by Daniel Kraus
“Aussteigen! Aussteigen, aussteigen!”
Eyes a-bug, the team scuffled off, though von Lüth held the mjölnir out to halt the last of them. He gestured this man toward a table in the corner. The operator stole a jittery look at the hammer, and took a seat. Von Lüth grinned at the obedience and favored me with a playful look.
“You know of the Enigma machine?”
I shook my head.
“Is this so? Very good. Deutschland keeps a few secrets, even now.”
Mephistopheles, it appeared, had designed a typewriter. Enclosed within a wooden box were twenty-six letters on spindles—simple enough, except that these same twenty-six letters were also printed upon small lamps above, while below was a miniature switchboard featuring those twenty-six letters yet again, each one patched into another via black cables. At the head of the device was a series of sharp-toothed interlocked metal dials.
Von Lüth presented the instrument with the same pride with which Leather had once presented his Victor VI Deluxe Model Victrola.
“In the field, the Enigma has been replaced by the Lorenz SZ40, but, alas, in wartime one makes do. The Enigma’s hundreds of millions of levels of security will just have to suffice. Stations like this one exist throughout the Reich, each dedicated to coding and decoding dispatches. Messages sent in such a way are never ignored, and I am quite certain Schloss Wewelsburg has one of every model.”
The operator did not appear to know English, but his shock at the sharing of secrets was blatant. Von Lüth shrugged.
“I suppose now that you have seen this, Herr Finch,” deadpanned he, “we will have to kill you.”
The jolly jumbo was bucking a dangerous system and, from what I could tell, having a grand old time doing it. He winked, then set to delivering catechisms to the operator. Outranked, the minion mopped his brow, consulted a key containing the settings for July, and began turning wheels and patching cables. Von Lüth relaxed in a chair and beamed at the two photographs hanging above the Enigma. One was of Adolf Hitler, but the other was of a narrow-faced man with swept-back hair and large, perceptive eyes. I consulted the name plate. It was Otto Rahn, and his equal billing to der Führer was a spit of insurrection—and I’d always admired a good spit.
This was no place for Black Hand poetics. Even after severe truncating, my message took well over an hour to transmit. We were, though, quite lucky. Three days later, RAF firebombing obligated the SS to issue an evacuation order for Ahnenerbe headquarters. Its archive of rare artifacts and texts was packaged and transported to a castle near Ulm, and the staff relocated to a remote Bavarian village. The turmoil of the move likely spared von Lüth from comeuppance for unauthorized Enigma use, though the fact that he made no preparations for Bavaria signaled the end of his affiliation with the Ahnenerbe, which had so long been his major source of pride.
In a mere fortnight—quick for a world whanging away at war—I discovered, tucked into the day’s usual brick of correspondence, an envelope addressed to me in care of von Lüth. Quickly I bore it to the roof, where von Lüth had spent the past two weeks occupied not with cerebral labor but rather the physical labor of dismantling his forest. Every tree had been toppled and bush unsocketed so that the landscape of rolling green had been replaced by one of frazzled black roots. Boulders had been corralled like cows along the southern brink, and that is where I found von Lüth sweating and grunting. He grinned at me through a mud-speckled mustache, though that grin faded when I presented to him the letter.
He slit its belly and yanked its guts. The letter was on Wewelsburg letterhead and composed upon a typewriter hubristic enough to include a dedicated key for “SS.” He leaned on a shovel and read it aloud. Predicting that von Lüth would be the translator, Himmler had worked into his epistle several sly denigrations. To von Lüth’s credit, which, by my count, was growing by the day, he took each shot like a boxer and pushed on to the meat of the matter. Himmler would, in fact, enjoy discussing my future with the SS, should I do him the great favor of meeting him in Linz, Austria, in six days’ time.
The stimulation of success was soon snuffed by concern. I was no cartographer (to Rigby’s chagrin I habitually transposed Yugoslavia and Romania, Switzerland with Sweden, and don’t get me started on Prussia and Russia), but Austria certainly sounded far away. I asked von Lüth how we would get there, but he was lost in thought, gazing into the rolled layers of skimmed turf.
“Linz.” He said it with soft awe.
“A city of significance? I’m unfamiliar.”
He met my eyes with a gentle blink of affection.
“Linz is the hometown of Hitler.”
Von Lüth’s smile was patient. He waited for me to understand, which, at length, I did.
“Do you think . . . ?” asked I.
“I do.”
“That he’s taking me to see . . . ?”
The word “Hitler” was a feather teased between two breezes.
“Linz is a full day’s journey,” said he.
“Then we should prepare.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled.
“Just you, Herr Finch. My dear Herr Finch. This time I cannot join.”
I reached for a tree against which to support myself, but they were all gone.
“Alone? With Himmler? I can’t possibly—”
The soft tranquility of his voice stopped me.
“I can only damage you with Himmler. We both know this. This is the leg of your journey that you must make unattended.”
“But you asked me to help you. I want to help you. But how can I if you don’t—”
He held up a hand. The creases of his palm were black. There was nothing von Lüth liked better than German soil.
“You have already helped me, Herr Finch, more than you will ever know. Should you gain Hitler’s trust and be so moved to endorse me, we will see what happens. For now, it does not matter. I am proud to know you, Zebulon Finch. Proud to have been a part of your quest to prove your allegiance to Hitler. And when der Führer makes you famous, I will buy the newspapers and attend the parades and be prouder still. This, my friend—this is German behavior.”
How I would have liked to clamber over the boulders so that I might hurl myself from roof’s edge! This man, having already quit the job he loved, was willing to throw away his dream to facilitate my goal, which I’d lied about from the start. My mission was not to become a loyal subject to his Führer, but to extract a Smith & Wesson from my chest and fire it into Hitler’s own, over and over. Von Lüth’s association with me was well documented; should Operation Weeping Willow work, he’d not survive the repercussions.
“I don’t know what to say.” It was the truth.
“Then say you will be a Grâl knight and will fight for what is worth the fight.” He gestured at my dirty clothes. “Somewhere in the rubble of this old town there must remain a tailor with talent. Come, let us find him and offer him some money.”
XIII.
KUPPISCH DROVE. WE’D HAD OUR difficulties, the bone-breathed slobberer and I, but it was a long ride begun in the lilac of dawn and interrupted by the constant rolling down of windows to sieg heil at checkpoints before circumnavigating inevitable Autobahn damage, and I developed a grudging respect for his dogged stoicism. Not once did he growl about the assignment, sigh at bottlenecks, or even tap his claws to the wheel in boredom.
If this was the fortitude of the SS, I needed it. I was anvilled to the backseat with fear; the revolver beneath my ribs had turned into one of von Lüth’s rooftop boulders. My distress was justified. Before leaving, I’d swiped one of von Lüth’s shaving blades and sunk it into the flesh of my left forearm, where Leather, thirty years ago almost to the day, had punctured me with a serving fork at a most unpalatable dinner party. The plan, hasty though it was, was to use this blade to cut open my stomach when the moment came.
We arrived mid-afternoon at Ottensheim, a village on the Danube five miles north of Linz, a less public spot, perhaps, for a conclave of N
azi elite. The meeting place was another castle, a good deal smaller than Wewelsburg and perched upon a smaller hill. Kuppisch parked the auto and accompanied me into a courtyard where three men in identical SS garb waited. I turned to Kuppisch in alarm, hoping that our outing had indeed made us bosom pals, but the bulldog was already gone; his adieu was the crunch of gravel beneath the tires of von Lüth’s Mercedes.
What was it, Dearest Reader, with Nazis and nudity? Again I was ordered to strip. It was evident these soldiers had received forewarning, for they were aloof to my leathery lacerations and degenerative bloat as they ran their weapons search. Still, they did not relish it. Their hands but skimmed over the planted razor and the diaphanous skin of my stomach.
When I was again presentable, they shepherded me through an egress and into a gravel lot, where menaced three long, black automobiles. I had no time to cultivate confusion; an SS man opened the rear door of the center vehicle and shoved me inside. My fingers skidded across soft seat leather and my nose was steeped in the odor of bleach solution, and then the three cars ignitioned, and turned, knocking my skull against the window. It gave me a good rattle, and I squinted to make out my fellow passenger, acres away, it seemed, a very slight person in a very large car.
Heinrich Himmler’s abrupt presence was a shock, but seven months in Germany had disciplined me. My arm shot up in a salute, only for it to punch the ceiling. I winced. Was there a modified salute for inside a vehicle? His tittering expression hadn’t changed since Wewelsburg. He unlaced his smooth white fingers and waived off my attempts at salute. His Death’s-Head Ring streaked like a falling star across the night sky of his coat.
“Forgive the delay, Herr Finch. Always there are protocols. It is enjoyable to see you again.”
“Thank you. You as well. Herr Himmler. Reichsführer. Sir.”
He overlooked the bumbling.
“How happy I was to receive your message. Coded, even. Herr von Lüth assisted you, ja?”
I saw no reason to lie. “Yes.”
“Good. Then he has been of use to the Reich. That should bring him peace.”
The remark had the cold finality of Otto Rahn freezing upon a hill.
“There was much in your message to titillate,” continued he. “Above all I am curious about this ‘Theory of 17.’ You will tell me about it.”
Of all the mystic mumbo-jumbo I’d run through the Enigma, Church’s 1918 theorem, improvised behind the Belleau Wood battle line, was the most easily debunked.
“There is little to say. The idea, I suppose, was that I was here on Earth to save as many lives as I’d taken. At the time, the number was seventeen.”
“In order for what to occur?”
“I’m not sure. For my debt to be paid?”
“Debt to whom?”
The answer was gullibility itself. Embarrassed, I stared at the driver’s head.
“Gød,” murmured I.
“Very good. And how many people have you killed now?”
Rare was the human who could be so offhand with the question. Our caravan had gained speed enough now to indicate that we weren’t stopping soon. The question, therefore, could not be dodged. I stared harder at the driver’s curled nape of blond hair and operated the abhorrent abacus. How many of Himmler’s countrymen had I taken by bullet and bayonet to rescue Church on Armistice Eve? I’d never wished to count, but it had to have been at least ten—if I was being honest, fifteen. Should I count the flappers who had fallen to the Bird Hunter’s vivisections? Were their murders not mine to shoulder? And what percentage of responsibility had I in the death of Leather himself? Or that of wife Mary and daughter Gladys? More quantifiable was the slaughter I’d brought to the drug den of Watts, California, in order to disentangle Merle. Last, of course, there was Margeaux in the Yankee Doodle roadster; that death, the worst one, could be attributed to none other.
“Do not be sheepish,” spurred Himmler. “An estimate.”
I rushed it out: “Fifty.”
“That is your closest guess? Estimate high.”
“Fifty-one.” My, how that last one stung.
Himmler nodded as if a long-held prediction had come about. I felt lightheaded; how was it that I’d been so swiftly destabilized? I gripped the automobile door, wondering if I might yet throw it open and take my chances spilling across the racing road.
“So.” Himmler adopted the flavorless tone of a regaling host. “Do you intend to vacation with us a while longer?”
His smile was the joke. There was no path out of Deutschland.
“Forever,” said I.
This was, as determined by Rigby, the right response, though a harrowing one when uttered by a fellow of my deathless plight. I told myself that forever might not be so long after all. The hour of the blade, the minute of the gun, and the second of the bullet were close. I looked out the window. Our caravan had left Ottensheim behind. Classic misdirection, surmised I. Hitler awaited us in Linz.
“The notion of forever is interesting,” mused Himmler. “What else is my breeding program but an attempt, a very modest one, to allow the Germans of yesterday to live forever inside the Germans of tomorrow? I have done research on you, Herr Finch. You are bounds ahead of the Lebensborn. You lived a generation before; you live now; in future generations, you will live still. It is as if you perch upon the axis of the Yggdrasil, feet on the lower limbs but hands upon the crown.”
I looked at Heinrich Himmler then, Reader; you bet I did. His coy expression suggested that he was well aware of the seed he’d planted in his office, and he wished to see if it had flowered. It had; ne’er a night had passed since Wewelsburg that I hadn’t tossed about his conviction that, given time, the Nazis might find the Tree of Life. Now, his tantalizing implication was that there was no first climber more qualified than I.
Was it worth swearing allegiance to an enemy if it meant at last solving my own mysteries? We were at the outskirts of Linz; mere minutes remained to consider futures other than that of assassin. I pictured myself as leading Hitlerjugend in a smart cap, silver belt buckle, and baggy-thighed jodhpurs, ordering eager yearlings to polish my boots. I saw my name winking from a dining-hall nameplate at Schloss Wewelsburg and heard my own Death’s-Head Ring tapping against the glossy armrests of an SS reading room. A single crumb of this fantasy was richer than a lifetime of grubbings from Rigby and Meixelsperger.
Forever did not have to be a prison sentence. It could be a reign.
From the peak of a hill we coasted into the charming hamlet of Linz. I looked across the blue Danube and bluer Oberösterreich mountains and imagined that I felt the same as lederhosened Adolf had when growing up in the environs, that there were great, wide worlds beyond those imagined by simple villagers. Himmler sighed at the grandeur.
“I am certain Herr von Lüth has told you how he chased his Otto all over the world. I am also certain he gave you his favorite precept about how the search for the Grâl is more important than finding it. Only a great failure would believe such a thing. Only a man who politely asks for power when he should be wresting it. Did Herr von Lüth describe the purported power of the Grâl?”
We shot through Linz without stopping, and I did not care.
“No,” said I.
Leather creaked as Himmler gestured at the golden countryside.
“The right of rule. Irreducible sovereignty. It would be a more powerful birthright than even those we already possess. The point I wish to make, Herr Finch, is that you yourself are a birthright, lost for ages, but after much travel and tribulation, delivered home, where you began and where you belong.”
His smile elongated ever so slightly.
“We don’t need the Grâl,” said he, “because you are a Grâl.”
The scythes of sun slicing through treetops would have blinded the ordinary man. I, however, was Zebulon Finch, and had no cause to shield my eyes from even the brightest of beacons.
“This number you give me—this fifty-one? It indicates you have the a
spiration demanded from the SS. The question to be answered is if you are fully prepared to assume the responsibilities of the Third Reich. Or the Fourth Reich, if it comes to that, or the Fifth, or the Sixth. You will forgive me, I hope, if I use our meeting today to institute a test, a small one, to evaluate your acceptance of your Aryan destiny.”
Gravity slung me forward. Our auto was slowing. I leaned aside, peered through the windshield, and saw, looming above the lead car, a twenty-foot brickwork archway topped with an iron eagle of fifteen-foot wingspan clutching a wreathed swastika. The structure to which the eagle was connected had the dusty, hewn-edged feel of a factory site. This was not the sort of place one would find Hitler. The razor blade in my forearm turned to an icicle. Von Lüth and I had misjudged the purpose of this meeting.
“We are here.” Himmler rubbed together his ladylike hands. The skull upon the Death’s-Head Ring rolled to the side and leered. “I think you will find this interesting, Herr Finch. This is what we call a Konzentrationslager—a concentration camp.”
XIV.
TO BE SPECIFIC, AND I think that we should be, the camp was called Mauthausen. We parked outside of a nondescript wall, and our three vehicles spat their sputum: twelve SS officers and bodyguards, Himmler, and me. A roiling nucleus of discombobulated camp bureaucrats assembled before us, elbows twitching in eagerness to volley salutes over the Reichsführer’s head.
Introductions bandied for ten minutes. I shook hands chapped, clammy, smooth, and calloused, each of them ringed. I caught the names of the two primary figures, a shifty-eyed camp commandant called Ziereis and a cruel-lipped brute called Bachmayer, the latter of whom held at bay two gleeful, galumphing German shepherds. I’d always disliked dogs, but I had to hand it to the beasts—they were the only ones who didn’t offer the Reichsführer their pink bellies.