Niska’s heart plummeted when he read the wire. Just as it was beginning, Niska’s clandestine work had been betrayed. He feared that now, it might even have been compromised.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Berlin: March 12, 1939
Kersten sat on the bed in his flat in the Hotel Kaiserhof. The room was amply decorated in an overly ornate Victorian style. Only after accepting accommodation there from Himmler did Kersten learn that the Kaiserhof was where Adolf Hitler had stayed on the eve of his assumption of power as Chancellor in 1933. Kersten wished he had remained ignorant of that fact. The knowledge seemed to blemish his own stay there, making him feel contaminated, somehow.
It didn’t matter today, however. His heart and mind transported him to another room, the richly textured wood-paneled den of his forest manor on Hartzwalde, north of the capital city. In his daydream, his mind and entire body were still luxuriating from the long-awaited relaxed love-making with his bride. Now, post-coitus, Irmgaard was in the room with him. The pleasing aroma of the flowers Irmgaard had placed in the vase sweetened the whole room. He was reading the Deustche Zeitung in den Niederländen in a leather easy chair; Irmgaard was across the room on the sofa reading a novel by the banned Thomas Mann. His novels had been banned and burned―in Germany, that is―but not in the Netherlands. Felix had been able to locate a copy in Dutch for his wife in a bookstore in The Hague. The feeling of defiance when he bought it was extremely delicious.
Bright sunshine streamed across the carpeted floor of the den through the huge window overlooking the verdant garden in which the two of them liked to dig their hands. The sound of the springtime morning birds drifted in.
Abruptly, Kersten’s mind was carried back against his will to his Berlin flat. Yet, he was filled with a warm sense of gratitude that he had been able to escape the mounting bedlam of Berlin, if only for a fleeting moment, and if only in a daydream from which he needed to awaken.
He telephoned the royal palace in The Hague to check up on the condition of Queen Wilhelmina and the royal family. The queen’s secretary assured him that she was faring well, as were others in the family. In that case, he told the secretary, he would extend his stay in Germany. He didn’t divulge why.
He performed a series of almost daily treatments on Himmler. At each session, Himmler was doubly overcome. First, by the piercing pain in his abdomen when Kersten arrived in his office for the session, and then, by the pain’s defeat. After each treatment, the Reichsführer, whose whole life was devoted to the obsessive planning and performance of the most top-secret, sordid tasks, had a seemingly unquenchable desire to talk.
“I’ve been wondering, Doctor, if you don’t mind me asking. How is it that a man with a German surname is a citizen of Finland?”
“I’m rather surprised that with all your sophisticated and advanced German tools for surveillance, you do not know the answer to your own question. Surely, you’ve had both the Chief of the Reich Security and the Director of Intelligence check me out.”
“Indeed, you are right, Doctor. Kaltenbrunner and Heydrich both did a thorough check when you first started treating me. I know every detail of your story.”
“Well, then, why don’t you tell me what their intelligence uncovered? I will either confirm each finding or refute it.”
“Very clever, Doctor. You catch onto these games very quickly. But no, I want to hear your story directly from the horse’s mouth.”
“You still want me to repeat it to you? To see if my story corroborates their findings, is that it?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s like prayer. Do you ever pray, Doctor?”
Kersten was taken aback by what seemed like a non sequitur. Before Kersten could respond, however, Himmler filled the brief silence with his words.
“I do sometimes, Doctor. Haven’t you ever wondered why we pray when, being omniscient, the Almighty already knows what we need even before we ask?”
Himmler paused, as though waiting for an answer from him, Kersten thought. But he could see that Himmler was engrossed again in one of his monologues.
“I think the Almighty simply wants to hear our need uttered on our own lips, don’t you think, Doctor?”
Kersten had never heard Himmler talk in these terms.
He prays? Now, that’s a surprise. Apparently, he hasn’t totally abandoned his pious Catholic upbringing by his devout Bavarian parents and sacrificed it all at the altar of pagan National Socialism. A faded remnant remains.
“It’s a long story, Herr Reichsführer. The long and short of it, however, is that I was in Berlin for post-graduate training with Dr. Ko when the Great War broke out.”
“I don’t prefer the term, ‘Great’ War, Doctor,” Himmler said rather sternly. “There was very little about it that was ‘great’ for Germany, especially the ending and aftermath in Versailles.”
“Would it shock you, Herr Reichsführer, if I confess to you that I am now a Finnish citizen because I didn’t want to serve in Kaiser Wilhelm’s army in 1917?” Kersten had a glimmer in his eyes.
Himmler raised his head off the divan to look disconcertedly at Kersten.
“If you weren’t so adept at alleviating this pain of mine, I rather think I would be very upset about that. That’s treason, as I am sure you know. However, I have no choice but to let it go. I may be sorry, but please tell me more.”
“To be quite frank, Herr Reichsführer, I was put off by the showy Prussian uniforms, the whole ostentatious demeanor of the Kaiser’s army.” He left unsaid that he wasn’t any less put off by all the Nazi militaristic exhibitionism now. “I just wanted to complete my training and begin my practice.”
“You are being quite frank and brave, Doctor. Aren’t you the least bit afraid of me?”
Kersten sidestepped the question.
“I found a compromise. I learned that some ex-patriate Finns in Germany were forming a legion to assist their native land to throw off Russian domination. Although I was born in the German Baltic province of Estonia, I was pretty confident I didn’t have a drop of Finnish blood in me. Nonetheless, I enlisted with the Finnish adventurers.”
“It seems I remember hearing something about that Finnish legion.”
“I served in the regiment that routed the Russians and their Finnish Bolshevik comrades from Helsinki in 1919. That, for all intents and purposes, cemented independence for Finland.”
“I was just a seventeen-year-old student then,” Himmler said. “But I well remember how elated I was entering in my diary how the Bolshevik devils were defeated.”
“The new Finnish government was very grateful for our legion’s part in the victory. I was offered honorary Finnish citizenship. They recommended me for a post as a reserve officer in the newly formed Finnish army. I said, ‘Why not?’ The Finns were very good to me. I developed a real love for their gutsiness. But really, what did I know about being an officer in the army?”
Kersten paused to take stock of Himmler’s reaction to his account. Himmler simply continued listening.
“I was hospitalized in Helsinki for wounds endured in the skirmishes with the Bolsheviks. There, I saw the work of medics. So I decided that I would become a surgeon. I shared my plan with a mentor, the chief of the medical staff at the military hospital. He warned me about how long and grueling the training to become a surgeon was. All the while the doctor was speaking to me, however, I noticed that he kept looking at my hands. Finally, the doctor took hold of one of my wrists, and said, ‘This hand is ideally suited for massage.’ He recommended Dr. Ko. There you have it.”
“I’d say that that military doctor deserves a medal. He gave you very good advice.”
“I didn’t think so at the time. Massage? What the hell? I wanted to be a doctor, not a masseur. I had my sights set on something higher and more dignified.”
The familiar sharp pain shot once more in Kersten’s stomach. He hadn’t wanted to revisit his brief, unpleasant stay in the field of surgery, even in his memory.
“You have discovered a very high calling, Doctor. By the way, I am a great admirer of the Finns. Very few composers are in touch with the tragic and melancholy dimension of human life as intimately as Sibelius. Of course, our German composers are supreme, Beethoven, Brahms, especially Richard Wagner. But I make an exception for Sibelius.”
“Not to mention Bach and Mendelssohn,” Kersten added enthusiastically.
“Bach, perhaps, but he wasted all that talent on the church. But for God’s sake, Kersten, not the Jew Mendelssohn. Jesus, we had his statue removed from the square in Leipzig. Don’t bring up his name again!”
Kersten wondered if he had simply forgotten that Mendelssohn was a Jew. Or was this an instance of what that famous Jewish psychiatrist in Vienna referred to as a “slip” in which our apparently careless speech reveals a deeper unconscious intent.
“And the heroes in your Kalevala remind me a lot of our Aryan heroes.”
Kersten had to hold back his irritation at the nerve of this Kraut in daring to co-opt for the Nazi cause the protagonists of one the world’s greatest epics.
“While we are talking about your being a citizen of Finland, I have a question to ask you, Doctor,” Himmler said. “Several of my lieutenants have mentioned to me the name of a troublemaker here in Berlin, a Finn. His name is Algro Niska. Something like that.”
“Algot Niska?”
“Yes, I think that’s it. Do you recognize the name?”
Kersten did, although he was reluctant to say so to Himmler. Niska had a reputation among Finns for being an intrepid whiskey smuggler during the years of prohibition. Kersten thought he remembered reading something about Niska’s having served a short prison sentence in Finland for his crimes. In Sweden, too, as he recalled. But he hadn’t heard Niska’s name mentioned since prohibition ended in 1932.
“Seems that this Niska character has been smuggling the property of Jews out of the country, a capital offense.”
Niska, out of jail? Right here, now, in Berlin? Not surprising that he’s back in the smuggling business, though.
Himmler’s face had become sterner now, his voice more conspiratorial.
“Now we have reason to believe that he’s smuggling actual Jews out of Germany, some of them apparently to Finland.”
Kersten tried to hide the anxiety that was suddenly churning in his stomach.
“As a matter of fact, Kersten, Heydrich informs me that a Jew tried to sell a forged Finnish passport to one of Heydrich’s undercover Gestapo agents in Travemünde. Not too smart, was he? The Gestapo used their unique methods to interrogate the Jew until he was able to wring the information out of him that he had originally received the passport from this Niska in Berlin.”
Kersten felt an attack of alarm, though he didn’t even know Niska. But Niska was a fellow countryman whom he imagined being tortured by the Nazis if they ever caught him.
“We’ve put out a bulletin alerting all our detachments throughout the Reich about Niska. He won’t get far. We’ll catch this damned Jew-lover, you can depend on that...By the way, Doctor, what would you recommend as a particularly Finnish form of punishment for him once we have caught him?”
Kersten couldn’t tell if Himmler was serious or not. The SS had its own notorious punitive measures. Why ask about a distinctly Finnish measure? So he tried to put a period after this conversation with some humor. Mind you, he didn’t expect a non-Finn like Himmler to appreciate the joke.
“Put him in a room,” Kersten said with a straight face, “with a group of extremely extraverted, incurably talkative strangers.”
Himmler looked totally flummoxed by the answer. But it occurred to the introverted Kersten that he was enduring a form of the same punishment himself whenever he was in Himmler’s office.
~~~
Habitually a deliberate man, Kersten a left Himmler’s office feeling unusually restless and agitated. He couldn’t explain his sense of urgency to get word to Niska somehow about the danger he was in. For some vague reason, he felt responsible for Niska’s situation even though he hadn’t had anything to do with it. Surely, it would not be news to Niska that he was now a wanted man throughout the entire Reich. After all, Niska was a smuggler accustomed to being on the run. What more could Kersten possibly do to help his renegade countryman? What new information did he possess of which Niska was not aware? Was it even any of his business?
Or was the root of the current inexplicit anxiety something else? Was it the possibility that Niska’s flouting of the Nazi Jewish emigration laws might now draw attention to any and all Finns and their activities in Berlin, including his own, attention he neither needed nor desired? It could lead the SS right to him. It would seriously jeopardize his new mission, if not end it completely. It would most likely be the end of him, too, for that matter, although he was surprised pleasantly that his own survival didn’t seem to be the supreme priority now.
~~~
Kersten’s discomfort led him back to the Finnish legation and the office of Ambassador Mäki. Kersten repeated to the ambassador what he had learned about Niska’s predicament from Himmler.
“I think you know, Doctor, that we can neither confirm nor deny that we know of this Algot Niska. Yes, we know about his past in Finland, of course. That is public knowledge. But as to whether we know of his exploits after his departure from Finland for his self-imposed exile, we cannot, as I say, confirm or deny. I am sure you understand, Doctor. We would answer in precisely the same manner if someone came to us seeking information about you.”
Kersten did understand, but still, was irritated and impatient with the diplomatic cageyness.
“Surely, Mr. Ambassador, since Niska is a Finnish citizen in this country, you must know of his whereabouts…an address, or something?”
“If you insist, Doctor. His last known address in our records is a boat registered in his name in Amsterdam harbor.”
Maki kept his eyes on Kersten absentmindedly while he contemplated the matter some more.
“You seem unusually interested in making contact with him. Since that is so, you might pursue the matter with the Finnish legation in The Hague. I warn you, however, Dr. Kersten, that your position is already quite delicate. It probably wouldn’t improve any by enmeshing yourself with the fate of Algot Niska.”
Kersten sat silently and waited for the ambassador to offer more. Mäki, however, returned his focus to the stack of papers on his desk. Kersten uttered a formal, if half-hearted, thanks, rose from his chair grudgingly, and headed in the direction of the door.
“Oh, by the way, Dr. Kersten,” Mäki said from behind his desk without looking up from his papers. “We appreciate your service to us with regards to Heinrich Himmler. I am sure it is not always pleasant…As for the whereabouts of Algot Niska, you might try your luck with his physician, a Doctor Josef Singer in Charlottenburg. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
~~~
Kersten found Dr. Singer at his small clinic on Otto-Suhr Allee, not far down a steep hill from the imposing castle named after Queen Charlotte of Prussia. Charlottenburg exhibited telltale signs that not long ago at all, it had been a comfortable, affluent and bustling sector of Berlin. Many of the formerly elegant shop windows were boarded up. The shops themselves stood empty and abandoned. Evidence of destruction by fire and vandalism was all around.
The massage practice Kersten had inherited from Dr. Ko when the Tibetan master retired and returned to China was located in the Schöneberg sector, adjacent, ironically, to Charlottenburg. But non-Jews seldom had business in that primarily Jewish enclave, so Kersten had never sauntered to the neighborhoods to the west and north of Kurfürstendamm Strasse. This was his first crossing into the mysterious neighborhood of Jewish professionals.
Josef Singer appeared wary, suspicious even, when Kersten caught him at his clinic between patients.
“Whether I know of Herr Niska, I am not allowed by medical ethics to divulge,” Singer replied when Kersten asked if he knew Niska or had an addre
ss for him. “I am sure as a doctor yourself, you are familiar with that, and follow the same practice with your own patients...That is, if you really are a doctor, as you say you are.”
“Yes, of course, Dr. Singer, under normal, routine circumstances. But as you know, the days we are living presently are not the least bit normal or routine. Neither is my business with Herr Niska.”
“He has never mentioned to me that he is under the care of a masseur.”
“He’s not, as far as I know. At least, not with me.”
Kersten could see he was not making much headway with the quiet, unassuming but shrewd, guarded doctor. He couldn’t blame him if he suspected that Kersten was an officer of law enforcement.
“If it’s not medical, then may I ask what your business is with Herr Niska?” Singer asked warily.
“I acknowledge the fact that I am not a friend of his, nor even an acquaintance. Just a countryman of his concerned about his safety at this time. We’re engaged in the same kind of enterprise.”
Singer’s dark eyes softened and eyebrows rose slightly at this news. He looked directly at Kersten’s eyes. He seemed to comprehend Kersten’s code language.
“If, then, you are engaged in the same enterprise as Herr Niska, I welcome you to my clinic. And warn you, as well. I apologize if my reception of you has been so cautious. Perhaps you have interpreted it as cold and unfriendly. I am sorry. But as you say, the days we are living are not the comfortable, secure ones we knew just a few years ago, especially here in Charlottenburg.”
“No apology necessary, Dr. Singer. I fully understand the circumstances. You were prudent to be judicious with a total stranger, especially at this time a non-Jew.”
“Herr Niska has never divulged his actual address to me, for perfectly good reasons of security, I’m sure. His own, and mine as well. If I don’t know his address, should the authorities come looking for him here, I can honestly and credibly say that I do not know where he resides.”
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