Out of Mecklenburg

by James Remmer

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ she shouted, totally overcome by the surprise.

  For Jürgen, the next best thing to euphoria was about to unfold in the relative calm of the library, where Manfred von Leiber was waiting for him.

  ‘I need to speak to you about something, Jürgen, and before I start, you can forget about rank. The conversation we’re about to have is between Jürgen Lanze and Manfred von Leiber. Understood?

  ‘Perfectly… Manfred.’

  ‘I take it you know about Carl returning to Argentina?’

  ‘Yes, he told me this morning.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘I’m not familiar with the entire story, myself,’ explained von Leiber. ‘It’s all very hush-hush, but I do know that he’s to rendezvous with a U-boat off the coast of Argentina.’ He lit up another cigar, puffed on it vigorously for a few seconds and then, with a distorted smile, said, ‘The U-boat will be disembarking some… er… equipment for him.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about that.’

  ‘No I don’t suppose he did, but it will affect you.’

  ‘How?’

  Von Leiber’s teasing smile added length to the moment. ‘Because it’s your boat he’ll be meeting! It’s why you were ordered back to Lübeck-Siems.’

  Jürgen stared silently at the ceiling, his face full of puzzlement, chin in hand. ‘First, Katrina asks me if I’d like to start a new life in South America,’ he mused, seeming if he were talking to himself, ‘then Carl calmly announces he’s going back to Argentina sometime after Christmas. Now you come along and tell me that I’m to meet him off the coast of Argentina.’ He fixed von Leiber with a searching look. ‘Am I missing something?’

  ‘No, but the chances are you’ll still be alive when the war’s over, and if my judgement is right, it will be over by the time you get back to Germany. All you’ll have to do then is sit tight and wait for the right moment.’ A grave look washed over von Leiber’s face, a haunting reality trickling into his mind. ‘So far this year, Jürgen, we’ve lost more U-boats than I care to think about… over 600 since the war began. It’s hideous, completely hideous. My aim is to keep as many sailors alive as I can, by whatever means it takes. And before you ask me about Dönitz’s master plan for a last great offensive, take it from someone who knows – it’s all garbage.’ Von Leiber stubbed out his cigar and folded his arms across his chest. ‘With your skill, Jürgen, and with all the latest technology a Type XXI has to offer, I’m confident that you will make it to the South Atlantic and get back.’

  ‘Well, I’ll certainly do my best, Manfred.’

  ‘And one last thing, Lieutenant Commander.’

  ‘Yes, Vice Admiral?’

  ‘Not a word to anyone.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Jürgen started towards the door, suddenly checking his stride, a thought zipping through his mind. ‘There must be a great deal of sensitivity attached to this operation.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Then perhaps I should tell you about a certain midshipman—’

  ‘Beiber?’

  ‘You know of him?’

  ‘I know everything about him. He’s a political appointment, a very political appointment. Don’t worry, though, he’s being replaced by sub-Lieutenant Janssen.’

  *

  Tuesday 19th December 1944

  West of Berlin, the roads were a chaotic mess, the delays unending. It was nearly five o’clock when von Menen arrived at the Foreign Office, a scribbled note waiting for him.

  My Dear von Menen,

  Seems that we have missed each other again.

  My apologies for dragging you down to Berlin at such short notice, but having other matters to attend to in Berlin, I thought we’d meet halfway. Left Krummhübel at five-thirty this morning. A nightmare of a journey.

  Anyway, there’s an envelope waiting with the duty officer.

  Yours, von Althoff.

  P.S. The suitcase is a present from Herr Werner.

  Von Menen studied the envelope, the gummed flap at the back embossed with the seal of the Foreign Office. The writing was unmistakeably Werner’s.

  Avoiding the unending delays along Heerstrasse, von Menen headed for Friedrichstrasse, crossed over Unter den Linden and made his way over the Weidendammer Bridge. One hand on the steering wheel, he was about to open the letter when, just south of Elsasser Strasse, his head shot sideways, like a pin drawn to a magnet.

  There is only one woman in the whole of Berlin with a carriage like that.

  He brought the Delahaye to a screeching halt, leapt out and hastened back along the sidewalk. Glancing over her shoulder, the woman made hurriedly into Oranienburger Strasse, her pace quickening, the image of a grey coat fading in the distance. For a moment, he lost sight of her, and then, in an instant, he saw her again, the same cream beret bobbing up and down in the darkness, weaving left and right, the only cream beret in a sea of people.

  Suddenly, she broke into a run, as if being chased by a pack of wolves. Von Menen was running, too, pushing, shoving, rounding piles of rubble as though his life depended on it. Faster, faster.

  Breathless, the woman finally drew to a halt, turned and waited for him, her shoulders down, her face pained, a crumpled brown paper bag in her hands. She looked different.

  ‘Sigi,’ said von Menen, his voice faltering at the last syllable. ‘It is you. Why…?’

  A sad, ashen-grey face peered back at him, eyes dark and hollow, not a hint of make-up nor a trace of cherry-red lipstick. Sigi Bredow had aged. He reached out for her hands, felt the roughness of her skin, saw the totally worn look on her face and the tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Carl,’ she said, her voice quavering, choking out the words. ‘I knew it was you, I recognised the car. It’s just that, well, I didn’t want you to see me looking like this. You do understand, don’t you?’

  He placed his arms around her, held her tight. ‘Sigi, Sigi, dearest Sigi,’ he whispered, ‘you’ve no idea how pleased I am to see you.’

  Von Menen took out his handkerchief, dabbed the tears from her eyes and pressed it into her hand. He took hold of the pitiful paper bag she was carrying, placed his arm around her waist and ushered her forward.

  ‘Come on, Sigi, let me walk with you.’

  ‘I hear you’ve seen Gustav’s mother,’ she said, still choking out the words. ‘Poor Lutzi. I’ve cried so much for her. She’s pregnant, but you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Sigi, I do. Frau Helldorf told me.’

  ‘Such a nice lady. When she wrote that you were back, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve thought about you a lot, wondering how you are, what you’re doing.’

  Von Menen gazed thoughtfully into her eyes, brushed away her tears and kissed her gently on the forehead.

  ‘Sigi, darling,’ he said, ‘forget about me, I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about. I went to Lützowstrasse and saw the remains of the villa. I’ve been frantic with worry.’

  ‘The villa,’ lamented Sigi. ‘Gone, over a year ago. Mummy and I were out at the time, but…’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy was killed.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Sigi.’

  ‘Save your pity for the others, Carl, there are many far worse off than us.’

  ‘But where are you living?’

  ‘Mummy and I have a room off Alexanderplatz. Nothing special, but it’s adequate. We can’t afford anything better. They’ve frozen all our money.’

  ‘Are you working?’

  ‘Yes, at Borsigwalde. I’ve just finished my shift. A bus picks me up along Chausseestrasse at six in the morning and brings me back in the early evening, usually between six-thirty and seven. I just happened to get
away a bit early today.’

  ‘Which factory?’ asked von Menen hurriedly.

  ‘Munitions. I pack boxes of ammunition, twelve hours a day, six days a week.’

  ‘Hell, Sigi, how do you cope?’

  ‘With great difficulty. The Allies try repeatedly to bomb us out of existence, but our Nazi masters somehow manage to get the place up and running again – unfortunately.’

  They had passed Artillerie Strasse and were approaching the burnt-out remains of the Mitte District Synagogue when von Menen suddenly remembered his car.

  ‘Sigi!’ he said, giving her a gentle tug, ‘my car! Come on, I’ll give you a lift home. You can get changed and we’ll go out to dinner.’

  She looked at him as if he were an alien from a far-distant planet. ‘This is Berlin, Carl, 1944. You do not just walk into a restaurant.’

  ‘We’ll go to the Savoy. They know me there. I’ve got spare clothes in the back of the car. They’re sure to have a room and I’m certain they’ll be able to find something for us to eat… Pavlova, perhaps?’ he teased.

  Sigi’s face gave way to her first real smile. ‘You know, I never did go back to the Eden.’

  They both laughed.

  Suddenly, von Menen was gripped by a surge of uncertainty. ‘Er, it’s okay, is it?’ he asked. ‘Going to the Savoy? Only, it’s just occurred to me that you might…’

  ‘Have a man friend? Carl, in the old days I was a bit feisty, yes. I frightened men to death, including you. But now…’ She looked down at her drab grey coat. ‘Who would have me looking like this?’

  In the one-bedroom apartment in Alexanderplatz, von Menen chatted freely with Frau Bredow whilst Sigi brought forward her one great treat of the week – her Saturday evening bath. She fetched out her best dark-blue suit and her last pair of silk stockings, before treating herself sparingly to a few treasured drops of fragrance from her last bottle of perfume.

  An hour later, bedecked in her mother’s only fur coat and trailing the distinctive fragrance of Chanel No 5, Sigi Bredow glided into the lobby of the Savoy Hotel and, for the first time in months, turned a dozen heads.

  ‘So, when did you get back?’ she asked, once they were seated.

  ‘About a couple of months ago. Before then, I’d been in Madrid.’ His lying didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  ‘And what do you think of the improvements to this wonderful country of ours?’ she asked cynically.

  ‘Horrific, Sigi, absolutely horrific.’

  ‘It’s worse than horrific, Carl. Unless you’ve seen it for yourself, you wouldn’t believe the degree of brutality and cruelty that exists in this magnificent Third Reich.’

  Through the sleeve of her dress, she began rubbing the inside of her left forearm, just as she had in the car, as if something was hurting her. Glimpsing a bright pink mark, von Menen slipped his hand across the table, placed it gently on her wrist and eased up the hem of her sleeve, nausea stirring in his stomach, his eyes settling on a series of small round scars. He drew the sleeve back and hid the disfigurement, a mixture of puzzlement and sorrow spilling from his eyes.

  Sigi’s eyes were welling with tears again, her bottom lip quivering, like a child who wanted to cry but knew that she had to be brave.

  ‘Is there more?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Don’t, Carl, please.’

  ‘Sigi…’

  She turned away, and for what seemed like an eternity, she said nothing, until finally she began to speak.

  ‘Not in my entire life will I ever forget that day, Friday 28th July, a week after the attempt on Hitler’s life. They came to take Lutzi… They’d already killed her brother by then.’

  ‘The Gestapo?’

  ‘Yes, and because I was at the apartment when they arrived, they took me as well. But Lutzi fared much worse than I did.’ Sigi shook her head. ‘A night doesn’t go by when I don’t hear her cries,’ she said, fiddling nervously with the garnet dress ring on her left hand. ‘The insufferable screams, the insane agony. I only saw her once. She looked awful, her face bruised, her eyes black and blue, a deep cut across her forehead. Two days later, they took her away. I could hear her sobbing in the corridor outside my cell. It wasn’t until I received the letter from Gustav’s mother that I knew she was in Flossenbürg.’

  He reached across the table and squeezed her hands. ‘And you, Sigi?’

  ‘I spent another five days at Gestapo Headquarters and then they released me. After that, I found myself working forcibly at Borsigwalde.’

  Von Menen gritted his teeth, gestured towards her left arm. ‘It’s unimaginable, Sigi. Who on God’s earth would want to do anything like that?’

  ‘Believe me, Carl, there are plenty of depraved people on Prinz Albrecht Strasse. One of them was an outright savage, as evil as the Devil himself.’ She tossed back her head. ‘My God, the pain… Each time he lit up a cigarette, he would stare at me, a frightening, malevolent look in his eyes… I fainted several times.’

  ‘His name, Sigi? Do you know his name?’ Von Menen was almost exploding with anger.

  Sigi shook her head. ‘I can’t rightly remember. It’s pointless, anyway. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s not worth the risk. It’s best to… well, to try and forget it.’

  ‘Sigi, please, try and remember.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Braun… Baum… Baumer, something like that. What they call a Hauptsturmführer, a captain. He had an ugly, long scar across his left cheek.’

  Von Menen purposefully steered the conversation towards the memory of a much happier Germany – the recollection of the gaiety and liveliness of pre-war Berlin and the thought of dear, departed friends.

  But time was short. At five-thirty the next morning, Sigi and tens of thousands like her would be trudging the cold, dark streets of Berlin on a constrained vocation of false salvation. Von Menen saw her safely to her apartment, a longing smile on her face as she listened to his parting words.

  ‘I’ll be back, Sigi, I promise. A happy Christmas to you and your mother, and…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t give up.’

  The evening’s unexpected turn of events had eclipsed the one, all-important reason why von Menen had gone to Berlin in the first place – the envelope which he’d collected from the Foreign Office.

  When he opened it in his room at the Savoy, he found a second envelope inside, marked TOP SECRET. It contained the passport of his old “friend”, Kurt Lindemann, several visas and a birth certificate in the same name. Flicking through the pages, he noted it had been franked with German and Swiss Border Police stamps, showing that “Lindemann” had left Berlin for Geneva on 28.10.1944 and had arrived back on 11.1.1945. A tingling sensation raced up his spine when he read the date of departure on the Deutsche Lufthansa airline ticket: 15.1.1945.

  The next day, after calling briefly at the Borsigwalde munitions complex, von Menen left the northern suburbs of Berlin and headed for the peace and tranquillity of Mecklenburg.

  27

  Wednesday 20th December 1944

  While von Menen had been in Berlin collecting the documents that would deliver him from the misery of war-torn Germany, Jürgen Lanze had been wrestling with the thorny problem of how to get a 1600-tonne submarine to the South Atlantic – and back!

  With a round trip of over 15,000 nautical miles in prospect, and little hope of refuelling at sea, the boat’s endurance would be stretched to its limits.

  ‘I can see by the look on your face, Jürgen, that you’re still concerned about the lack of refuelling facilities,’ said von Leiber, mindful of the distance involved.

  ‘Using the Regelbunker we can squeeze in an extra twenty-six plus metres of fuel,’ commented Jürgen, ‘which will give us an extra, say, 1,500 miles, so we might just make it there and back… but onl
y at a desperately low speed.’

  I know, Jürgen, I know,’ replied von Leiber, ‘and I’m still working on it. Believe me, if it’s at all possible you’ll be refuelled at sea… Anyway, let’s turn to the cruise itself,’ he continued, unrolling a large chart.

  Lanze studied the detail with mounting disquiet. ‘A bold, dangerous and risky voyage,’ he said solemnly.

  ‘Can’t disagree with that, but if you stick to the prescribed course, you’ll reach the rendezvous point in forty days and have enough fuel left to get you back home. South of the Equator, your penultimate position lies 112 nautical miles due east of the rendezvous point… About eleven hours sailing at ten knots—’

  ‘There’s not much depth off the Plate estuary, Manfred, and I’ll need all of eleven fathoms to “hide” the boat.’

  ‘I know, it’s notoriously shallow… Five miles east of the Cabo San Antonio Lighthouse, it’s shallower still; little more than six and a half fathoms.’ Lanze winced at the thought of it. ‘Your final position will be just short of eleven fathoms, but reaching it will be very challenging – the run-up from the twenty-metre contour is only just over eight fathoms!’

  ‘Mm… tricky, indeed. Whatever, I’ll start my final run when the sun goes down and when I arrive, I’ll wait on the bottom.’

  ‘That’s what I would do. As to your concerns about fuel, just pray that we can get another U-boat to you. Failing that, you’re on your own. And finally, some personal advice: do not engage the enemy and make Bergen your return destination… irrespective!’

  Von Leiber took his leave. No sooner had he left the room when von Menen walked through the door.

  ‘This matter of Argentina, Carl… What’s all this about equipment?’ asked Jürgen.

  ‘Didn’t Manfred tell you?’

  ‘No. Neither did your father. In fairness, though, I suspect he thought it best if it came from you.’