The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  Fischer’s lips formed a tense smile. ‘She’s an orphan, an only child. The Reichsbank’s been her family. The old bank was like that. Many young women from good families came in. I told you that. Since 1935, the winds of change have blown most of them away.’ He paused. ’Let me tell you, Fräulein von Schelling’s a very determined person. Don’t be deceived by her delicate appearance.’ He lapsed into silence. ‘Even so, those winds gain more power each day.’

  Schmidt gazed into his glass of colourless liquid. Yes, he’d detected that fine steel in her. The few sips he’d had were fiery in his stomach. Obviously Fischer was prepared to back his judgement as to when it was safe to speak out. But how had he decided that Franz Schmidt, a Party member, was safe? Surely von Streck wouldn’t be relying on this incautious man?

  So, how well had Fischer known Wagner? Schmidt felt his late colleague at Wertheims hovering between them again, like sinister background music. Possibly the connection was through the banned SPD. Wagner’d been a courier to its outlawed headquarters in Paris.

  At a slight sound, Schmidt turned his head. A blond youth had appeared in the doorway. Fischer said, ‘Ah, Pieter, come in and meet my guest. This is Frau Seibert’s son,’ he said to Schmidt. The youth was about sixteen, his face and manner servile. He bowed to Schmidt, ferrety eyes darting at the Party badge. ‘Mother asks if you wish coffee now, Herr Fischer.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The youth disappeared.

  ‘He spies on me,’ Fischer said casually. ‘On his mother too. Behind that meek and mild face the Party’s dogma stains his guttersnipe heart. Hitler Youth, of course.’

  Hearts were very much on his new colleague’s mind tonight. Schmidt was familiar with aspects of the Hitler Youth movement. Two of the main dangers to a citizen’s privacy and safety are children and servants — a von Streck caution.

  Ten o’clock. Time to go. Schmidt spoke his thanks and took his leave. As he put on his overcoat, Fischer looked up a timetable. A tram was due in ten minutes. In the hall the reek of tobacco from the manager’s suit was powerful. When they shook hands at the door the muscles in Herr Fischer’s cheek jumped. He muttered, as if to himself, ‘The new broom.’

  Schmidt’s head felt clear as he walked briskly to the tram-stop. The rain had stopped and the air was moist and a trifle warmer. The locality reminded him of the one, formerly the domain of prosperous merchants, where his mother-in-law lived in Dresden, 180 kilometres to the south, where Helga and Trudi were. Coming to Berlin had brought him a step closer to them, though that was of no practical benefit in his particular situation. They might as well have been on Mars. Grimly he regarded the ill-lit street.

  His thoughts swung back to Fischer. If the Reichsbank man didn’t begin to curb his tongue, he was headed for destruction. Schmidt’s feet kicked through leaves. From now on he’d keep his distance from the man; to do otherwise might endanger Franz Schmidt’s fraudulent existence.

  ~ * ~

  6

  C

  APTAIN EUGENE VON BECKENDORF lit a cigarette and inhaled gently as if to avoid pain. He gave Major Hoffmann, who was sitting opposite, an apologetic look. Hoffmann clucked his tongue. For the past three months von Beckendorf had been a patient at a sanatorium in the Bavarian alps. He had tuberculosis. His prognosis was bad. The doctors had told him so last week: two grave men, in white coats. He’d expected it. With the increased coughing, blood and the extra effort needed to breathe, his situation was as crystal clear as the alpine air. The sanatorium was too late.

  He was handsome, a poet as well as a soldier. Even now there were women eager to tend him, fascinated by his gaunt face, his ice-blue, perceptive eyes, his aristocratic origins. It was too late for that, also.

  The two army officers, each thirty-eight, wore civilian clothes. Hoffmann’s face was serious as usual. His red hair, thin and receding, left an expanse of florid brow. He was wide in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, shorter than the captain but his physique was the more powerful. He’d been a champion boxer at university and a broken nose recalled that fact to his friends.

  It was 8.30 pm and they were seated at a corner table in a café overlooking the light-glazed Tirpitzufer, with its lines of naked chestnut trees. Two tall glasses of beer, untouched, still foamed before them. The café was bursting with rowdy customers, which was why Hoffmann had suggested they meet here. Also, it was close to the massive Wehrmacht building where the Abwehr had its office.

  Casting a glance around the room, von Beckendorf absorbed the nervous vivacity. Berliners seemed more keyed-up. The alps had been placid. Turning back to Hoffmann, he said, ’The outlook isn’t good. Lungs are finished.’ He smiled. ‘Cigarettes will make no difference now.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’

  The Abwehr officers took up their glasses, clinked, and swallowed generous draughts. Hoffmann, in turn, checked the room. No-one he recognised. No-one from his club. He frowned. Two days ago he’d telephoned the sanatorium and simply said, ‘We need to talk about Anna. I’ll come to see you.’ But von Beckendorf had come to him.

  Hoffmann said now, ‘I’ve had disturbing information about her group of friends . . . She needs to be spoken to. No holds barred.’

  Von Beckendorf studied his friend. The worry lurking in the back of his mind had rushed to the forefront when Hoffmann had phoned. He’d signed himself out of the sanatorium and hastened to Berlin. ‘Her friends?’ he said.

  The major nodded briefly. ‘They’ve had more meetings. In December. They’ve been trying to contact sympathisers who travel to Switzerland. God knows what they have in mind but anything like that is deadly dangerous.’

  ‘Is she involved in that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, they’ll all be tarred with the same brush.’

  Von Beckendorf, the cigarette between his lips, was silent. Away in Bavaria he’d been quarantined from this. The tea parties had begun twelve months ago. She’d told him about them. He’d given her a serious warning but she obviously hadn’t listened. Elisabeth was behind it all: Anna’s teacher from the girls’ school where she’d been educated. The former teacher was a woman in her early forties. The co-leader of the group was a countess whose husband was in the Foreign Ministry. As far as he knew, the rest were well-off women.

  Hoffmann took another practised look around. ‘It’s come from a friendly source. If they’re onto it, the others won’t be far behind.’

  He meant the Gestapo. Von Beckendorf stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  Hoffmann, leaning closer, said, ‘She must cut off all communication with these women. They should stop meeting. I don’t think they’ve any conception of what they’ll be in for if they’re discovered. They must stop. Without delay. Even tomorrow might be too late. You’ll know how they should act to protect themselves.’

  The captain could barely hear the major’s terse utterances above the hubbub, but he could see how disturbed he was.

  ‘Did you have an inkling of this, Eugene?’

  ‘Yes,’ von Beckendorf said shortly ‘I warned her about it.’

  Hoffmann nodded. There was a shared past and intimacy between them that enabled communication with a minimum of words. They’d been students together at university, and then at the military academy. In 1937, they’d both been posted to the Abwehr, the foreign and counter-intelligence department of the High Command. In 1935, they’d attended Oxford University — von Beckendorf taking a course in English literature, Hoffmann one in economics. It was that innocent student interlude that’d brought them to the attention of the Abwehr, and into the ambit of Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster and his anti-Nazi aspirations.

  Last September, they had been part of a plan to kill the Fuehrer.

  ‘D’you think we’re in the clear?’ Eugene muttered.

  The major gave an emphatic nod, and a warning look; after a moment he said almost in a whisper: ‘The Englishman cooked our goose.’

  British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s start
ling appeasement at Munich had made the Fuehrer a hero. Sabotaged the plan. Many of the plotters had fallen away overnight. It had been painstakingly organised by Oster, on a hair-trigger to activate. But the trigger hadn’t been squeezed. The failure, the lost opportunity, loomed above the two men like this freezing winter; as did the danger. They sat silent, still shocked by it.

  Berlin was seething with dangerous secrets, but none more malignant to the health of those intimate with it than this one. In October, Hoffmann had killed a Gestapo agent who’d come sniffing around; who might’ve picked up footprints of the aborted assassination.

  Nothing more could be said.

  They finished their beer, paid, put on coats and hats and stepped out to the street. The night struck them with the force of cold steel. Von Beckendorf shuddered and pulled his scarf higher. ‘I’ll see Anna tonight,’ he said. He must see Elisabeth, too. He was desperately worried for both women.

  ‘For God’s sake, do.’ The remark was heartfelt, and von Beckendorf glanced quickly at his friend. He’d known for some time that the major was in love with Anna. He remembered how last Christmas Hoffmann had stood in her hall with an armful of flowers, blushing and awkward.

  Hoffmann, in turn, studied the captain’s blanched face in the streetlight. Despairingly, he saw that it wouldn’t be long. They shook hands warmly. Walking away, Eugene said to himself, ‘Yes, we each suffer from cases of unrequited love.’

  ~ * ~

  Schmidt was the only passenger on the tram. No-one was travelling into Mitte at this hour. He was surprised to see the middle-aged conductor who’d called goodnight to Herr Fischer earlier. The man had a large red birthmark in the centre of his forehead that made him memorable. He’d nothing to do but ring the bell at each stop, and hang on a leather strap peering through rain-flecked glass at the streets sliding by.

  Over four million people, the third-largest city in Europe, Berlin was encircled by tracts of doleful suburbs dotted with dripping woodland and cold lakes. In a few weeks there’d be snow and slush, bringing a semi-paralysis. Chilblains, running noses and chattering teeth would be the daily diet. Already, there was a shortage of coal. Schmidt brooded on this cheerless prospect as the conductor scrutinised the cold reality of the streets. Fischer’s face came to him. Schmidt was accustomed to sedate birthday celebrations and tonight’s had been a noteworthy example. The Reichsbank manager had clearly been oppressed by his thoughts; doubtless, by the future.

  In twenty minutes they escaped from the entombed suburbs and the tramcar stopped in Mitte. Light and life. The glass-fronted cafés were still full with drinkers and diners. People were spilling out of the cinemas, passengers came aboard. A youngish man, tall and erect yet with the haggard face of an invalid, was one that Schmidt’s eye singled out. He sat down a few places along the aisle. Briefly the auditor took in his well-cut clothes, the well-bred look of him except for the unkempt blond hair beneath a felt hat, then turned back to his thoughts.

  In the midst of a remark about something else, Fischer had put down his wine glass and leaned toward Schmidt. ‘Let me tell you, the Czech gold reserve has a special character. It was put together by contributions from the Czech people. By public donations. By personal sacrifice. An entirely different situation to the reserves of other nations. The Czechs have an emotional connection to it.’ He’d taken up his glass, and gazed over its rim at the auditor . . .

  Schmidt blinked at the night streets. Fischer was obsessed by the Czechoslovakian gold reserves, appalled by the prospect of their plunder by the Reich. And the Fuehrer was going to put Bohemia and Moldavia in his bag. That seemed certain.

  Schmidt felt sympathy for Fischer. The man must feel that his bankerly world, a lifetime of ethics, were going up in smoke.

  The tall well-dressed man rose and rang the bell as they approached a stop. He and Schmidt had the briefest eye contact, then he stepped down to the street. As the tramcar rattled off, Schmidt looked back at the street sign. Rankestraat. Fräulein von Schnelling’s stop.

  ~ * ~

  The plain envelope had been pushed under the front door. Schmidt bent down, retrieved it and tore it open. A single sheet of paper: Noon tomorrow, Hans.

  Von Streck. The auditors heartbeats lifted. Here was the coded summons. ‘It may be a month, or a week, Schmidt. Be ready.’

  Schmidt removed his overcoat, scarf and hat, hung them up, went into the study and lit the gas fire. With his back to the fire, warming his legs, he gazed at Dürer’s knight. It seemed that the new game was about to start. He was no longer amazed at the stark change in his life. The brutal assault by the Brownshirt thug that had cost him his eye had been a signpost pointed to his future. That was the way Schmidt now saw it.

  Since then, so many individuals who’d been part of his life had died. Violent, wretched deaths, yet some of them noble too. Now von Streck, with his obscure power-base, held Schmidt’s life in the palm of his hand. But did he also hold the high Nazi’s in his? No. He knew that he’d never win such a contest.

  Stock-still, he looked for something new in Dürer’s creation, found nothing.

  He went to the window and peered out. A military convoy, headlights on, was rumbling dull and heavy in the fragile air across the cobbled, frosty platz, an endless procession of trucks. It had the cadence of a Mozart sonata.

  Tomorrow it appeared he was to begin his own new journey. He had no doubt that it would mean a descent into an even darker world.

  ~ * ~

  7

  T

  HE INEXPLICABLE RINGING of her doorbell shocked the Reichsbank secretary. Eleven o’clock! She hurried to the door, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Eugene.’ The next moment Anna was in her cousin’s arms.

  ‘Dearest Eugene, when did you get back?’ she gasped. The tall man released her and removed his hat. She pulled him into the flat, staring up at his wasted face with rising alarm. ‘Why are you back?’

  He gave a tight smile and closed the door for her. ‘I’ve just seen Martin Hoffmann.’

  ‘Oh? Please answer my question.’ She was shocked at his appearance. All her cousinly affection welled up. He was her last surviving family member.

  ‘All in good time, Anna.’

  ‘Very well, come in by the fire, you’d best take off your overcoat.’

  Von Beckendorf did remove the coat but not his scarf, then he went to the wireless in a corner and switched it on. It was tuned in to a Berlin station that was broadcasting a concert. He turned the sound up until it battered their ears.

  Anna watched him, perplexed. ‘Now we can talk,’ he said. ‘We’ll sit close together.’

  Her cousin wasn’t an eccentric person but was his illness changing him? He came back and took her hand in his own. ‘Germany’s now full of microphones. No place can be considered free of them.’ He paused. ‘It’s unlikely they’ve put one in here, but who knows?’ As much as anything, he was giving her a lesson. Then he told her why he’d left the sanatorium. Briefly, animation overcame the weariness and illness on his face as he spoke. ‘Hoffmann sent me a message.’

  He released her hand and abruptly sat down in an armchair; she drew up a small chair. He leaned close. ‘Elisabeth and your friends, these tea parties, Anna, they must stop.’

  ‘This has brought you down from the alps?’ He nodded. She shook her head and, gazing at him, thought: Oh God, make him take care of himself, bring him through this. Her whole face had become tight, as if the skin had shrunk on her cheekbones.

  Recovering his breath, Eugene observed and regretted her intense strain. But he must press on. He cleared his throat. ‘Hoffmann is engaged in certain work . . . He’s received information about the meetings. I know what Elisabeth thinks of the Nazis, I can imagine what’s being said, I hope to God it hasn’t gone further than that.’ A muscle in his cheek spasmed. ‘If Hoffmann’s people know, then the Gestapo will before long. Anna, this is the world we live in now.’ He pointed to the blaring wireless. ‘I’ve warned you to say nothing
on the telephone.’

  Her eyes had not left his.

  ‘Any kind of dissent or criticism of the Fuehrer, the Party, or the Reich is punishable by death. Death, Anna. The Gestapo’s a law unto itself. There’s no avenue of appeal from anything they do. No justice to be found. An honourable past won’t save a person - even one such as Elisabeth.’ He lifted his hands. ‘Her name’s a byword in female education. But it won’t save her.’

  He stopped, agitated and exhausted.

  Anna shook her head in dismay. ‘Elisabeth is away from Berlin, returns on Saturday,’ she said softly. The concert had finished and the voice of Reich Minister Goebbels took over. He was speaking about coffee. The noise was jarring her nerves. She was intelligent and certainly not naive. Doubts and misgivings about the meetings, which she’d been carrying with her, had welled up as she listened to Eugene’s earnest plea. It seemed that their little group had been swept along by an unthinking momentum of friendship and shared bonds, as if that was a kind of talisman against disaster.