Authors: Alex Gerlis
As soon as he did, Franz Hermann made his exit too. It
was nearly quarter past seven before he arrived at his mother’s house on Arno
-Holz
Strasse. He knocked on the door but there was no answer, so he used his own key
to let himself in. The house felt empty and there was no reply when he called
out. The lights were on downstairs but the upper floors were dark. Certain he
was walking into a trap he headed for the room at the back overlooking the
garden, where his mother spent her days.
He found her propped up in her armchair, swathed in
blankets with a tray next to her and her eyes red from crying.
‘I’ve been calling her for hours Franz!’ she said in
a hoarse voice. ‘She said something about going out but that you’d be here
later. What does she think she’s up to? I’ve been on my own all this time. I’m
desperate to go to the toilet and I haven’t had my evening meal yet. The
telephone was ringing but I couldn’t reach it!’
Setting aside his fear, Franz Hermann acted swiftly.
He helped his mother to the toilet then settled her before going upstairs. There
was no sign of Rosa and Sophia, and within half an hour he had gathered up any
items belonging to them or that could even be associated with them. He bundled
everything into old laundry bags and carried them into the attic, where he
locked them in an old trunk, which he then covered with old tennis rackets, a
cello case and other reminders of when life was more normal.
When he came downstairs he telephoned Gunter
Reinhart at his home. He knew it was a big risk, but he had no alternative.
‘Did your courier visit today?’
‘Yes – why?’
‘And was he acting normally?’
‘I think so, hard to tell really. Is there a
problem?’
‘No, no, no – of course not. I was just checking
what time he left you?’
‘I’m not too sure, I would say by 10.30. Something
like that.’
‘Perhaps we’ll meet tomorrow for a chat?’ said the
lawyer, hoping the other man would recognise the urgency in his voice.
‘Yes, perhaps that would be a good idea.’
After that Hermann telephoned his wife and told her
he would stay at his mother’s house tonight as the nurse had been called away. He
telephoned his sister with the sad news that the nurse who cared so well for
their mother had been called back to Bremerhaven because her husband had been
killed at sea.
It was terrible,
they both agreed. The poor nurse had no
idea how long she would be there, but in the meantime they needed to sort out
their mother. Hermann’s sister paused for a while then said if he could look
after her until Thursday, she would come over and bring her back to
Brandenburg. She can stay with us for a week or so:
I imagine the nurse will
be back by then.
‘I’m sure she will,’ replied Franz.
***
It
was some time after dawn on the Wednesday before enough light to wake them
penetrated the woodland
just to the north of Göttingen. Sophia was upset
again when she woke up. The tall trees frightened her and she wanted to know if
there was no such thing as goblins, what about witches? Hardly reassured by her
mother’s promise that they were quite safe, she then wanted to know when she
was going to see Alfred.
‘Soon, darling.’
‘When is soon, Mama?’
Henry had been out of the car for a few minutes and
had just returned.
‘The sooner we can leave this place, the better,’ he
said.
‘Give us a few minutes, Henri,’ said Rosa. ‘Sophia,
eat these biscuits and drink the milk, then we can be on our way.’
‘To see Alfred and Papa?’
‘Maybe not today, but hopefully soon. And remember,
darling, if anyone asks, your name is Gisela: Gisela Keufer. We’ll all play
that game until we meet Alfred, do you understand?’
Henry checked the map and tried to show the route to
Rosa, but she wasn’t interested.
‘It’s amazing we’ve got this far, Henry. Our luck can’t
hold out much longer.’ She spoke quietly so Sophia could not hear, but there
was no disguising the annoyance and fear in her voice.
‘I don’t see why not, especially if we keep to the
back roads.’
‘What if they’re looking for us?’
‘How would anyone know? Franz is unlikely to report
us, is he?’
They waited until seven o’clock before starting off,
first heading south through
Göttingen then keeping to the patchwork of
smaller roads until they reached Würzburg at lunchtime. They needed to stop for
petrol, which was risky, but Würzburg was just 70 miles west of Frankfurt, their
supposed home town. They drove slowly through the town centre, looking out for
a petrol station. The first one they found had a police van waiting at one of
the two pumps, so they drove on. Then just before the river they came to a
garage with a solitary pump and an elderly owner sitting outside on a bench with
a large dog sitting next to him and less than an inch of a lit cigarette
protruding from his lips. He asked to see the documents entitling them to
petrol.
‘If I was minded to be difficult,’ he said in a
gruff Bavarian accent, ‘then I’d say you’re only entitled to half a tank.’ He
smiled, revealing a mouth filled with near-black teeth. The cigarette stub seemed
to be stuck to his lower lip. The man’s eyes focussed on the Nazi Party badge
on Henry’s lapel and swiftly his mood became less hostile. ‘But, fortunately
for you sir, I’m not minded to be difficult. I had a delivery yesterday – the
first for over a week. I’ll fill you up but you don’t need to tell anyone that.
Come inside. It takes longer these days to do the paperwork than it does to
repair a car… Maybe even longer than it takes to build one.’ The man’s throaty
laugh echoed around the workshop before breaking into a violent cough.
They went over to a counter at the side of the
garage. The owner checked the paperwork painfully slowly: he looked at the
identity card in the name of Erich Keufer and the documents showing that the Opel
Super 6 sedan, registration number UTM 142, was entitled to petrol every ten days.
Henry glanced out of the garage and saw Rosa looking worried: this was taking a
long time. The owner wrote slowly in a large ledger.
‘So tell me, are you returning to Frankfurt?’
‘No, we’re just on our way from there. We’re
visiting my wife’s family in Nuremberg.’
‘You sound like you may not be from Frankfurt?’
‘Well spotted my friend: I’ve lived all over
Germany, which explains my accent!’
The owner nodded and handed back the paperwork,
which was now covered in grey grease marks. ‘Odd that your petrol entitlement
document was last stamped in Berlin.’
When he returned to the car Sophia was asleep on the
back seat and Rosa looked pale and tense.
‘Why did it take so long?’
‘Paperwork,’ he said.
***
The
garage owner, J
ürgen Neumann, was a worried man as he watched the
Opel Super 6 pull away awkwardly from the forecourt of his garage.
He
was not a
political man by any means and nor was he any good at keeping his mouth shut,
and that was his problem. In recent months he had rather too openly complained
to his decreasing number of customers, about the infrequency of his deliveries,
the cost of food and the lack of business. This had led to a series of visits,
firstly from a Würzburg police officer who happened to be a friend of his, and
culminated in a visit from the deputy head of the local Gestapo, who was no
friend at all.
This complaining has to stop. If you’re out to make
trouble then be assured we can make plenty of trouble for you. It’s about time
you were more co-operative with us.
And that had been followed by a noticeable drop in
business and in the delivery of fuel. So now
J
ürgen Neumann
had decided enough was enough. Unless he went out of his way to ingratiate
himself with the powers that be he would have to close down his business. He
picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the deputy head of the local
Gestapo, the man who had recently given him his warning.
‘It’s probably nothing, sir, but I did promise to
contact you with any information.’
He explained about the car that had come from
Frankfurt but whose petrol entitlement document was last stamped in Berlin, and
whose driver said they were heading for Nuremberg but had driven off in the
other direction. It all seemed rather… odd.
Do I have the registration number sir? Of course I
do.
***
Three
hours before the garage owner in Würzburg contacted the Gestapo office, a lady
in Berlin rang her local police station and began in a similar manner.
‘It’s probably of little consequence and I was
unsure whether to trouble you, but I thought I’d pass on this information in
case you were interested.’
The officer who took the call at Dahlem police
station was well used to this. These days he seemed to spend half his time
taking calls from people eager to inform on neighbours, work colleagues,
friends and even family. This one sounded little different and he took down the
details. The lady, a
Frau Werner, said she lived in Arno-Holz Strasse and
although she was minding her own business and was certainly not the kind of
person to spy on her neighbours she couldn’t help but notice something unusual
the previous morning –
yes, Tuesday
.
‘There’s an elderly person who lives opposite me: a
Frau Hermann. I hardly ever see her these days, she’s virtually housebound. She
has a nurse, I understand, who also hardly ever leaves the house. But
yesterday, it must have been around noon, I happened to notice a man leave the
house and walk over to a car parked just across the road. He then parked
immediately outside Frau Hermann’s house. Within two or three minutes, no more
than that, I saw the man come out of the house along with Frau Hermann’s nurse
and with them was a young girl. They all seemed to be rather nervous, looking
around. I’ve never seen a child going in or out of that house before: never. How
old do you say? Four or five, I’m not sure. They were in a hurry. Do I think
they saw me? No: I don’t want you to think bad of me, sir, but I was kneeling
down on the floor, peering through a gap in the net curtains… As it happens,
sir, yes I did. Are you ready? It was an Opel – I’m not sure what model, but it
was dark green and the registration number was… Do you have a pen ready? UTM
142.’
Up until a couple of weeks previously, the policeman
would have annoyed by this call, as it would have meant hours of work just to
satisfy the whim of a nosey neighbour. But recently the rules had changed. After
one or two unfortunate incidents, the Gestapo had realised criminals and others
they were interested in were finding it too easy to move around the Reich by
car. As these people drove from one town or district to another, there was no
proper system of keeping track of them. So the Gestapo brought in a new one:
the details of any cars the Gestapo or other sections of the police were
interested in would be passed on to a central control in Berlin.
Suits me fine: more work for them, less for me,
thought the officer. He filled in the form and took it upstairs to the Gestapo
liaison office in the station. Still, he thought, they will be pleased enough
with this one.
It’s not often we get a registration number.
***
Franz
Hermann woke early on Wednesday morning, checked on his mother then walked
around the house he had grown up in, preoccupied with thoughts that had played
around in his head all night. He needed to move fast.
Once his mother was settled, he left the house
through the back gate, from where it was a swift ten-minute walk to his own
home. He explained his plans to his wife. Before leaving the house, he
telephoned his sister then the office, telling them he would be slightly late
as he needed to see a client on his way in.
He rarely used his car these days but the Daimler
started at the third attempt and within two minutes he was back at his mother’s
house, parked by the back gate he had departed through barely half an hour
previously. He told his mother she would be coming to his house for a day or
two, then his sister would collect her and she would go and stay with her in
Brandenburg for a week or so. Hopefully after that the nurse would return and
everything would be back to normal. His mother was confused but there was no
time to argue.
Once she was settled at his house, he left for work,
but not before stopping once again at his mother’s, where he spent an hour
checking again there were no signs anyone had been there for at least a day or
two.
He made a point of leaving the house though the
front door and boldly walking over to the house opposite, from where the lady
carefully observed all the comings and goings in the street. As he approached
her door he noticed the net curtains in the front window twitch; a moment later
the door opened, a split second before he had knocked.
‘Frau Werner, I thought I’d let you know in case
anyone asks that there’ll be no-one at my mother’s house for a few days. In
fact, she’s not been there since Sunday – she’s staying with my wife and me. Her
nurse has had to return to Bremerhaven suddenly: a death, I’m afraid. Her
husband was in the navy, he died in the cause of the Reich.’
The woman was very grateful to be told. She told
Franz she had wondered about Frau Hermann because only the previous day she had
seen the nurse leave the house with a man… and a young girl. They had been
carrying a case and some other things they had put in the boot of a car parked
outside the house then driven off.
‘Oh really?’ He was trying his best to sound confused
rather than shocked. ‘Could you describe the man?’
With unerring accuracy she described Henri Hesse. Franz
Hermann did his best to look none the wiser. ‘As I say, Frau Werner, my mother
has been staying with us since Sunday. I’ve no idea about this man; it’s
possible he was taking her to Bremerhaven.’
‘And what about the girl?’
‘As far as I’m aware no child has been in the house
for a very long time. How old would you say she was?’
‘Perhaps four or five, hard to say. I didn’t get a
perfect view, you understand. She was such a slight thing.’
‘And you’re certain they came from my mother’s
house? Maybe they were just passers-by.’
She was certain. She just happened to be cleaning
the windows at the time – by coincidence.
‘I don’t suppose you saw what car it was, by any
chance?’
‘I do, Herr Hermann: it was an Opel, a dark-green
one. And not only that: I even wrote down the registration number. But don’t
worry; I’ve given all the details to the police.’
***
When
they left Würzburg, Henry announced they would head south-west, into the Black
Forest.
‘The Black Forest?’
‘Yes, Rosa, the Black Forest.’
‘You’re crazy! Do you still read fairy tales?’
Sophia started to cry in the back seat. She didn’t
want to go into a forest. She was afraid of witches. Henry turned round and
snapped at the little girl.
‘I told you! There’s no such thing as witches, or
goblins. Or fairies, for that matter.’
Sophia’s crying became louder.
‘Don’t shout at her: she’s a little girl. She’s
frightened and she’s not the only one.’
‘Trust me Rosa, the Black Forest stretches down to
the Swiss border: it almost goes as far as Basle!’
‘I’m aware of that, but do you really think we can
just stroll over the border? Maybe the SS or whoever’s guarding it will help
carry our cases!’
‘Listen to me, Rosa: our Swiss papers are very good,
far superior to the German ones. I’m using my own papers and I managed to get ones
that show you’re my wife and she’s our daughter. They’re hidden in the boot. When
we get near the border we can use them, but we’ll need to abandon the car
first.’
They stuck to the side roads and, at 4.30, emerged
from a long lane onto the main road at Heilbronn, before taking the road to
Pforzheim and from there into the Black Forest.
***
Edgar
and Remington-Barber arrived in Zürich on Wednesday afternoon and were met at
the station by Rolf, who took them to another of their safe houses, an
apartment above a bar on Predigerplatz. On the way up, he collected a bottle of
whisky.
‘I think it’s a bit early for that,’ Edgar said once
they were in the small apartment.
‘Not when you hear what I’m about to tell you,’ said
the Austrian. ‘I went to see Hedinger this morning, he’d just heard from
Reinhart. Apparently Henri did come to Reinhart’s office at the Reichsbank
yesterday morning to collect the documents. Last night Hugo called Reinhart to
ask whether Henri had been to his office and they arranged to meet up today,
which they did at lunchtime. It seems that rather than heading for Tempelhof,
Henri headed for Hugo’s mother’s house in Dahlem.’
In the shocked silence that followed
Remington-Barber looked confused, as if he had not heard properly what Rolf had
said. Edgar had heard clearly enough and looked furious.
‘No!’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Hugo knows this because he was
telephoning his mother’s house all Tuesday afternoon and when there was no
reply he went round there after work. His mother was all alone; there was no
sign of Rosa or her daughter. This morning he spoke to a neighbour who’d seen
Rosa leave the house with a young girl and a man who seems to match Henry’s description.
They drove off in a green Opel.’
Edgar leaned over to the whisky bottle and poured
himself a measure that in other circumstances would be described as excessive. He
drank most of it, repeating ‘Jesus Christ’ several times.
‘How on earth has he managed to get hold of a car?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Basil: the fool
probably stole it. Carry on Rolf.’
‘Reinhart is in a terrible state, according to
Hedinger. He thinks the Gestapo are about to knock on his door and, of course,
Hugo is worried sick too – not least because when he was with Henry on Tuesday
morning they bumped into a colleague of his who is not only an active Nazi but
also claims he’d met Henry in Bern a year ago.’
Remington-Barber was watching Edgar very carefully,
expecting him to explode at any moment, but he remained calm. Edgar drank the
whisky remaining in his glass, removed his jacket, loosened his tie and walked
over to the window. ‘Thank you Rolf. By the sounds of it, Henry decided that
rather than return to Switzerland as instructed, he’d turn his return journey
into some kind of rescue mission.’ Edgar was speaking very calmly, as if
everything he said had a perfect logic to it.
‘But he’s carrying the Rostock Report, Edgar. It’s
meant to be falling into the hands of our Soviet friends!’
Edgar turned from the window. ‘Thank you Basil, I’d
realised that.’
***
By
March 1941 few people in Germany would have been foolish enough to accuse the
Gestapo of inefficiency. When the deputy head of the Gestapo in Würzburg was
informed by the garage owner about the ‘odd’ dark-green Opel Super 6, he simply
followed procedure. He sent a telex giving the details of the car to his
regional headquarters, where in turn the duty officer followed procedure and
passed on the details of the car to the new central control room in Berlin. Around
three o’clock that Wednesday afternoon an officer at the control room in the
Gestapo headquarters in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was reviewing the ‘alerts’
received since his lunch break. When he spotted that a dark-green Opel,
registration number UTM 142, had been added to the watch list he thought there
was something familiar about it, so he checked that morning’s alerts. Sure
enough, the Gestapo liaison office at Dahlem police station had passed on
details of the same car: a woman who lived in Arno-Holz Strasse had observed a
man, woman and young girl leaving a neighbour’s house and getting into the car.
They seemed, according to the neighbour, ‘nervous’.
The officer wrote up his notes: the car was seen in
Berlin at noon on the Tuesday and just over 24 hours later it was in Würzburg. It
would certainly be worth putting this one out for national alert: he should
have been less sceptical about this new system, maybe it was working after all.
And thank heavens for frightened business owners and nosey neighbours, what
would the Gestapo do without them?
At
four o’clock that Wednesday afternoon
officer
Reinhard
Goetz left the police station in Pforzheim for a routine patrol, briefed – among
other things – to keep an eye out for the dark-green Opel. ‘Berlin is
interested and it was last seen in Würzburg,’ he had been told. ‘It was heading
south – so you never know. It’s the Gestapo who’re interested, so keep your
eyes peeled.’
The traffic policeman headed east on his BMW
motorbike and after a while changed direction: south into the Black Forest. At
five o’clock he decided he had earned his first cigarette break, so just before
the small town of Tiefenbronn he pulled into a clearing in an area where the
forest was starting to become dense. He would be able to enjoy his cigarette in
peace. But as he turned into the clearing he noticed a car was already there. A
dark-green Opel Super 6. He parked his motorbike so it blocked the path back to
the road and walked over to check the registration number of the car.
Henry was on his own in the car when Goetz pulled
into the clearing, Rosa having taken Sophia into the trees to go to the toilet.
He watched as the officer parked his bike and headed towards the car. Henry
glanced to his left, but there was no sign of Rosa and Sophia. Watching the
policeman all the time, he leaned over to the glove box and removed the bundle of
grey cloth from behind the log book. The policeman smiled at him from a
distance and Henry smiled back as the policeman moved in a wide arc to the
front of the car. Henry held the bundle below the steering wheel and slowly
unwrapped it. By now, the officer was in front, peering down at the
registration plate. He looked up at Henry and made a motion with his fingers to
unwind the window.
Officer Goetz bent down by the window, his face
inches from Henry’s.
‘Is this your car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where have you come from today?’
‘Frankfurt.’
‘And where are you going?’
‘We’re just out for a drive – to see the forest.’
‘We?’
‘My wife and daughter – they’ve gone to the toilet
down there.’
‘Have you been in Berlin in the past day or so?’
‘Berlin? No, of course not!’
‘Or Würzburg today?’
Henry hesitated for too long. He had no idea how to
respond. ‘Maybe… We stopped at a town for petrol. I don’t know what it was
called.’
‘Right: get out of the car now, I want to check your
papers.’
He noticed the policeman’s right hand moving towards
the holster on his hip and knew he had just seconds to act. The policeman stepped
back as Henry opened the car door and at that moment both heard the voices of
Rosa and Sophia emerging from the trees. As the policeman glanced in their
direction Henry pushed the revolver into his stomach and fired. It was a
muffled shot and the man staggered back before collapsing to the ground. He was
still conscious and trying to remove his own pistol from its holster. Behind
him, Henry could hear Rosa and Sophia screaming. He stepped towards the prone
body of the policeman. A pool of blood was forming beneath him as he tried to
lift his own revolver, but he didn’t have the strength. Henry held his gun no
more than a few inches from the man’s head and pulled the trigger. In the
ensuing seconds, his world slipped into slow motion.
He was aware of a chunk of the man’s head flying
away, of gore splattering around him, of the sound of the shot bouncing off
every tree in the forest and what appeared to be thousands of birds swarming in
every direction. Then there were Rosa and Sophia standing in front of him,
their mouths wide open in silent screams. By now he had sunk to his knees, the
gun still in his hand, staring at the body of the third person he had killed.
For a time he could not hear anything other than the
ringing of gunfire in his ears. When his hearing began to return Rosa was
shouting at him.