The Other Side of Love (64 page)

Drawing a sharp breath, he said in a quieter voice:

“The decision’ll be handed down a week from Monday. My orders are to head back to Berlin, but I’ll come here then. I can’t promise anything, but they did seem to be listening to my closing argument.”

“I suppose I should thank you, but…

“

She shook her head.

“Is that why you ditched me - to look for this child?”

“It was my only chance.”

He was silent a moment before he asked:

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“A few days before … He died a few days before we traced him down.”

Could I have gotten her out of Ober Tappenburg when I visited1? It seemed unlikely, yet he felt awkward and guilty. He sat next to her.

“Kathe, you aren’t contemplating anything more drastic than trying for a prison term, are you?”

413

‘So many killed in the war, millions still dying from illness and starvation what difference would it make?”

“There are religious and ethical answers to that one, but as of the moment they escape me.”

“You don’t need to worry,”

she sighed.

“The authorities at Konigstrasse Prison are strict about everything including the confiscation of items of self-destruction.”

“That’s good,”

he said.

“Kathe, listen, I’m sorry about your boy.”

She rubbed a fingernail on her tweed skirt.

“After Araminta did you try to … ?”

“In a big way. Eight dead Germans and a Distinguished Service Cross - that’s what happened while I was trying. I won’t con you and say you’ll get over it. The wound closes, the bleeding stops, but the pain’s always going to be there.”

“But what if all that’s left is pain?”

“The first thing is to get through today. Then you get through tomorrow. Then the next day.”

Down on the ground floor, doors were clanging open and shut, women chattered, a guard’s bass voice bawled for silence.

“Thank you,”

she said.

“I promised Aubrey I’d do my damnedest.”

“Not for defending me,”

she said under the cover of the din.

“For not staying angry. For being kind.”

As Wyatt was passed through the locked grate to the locked courtyard, he spotted Leventhal in a sheltered corner, writing on a pad of paper.

“I’d hoped to see Fraulein Kingsmith,”

Leventhal explained.

“She’s not allowed visitors, so I’m dropping her a note.”

“No mail, either. But I’ll pass on the message to her that you were here.”

At the thick-walled old-fashioned gatehouse Leventhal retrieved his papers. They emerged on to the street. He pulled his shoulders back.

“That’s the first time since BergenBelsen that I’ve let a key be turned behind me. So tell me, how is Fraulein Kingsmith?”

“Not real great. But she looks more human than yesterday.”

Though the sun was out, the morning was cold, and Wyatt buttoned his overcoat.

“Jesus! That damn letter! How could she?”

“Wyatt, have you noticed that Germans don’t look directly at me? They’re overly friendly, most of them, but their eyes never connect with mine. I’m the living reminder of what this country wants to forget. Fraulein Kingsmith looks me in the eye.”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t give you the dry heaves to know she was in bed with some guy who maybe sent thousands of people to the ovens.”

414

I

‘Forget what she did between the sheets, Wyatt. She saved my life, she helped save a lot of other lives. She could teach those martyrs and saints of yours lessons in unblemished altruism.”

“The jeep’s over there,”

Wyatt said.

“Come on, give you a lift.”

At gust of wind, Leventhal clamped a hand on his shabby fedora.

“You are doing everything that’s possible to get her off?”

“That’s a hell of a question!”

“You’ve never explained your past relationship, but I can tell it wasn’t on a cousinly basis. Yesterday there was murder on your

face.”

“You noticed it didn’t interfere with my closing argument!”

“My God, you’re like Myron. That same quick temper.”

Leventhal chuckled.

“I’m sorry I asked; it was insulting and unnecessary. You’ve got that same streak of obstinate decency as he had.”

They climbed into the jeep.

“I’ve got one last name to look up at the Red Cross, so if you’ll be so good as to drop me off there. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Switzerland. Fraulein Kingsmith means a great deal to me. If I give you an address, will you let me know the outcome?”

“It goes without saying.”

As Wyatt detoured along the passable streets to Grosse-Bockenheimerstrasse, he asked:

“What’s the straight dope on Lebensborn?”

“It was Himmler’s pet project. You’ll have an easier time understanding if you keep in mind that he was a chicken-farmer. When he came to power with the Nazis, he set out to breed the new Aryan super-race. But, alas for Himmler, humans aren’t as docile as chickens. Not enough German girls were willing to do their share, so during the war he initiated Mknother Lebensborn programme in the Occupied Territories. iv|fcstly Scandinavia. He kidnapped racially and physically acceptable babies, thousands upon thousands of them.”

“Jesus!”

“They were placed for adoption with SS families and other loyal Nazis. Now the real parents are here, searching through all four sectors. What a nightmare. I’ve met a few of the poor people. They follow the wildest leads. They drive themselves crazy; several of the women - the mothers - have gone insane. The Norwegians set up an agency to help. A couple of days ago I had lunch with the person who runs it. She was very down in the mouth. To her knowledge, not a single kidnapped child has ever been returned to its own family.”

|Not one? That’s hard to swallow.”

Think of it. The children were infants when they were taken. They have no memories, different names. Blue-eyed blonds in a land of blue-eyed blonds.”

415

‘Still, you said there were thousands. Never to have found even one child?”

“She’s convinced the SS run a network capable of falsifying birth registrations, baptismal papers, death certificates.”

“Wouldn’t that have come to light?”

“How? Your de-Nazification programme isn’t working very well. The Germans know you won’t stay here for ever. They’re a beaten people. They worry, quite reasonably, that the same group will be back in power soon. So even the ones who despised the Nazis keep their mouths shut.”

“We call it closing the ranks.”

“Exactly. The SS are able to do what they must to keep the children for the Master Race.”

Arriving at his office in the Berlin Luft Gau complex, Wyatt called London.

“What happened?”

Aubrey’s voice came thin and metallic over the buzzing longdistance lines.

“Is she free?”

“The decision won’t be handed down until Monday week.”

“With so many cases I shouldn’t have believed they’d take time to deliberate,”

Aubrey said.

“How did it go?”

“Pretty well.”

Badly, very.

“I dug up a Jewish man she sheltered.”

My cousin Heinrich found me.

“He brought along one of your ATS, Berlin-born. She testified that Kathe and her family helped her and others on Kristallnacht.”

“I should have thought the tribunal would have given her three cheers and carried her out on their shoulders.”

They would have, if my client hadn’t been fucking her way through the SS officer corps.

“She doesn’t give me much to work with. It’s like pulling teeth.”

“Did she tell you that Sigi and his uncle were in the conspiracy to get rid of Hitler?”

“I pried it out of her. But according to captured OKW records Sigi died for the Fiihrer in the Ukraine.”

“Do you know what Sippenhaft is?”

“One of the sweetest laws on their books. Retaliatory measures against the families of Hitler’s opponents. Kathe only told me she was in gaol. So Sigi was the reason?”

“Precisely. Wyatt, if it goes against her, tell them about the beating.”

“What beating?”

“Just before the surrender. She has scars from it.”

“She’s never let out one peep about any damn Nazi whipping her.”

“Over her entire back.”

416

The operator cut in.

“Sorry. All calls must be limited to three minutes.”

Wyatt sat back in his swivel chair. His eyes were narrow and brooding, his cheeks drawn in. His mind was giving off warning signals. Aubrey had never lied to him and was the most high-minded ethical person he knew. Yet if he’d learned one thing in his legal career it was not to have any illusions about the use of perjury when it came to saving a loved one. Furthermore, Aubrey’s wartime activities

- though, God knows, courageous had called for massive dosages of fabrication.

Had there been a beating?

417

On the Monday when the tribunal would hand down its decision, Wyatt arrived in Frankfurt at lunch-time. In the Buick assigned to him at the Rebstock Airport motor-pool, he headed for the Casino Officers”

Club. Both diningrooms were full. He spotted Major Fitzpatrick alone at a small table. Normally at such a time he would have avoided a judge; but he was far from sanguine about the verdict, so he weighed eating in the snackbar against the possibility of a little out-of-court finagling. After a momentary hesitation, he jostled around noisy tables.

“The joint’s packed,”

he said when he had shaken hands with Fitzpatrick.

“Mind if I join you?”

“If you’re not out to suborn me,”

Fitzpatrick said with a braying goodnatured laugh.

“Sit you down, sit you down. Eating alone puts a crimp in my appetite. Not that I couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds.”

He patted his substantial belly.

“Ha ha ha.”

While Fitzpatrick eagerly spooned the Heinz cream of tomato soup, Wyatt toyed with his bowl, talking about his task of weeding out Nazi legislation.

“They enacted some lulus,”

he said.

“Take Sippenhaft, for example.”

“Sippen what? That’s a new one on me.”

“Kith-and-kin detention. The Nazis legalized the punishment of families of anyone they considered a traitor.”

Wyatt aligned his spoon.

“I’m not meant to discuss the case but, hell, strictly off the record, you surely must realize my client is my cousin.”

418

‘It’s an unusual name. I figured you had to be related.”

“Well, Katy’, Wyatt said, pausing purposefully as he anglicized her name,

“had a halfbrother from an old Junker family. He’s the one who got her the job at the OKW. Incidentally, one hell of nice guy. As far from a Nazi as you can get, Sigi. Back before the war, we were up in GarmischPartenkirchen”

“Fabulous spot. Went skiing there over the holidays.”

“How about that Zugspitze? In those days, though, parts of the scenery could get pretty obnoxious. I tore down a couple of their Juden Verboten signs. Some party plug-uglies jumped me, and Sigi ploughed right in at my side. That was Sigi all over. It came as no surprise to hear he was in on the July plot.”

The July plot? With von Stauffenberg?”

“Right, right. There were so damn many defendants that it began to reflect badly on old Adolf, so Goebbels swept some of them under the rug. They put out that Sigi was killed in action. Then turned to Sippenhaft. My aunt was shot. And Katy.”

He paused.

“Katy has scars covering her back.”

“Those sadistic Heinie sons of bitches!”

Fitzpatrick burst out.

“A gorgeous gal like that! But, Kingsmith, you know we follow European procedure when it comes to admissible evidence. Why didn’t you tell the court that she’d been beaten by the Nazis?”

“To level with you, the story was news to me. There’s a lot Katy refuses to talk about. I only found out by accident that she helped Herr Leventhal and the others.”

“Doesn’t like blowing her own horn, eh? Must be the British side. Say, how did you Kingsmiths get to be a United Nations anyway?”

The newly formed UN was the subject flf many jokes and much hopeful conversation. P

“My grandfather has a silver and fine arts shop on Bond Street. Before the first war, he opened branches in Berlin and New York, sending Dad and my uncle to manage them.”

Wyatt tore off the end of his roll, buttering it.

“I’ve often wondered what would have happened if Dad had been the pick for Berlin. Probably we’d all be dead like my uncle, aunt and poor old Sigi. Or have scars like Katy.”

On that pensive note, he stopped. The German waiter with the threadbare white cotton gloves was setting down their porterhouses.

The helmeted MP who escorted Kathe from prison to the de facto courtroom on Zeppelinalle stepped away to give her and Wyatt privacy. But after the initial muted greetings neither counsel nor client spoke. The tribunal filed on to the dais. Kathe went to stand m the lonely space below them.

Fitzpatrick turned towards Wyatt with a long glance before he