The Sleepwalkers (19 page)

An hour later Fritz jabbed him with an elbow. “Reminds me of Soissons, huh, Willi? Spring, 1918. Remember? Behind French lines.”

Willi was hardly in the mood for reminiscing. But now that he thought about it . . . yeah. Kind of. The moonlight on the river. The heavy, dark air. A million stars.

Anxiety tearing up his gut.

At any moment Paula could come out that door with her captors—and the chase would be on. They had the Black Stag Inn surrounded. He’d parked the radio trucks a few blocks down the only side streets leading in and out, manned by Reichs Wehr officers handpicked by von Schleicher. He had more of Schleicher’s men inside the S-Bahn station, posted up the Citadel tower with binoculars, and down in the alley behind the tavern. Inside, Gunther was ready to telephone him the minute Paula was
about to leave. Willi and Fritz waited downstream at the Havel River Cruise pier, where Fritz’s new cabin cruiser,
The Valentina,
was all tanked up, with the third mobile radio installed.

Because Willi had no idea what to expect wherever they were going, he’d no choice but to confine this stage of their operation to reconnaissance. Clearly this Sachsenhausen place was remarkably secluded. But was it armed? If so, by what force? How many people were they holding? He had to know before mounting any sort of assault. So he’d pulled a plan from one of the old war books. He and Fritz were going to launch an old-time scouting raid. By car or by boat they would follow Paula however and wherever these bastards took her. Then they’d reconnoiter the enemy dispositions. Once they knew what they were up against, then and only then would they call in reinforcements.

Waiting was the worst part. On the Western Front they’d learned that the hard way. As he fixed his binoculars at the Black Stag, just beneath the Nazi flag, Willi didn’t stop Fritz from jabbering nonstop, knowing it eased the tension.

“Remember that day we saw Ludendorff lose his marbles?”

Not a favorite memory.

November 1918, the bitter end, they had witnessed Erich Ludendorff, supreme commander of the Imperial High Staff, sitting in his open limousine, stuck in traffic with the rest of the retreating army, having a nervous breakdown. Ranting, crying, punching the car, blaming the kaiser, the Reichstag, von Hindenburg, everyone but himself for the lost war.

“I swear to you, Willi, half of Berlin’s gone just as crazy.” There was no mistaking the angst in Fritz’s voice. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Sheer hysteria. Scheming like there’s no tomorrow. The whole thing’s ready to blow.”

Through the binoculars Willi watched the swastika flying in the wind.

“Von Papen’s absolutely hell-bent on revenge against von Schleicher for having him sacked last November, determined to forge a new alliance—with Hitler. I interviewed him the other
day. Totally lost all reason. He actually believes the Nazis have been weakened enough that if Hindenburg snaps the presidential whip and he wields the vice chancellor’s chair, Hitler could be tamed as chancellor. Every idiotic rumor circulating in Berlin he repeated to me. The Communists ready to move with Soviet troops. The kaiser plotting a return with the help of the British crown.

“And as for our dear friend von Schleicher . . . well, far from carrying off a third of the Party, Strasser’s fled the country—alone! The Socialists are ready to bolt from his coalition, and the Junkers are backing Papen. No, I’m afraid our future now lies either with the Communists or the—”

The phone in the yellow booth cried out. Willi grabbed it.

“Side door,” Gunther whispered. “Through the beer garden.”

Finally. In another hour the sun would start rising. Camouflaged pursuit, especially by boat, would be impossible. But now, through the binoculars, Willi just made out Paula’s pink evening gown in the predawn darkness, two men in overcoats escorting her through the beer garden, down a dock, and onto an inboard motorboat.

Its engine suddenly roared to life. Willi passed the binoculars.

“She’s a V-10.” Fritz listened more than looked. “Maybe one hundred and eighty horsepower. I can dance a Charleston around her.”

“Tango would be fine,” Willi said. “Come then,
vorwärts!”

They scrambled aboard
The Valentina,
twenty-five thousand marks’ worth of “art,” according to Fritz—custom-made with chromium hardware, mahogany deck, the finest leather upholstery. And 250 horsepower, he reminded himself now, furiously untying her. On board they ducked in the shadows, waiting as their quarry neared, then roared by them into the wide, dark Havel. A moment before they vanished, Fritz hit the ignition.

Wind was suddenly tearing through Willi’s hair. Icy spray smacking his face. As he went to turn on the radio, he found himself clutching the seat to keep from getting chucked overboard.
Only with great determination did he manage finally to contact one of his communications trucks. “North by northwest, across the Havel,” he practically had to scream to be heard.

“Verstanden,
Herr Inspektor.”

He wished he’d brought gloves. And a hat. Even as a kid he’d never liked boating. The faster they went and the harder they rocked, the more miserable his stomach felt. There was a definite reason he hadn’t joined the navy.

“Are you sure they don’t see us?” His mouth was filling with saliva.

“No guarantee,” Fritz cried from the wheel. “I’m keeping far back as I—”

Willi grabbed the side rail and threw up.

Fritz laughed so hard he almost lost control of the boat.

In half an hour they were rounding the edge of the Tegel Peninsula, heading due north toward Oranienburg, where the river narrowed by half. They had passed the boathouse and the holiday village. Where was Sachsenhausen?

Willi’d just finished radioing in their latest position when he heard Fritz cry:

“Jesus Christ, they spotted us.”

“No—”

Willi dropped the microphone, stumbling to his feet, praying it wasn’t true. But even in the misty darkness there was no denying the boat ahead was making a sharp right turn, sending up a huge spray as it tipped practically on its stern and headed straight toward them.

Disaster.

The choices were appalling. They could shoot it out, Willi knew—he hadn’t been foolish enough to come unarmed. But Paula might get hurt. They could turn and outrun them—but Paula would be lost. So would Sachsenhausen. They could let
themselves be overtaken, pretend they happened to be out here fishing at five a.m. But the maniacs would just as likely believe that as turn a machine gun on them and dump them in the Havel. His face, his scalp, all the way down his neck and back, broke into a freezing sweat. Frantically he searched the horizon. There had to be some way out. A shoreline somewhere. Like . . . that one . . . draped with giant fir.

“Over there!” he shouted.

Fritz got it.

Directly among the thickest of green, the boat angled in to the riverbank. As they scraped bottom, Fritz cut the motor. The moon disappeared. They were shrouded in darkness. Great draping branches mercifully embraced
The Valentina.

The roaring engine of their former quarry—now their hunter—grew louder. Fritz and he clung to the deck, Willi’s head practically bursting with anxiety. If they were spotted, all was lost. Louder . . . Louder . . . The boat was upon them. It was tearing right past . . . oblivious to their whereabouts. They’d done it!

With any luck they could finish this mission still.

But his optimism proved premature.

A minute later, suspicious they’d been given the slip, the boat doubled back and began reapproaching, this time slower, nearer the shore.

Bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang!
Like strings of firecrackers a machine gun opened fire—randomly into the trees. As it neared, the deck around Willi’s face erupted into mahogany splinters. Chromium was tearing loose with shrill, pathetic shrieks. Sparks flew. Branches fell.
Bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang!
The enemy kept moving down the shore, gunfire cutting through the trees for what seemed minutes. Then it stopped. Their engine picked up. They were heading back into the Havel, upstream, on their original course.

Fritz groaned loudly. Willi pushed the branches from his face. Coughing from sulfur, he realized the boat was listing hard
right. The radio receiver was a heap of smoking wire. And Fritz was sprawled on his leather upholstery, his shoulder red with blood. “What have they done to my beautiful
Valentina?”
he moaned.

Damn your
Valentina,
Willi thought, searching for the medical box.

What have they done to our mission?

Beneath the enshrouding green a hellish gloom prevailed. On the ground the carpet of needles echoed back every futile step. Great birds shrieked derisively. They were lost in the
Urwald.
The forest primeval.

It could have been worse. They could have been killed. Or captured. Taken to Sachsenhausen. Flayed alive. But it was bad enough. The boat and the radio were gone. So was Paula. A bullet had lodged in Fritz’s shoulder. The bandage Willi had fixed didn’t keep Fritz from losing blood. He was starting to get delirious.

“Did you know . . . ,” he stammered, all but dragging his feet now. Willi had to hoist him along, every step, so heavily painful. “Did you know our Germanic forefathers believed the whole world was supported by a giant evergreen tree?”

“For God’s sakes,
Mensch,
save your energy.”

“That under its branches dwelled the forest gods, who sat in judgment of the dead beneath its roots.”

“Fritz, I said shut up.”

The last thing Willi needed was to be reminded of the pagan past.

They were stumbling in preternatural darkness. No idea where they were. No road. No trail. Just conifers. Mile after mile of them. Barely a ray of sunlight penetrated. With their compass destroyed, they were hopelessly adrift. Like Hansel and Gretel in the woods.

“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is,” Willi remembered his mother telling him as a child. But even a cub just now was more than he’d care to face.

Fritz stumbled, then collapsed, a branch on the ground snapping from his weight.

Willi’s heart wrenched. He leaned down and lifted his old friend’s torso. The bandage, he saw, was sopping with blood.

“Leave me, Willi,” Fritz panted, deathly white. “Go on. Save yourself.”

“I didn’t in France. You think I’m going to abandon you twenty miles from Berlin-Center? There’s got to be someone in this godforsaken wilderness.”

“Hilfe!”
Willi shouted from the bottom of his lungs.

But all he got back was his own fearful voice.

As he stood there looking at the forest, filling with rage, he realized there was nothing else to do. He was going to have to carry Fritz.

He yanked and hoisted him piggyback style, feeling the weight in his knees. His shins. His ankles. Ignoring it, he started to walk. But in which direction? For all he knew, they’d been circling for hours now. Still, what choice was there but to pick a route and stick to it? He did. But it wasn’t long before the burden became unbearable. His back began cramping. His thighs shook. Every step he took became impossible, beyond what he
could endure.
Not bricht Eisen.
Another of his mother’s sayings hammered through his skull. Necessity breaks iron.

“You know this forest used to be mixed conifer and deciduous,” Fritz was mumbling in his ear. Willi could feel his shoulder getting wet from Fritz’s blood. “During the war Berliners trekked out here for firewood. They cut down all the birch and poplar, the alder and the—”

A sickening feeling filled Willi’s gut as his foot began to sink. He looked around trying to contain the rising panic. He’d stumbled into a bog. He couldn’t see where it began. The ground had turned to thick, black peat, gluelike, grabbing his feet, refusing to let go. A shiver of terror went through him. He’d survived infantry assaults, artillery bombardments, gas attacks. Why did he feel this was the end?

“Leave me, Willi,” Fritz kept saying.

Necessity breaks iron. Necessity breaks iron.

The ground seemed intentionally resisting his every effort to extricate himself, like the clasp of Satan. He pictured centuries from now . . . their skeletons unearthed . . . displayed in a museum next to a woolly mammoth. With no small irony he realized it was New Year’s Day. Happy 1933. He wondered about Paula. Had she come out of her trance? Did she feel as helpless as he did right now? How could he die? He had to rescue her. All those people at Sachsenhausen. His heart was pounding faster than a machine gun. He cursed and swore, spewing fire. Managing a step. A half. Another.

Not bricht Eisen. Not bricht Eisen.

What choice was there but to believe?

To just keep—

His foot flung loose and the next step he took landed on something hard. It made him lose balance. Fritz and he went plummeting, tumbling headfirst into a blanket of pine needles. Pain. But the earth beneath them . . . solid. Terra firma! They were saved from the bog. Delirious though. Both of them.

Fritz kept yammering about the trees that had been cut down. “The poplar, the ash, the alder . . .”

Willi pressed his face into the dry earth, heaving with agony, so light-headed he actually thought he heard singing on the horizon.
Valderi, Valdera!
What a joke. The angels were coming for him—singing a hiking song.
Valderi!
He wasn’t imagining it. They were coming. And they
were
singing a hiking song.
Valdera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

But they weren’t angels. It was the
Wandervogel.

The wandering children of the German forests.