The Nero Decree

by Greg Williams

  The area directly north of the Spree didn’t appear to be as badly damaged. He had seen the ruin along Unter den Linden: the university, the museums, the cafés. He headed toward Charité Hospital; there were rows of apartment buildings where there appeared to be some normality—washing hung from balconies, a tailor’s shop remained open, and people hurried along the street, going about their business.

  He was not far from the home that he had briefly shared with Anja and Nadine. They had moved there a year before he had received his call-up papers in 1941. Back then, before the opening of the front in the east, it was hard to believe that they had been at war.

  Before him, a damaged water main pumped water into the air like a fountain. An old man stood by the side of it and collected the falling liquid in a tin pail. Johann turned onto a street that was almost entirely rubble. Nevertheless, there were some families who were trying to make the best of things, living in jerry-rigged constructions made from tarpaulin—damaged doors propped at the side acted as walls. Someone had constructed a makeshift oven from bricks. A woman was cooking something on a skillet with a group of hungry-looking children gathered around. Johann was surprised by the number of children still living in the city. Parents had been told to send them away, but most were unwilling to be separated.

  He turned onto what had once been his street. It was unrecognizable as the vigorous thoroughfare he remembered. The neighborhood had been largely lower middle class—low-ranking civil servants, teachers, and shopkeepers had formed its backbone. Now the men were either dead or at the front, and the women had joined them in the graveyards in Lichtenberg, Schöneberg, and Weißensee, or had fled, or were living the lives of scavengers enduring the daily toil of survival in the capital.

  He almost didn’t dare approach the building. Clouds of dust were being whipped up by the wind; a stray, emaciated dog clambered over wreckage; and a telephone cable hung loose, wildly slapping against the façade of a building that had somehow managed to stay upright.

  “Herr Schultz!” came a voice. “Herr Schultz!”

  Johann turned to see an old lady who used to work in the nearby laundry. He couldn’t remember her name. She hobbled toward him. Johann cast a wary glance up and down the street. He didn’t want anyone using his real name.

  “Since when did you join the SS?” she said, her face a combination of confusion and concern.

  “Oh, recently,” Johann said. “I was briefly transferred to work at an SS hospital attached to the Third SS Panzer Corps. A braver group of men I have never known.”

  He looked up the street warily.

  “And Anja?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Johann felt his whole body go numb. He shook his head.

  “The apartment… Only a few days ago…,” the old woman said.

  Johann nodded, trying to hold his emotions in check. His mind immediately tumbled to dark conclusions. He pulled air inside him as his head spun. The woman from the laundry continued to talk, but he didn’t hear a word. He just kept repeating to himself.

  They weren’t here.

  They weren’t here.

  They weren’t here.

  He assured himself that Anja would have taken them both to the bunker or the U-Bahn station.

  He momentarily felt more composed, but dread quickly rose again unless he maintained a firm grip upon his mind. What if they hadn’t made it to the shelter? What if this had been one of the American daytime raids that offered little warning? What if the SS had already implemented the Nero Decree somewhere Anja and Nadine happened to be?

  “You haven’t heard anything?” the woman asked.

  “The Feldpost isn’t entirely reliable at the moment,” Johann explained. “We get our letters in fits and bursts. And my unit has been moving a lot.…”

  The old woman nodded.

  “And you?” Johann asked.

  “I came back to see if I could find some things,” she said. “My Heinz’s medals from the first war.”

  Johann nodded. “I hope that you find them,” he said.

  “I’ll keep looking,” the old woman said, casting her eyes to the ground. “They’re all I had left of him.”

  Johann moved along the street, trying to breathe. Had he gotten here too late? He cursed himself. If he hadn’t gone to the farmhouse he would have arrived in Berlin sooner. Maybe he would have been with Anja and Nadine and they would have been on their way west. At the very least—and he could hardly believe that he was thinking this—then he would have been able to die with them. He kicked tamely at what was left of a truck tire. It was partially melted to the ground, the rubber spilling sideways from the vehicle.

  He told himself to get a grip. There were plenty of people who survived the raids. As long as the bunker or U-Bahn station was sound, then they were alive. He needed to calm himself; his emotions were running high because he was exhausted. He had to find them—but where to start? First he needed to visit the building itself. Anja knew that he was coming, so it was likely that she would have left some sign or a message for him. He peered around the front corner of a blackened bus. He gambled that Reinhard would not know his real identity, but the soldiers from the farmhouse were back in Berlin now and might have been questioned. Even if neither of these things had happened he must still avoid encounters with any form of authority—if Dieter had regained consciousness, the Gestapo would be after him. He thought about the Walther P38 on his hip. He hadn’t fired a round since officer training, but the idea of doing so no longer troubled him. He would kill whomever he needed to should they try to prevent him from reaching his family—if they had survived the bomb.

  All appeared quiet near the apartment. He edged forward up the street. A couple of women carrying pails of water passed by him, their bodies lopsided from the weight of the water. There was a small fire burning in the remnants of the building opposite. Johann could see faces inside lit by the flames.

  He got to the building and took a deep breath—his attempt to conceal a sob.

  Even knowing what had happened to his family home couldn’t prepare him for what he saw. He and Anja had come here for the first time when friends had told them that it was available to rent. It was bright and airy with a modern kitchen and an indoor bathroom in a good location and was well within their budget. They had shaken hands with Herr Kessler the landlord that afternoon and had moved the few things they had before their marriage into the apartment one cheerful autumn day. Johann could remembered the sting of the cold October wind—the first real chill of the winter—as he and a friend had carried a dining table Anja had bought at a flea market into the apartment. What seemed strange was that—after all that had happened in the intervening years—it seemed so recent. If he had returned to find the street still tidy and the apartment well cared for he could almost have imagined that what had happened in the east had been something he could discount as fantasy. Rediscovering his Berlin life would have compensated for the horror of war. He could have walked in the park, eaten at restaurants in Charlottenburg, bought vegetables at Hackescher Markt, visited the theater. Life would have been as it once was. Now it was something totally different.

  He approached the building with the swagger of an SS officer with nothing to fear. He surveyed the property. Old Mrs. Matthaus’s apartment had been entirely crushed. The Petersons once had a third-floor apartment—now they had easy access to the street. He could see belongings strewn about inside. Water cascaded from shattered plumbing in one part of the building. He glanced around. There didn’t appear to be anyone watching him, so he began to examine the messages that had been left by survivors. As he moved between them he began to feel a degree of optimism: It appeared that many of the residents had left messages. It seemed that most of them had survived.

  But, even as hope flowered within him, he still couldn’t find a message from Anja. He checked through the rubble systematically for a second time, clearing away dust and sand where he thought it might have covered a message.
Was it possible that they had left a note and that it had been blown away in the wind? Or maybe it had been removed, either by a mischief maker or by the authorities.…

  He examined the building thoroughly for a third time, alarm spreading through him—if so many of the residents had survived, surely this meant that, statistically, it was less likely that Anja and Nadine had escaped.…

  Think clearly, he told himself.

  How else might they have thought to communicate with him? He checked the messages chalked on the front of the structure again.

  Still nothing.

  He prayed he was missing something. Then he saw the narrow passageway that had once run between his apartment block and the adjacent building, along which the caretaker had moved the rubbish bins from the rear of the building and the coal merchant had made his deliveries. He hurried toward it. There were several messages chalked on the wall. He scanned them quickly and didn’t recognize any handwriting. He tried to compose himself. He needed to take his time and make sure that he didn’t miss anything. He told himself to work from top to bottom, ensuring that each message was examined carefully.

  He forced himself to take in each and every letter.

  No. No. No.

  There it is.

  “J. We are all right. We are with your friend.”

  It was Anja. He was sure of it. It was like her to remain cautious, not to take unnecessary chances if she could avoid them. He stood there and ran his hands over the letters, knowing that if the old lady was right and the bombing had occurred only two days before, then Anja had been here, maybe only hours ago. She was still alive and she was still here, in Berlin. He would find her. He puzzled for a moment about who the “friend” she mentioned might be before realizing that it was likely to be just one person: Otto, who had brought the letter to Anja. He knew that Otto lived in Moabit. He even recalled him living on Wiclefstraße, but he wasn’t entirely sure of the number. He would remember the building when he saw it.

  His family was alive; he still had the briefcase. It was enough.

  He heard a pile of rubble sliding near the road—the clinking sound of bricks knocking together mixed with the rush of aggregates. He looked up to see two men picking their way over a pile of twisted metal and masonry.

  Johann immediately knew their identity from their fedoras and long coats: Gestapo.

  He was so close to reuniting with his family. He would not let them take that from him. Johann looked around for a quick means of escape. But every path was either filled with rubble or had obstacles in front of it. He reached down to his leather holster, pulled the flap open, and pulled his pistol out, holding it level. He pointed the weapon at one of the men and then the other, not knowing which to fire at first.

  A shot rang out, surprising him with the volume of its noise. He had been too slow, but he had been lucky—the Gestapo man had missed. He squeezed off a round before throwing himself behind a cast-iron bathtub that was lying nearby. He could hear the Gestapo men shifting toward him, searching for cover. Johann risked peeking out from behind the tub. They had taken shelter, but he wasn’t sure quite where. Another shot rang out, and he ducked back behind the bath. He needed to move; no doubt one of them was trying to pin him down while the other outflanked him.

  He leapt up, lugging the briefcase, and fired off another round at the officer who had shot at him. The man ducked back behind the shattered wall he was sheltering behind. As he did so, Johann scrambled out from behind his shield before throwing himself inside the shell of the building next to his own. He found himself in the hallway of a residential block he had once visited to drop off mail that had been wrongly directed.

  He lay behind the wall, desperately running through his options. There were footsteps outside, two sets—both men were on the move. He looked around. As far as he could tell the back of the building was still intact; there was no easy escape. He peered from behind the bricks and saw one of the men edging toward him. He fired another round. It missed, but the bullet kicked up a cloud of dust near the officer’s feet, causing him to dive behind a pile of rubble. Johann reached into the leather pouch on his belt and picked out some replacement ammunition. He had perhaps another dozen rounds. He needed to think fast. The two men were closing, and he was trapped. His fingers shook as he loaded the ammunition, dropping a bullet. He reached down to the floor—stone flagging that now had an inch or so of dust settled on it—and fumbled for the brass casing.

  Johann told himself that he needed to stop thinking and act: If he stayed where he was, he would either be killed or captured.

  He began to crawl toward the stairs before standing and rushing up the steps. Shots rang out, peppering the steps with traces of gunfire. They knew that he was headed upstairs. He needed to use the building as a maze in which to lose or kill them. He got to the first-floor landing. He was out of his pursuers’ line of fire now and peered down. There was no way the Gestapo officers could get up the stairs without him being able to shoot them. But he knew that time wasn’t on his side; they would muster men to overwhelm him in a short time, and his ammunition was limited. He ran to the back of the building to see if there was a fire escape. He crept as close to the edge as he could risk—maybe he could jump?—but at the back of the building was a tangled mass of ironwork. Johann liked his chances of surviving the drop but knew he would almost certainly injure himself on a sharp piece of metal.

  There was no other means of escape that he could see other than the roof. He knew that, on the left, his own building was semi-derelict and there were no other ways of getting out of the front or the rear of the structure. This left only the building on the right as a possible escape route—if he could reach it. Johann racked his memory to try and remember whether it was still standing. Even if it was partly destroyed, he might be able to get over to it and climb down to the floor and get away.

  Johann returned to the landing and peered down cautiously, aware that his pursuers would be looking for an opportunity to take a shot. He crept along the hallway, trying to make as little noise as possible. He stopped moving and listened—he could hear whispering. They were in the building. He craned his neck over the staircase and saw, in the lobby area, a pair of large, dusty shoes poking out from behind a doorframe. They were just a floor down from him.

  Johann experienced a moment of dread. How many steps were there? Maybe twenty? They could be up here in a moment. He needed to get away, to put some distance between them in order to reach the roof and see what his options were for escape. And what if he was unable to get away? He would need to find a place to hide and wait for his adversaries. With the element of surprise he might be able to shoot both of them, as long as his aim was true.

  Johann ran up to the next floor and waited. He heard boots cautiously following him up the stairs. He waited for a moment before rushing up to the third floor. Again, they came after him. He repeated himself, getting to the landing on the next floor. The second he imagined the two men were edging along the third-floor landing, he appeared at the top of the stairs and took a shot. He saw the first of them—a big man with a walrus mustache and a face pink from exertion—drop his weapon and fall to the floor, cursing. Johann flung himself back to the top of the staircase. A piece of plasterwork puffed into the air as a bullet lodged in the wall a foot away from where he was lying.

  The incident bought him a few moments, and he rushed along the walkway on the top floor, passing through a door that was hanging from a single hinge and out onto the roof. Outside, the sun was beginning to set. The lack of light didn’t make a huge difference. The gloom just appeared to be getting heavier. Johann looked around. The remaining Gestapo officer had yet to start up the final staircase. He scanned the roof. One edge was completely shattered, but the other three appeared safe to walk on.

  Johann oriented himself. He knew that three sides were useless. He needed the fourth to offer him an escape route. The officer would be up the stairs soon. He needed to hurry. He ran to one edge and peer
ed outward—it was the side adjacent to his old building. This meant that the opposite side was his potential escape route. He rushed over, barely able to contain his dread. As he crossed to the other side he realized the roof offered no cover. He held his weapon up as he approached the edge in case the Gestapo officer came through the door.

  He looked over and distinguished a solid roof, about ten feet below. But the gap between the buildings—perhaps eight feet—was such that he would need to leap. From where he was standing, Johann thought the roof appeared to be solid. He had no choice anyway; he had to get away, even if there was a chance it wouldn’t support his weight.

  Johann backed up so that he could gather pace for the jump—the weight of his briefcase would slow him, so he needed to gain as much momentum as he could.

  “Wait right there!”

  The voice was as loud as thunder. The order came from the Gestapo officer who had appeared on the roof. Johann had his back to the man. Should he dare turn and try to shoot him?

  “Drop the gun!” the man instructed him.

  Johann hesitated. Once he was unarmed there was no hope.

  “Drop the gun or I will shoot!”

  Johann held out his arms horizontally, but held on to the pistol.

  “I will count to three,” came the voice. “One…” There was a pause. Johann listened to a loud diesel engine starting somewhere in the distance. “Two…”

  He made a decision: Being alive and in the hands of the Gestapo was marginally better than being dead. He dropped the pistol and the briefcase.

  “Now turn around slowly,” the officer instructed him.

  Johann rotated and stared at the man. The officer was tall, with dark hair that had a severe center part. The skin on his face was florid. A drinker, perhaps.

  “I think he’s dead,” the man said, nodding back toward the exit to the roof. “Aren’t you in enough trouble already? Killing a member of the Staatspolizei is just going to get you deeper in the shit. Mind you, you were so deep in the shit already that there was nothing you could do to keep yourself alive beyond nightfall. I suppose it’s all relative.”