The Wind Chill Factor (28 page)

In 1938, at the age of seventeen, he reached real, recorded prominence in the Hitler Youth, and that was where Ivor Steynes’ dossier began. During the war he was shuttled from post to post, conducting himself meritoriously at each one. He was attached primarily to command posts, eventually finding himself going from Kesselring to Keitel to Goering at staff level, then to the Reichs Chancellery as liaison to the SS. There were photographs of him, slickly, smoothly handsome with Himmler and Goering and Skorzeny.

There were letters from those who had known him, testifying to his homosexuality and how it had clearly been of use to him while moving up the military-political ladder. Because, clearly, he was one of those who bridged the gap between the Nazi hierarchy and the professional military caste. By inclination he was attracted to the one, but by birth a near-member of the other. Apparently he’d been accepted by both.

Somehow, Steynes had come into possession of a series of letters from Martin Bormann to Brendel, friendly notes, surprisingly chummy for what the world knew of Bormann, and formal letters of commendation.

As the Reich was methodically being blown to bits by the Russians in the last weeks of the war, Brendel was dispatched to the Bavarian mountains to help establish
Festung Europe,
the final redoubt where the ultimate stand would be made and from which the Werewolves would strike terror into the hearts of the occupying power.

After one abortive Werewolf raid in which the mayor of a village was murdered and left dismembered on his doorstep as a warning to those who cooperated with the victors, Brendel faded from view and Steynes’ informants lost him. He reemerged in the late forties without a single blot on his official copybook and took his place in the family business. He had officially been recovering from “severe wounds suffered in the service of the Homeland” in a private hospital.

In the intervening years, through the fifties, he remained a spotlessly respectable businessman, never dabbling, however slightly, in politics. But Steynes had seen Herr Brendel in the provinces, quietly standing in the shade of village bandstands or lifting a stein in a quiet corner—while the Nazi rallies of the fifties gave proof of the rebirth of the old spirit.

Grosstreffen.
The weekend reunions were called
Grosstreffen.
Always in provincial towns, the old soldiers and their new admirers gathered together to sing the old songs and hear the old speeches. A Panzer division here, an SS formation there, the Afrika Korps somewhere else. Steynes saw and secretly photographed Brendel, in a heavy tweed suit, the bright Bavarian sun shining in his eyes, as he leaned against an old Mercedes at the Afrika Korps rally in Karlsruhe, September of 1958. He was thirty-seven. He was rich and fit and unaccompanied, apparently unnoticed.

In Wiirzburg, at a paratrooper outing, Steynes had watched five thousand of the old “Green Devils” go quite mad at the appearance of Field Marshal Kesselring, carrying him about on their shoulders. And Dawson had surreptitiously snapped a photograph of Gunter Brendel slipping into the back seat of the Field Marshal’s limousine early Monday morning, in the rain when the rally was over.

The record was copious. At reunions of the Gross Deutschland, the Viking, Das Reich, and the Death’s Head divisions Brendel was spotted. Not by reporters, not by the public, but by Dawson and Steynes. Another snapshot: Brendel in dark glasses, raincoat, umbrella above, turning away from the hidden camera, behind him a banner nailed to a building, the huge initials LAH—
Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler.

The guard regiment whose sworn duty was the protection of Adolf Hitler. The
Treuegefolgschaft:
the loyal followers. They met in Verdun to reminisce, to search for missing comrades, to acknowledge once again that “they were ready to do their duty for the Fatherland.”

And Brendel was there in the rain, turning to the young woman at his side. Blond, eyes wideset and clear, an eager smile on her face as she looked up at her new husband. I searched the fresh young face for a clue. Surely, it was Lee. It had to be Lee. Men had died because it was Lee.

But suddenly, listening to the rain drum on the windows of the lighthouse turret as it had beaten down on Gunter Brendel’s black umbrella, suddenly I could not feel so sure. It was a very pretty blond girl. But was it Lee?

Dawson laced our coffee with brandy and Peterson coughed. No wisecracks: he had fallen under the otherworldly spell Steynes had been weaving. These were not the babblings of a nut case—these were documents, bits and pieces of Martin Bormann and Gunter Brendel and the Nazis past and present. And Steynes was not finished. His hand was white and cold. We all held our coffee against our palms to stop the chill. Steynes opened another thick folder, spread it across the plaid blanket on his knees.

There were, he explained, several organizations devoted to smuggling the biggest Nazis out of Germany. ODESSA, the old SS group, had been one, and
Die Spinne
had been another.
Die Spinne
—the spider—had been immensely more effective, but it had worked in unison with ODESSA and HIAG, as well, another SS organization whose initials stood for the German “mutual assistance.”

Two major escape routes had been open to the Nazis. One, through the Alpine Fortress, flew captured American planes out by way of Switzerland and Spain, then on to Africa and Egypt. The other was termed Project North and was operated by
Die Spinne
closest to Sweden. This was the U-boat route. It was saved for the most prominent transportees and it was the method by which
Die Spinne
got Martin Bormann to South America. Gunter Brendel had helped to coordinate
Die Spinne
’s activities inside Germany. It was
Die Spinne,
Project North, which got Eichmann to Argentina … got Alfried Kottmann to Argentina long before the war ended.

I felt almost physically the tumblers clicking in my brain. The names, the men, the paths which had seemed connected only by my brother Cyril’s search and death were tightening like the drawstrings of a purse. But what was being choked off, locked inside?

“Did Brendel run
Die Spinne,
then?” It was Peterson: he punctuated the question with a sneeze into a sodden handkerchief and actually apologized.

“No, Brendel didn’t run it,” Steynes said. “He might be considered the vice-president in charge of traffic. He delivered the bodies to the transport branch and went back for more.

“The man who had overall responsibility for
Die Spinne
wasn’t even a German. He was quite young then, a soldier of fortune, an adventurer, not even a Nazi. Utterly apolitical, I assume, his type always is. He was a technician, a skilled and clever fellow I’ve been told, though I never had the pleasure of meeting him. He was, of all things, an Englishman. But then we are supposed to be a calm race, good with details—”

“His name?” I asked.

“Martin St. John,” Peterson said.

Steynes’ head swiveled sharply. “No grass growing under your feet, I daresay.” His eyes bored into Peterson: a dark smile stung the corners of his tight, ridged mouth.

“St. John?” I said.

“A guess,” Peterson said, reaching for his brandied coffee with one hand, feeling for his handkerchief with the other. “Who the hell else is left in this puzzle, anyway? Everybody keeps turning up again and again, if you’ve seen him once, you’re sure as hell going to see him again. Thus, St. John—the man who got Kottmann out before the roof gave in on all of them.”

“Perspicacious, indeed,” Steynes said against a sudden howl of wind. Fog rolled around us. “Martin St. John was, indeed,
Die Spinne.
The Spider. And you,” he said, turning to me, “have had him buy you your lunch in Buenos Aires.
Die Spinne
. …” He mused into a fist for a moment, blowing into it. “The man who got Bormann out of Germany. …” He motioned to Dawson. It was time to leave the tower. Slowly, following Dawson and his burden down the twisting stairway, we slipped into the fog that clung to Cat Island.

A fire blazed in the dining room when we assembled for dinner. Peterson’s voice had begun to go and his nose was stuffed. He kept pulling in on a Benzedrine inhaler. “Never travel without one,” he croaked. “No goddamn Kleenex, though.” But there was no more complaining about our host’s mental state.

Dawson had roasted a joint of leathery mutton and we drank a robust claret, slashed our mouths on thick-crusted bread.

Steynes explained how
Die Spinne
had moved the cargo across the Atlantic.

“This is the tricky part,” he beamed, the pleasure of special discovery easing the harshness of his countenance. “Not at all widely known—oh, a bit of random theorizing here and there, but those who knew always make sure to pooh-pooh it. And once again I make no explanation of why I’m telling you all this—I don’t actually know.” He drained his claret, stared into the faint blotch of sediment. “But I slept on it all last night and here it is. …”

Dawson refilled the glass, attended to ours.

“Separating myth from reality about
Die Spinne
is no easy task. General Paul Hausser was the more or less ‘public’ head of
Die Spinne,
assisted by Hasso von Manteuffel. Few realized that young St. John was actually doing the work. The same kind of confusion surrounds the means by which
Die Spinne
worked its wonders. And how efficiently. There are those who insist that it existed mainly in theory. Others believe that the Swedish connection or conduit to the outside world was used with some degree of effectiveness. And still others insist that the main exit route was through Spain using captured American Flying Fortresses.

“The truth includes aspects consistent with all these theories—but they are only minutiae. The real story is somewhat more difficult to fully take in.”

He motioned to Dawson. “A sweet, Dawson? Do we have an afterdinner sweet? A tart? Would you gentlemen enjoy a tart?”

“A plum tart with sweet cream,” Dawson suggested. Peterson rolled his eyes at me: his flu had blunted the edge of his impatience. I was immensely tired. My shoulders ached and the claret had precipitated a volleyball game behind my eyes. I wished that it had never started. I was having difficulty assimilating it all, yet I knew my life dangled from
Die Spinne
’s web, was being pulled up into its mesh.

My forehead was damp in the fire’s heat. I dabbed it. Dawson placed a huge tart before me. He looked fresh, tireless, cheerful. He gently slapped my back. “Hang on, Yank.”

Steynes sampled the tart, smiled, wiped cream from his chin, sucked coffee noisily, happily: he was enjoying himself.

“Certain activities of the northern-based U-boats are well known. After all, as the war was drawing to a close there were approximately four hundred of them at sea. Or able to get to sea. And Admiral Doenitz had ordered his submarine commanders to fight on and never give up. An amazing number of them shared his belief and desire. They simply did not give up once the war ended. After all, the sea is large and was theirs as much as anyone’s.

“U-977, commanded by Heinz Schaeffer, came out of the Norway-Scotland run and ran for Australia. It was a specially equipped ship, no longer had to surface to recharge its batteries what with the snorkel breathing device. It took fourteen weeks, but he made it to Argentina. And he was only one of many. But, you see, we had ways of knowing rather much of what he was doing. And eventually we picked him up. He wound up in Hertfordshire, actually, but the point is that he got to Argentina in the first place.

“U-530, under Oho Wermuth, was sitting off the coast of Long Island—yes, Mr. Cooper, Long Island—when the war ended. Two weeks later, he, too, arrived in Argentina.

“U-239, U-547, U-34, U-957, and U-1000—they were never found. Some evidence indicates they got to Japan, to the northern shore of Massachusetts, to Africa. There were leads as to the human cargo they dropped in various places. But much of it remains mysterious even to this day.

“But these vessels, while well equipped, were still normal U-boats. Bormann was not taken out on one of these—
Die Spinne
was using something else altogether, a land of U-boat which we have never officially admitted existed at all. Let me tell you about these rather marvelous things.

“They were huge, first of all, and their range was incredible. They could go where they wanted.

“Thirty-one thousand five hundred miles at ten knots—
thirty-one thousand five hundred
miles.” He smiled at our faces. “A very long way, that.”

He munched more tart, licking plum and cream from the corners of his mouth.

“Each could carry nearly three hundred tons of cargo. And there were supposed to be one hundred such ships.”

“Supposed to be?” Peterson wheezed from the end of the table.

“
Officially,
they were never built. Stalin was sure that they had been built. We—the British and the Americans—told him that they were only scheduled to be built, that they existed only on paper, that air raids on the production facilities had made their construction physically impossible.

“There were no documents at all beyond those plans—no indications of completion, no stop orders. And we told Stalin that there were no stop orders because the plants were destroyed and stop orders were thereby rendered superfluous.

“Stalin did not believe us.

“Stalin was right.”

Steynes stopped for effect. Peterson shook his head. Dawson offered us cigars and Steynes took one, clipped the end, warmed it, lit it slowly, ritualistically.

“Do you realize what the existence of these ships meant? The survival of Nazism, nothing less—not an offshoot, not an ideological neo-Nazi movement. But a direct lineal continuation. Not only in the person of Bormann and others but in the survival of the documents, whether you call them the ‘Bormann papers’ or something less dramatic.

“The survival of these textual bases for the Fourth Reich frightened the Russkies, who had sound ideological justifications for fearing them. After all, Nazism and Communism are conflicting ways of ordering things, quite unlike the Allies’ reasons for joining the battle.