The Losing Role

by Steve Anderson

  I told Winkl about the corpses and the four officials’ reaction.

  Winkl began to speak. He stopped.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Your Abraham, sir. He could have been from here. But in the end, in the last few years, there was no one like that here in town that I know of.” Winkl’s eyes searched the room.

  “There’s something else? Take your time.”

  Winkl began again: “Sir, in the last days, when the SS were still here, some Heimgauers disappeared.”

  The local SS stuck it out to the end in many towns, always expecting some miracle that would keep them in their showy uniforms, some sacred immunity that would let them play the bully forever. But that was always before our troops passed through.

  “No, this is different,” I said. “What I saw, it happened later. Their blood was fresh.”

  “That’s all I can tell you. You ask me. I tell you.”

  So the man was wary. Who wouldn’t be? I could play along. “You know what I think? You don’t stand for hokum, do you?” I said. Winkl shrugged, waiting for my hokum to end. I continued: “I am the Public Safety Officer for Heimgau, you see. And it’s come to my attention that you were a policeman here, before.”

  “Yes, that is true. But it was well before. Before the Nazis.”

  “How long have you served City Hall? A good twenty years, counting the cop work? Seen a lot of change here, have you?”

  Winkl snorted. “One could say that, ja.”

  “And you’ve become a keen judge of how things operate around here.”

  Winkl eyed me, his lips tightening, face hardening up. “I would not feel comfortable, unlike others, informing like that—”

  “It’s not informing, and it’s not a question of if you decide to or not. Still, I’d prefer that you agree.”

  Winkl said nothing. He looked down, at his strong hands.

  “Go on,” I said. “We’re just talking here.”

  “You’re not a specialist at this, are you? The Public Safety is new to you.”

  One smart guy, my man. I had to chuckle. “We don’t always get what we want, do we? Look, I’m doing this my own way. I don’t want you to spy. This will be just between you and me, a partnership based on trust, not rules. There’s no politics here, no . . . ideologies. No ‘isms’ at all. Think of it like this: You’re not going to the enemy or to the Amis or whatever we are to you. You’re going to me.”

  Winkl’s eyebrows raised.

  “You come straight to me and only me when you think something’s fishy, and I’ll do my best to correct it. Promise. What do you say? I’ll throw in a carton of Lucky Strike for good measure.”

  Winkl dared a grin. “And a couple bars of the Hershey’s?”

  “Done.”

  “Then I agree.”

  “Good.” So far, so good.

  “Tell me something about you,” Winkl said. “You are an Ami, that’s certain, but you are also German, yes? Your accent’s too good to be from school lessons.”

  “My parents are German. I was born here.” I stopped there. I didn’t want any local buttering me up and especially not on account of my Deutsch. Colonel Spanner himself had warned me of that. “Good? Clear on that?”

  “Yes.” Winkl looked to his lap.

  “Let’s just keep this moving, shall we? Now, my directives say I have to ask this: Have you ever been a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party or any other affiliated organization?”

  Winkl laughed, shooting spittle. “The pigs threw me in Dachau for weeks back in ‘37. Morons mistook me for my brother Udo, who was a Communist. Go and put that in your notes.”

  “Excellent. I mean, you know what I mean.” I stood and held out a hand. “Herr Winkl, congratulations. I am appointing you Temporary Police Chief of Heimgau.”

  Winkl’s face paled. He shot up, knocking over his crate.

  “It’s only for a few weeks. You’ll help me announce curfews and proclamations till the major finds a full-time Bürgermeister. Then we’ll find a new chief. Short-time gig is all it is.”

  Winkl kept shaking his head. He trudged in a circle, in and out of the light, glaring at his toppled crate like he wanted to stomp it to splinters.

  Of course, it was not the response I wanted. But then I recalled my backgrounders: Heimgau’s geographic isolation had always spared her that influx of outsiders who deluged a town in times of trouble. This time, though, Hitler’s fine mess would bring in the newcomers and Heimgauers had to dread it like they had the plagues of centuries before.

  “Otherwise?” I added, “I’ll have to run things myself until we find someone who’s qualified. Say, some German refugee Joe Stalin expelled from the East, or what we in English call a ‘Displaced Person.’”

  “A what? What’s that?” Winkl tried the English word, but only sputtered his P’s and S’s.

  “A Dis-placed Per-son. DP for short. Get used to that word. That’s what my authorities are calling all those your Führer brought into Germany and imprisoned here against their will. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Concentration camp inmates, to be sure, but nearer to Heimgau what we have mostly are men who were being worked to death. Former forced laborers. Slavics, mostly, Russians, Yugoslavs. And not too happy about it either. Many we’ll be repatriating—sending back home—but that could take a while and meanwhile? Not too happy.”

  Winkl’s eyes had glazed over with worry. He righted his crate and sat back on it. “If it’s like you say. But for a few weeks only.”

  “Excellent.” I handed Winkl a list. “Now, pass these rules on to the townsfolk. Make up some nice big signs for them, post them around. First, though, gather all keys for the jail and the police station—”

  The cellar door flew open. Major Membre plowed down the steps. Winkl sprung to attention, his face pale. Membre had a riding crop that he held out as if to strike Winkl.

  “What are you doing down here?” Membre said to me.

  “Interviews, sir, for Public Safety.”

  “And you?” Membre shouted at Winkl, who looked to me to interpret.

  “He would be the one being interviewed,” I said to Membre.

  “That man needs to be out manning the courtyard, and p.d.q.. We need new tallies. I’ve got a proper cameraman out there.” That morning Major Membre had instructed Winkl to gather every icon and object of Nazism inside City Hall and pile them up outside for destruction. They already had a great mound of party pins and armbands, SA standards and tin SS daggers, swastika clocks and even kids’ play-sets of Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels. Out there, throngs of Heimgauers were battling hunger and jitters and nostalgia to please their new Major-Conqueror in his Nazi Kitsch Destruction Drive. It was one way to get the people back out on the streets. Not to be outdone by their zeal, the major was sure to add tally tables and graphs and glossy photos to his report of the big event. “We’re losing the moment,” Membre went on. “Don’t you see?”

  “One moment, sir.” I told the major about naming Winkl Temporary Police Chief. There was no one else. So find someone else to play junk collector, I wanted to add.

  “That right? Ha!” Membre slapped the crop against his thigh. “You should like that,” he said to Winkl as if Winkl understood. “Folks here been kicking you around long enough.”

  Winkl could only grimace. I dismissed my new chief, and he gave me a hurried half-bow on his way out.

  “Hey, lookie there. I think he likes you.” Major Membre bounded over and, to my surprise, lit the fresh Lucky hanging from my mouth. “Custodian becomes Police Chief. Rags to riches. It’s a swell angle.”

  “Thanks. I saw the troop truck. What’s new up there?”

  “That Sergeant Horton is such a front-line ruffian, but he knows the drill. He says that CIC agent of ours will pass through any day, to check in. Spanner’s the name? Say, speaking of, let’s give his men a poker game tonight after curfew. Set it up, will you?”

  “Spanner is the name. Yes, I will.” Bec
ause I sure have nothing better to do, I wanted to add. I also realized I could bank a few points with CIC Agent Spanner by hosting his men.

  “Swell, then.” Membre went over to a high cellar window and, gazing out, released a deep and satisfied moan, like that of an aching and grimy man sinking into a hot bath with suds. “Ah, yes. You never asked where my billet is. You know where my billet is? Bet you’re just dying to know. Aren’t you?”

  “Okay. Where’s your billet?”

  “The castle. There’s fine quarters up there, just swell. You’d think it’s all old cold stone and dust up there, but no. Oh, no.” Membre wagged a finger at the window as if talking to his castle, which I knew from our backgrounders: Hohenheimgau Castle, high above Heimgau Town, had once housed a respected bishopric, including seminary, monastery and chambers. By the 1930s only the small monastery was still operating up there, the few aging monks remaining aloof from local Nazi authority, never blessing yet never challenging while down below in town the brown priest Plant was spiking his many sermons with increasing doses of vitriol. “But there’s so much more, more of the church up there, more everything,” the major added.

  This day, I had to admit, was suddenly a long one and my patience thinning fast. Sure, Major, I was thinking, you got your schön little town, and on top of it, practically crushing it, sits a humongous, stinking, deadly gorilla with the curiously long name of Catastrophic Nazi World War. And the gorilla’s latest newborn bastard? Those three dead tortured you could give a hell about.

  “This town’s like a museum, it really is,” Membre droned on. “All of it. A lovely, sumptuous exhibit, chock-full of fine art. This is an artisan town. Did you know that?”

  “It says so in the backgrounders.”

  “The what? It’s different when you see it all. It really is, I must tell you. You have to understand . . .” Membre paused. He turned from the window showing hard, dark eyes. “Now you listen, Kaspar. These here people here, they brought this on themselves, and we don’t owe any of them a damned thing.”

  More about Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945 (Kaspar Brothers #2)

  ***

  Introducing Lost Kin: A Novel (Kaspar Brothers #3):

  Reunited brothers confront a secret Allied betrayal in postwar Munich.

  Occupied Munich, 1946: Irina, a Cossack refugee, confesses to murdering a GI, but American captain Harry Kaspar doesn’t buy it. As Harry scours the devastated city for the truth, it leads him to his long-lost German brother, Max, who returned to Hitler’s Germany before the war.

  Max has a questionable past, and he needs Harry for the cause that could redeem him: rescuing Irina’s stranded clan of Cossacks who have been disowned by the Allies and are now being hunted by Soviet death squads—the cold-blooded upshot of a callous postwar policy.

  As a harsh winter brews, the Soviets close in and the Cold War looms, Harry and Max desperately plan for a risky last-ditch rescue on a remote stretch of the German-Czech border. A mysterious visitor from Max’s darkest days shadows them. Everyone is suspect, including Harry’s lover, Sabine, and Munich detective Hartmut Dietz—both of whom have pledged to help. But before the Kaspar brothers can save the innocent victims of peace, grave secrets and the deep contempt sown during the war threaten to damn them all.

  More about Lost Kin: A Novel

  www.stephenfanderson.com