‘Yes. I’ve heard.’
They regarded each other in silence. The doctor’s heart sank. ‘You people have lied to me.’
‘I don’t know what you were told but it’s immaterial.’
The Swiss shook his head in despair and sat down.
Von Beckendorf was focusing on the other’s face with difficulty. He was fearful that his strength would give way. He should kill him immediately. But he wanted him to know . . . He gritted his teeth, holding himself together. ‘Mein herr, you betrayed my friend, Fräulein von Bose, and others. That is why I must kill you.’
The doctor gasped. Desperately his eyes shot around the room. His mouth tasted of ashes. ‘My God,’ he breathed.
The man holding the gun was dying. Lobe had taken that in. He had to support his right hand with his left to keep his aim steady. A chest-racking burst of coughing came and his head dropped forward. Blood surged and rimmed his mouth red. With a surge of hope, the doctor’s brain grasped at the situation.
Eugene was bright-eyed with fever. Anna and Elisabeth’s faces swam in and out of his head — as did this man’s. ‘Cardinal sins and hollow hearts, I fear you.’ The bard’s words were mixed in with the images in his head. The gun muzzle wavered as, awkwardly, he mopped his lips.
Lobe wanted to live. To see his daughter and his mother. To do his work. To redress his mistakes. He edged forward in the chair, avid for a half-chance.
Eugene registered a blurred impression. In a reflex action he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the Swiss in the shoulder and he fell back in his seat with a loud gasp, clasping both hands to the wound. The sound of the explosion was deafening.
‘I do apologise for my clumsiness,’ the captain said. ‘My weakness . . .’
Slowly, Lobe subsided in his chair, eyes narrowing with the intensifying pain. He spoke between clenched teeth. ‘In the case you mention ... I regret what I did. Very much. That’ll be hard for you to believe.’
The captain once again was gripping his right wrist with his left hand. He nodded slowly and spoke painfully, ‘I believe you, herr doctor. And am pleased to hear this. Nonetheless, all of us must expect to pay for our mistakes. Especially when life and death are in the balance.’
For the first time in this long, agonising day, Dr Lobe saw the future, and understood that it no longer need concern him.
~ * ~
At Gestapo headquarters, the Vormann folder was open on Sack’s desk. He’d been working through it but now he was staring at Buhle, who stood with the telephone to his ear. The agent was waiting for a response to his query.
Sack’s mind returned to what he’d been reading and trying to understand. During his career in the Prussian political police and the Gestapo, he’d had occasion to falsify evidence; to frame technically innocent persons. Abundant signs of that were in the papers and the transcripts before him. But to nail the powerful von Streck he needed a single piece of blinding evidence to rise above this circumstantial morass. He hadn’t yet found it and making a move without it would be suicidal.
He’d flung the net wider, made two telephone calls to Ludwig in the southern city, and to the panicky Vormann. Reluctantly, each had agreed to look into Sack’s query. Vormann had insisted on calling him back from another line, which was worrying. God almighty! The interior ministry’s phones compromised? Or was it his own? Sack swore a bitter oath. He flipped over pages. Traitors they were but for reasons he only had a sketchy notion of.
‘Are you there?’ the untersturmfuehrer shouted into the phone. He cast his superior an apprehensive look.
‘What is going on?’ Sack grimaced.
Buhle shrugged nervously. ‘Yes?’ He became tense.
‘Has she been arrested?’ Sack demanded.
‘There’s been an incident —’ Buhle said over his shoulder.
‘Has she been arrested?’ Sack spat out.
‘No,’ his subordinate said distractedly, trying to listen.
Sack stood up, limped to his subordinate’s side and ripped the phone from his grasp. ‘This is Sturmbannfuehrer Sack at Headquarters,’ he shouted.
It made no difference. She hadn’t been arrested. Nor detected. Sack didn’t want to hear about the ‘incident’. When the officer at the other end queried whether it was known for certain that the fugitive had been on the express, Sack hung up with a curse. He stared across the room. Now Anna von Schnelling was in Switzerland. Reich Minister Himmler’s Tea-Party case would be closed in a way he’d find absolutely unsatisfactory. Sack shuddered. He visualised the pig-like eyes searching for a scapegoat.
~ * ~
Since lunchtime Schmidt hadn’t left his office. The clock on his wall now showed 4.10. Outside it would be dark. Von Streck had been as silent as the Sphinx. Was he being trusted to deliver the final result? He’d heard nothing about the quality of the photographs. Even more worrying, was von Streck still in the clear?
Schmidt realised he’d been almost in a vacuum these past few days. But there was no alternative, other than to keep to the road he was on. He smoothed his hand over the eye. His vision was no longer blurred.
Anna must have arrived at the frontier. He checked the clock again. The die was cast . . . His telephone jangled in the silence, making him jump. Schmidt reached for the black tube.
‘Do you recognise my voice?’
‘I do.’ It was Major Hoffmann.
‘Good. I report success.’ An exultant tone.
The connection terminated with a click.
Schmidt, the telephone in hand, was swept by emotion. He slumped back and stared across the room. It was akin to watching a fine sunset on a beautiful summer’s day - the climactic, fulfilling moment — when the blazing orb sank beneath the horizon. She’d reached freedom! His hand trembling slightly, he hung up, and immediately the phone rang again. This time, a faint and weary voice: von Beckendorf’s, fluctuating with weakness. ‘I report success.’
Another significant click. The man was gone. Toward his death. Schmidt had wished to say something . . .
What had the switchboard operator made of these calls, presuming she’d listened in? She wouldn’t be busy at this time. Schmidt shrugged to himself, to the watching Fuehrer. ‘I report success.’ He supposed that Abwehr officers had a vocabulary coded for certain situations.
In this case, the captain’s report was also the doomed man’s signal to activate the scheme for Franz Schmidt’s survival.
Schmidt straightened his shoulders. It was time to leave the Reichsbank and cross the snowy darkness to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.
The story he’d devised at the Abwehr man’s behest began to roll in his head like a film projection. He trusted it would be more plausible than the efforts emerging from Goebbels’ studios.
~ * ~
At 5.11 pm Freda Brandt checked herself out from the hospital, took a taxi and, twenty minutes later, entered the Reichsbank. A flustered Herr Wolff buzzed around her, as she painfully walked across the foyer to the lift. Resolute to serve her, he flung open the lift’s concertinaed steel door. She nodded curtly and stepped in, not able to conceal a grimace of pain.
Her mood was black and apprehensive. After his visit to the hospital she’d tried to phone Julius but he’d not responded to her messages. Where did things stand? With Schmidt? With the von Schnelling woman?
In the second floor corridor she peered ahead, as if answers might lie in the dusk at its end. She had to face the fact that Julius might fail her. He was a cautious and painstaking person - where his own skin was at stake. It was quite possible that this would outweigh the great opportunity to serve the Reich. A thought burst upon her: The Fuehrer! The only man one could trust. If he only knew! About the harvest of plots, the whirlpools of ambition and personal venality being loosed in his name!
She walked with difficulty to her office. Used to striding along these corridors in the full flood of her energy and fine physique, this was deeply humiliating. She looked down at her bandaged knees with disgust. Eve
n damned Julius could move faster than this.
She’d refrained from asking Herr Wolff whether the chief auditor was in the building. The other night’s contacts in that context had been a mistake. Had he blabbed to anyone? To Schmidt? Her lips pinched tight. Where allegiances lay these days was never clear. She missed Rossbach. The foolish man had been reliable, as long as he was being looked after.
It angered her that there’d been no inquiry about her health from President Funk, or even from Frau Heyer.
She kept a small bottle of cognac in her desk drawer. She needed to fortify her nerves and her body for what might be ahead tonight. But first she must get hold of Julius and find out what was going on. One thing at least: she was stepping back into the picture. Lying on the hospital bed she’d been in purgatory.
~ * ~
Schmidt was resolute as he walked to the confrontation with the Gestapo agent who aped Goebbels. Resolute in spirit, but freezing in the flesh. Nonetheless, even before the building came into sight, his heart was tapping away, hard and precise. It was late. Would the Nazi still be here?
According to Eugene, Sack had been down south investigating the events of last November. How deep he’d penetrated the Bankhaus Wertheim imbroglio remained to be seen. Grimly the auditor considered what had set the agent onto that trail. Doubtless, the probing mind of the secret policeman allied with Freda Brandt’s perplexed curiosity about the circumstances of him coming to the Reichsbank.
Sack had a lot of meat to get his teeth into. The death of the agent tailing him, Schmidt’s familiarity with Anna, who’d eluded their net, would be festering in the Gestapo man’s brain. He might be weaving the threads together.
He hurried on, his rubber overshoes squeaking in the new snow, his thoughts running ahead. Instead of making a preemptive move to short-circuit Sack’s suspicions about himself, he might be committing suicide.
He cast a glance up at the grimy brick facade plastered with electric lights. His resolve flickered. A moment to remember his family. And the knight. The knight sallying forth looked wary; was the look a gathering of strength, or one of farewell?
He took a deep breath and entered the sinister building.
~ * ~
45
W
HAT!’ SACK SAID, the muscles in his lean face flickering in genuine surprise.
‘Sir, Herr Schmidt, the Reichsbank auditor, is downstairs asking for you,’ Buhle repeated, his face more puzzled than surprised. The murdered agent had been an old colleague of his, more than that, a cousin of his wife’s. No clues at all had been found concerning his death but, before his demise, he’d been following this auditor.
Sack stood up. ‘Send in a stenographer. Immediately. And come back yourself.’
It was impossible to predict what this man was up to.
A few moments later the chief auditor of the Reichsbank stood in the door, a mild, hesitant expression on his face.
‘Step in, mein herr. Take a seat.’ Sack peered across the room. This was only the third time he’d seen this man who’d been so much in his mind.
Schmidt removed his hat and went to the chair before the desk. A young woman hurried in, sat down on a chair against the wall and opened a notebook. Buhle came in and stood near the door.
Sack closed the Vormann file but did not put it aside. ‘What can I do for you?’
Sitting on the edge of the chair, Schmidt ignored the others and gravely regarded Sack. ‘I have important information I wish to pass on.’
The sturmbannfuehrer nodded. ‘Why have you come to see me?’
Schmidt blinked in surprise. ‘You may recall, we met one night at the Reichsbank. I believe you’re known to my colleague, Fräulein Brandt. Doubtless you’ve heard of her accident. Otherwise I would’ve requested her to arrange the meeting.’
‘Very well.’
Schmidt said, ’I’m in some difficulty in connection with the Reichsbank secretary, Fräulein von Schnelling.’
Sack remained impassive, though it took an effort. He gave a curt nod.
‘I understand you’re seeking that lady.’
‘I don’t know how you came to such an understanding, but go on.’
‘I was forced to have her stay at my flat. She’s been there several days.’
Sack stared at this man. Freda had found that out. Why in hell hadn’t he thought of the possibility?
‘I’ve been the victim of blackmail by her cousin — an army officer.’ Schmidt’s hands fluttered, conveying his deep worry.
Sack inclined his head. ‘Blackmail?’
‘The lives of my daughter and ex-wife were threatened. If I didn’t shelter the fräulein —’ The muscles in Schmidt’s face jerked in a spasm — ‘they’d be killed.’ His voice cracked. ‘He said he’d personally slaughter them like animals.’
‘Who said?’
‘Captain Eugene von Beckendorf.’
Sack gazed at the small handsome man. ‘And you believed this?’
‘He’s a man desperate for the safety of his cousin. What I’ll now tell you shows that. Perhaps a disturbed man . . .’
‘Go on.’
Schmidt darted a worried glance at his watch. ’Thirty minutes ago he telephoned me - demanding I bring a taxi to an address. Here.’ He passed a piece of paper to Sack.
Sack’s eyes flicked at it. He remembered this address. ‘For what purpose?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Is it the captain’s address?’ Sack asked. He knew it wasn’t.
‘I don’t know.’
Sack’s dark eyes were like stones. ‘Aren’t you still worried about your wife and child?’
‘Of course. My daughter . . . But I can’t go further down this path. Can’t continue with this illegality. I’m a good servant of the Party! I’ve realised that if he’s arrested, the threat to my daughter will cease.’
‘Where is the Reichsbank secretary?’
‘I don’t know. She and her luggage are gone from my flat.’
Sack looked at the stenographer. Head down, pencil poised over her pad, she was waiting. He thought: How does he know she’s gone? Another lie. He hasn’t returned there during the day. This was a subterfuge. Here was a man who’d lied and fraudulently deceived the Party. Who’d been responsible for the execution of two Party officials. A man as cunning as one of the swamp foxes out in Wannsee. The story was bogus. Absolutely! But he’d play along.
Sack thought: the situation has got too hot, even for this one. He’s decided to concoct this story and sell out the Abwehr captain to clear himself. Perhaps the woman wasn’t on the train after all. The thought jolted him. If they could arrest the captain, his story could throw a different light on this auditor’s activities. As well as on the captain’s.
Sack’s hand thrust forward and smacked down on the bell. The others gave a violent start at the rapid movement and the shrill sound.
The sturmbannfuehrer shot to his feet. ‘We’ll go to this address.’ He gestured to Buhle, who’d become rigid. ‘Two cars. Six men. Come yourself.’ He stripped his coat and hat from the stand, and fixed the still-seated Schmidt with a hard look. ‘You, mein herr, will come too.’
The auditor’s face fell. He looked surprised and dismayed.
The sturmbannfuehrer couldn’t tell whether it was genuine or otherwise; or precisely much at all about this fellow. As they hurried downstairs, he said to himself, ‘But we’ll find what we’ll find, and see what we’ll see. Later, my friend, you’ll tell me what you’re really up to.’ The deceased Strasser’s methods would be brought to the fore.
~ * ~
So far so good. Perspiration soaked Schmidt’s underclothes. In the back seat of the car he braced himself to avoid bumping Sack. The agent driving was having problems with the slippery conditions. The cars entered a street and slowed, their headlights fingering house facades. Schmidt recognised the doctor’s building. Could it be only three nights since he’d been here, putting the fear of death into the Swiss, doing their
deal? He took a deep, covert breath. He’d no idea how von Beckendorf intended playing out this horrendous situation.
‘Stop!’ Sack shouted. A person had emerged from the block of flats. He jabbed his arm at the figure. Seeing them, it turned and hurried into an adjoining alley. ‘Buhle! Arrest him!’
Schmidt glimpsed a man with a stick. Buhle had the door open before the car slithered to a halt. He was out, running across the footpath to the alley, drawing his pistol. Behind them the other car’s doors slammed. With a shouted curse an agent slipped and crashed down.
‘Stay here,’ Sack ordered. Crablike, he got himself out.
The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02] Page 37