Assignment Gestapo (21 page)

‘It’s only the truth, what I’m saying.’ Tiny stuck out his lower lip, mutinously. ‘You ask anyone if it ain’t.’

‘He’s right,’ said Porta. ‘The Frogs knocked ’em about so bad at Douaumont that the Crown Prince himself was given a right bollocking from the old Emperor.’

Barcelona frowned at him and turned back to Frau Dreyer.

‘What did Herr Bielert say to you, exactly?’

She sighed and frowned and dragged her eyes away from a photograph of Himmler, which seemed to mesmerize her. Across the foot of the photograph, printed in gold letters, were the words:

HEINRICH HIMMLER, Reichsführer of the SS

Chef der Polizei (Head of Police)

Minister des Inneren (Minister of the Interior).

‘Herr Bielert was so kind. He listened to all that I had to say, and I could tell it upset him, and I thought perhaps I’d been offensive in some way, but then he told me it was all over and done with and I wasn’t to bother my head over it any more.’

And she looked back up at Himmler and smiled at him.

‘Did he tell you what was going to happen to you?’ asked the Old Man. ‘Did he write down what you said about Herr Hitler?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed, he was most punctilious. He dictated it all word for word to another gentleman who was sitting in the room with him. I’m afraid I became rather sleepy, I think I must have dozed off, but when I opened my eyes again I found they’d written quite a book between them . . . and then Herr Bielert told me I was to go to Berlin.’

‘To see the Führer?’

‘Oh, dear me, no. I’m sure he’s far too busy to bother with people like me . . .’ She looked again at the photograph of Himmler, and her forehead puckered. ‘I can’t quite remember . . . there were some initials, I know, but—’

‘RSHA?’ suggested Barcelona, into the cold silence that had fallen upon us.

‘Ah, yes! RSHA! That was it!’ Frau Dreyer clapped her hands together and looked at Barcelona. ‘Do you know it, Herr Feldwebel?’

Barcelona looked round at the rest of us for help, but we turned away and left him to it.

‘Yes, well – it’s a – well, it’s a – a big department in Berlin.’

‘What do they do there?’

‘They – ah—’ Barcelona scratched desperately in his hair. Well, it’s a sort of cross between a – a registry office and an employment bureau.’

‘I lie it!’ approved Porta, boisterously. ‘I like it, I like it! But you left out the most interesting bit.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Frau Dreyer, innocently.

‘Well, now, I’ll tell you. The RS—’

‘For God’s sake!’ said the Old Man. ‘Hold your tongue!’

‘I wonder if they wish to offer me employment?’ Frau Dreyer sighed and kicked off one of her shoes. ‘I fear I’m rather useless. I suffer from my feet, you know . . . I should have gone to the chiropodist this morning, but of course I had to miss the appointment because of coming here to see Herr Bielert.’

We nodded, solemn and awkward and wishing she could be spirited away, struck dead, turned to stone, anything to save us this embarrassment. She leaned back in her chair and began talking, rambling on in that way old people have, more to herself than to us.

‘I was out when they came for me. I’d gone to settle up with Herr Berg in the Gänsemarkt. Once a month I go. I was early, of course – 1 always am. I like to sit down in the station for a bit and watch the people go by. And then at this time of year they have such a splendid show of flowers to look at. I know Herr Gelbenschneid, the station master. I know him very well. He has green fingers, his roses are some of the best I’ve ever seen. I wish I could grow them like that, but there you are, if you don’t have the touch there’s nothing you can do about it.’

She shook her head, resigned, and Tiny shook his with her in sympathy.

‘Well, now, I knew as soon as I got to the top of my road that something had happened. I saw the car, you see. A big grey one, and I knew it belonged to the SS because I’d seen them before. At first I thought they’d come to see my neighbour. Frau Becker. She has a son in the SS. He’s an Untersturmführer in the “Reich” division. She’s very proud of him, naturally. Before he was made an officer he was in another regiment . . . what was it? SS Westland, I think. My youngest son was in the SS, you know. I didn’t want him to be, but he would have his own way. Attracted by the uniform, I shouldn’t wonder. Young boys are so easily swayed by these things . . . Anyway, he’s dead now. They sent me his Iron Cross. I remember he was very angry with me when I told him his father wouldn’t have been at all pleased at him going into the SS. You ought to wait, I said to him. Wait till you’re called up, like your brothers . . . Three brothers, he had. Two of them went into an infantry regiment, and the oldest went into the Pioneer Corps. He’s dead now, as well. The other two were reported missing. They might still be alive, I don’t know, I try not to think about it too much . . . But the youngest boy, he was always one to have his own way. When I told him to wait for the call-up and not go throwing his life away, Mother, he said to me, Mother I should by rights report you for spreading defeatist talk, but just for this once I’ll pretend not to have heard you. Never again, mind you. Next time I shall report you whether you’re my mother or not . . . Oh, dear, he was so angry with me . . . didn’t even want to kiss me goodbye when he went . . . and now he’s dead, like all the rest of them, and I’ve nothing left save his Iron Cross. I keep it in the drawer along with all their baby clothes. Their little vests and their little knitted shoes . . .’

She suddenly looked across at us and smiled. Tiny smiled back, in a rather sickly fashion, I thought.

‘But anyway, you see, as I walked down the road I realized that the car was parked outside my door, not Frau Becker’s, and I thought for a moment it was Paul come back from the grave . . . Paul was my youngest son, of course. The one I was telling you about . . . Well, the young man that got out of the car, he looked just like him, I’m sure. Six feet tall, wide shoulders, narrow hips, blond hair, blue eyes . . . he was always the most handsome of the four . . . And this young man was so like him it gave me quite a turn. And when he spoke, he was so gentle, so polite, so obviously well brought up. He must have come from a good family, you know . . . The only thing I didn’t take to was the black leather he was wearing. He seemed to be all black leather from head to foot . . . so cold, I always feel. So very impersonal . . . But then, perhaps it’s a uniform?’

Smiling now at Tiny, now at the photograph of Himmler, she took us through the entire scene. I was able to picture it so well: the blond young god from the SS, with his arrogant blue eyes and his black leather boots, and the silly old lady, faded and trusting and too busy comparing him with dead baby Paul to notice the menace lurking behind his façade of polished charm.

Frau Dreyer?’ he had politely inquired, as he stepped out of the car.

And the old woman, all of a flutter, had presented herself to him and held out her hand and had it crushed in a big black gauntlet, and the young man had gone on to verify the fact that she was indeed the Emilie Dreyer who lived at Hind-enburgstrasse No. 9. And all the time standing there with a suave smile on his face and a Walter 7.65 in his pocket, and old Frau Dreyer never suspecting a thing. He turned and opened the car door, to usher her into the back seat. They wanted her at headquarters, there were matters that had to be talked about.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, but I can’t possibly manage today! I have an appointment with Dr Jöhr, to have my feet seen to, you know. I suffer very badly with my feet.’

And the SS man had laughed aloud at that. A visit to the chiropodist! That was the poorest excuse he had ever heard.

Frau Dreyer never knew why he found her innocent statement of fact so amusing. She went on to explain, in case he might not have appreciated the seriousness of the problem, that Dr. Jöhr was a busy man with a large practice, and if you didn’t cancel an appointment at least twenty-four hours in advance you still had to pay for it.

The SS man laughed even louder. He at least had a good sense of humour.

Don’t you worry about your feet, old lady. We’ll get in touch with Dr Jöhr and see that he doesn’t charge you.’

‘But you see,’ she said, ‘it might be weeks before I can make another appointment. He’s such a very busy man . . .’

Losing patience with the daft old bag, the SS man had taken her by the shoulder and pushed her towards the car. As he did so, she had suddenly realized that his left arm was missing, and this had completely sidetracked her from the problem of her feet. Such a dreadful thing to have happened! Such a tragedy, such a disaster, such a—

‘Do you mind if we don’t discuss it?’ he said, curtly.

She showed him the SS ring that had belonged to Paul. She told him about Paul, about his Iron Cross and how he had died for his country, but the young man seemed curiously uninterested. He had bundled her into the back seat of the car and slammed the door on her, and they had driven off at full speed to the Gestapo. They went everywhere at full speed, those people.

The driver was a very different type from the other young man. A rough, tough, crude type of person. No manners, no breeding. He had a glass eye, which had been ill made and looked more like a blood alley than a glass eye. And his face was thick and coarse, and Frau Dreyer felt from the beginning that he was out of sympathy with her.

‘Watch it, grandma!’ were the first words he had addressed to her, as she was hustled into the car; and then, turning to his companion: ‘I hope the old bag behaves herself in the back.’

‘You get on with the driving and leave everything else to me,’ was the young man’s retort.

Frau Dreyer felt that the implied rebuke had been justified.

‘It was not up to a man of that class to address me as grandmother,’ she told us. ‘And as for calling me a bag, I find that to be totally lacking in respect towards one’s elders and betters.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ said Tiny. ‘But if I was you I wouldn’t get too hot under the collar about it. I mean, it’s not like calling someone a—’

Just in time, Porta clapped a hand over his mouth.

‘In future,’ he begged him, ‘just confine your remarks to a simple yes or no and then we’ll all rest a lot easier.’

‘Get out of it!’ shouted Tiny, indignantly breaking free. ‘I’ll say what I flaming like and it’s no concern of yours . . . And I’m certainly not saying yes any more, I can tell you that for nothing. First time I ever said yes it got me two months in the nick. I swore blind after that I’d stick to no.’

‘So long as you do,’ said Porta. ‘That’s all we ask.’

And he turned back to the bench on which he was stacking up one of his marked packs of cards. He always put them away very carefully in their original wrapping paper, sticking it down with an application and regard for detail that was totally missing from the more official tasks that were given him.

Barcelona and Heide were idly playing dice again. Frau Dreyer went on with her tale as if there had never been any interruption.

‘I couldn’t help feeling he was rather an unpleasant man altogether. He drove so fast, you know, really quite dangerous, and on several occasions I swear it was a miracle that people escaped. But he just laughed, as if it were a great joke . . . Then at Harversterhude they stopped to pick up a young girl. I don’t know why they wanted her, but I must say that even the young man who was so charming to me behaved in a VERY ungallant way towards her. Perhaps she may have done wrong, I wouldn’t know, but I really cannot see that there was any need for them to hit her as they did. A gentleman should never hit a woman, never! And if he does, he only shows himself to be no gentleman, and so I said to the young man. Don’t you agree with me. Herr Feldwebel?’

‘I do indeed,’ said the Old Man, gravely.

‘I wouldn’t have hit her,’ said Tiny. ‘What’d be the point of it? I can think of something I’d far rather do. What’s the point of clobbering ’em if you can—’

This time, it was the Legionnaire who shut him up. Frau Dreyer blandly continued.

‘When we arrived here,’ she explained to us, ‘they showed me in to a sort of waiting room up on the third floor. There seemed to be a great many other people there who had come from interviews, and they left me in with them for some time. Not very polite, I thought. After all, I hadn’t ASKED to see Herr Bielert, you know. It was he who had sent for me. So I do think they might have made a little more effort . . . However, I suppose they are busy men and there is a war on. I think an apology is all I would have asked . . . Well, even when they took me out of the waiting room I still didn’t get to see Herr Bielert. Instead, they insisted on going through all my pockets and my handbag and taking away a great many letters of a personal nature. I know they were only doing their job, I know there is a war on and we all have to beware of foreign agents, but I still can’t help feeling that they were overreaching themselves just a little . . . and I am still at a loss to know what right they have to read my letters . . . Anyway, when they had searched me they took me off to a second waiting room. I didn’t like it in there at all. An old man with a gun sat on a chair and wouldn’t let any of us speak. It was most boring, and not only that, I was hungry.’

They had left her there for several hours, and then the blond one-armed Oberscharführer had collected her and taken her to a small room elsewhere in the building, where two men in civilian clothes had asked her if she had ever said the Führer was a fool.

‘Well, of course,’ she told us, ‘I denied it at once. I said to them, someone has been spreading horrid lies about me. And then they asked me if I wouldn’t please try to help them, because you see it was their job to look into all this sort of thing and make sure no one had ever said anything bad about the Führer, and really in the end they were quite nice about it all and told me I should take my time and try to remember exactly what it was I’d said . . .’

‘Didn’t you ever tell your neighbour, Frau Becker, that you thought the Führer had been foolish ever to start the war?’ Bielert had asked her.