Armageddon (21 page)

“Did you suspect?”

“Suspect what?”

“The exterminations.”

She looked up at him pitifully, wrung her hands, dropped her head again. “We all suspected.”

Sean was excited by the knowledge that he had either baffled her or gained her immediate confidence or ... that she was playing a wild gamble to hang onto life. “How much did you see of the camp?”

“Only ... only the outer camp. My husband’s office, the area around the SS barracks ...”

“How about the medical experiment center?”

Emma sealed her lips.

“The center was in that immediate area, Emma. Did you ever go inside the experimentation center?”

“Yes,” she said almost inaudibly.

“And the Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters?”

“I answered these questions a hundred times for Lieutenant Arosa.”

“The Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters?”

“I don’t want to speak any more! Get out!”

“Last time, Emma. It’s the end of the line for you. Were you ever in Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters!”

“Get out!”

“Okay, Emma. No more questions.” Sean walked toward the solid iron door to thump for the jailer.

“I was in Gestapo,” she said.

Sean turned back to her. “How many times?”

“I don’t know.”

“Forty?”

“Maybe.”

“Fifty?”

“Yes ... fifty ...”

“And you beat prisoners and forced them to perform sex acts.”

“Only Jews and Slavs!”

“And you went to the inner camp and you watched the exterminations!”

“No! No! Never! I swear! Never! I was never in there! I swear I was never in there!”

Sean knelt quickly alongside the cot, where she was weeping, mumbling prayers to God, proclaiming her innocence.

“I have one last question, Emma. Answer it carefully. Your life depends on it. Where did you get your silverware set?”

The sudden shift in questioning threw her. “My ... my ... what?”

“Your silverware set?”

“But I have two sets of silver.”

No actress could fake it. Emma Stoll was innocent of the charge. Sean knew that now beyond question. “Well, where did you get them?”

“The good silver, I purchased in Switzerland.”

“With funds stolen from German Winter Relief?”

She buried her face in her hands and wept again, sobbing now. The world would look upon her as a thief. This was more than she could bear. Sean waited until her crying spell ebbed. “And the other set. The one with the fancy carvings?”

“The old silver with the ivory handles was given to me by my father from his father. My grandfather was a soldier in German East Africa before the first war. He brought it back with him. It has become a family heirloom. It was ugly, but a German wife is taught to treasure family heirlooms ... so I kept it.”

Sean sighed deeply. His rugged, black Irish face was as perplexed as Emma Stoll’s. “For reasons best known to the Lord above alone ... I am going to try to save your life.”

The next morning there was a press conference called at Supreme Headquarters in Frankfurt Proclamation #22 was announced. The press officer intimated that a speedy trial would follow.

Those journalists who had become authorities in the American Zone quickly pieced two and two together. Within minutes of the announcement, as it was flashed around the world, there was open speculation that Klaus and Emma Stoll would be the first tried under the proclamation.

DELIVER BY PERSONAL COURIER TO BRIGADIER GENERAL A. J. HANSEN, G-5, SUPREME HEADQUARTERS: I. G. FARBEN BUILDING: FRANKFURT

Dear General Hansen,

I am not certain whether your communication constituted an order or a request. At any rate, I am hereby notifying you that I reject it in either event.

In the opinion of my legal officer and in my own lay opinion, Klaus Stoll is guilty and deserving of the death penalty. However, it will take weeks to prepare proper legal documents and conclude a case ... tried in American tradition.

Emma Stoll has done nothing to deserve a death sentence.

PROCLAMATION
#22 is against my conscience, my morality, and, in my opinion, contrary to the best interests of my country.

Sincerely,

Sean O’Sullivan

Chapter Thirty

A
NDREW
J
ACKSON
H
ANSEN’S STAFF
car and motorcycle escort wiped everything out of its path like a hurricane blowing down from Frankfurt.

Eric the Red bounced out of his car before it was brought to a full halt at the Rombaden City Hall, churned up the marble steps, down the statue-lined corridor, and burst into Sean’s office, slamming the door behind him.

Sean arose. “Good afternoon, General. I was expecting you’d be down here.”

“You snot-nose bastard! Are you trying to make us look like idiots!”

“No, sir. I’m trying to save you from looking like idiots.”

“What the hell are you protecting that goddamned ghoul Emma Stoll for!”

“I am attempting,” Sean said slowly, “to protect the good name of my country. She happens to come with the bargain. You’ve read the report, sir. Those bone handles are not human skulls.”

Hansen leaned on his knuckles, bent forward over the desk, and aped Sean’s soft, smooth speech. “But the world doesn’t know. And, Major, that story will never be set straight. Corney has done her job well. And if by some miracle the story is corrected the world isn’t going to give a good rat’s ass. The world wants Emma Stoll’s neck.”

“I won’t sign my name to a lynch order.”

Hansen’s fist crashed two, three, four times atop the desk, making it bounce under his fury. “Now you hear this, boy. Emma Stoll is going to die! The Germans will laugh in our faces if we spring her and the whole goddamned world is going to scream that we’re coddling Nazis!”

“And I don’t give a big rat’s ass what the world screams!” Sean bellowed right back in Hansen’s face. “And furthermore, I refuse to talk to the General while he is in such a rage that he has no control of his senses.”

Hansen stood upright with the astonishment of a child in the middle of a tantrum who has been doused in the face with a glass of water. Sean’s voice quivered for control. “What are we proving by Proclamation 22? Why bother with a sham of a kangaroo court? Let’s just take them out and shoot them. Adolf Hitler proclaimed the same kind of courts to get rid of undesirable elements. They were called People’s Courts. We call them Proclamation 22. Don’t you think I know the German people want Emma Stoll dead even more than we do. Sure, let her die for their crimes. Let Emma Stoll die for every one of them who screamed
sieg heil.
I’m sorry I lost my temper, sir. I have strong feelings on the matter.”

“Sometimes, Sean,” the general said quietly, “we see our country make an obvious mistake. We go along with it without protest because we believe in the ultimate right of what we are doing. Those times are the most difficult when a man is asked to believe so deeply that he will follow blindly and without question. What we have asked you to do is not your decision ... or mine. It is the decision of our superiors. Nor will the ultimate responsibility rest upon you. What can I say, Sean? This creature is not worth saving. And the world will never condemn you. Allow us this human mistake and go on believing.”

The pressure was intensifying now. Yes, Sean thought, it would be so damned easy to just sign the request for the tribunal. To resist was stupid and ridiculous. And when Emma Stoll was hanged there would be much cheering around the world and no one to grieve except a pet dog and a grandmother. In a decade or two some obscure professor of law might point out that Emma Stoll was denied a due process of law. But even America could make a mistake in the backwash and confusion of the war’s ending. And who would remember the name of the major who signed the order for the tribunal?

But to refuse was to invite calamity ... no one would understand or want to understand his position. He could never set the truth straight in people’s minds about the ivory handles. Why in God’s name stand up in the face of world wrath to defend a slut who hardly deserved to live.

“General Hansen, I have sat here, day in, day out, week after week listening to one German after another repeat the same story like broken records. They say, ‘We were only following orders.’ You see ...that is their justification for murder, castration, barbarism, degradation. They were just following orders. And I go to my billet and I get a little bit crocked every night and I think ...what if a few million Germans, or a few hundred thousand, had had the guts to stand up and refuse to commit crimes in the name of their country. I’m sorry, General Hansen. America doesn’t stand for Proclamation 22. I’m not going to commit murder in the name of my country for you or anyone else just because orders are orders.”

Hansen knew now what he had to do. “This is all beyond our hands and our scope, Sean. That is reality. You will report to Frankfurt in seventy-two hours with a request either for the tribunal or your resignation from the Army. I regret a willful and stubborn decision that will bring you much unhappiness.”

“I’ll take full responsibility for my decision, General.”

Hansen put on his cap and walked toward the door. “I’m sorry you came here, General. I’m sorry because I believed in you ... I believed in you when you told me ‘We are not Nazis....’”

It rained and the Landau became muddy again and the cobblestones of the great square were slick. It rained into the leaking hovels of the bomb ruins, and the wet misery added to the gloom inside City Hall.

No one spoke of it openly but General Hansen’s visit was a well-known secret. Sean gathered his people in one at a time to bring them up to date, for the obvious purpose of smoothly turning Pilot Team G-5 over to a new commander.

Pilot Team G-5 had been a grand experiment. All of them wondered if, with Sean gone, its conscience would not also leave. Maurice Duquesne would, most likely, be made commander if he would sign a request for the tribunal under Proclamation 22. The new beginning would be based upon a lie.

Maurice was perplexed by the predicament Sean had put him in. He did not wish to be confronted with such a decision. Duquesne knew that in the beginning all men are pure and driven by pure motivations. The men they believe in are also pure, in the beginning. But somewhere early in the journey all men come to that first moment of compromise. Maurice Duquesne compromised when he ran for his first office two decades before; he had gone on, hardly looking back for a moment’s remorse.

He had been a good servant of his people within a framework established before him. He knew that to compromise, to overlook truth at times, to be expedient at other times, to back down instead of making a fatal stand ... all these were practical tools of his profession. He loathed the incorruptibility in Sean that would force him into a corrupt decision; Sean’s idealism was stubborn and had little to do with reality. And, in the end, he was reluctantly filled with admiration for the man he wished he might have been.

For Sean O’Sullivan the moment of sadness came with the betrayal of Andrew Jackson Hansen. At one time Sean believed that Hansen would strike back at the stars and the moon. But now he was merely a weak man bowing quietly to an unjust decision.

Could Sean believe in Hansen’s reason, that ultimate American goals justified and knowingly permitted mistakes like this?

Now the doors of doubt were thrown wide open. Perhaps Hansen was merely a clever politician. Did Hansen in reality make all of his famous fights knowing and calculating in advance just how much the traffic would bear? How many other times in his career had he knuckled under like this? Had he carefully and deliberately built himself into a “colorful character,” merely paying lip service to his imagined strength?

In the end Sean would be completely alone with Frau Stoll’s dog and grandmother. He would be thrown into a pit of journalistic wolves to be devoured live. No, not even Emma would understand why Sean felt her life was worth fighting for. Perhaps Big Nellie would try to defend Sean or at least try to give his reasons. But to do that might mean Big Nellie would go down with him, by a world calling for blood.

In the end, there would be but a single friend, his father. Sean longed desperately to see him and he prayed that when the news reached his father, from strangers, it would not harm his heart. But no matter what ... his father would go on believing in him ... in the face of it all ... his father would be there ...and understand.

Chapter Thirty-one

E
LEVEN O’CLOCK.
I
T WAS
time for the daily meeting with Ulrich Falkenstein and the German Council. The big conference room resembled the dining room of a medieval castle; a long wooden table; high, straight-back, rough-hewn chairs partly covered with polished, worn leather; an enormous tapestry depicting a battle of the Legend of Rombaden. Those councilmen who owned pinstripes dressed in them. There were twenty Germans, with Ulrich Falkenstein at one end of the table.

As the Marienkirche bell bonged the hour, Sean entered the room and the Germans arose crisply, bowed slightly. Today Sean was without his usual contingent of American officers. “Be seated,” he said. “I have excused the other officers from today’s session for other business. You will examine your files and agenda to see if there is any business that cannot be held over for two or three days. I wish to consider only matters needing an immediate answer.”

It was a chilling pronouncement to them. The Germans began to fish through their files nervously. They all knew what it was about, they had spoken of it in whispers. Things had gone well with O’Sullivan in Rombaden. He gave his commands with sureness and took responsibility for every decision; he was stern, but fair. They knew that other cities in the Schwaben and Württemberg and Bavaria were in chaos. With him gone ... God knows. What if they had to deal with the Frenchman?

One by one each uttered that he had nothing urgent.

“There is one matter,” Ulrich Falkenstein said. “The day after tomorrow is the twenty-second of June. For a century and a half it has traditionally been Hinterseer Day, in honor of the Rombaden poet. In the old days there was much ado and pageantry ... in lean years the people have merely gathered in the square to hear the reading of his most famous work, the
Legend of Rombaden.
Although it must be necessarily austere this year I have been asked by all facets of the citizenry to petition you to allow the reading to take place. It would be a matter of a half dozen or so actors, a platform behind Hinterseer’s statue, and some loudspeaking equipment.”