A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “It will come back to you.”

  Unsure that I wanted it to come back to me, I let him lead me to the dance floor.

  He put one arm on my shoulder blade and took my right hand. I put my left atop his black shoulder.

  “Why would you put your career in jeopardy to help me?” I winced when he stepped on my toes as he stepped forward too far.

  “Perhaps I like you. It could be as simple as that.”

  I dodged his foot the second time. He had a terrible sense of rhythm. “That would not be simple. And I do not think it is the reason.”

  “You are a very attractive woman.” He pulled me closer than the dance usually dictated. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  “But I give you sufficient credit.” I pushed myself away from him and into a turn. When we were face-to-face again, I continued. “Your motives are more complex than that. That is not enough.”

  He pulled me forward, and his boot-black eyes gazed into mine in an unmistakably flirtatious way. “It would be enough. I assure you.”

  I counted steps, speechless. One, two, three. Two, two, three.

  The song ended, and I returned gratefully to our table. The man with the newspaper at the neighboring table still read the front page.

  Lang pulled out my chair and I sat. Before I could figure out how to start another conversation, our waitress appeared with dinner. The spätzle tasted heavenly, but the schnitzel was dry and overcooked. I devoured both.

  Over dinner we chatted about the unseasonable heat and worries about a drought. We both hoped that it would not turn into the kind of drought destroying farmlands in the American Midwest and driving families from their homes with dust. I wanted to talk about Anton, but was too afraid of being overheard.

  After dinner we danced again, better this time, then talked over coffee. The exhaustion that had been at the edge of my consciousness all day overwhelmed me, and I yawned.

  He was solicitous. “I am waiting for our closest watcher to leave, then I have a proposal to make. Soon you may go to bed.”

  I snapped alert so sharply that my rib twinged.

  He glanced at our shadow, who had not yet turned a page. We had not outlasted him.

  “Let us go to my apartment,” Lang said, under his breath.

  “I beg your pardon?” I had not expected him to make such an improper suggestion so easily.

  “Be logical.” He looked annoyed. “You cannot return to your banker’s house without making the connection between you explicit to others in the SS. Correct?”

  As usual, he was correct. I nodded.

  “If you register at a hotel, you reveal to your SS follower that you have not been registered there before tonight which opens up questions about where you were. I stamped your Swiss passport the day I procured it, not knowing that you’d be wanted for murder so soon after. Your best option is to tarnish your honor by spending the night at my apartment.”

  I blinked several times. The third choice involved ridding myself of the SS tail, but I was unsure that I could and, in any case, I did not want to alert him yet. “My honor is my own. And perhaps it is more valuable to me than you realize.”

  He ducked his head, a lock of hair falling across his forehead. “Forgive me. I wish to make clear that nothing beyond conversation will take place in my apartment.”

  “Make your proposal here. Then I will decide where I go.”

  He smoothed his hair back. “I count three men in here. I want control of the situation when I tell you what I need to tell you.”

  “As do I. Move your chair closer to mine. We will discuss it here.”

  He stared at me. I kept my eyes on his. When he looked away first, I stifled a sigh of relief.

  He shifted his chair next to mine, so close that our shoulders touched. I turned toward him, the back of my head toward our watcher. Well choreographed. The watcher would see only Lang’s expressions, not mine. He did not trust me not to give him away.

  “This is as much control as I will give you.”

  He bent his head closer to mine, and I feared that he would kiss me. I was unsure what I would do if he did. But he did not.

  “As I said earlier, I believe that you smuggled information about the Night of the Long Knives out of Germany into England.”

  Had Sefton or Bella moved the information out so quickly? Regardless, I started to deny his allegation, but he put his index finger on my lips.

  “I want no details. It is enough to know that you did. As you seem to know, I have files in my apartment.” He looked at me expectantly.

  I peeled his finger off my lips. “Yes. I do.”

  “I thought you had been there,” he said, smiling. “I smelled your scent, but I thought that my mind played tricks on me.”

  I shifted in my chair, and he slid one arm around the back of it. My instincts screamed to run, but my logic told me to stay.

  “I want you to take some of those files to the intelligence community in England. Especially The Reich List of Unwanted Persons, those killed in the purge.”

  I stared at his obsidian eyes, as mesmerized as a bird before a snake. If he told the truth, those boys who had been shot could be marked somewhere—if I helped him.

  “If it works, I propose an ongoing intelligence exchange.”

  “Why would you do such a thing? You have been a devoted National Socialist for years.”

  His eyes were so sad that I pitied him. “That is why I must do this. I helped to build this apparatus that controls the state. I believed in them, and I did my part.”

  “But you would betray it?”

  He traced his fingertips down the side of my face, as if we talked about something as frivolous as a sexual relationship. “Things have been done in the name of the party, horrible things. Women tortured. Children killed.” His fingers stopped on my jaw. “Some of it is political, yes, but much of it is personal. As you likely know, much killing during the purge was out of revenge.”

  “I know.” But I could not believe that a senior member of the SS confessed it.

  “It is not the party I once thought. I am a policeman at heart, and I believe in the rule of law, not the rule of one man.”

  I stared at him, astonished. “You are an idealist.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “I was an idealist. Now I am a realist. And I must follow my conscience. My conscience says that the National Socialists must be stopped. I helped to create them, and I must help to destroy them.”

  “If they catch you . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “I know. I’ve seen.” He cupped my chin as he had in the Gestapo headquarters, the tender gesture at odds with his words. “And I’ve participated.”

  Lively polka music played as if we were at a party. I stared into the saddest eyes I had ever seen. I looked away first.

  “What if they interrogate me and I tell them about you?”

  “Any punishment they give me, I’ve earned.”

  My heart raced. I did not know what to do. He had access to high-level intelligence that Sefton could put to good use. If I smuggled out those files, and others he accumulated, it might damage the Nazi party. Perhaps I could undo the harm I had caused by not publishing the sexually explicit letters that Röhm had written my brother all those years ago, when it might have made a difference. And those thousand men executed would be noted somewhere and not disappear into unmarked Nazi graves.

  But could I trust him, or was this an elaborate trap to catch Sefton? A skilled interrogator like Lang could construct such a clever trap. He leaned in closer, but I barely noticed. This one action would change my life. If I chose to collaborate with him, the Nazis would kill me if they found out. If I did not collaborate, I must live with the knowledge that perhaps I could have helped, assuming that he let me go. And what would become of Anton?

  He kissed me full on the lips, angling his body slightly so that the our watcher at the next table had a proper view. The kiss was passionate, barely restrained, b
ut also frightened. Either he was a consummate actor, and I could not dismiss that possibility, or the kiss was genuine, not staged as Wilhelm’s had been. I closed my eyes and let him, having made my decision. I would not pass up another chance to fight the Nazis, whatever the cost.

  When he pulled back, fear shadowed his eyes. Did he fear that I would reject his proposal, or that I would reject his advances? Either one gave me power over him, but would it be enough to keep me alive? I hated thinking in such terms, but the time had come for it.

  Finally he spoke. “Choose where you go, and what you wish to reveal to the men following you.”

  He stood and offered his arm. I hesitated, then took it.

  He bent his head close and whispered, “Thank you.”

  29

  Even though I spotted the men following us, I felt safer in the open air. “Tell me about Anton,” I said quietly. I had not dared ask before.

  Lang strolled next to me. We looked like a couple enjoying the warm night, but my stomach churned.

  “Not much to tell. I have a man on Frau Röhm.”

  “Did she kill Mouse?” I imagined that she had. He would not have seen her as a threat. He would have let her get close.

  His shoulder shrugged next to mine, too close, but for the sake of our charade I dared not move away. “We may never know.”

  “Was she followed that night?”

  He shook his head, his voice low. “We didn’t pick her up until she called to arrange your arrest at the church.”

  “Is she being watched?” I dared not trust whatever answer he gave.

  He squeezed my hand. “Every minute.”

  Our tail stopped to look in the window of a closed tobacco shop. Too far away to hear.

  “Where is Anton?” My voice broke.

  “Safe at Hotel Adlon.”

  I stopped, dumbfounded. How much simpler it could have been. Our minder looked over at us, probably surprised that we had stopped. I took a step forward, then another. I had been near Anton and had not known it. But the most important thing was that he was safe.

  “I can move the man at the Adlon outside tomorrow. But not before lunch.”

  Whatever the price for Anton’s freedom, I would pay it. By tomorrow, I would have him back. “Thank you.”

  He looked over, his face in shadows. “I know what it means to you.”

  “Who betrayed us on the zeppelin?”

  “A couple from Bolivia, but I don’t know their real names.”

  The smoking Santanas? I thought of how they had pretended to dote on Anton, how I had left him alone with them mere minutes before the zeppelin docked in Friedrichshafen. If they had kept him then, he would have been lost to me forever. I stumbled on the pavement, and he caught my arm.

  “Are you ill?”

  I shook my head, breathless. Together, we climbed the stairs to his front door. It felt intimate, but unreal, as if I watched a film of myself climbing the stairs with a man in full black SS uniform, double lightning bolts shining silver on his collar.

  I stepped into the hall that I had fled through at a run last night. It seemed a hundred years ago.

  He fumbled with his key. After he opened the door, proper as always, he gestured that I cross the threshold in front of him. I stepped over the squeaky board and into his entry.

  “I see you are familiar with my creaky board.”

  I simply nodded and walked into his parlor. Everything was as it had been on my previous visit. Unwilling to go to the sofa a moment before I had to, I sat on the chair.

  “Would you care for a drink?”

  “Please.” Perhaps the alcohol would cut through the sense of unreality.

  He handed me a traditional schnapps glass—small and with a short, thick stem. He filled it with a clear gold liquid. I sipped. Corn schnapps. Strong, but higher quality than I expected.

  He sat on the sofa across from me, pulling on the crease of his trousers, glass in hand.

  We discussed how I would rid myself of my SS tails and pick up his files, stored on two rolls of undeveloped film, to deliver to Sefton. I did not name Sefton, and he did not ask. Either he already knew, or he did not want to.

  “Who else knows of your plans?”

  “I have told no one but you. I do not trust anyone else.”

  “Yet you trust me. Why?” I sipped my schnapps.

  “I have watched you. You are honest. You had something on Röhm.”

  “Did I?” I’d had the letters to get me out of the sticky room, but I escaped only because Röhm underestimated me.

  “You did, or he would never have let you go. I know that you are no Nazi, yet you kept his secrets. If you kept his, I believe that you will keep mine.”

  “What if you are wrong?” I finished my drink, too fast.

  He refilled my glass. “Then I pay for that with my life. But I was a policeman for many years. I can judge character, and you are not so complex as you seem to think.”

  I laughed. “How flattering.”

  “It is flattering, whether you believe it or not,” he said gently.

  Unable to meet his eyes, I picked up the photograph of his parents. Soon I could snap this kind of carefree picture of Anton, if I kept on Lang’s good side.

  “My parents and I on the North Sea.” He ran his index finger along the frame. “A week later they were murdered.”

  I almost dropped the picture.

  “I became a policeman to find their killers.” His lips twisted into a bitter smile. “One of my first actions when I had gained enough seniority was to reopen the case. Their killers were never found.”

  “I am sorry.” I returned the photograph to the table.

  “I keep the picture to remember them.” He positioned the frame parallel to the edge. “And to always remind myself of how I have failed.”

  I had no answer. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I want one person to know me.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. “Then after you leave, I will not be wholly alone.”

  He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I sat still, unable to reach out, although that was what he wanted, and the best way to build a relationship where I could trust him.

  I drank my second glass of schnapps in one swallow. “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”

  “And I want my grasp of things true before you.” He smiled. “Rilke.”

  I was not sure if I was more surprised that I had quoted Rilke to him, or that he had recognized it and quoted it back.

  I stood too quickly, eager to escape, and the room spun. I had drunk too much, too fast. “May I use your bathroom?”

  He gestured toward the door, as if I did not know its location from my previous visit. I needed to keep a clear head. Getting Anton back was far too serious to let emotion cloud my judgement.

  I washed my hands and face. I flattened my palm against the door, trying to slow things down. I should not be drinking so much. But I did not want to face what might happen while sober.

  I was being forced into an unwanted intimacy with him because he had told me his secrets. I felt sympathy for him, and I did not want to. I could not forget the signed death warrant in his desk drawer.

  I had no intention of opening up, so the imbalance would always be there. And he did not seem a man who dealt well with imbalance. I did not wish to be his secret keeper, but I also knew how it felt to be alone. I had been alone for most of the past three years, afraid to trust anyone.

  I owed him. He had saved my life, told me where Anton was, and was the only one who could help me free him from his grandmother. I did not know what she wanted from Anton, and I did not want to know. I just wanted him back. I would have to pay whatever price required.

  I remembered my file in his wardrobe. I thought of things that he knew and had not put into my file, such as my activities at Lichterfelde, my connection to Mouse and his murder, and my visits to London to see Boris. He had been protecting
me for years.

  I opened the door and walked through the bedroom where I had spent uncomfortable hours crammed under the bed the night before. In the darkened parlor, he sat as I had left him, except that he had removed his boots and unbuttoned the top button of his tunic. I sat next to him on the sofa. Knowing that this started a relationship I could not avoid, I touched his arm and asked, “How old were you when your parents died?”

  “Nine.” The same age as Anton. What must that have been like for him? What would it be like for Anton if I did not reclaim him?

  He told me of a childhood spent in boarding schools, vacations at military camps, always alone. He moved on to his experiences in the Great War, his shame at not solving his parents’ murder, his belief in the Nazi party, and his disillusion. He never said what one action had proven too much for him, and I did not ask. I did not want to know.

  I already knew more than I wanted, but I did not interrupt him, realizing that my one thousand days of silence were insignificant compared to his lifetime of isolation. He was unused to talking about himself, but once started he was difficult to stop. I hoped that he would not punish me later for having seen the wounds that he revealed.

  When he finally fell silent, I remained still, exhausted. “Hauptsturmführer,” I said, hating the title, but having nothing else to call him. “What is your first name?”

  He laughed, loud and long. “You know more about me than anyone, yet you do not know that. My full name is Lars Engelbert Lang.”

  “Lars Engelbert,” I said. Engelbert meant “bright angel.” I was close to falling asleep.

  “You look done in.”

  “I am, Lars.” I stumbled over his first name.

  He brushed a strand of hair off my cheek, fingers tracing my jawline. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  The next morning we left the building and hailed a taxi together, as befit a Swiss reporter and an SS man beginning an affair. Behind us, a man flagged down his own taxi and followed. At Anhalter Bahnhof I retrieved the suitcase that Lars had left there yesterday, while I had waited for my interrogation at Prinz Albrecht Strasse.

  He installed me in the first-class compartment of a train bound for Switzerland, much nicer than the sleeper car in which I had arrived in Berlin. After a quick kiss to underline the relationship we would use to meet and smuggle information out of Germany, he left the compartment, but not before revealing the location of my two followers, one on the train and one on the platform.