The Traitor's Emblem (21 page)

It’s me. Come every Thursday, I’ll leave you a note. Ask for Ingrid, give her your reply.

Love you—A.

For the next seven days she waited impatiently, fearful that her brother would not want to answer, or that he was angry because she had left without saying good-bye. His reply, however, was typical of Manfred. As though he’d just seen her ten minutes earlier, his note started with a funny story about the Swiss and the Italians, and ended up telling her things about school and what had happened since he last heard from her. Hearing from her brother again filled Alys with happiness, but there was one line, the last, that confirmed her worst fears.

Papa is still looking for you.

She ran out of the sweetshop, afraid that someone might recognize her. But in spite of the danger she returned every week, always pulling her hat down to her eyebrows and wearing an overcoat or scarf that disguised her features. She never raised her face toward her father’s window, in case he should be looking and recognize her. And each week, however dreadful her own situation, she was comforted by the daily successes, the small victories and defeats in Manfred’s life. When he won an athletics medal at the age of twelve, she cried with happiness. When he received a thrashing in the schoolyard because he’d confronted some children who’d called him a “filthy Jew,” she howled with rage. Insubstantial though they were, those letters bound her to the memory of a happy past.

On that particular Thursday, November 8, Alys waited for a slightly shorter time than usual, fearing that if she stayed around Prinzregentenplatz for very long her doubts would overcome her and she’d go for the easiest—and worst possible—option. She went into the shop, asked for a packet of mint toffees, and paid three times the standard price, as usual. She would wait till she was on the trolley, but that day she looked immediately for the piece of paper inside the wrapping. There were just five words, but they were enough to make her hands shake.

They’ve found me out. Run.

She had to stop herself from screaming.

Keep your head down, walk slowly, don’t look to the side. Maybe they’re not watching the shop.

She opened the door and stepped out into the street. She couldn’t help glancing behind as she walked away.

Two men in raincoats were following her, less than sixty yards away. One of them, realizing she’d seen them, gestured to the other and both picked up the pace.

Shit!

Alys tried to walk as fast as she could without breaking into a run. She didn’t want to run the risk of attracting the attention of a policeman because if he stopped her, the two men would catch up, and then she’d be done for. No doubt they were detectives hired by her father, who would make up a story in order to detain her or take her back to the family home. Legally she was not yet an adult—there were still eleven months to go before she turned twenty-one—so she would be completely at her father’s mercy.

She crossed the street without stopping to look. A bicycle brushed past her, and the boy riding it lost control and fell to the ground, obstructing Alys’s pursuers.

“You crazy or what?” shouted the lad, holding his injured knees.

Alys looked back again and saw that the two men had managed to cross the road, taking advantage of a break in the traffic. They were less than ten meters away, and quickly gaining ground.

Not far to the trolley now.

She cursed her shoes, which had wooden soles that made her skid slightly on the wet pavement. The bag where she kept her camera knocked against her hips, and she clung to the strap, which she wore diagonally across her chest.

It was obvious that she wasn’t going to make it unless she could come up with something quickly. She could sense her pursuers right behind her.

It can’t happen. Not when I’m so close.

At that moment a group of uniformed schoolboys came around the corner in front of her, led by a master who was accompanying them to the trolley stop. The boys, twenty or so of them all lined up together, cut her off from the road.

Alys managed to push through and reach the other side of the group, just in time. The trolley rolled along its tracks, sounding its bell as it approached.

Reaching out, Alys grabbed hold of the bar and stepped onto the front of the trolley. The driver reduced his speed slightly as she did so. When she was safely aboard the packed vehicle, Alys turned around to look at the street.

Her pursuers were nowhere to be seen.

With a sigh of relief, Alys paid and clung to the bar with trembling hands, quite oblivious to the two figures in hats and raincoats who at that moment were boarding the back of the trolley.

Paul was waiting for her on the Rosenheimerstrasse, close to the Ludwigsbrücke. When he saw her get off the trolley he went to give her a kiss, but he stopped when he saw the concern on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

Alys closed her eyes and sank into Paul’s strong arms. In the safety of his embrace, she did not spot her two pursuers getting off the trolley and entering a nearby café.

“I went to get my brother’s letter, like I do every Thursday, but I was followed. I won’t be able to use that method of contact anymore.”

“That’s terrible! Are you all right?”

Alys hesitated before answering. Should she tell him everything?

It would be so easy to tell him. Just open my mouth and let those two words out. So easy . . . and so impossible.

“Yes, I suppose so. I lost them before I got on the trolley.”

“All right, then . . . but I think you ought to cancel tonight,” said Paul.

“I can’t, it’s my first commission.”

After months of persistence, she had finally come to the attention of the head of photography at the Munich Allgemeine newspaper. He had told her to go that evening to the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall, fewer than thirty steps from where they were now. The state commissioner of Bavaria, Gustav Ritter von Kahr, would be giving a speech in half an hour. For Alys, the chance to stop spending her nights enslaved in the club and begin making a living from the thing she most enjoyed, photography, was a dream come true.

“But after what’s happened . . . don’t you want to just go to your apartment?” Paul asked.

“Do you realize how important tonight is to me? I’ve been waiting months for an opportunity like this!”

“Calm down, Alys. You’re making a scene.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! You’re the one who needs to calm down!”

“Please, Alys. You’re exaggerating,” said Paul.

“Exaggerating! That’s just what I needed to hear,” she snorted, turning and walking off toward the beer hall.

“Wait! Weren’t we going to have a coffee first?”

“Have one yourself!”

“Don’t you at least want me to go with you? These political meetings can be dangerous: people get drunk and sometimes arguments break out.”

The moment these words left his mouth, Paul knew he’d put his foot right in it. He wished he could catch them in flight and swallow them back down, but it was too late.

“I don’t need you to protect me, Paul,” replied Alys icily.

“I’m sorry, Alys, I didn’t mean—”

“Good evening, Paul,” she said, joining the crowd of laughing people going inside.

Paul was left alone in the middle of the crowded street, wanting to strangle someone, to scream, to kick the ground and cry.

It was seven in the evening.

38

The hardest thing had been to slip into the boardinghouse unnoticed.

The landlady was hanging around the entrance like a bloodhound with her overall and broom. Jürgen had had to wait a couple of hours, wandering around the neighborhood and watching the entrance to the building surreptitiously. He couldn’t risk doing so brazenly, as he had to be sure he wouldn’t be recognized later. In the bustling street it was unlikely that anyone would pay much attention to a man in a black overcoat and hat walking with a newspaper under his arm.

He’d hidden his cudgel in the folded paper and, fearful that it might fall, squeezed it so hard against his armpit that the next day he would have a considerable bruise. Under his civilian clothes he was wearing the brown uniform of the SA, which would certainly have attracted too much attention in an area that was as full of Jews as this one. His cap was in his pocket and he’d left his boots at the barracks, choosing a pair of sturdy shoes instead.

Finally, after going past many times, he managed to find a breach in the line of defense. The landlady left her broom leaning against the wall and disappeared through a small inner door, perhaps to prepare dinner. Jürgen made the most of this gap to slip into the house and trot up the stairs to the top floor. Having passed various landings and corridors, he found himself outside Ilse Reiner’s door.

He knocked.

If she’s not here, everything will be easier, thought Jürgen, anxious to complete the task as soon as possible and cross over to the east bank of the Isar, where the members of the Stosstrupp had been told to meet two hours earlier. It was a historic day and here he was, wasting his time in some intrigue he couldn’t have cared less about.

If at least I’d been able to fight Paul . . . that would have been different.

A smile lit up his face. At the same moment, his aunt opened the door and looked straight into his eyes. Perhaps she read betrayal and murder in them; perhaps she was simply afraid of Jürgen’s presence. But whatever the reason, she reacted by trying to slam the door shut.

Jürgen was quick. He managed to get his left hand there just in time. The doorjamb hit his knuckles hard and he stifled a cry of pain, but he had succeeded. However hard Ilse pushed, her fragile body was powerless against Jürgen’s brutal strength. He leaned his great weight against the door, and both his aunt and the chain protecting her were dispatched onto the floor.

“If you scream I’ll kill you, old woman,” said Jürgen, his voice low and serious as he closed the door behind him.

“Have some respect: I’m younger than your mother,” said Ilse from the floor.

Jürgen didn’t reply. His knuckles were bleeding: the blow had been harder than it had seemed. He set the newspaper and cudgel on the ground and approached the neatly made bed. He tore off a piece of the sheet and was tying it around his hand when Ilse, believing him to be distracted, opened the door. Just as she was about to make a run for it, Jürgen yanked hard at her dress, pulling her back down.

“Nice try. So, now can we talk?”

“You haven’t come here to talk.”

“That’s true.”

Grabbing her by the hair, he forced her to stand up again and look him in the eye.

“So, Auntie, where are the papers?”

“How typical of the baron, sending you to do what he doesn’t dare do himself,” snorted Ilse. “Do you know what it is he’s sent you to get?”

“You people and your secrets. No, my father hasn’t told me anything, he’s just asked me to get your papers. Luckily my mother gave me more detail. She said I have to find a letter of yours that’s full of lies, and another from your husband.”

“I have no intention of giving you anything.”

“You don’t seem to understand what I’m prepared to do, Auntie.”

He took off his overcoat and put it down on a chair. Then he drew out a red-handled hunting knife. The sharp edge gave off a silvery gleam in the light from the oil lamp, which was reflected in his aunt’s trembling eyes.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find I would.”

For all his bravado, the situation was more difficult than Jürgen had imagined. It wasn’t like a tavern brawl, where he would allow his instinct and adrenaline to take over, and his body became a savage, brutal machine.

When he took the woman’s right arm and held it down on the bedside table, he felt barely any emotion. But then a sadness bit into him like the sharp teeth of a saw, scraping the pit of his stomach and showing as little mercy as he himself showed when he put the knife to his aunt’s fingers and removed her index finger in two messy cuts.

Ilse screamed in pain, but Jürgen was ready and covered her mouth with his hand. He wondered where the excitement was that violence usually brought, which was what had first attracted him to the SA.

Could it be the lack of challenge? Because this scared old crow was no challenge at all.

The screams stifled under Jürgen’s palm had dissolved into inaudible sobbing. He fixed his gaze on the woman’s tearful eyes, trying to take the same pleasure from this situation that he’d felt knocking out the teeth of the young Communist a few weeks earlier. But no. He gave a resigned sigh.

“Now will you cooperate? This isn’t much fun for either of us.”

Ilse nodded hard.

“I’m glad to hear it. Give me what I’ve asked you for,” he said, releasing her.

She moved away from Jürgen and, with hesitant steps, walked toward the wardrobe. The mutilated hand that she held against her chest left a growing stain on her cream-colored dress. She searched among her clothes with her other hand till she found a small white envelope.

“This is my letter,” she said, holding it out to Jürgen.

The young man took the envelope, the surface of which bore a bloody smudge. His cousin’s name was written on the other side. He tore open one end of the envelope and removed five sheets filled with tight, round handwriting.

Jürgen glanced over the first lines but then was drawn in by what he read. Halfway through the text his eye bulged and his breathing became agitated. He threw Ilse a suspicious look, unable to believe what he was seeing.

“It’s a lie! A filthy lie!” he cried, stepping toward his aunt and holding the knife to her throat.

“It isn’t, Jürgen. I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” she said.

“You’re sorry? You feel sorry for me, do you? I’ve just cut off your finger, you old hag! What’s to stop me slitting your throat, eh? Tell me it’s a lie,” hissed Jürgen in a cold whisper that made Ilse’s hair stand on end.

“I’ve been a victim of this particular truth for many years. It’s part of what has made you into the monster you are.”