1503954692

by Steve Robinson

  Tayte returned Langner’s smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to stare.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ Langner said. ‘Most people do the first time, and believe me, you’d stare harder if I took my glasses off.’

  The notion seemed to amuse Langner. He chuckled quietly to himself, then turned to the man by the door and said, ‘You can leave us now, Christoph.’

  Christoph frowned. ‘Where’s Ingrid? Perhaps I should wait with you until she returns.’

  ‘Ingrid is my personal nurse,’ Langner said to Tayte and Jean. ‘This is my third heart attack and Ingrid has literally saved my life every time. She should return shortly.’ Langner reached for something beside the bed. He fumbled for a moment, and then he brought a cabled switch into view. ‘I’m not so old and weak that I’m incapable of pressing this button if I need help,’ he said to Christoph. ‘Besides, I’m sure I’m in good hands.’ He smiled at his guests again.

  ‘Very well,’ Christoph said, ‘but I must insist on waiting outside.’

  ‘Yes, yes. If you must,’ Langner said. Once Christoph was out of earshot, he added, ‘He means well, but he treats me like a child.’

  Tayte just smiled, and realising that he was still holding his briefcase, he put it down by the side of the bed and pulled two chairs closer so that he and Jean could sit down. As he did so, he wondered why such chair manufacturers didn’t make them wider. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to push the arms down so hard just to get up again.

  ‘Now, Mr Tayte,’ Langner said once they had settled. ‘I feel I must apologise to you for not being able to see you sooner.’

  ‘That’s perfectly understandable,’ Tayte said. ‘I’m just glad to have the opportunity now.’

  Tayte had first tried to meet with Johann Langner the year before, soon after he returned home to Washington, DC from a visit to London, but every time he’d tried to contact Langner he’d been informed that his health was in too poor a state for him to see anyone. That is, until recently.

  ‘Very well,’ Langner said. ‘Now you mentioned in your letter that you believe I can help you to find your birth parents.’

  Tayte drew a deep breath and held on to it as he thought through the implications of that simple statement. For now at least, he felt that all the failed research he had conducted into his own family history over the years really came down to this man and what he may or may not be able to tell him. When the call he’d been waiting on throughout his previous assignment had at last come in, confirming that Langner was able to see him, he’d been all the more anxious to meet the man. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out the photograph his mother had left for him when she’d abandoned him in Mexico forty years ago, when he was just a few months old.

  ‘As I’m sure you know,’ Tayte said. ‘I trace people’s family history for a living. I’ve been trying to trace my own, so far without success, ever since I found out I was adopted.’

  ‘Really?’ Langner said. ‘A genealogist who knows nothing of his own family history. How painfully ironic that must be for you.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Tayte said. ‘But it keeps me going. In a way I feel it drives me to be better at what I do, in the hope that I’ll someday be good enough to find the answers I’m looking for. I was told I’d been adopted soon after my adoptive parents died in a plane crash, when I was in my teens. They left me this.’ Tayte handed the photograph to Langner. ‘I believe the woman in the picture is my birth mother. I’m trying to find her, or at least find out who she is. The photo was taken in 1963.’

  Langner studied the image. ‘You seem very sure of the year. How can you be so certain?’

  ‘I’ll come to that in a minute, if you don’t mind,’ Tayte said. ‘Do you recognise her?’

  Langner seemed to give it some thought. He took his time before answering. Then he began to shake his head. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  Tayte had been prepared for that. He didn’t expect it to be so simple. ‘But you do recognise the building she’s standing in front of.’ It wasn’t a question.

  Langner brought the photograph closer to his good eye and scrutinised it.

  Jean joined the conversation. ‘You bought the building from the government in 1958 after it was earmarked for demolition as part of an area regeneration project.’

  Langner began to nod his head as he set the photograph down onto the bed. ‘Yes, this is one of my buildings. It’s on the outskirts of the city, not far from here. The stone lions were originally placed there as representations of strength and courage. They’re quite unmistakable.’ He smiled at Jean. ‘You’ve certainly done your research. I can see that you already know a good deal more about me than I know about you.’

  The remark caused Jean to fidget in her seat. She pushed her shoulder-length brown hair back over one ear and returned an awkward smile. ‘It’s made a welcome change to the historical figures I usually find myself researching.’

  Langner laughed. ‘The living over the dead, eh? It will not be long now before I am one of your historical figures myself.’ He turned to Tayte. ‘So your mother was outside one of my buildings when this picture was taken, and you’ve come all this way in the hope that I can help you to identify her?’

  ‘Perhaps not directly,’ Tayte said.

  The months of research that had begun when he’d opened the safety deposit box his late friend and mentor, Marcus Brown, had bequeathed to him had led him here, and now he only hoped his hunch was right—he was desperate for it to be right. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a folder, which he placed on his knees. Opening it, he withdrew a photocopy of a newspaper cutting Marcus had left for him, along with a brief letter explaining that he hadn’t told him about it before because he didn’t want Tayte to get his hopes up until he had more to go on. That’s all there was, and Tayte supposed Marcus must have made the discovery close to his death or there would have been more. However little, Tayte believed it was enough.

  ‘I’m sure you remember the day this picture was taken for the local newspaper, the Abendzeitung,’ he said, handing it to Langner.

  Langner took the photocopy. It showed two images of the same neo-classical building. One was clearly more recent than the other and had been taken when the newspaper article was printed in 1963. The other was from an unforgettable time in world history. Both images showed a wide three-storey building, with what Tayte considered to be an oppressive central portico, whose towering concrete pillars reached almost to the full height of the structure. In the centre were the two stone lions, exactly as they appeared in the photograph Tayte had of his mother.

  The letters above the main doorway were obscured in the photograph, showing only part of the words spelled out above it: ‘nd E’. With only the limited elements of the photograph to go on, Tayte had come to think of the building as a hotel somewhere, and he’d spent many hours trying to work out possible names for it—the Grand Excelsior perhaps. He’d spent a great many more hours researching those hotels whose names fitted, but he’d found nothing that matched. And it was no wonder, because he now knew he’d been looking in the wrong places. The words above the main entrance weren’t even English, they were German: ‘Blut und Ehre’—‘Blood and Honour’.

  Tayte heard Langner say something then, but it was spoken too softly to make out. ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’

  ‘Hitlerjugend,’ Langner repeated, gazing now at the newspaper copy as though the older image, with its tall Nazi Party flags adorning the pillars, had stirred old memories within him. ‘Blut und Ehre was the motto of the Hitler Youth. The building was established for promising young boys from all over Germany.’ He shook his head. ‘I wanted to do something good with that place, although many of Munich’s people at the time would sooner have seen it destroyed. I believed it was important to preserve it.’ He paused. ‘What’s that British phrase I’m looking for? Ah, yes … Lest we forget.’

  ‘So you turned it into a museum?’ Jean said.

>   ‘I suppose you could call it that. Although, I prefer to think of it as an education centre. It’s been overshadowed now of course by the NS-Dokumentationszentrum, the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, which was built on the site of what used to be the headquarters of the former NSDAP—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which you will no doubt better know as the Nazi Party.’

  Langner looked down at the photocopy of the newspaper cutting again. ‘1963,’ he said, smiling to himself. ‘I remember the mayor of Munich cutting the ribbons as though it were yesterday.’ He looked up at Tayte. ‘How can a former Hitler Youth training academy possibly help you in your search to find your mother?’

  It was a good question, and one which Tayte had already asked himself many times since he’d embarked on this most personal of assignments. When it came to his own family history, Tayte knew he’d been clutching at straws his whole life, and he had to admit to himself that this time was no great exception, but this time he knew for a fact that this former Hitler Youth building was somewhere his mother had once been. He had never found such a concrete connection to his family before, and Marcus had clearly thought it important, which had helped to spur Tayte on. All he figured he had to do now was to find out why his mother had gone there, and then follow the clues. He reached a hand towards Langner and pointed to another image on the newspaper copy. It showed a crowd and several protest placards. He singled someone out.

  ‘Going back to your earlier question, I know the photo I have of my mother was taken in 1963 because she was there the day your education centre was officially opened. She was at the ceremony.’ Tayte paused as he wondered again whether his father had perhaps taken the photograph. ‘See the dogtooth 1960s baker-boy hat this woman’s wearing?’

  Langner looked more closely and nodded. Tayte drew his attention back to the photograph of his mother.

  ‘Her face is a little obscured in the newspaper image, but that’s very clearly the same hat my mother’s holding in the photo she left me. The style and pattern are identical.’

  ‘So your mother was a Demonstrant? She was protesting against my having saved this former Hitler Youth building from demolition?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tayte said. ‘Or maybe she was there for some other reason and just got caught up in the crowd. It’s the reason she was there at all that interests me—whether it was because of the building or perhaps someone connected with it.’

  ‘Which is what brought you to me,’ Langner said.

  Tayte nodded. ‘I figure if I can find out what or who my mother was interested in, and why, it could lead me to someone who can identify her.’

  ‘But I’ve already told you I don’t know the woman in this picture. I can’t see how I can be of any further help to you.’

  ‘Volker Strobel,’ Jean said, sitting forward as her eyes locked on Langner.

  Langner’s eyebrows twitched at hearing the name and he smiled. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Now I begin to see where this is going.’

  Tayte elaborated. ‘According to the article in this newspaper, Volker Strobel was the main reason for the protests at your opening ceremony that day—the day my mother was there. As I’m sure you can imagine, when I set out to identify why she was there, Strobel went straight to the top of my list.’

  Jean leaned in and picked up the newspaper copy. ‘This article shows that the protestors were strongly against preserving the institution that had, and I quote, “spawned such evil as Volker Strobel, the Demon of Dachau”.’

  Langner’s features had taken on a solemn appearance. He slowly nodded his head in recognition of the facts being presented to him as Tayte continued.

  ‘I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out about Strobel—trying to understand why my mother might have been interested in him. I soon learned that researching a most-wanted war criminal, whom no one’s been able to find since the war ended, is no walk in the park. Coupled with the seemingly impossible task of trying to connect this man with a mother I know nothing about made the job of finding my family seem as impossible as ever.’

  ‘But something has given you hope?’ Langner said.

  ‘Possibly, which of course is why we’re here. I managed to identify a few people in Strobel’s family line, but no one wanted to talk to me about him. They all gave me the same answer—the answer I’m sure they’ve given to many Nazi hunters over the years. They said they knew nothing about him. They were ashamed of him and wanted to be left alone, and for the past to be left where they felt it belonged. So, after that avenue was closed to me, I returned to the archives and kept digging in the hope that I might turn something up. Then I found a reference to Volker Strobel that made it all the more imperative that I see you.’

  ‘Do you remember the magazines of the Hitler Youth?’ Jean asked. ‘One was called Will and Power. Issued bi-monthly.’

  ‘Yes, of course, the Wille und Macht,’ Langner said. ‘It was familiar to most members of the Hitlerjugend. There may be many things wrong with me, my dear, but there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with my memory.’

  Tayte reached into his folder again and slid out another of the records he’d collected. ‘During my research I came across a digital copy of the magazine on the San Francisco based Internet Archive. It was filed under Baldur von Schirach, the magazine’s editor at the time. I had a translated copy made and this is a printout of the page that caught my attention as it appeared in Will and Power magazine in May 1937.’

  Langner took the copy and studied the page for several seconds before a gentle smile creased his lips. ‘So young,’ he said, his tone distant and melancholic. His smile dropped. ‘We had become perfect little soldiers—we sons of the Führer. I was nineteen years old when this picture was taken—a young man swept along by a wave so strong no one could have stopped it, let alone imagine the devastation it would ultimately cause.’

  Langner turned the copy of the magazine page around to face Tayte and Jean. Amidst the text, which was written in the Fraktur blackletter typeface so synonymous with Nazi Germany, were the portraits of two Hitler Youth members. The image was in black and white, but having seen so many photographs of similar Hitler Youth members during his research, it was not difficult for Tayte to imagine their blonde hair and blue eyes, their black trousers and brown shirts, with black ties and cross straps over their chests. With their strong jawlines and proud, authoritative stances, they looked the epitome of Nazi Germany’s perfect Aryan race.

  ‘We had grown out of our shorts by the time this picture was taken,’ Langner said. ‘We were being honoured for our conduct in the Hitlerjugend, and for becoming two of the youngest members to make the rank of Bannführer at the time, although when the war began and the majority of adult leaders were conscripted into the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, the minimum age was reduced to as young as sixteen to make up for the sudden deficit in leadership.’

  ‘The article tells of your friendship with Strobel,’ Tayte said.

  ‘Yes, and of course the HJ, as we commonly referred to it, encouraged such comradeship.’ He gazed down at the image again. ‘Look at us,’ he added, offering the image closer to Jean. ‘We were the very best of friends when this picture was taken. But how quickly the war, among other things, changed all that.’

  ‘You fell out?’ Tayte asked.

  ‘What about?’ Jean added. ‘If that’s not too personal a question.’

  ‘No, it’s quite all right. It was a long time ago. I had once thought that nothing could come between us, but I was clearly very naive. In simple terms I suppose we fell out over a girl, and because the war brought out the very worst in Volker Strobel. I came to hate and despise the man I had once considered my friend.’

  ‘Could you tell us about him?’ Tayte asked.

  ‘To a point, yes, I could.’

  ‘And will you?’ Jean said.

  Langner turned to Tayte and regarded him seriously. ‘If your mother was interested in a man such as Volker Strob
el, are you completely sure you want to find out why?’

  Tayte gave a single, determined nod.

  ‘Wherever it may lead? Whatever the repercussions?’

  When it came to understanding his own ancestry, Tayte had always felt a degree of apprehension about what he might someday find. Nevertheless, he had to know where this new lead would take him. He looked at Jean and then back at Langner. ‘Yes, I’m absolutely sure,’ he said. ‘If there’s something about Volker Strobel that could help point me in the right direction, I’d be glad to know it, wherever it might lead.’

  Langner sat up and took a sip of water from the glass beside his bed. ‘Very well,’ he said, adjusting his posture. ‘Let me tell you about the man who was once my closest friend. As it remains unclear about what you hope to find, I suppose I should commence the story of my acquaintance with Herr Strobel, Der Dämon von Dachau, from the day I first met him. It was in 1933 and I had just turned fifteen. It wasn’t mandatory to join the Hitlerjugend until 1936, but I come from a long line of military forefathers, and so I had been a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk—the junior branch of the Hitlerjugend—from the age of ten. I can still remember the very first time I saw Volker. Out of nowhere he came striding confidently towards me. His hair as bright as fire and his blue eyes so piercing it was impossible to look away, despite the somewhat difficult circumstances I had found myself in.’ Langner paused, as though momentarily lost to his memories. ‘Yes, I remember Volker Strobel very well,’ he added. ‘But then, it was a very memorable introduction.’

  Chapter Two

  Munich. 1933.

  ‘Kick him again, Erich! Never let your opponent gain the upper hand.’

  The boy’s lip was already swollen and bleeding profusely from the blow that had knocked him to the ground. It was three against one and he knew this was a fight he could not win.