Armageddon (16 page)

Sean was correct. The American was always correct. He and that abominable Dante Arosa knew everything.

“Is it not further correct,” Sean pressed, “that you secretly have a registration of all the women who worked as prostitutes in Rombaden?”

The baron stalled.

“Well?”

“You must understand,” Sigmund whined, “there was never graft connected with this. Of course, some consideration to the police now and then. However, the registration was only to keep the situation under control. To keep out undesirable elements ... what I mean ... to keep the girls protected ...”

“Strictly nonpolitical,” Sean said to Duquesne, who was forced to crack a smile. “How many of them are still around?”

“Perhaps thirty or forty.”

“Jolly place,” Sean said. “They’re going to be needed.”

“For your troops?” the baron asked, hoping that the nonfraternization ruling had been rescinded.

“For the Poles.”

“Oh ...”

“Nonpolitical, Baron. I don’t want to know who these women are. Furthermore, they are not to know this is coming from the Allied authority. You may be their benefactor. Beginning tomorrow the Poles will be paid in occupation currency. Any girl voluntarily going back to her chosen profession will be given triple ration.”

The deflated baron mumbled that it would not be too difficult to find women, even for Poles, with triple ration.

“The alternative may be the rape of your women in the streets.”

“I understand, Herr Major.”

The baron was dismissed.

Maurice Duquesne laughed at the poetic justice in making Baron Von Romstein pimp for the Poles he and his brothers had used as slaves. “A clever solution, Sean, but one which will lower you in the eyes of the Germans. They will say ... look what the American does to protect us.”

“I am doing it for the sake of law and order.”

“Ah, but Sean, a conqueror is not expected to be benevolent. Don’t you think the women here are expecting to get raped? Don’t you think the German soldiers raped the women of my province and the Polish women and the Russian women?”

“More of your centuries-old traditions, Maurice?”

“More of your American naiveté, Sean. We Europeans are not dreamers, but realists. The husbands, sons, and lovers will take their women back, tainted or not.”

“I don’t understand you people!” Sean snapped in anger.

“And I don’t understand you. How long do you think you Americans are going to be able to keep up with this idiotic nonfraternization? How long will it be before your clean-living American boys go frantic for the touch of a woman?” And then, Duquesne laughed heartily. “By God, you are missing out on one of the true rewards for winning the war.”

Chapter Twenty-two

R
OMBADEN GASPED FOR LIFE
amidst its devastation. The full impact of defeat drove deeper with each passing day. No water, no food ... ashes. Frightened movement stirred behind the charred walls as the armed Poles patrolled the streets.

The coming of Ulrich Falkenstein disturbed them deeply. The tyrannical but paternal rule of the Von Romstein dynasty was over for the first time in history. Although Count Ludwig and his brothers had governed with an iron fist, they had worked for the solid status quo of traditional life. The Von Romsteins were the father. The Von Romsteins would take care of them.

Now, Falkenstein, enemy of the Reich, scorned for two decades, sat at the right hand of the Allied governor.

Sean’s first doubts about the meaning of Falkenstein’s Germanness faded. Falkenstein would have no truck with the Nazis. Moreover, he could smell them. A few people from the whitelist and a few political survivors of Schwabenwald were placed in key civic positions. The Nazis were routed.

It became clear that every person in Rombaden and the Landkreis was going to have to account for his past activities. Rumor had it that the military government was preparing a questionnaire with hundreds of questions which every man and woman had to answer. Imprisonments grew daily.

Dante Arosa and Shenandoah Blessing played upon the shocked condition of the people to build a system of informers. The safest way for one to clear one’s name was to implicate someone else. Inform. Tell on your neighbor. Informing had become a fine art during the Nazi days; no one had been safe from prying eyes. Informers had been glorified by the Nazis ... children were rewarded for telling on their parents and parents on their children and brother on sister and cousin on cousin.

Werner Hoffman, a deputy of Falkenstein, became the unofficial liaison between the informers and the Allied authorities. Hoffman had been a minor Socialist official in pre-Nazi days and somehow survived five years at Schwabenwald. He walked bent from his back which had been broken by a guard’s rifle butt. He had been made a freak whose constant pain had amused the SS, so they let him live. Hoffman was not a particularly efficient official, but he was a rare being ... a trusted anti-Nazi.

Hoffman made the rendezvous on Princess Allee. Hoffman made the deals with the informers for extra rations and extra consideration.

This disintegration of morality added to Sean’s disgust of the Germans. And it brought the usual snide and knowing observations of Maurice Duquesne. “Why are you so shocked? They are defeated and they wish to survive. You Americans have never had to live under the conditions of defeat. You have never had to account for the actions of your life. If a German army was occupying New York you would be amazed how many Americans tongues would waggle.”

There began a wild scramble to exonerate one’s guilt

“You must make the Americans understand I joined the party because my job was at stake.”

“My job was nonpolitical, strictly nonpolitical, but I was in a position to see what was going on.”

“Holstein turned over four Jewish children who were being hidden.”

“No matter what Herr Dunkel tells you, he was a Brown Shirt.”

“When you question Bargel, remind him of how it was when he was a block warden.”

“It is known that the child turned his own mother in.”

“Yes, stole the entire business and house of the Jewish family when they disappeared.”

The overloaded garbage can spilled and the overflow vomited and the stench mingled in Rombaden’s ashes.

Ulrich Falkenstein slept in a mansion confiscated from the brewery owner. It was a twenty-two-room affair on the south bank shared with a half-dozen former Schwabenwald inmates working with the Allied Government.

At five o’clock in the morning of the beginning of the second week of occupation, his phone rang. It was Werner Hoffman.

“What in God’s name do you want at this hour!” Falkenstein demanded.

Hoffman answered with a single name. “Klaus Stoll.”

He spoke the name of the commandant of Schwabenwald, who had disappeared at the end of the fighting.

“Stoll!” Falkenstein repeated in a chilled whisper.

“And his dear wife, Emma. We have them both.”

“Where? How?”

“The information came to us from someone who has a lot to answer for. Stoll has been hiding in the basement of a bombed-out rubble on Friedrichstrasse. He placed his trust in one of our most reliable informers.”

“The Allied authorities! Do they know?”

“As a matter of fact it was Lieutenant Blessing who captured Stoll an hour ago. He said that for the sake of certain identification it would be a good idea if a dozen or so former inmates from Schwabenwald interviewed Stoll right in the basement before he is taken into custody.”

“God in heaven! Major O’Sullivan will be furious!”

“Major O’Sullivan knows. He said that he will be touring the Landkreis all day. And he added something quite strange. He said, ‘What I don’t know won’t hurt me.’ What did he mean by that, Ulrich?”

Falkenstein threw his blankets off. The blood rushed through his heart so quickly and heavily he thought his chest would break. He fought into his clothing, called for his chauffeur, and soon crossed the pontoon bridge into Rombaden. He was met by Hoffman in the square in the first light of day.

They stopped before a rubble pile of what had once been Kaufmann’s Department Store. No one seemed about. Hoffman, grimacing from the pain of his warped body, and Falkenstein, puffing from age, stumbled through the wreckage and down into a foul-smelling basement.

A flashlight beam hit them. “In here!” someone called.

They made their way into a cleverly concealed cell all but blocked by twisted steel and burned-out timbers. They gasped for breath and adjusted their eyes to the lantern light. A dozen German inmates of Schwabenwald had been assembled.

On a bed of rags in the corner, Obersturmfuehrer Klaus Stoll and his wife, Emma, cringed.

One of his former prisoners kicked him in the stomach. The blow made more noise than damage. “Stand in the presence of Ulrich Falkenstein,” the man demanded.

Klaus Stoll slid his back up the wall, holding his arms across his face to ward off any blows.

Another of them grabbed Emma Stoll by her hair and jerked her to her feet.

Ulrich pushed through the ring and stood face to face with the Nazi. Stoll was a great brute of a man, as large in frame as Falkenstein had once been before the flesh had been beaten from his body. He looked from Klaus to Emma and back again. He tried to renew the nine years in Schwabenwald in his mind. There she stood as she was. A dull, stupid, low-class, foul-mouthed slut. Emma, who wore her sweaters and skirts tight to taunt the inmates. Emma, who called for naked men and women to perform for her. Emma, who collapsed in sweaty exhaustion from lashing inmates.

And Klaus Stoll, brewery-wagon driver saved from anonymity by his depraved Nazis. Klaus the braggart, who taunted Ulrich by descriptions of the gassings and how he liked to watch the castrations at the medical experiment center; how he made a half-dozen prisoners kneel head to head and bet he could put a single pistol bullet through their heads.

And Klaus Stall’s killer dog, Messer. The dog strained on the leash waiting for the command, “Kill! ... Go for the throat, Messer!”

Klaus Stoll’s dark face was stubbled, dirty, and sweat-drenched. His black Nazi uniform was torn and caked with dried blood. The swastika was gone. “I am glad you are here, Herr Falkenstein,” he said in his semiliterate speech. “You are understanding. I have explained to them that I only followed orders. The Nazis would have killed me if I hadn’t obeyed. They held my family as hostage to see that I carried out orders.”

“Step back, Ulrich, and let us deal with them.”

“Herr Falkenstein! You are a civilized man! You cannot put me at their mercy!”

“Perhaps you are right, Stoll. Perhaps we should call in the Poles.”

“God no!” Emma screamed.

Stoll turned to the crippled Hoffman. “Didn’t I spare you even against orders?”

“Because it was amusing to see me scream in pain with my back.” Hoffman snatched up a brick. “Let us see how you will bear the pain of a broken back!”

The Nazi fell to his knees and clasped his hands. “God! God be my merciful judge! I hated every minute of it! They made me do it!”

The ring closed in.

“Wait!” ordered Ulrich Falkenstein with such power and authority they halted. “Let us not be so quick. In places like Schwabenwald human beings were turned into animals so that whores and bums like Klaus and Emma Stoll would become supermen in their own eyes by comparison. Let us see if the superman is made of our stuff. Stand up Klaus Stoll,” Falkenstein said in an almost paternal tone. “We shall not lay a hand on you.”

Ulrich quieted the others’ protests and continued. “Now, Klaus Stoll. Face your wife. Spit in her face as you made us spit on our comrades. Spit I say!”

He spat upon his wife.

“Now, Emma Stoll. Do not wipe the spit. Let it run down your face and into your mouth. Spit on your husband!”

She spat twice.

He ordered them to spit again and again and again until their mouths ran dry, and they were given water and made to spit again.

“Now, Klaus Stoll, slap your wife until her face bleeds.”

“Here, Emma Stoll. Take this stick and beat the face of your husband.”

And they beat on each other with sickening thuds. The prisoners of Schwabenwald shrunk back from the scene in revulsion. They beat upon each other until Emma Stoll slumped, semiconscious. The Nazi stood over her gasping and weeping and babbling to God for understanding.

“Klaus Stoll!” Falkenstein roared. “Call for your dog!”

“Mercy!”

“Call for your dog, I say!”

“Messer,” the Nazi voice whimpered, “Messer.”

“Tell Messer to kill! Tell him to go for the throat!”

“Kill ...” Klaus Stoll choked.

“Aha! Messer does not answer his master’s call. Get on your hands and knees and bark like Messer. Bark at your wife.”

Klaus Stoll grotesquely groveled about on all fours and barked and snapped at his wife.

Ulrich Falkenstein faced the others, and they knew that he had deliberately made them disgusted with themselves.

“It is enough!” Hoffman cried, dropping his weapon. “Make him stop!”

Klaus Stoll fell exhausted and Ulrich Falkenstein stood over him. “Why didn’t you have the decency to kill yourself? ... Hoffman ... call the Americans.”

Chapter Twenty-three

T
HE SHEETS WERE SOGGY
with sweat. Dante pushed off the bed on rubbery legs, groped for matches, lit the kerosene lamp, turned the wick up. It flickered shadows about the war-battered room.

The shadows played over Marla’s glistening body. She lay on her side, her face buried in the pillow, her hair in disarray on the shambled bed. She was motionless except for the exhaling of deep sensuous groans.

Dante’s fuzzy mind tried to work. He washed himself as best he could in the single bucket of water, and then he dressed.

The numbness caused by her bites began to wear off and hurt. Crazy! It’s all plain crazy!

The rendezvous had been kept in a bombed-out apartment that her father once used for a mistress in the old days. When Dante arrived, Marla had been waiting in the darkness for well over an hour. They had both reached a kind of madness.