Assignment Gestapo (26 page)

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Yeah, and old Gustav bleating along behind us telling us not to shoot or we’d bugger up his books
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That’s right, she had to be done away with proper, according to the regulations, else her papers wouldn’t be in order
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She was a murderer’ said Heide, coldly. ‘I saw her file in Hauptfeldwebel Dorn’s office. She killed her best friend
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Yeah, but only because her best friend happened to have pinched her fiancé,’ I objected
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Heide looked at me
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Fiancé, my arse! She just slept around with him and took presents off of him . . . he was a rich bloke, remember
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Next week we’re on duty at Fuhlsbüttel,’ said Steiner, suddenly. ‘I’ve arranged to be sick that week, I’ve already seen the Feldwebel down at the infirmary. It’s costing me two cartons of fags, but I reckon it’s worth it. I know for a fact they’ve got at least five executions laid on for that week
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Don’t worry me none,’ declared Tiny. ‘So long as they give us a bit of extra cash for being there. I don’t care how many flaming executions they got going. Way I see it is, if we didn’t do it there’d be a hundred others who would
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Precisely’ said Heide. ‘And in any case, we’re supposed to be soldiers. We just do what we’re told to do
. . .’

CHAPTER SIX

In Preventive Detention

In the offices of the Gestapo, 8 Stadthausbrücke, Lt. Ohlsen sat facing Paul Bielert across a wide desk.

Lt. Ohlsen was holding a document in his hand. Bielerf was thoughtfully smoking a big cigar. With a smile on his lips, and his eyes narrowed, he watched the smoke as it twisted and curled on its way to the ceiling. Ohlsen was his 123rd arrest that week. Gruppenführer Müller in Berlin could hardly do otherwise than express his satisfaction with Bielert’s industry. Though, mind you, Müller was a fool and a swine. Not a patch on Obergruppenführer Heydrich.

Bielert shifted his position slightly and thought about Heydrich. They had assassinated him, the fools. And yet he was one of the best men they had had. A man Bielert had not objected to working for. Intelligent, self-assured and unscrupulous. A very angel of the devil. Even SS Heinrich had thought twice before crossing swords with him. And who knew, wondered Bielert, as he had often wondered before, who knew if Himmler and the Führer himself had not had a hand in his murder? Scared that the man was growing too powerful, and hence dangerous? Certainly the whole affair had been handled in a highly unsatisfactory manner. There were still far too many unanswered questions for Bielert’s liking.

Why, for instance, had none of Heydrich’s assassins been allowed to survive to tell their tale? The order of SD Gruppenführer Nebe, who was in charge of the mopping-up operation, had made it very clear that death and not capture was what was required: ‘Take no prisoners. They must all be killed, by whatever means available – even if it means violating the sanctity of a church, should they attempt to take refuge in one. Burn the church if necessary, but let none escape.’

The last of the assassins had been run to earth in Prague. He had given himself up without a struggle, and instead of shoot-ing him on the spot they had taken him back with them. He seemed perfectly willing to speak, but strangely enough he had never been given the chance: he had been shot in Nebe’s office. According to the official report in the newspapers it had been suicide, and most people had readily believed it. Even the English had swallowed the story and had put it out on the BBC.

Bielert slid open a drawer in his desk and looked down upon the pistol he kept in there. It was the pistol he had used to shoot the last of the assassins, there in Nebe’s office. He had been glad enough to do so at the time, thinking only of revenge, but now he sometimes found himself wondering what the man might have said, had he been given the opportunity to talk.

Shortly after the inquest, Nebe had been removed from office. He had grown cocksure and over-zealous since Heydrich’s death and was evidently considered to be an embarrassment. At first Bielert had been puzzled, but his cunning brain had soon put two and two together and he had begun to wonder if he might not be the next on the list. He had instantly put in for a transfer and been sent to Hamburg.

By way of a so-called reprisal for the murder of Heydrich, they had burnt down the entire village where it had happened, just outside Prague. It was the military police who performed the operation. A rumour was spread about that the SS had been responsible for it, but in fact there were no more than five SS men in the whole commando. The liquidation had been entirely the work of MPs from Dresden and Leipzig.

Bielert laughed softly to himself. It had originally been proposed that the Waffen SS should perform the task, but SS Obergruppenführer Berger had strongly opposed the idea on the grounds that it would he harmful to the current recruiting campaign for volunteers from Bohemia and Slovakia. He had probably been right, in theory. In practice, as it turned out, the recruiting campaign was in any case dealt a blow from which it never recovered.

The idea of burning the village had come from Himmler himself, and it seemed an excellent one. An act so terrible, on such a scale, would set the whole world by the ears. They would understand at once that it was a reprisal: an act of revenge against the Tchechoslovak resistance movement, which had supposedly assassinated Heydrich. And in the face of such an orgy of slaughter, of burnings and shootings and hangings, all for the death of one man, the people would surely turn and curse the resistance movement for bringing such misery upon them?

The only trouble was that the English almost immediately became suspicious. They lost no time in broadcasting their views on the affair, with the result that many hundreds of volunteers from Bohemia and Slovakia at once deserted and joined the Resistance movement instead, while the recruiting offices fell suddenly silent and empty. Heydrich had been exterminated, certainly, but the rest of the plan had gone sadly astray. One might even say, thought Bielert, closing the drawer again, that it had backfired. And serve them right, too.

He turned his attention to Lt. Ohlsen, who was frowning as he read through the warrant for his arrest. Bielert leaned back in his chair and smiled contentedly through a cloud of cigar smoke. It was a good idea – and his own – to give these intellectual types the chance of acquainting themselves with a few of the facts before the interview began. It unsettled them, made them less sure of their ground and more disposed to open their mouths and try to talk their way out of trouble. And in Bielert’s experience, the more a man talked the more trouble he made for himself.

He waited patiently. Ohlsen was now reading through the warrant for the third time, going through it with desperate care, to make sure he had missed none of it. They always did that. The first time they skipped through it and only half understood it; the second time they slowed down sufficiently to grasp a few of the essentials, although even then their minds still refused to accept the hard fact of their arrest; but the third time round, their nerve began to go and they began to be far more malleable. So Bierlert sat back and bided his time, looked at his well-kept fingernails and savoured the aroma of his excellent cigar.

Lt. Ohlsen appeared to be no exception to the general rule. He was reading the document with painful slowness, still tending towards incredulity and yet with a growing horror of awareness which spread from the deepmost pit of his bowels and steadily up through his body, making his palms sweat and the hair follicles prick at the back of his neck.

‘To the President of the People’s Tribunal, People’s Tribunal, 7J.636/43 (52/43 – 693)

Hamburg, 3rd April 1943
8 Stadhausbrücke
Hamburg 2.

Warrant of Arrest

Lieutenant Bernt Viktor Ohlsen, born 4 April 1917 at Berlin-Dahlem, currently serving with the 27th Armoured Regiment, is required to be interned by the State Secret Police. The 27th Armoured Regiment is at present stationed at Hamburg, at the Altona Barracks.

An official inquiry is to be held into the conduct of the said Bernt Viktor Ohlsen. He is accused of seeking to disrupt public order by spreading alarm and despondency and by generally encouraging acts of sabotage and insurrection. The facts are as follows:

1) On 22nd January 1943, while the Regiment was at the Eastern Front, the Accused made the following declaration to a fellow officer:

‘If you ask me, the Third Reich won’t even see its centenary, let alone the millenium . . . everyone knows the war’s as good as lost. It’s not going to be long before the English and the Americans come up through the Balkans and Italy and invade Germany herself . . . and then Adolf and his pals can go jump in their ovens and burn themselves to cinders, and the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.’

2) On or about the same date, the Accused showed to a junior officer some Russian propaganda inciting German soldiers to desert.

The offences committed are in violation of Paras 5 and 91, Article I of the Penal Code. The arrest and preliminary investigation of the Accused shall be carried out by the State Police, 8 Stadthausbrücke, Hamburg 2.

The arrest and detention of the Accused are subject to appeal before the President of the People’s Tribunal.

(Sgd) Dr Micken
President of the Court of Appeal.’

Lt. Ohlsen came to the end of the document for the third time. He laid it on the desk and looked across at Paul Bielert, with a gesture of resignation.

‘What am I supposed to say?’

Bielert blew out a cloud of smoke and hunched an indifferent shoulder.

‘That, of course, is entirely up to you,’ he said, smoothly. ‘I am only the person in charge of the preliminary investigation. It is not up to me to tell you what you should say. However, there is one word of advice I can give you.’ He leaned forward across the desk, gesticulating towards Ohlsen with his cigar. ‘Remember always that we at the Gestapo are not idiots. We know what we’re about. We never arrest anyone without very good reasons . . . and we never make mistakes. We check the facts most carefully before we even go to the lengths of bringing in a suspect for questioning. In a case such as yours, therefore, you will only make it worse for yourself if you attempt to deny any of the charges . . . particularly since, in the final analysis, you will end up by saying just whatever we wish you to say.’

He smiled, and leaned back again. His eyes glittered with malevolent enjoyment behind his thick-lensed spectacles.

‘If I were you, I shouldn’t worry your head too much about the details. When it comes to it, it resolves itself quite simply into a question of choosing whether you walk out of this room on your own two feet or whether you’re dragged out like a sack of potatoes . . . it is entirely up to you. But whatever you decide, it makes no difference to me. Either way, you don’t leave until you’ve made a full and satisfactory confession.’

He held his cigar under his nose a moment, delicately twitching his nostrils as the smoke curled up. He looked across at Ohlsen and smiled amiably.

‘Of course, you can make things far easier for yourself if you do decide to be sensible. If you’re willing to make a confession straight away, it saves both your time and ours. We don’t have the bother of going through all this rubbish—’ He disdainfully tapped a finger on a pile of papers and documents that lay before him on the desk – ‘and you will probably be detained in Torgau no longer than two to three weeks, which I think you. will agree is quite reasonable. After Torgau, of course, you’ll either be sent to a disciplinary regiment as an ordinary soldier or possibly put in an FGA
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for a few months.’

Lt. Ohlsen ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end like a brush. He met the glittering grey eyes of Bielert, and he refused to flinch.

‘Everything you say sounds perfectly straightforward,’ he allowed. ‘Even, in the circumstances, quite tempting . . . I suppose most of the poor fools you have sitting in this chair would be gullible enough to believe you. The only thing is, I’ve already served three years in a disciplinary regiment and I’m perfectly well aware of the fact that no one – I repeat, no one –has ever survived more than two months in an FGA.’

Bielert hunched a shoulder.

‘You’re exaggerating, of course. I have personally known several people who have been through the ordeal and are still very much alive to tell the tale . . . naturally, they are the ones who have been sensible and co-operative, I will grant you that. But anyone who is willing to be reasonable is always given a fair deal. And frankly, Lieutenant, I don’t see that you have any real choice in the matter. Owing entirely to your own lack of discretion you have succeeded in landing yourself in your present position, so why not confess to your crimes and have done with it? I have, I can assure you, sufficient evidence against you to have you executed if you don’t choose to co-operate with us.’ He picked up his pen and pointed it towards the Lieutenant ‘When I say executed, I mean – executed. Decapitated . . . Have you ever seen anyone decapitated, Lieutenant? It’s not a wholesome experience, even for the audience . . . Anyway, that is the position in which you find yourself and it’s up to you to take your pick. But whatever you do, don’t underestimate the Gestapo. I don’t exaggerate when I tell you that our information services are so efficient that we even know what people say in their sleep . . . My men are all over the place. And I make no bones about it, some of them are pretty unscrupulous people. I don’t care who they are or where they’ve come from, whether they’re generals or whether they’re prostitutes, whether I’ve met them at society dinner parties or in the urinal of some stinking bistrot, so long as they can do the job, that’s all I ask . . . If I felt so inclined, Lieutenant, it would take me no longer than a couple of weeks to have the whole of your life history from the moment you were born, even down to the minutest details that you yourself have probably never known . . . I daresay I could find out the colour of the very first dummy you ever sucked, if it were of any interest or importance to me.’