The Traitor's Emblem (15 page)

“What are you doing?” asked a short man, presumably the tavern’s owner.

“We’ve come to break up an illegal meeting,” said the head of the SA platoon, stepping forward with an incongruous smile.

“You have no authority!”

The head of the platoon raised his cudgel and hit the man in the stomach. He fell to the ground with a groan. The leader gave him a couple more kicks before turning to his men.

“Fall together!”

Jürgen immediately moved to the front. He always did this, only to take a discreet step back to let someone else lead the charge—or take a bullet or blade. Firearms were now forbidden in Germany—this Germany that had had its teeth removed by the Allies—but many war veterans still had their regulation pistols or weapons they had taken from the enemy.

Standing shoulder to shoulder in formation, the storm troopers advanced toward the back of the tavern. The Communists, scared out of their wits, began to throw anything they could get their hands on at their enemy. The man marching next to Jürgen was struck full in the face by a glass jug. He staggered, but those marching behind caught him, and another came forward to take his place in the front rank.

“Sons of bitches! Go suck your Führer’s cock!” shouted a young man in a leather cap, picking up a bench.

The storm troopers were less than three meters away, within easy reach of any furniture thrown at them, so Jürgen chose this moment to fake a stumble. A man came forward and joined the front.

Just in time. Benches flew across the room, there was a groan, and the man who’d just taken Jürgen’s place slumped forward, his head split open.

“Ready?” cried the head of the platoon. “For Hitler and Germany!”

“Hitler and Germany!” the others cried in chorus.

The two groups charged at each other like children playing some kind of game. Jürgen dodged a giant in mechanic’s overalls who was heading toward him, striking his knees as he passed. The mechanic tumbled, and those behind Jürgen began to beat him mercilessly.

Jürgen continued his advance. He jumped over an upturned chair and kicked a table, which smashed against the hip of an old man wearing glasses. He fell to the floor, dragging the table with him. There were still some scribbled bits of paper in his hand, so the baron’s son deduced that this must be the speaker they had come to interrupt. He didn’t care. He didn’t even know the old man’s name.

Jürgen went straight over to him, taking care to tread on him with both feet as he made his way toward his real target.

The young man in the leather cap was fending off two storm troopers using one of the benches. The first of the men tried to outflank him, but the young man tipped the bench toward him and managed to get him in the neck, knocking him down. The other man lashed out with his cudgel, trying to catch the man unawares, but the young Communist ducked and managed to bury his elbow in the storm trooper’s kidney. As he doubled over, contorted with pain, the man broke the bench over his back.

So this one knows how to fight, thought the baron’s son.

Normally he would have left the toughest opponents for someone else to deal with, but something about this skinny young man with sunken eyes offended Jürgen.

He looked at Jürgen defiantly.

“Come on, then, you Nazi whore. Afraid you’ll break a nail?”

Jürgen sucked in his breath, but he was too cunning to allow himself to be affected by the insult. He counterattacked.

“I’m not surprised you’re so keen on the Reds, you scrawny little shit. That Karl Marx beard looks just like your mother’s backside.”

The young man’s face lit up with rage and, hoisting up the remains of the bench, he charged at Jürgen.

Jürgen had planted himself broadside to his attacker and he waited for the attack. As the man lunged at him, Jürgen moved aside and the Communist fell to the floor, losing his cap. Jürgen hit him in the back with his cudgel three times in quick succession—not very hard, but enough to take his breath away while still allowing him to get to his knees. The young man tried to crawl away, which was exactly what Jürgen wanted. He drew back his right leg and kicked hard. The toe-capped boot struck the man’s stomach, lifting him more than half a meter off the ground. He fell back, struggling to breathe.

With a smile, Jürgen laid into the Communist viciously. His ribs crunched under the blows, and when Jürgen stood on his arm, it snapped like a dry branch.

Grabbing the young man by the hair, Jürgen forced him to rise.

“Try saying what you said about the Führer now, Communist scum!”

“Go to hell!” the boy babbled.

“You still want to say stupid things like that?” shouted Jürgen, incredulous.

Grabbing the boy even more tightly by the hair, he raised his cudgel and aimed it at his victim’s mouth.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The boy’s teeth were nothing but a handful of bloody remains on the tavern’s wooden floor, and his face was swollen. In an instant the aggression that had fed Jürgen’s muscles ceased to flow. Finally he understood why he had chosen that particular man.

There was something of his cousin in him.

He let go of the Communist’s hair and watched as he fell limply to the floor.

He doesn’t look much like anyone anymore, Jürgen thought.

He raised his eyes and saw that all around him the fighting had stopped. The only ones left standing were the storm troopers, who were watching him with a mixture of approval and fear.

“Let’s get out of here!” shouted the head of the platoon.

Back in the truck, a storm trooper Jürgen had never seen before, and who hadn’t traveled with them, sat down beside him. The baron’s son barely looked at his companion. After such a violent episode, he would usually sink into a state of melancholic withdrawal, and he didn’t like anyone to disturb him. Which was why he snarled with displeasure when the other man spoke to him in a low voice.

“What’s your name?”

“Jürgen von Schroeder,” he replied reluctantly.

“So it is you. They told me about you. I came here today especially to meet you. My name’s Julius Schreck.”

Jürgen noticed the subtle differences in the man’s uniform. He wore an insignia with a skull and crossbones, and a black tie.

“To meet me? Why?”

“I’m setting up a special group . . . people with guts, skill, intelligence. Without any bourgeois scruples.”

“How do you know I have those things?”

“I saw you in action back there. You went about it cleverly, not like the rest of this cannon fodder. And then there’s the matter of your family, of course. Having you on our team would give us prestige. It would distinguish us from the riffraff.”

“What is it you want?”

“I want you to join my Stosstruppen. The elite of the SA, who answer only to the Führer.”

24

Ever since spotting Paul at the other end of the cabaret club, Alys had been having a terrible night. It was the last place she had expected to find him. She looked again, just to be sure, as the lights and smoke could lead to some confusion, but her eyes had not deceived her.

What the hell is he doing here?

Her first impulse was to hide the Kodak behind her back, ashamed, but couldn’t maintain that position for long as the camera and flash were too heavy.

Besides, I’m working. Hell, that’s something I should feel proud of.

“Hey, nice body! Take my photo, gorgeous!”

Alys smiled, raised the flash—supported on a long stick—and squeezed the trigger so that it went off without her having to use up any film. The two drunks obstructing her view of Paul’s tables tumbled sideways. Although she had to recharge the flash with magnesium powder every once in a while, this was still the most efficient way of getting rid of anyone bothering her.

A lot of people buzzed around her on nights like this, when she would have to take two or three hundred photos of the customers at the BeldaKlub. Once they had been developed, the owner would choose half a dozen to put up on the wall by the entrance, shots showing customers living it up with the club’s dancing girls. The best photos, according to the owner, were the ones taken in the early hours of the morning, when you could frequently witness the biggest wastrels drinking champagne from the girls’ shoes. Alys detested the whole place: the noisy music, the sequined suits, the provocative songs, the alcohol, and the people who consumed it in vast quantities. But it was her job.

She hesitated before approaching Paul. She felt that she wasn’t looking particularly pretty in her dark blue secondhand suit with a little hat that didn’t quite match, and yet she continued to attract the losers like a magnet. She’d long since come to the conclusion that men loved being in the center of her lens and she decided to use this fact to break the ice with Paul. She still felt ashamed of the way her father had thrown him out of the house, and a slight unease at the lie she’d been told about him keeping the money.

I’ll play a joke on him. I’ll approach him with the camera covering my face, I’ll take the photo, and then I’ll reveal to him who I am. I’m sure he’ll be pleased.

She set off with a smile.

Eight months earlier Alys had been out on the street looking for work.

Unlike Paul, her search hadn’t been desperate, as she had enough money to last her a few months. All the same, it had been tough. The only jobs for women—called out from street corners or whispered in back rooms—were as prostitutes or mistresses, and that was a path down which Alys wasn’t prepared to go under any circumstances.

Not that, and I won’t go back home, either, she swore.

She thought about traveling to another city. Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Berlin. However, the news that arrived from those places was as bad as what was happening in Munich, or worse. And there was something—the hope of meeting a certain someone again, perhaps—that held her back. But as her reserves dwindled, Alys increasingly began to despair. Then one afternoon, walking down the Agnesstrasse in search of a sewing workshop she had been told about, Alys saw a notice on a shop window.

Assistant Required
Women Need Not Apply

She didn’t even check what sort of business it was. She pushed open the door indignantly and marched up to the only person behind the counter: a thin, older man, with dramatically receding gray hair.

“Afternoon, Fräulein.”

“Good afternoon. I’ve come about the job.”

The little man looked at her intently.

“Might I hazard a guess that you do actually know how to read, Fräulein?”

“Yes, although I always have difficulty with any nonsense.”

At that, the man’s face changed. His mouth creased up in amusement, revealing a pleasant smile, which was followed by a laugh. “You’re hired!”

Alys looked at him, utterly thrown. She’d gone into the place ready to rub the owner’s face in his ridiculous sign, and thinking that all she’d achieve would be to make a fool of herself.

“Surprised?”

“Quite surprised, yes.”

“You see, Fräulein . . .”

“Alys Tannenbaum.”

“August Muntz,” the man said, with an elegant bow. “You see, Fräulein Tannenbaum, I put up that sign so that a woman just like you would respond. The job I’m offering requires technical skill, presence of mind, and above all a good deal of insolence and daring. It would appear you possess the latter two qualities, and the first can be taught, especially with the benefit of my own experience . . .”

“And you don’t mind that I’m . . .”

“A Jew? You’ll soon discover that I’m not very conventional, darling.”

“What precisely is it that you want me to do?” asked Alys suspiciously.

“Isn’t it obvious?” the man said, gesturing around him. Alys looked at the shop for the first time and saw that it was a photography studio. “Take photos.”

Though Paul had changed with each job he’d taken on, Alys had been completely transformed by hers. The young woman had instantly fallen in love with photography. She’d never been behind a camera before, but once she had learned the basics, she understood there was nothing else she wanted to do with her life. She was particularly fond of the darkroom, where the chemicals were mixed in trays. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the image as it began to appear on the paper, as features and faces became distinct.

She immediately hit it off with the photographer too. Although the sign on the door said MUNTZ AND SONS, Alys soon discovered that there were no sons, nor would there ever be. August lived in a flat above the shop with a delicate, pale young man he called “my nephew Ernst.” Alys spent long evenings playing backgammon with the two of them, and as time went on her smile returned.

There was only one aspect of the job she didn’t like, which was precisely what August had hired her for. The owner of a nearby cabaret club—August confessed to Alys that the man had been a former lover of his—had offered a good sum of money to have a photographer on the premises three nights a week.

“He’d like it to be me, of course. But I think it’s best if a pretty girl shows up . . . one who won’t allow herself to be bullied,” said August with a wink.

The club owner was happy. The photos at the entrance to his establishment helped to spread the word about the BeldaKlub until it became one of the highlights of Munich’s nightlife. It couldn’t compare to the likes of Berlin, of course, but in dark times any business based on alcohol and sex is bound to succeed. It was a widely spread rumor that many customers would spend their entire salaries in five frenzied hours before resorting to the trigger, the rope, or a bottle of pills.

As she approached Paul, Alys trusted that he wouldn’t be one of these customers out for a final fling.

No doubt he’s come with a friend. Or out of curiosity, she thought. After all, everyone was coming to the BeldaKlub these days, even if it was only to waste hours sipping a single beer. The barmen were understanding sorts, and they were known to accept engagement rings in exchange for a couple of pints.

As she drew near, she held the camera up to her face. There were five people at the table, two men and three women. On the tablecloth were several half-empty or overturned bottles of champagne, and a heap of food that was almost untouched.