Prisoner of Night and Fog (10 page)

“Herr Hanfstaengl,” she said, “what do you know about my father’s death? I mean,” she added when his eyebrows drew down in surprise, “I know he was a hero, but no one has ever told me very much about what happened. And now that I’m older, I’d like to know.”

“It isn’t a pleasant story,” he warned. Concern lined his long face. “And I don’t know all the details.”

She thought of what her history teacher always used to say—history depends upon one’s perspective. Perhaps if she gathered others’ recollections of her father’s death, she could piece together what had happened during those frantic sixteen hours, beginning when her father entered the beer hall with Uncle Dolf and ending with his death in the street.

“Please,” she said. “Tell me what you do know.”

“Very well.” He leaned back in the chair. “It isn’t as though we have very much work to do anyway,” he added sarcastically, and he began.

11

“IN THE EARLY YEARS AFTER GERMANY LOST THE
Great War, Munich teemed with plots and attempted takeovers,” Hanfstaengl said. “Everyone was desperate.”

Gretchen nodded. She remembered waking with ice crystals sparkling on the walls, because they couldn’t afford to buy coal. Falling asleep on her makeshift bed, the divan in the parlor she shared with Reinhard, her stomach cramping from hunger. Papa kicking a chair across the room, sobbing, because he had missed a streetcar, and had arrived at the bank fifteen minutes later than he had expected, to exchange his pay from the shoe shop for foreign currency or gold marks, as everyone else tried to do. Fifteen minutes, and the value of his paper money had fallen by a quarter. The postwar inflation was quickling strangling and starving them all. “So,” Hanfstaengl said, “it wasn’t unexpected when Hitler decided it was time for the National Socialist Party to seize power by force. We knew that most of the city’s top leaders and citizens would be attending a meeting at the Bürgerbräukeller.”

Gretchen knew this part of the story well. The plan was simple: A contingent of SA men would storm the beer hall and take the city’s leaders hostage. Hitler would convince the hostages to hand over power to the National Socialists, and by the next day, control would have smoothly shifted into the hands of the NSDAP.

“I saw your father when he arrived at the beer hall, at around eight o’clock,” Hanfstaengl said. “Police had roped off the area—somehow they’d gotten wind that something important was going to happen that night—and I was standing outside, arguing that the journalists and I ought to be allowed inside. Then Hitler’s automobile pulled up. He came out, followed by Graf, Rosenberg, Amann, and your father.”

Gretchen leaned forward on her chair, concentrating.
Graf
 . . . that would be Uncle Dolf’s bodyguard, who would be gravely shot the following morning during the shoot-out.
Rosenberg
 . . . clearly Alfred Rosenberg, as such a Jewish-sounding name was peculiar in a high-ranking NSDAP man. The name Amann sounded familiar, though she couldn’t place it. Shaking the thought off, she focused on Hanfstaengl’s story. Plenty of time for questions later.

“Your father looked upset,” Hanfstaengl went on, leaning back and lacing his fingers across his chest. “Nerves, I assumed, for we were all on edge. Hitler had warned us we would be either victorious or dead by dawn.

“Fortunately, Hitler told the police guard to let me in, and I hustled my journalist colleagues inside as well. Even that ridiculous fellow Gerlich, the one who’s become such a pebble in our shoe. He was fairly bubbling over with excitement, saying he was about to witness history.”

History
 . . . Gretchen nodded hard. How wrong they had been. The putsch hadn’t been a triumphant revolution, but an amateurish farce. Sixteen hours of fumbling that had ended with sixteen National Socialists and four policemen dead in the street.

“Most of Munich’s elite were squeezed into the Bürgerbräukeller’s main room,” Hanfstaengl went on. “I was nodding off in boredom to a speech when the SA brownshirts burst in, brandishing their pistols and machine guns. The whole place became a madhouse.”

The next part of the story was embroidered on Gretchen’s brain, for she had heard it so many times. By the next morning, the attempted revolution was unraveling like a ripped tapestry. The police had formed an immense cordon around the beer hall, and the Reichswehr, the National Defense soldiers, had been called out to assist the state police troopers. The putschists knew most of them had only hours, maybe minutes, of freedom left before they were arrested.

“The Reichswehr soldiers flooded the streets like cockroaches fleeing a fire.” Hanfstaengl still sounded bitter. “I ran to my apartment to pack. I hoped I could escape over the border into Austria. Then my sister rang me to say the men were on the march.”

This was the hardest part for Gretchen to hear. She curled her hands, fingernails cutting into her palms. Papa was walking to his death. The brownshirts had decided to save Ernst Röhm. During the night, he and his SA troops had taken over the Reichswehr headquarters but were now besieged from all sides. The Reichswehr had closed off most of the access points to their headquarters, except for the Residenzstrasse, the narrow street that spilled into the Odeonsplatz.

“I was running when a great swarm of people surged up the street from the Odeonsplatz,” Hanfstaengl said. He started pacing again. His legs were so long, he could only take a few steps in the tiny office before he had to spin around “One of them was Lars Dearstyne. I recognized him as a first-aid man in an SA brigade. He’d been shot twice, in the shoulder and the side.”

Lars Dearstyne!
Gretchen started. The name she’d seen on the martyr plaque in the great hall minutes ago. Cohen had said that Stefan Dearstyne had wondered about Papa’s death after reading his brother’s diary. . . . She waited for Hanfstaengl to go on.

“Dearstyne told me the Reichswehr had opened fire with machine guns. He’d seen your father leap in front of Hitler to take a bullet. Then Dearstyne collapsed. I half-carried, half-dragged the poor fellow until we came across his elder brother. Stefan, I think his name was.”

Gretchen was shaking inside. All these different pieces, nothing fastened together yet, all floating apart . . .

“The rest you know,” Hanfstaengl said. “I escaped to Austria; Hitler made it to my country house in Uffing before he was arrested for treason and imprisoned; and Dearstyne succumbed to his injuries a few days later.”

He paused while Gretchen’s thoughts spun out in all directions. Something was wrong about Hanfstaengl’s story, but she couldn’t snatch hold of it.

“Yet see how far we’ve come in eight short years!” Hanfstaengl said, then spread his arms wide to encompass the small room. “Now let’s make ourselves worthy of our pitiful salaries.”

He pushed a stack of newspapers across the desk. The tidy lines of type seemed to jump about on the pages. She didn’t know how she would ever settle down to accomplish some work. “Today’s morning editions,” Hanfstaengl said. “Clip any articles mentioning the Party. I have a meeting with an English correspondent at the Regina Hotel and won’t be back in today, so feel free to let yourself out when you’ve finished.”

“Yes, Herr Hanfstaengl. Thank you.”

She tried to read the papers while he collected his hat and stick. The sentences jumbled together. Unemployment reaching as high as 14 percent, massive floods in China, a first-ever constitution for Ethiopia. She couldn’t concentrate. For nearly an hour, she skimmed the pages, half of her thoughts on the task, half running over Hanfstaengl’s story again and again.

It reminded her of a song played in the wrong key. It almost sounded right, but there was something slightly off about it. She had to reread the articles because her mind insisted on swerving out of her control.

And then she realized. The timing was wrong.

Lars Dearstyne had said her father had leapt in front of Uncle Dolf when the bullets started. She’d heard the story so many times that she had never questioned it, but now she saw it didn’t make sense.

Her father had worn his war uniform. Although he had decided to join the SA, he hadn’t formally done so yet. Therefore, he should have been marching in the rear with the rest of the tagalongs, with two thousand men separating him from the front line.

But he had been right there next to Uncle Dolf, close enough to shield him when the gunfire erupted. He had flung his body in front of Hitler’s, the bullets riddling his chest and killing him quickly. That fact was incontrovertible. She had heard it from dozens of lips; she had heard it from Uncle Dolf himself. Papa may have been shot in the back—a mistake in all the confusion, she hoped—but he had also served as a human shield for the Führer.

But what had her father been doing alongside Hitler in the first place? There was no chance he would have marched with Hitler simply because they were friends—Uncle Dolf adored order and would have insisted that everyone march in his proper section.

The shoot-out had been over in thirty seconds. There had been no time for her father to charge up from the rear unit. He must have marched with Hitler in the same line. But why had her father been there at all?

She shoved her chair back. There was no decision to make; there were no options to consider. She knew what she must do. If anyone saw her leave, she would say she was getting a breath of fresh air. She couldn’t risk using the Braunes Haus telephone switchboard, so she snuck into a hotel lobby down the street.

A voice she already recognized answered on the second ring.
“Munich Post.”

“Herr Cohen,” she said, “it’s Fräulein Müller.”

There was a pause. “Have you rung to make good on our agreement? A National Socialist who keeps her word—what an oddity you are, Fräulein Müller.”

How she hated his condescending tone. “Never mind what I am, Herr Cohen. Yes, I’m ready to fulfill my promise, provided you tell me about the dead man’s diary.”

“The Diana Temple,” Cohen said. “Eight o’clock tonight. Come alone or the deal’s off.”

The church bells chimed six as Gretchen left the Braunes Haus. She was unlocking her bicycle when a hand clamped over her wrist. “Say nothing,” a voice whispered in her ear. “I’m revising the favor you owe me. You must come with me right now, for we haven’t much time.”

It was the Jewish reporter. He had tipped his fedora low over his face, so she could scarcely see him. Today he wore a blue suit, its fabric softened by many washings, its cuffs hemmed in mismatched thread. The combination of navy and sky-blue threads looked strange. Everyone knew Jews were wealthy. Surely Herr Cohen could afford new suit jackets instead of stitching up old ones?

“I’m glad to see you have some sense.” He pulled her bicycle back from the iron railing. “Other NSDAP pets would no doubt be screaming at the sight of me.”

A pet, a stupid mindless creature—that’s how he saw her, this Jew who looked down at her. Anger and surprise stole her voice.

Together, they moved past the old stone palace, he wheeling the bicycle. All around them, shopgirls in smart dresses and businessmen in dark suits strode home. Across the street, a cluster of young men in SS uniforms laughed and loped along, probably on their way to supper in a noisy beer hall. No one guessed she was walking with a Jew.

Slowly, she felt the muscles in her stomach unclench. But when his eyes fastened upon hers, they were so sharp with intelligence and intensity that it took all of her self-control not to squirm. He looked at her as if he knew precisely what she thought about him and he didn’t care because there were other things that mattered far more.

Nobody had ever looked at her in such a dismissive manner. Not even Reinhard. Although Cohen couldn’t have been more than four or five inches taller than she was, she felt impossibly small walking beside him.

“I must talk quickly, and there is no time to ask questions,” he said. Although his Berliner dialect altered the sound of the words, she understood him easily. “Stefan Dearstyne rang me as I was closing up the
Munich Post
offices a few minutes ago. He said Röhm and his men were following him, and he would rather die by his own hands than by theirs. He was using one of the public telephones at the train station, and he said that as soon as we hung up he would fling himself in front of an incoming train.”

He ignored Gretchen’s startled gasp. “Most likely, he’s already dead. But his brother’s diary is in his apartment, and we must, at all costs, prevent Röhm and his men from finding it. The diary is the only proof I have that your father was murdered. I need it, and you’re going to help me get it.”

She felt like she stood on shifting sand. All the perfectly smoothed edges of her old existence seemed jagged now. What the boy proposed was impossible. “I—I can’t.”

They had reached the curb. Traffic curled around the corner, a black Mercedes, then a white Horch. Across the street, a tired-looking old horse pulled a cart. The driver lashed his whip across the beast’s back.

Even as Gretchen watched, the animal’s skin split apart. Three long red welts marred its matted brown hair. The horse kept walking, its head hanging, its slender legs moving more and more slowly. Sweat gleamed on its neck, from the strain of pulling such a heavy load, and its white eyes rolled when the driver cracked the whip across its back again.

She swallowed hard. Had she become that horse—beaten and bloodied but still serving its master without question? A beast of burden. An easily dismissed pet.

Someone who was so scared, she would choose the familiar lies over the truth? Papa deserved better than that. And so did she.

“I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Cohen was nervous now; she could see it in the way he scanned the street, his eyes narrowing at the cluster of SS men, still laughing, digging in their pockets, probably looking for cigarettes or change. “We must leave straightaway. Röhm and his men may be heading toward Dearstyne’s apartment even now. Get on the handlebars.”

She said nothing more as she clambered on. She felt the bicycle shift as Cohen straddled it; felt his breath on the back of her neck as he pushed off the pavement with his foot; felt his arm brush hers as he leaned forward to pedal. She flinched. What would Uncle Dolf say, if he saw her now?