A Pious Killing Page 24

  “Now go and wait outside the door Angela, while I have a quick word with your mother.”

  Frau Rusbech looked nonplussed as her daughter went into the corridor. Mother turned to speak to her in a quiet but deliberate manner.

  “Your daughter caused disquiet during this morning’s service.” She paused, her eyes fixed on Frau Rusbech. “Her clumsiness,” she went on, “is beyond a joke. She distracts the other children. They were giggling at her at the very moment of communion when they should be experiencing the most sacred and profound holiness.”

  Frau Rusbech looked too shocked to respond. Her face blushed with embarrassment.

  “We cannot have the mass turned into a comedy every week. I have decided I do not want you to bring Angela to mass for the next two weeks.”

  Robert was as shocked to hear this as Frau Rusbech. He said nothing. He thought that Mother’s behaviour was telling him something. Something he was pleased to hear. However, pleased or not he could not help a rising anger swelling up inside him to hear Frau Rusbech spoken to in this way.

  “But…” began Frau Rusbech. But her words dried up as she found Mother’s hand, palm out, in front of her face.

  “Please do not but me, Frau Rusbech. I have made my decision. Now, please go!”

  Ashamed and humiliated, Frau Rusbech turned, glanced briefly at Robert before quickly averting her eyes and exiting the room.

  Outside in the corridor she found Angela in the company of Herr and Frau Todt. The Headmaster put on a mock serious face and said, “Angela, have you been naughty again? I hope Mother didn’t have to slipper you.”

  Angela laughed but there was a strong hint of nervousness in it. Herr Todt was her headmaster and she had a healthy fear of him. He took Angela’s face in between his two warm palms and lifted it gently to look at him.

  “You have a very special daughter here Frau Rusbech. I hope you are very proud of her.”

  “Thank you so…” ventured a wet-eyed Frau Rusbech before being interrupted by the holy Mother who had appeared at the door to her office.

  “Ah! There you are Herr Todt. Come along in. The doctor and I have been waiting for you. Goodbye Frau Rusbech,” she added as an afterthought.

  As they settled to their ersatz coffee and malt biscuits, Robert noticed that they were not treated to Mother’s secret supply of large chocolate biscuits. It was probably the exchange he had just witnessed that provoked Robert to introduce a topic of conversation that would normally not be touched upon. However, given the situation in Germany it was surprising to Robert that a discussion of politics never entered their conversation. But he was coming to realise that in this Germany the political situation was the last thing anyone spoke about. The nearest they came to the subject was some brief reference to the state of the war and what the allies might have in store for them that coming night.

  In an attempt to provoke his host and fellow guests Robert raised the issue of the Weisse Rose. He regretted doing this almost at once. Herr and Frau Todt looked most uncomfortable and it was the Mother who rescued him.

  The movement, which had become known as The Weisse Rose, was one of the very few public protests against the Nazis in Germany. Someone was organising a propaganda effort to counter the Nazis. Graffiti and leaflets appeared around the city criticising the regime and exposing some of its evil activities. The authorities issued dire warnings against this group which they labelled mentally deficient, pro-Jewish and communist conspirators at various times.

  “God works things out in his own mysterious way. It is not for us to pass judgement on those misguided souls, the Lord forgive them.”

  And thus, in her dismissal of even this most pathetic act of opposition to the might of the Nazi terror machine, Mother summed up the attitude of the church to the current conflict at large.

  Robert’s clumsy fumbling towards some glimpse of the attitudes of his companions had almost misfired and he silently thanked the Mother for putting the issue to bed.

  Frau Todt who, in her late forties was five or six years younger than her husband, uncrossed her legs exposing an expanse of elegant thigh and got up from her seat. She crossed the room to the window and looked out.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “When we look at the sky these days we rarely comment on the weather. Instead of clouds we look for planes.” She turned and faced the room. “I hate this war,” she said. “I think it could go on for another twenty years. Our lives will have been totally wasted. The man I blame for all of this destruction is Winston Churchill.”

  She lit a cigarette, returned to her chair and continued, “What did Germany do to deserve this onslaught? Can anybody tell me?” She paused to allow a response but nobody took up the offer. “Well,” she continued. “I’ll tell you what I think. Germany was surrounded by enemies and agitators and our brothers and sisters across neighbouring borders were being persecuted. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland. All the Fuhrer tried to do was right a few wrongs and to give Germany some pride back. And what happens? The warmonger Churchill, with his lust for blood and destruction, refuses all reasonable approaches for peace; even against his own cabinet and the rightful king of that horrible little island. And so what do we have now? A permanent state of war, that’s what. And that’s what will remain. The so-called allies will never defeat Germany. Our fighting men are invincible. The allies will soon fall out amongst themselves. But, unfortunately, as long as Churchill wields his evil power over the English this war will never end.”

  She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. Again the hem of her dress rode up her thigh and Robert shrank with abhorrence from the fact that he found this rotten-to-the-core-Nazi sexually attractive.

  “Do you know what I think?” she said in conclusion. “I think someone should assassinate Mister Winston Churchill and then all of our problems would be solved.”

  Robert, Mother Superior and Herr Todt chuckled and nodded agreement.

  “I will write at once to the Fuhrer,” declared Herr Todt, “And tell him of your solution to the world’s crisis.”

  Unable to rid himself of his provocative mood, Robert heard himself asking of the Mother, “What is the Church’s position on political assassination in a time of war?”

  Mother took her sherry glass away from her lips and wiped a rich ruby liquid from them.

  “The commandment says, ‘thou shalt not kill!’

  Realising, as her companions were staring at her in anticipation of some further development of her statement, that in the context of a world war that particular commandment was somewhat redundant, she hid her embarrassment behind a sip of her coffee.

  “Well now,” she answered with more confidence having swallowed, “I think Holy Mother Church has enough to do guiding and leading us in prayer without getting into a debate about assassinations.”

  Thirty

  As dusk fell late that Sunday afternoon and the city braced itself for another pounding, two trucks pulled swiftly out of Gestapo/SS Headquarters and raced along the cobbled streets of the Marienplatz out along the Theatinerstrasse, past the Max Joseph I and the lion statues out towards the residential apartments on the edge of the old town.

  The Tring family were shocked at the sound of jackboots pounding across the courtyard below their flat. But they kept their door locked and prayed, along with every other resident, that the jackboots were not heading to their door. To their relief the scraping sound receded slightly and they went back to their time-filling activities expecting the air-raid siren to sound at any time.

  Captain Vogts had hardly reacted to the sound of boots pounding on the stairwell of his block. Another traitor discovered and captured was his first thought. Like that doctor he had encountered. He was going to investigate that man further in the morning. He wanted to be sure he knew his man before informing the authorities of his suspicions. Tomorrow, after a visit to the surgery, he would be certain.

  The sound of his front door splintering shocked him out of his reverie. Before he
could even get to his feet two of the six guards who had crashed in had grabbed him and were already dragging him away to Gestapo/SS Headquarters.

  On Wednesday afternoons Frau Helga was permitted some free time from the school. The girls all took part in physical education programmes and Frau Helga did not number physical education as one of her areas of expertise. She paid her time in lieu back each Saturday morning with advanced English and Latin lessons.

  Her first activity each Wednesday was to inspect the “dead letter box” used by the group. It was her intention to always vary her routine but invariably she was too curious to postpone her visit to the central municipal library where the “dead letter box” was situated.

  In the late autumnal afternoon Frau Helga decided to walk the short distance into the centre of Munich. It was a mild afternoon with hardly a breeze and the occasional flickering of sunshine through the thin clouds. She was intermittently aware of the odour of cordite and dampened ash in the air as it drifted around the city streets following last night’s raid. Sometimes a gust of unnaturally warm air would caress her as she walked past a still smouldering ruin.

  In the library foyer she queued at reception to show her papers and to have her handbag searched. The receptionist, a local Nazi Party official smiled at her in recognition.

  “Good afternoon, Albert,” she whispered with a friendly smile. “How are you today?”

  “Today I am good. I glory in last night’s great success. Four allied bombers shot down.”

  “That is wonderful,” replied Helga.

  She moved away from the reception desk and the bedraggled line of old and injured men and women behind her.

  Forcing herself to take her time, Helga first went into the main reference library and sat down at a desk with a recent copy of the official Nazi Party publication. She read two articles; one about Hitler’s promise of new opportunities in the east for loyal Germans. There would be land and work and untold riches for the brave and the daring once the war was won. She read a second about how Aryan blood was already enriched thanks to the blood and race policies of the Fuhrer. Eventually she left her station, returned the magazine to its position at the front of the stand and then wandered slowly through the main reference hall to a side room labelled anthropology.

  Anthropology was housed in a large, high-ceilinged room with grandiose coving echoed by carved dado rails. The walls were lined with bookshelves twice a man’s height and they also stood in lines at right angles to each other carving the room into a maze. Helga could not help noticing with disapproval, as she did on every visit, that many of the shelves were bare; the result of enthusiastic Nazi book-burning frenzies. The volumes that remained were those produced by Nazi pseudo-scientists who had managed to re-structure anthropological knowledge in the image of the Fuhrer’s dogma.

  At the end of a deep corridor between bookcases, which dead-ended before a redundant, ornate fireplace, she stooped and reached to raise a short floorboard adjacent to the wall. As a loose floorboard it had eluded detection because, at the end of this corridor and against the wall, it was never walked upon.

  Her hand came away with a tiny piece of note paper. She unfolded it, read it and memorised it. Then she quickly shredded it in her fingers, ensuring that each letter on the paper was torn in two. She then spent the next fifteen minutes in deep concentration wandering around the main reference section once more browsing through the shelves. At each wastepaper bin that she came to she deposited one of the scraps of paper in her hand until all the scraps were gone. Finally she selected a book from the history section and sat down with it at a reading station. With the aid of this book she de-coded the message.

  With her heart in her mouth she returned the history book to its shelf and walked out of the main reference section into the reception and towards the exit.

  “Mein Frau!” she heard the receptionist call in a voice inappropriately loud for the library. Her heart stopped as she turned to face him.

  “I fear you have forgotten something,” he said sternly.

  Frau Helga looked at him hoping that the frozen terror she was experiencing was not illustrated by her expression.

  “Your bag?”

  Her mind blank, she looked down at the bag on her arm and then back at him.

  “I must search it before you leave – as I always do.”

  The release of tension made her laugh a little too loudly, but he did not notice and in a moment she was outside on the Munich streets hurrying towards a rendezvous with Adolf.

  “We are blown!”

  The words reeled in her head as she walked as quickly as she dared to without attracting unnecessary attention.

  As she entered the park she saw Adolf at once. He was seated on the bench where they met. Usually relaxed, Helga could tell from Adolf’s rapid scouring of the park that today he was very agitated. This only heightened her own anxiety.

  She sat at the other end of the bench to him and he began speaking at once.

  “They know about us.”

  On hearing the words she most dreaded her stomach tightened in a spasm of fear.

  “What do they know?”

  “Everything.”

  “What do you mean, everything?” Helga could hear the irritation in her own voice. “Do they know who we are?”

  The sensation of fear she experienced as she anticipated the reply she dreaded was almost overwhelming.

  “I don’t know.”

  “For God’s sake , Adolf, what do they know?”

  “They know of the plot. They are monitoring the convent. They are waiting for their moment to strike.”

  He searched his pockets for a packet of cigarettes, although he knew he had none.

  “We must get the message to the others. It’s every man for himself now. If we’re caught you know what will happen. You saw what they did to the White Rose students.”

  “Adolf,” Helga interrupted. “Slow down. Tell me exactly what you know.”

  Adolf looked to the sky where a sheet of gun metal grey loomed above them. Two mothers walked past pushing their prams and glancing at the two strangers sitting in the cold.

  “It was about ten minutes before I was due to finish my shift and the sergeant sent me down to the cells with drinks for the two men on duty down there. There’s a new prisoner; a Captain Vogts. He’s become a bit of a sideshow because of the unholy row he’s been making. He has this hideously twisted scream; the result of a war wound. He screams at anyone who goes near about his innocence; how he served in France; how he was invalided out; all about a doctor who is a British agent.”

  Adolf stopped and stole a glance at Helga. He could see the horror in her eyes.

  “They know about the doctor?”

  “Well that’s what I thought was odd to begin with. If they know about the doctor, then why is Vogts in a cell? But then, as I delivered the coffee to the guards there were two Gestapo men discussing Vogts. Basically they were saying that he would have to stay where he was until the assassins – that’s us – had been rounded up.”

  “Oh my God,” breathed Helga.

  They sat in stunned silence for a while. Then Helga said, “Wait a minute. If they know so much, why didn’t they take you there and then? And why would they carry on talking in your presence if they didn’t feel secure?”

  Adolf looked at her waiting for her to continue.

  “Don’t you understand? This means they don’t know that you’re involved. Which means they might not know about the rest of us.”

  “They must know something. Otherwise how would they know about an assassination plot? How would they know about the doctor?”

  Helga did not reply. When Adolf glanced across at her he could she that she was crying. Sensing his glance, Helga shook her head and took a handkerchief from her bag. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.