Georg looked surprised that the man hadn’t realized the obvious. “To blow out the pillar so the roof would fall in. I had to kill all of them: Hitler, Himmler, and Goring. Himmler would have declared martial law. He’d have owned the country in an hour.”
Nebe wondered if Georg would really believe he was stupid. “But he doesn’t have popularity.”
Georg was adamant. “He’d have had it in a week.”
Nebe considered the possibility. “Perhaps …” There was nothing else to say.
“You really shouldn’t argue with him; he just might be smarter than you are.” Nolte was behaving like an embittered fiancé. “You know I love that Prussian thing you do, squinting then widening your eyes to show that you’re angry.”
Brandt had a sudden burst of curiosity. “Was Himmler really there?”
Nolte felt he was being one-upped. “What are you suggesting?”
Brandt seemed hurt by his tone. “Not suggesting anything, it just hadn’t been mentioned before.”
Nebe was quite suddenly revived; he shot another glance from Georg to Nolte. “So, was Himmler there? And Goring?”
Nolte despised having to confirm information; he considered it beneath him and yet that was his fate. “Yes? I think so.”
Nebe stood up with a sadistic grin. “Well then, the rest of us will have a break until you know so!”
Nolte snapped to attention as Nebe shouted down the corridor for the turn keys. Brandt stretched in wide-eyed wonder. As the small headed giants dutifully snatched Georg up Nebe gave him an almost fatherly reprimand. “Stick to the meat Georg, ignore Nolte, he doesn’t even mean well.”
As they all filed out, Nebe rubbed his hands together in anticipation. The way things were going he would soon have nothing; he decided to treat himself to another prostitute while he still had the rank and the means to get him in the door.
NOVEMBER 15TH, 1939
BRANDT HAD JUST PLACED A very ominous looking cup of coffee in front of Nebe when Nolte charged in and Heil Hitlered with renewed vigor. “They were there!”
A clearly more relaxed Nebe gave him a sardonic smile. “Of course they were. Now go have them bring Elser in.” Brandt stifled a chuckle and Nebe’s eyes flashed at him. “Remind me at which point of his mind-numbing tale we left off.”
Brandt glanced quickly through his typing. “The umbrella boat and the fat landlady’s bathtub.” Nebe tried to take a swig of the coffee but had to spit it back in the cup. Brandt shrugged apologetically as Georg and his bodyguards entered followed by Nolte.
Nebe seemed full of youthful vigor, “feeling his oats” as the Americans would say. “So you shaved and bathed, Georg. When did you plant the bomb?”
“The following evening I walked into the BürgerBräuKeller carrying the umbrella and my tool case. There was nothing unusual about that, a number of tradesmen got off work and stopped for dinner on their way home. The waiters were all tall, big-bellied men, but professionally light on their feet. Their beaked faces glided by, almost a foot over my head because I’m only 5’4”. A Viking prow of a face loomed over me. ‘We close in half an hour, sir,’ he said it in a voice you’d use when talking to a dullard. I smiled, nodded, and kept walking through the ranks of dining rooms. The table cloths looked as crisp and tight as the clothes on a sculpture.
“The ballroom was empty and lit only by what light leaked in from the hall and the street. I slipped in and took the stairs to the second-floor balcony then walked along it, checking every room. Most were unlocked but with the look of constant use, full of canned goods and barrels of sauerkraut, table wear and busboy trolleys. Three quarters of the way around the balcony there was a knob with a broken latch, the knob wouldn’t turn but when I released it the door sprung open a crack. When I placed my palm against it, the door eased open with a satisfying squeak of disuse. The room was empty except for a painters’ drop cloth, two saw horses, and some dried-out cans of paint. The peeling wallpaper looked prehensile. I walked in and closed the door. There was the smell of cockroaches, the stale smell of old newspapers and the sweetish smell of old age in the darkness. I lit a candle and wedged the sawhorses against the door, then pulled the drop cloth over myself like a blanket, blew out the candle and went to sleep.
“When I woke up and checked my watch, it was 1:35 a.m. I picked up my equipment and walked out to the balcony. The ballroom had huge French windows. A light might have been seen from the street but two street lamps gave me enough illumination to work. I sat down in front of the right-hand pillar and laid out the tools. The first night was to be the most difficult but also the most interesting. I had to cut out a section of the paneling and hinge it so that when closed, the join would be undetectable. For a talented cabinet maker under normal circumstances it was a pitifully easy test, but there it had to be done in semi-darkness, in the few hours before dawn. It would have been suicidal to leave it incomplete, with the cuts visible in the wood.
“It went slowly, at first. Fortunately, the pillars were painted white and, if I had to, I could putty the cracks closed with old paint from the storeroom, until the next day. The columns were mock Roman so I made the vertical cuts along the edge of the fluting. That was no problem; it was the horizontal cuts that could be problematic. The lower one could be made where the pillar joined the base and that too would be invisible since it followed the natural lines of the pillar. The first three sides were straight forward in construction and required only ordinary skill. But the top edge of the door had to be hidden in plain sight and that required magic. At 3:00 a.m. I went back to the storeroom and scooped up a chisel load of rubbery white paint from a discarded can and plugged the cracks with it. It looked fine, so I could conceal my work if I had to. The sky was still reassuringly black so I took out the doll house hinges and began to hang the door. I was now working entirely by touch because I couldn’t trust my vision in the faint light. To avoid distractions I closed my eyes. The work seemed to go more quickly that way, even though I knew it made me move more slowly.
“When I opened my eyes, it was 4:17 a.m. The door into the pillar was fitted and hung and stood wide open. I touched it gently with minimal pressure, almost cajoling it shut. When the door was closed I couldn’t see its outline against the wood. I couldn’t risk a candle but I moved to an angle where the light from a street lamp fell full across the pillar. The door was invisible. I ran my hand across the wood until my finger nails found the join, then eased the door open again and leaned it back. I opened my boat-shaped umbrella and fitted the flat side to the pillar so it would catch the debris, tacking the fabric to the inside of the paneling and unscrewing the handle. The pillar itself was brick. With a hammer and chisel I began to chip away at the mortar. I started sitting down but found it ineffective; I needed leverage so I switched to my knees. I’d gotten one brick loose and the umbrella full of concrete flakes when the sky began to gray. I repacked my tools and looked around. Sawdust wouldn’t show in the darkness so I wiped the floor around the pillar with a damp rag to be sure before I went back to the storeroom.
“When I next lit a match and checked my watch, it was 6:00 a.m. I walked out along the balcony and stooped in front of the pillar. When I brushed the floor with my fingers they came up clean. The door was still undetectable; following the lines of the moulding on three sides and the top edge looked like a random scratch in the paint. The ballroom door had been unlocked and the place was technically open but a dismaying quiet came from the outer rooms. Regretfully, I had to return to the storeroom until noon when the restaurant was too crowded and rushed for the staff to notice me arriving from an odd direction.
“At 11:50 a.m., I threaded my way out through the horizontal stack of dining rooms and sat down in a room just off the central hall. I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to eat for the last two days and hunger swept through me like an anthem. I grinned at the waiter as he walked over and handed me the menu. The waiter half smiled in acknowledgment. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the wai
ter as he pulled out his book, ‘I didn’t see you come in.’ I was still conscious of the limits of my finances in correlation with the time this endeavor was going to take. I would have preferred my favorite Jäger Schnitzel, but the Bratkatoffeln potato casserole with bacon and onion was more in budget. Despite the two baskets of bread, after two beers I was abruptly the drunkest I had ever been in my life. I had to walk carefully the twenty feet to the cashier, watching my feet all the way. I tried to keep my face expressionless and managed a mask of whimsical euphoria.
“‘You must be in love,’ said the cashier as she handed me the change. I compressed my lips and nodded then turned away and walked out the back door of the BürgerBräuKeller and through the deserted brewery yards. I was carrying my reassembled umbrella and the tool case. Every so often I opened the umbrella and dumped a few handfuls of concrete chips and sawdust on a pile of miscellaneous debris. I added a brick from my tool case and swaggered off singing. It was a song that I had made up on the spot and it didn’t make any sense so I forgot it immediately after. I walked back toward the rooming house and Margit. I was very tired, too exhausted for one night’s sleep to leave me fresh. But a hard day’s work makes a man make love all the better and, besides, she wasn’t about to accept any excuses. I knew her that well after only one afternoon.
“I passed a church and entered knowing that I had something to do there. It was a Catholic church and I was Lutheran, as my family had been for four hundred years, but that was the least of my problems. I knelt, which seemed to be the thing to do, and winced as my knees touched the rail. They were raw already and that, too, was comforting. I clasped my hands in front of me, wet my lips, and prepared to address God. Problem was I had nothing to say. I wouldn’t pray for success, there was no reason for the lieber Gott to prefer one side to the other; he was on all sides at once. There was nothing to explain, the Good Lord knew everything already. I couldn’t ask for forgiveness. If I were right, there was nothing to forgive and, if I was wrong, forgiveness would be impossible. I turned my head from side to side, looking for a cue from the pulpit or the statues.
“The Good Lord was waiting and I thought hard about what I had meant to say. I couldn’t ask for understanding, I already understood more than I could handle. In fact, I seemed to be the only one who understood, but that didn’t help. It was entirely my own decision. I knew that much and it was torturous enough for it to be unfair to ask anyone else to share the guilt, not even the Good Lord. Still, there was something that had to be said. I tried my face in different positions, trying to think of what the words might be. Then the answer came to me. I clasped my hands in front of me and recited the Lord’s Prayer, only once, but I was surprisingly comforted by it.
“Mercifully I managed to leave Margit panting and wide-eyed after only an hour and got to the carpentry shop by the middle of the afternoon. I was working on the design for a trigger mechanism and doing some careful arithmetic. Franz was watching over my shoulder showing no recognition of what the design meant and saying nothing. I looked up quickly and our eyes met. Then we both looked at the design. Franz showed no suspicion, only a quiet, slightly resentful admiration. The draftsmanship was impeccable. I was brooding about a problem.
“‘I need some parts that I can’t make myself. Can you recommend a machinist?’
“Franz rummaged in a drawer and came out with a solid business card. ‘You can say it’s for me, for the shop. He’ll give you a discount or he won’t charge you at all,’ Franz said it but looked unhappy; he thought he was going to have to give me a job after all. He managed to find a safe target for his annoyance. His fourteen-year-old apprentice had been doing some hand sanding but was watching us over his shoulder. Franz saw him watching and the apprentice quickly looked away. Franz came up behind him and swatted him mightily alongside the head. ‘Now, maybe you’ll learn to mind your own business if you can’t learn anything else,’ said Franz, doing his Führer imitation as I walked out.
“I did get the machine parts for free. Franz had made a double cradle for the machinist’s twin daughters and that small charity had taken the sting out of having two women to marry off. The master machinist was eternally grateful; he said so repeatedly and lathed the parts out of surgical steel, something his apprentices weren’t competent to do. I watched and waited. Franz hadn’t acted out of charity. Working for free was better than not working at all; at least you might generate some trade. But the machinist suspected nothing, not even though Franz had carved his name and the address of his shop in five centimeters high letters into the kick board of the cradle, just an artist signing his work.
“Finally, the parts were done and the master machinist handed them across, standing back and waiting for flattery. Instead, I offered to make a rocking horse for his daughters, a twin rocking horse. The Machinist had tears in his eyes and spoke of the new comradeship and solidarity created by the Party and the imminence of war. The words had been badly chosen, they had communist overtones, but I just smiled and nodded, which was always the appropriate reply when someone was talking to himself. I bowed my way out and that was appropriate too, since I was only a journeyman, and I went out into the street admiring the miniature pivots, levers and hammers I held in my hand, my mouth pursed in a small O of wonder. The store next door had a cracked plate-glass window with a paper banner pasted diagonally across it. The banner read: TRUE ARYANS DON’T PATRONIZE STORES OWNED BY JEWS. It meant nothing to me. Generally, I thought Nazi posters were like medieval art, some very advanced techniques were used but the things they were saying were so simple, it was like looking at a comic book. Simple, directed at the lowest and most primitive emotions, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying your lowest and most primitive emotions. I stopped thinking, slid the parts back into their envelope, put them in my pocket and went back to Margit … home sweet home.
“The days took on a blurring regularity. I spent the nights napping in the storeroom, scraping and chipping away at the concrete through to the early morning. I worked on my knees. After the first night, I knelt on a pillow but the damage had been done.
“While dumping another umbrella load of concrete chips, I realized that a week had passed and there was a fairly large pile building up. There were even nine bricks. I counted them several times with satisfaction. I walked out of the brewery yards around the block to Rosenheimer Platz. The Sausage Maker’s Guild was having a parade. They were wearing lederhosen and Alpine hats and carrying pikes and cleavers. They had the maudlin baffled meanness of halberd bearers in a Breughel painting. They were carrying a sausage two blocks long. The parade was led by a Mark I panzer. The tank commander was wearing a suit of armor with rear-view mirrors welded to the sides of the helmet, angled forwards at 45 degrees, like a bug’s antennas. I tried to think about that but nothing came.
“I was sitting on the bed, bandaging my knees when Margit opened the door without knocking and walked in as operatically triumphant as she’d ever been on the stage. ‘What happened to your knees?’
“I sought the appropriate expression of martyrdom. ‘Scrubbing floors, what does it look like? And don’t tell me I don’t need the money.’
“But Margit gave me a childlike and conspiratorial smile. ‘You mean, cracking a safe. And yes, we both need the money. I saw the dynamite.’
“I laughed with relief because she thought I was a common criminal. I put my arms around her, no easy task, and pulled her onto the bed. Afterward, I lost consciousness and slept for 36 hours. When I woke up, I decided to change the schedule, working only three hours a night in the BürgerBräuKeller and spending the afternoon at the carpentry shop.
“It took two weeks to get the device half built, incorporating the clock mechanisms. The axle of the hour hand winding up a length of wire until the detonator clicked. This was a more elaborate version of the device I’d tested in my sister’s garden, this one used two clocks and two detonators since one might fail. I took the time out to build the double-hobby horse for my new
friend, the machinist. I helped Franz with the joinery work on a cabinet for a massive Telefunken radio, the first important commission for the shop. The joins were so perfect that the cabinet looked carved out of a solid block of wood. Franz offered to pay and when I refused he almost kissed me. But this was Holy. Even Margit wasn’t too bad once I could trick myself into getting started. The bomb itself was going almost too well. I lined the trap door with tin in case a waiter drove nails into the pillar to hang party bunting. I lined the tin with cork so the pillar wouldn’t sound hollow if someone rapped on it. Once all the preparation had been done and the routine had become settled, the work began to go quickly.”
“And you never wondered why the ballroom was unguarded?” asked Nebe.
Georg may have been very tired. He could have only been doped on Nebe’s orders and this story was already insane enough without adding any narcotic aberration.
“There was no problem so I had nothing to wonder about,” said Georg.
“What a Nazi you would have made!” Nebe said that admiringly while Brandt and Nolte made faces of warm encouragement then, the telephone rang.
As Nebe lifted the receiver the hysterical shouts of the caller got everyone’s attention. He listened, trying to retain the objective distance toward everything that he had regained on his most recent visit to the brothel. He grunted at appropriate intervals until the shrieking on the other end came to an abrupt halt. Nebe went on stoically. “Seems there has been a procedural disagreement between SS-Brigade Führer Christian Weber, they found him after all, and our friend the Munich Prasident of Police, Karl von Eberstein. My presence has been requested. Can you be trusted to entertain Herr Elser in an appropriate manner until I return?” It was a general question but it was to Nolte that he gave the most meaningful look. “I thought so; it is such a comfort to have competent colleagues.”
The Führer Must Die Page 13