The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  Schmidt sat tight. In the mediocre streetlight, von Beckendorf reappeared. Walking slowly, hands held aloft, his stick was gone and Buhle’s pistol was pressed to his back.

  The auditor alighted from the car. The captain had been waiting in the foyer for their arrival; had timed his ‘attempted’ escape perfectly.

  ‘Take him inside,’ Sack said. Schmidt stood back. Eugene didn’t look in his direction.

  The door to the ground-floor flat was wide open. The untersturmfuehrer and another agent had von Beckendorf by the arms. The Abwehr officer’s head drooped. Schmidt saw he was on the point of collapse. Pistol drawn, Sack entered the flat first and, from the foyer, Schmidt heard the sharp exclamation.

  ‘Bring him in,’ Sack shouted.

  They brought Eugene in and thrust him into a chair. Roughly they searched him and produced a pistol. Schmidt, almost forgotten, entered last.

  Dr Lobe was sprawled in one of the dining chairs, his head flung back, his eyes gazing at the ceiling. There was a blood-streaked wound in his left temple, and a patch of blood on the shoulder of his overcoat.

  Sack studied the scene for a moment. He swallowed down his nerves and rounded on the semi-conscious Abwehr officer. ‘This is your dirty work.’

  Eugene’s eyes were half closed, and he didn’t respond.

  Don’t pass out, Schmidt breathed to himself.

  Sack peered into the ill man’s eyes then stepped back and slapped his face hard. Eugene’s head jerked back and his eyes flicked open. The agents hauled him upright in the chair.

  ‘Did you hear me, you murdering swine?’ Sack hissed.

  But von Beckendorf was staring at Schmidt, loathing forming on his ravaged face. ’You! Your family is as good as dead.’ Schmidt blinked. Eugene might have been reading his mind.

  Sack’s eyes narrowed as he turned and regarded Schmidt. It seemed this criminal had just corroborated the auditor’s story. But it was bogus! Had to be! He swung back to von Beckendorf. ‘Where is your cousin, Anna von Schnelling?’

  The Abwehr officer replied with a ghost of a smile.

  The sturmbannfuehrer re-holstered his pistol.

  ‘Very well. We will take you back. You will sing us a song about your treacherous activities. About everything. Whether it’s ultimately in a falsetto voice or not will be entirely dependent on your cooperation. The Abwehr can’t save you now.’

  Eugene ignored him. ‘A curse on you, Schmidt,’ he gasped. He brought up the cuff of his overcoat and bit into it.

  Sack and his men leapt forward, but too late.

  The Abwehr man died in seconds.

  Sack stared at the newest corpse in the room. He swore, whirled away and began limping up and down, muttering under his breath, the muscles of his face working. Mesmerised by the act and its speed, his Gestapo colleagues gazed spellbound at the dead officer.

  Schmidt, almost physically, shook himself out of his own shock and pushed his mind in another direction. The president must have re-lodged his satchel in the safe by now. For the last time, if Frau Heyer was accurate. But how to get out of this nightmare and into that one? Was von Beckendorf’s plan going to work?

  Sack pulled up short. He looked ill. A headache had begun to pound behind his temples. Now this mess! God! He had to get back to that file. The two inquiries he’d made earlier must give him the ammunition to sink von Streck and this auditor. They glimmered in his pain-seared brain, like street lights on a foggy night.

  He stared at Schmidt. Here was one of the greatest actors in Germany. His whole story was fake. His whole life treacherous to the Third Reich - the Party. Tomorrow he’d have him and Special Plenipotentiary von Streck by the balls. Both of them. A wave of desperation hit him. If just one of the two inquiries he’d made paid off, he’d have the evidence and the co-conspirators would be finished. Destroyed! That was the way it must work out.

  He turned away as if unable to stand the sight of the auditor. ‘Mein herr, you can go. Without fail, report to me at my office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ~ * ~

  Twenty minutes later, Schmidt’s throat was dry, his eye-socket aching but there was no problem now with the good one, thanks to Anna’s professor. He’d pushed the drama that had just unfolded before his eyes into the ‘pending’ segment of his mind. By necessity, slotting his life into compartments had become one of his specialties.

  However, hurrying through the streets the haunting cadences of J.S. Bach’s famous requiem had been in his head. For the dead Abwehr captain.

  At the Reichsbank’s entrance, he hesitated. He sensed he was about to be sucked through the small port in the main door into its nocturnal hibernation, its web of secrets, his destiny; that he was an actor returning to a shut-down theatre where past players roamed backstage areas enacting old roles. Fanciful. But relief from his deadlier underlying preoccupations.

  He waved Herr Wolff back to the seat he’d sleepily risen from and hurried toward the lift. His mind came back to reality: to the camera in his desk, the satchel in the president’s safe. To the end of the mission now in sight.

  The pill sewn into Eugene’s sleeve doubtless had been cyanide, the same as the capsules von Streck had put into his hand in the walled garden of icy statues. ‘If they take you, Schmidt, you must use one. Quickly. The alternative’s unthinkable.’ One von Streck speech not loaded with irony.

  When the moment came, the Abwehr captain hadn’t hesitated.

  He opened the lift’s door with its usual clashing of metal. Behind, he sensed the bronze-blinded actor in the foyer. Actors were in vogue tonight; he’d correctly read Sack’s disbelief and indecision but, thank God, the fellow wasn’t ready to move.

  His desk was as before. The neat stack of files remained in the out-tray awaiting Fräulein Esser. He removed his overcoat; to work at the safe he needed freedom of movement. He’d kept his door ajar; he went to it and listened.

  No significant sounds from the labyrinth.

  He returned to the desk and unlocked the drawer. Methodically but rapidly he transferred the equipment and the torch into his pockets. The automatic was in his pocket. God! He’d taken it into Gestapo headquarters. He locked it in the drawer.

  ~ * ~

  The president’s anteroom seemed to have been brushed with recent movement. The door to the corridor locked behind him, Schmidt paused. His nerves were playing tricks. How long since Director Funk had been here? If he had. The impression faded. Perhaps a draught had stirred curtains. He lingered for another moment, then went to the other door and opened it.

  In the inner sanctum he switched on the torch. All as before. The items in the green folder bore the president’s scrawled initials. A moment later he turned the key in the safe’s lock. He worked the handle and the bolts thunked back with a sound that made him wince. He swung open the door. Relief surged through him. The satchel was on its shelf.

  Swiftly he went to work. The last stage. He was adept at this now: camera aligned, focused: ALUMINIUM PRODUCTION, shutter activated, film wound on. He was as one with the tiny camera, and always listening . . .

  After fifteen minutes, he’d finished. Carefully he replaced the file of papers in the satchel, returned to the safe and put it back. Again the clunking of bolts, the whoosh of expelled air as its door closed.

  He came back to the desk, disassembled the camera, pocketed the equipment, switched off the lamp, then went to the door and pulled aside the draught-guard. He unlocked the door to the anteroom. With a silent sigh, he stepped through it.

  The light on Frau Heyer’s desk snapped on. Schmidt’s heart stopped. Before his uncomprehending eye, Freda Brandt, one arm bandaged, her good hand hovering over the bell-push button to the front-foyer — to Herr Wolff and the SS guards — had risen up from behind the secretary’s desk like a spectre.

  They stared at each other in a shared trance of shock.

  ‘God almighty! Herr Chief Auditor! What is this?’ Her voice was a prolonged breathy hiss. Her eyes were huge
. Rapidly she licked her lips. ‘You! A spy and a traitor.’ Her hand twitched above the button.

  Schmidt remained absolutely still. ‘Fräulein, don’t touch that bell if you wish to stay alive.’ He spoke with urgency and overwhelming authority.

  ‘What?’ she hissed, anger overcoming her fear. ‘You’re threatening me?’

  Schmidt forced calm upon himself. ‘You’re interfering in the most top-secret business of the Reich. Knowledge of it is a death sentence.’

  She gaped at him.

  ‘I’ve been sent to the bank by Reich Minister Himmler himself to carry out an assignment of national importance.’

  She swallowed, gasped: ‘To spy on the president?’

  Schmidt gave a terse nod. ‘You don’t understand the sinister forces working against the Fuehrer. The great need to protect him. There are those who pretend to love him, but plot to kill him. There have been four attempts on his life in the past six months.’ He stared at her shaking hand. ‘There are papers in this safe that are proof. . . But I’ve said too much.’ Suddenly he brought out the camera and held it up. ‘I have photographed the evidence.’

  She stared at the tiny stainless steel box gleaming in the light. She spoke in a strained whisper: ‘Herr Chief Auditor, I do not believe such a scandalous thing.’

  ‘Fräulein, the unique circumstances of my appointment here should make this clear to you. My short appointment. My work for the Reich Minister is completed.’

  With searing, desperate eyes Freda Brandt gazed at the diminutive auditor, the miniature camera in hand. Her mind grappled with what he’d said. It made no sense. Nothing this man said could be believed. Julius’s report of his activities in the southern city flooded her mind. A man who’d twice given shelter to a criminal fugitives. Lies and duplicity came out of his mouth like counterfeit gold coins . . .Yet, she’d seen the officer of the SS visiting him.

  Her hand hovered above the button.

  Schmidt’s quick mind was crafting more sentences. ‘Your Gestapo friend won’t be able to save you. This is also a death sentence for him. Unless you forget what you’ve seen tonight. That’s your only hope.’

  With a whimpering, animal-like cry, she withdrew her hand and staggered from the room. Her head was whirling. How to combat this man? He was lying — must be lying. She’d never trusted him. And her instincts were always right. Yet it was possible that he was a special agent for the SS chief.

  She limped towards her office, despair in her heart at the uncertainties bursting in her head. She halted. Pull yourself together! She must find Julius and tell him everything. My God! Where was the crippled bastard?

  ~ * ~

  Schmidt’s shirt and underclothes were saturated yet again with perspiration. The freezing cold in the corridor felt unreal on his hot brow. His hands were shaking with delayed reaction as he put the equipment under lock and key, slipped the two cassettes into his pocket. Jesus Christ. He’d found a new dimension of fear.

  What the Reichsbank manager would do next — after she’d recovered from her shock — was in the lap of the gods. As was his fate. He’d painted himself into a corner and it would take the special plenipotentiary to get him out of it. But the mission was complete. It remained only to get the last cassettes to von Streck.

  His head snapped up, his heart dived, at a ponderous running in the corridor. Herr Wolff burst into the room. His body sagged, oozing relief. ’Herr Chief Auditor! Thank God I found you. The president wishes to see you. His car will be at the front door within five minutes.’

  ~ * ~

  46

  F

  REDA BRANDT peered at Sacks face as if she couldn’t believe he was on her doorstep — albeit looking tense and fatigued, but here! The emotional trauma caused by the auditor had subsided; thoughts were again fluent in her mind. ‘Julius! Why didn’t you respond to my messages? A lot’s been happening with the auditor.’

  He gave a weary shrug. ‘A lot’s happened at my end, too.’

  She blinked and flushed scarlet. ‘Jesus!’ But she swallowed her anger and gestured him in.

  For once Sack didn’t notice the domestic chaos. Holding the attaché case, he faced the tall woman, bandaged at the knees and the elbow, yellow antiseptic on the grazed forehead. Her iconic image was tarnished, yet a Reichsbank manager’s authority still exuded from her.

  She burst out: ‘Tonight he was in the president’s room. Photographing documents. I heard the safe being opened and closed. He’s been at the documents. He showed me a camera!’ This last, she gasped.

  He grimaced. ‘What documents?’

  ‘I don’t know, but listen . . .’ She poured out the night’s events, all that had been said in the confrontation in the anteroom. She drew a harsh breath. ‘He was in there the other night.’ Sack put aside the attaché case. He turned to a chair and sat down. Hands on hips, she stared at him. ‘Well?’

  The sturmbannfuehrer glanced away from the forceful vision standing over him. ‘The man’s as creative and glib a liar as I’ve come across. He must’ve been shocked. But he recovers, and pulls this story out of the air with a veracity that stops you in your tracks!’ He gave her a direct look. ‘Which was fortunate. Otherwise, he’d have killed you.’

  Freda Brandt paled, then sneered, ‘Protecting the Fuehrer! What a lie!’

  Sack’s face hardened. ‘He and von Streck are after secrets. President Funk’s working on a top-secret project.’

  Hands still on her hips, Freda thrust her torso at him. ‘So! When are you arresting them?’

  Sack gestured impatiently ‘Sit down, Freda.’ His look was kinder than his tone. He reflected: A smart woman. She’d suspected the fellow from the first, had discovered he was sheltering the Reichsbank secretary. In effect, she’d flushed out the traitorous Abwehr cousin. His eyes held hers. ‘Please listen to me.’

  In terse sentences he told her about his own day and night. As much of it as she needed to know. The point that he’d arrived at, in building a case against the special plenipotentiary. She looked amazed as she heard of Schmidt’s visit to Gestapo headquarters; blinked hard when she heard the Abwehr man was dead.

  As he spoke, Sack undid the attaché case and produced the papers on the Bankhaus Wertheim case. ’Here is the investigation of the theft of the Party’s bonds and the transcript of the trial of Party members Dietrich and Otto Wertheim. Schmidt stole the bonds and framed them for the crime. Von Streck protected Schmidt and organised the prosecution of that luckless pair.

  ‘Schmidt’s colleague Wagner smuggled the bonds to Zurich. Schmidt and Wagner were co-conspirators. At the trial, Wagner was falsely shown as working with the two executed men.

  ‘Wagner was arrested. Two SD colleagues questioned him. Wagner dies. The same night the SD men are killed. The record of Wagner’s interrogation disappears. That segment of the fraud and cover-up was von Streck’s work. His motive? When we have him under the lights at headquarters, we’ll learn that.

  ‘From where I stand the crux is von Streck’s traitorous agenda. But we’ll extract the plot behind the criminal espionage in the office of the president of the Reichsbank. No mercy will be shown.’

  Freda was watching him — avid for it all.

  He continued: ‘Von Streck and Schmidt must be taken at the same time. If we grab Schmidt, even if we work fast in extracting von Streck’s guilt from the auditor, the plenipotentiary could disappear. However, there’s another big complication. The existing case against him is circumstantial. Given his power in the Party, I need an undeniable piece of evidence.’ He paused. ‘I may have that tonight.’

  The flesh of Freda’s face seemed to loosen and drop. ‘Jesus,’ she breathed, ‘you’re still not ready to move.’

  Sack ignored this. He consulted his watch, rose, limped out to the telephone in the hall, and booked a call through to the southern city. Ludwig was always available. His call received the usual priority and within a few minutes he spoke to the local headquarters. ‘What?’ Damn. Damn! Ludw
ig had gone off duty, the agent said. Sack drew a deep breath and told the man concisely what he must do. He gave him Freda’s telephone number. Then he phoned Vormann at his home. The SS bureaucrat was still awake. ‘What have you found out?’ Sack demanded.

  Vormann’s breathing was audible. ‘Is your line safe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He is very careful with paperwork, but some was necessary, and still exists. There’s no doubt the transfer of the Party’s bank accounts to Bankhaus Wertheim was his work.’

  The sturmbannfuehrer was silent. A transfer that’d put them in hazard! He stood in his lover’s hall, nodding to himself. Von Streck had left some sticky fingerprints. ‘Very good. Be warned you may have to make this paperwork available to higher authorities.’