12. Heinrich
12
Heinrich
O ne of the first things I was taught when I entered the Führer’s intelligence service was that few things ever go according to plan; therefore, it is vital to have a backup plan . . . and a backup to the backup.
“A multi-layered strategy in which one contingency does not depend on the success of another is critical to the success of missions and survival of assets.” Those were the words of instructor Nils Shiller during his first Introduction to Tradecraft lecture. Shiller was one of the few instructors who seemed to actually care about our survival. The others only spoke of mission objectives and furthering the Reich. I liked Shiller’s sense of humor and practical knowledge; but, as I stared down at Sergei’s one-word letter, I grew to appreciate his instruction even more.
I’d spent the better part of a year hunkered down in the cobbler’s shop, pretending to be thirty years older than my actual age and swearing, daily, that I played no part in Hitler’s foolish schemes. Those lies had kept me alive. They had also bought me precious time to execute on Shiller’s most valuable pearl of wisdom: Create backup plans.
Plan A was straightforward: Live out in the open, albeit in disguise, and hope no one ever pierced the veil of my camouflage. That worked well until my original Plan A, the “blackmail the Russians” lunacy, went awry.
Plan B, which I supposed should now be called Plan C, required me to cross the Soviet sector to a building that overlooked the border between the Soviet-controlled portion of the capital and the German countryside beyond. Like the brick behemoth that housed the cobbler’s shop, Plan B’s building had survived the bombs’ devastation, barely. In fact, most of the buildings in the block surrounding it had also survived. Where the cobbler’s shop stood out as a lone survivor, my eastern option was one among a number still standing.
Unfortunately, buildings that survived attracted attention from our Soviet occupiers. Of the thirty-two apartments in my target building, twenty-seven housed Stalin’s men. The others were likely filled with sympathizers or informants.
Plan B was out.
Plan C—or was it Plan D now?—required a retreat into French-controlled Berlin, a relatively small northwestern chunk of land that bordered the Soviet sector on one side and the British on the other.
This plan had serious flaws.
First, because of the location of the cobbler’s shop in the southeastern corner of the capital, I would have to cross the entire Soviet sector to reach the border. As Shiller would say, “Time exposed is time discovered.”
Discovery was bad.
Second, and certainly not to be discounted, was my distinct lack of skill with the French language. I’d spent most of my time learning about Russians and Slavic languages. The French were someone else’s concern. I could barely order breakfast in a French café without insulting someone with my heavy tongue.
In order to survive, I needed to blend into the background, fade into the tapestry, become unseen. The French governed a land with many who couldn’t speak their language, but any French soldier with half a brain—and at least one working ear—would know I was hopelessly lost in their sector.
Plan C was weak, at best.
I had no plan D . . . or E, if one counted correctly.
Schei?!
Hiding in the darkness of an alley three blocks from my shop, I turned the rabbi over in my hands, absently running my fingers across his face while my brain strained to formulate a path forward.
“What do I know for certain?” I muttered, returning my focus with the grounding technique Shiller taught us while wishing the wise man staring up at me might offer some of his wisdom.
One: The Soviets knew who I was.
Two: The Soviets were coming for me; and, based on Sergei’s brief but very clear missive, their intent was not kind.
Three: They wanted what I held badly enough to send agents to hunt me down.
Someone at a very high level had either been angered or frightened enough by the film inside the statue to mobilize the MGB’s elite. While terrifying, that meant my images were valuable to someone important. At the very least, ensuring those images never saw the light of day held value.
That meant I had leverage.
Hope dared to spark in my mind. I looked down at the statue.
There was no way the Soviets could know exactly what I held—no one knew, not even Sergei—but they now knew I had something harmful to the Soviet state and possibly Stalin himself. Of course, Stalin hadn’t been in Poland when the slaughter occurred. He likely didn’t even know it happened; but, the world’s media was obsessed with the deterioration of US relations with the Soviet Union, and any whiff of embarrassment or perceived barbarism on Stalin’s part would drive the wedge further between the two former allies.
I’d been proud of that little innuendo in my napkin note.
I couldn’t be caught with the statue, or my leverage would vanish. Soviet soldiers would shoot me and take it. Game over.
Where could I hide a centuries-old carving of a Jewish rabbi in postwar Berlin?
The thought was as preposterous as my dilemma. There were no synagogues left. We’d gutted them all.
Then I remembered a flyer some child had tacked to the wooden windows of my shop advertising the reopening of Kulturhistorisches Museum Viktoria, one of the oldest and most prominent galleries in all of Germany. While parts of the museum’s complex were severely damaged during Allied bombings, much of the core structure remained untouched. Soviets, determined to show the world they cared about life beyond shared work and war, had rushed to repair what they could and throw open the doors to one of the German capital’s crown jewels. 1
“Would you like to go on display?” I asked the rabbi, smiling at the silliness of me conversing with a statue while hiding from men with rifles.
The rabbi offered no reply.
Kulturhistorisches Museum Viktoria was halfway across the sector. Even the moon remained hidden from the Soviets’ gaze, a thick blanket of clouds barely moving in the pitch-black sky. There was no way I could traverse so many blocks without being noticed by one of the countless patrols. They’d pick me up for defying the curfew without even realizing what treasure I held.
In addition to the “peacekeepers,” as Stalin’s boys liked to be called, I knew another army, far more secret and sinister, sought my capture. How many of them had my physical description? Did they also know of the disguise I’d used over the past year? The false mustache, grayed brows and hair? Fake spectacles above my prosthetic nose and cheeks?
Would I be safer shedding my disguise and risking recognition as a former Nazi intelligencer?
I rarely struggled with decisions, but in that moment, fear seized my chest, and I struggled to answer a single question before a dozen more cropped up.
Voices from beyond the alley, Russian speakers with no worry for how loudly they spoke or how far their words carried, reached my ears. I shrank back, curling into a ball at the far end of the alley, hidden behind a trash bin whose inhabitants skittered at my presence.
A beam of light speared through the darkness, landing a few feet above where I’d ducked. It scanned, lighting one brick, then another, sweeping in lazy arcs until its handler lost interest in the game.
I peeked around the bin to catch four soldiers as they ambled by. One puffed on a cigarette before tossing it halfway down my alley. The angry glow of its butt faded a few heartbeats after it landed.
A jeep rolled by, slow and deliberate.
More evidence of a search in progress.
Or was this typical of the Soviet sector after dark?
I’d lived with their rule for nearly a dozen months, yet my mind could not recall what “normal” meant anymore. There was no such thing as “normal.”
Would there ever be again?
That was my last thought as the stress of the day and lateness of the hour drew me into a fitful, restless sleep.
I woke with a start, my head snapping up from where it had rested against the damp brick wall. My left leg had gone numb, pressed awkwardly beneath me during the hours I’d spent wedged between the wall and bin. Every muscle in my body ached.
I tried to stand, wobbled, and nearly toppled.
My nose wrinkled as I sniffed myself in disgust. Hopefully, the museum staff would care more about my donation than my appearance or aroma.
I sat up, glancing around the alley.
The smells of coal smoke, garbage, and faintly blooming linden trees drifted on the breeze. The air was already warming, the damp chill of the night dissipating into the kind of heat that made people long for shade. East Berlin was awake, shedding the last vestiges of winter, its streets stirring with the rhythms of the day.
I had so little time.
The sight of a checkpoint down the block made me freeze.
Two soldiers stood by a jeep, their conversation punctuated by bursts of laughter. They were young, their uniforms neatly pressed, their rifles slung over their shoulders. The sight of them struck me as obscene, a mockery of the wreckage they had helped inflict.
I adjusted my hat, pulling the brim low over my face, and forced myself to walk past them without breaking stride.
The streets became busier as I made my way toward Alexanderplatz. Late spring had awakened the city in a way that winter never could, and the people of Berlin, starved for light after a year of darkness, clung to the season with a desperation that was almost defiant.
A flower vendor stood on the corner, her table covered in blooms—daisies, marigolds, and pale pink roses. I hesitated for half a heartbeat, caught off guard by the incongruity of such beauty in a city still riddled with scars. The vendor’s smile faltered as she noticed me lingering.
I quickly moved on.
That’s when I saw him.
A man in a dark coat, leaning against a wall near the tram stop. He was reading a newspaper, or pretending to, his eyes flicking up just as I passed. My chest tightened.
He wasn’t alone.
A second man loitered near the fountain, his posture too relaxed.
They were watching me.
I turned down a side street, my pace quickening.
The air felt heavier now, harder to breathe. The sunlight felt oppressive instead of warm.
My mind raced as I tried to piece together how they had found me. Had they followed me from the alley? Or had they been waiting here all along, knowing I had no other route to the museum?
I ducked down another alley, the narrow space offering a brief reprieve.
The sounds of the city faded, replaced by the rustle of leaves from a tree growing wild behind a collapsed wall. I pressed my back against the bricks, listening for footsteps.
Nothing.
I waited a moment longer, then stepped back out onto the street, careful to blend into the flow of people.
Everything moved so quickly. There were so many people. Everyone looked, everyone stared. I had no friends. Was everyone an enemy?
“There was a fine line between caution and paranoia.” Shiller’s words rang in my ears.
I had to reach the museum. The museum was all that mattered.
The Kulturhistorisches Museum Viktoria loomed ahead, its facade a mixture of neoclassical grandeur and wartime damage. The columns at the entrance were pockmarked with shrapnel scars. A section of the roof of the eastern wing had been patched with mismatched tiles.
I slowed as I approached the square.
Soviet soldiers were everywhere.
Two stood guard at the main entrance, their rifles held loosely but their eyes sharp. Another pair patrolled the perimeter, their boots crunching against the gravel path.
I spotted a truck parked near the side entrance, crates stacked high in its open bed. A delivery, perhaps, or some other mundane errand. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that it offered a chance.
I forcing myself to appear calm as I walked toward the truck.
A man in overalls was unloading the crates, his movements slow and deliberate. He didn’t spare me a second glance as I slipped past him and through the building’s service entrance.
The air in the museum was heavy with the scent of old wood and dust, so I was surprised how clean everything looked. So many of the surrounding buildings lay in dust-covered rubble, but this one appeared show-ready. The Soviets had worked a minor miracle.
My footsteps echoed faintly against the marble floor as I slipped through a side door, keeping to the shadows. Majestic marble columns, unmarred by bullets or bombs, rose to meet the ceiling that towered above. On that ceiling, visions of the distant past, mostly in the form of cherubs and sprites, smiled down at me from their heavenly height.
A woman with a clipboard crossed the hallway ahead of me, her heels clicking sharply against the floor. She glanced in my direction but didn’t stop.
I ducked into a side gallery, the dimly lit space filled with glass cases and faded portraits. The weight of the statue tucked beneath my arm felt heavier now, as if it knew how close we were to our destination.
“May I help you?”
I startled so badly I nearly hurled the rabbi across the polished floors.
A deep, rumbling bass filled with amusement and warmth flowed toward me as I turned.
“Please, be at ease, my friend. I did not mean to startle.”
A portly man with more splotchy scalp than hair blinked up at me, his smile nearly as wide as his face.
“I, uh—”
The man’s eyes widened as they fell to the carving cradled like a babe in my arms.
“I have this,” I said, unwrapping my arms so he could see more of the figure. “I was hoping you could care for it better than I can. The war and all . . .”
The man’s expression flooded with sympathy. His sausage-like fingers reached up and gripped my arm. “It has been so terrible, yes? Come, let us sit. Would you like some tea? I just brewed a pot.”
Before I could respond, the man tugged, and my feet followed him through a series of hallways and galleries. He prattled on about one statue or another painting, each saved from the ravages of time and destruction.
He led me through an unmarked door nestled between two marble sarcophagi.
“Please excuse the mess. With the grand reopening, everyone is running themselves ragged.” The man waved across a pair of six-foot folding tables he apparently used as his desk. Each was so laden with papers and items that their surfaces were impossible to see. “Sit, sit. I will get our tea.”
Unsure what else to do, I lowered myself into a flimsy chair and watched as the man scurried to the far end of the room and tipped a kettle, filling two mugs with steaming liquid. The bitter aroma of freshly brewed tea made my stomach rumble.
“Might I trade you?” the man said, motioning with one of the mugs to the statue I still clutched against my chest.
“Oh, uh, yes. Of course,” I said, reluctantly exchanging the rabbi for the mug.
The man set his mug down too quickly, sloshing tea all over some of his papers. “Oh, drat. I am such a clumsy sort.”
He set the statue some distance away and scurried around the table to retrieve a towel hanging on a cabinet pull near where the kettle’s toot was dying. He returned a moment later, dabbing the spilled tea and salvaging what he could of his documents.
“Where are my manners?” he said, searching for a place to set the towel before giving up and tossing it across the room toward the cabinets. “I am Kessler Bider, one of the archivists here at the museum. And you are?”
I tried to smile but was sure it came across as more of a sneer. Coming up with an alternative name was one of the most basic forms of tradecraft; and yet, I’d been so flummoxed by Sergei’s note and my night in the alley that I’d failed to execute even that simple task. I scanned the room quickly and made up a name.
“Gerd. Gerd Lang.”
“Very good to meet you, Herr Lang—or should that be Comrade Lang? I never know what to call a person these days. It changes nearly as often as the flag.”
The man’s tone was whimsical, almost comical, as he summed up European affairs more succinctly than a trained newsman.
“Gerd will do.”
“Right. Gerd it is, then. Now, what have you brought me?” Bider settled into a chair across the table from where I sat and hefted the statue. “Oh, my. Dear me. Gerd, do you know what you have here? Or ‘who,’ I should say?”
I shrugged. “A rabbi?”
Bider’s laugh filled the office. “Yes, yes. He is a rabbi, but he is so much more. I know this piece. Yes. I know it well. It belongs to a very old synagogue . . . in Poland, I believe. Or it did before the war. Blasted thing changed everything, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” And I did.
“Of course, you do. How silly of me.” Bider’s eyes never left the statue. His fingers roamed every crevice and crease. Had I not known better, I would have thought Bider a blind man reading a most complex, three-dimensional manuscript. “This is fascinating. My, yes. How wonderful.”
“Do you know much about it?” I asked, my foot on frozen waters, unsure where to step.
Bider snatched a pair of thin, wire-rimmed spectacles off the table and resumed his inspection.
“It is Jewish, of course. The name of the piece is ‘The Keeper of Wisdom.’ The figure represents an aged rabbi with astounding knowledge, yet he continues to study and read, forever in search of deeper meaning.”
“Huh,” was all I could think to say. It just looked like an old man reading a book to me.
“This was crafted by a master in Prague in the early eighteenth century, made as a gift for the local synagogue. I am surprised it survived the Nazi occupation of Poland.”
Bider was so distracted with the piece, he failed to recognize the near-blasphemous reference to the German occupation of Poland. Any good Nazi knew it was liberation .
I kept my lips clamped tight.
“The Keeper is said to embody the enduring spirit of the Jewish people. He represents the importance of knowledge and the intersection of Jewish heritage and the broader narrative of European history.”
“Right.”
Bider finally glanced up, his eyes poking above the spectacles barely clinging to the tip of his nose. “Herr Lang, the Keeper is a treasure, some might say a national treasure.”
“Jews would say that.”
Bider paused.
His lips pursed, then he returned his gaze to the wood. “Yes, they would.”
A crash sounded beyond a door opposite the one we entered, causing both Bider and me to startle. He glanced up and shook his head. “We have apes working in the back. I swear, we will have nothing to display when they are done. Worse than the bombs, they are.”
Shouts in German painted with heavy Russian accents punctuated his words and reminded me of the search underway throughout the sector.
“Herr Bider, I fear I cannot keep such a treasure safe and would like to loan it to the museum. Is that possible?” I asked, hoping to conclude our conversation and resume my escape.
Bider’s face brightened. “Of course, my dear friend. Of course. Would it be all right if we displayed it? This piece is far too important and valuable to hide in the storeroom with our man-apes.”
“It would be my honor.”
“Very well.” Bider winced as though setting the statue down caused him pain. “I will write up a receipt should you wish to reclaim the piece. Wait here a moment, will you?”
“Of course.” I smiled again and sipped my tea as the man waddled to the far end of the room and out the door.
When the door opened again, I caught a quick glimpse of a Soviet uniform and the butt of a rifle. Bider’s near-squeal was silenced by one of the soldiers barking at him. The only words I caught were, “Nazi” and “disguise.”
The time for paperwork and receipts had passed.
I left my mug beside Bider’s, gave the rabbi one last glance, and shot through the door. Weaving between the sarcophagi, I raced as quietly as I could through the gallery toward the exits that led to the street.
1. Kulturhistorisches Museum Viktoria is a fictional museum created for this story. Most of Berlin’s historically significant galleries were badly damaged or completely destroyed during the war. Looting by occupying soldiers also stripped many collections bare.