Hitler's Angel

by William Osborne

  A taxi had pulled up and his mother and brother had got out, a series of department-store packages in their arms. He had jumped up and been on the point of shouting to them when four Gestapo men had climbed out of a plain black car parked near the entrance. He had watched dumbfounded as the men had quickly crowded round them, taking their packages, grabbing their arms, pushing them into the back of the car. Karl had started crying.

  He had stood in the street and watched the Gestapo take his family into oblivion.

  Now he was standing outside their front door once more. He glanced up and down the corridor one last time. There were three apartment doors on the third floor, and all were firmly closed. It was very quiet. He took a final breath, gathering his courage. He'd got this far, he told himself. He must go on, take the chance. He slipped off his heavy walking boots and knelt down, easing back the skirting where it met the door frame. Behind was the front door key, just as it always had been. He stood up and slid it into the lock, wondering if it would work. It did. He took a breath and gently pushed the door open, his boots in his hand.

  A tall, handsome man with greying hair was standing in front of him. He was dressed in green suit trousers and a matching waistcoat, his tie loosened. He threw open his arms. Papa!

  For a second, Otto allowed himself to imagine the scene. But there was no one to greet him. The hallway was empty.

  He eased the door shut and listened intently.

  “Hello . . .” he called out, softly, then a little louder. Nothing.

  Everything seemed just as it had been the day he left the apartment. Except it wasn't. The coats hanging on the rack were neither his mother's nor his father's. In the kitchen, the smell of breakfast permeated the air, coffee and fresh bread. The table and chairs were different. So was the crockery piled in the sink and the pictures on the wall. Another family was living here now. He felt his heart begin to race a little faster. He was an intruder.

  He hurried to inspect the other rooms. Their old sofa and armchairs were gone, but his parents’ bed was still there. In his room, the twin beds had been pushed to the wall and a child's cot sat in their place. In the dining room the long table and chairs which had been his grandfather's were still in use, but the watercolour his mother had painted had been replaced with a large portrait of Hitler. There was a glass cabinet filled with bronze and silver sporting awards.

  Otto stared. He felt a tightening in his chest, an unstoppable urge to rip the Führer's picture down, to smash the cabinet, to throw the possessions of these interlopers out of the window into the street below. He felt the tears spring in his eyes. He'd known his father wouldn't be here. But in some corner of his heart he'd hoped that somehow his mother and brother might be. He would have hugged them and told them what he was doing, and they would each have known that they were all still alive.

  He wiped his nose and his eyes, pulled himself together. It was time to get out of this place. It wasn't his home any more. It was nothing.

  The phone rang in the hallway and Otto jumped. It was like an alarm going off in his brain. He must have been insane to think of coming back here. Get out, get out now! he told himself.

  The phone continued to ring as Otto raced to the front door, bending down to pick up his boots. As he reached to turn the handle, the ringing stopped. In the brief moment of silence that followed, he heard footsteps on the stairs and voices outside. A man and a woman were arguing. The footsteps and voices stopped right outside the apartment door. Otto spun round and ran back down the hall into the dining room, throwing himself under the table. The beaded edge of the linen cloth stopped a few centimetres from the floor.

  He heard the lock turn and the front door swing open. Something was wheeled into the hallway. The door closed.

  “If it's important, they will ring back, Heinz.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  The man strode into the dining room. Otto could see his brown shoes, polished to a high sheen. This was bad, he thought, as he listened to the man turn the pages of the newspaper that lay on the table. Really bad. He told himself to keep calm. The front door was only a few metres away. He just had to sit tight.

  CHAPTER 25

  MISSING

  Otto was not the only one trapped in a nightmare situation. Somehow Leni had managed to lose Angelika. It had been only half an hour but it felt like an eternity.

  Everything had been fine until then. The two of them had taken Otto's advice and walked to the Englischer Garten, and Angelika had finally got her wish for an ice cream. The girl had sworn that she had never had one before, but then said actually, she just couldn't remember. Maybe she had.

  After that, they'd jumped on a tram and ridden down Prinzregentenstrasse to the National Museum. Leni, increasingly anxious about sticking out, had decided they would blend in with all the other school children touring the museum. She realised she was anxious not because of Angelika but because of herself. She half expected someone to point and shout “Jew!” at any moment. Somehow she kept a smile fixed on her face and tried to answer Angelika's questions about the city, the shops, the fountains and statues.

  Angelika had been interested in the exhibits at the museum but also, Leni thought, a little distracted. She put it down to her seeing so many new things. It was a lot for such a sheltered child to take in. They'd tagged along discreetly with another party of children while Leni kept a careful eye on the time and fretted about what Otto might be doing. Everything seemed to be just about all right until Leni turned her back on Angelika for a minute. When she looked round the girl was gone. Leni had felt her stomach somersault.

  She had hurried forward to the next couple of galleries in case Angelika had gone ahead, but could not see her, so had doubled back to the earlier ones. No sign of her. Not only that but, she realised, it was going to be impossible for her to recognise Angelika from any distance. Not for the first time, Leni cursed her poor eyesight.

  She raced back to the toilets, hoping Angelika had taken herself there, but the stalls were empty of any nine-year-old girls. To search the whole museum would take hours, and she dared not ask any of the attendants and so set in motion an official search party. The questions that would be asked – names, addresses, parents. No, she had to find her herself, and fast. She peered really hard, trying to sharpen her vision, but Angelika was nowhere to be seen in the crowds of visitors swirling past her.

  Leni got back to the main entrance, hoping if Angelika was also looking for her she might make her way there as well. She felt the tears well up inside, but fought to stop them spilling. Again, it would only attract attention. As she stood there, her mind racing, she tried to think what Angelika might be doing, why she would have left her. They had been getting along fine, having a lovely time. Surely she hadn't got nervous about the whole thing and handed herself in to the authorities? It was a possibility, in which case a police car might come screaming up to the museum at any moment to arrest her.

  Then something else flashed through her mind. On the tram journey along Prinzregentenstrasse, they'd passed a building festooned with large Nazi banners hanging from the windows. Angelika had stared intently at it. “That place, I know it,” she had murmured. Leni had dismissed it at the time, but now . . .

  She ran as fast as she could down the street. She could get to the building and back to the museum in a few minutes if she really sprinted. As she reached Prinzregentenstrasse, out of breath, she looked frantically around. The pavements were filled with shoppers and pedestrians out for a Saturday morning stroll, and Leni had to bob and weave around them. She stared around, squinting furiously. Just as she was about to give up and return to the museum, she caught sight of a flash of blonde hair on the opposite side of the street. Leni ran straight across the street. A car swerved past her, its horn blasting a rebuke.

  It was Angelika. She was standing right outside the building with the Nazi banners, gazing up. Leni almost collapsed with relief.

  “Angelika!” She didn't mind how loud she shout
ed her name. She wanted her to stay there, right there, rooted to the spot.

  The girl waved at her. “Leni!”

  Leni was by her side now. She wanted to give her such a telling-off, but knew better than to make a scene or upset the girl. Especially outside a building plastered with swastikas. Of all the places she could have chosen to visit . . . Briefly she wondered what the building was, and what the Nazis inside would think if they realised a British agent and this important girl were right outside. She bit her lip and instead gave her a weak smile. “What are you doing here? You gave me such a fright . . .”

  Angelika looked up at her, saw how red in the face she was. “I'm sorry, I didn't think. I just wanted to come back and have a look at this house.”

  “Why?” asked Leni. She took the girl's hand and started to lead her away.

  “I'm not sure,” she replied.

  “Don't ever do something like that again,” said Leni. “Promise me.”

  “Ow!” said Angelika. “You're hurting my hand.”

  Leni realised how hard she was gripping and relaxed her hold.

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “I was worried.”

  Angelika nodded. “I'm sorry, too.”

  Leni checked her watch. It was late. They needed to get to the station. “Let's take a cab,” she said. There was no way she was going to let this girl out of her sight from now on. She managed to hail a passing taxi and helped Angelika in. As it pulled away, the girl stared out of the back window.

  “At Christmas time, a long time ago, I went in there, I'm sure of it. There was a party,” she said. “I wonder if my parents were there, too. I wish I could remember.”

  Leni stared at her, then back at the building, decorated with swastikas. The question that had been in the back of her mind from the first day came to the fore once more. Who was this girl? It was quickly replaced by another question: where the hell was Otto?

  CHAPTER 26

  ESCAPE

  Otto hadn't moved a centimetre or a muscle for the last ten minutes. The brown shoes hadn't moved either, as the man continued to turn the newspaper pages on top of the table. Then, just as Otto was beginning to despair, the phone rang again, the shrill bell making his heart skip. The man hurried from the dining room to answer it. Otto got ready to spring out and race for the door. Then a tiny hand lifted the edge of the cloth, raising it up a little.

  A baby girl, perhaps two years old, with blonde curly hair and chubby cheeks, stared curiously at Otto. He put his finger to his lips.

  “Mutti!” the girl cried. She had a loud voice for such a small person.

  Otto prepared himself for the worst. His pack was at the station, and without a knife or his pistol the situation would be hopeless.

  “What are you doing, Liebchen?” A woman's shoes appeared by the baby.

  “Mutti . . .” The baby let go of the cloth and took a step towards Otto.

  “No, no, not under there.” The mother bent down and scooped her baby up.

  “That was the office. Something big has come up.” The man had come back. “All personnel have been ordered to report immediately.”

  “But, Heinz, it's Saturday.”

  “It's from the top, Heydrich himself. Get me a clean shirt and see if my boots are polished. Come on, Helga, hurry up.”

  Otto shook his head. Of all the people who could have moved into his house, it had to be a Gestapo officer.

  The three of them left the room, and Otto heard them walking down the corridor to his parents’ bedroom. This was his chance. He took a firm grip of his boots and moved. In a couple of steps he was by the front door. They were talking in the bedroom.

  Otto eased open the door and slipped out into the corridor, sliding on the linoleum in his socks. He left the front door ajar, not wanting to risk the sound that closing it would make. He pulled on his boots, lacing them as fast as he could. It only took a dozen seconds.

  “Mutti!”

  Otto looked up. The baby was standing on the threshold of the open front door, looking right at him. Then the mother appeared, and her mouth dropped open with shock.

  “Heinz!” she shrieked.

  Otto didn't wait to see Heinz. He sprinted to the stairs and flew down, taking the treads three at a time. As he hit the first landing, the woman's second shriek pierced the stairwell and he lost his footing on the polished stone. He fell headlong, rolling over and over until the next landing broke his fall, and lay there, momentarily stunned. Then the man's head appeared at the top of the stairs, staring down. Fear surged inside Otto. He pulled himself up and starting running down the steps again, ignoring the pain in his ankle.

  “Hey, you, halt!”

  Otto didn't look back, though he heard the man's boots clattering on the steps above him. Then he was in the entrance hall, his head down, praying no one was coming in or out at that moment.

  Luck was against him. A big man in grey overalls was standing by the front door, talking to the postman. It was Günter, the building's caretaker, a simple man who had been gassed in the Great War.

  “Halt!” The man's voice echoed down the stairs.

  Günter looked back from the doorway towards Otto. He was bound to recognise him. They used to swap cigarette cards. But Otto couldn't take the chance that Günter would be kind to him now. There was only one course open to him. He swerved away from the front door, and into Günter's apartment, throwing the bolt on the door.

  Otto saw immediately that nothing had changed in the sparsely furnished two-room studio, apart from the inevitable addition of the Führer's portrait on the wall. He wrenched open the small window above the washbasin and wriggled through. Then he was in the alleyway by the side of the building, dashing towards Jaegerstrasse at the front. At the end of it he turned left into Fürstenstrasse.

  Fortunately, the streets were packed with morning shoppers and service personnel on leave. Otto ducked between them, trying to blend in. Surely the man wouldn't pursue him this far?

  Unfortunately, Heinz was Gestapo and therefore not the type to give up. Half-dressed in his uniform, black trousers and boots and a collarless white shirt, he was running straight after Otto.

  Otto sprinted into Ludwigstrasse. A passing omnibus and car blasted their horns at him. At the end of the street he glanced back again. The man had no intention of losing him and was in fact gaining. Otto ran into Maffeistrasse and then Promenadeplatz. But any hopes of losing the man in the wider boulevard were dashed by the presence of soldiers sitting outside the beer halls drinking great mugs of beer. Otto would stick out a mile. His only option was to duck into one of the alleys by the side of a beer hall and hide behind the wooden beer crates and barrels. After running past the first two halls, he found a suitable alleyway and ducked in.

  He reached the end where all the spent bottles and barrels were kept, and managed to wedge himself in out of sight. He crouched there, desperately trying to catch his breath, his ankle on fire. He looked at his watch. He was supposed to be meeting Leni and Angelika at the station right now.

  Then came the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass. Otto peeped out from his hiding hole. The man was walking slowly down the alley, pulling over the wooden crates, shattering the bottles. Otto could smell the sweet malted aroma of the dregs.

  “I think it would be best for you, young man, if you were to give yourself up now, with no further struggle.”

  The voice was cold and official now, and all the more menacing for that.

  Otto cursed the fact once again that his weapons were at the station. His hands shaking, he gently withdrew an empty bottle from a crate and grasped it firmly round its neck. Then he stood up and stepped out from his hiding place.

  The man was ten metres from him, his feet planted wide.

  “I am an inspector with the Gestapo, and you, young man, are under arrest.”

  Sweat was pouring down Otto's face. He slammed the end of the bottle again the brick wall, leaving a jagged shard in his hand.

  The
Gestapo officer shook his head. “You do realise that your life is now over.”

  Otto realised it only too well. “Stay back!” he said.

  “I've had enough of this.” The man strode towards him. Otto waited until he was almost with an arm's grasp of him, then sidestepped to the right and slashed the broken bottle at the man's left side.

  “You little—!” The man glanced with fury at his shirt sleeve, sliced open below the elbow, blood spreading through the white cotton.

  Otto jabbed again, but this time he was not so lucky. The man caught Otto's wrist in his hand and slammed his hand against a crate. Bang, bang, bang. The bottle dropped from Otto's hand. The man transferred his fist to the neck of Otto's shirt, grasping it tight so he could lift Otto off the ground.

  “We shall make a very special example of you,” he said, his lip curling.

  Then Otto saw a blur of brown behind the man, heard the sickening thud of the impact, and saw a beer bottle exploding from the back of the man's head. The man's eyes went glassy and he let go of Otto. He took a step back and dropped to his knees, before crumpling to the ground.

  Leni was standing directly behind him, still holding the neck of the bottle in her hand. He stared at her incredulously.

  “How. . .?”

  “We were in a taxi, on our way to the station, we saw you running down the street . . .” Leni struggled to get the words out. Otto nodded, his heart was still hammering, he was finding it hard to catch his breath.

  Angelika was a few metres behind her, her eyes wide.

  Otto waved and smiled weakly. “It's all right, Angelika. He was a bad man, that's all.”

  Angelika walked slowly forward and stared down at him. Otto couldn't tell what she was thinking, whether she was frightened or upset. She seemed almost detached.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  Otto shook his head. “No, no. He'll be fine.”

  “Are you all right?” she said.