Accidental Saviors

by Jack A Saarela

  “Alas, Kersten, though there will be no mass deportation for the time being, the invasion and subsequent occupation of your adopted homeland will proceed as planned.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Berlin: March 1, 1940

  When he got to his flat at the Kaiserhof, Kersten was feeling simultaneously ashamed, fearful, and deeply cleansed and purified by his frank, cathartic display of anger at Himmler earlier that day. Despite his sense of accomplishment and victory, Kersten was totally exhausted from his session with Himmler. He didn’t even bother to brush his teeth before collapsing onto his bed, a very unusual violation of his usual strict discipline.

  He didn’t fall asleep immediately. Perhaps it was the abnormally early hour in the evening when he was retiring for the day. The longer he lay on his bed, the more he tossed and turned, and the more often he had to rearrange the tangle of fine sheets the hotel provided for him.

  He got up one time to urinate. Then, as if to compensate for the fluid he eliminated from his body, he went to the liquor cabinet in the living room and poured himself a full glass of Finnish vodka, gulped it down greedily, and returned to bed, hopeful that the vodka would induce sleepiness. He opened the Finnish novel he had been reading in the past week and tried unsuccessfully to focus his attention on the words on the page.

  Sure enough, in a few minutes, his eyelids were beginning to droop. When he woke up several hours later to empty his bladder again, he found the book open on his chest at a page he didn’t remember having read.

  Between his falling asleep and his revisit to the toilet, he was suspended in that delicious, but simultaneously confusing and even frightful, liminal state where his mind was pleasantly idle and at rest, but strangely still aware of the world from which his mind was seeking temporary retreat. His ears could detect the consistent ticking of the alarm clock on the night stand to his left. Tick, tick, tick, tick. The relentless drip-drop of water from the tank into the bowl of the toilet. Drip, drip, drip, drip. A door being shut loudly in the distance. An angry woman’s muffled voice from a flat down the corridor. The insistent buzz of an incandescent lightbulb on the ceiling of the corridor giving notice of its intention to malfunction. The impatient honking of two car horns from Mohrenstrasse below.

  The air in the Kaiserhof was charged with unease. The sounds were distressing. The automobile lights from the street below were projecting unfamiliar ominous shadows that moved across the wall and reflected partially onto his face. Kersten turned onto his side on the bed.

  Heydrich’s shrill nasal voice intruded. “The Führer intends to invade and occupy the Netherlands and eliminate the ‘irreconcilables.’”

  Kaltenbrunner’s savage laughter echoed through the corridor and became louder the farther away it traveled. Himmler heard himself saying, “Treaties and promises are made to be broken.”

  At that, Kaltenbrunner’s laughter grew more sinister and echoed in Kersten’s mind.

  Kersten tossed in his bed but remained in his liminal state.

  He was transported to a city street with pavement wet from the rain. Was it the denuded Hague? Fog hung like a curtain in the air above the street. It was night. A faint nimbus formed in the anemic light from a couple of lonely streetlamps. Kersten saw a shallow puddle at the junction of the concrete sidewalk and an old edifice. The liquid was not the clear color of rain, however, but bright red.

  A woman dressed in some coarse material like burlap was coming directly toward him on the sidewalk on a bicycle. Her bare head was bald in spots, yet covered in others with lonely short tufts of hair. The tunic hanging loosely over her inhumanly thin body had faded gray stripes. The cloth material was torn in places. Even in the misty darkness, Kersten could see with horror the irregularly shaped red stains and stripes on the tunic. He saw similar bloody scratches on her emaciated face. She seemed to be aiming the bicycle right at him. Kersten didn’t have time to curse. He jumped off the sidewalk onto the street to avoid being struck. The woman looked back defiantly and swore in Dutch, and then cried out, “I am an irreconcilable,” as she faded from view.

  A black car honked its horn irritably. Kersten’s heart skipped, and he hopped back up onto the curb. The automobile missed hitting him by a matter of centimeters. A rowdy voice from inside the car shouted in German, “Get out of our way, you fat bag of shit.”

  Kersten caught his breath, and resumed his walk. On the sidewalk up ahead, he spied a short dark figure. The figure’s back was turned toward him. It was covered in a dark overcoat. Its head was obscured by a hood. Kersten swallowed his fear and passed the figure warily. From behind him he heard his name being called in a grotesque voice. “Hey, Kersten, Finnish doctor, Dutchman, whatever you are. You are an enemy of the Reich.”

  Kersten turned to face the figure. In the fog and dim light, he couldn’t make out its face. Uninvited, the figure pushed the hood off its head. It had short, straight hair as dark as the night, with a surprisingly neat part down the right side of its scaly scalp. A sinister caricature of a red swastika stared out at Kersten from the figure’s chest. It held out a limb toward Kersten. Kersten held out his own hand to return the gesture. He was repulsed and backed away instinctively. The appendage was furry and bony, a ghastly paw dripping with blood.

  The figure was a black wolf.

  From its sheath by his right side, Kersten pulled out his curved golden ceremonial sabre awarded to him by the government of Finland in 1919. He grabbed the hilt firmly in his right hand. He swung the sabre at the figure, which stepped back quickly to evade the blade. The figure laughed at the failed attempt. It ran out of room to back up on the sidewalk. It was caught against the wall of a grand, ornate official building. The figure now had fear and panic etched on its face. It held up two huge paws, first in a gesture of threat and attack, then in an effort to defend itself from Kersten’s sabre. To no effect, as Kersten swashed the sword in the air and thrust it through the overcoat deep into the flesh of the wolf. A blemish of yellowish-orange blood formed on the overcoat. A hideous pool of the figure’s discolored blood was forming at its feet. Kersten cut off the buttons of the figure’s overcoat with the sabre. Underneath was jet black fur, stained with the abhorrent fluid.

  The figure fell into the rank, revolting puddle on the sidewalk. Kersten thrust the sabre into the torso again once, twice, three times, until the figure was a heap of repugnant bloody meat.

  After an untold number of stabs of the sabre, Kersten’s eyelids burst open with a start. His heart wanted to beat out of his chest. He was breathing heavily. The sheet underneath him felt damp. His mouth felt as though he had swallowed sour milk.

  The horrifying dream scene flashed through his awakening memory, leaving his conscious mind to ask, Are you capable of such brutish butchery, Felix? Is there a seething well of violent hatred deep within your heart that you have tried to condition with reason, science, and civilization? Where is this thing with you and Himmler headed?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Karelia: March 9-10,1940

  The whole world seemed to be thundering and shaking under their feet as the shells whirred overhead. The fighting had been bloody, cold, and fierce at the Kollaa River in western Karelia where Jiri Hudak’s 12th Division of the Fourth Army had been badly outnumbered by Soviet troops. For every infantryman the Finns were able to kill, there would appear three or four fresh Soviet replacements. The Soviets were firing nearly 40,000 artillery rounds from the ridge on the eastern side of the river at the Finnish defensive line. All the Finnish artillery could manage was a paltry 1,000 rounds a day.

  Jiri’s company had been at the Kollaa for a week. Most of the 12th Division had been trying to hold back the Soviet war machine since the second week of the war in early December. Several times, the Red Army had been able to penetrate the Finnish defensive line, pushing the Finns out of their positions. But each time the Finnish boys systematically counterattacked to restore the integrity of their line. It had been a brutal, bloody, and costly tennis mat
ch that was lasting over two months.

  The most effective weapon for the Finns was Corporal Timo Haula, known among the Russians at Kollaa as “The White Death.” A world champion marksman in his pre-military days, he proved to have a deadly aim as a sniper from the tops of the pine and spruce trees. The others in his company marveled at the idiosyncratic procedure followed by their thoroughly unassuming mate. He insisted on using an iron sight on his rifle, by now old-fashioned, instead of a telescopic sight, which one would expect would enhance the accuracy of the shot. No, Haula pointed out, it would not. In these glacial conditions, the telescopic sight glass would fog up easily, rendering it practically useless. Should sunlight reflect off the glass, his location would be exposed to the enemy. When sniping from the ground, Haula resourcefully packed dense mounds of snow to conceal himself while also providing padding for his rifle and reducing the telltale billow of snow stirred up by the rifle blast. What his mates thought rather counterintuitive initially was his practice of stuffing his mouth full of snow as he aimed his rifle; but they quickly realized that the snow prevented steamy clouds of breath that would give away his position in the frozen air.

  The Finnish forces ran a pool—a half-pack of cigarettes got you in the game—to see who could predict the number of fatalities Haula would inflict each day with his M/28-30. The men learned quickly not to pick a number less than five.

  Russian casualties were heavy. Without cross-country skis and dressed in olive-colored coats, which stood out against the snow, the Russians slogged on foot through two-meter-deep drifts and were as easy targets as ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. With fewer troops to begin with, the smaller number of casualties on the Finnish side made more of a lethal difference. Jiri’s company and others had been deployed to Kollaa as reinforcements.

  Most days, however, it appeared to the Finnish commanders that the number of reinforcements had not been enough to staunch the bleeding. The division commander sent a daily request to his Fourth Army superior for more reinforcements to shore up the defenses. Each day, the message came back: “None available. We have three separate fronts to defend.”

  If the Soviets were to succeed in penetrating the Finnish line with finality, the result for Finland would be severe, probably disastrous. The Russians would have a clear, unhindered passage through the remaining fifty or so undefended kilometers to the town of Kitee within Finnish territory, and the road and rail networks and endless chain of navigable lakes and rivers of eastern Finland. Above all else, it was imperative to limit the Russian advances to Karelia and not allow them to penetrate further west into the rest of Finland.

  One day, the runner from the Fourth Army headquarters came with the news that the division commander’s entreaties for reinforcements had been heard and heeded finally. Companies of the 13th Division were being sent to Kollaa. For the men of the 12th Division, yesterday was not soon enough for them to arrive.

  There was a lull in the artillery barrage from the Soviet ridge the afternoon the 13th Division appeared from the west. The troops of the 12th let out a spontaneous cheer and shout of welcome at the arrival of the first reinforcements. The commander made no attempt to order the men to stifle their cheers. Surely the Soviet troops could hear the loud cries of jubilation and relief from across the river. On the other hand, just as surely the Finnish revelries would thrust an unwanted shot of despair and fear into the freezing Russian hearts.

  In the makeshift mess tent men shook the hands of strangers and patted the backs of familiar men whom they had not seen since before the conflict had started back at the end of November. They related tales of their tussles with the enemy elsewhere on the Karelian front, some obviously stretching the truth a little to outdo others with accounts of their heroic exploits.

  Jiri couldn’t remember when he had last laughed. From amidst the laughter and general racket in the mess tent, he could make out a particular laugh that somehow was familiar. Some men chortle when they laugh, others cackle, still others shriek with delight. This man’s laughter was like a full-bodied guffaw. Jiri had known a man with such an idiosyncratic guffaw once.

  Jiri looked around the mess tent to see where the hearty whooping was coming from. Once Jiri thought he had isolated the one with the familiar laugh, the man had his back to him. Jiri couldn’t see the face. But the back of the man’s head had a small, round, bald spot surrounded by a ring of thinning, dirty blond hair. This would not be uncommon in the officers’ tent. But in the conscripted men’s mess, full as it was with men in their early twenties, and some even as young as nineteen, it was a very unusual sight.

  Jiri had a happy hunch. He arose from his seat and carried his dented metal mug of coffee over to the table where the man was conveying his husky laughter.

  Jiri’s hopeful intuition had been an accurate one. Sure enough, the man slapping his thighs in almost obscene enjoyment and raising his deep and loud gusts of laughter to the canvas ceiling was none other than Algot Niska.

  Before Jiri could get close enough to greet him, Niska himself caught sight of Jiri’s eager face in the distance.

  “Is that you, Jiri?” he shouted gleefully in German in Jiri’s direction. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jiri took a few steps toward Niska and reached out his hand to shake Niska’s enthusiastically.

  “I was about to ask you the same question,” Jiri said in German. His Finnish had improved only slightly since Niska had last seen him in Poland over a year earlier. “Why are you here?”

  Niska threw his long arms around Jiri, conveying how very relieved and glad he was to see Jiri alive and well. He embraced Jiri as much because of their history together, Jiri represented the best of Algot Niska, the honorable smuggler of Jews that he had had to leave behind in Germany. Seeing Jiri again, his first rescue, helped him feel validated once more as a worthy person.

  The two pulled away from the others and a found a table where the previous occupants had finished dinner and moved on.

  “I know, I know; you think I’m too old for this, too, right? Why not? Everybody else does. It’s a long story.”

  “This is one story I want to hear, for sure.”

  Such was Jiri’s surprise at seeing his old friend in such an unexpected place, such was the fullness of his gratitude for what Niska had done for him, that Jiri had a lump in his throat that rendered him speechless. Tears of joy welled up in his eyes.

  Finally, his tears turned into a broad smile, “Good God, it’s great to see you, Algot.”

  “I’m sorry, Jiri, that I didn’t follow up and try to ascertain your whereabouts in Finland. I simply couldn’t under the circumstances, you understand?”

  Jiri nodded. The chatter and laughter in the tent had run its course. Men were finishing their cup of coffee and getting up to leave.

  “But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t wondered about you, about how you are doing in Finland, or indeed, whether or not you were still in Finland at all.”

  “I wondered about you, too, after we went our separate ways in Poland. Did you go back to Berlin?”

  “For a short time, yes. Not long afterward, I developed the damnedest ulcers in my gut. A doctor recommended that I get out of Germany and seek treatment in my home country.”

  “You picked a hell of a time to come back.”

  “The Russians dropped their first bombs on Helsinki not long after I arrived. I made it back to Finland by way of Latvia and Estonia—just barely—in a rowboat. Can you believe that?”

  “If it was anyone else telling the story, I wouldn’t believe it. But I have learned, Algot, that you are like a cat. You have nine lives. Obviously, the bombs over Helsinki did not kill you; you’re here now.”

  “That’s not all, Jiri. It’s precisely because of the bombs that I’m here in the flesh before your eyes.”

  “I don’t follow.” Jiri chuckled and playfully slapped Niska on his left shoulder.

  “The bombing was what kept me out of prison. After my ulcers st
arted to heal, I went dutifully to ValPo headquarters to turn myself in and face the music for my liquor smuggling. The whole place was abandoned like an empty matchbox. The cops had all taken refuge in the bomb shelter down the street.”

  “What? No one minding the store?”

  “Not even the janitor or night watchman. I did run into a couple of the officers when I took cover in the bomb shelter myself. They told me that given the turn of events in the country, they had bigger fish to fry than a small-time booze smuggler from a time before the Depression.”

  “They let you go scott-free, just like that?”

  “They gave me a choice: Either go to prison or join the Finnish defense forces at the front, even though I’m past the age of enlisting.”

  “So you chose this frozen hell?”

  “The anti-aircraft guns shot down a few of the Russki planes in Helsinki. I figured that if I chose prison, I might end up sharing a cell in Sörnäinen with a damn captured Bolshevik.”

  “You are one lucky man, Algot.”

  “Yes, but not everyone was so lucky in the bombing. About fifty civilians were killed on the first day. Tragic. But you know, Jiri, there have been times in my life when some good fortune emerges out of misfortune, even if it’s just a single match flickering in the darkness.”

  Jiri listened eagerly for more. He needed to hear about light and good fortune, so much darkness and misfortune had he endured in the war.

  “Someone up there is looking out for me, that’s for sure,” Niska continued. “Some angel, maybe.”

  Jiri was silent for a moment. He didn’t know quite what to make of his rescuer’s newlyfound cosmological and religious leanings.

  “You’re probably thinking that Niska has been buffeted by too many gales, or that he’s endured one too many bouts of sunstroke. I don’t blame you if you are...Let me ask: Have you lost a buddy in this war, Jiri?”