Jean tapped at her tablet PC, calling up some of her prior research. ‘It was because of your association with the SS that you faced trial for war crimes after the war ended.’
‘Yes. The entire Schutzstaffel was declared a criminal organisation, including the combat units of the Waffen-SS. Every German soldier who wore the Sieg runes of the SS on their tunic was subject to trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity—and we were all considered guilty unless proved innocent.’
‘I read about your trial,’ Jean said. ‘You were charged with inciting your troops to give no quarter to surrendering soldiers, and the deaths of seventeen prisoners.’
‘Those were the charges, yes, to which I pleaded not guilty. But while I was acquitted of directly ordering the deaths of those soldiers, I was found guilty of allowing their murders. In truth—and at my age I have nothing to gain from lies—I had not known about the murders until it was too late to prevent them.’ Langner paused to sip some more water. ‘The death sentence was passed and I accepted my fate. It was as I waited to die that I was encouraged to appeal, and then after a good deal of discussion by the prosecuting committee, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, of which, as I’m sure you are aware, I served ten years. I later learned that a key consideration for this clemency was due to one of the officers for the prosecution stating that there wasn’t a commander on the Allied side, that he knew of, who had not told his troops that this time they did not want to take any prisoners.’
‘So you had no involvement with the rounding up or extermination of Jews?’ Tayte asked.
Langner gave an emphatic shake of his head. ‘I did not, and I would not,’ he said, his voice wavering with emotion. ‘I was a soldier of the Leibstandarte, committed along with the entire youth of Germany to fight what we had been indoctrinated to believe was our common enemy—Bolshevism. I did not hate the Jews.’
‘I see,’ Tayte said. He saw a tear fall onto Langner’s cheek then, and he decided it was best to steer the subject back to kinder memories. ‘I guess you bumped into Ava Bauer again. How did that come about?’
Langner wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. He smiled awkwardly, as though still racked by his thoughts, yet keen to change the subject, as Tayte had supposed.
‘Bump into her?’ Langner began to laugh at the idea until he set himself coughing again. ‘Mr Tayte, I didn’t just bump into her. I couldn’t leave such a thing to chance. I had to find her, and it wasn’t as difficult as I’d at first imagined.’ His smile dropped again. ‘Although I should have gone to find Ava by myself that night. Not that I could have kept her a secret from Volker for long. But I regret with all my heart the day Volker Strobel ever met Ava Bauer.’
Chapter Six
Munich. 23 November 1938.
Beneath a hissing gas lamp, leaning against the stone archway that led into the meeting place of Munich’s League of German Girls Faith and Beauty Society, Volker Strobel lit a cigarette and offered the packet to Johann.
Johann shook his head. ‘Not just now.’
‘Really? It’s not like you to turn down a cigarette. Especially on a cold evening like this.’
‘I don’t feel like one.’
Volker laughed to himself. ‘It must be because of the girl, eh? You want to keep your breath fresh, is that it? Have you kissed her yet?’
‘How could I have? I’ve only seen her once, and that was only briefly.’
‘Yes, of course. So maybe she’ll show up tonight, eh?
‘I hope so.’
After meeting Ava two weeks before, having learned that she was a member of the society tasked with raising girls as torch bearers of the national-socialist world, Johann had made it his mission to find out where the society met every week. He had tried in vain to see Ava on the Wednesday after he’d met her. Now he was trying again in the hope that she had gone to the meeting this week. He had his black winter coat with him tonight, but having stood outside the building with Volker for close to an hour already, the cold was beginning to bite regardless. He crossed his arms and stamped his feet as he took in the busy street before him. He watched a crowded tram go by, and he cast his eyes further along the street and up at the tall buildings whose Nazi Party flags were all flapping in the chill breeze. He rubbed his hands together to warm them, and under his breath he wished that Ava would come out soon.
Volker crossed the steps that divided the archway and stood close beside him. ‘You know, you worry me, Johann. I find the circumstances of how you met this girl very disturbing. If you were not my closest friend I would be obliged to report you both. Have you told anyone else?’
‘No. Only you.’
‘Good. I suggest you keep it that way. It could otherwise be very dangerous for you.’ He paused, as if considering the consequences. ‘Perhaps it would be for the best if this Ava girl failed to show again tonight. You really shouldn’t have anything more to do with her. Let’s go and get a drink, eh? What do you say?’
Johann smiled at his friend. He turned and held him by the shoulders forcing their eyes to meet. ‘I have to see her again, Volker. Just wait until you meet her. Then you’ll understand.’
Volker shook his head. ‘I’m sure you must see a great deal in her, but it’s freezing out here and I could use a drink to warm me up. Besides, there are hundreds of girls in Munich. Why must it be this one?’
‘They’re not like Ava. She’s special. You’ll see.’
The sound of the main doors opening drew Johann’s attention then and he turned towards them as light spilled out onto the steps.
‘Look, they’re coming out now,’ Johann said.
He pulled Volker aside, his eyes still on the doors as the first two girls came out. He smiled at them as they passed, and then he quickly turned back to the doorway as several more young women left the building.
‘Do you know Ava Bauer?’ he asked one of the girls at random. ‘Was she at the meeting tonight?’
The girl shook her head and carried on talking to her friend.
Volker blew smoke across Johann’s face. ‘It’s a lost cause, I tell you. Her father’s most likely forbidden her to come to these meetings again after all the trouble on the streets the last time she attended. You said her father came to find her because she was late home.’
‘Yes, because her bicycle had a flat tyre.’
Johann was paying more attention to the girls now pouring out of the building than he was to his friend. The throng had forced the two of them down onto the pavement and he’d lost track of who he’d looked at and who he’d missed as the seemingly endless parade of girls parted to his left and right. It seemed hopeless. He was about to start calling Ava’s name, but at that moment his conversation with Volker caught up with him. His eyes widened.
‘Her bicycle! Of course.’
Johann grabbed Volker’s arm and pulled him along the street, turning the corner to the bicycle racks he’d seen on their way there. He saw a few girls getting onto their bicycles, and a few others were already cycling away. He ran ahead to see them better, but he didn’t recognise Ava among them. There were still dozens of bicycles waiting to be claimed.
He turned back to Volker. ‘Her bicycle will have been fixed up by now,’ he said. ‘She’ll be easier to spot if we wait here.’
Volker checked the time on his wristwatch. ‘I’ll stay another ten minutes, then I’m going for that drink, which you’re paying for, by the way. You owe me that much. I’ve been very patient.’
‘Yes, you have. Another ten minutes then.’
During that time, Volker smoked three more cigarettes and Johann watched the bicycle racks gradually deplete. As before, there was no sign of Ava Bauer. Although when he had asked one girl whether she knew Ava, and whether she had seen her at the meeting, she had told him she thought she had. It renewed his hope.
But where was she?
‘Time’s up, my friend,’ Volker said.
Johann felt Volker’s hand on his shoulder and he
knew it was indeed time to go. There were only a few bicycles left now, and he had to concede that the odds of one of them belonging to Ava were small. He had missed her again.
‘Come on, I’m frozen to my bones,’ Volker said.
Dejection must have been written all over Johann’s face as he turned to his friend because Volker returned a sympathetic smile.
‘It’s not so bad, Johann. We’ll give it one more try next week, eh?’
Johann gave a slow nod. ‘You’re a good friend, Volker. But I really don’t mind coming by myself.’
They set off at an amble, back along the pavement.
‘Nonsense, I won’t hear of it,’ Volker said. ‘Besides, you’ve built her up so much now that I want to see this Ava Bauer almost as much as you do.’
They were laughing together as they turned the corner and crossed the street beneath the pale glow of the lamplight. Then a familiar voice stopped Johann in his tracks.
‘Johann?’
He turned back, and at once he caught his breath. It was Ava Bauer.
‘Ava!’ Johann’s face was beaming. ‘I thought I’d missed you.’
She was just how he remembered her. She wore the same long grey coat, and her dark blonde hair was rolled up beneath the same felt hat she had been wearing when he first met her. She was standing beside the kerb with her bicycle, and Johann was at a loss to understand how she could have retrieved it without him having seen her sooner.
Ava continued to smile at him, but with a degree of bemusement as she asked, ‘Whatever are you doing here?’
Not waiting for an introduction, Volker stepped forward. ‘He came to find you. He’s besotted with you, aren’t you, Johann?’ He thumped Johann playfully on the shoulder. ‘And now I can see why.’
Johann laughed to hide his embarrassment. ‘This is my friend, Volker Strobel. You remember I told you about him?’ He turned to Volker. ‘Volker,’ he said, beaming. ‘This is Ava Bauer.’
Ava offered her hand and Volker took it in his. With his eyes fixed on her, he spoke to Johann first. ‘You told me how you met Ava, Johann, but you did not tell me how pretty she was.’ His eyes seemed to devour her as he leaned in and kissed her hand. ‘Fräulein Bauer.’ He clicked his heels. ‘It is a pleasure indeed to finally meet you.’
Johann thought Ava was about to start giggling at Volker’s flirtatious introduction, but by the time he had lifted his head again, Ava’s face was composed, with just the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
‘I know the name Strobel,’ Ava said. ‘Are you related to senior Reich Minister, Joseph Strobel?’
Volker raised his chin proudly. ‘Baron Joseph von Strobel is my father—although since the German nobility is no longer recognised, my family has stopped using the title.’
‘Volker’s a very well-connected man,’ Johann said.
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Volker said. ‘My father is a great politician, just like our Führer. That’s where the real power is.’ He paused. ‘But enough of all that.’ He moved closer to Ava and placed his arm loosely around her so that his hand was resting on her bicycle saddle. ‘Do you know that Johann here hasn’t stopped talking about you since the riots?’
Ava looked as though she wanted to giggle again, and from the mischief written all over Volker’s face, it was clear to Johann that his friend was out to embarrass him.
‘I wanted to see you again, Ava,’ Johann said. His stutter returned. ‘I-I hope you don’t mind my having found you again like this.’
‘No, not at all. I’m quite flattered.’
Johann could feel another blush rising, so he changed the subject. ‘I see that you’ve had your puncture repaired.’ He pointed down at the front tyre of Ava’s bicycle, having no idea whether it was the right one. ‘We were waiting for you by the bicycle racks. I don’t know how we missed you.’
‘I don’t leave my bicycle there any more. The racks get too full. A few of us leave them across the street.’
She gestured behind her, but Johann couldn’t take his eyes off her long enough to see where she meant.
‘Well, that explains it,’ Volker said. ‘We were just going for a drink. You’ll join us, of course.’
‘Well, I—’
‘But you must,’ Volker insisted. ‘We’ve waited over an hour in the cold for you, haven’t we, Johann?’
Johann nodded and gave Ava a sheepish smile. Now that he had found her again, the last thing he wanted was for her to be put off by Volker’s overly direct manner.
‘It’s true that I’ve been waiting at length in the hope of seeing you again, and that Volker here, like the good friend he is, has been standing in the cold with me. If you do have the time to join us for a drink, I should like it very much.’
‘I’d like it, too, but I’ll be late home and Papa will worry.’
Volker cut in again. ‘What if I told you I know how you can have a drink with us and still be home at your usual time?’
‘How?’ Ava asked.
Volker lifted her bicycle up onto the pavement. ‘Walk with us and I’ll explain along the way. We’re wasting time here, and you were going in this direction anyway.’
They started walking, Ava pushing her bicycle with Johann to her left and Volker to her right.
‘I know a nice place just around the corner,’ Volker continued. ‘The proprietor has been a friend of my family’s for a very long time. He’ll serve us the finest brandy to warm us up, and when we’ve finished, I’ll borrow his van and Johann and I will take you and your bicycle home to your papa, who will be none the wiser. Now what do you say to that?’
Ava turned to Johann, and he could see that she was still unsure. He could also see that Volker had changed his opinion of Ava quite considerably now that he had met her. This was a far cry from wanting him to have nothing more to do with her.
‘It would just be for one drink,’ Johann said. ‘And I should very much like the opportunity to continue the conversation we began two weeks ago.’
Ava smiled. ‘I don’t see why not. As long as I’m not late home.’
‘Good!’ Volker said. He laughed then as he grabbed Ava’s bicycle and began to run with it. ‘Come on! If we hurry, we might have time for two drinks.’
Chapter Seven
Present day.
Outside the German Heart Centre on Lazarettstrasse, Tayte and Jean followed their bags into the back of a cream-coloured Mercedes taxi. Although they hadn’t had to wait long, Tayte was glad of the cool air-conditioning, which was a welcome respite from the hot afternoon sun. Tayte liked taxis. They took the stress out of driving on unfamiliar streets, and you didn’t have to know your way around. He thought back to the last time he’d worked with Jean, in London the previous year, and was glad he didn’t have to travel around on the back of her motorcycle again this time.
‘Maxburgstrasse,’ he said to the driver, and they were on their way, heading towards the city centre.
When the ECG machine Johann Langner was attached to lit up with alarms for the second time during their visit, Ingrid Keller had once again ordered them to leave, and this time Langner had not recovered sufficiently to insist they stay to hear the remainder of his story about his friendship with Volker Strobel and the girl, Ava Bauer, who had come into their lives not long before the war began.
Tayte turned to Jean. ‘I hope the old man’s okay. Maybe we should have left sooner.’
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Jean said. ‘But he wanted to talk, didn’t he?’
‘I know, but I can’t help feeling a little responsible. His nurse was right—he needed rest.’
‘I think what really set him off that last time was talking about Volker Strobel. Whatever did the man do?’
‘A terrible thing,’ Tayte said, thoughtfully, repeating Langner’s last words to them, knowing that he wasn’t referring to the terrible things Strobel had done to earn him the moniker ‘Demon of Dachau’, but something else. ‘I’d love to know what he was referring to, and
I’d have really liked to hear what else he had to say.’
Jean agreed. ‘Maybe we’ll get another chance to talk to him.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Tayte said, but recalling how ashen and drawn Langner had looked as they left his hospital room, he somehow doubted it.
As they continued their taxi ride through the busy streets of Munich, Tayte turned his thoughts to their destination: the registered offices of Die Freunde der Waffen-SS Kriegsveteranen—The Friends of the Waffen-SS War Veterans—or the FWK as the organisation was commonly known. It was close by and their bags were light and few. Now that he was in Munich, rather than going to their hotel to check in, Tayte was all the more keen to push on and piece his own family history puzzle together.
‘Hopefully we can fill in the rest of Langner’s story some other way,’ Tayte said. ‘The FWK might be able to tell us a thing or two.’
‘That’s if they’ll talk to us.’
‘True, but we’ve nothing else planned until tomorrow. It’s worth a shot.’
Jean pulled out her tablet PC. ‘I made some more notes about them. While you were staring at the back of the seat in front of you on the plane this morning, I found a newspaper article from the Guardian a few years ago.’
Tayte caught Jean’s wink as she teased him about the flight and he threw her a playfully sarcastic smile. ‘So what have you got, hotshot?’
‘Well, it seems that the German government has had a close eye on the FWK for some time. They were established as a non-profit and thus charitable organisation in 1945, but the Federal Finance Court denied them their non-profit status in the early 1990s, when it was discovered that they were not only raising funds to help Waffen-SS war veterans and their families, but that they were also assisting families of convicted war criminals. The report goes on to allege that the FWK are even supporting wanted war criminals who are still at large today.’
Tayte scoffed. ‘If that’s true then I’m not surprised they lost their charitable status. I wonder if they’ve been helping Volker Strobel. Maybe they know where he is.’
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