Babs nodded.
‘But you had no knowledge at the time.’ She changed her tack. ‘None of this was relevant to your husband. Or at least, no one would have connected the two parallels; your husband making it to Congress, and Demski searching for answers to his grandmother’s death in the camps.’
‘Exactly.’ She hunched her shoulders and laughed mirthlessly. ‘God, the things that turn round and bite you.’
PART TWO
EIGHT
Four years later
JACK DEMSKI HAD never liked the Germans. The fact that he was with one now, Gunter Haman was expediency; he needed him. He loathed the German nation with a passion. Not because he had experienced any harm from them, but because of his father, Isaac, and his grandmother, Rosmaleen.
It had taken Jack a long, long time to drag the truth from his father after Haman’s visit. Isaac fed his son the stories piecemeal. He had never wanted to talk about the camps. He had never wanted to relive the moment he was dragged away from his mother and put on to a train where he was pressed in with other weeping children.
Isaac Demski had wanted his son, Jack, to live the American dream and not know the fear of persecution, of slavery and of terror and death. For that reason he had tried to keep the horrors from him. But Jack knew he was entitled to know the truth; it was his heritage. And so his father responded more fully. The more Jack learned of what the Nazis had done, of the bestial things they had visited upon the Jewish nation, the more he loathed them. Although his father had tried to disabuse him of the idea that not all Germans were Nazis, the more Jack despised them. And although Jack had come to trust Gunter Haman, and found that he was a civil and charming man, he could not rid himself of that sense of betrayal; of how the Germans had betrayed the human race.
Haman had left America to return home to Germany after bringing his story to Isaac Demski. That was four years ago. Jack Demski’s desire to search for the truth about his grandmother’s murder, and to locate the final whereabouts of Heinrich Lörenz, had burned away at him for some considerable time. His father had urged him to let sleeping dogs lie, and it was because of his father’s urging that he allowed the thought to sleep. But it was because of a call from Haman in Germany that the urge had returned: Haman had tracked down Franz Weber, the driver who had taken Eva Braun away from the Reich Chancellery under Heinrich Lörenz’s orders.
The two men arrived at the small town of Arsdorf, several miles south of Munich just as the evening sun was setting. The town nestled in the foothills a few miles from the border with Austria. The green fields and hillsides were losing their verdant characteristics as evening shadows began to cloak them in darkness, but the lingering trace of picture postcard quality was still evident in the sloping farmland around them.
Haman had driven the Mercedes hire car with the comfortable reassurance of someone in his own country. The drive from Munich airport had been uneventful although Haman lost no opportunity in relating to Demski the beauty of his beloved homeland. Demski tried to show some interest, but the dislike of his father’s persecutors left no room for sentiment, and even the charm of the German countryside failed to move him.
Haman turned off the main road and followed the sign to Arsdorf. The road followed a small stream and curved into the outer reaches of the town, passing the open entrance to a farm, which seemed to announce the fact that they were in the heart of farming country.
The influence of Austrian architecture was not lost on Haman as he slowed the car on entering the main square. It was not difficult to spot the hotel they had booked because it was the only one there. A few cars were parked in the parking area along the side of the building, and Haman swung the Mercedes into a vacant lot.
‘Good, we are here,’ he announced.
Demski said nothing as he opened the door and stepped out on to the tarmac. He stretched and pushed his hands into the small of his back. Then he turned towards Haman who was opening the boot.
‘I bring the bags, Jack,’ he said as he hefted the two medium-sized cases from the back of the car. He slammed the lid and nodded towards the front of the hotel. ‘We go in now.’
Demski smiled inwardly at Haman’s inverted English and followed him towards the hotel. But before stepping through the open doorway, he turned and looked around the square. The street lamps were flickering into life and most of the shop windows were adding their brightness to the shadows. For a brief moment, Demski took his mind back to the vivid images portrayed by his father and he imagined this town under the polished jackboot of the Nazi thugs. Suddenly the brightness seemed to fade. He turned swiftly and walked into the welcoming lobby of the hotel.
The two men looked up at the old street name on the corner of the main road through the town. Im Winkel was little more than a farm track. On one side was open meadow, on the other the beginnings of what looked like farm buildings. Demski thought they looked old enough to have been around at the turn of the nineteenth century. They followed the track for about fifty metres until they reached a high gate, about five metres in length. Beyond it was a gravel area that led into a patch surrounded on three sides by low, almost derelict buildings. One looked like an old stone barn while the other, which was a continuation, looked like it doubled as a store or equipment shed. It was impossible to see beyond the small windows of these sheds. On the left, still a continuation of the other two was what appeared to be the farmhouse. Haman reached for the bell pull and gave it a sharp tug. Somewhere a bell rang.
A few minutes later a young woman appeared. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform. She stopped at the gate but didn’t open it.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked the two men.
‘Fräulein, I am Gunter Haman, and this is my colleague Herr Demski,’ he replied, pointing at Demski. ‘We are here to see Herr Weber.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
Haman shook his head. ‘No, but Herr Demski has travelled all the way from America, and we do need to see him.’
‘I’m sorry, but Herr Weber will not see anybody without an appointment. He is very sick, and very old.’
Haman smiled. ‘Fräulein, as you can see, I too am old. I was with Franz Weber in 1945 in Berlin. If you tell him my name, I’m sure he will remember. I’m sure he will see us.’
The woman gave them both a deprecating look. ‘Wait here.’ She turned and went back into the farmhouse.
‘You told me you didn’t know anybody who was there when it happened.’
Haman turned and looked at Demski. ‘And that is true. But since we learned about Herr Weber, it would be true to say I knew him. After all, it was a fleeting glimpse, but he was there.’
The nurse returned and opened the gate. She stepped aside as the two men walked into the yard. She closed the gate and locked it, then led the men into the house.
For Gunter Haman it was like stepping into a time warp and being transported back to the war years. The door opened into a bare, quarry-tiled hall that had very little in the way of decoration on the walls. They were painted white, but the colour had faded and become stained over the years. An old, metal lamp hung from the ceiling, and up against one wall was a black framed mirror that was crazed and dirty. It was dark in the hall, the only light coming from the door and from somewhere above the poorly lit staircase that led up from the hall.
They were led across the small hall and into a kitchen. On their left was an old wood burning stove that served as a cooking range and heating for the room. The black stove pipe reared up from the back of the stove and into the ceiling above it. There was a table to one side, covered in an old, plastic cloth. A sink stood beneath a small, shuttered window, and to the left was a work surface on which stood a small oven. The smell in the room was a mixture of pine wood and cooking oil.
The nurse took them through a door into a small lounge. A window, similar to the one in the kitchen was the only source of daylight. On one side of the room was a small bed. At the far end was an open fire in which a few logs s
moked and threw out a tremendous heat. Near the fire, sat in a high-backed armchair, his legs covered in an ageing blanket, was the man they had come to see.
‘Try not to tax him,’ the young woman asked them. ‘I will come back in fifteen minutes. Then you must leave.’
Haman thanked her and waited until she had left the room before he introduced himself and Demski to the old man.
Franz Weber looked frightfully old and decrepit. Haman had never known the man, although he did see him briefly on that fateful day in the Chancellery, so it was difficult to put an age on him. He was sitting close to the log fire that was throwing out a tremendous heat. He seemed oblivious to it even though it was quite warm in the room. His body was hunched forward. His hair, what there was of it was wispy and white. His scalp was covered in flaking skin and dotted with the tell-tale brown spots of age. He looked up at the two men through red rimmed eyes.
‘Guten Tag,’ he said quietly.
Haman stopped beside the chair and offered his hand. Weber ignored it.
‘Herr Weber,’ Haman began. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us. My name is Gunter Haman. This is my friend, Jacob Demski.’ Weber showed no reaction. ‘We would like to talk to you about the end of the war in Germany.’ Weber’s eyes widened a little. ‘In 1945, in the bunker.’ Haman looked around the room quickly. ‘May we sit down?’
Weber nodded. ‘Why do you want to know about Berlin?’
Haman and Demski found themselves a couple of old, dining chairs that were pushed up against a small table.
‘Can you remember much about that day?’ Haman asked as he settled himself in front of the old man.
Weber shook his head. ‘It was a terrible day for us. A terrible day.’
‘So you do remember some of it?’
Weber’s face brightened a little. ‘It is difficult to unlock the doors of a memory that has faded, but sometimes we are encouraged to remember pieces of it.’
Haman leaned a little closer to the old boy. ‘Can you recall bringing a woman into the bunker? A Jewess?’
Haman had taken many, many months to track down Franz Weber. Through Jewish and German organizations that were dedicated to tracing any Nazis who had escaped the Nuremberg War Crimes Commission, he was able to get on to Weber’s trail. He wasn’t a Nazi, but a soldier like Haman who had been doing his duty; a junior rank who simply followed orders. Weber had been a driver assigned to Hauptmann Lörenz. The Simon Wiesenthal Organization and others like it had uncovered mountains of evidence as to the way in which the senior Nazis had fled Germany. These men and women used an organization known as Die Spinne, The Spider. The group was often referred to as Odessa, but by whatever name they were called, the Nazis were smuggled out of Germany by this group. They came into their own in ’45 when they knew the war was lost and there were a lot of Nazis clamouring to get out of Germany. They set up an underground network smuggling the top brass into Switzerland and then into Italy. The SS used them to smuggle their own kind out. They supplied the false documents, the routes and the Catholic priests who were misguided enough to believe they were doing their Christian duty by shifting the Nazi thugs through their monasteries. The Spider network did not dissolve after the war either, but simply spread their web all over the world. Even to America.
Haman had discovered Weber’s name in among the mountains of files he had searched through. It was because Weber had fled along with his commanding officer, Hauptmann Lörenz, that he had been listed as a wanted criminal. In his absence he had been sentenced to ten years in prison, but that was suspended on appeal because the commission realized that he was after all, a minion in the service of the Nazi butchers.
Haman recognized Lörenz’s name and realized that the driver listed as an accomplice was indeed the man who had brought the struggling Jewess into the Reich Chancellery.
A thin smile crossed Weber’s lips. ‘I’ve never been asked that question before.’
‘Do you remember?’
His eyes moved from Haman to Demski. They could see he was questioning them and probably coming to a conclusion over something. ‘How do you know this?’ he asked eventually.
Haman’s head lifted. ‘I was there.’
Weber’s mouth opened. Then he shook his head as he tried to recall what he saw in that room. Then he lifted his hand and pointed a thin, skeletal finger at Haman.
‘There was a young boy there.’ He peered at Haman. ‘It was you?’
Haman glanced at Demski and then back at Weber. He nodded. ‘That was me.’
Weber laughed. It was a dry cackle. Then he stopped as quickly as he had started. Something had struck him. He jabbed the finger again.
‘So you and me.’ He stopped as though he wanted to make sure that his facts were right, that he hadn’t forgotten anything. ‘You and me must be the only two people left in the world who were there that day?’
Haman’s head bobbed up and down slowly. ‘Hitler was dead. Eva Braun had been taken out of the room. I was there when you came in dragging a Jewess with you. Hauptmann Lörenz was there as well.’
Weber’s mouth opened wide. ‘I remember. Fräulein Braun was in the car. She was scared. We all were. Berlin was thick with Allied soldiers. The Russians were there.’ He shook his head. ‘We all feared the Russians. Brutes!’
Haman wondered how a German could refer to the Russians as brutes. It was a savage irony indeed.
‘Why was the woman taken there?’ Haman asked. ‘Why was she chosen?’
Weber shook his head and lifted his thin shoulders in a weak shrug. ‘I don’t know. I was only following my orders.’
‘Did you know she was going to be shot?’
Weber looked genuinely surprised. ‘No. Why should I?’
It was true; there was no reason why he would have been told of the murderous plan to swap Eva Braun with Rosmaleen Demski.
‘Hauptmann Lörenz shot the Jewess.’ Haman turned and pointed at Demski. ‘The woman was this man’s grandmother.’
Weber’s head turned and his eyes widened a little more. It was obvious that he was hearing this news for the first time.
‘Oh my God.’ His voice came out in a faint whisper.
‘Where did you take Fräulein Braun?’
Weber looked confused now. ‘Take her?’ His head dropped and he gazed at his thin, bony hands. ‘There was nowhere to go. Too many soldiers.’ He began to weep. ‘I drove to an airfield, a strip of grass. I don’t know, somewhere.’ He looked up at Haman. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot remember.’
He began muttering something when they heard the sound of footsteps. The nurse came into the room. She ignored the two men and walked straight up to Weber. She leaned over him and dabbed a handkerchief on his face to wipe away the tears.
‘You must go now,’ she told Haman. ‘You have distressed Herr Weber enough. Please, go.’
Haman knew it would be pointless arguing with her. He stood up and looked at Demski who had been aware of what had been exchanged between Haman and the old man, but because of his infrequent use of the German language, his father’s first language, he had allowed Haman to lead the conversation. He knew, though, that it was time to leave.
Suddenly the old man reached out and grabbed the nurse’s arm. ‘Please, let them come back tomorrow.’ His eyes switched to Haman. ‘We have so much to talk about. So much.’
The nurse looked cross with the old boy but finally agreed.
‘You can call back tomorrow,’ she told the two men, ‘but only if he is well enough. Is that clear?’
Haman said he understood and thanked her. He then reached down to Weber and shook his thin, cold hand. ‘I will return tomorrow,’ he promised. ‘And we will talk again.
That evening, Haman and Demski talked over the prospect of extracting more information from the old man. Demski had used the time at the farmhouse to observe the surroundings and watch the body language of the nurse. He came away with the feeling that something was too contrived about the apparent arrangement w
ith the nurse and Weber: something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. His experience of subterfuge and deceit gave him a reason to suspect that whatever it might be, they would never learn the truth by direct questioning. Any secrets Weber had, he believed, would have to be hidden somewhere.
It was well past midnight when Demski closed the door of his room behind him and walked quietly down the stairs and out of the hotel. The main street of the town was well lit, but his route took him the short walk to the darker edges of the hamlet and to Im Winkel.
His shoes crunched on the gravel so he walked up on the balls of his feet. When he reached the gate he wasted no time but clambered over the top and dropped softly down on to the other side.
He approached the old front door that they had passed through that morning and began working on the lock as noiselessly as he could, using a tool that was shaped like a retractable biro with a thin blade. It was a legacy of Demski’s youth; a burglar’s tool for picking door locks. He always carried it with him.
By working the small, steel blade vigorously, Demski was able to move the inner pin tumblers and compress the small springs against the outer pins. He pushed a small, thin flat key with no shape into the open lock and twisted. He felt the door lock move and then pushed down on the handle. The door swung open without any noise.
He stepped into the room and pushed the door back but didn’t close it because he knew it would lock again. Raising himself up on to the balls of his feet, he headed towards the small lounge where Haman had spoken to Weber that morning. Looking carefully into the room he could see the old man’s shape beneath the bed clothes on the small, single bed that was pushed up against one wall.
He turned away and crossed the kitchen, heading for the stairs and paused there, listening carefully. There were no sounds coming from the rooms above, so he went back to where Weber was sleeping. He began to cast around, looking for something like a small box or case that might contain a clue to Weber’s past. The small torch he had with him threw a round beam against the grimy walls; picking out precious little that he could see would be of any worth to him.
The Boy from Berlin Page 9