A Mortal Terror (2 page)
“Billy,” Diana said, glancing toward Philby, her eyes showing a curious mix of surprise, joy, and fear. “Why are you here? Is something wrong?”
“Nothing wrong, my dear,” said Philby. “I simply owed Lieutenant Boyle a favor and brought him along to see the sights.”
“Then you
have
been busy since I last saw you,” Diana said to me, her face relaxing. We’d last seen each other in Naples, a month ago, before an assignment from Uncle Ike cut our time together short.
“Yes. I asked if I could tag along when your mission was finished. I never thought you’d be brought out so soon.”
“It was … sudden,” she said. Her voice wavered, and I thought tears welled up in her eyes, but she regained her composure in an instant, running the rosary beads she wore through her fingers. “What’s the connection?” Diana asked in a low voice, nodding toward Philby.
“It’s a long story.”
“They all are,” Diana said, as she took my hand in hers and gazed out the window. She rubbed the moisture away and stared at the traffic, the streetlights, the glow from windows—all the signs of normalcy that had become so abnormal in these years of war. She blinked rapidly as the tears returned, and one dropped onto the back of my hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Long and sad,” she said. “Every story is so long and so sad.” She gripped my hand until her knuckles turned white. We drove on through the peaceful streets in silence broken only by the sound of muffled sobs.
T
HE
H
OTEL
T
URCONI
was located just north of Chiasso. It sat atop a hill at the start of a wave of foothills and high ridges cresting the Alps themselves. It was a small place, perfect for knowing who your fellow guests were, and for watching the winding road that led up from the border town. When we’d first checked in, the owner nodded to Philby like a long-time customer, the kind who liked to be left alone. He didn’t blink at our passports, both Irish, and reserved a table in an alcove for our meals, set apart from the other diners. Our papers and our names were phony, but the money Philby handed over wasn’t. I hoped he wasn’t stingy with the king’s pound notes, since I didn’t like the idea of German agents paying us a visit while we slept.
The owner himself served us. Wild mushroom soup and roasted duck breast with apples, washed down with a couple of bottles of Merlot Bianco—from his cousin’s vineyard, he was proud to tell us. It beat dining in London, with all the rationing restrictions, even though Diana was still dressed as a nun.
“Why don’t you change?” I asked as our host cleared the dishes and Philby fired up his pipe. “Do you need clothes?”
“Kim,” Diana said. “Didn’t you tell him?”
“Tell me what?” I wanted to know.
“The mission isn’t over,” she said, lowering her voice. “I needed to report something in person, so I asked to come out. I’ll go back as soon as I can.”
“I will be the one to make that decision, my dear,” Philby said in his best professorial tone. “That’s why I didn’t tell Boyle. I’m not sure myself if you should go back. First, I need to hear what was so important, and how you came to learn of it. The Germans are great ones for playing games, and it could be false intelligence designed to draw out an agent, forcing you to take the sort of intemperate action you did.”
“This is not the sort of intelligence they would plant,” Diana said. “And I am not intemperate.” She drank her wine and set the glass down hard, punctuating her statement.
“Very well,” Philby said, shrugging his acceptance. “We can discuss the matter later, in private.”
“No,” Diana said. “This is not something to be hidden away and kept secret. Billy does work for General Eisenhower, after all.” She made it sound like Philby was an idiot, not her spymaster boss.
“And I am in the business of managing secrets,” Philby said. “Not broadcasting them before their usefulness can be determined.”
“I saw a report from the bishop of Berlin, Konrad von Preysing,” Diana said, ignoring Philby, who refilled his wine glass and eyed her with faint amusement, as if she were a precocious child on the verge of misbehavior. “It was sent directly to the pope, and one of his secretaries typed a copy …”
“If you insist on proceeding, move on to the facts,” Philby said. “There is no need to detail your sources for Lieutenant Boyle.” It was a way for him to assert his authority while allowing her to continue.
Diana waited for a heartbeat, then nodded. “Kurt Gerstein is an
Obersturmführer
in the SS. A lieutenant. He joined the Nazis in 1933, but quickly became disillusioned and spoke out against their antireligious policies. For his involvement with various Christian youth groups, he was thrown out of the party, severely beaten, and briefly imprisoned for anti-Nazi activities.”
“So how did he end up in the SS?” Philby asked, an eyebrow raised in disbelief.
“In early 1941, his sister-in-law died in a mental institution.”
“Nazi euthanasia?” Philby asked.
“Yes. At that point, Gerstein became committed to acting against the regime. He apparently decided the best way to do that was from within. A few months after her death, he joined the SS. Either they didn’t check his records, or his technical skills made them willing to overlook them. He had an engineering degree, and had completed his first year of medical school. So they brought him into the Technical Disinfection Department of the SS.”
“What, do they clean garbage cans?” I asked, wondering where all this was leading.
“No. They are in charge of disinfecting the clothes of all the Jews they kill. Jews, Gypsies, Communists, opponents of the regime, anyone who is sent to the extermination camps.”
I’d read about the concentration camps, where enemies of the Nazis were sent, and I knew the SS and the Gestapo had no qualms about shooting whomever they wanted. But this felt different. A whole structure dedicated to extermination? It was bigger than wanton slaughter, beyond evil, beyond believing. Everything I’d read or seen in newsreels about the Nazis made me angry. This made me sick.
“We know the Nazis have treated the Jews terribly,” Philby said. “As they have many others. We know many die in the camps in the east, but extermination? Surely they use them for labor, and many die, but you can’t mean wholesale slaughter?” Philby’s normally suave demeanor faltered for a moment as he took in what Diana was describing.
“The Technical Disinfection Department also provides a gas called Zyklon B. It is used in gas chambers, in large quantities,” Diana said, her lips compressed, as if the words were too terrible to let loose into the world. “Kurt Gerstein is in charge of the delivery of Zyklon B. He delivered large quantities to a number of camps in Poland, including a huge complex of camps at a place called Auschwitz.”
“Unbelievable,” Philby said, and I couldn’t tell if he simply did not credit Diana, or was stunned at the enormity of what she was telling us.
“In 1942, he visited several concentration camps, including Belzec, in Poland. While he was there, he witnessed the gassing of three thousand Jews. This was what he had joined the SS for. To gather evidence of outright extermination. He described what he had seen to the Swedish diplomat Baron von Otter, and the papal nuncio in Berlin, Father Cesare Orsenigo, as well as to the bishop. All promised to send word to London, and each did. When nothing but silence came of that, Bishop von Preysing wrote directly to the pope.”
“Diana,” Philby said, leaning forward to whisper to her. “Are you sure this chap isn’t mad? Surely I would have heard of such a report coming from Berlin. Perhaps he had an attack of conscience and fabricated the worst he could imagine.”
“You don’t understand,” Diana said. “What do you think is happening in these camps? Gerstein witnessed it all, the trains coming in, the few able-bodied separated to be worked to death, all the rest ushered into the gas chambers. They have them marked as showers, to disinfect for typhus. Jewish trustees tell them to fold their clothes and leave them on benches, to remember where they left them. Then they enter the chamber and the doors are locked behind them. The Zyklon B is dropped through vents in the ceiling. In twenty minutes they open the doors and pull out the dead. They pry the gold from their teeth and incinerate the bodies.”
“The very Zyklon B that Herr Gerstein so thoughtfully provided?”
“Yes. So that he could witness what was being done. So he could tell the world. But so far, the world hasn’t listened.” She slammed the table with the flat of her hand and her glass fell, staining the tablecloth with wine before it rolled off the table and shattered.
Philby sat in silence, haunted perhaps by visions of mass killing, or worried that he hadn’t been privy to reports smuggled out of Nazi Germany. Finally he stirred enough to chastise Diana about overreacting to Vatican gossip and to tell me to keep quiet about what I’d heard, and then left the table.
“What do you think, Billy?” Diana said, now that we were alone. I knew Diana was counting on me to believe her, to back her up. I squirmed in my seat, trying to find the words she wanted to hear, but I didn’t know what to say. It was all so insane, it was hard to come up with a logical thought. Then I remembered Sammy.
“I had a friend in high school, Sammy Vartanian. He was Armenian, and his father used to curse the Turks for killing over a million Armenians in 1915. I’d never heard of it, and I figured maybe Sammy’s old man was off his rocker. So I looked it up in the encyclopedia. Sure enough, there is was. The Armenian Genocide. I figure if something like that happened a few decades ago, and I never heard of it, then you could be right. Besides, I believe in you.”
“I’d heard talk among Jews we have hidden in Vatican City, but I thought it might be nothing more than rumors. Not the deportations and shootings, all that is well known. It’s the sheer scale of it all. Like a giant assembly line of death.”
“But you believe this report from Gerstein?”
“Yes. It all checks out. Bishop von Preysing vouches for him, and he’s completely reliable. He’s been anti-Nazi and quite outspoken about it, unlike most other German bishops. And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For believing in me.” Diana reached her hand toward mine, and her skin held an electrical charge. I pulled away, looking around to see if anyone had seen this Irish civilian hold hands with a nun. Diana blushed, the red flush stark against the white surrounding her face.
“Let’s go,” she said, and I followed her up the stairs, aware of the movement in her hips beneath the black cloth. My heart was beating fast, and I wondered if I should feel guilty about desiring her so soon after discussing the fate of millions. Then I wondered if I was going to hell for lusting after a nun, even a phony one. That made my heart beat even faster, but I didn’t have time to decide which to worry about, since we were in front of Diana’s door. Guilt and hell were pretty much the same thing in my upbringing, and I knew I could never explain this situation to a priest and ask for absolution.
“Listen,” I said, as she turned the key in the lock. “I’ll understand if you want to be alone, you know, after your long trip and all.”
Diana eyed me, then the hallway. It was empty. The only sounds were those drifting up from the restaurant two floors below. She pressed her body against mine, her face warm, her eyes half closed, her lips moist as we kissed. Our arms encircled each other, and I tasted the sweetness of her mouth and the saltiness of the tears that streaked her cheek. I reached for the unlocked door, pushed it open, and we entered like two dancers in tune with the music of longing. I kicked it shut as Diana pulled the white coif from her head, letting her long hair loose. She carefully removed the cross she wore around her neck and the rosary beads from her woolen belt, placing them on a small table by the gable window. Then she removed her scapular— the black apron draped over her shoulders—and covered them with it.
“I’ve missed you,” she said, kicking off her shoes and wiping a tear away.
“Is that why you’re crying?” I asked, taking her in my arms, feeling warm flesh beneath the nun’s habit and trying not to think about all the real nuns I’d known. This was not the time for visions of Sister Mary Margaret.
“I don’t know. It’s everything. The war, the innocent deaths, all the lives ripped apart. It’s too much to bear. I don’t want to think about it anymore, at least not now.”
We struggled out of our clothes, not wanting to separate for a second, eager to release our bodies from the confines of belts and buttons. I laughed when Diana pulled off her tunic, half expecting all the saints in Switzerland to barge through the door.
“What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a nun undress before?”
I laughed some more and Diana giggled as the pile of clothes by the side of the bed grew, layers of her undergarments mixing with my civvies, until we were under the duvet, basking in the warmth of our flesh on a cold winter night, safe from the murderous conflict that threatened from all points of the compass. The world had shrunk down to the two of us in this room. The war had burned away all the petty arguments, all the ill will that we’d let come between us. There were no questions about tomorrow or the next day, no expectations of the future, no wondering what would become of us. Fear, blood, and death had washed us clean, leaving only what survived, or what had burrowed deep into our hearts, as far from the danger as it could go and still be remembered. We caressed each other, coaxing those memories out, letting them breathe the air of joy and freedom before we put them away again.
We laughed, but I can’t say we were happy. We made love, but it was desperate and burning hot, as if we were keeping evil at bay by the very act. We cried, but our woes were so small that I was ashamed of the tears. We held each other, and knew it would not last.
We slept, but could not rest.
T
HE
NEXT MORNING
, he was waiting for us. A young guy, his face smooth and pink. He sat at our alcove table, pulling at his shirtsleeves to best display his gold cuff links. I squeezed Diana’s hand and stopped before he saw us. I watched as he sipped his coffee, resting his hands just so, allowing the gold to sparkle. A leather briefcase was on the chair next to him. His hair was brown and wavy, his expression bored, his fingers manicured. He’d been out in the sun, most likely on a ski slope. He had the healthy, athletic look of a college boy, and the well-tailored look that came from a rich daddy. His eyes weren’t on the other guests or the entrance. He didn’t even notice us a dozen steps away. He sipped his coffee and looked at his copy of the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
, the major Swiss daily newspaper. Probably checking his stocks.