On the first floor all was in darkness apart from the dimly lit corridors. Listening hard, he paused outside the anteroom: silence. Unlocking the door, he stepped inside, then re-locked it. He switched on no lights, instead brought out a pocket torch and followed its beam across the room. He unlocked the door to the inner sanctum.
Bypassing the huge desk, he lit his way to the alcove. The torchlight played on the brass maker’s plate and on the keyhole. He brought out the new key and inserted it. Now his heart was really racing. This was the acid test. The key caught. It turned.
Schmidt let out his breath. The hurried impression taken in Dr Funk’s pornographic bedroom, and the unknown locksmith’s skill, had worked. He turned the handle and eased the door open. The light beam shot into the interior.
The shelves were bare.
The auditor blinked hard. Stay calm. He closed the door and re-locked it. Doubt gripped him. What now? Had the president changed his routine? Was he leaving his papers at the ministry overnight? So far it appeared he’d been scrupulous in preserving their secrecy, in ensuring they remained under his control. Funk would have enemies in the Party; a ministry safe wouldn’t be a good idea.
Perhaps the blueprint was done and delivered! No. Too soon. Schmidt swallowed down his uncertainty, his nerves. Funk must’ve been delayed. The danger of that leapt into his mind. He switched off the torch as he heard the sound of the key in the lock. It pierced the auditor’s heart.
~ * ~
The Reich Marshal had called an evening meeting to check on the progress of the plan, which had delayed President Funk, and now he was running late for a supper party he’d arranged at a club near Nollendorf Platz. Gripping the brown satchel, he let himself into the anteroom, switched on the lights and crossed to the other door. He fumbled his key into the keyhole, then realised that the door was unlocked. He paused, his head to one side. Frau Heyer had been careless. Damn the woman! He’d give her nervous condition a boost when he phoned her tomorrow.
~ * ~
Schmidt hadn’t re-locked the inner sanctum door. His heartbeats thundering in his ears, he crept out of the alcove. Only one place to hide. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows near the alcove. In two strides he was at the midpoint where they met. He slipped into the slit, stilling the disturbed material with a hand, and drew in his feet so that they were nearly parallel to the wall.
The lights snapped on. Immediately soft footsteps were coming toward him. The president’s breathing! Sound of another key; the safe door opening, leather sliding on metal; door whooshing shut expelling air; metallic clunk; key again.
Silence - except for the president’s breathing. Was Funk standing there, mesmerised by the imprint of a figure behind the curtain?
The auditor didn’t hear the small man move. The next sound was the squeak of the big padded chair behind the desk. Then, the faint riffling of papers. The dwarfish Nazi was reading the morning correspondence Schmidt had reserved for him to see.
Five minutes passed. From behind the curtains Schmidt heard the president laugh once, swear once — a very sexual word— and grunt several times. Then a fruity fart reverberated. More silence.
The lights snapped off; the door was being locked; footsteps were retreating across the linoleum of the anteroom.
Schmidt, frozen behind the curtains, his back to the window, could hardly believe that he’d survived. He stepped out into the darkened room feeling light-headed and paused to regain his composure. He switched the torch on and re-entered the alcove.
A minute later he was opening the file; more than a hundred pages of typescript - supported by pages of numerical tables. And, perhaps, not yet complete. He began to skim through the loose sheets. How much would he need to photograph to gain the vital content? He decided: All of it. More than one visit to the safe would be required.
Schmidt carried the file to the president’s desk. Then he lit his way back to the door and positioned the sausage-like draught guard along its bottom; this should prevent light escaping. He returned to the desk and snapped on the desk-lamp. He brought out the Minox and the fat pencil, assembled the tripod, attached the camera, and the cable-release. With the measuring chain he checked and adjusted the distance to the wooden stand. He placed the first sheet of paper on the stand.
He peered down through the viewfinder. Miraculously ‘Introduction’ jumped up at him. All clear! He squeezed the cable-release and the shutter clicked. He push-pulled the camera to wind on the film. After the first few exposures, he began to speed up. Check focus, trip the shutter, wind on. A few, quick, vision-clearing blinks between exposures. Efficiently, he proceeded. He glanced at his watch at 10.45. He’d used a cassette, fifty exposures. He was surprised how nimble his fingers were in replacing it.
At 10.47, as he peered again through the viewfinder, the lines of text blurred. Consternation rose in him. God! What had happened? Then he realised his right eye was watering. Aching. A headache had come. He’d been so tense and intent it’d been relegated from his consciousness. He’d have to stop. It was time to stop.
He wiped the eye with a handkerchief. The empty socket behind the prosthesis was the one that usually wept. He gathered up the papers, returned them to the safe and locked it. Quickly he disassembled the camera and equipment and distributed it in his pockets, switching off the desk-light as he left.
Head pressed to the anteroom’s door to the corridor, he listened. The Reichsbank seemed to be brooding on its history; on millions of completed transactions; on the hundreds who’d toiled within its walls — and then departed. He steeled himself and opened the door.
The corridor was empty.
Back in his office, Schmidt locked the camera and equipment away. He put the tiny exposed cassette into a small box that had contained paperclips, and carefully inserted it into an inner pocket of his suit-coat. He put on his overcoat, feeling the weight of the automatic Hoffmann had given him. Rather than hours, that meeting seemed like days ago. He checked the room, turned out the light and locked the door. His hand was shaking.
Downstairs, in the freezing foyer, Herr Wolff’s eyes snapped onto the departing Schmidt.
‘Ah! Leaving, Herr Chief Auditor?’
Schmidt nodded.
The man said, ‘The president was late tonight also.’
‘Oh! I didn’t see him. Goodnight.’
The frozen air assaulted the auditor as he emerged into the deserted street.
Travelling homeward, it seemed to Schmidt that events were moving in jagged fits and starts, like the tramcar. Rubinstein loomed up from the other secretive channel in his life. Without the passport, the plan for the Swiss doctor was meaningless. That fear must’ve been in Hoffmann’s mind when they’d come to their agreement.
There were only twenty or so persons in the tramcar, weary people gazing blindly out the windows or immersed in newspapers. Two men sat opposite Schmidt, buried behind their papers. No-one had followed him in the street when he’d left the bank. He’s shaken his shadow off at the department store . . . for the moment.
It began with a raised voice. Two black-coated men, whom Schmidt had already observed at the far end of the tramcar, jumped to their feet and began shouting at a man still seated — a large man in a voluminous overcoat, whose face, in profile to Schmidt, looked stupefied. His drooping moustache accentuated the expression. ‘Your papers!’ one of the men shouted.
Police — or Gestapo. Schmidt leaned forward slightly
‘Mein herr, what is this about?’ the large man protested.
‘Stand up!’
The newspapers covering the faces of the two men opposite Schmidt had whipped down. One of them was Rubinstein; his thin, pale face — minus its beard. Schmidt swallowed a gasp. The ex-judge’s eyes were on him, alert and cautioning.
The conductor was tugging on the cord to stop the tram. The two men had the heavy fellow up and were dragging him along the aisle toward the door. Volubly he was protesting: ‘Mein herren!’When he was adjace
nt to Schmidt he grabbed the seats either side with big soft hands. His face was red and the moustache-ends were shaking. ‘Show me your authority,’ he cried. Everyone was now anxiously craning their heads.
‘You traitorous filth!’ the articulate agent shouted. ’Here!’ He drove his knee into the man’s groin. The man roared in agony and doubled over, clutching his middle. They seized him afresh and propelled him out the door. He slipped on the step, staggered, and crashed down on his knees in the snowy street. They began to kick him.
The man had ejaculated a mouthful of saliva over Schmidt and the two men opposite him, one of whom was mopping up with a handkerchief. Rubinstein was leaving. Schmidt caught a flash of eyes as a small brown envelope dropped into his lap. He covered it with his hand, then slipped it into his overcoat pocket. He didn’t turn to watch the Jew alight.
The other man opposite him, putting away his handkerchief, turned to look at Schmidt, gesturing at the fracas in the street, whispered, ‘Isn’t he that newspaper editor?’ Schmidt shrugged his ignorance, wiping his own face with a handkerchief. Thank God, he had it.
~ * ~
Anna stared at her photograph in the passport: her hair up, and wearing spectacles. Fräulein Helene Schreiber. Born 6 June 1903. Carefully she turned the pages. The Swiss exit stamp was dated two weeks ago and the Reich entry stamp the same day She raised her eyes to the watching Schmidt.
‘Anna, it’s a good job,’ he said.
She nodded agreement, said, ‘At eight-fifteen the telephone rang.’
Schmidt frowned. Who had that been? Freda Brandt’s face jumped into his mind. The wireless was blasting out orchestral music. He moved to her side and pointed at the name. ’Of course, that’s your cover identity. If we’re able to persuade the Swiss to accompany you, he’ll be your cousin. You’ve been having a brief holiday with him.’
She frowned at the word ‘persuade’.
Schmidt gestured to the chairs in the study They sat, and he told her the details of this Swiss doctors life, including the whereabouts of his mother and daughter that Hoffmann had supplied. ‘There may well be questions at the frontier. Memorise these details. If he undertakes to do it, he’ll be cooperative.’
Cooperative? Anna was perplexed. This man who’d betrayed her dear friends? How could that be? How could she travel with him, look him in the eye without loathing? It would be a charade fraught with peril; even with his cooperation. However, she was in the hands of Martin Hoffmann and Franz.
‘Franz, when?’ she asked.
‘Very soon.’
They ate supper in silence. She no longer asked about the bank. Or her friends. While she finished cleaning up in the kitchen, he excused himself and went into the bathroom. He examined his right eye in the mirror: bloodshot, but not weeping as much as earlier. With a shock, he noticed the enlarged iris. However, the blurred vision in the last minutes of photography had improved slightly. Anna’s face and the details of the flat had been fairly clear.
But when he peered at the small print on a medicine bottle label he couldn’t read it.
Schmidt turned away from the mirror and faced the white tiles on the wall. If this didn’t improve overnight he’d be photographing the rest of the documents blind, not knowing whether they were in focus. If he set the camera at the same distance from the desk-stand and left the focus untouched, like the woman photographer had shown him, it could be possible. Though, could he see enough to set up correctly?
He decided to attend to the left eye socket. He laid out the towel and carried out the procedure. Washing the prosthesis in the solution, he wondered what he would do if he became totally blind. That brought a surge of panic. He must see a doctor.
Anna was in the study. From the door, he observed her profile. Five days cooped up here. He couldn’t tell her the news about the teacher . . . and her other friends. Perhaps when she had left Germany . . . although then it would be for someone else to do; she interrupted his thoughts.
‘May I have a bath? Tonight there’s hot water.’
‘Of course.’ He knew she wouldn’t run water in the flat while he was absent.
‘Franz, is there something wrong with your eye?’
‘There seems to be a problem. I’ll see a doctor.’
She thought for a moment. ‘The doctor who treated me is a friend of our family A good man. A professor at the university.
I can give you his details.’
Schmidt nodded his thanks. When she left the room he tried out his vision on the etching. The knight appeared to be riding through a mist; the grotesque faces of the figures surrounding him had become blank. The uncertainty of the rider’s intentions had magnified. He turned to face the hissing fire. Whichever way he faced, the future was an enigma. Anna, whom he could hear moving in the bath, must have almost identical thoughts.
Fully dressed, she returned to the study. The warmth of the bath emanated from her. Her face was blurred to him, yet clear in his mind.
‘What is it?’ she said.
His concentrated gaze must have looked strange. It was running in his mind that her beauty had a highly changeable quality, different angles, different degrees of light, effected subtle changes. He imagined even her transient thoughts were effecting changes.
In a soft collision they were enfolded in each other’s arms. Immediately, they drew back - as though a hot wire had been touched. He was still peering at her face. More by osmosis, he absorbed her care and concern for her friends, for everyone she knew; for the unfortunates of this turned-upside-down world. And her passion. This pragmatic, supple-bodied woman, abounding with humanity.
He drew her back into his arms. His thoughts were rushing in a new direction: Was this a positive step into the future? Or merely a grasp at a fleeting moment?
Schmidt didn’t know. What he did know, blindingly and absolutely, was that the first moment he’d seen her in Herr Fischer’s room she’d entered his heart. The marvellous essence of her. The next moment their mouths were pressed together and they were lost in an unbelievable intimacy of yielding lips and tongues and moisture, with all thoughts and preoccupations banished to another universe.
~ * ~
35
A
T 7.25 AM SCHMIDT hurried across the platz, hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets. The cold was mind-numbing and the suburb dense with fog and a soul-destroying moodiness. Entwined in streamers of mist, a tramcar stood at the stop, looking abandoned. Schmidt climbed aboard. Herr Bosch was on duty, peering out at passengers straggling across the platz. The conductor’s birthmark glowed like a red coal on this frigid day. The auditor nodded to him and took a seat.
If Hoffmann was correct, today Elisabeth von Bose and Frau Kapp would be executed. It might already have happened. The knowledge sat in his stomach like a painful cramp. His mind’s eye gave him back the tall elegant woman in the café.
After the amazing intimacy of last night, he’d re-considered telling Anna this disastrous news. But he knew her every atom must be focused on the escape plan.
Last night had been a wonder.
~ * ~
The express to the southern city left Berlin at 8.00 am. Watching the crowded platforms drift by, Sack felt uneasy at leaving headquarters. He’d emptied his in-tray but by afternoon it would be overflowing again. The Reichsbank secretary, the Beck woman and her literary editor husband were still at large; and the Jewish ex-judge. Those cases were squarely on his shoulders.
He’d told Freda that he was undertaking the trip to satisfy her; however, his own curiosity and suspicions had been aroused. He’d considered interviewing the auditor but had drawn back. With the mysterious von Streck in the background, at present it was too risky.
In one sense, it was a relief to have a break from headquarters. Last night Strasser’s men had arrested the newspaper editor Straub. His colleague relished such assignments. Under his orders, four SS men in relays had flayed the man’s huge, white buttocks with metal-edged belts. The editor’s screams
from the cells had given Sack a headache. Orders had come down from Reich Minister Goebbels to punish Straub for a recent article in his paper.
Sack had secured a seat by requiring an army officer to vacate his. The man now leaned in the corridor, and his five companions were casting hostile looks at the Gestapo man. Sack ignored them, closed his eyes and tried to sleep. The express was crowded with officers going south. East he understood, but what was going on in the south?
They arrived at 12.25 pm and the sturmbannfuehrer went to Gestapo headquarters by taxi. He was ushered into the room of his old colleague, Ludwig, from his Prussian political police days. They shook hands. ‘Don’t take off your coat,’ Ludwig said. ‘We’re going for a walk.’
Sack understood. Even in this provincial Gestapo office the walls might have ears.
The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02] Page 28