Chapter 4: SS
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Henrik was taken immediately to Gestapo headquarters and placed in a solitary detention cell. He was treated quite gingerly, which indicated they had something special planned for him. Henrik was not looking forward to that, but at least he had some time to think. He needed to think. Things had gone so very wrong. A dogfight with British Spitfires. Being shot down by his own countrymen and by his fiancé. Not to mention a British spy that was out for his blood. None of this was supposed to happen.
Major Koch had put on quite a show on the way downtown, explaining in fluent German how he’d single-handedly captured the American spy, following him to the Jewish quarter after noticing his suspicious behavior down by the docks. That much was probably true, and Henrik secretly worried that the British spy might find the tunnel entrance. But at the moment, the tunnel was perhaps the least of Henrik’s problems.
The cell door opened and two dark-eyed soldiers entered. They were SS and not the same Gestapo that had apprehended him in the Jewish ghetto. These wore long, black uniforms with silver deaths-heads embroidered on their sleeves and collars. They seemed older and eerily sanguine, like ghosts in a gothic tale. And yet they were not officers with full rank, only NCOs. The big one was a sergeant, and the smaller a sergeant major second class. The small soldier sat down on the metal chair facing Henrik while the other went immediately around behind Henrik and began slowly removing his leather gloves.
“Herr Schliemann,” the tall soldier joked loudly behind Henrik’s back, “I think we’ve found the marshal’s jacket.”
“I’m sure he will be grateful,” Schliemann responded. “Look at all those medals. Are these your medals, dumb head?”
Before Henrik could answer, the tall soldier whipped Henrik’s ears with his leather gloves. “Answer him, dumb head.”
“Are you a general in the German army? I don’t think so. Wehrmacht generals are all fat.”
Again with the gloves. Henrik heard a ringing in his ears, but he said nothing.
“Herr Klein, I think we have a tough guy. Are you a tough guy?”
Henrik braced himself for another blow. His hands were cuffed to the back of the metal chair and his ankles bound in manacles to the chair legs, but this time he was determined not to take it sitting down, at least figuratively speaking. At the last moment before the blow landed, he tipped his chair and snapped his head back, crashing hard into Herr Klein’s unprotected groin. The SS brute fell back groaning. In a flash, Schliemann had his Luger drawn and leveled at Henrik’s head.
“I don’t think you want to do that, Herr Schliemann. If a bullet from your gun somehow found its way into my skull, the Fuhrer would lose his prize, and you would most certainly lose your life.”
“His prize?” Schliemann raised an eyebrow.
“Information.”
Schliemann smiled. “But my friend that is precisely why we are here. Have no fear. I’m not going to shoot you with this gun. I’m going to beat you with it.” Schliemann raised the gun to strike.
“No. Let me do it,” Klein scrambled to his feet, preparing to exact revenge for his wounded testicles. Henrik would have to cut this drama short before he suffered permanent injury.
“Manhattan,” he said quickly. Schliemann held up his hand and Klein reluctantly stopped his attack mid-swing.
“Is that supposed to mean something? Perhaps you had better elaborate before my associate goes to work on your head. He was a champion pugilist in Austria until he killed his opponent in the ring, accidentally of course. But he does so much enjoy his sport.”
“I’ll say nothing more until I meet with the Reichsfuhrer in person. And if my memory is a little foggy with concussion by then, I’m sure you’ll be prepared for the consequences.”
Henrik heard Klein winding up behind him and cringed. But the blow never landed. The two SS non-commissioned officers walked silently out of the cell and Henrik breathed a sigh of relief. An hour later, they returned with a third man, a tall SS officer with a long sallow face, piercing blue eyes and plenty of brass medals on his chest.
“I understand you have some information for the Reichsfuhrer,” he said in a clipped, high-pitched voice that somehow matched his goat-like appearance. “Will you give this information to me?”
“Who are you?”
The officer smiled, a smile without warmth or humor, and Henrik sensed that there was something hollow about the man, a coldness of death that broached no human kindness even at the basest and most elemental level. Henrik felt his skin crawl.
“You must have been gone a long time, lieutenant. I am Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia and head of SD. I can assure you that you will get no closer to the Reichsfuhrer unless you speak to me.” Heydrich sat down in the same metal chair Schliemann had occupied an hour ago. Schliemann and Klein stood behind him at strict attention.
“Manhattan.”
“Yes, that was the word that brought me here. Will you say more?” Heydrich spoke kindly, like a father to a young child, although the two men were about the same age. It made Henrik feel eerily uncomfortable.
“May I have a cigarette?”
“Of course.” Heydrich nodded to Klein. The tall SS goon produced a cigarette immediately, lit it and placed it gently between Henrik’s lips. Henrik took a long drag and blew the smoke up into Klein’s face. Klein coughed but did not retaliate.
“Manhattan is the name of an atomic research project in America. It has a secret testing facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The U.S. government has corralled the top physicists in the world in this Godforsaken desert to build a bomb the likes of which the world has never seen before. It is an atom bomb.”
“Impossible!”
“I’ve seen it. It’s not finished yet, but it will be. The theory is sound. All that’s left is the engineering.”
“I tell you it’s impossible. Our top scientists have already abandoned the project. It’s piss in the wind.” Klein and Schliemann laughed at the crude metaphor until Heydrich told them to shut up. Henrik leaned forward to take another drag on the cigarette, this time resisting the urge to blow smoke in Klein’s face.
“Oh, is that why they gave up? I heard it was something else.”
“What story did you hear?”
“Many of the scientists in New Mexico were German defectors, many Jews, some of our best minds, I think.” Henrik couldn’t resist the last remark, although it was dangerous.
Heydrich sat back in his metal chair, thinking. “How do I know that what you are telling me is true? I don’t even know your name.”
Henrik laughed. “Lieutenant Henrik Kessler, but my name is not important. It has changed so many times. Deep cover operatives are given a codename that only they and the Reich Command have access to. This name is important.”
“And yours is Vengeance?”
“Yes.”
Heydrich’s eyes narrowed. “An Abwehr operation, no doubt. Your file was closed. Lost in action. We have not heard from you in three years. Why have you chosen this time to come in from the cold, and why this charade with the marshal’s coat and the Jewish ghetto? What business did you have there?”
Henrik leaned forward to take another drag of the cigarette, and then looked up at the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia. “Do you think maybe . . .?” He rattled the handcuffs against the metal chair. Heydrich looked at the cuffs and frowned.
“Free him,” he snapped. The SS guards hesitated, perhaps caught off guard by the officer’s sudden change of attitude. Heydrich looked at the guards with dangerous impatience. “He is a deep cover operative and a valuable asset to the Fuhrer, unlike you two idiots. Free him!”
Schliemann and Klein hurriedly went to work on freeing their prisoner and Henrik couldn’t help but smile. He was even tempted to blow more smoke in
the big man’s face, but there was no point in bearding the lion now. He was in. He took another long drag on his cigarette and sat back contentedly.
“And now, lieutenant,” Heydrich continued kindly, “perhaps you can finish your tale. And please, leave nothing out.”
Henrik talked freely and convincingly for the next hour and half, filling in every minute detail of his three-year undercover operation in America. And at the end of his story, Heydrich seemed pleased. Although it was hard to tell what was really going on behind his hollow mask of a face, he told Henrik that he would be reassigned to special weapons division immediately. No more covert operations behind enemy lines. He would wear a white lab coat, eat three square meals a day and sleep in a real bed with sheets. And the German physicists and engineers, what was left of them, would pick his brain and build their bomb.
But one serious problem still remained. How was he supposed to find Esther and slip out of the country in a hidden U-boat while working for the SS? He may not have been in irons, but he was still a prisoner. It would take at least a day for Heydrich to deliver his news to all of the right powerbrokers in the Third Reich, including Himmler and Hitler himself, and in the meantime Henrik was to report directly to his father’s cottage just outside Amsterdam. Klein and Schliemann would accompany Henrik as his personal bodyguards. Henrik wondered how all this would fit into Major Koch’s plans, if he even had any.
All lies, Henrik mused darkly.
Henrik arrived home just after eleven. His father was standing in front of the stately cottage in his old uniform complete with bronze medals, star pointed helmet and shining silver monocle. He greeted Henrik with a warm handshake and a cold eye. Kessler Sr. was a retired air force colonel, a World War I ace in the class of the Red Baron and still an important man with a long shadow. If it had not been for the tragic loss of his left eye in a dogfight over Versailles 25 years ago, heaven knew how high he might have risen in the Reich Command. Goering, his junior wingman at the time, had risen all the way to Reich Marshal, the highest rank in the military, second only to Hitler himself.
Needless to say, the old colonel fully expected his son to take up the flying mantle and bring glory once again to the name Kessler as soon as he was of age. Instead, Henrik became a ghost and simply disappeared just as the greatest war the world had ever seen was about to begin. For three years Kessler had no son, and when he was notified a few hours ago of his son’s surprising resurrection from the dead, his heart was just unable to accept it.
Perhaps it never would.
“Welcome home, lieutenant,” Kessler said formally. “I . . . ” He faltered a moment, unsure of what to say. What was the military protocol for resurrected prodigal sons anyways? After an awkward pause, he found the words, however inadequate. “I had the servants prepare your old room.”
“Thank you, colonel,” Henrik responded with equal inadequacy.
And that was the end of the reunion. After a quick bite to eat, Henrik retreated to his old bedroom under the stairs and slept the rest of the day and most of the night. Meanwhile, the colonel slipped silently away to his room at the top of the stairs and was also not seen again until the morning. Henrik’s two SS bodyguards found nothing strange about this, however, taking full advantage of the opportunity to raid the Kessler family wine cellar and smoke the last of the old colonel’s expensive cigars.