The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  The doctor gaped. ‘What?’

  ‘We know the whereabouts of your mother and daughter. They’ll both be killed. Within a few days, your family will be wiped out.’

  Schmidt stared at the thunderstruck man. His vision was already a little clearer. Since last November he’d been amazing himself with his terrible fecundity. With his coolness. The proposals unfurling in his brain, falling in words from his lips, were at a new depth — as evil and conniving as any Nazi routine. He added, ‘Naturally, you would also be killed.’

  Bewildered, Lobe shook his head as though trying to drive out a nightmare.

  Schmidt spoke sharply. ’The mission must be successful. The lady must be escorted safely into Switzerland. If she’s arrested on the journey, even through no fault of your own, your family will be killed.’

  For thirty seconds the room was silent. Except for the doctor’s harsh breathing.

  Schmidt stared at the Swiss, felt himself an actor, acting out the script that’d come to him in a café as he’d studied Hoffmann’s papers. Was the performance working?

  The Swiss plunged his face into his hands. When he looked up, it was haggard. His eyes had become red. ‘What do you require me to do?’

  Quietly Schmidt released his breath. He brought out a piece of paper, and pushed it across the table. ‘This is the name the lady — your cousin — will be travelling under. You’ll obtain two tickets for tomorrow morning’s 9.00 am express.’ Schmidt peered at the man to ensure he was absorbing this. ‘You’ll meet the lady under the big clock at Anhalter Bahnhof at 8.15 pm. You’ll wear the same red scarf you’re wearing now. You’ll greet her with a familiar embrace, and take her suitcase.’

  The Swiss swallowed and licked his lips.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘If I can’t get seats?’

  Schmidt glanced at the pistol, and shrugged. It was a clear enough message. The muscles in Lobe’s face worked in a spasm. ‘And afterwards — we will not be touched?’ It was hardly above a whisper.

  ‘That is correct.’ But Schmidt did not know about that.

  ~ * ~

  Slabs of darkness like soaring sea-cliffs lay on all sides of Schmidt as he walked away in the pitch-black suburban street. As he’d stepped out of the doctors building, the electricity failed. Thank God! If the room above had been plunged into darkness a few minutes earlier . . . Berliners would be cursing yet another power failure. Despite the wonderful progress of the Reich, it was increasingly difficult to heat and light their lives, in the moribund depths of this winter of 1939.

  Inside his thick clothing, Schmidt was perspiring freely, but his heartbeats had settled down to an even thump-thump. He’d been cool all right while it was in progress. Too cool? He remembered his own family. How would he react if someone played such a terrible game with him?

  Dr Lobe would cooperate. At the first corner he reached, the streetlights blinked back on. Unless the Swiss had second thoughts . . .

  ~ * ~

  37

  S

  PEEDING NORTH TO BERLIN on the express, Sturmbannfuehrer Sack was well satisfied with his day in the southern city. His suspicion about the Reichsbank’s chief auditor had become valid and deep-set in his mind; he’d confirmed what he’d read in the man’s file, and opened up a Pandora’s box on last November’s imbroglio at Bankhaus Wertheim.

  Satisfied, yet apprehensive. He’d see Freda tonight. A life and death decision had to be taken, and that wasn’t putting it too high. The whipcord muscles in his face flickered.

  On arrival, he had a quick meal at the bahnhof then took a taxi to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. Having divested himself of his overcoat and hat, he was sitting down at his desk when Buhle hurried in, his face tense. Sack looked up sharply.

  ‘Sturmbannfuehrer, I regret to report Koller has been killed while on duty.’

  ‘Shit!’ Sack straightened in his chair, and scrutinised his subordinate. Koller had been the man assigned to watch the auditor. ‘What are the details?’

  ‘At 5.10 pm his body was found on the landing of a building in Friedrichstrasse. His neck was broken. We surmised he followed the auditor there and a doorknock has proved that correct. The auditor visited an eye specialist. The doctor knows nothing about him beyond the visit. It was his first.’

  Sack jumped up and paced the room, thinking hard. Was the auditor a murderer now? Unlikely. But someone working with him? Someone also connected to the special plenipotentiary . . . He turned on his subordinate. ’Where is the auditor?’

  ‘Unknown, sir. No-one else has been assigned —’

  ‘Assign someone,’ Sack hissed.

  ‘Yes, sir. Should we arrest him?’

  Sack stared at the untersturmfuehrer. ‘No. Resume the. surveillance.’

  Buhle hurried out. Sack stared toward the window and the blurry lights outside. A grim twist in the affair. Yet, this milk-and-water auditor, apparently, had sent two senior Party members to their deaths on false charges — which was even grimmer. He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. One way or another, Koller’s murder was another screw into the coffin lid of Chief Auditor Schmidt’s guilt. Sack turned and went to the phone.

  But Freda wasn’t at her flat. He put a call through to the Reichsbank; not in her office either. He placed the phone back on the hook, and stroked his cheeks with his hand. He must see her tonight . . . He reached for the phone again, then hesitated. It was a call he’d dwelt on making as he’d returned to Berlin. It would be a step down a road he couldn’t know the end of; but a call that he must make. Decisively, he took up the phone.

  The call he placed was to another former colleague in the defunct Prussian political police - now in the Interior Ministry; a man whom Sack considered he could rely on.

  He breathed relief when he found the SS man at his desk. After the briefest of greetings, Sack said, ‘Please meet me at the Café Munchen in ten minutes.’

  ‘Mein herr?’ The man, whose name was Vormann, was surprised.

  ‘It’s important and will take only a small amount of your valuable time.’

  The other was silent. ‘Very well.’

  As with Schloss, Sack hadn’t expected a refusal. He also possessed information on this man which could prove disastrous for him.

  At 7.45 pm Sack and his ex-colleague met at the small café off Potsdamer Platz. The overweight SS bureaucrat looked worried and edgy as he arrived. He sat down at the table where Sack waited. Despite the temperature, perspiration shimmered on his bald head.

  ‘Believe! Obey! Fight!’ This fellow wasn’t an ideal representative of the SS slogan, Sack noted. However, the sturmbannfuehrer wasted no time. Checking that he wasn’t going to be overheard, in a low voice he gave the paunchy man the essentials of the Wertheim case. He said, ’The prosecution file and even the court records’ve disappeared. I want to get my hands on them.’

  The SS man’s face tightened. After a lengthy pause, he said, ‘This is bound to be delicate ground. I’m not sure I want to tread on it. Or that you should. The man you mention is close to the Reich Minister. That’s what is said . . .’

  ‘Merely a very light and cautious tread,’ Sack suggested.

  The bureaucrat gazed across the room. Sack was capable of turning him in if he didn’t cooperate. He had no doubt about that. But the files would’ve gone missing for a good reason, and von Streck was one of the Party’s men of unfathomable power. Prying into this would be dangerous. ‘They might’ve been destroyed. Be impossible to turn up.’ He looked at Sack, almost pleadingly.

  Sack’s eyes were merciless. ‘My friend, it was only three months ago, you will find them.’ He nodded. He didn’t need to be explicit about the consequences of failure.

  Ten minutes later, back in his office, Sack’s call found Freda at her desk. ‘You’re back,’ she said.

  ‘Can I come to your office?’

  ‘That is a very good idea.’

  Sack was climbing into his leather coat when his inter-office p
hone rang. ‘Yes?’

  Buhle said, ‘The Jewish fugitive, Rubinstein, was spotted tonight leaving an address at about seven o’clock. It’s opposite the fugitive von Schnelling’s building.’

  ‘Spotted by whom?’

  ‘The woman janitor of the Reichsbank woman’s building — she’s one of ours - recognised him from photographs, though he’s shaved off his beard. She’d previously seen him visiting her building.’

  ‘Send men to watch the house. He may return, he may not. If he does, we must have him. Failure won’t be accepted.’ As an afterthought, Sack gave his subordinate Freda’s office phone number. ‘I’ll be there.’

  He left his office and a few moments latter went out into the street. That Jew had proved as cunning as a fox in his movements, but this time the sturmbannfuehrer sensed that he would return to his den.

  With a strong feeling that events were now heading in a favourable direction, he walked through the wet and windy streets toward the Reichsbank.

  ~ * ~

  Already in Wilhelmstrasse, Schmidt was also approaching the Reichsbank. It was twenty past nine and there was still a considerable amount of motor traffic in Mitte. Shadowy pedestrians hurried by. The auditor, head down to minimise the impact of the wind, nonetheless held a handkerchief in a gloved hand to dab at his troubled eye and at the weeping socket behind the prosthesis. Thoughts swept through his mind.

  Later tonight, he’d brief Anna on her impending journey. An image flashed to him of her in the flat waiting for him by candlelight. Nerves coiled in his stomach. If he didn’t survive the task immediately ahead, she’d be left high and dry. Doomed. He dismissed the unbearable thought.

  Tonight might be his last chance at the president’s safe. Nothing had come from von Streck on the quality of the first cassette. The pinkish scrubbed face of the Swiss came back. Could the man be trusted? He might decide to rush off to Sack, regardless of the risk to his own and his family’s lives.

  At the Reichsbank’s door, he dropped this negative thinking. The SS sentries’ eyes swivelled to him, then returned to straight ahead. ‘Heil Hitler, Herr Chief Auditor!’ Wolff snapped from behind his desk. Schmidt waved a hand and hurried to the lift.

  ~ * ~

  At an intersection, ex-judge Rubinstein stopped, rested a gloved hand on a tree trunk, and scrutinised the street where Frau Singer and the Reichsbank secretary had lived. He was shivering, and a little light-headed. It was 8.20 pm.

  The apartment building was one hundred metres away. The snow had vanished and the wind-struck, wire-suspended streetlights flung jittering yellow circles on the pavement. Only half were switched on; the Gauleiter’s austerity drive was a bonus for fugitives. No pedestrians at this hour in these conditions and very few lit windows along the way.

  It seemed all clear, yet he wasn’t satisfied. Sector by sector he examined the street. He’d not wished to come out tonight but had needed to find food for a man living in Wedding. A man, ill and unable to travel, who’d been a judge until 1934, who would soon die. The papers Rubinstein had procured and paid for with Frau Singer’s money wouldn’t be used.

  He’d eaten a small portion of the meal himself. His clothes had become loose everywhere. He’d eaten well in his past life. Like a hibernating bear, he was surviving on the fat of those days. He grimaced at this piece of black humour.

  He stood against a tree, virtually invisible. Re-entering his temporary abodes was the most dangerous time. Leaving, he could dive into the streets and byways; returning, he was committed to either haven or trap.

  Stealthily he breathed out frosty air. A car passed, heading in the direction of Wedding; a taxi followed, tyres squishing on the wet tarmac. He waited, rallying His failing energy. A few paces to his left a continuous cast iron fence ran in front of the houses, interrupted only by steps ascending to front doors, and small gates descending to basements. A band of deeper darkness, like black mourning crape, lay along the alignment.

  His eyes flitted along the houses. His sixth sense was giving off a warning impulse; it did that several times each day Should he move in or slip away and go to the apartment in the next suburb; the home of an old Jewish couple who’d left a year ago for Amsterdam. Still empty.

  Footsteps in the next street set up night echoes. He moved his head to listen. His rubber-shod shoes made no sound. Stepping left onto the black ribbon, he went, a flit of shadow, along the cast iron fence.

  ~ * ~

  In the empty, breezy second-floor corridor, Sack knocked on the door, stepped into the room and was transfixed by the head of precious metals’ vivid blue gaze. A grimace flitted across his features. The day of travel had set up a nagging ache in his hip.

  ‘Take off your coat and sit down,’ Freda said. ’I’ve hot coffee for you.’

  He was pleasantly surprised.

  ‘Well?’ she said when he was seated, the cup in his thin hands.

  ‘Well, indeed, Freda. Your chief auditor is a fellow worthy of our closest attention.’ Sack took a sip, set the cup down, and told her, in concise reportage, of the two interviews that he’d had in the southern city.

  Freda listened with an eager expression, analysing each phrase as he uttered it with the full force of her mind. Progressively her face became exultant — radiant. But she heard him right out. They sat in silence for a few moments. Then she exhaled a celebratory gust of breath. ‘Can there be any doubt our mild-mannered auditor is working against the Reich?’

  Sack shook his head, but cautiously. ‘If the Wertheim general-director’s evidence holds up, Schmidt’s false accusations causing the death of two Party members will be exposed. Beyond that . . .’

  Smoothly she rose, and paced from behind her desk. Her face, and blonde drawn-back hair were as perfect as when she’d arrived this morning. She exuded commitment, determination — and sexuality. Sack watched in admiration. He was conscious of how drawn his own face was, of his dishevelled appearance. She appeared impervious to the tensions encircling them. Boundless energy.

  In reality, Freda Brandt had a stomach pain. She hadn’t opened her bowels for three days.

  Sack blinked away the perfect vision and retreated to his caution. ‘That part of it appears clear-cut. However, the precise role of the special plenipotentiary isn’t. I’ve no doubt he was involved, probably has pulled the files on the prosecution and trial. Perhaps at some point he took the lousy affair out of Schmidt’s hands and became the fellow’s mentor.’

  Freda Brandt frowned at her lover, felt him drawing back. ‘But there’s a possibility von Streck’s been deceived by Schmidt,’ Sack said.

  ‘Ha!’ She stared down at the seated Gestapo officer. ‘Such a man — deceived?’

  ‘Schmidt’s an expert in deception. An operator both cunning and brazen. That’s very clear.’

  ‘All that, for revenge?’ she queried.

  ‘Why not? Apart from the Jewish secretary, the SA destroyed his eye, and his mother dropped dead during questioning by one of my colleagues. Nonetheless, only partly that. Deeper matters are involved ... I think the special plenipotentiary is swimming in dark waters. The dark waters of high treachery . . .’

  He lingered over the last phrase. He’d heard it spoken by Reich Minister Goebbels and, unconsciously, he’d used the propaganda master’s intonation. ‘With other highly connected traitors — behind a wall we may find impossible to breach. A move against Schmidt might be seen by these powers as a move against themselves.’

  She stared at him in horror. ‘Such people in the Party — against the Fuehrer?’

  Sack gave an ironical shrug. Surely she knew these things? Too much idealistic thinking, too carried away by it all. She’d told him that, once or twice, she’d joined the morning women outside the Chancellery, avid for a glimpse of Hitler when he left.

  Freda Brandt stood staring at the Fuehrer’s photograph, as if for guidance. The dangers and the rewards were playing out in her mind. She turned to him, remembering this afternoon. ‘Today he had a visit f
rom an officer of the SS.’ She described what she’d seen.

  Sack studied his lean hands, fresh doubts rising in his mind. What would they be getting into? A wrong move could be fatal for a Reichsbank senior manager, and a Gestapo major . . .

  Decisive, hands on hips, she stood over him. ‘Julius, you must question him without delay. My God! Don’t hesitate.’

  Sack drummed his fingers on her desk. ‘I’ll wait a little longer.’

  Her face darkened. ’For God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I must telephone my office.’ He gestured at the phone.

  Angrily she wheeled away.