The Nero Decree

by Greg Williams

  “There’s a shelter in your building?” Anja asked.

  “Yes,” said the old lady. “And I’m on the ground floor, so I only have to walk down one flight of stairs. I suppose if we get a direct hit, they’ll only have to bring my body up one flight, so it works both ways, I suppose.”

  She chuckled to herself and touched Anja on the forearm playfully.

  “Do you know what time the shop opens?” Anja asked.

  “Well, he didn’t open until lunchtime yesterday—the queue was round the block by then, but I heard a couple of the girls say earlier that they’d heard he was in there already this morning and there was talk of fresh bread.”

  The lady squeezed Anja’s arm in anticipation.

  “That would be a treat indeed,” Anja said. “If only there were butter.”

  “How wonderful that would be,” the old lady said. “And maybe some rose-hip jam too, while we’re at it.”

  “My husband always loved sour-cherry jam,” Anja said.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” the old lady said, after a pause. “When did he leave you?”

  “Oh, no,” Anja said. “He’s still alive.” It was her turn to pause. “I think. He’s in the east.”

  The old lady squeezed her arm again.

  “Oh, well,” she said. “At least he’s not too far away, eh?”

  Anja was surprised to see that the old lady had been right: The store contained basic provisions. She got some bread, potatoes, a jar of pickled carrots, powdered eggs, and a tin of herrings, and she had to suppress the smile playing on her lips as she walked past those still in the queue—some of them might not be as lucky. Anja could hardly wait to get home. She would make Nadine and Otto a fine breakfast, and then they would be able to look forward to a dinner of the fish with the potatoes and maybe some of the bread, if there was any left.

  She hurried along the street, not entirely sure of the fastest way to get home—there were so many thoroughfares closed because of collapsed buildings that Berlin had become something of a maze. She passed through a series of streets that were almost entirely unoccupied. She noticed, though, that some of the bombed-out wrecks were occupied by pitiful families. Better misery in their own homes than misery in the unknown.

  She came to a road that had been largely untouched—people busied themselves with their daily routines, many of them wearing scarves over their mouths for protection from the foul air. She had grown used to the noise of almost constant coughing. Anja wondered at an old man who was cleaning the windows of his tobacconist’s shop—aside from the pointlessness of the task, she wondered where he had gotten the water. She assumed that there must be a standpipe somewhere nearby. She watched him as she started to cross the road.

  “Watch out, madam!” The voice came past her quickly, out of nowhere.

  Alarmed, she stepped back onto the pavement and watched as a series of bicycles streamed by her. Each was ridden by a member of the Volkssturm, the militia of young boys and old men that the Nazis had ordered into existence—a final roll of the dice once it became clear that German towns and cities were under imminent threat from the Red Army. None of them appeared to have a uniform—they wore mismatched items of Hitler Youth, Wehrmacht, and improvised clothing. Some of them had attempted to dye their garments a dark color, as advised by the authorities. The only thing each had in common was a Panzerfaust—a disposable bazooka that fired a single shot—strapped to the handlebars of their bicycles.

  Anja watched them move past her, and the mood of excitement she had felt at foraging the food was erased by a terrible realization that the defense of Berlin was to be conducted in such a way. Some of these boys were no older than Nadine.

  “Mrs. Schultz!” A voice came from one of the riders.

  She looked up and realized that it was Lars Ziegler, the boy who had been taken from her class only two days before. He was the last rider, followed by what looked to be a police officer. The boy waved at her unsteadily, taking one hand off the handlebars.

  “Mrs. Schultz!”

  Anja waved at him enthusiastically as he passed, hoping that, in some way, her support might offer him a form of protection. Lars continued to ride with his hand raised once he had gone beyond her. The police officer, meanwhile, pulled his brake so hard that the back wheel of his bicycle lifted momentarily from the road. He had a thick gray scarf over his mouth to protect himself from breathing the debris that was thrown up from the road. He looked at Anja warily.

  “Mrs. Schultz?”

  Anja said nothing. She noted that Lars had stopped on the roadway ahead.

  “Mrs. Johann Schultz?”

  The man continued to stare at her.

  “Are you Mrs. Johann Schultz?”

  They know my name. They’re looking for me.

  It was too late for denial. Anja’s hesitation had convicted her. She tugged at her coat as if she had felt a chill and headed off in the direction opposite from the one the cyclists had been riding in. She walked quickly, ignoring the stares of a few passersby who had witnessed the exchange. She glanced backward and noticed that the man was turning his bicycle around to come after her: He would be upon her in moments. She looked to her left and saw, no more than a hundred yards away, a collapsed building. Hoping that the officer would not follow her over the rubble, Anja crossed the road and broke into a run.

  She glanced behind her. The man was standing while pedaling now to try and reach her. She had to be careful where she placed her feet—there were bricks and pieces of wood scattered nearby, and a misplaced foot while running could mean a sprained ankle and almost certainly capture.

  She made it. She placed her boot on a section of wall that had ruptured outward and began to climb. How strange, she thought, that the buildings that had once dominated the city were now an obstruction. The going was slow; occasionally Anja would put her foot on what she thought was a solid outcropping, only to feel it slide away once she put more weight upon it. She trod carefully; she was terrified of falling into a hollow that had been concealed by part of the collapsed edifice. Parts of the building slid down behind her, as if she were clambering up a scree embankment.

  Behind her the Volkssturm officer reached the bottom of the collapsed building and looked up at Anja.

  “I order you to stop!” he shouted.

  Anja ignored him. She had reached the highest point of the rubble and was able to see that, on the other side, there were several houses that were still standing. If she could get to the other side, she would be able to lose the policeman in the streets below. She looked back and saw that her pursuer had abandoned his bicycle and was laying his Panzerfaust on the ground gently. He began to clamber over the rubble after Anja—he was not giving up.

  “Dammit,” Anja said. She started down the other side, balancing her desire to get away as quickly as possible with a need for caution.

  “There’s no point running,” the man called after her. “We will find you wherever you are.”

  His words echoed around the empty houses, repeating themselves in Anja’s panicked mind. She stumbled. Dust flew around her. Her relief at not damaging her ankle was offset by her dropping the shopping bag. She watched, horrified, as the contents spilled among the bricks and dirt. She paused, unsure whether she had the time to collect her belongings. The man was just over the brow of the rubble now—heading down toward her. She felt a rush of anger: She had gone out to get food for her niece and this… this bastard was trying to capture her. He wanted to ruin the one good thing that she was able to do in this terrible, terrible city.

  She refused to leave the food where it lay. She would make Nadine the breakfast that she had intended to make the girl. A healthy meal should be the least that she could offer her. Keeping an eye on the officer, Anja stooped to pick the items up quickly. The officer saw his opportunity and started to clamber faster, taking greater risks than he had before as he descended through the shattered masonry and splintered timber.

  Anja found the bread and h
er onion quickly enough. She put her hand into the hole where she thought the tin of eggs had fallen and pulled it out. But where were the herrings? They were to be the centerpiece of the meal—their oily smoothness offering enough comfort and sustenance to keep them going for a few more days. She had pictured it in her mind, but now she was standing in a bomb site turning around in circles as a man pursued her.

  There! She saw a silver glint—like a fish in a murky ocean—and reached down to pick it up before putting it in her bag. The man was much closer now; he was about halfway down the slope. Anja started to run up the roadway, her legs feeling more vital as she moved along a flat surface. She made a dramatic right turn onto another street and looked for somewhere to hide. She ducked into an abandoned building and realized that she was intruding—a woman and her husband and children sat around a fire drinking from tin cups, their possessions arranged neatly throughout the burned-out room. They turned to look at her, their faces wretched and smeared with soot.

  “I’m sorry,” Anja said, bolting back out the door.

  She continued along the street. Some of the houses were intact, but many were damaged and blackened—it seemed that the RAF had used incendiary devices in this part of the city. She was breathing heavily now as she tired. The shopping bag felt heavy, its contents jumping around with every fearful step she took. Behind her she heard the crunch of footsteps. They sounded as if they were quickening. She was now too terrified to turn and see how close he was to her. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could continue to run like this.

  Anja realized with dismay that she wasn’t going to be able to outrun the man. She made a quick right turn down a side street and almost immediately saw an alleyway. She thought that she had maybe thirty seconds before the man would be upon her. This was her opportunity to lose him; if he dithered over which way she had gone, she would be able to slip away.

  She headed swiftly down the alley, which passed behind the backyards of a row of unblemished houses. Almost immediately she saw that it was a dead end. Panicked, she realized that she had no time to go back; by now the officer would be approaching the road she had first turned down. If she was to reappear from the entrance to the alleyway they would virtually bump into each other. The only way out was through one of the houses. She ran through the yard and tried a back door. It was locked. She knocked on the door—rapping quickly on it. An old lady appeared at a window and peered at her.

  “Please, let me in,” Anja implored as quietly as she could. The old lady considered her request for a moment before raising her hand and shooing Anja from her property. Anja had no time to explain. She ran to the next house and tried the door. It was also locked. She banged on it, fearful that the noise would alert her pursuer. There was no answer. She had no time to wait, quickly moving to the last house. She realized that by now, the man must be in the street at the end of the alley. If he was to investigate the passageway, the next time she appeared from a backyard he would spot her immediately.

  She tried the third back door. It was locked, as the others had been.

  She couldn’t knock—her pursuer would surely hear her. She tapped with what was left of her nail on the pane of glass. She thought of Nadine. Asleep alone in Otto’s apartment. The policeman’s boots crunched ever closer. She tapped again—there was nothing left to do. It was a just gesture, a plea. It was hopeless.…

  At the very moment Anja turned to face her pursuer, the door opened behind her. Anja tumbled into the scullery of the house, landing on a slate floor. She heard the door close and looked up to see an old woman, who was dressed head to toe in black. She had perfectly manicured gray hair, which Anja took to be a wig. The woman leaned over Anja and put her index finger to her lips. The two women remained motionless and listened to the crunch of boots in the backyard. An unseen hand rotated the handle a second after the old woman silently twisted the lock. The wooden object rattled in its frame. There was silence and then, after what seemed to Anja like an eternity, the noise of the boots receded into the distance.

  The woman beckoned Anja to stand up, then led her into a dark, candlelit parlor with a threadbare sofa that had maybe once been covered in velvet. The woman floated through the room like a specter. Although the woman said nothing, Anja knew that she was supposed to follow her through the shadows. As she passed through the room, Anja made out a silver frame resting on a sideboard. She slowed slightly to look at the photo inside. The woman felt Anja pause to examine the picture. The two of them stood silently for a moment and took in the image before them: a couple on their wedding day.

  The man was in his dress uniform, stiff on a gray background. Anja knew nothing about military insignia, but she thought she recognized a Luftwaffe uniform. He was clean-shaven, with a strong jaw and a playful look in his eye. She looked at the woman and half smiled, wanting to express her sympathy but also acknowledge the striking look of the man. They must have made quite a couple at one time in their Sunday best on the Kurfürstendamm. The woman nodded as if accepting Anja’s respects and then continued through the house, eventually coming to a front door, just off the parlor. A plate containing a single slice of black bread with a layer of margarine smeared over it sat on a table nearby. The woman looked at it guiltily, as if she had been caught doing something improper, before leading Anja to the door.

  She opened it carefully and peered outside. The gloom of the house made the day appear bright. There was the sound of a horse and cart coming by at quite a clip and even of a child laughing. The woman took a long look up and down the street. She seemed to have second thoughts, returning inside and reaching for a light-colored raincoat that was hanging on a rack by the front door. She lifted it down and beckoned Anja to turn before sliding it over Anja’s wool coat. The woman turned Anja around so that the two women faced each other and examined her closely. The woman reached up and pulled out the pins that were holding Anja’s hair up. It fell about her face. She handed the slides and pins back to Anja, who put them in her pocket. The woman nodded, pleased with the change in appearance. From a distance Anja didn’t resemble the woman who had been chased through the rubble.

  The woman opened the front door again before handing Anja another cheap bag to put her groceries in. A minor but maybe decisive change. The woman scanned up and down the street thoroughly, before ushering Anja outside.

  “Thank you,” Anja said.

  The woman, still watching for danger, waved her away.

  “Go,” she said. “Quickly.”

  Anja scuttled along the street, back toward Otto’s apartment.

  This morning she would make her niece breakfast.

  15

  Johann had slipped from the back of the truck as it passed through Kreuzberg and breathed the Berlin air for the first time in months. It was dense and left a residue of dust and smoke at the back of his throat. He coughed and cast his eyes around. It seemed that the majority of the city’s muscular, elegant buildings were destroyed, the vibrant city a crooked shadow of its former self. As he walked down the street clutching the official briefcase, he noticed that civilians cast dark glances at him. Some even crossed the road, or went out of their way to avoid him.

  Dieter’s uniform marked Johann out as a Sturmbannführer. The SS had been feared but widely deferred to; now it seemed that they were feared and loathed. He strode as confidently as he could—only those hunting him would be aware of the panic in his heart. He needed to find Anja and Nadine to get them away from this hell. But first he must finish what he had started at the farmhouse. The violence perpetrated on the populace for years was terrible enough, without the terminal conclusion advocated by the Demolitions on Reich Territory. He stepped into a doorway, then pulled the top document—the army directive expediting the Nero Decree executive order—from the briefcase and scanned down the page.

  The directive had been issued from the office of Oberst Erich Reinhard at the Reich Main Security Office. Overseen by the loathsome Reichsführer himself, Heinrich Himmler, the dep
artment was responsible for all matters of state security from the police to the most senior member of the SS. It was the same government department responsible for the KZ documentation. Johann recalled while in the east having to listen to an interminable broadcast by its former head, Reinhard Heydrich, who raved about “enemies of the Reich both within and without our borders.”

  Johann knew its headquarters, the Ordenspalais on Wilhelmplatz, a grand neoclassical building by the famed nineteenth-century architect Karl Schinkel, like many in the government district. It sat opposite Speer’s vast Reich Chancellery, which Hitler had funded—although the Führer was said to spend little time there, avoiding Berlin as much as he could. Johann calculated that he could reach it in twenty minutes if he hurried.

  There were more buildings flattened than there were standing in Wilhelmstraße: Passersby wound their way around the neat V-shaped piles of masonry that were arranged on the pavements and street corners. Eerily, most of the street signs were intact or had been replaced by temporary wooden stands even when the buildings around them were gone, creating spectral versions of once-familiar streets. What had been the engine room of the Nazi state was little more than a skeleton—it may as well have been of an ancient civilization. As he approached Voßtraße, he could see that the Ordenspalais no longer existed.

  For a moment, he forgot his mission and stood and looked at what had once been the home of Prince Charles of Prussia, who would have gazed from the building onto a large, neatly aligned grass square with a gravel path around it. There was nothing left except for a flag with a swastika planted in the rubble. Behind it two poles had been sunk into the ground. A banner fluttered between them proclaiming, “Führer, we march with you to final victory!”

  A policeman stood on the corner of Wilhelmstraße. Johann approached him.

  “Yes, sir,” the policeman said, and came to attention.

  “The Reich Main Security Office,” he said. “What has happened to it?”