An Honorable German (35 page)

Max smiled and shook Josef’s hand. “Thank you for making me presentable.”

Josef snapped off a parade-ground salute. “Good luck and good hunting, Herr Kaleu.”

Max tried to phone his father from the station in Kiel but no one answered at the shop, which was strange. The Berlin train
left in four hours. Max felt guilty for not seeing his father when he was so close, but Mareth needed him now.

Hanging up the phone, he gathered his greatcoat around him. Even in October, the afternoon air had a bitter edge to it. Soon
there would be snow, winter would come again to the North Atlantic: unrelenting cold, freezing spray driven so hard by the
wind that it split your lips. No dry clothes. The Florida assignment was a miracle, almost a vacation, as far as the weather
was concerned. If they drowned off Miami, at least the water would be warm.

Around him the rail station was totally shattered, windows blown out, ceiling beams lying across the floor. No one even used
the old main station, its roof now completely gone. Passengers simply congregated on the stone platforms. Max bought a copy
of
Signal
from one of the news vendors and flipped through the pictures of German soldiers and sailors in action. There was a color
section about an artillery unit in the East. The men looked so strong with chiseled jaws and fierce eyes. There had been reverses
on the Eastern Front, terrible reverses, everyone knew it. And Stalingrad was more than a reverse—it was a calamity, the worst
defeat in German military history. But maybe they could still win the war. Max’s father had told him at the beginning of the
war that victory was most uncertain, and once they attacked the Soviet Union it was impossible. After the Amis came in, he
had written Max and said that his cousin Heinrich was coming to visit very soon. Heinrich had immigrated to America before
the First War.

Max knew of America’s strength. He had seen it. And as each weary day of the war passed into the next, everyone could see
with their own eyes that it wasn’t German bombers dropping incendiaries on Washington, or New York, or Los Angeles; it was
American planes bombing Berlin, the Ruhr, and whatever remained of Hamburg. But maybe they could still win the war if they
just kept pushing. It would take longer than anyone had thought, but still—in another year or two they might be able to win,
or at least fight the Allies to a stalemate. He just had to keep going, stay alive until then. Could he stay alive for two
more years? He tried to put the question out of his mind because the answer was plain: he could not. Living two more months
would be an accomplishment.

He tried his father’s shop again a half hour before the train left for Berlin. Still no answer. Six in the evening was his
busiest time of day, with people stopping by for groceries on their way home from work. Buhl, the party Kreisleiter, would
know where Johann was—Buhl was forever keeping tabs on everyone, writing things down in a little tan notebook embossed with
a swastika. Max took another fifty-pfennig coin out of his pocket and dropped it into the phone. The operator put him through
directly.

“Buhl?”

“Ja?”

“Maximilian Brekendorf.”

“Max, our brave warrior of the deep. A pleasure to hear from you. You are well?”

There was static over the line, and Max had to raise his voice. “Very well, thank you, Buhl. I’m trying to get through to
my father but can’t find him. I thought perhaps you—”

“I did everything I could for him, Max, you know that I would.”

Max felt a chill race through his body. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what, dammit?” Max yelled so loud that two old women on a nearby bench startled and stared up at him in fear.

“Your father was arrested by the Gestapo.”

He should have never helped those English swine in their lifeboat. “For what, Buhl? Surely not for anything I—”

“For sleeping with the Polish girl.”

Max came up short. “Buhl, the Gestapo arrested my father for sleeping with his maid?”

Again the static. It crackled over the line and then cleared: “… against the racial laws of the Third Reich.”

Max bellowed into the phone with his best quarterdeck voice: “Are you out of your mind! My father is a decorated veteran of
the Prussian army! He’s been arrested for screwing his maid?”

The two old women got up from the bench and shuffled away as fast as they could on worn house slippers stuffed with newspaper.

“I did everything I could, Max, everything. I had warned your father about this. Someone reported him—a customer perhaps,
I don’t know. The Gestapo office in Kiel received an anonymous call. I even wrote a letter on his behalf to the Gauleiter
detailing your gallant service to the Reich. There was nothing more I could do. But it’s only a four-month sentence and he’s
been in for one month already. Three more and he’ll be out.”

Had the world gone mad? His father obviously bribed half the party officials in the district to overlook his activities on
the black market, but disobeying the racial policies of the Nazi Party was apparently unforgivable. Something you couldn’t
bribe your way out of even with an entire storeroom of Persil. “May I see him, Buhl?”

“I—I don’t know. Perhaps I can arrange it. They’re holding him at the city jail in Kiel. Max, I’ll try to see if I can arrange
it. For old times’ sake. Can you phone me in three days?”

“Yes, yes, of course. I’m on my way to Berlin now. And Buhl, thank you—I’m sure you did what you could.”

“Heil Hitler!” Buhl shouted.

“Heil Hitler,” Max said quietly.

He replaced the phone on its hook.

Max stood on the platform in stunned silence until it was time to board the train, a sloppy mixture of banged-up Reichsbahn
rail cars and cars confiscated from France and Belgium, with the occasional Dutch car sandwiched in.
WHEELS MUST TURN FOR VICTORY
had been chalked in prominent letters on the side of each rail car. That was a great slogan. What was it supposed to mean?
Don’t be late for the train?

The Reichsbahn didn’t offer private compartments with hot water and clean linen like the U-boat train. He couldn’t even find
a seat. Soldiers bound for the Eastern Front were jammed aboard, their backpacks piled everywhere, cigarette smoke hanging
in a dense cloud above their heads. A few civilian families sat scattered among them, their children staring wide-eyed at
the soldiers. Most of the windows had been blown out by bomb concussions and replaced by sheets of wood that blocked all ventilation
and most of the light. The cars were hot and stuffy and stank of unwashed men.

He stepped out onto the small platform between two cars and set his suitcase down, dropping his tired body down beside it
and leaning back against the metal wall. An army captain had done the same and the two of them sat facing each other. It would
be a cold and drafty ride out here but at least they would have room to stretch out. “Guten Abend, Herr Hauptmann,” Max said
to the captain.

The man nodded. “U-boat?”

“Ja,” Max said. The captain wore the Eastern Front Medal, awarded to those who had taken part in the initial Russian campaign.
Soldiers called it the Frozen Meat Order. He also had a silver wound badge on his left tunic pocket, just below his Iron Cross
First Class.

Max pulled a pack of Murattis from inside his coat. U-boat men could still get them but no one else. “Zigarette?” he asked,
extending the pack.

The captain took one, sniffed it. “Danke.”

“Ost Front?”

“Ja.”

“How is it out there with the Russians?”

“Cold,” the captain said. “Damned cold. And you, in the ocean?”

Max shrugged. “Cold.”

The train got under way and as it rumbled through the dark country they talked about the war—about the Russians in their endless
numbers, inexhaustible and relentless, ready to keep dying forever, and the Americans, who the captain had heard were poor
soldiers but could supply anything and everything the Allies needed, including the six-wheel-drive Studebaker trucks of which
the Soviets seemed to have so many. And Jeeps, which the captain especially liked. His unit had five of them, captured from
the Soviets. A coat of feld grau paint and the small vehicles were ready to play their part in the struggle against Bolshevism.
Max had to laugh. What next? Capture Benny Goodman and force him to play for the U-boat men in Lorient? The captain produced
a bottle of schnapps and offered it up. Max smiled, accepted the bottle. He took a long pull and the two of them fell silent
for a time, passing the schnapps back and forth as the train rolled on toward Berlin.

The captain gazed at the passing countryside as if watching for a Russian ambush. Without shifting his eyes, he asked if Max
had ever been to America in his travels with the navy. Yes, during his training cruise. And was it as big and powerful as
everyone said? No, it was much bigger, much more powerful. And where had Max gone? Where in America? California first, for
twelve days. He saw the sights, met some pretty American girls, even took a tour of Hollywood. They laughed at that. Hollywood,
the captain said, smiling. Hollywood. As if such a place could even exist on the same planet as them. What had the Führer
said: “What is America but millionaires, beauty queens, stupid records, and Hollywood?” Max shook his head. All of Germany
could fit into the state of California with room to spare, and there were forty-seven other states besides. Americans had
no culture, they worshipped money like a god, but they had energy, and no one ever need tell an American what to do. They
just did it, unlike the Germans, who were always waiting for a word from the man in charge. And what about New York? Yes,
Max had been to New York. And what had he done there? Gone to the top of the Empire State Building and drunk a Coca-Cola.
The captain laughed again. He looked down at the bottle in his hands, took a sip.

“And to think,” he said, “we declared war on America.”

Max leaned his head back against the metal wall of the platform. “Just as we did on the Soviet Union, Kamerad.”

They talked through the night. Max didn’t introduce himself. Names weren’t important. The captain knew what it meant to order
men into battle, to see them die, to live with that responsibility. He had seen friends die and die horribly—one set afire
in his Kübelwagen, stumbling out to stagger a few steps in a ball of flame before he dropped; another run down by a Soviet
tank, ground into the mud by the forty-ton monster.

Toward 0200 the train came to a halt in a wheatfield ten kilometers outside Berlin. Max had fallen asleep but was wakened
by the jarring of the cars banging against their couplings as the air brakes exhaled. A roar sounded as the engineers blew
the steam pressure from the engine. The train and all aboard her fell silent. Max heard the droning of the aeroplanes. He
got up, unlatched the heavy metal exit door, and leaned out. Others did the same up and down the line of cars, their faces
visible in the bright moonlight.

On the horizon, the searchlights ringing Berlin sent up white columns that swept the night sky. Sometimes one of them would
catch a bomber in its cone and hold it there, illuminating the aeroplane so one of the German night fighters could home in
and attack—or, if the bomber was at low altitude, so the anti-aircraft batteries could take it under fire. Max could hear
the staccato beat of the flak artillery pouring shells into the darkness. The projectiles were fired in specific patterns
set to explode at a designated height and spew metal fragments at the British planes, which had to fly in strict formation
on their bomb runs, practically wingtip to wingtip, to minimize their time over the target. The flak reached a crescendo—every
barrel in every battery firing—as each formation swept down on its run. But more prominent was the heavier sound of the falling
bombs destroying Berlin. Fires burned all over the city, lighting the horizon with an orange glow.

The RAF had a method for this, the murder of a city, a method so terrible it was worthy only of Gog and Magog. They began
with blockbuster high-explosive bombs to blow the roofs off buildings and blow the windows in, exposing wooden beams and interiors,
giving fire endless pathways along which to spread and providing through-drafts of air to rush it along. Then came the small
incendiary bombs, falling in their hundreds of thousands into buildings; and then the fires began. Fires medieval in their
terror; fires that could not be extinguished because they were composed of burning phosphorus; liquid fire that flowed in
burning streams down gutters and into the basements where women and children took shelter; fire so terrible, fire so merciless,
there was nothing to do but run from it with all the strength God had given you; fire spreading so fast that running with
all your strength was never enough. Fire so hot it set the very asphalt in the street ablaze and if your feet became stuck
in the liquid tar, you burned like a torch, your screams unheard over the roaring of the firestorm. This was the hell brought
down on Hamburg by the Tommies, and now they were bringing it to Berlin. And Mareth was somewhere in that godforsaken pyre,
its columns of poisonous yellow smoke twisting slowly into the heavens.

Max dug his fists into his eyes. He couldn’t look anymore. Was she safe in the flak tower? Safer than the Führer bunker, they
said, but was this one of her nights on duty? His whole body was tense and trembling. He pulled his hands from his face and
watched again. Damn the English and the Americans, damn them all to bloody hell. This terror bombing—just dumping bombs blindly
on women and children, on a defenseless city. It was a crime. It was murder—against the laws of war, the laws of humanity,
against the Hague Convention. After the war the Allies would be made to pay for this. He should have shot the English sailors
in that lifeboat, payback for what was being done to Berlin. Wave after wave of aircraft came over the city loosing their
bombs, the muffled explosions shaking the earth until the entire horizon seemed to be burning. If a British pilot parachuted
from his bomber and came down close by the train, Max would take out his pistol and shoot the man on the spot like a dog.
It happened all the time now, all across Germany: mobs of enraged citizens beating downed pilots to death before the Feldgendarmerie
could arrive.