Death’s Head Read online

  When he had finished listening to them, Schwarzenbach went into Broszat’s kitchen and walked around restlessly. Outside darkness had fallen. It seemed to him that it contained innumerable shadows, threatening shapes that were simply waiting the chance to destroy him.

  Broszat followed him into the kitchen. He took a fresh bottle of wine from the cabinet and searched around for the corkscrew.

  ‘Is there any news of Urbach?’ Schwarzenbach asked.

  Broszat shook his head. ‘They took him to their intelligence headquarters and nothing’s been heard of him since.’ Broszat paused by the window, the wine in his hand. ‘It’s fucking absurd. I don’t like it. What the hell are they doing to him?’

  Schwarzenbach finished his drink and sat at the kitchen table. He couldn’t remember when the atmosphere in Broszat’s apartment had last been so tense; and yet the tension seemed to have a hollow centre to it – the uncertainty, the ignorance, the plain fact that none of them knew what was going on.

  Broszat said, ‘He might talk.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Broszat said, and his voice trailed off into a whisper. ‘I don’t think we should have any more of these meetings. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Schwarzenbach felt a sense of relief. The Thursday gatherings had become an unnerving burden.

  ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like the feeling of having a bloody noose around my neck.’

  ‘Have they been to see you?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Broszat finally uncorked the bottle and put it down on the table. ‘But they’ve spoken to you. And they’ve taken Urbach. Who’s going to be next?’

  Ecksdorff came into the kitchen looking for more wine. He put his empty glass on the table. He was a tall man with an expression that reminded Schwarzenbach of the sort of look associated with visionaries – the eyes seemed to look beyond the debris towards something else, a new world. But the expression irritated him; it was exclusive of everyone, save Ecksdorff himself.

  ‘In spite of our current difficulties, gentlemen, it’s not altogether unpleasant to be in Germany again,’ he said. He filled his glass and drank from it quickly and, clicking his heels in a slightly ludicrous, self-mocking way, gave the Hitler salute. ‘May God rest Adolf’s soul.’

  Broszat said, ‘It isn’t safe for you to be here –’

  ‘Nonsense, Helmut,’ Ecksdorff said, and sat up on the edge of the table. ‘What is safety? I used to say to my subordinates that the cardinal rule of action in the Einsatzgruppe was to disregard safety. Practise what you preach. Another principle of mine.’

  Schwarzenbach disliked the man, an instinctive reaction without apparent rational basis. ‘Helmut means that Berlin isn’t a safe place to be these days. Take a walk along the Unter den Linden and you’ll find out for yourself.’

  ‘I’m quite prepared to forgo the nostalgic pleasure of walking along that particular thoroughfare – for the time being.’ Ecksdorff waved his glass at Schwarzenbach and frowned. ‘We haven’t been properly introduced, have we?’

  ‘Not properly,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘Lutzke – Gerhardt Lutzke.’

  Ecksdorff said: ‘Your complexion reminds me of the sort I used to see in Poland – grey and washed-out. Were you in Poland?’

  ‘For a time.’

  ‘On SS business?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Ecksdorff smiled, and something in the smile reminded Schwarzenbach of Captain Eberhard. ‘Of course, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, would you? But I imagine your reluctance to speak about yourself implies that you had some connection with one of old Heini’s death factories. Right?’

  Schwarzenbach reached for the wine. The man made him uneasy and he felt a sudden shift of anger.

  Ecksdorff said, ‘But why the reluctance? Why are you so coy? If you had a hand in one of those notorious palaces, don’t be ashamed. Do you want me to tell you some of the enjoyable monstrosities that I perpetrated? Do you want to hear?’

  Schwarzenbach had a sudden image: Chelmno, the wooden hut, the soiled rags of human beings that were brought to him and placed on the wooden table, the frenzy with which he worked to destroy them. Was he ashamed? No; there was no shame, no sense of guilt in the memory. The responsibility for those deaths lay less with him than with Gruppenführer Brandt – but even that was a nebulous thing. Who could say where the responsibility lay ultimately? Besides, the question didn’t interest him.

  Ecksdorff was still staring at him; the eyes, brilliant and grey, penetrated him, and he felt as if Ecksdorff’s stare were a fine instrument designed to probe the fragile tissues of evasion. Why was he being evasive?

  Ecksdorff poured himself another glass of wine and, picking it up, went through to the other room where Katzmann and Winkel were talking together. Schwarzenbach became conscious of Broszat’s heavy breathing in the silence of the kitchen. A moment later Broszat went out, leaving Schwarzenbach alone. He stood for a time at the window, twisting his empty glass in his hand. He was perspiring heavily and wondered why Ecksdorff should have disturbed him so much. Enjoyable monstrosities? When Schwarzenbach thought about it, he knew that he hadn’t enjoyed killing in the least. But it had been hard to think of it in that way – as murder. Duty was the prime thing; where duty existed, where patterns of behaviour had been allotted to you in advance, you became like a locomotive that can run only on one set of tracks and no other. There wasn’t time to stop and think whether there were questions of right and wrong. The duty, the sense of duty, transcended ethical problems. You became a device, an instrument in the hands of the system that survived only because of your enthusiasm for it. There was nothing else. Those who had stopped, who had questioned duty, who had turned round and wondered about ethics – those were the men who had gone insane.

  He looked from the window into the darkened street. Two cars had drawn up outside. He stared at them. They were lined up one behind the other, their engines dead, their windows dark. Leaning forward, he felt a sudden premonition, a fear, and yet it was nothing he could locate within his mind. Why had the vehicles stopped there? And why hadn’t anyone emerged from them? In one of the windows of the rear car he saw the flash of a match or a cigarette lighter, a brief flare hurriedly extinguished. What were they doing down there? He pressed his face flat against the glass, his skin streaking the pane with perspiration. And then, for a reason he couldn’t understand, he experienced panic. Silently he pushed the window open and the cold night air struck him. He listened. The city around him was dead, noiseless, as though it had been vacated by every living person, and again he felt the touch of fear. Anxiously he leaned over the ledge. Those black windows below, no sign of movement – it seemed as if the cars had driven themselves there and that there was nobody in either of them. He picked a flake of loose cement from the ledge and let it drop and although he listened he heard nothing.

  ‘You’re being anti-social.’ Broszat was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Look.’ Schwarzenbach indicated the cars.

  Broszat stared from the window. ‘Well?’

  ‘They drew up a moment ago. And nothing’s happened.’

  Broszat was alarmed. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  As they watched they heard the engines being switched on – first in the front car, next in the rear. And then both vehicles moved slowly away. Broszat closed the window.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It was nothing.’

  Schwarzenbach followed him into the other – room. Winkel was half-asleep and Katzmann, as usual, was drunk. Ecksdorff was standing at the other side of the room, gazing at the swastika flag.

  ‘A nice touch,’ he said. ‘It adds to the emotions.’

  Broszat said, ‘I think it’s time for the toast.’

  ‘Which toast?’ Ecksdorff asked.

  ‘Loyalty and honour,’ Broszat said.

  Ecksdorff sighed: ‘A dangerous thing to keep alive.’

>   Broszat was filling glasses. When he had finished they all stood – with the exception of Winkel – in front of the flag. Above the swastika hung the photograph of the Führer, an oddly benign expression on his face, as if he had been snapped unexpectedly at a time when the war was going well.

  ‘Death to our enemies,’ Ecksdorff said, and there was mockery in his voice. He clicked his heels and raised his arm in a salute, as if he did not take the matter seriously.

  Broszat began to recite the oath. As they spoke together, Schwarzenbach felt an acute sense of fear again, almost as if he had been given in advance an insight into the immediate future. Fear, anxiety, and beyond those feelings a deep encircling blackness that nagged at his mind: why did he feel like that? When they had finished the oath, they raised their glasses. Ecksdorff drank his wine quickly, throwing his head back in an extravagant way, and then he dropped his glass to the floor where he crushed it with the heel of his shoe.

  ‘The custom of the groom at a Jewish wedding,’ he said. ‘It symbolizes the end of his freedom and the renunciation of his past. Sometimes I feel like a Jewish bridegroom.’

  It was Katzmann who spoke first after a prolonged silence.

  ‘Am I imagining things?’

  ‘What things?’ Broszat asked.

  ‘I heard something. Outside. On the stairs.’

  They were silent again, listening. They heard nothing.

  Broszat said, ‘You’re a nervous bastard.’

  ‘I heard something. I’m telling you.’

  Broszat moved towards the door. Ecksdorff, as if deliberately wishing to break the spell of sudden silence that had fallen on the room, laughed noisily.

  ‘I don’t hear a thing,’ Broszat said. He moved away from the door and back towards the flag at the other side of the room. Schwarzenbach waited and knew that he was waiting for something; he knew that something was about to happen. He shivered suddenly, wondering why he should feel as he did, and yet knowing the reason. The two cars in the street, empty hearses. The premonition. The fear. He turned his face towards the door and simultaneously so did Katzmann. There was a faint noise from the stairs outside, like a coin falling on stone some distance away, but echoing faintly now.

  Someone was standing outside the door. He knew it; he was certain of it. But he hesitated still, lost, not knowing what to do, what course of action to take.

  The first loud noise any of them heard was the sound of enormous pressure being placed upon the door and then that of old wood splintering drily. Broszat acted quickly: he went to his bed, which was situated behind the curtain in a recess, and took his old revolver from beneath the mattress. In the confusion, Schwarzenbach heard a single shot, fired from behind the curtain in the direction of the door. It pierced the wood. Outside someone cried out in pain. The door fell inwards, wrenched from its bolts, and the Americans entered the room, guns drawn, their faces surprised, as if they had not expected the door to yield so easily. Broszat fired again. His bullet struck the first American, a Negro, throwing him back against the wall, drawing a fountain of blood from his neck. Schwarzenbach lay on the floor, aware that Ecksdorff – in trying to get past the Americans to the stairs – had been shot in the skull. And Katzmann, his arms raised in surrender, was cowering in the corner of the room. But Broszat was still firing desperately from behind the curtain, his bullets cutting into plaster, shattering glass, ricocheting from the ceiling and walls. Schwarzenbach saw the Americans move towards the curtain and then they opened fire, blindly, their shots tearing into the curtain, shredding it, piercing the wall beyond, and they advanced towards it only when the thin material was soaked with Broszat’s blood. The curtain was pulled back. Broszat was lying across his bed, the empty gun still in his fingers. His face had been shot away. The bed sheets were sodden with his blood and the walls of the recess splattered with insane red patterns.

  When the gunfire had died Schwarzenbach stood up and raised his arms in the air. One of the Americans searched his pockets while another tore the swastika flag from the wall and smashed the picture of the Führer with the butt of his gun. Schwarzenbach watched the sparks of glass that flew in the air as the photograph slid from the frame to the floor and lay there, upturned, Hitler’s face hidden from view. There were seven or eight soldiers in all and they explored the room as if they expected to encounter a concealed army. Winkel was taken out, dragged to the landing where he screamed. Katzmann was forced towards the door, his arms twisted behind his back. Ecksdorff lay near the door, looking frail and strangely insubstantial in death, and Katzmann, as he was moving, stumbled across the corpse. Schwarzenbach was pushed down the stairs. On the last few steps he fell. He was picked up roughly and led out to the street. He was taken round the corner of the building to where the two cars were parked. He was thrown into a back seat. He covered his face with his hands, listening to the sound of the engine, feeling the vibrations of movement as the vehicle slid forward through the city.

  The American sergeant asked: ‘Do you speak English?’

  Schwarzenbach stared at the rifle that lay across the man’s knees. ‘Yes. I speak English,’ he said.

  The sergeant was silent, as if content to have discovered one significant fact. Sometimes he whistled through his teeth and occasionally grunted incomprehensibly whenever the driver spoke to him. Schwarzenbach looked through the window. So far as he could tell they were going in the direction of the Berlinerstrasse. Broszat was dead: this fact – as though he had suddenly realized it – caused him a moment of pain. And then he remembered that he had been caught himself. What was he going to say when they started to ask their questions? What lies could he dream up to tell them? His mind was blank. Shrunken into his coat, the collar turned up against the icy night air that came through the open window, he watched the shapeless city flit past. Now the car was turning away from the Berlinerstrasse and moving past the Hippodrome in the direction of Charlottenburg.

  The sergeant said: ‘I lost one of my men tonight.’ He lowered the window still further and spat out. And then he leaned towards Schwarzenbach and struck him hard in the groin with the barrel of his rifle. Schwarzenbach slumped forward, trying to contain the pain, his hands fumbling around the place where he had been hit. He sat back again, gasping. His eyes were watering.

  ‘I shall report this to your senior officer,’ he said.

  The sergeant rubbed his hands together. ‘I could stop this vehicle and put a bullet through your skull. Shot trying to escape.’

  Schwarzenbach was silent. The pain had not subsided. Instead it seemed to have given rise to a whole sequence of lesser pains that rippled spasmodically through his body. For some reason he thought of the photograph of Hitler that had been smashed from the wall in Broszat’s apartment: and envisaging this again, it was as if he had only just realized that the past was finished, and that everything – everything he had lived through – was finally washed away.

  The sergeant looked at him: ‘You fucking Nazi. I thought we’d wiped you all out.’

  Schwarzenbach watched the black buildings drift past in silence. When the car slowed, and turned into a courtyard, he felt a stab of anxiety.

  The office was small and stuffy: before the war it had been the junior clerk’s room in a firm of solicitors, now defunct. It was lit only by a single bare bulb that burned weakly, flickering sometimes, throwing exaggerated shadows amongst the shelves of legal documents. Schwarzenbach waited in the room alone for almost an hour before the door opened and Major Spiers entered. He went quickly and silently to the desk, a monstrous wooden rectangle that ran almost the entire width of the office. Seated behind it he looked uncomfortable, as if he had been placed there forcibly and was now aware that the desk imprisoned him. For some time he did not speak, apparently engrossed in a batch of papers that lay in front of him. Smoke from his cigar – which lay burning in an ashtray – masked his face and sometimes he fanned it away with a quick movement of his hand.

  Schwarzenbach stared at him: if he resen
ted any single aspect of Spier’s power, it was the way in which the man made the mere act of waiting seem obligatory. The silence – almost an extension of the room’s lack of fresh air – was intolerable. It lay heavily on Schwarzenbach, exaggerating the sense of shock that he was beginning to feel. The way the Americans had burst into the room, snapping the door back, firing their revolvers – he had dropped to the floor almost immediately – the way they had shot round after round of ammunition into the curtain that covered the recess until poor Broszat’s body was broken in pieces: it had seemed to him that his own life was about to be shattered.

  Spiers was still silent, shuffling through the papers, dispersing the smoke from the cigar with sharp absent gestures of his hand. And yet it was obvious to Schwarzenbach that he wasn’t really concentrating on the papers at all – he was thinking of other things, he was planning how to handle the interview. This realization somehow reassured Schwarzenbach and emphasized something he had suspected before – that Spiers, and Eberhard as well, were basically amateurs, untrained for the game of vengeance and the consequences of the chase. When he compared Spiers and Eberhard with some of the interrogators in the Gestapo the difference was almost laughable. The American was inexperienced and unsubtle and Schwarzenbach felt a little more relaxed now, even if the still unbearable silence beat down on him and the insufferable room choked him.