Five Past Midnight (2 page)

It had been a busy place since July 20,1944. At Hitler's headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia, Colonel Count von Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb had only slightly wounded Hitler because the attache case had been shunted aside by another officer, and Hitler had been shielded by the conference table's heavy leg. Colonel Stauffenberg, Generals Beck and Haider, Field Marshal Witzleben, former Leipzig Mayor Goerdeler and other plotters had already met their ends. Five thousand others — army officers, professors, writers, doctors, clergymen, district and town officials, most with utterly no knowledge of the plot — had also been executed.

Before his arrest Otto Dietrich had been chief criminal inspector with the Berlin Police. He had joined the Kriminalpolizei, known to Berliners as the Kripo, after the Great War. Arguing that the investigation of criminal acts was irreconcilable with political police work, he had assiduously avoided involvement in the political police—then called the Schupo—and the growing National Socialist German Workers' Party and its strong-arm branches, the SA and the SS. He graduated from the Institute of Police Science in Charlottenburg. He won promotion to inspector that year.

Dietrich's investigative gift was clear from the start. In 1928 he solved the murder of the heiress Elisabeth Hoffer, whose headless corpse had been found in the Spree, put there, Dietrich learned, by her younger sister, whom he tracked to Buenos Aires. Two years later he was assigned to the highly publicized murder of Director Drager of the Mercedes Palast cinema, who was killed during a kidnap attempt gone awry. Dietrich found the two killers in the German community of Seffert in central Ukraine. And in 1938 when Karl Schwandheist reported that two brigands had stabbed and carried off the body of his wife Marie, Inspector Dietrich found her alive and well in Geneva, spending with her husband the 400,000-mark insurance proceeds he had claimed. Otto Dietrich was a household name in Berlin.

From the door came the scrape of a key, followed by the shriek of metal on rusted hinges. Dietrich's fear welled up again. The executioner stepped into the cell.

In a land besotted with uniforms, even executioners had their own colors. Sergeant Oscar Winge's uniform was police green with yellow insignia and carmine-red piping. He had a drinker's face, blotched and purple, with red capillaries showing on his nose. His razor had missed spots below his mouth and under an ear.

A Gestapo case officer followed him into the cell. The agent had a pinched face, with deep lines like a cracked window. He wore street clothes and the ubiquitous Gestapo accessory, a black leather coat belted at the waist. The agent's name was Rudolf Koder, of the Gestapo's Amt IV 3a (counterintelligence.) He was a senior-grade civil servant, a deceptively bland title.

The agent said, "Let's see what today brings, shall we, Inspector?"

Winge brought Dietrich's arms behind his back to secure them with handcuffs. He prodded the prisoner through the door into the hallway. A line of dim overhead bulbs marked the way to the death chamber. When Dietrich's legs sagged, the executioner gently pulled on one of his arms to right him. Their footsteps echoed along the hall. They passed a dozen cell doors, behind which huddled the condemned.

Dietrich had always avoided cases that involved political controversies. He shunned the Drossier case in 1932 when it was clear the National Socialists had framed Drossier. And in 1939 he told his superior, Director Friedrichs, that he would not investigate crimes referred to him by the Gestapo. Only Dietrich's brilliant successes and his city-wide reputation allowed Friedrichs to resist the Gestapo's pressure to dismiss the inspector. When Director Friedrichs retired in 1940, Dietrich was passed over for the directorship because of his failure to join the Nazi Party.

There was more to it than that. Dietrich and the chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, had engaged in a ten-year feud, a running battle in which only Dietrich's skill and notoriety had allowed him to escape Muller's wrath. This time, skill and notoriety had not been enough.

And now Dietrich was an inmate in the very prison to which he had sent so many convicted criminals. His crime was as insignificant as it was damning. His brother Joachim had stolen from the Gettels Munitions Works in Hamburg the "L" relay and detonator used in Colonel Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb. The Gestapo had taken only three weeks to discover Joachim's complicity in the plot, and he had been executed within twelve hours of his arrest. Otto Dietrich had known nothing of Joachim's involvement with Stauffenberg and was entirely unaware of the plot. But Dietrich's blood relationship to Joachim was an adequate indictment. His well-known anti-Party behavior over the years sealed his conviction.

The executioner and the Gestapo agent led Dietrich down three steps to the lowest room in the prison. Above the door was a crude keystone that jutted an inch into the hall. The ancient wood door hung on broad black iron hinges. Rudolf Koder opened the chamber door.

It is little known that the guillotine is the German execution device. Dissimilarities in the German and French guillotines may reflect their differences as people. Whereas the uprights on the French guillotine in the courtyard of the Fort d'lvry in Paris rise to the heavens, the German machine is short and thickset, its purpose more readily evident. In France, the severed head drops into a woven basket, and while perhaps not a tender invention, the basket compares favorably to the rough plank onto which the German head falls. The French trestle, where the condemned lies while his head is slipped through the lunette below the blade, is decorated with a carved fleur-de-lis to remind the condemned of the state's authority by which he has found himself in this predicament. The Germans do not bother with such trifles, not wishing to waste the lesson on one who will momentarily be beyond caring.

Winge shoved Dietrich against the trestle and wrapped leather straps around his chest and knees. Lying on the board belly-down, Dietrich was then lowered to horizontal. The trestle was on rails. The executioner slid Dietrich forward until his head was through the lunette. The neck beam was lowered and secured with a metal clasp. The Gestapo agent removed the safety bolt from the upright.

On his stomach Dietrich could see the plank and surrounding stone floor, blackened by a century of blood. He fought for breath, trying not to sob.

The Gestapo agent moved around the guillotine's ground beam so that Dietrich could see him out of the corner of an eye. "Have you truly told us all you know about Joachim, Inspector?"

"I have," he whimpered. "I have nothing left to tell."

It was the truth. The Gestapo had broken him. Dietrich had told them all he knew about his brother, his family, his career, and his religion. He had known nothing about his brother's treason, but Dietrich had held back nothing. He was bitterly ashamed of his weakness, but he was helpless against them.

"Well, it hasn't made any difference anyway, has it? Get on with it, Sergeant."

Dietrich closed his eyes, blocking out the light for the last time. Winge stood motionless for a respectful ten seconds before pressing the button on the upright with his thumb.

With a searing squeal, the blade dropped in the post grooves. It fell for an eternity, for the blink of an eye.

And with a ringing crack, the blade stopped one inch above Dietrich's neck. The Gestapo agent had replaced the safety bolt.

"Not today, then, Inspector. Not today."

The executioner released the neck brace and pulled Dietrich from under the lunette. The detective was quickly brought upright. When the straps were released, Dietrich swayed against the sergeant, who seized his arm to lead him from the execution chamber and along the hallway.

Dietrich was propelled into his cell. He collapsed onto his cot.

From the cell door Rudolf Koder said equably, "We'll return again tomorrow. Right at noon. You may survive our next visit. You may not."

The door creaked shut. Dietrich pulled the vile blanket over him and brought his legs up against his chest. For twelve consecutive days he had been taken to the guillotine, then returned to his cell.

Dietrich groaned, tightening the blanket around himself and laying his cheek against the cold metal of the cot. His entire frame shook with relief and with dread. His thoughts came only in simple pulses. All he wanted was to get out of this cell. Or out of this life. He didn't care which.

2

THE POWs heard the crippled bomber long before they could see it. Allied planes based in occupied Italy now flew so often over the castle ninety miles south of Berlin that the prisoners could identify them by the pitch of their engines. This was an American B-25 Mitchell, and one of its engines was sputtering. Several POWs lifted to their toes for a better view.

"Stay in formation," shouted Lieutenant Gerd Heydekampf. "Close up there."

Heydekampf was five feet three, and was known by the POWs and his fellow guards as Dreikasehoch, three cheeses high. The lieutenant was wearing a greatcoat, short boots, and trousers with ankle-length gaiters, which the Wehrmacht had begun issuing that winter to conserve leather that would otherwise be used in the army's tall marching boots. He had a square chin and a gold front tooth. He was almost sixty years old, a reservist recalled to duty when the younger guards had been transferred to the front. Most Colditz guards were in their fifties and sixties.

"You there, Davis," Heydekampf ordered, pointing to a POW in the first British line. "Get back into line."

Lieutenant Heydekampf was the camp's
Lageroffizier
(camp officer) , senior to all guards but the commandant. He had lost his left arm in the Great War. The left sleeve of his coat was tucked into his belt. He spoke English well, learned on the job. He was a kindly man who tolerated no cruelty by the guards toward the prisoners.

Standing at sluggish attention, the British POWs were in five-by- five rows. The senior allied officer, RAF Group Captain Ian Hornsby, stood at the front center. The Americans were in the northernmost group, nearest the chapel. Twenty-two guards were in the yard, and more on the catwalks and towers.

Captain David Davis of the Royal Ulster Rifles smiled evilly then drew a finger across his throat in an exaggerated motion. Not once since D-Day had Davis been addressed by a German guard without responding with the slashing pantomime. Earlier in the war Davis would have been sent to the cooler for five days for such insubordination. Now Lieutenant Heydekampf bit down and turned away. An endless topic of conversation in the guards' mess was their fate when the Americans or Russians—pray God it would be the Americans—overran the camp. Surely the POWs would not slit their throats once the guards threw down their rifles. But, just in case, none of the guards was going to be anywhere near Captain Davis on that day.

Or anywhere near the nameless American who always lined up during the roll call in the back row, staring straight ahead, chewing rapidly on nothing. The American was captured six months ago, dressed in a U.S. Army Air Force uniform. He had refused to divulge his name or rank to his interrogators at Dulag Luft, the airmen's reception camp at Oberursel. At Dulag Luft, he had defeated sophisticated interrogation techniques by simply saying nothing, not one word to the interrogator. Instead, after three hours of questioning, the American had reached across the desk to grab the interrogator by the lapels, used him as a battering ram to break open the interrogation room's door, then sprinted across the campground toward a command car, dragging the hapless interrogator along as a shield. The escape attempt had been foiled by a sentry who had shot the American in the leg, a poor marksman, as he was aiming for his back. After the American had recovered in the camp hospital, he was shipped in manacles to the castle.

None of the guards believed the American to be a flyer. He lacked the airmen's camaraderie and high spirits, unmistakable among flyers even in the meager conditions at the castle. There was a ruggedness about him, and a recklessness that bordered on indifference to his own safety. The American had attempted six escapes from Colditz, one a month since his arrival, receiving twenty-one days in a solitary-confinement cell each time. He was either escaping or serving time for it.

Still out of sight behind the walls of the prison, the Mitchell bomber drew closer. Its damaged engine drummed unevenly, fluttered, then quit altogether. One engine continued to thunder. Some POWs cocked their ears to better pick up the sound. They could tell the plane was on a northwesterly course. Perhaps its target had been the Leuna synthetic oil plant near Leipzig.

Several intoned silent prayers. Others whispered, "Come on, old fellow," and, "You'll make it, friend."

"Silence there," Heydekampf ordered. "Back to attention." But he, too, turned to glance over the roof of the castle, searching for the plane.

Because they were in a forty-yard-square courtyard surrounded by five-story walls, the guards and POWs would not see the plane unless it passed directly overhead. The bomber sounded like it might oblige. Near the passage to the German yard the camp commandant, Colonel Erich Janssen, also stared into the sky. He monitored the roll calls but let Hey- dekampf do the work, and seldom said anything, merely nodding when Heydekampf gave him the completed roster at the end of the roll call. The sound of the failing bomber grew louder.

Built on a high promontory jutting out over the Mulde River, which flowed north to the Elbe, Colditz was perhaps the least attractive, least romantic castle in Germany. The citadel consisted of a series of wings erected over the centuries that had resulted in a figure eight, with two baileys in the middle of the wings. The south bailey was the prisoners' yard. The north was the guards' recreation area. The castle resembled a dormitory, with four- and five-story edifices surrounding the courtyards. The windows were evenly spaced and barred, some looking into the yards, others looking over the apple and pear trees of Upper Saxony. Two Moorish cupola towers were the structure's only ornament. The lower walls were seven feet thick. The wooden roofs were sharply canted. Dormers extended from the roofs in a haphazard fashion, and brick chimneys dotted the roofs. The entrance to the POW yard was over a moat and through mammoth oak doors. The ground fell away from the castle in terraces, on the west toward the town and in other directions toward orchards. The castle loomed over the medieval town of Colditz, where it was visible from every intersection.