsible to Hitler for the fact that no destruction took place.
Flächsner: With regard to the other occupied countries… did you use your influence to prevent destruction?
Speer: From August 1944, in the industrial installations in the Government General, the ore mines in the Balkans, the nickel works in Finland; from September 1944, industrial installations in northern Italy; beginning in February 1944, the oil fields in Hungary and industries in Czechoslovakia.
Flächsner: At the beginning of September 1944 when enemy troops approached the German boundaries from all sides, what were Hitler’s intentions… for the preservation of the means of existence for the… population?
Speer: He had absolutely no [such] intention. On the contrary, he ordered the “scorched-earth” policy with special application to Germany.…
1
CHARLOTTENBURG, BERLIN
JUNE 1934
The metronome that rested on the piano always made Thomas think of his father, Nicolas. When Thomas was a boy, Nicolas would reach over to the small wooden box with a curved top and pull the metal arm from the catch before releasing it on its short journeys from one pole to another. Thomas had not used the metronome for years—he was an accomplished pianist now—but he liked the idea of its reliability.
“So, Thomas,” Nicolas said to his son with a half smile as he passed from the kitchen into the parlor. He pulled at one end of his thick mustache, which curled upward. “What are we to have?”
“What would you like, Father?”
It was a game they played, a ritual that offered familiarity and comfort when so much about them was changing. Nicolas settled into his high-backed chair, his slender hands resting on its worn arms.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said after a while. “You’re eighteen now, old enough to know your own mind. Why don’t you choose something?”
Thomas smiled. Usually if Nicolas came into the parlor to listen to him practicing, then he wanted to hear Bach. Thomas thought for a moment, his eyes casting outside the high windows that he had cleaned that morning. Outside, an aging gray mare, its mane matted and grisly, was pulling a coal cart. A flatbed truck with wooden sidings pulled up behind the cart and the driver honked his horn. When the truck was eventually able to pull past, the two men in Party uniforms in the front shouted and made gestures at the man in the cart, who sat holding leather reins. He turned his tired face the other way, as if he hadn’t heard them.
Thomas moved his hands to the piano keys, rested them momentarily, and then began to play. The music flowing through him was familiar and golden, pulling him onward. He had no choice but to follow it. He watched, examining his father, as Nicolas lowered his head to concentrate. There were deep lines on his face now and a stooping manner of a man in decline.
Thomas knew that his father had watched as members of his history department—mainly those who were unwilling to teach a revised version of the subject or had “un-German” political beliefs—had been taken away. The prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße was full, so some were incarcerated in the old military prison in Tempelhof, which was now run by the Gestapo. Thomas had passed by this place, Columbia-Haus—which was near the barracks—on his bicycle only last week. Slowing to examine its mean stone walls on Friesenstraße, he had experienced an involuntary shudder: It was said that the place possessed dungeons and 156 cells in which there were hundreds of prisoners. Most were on their way to the new camp in Oranienburg, near the Hohenzollern Canal, where an old factory had been repurposed.
Thomas had tried to put it out of his mind and had headed onward to the swimming pool, where he had competed in the youth games, winning the hundred-meter butterfly as he always did. On his way out, as he squeezed through the bronzed and uniformed teenagers who smelled of chlorine, a tanned girl with tight blond plaits had smiled at him in a shy way that was, he thought, an invitation of a sort. He had seen the badge of the Bund Deutscher Mädel—the League of German Girls—on her shirt. It made him wonder what was really in her heart. He had arrived late and left early, slipping away before the parade with its triangular flags, songs, and spontaneous cheers for the Führer.
Thomas had been playing the piano for perhaps five minutes when the banging started. He heard a thump on the ceiling above them, as if a large object had been dropped. A few minutes later there was a thudding of footsteps. Thomas continued to play and looked over at his father. Nicolas’s face was creased with effort, the lines around his eyes and mouth betraying tension as he tried to focus on the music.
Slam!
A door upstairs crashed into its frame.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The noise of boots on the staircase blotted out all trace of the music. Nicolas could no longer make a pretense of listening—he slammed his pipe down, spilling its contents onto the crocheted cover of a side table.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The noise was heading toward them now, down the creaking staircase. It sounded like someone was rolling a boulder that was hitting every step on its way down. Nicolas hauled himself from his chair. His back stooped, he walked toward the hallway, his footsteps uneven and shallow. Thomas stopped playing. His father was in the hallway. No one was listening to him now.
“Dieter!” Nicolas shouted to his stepson. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I have a meeting to attend,” Dieter said. His voice was low and confident. The noisy provocation was now matched by undisguised insole
nce. Dieter no longer used a deferential tone toward Nicolas. His manner was one of barely concealed contempt.
“Look at yourself, Dieter. What do you think you look like?”
“Like a patriot, of course.”
Nicolas didn’t answer.
As he approached the hallway, Thomas watched his father’s liver-spotted hand reach out and clasp the doorframe to steady himself. The sinews were raised, pressed hard against the skin.
“Ah, of course,” Dieter continued. “I forgot that you might not recognize a uniform, seeing as you’ve never worn one. Two million Germans died on the western front, including my father, but you never managed to take up arms to defend our country.”
Thomas turned the corner into the hallway and laid eyes on his half brother. Dieter was heavyset, awkward, and pallid. The uniform offered Dieter poise, as if it organized a body that was inherently muddled. He had never been particularly academic or athletic, but there was a raw energy to Dieter, an unapologetic aggression that had made Thomas wary of him. His friends’ big brothers would playfight with them, holding back from using the full extent of their force, but Dieter would never pull his punches. If Thomas found himself in a physical confrontation with his half brother, he knew that there would be no restrictions to the elder’s behavior.
Which is why it was no surprise to Thomas to see his half brother standing in the hallway in the brown shirt and office jacket of an Oberscharführer in the Sturmabteilung, the Nazis’ paramilitary thugs. This was a uniform of a brawler, a playground bully, a willing facilitator. Thomas could smell the polish on Dieter’s boots, could see the slight bulge of his belly above his belt and the blue diamond insignia denoting rank on his collar. The brown strap on his kepi bit into the fat beneath his chin, which was raw and freshly shaved. Thomas had learned that the color on the top of the kepi signified the wearer’s Gruppe: Dieter’s was black, denoting his allegiance to Berlin-Brandenburg. Thomas had seen them in the streets, waving flags, smashing windows, sticking their boots in innocents’ groins.
He thought: If the SA didn’t exist, then Dieter would have willed it into being.
“Dieter, I implore you,” Nicolas said. “I know that you have friends in this… this… organization, but you need to think about what you’re doing. The consequences. The future. Your responsibilities.”
“You’re right,” Dieter said, exhaling. “That is exactly what I am doing.”
“No good will come of this folly,” Nicolas replied.
Dieter raised his chin defiantly. There was something more than fire in his eyes, Thomas thought. He had seen it in a priest before: devoutness.
“Please, Father,” Thomas said, taking Nicolas’s arm. He could see that his father was trembling. He had never been a strong man; his absence from the Great War was due to chronic asthma, a condition that had caused him to retire to his books, to study Greek and Latin. A diktat had recently been handed down that his course was to be given a Germanic slant—now the warriors of Greece were ancestors of the Aryan race. Nicolas had yet to agree to teach it.
The old man shook Thomas’s hand away.
“You and your friends can march all you like,” Nicolas said, “and yes, you can torment decent people”—he jabbed a bony finger at Dieter—“but we know that, at heart, you are weak unless you are in your destructive herd.”
Dieter set his jaw hard, his eyes dead as he stared at his stepfather.
“You call eighty thousand Party members at the Lustgarten a herd?” Dieter clapped his right hand on the red armband on his left arm. “You know, sometimes, old man, I wonder where your loyalties lie. Remember, we are on the watch for defeatists and traitors.”
Nicolas ignored the comment. Instead he grasped his stepson’s upper arm.
“Don’t go, Dieter,” he said. The anger that had risen in him moments before had subsided. This was a request from the heart. Dieter turned away briefly before returning his eyes to his stepfather. His gaze was unwavering.
“I have to,” he said. “My unit is waiting for me.” Dieter opened the door. Outside three of his uniformed friends were standing in the street, their bodies angular and tense. They peered into the hallway.
“Damn your unit!” Nicolas shouted. Dieter glanced from the members of the SA outside—one of them was not much older than Thomas—back to his stepfather, who was breathing heavily.
“No, Nicolas,” he said eventually. “You are the one who is damned.”
Dieter slammed the thick wooden door behind him. His boots clattered on the steps outside. Thomas heard his half brother giving what they called the “German greeting” to the men outside. Nicolas shuffled back into the parlor. Thomas went to the kitchen to make some coffee, which his father liked to drink before bed to prevent him from falling asleep while reading.
He came back into the parlor to discover that his father had poured them both a large glass of whisky—a drink Nicolas had developed a taste for when teaching at the University of Edinburgh.
“Auf uns,” his father said: to us. Thomas walked over and knocked his glass against his father’s.
“Shall I play again, Father?”
“Not tonight,” Nicolas said. “Tonight we shall talk, Thomas.…”
His voice was dry, cracked. Thomas straightened his back—his father had never spoken to him like this before—and put his index finger to his lips. Talking frankly was dangerous: The walls of the house were not impervious to voices, and the Gestapo relied on denunciation to maintain an undercurrent of continual surveillance. Who knew who was listening and what trouble it might bring them? Thomas pulled an ottoman next to his father’s chair.
“This is the beginning, Thomas, make no mistake,” Nicolas said, his voice quiet now. “Darkness is descending.”
“Hush, Papa,” Thomas said. “Don’t upset yourself.”
“I am sorry to have brought you into such a time,” Nicolas sighed.
“It will be all right,” Thomas said, immediately regretting the banal sentiment. It wasn’t going to be okay. Yesterday he had seen a worker whitewashing a curb. Thomas had asked the man what he was doing, and the man, a Pole, explained that it was preparation for an air-raid blackout exercise. Why? Thomas had asked. The man had shrugged. None of his business—he was just doing his job. And Thomas realized—right there, right then, standing on that street corner in Prenzlauer Berg—that these men, they wanted a war. They were willing it to happen.
Nicolas got up and poured himself another measure. On his way back to his seat he paused by his battered, ancient Seidel und Naumann typewriter and ran his hands over the keys fondly.
“What a mess… what a mess…,” Nicolas said. “You know, I miss your mother so very much.”
Thomas had never met his mother, Hannah. He knew nothing about her or her family other than that she had died while bringing him into the world. There was one photo of her on the dresser, a portrait taken in 1910 when she was in her early twenties: a young woman with a small, mischievous smile; quick, intelligent eyes; and thick black hair pulled back and arranged in a bun. The thought of this woman bleeding to death in a delivery room was the reason Thomas had long nurtured a desire to make a career in medicine.
“She was a strong woman,” Nicolas said. “She dealt with a lot from her previous husband, Wilhelm.”
“He died in the Great War, didn’t he, Father?”
“During the war, yes…,” Nicolas said, his voice trailing off.
“I wish I had met her,” Thomas said.
“You must not feel any sadness about your mother,” Nicolas said sternly. “She would not have wanted that. I know that she would willingly have given her life to make sure that you arrived among us. That was the kind of person she was. I have never met anyone like her.”
Thomas finished his drink, despite his distaste for scotch.
“I am sorry, Thomas,” Nicolas said. “I know that it must be hard for you to think about your mother.”
“It is,” Thomas said. “I can
only imagine her from what you tell me.”
“No, no…,” Nicolas replied. “You need not only imagine. You can feel her, no? In your veins. Her blood running through your heart. That is her legacy, Thomas. I can see her in you, even now.”
The two of them brought their glasses together again.
“Now, Thomas,” Nicolas said. “Now that we are talking like men, it is a good time for me to tell you something important.”
“Yes, Father,” said Thomas, watching as his father got up again. Tonight he was like a young man at a dance, unable to contain himself and desperate to do what he needed to do before the evening passed.
Nicolas walked to the fireplace, then reached up and pulled a brick from inside the chimney. He felt inside a hole, retrieved something, and held it up for his son’s inspection. Thomas looked carefully and recognized a key about the length of his father’s thumb. At one end of the shaft was a loop of metal, presumably so that it could be strung on a belt or chain. Nicolas approached his son and handed him the key ceremonially. His face had lost the false bonhomie of the whisky; it betrayed only resolution.
“It’s time that I gave you this,” Nicolas said. He didn’t return to his seat but instead crouched down on one knee to address his son. Thomas cupped his hands and held the key as if he had scooped water from a stream.
“You know the Danat-Bank on Behrenstraße, on the corner of Glinkastraße?” Nicolas asked. Thomas nodded. He and his father had been there together when he was younger. It was a grand place with marble floors and long wooden counters where bespectacled men and starchy women would count money and conduct transactions in hushed tones. He liked being taken there: It was as if his father was sharing some of the secrets of adulthood with him.
“If you go downstairs there is a room where they store people’s valuables,” Nicolas continued. “I have a box down there that contains something important to me. Something important for us. We must do everything we can to keep it from these people that surround us now. I fear for my future, Thomas, so I pass this key to you, my son.”
The Nero Decree Page 1