The Serpent's Egg (8 page)

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Max-Christian! Didn’t I warn you about taking precautions? Oh, you young people—”

“It’s nothing like that, Mother. She’s not pregnant. We’ve decided to get married.”

She frowned. “She’s part-Jewish isn’t she? Isn’t that illegal now?”

“Yes, but we’ve been granted special permission.”

She held up her hands. “I don’t want to know any more about that. But I hope you’ll both be very happy. Have you picked a date?”

“We don’t have a date. We’re planning a spring wedding. The department store won’t give Anna any time off until after the winter season.”

“Where will the wedding be? She’s not Lutheran, I think.”

“She’s Roman Catholic. We thought we might get married in Berlin. It’s not far for you to come and Anna’s parents won’t mind travelling from Dresden.”

She grabbed his hand and held on to it. “It’s a pity your father’s not here. Wait here for a minute.” She left him and went upstairs.

He laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had an exchange so free of sidetracks. He waited a few minutes. When she failed to return, he followed her upstairs. He found her in one of the spare bedrooms surrounded by old family photographs. She laughed. “Look at this one. This is you and me in Nuremberg at a rally. Do you remember?”

They spent an hour going through the photographs together. When Max said he had to leave she reached into the pocket in her apron and handed him a cigarette lighter. “This was your father’s. I want you to have it.”

He examined the lighter. It was steel, shaped like a tiny book, engraved with the date: May 1916. He had never seen it before.

“I can’t take this, mother. You have so little to remember him by.”

“Nonsense. Keep it.”

He examined the lighter again on the autobus. The thought that his father had handled it before his death sent shivers up and down his spine. Wilhelm Noack had gone to fight in the War in 1916. He lost his life in the Battle of the Somme. His body was never recovered. If this was his lighter why had he not taken it with him?

Chapter 21

October 1938

The following day when he arrived at work, ‘the bush’ Schnerpf was standing by Max’s desk clutching a bundle of requisition orders, his moustache twitching on his face like an eel on a hook.

“Where were you yesterday, Noack?”

“I took a day’s leave. I left a note on your desk, sir.”

“Did I not impress on you the urgency of the task in hand? Rebuilding the Chancellery must be the most important construction job ever undertaken in the Reich.”

“I have located most of the labor and nearly all the engineers for the Chancellery job, and I have compiled a list of 50 able-bodied men for the secret mission overseas. I left the paperwork on your desk.”

He wagged a finger as if admonishing a child. “You have been taking a lot of unscheduled leave recently. Is there something I should know about your private life?”

Max explained that he had been trying to obtain approval to marry.

“And do you have it?”

“I received it last week.”

His boss frowned. “I thought your girlfriend was Jewish.”

“No, sir, she’s Roman Catholic.”

Schnerpf handed him the requisitions, all duly stamped and signed. His mustache twitched. “When are you planning to get married?”

“Not until March at the earliest, sir.”

#

Anna tended the tables in the food court of the KaWeDe department store. Closing time was approaching. She had been on her feet all day. They ached, but still she maintained her good humor, her bright smile.

“You’re amazing,” said her friend, Ebba. “I don’t know how you do it. Don’t you ever get tired?”

Anna laughed. “Smiles cost nothing.”

Two smartly dressed young men came into the food court and took a table by the door. Anna gave them a few moments to read the menu. Then she went across to take their order. One of the men was heavy-set, overweight, the other was blond with well-defined musculature and deep blue eyes, wearing a modern double-breasted suit. She estimated his age at 22 or 23 – perhaps a year or two younger than Max.

They ordered coffee and Strudel pastries. She smiled at them.

As she was placing the food on the table the younger man held her wrist. “My name’s Jürgen. What’s your name, darling?” There was something unpleasant in the tone of his voice.

“Anna.” She gave him her blank smile, pulled her arm away, and hurried back behind the counter.

She spoke to Ebba. “Do you see those two men near the door?”

“The two in the Hugo Boss suits? What about them?”

“One of them made a pass at me.”

Ebba laughed. “Serves you right for smiling at everyone.”

The kitchen closed up shortly after that and the last few customers left. The two young men remained where they were.

Anna cleared their table. “The food court is closing now.”

“Where do you live?” said the younger man. “Can I walk you home?”

“No, thank you. That won’t be necessary.”

She was shaking, now. She found Ebba in the staff room. “Those two men haven’t gone. I’m sure they’re SS. I’m not leaving here until they go.”

Ebba took a look outside. “They’ve gone. The food court is empty.”

Anna left the department store by a rear door that evening, and took a circuitous route home.

Feeling vaguely guilty about what happened, she decided to say nothing to Max about the encounter.

#

When he arrived home from work, Max found Frau Greta sitting on the sofa sipping tea with Anna.

Anna waved a bundle of Reichsmarks in his face. “Frau Greta has returned our 100 Reichsmarks. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Max looked to Greta for an explanation.

Greta waved her free hand. “Madam Krauss should never have demanded a fee for what we did. I know that you will need the money for the wedding.”

What ‘we’ did. She must be referring to the actress.

“Thank you, Frau Greta. What a pleasant surprise.”

“I’m delighted that we could help you.”

“When you say ‘we’ who do you mean? If there are others that helped us I would like to meet them so that I can thank them in person.”

Greta laughed. “It was a team effort. I believe one or two of the others would like to meet you, too. Give me your telephone number. I’ll see what I can arrange.”

Chapter 22

October 1938

A week later Max took the S-Bahn north to the exclusive Pankow quarter of Berlin. Soft October showers had given way to weak sunshine, and the Mitte was alive with smiling pedestrians. He had to change trains once to reach his destination, a magnificent mansion surrounded by mature trees and protected by 3-meter high walls and massive iron gates. He pushed the gates. They swung open. Walking slowly around a gleaming Daimler-Benz saloon car, he knocked on the front door. It was opened by a plump maid who took him to a study.

Max had never seen so many books in one place. That and the elaborate, expensive furniture, the pictures on the walls, all told him that whoever lived in this household was wealthy and cultured.

A woman approached and introduced herself as Libertas Schulze-Boysen.

This must surely be the woman – the actress – that Kurt Framzl had named.

Max shook her hand warmly. “I wanted to thank you for your help with our Marriage Application.”

“That was nothing. I played a minor role in the matter.” The contrast between her deep voice and short stature was striking. The immediate impression was of a pocket dynamo, someone in control of her surroundings. She invited Max to sit and took a seat facing him.

Without realizing it, Max’s hand slipped into his pants pocket and emerged with his father’s cigarette lighter.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Max-Christian. I’ve heard so many good things about you.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “What have you heard?”

“Greta tells me you are a man of principle. And I’ve heard that you are not one to follow the crowd, that you have a mind of your own.” She crossed her legs. Max noted her sheer stockings, her trim figure. “Greta was particularly impressed by your concern for the unfortunate souls that you are required to transport from place to place. You are a Humanist, I think. No?”

Max wasn’t sure what that meant, but he wasn’t going to argue with the woman in her own home. “Yes, I suppose so.” The lighter turned in his hand.

“You will be familiar with the egalitarian ideas developed in the East?”

What did she mean by that? “I have heard of Confucius.”

Libertas laughed. The transformation of her countenance was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, sending ripples of pleasure through his body. “Not that far east, Max-Christian. I was thinking of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. You’ve heard of them?”

Communism. He’d hit ‘pay dirt’! The lighter spun in his fingers.

“I am aware of their work. I have long admired Communism as a system, but I must confess I have never read any of their writings.”

She nodded toward the lighter in his hands. “I hope you’re not planning to smoke.”

“Oh no, I don’t. This was my father’s. Forgive me.” He slipped it back into his pocket.

She got to her feet, took a book from one of the shelves and handed it to him. Max read the title, written in gold on the spine, ‘Das Kapital.’

“And how do you feel about Fascism?”

“Really, Frau Schulze-Boysen, I have no time for the Nazis.”

“Call me Libertas. Everyone does.” She pulled a bell rope. The maid appeared. Libertas took the book back and asked the maid to wrap it in brown paper. The maid scurried off with the book. “Remind me to give it to you before you go. You may take it with you, but you must keep it hidden. It’s on the list of banned books as I’m sure you are aware.”

“Thank you, Libertas.” Max wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to read the book.

“Now, tell me all about Anna and your marriage plans.”

#

As soon as the maid had closed the front door behind Max, Harro Schulze-Boysen stepped into the study.

Libertas smiled at him. “Well, what did you think?”

“I think you’re going to have to work on your technique. Your approach was crude, heavy-handed and far too obvious.”

She frowned. “Never mind my technique. What did you think of Max-Christian? Will we be able to use him?”

“We may use him, but we’ll have to check his background first. He could be a plant.”

She snorted. “He’s a young man with obvious Humanist principles and a fiancée who’s half-Jewish. He’s under an obligation to us – to me and Greta – for his marriage approval. Why do you have to complicate everything, Harro?”

#

Max unwrapped the book and showed it to Anna.

She shied away from it as if it were a venomous spider that would bite her. “That’s the Communist book, Max. It’s banned. Where did you get it? Get rid of it.”

“A friend lent it to me.”

She flapped her hands. “Well, keep it hidden. I don’t want anyone to know that we have banned books in the apartment.”

Every night for a week, he waded through the book before sleeping. Much to Anna’s disgust. Soon his head was spinning with Marx’s theories of the value of labor. The more he read the more he felt he needed to go back and re-read what went before, and the more he became convinced that the book should be mandatory reading for everyone working in the Reich Labor Service. By the end of the second week his mind was grappling with serious ethical questions around the use of unpaid forced labor.

Chapter 23

November 1938

Max lived in a constant state of fear. He tried to lead a normal life, to give the appearance that nothing was troubling him, but the Gestapo was always in his thoughts. Germany was like a hospital patient emerging from a coma. The Nazis had injected new life into the country, but she had a new sickness – a patriotic fever that infected everyone. Brownshirts roamed the streets of Berlin. Armed with sticks and cudgels they hunted in groups of four or five, picking on anyone they considered weak, foreign, politically deviant or Jewish. Max’s nights were infested with bad dreams. He spent his days in a trancelike state that was the only way he could live with his unrelenting anxiety.

And then one day, while he was out of the office, a coworker took a telephone call for him. Herr Framzl would like him to call into his office tomorrow morning at 8:30.

Max’s heart skipped a beat. This was what he had been dreading. Framzl would be looking for answers and Max hadn’t crossed the first hurdle yet. He had heard nothing more from Frau Greta or Libertas the actress since she’d given him the Communist Manifesto. Should he have made it more obvious that he wanted to join the Red Orchestra? Should he have called back to the actress’s mansion?

It was November 2, All Souls Day. Max felt kinship with the dearly departed. Surely he would be joining them soon.

Framzl kept him waiting for 30 minutes before taking him into an office with a glass panel in the door. ‘Department B Race and Ethnic Affairs’ was stenciled on the panel in gothic script. Framed between two limp Swastika standards, an oversized picture of the Führer hung on the wall behind Framzl’s desk.

“How long has it been since we spoke?”

“A couple of weeks. Herr Framzl—”

“It’s been four weeks. I’m disappointed not to have heard from you in all that time. I trust you’ve made some progress.”

“I have spoken with the actress. I made it plain that I wished to join the organization, but I’m afraid they haven’t come back to me.”