Читать книгу Our Only Shield - Michael J. Goodspeed - Страница 8

2

“REINHOLD, HURRY UP or you’ll be late. Everyone has to be seated at least forty-five minutes before the Führer arrives and we can’t leave the taxi waiting.”

Reinhold Neumann smiled. Maida, always such a worrying little hen. Hadn’t he managed to become Austria’s youngest Major in the Schutzpolizei? Now he was well on his way to becoming the youngest Oberstleutnant in Greater Germany’s newly integrated Geheime Staatspolizei – more fearsomely known by their acronym, the Gestapo. Not to worry, he’d get them to the investiture on time. That wasn’t anything to fret about. His rise in the Reich’s police ranks wasn’t going to be slowed down by something as stupid as being late for the most important ceremony in the history of the Austrian police. Neumann thought that Maida, as pretty as she was, should stick to her three primary worries: their boy, Klaus; their baby daughter, Monika; and of course, anything to do with fashion.

Neumann adjusted the swastika on his pocket and smoothed his grey tunic in the mirror. He looked good: wavy, thick brown hair, a healthy complexion, and an aggressively downturned mouth. At twenty-six years old, he was eagle-eyed, fit, and ruthlessly efficient looking. He turned his head to catch the light. Not bad. Today he conveyed the precise sense of authority and vigour that such an occasion demanded.

In the last three years his situation had improved more than he could have imagined. Who would have thought? But then, his career path hadn’t happened by accident. He had made the right moves. Marrying Maida, the daughter of one of Vienna’s deputy chiefs of police, had given him legitimacy and status in some people’s eyes. He was well aware that a poor boy from a small walk-up flat on the seventh floor of a tenement in Vienna’s Simmering District would ordinarily have taken decades, and a lot of good luck, to attain that kind of social position. He never let on to anyone that Maida’s family didn’t like him; and although he never told Maida, the sense of hauteur her family exuded when he was around left him resentful and angry.

A year after marrying Maida, he’d boosted his career once again by joining the Austrian National Socialist Party, even though at the time it wasn’t something most people would have described as a clever move likely to result in promotion. Most of Maida’s family were quite cool with him after he became a National Socialist; and while he didn’t know it then, there were a few senior officers who tried to have him and his fellow Nazis run out of the police force. Happily, those days – and those officers – were long gone. Three years ago he had been a struggling police cadet walking a beat in a Viennese slum. His good judgment was paying off faster than he could have imagined. In 1936 he’d joined the party, a frustrated young man looking for a means of venting both his energy and his anger at the world. It had been the right thing to do. He’d shown courage and insight. He certainly had a knack for predicting how things would work out, and he knew it.

Neumann had always been inspired by the Nazi talk of a “Greater Germany.” For him, it was inevitable; anyone could see that. If you believed in the survival of the fittest and the strengthening of species, then it was quite obvious that the German race, led by the Nazi Party, was destined to dominate inferior races. Sure, the party had more than its share of windbags, and it carried a certain amount of dead weight; but Neumann was certain that would change in a few years.

In a curious way, Reinhold Neumann had always felt at home in the party. It gave him a sense of solidarity and purpose; more than that, there was something about the concept of national destiny and racial hierarchy that appealed to him in a strange way. He thought it was the same sense of direction some people found in their faith, although even as far back as his first year in secondary school he had regarded the religiously devout as psychological weaklings. Religion was for those who needed something external to prop them up. National Socialism was for those unafraid to take responsibility for the future into their own hands. But there was more to it than that. The party, under the Führer’s leadership, brought a sense of order; it stood for things you could understand and see. The party knew what had to be done. In a few years it had returned Germany and the German people to a position of strength and respect. It had united Germany and Austria, and was in the process of bringing back all German peoples into a single and mightier Greater Germany. Who could argue with that?

In forging a new national consciousness, the party had unequivocally identified the nation’s enemies, the people who sucked the life blood out of the nation: Jews, communists, homosexuals, gypsies, capitalists, and farther down the scale, weak-kneed church leaders, the pseudo-intellectuals, and the liberal artists. It was a good, comprehensive list; it explained what was wrong with society and it provided an indication as to where action was required to fix things.

Now, this afternoon, he was off to attend Austrian Chancellor Seys Inquart’s reception for the Führer. Only a very few other police officers, and no others of his rank, had been accorded that honour; but then, none of the others had been in the party as long as he had.

Downstairs, Maida cast an appraising eye over him and coquettishly brushed imaginary fluff from his lapels. She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him ever so lightly on the nose so as not to brush off her lipstick. “Do you really think when you’re promoted to Oberstleutnant that we’ll be posted to Berlin, Reinhold? I’d love to spend a few years there.”

“There’s a good chance of it. We’ll find out soon, so keep your ears open at the reception and do your best to flatter Scheidler. He’s close to Himmler and he’s the one deciding which Austrians to send on the new Reich Senior Security Officer’s Course. That’s the route to promotion, especially now that war has been declared.”

* * *

AMSTERDAM WAS BASKING in the midst of a glorious late autumn warm spell, and to Annika Hammerstein it seemed that all the city’s young men and women were out this evening. Throngs of them in shirtsleeves and pretty summer frocks ambled aimlessly along the pathway beside the Prinsengracht Canal. She gave up trying to ride her bicycle, and in an aggressive stop-and-go manner pushed it determinedly through the crowds.

It was already a quarter to the hour. She had to be home by eight to take her husband, Saul, to a surprise birthday gathering at his sister’s. Tonight she was flustered. She was running behind schedule; twice she had almost had her violin case knocked from her bicycle’s basket. Annika’s string quartet had been late in starting practice and they were late ending. They could have used more rehearsal time. It bothered her that the quartet’s interpretation of Allessandrini’s “Eighth Sonata” was nowhere near ready for their recital in two days time at the Institute.

But, as she told herself so frequently when she felt frustrated, she was a practical woman. She could cope with whatever hardships and anxieties life had in store for her. At thirty-four, she had weathered more than her share of misery and sorrow. When she became gloomy or impatient, she reminded herself that she had lived through hardships that were much more difficult. In her teens, she had been the sole support for her mother through a long fatal illness. And after her mother’s death, she had, entirely with her own resources, gone on to finish her degree with first-class honours in modern languages and music.

Now, she was a lecturer and research assistant in the Music Conservatory at the University of Amsterdam.

Annika was a thoughtful woman, and grateful for having been born and raised in a level-headed, comfortable, and safe country like the Netherlands. The rest of the world looked like it was once again in the process of disintegration, but thankfully this tiny oasis of neutrality and common sense would once more keep itself isolated from whatever calamities the rest of humanity was foolishly preparing for itself.

She wheeled her bicycle around a handsome blond couple in their early twenties. Both of them had their heads thrown back, laughing together at some private absurdity. In a way, she envied them. Not that she wasn’t happy with Saul, but this couple so obviously had their whole future before them. They would probably spend the rest of their lives enjoying this comfortable, civilized lifestyle and raise a family together. It seemed that Saul and she would never have a child now. For the last year this had been a source of wrenching unhappiness; sometimes, even the sight of happy couples without children brought this deep-rooted anguish to the surface.

It all seemed so unfair. She and Saul had overcome so much together. Theirs was a mixed marriage: she was a Christian, he was a Jew. Relatives on both sides had been aghast when they announced their intention to wed. For Annika, it was less of a problem than it had been for Saul. Annika was an only child and both her parents were dead, so she had fewer upset relations to deal with. There was of course her cousin Margrethe in The Hague, who had written her a long, scolding, arrogant letter, but she had ignored both the letter and Margrethe. Things were different for Saul. The Hammersteins were a large and close family. Many of them were not happy that Saul had flouted their traditions and their wishes, and married a gentile. Still, Saul and Annika had their own circle of friends, and tonight a number of Saul’s younger relatives as well as their mutual friends had quietly chosen to ignore their elders’ concerns. Even so, for two otherwise gregarious people, it meant now that their lives were effectively restricted to a smaller circle of close relatives and friends than would otherwise have been the case.

Although Holland was, by European standards, a very tolerant country, it wasn’t the same as being an accepting country. Not a day went by without both Annika and Saul being made in some small and painful way aware of that unpleasant fact.

Annika became more aggressive pushing her bike forward through the crowds. No point in wallowing in self-pity. What else was life if it wasn’t a series of obstacles to overcome? She felt a surge of energy. She wasn’t going to be late for something as simple as a birthday party.