Child of the Light (33 page)

Hempel drew on his cigarette. The end glowed briefly brighter. "A good limp-along might be more accurate," he said.

Erich rose to his feet, stiff with anger. "Your attitude is intolerable!"

Hempel ground out his cigarette, took a bottle from the crook of the tree and drank from it. "My apologies, Herr Rittmeister. The comment was inexcusable." He patted the wolfhound. "Sometimes my anxiety to embrace my true destiny makes me careless toward anything that is old, that represents the past. We are the first of the new world, are we not? And yet one cannot forget..." His voice became bitter, and he stopped talking.

The admission startled Erich. Tensing, he stood, expecting trouble, but Hempel just looped the wolfhound's leash around the rail and, straightening, extended his right hand as he offered Erich the bottle with the left. "We should bury the hatchet. We serve the same master, after all."

Against his better judgment, Erich shook hands. A chill seized him; the hand was strong but cold as stone.

"A toast," Hempel said.

Erich took the bottle. "To the Führer," he said brusquely, and handed the bottle back to Hempel.

The lieutenant drained what was left. "To the SS! The soul of the Fatherland." He flipped the empty into the hedge. "I remember that first Christmas after the war, when I joined the Freikorps and we fought to keep Berlin from falling to the Bolsheviks. How black things were!" His facial muscles tightened. "Now nothing can keep us down. Nothing!" Eyes gleaming, he looked at Erich. "Hitler and Himmler and others of vision have shown us the German phoenix can rise from the ashes and become supreme."

Erich itched to get away. Even Hempel's contempt was more palatable than standing here listening to platitudes about the Fatherland's greatness and the wonderful men who were leading her to world supremacy.

"Four days ago, at the SS Yuletide bonfire, I saw the future," Hempel continued. "Reichsführer Himmler himself invited me to Wewelsburg."

Erich tried not to show surprise. Wewelsburg was the SS high temple--a moldering, Westphalia cliff-top castle recently overhauled by detention-camp inmates. It was there, seated with his SS knights at an Arthurian round table, that Himmler held court. If Hempel had received a personal invitation to attend the Solstice celebration there, the climax of the Nazi calendar, he had more prestige in the SS hierarchy than Erich had realized.

"Anyone who has seen it must believe in our cause! We sang and the flames created by the burning pages of all those books filled the darkness." Hempel looked up into the night. "And I knew I had a soul." His voice cracked from the intensity of his emotion. "They say we sense the primitive when we gaze into flames--that we claim the past. I did not see the past, I saw the future. I saw our destiny. We will burn the world clean of impurities. It was as if the flames were calling to me."

Achilles began to growl but Erich barely noticed. Hempel's sense of certainty was so crystalline that he felt drawn, not to the man but to the dream. He looked for the Christmas star. No matter how much he hated Hempel and everything he stood for, he understood the man's desire. The difference between them was a matter of choice, and degree.

Hempel shook his head in amazement. "When I looked beyond the flames, I saw the Reichsführer, fire glinting in his glasses, and I knew. He smiled at me and I knew I was...blessed."

"So your loyalty, your commitment, is to Himmler rather than Goebbels?"

"Allow me to tell you about commitment, Herr Rittmeister." Hempel's feral smile returned. "The bonfire burned through the night. We stood there, without coats, at parade rest, from midnight until dawn. No one ordered us to. It was simply
right
. There were a hundred and forty-four of us--all personally selected by the Reichsführer for the ceremony--and not a man moved, even when it began to sleet, until the sun broke through the clouds. I felt...purified. Redeemed."

He pulled out and lit another cigarette.

"Then Reichsführer Himmler said he had something to show me. He looked at me as if I had been transformed--which indeed I had--and led me inside, up to the Supreme Leaders' Hall. Not a word from him once we were inside the castle. Not a word."

Hempel shook his head in wonder. "I've seen a thousand castle rooms, but nothing that compares to that one in Wewelsburg. Circular, with windows that made the dawn-light look almost mystical. The swastika chiseled into the vaulted ceiling." He arched his hand to show Erich.

"Around the wall were twelve pedestals, each with an urn. I'd heard they existed, and now I was in their presence!" He sounded breathless with the wonder of it. "They are there to hold, as each man dies, the incinerated coat of arms of Himmler's twelve most trustworthy knights."

Gently he took hold of Erich's shoulders. "I shall achieve that immortality. With your help."

As gently as they had been placed, Erich removed the hands.

"My help?"

"You and your dogs. They're special. We both know that. The canine equivalent of what we Germans shall be in a generation. One people. One mind. One soul." He made a fist, then said in a husky voice, "But they're not SS. They never will be as long as you are in charge of them."

As if she understood the words, Achilles' growling became more pronounced; Erich's once benign mood became a growing fury that twisted in him like a rope. There would, he thought, be no pleasant bicycle ride tonight.

Damning himself for wanting Miriam's approval--even after his success with the dogs--Erich shouldered his way toward her dressing room. People not associated with the show normally were not allowed backstage, but he came to see her at least twice a week and was used to making his way relatively unnoticed between the performers and props crowded in the cabaret's stage wings. His presence usually aroused nothing more than an occasional leer.

Tonight, however, he was carrying a pineapple, its aroma unmistakable even in the wine- and sweat-filled air. He could probably buy any chorine for the price of one slice of the coveted fruit, he thought bitterly. Certainly the fruit gained him attention, such as might have been given a Yank overtly carrying nylons. If anything, his gift was even more appealing here, where desire was the stock-in-trade. The cabaret's name was, after all, Ananas:
Pineapple.

A long-legged chorus girl dressed in little more than feathers and flesh emerged from the storeroom that served as the main dressing room. Eyeing him, his uniform with its new captain's bars, and the pineapple with open and equal admiration, the girl bent to smell the fruit.

"Which tastes better, you or the pineapple?" She tickled him under the chin and laughed when he batted her hand away. "Wish you were waiting for me, Poopsie." She wiggled her bottom. "That one won't give you ice in winter, you know."

She was pretty enough, but he couldn't manage a smile; the woman disappeared in a flurry of dyed ostrich feathers.

He could see Miriam's dressing room from where he stood. Though she knew he was coming, the door was closed. The paint had peeled where a star once marked it, leaving only two faded points.
 
Everything in the club was tawdry and cheap. Everything, he told himself, except that goddamn Miriam. Which was doubtless why he continued to make an idiot of himself, bringing testimonials of love--and despair--to heap at her feet.

Striding to the door, he raised his hand to knock, decided the hell with that and turned the handle.

Miriam sat before a cracked mirror framed with tiny,flame-shaped light bulbs. Some cast a pink glow; other filaments glared from plain glass. The mirror was decorated with faded sienna photos, bits of ribbon, ragged feathers and splashes of make-up.

"Know how to knock?" she asked Erich's reflection.

She picked up her mascara, spat in it and mixed it vigorously with the small brush she used to apply it to her lashes. As she leaned forward to put on a layer of eye shadow with the tip of a finger, one of the narrow rhinestone straps that held up her dress slid down her shoulder. The dress was little more than a silk slip, black and flimsy, an illusion as thin as stardom's hope. Erich had to stifle the urge to unzip the back and slide his hands beneath her arms and over her breasts--to make love to her, now, at once, on the grimy carpet if need be.

"What do you want?" she asked brusquely, without turning.

"I came to warn you."

"About yourself?"

She stood and, placing each foot in turn on the chair, adjusted the seams of her black lace stockings. Her dress was slit up to her thigh on one side, and he could see the edge of black lace panties.

"Say what you have to say, then leave me alone." She slipped into silver shoes and straightened the dress against her hips. "I'm tired of you bothering me, and I'm just plain tired--period. I'm here until four in the morning and up at ten to help in the shop. I eat on the run, take the trolley here to dance for the animals...I have no time for what you want. Nor," she looked right at him, "would I take the time if I had it."

"You don't have to live with the Freunds or work in the shop." He set the pineapple on the vanity. "I've offered to get you a place of your own."

As always, she ignored his offer to take care of her. Lifting the pineapple by its green topknot, she thrust it back into his hands. "Why don't you try this on one of the other girls? They may be stupid enough to confuse exotic with erotic."

Her tone was cold and uncompromising. In the two years since her return to Berlin, she had yet to give him one gentle look, one pleasant word. She had been, at best, polite until he had told her finally that he could do nothing about her estate. Surely she knew he had tried his best. He had broached the subject with those few individuals he knew who dared speak frankly to the Führer. Professor Gerdy Troost, widow of Hitler's favorite architect. The Harvard-educated eccentric Ernst Hanfstaengel, who had drawn and published, with Hitler's consent, caricatures criticizing the Führer. Leni Riefenstahl, the actress turned film maker.

Of the three, only Fraülein Riefenstahl had agreed to look into the matter. She had met him over a cognac to inform him quietly, "You pursue this, and your Miriam Rathenau could lose a lot more than her estate, and so could you. Goebbels would rather have that house than all his harlots."

Clearly Leni was right, Erich thought. The house was not the issue, not anymore. The danger to Miriam, and to Solomon and his family, was growing more evident by the day. Somehow he had to take care of them, but how? He could try to help them get out of the country, but that would ensure his losing Miriam. Not that he had ever really found her again since her return to Berlin.

Damn little Jewess! Who was she anyway? Nothing but a saucy ex-debutante who thought herself better than everyone else. Which was probably why he wanted her--because she considered herself inaccessible. Jews were so stubborn! And foolish!

What if she or the Freunds did something stupid and were arrested? Only God, if indeed He existed, could withstand an SS interrogation. Even if talking meant implicating him--and just knowing him was enough to do that--he would want them to save themselves. Add to that his reputation as an officer, an Abwehr member no less, who had criticized the Reich and who openly worshipped the niece of the man who exemplified everything the Reich detested....

No matter what he did, Erich thought, he could only lose.

Feeling awkward and angry, he continued to hold the pineapple on his open palm. "Tomorrow is Christmas, Miriam. If you don't want this, give it to...to someone." He was thinking of the Freunds and his parents but was unwilling to mention them by name.

"Tomorrow is Christmas! That's what you crawled in here to tell me? Wonderful. I'll mark my calendar and make sure there's room at the inn."

He lowered the pineapple. If any other woman dared treat him like this. he'd give her a boot in the backside and send her out the nearest door. "You must be careful, Miriam."

"What are you, my protector? I'm told you beat up one of Himmler's cronies after the show the other night because he made a comment about me. Sounds like you should be the one to be warned. Your dear friends may not appreciate your solicitude."

"I am not concerned with what--"

Someone rapped twice on the door, stopping him from adding more lies to the ones he had already told himself. He had been about to tell her that he didn't care what others in the Party thought of him--that, unlike them, he could never be a racist. He alone among his classmates in the Bavarian camp and in the Berlin-Tegel classrooms was different. Was Solomon not his friend? He knew most of the others in the Party were not fit fodder for pigs, but that would change as the Führer rose above his petty need for scapegoats.

"Duty calls." She lifted an index finger. "In the future, if you want to talk to me come to the shop. You do remember where it is, don't you?"

"You know I don't go there."

"More shame on you, Oberleutnant Weisser." She spoke with such venom, he recoiled as if from a snake bite. Then, frowning at his uniform, she corrected herself. "Forgive me. I see it is Rittmeister Weisser. That little choreography of your name-change paid off, did it?"

"This warning isn't something to shrug off, or laugh at." He put a hand on her forearm as she opened the door.