Now, mainly by feel, he made his way to the Frisches’ space. Dormer windows gave access to the rooftop and to the steep roof of the adjoining building; through the dormers the night sky lent a faint illumination to the vast dump of cast-off possessions. His breath making white puffs before his eyes, he stepped out through a window onto a tiny iron-railed balcony, and peered over the rooftops. Crevices of snow glowed white; colonies of chimneypots strutted away; the steep adjoining roofs, deep-shadowed, resembled ski slopes; iron-railed widows’ walks paraded against the sky. All of it created a shadowy fantasy of coal-begrimed, complicated architecture. A nightmare, really…
He’d known he’d need ropes to negotiate these precipitous cliffs and had foraged for some. Two coils lay at his feet. With cold fatalism, he realised that he’d no strength to attempt an alpine endeavour; no strength in his arms or his legs. Resigned, he realised the only way out for him would be through the front door.
He went back to his room and sat down on the bed. Fifteen minutes passed. Head cocked, he listened. The house below seemed to seethe with suppressed human sound. Up here only rats were scratching. He could visualise the Gestapo on the stairs and landings, creeping closer. These death-dealers were mean with their own lives.
Two flickering torchlights appeared in the labyrinth, thirty paces from where he waited. Not so cautious after all. It hadn’t taken them long to search the floors and rooms below. But they wouldn’t expect him to have the revolver; his service weapon that he’d kept from the Great War. He hadn’t kept the Iron Cross. A year ago he’d obtained fresh bullets. He drew the heavy weapon from his overcoat pocket. The torch-beams wavered in the murky distance. Quietly he moved to position himself at the door, with a view down the narrow passage between the rooms. His thoughts flashed to his wife and children, safe in England.
They were in his passage. If he could kill them, how many more were behind? Surely not many for a solitary Jew. He had six bullets in the gun, another four in his pocket.
Very close. Ten paces. Not a word spoken between them that he’d heard. He raised the revolver and aimed the barrel down the passage, eased back the hammer. He’d not fired it since 1919, when he’d killed two Canadians. He held his breath, prayed that dizziness would hold off.
A torch-beam lifted toward his door. He fired. A grunt, a stagger, a drastic thump. ’Hans!’The other torchlight jumped up. He fired again. The thunderous sounds of the two explosions in quick succession went reverberating across the vast attic, the shock waves disturbing dust and sending the rats crazy.
Deafened, Rubinstein coughed out dust and stepped over the two entangled bodies lying in the narrow passage. The second one was twitching and groaning. He hurried through the labyrinth bumping into the walls, catching his overcoat on room spaces fenced off with chicken-wire. He pulled up at the stairway leading down to the Frisches’ apartment. By feel, he reloaded the two empty chambers.
Someone was on the stairs — coming up. He sensed the presence rather than heard it. He dropped to one knee, peered into the darkness, raising the revolver. Only one? The stairs creaked. Whoever was there had moved up a tread, and stopped. Rubinstein’s eyes were aching with his concentration.
The ex-judge was perspiring deep in his thick clothing but his fingers were dry on the revolver butt and trigger. He peered hard to find the figure. Faint creaking; another tread closer. In an eye-blink the outline of a head and torso formed. Thank God! He eased back the hammer and squeezed the trigger. The sound and shock and smell of the explosion buffeted him again. Below: thud-thud-thud — like a medicine ball bouncing down.
Hand now on the balustrade, he felt his way down. The corpse was wedged across the bottom of the stairs to the attic - no movement from this one. He edged around it and slipped through a half-open doorway into the Frisches’ apartment.
~ * ~
Sack’s nerves leapt as the shot exploded high up in the house. The third one. Three of their men, including Strasser, had gone in. This didn’t look good. A heavy revolver; not a Mauser. A Jew with a gun! Sack was on the stairs between the ground and the first floors, the agent just behind him, breathing on his neck. It was becoming a job for an SS detail. However, he edged up two more steps, his Mauser pointed up into darkness. He wished to avoid making such an embarrassing request. ‘Don’t switch on your torch,’ he whispered to the man behind.
~ * ~
On the second floor, outside Herr Frisch’s library, the judge thought: How many more? He could feel their stealthy presence below. He’d given them good reason to pause. They’d probably be having the electricity reconnected. To blast him out with light. The ominous silence from their three colleagues wouldn’t inspire them to make further suicidal moves. From now on, it’d be harder. Softly he twisted the door handle to the library, stepped in and closed the door.
Before him, dust covers glowed like white ghosts. The big window on the street was illumed from a streetlight. It was a perfect view straight down to the front steps. One man stood there, peering in through the door. Rubinstein went back into the room and rested his hand on Herr Frisch’s massive and ornate desk. He’d admired it yesterday in daylight.
Seven bullets left. He walked softly back to the door. He must not be taken alive. He had the cyanide capsule. Gently, he reopened the library door to the second-floor landing and peered into the darkness. He took up the iron doorstop and tossed it across the landing to the head of the stairs. As it crashed down, he dropped to one knee in the doorway, the revolver, held in both hands, pointed down. Multiple flashes and a fusillade of bullets buzzed past his position. They were firing blind. He aimed at where the flashes had been. The gun bucked again. The firing below stopped abruptly and a scream rose above the echoes of the explosions. A dark shape went reeling and staggering down the stairs.
Wounded only. Now they knew where he was. He withdrew into the library and closed the door. He reviewed the situation. A pity. But it was unthinkable to risk being wounded.
He moved cautiously across to Herr Frisch’s desk and sat on the dustsheet-covered chair. There was nothing on his person that would incriminate others, he’d always been careful about that. He laid the revolver on the desktop and faced the door. If one had to die, then this was a good room to die in. He’d always loved books. Although that belonged to another life. Sitting here, he raised his eyes to the dim walls of massed volumes.
He took up the revolver, which had come to life again tonight after its long hibernation, and said his customary prayer for his family and friends.
~ * ~
A rat’s nest. Sack shook his head as he inspected the dead Jew. A wonder how these people could survive and do what they did. He’d lit his way to where the bodies of his two colleagues lay, examined them for life, found none. Others had arrived from headquarters.
On the stairs, examining Strasser’s dead face in his torch-beam he’d said nothing to his colleagues. Where the sturmbannfuehrer’s left eye had been was a bloody hole; otherwise he was the perfectly groomed Strasser, fallen asleep after a night on the town or in the cells.
‘A courageous death,’ an agent said. ‘For the Fuehrer.’
Sack switched off the light-beam to conceal the humorous grimace that twisted his features. ‘Yes, that can be said,’ he commented. In a shattering change to the environment, the electric lights came on. He checked watch: 11.06 pm. He’d go back to headquarters and file his report. Auditor Schmidt was back in the forefront of his mind.
~ * ~
40
N
EW TENSION twisted in Schmidt’s stomach as he returned to Savigny Platz by tram. The dead agent’s face on the eye doctor’s landing was a stark image in his mind’s eye. What moves would the Gestapo make now? He had to force himself to sit calm and immobile. It was 11.07 pm and he was poised to cross the frontier between the two dangerous sectors that dominated his existence.
The icy wind smacked into his face, making him flinch, as he alighted from the tramcar. He peered ahead: a
hundred metres away, his flat’s windows were dark. There’d been no-one he’d regarded as suspicious on the tram but surely they’d be watching his flat. His face tightened; so long as they didn’t enter it. His hand checked the pistol in his pocket. He started across the platz.
‘Herr Schmidt!’ Schmidt’s head whipped around. The tramway shelter. A solitary figure. Von Beckendorf!
The auditor overcame his shock and moved toward the Abwehr man. Even with the single-bulb lighting he could see the drastic deterioration; his face was sunken, the eyes bright points but black-ringed. Only the strongest will could’ve brought him here. The captain offered his gloved hand. The auditor took it.
Von Beckendorf said, ‘I know about the agent.’ A spasm of coughing wrenched his chest. He released Schmidt’s hand, pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his mouth. Schmidt cast a look into the stricken man’s face, then another to scour the vicinity. The coughing stopped. ’I’ve been watching . . . none of ‘em here. But the sooner Anna’s out of your flat —’ He leaned against the shelter wall for support. ‘I have to know what stage you’re at. Whether we must take other action.’
Quickly, concisely, Schmidt told of the night’s developments affecting Anna. He finished: ‘She leaves tomorrow morning.’
‘Thank God!’Von Beckendorf’s voice trembled with relief. He raised the handkerchief to his mouth again, and his body shook in a briefer spasm. He gasped, ‘You’ve given me new strength. Tell her, God speed — and give her my love.’
He peered into the auditor’s face, as if seeking an answer to another question. A tramcar bound for the centre came squealing and swaying over points toward them. ‘You’re a good man, Herr Schmidt. I surmise you’re engaged in our work. Good luck! Trust no-one.’
His voice was faint, but the words were strong with sincerity. He hunched his shoulders and lurched forward, nearly into the path of the braking tramcar, causing Schmidt to leap to his aid with a steadying hand.
~ * ~
Sturmbannfuehrer Sack arrived back at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse before midnight. Putting all else out of his mind, he dictated a report on the siege to a bright-eyed female stenographer. How did these women manage it in the small hours? His own eyes were thick with weariness . . . They’d finished off the troublesome Jew. The fellow had eluded capture for a long period but, finally, Sack’s assiduous work had cornered him. No-one knew how many fugitives the criminal had helped escape from the Reich; influential Jews, carrying their poison to the outside world - and other traitors. The elimination of the conduit by his section was a major achievement. All of this went into his report.
Three agents had died tonight. Extremely regrettable, and he laid the blame squarely on Strasser’s shoulders. An image of Strasser’s dead face coalesced, satisfyingly, in his mind as he dictated. This task took him thirty minutes. The stenographer hurried away to type it up. He stood up and limped to the window.
His thoughts returned to Schmidt. The auditor must be brought in. With von Streck’s shadow over him it was thin ice to move onto, but not as dangerous as going directly up against the plenipotentiary.
Still, the sturmbannfuehrer, usually icy calm and decisive, felt himself torn. Goddammit! He should be basking in tonight’s triumph! Never any rest — always on to the next problem. He took up the phone and put through a call to Freda.
~ * ~
Her arms crossed beneath her breasts, hugging herself against the cold, Anna walked quietly through the flat. The seventh day she’d been here; seven days of keeping well away from the windows, not running the water, not switching on lights, being careful of cooking smells, padding through the rooms in stockinged feet. Alone with her thoughts; deep in a process of survival. She’d put Elisabeth and the others to the back of her mind. That had taken an extraordinary feat of willpower. Apparently Franz knew nothing. But she feared the very worst.
He’d been returning each night with the irregularity of a person engaged in a secret life; tonight was no different. She checked her watch again and listened: from the platz, only the intermittent sounds of tramcars; from this room only the hissing of the fire ... A secret and highly dangerous life. She was sure now that the enigmatic auditor was in the anti-Nazi movement. A double-man. He’d come to the Reichsbank on a special mission.
Eugene had never told her anything about his own work, but she’d noted his brooding silences at each Nazi-inspired outrage. Four years ago, he and Martin had been vocal critics of the Nazis. Abruptly their mouths had snapped shut. That’s when it must have started.
She realised she was scarcely breathing. Last night, they’d made love with a passion that shut out the desperate world, but it went beyond that. There’d been a jolt in each of them that first moment their eyes had met in Herr Fischer’s room. Like the blooming of a day lily in spring. Last night they’d spoken of it. A wonder. She pulled up short in the hall. She looked at her watch again: 11.25. Oh God, had they taken him?
Her heart leapt - a key was turning in the front door.
~ * ~
Lying warm in bed, they listened to the wind whining around the building. Wide awake, Schmidt had his old thought: a wolf seeking entry to a sheepfold. Until last century, they’d had wolves in Germany. They had been the bane of farmers and were wiped out, or had fled to the east. Now the nation was being stalked by human wolves. One day they’d be wiped out too. From his knowledge of the rise and fall of the Teutonic Knights, he was confident of that; it could be hoped for and, if you were a religious person, prayed for.
Anna had kneeled by the bed and silently said her prayers. Watching, Schmidt had thought of dearest Trudi chanting her own little prayers.
‘I’m an optimist,’ Schmidt said in the darkness as they lay side by side. ‘You will escape, I will survive. These black days will pass.’ There was no harm in making such statements. She was a strong woman but tomorrow she would need every gram of her strength. He was determined to send her, strong-minded, on her own way. He’d passed on her cousin’s message. God speed. Her eyes had flooded with tears. They both knew she’d never see him again.
In a low voice, she said, ‘Is there a god? What do you think, Franz?’
Surprised, he hesitated. Who had she been praying to? He said, ‘I believe in a creator...’ He’d thought about it recently. ‘I picture this creator playing a vast organ but, with the best of intentions, not perfectly . . .’ He faded out, realising it was a feeble proposition. She laughed softly in the darkness, and reached for his hand.
He lifted his head. Faintly, above the wind, he thought he heard the clocks in the shop nearby, striking the hour. Not an organ.
She was whispering to him. Her lips close to his face. ‘You’re a good man, and I’m a good woman. Your creator may have chosen us to survive.’ Then the soft and pliable warmth of her lips was driving all else from his consciousness.
~ * ~
To the west, on the other side of Berlin, Sack was exhausted when he entered Freda Brandt’s building. It was sixteen hours since he’d taken the train south. His day had unfolded with the relentlessness of a conveyor belt on a Ruhr production line. And now he had to deal with Freda.
‘By God, you look terrible,’ she said, peering at him as he limped into her tiny hall.
‘A busy day,’ he said. ‘Four of our men have died. I’ve been in a gunfight. But an activist Jew who’s given much trouble has been dealt with.’ He removed his leather coat, soft hat, placing them on a chair with an air that emphasised the finality.
She continued to examine him, then nodded brusquely and led the way into her sitting room. He winced at the high-power electric lights. He sank down in a chair. ‘Don’t sit on that,’ she said irritably. She gestured to him to pass her the skirt draped over it. ‘You’re not the only one to’ve been busy, Julius. The auditor was up to something at the bank tonight. He was there from 10.10 pm to 11.01 pm but the little bastard kept out of sight. Not in his office. Not anywhere I looked. Vanished into smoke. I needed you there.’ She p
ut the skirt aside and, hands on hips, stared down at him. ‘He was locked into the President’s rooms. I’m certain of it.’
She emitted a gust of breath, and told him of her patrols through the bank in pursuit of this shadow.
Sack closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Doesn’t he go to the President’s room each day to perform that special task?’
‘In the morning,’ she hissed.
‘Might he not’ve returned to do follow-up work?’ He was really too weary to play devil’s advocate. And why bother? He’d no doubt this auditor was a dangerous individual; that his entry into the Reichsbank wasn’t an innocent matter; he’d a dead agent on his hands because of Schmidt. He said, ‘If he was there, what could he be after?’
She looked at him pityingly. ‘The president’s special assignment. The safe.’ She related Frau Heyer’s comments concerning the overnight lodgements of the work from the ministry. ‘He gets into safes. Isn’t that what you told me?’There was a sarcastic twist to her last words. She gave a bitter laugh. ‘My God, I could feel he was there. Playing his Wertheim tricks again. The devious crook!’ Her face was iron-hard in the bright light.
The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02] Page 33