The Hunt

by William Diehl

  Keegan had hired Charlie Kraus, an American jazz arranger and pianist living in Paris, to work with Jenny and accompany her during the audition. That had impressed Hammond who knew Kraus to be a tough and discriminating musician, a man who would not waste his time with second-rate talent. A dapper little man who dressed in the fashion of the day with his beret cocked jauntily over one eye, Kraus, whose mother was Negro, had been an arranger for Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and other rising stars before he had abandoned the States two years earlier, disillusioned by racism in the music business.

  Kraus made a good living as a teacher and arranger and had a small combo which played in one of the Paris clubs on weekends. It was there one night that Keegan had convinced him to let Jenny try a song or two. Kraus had been amazed, talking her into singing with the band for an entire set, then offering her a permanent job. But Keegan had more ambitious plans. He had tracked down Hammond in Kansas City and put Kraus on the phone.

  “She’s special, Johnny,” Kraus told Hammond. “Great breath control. Phrasing’s a miracle. Tone’s unique, not quite alto but almost. And the lady has great respect for lyrics, doesn’t throw away a single syllable. I mean, this lady knows exactly what she wants a song to sound like. Man, she reaches for notes some of us don’t even hear in our head. Tell yuh, John, she could give me a lesson or two.”

  Based on that endorsement, Hammond had agreed to the unprecedented phone audition. Keegan’s dream was that Hammond would be impressed enough to lure Jenny to New York.

  They had gone to Kraus’s studio in Montmartre and spent an afternoon there, exchanging ideas, trying new things, working with songs she didn’t know. Then Keegan had moved the piano into their suite; she and Kraus had been working together for two weeks to prepare for the event.

  Keegan placed the call three times before the overseas connection satisfied him. Finally they were ready. He uncradled the phone in the bedroom and placed it in front of the loudspeaker, then went back in the living room and picked up the extension.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Fire away,” said Hammond.

  Jenny’s first choice was a strange one. The song had become a kind of anthem to the Depression and had been made famous by Rudy Vallee, the nasally Ivy Leaguer turned crooner, who had recorded it almost as a dirge.

  Keegan and Rudman sat nervously on the edge of one of the stuffed sofas, sipping champagne. At first Keegan was shocked by her choice. But as she sang, he realized it didn’t matter. She closed her eyes and held a finger against one ear, leaned her head back slightly and started singing. She sang with such ardor, reaching for and hitting each note so perfectly, that her choice of material quickly became moot. Keegan sat back and marveled at her incredible control, at her passion when she sang.

  “Once I built a railroad, made it run

  Made it race against time.

  Once I built a railroad, now it s done.

  Brother, can you spare a dime?”

  She turned the bitter tune into a torch song, almost a love song with an upbeat lilt, as she finished:

  “Hey, don’t you remember, they called me Al,

  It was Al all the time,

  Hey, don‘t you remember, I’m your pal,

  Buddy, can you spare a dime?”

  Then segueing easily into the next selection, looking across the room at Keegan, she sang:

  “I got a crush on you,

  Sweetie Pie,

  All the day and night time,

  Hear my cry,

  The world will pardon my mush,

  But I have got a crush,

  My baby on you.”

  And from the Gershwin love song she easily turned to a Billie Holiday heartbreaker, shifting the words slightly to suit her, stretching a syllable out for two or three notes, rolling from one note to another, shaving the songs down to the bare essentials, then as she segued into her last number, she looked over at Keegan and wiggled her hips and winked, then in a very upbeat tempo, fingers snapping and staring bright-eyed at her lover across the room, she sang:

  “Everything

  Is fine and dandy

  Sugar candy

  When I’m with you

  She ended the set on a high note with Kraus and bass player Chuck Graves jamming behind her. When she finished, Kraus, Graves, Keegan and Rudman all were speechless for seconds before they simultaneously burst into applause.

  “Immaculate, lady, immaculate,” Kraus said, flashing a million-dollar smile.

  Dead silence for a moment when she finished, then Keegan snatched up the extension phone. “Well?” he asked.

  “How soon can you get her to New York?”

  “Are you kidding!”

  “Not this time.”

  He cupped the receiver. “He wants to know how soon we can come to New York,” he said to Jenny.

  Jenny bit her lower lip. Her heart was pounding. This was a chance she had dreamed about since she was a child. But

  she had other responsibilities. Her eyes began to well up with tears. Keegan was so happy, so happy for her. Perhaps they could go to New York for a few weeks and test the waters. Perhaps if she was a success she could do something significant for her friends and family in Germany. Perhaps .

  “Go . . . go . . . pick up the phone,” Keegan said.

  “Oh no, no she said shaking her head with embarrassment. He grabbed her hand and put the extension phone in it.

  “Here, say hello to John Hammond,” he said, and went to the other phone.

  “Hello she said hesitantly.

  “Miss Gould, you have a voice that would put the heavenly chorus to shame. Quite simply, you have a great voice and you know exactly how to use it.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she whispered.

  Keegan picked up the other phone. “So.. . Where do we go from here?” he asked Hammond.

  “You get her this far and I’ll take it from there. We’ll introduce her around, maybe get her a guest shot at Kelley’s or the Onyx, one of the downtown clubs. I’ll get Benny and Bill Basie, maybe even Lady Day herself down there to hear her. With a voice like that she can sing her way through any door in town.”

  “All right, all right!” Keegan cried.

  “Do me a favor,” Hammond said. “I’ll call Louis Valdon at the Gramophone Recording Studio there in Paris and set up a session. Cut all four songs and send them ahead to me. I want to hear what she sounds like on wax. Put Charlie on a minute.”

  “Go in the other bedroom and get on the phone,” Keegan yelled to Kraus. A moment later the dapper arranger picked up.

  “Charlie, we’ll do a session with her. All four songs. Maybe you can add drums behind her, what do you think?”

  “Sounds right.”

  “Can you produce it for me? Francis will pick up the tab, won’t you, Francis?”

  “You skinflint.”

  “Hey, I told you, get her to New York and I’ll take over. Listen, if she sounds as good on wax as she does over the phone, I’ll have the city hopping up and down by the time she gets here.”

  “You’re on.”

  “I’ll call Louis right now and tell him to expect your call. Let me know when you’ll be in New York.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  “Hey,” Hammond laughed, “after ten years I finally got something out of you.”

  That night they ate alone in a small unknown restaurant on the Left Bank. She would go to Berlin in the morning to say her goodbyes. He would stay on in Paris and make arrangements for the trip, then fly over to Berlin in five days to pick her up. He booked her on the ten A.M. plane to Berlin the next morning.

  “We’ll fly to London and take the Queen Mary over,” he told her.

  After dinner they walked down the banks of the river. The bateau-mouche slipped by and they sat down for a moment, watched and listened to the laughter of the people on the pleasure boat. They walked on, started across the wooden foot bridge that crossed one of the small tributaries at the Quai d
e Bethune. From the middle they could see the gargoyles on Notre Dame, squatting ominously in spotlights, and beyond it, the Eiffel Tower, a brilliant, luminous triangle.

  “It’s like a diamond glittering in the dark,” Keegan said.

  “Why did you decide to live in Berlin when you came from the States?” Jenny asked. “You seem to adore Paris so much.”

  “I was doing business in Germany. And I truly liked the people. That’s why I really don’t understand what’s happened to them.”

  “The devil spoke and they listened,” she said.

  “You really believe that, don’t you? That Hitler’s the devil incarnate?”

  “Yes,” she answered with a bitterness he had not heard in her voice before. “And Himmler, Goring, Goebbels. All of them.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her lightly on the lips, but she pressed harder as he started to draw away, clinging to him almost in desperation.

  “Hey, what is it?” he asked softly.

  “I love you, Francis. I love everything about you. You’re funny and tough and a little mysterious and you make me feel safe. And I know in my heart nobody has ever felt toward me the way you do. And I do love you so for that, too.”

  “And I love you,” he answered. “For all time and beyond. I promise you, I’ll make your life the most dazzling adventure you can imagine. I’ll devote my whole life to making you happy.”

  She brushed his lips with the fingertips of one hand.

  “You already have,” she said.

  The hawk shrieked as it swept past the domed tower of the Gothic fortress, startled by the rumbling, blazing torches flickering through the window slots. Inside the stone walls, Himmler stood apart from the others, watching the ritual unfold. Even he was stunned by the power of the play and its setting. Vierhaus watched from the side of the tower, jealous of Himmler’s moment of glory and yet awed by the power of the ritual. It was the first holy ceremony at the new secret SS headquarters at Wewelsberg. Beside him, etched in lurid flickering light, were Hess, Heydrich, Goebbels and Goring—the powers behind the throne.

  This was Himmler’s night and he was indeed a genius. No place could be more perfect than this moss-covered, dank castle, its cold halls stalked by Teutonic ghosts who had died jousting for the pleasure of ancient kings or clashing broadswords on some forgotten battlefield.

  Himmler’s cold, mouse-like features wavered in the yellow torchlight and his jaws twitched as he tried to control his emotions. He loved the night. It matched the darkness of his soul and the mad fantasy he had brought to life in this eerie fortress. His ghoulish imagination had created a nightmare Camelot, a flagitious Round Table whose homicidal knights now had a secret headquarters in which to swear allegiance to their new king, Adolf Hitler. Not to the Fatherland—to Hitler.

  Thirty-six newly graduated SS officers stood in their black uniforms, eyes ablaze with hypnotic fervor, their passionate oath to defend Hitler to the death echoing in the silo-like stone tower while the wind soughed and whipped the torch flames into a frenzy. They stepped forth, four at a time, to touch the consecrated battle standard, the swastika, a perversion of the Sanskrit swastika, a religious symbol to the Hindus, its four points representing the animal and spirit worlds, hell and earth. The left- hand swastika adopted by the Nazis stood for darkness, for Kali, goddess of murder, for black magic and witchcraft. To simply touch the cloth of this flag was sexually stimulating to some of the initiates.

  The new black knights of the Third Reich returned to their places on the winding stone staircase, raised their arms and cried out:

  ‘Heil Hitler! . Heil Hitler! . Heil Hitler!’

  They had touched the consecrated flag and taken the oath of fealty to Hitler. Now Himmler walked up the steps followed by Heydrich, giving each of the initiates a sword and scabbard to be worn only at official ceremonies. And each was given the long knife, their dagger of authority.

  What a moment for Himmler! Hitler had given him full responsibility for creating the Schutzstaffel and he had gone about it with a vengeance, combining the mission of the SS with his own fantasy, spending three million reichsmarks to renovate the ancient castle known as Wewelsberg outside Paderborn in the heart of Westphalia. Just as the Nazis had perverted the swastika, Himmler had perverted Christian holidays into SS holidays—pagan rituals to celebrate Hitler’s birthday, the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, harvest and spring festivals; had created a funeral service straight out of the Dark Ages, a midnight, torch lit ritual climaxed by cremation; had combined witchcraft and mythology into a pseudo religious order. And he conscripted and nurtured men who disavowed Christianity in favor of darker spirits; who worshipped Ares and other gods of war; who were matched in marriage to Aryan maidens selected by their commanding officers; who dreamed chaos, murder and unspeakable atrocity, their psychoses nourished by the Third Reich and encouraged to flourish by the Führer.

  Thus the SS was born; a madhouse government within the government, bound by no laws, with awesome powers and its own secret police, the SD. Hitler’s private army created in the mind of Himmler. But if Himmler had created the machine, Hitler had given it its perverted soul. Racism, Hitler had written in Mein Kampf would give the Germans “blood” and “soul.” It would identify a common “enemy.” It would restore the self- confidence and enhance the ego of the German people. So, he had ordered Himmler to create the SS. It would enforce this Nazi tenet and Goebbels would publicize it. Hate, terror, lies, these were the spine of the Nazi Third Reich.

  Vierhaus stared down at Himmler, standing at the base of the staircase, looking up at the new troopers spiraling up and around him. Himmler smiled smugly. Treachery begets treachery, Vierhaus thought to himself. The SS would become Hitler’s avenging army against his onetime friend Rohm, now turned traitor, and his maverick SA brownshirts.

  “You are now members of the greatest order in history, Die Schutzstaffel,” Himmler said. “Tomorrow you will take part in a great adventure, one which will tell the world that our great leader, Adolf Hitler, is Germany. And we are the true knights of the Third Reich. We are his army. Sieg Heil!”

  “Sieg heil!” They answered.

  “Sieg heil!”

  “Sieg heil!” They answered.

  “Sieg heil!”

  “Sieg heil!” They answered.

  Himmler raised his dagger over his head.

  “Go with God,” he cried.

  Everything seemed right but the weather

  Saturday, June 30, 1934, had been the day picked by Himmler for Operation Kolibri, “Hummingbird.” Hitler had accepted the date without question, for if Goring was the obese Falstaff to Hitler’s king, Himmler was the Führer’s Merlin. Himmler had relied on his mystic powers, his understanding of the occult, witchcraft, astrology, and numerology, to arrive at the date. He conjured the spirits and advised his leader that the weekend was the perfect time for Operation Kolibri. Himmler was the ultimate magician of the Third Reich. He could even manufacture evidence out of thin air if the Führer needed it.

  It was Himmler who had invented Hummingbird, as they all had come to call it, and drawn up the basic blueprints, although everyone ultimately contributed something to the dark plot. Theodor Eicke, the sadistic manager of Dachau, had drawn up the initial list, even going back through old news accounts seeking names that might have otherwise been forgotten or overlooked. Himmler and Goring added their own victims to the growing roll. Then Heydrich dropped a few names in the hat. Hitler had even invited Vierhaus to add his names to the list but the deformed little box of a man declined.

  “Dan k e, mein Führer,” he said. “My enemies are all dead already.”

  So the list grew. Not only leaders of the brownshirt Sturmabteilung, but political opponents and old enemies appeared. By the end of June there were over three thousand names on the deadly roster.

  The schizoid path of deception and betrayal eventually led to the town of Bad Godesberg, near Bonn, and a quaint hotel called the Dresen which
overlooked the Rhine River. In his suite on the second floor, Hitler brooded. His round, astonished eyes glared up into the southern skies, prematurely dark from the storm clouds that were broiling up between Bonn and Munich. Occasionally a jagged arrow of lightning would etch the contours of the river, followed by rumbling drums of thunder.

  He stood in the open french doors that led to the balcony, his hands stiff behind his back, his shoulders hunched. The weather had to clear, he said to himself, smacking his fist into his open palm several times. It was crucial that the weather clear. His dinner of vegetables and fruit sat untouched. The room seemed to crackle with tension. Vierhaus, who was smugly honored by being invited to sit with the Fuhrer on this important night, had never seen him look so gaunt and edgy. Hitler’s eyes were ringed with deep, dark circles and they seemed even more feverish than usual. His cheek twitched uncontrollably.

  He had made his old friend, Ernst Röhm, probably the best recruiter and trainer of militia in the world, head of the Sturmabteilung and Röhm had built it from 600,000 men to 3 million in one year, an amazing feat. And then Ernst had developed ideas of his own. Dark delusions. Now it was obvious he planned to use the SA to overthrow Hitler.

  A born sold i er, Hitler’s inner voice screamed, a street soldier, only happy when dealing in death. Why did he turn on me? How could he be so disloyal?

  Hitler saw in these elements a truly Wagnerian tragedy. Two magnificent schemers pitted against each other. One of his oldest friends. Now his greatest enemy. Such irony.

  And yet, Hitler could still not bring himself to initiate Hummingbird. He had to be sure. He still had to have evidence that his old friend had turned traitor.