The Nero Decree

by Greg Williams

  Henke pushed his hands into his coat and walked off toward the triage unit, his head unbowed even in the rain.

  “Anyone would think that you didn’t care whether we caught Oberstabsarzt Schultz or not,” Dieter shouted after him.

  The Kommandant halted and spun around on his heel. He held Dieter’s gaze for a moment.

  “You know…,” he said, his voice echoing across the field, before the words petered out and Henke continued onward. Dieter watched as the Kommandant walked quickly into the gloom.

  The other doctors were useless—they were either too recently arrived to have met Schultz or they were full of praise for his professionalism. Most noted his private nature. None of them knew anything about his personal life.

  An adjutant brought Dieter a small cardboard suitcase of Johann’s belongings. Dieter picked through socks and shirts, casting items on the floor impatiently. There were toiletries and a fountain pen, but no letters. Dieter considered this for a moment. Almost certainly this could be explained by a pattern that he was beginning to determine in his half brother: caution. He appeared to offer little of himself to the world.

  With good reason, Dieter thought.

  Then, at the bottom of the case, his hand struck two hard objects. He pulled them from the case, energized with excitement: his first clues. He held one in each hand and considered them.

  Two framed photos.

  One he knew well. He had seen it every day of his early life: his stepfather, Nicolas Meier. The photo showed an austere, patrician figure. Dieter knew him differently—a weak man with a politically objectionable outlook. Dieter felt nothing; seeing an image of Nicolas for the first time in over a decade made no impression on him.

  He put down the photo of Nicolas and focused all his energy on the other black-and-white image. It was a woman in her early twenties, her hair pinned back, looking into the distance. She looked calm, contented. And she was attractive.

  Dieter smiled. His half brother had a wife.

  There was now a new way to find Johann. Another means to take him down.

  Dieter’s driver met him outside the tent. Rain drummed on a large black umbrella he was holding. Dieter wasn’t sure where he had gotten it from—incongruously the handle was made of bamboo. The driver pushed the umbrella over Dieter’s head.

  “That is not necessary,” Dieter said, batting the man’s hand away.

  “Apologies, sir.”

  Dieter headed back toward the staff car.

  “We must head back to Berlin immediately,” Dieter instructed the driver.

  “Absolutely, sir,” came the reply. The man trotted to keep up with Dieter, who was making quick progress despite his limp. “Sir,” the driver said. “The comms department just gave me this.”

  Dieter took the envelope that he was being offered. The field hospital had received a telegram from Kuefer back in Berlin. The old coot had come up with something: The Kübelwagen that Johann had stolen had turned up. It had been found by the Feldgendarmerie about thirty miles northwest of the hospital—about seven miles south of Müncheberg.

  The name flashed across Dieter’s mind—the rendezvous. Had Johann found out about the meeting and attempted to reach it? If so, what had happened there?

  Such behavior seemed improbable, but then pretty much everything else about his actions had been out of character. The car was discovered to have run out of diesel, suggesting that Johann had had to abandon it. Where had he been heading? Maybe to the meeting, but far more likely he was traveling west—back to Berlin.

  “We need to return to the Ministry as quickly as possible,” he instructed the driver. “We have much to do.”

  Despite his persistent cough, Kuefer puffed on cigarettes constantly. Dieter waved his hand through the clouds of smoke as he entered the small, cheerless room at Gestapo headquarters that he had been detailed for the investigation.

  “Are you still alive?” he said to Kuefer, who barely raised his head from the noisy typewriter that he was working on.

  “Where do you even get those things from?” Dieter asked.

  “One decade in the Kriminalpolizei and another in the Gestapo,” Kuefer said, his eyes narrowing. “You think I don’t know where to find a smoke when I want one?”

  Dieter removed his coat and hung it on the rack. The smell of damp wool competed with the cigarette smoke.

  “What did you find at the hospital?” Kuefer said, pushing himself back from the desk. His chair had small wheels on it.

  “Schultz has a wife,” Dieter replied. “And I think she’s here.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “No,” Dieter said. “Look for a Schultz in the records. Intelligence should at least be able to give you a first name.”

  “Once we know, I’ll send someone to pick her up immediately,” Kuefer said, reaching for a black Bakelite phone.

  “No,” Dieter said, easing himself into his chair gingerly. “Don’t pick her up. Watch her. Wherever she is, Schultz will follow. Think of her as bait rather than quarry.”

  Kuefer made a call. Officers were instructed to locate the last known address of the wife of Johann Schultz.

  “They are saying that they can locate a district soon, but an exact address will take longer as the records have been archived,” Kuefer said after putting down the phone.

  “Dammit!” Dieter thundered, thumping his desk. “I need an address!”

  Kuefer put out a cigarette in the overflowing ashtray before him. “Once the district is known, we can at least alert all police and Gestapo units to be on the lookout,” he said. “She might show up.”

  Dieter drummed his fingers on the table impatiently. He had never much liked the idea of police work and its interminable processes and waiting. Now that he knew how dull it was he longed to be back in a combat unit.

  The phone burst to life. Kuefer snatched it up.

  “Yes,” he said, before pausing. “I see.” Another pause. “Immediately. We will be there within the half hour.”

  “What?”

  “That was the Oberst Reinhard’s office,” Kuefer said, suppressing a smile. “It seems that you are responsible for stripping three SS officers near naked and robbing them of official documents.”

  The three men were back in uniform and seated in a row behind an interview desk. They stood up when Dieter entered the room, and they exchanged the German greeting. Sturmbannführer Schorner, Obersturmführer Beckmann, and their driver, Glaezer, stared expectantly at Dieter, who remained standing when they sat down.

  “I know that your superiors will have a great deal to say about this fiasco,” Dieter said. “I am not interested in the consequences for any of you. I am here in my capacity as an investigator.”

  Schorner and Beckmann exchanged an irritated look.

  “Forgive me,” Dieter said. “I should have introduced myself more formally: Sturmbannführer Dieter Schnell.”

  The men looked at their boots.

  “I believe that you have encountered someone else using that name,” Dieter said, limping over to a corner of the room, where he stood in a shadow. “But I can assure you that he was an imposter.”

  Glaezer took a deep breath. He wanted nothing to do with this.

  “Where shall we start?” Dieter said, clapping his hands together lightly. It would have been too painful to make anything other than the gentlest contact.

  “I shall speak for all of us,” Schorner said, folding his arms.

  “I shall decide that,” Dieter replied quickly.

  “I think that the Sturmbannführer forgets himself…,” Schorner continued.

  “On the contrary—I think you’ll find that this investigation has the authority of SS-Obergruppenführer Doctor Ernst Kaltenbrunner,” Dieter said. “Take it up with him if you’d like. He has expressed a personal interest.”

  Dieter was lying—the last thing anyone wanted was for Kaltenbrunner or Himmler himself to be aware of what had happened. The implicit deal he had made
with Keller was that he would stamp this thing out before it made its way up the chain of command. It was also in the best interests of Schorner and Beckmann to make as little noise about the incident as had to be made.

  “I insist on full cooperation,” Dieter announced. Beckmann and Glaezer looked down at the floor, waiting for Schorner to speak.

  “What would you like to know?” Schorner said.

  “Obviously we were both aware of the other’s missions,” Dieter said. Schorner nodded.

  “But the rendezvous was compromised.…”

  “The information that led to the impersonator coming to the farmhouse did not come from my side,” Schorner said coolly. “It might make sense for the Sturmbannführer to be asking questions of his own men rather than laying the blame elsewhere.”

  Dieter cocked his head. “This investigation is not about apportioning blame for how the incident came to pass,” he said firmly. “This is the very least of our concern. Through your oversight we now have a Bolshevik on the run with state secrets. Orders from the Führer himself that, were they to fall into the wrong hands, would have enormous repercussions both for the people of Berlin and the defense of the Reich.”

  The men straightened their backs. The very mention of the Führer’s name, even when the man hadn’t been seen for weeks, was enough to make them sit up. If the documents were not recovered swiftly, Hitler would ultimately be told of the incident and would draw his own conclusions about who was responsible. There would be repercussions.

  “This impersonator,” Dieter said. “Was there anything else that he took other than the briefcase with the materials?”

  “No,” Schorner said. “When he left, we assumed that he would take the truck, but he just appeared to slip away into the night.”

  “He had a Kübelwagen and a driver,” Glaezer added, keen to offer some insight. “He told me that they had broken down not far from the farmhouse.”

  Dieter noted the detail. It was consistent with the report from the Feldgendarmerie. It seemed likely that Johann was still somewhere in the country east of Berlin.

  Schorner glared at the driver for speaking out of turn. Glaezer shrugged.

  “Tell me about the conversation,” Dieter asked.

  “He arrived on time at eighteen hundred hours,” Schorner said. “He was carrying the briefcase and introduced himself as you. There was nothing about him that appeared suspicious.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He seemed a little odd at first—anxious,” Schorner explained. “But I put this down to the fact that I thought he had been on the road for some time and was carrying highly sensitive information.”

  “Did he ask you any questions about your mission?”

  “Yes, he wanted to know what we were doing next.”

  “You didn’t think that odd?”

  “Maybe in retrospect,” Schorner says. “You’d imagine that an officer so intimately involved in the operation would have that knowledge, but who knows? He had fulfilled his part—he was bringing the information, and from that point onward his role was over.” Schorner paused.

  “At what point did it become clear to you that he had gone rogue?”

  “When we were woken from our beds at gunpoint.…”

  “You thought it wise to fall asleep?”

  “He was an officer with whom we had a longstanding rendezvous,” Schorner answered. “It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.”

  “But why did he wake you?” Dieter asked. “Why didn’t he slip off into the night? Surely it would have been much safer to do so.”

  Beckmann and Glaezer were now paying attention. They looked at Schorner.

  “He wanted to know about the Nero Decree,” Schorner said.

  “What about it?”

  Schorner shrugged and then sighed.

  “What about it?”

  “He seemed to be fixated on it—it was like he had just learned about it and was…”

  “Was what?”

  “He seemed to be particularly struck by it. Outraged, even.”

  “And he left with what, exactly?” Dieter asked. Schorner held his gaze and set up straight.

  “Everything,” he answered eventually.

  The silence in the room was broken only by the sound of Kuefer’s cough and then the sound of his boots on the floorboards.

  “This is the suspect,” Kuefer said, handing over a sheet of paper to Dieter. The three men had contributed to an artist’s impression.

  Dieter picked it up and examined it.

  He concealed a shiver of recognition.

  He knew this man.

  Dieter strode across to the other side of the room. Schorner, Beckmann, and Glaezer watched him as he stood with his head bowed.

  He knew now who had the briefcase - and there was no doubt in his mind that Johann was coming to Berlin.

  14

  Anja woke early and dressed quietly while Nadine slept. She needed to leave Johann a message in the ruins of their apartment—something discreet that would reveal where they were without revealing anything to the Gestapo. Then she would find some food and wake Nadine with breakfast. It would be like the old days. She padded through Otto’s apartment. She had been surprised when they arrived yesterday by how grand it was—there were paintings on the walls and dark wooden furniture throughout. As she pulled her boots on, Anja realized she had only two more nights in Berlin. They would rest and try to find some food to give them strength; then they would leave, as Johann had written.

  Outside the weather revealed an indifference to the mood of the capital—while the sky wasn’t blue, it was at least bright. The acrid smell of smoke remained, but there was at least no rain to slog through. Anja imagined that this had once been a fashionable bourgeois neighborhood where families of the professional classes situated themselves to raise wholesome children. Now there were only blackened stumps remaining of the linden trees that had once provided shade for mothers pushing carriages in the heat of summer. Anja looked around. She couldn’t see another human being. There were not even any birds.

  She came to the end of the street and remembered that there had once been a famous pet shop here called Schnauzers, like the dog. On Sundays families would come to look at the puppies and kittens in the windows. There were also exotic birds, lolloping rabbits, and tropical fish. Anja had heard once that they even had a monkey for sale, although no one she knew had actually seen it.

  Now there was nothing for sale. No mammals, no birds, no fish. Every building on the block had been flattened during a raid. Where once there had been a small department store, a café, and a haberdashery, there were just the husks of buildings. In front of each there were piles of rubble. Twisted metal appeared from piles of masonry, like plant tendrils reaching up from the earth. Anja noticed a streetlight that had begun to melt because of the heat it had been exposed to. Occasionally she would pass temporary structures that had been set up by the bombed-out: bits of tarpaulin engineered into tents with fires for warmth and cooking. Many of the parks in the city were now being used as campsites for the homeless. Thousands of them huddled together in a misery of mud and jerry-rigged shelters.

  She felt the piece of chalk Otto had given her to leave Johann a message on the ruins of their former home. Anja knew that returning home was loaded with potential danger, but she reasoned that it was the only way Johann would be able to find them, should he make it to Berlin. She walked confidently through the streets, back to her old neighborhood, playing the part of a woman with an early-morning errand to run. She kept her head down, while maintaining an uneasy surveillance of everything around her—just one mistake or piece of bad fortune, and she would be found.

  The street had been cleared of much of its debris. Anja marveled that even now, with the country’s resources exhausted, there was still the wherewithal, manpower, and desire to sweep away the wreckage of attacks with such speed and thoroughness. It was one of the last vestiges of the city that she recognized—the determine
d, single-minded Berliner. She skirted carefully past their old building, checking to see if anyone was watching before crossing the road and retracing her steps on the other side to make sure that there wasn’t something—or someone—that she had missed.

  There appeared to be no one around this early in the morning. Writing the message on the front of the building was too risky—she might be seen, and it was more likely that, should Johann be pursued, this would be the first place the authorities would check. She moved around to the side of the building and, as close to the front as she could manage, added a brief, cryptic missive to the dozens already there. The second she had finished she threw the chalk down to the end of the passageway, thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her raincoat, and walked briskly away. Only when Anja was three streets away did she begin to feel like she wasn’t being observed.

  She came upon a road near Chausseestraße where she saw a queue of women. They seemed hopeful, although the shop had yet to open. Anja joined the back of the line, turning her collar up and pulling down a hat Otto had lent her in case anyone should recognize her.

  “Morning, dear,” an old lady in front of her said.

  “Good morning,” Anja said, smiling. Social interaction was the last thing that she desired, but she didn’t have the nerve to let others know otherwise.

  “No raids last night then,” the lady said. She was dressed entirely in black with stout lace-up shoes, and her gray hair had been arranged neatly in a bun. She could have been on her way to church.

  “Thankfully not,” Anja replied. “It was nice to get a full night of sleep for once.”

  “I sleep through it, mostly,” the old lady said. “I have a makeshift bed down in the cellar, and most of us have gotten so used to it that we don’t even notice it unless it comes really close.”