The Führer Must Die Read online

  “We were not taken in by it,” he said. “He is being detained only to establish the connection with the Englishmen who entrapped him so that we can track them down. There is one problem,” Nebe managed to say before Mueller could hang up. “This case rightfully belongs to the Gestapo. I am concerned that certain departments may feel that we have taken it away from them by intrigue and that we are attempting to set ourselves up as rivals in some sense.”

  Heinrich Mueller’s office was appointed with a rococo touch, and with the dim lighting and long shadows that one would almost expect Bella Lugosi, Lon Chaney, or Christopher Lee to make an entrance at any moment.

  “They are supposed to,” Mueller’s voice deepened. “We have so many police forces and they all have overlapping and contradictory fields of authority, exactly like the army and the SS. The Führer has deliberately fostered this confusion so that none of them will have the power base to replace him. This is simply a continuation of existing policy but,” there was a pointless menace in the phrase, “in police work there is a limit to the amount of useful confusion. For that reason it is essential that we maintain a clear line of responsibility on this. No one is to talk to him but you. I have already given orders to that effect. Good to see that you’re making progress but try to keep him alive. Brutality is, after all, only another form of sentimentality. Neither have any place in police work.”

  “So I have told my men,” said Nebe, but Mueller had already hung up. Nebe put down the phone. … A coup d’état by the police? It might have been a possibility in Luxembourg, but never in Germany.

  Nolte and Brandt were on their feet and watching him. He sighed gutturally and looked away. He rubbed his chin like Lionel Barrymore, trying to remember what movie that was from. He covered his face with his hands. Then he put them on the table. Nolte and Brandt were still watching him, rigid as figures in an Easter crib. Nebe smiled at them. “You hear any of that?”

  “Enough,” said Nolte. “He’s innocent. He was framed. He’s going to go free.” Nolte started to reach for his gun then thought better of it. “You …” Nolte searched for a word, “are …” he searched for another. His stomach swayed on its moorings. “It was an English plot. He will say that.”

  Brandt was standing, watching them with his mouth open; he’d had his tonsils out. Nolte’s face twitched through a series of expressions that were like title cards in a silent movie. Clearly the man kept thinking of questions and finding them unacceptable.

  “In answer to your question, the investigation is being conducted by the police, so there can be no question of political involvement.” Listening to himself, Nebe was amazed at how smoothly he lied. If this kept on going he might just manage to cheer himself up.

  “Oh,” said Nolte. “Oh?” he said it again.

  “Meanwhile, we’ll find out what actually happened, just in case that question comes up.”

  Brandt was smiling at Nebe with a devotion that would embarrass the average dog and Nolte suddenly relaxed. The Chief Inspector stood up, his pants slid down past the bulge. Seven days on a fast and he still didn’t have a waist. Well, such things take time. For the first time in a week, he realized he was hungry. “Let’s take a break,” he said.

  Nebe invited Nolte for a drink. It was an honor and Nolte was properly appreciative. Nolte would want coffee, as usual. Nebe preferred beer to free his subconscious associations, but beer would imply an informality that would defeat the purpose of the occasion.

  They walked into a working-class bar that had the brownish glow of an old master with too many coats of shellac. Conversation died around them as they passed, which was nice, and they walked through the scrape of chairs and the rattle of beer stein lids to find a table at the back.

  Nebe looked around for the barmaid. Across the room, over-decorated beer steins were stacked to the ceiling like pieces in a three-dimensional chess game. The barmaid appeared in the center of his vision. She had no waist and no neck. Her hair was cut short and brushed straight up like that of a student with a taste for dueling. She had arms like a circus strongman. Her upper arms may have been just fat, but the forearms were real: she was holding ten maßkrugs—one-liter beer steins. Nebe briefly considered suicide. He nodded to her and she smiled back. She had all her teeth, which was a mercy. He turned back to Nolte, who was sitting with his eyes down.

  The table was set with blue tiles showing the coat of arms of something of historical importance. The barmaid slammed two glasses and a bottle of schnapps on the table, meaning that Nebe was known there. Nolte didn’t react to that, which was promising, but it was one more argument against moderation.

  Nebe poured each of them a double shot. The noise level was rising again. It was getting a little loud for an intimate conversation. Shouting, belching, spitting, and banging on the table might not be good manners elsewhere, but this was Bavaria. Nebe leaned forward conspiratorially. “Do you think I drink too much?” he asked, undermining his authority to see what Nolte would do with the opening.

  “What I think is of no importance,” replied Nolte.

  Nebe looked up from the glass, regarding Nolte with the beginnings of professional interest. He gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach up to his nose. They were investigating a plot against the Führer and suspected a plot against the police, but perhaps, it was a plot against Nebe by his junior officers led by Nolte. Nebe thought of telling him that the schnapps was poisoned and that he wouldn’t give him the antidote unless he confessed. Heydrich had played those games with Schellenberg, who had promptly poured himself a double, toasted Heydrich’s health, and then drank it down.

  “Excuse me a minute,” said Nebe, standing up. He had suddenly remembered an abortionist. In the Third Reich, abortion was murder and, if you measured the severity of the act by the number of years you took away from the victim, then abortion was the ultimate crime. The man had been headed straight for a colorful public beheading but there had been some political connection and they’d been forced to let him go. Nebe found a phone by the W.C. and called him.

  The doctor’s office was sterile in every sense, much like the balding middle-aged surgeon himself. He had just donned his coat and hat as the telephone rang. He considered ignoring it but times were lean, even for those on the dark side of the medical profession. Upon hearing Nebe’s voice he rolled his eyes, irritatingly not intimidated by his name or rank.

  “How would a man fake a heart attack?” Nebe asked.

  “Why ask me?”

  “Because you’re a criminal, you know how these things are done.” Nebe’s tone wasn’t actually accusatory.

  The doctor thought a moment, “Digitalis, possibly strychnine …”

  Nebe became snappy, “Those cause heart attacks. This man is interested in faking one.”

  “The extract of pig’s pituitary gland, it causes arrhythmia—irregular heart beat.”

  “Would that be grounds for a man to take an early retirement?”

  The doctor could no longer contain his exasperation, “If he had a physically strenuous job, yes. This is the third call of this nature I’ve had this month, tell ‘this man’ to mount a younger woman and the heart attack might come naturally.”

  Nebe’s voice became sinister, “There has to be something else.”

  “Try blutwurst and red cabbage. Nothing looks like a heart attack more than a good case of heartburn.” His ironic tone was belligerently insubordinate.

  Nebe seethed, “What did you mean by ‘try it’?”

  “I meant consider the possibility,” the doctor said.

  Nebe hung up without replying. It was his turn. When he got back to the table, Nolte was watching him with a serene reptilian alertness, eyes wired directly into the spinal cord. He could catch flies out of the air with either hand. He looked like he could catch them with his tongue too.

  “So,” said Nolte, “how do we get out of this?’

  “We don’t. …” said Nebe.

  NOVEMBER 12TH, 1939
r />   WHEN NEBE GOT TO HIS office the next morning the door was locked. When he unlocked it he saw that his desk was gone. Then he remembered than no one had spoken to him as he crossed the squad room. He stood staring into the empty room for what seemed a very long time, though it must have been less than a second. He wanted to turn around and shout but he knew the result in advance as clearly as if he were remembering it. He would demand to know what was going on but no one would answer. They wouldn’t know either. They would know that Nebe had become a dangerous man to know. Then he noticed a note taped to the door. When he unfolded it, it said that his office had been moved to the fifth floor so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. With a sigh that was more resignation than relief he recalled Muller’s statement: I have already given orders to that effect. …

  Nebe had worked in the building for 25 years but still he had to ask directions twice to find his new office. Brandt and Nolte were already there, so were his desk and filing cabinets. Was there a phone? There was a phone on the desk. Brandt and Nolte were as morosely industrious as condemned men trying to demonstrate their rehabilitation. Nolte was smoothing out the telex file and snipping it into pages. Brandt was tucking them into a brown cardboard folder.

  Nolte looked up, frightened as a child. How quickly they regress. “We’re under quarantine,” said Nolte, still snipping away. “Does that make sense?”

  Nebe sat down behind his desk. “This is what Muller ordered. They’re taking precautions so that they can control the attention the case receives. You were there. By questioning our orders you gave the impression that our cooperation had to be enforced. Before that the responsibility for the case had been mine alone, now you will share it.”

  Nolte looked down and chewed his lower lip, still smoothing and snipping. Good. Nebe patted his desk with both hands, as if he were calming an unruly steed. “So, what do we have?” he asked.

  “Lutheran, pure Aryan. … That’s embarrassing,” said Nolte. “There’s a lot of personal junk: got a girl in trouble when he was eighteen; father’s an alcoholic.”

  Nebe gestured for them to get moving. “So, read it.”

  “Do we really need to go through all this?” asked Brandt, incredibly.

  “Oh, yes. It will be useful in making him uncomfortable later on.” Nebe nodded his chin upward at Nolte, who shuffled the pages out of the file but didn’t refer to them.

  “The father ran a sawmill and a logging camp. Wanted Georg to enter the business but the little fellow didn’t like the way the horses were treated.”

  “I’ve always wondered why so many cold killers are animal lovers. It’s ironic.” Nebe tended his fingertips and smiled.

  Nolte gave him a school teacher’s frown, “No it isn’t. That’s the side they’re on. If that’s the only place they have found love and loyalty, then they’re on the side of the animals against man.” Nolte had an answer for everything. It was infuriating but it was his value. It was foolish to hate him for it.

  Nebe smiled and nodded, and Nolte went on, “Business declined, father became an alcoholic then sold the house out from under his family, except for one small room in the attic where he moved in alone.”

  They looked at each other in disgust. “So, he hates his father,” said Brandt. “He has an Oedipus complex.” This reference to the Jew science was yet another exercise in bad taste.

  Nolte resented Brandt seeking attention, “An authoritarian society like ours cranks them out like link sausages,” Nolte replied.

  “So what?” Brandt had apparently had similar experiences.

  Nolte was not in the mood. “So, this is getting a little obvious.”

  “It’s supposed to be,” said Nebe, reining them in as he nodded again.

  Nolte picked up the telex pages and began to read in the singsong voice of a court clerk. “Johann Georg Elser: passed his journeyman’s exam as a cabinet maker with the highest marks in his class in the spring of 1922. Unable to find work, he walked 215 kilometers in the middle of winter to the Dornier Aircraft Company in Friedrichshafen. Obtained work in the propeller department but was terminated without prejudice when wooden propellers were discontinued. It’s all like that.” His questioning glance at Nebe was met by a nod to continue. “Mastered the difficult art of making cuckoo clocks with hand-carved wooden gears till the company went bankrupt three months later. The man is a joke. He kept learning a trade just when it became obsolete. Another clock factory, then he went door to door offering to repair furniture. He was very successful at it, widows and landladies loved him. Then … something … I can’t find it.”

  “But he kept looking for a job. So he had to have believed that things would change.” Brandt was always the optimist.

  Nolte ignored him. “He learned to play the zither and joined the band in a dance club.”

  Nebe chuckled, but Brandt was wide-eyed. “Why do all women want to sleep with musicians? I’ve never understood that.”

  Nolte opened his mouth. He had the answer, he always did. “They’re not around much.”

  “Never mind!” said Nebe. “Try to stick to the point. Police record? Politics? Foreign contacts? Subversive organizations?”

  “None.” Nolte twisted his mouth; he didn’t like the answer either. “Not a political fanatic. Not an embittered loser. Not even an attention seeker or he would have signed his name to it and wouldn’t have tried to escape. So, what was his motive?”

  Nebe shrugged as though it were easy. “His life was a disaster. He thought he could change all that in the last reel. Like any assassin, he wanted to commit some gigantic melodramatic act that was supposed to change the meaning of everything that had come before it.” He spread his hands to show that there was nothing up either sleeve. “They promised money to his family if he’d take the fall for this. Maybe they even paid it. But we’ll promise him even more if he just tells the truth.”

  “Precisely,” said Nolte, as though it had been his idea. Nolte didn’t change expression at first but Nebe and Brandt were smiling and he began to smile too. They were still smiling at each other when two patrolmen with gigantic shoulders and little heads came in the door carrying Georg Elser by the elbows. They all gave the Nazi salute, the patrolmen missing Georg’s face by inches as they held him. After letting Georg go, the patrolmen left.

  Nebe and Nolte sat Georg down in front of the desk, wedging him in from either side. They spread out their files, photographs and evidence and Brandt sat down in front of the typewriter. They glared at Elser, waiting for him to look ashamed. Nothing happened. He looked awestruck—as the working class always did with the police—and eager to help. But he didn’t look guilty. It was a face from the Depression, lean and worn down, reduced to a mechanism by grinding routine. The eyes were alive, alert like a cat watching you with terrible innocence. It was going to be a very long night.

  Nebe picked up the photo of the wreckage with one hand and the postcard with the other. He held them next to each other in front of Georg’s nose.

  “Cause and effect are easy to put together,” Nebe said. Georg didn’t look away, but neither did he look like he was seeing what was in front of him. Nebe rattled the postcard at him to get his attention. “You shouldn’t have kept this, Georg. You shouldn’t have been quite so proud of it.” And it sounded wrong to Nebe as he said it. Brandt began to type.

  “He should be proud,” said Nolte. “He almost changed history single-handedly. Like Napoleon at Waterloo, he staked everything on timing. And it went wrong only by seconds.”

  Georg looked puzzled; he was good at that. He had tried; he had failed. They were going to kill him, so why were they making it so complicated?

  “I didn’t do it,” he said obligingly.

  Nebe groaned. This part of the interrogation could be conducted by a player piano. “What were you doing in Munich, Georg?”

  “I was looking for a job … at The BürgerBräuKeller.”

  Nebe smiled. “Of course, that’s how you got the postcard. Is that also
where you got the scars on your knees?”

  Georg tried to appear nonchalant, “I was scrubbing floors for my landlady to pay rent.”

  Nolte interjected, “The only work you did for her was in bed. I bet she was fat and ugly, wasn’t she, Georg?”

  “Maybe he just likes women.” Brandt’s Candide-like romanticism caused them all an involuntary shudder.

  Georg smiled at him. “I like women who read.”

  All three men looked at him as if he had suddenly fallen from the sky. Nolte was aghast. “What difference does that make?”

  Georg shrugged. “They’re more interesting than women who don’t.”

  Nebe struggled to keep a straight face as he let the play drop on the desk in front of Georg. “So is this a souvenir, or do you make a habit of reading subversive propaganda?”

  Georg didn’t seem to understand what he meant. “Reading just makes it easier to forget that I’m hungry.”

  On seeing the title, Brandt practically shrieked, “I thought they had burnt all that trash!”

  “Speaking of burning,” said Nebe, “one of the people you killed was a waitress, sixteen years old. Would you like to see her picture?” He handed the photograph to Georg. Georg took it.

  In the background, Brandt clattered away at the typewriter like a centipede with lead shoes. The hand holding the photograph began to tremble. Georg handed it back.

  “Doesn’t leave a whole lot to be said,” said Nebe.

  Nolte looked like he had just invented the wheel. “You have it exactly wrong. That’s all it leaves. What can be said is the only thing that can change what it means.”

  Nebe gazed at Nolte with the same sinister benevolence with which one regards a precocious child that insists on interrupting adult conversation to show how clever they are.

  “Yes, if he cooperates, if he tells us who paid him to do it. That could change it. Then he wouldn’t be an enemy.” Nebe tried the same look out on Elser. “Isn’t that right?”

  Georg was suddenly lost. “I didn’t …”