Johann could sense Lehman’s fear. He and Ostermann were afraid that they had compromised the mission, whatever it was. Lehman had said that the directive was an addition to another, central task. And earlier in the day he had talked about a rendezvous tomorrow night. What was so important about it? Why was Lehman so concerned?
“Surely you can wait another day or so to see if the Sturmbannführer’s condition improves?” Johann said, testing Lehman.
“We have to leave tomorrow night,” Lehman hissed. “With or without him.”
Silence.
Johann waited. He could sense Lehman had more to say.
“We have a rendezvous.”
“The farm?” Johann ventured. He was sure the meeting would explain Dieter’s presence—it was surely why Dieter was here.
“I have been thinking about the route and the quality of the roads and how we will fit the Sturmbannführer in the Kübelwagen.”
Lehman was rambling now. Drunk beyond reason. There were no restrictions, no editing of his thoughts.
“The Wenck farm on the Zossen Road, just near a crossroads two miles south of Müncheberg,” Lehman said to himself quietly. “Ostermann made me remember it. We’re not allowed to write it down.”
“But the Sturmbannführer,” Johann interrupted, “what is his role in this?”
“There is a handover,” Lehman said quietly.
Johann’s mind flashed back to the briefcase chained to Dieter’s wrist.
“Tell me what he—”
“You will not hear anything else from me,” Lehman slurred, pulling away from Johann. “You will only find out by going to the farmhouse.”
“What is happening there?”
“Go there yourself if you want to find out,” Lehman shouted in the darkness.
“Tell me,” Johann insisted.
There was silence. Johann could tell that Lehman had stopped moving.
“What is happening there?” Johann pressed. He was getting closer to Dieter’s secret. He could sense it.
More silence.
“Tell me, Lehman.”
Finally the SS man spoke.
“You ask a lot of questions,” Lehman said coldly. “None of it your business.”
“Maybe we should hit the sack, eh?” Johann said, suddenly scared. He had ventured well beyond safety. He heard the movement of tree branches above him.
There was a rustle of clothing and suddenly Johann wasn’t able to breathe: Lehman’s wurst-thick fingers were around this throat, his chunky thumbs pressing into Johann’s windpipe. Johann tried to beat away Lehman’s hands, pulling on his arms, but the SS man was too strong.
“You shouldn’t have asked,” Lehman hissed. “You shouldn’t have asked.”
4
The suffocating pressure on Johann’s throat was softened only by the whirling dizziness of his mind.
“You traitorous bastard,” Lehman hissed, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth and hitting Johann in the face.
Johann’s head spun as his brain began to crave oxygen. Standing in a field in Frankfurt an der Oder, his life being ended by a drunken sociopath, Johann wondered how long it would be before he lost consciousness. Thirty seconds? Maybe forty-five?
“I knew there was something suspect about you,” Lehman said. “I knew it.”
Johann pulled on Lehman’s wrists, but his efforts were having no effect—the SS man was stronger than him and his grip was showing no sign of weakening. Johann could feel his energy ebbing. He sensed the opportunity to relax into a delicious sleep. How he deserved it.…
“That’s it,” Lehman said, sensing Johann weakening. “Very soon you will feel nothing. Just relax.…”
Johann was galvanized by the executioner’s words. He lashed out with his right foot and drove it into Lehman’s knee. There was a crunch. The SS man stumbled and lost his grip. Johann gulped down air, his throat burning. His breaths were coming like sobs: deep, pained, body-rocking like those of an alcoholic with the DTs. He heard Lehman coming for him and stepped to the side. There was a whoosh of energy and the big man fell in a heap. Lehman had lost the advantage of his strength. Johann had the upper hand, dodging the Oberscharführer, who was stumbling around, crashing into trees.
As Johann backed away from Lehman’s lunges a horrifying thought struck him: Only one of them would walk out of the woods. Lehman couldn’t allow him to escape; his revelation about the rendezvous would end with a bullet to the head. And Johann couldn’t allow Lehman to get back to the hospital. The allegations of an SS man—no matter how drunk—would be the end of him.
One of them would die in the next few minutes.
Johann felt a rush of air past his face: Lehman throwing a haymaker. If it had connected he would not be conscious. He needed to think. He couldn’t keep dodging the SS man indefinitely. He was tiring—if Lehman were to grab him again he would surely squeeze the life out of him. Being able to avoid Lehman wasn’t enough; he needed to kill the man. Even in his state of panic he considered the irony—after six years of doing everything he could to save lives, he was now desperate to end one. He had to if he was to survive.
“You’re pathetic,” Lehman goaded Johann. “I’ll cut out your traitor’s heart!”
Lehman bellowed and came at him. Johann could see his silhouette against the bluish darkness. Just as the SS man closed in on him he jumped to the side. Lehman stopped and turned.
“Give up, doctor,” he said. “You’re already dead.”
Lehman was close enough now to be able to see Johann, who started to move through the woods as quickly as he could. Branches tore at his clothes and whipped his face. He could hear Lehman crashing after him like a bear as the two of them plunged deeper into the woods.
After a few minutes they came to a clearing. Johann bent forward, hands on knees, exhausted. He would not be able to keep this up for long. He needed to do something decisive. Then it came to him—a single chance to end their fight. He gathered himself and set off again, accelerating across a meadow. His legs were soaking now from the rainwater and dew on the grass. He could see the silhouette of the tree line ahead of him. He slowed a little to let Lehman catch him: Johann wanted the SS man to be as close to him as possible without being able to grab him. Lehman would surely think Johann was done for now—that, with a little more exertion, he would fall upon his prey and finish him. There were no more than ten meters between them.
My God.
Johann was down. His boot had snagged on something—a branch or a root maybe—and all he knew was that he could smell the rich, damp earth clinging to his face. He forced himself up as quickly as possible but felt Lehman’s hand around his ankle.
He was caught.
Johann smashed his other foot backward as hard as he could into Lehman’s face. The SS man screeched and let go, and Johann was on his way again. He looked around in the moonlight to see Lehman doggedly stumbling after him. Johann couldn’t go on much farther. He needed to rest. His lungs and heart were at capacity. But he had to hold on. Had to push ahead. He was almost there. He pulled back a little to let Lehman get close. He could hear the man coughing and spluttering behind him, but his footsteps remained constant.
Lehman thought that the chase was over.
Twenty meters.
He could feel Lehman was there now.
Ten meters.
Lehman’s moonlit shadow was upon his.
Five meters.
Keep going, keep going, and—Johann threw himself sideways.
Lehman fell into the darkness with a roar, his limbs flailing. Johann lay there in the night trying to catch his breath. There was utter stillness around him. The edges of a ravine gave off an almost otherworldly glow, as if they were being lit for a theatrical production at the Schillertheater on Bismarckstraße. Johann pushed himself to his knees and peered downward.
Dead air.
If Lehman was injured surely he would be moaning. Maybe the booze had softened the blow for him. No, he was dead. There was no way a
man could fall onto the rocks below and live. Johann had discovered the place a few days before during one of his head-clearing walks. It had seemed incongruous compared to the rest of the landscape—a steep, rocky ravine seemingly scooped out by a giant hand. Now a dead SS man lay at the bottom of it. They were only about ten minutes from the field hospital, but they might as well have been deep in the Bavarian forest.
He felt his hand trembling. He knelt down and started to vomit. The spoils of the victor.
Only one of them was walking out of the woods tonight.
Both he and Dieter were murderers now.
He had killed a man.
This was what he thought as he shivered through the woods on his way back to the field hospital. He might not have shot or stabbed or strangled Lehman, but the SS man was lying dead, his head smashed on rocks at the bottom of a ravine, because of Johann. He wasn’t the executioner, but he was certainly the engineer of Lehman’s demise.
And while he felt fearful about what he had done, Johann didn’t feel any guilt. He was beyond that now. In the past he might have been inclined to keep his head down and hope to avoid the attention of the Party; now he knew that he was willing to do whatever he could to bring them and their ways to an early end. He had seen too much death to care when the murderous and ruthless departed the fray.
Lehman’s words had only served to confuse Johann. The SS man had talked about something the Nazis were planning in Berlin—an event Lehman was too scared to tell him about. He had said that the explanation for the mission would be found at the farmhouse tomorrow. What was it that Dieter and his fellow SS officers had been doing?
His mind was made up. He would return home to Berlin for Anja and Nadine. But first he would extinguish Dieter’s mission—and avenge his father.
He would kill Dieter.
The risks were terrible, but as the ice grew thinner, Johann thought, he would have to skate all the more furiously.
Still soaked from the woods, Johann crept carefully into the room where Dieter and Ostermann were quartered. Part of an abandoned farmhouse where patients awaiting evacuation were being held, it was quiet except for the sounds of moaning and breathing. Dieter had been put in a screened-off area, and before it there was an improvised antechamber where Ostermann lay rigidly in a cot, his body straight and still. Johann walked slowly past the Obersturmführer, watching him carefully for signs of wakefulness.
Johann pulled back the tarpaulin that had been hung to create the private area for Dieter. His half brother was wheezing, his breath jagged. Someone—probably Ostermann—had left a lantern burning. Its glow cast deep shadows throughout the room, giving the space a jaundiced warmth. It reminded Johann of a painting he had seen once—a Dutch master, he thought. All was dark except for one burnished light.
Johann looked down at his half brother’s face. It had been worn by time. There were lines across his forehead and down both sides of his mouth that were deep enough for Johann to lay a thermometer in. His eyes were similarly damaged. His wrinkles—starbursts emanating from his eyes—were those of a man who had spent much of his life subjected to the elements. Johann felt no flicker of sibling warmth: There was nothing in his heart but hatred for Dieter, his father’s killer.
Johann hadn’t expected him to still be alive. But then, he reasoned, he was just judging the injuries, not the man who bore them. Dieter was an opportunist, a passenger of history, like Lehman. His identity was determined by his loyalty to the Party—his biology and physical presence were almost irrelevant. He had been part of this movement from the very beginning; now he must ride out the rest of it.
There was an abrupt creak. Johann froze. He listened and realized it was just Ostermann turning over. He needed to hurry; the Obersturmführer appeared restless.
Johann had to find the briefcase. He was sure that its contents would offer a clue about the farmhouse meeting the following night. He looked about the room and noticed a stack of Dieter’s personal effects, and what looked to be a spare uniform piled on a wooden box. Johann rifled through it and searched around the edges of the room in case he’d missed something in the darkness. Maybe they had left the briefcase in the SS Kübelwagen, which they had parked on a grassy embankment just behind one of the temporary patients, rooms. Johann crouched down and reached under Dieter’s cot. He moved his hand around until it hit an object.
He felt it: leather. Surely Ostermann could have thought of a better hiding place than this? Or maybe he wasn’t trying to conceal it; the notion of SS property being stolen was so alien that the Obersturmführer hadn’t thought about secreting the briefcase anywhere other than close to its envoy. Johann slid the case along the ground and into what little light there was. It was heavy, packed to bursting. He examined the case in the half-light: battered brown leather with a handle that was worn smooth, except where the stitching had frayed. A steel hoop passed through it—the fixture for Dieter’s chain. There were no official markings. The carryall could have been the property of a provincial doctor or accountant.
Johann pushed down the brass clasp. The mechanism clicked—but it wouldn’t open. He pulled at it, but it remained fixed. Maybe it was just stiff. He tried again but the lock stuck fast. He would need a knife to wrench it open.
He stared at the case and was suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety. He was in way above his head; he should just leave. He might be better off not knowing the world that Dieter had embraced. He should just disappear now, in the dead of the night, and return to the city. Surely he and Anja and Nadine would be able to escape west in the chaos that grew greater every day.…
He stood fast.
Lehman had been desperate enough to try to kill him rather than reveal the full extent of their task. Why would three intelligence officers be heading west with the Red Army at their heels? Was the briefcase related to the order from the Führer that Lehman had refused to tell him about, or was it related to the “main mission” that Dieter had been leading? Johann knew the case might contain the answer—why else would it have been chained to his half brother’s body? Now that Lehman was dead, the meeting at the farmhouse was his only means of finding out.
Johann froze. He heard Ostermann shift his body and let out another sigh. There was no other movement. The Obersturmführer was still asleep, but he must make haste. He put down the briefcase and pulled a brown bottle from his pocket and examined it briefly: sodium thiopental, a barbiturate used in anesthetics. In the field its contents were as precious as any commodity. Over the previous few months Johann had spirited several bottles from the pharmacy for use on patients when supplies had dried up. It was not unusual for doctors to do this—but most of them were planning on saving it for personal use. When the time came they would load their syringes, find a vein, and push the liquid into their bodies, slipping away beyond the reach of the Nazis and the Red Army.
He pulled a syringe from another pocket and drew the liquid into the barrel. Usually he was precise with measurements. Tonight, however, he drew back the plunger as far as he could: He wanted to ensure that he would administer the most powerful dose the device would allow.
He placed the syringe on top of Dieter’s bedcover. He would end it now. He would do it for Nicolas. And for Thomas.
Johann slapped his half brother lightly on the cheek—he didn’t want to risk waking Ostermann. There was no response. He tried again, but Dieter slept on. He felt angry: He wanted Dieter to know what he was doing and why. He wanted his half brother to watch while Johann administered the fatal dose, to know that Nicolas had been revenged.
Johann slapped his half brother hard. Dieter’s eyes flickered to life for a moment before settling closed again. Johann hit him again. Dieter’s eyes opened and searched the room, adjusting to what was before him. Johann perched on the edge of the cot next to Dieter and held up the lantern. His half brother registered the movement and focused his eyes to determine its origin.
It took a moment for the information to register: Dieter’s body, ev
en in its injured state, buckled as if it had received an electrical charge. His eyes were wide open, the irises alert and questioning. Johann couldn’t tell whether his half brother was disbelieving or fearful. Johann leaned in close and whispered to Dieter as quietly as he could, his voice halting and broken from the excitement of the moment.
“You’re not hallucinating,” Johann said. “It’s me.”
Dieter flinched, as if witnessing an apparition.
“Ha!” Johann couldn’t help a brief moment of… what? Victory?
“The great defender of the fatherland reduced to this.”
Dieter tried to move, to push Johann from the cot, but he was too weak. He opened his mouth to call out, but there was only a low gargle. Johann watched as his half brother came to the realization that he no longer had the power to determine life and death—that he was subject to the whim of the younger sibling he had dismissed as weak and worthless.
“You arrived seriously injured yesterday at the field hospital and I performed my duty as a doctor,” Johann whispered. “But now, Dieter, I will end things for you. Your war is over.”
His half brother’s breathing became more pronounced. He opened his mouth again, but there were no words.
“There’s no need to speak,” Johann said. “Nothing you can tell me, nothing you can do, will stop what’s about to happen.”
He fumbled inside his shirt before finding a metallic object, which he held in front of his half brother: the key.
“This ring any bells, Dieter?” he asked. “Huh? You remember this? You wanted it so badly that you would destroy my father.… I had it all along. Why? Because if I had it I knew that you never would.”
Johann swung it so that the metal brushed Dieter’s cheek.
“There—you touched it,” he said. “But you will never hold it, never know what secrets it has. But I have something else for you.”
Johann pulled the syringe from the bedclothes. A clear drop of liquid had collected at the tip of the needle. He held it up to Dieter’s face. His half bother’s eyes narrowed and his body heaved before slumping back into the cot. Dieter’s bandaged arms rose slightly and fell back, as useless as those of an infant. Dieter tried to turn, to make some noise. Johann leaned forward quickly and pressed on his half brother’s chest to prevent him from shifting.
The Nero Decree Page 5