Grandt glanced out the window. Why would anyone wear sunglasses on such a cloudy day? On the bench opposite Weiner, there were dozens of photographs that seemed to have been piled hastily, the top ones turned over, blocking his view of the others.
He returned his attention to the SS guard, who was at most five years older than him. Grandt leaned over to examine the man’s pale face. He’d been well trained in first aid, but he couldn’t help feeling that this nurse was far better qualified to assess such a condition.
Why do they need me here? Grandt wondered.
With the flat of her hand, Emma hit him hard from behind, at the base of his skull, repeating the motion three times.
The young man hit the floor, and his world went completely dark, not unlike the theater from his youth just before the movie reel began to spin.
Chapter 30
Wednesday, October 18, 1944
11:32 a.m.—Train from Stralsund to Berlin
Berg woke as the train began to roll, jerking him back and forth as it picked up speed.
He stared at his watch. Christ. He’d been asleep for more than two hours. He looked out the window to get his bearings. They were pulling out of a station.
I didn’t think this train was supposed to stop so close to Berlin.
His head swiveled, searching for Grandt, then he remembered that he’d sent him to find the blonde he thought he’d recognized on the platform. His assistant was nowhere to be seen. Grandt probably hadn’t found her, and had disappeared to go to the bathroom or stretch his legs when he found Berg asleep. Berg had soon come to realize that Grandt was conscientious but also a bit of a daydreamer who lacked any kind of internal clock. He sighed and picked up his novel, hoping to squeeze in a little more reading. Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot was about to stumble onto a crime scene.
—
SS guard Thomas Weiner sat open-mouthed, staring across at the other bench. There was no sign of the scientist he was supposed to be guarding, but there was a redhead sitting opposite him who looked to be in her mid-thirties—and not unattractive, either. He assumed he was hallucinating, because the woman wasn’t wearing anything except her panties. Her exposed breasts swayed with the movement of the train, which had just departed from the station, waking him as it jolted forward. She stared back at him, putting a cigarette into her mouth and inhaling.
Her smoke joined the fog surrounding Weiner’s brain as he tried to make sense of the situation, closing his eyes again and reopening them to see if Wolf might be there in the redhead’s place. No such luck. The sergeant looked down and gasped. Like her, he wore only his underwear. His eyes spun sideways across the room. His uniform was gone.
“Do you want to do it or not?” the woman asked, sucking on her cigarette again, her perfume overwhelming the smell of the smoke, her bright-red lipstick leaving its mark where her lips squeezed the tobacco.
He didn’t know what to say. Then he heard the door slide open. He turned.
Oh no, please God, no.
Erhard Wolf stood speechless in the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing, Weiner? Our last trip you drank too much. Then I leave for a few minutes this time around and you do this?” Wolf said, pointing toward the naked woman.
“Sir, I can explain everything . . . or close to everything.”
“Really Weiner? Everything? I look forward to hearing your explanation and why you think I shouldn’t report you to Kammler or Himmler.” The scientist paused, looking around the room. “Maybe you can start by explaining your new uniform.”
Weiner turned whiter than his crisp white underwear. The life and credibility he had carefully built as an SS guard were crumbling. He wasn’t even thirty yet, but he had to wonder if he was going senile. Or was the war finally taking its toll? Maybe he was allergic to alcohol? This was twice in the past week that he had inexplicably strayed from his duties. He knew now that he needed help. He couldn’t have Wolf snitch on him. He would do anything for the scientist, despite not liking him, if only Wolf was willing to forgive him for this second indiscretion—no, for this twisted perversion, he admitted to himself.
Wolf tossed the woman’s clothes at her and she caught them, casually, as though they’d been thrown at her many times before. She dressed quickly, telling Weiner she was sorry that things hadn’t worked out as he’d hoped. She said goodbye and left the compartment.
Once in the hallway, the redhead slowed her pace and began to walk back to the general seating area in coach three. That’s where the kind nurse had first located her, offering her a deal she couldn’t refuse: five hundred Reichsmarks to sit naked in a nearby compartment until the man there woke up. Easy money, especially in wartime, when even fifty Reichsmarks was hard to come by. She laughed, knowing that she’d done a lot worse—for a lot less. She pulled the payment from the purse she’d hidden under her seat, counting out the nurse’s money one more time.
—
The SS guard’s clothes were tight on Manfred’s sturdy frame, but he wasn’t complaining.
It had been Emma’s idea to strip them off Weiner while he was unconscious and have Manfred wear them so that he would look like an SS guard.
With Emma dressed as a nurse and him in uniform, they were able to make the case to the conductor that he needed to make an emergency stop at the upcoming station to help save the life of the Gestapo officer they’d found unconscious on the train. They explained that Grandt, whose ID they’d found in his suit pocket, must have fallen backward while drinking. He had hit his head so severely that he’d stopped breathing by the time they were called to assist him.
In a small town about forty minutes north of Berlin, Emma and Manfred had carried Grandt off the train, one arm slung over each of them. They laid him on a platform bench, both breathing heavily as the steam engine started up again to leave the station.
“I hope the poor bugger lives,” Manfred said. “I know he’s Gestapo, but did you have to hit him so damn hard? I just don’t like attracting attention to ourselves like that, especially when he didn’t seem that threatening.”
“Manfred,” Emma said firmly, “what this man saw put all of us at risk. We had to defend ourselves. I considered killing him, but I figured I’d try to apply something I learned about head injuries when Nash was hurt.”
“What was that?”
“The base of the head, just above the neck, is one of the worst places to get hit hard. Your odds of remembering anything from immediately before you’re hit are very low, especially with strong repeated blows—or a bullet.”
“So this guy is going to live but not remember anything we did to him?”
“He’ll be lucky if he remembers he was on a train,” she said.
“Any ideas about where we take him?”
“Not far,” Emma said, lifting Grandt again and straining to get his arm around her shoulder.
—
Berg was furious at himself. He felt like an idiot and knew that he looked like one. They had arrived late to Berlin. Once it became clear that his criminal assistant wasn’t on the train, he’d waddled to the conductor to find out what might have happened. Only then did he learn that someone matching Grandt’s description had been carried off the train before the final stop, apparently having hit his head after drinking too much. A nurse and an SS guard had gone with Grandt, escorting him to a nearby hospital.
“Which town?” Berg inquired.
“Wilmersdorf,” the grizzled conductor answered.
“Did you get their names?” Berg asked.
“Why would I get their names?” the conductor said. “There was an emergency—they were saving a man’s life.”
“Was the nurse’s hair blond?” Berg asked.
The conductor cocked his head. “You know, I didn’t notice the color of the nurse’s hair. Did I mention that she was saving som
eone’s life?” The conductor spun around, choosing to walk away rather than swear at a Gestapo official, something he knew he might later regret.
Berg threw his trilby to the ground. He still hadn’t been able to confirm whether the woman who gave him the gold coin had been on the train from Stralsund. He knew one thing without a doubt: he would track her down and find out whether she had anything to do with Grandt’s disappearance. Killing one of his criminal assistants had been a serious crime, for which only the freckled youngster Dunkle had paid the price. Taking another officer from him would be unforgivable, and this time she would suffer the full consequences.
First, though, he had to find Grandt.
Chapter 31
Friday, October 27, 1944
Twelve Noon—The Tiergarten, Berlin
The weather was wetter than when they’d met in late September, making the lions look stronger, their furs shinier, and the glint in their eyes sharper.
As Emma approached the statue, she saw for the first time that the lioness had been wounded, an arrow having pierced her side. But the female remained stoic, tending to her cubs while her mate stood over her, defending her, on the lookout for other attacks.
Emma and Paula met at the statue and kept moving, returning to the path that ran through the dense woods behind the statue and the sitting area. Emma immediately handed back the envelope of photographs, thanking her contact for getting them to her so quickly.
They noticed that the forest seemed sparser, a reflection of winter’s hasty approach. As they spoke, another bout of light rain began to fall on the trees overhanging the sandy pathway, enclosing them in a shroud of pitter-patters.
“Is Wolf on board?” Paula asked.
“He is, yes,” Emma began. “When we first met on the train—”
“Please,” Paula said, putting up a hand and shaking her head. Their implicit understanding was rapidly becoming clear to Emma: Paula would guide her and tell her what she needed to know, but she didn’t want to know much in case she was ever pressed by the Nazis. Emma also suspected that knowing details might make her contact feel that she was even more of a traitor to her leader.
Paula wore another red hat—a fedora this time—as well as a dark scarf wound tightly around her head, the same long gray coat, and large tinted glasses that were different from the dark sunglasses she had used before. Emma could now trace the outline of her eyes. Despite all her coverings, Paula seemed thinner, especially in her face, which looked grayish and sickly. She did seem to Emma friendly and open, more so than during their initial meeting, but also at times more agitated, even distraught.
“Is something wrong?” Emma asked.
“We’re in a war, and we’re losing—of course something’s wrong,” Paula snapped. A lengthy silence followed. “I’m sorry. It’s just so different from when this war started. France is lost to us. We’re under attack on all fronts and . . . and I’m told that even the führer is deeply discouraged.”
“I understand. There’s no need to be sorry,” Emma said. “Just out of interest, Paula, how many times have you met the führer?” Emma knew that it was a gamble to ask.
Paula gave her a small smile, eyebrows raised at Emma’s prying. She sighed.
“One complaint about our führer is that he is very remote and inaccessible, like a turtle in his shell. It’s hard for anyone to see him. Even at public events, he often keeps to himself, not announcing his presence, which was once unheard of.” She hesitated. “Many blame that harebrained Eva Braun. She and the führer have spent a lot of time together in the capital, in Munich, and at the Berghof, his country home near Austria. According to people I know, the pair talk together endlessly about anything but the war, including their love of cinema, Richard Wagner’s music, sport, dogs, and their artwork. Apparently, they love buying art—especially works by contemporary German masters, such as Peiner, Kampf, and Dettmann.”
“Who is Eva Braun?” Emma asked, feeling as if she’d missed something.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Paula said. “Of course you wouldn’t know her. She’s Hitler’s mistress—a pretty young thing from Munich, not too bright, most would say. She isn’t even from a wealthy family. Her father is a teacher, her mother a seamstress. The führer met her before he became Germany’s leader and continued to see her.” Paula lowered her voice. “Word has it the Nazis keep her hidden away because they want the führer to appear independent and detached. That way, he’s more attractive to the German people—particularly women.”
“I’m surprised she goes along with that,” Emma said.
“Yes, I agree. But her sister Gretl married one of the führer’s senior officers recently, and that seems to provide a cover, so Fräulein Braun can at least be seen socially with Hitler from time to time.” Paula paused. “To answer your question, though, I’ve probably met the führer a dozen times, usually at state dinners. On one occasion recently, I actually happened to sit beside the elusive Eva Braun.”
“Did you like her?”
“She was polite but far from worldly. Frivolous in many ways, and, yes, I suppose I liked her, but I certainly don’t want her distracting our leader from his duties. She kept talking about their grand plans for reshaping Berlin into Germania—a capital worthy of the Nazis’ worldwide reign.” Paula smiled wistfully. “She lamented, as many do, that those plans had to be put on hold for the war, but the führer and his architect, Albert Speer, still have their blueprints—with huge buildings and wide boulevards. Fräulein Braun said that Hitler has taken to studying them again.”
“Another way to escape the realities of a war turning against him?” Emma asked.
When Paula looked at her, Emma could see the creases in her makeup deepen.
“Nobody would dare say that to him.” She looked at the ground as they walked. “But perhaps.”
“Any sense as to whether she influences his decisions on meaningful matters?”
“Dear God, I hope not!” Paula exclaimed. “But I did hear a rumor that the only reason cosmetics are still allowed, despite rationing and bans on all other luxury products, is that Fräulein Braun intervened. She made sure women wouldn’t lose this final piece of their normal lives—the ability to look beautiful amid the ugliness of war.”
“Damn the bomb-making and give me some lipstick and face powder!” Emma said, laughing. Paula laughed, too.
They turned back toward the statue.
“So, thanks to Wolf, we should be able to delay the progress on the bomb. Next, I’ll move on to von Braun and Sicke. Then onto the lion king himself.”
“How can I be helpful?” Paula asked.
That was just what Emma wanted to hear. “Wolf said it’d be best to get to Wernher von Braun through his younger brother Magnus, who is also a scientist but much more accessible than Wernher, even though they work together.”
Paula nodded. “I’ll try to connect you to Magnus von Braun.”
“That would be much appreciated.”
“All right. And what else?”
Emma took a deep breath. Blunt seemed to be the best way to go about it. “Everyone wants to help their country, Paula—but why you, why now and in this way? It would be most helpful for me to know your motivations in all of this.”
“I don’t see why that’s relevant,” Paula said hastily, her tone clipped. “You agreed not to ask me any personal questions.”
“Without this missing piece,” Emma countered, “I might be left doubting some things you tell me, mainly because I don’t know why you’re taking such enormous risks, but also because, well, I don’t know who you are or what you truly care about.”
“I see. Well, then, let me ask you the same question,” Paula said. She stopped on the path, turning to face Emma. “Before meeting Herr Nash and coming to Berlin, you were a nurse, happily working at your isolated English castle—not playing the role of a high-stakes in
ternational negotiator. So why, exactly, have you risked your life by coming here? I’m guessing it’s not just for the sake of world peace.”
The two women stared at each other, mouths pressed shut, the breath from their nostrils visible in the air between them.
“Here’s the truth: the day before the war began, my German husband kidnapped our three-year-old son, Axel, and brought him here. So, yes, I’ve come on behalf of Everett, hoping to make the world safer for all mothers and their children—but I’ve also come to find my son and take him home.”
Paula said nothing at first, only nodding slowly. She opened her mouth to say something, then turned to resume walking. When she finally spoke, it was to ask questions—about Emma’s past, her husband, and Axel and his personality, including what he liked and didn’t like.
It was strange to speak so much about her beloved son with her contact, but it made Emma feel lighter to share such a significant part of herself with Paula.
“Emma, do you have any idea where your boy might be?”
“No,” Emma said, her voice breaking. “And I have no idea how to track him down. It’s been five years . . . too long . . . I’ve told you who he was—but I don’t know who he is anymore.”
They were approaching the statue. Paula again turned to face Emma. “Do you want my help locating Axel?”
Emma nodded yes, unable to speak, a well of emotions rising. For weeks now, she had tried to close Axel away in a little mental compartment so that she could stay focused on Nash’s mission until the time was right.
“You keep doing your good work on our common mission and I’ll look into Dieter’s whereabouts,” Paula said. “It may take time but, rest assured, if this Dieter is still alive I’ll help you find him—and your son.”
“That would be the greatest gift anyone could ever give me, Paula. Thank you.”
Paula took Emma’s hand, her thin lips opening into a warm smile.
“No, thank you, Emma. It means so much to hear that others like you have suffered as intensely as I have. My father always said, ‘We are soul mates in our suffering, and separated by our successes.’ I believe that you and I may be soul mates. One day, I promise to share my story and why I want to stop this crazy weapon. Until then, you’ll have to believe, as one woman to another, that my motivations may be different from yours but they are every bit as pure.”
Weapons of Peace Page 27