Two Brothers (32 page)

He had condemned himself. He had condemned his family. He had deliberately provoked them. Like a fool he had wanted the last word. How could he have ignored what the world knew? That the Nazis were nothing if not vengeful. That spite and wicked pride motivated their every action. That they
never
forgave.

Watching from the ticket barrier, Paulus and Otto saw it all.

They watched in horror as the men in black coats and Homburg hats appeared as if from nowhere and laid a hand on Herr Fischer’s shoulder.

They looked on as Frau Fischer tried to grab on to her husband and pull him towards the carriage door.

They saw Herr Fischer pointing at the train, gesticulating furiously for his wife to board it. Ordering Dagmar who was leaning out of the window to stay where she was.

They watched as Frau Fischer shook her head and beckoned Dagmar to get off.

They saw Dagmar emerge from the first-class carriage once more and step back down on to the platform, her face white with shock and fear, her brief American dream turned back into a German nightmare.

The Gestapo frogmarched Herr Fischer back down the platform and out through the barrier. As he passed them Herr Fischer saw the boys and Otto thought he briefly tried to mask the terror on his face for their benefit.

Then he was gone.

Along the platform his wife and daughter stood there still as if frozen in shock and grief.

A whistle blew. The train compressed its steam.

Paulus cried out from behind the barrier.

‘Dagmar! Frau Fischer! Get on the train! Go!’

Heads turned. Some openly hostile. Others just surprised.

Otto was surprised too. In the selfishness of youth, a part of him had rejoiced to see the beloved girl remain. But even at thirteen, Paulus understood much more.

‘Otto, you know what happens. They
always
punish the family too! If Dags doesn’t get out now she’ll never get out.’

Otto wasn’t stupid, he knew his brother was right.

‘Get on the train, Dags!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Take it to the top of the Empire State building!’

A whack around the head interrupted him. The ticket collector had had enough.

‘Shut your face, kid. You don’t go shouting about and making a scene at
my
barrier! Particularly over a Jew.’

‘Fuck you!’ Otto said before shouting once again, ‘Dagmar! Get on the train!’

But the train was moving now and the two figures were still, standing motionless in the smoke and steam as their carriage pulled away from them. And then the next and then the next until they were alone on the empty platform.

Together they turned and walked slowly back to the barrier. There were sneers from onlookers as mother and daughter emerged back on to the station. The ticket man’s face wore a look of stern and pompous authority as if by dint of the fact that he wore a uniform he had somehow been a part of the police action.

‘Get along there, you two,’ he ordered pointlessly. ‘Your train’s gone, you’ve missed it. Move along.’

But for a moment at least Frau Fischer did not move along, she paused just outside the barrier seemingly at a loss, her eyes staring but seeing nothing. Dagmar looked up at her mother and gave way to tears.

Paulus took charge.

‘We should go to the taxi rank,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘You should go home, Frau Fischer.’

His voice helped her pull herself together. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Thank you, Paulus. You’re right. We should go home.’

Paulus led Frau Fischer towards the front of the station, leaving Otto to walk with Dagmar.

‘You look great, Dags,’ he said after a few steps. ‘I’ve never seen you in stockings before.’

Dagmar smiled momentarily through her tears.

‘You have to protect me now, Otto,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘You know that, don’t you? You and Paulus. You have to protect me.’

‘Well,
obviously
,’ Otto replied.

Isaac Fischer was tried the following month on charges of libelling the German State and its servants. There was only one witness for the defence, an American photographer who, it was gleefully reported in Goebbels’ press, had no actual photographs with which to back up his scurrilous claims. The man did, however, have a Jewish grandmother, a point which was raised in court as if it were evidence for the prosecution.

Two other potential defence witnesses did attempt to put themselves forward. The Stengel twins visited Frau Fischer in her big house in
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
and volunteered to go to court and describe what they had seen on the Kurfürstendamm on the day of the first Jewish boycott. Frau Fischer had been very grateful but declined the offer.

‘You’re such good boys,’ she said, sitting in her still splendid sitting room, the trappings of her previous life not yet having been stolen from her, ‘but I doubt that the word of two Jewish boys would make a lot of difference, and standing up like that would certainly get you and your parents into a lot of trouble.’

The prosecution was much better represented. Twenty members of the SA testified that Fischer had merely been cautioned having refused to clear up an unauthorized and offensive banner which the authorities had caused to be removed from Fischer’s store front. A Gestapo officer and member of the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda who had arrived later on the scene also testified that there had been no assault and the accusations were thus exposed as disgusting Jew lies which a Jewish-dominated American press had peddled as fact. As a result of the trial, the American ambassador was called to the Wilhelmstrasse to receive an official complaint from the Foreign Minister.

Herr Fischer himself received ten years’ hard labour, to be served at the new SA concentration camp at Dachau. He was, however, dead in three months. According to the official story he was shot while trying to escape, but Frau Fischer was not allowed to see the body.

Further Briefings

London, 1956

ONCE MORE STONE was sitting at the table with the teacups and the 1930s telephone, staring at the short plump man sitting opposite him, while the thin, quiet one in the corner looked on. True to form the short one had already started on the biscuits.

‘We are here to brief you in elementary spy craft,’ Peter Lorre said. ‘Principally codes and communications protocol. They’re going to be watching you, of course. They watch everybody from the West, but as a member of the Foreign Office you’ll be of special interest to them. The moment you attempt to establish contact with Dagmar Stengel they’re going to know about it.’

‘They know already,’ Stone replied, quietly but emphatically. ‘I’m being set up. Dagmar’s dead. It wasn’t her that sent me the letter.’

‘Well,’ Bogart conceded, ‘of course that
is
possible.’

‘It’s more than possible. It’s probable. A damn sight more probable than Dagmar being an East German agent. You know as well as I do that the Stasi are even more anti-Semitic than the KGB. They don’t take Jews. Particularly Jews with no training or aptitude who have spent their whole adult life either hiding in a Berlin apartment or incarcerated in a gulag.’

‘So,’ Bogart replied, ‘you think that somebody in the Stasi has communicated with you in the name of your dead sister-in-law.’

‘Yes. I think that’s exactly what has happened.’

‘Well, it’s an interesting theory,’ Bogart conceded.

Stone looked hard at his two interrogators.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘And the thing is, I find it difficult to credit that it never occurred to you.’

Bogart smiled, a kind of cheerful shrug. ‘Well, we might have considered it,’ he said pleasantly.

‘
Might have done!
You damn well know it! You think the Stasi are luring me to Berlin, don’t you?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘It’s a bloody certainty!’

‘For what purpose?’ Peter Lorre enquired. ‘Since you seem to know more about them than we do.’

‘Same purpose as yours obviously. Dirty spying. You said you were sending me to Berlin to persuade a Stasi officer to turn traitor and work for you. I think they have exactly the same idea except the target is me. I don’t flatter myself that I’m much of a catch. I’m just a translator, but I’m in the Foreign Office and what’s more I’m attached to the East German desk. That’s got to be of interest to them.’

For the first time Bogart left his corner and joined the party. He even reached over and helped himself to a biscuit.

‘You’re absolutely right, of course,’ he admitted in his soft Yorkshire burr, ‘it may very well be that you are being targeted. Which is why we must be getting along with your briefing. We don’t want to lose you to some stupid mistake on elementary protocol.’

‘Not so damned fast,’ Stone snapped. ‘I want to get this clear. You’re admitting that you were happy to send me into East Berlin even though you knew I was being set up for some kind of Stasi entrapment?’

‘We don’t
know
that,’ Lorre replied. ‘We don’t
know
anything. One never does in our game. We think you
might
be being set up.’

‘You told me you knew she was alive, you bastards!’

‘Perhaps we should have said that we knew somebody using her
name
was alive,’ Bogart conceded gently. ‘Somebody who may or may not be entitled to use it.

‘Either way works for us,’ he went on cheerfully, pouring Stone another cup of tea. ‘Whether we end up trying to recruit her or they end up trying to recruit you, it’s a very promising situation for HM Government.’

Stone lit a cigarette, trying to take it all in.

‘So right from the start you’ve had it in mind that I might return to Britain having been recruited by the Stasi?’

‘That is one possible scenario,’ Lorre admitted.

‘Were you going to warn me?’

‘We find it is generally a useful policy to refrain from divulging anything that we do not absolutely have to.’

‘So you would have sat back and watched to see if I turned traitor? Content that you could use me either way?’

‘We were content to keep the various options open for as long as possible.’

Stone smoked and sipped his tea and thought about it. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘at least now we understand each other a little better. So let’s get on with it, shall we? What do I need to know to be a spy?’

‘Oh, nothing too taxing,’ Peter Lorre said, once more adopting his vaguely patronizing tone. ‘Some addresses, a safe house if you need to run. Sources of money. Embassy codes and a bit of diplomatic law in case you have to try and claim immunity.’

‘I hate studying law,’ Stone said grimly.

‘Yes, we noticed you’ve been trying to pass your Bar exams,’ Lorre said. ‘Not happy at the Foreign Office?’

‘I’m not happy anywhere.’

‘There is just one thing, Mr Stone,’ Bogart said quietly. He had returned to his corner and was once more considering Stone with his enigmatic, faraway gaze.

‘Yes?’

‘The letter that first alerted you to the possibility that Frau Stengel might still be alive.’

‘Yes.’

‘That letter was sufficiently detailed and intimate to give you real hope. It was only when we told you that whoever wrote that letter was a Stasi agent that you began to doubt its credibility.’

‘That is true.’

‘So
if
Dagmar Fischer didn’t write it, who did? I can’t believe you haven’t thought about it. Who could still be alive today who had sufficiently intimate knowledge of your youthful relationship with Dagmar Fischer to be able to forge that letter?’

Stone waited a moment before replying.

‘I find it is generally a useful policy,’ he said finally, ‘to refrain from divulging anything that I do not absolutely have to.’

A Friendly Nazi

Berlin, 1934

WOLFGANG WAS PLAYING piano in a bar down by the river.

It was not yet completely illegal for Jews to perform in front of non-Jews but Wolfgang did not make a point of admitting his racial status if he could avoid it. He was only playing for drinks and tips anyway and since the landlord, who was a jazz fan, didn’t ask, Wolfgang did not tell.

He kept his dirty little secret. A secret of which he was supposed to be ashamed. And because of that, in a vague, difficult to define sort of a way, he
was
ashamed.

Scarcely a year after Hitler had been handed power, something of what he had always claimed about the Jews had actually come to pass.

He said they were different.

And they had
become
different.

He had accused them of being furtive and sneaky.