Hitler's Secret (13 page)

Otto stood at the top of the staircase on the third floor of the apartment building. He was racked with indecision.

He had already spent an hour sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the street, debating whether or not to go in and, inevitably, reliving that terrible day just over a year ago when he’d got back early from school, complaining of a stomachache. His father had come home early, too — quite by chance, a cancelled meeting — but his mother and Karl weren’t there. His father had suggested a game of chess. Just as Otto had put him into check there had been a loud hammering on the door.

“Who is it?” his father had called out, getting to his feet.

“Gestapo! Open up!”

“One moment!” His father had grabbed Otto and pulled him up.

“Open the door!” A fist banged again on the door.

“I am not dressed — give me a moment,” his father had shouted in reply, knowing that would not stop the men. He talked fast as he hustled Otto through the apartment to his study, the sound of boots kicking the door fracturing their conversation.

“The time has come, Otto.”

“No —”

“We’ve talked about this … You know what you have to do … You have everything.”

His father had pulled open the top drawer of his bureau and thrust an envelope into Otto’s hands.

“Passports and Reichmarks and French francs, enough for all of you. You have your identity card?”

Otto had nodded and his father had hugged him tight for a moment, kissing him on both cheeks. The hammering of the door grew louder.

“I am coming!” he shouted back, then looked at Otto. “Wait five minutes and then go.”

Calmly his father had closed the study door behind him as he walked to the front door and opened it. “Now what is all this about?”

Through a crack in the study door, Otto saw three men step into the hallway, the first one in a suit, the others in black Gestapo uniforms.

“Herr
Doktor
, you are under arrest for undermining the war effort.”

A terrible jolt of fear had run through Otto as he heard those words. He had read somewhere that the crime of “undermining the war effort” had been designated a capital one. And with that his father had been marched away. The men had not even bothered to check the apartment. Perhaps they had thought he was still at school.

After they had left, Otto had waited five minutes, as his father had instructed, in a state of blind panic. Then he had run out of the apartment building and crossed the street to sit on the bench opposite. He stayed there for some time, wondering what to do, before taking the tram to his school, only to discover that his mother had picked Karl up half an hour before. He had frantically run through the city, following their usual route home, but they were nowhere to be seen. And so he had returned to the bench and waited for them, the tears never far from his eyes.

A taxi had pulled up and his mother and brother had got out, a series of department-store packages in their arms. He had jumped up and been on the point of shouting to them when four Gestapo men had climbed out of a plain black car parked near the entrance. He had watched dumbfounded as the men had quickly crowded around them, taking their packages, grabbing their arms, pushing them into the back of the car. Karl had started crying.

He had stood in the street and watched the Gestapo take his family into oblivion.

Now he was standing outside their front door once more. He glanced up and down the corridor one last time. There were three apartment doors on the third floor, and all were firmly closed. It was very quiet. He took a final breath, gathering his courage. He’d got this far, he told himself. He must go on, take the chance. He slipped off his heavy walking boots and kneeled down, easing back the skirting where it met the doorframe. Behind was the front door key, just as it always had been. He stood up and slid it into the lock, wondering if it would work. It did. He took a breath and gently pushed the door open, his boots in his hand.

A tall, handsome man with graying hair was standing in front of him. He was dressed in green suit trousers and a matching waistcoat, his tie loosened. He threw open his arms. Papa!

For a second, Otto allowed himself to imagine the scene. But there was no one to greet him. The hallway was empty.

He eased the door shut and listened intently.

“Hello …”
he called out softly, then a little louder. Nothing.

Everything seemed just as it had been the day he left the apartment. Except it wasn’t. The coats hanging on the rack were neither his mother’s nor his father’s. In the kitchen, the smell of breakfast permeated the air, coffee and fresh bread. The table and chairs were different. So was the crockery piled in the sink and the pictures on the wall. Another family was living here now. He felt his heart begin to race a little faster. He was an intruder.

He hurried to inspect the other rooms. Their old sofa and armchairs were gone, but his parents’ bed was still there. In his room, the twin beds had been pushed to the wall and a child’s crib sat in their place. In the dining room the long table and chairs that had been his grandfather’s were still in use, but the watercolor his mother had painted had been replaced with a large portrait of Hitler. There was a glass cabinet filled with bronze and silver sporting awards.

Otto stared. He felt a tightening in his chest, an unstoppable urge to rip the Führer’s picture down, to smash the cabinet, to throw the possessions of these interlopers out of the window into the street below. He felt the tears spring in his eyes. He’d known his father wouldn’t be here. But in some corner of his heart he’d hoped that somehow his mother and brother might be. He would have hugged them and told them what he was doing, and they would each have known that they were all still alive.

He wiped his nose and his eyes, pulled himself together. It was time to get out of this place. It wasn’t his home anymore. It was nothing.

The phone rang in the hallway and Otto jumped. It was like an alarm going off in his brain. He must have been insane to think of coming back here.
Get out, get out now!
he told himself.

The phone continued to ring as Otto raced to the front door, bending down to pick up his boots. As he reached to
turn the handle, the ringing stopped. In the brief moment of silence that followed, he heard footsteps on the stairs and voices outside. A man and a woman were arguing. The footsteps and voices stopped right outside the apartment door. Otto spun around and ran back down the hall into the dining room, throwing himself under the table. The beaded edge of the linen cloth stopped a few inches from the floor.

He heard the lock turn and the front door swing open. Something was wheeled into the hallway. The door closed.

“If it’s important, they will ring back, Heinz.”

“Yes, yes.”

The man strode into the dining room. Otto could see his brown shoes, polished to a high sheen. This was bad, he thought, as he listened to the man turn the pages of the newspaper that lay on the table. Really bad. He told himself to keep calm. The front door was only a few feet away. He just had to sit tight.

Otto was not the only one trapped in a nightmare situation. Somehow Leni had managed to lose Angelika. It had been only half an hour but it felt like an eternity.

Everything had been fine until then. The two of them had taken Otto’s advice and walked to the Englischer Garten, and Angelika had finally got her wish for an ice cream. The girl had sworn that she had never had one before, but then said actually, she just couldn’t remember. Maybe she had.

After that, they’d jumped on a tram and ridden down Prinzregentenstrasse to the National Museum. Leni, increasingly anxious about sticking out, had decided they would blend in with all the other schoolchildren touring the museum. She realized she was anxious not because of Angelika but because of herself. She half expected someone to point and shout “Jew!” at any moment. Somehow she kept a smile fixed
on her face and tried to answer Angelika’s questions about the city, the shops, the fountains, and statues.

Angelika had been interested in the exhibits at the museum but also, Leni thought, a little distracted. She put it down to her seeing so many new things. It was a lot for such a sheltered child to take in. They’d tagged along discreetly with another party of children while Leni kept a careful eye on the time and fretted about what Otto might be doing. Everything seemed to be just about all right until Leni turned her back on Angelika for a minute. When she looked around, the girl was gone. Leni had felt her stomach somersault.

She had hurried forward to the next couple of galleries in case Angelika had gone ahead, but could not see her, so had doubled back to the earlier ones. No sign of her. Not only that but, she realized, it was going to be impossible for her to recognize Angelika from any distance. Not for the first time, Leni cursed her poor eyesight.

She raced back to the toilets, hoping Angelika had taken herself there, but the stalls were empty of any nine-year-old girls. To search the whole museum would take hours, and she dared not ask any of the attendants and so set in motion an official search party. The questions that would be asked — names, addresses, parents. No, she had to find her herself, and fast. She peered really hard, trying to sharpen her vision, but Angelika was nowhere to be seen in the crowds of visitors swirling past her.

Leni got back to the main entrance, hoping that if Angelika was also looking for her, she might make her way there as well. She felt the tears well up inside, but fought to stop them spilling. Again, it would only attract attention. As she stood there, her mind racing, she tried to think what Angelika might be doing, why she would have left her. They had been getting along fine, having a lovely time. Surely she hadn’t got nervous about the whole thing and handed herself in to the authorities? It was a possibility, in which case a police car might come screaming up to the museum at any moment to arrest her.

Then something else flashed through her mind. On the tram journey along Prinzregentenstrasse, they’d passed a building festooned with large Nazi banners hanging from the windows. Angelika had stared intently at it. “That place, I know it,” she had murmured. Leni had dismissed it at the time, but now …

She ran as fast as she could down the street. She could get to the building and back to the museum in a few minutes if she really sprinted. As she reached Prinzregentenstrasse, out of breath, she looked frantically around. The pavements were filled with shoppers hurrying to and from the daily food market known as Viktualienmarkt in the main square, and Leni had to bob and weave around them. She stared around, squinting furiously. Just as she was about to give up and return to the museum, she caught sight of a flash of blonde hair on the
opposite side of the street. Leni ran straight across the street. A car swerved past her, its horn blasting a rebuke.

It was Angelika. She was standing right outside the building with the Nazi banners, gazing up. Leni almost collapsed with relief.

“Angelika!” She didn’t mind how loud she shouted her name. She wanted her to stay there, right there, rooted to the spot.

The girl waved at her. “Leni!”

Leni was by her side now. She wanted to give her such a telling-off, but knew better than to make a scene or upset the girl. Especially outside a building plastered with swastikas. Of all the places she could have chosen to visit … Briefly she wondered what the building was, and what the Nazis inside would think if they realized a British agent and this important girl were right outside. She bit her lip and instead gave her a weak smile. “What are you doing here? You gave me such a fright …”

Angelika looked up at her, saw how red in the face she was. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I just wanted to come back and have a look at this house.”

“Why?” asked Leni. She took the girl’s hand and started to lead her away.

“I’m not sure,” she replied.

“Don’t ever do something like that again,” said Leni. “Promise me.”

“Ow!” said Angelika. “You’re hurting my hand.”

Leni realized how hard she was gripping and relaxed her hold.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was worried.”

Angelika nodded. “I’m sorry, too.”

Leni checked her watch. It was late. They needed to get to the station. “Let’s take a cab,” she said. There was no way she was going to let this girl out of her sight from now on. She managed to hail a passing taxi and helped Angelika in. As it pulled away, the girl stared out of the back window.

“At Christmas time, a long time ago, I went in there, I’m sure of it. There was a party,” she said. “I wonder if my parents were there, too. I wish I could remember.”

Leni stared at her, then back at the building, decorated with swastikas. The question that had been in the back of her mind from the first day came to the fore once more: Who was this girl? It was quickly replaced by another question: Where the hell was Otto?