Visiting Hours
London, August 1968
It was nearly a fortnight after my somewhat disorganised arrival back at Northolt with Matthew Gifford, that Laurence gave me a call to say Wolf Ulrich had regained consciousness. By the time we'd got back to London, he had been catatonic, virtually comatose, in reaction to the pain from his ankle and from internal injuries he had failed to tell me about, coupled with the suspected infection he'd been diagnosed with in Groningen. As a courtesy, Gifford had kept me informed of his progress, and I heard that they almost lost him at least once. However, finally, he had stabilised enough that they had transferred him to a civilian hospital.
Given that he was subject to the jurisdiction of Military Intelligence, I obtained authorisation to go and visit him in Charing Cross hospital. He'd been put in a private room - a rare luxury in a London hospital - but as I walked down the corridor and saw a pair of soldiers on guard outside, I realised why. He was effectively imprisoned, pending debrief. After all, as far as they were concerned, he was still a Nazi and, as both a former Gestapo officer and active member of Einsatzgruppe 4, still a potential war criminal. In fact, as far as even I knew, he may have actually been involved in atrocities during his stay on the Eastern Front.
I knocked on the door before entering, and then went inside. He was sitting up, his right leg raised slightly on a hoist and the ankle swathed in plaster. He was reading a book, but looked up as I came in and laid it open on the small unit to the side of his bed. As he laid it down, I saw that it was a copy of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
"Guten Tag, Herr Cuijper," he said, with a smile, then switched to English, "or perhaps I should say Herr Cushing?"
"How are you?" I asked, shutting the door, then pulling out the chair beside the bed and sitting down.
"Better, I think. Mainly aches and pains now...with the obvious exception."
He gestured vaguely towards the hoist.
"What do they think?"
"It's not hopeful," he said, with a shrug, "there was some nerve damage, and the infection didn't help, although at least it's still attached - apparently they were debating whether to just amputate and have done with it at one point. But they won't give any guarantees on whether it will fully recover."
"I'm sorry."
He shrugged.
"I'm alive, although it seems I'm going to be living up to the British archetype of an evil Gestapo officer...walking with a dodgy limp," he said, lightly, "now where did I leave my leather trench coat..." Then he paused, and his expression became more serious. "Except that isn't going to happen, is it, Mihai? That's no longer what I am?"
"No, not any more," I said, quietly, then tried to lighten the mood, "You know, one day, you're going to have to tell me where that comes from. You're the first person who's ever called me Mihai."
"My best friend at school was a boy named Michael. He was always the first into trouble, and first out of it, always willing to take the side of those younger or weaker than himself and help them...against the teachers, against our Reichsjugend officers, even against our parents on occasion. Our physics teacher, a Romanian, who had naturalised as a German citizen, called him Mihai the Brave. I always wondered why, but when I got to Bucharest, I discovered that Mihai was the Romanian version of Michael, and that Mihai the Brave, was a great Romanian hero who united his country in the seventeenth century. I thought Mikael Cuijper would figure out the Bucharest connection from that, if the Athanee Palace didn't give it away."
"What happened to him?" I asked, but the moment I did, I realised that it was the wrong question. He seemed to shrink back down into the pillows.
"He was shot by a Russian sniper about five years ago, while leading a patrol on the Eastern Front. He'd got married six months before: I was his best man. A few days before he died, his wife, Susanne, told him that they were expecting a child. He wrote to tell me how much was looking forward to being a father. I saw the notice of his death the same day I received his letter."
I wasn't sure what to say, so I waited for him to continue.
"I was in Berlin, and I helped her through it all. She nearly lost the baby, but in the end they both made it. Once the doctors were happy that they'd be fine, she asked me to be godfather to their daughter, Michel. I used to visit them two or three times a month, when my duty schedule allowed it. Keep an eye on them. Make sure they had everything they needed. I was the closest thing that little girl had to a father."
He fell silent again, then looked up at me.
"Christ, Mihai, what have I done?" he said, quietly, "Germany was my home. And now I've left everything behind...family, friends, reputation, everything I owned...there's no turning back."
"You must have realised that when you asked me for help."
"I'd murdered a superior officer, and the moment I did that, I knew I had no future," he said, quietly, "I was desperate and in pain, and I thought I was going to die in that bloody farmhouse. I didn't know what else to do."
"So you reached out to me and what...used me?" I said, hearing coldness in my voice.
"Not intentionally...to be honest, I didn't think you'd actually come."
"I owed you. You saved my butt from Ritter in Bucharest. Or did I read that wrong, as well?"
"No, you didn't read it wrong," he replied, quietly, "although I'll admit I didn't realise what a can of worms I was opening when I defied him. I knew I wasn't doing my career any good...but then, it wouldn't have been the first time. But I didn't realise just how...malicious he would be."
"Do you regret it?"
"I regretted it while I was being tortured in that bloody cell."
"You know that even after he let you go, Ritter would never have left you in peace."
"Standartenführer Kramer made that abundantly clear. He had every intention of having me shot as soon as I was no more use to him. Even my father couldn't have stopped him."
"Then why the bout of soul searching?"
"Because what I've done is beginning to come home to me. I'm in a different country, with not a thing to my name...no possessions, no money, no place to live...not even my honour."
No honour? That caught my attention as he said it. Something else had obviously happened while he was on the Eastern Front.
"Matthew Gifford is a good man. He'll treat you fairly as long as you co-operate with him."
"What's he likely to do?"
"He and his people will debrief you as they would any other defector.
"Is that what I am?...Yes, I suppose it is."
"They will want to know everything you can tell him about both the Gestapo and the Einsatzgruppen. Organisation, operations, personalities, campaigns. We hear a lot of stories about what happens on the Eastern Front, but there's very little proof, for obvious reasons."
"So on top of leaving everything behind, I become a traitor to my country."
"If that's how you wish to look at it. But think about how you came to be here...do you really owe your loyalty to people like Ritter and Kramer?"
He lapsed into silence, his expression pensive, then asked, "What if they aren't satisfied with what I have to tell them? What will happen to me then? Will they throw me in prison?"
"I don't know...but having got you this far, I'm not going to let them do that without a fight."
"Even if I deserve it?"
"Do you?"
He looked at me, a very strange expression on his face, and it was obvious that he was deciding whether to tell me something. My heart sank.
"Wolf...?"
"There was a parade on the Palace Square in St Petersburg on Midsummer Day. You know us Germans. We love our parades. This one was to celebrate the handover between those of our forces who were newly posted to the St Petersburg Gau, and those who were at the end of their tour and headed home. The partisans attacked it. They launched a mortar which hit in the centre of the square, killing nearly fifty of us straight off, and then engaged in a running gun battle with our forces as they tried to escape. Most of them died, but two of them were captured and interrogated first. It turned out that they were brothers. They came from a village called Eglizi, a couple of miles east of Tosno."
"I get the picture," I said to him, certain I knew what was coming next. Mass murder in reprisal for attacks on German troops had been common practise since Lidice had been eradicated after the attempted assassination of now-Führer Heydrich in 1942. Possibly even before.
"No, you don't," he said quietly, and carried on speaking., "A couple of days after Kramer arrived, and forced me to send you the postcard, my unit - Einsatzkommando 2/IV, under Sturmbannführer Walter Metz - received orders to go to Eglizi. Kramer came as a ride-along. I suppose there were three hundred people in the village - we numbered about two-fifty. We hit in the hour before dawn, and rounded them all up, separating the men from the women. I was one of those assigned to guard the women and children. The men were shot as the sun rose. And before you ask, I could no more have stopped it than I could have stopped a whirlwind. All I could think was thank Christ that I wasn't doing the actual killing."
He paused, took a drink from his water glass and continued.
"You know, in all my years with the various Reich police forces, I never killed anyone. Even during in my spell in the Gestapo. I was always a damn good shot - I even won the police shooting competition a couple of times - but while I had fired my sidearm in the course of my duties, it was always to wound.
After the shooting stopped, the silence was profound. Even the children, who had been crying earlier, fell quiet. It stayed like that for maybe thirty seconds, and then a little girl near to where I was standing began to cry. Kramer ordered me to shut her up. My first thought was to try to comfort her, and I moved to do that, but he stopped me. Permanently, he said, after all, she's just a stupid Russian. She isn't important. And as he did, I became aware that his own sidearm was pointed in my direction...not the little girl's. He was subtle about it. The men probably didn't realise. And then he waited, and he looked at me, and I saw his finger tighten on the trigger."
I heard his voice catch in his throat, and the emotional pain he was in was palpable.
"Wolf, you don't have to say any more."
"Yes, I do..." he answered, "no-one wants to die...even if it comes to all of us in the end. And faced with that, you do things to survive that it's hard to live with afterwards. I can't even fall back on 'I was just following orders'. I saw his pistol and knew that he meant to kill me if I didn't do as I was told. So I put my weapon to the little girl's head, mentally asked the Lord for forgiveness, whispered a prayer for her soul and pulled the trigger. She was no older than Michel. And as I was the officer in charge of the group guarding those women and children, the men took their cue from me...as Kramer knew they would. There were probably two hundred of them, and in just a few minutes they were all gone."
He sat back against his pillow, and I could see tears forming in his eyes as he remembered. However, as soon as he realised, he wiped them away quickly with the sleeve of his pyjama jacket.
"Do you know, what was possibly the worst of all? Metz came over to me afterwards and congratulated me on my dedication to duty. He didn't think I had it in me, he said. He'd be putting me forward for a commendation."
"I'm so sorry," I said, quietly, squeezing his shoulder in what I hoped was a supportive gesture.
"So having heard this, do you regret coming to get me?" he said, after a few moments, and I let my hand fall back to my side.
"If I had any regrets before, I don't any longer."
"Even though Kramer used me to cause the death of two hundred innocent people, whose only crime was to live in the wrong place?"
"Because of it."
"You are a strange man."
"Why?"
"I think that at this point, most other people - including Herr Gifford - would be demanding my summary execution as a war criminal."
"If you want my opinion, that's exactly why Kramer did it."
"How so?"
"It sounds as if he wanted an insurance policy, against the slim possibility that you would actually get out of there alive. By making you responsible for a massacre, he was cutting down your options for the future. After all, the first thing that would be checked would be your recent service history, and there you were...up to your eyeballs in mass murder."
"But you believe me...that it wasn't by my choice?"
"I think you were in an impossible situation."
"I hope Herr Gifford doesn't have me executed," he said, with a ghost of a smile, "I think you and I were supposed to be friends. That will be a little difficult with my head in the noose."
"Then co-operate with him. Tell him the unvarnished truth. And if he decides to prosecute..." I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet and handed him my business card, "...this is the number of a good lawyer."
He took the card and glanced at it, then turned his attention back to me, a half amused expression on his face.
"And no. I'm not missing the irony that this is pretty much what got us into this mess in the first place."
"Thank you, Mihai," he said, and as I did, I realised that he looked pale and tired.
"I should let you rest," I answered and got to my feet, "but I'll come and visit again. My word on it."
He looked at me and nodded, and then settled back to sleep as I headed out of the door.
* * * * * *
Around 9.30 that evening, I was sitting in the library, sipping a brandy and reading the most recent edition of the Law Review, when the front doorbell rang. A short while later, Barratt knocked on the door.
"Brigadier Rathbone is here to see you, sir."
"Thank-you, Barratt. Show him in."
"Evening, Ian," Laurence said as he walked into the library, "apologies for dropping in unannounced, but I wanted a chat."
"That sounds ominous," I commented, "do you want a drink while we talk?"
"Brandy would be nice."
"Barratt, if you'd be so kind? And a refill for me," I asked, indicating for Laurence to sit in one of the big leather wing armchairs by the fireplace, opposite to where I was camped out. He did so, placing a file on the side table beside his chair as he did so.
"Very good, sir," he answered and disappeared, returning a couple of minutes later with two brandies on a silver tray, which he placed beside each of us before departing.
"So what can I help you with?" I asked, once the door was closed.
"You went to see Captain Ulrich this afternoon? How's he doing?"
"Are you asking in a professional or personal capacity?"
"A little of both. Matthew has let me be involved with this matter, out of courtesy to both you and I, and we've both spoken to him. However, you had a longer conversation with him today than either of us have managed, and his guards said that after you left, he looked...haunted was their actual word. What happened?"
"He entrusted me with some information. Are you asking me to break that trust?"
"He's going to have to go through a formal debrief eventually. I was hoping you would give us a heads up."
"I'm not sure I can do that. Lawyer-client privilege."
"Implying that you thinks he needs a lawyer?"
"Implying that given his situation, I think he might need someone fighting his corner, and I offered to do that."
"Fair enough. Then give me your impressions...how was he?"
"Physically, better...although the doctors think he's always going to walk with a limp."
"I seem to remember they thought that about you, too, many years ago."
"I've always healed quickly, and I was determined to beat them. I'm not sure either's true for him. Especially the latter. He's in a very dark place right now."
"Gifford and I have been doing a bit of research into our young captain."
"I wouldn't have expected otherwise. He's a defector, after all...even if I think that little fact only just came home to him this afternoon..."
"Is that the reason for his reaction?"
"It was a contributory factor. All in all, I had a difficult conversation with him. Now he's safe, and away from Russia, he's beginning to understand the implications of what he's done, both before and after I got him out of there."
"Self-preservation often trumps common sense and long-term thinking when you think you're going to die. I'm sure you know that well enough, both from your SOE days."
"And later. But I never had to come to grips with throwing everything away, turning traitor to my country and my family, and fleeing."
"If he really is one of us...a servant of the Light...then his life expectancy was short the moment he came onto Ritter's radar."
"He knows that only too well. But it doesn't make the choices he's made any easier for him. Apparently, on top of everything else, there are a woman and child in Berlin who were somewhat reliant on him."
"His file doesn't mention that he's married."
"He's not...they're friends, not family. I don't suppose there's any way they can be contacted and brought over here?"
"That will probably depend on how his debrief goes. Do you think he'll come to terms with what he's done?"
"I'm not a psychologist," I answered, with a shrug, "I hope so, and if I can, I will try to help him. But it will be hard for him, and ultimately, the only person who can forgive him for what he's done is himself."
I sipped some brandy, watching for Laurence's reaction, but he was being his usual inscrutable self.
"What's in store for him?"
"As I said, a lot depends on the debrief. He potentially has a lot information which could prove very useful if he is willing to share it. On the other hand, being in Einsatzgruppe-4 is likely to count against him."
"So after everything he's been through, he might end up in prison anyway?"
"I hope not. But a lot depends on how co-operative he is. That's partly why I'm trying to get a feel from you how likely that is. If he's having serious doubts about what he's done..."
"You're afraid he won't play ball?"
"Something like that."
"I don't think it will come to that. He knows he can't go back..."
"According to Gifford's contacts in Berlin, apparently his status is currently missing presumed dead."
"At least they don't think he's deserted. I suppose that's something."
"Apparently half a dozen bodies were discovered at the farmhouse you pulled him out of, but they were burned beyond recognition. Also listed as missing presumed dead is the senior officer on that mission, one Standartenführer Torben Kramer, on attachment to Einsatzgruppe-4 from the Ahnenerbe. Do you happen to know anything about that?"
"He was a black Adept," I answered, "Remember I was attacked that night? He was the one responsible. Apparently Ritter had managed to get hold of an arcane connection to me again...he used that."
"Did you kill him?"
"He was dead when I got there. But I did have to tidy up after him. Obviously the fire spread further than I had planned, if they found half a dozen bodies. But perhaps that's for the best. Fog of war, and all that."
"Did Ulrich kill him?"
"He was dead before I got there," I repeated, trying to sound neutral.
"Gifford is going to ask him in the debrief."
"Then it's for him to answer," I replied, surprised at how defensive I sounded.
He paused a moment, then said, "You know, to someone who doesn't know you as well as I do, your complete lack of objectivity where he's concerned, and the lengths you seem willing to go to, to protect him, could come across as you being, at the very least, interested in him in a...less than platonic way."
"What the Hell?" I said, angrily getting to my feet, "Laurence, how dare you imply..."
"Sit down..." he snapped, and too surprised to argue, I did as I was ordered, "now, listen. I said to someone who doesn't know you. But you need to be careful."
"You know what the worst of it is? I still don't really know what the Hell is going on," I said, more quietly, taking a drink to brandy to steady my nerves, "and to be honest, it's freaking me out. Looking back on what happened, with two weeks of hindsight, running off into the middle of bloody Russia to rescue an enemy officer I hardly knew is pretty damned crazy."
"Until you have a pair of intelligence officers digging into his background to discover what they can find."
"Trust me, I'd love to hear your conclusions."
"Alright then," he answered, and I swear he took a deep breath before saying, "We're about as sure as we can be, that Wolf Ulrich is your biological son."
I felt the mouthful of brandy I'd just drunk go down the wrong way as I choked in surprise. It took me a moment or two to get myself back under control, and then I looked at him incredulously.
"How is that even possible?"
"You don't need me to explain the birds and the bees to you, lad," he said, his tone light, but I wasn't seeing the funny side of it, and I saw his expression change...become more serious, "back at Northolt, when you brought him home, I wasn't joking when I told you he reminded me of you at that age, and that got me thinking. So I did some digging."
"I'm listening," I said, all but holding my breath and uncertain whether to believe him.
"The two of you are surprisingly alike. You have similar backgrounds: privileged upbringings; private schools where you were both good at sport; studying languages at university, and graduating high in your classes. You both chose a career in the law, albeit in different areas."
"It's still nothing more than coincidence. We're not the only people with that kind of background."
"No. But then there are the circumstances which brought you both to our attention...by which I mean the Group, not Matthew and I. The pattern of your dealings with Ritter is very similar. For example, the doctors at Northolt indicated that he had old injuries which are consistent with repeated beatings about four to five months ago. Did you know?"
"He told me in Russia," I answered, "but this still suggests kindred souls, rather than an actual blood link."
"And kindred souls are a factor. Of that I'm quite sure. But I don't believe they're the only one. I have a couple of pictures to show you, if you don't mind..."
He reached over to the table, and handed me the file. It looked remarkably like the one he'd shown me for Wolf, before my crazy jaunt to Russia, except this one was considerably thicker. The label on the front identified Gruppenführer Dietrich Hermann Ulrich, Freiherr von Ansbach.
"Wolf's father?" I asked, puzzled.
"Do you recognise him?"
I flipped open the cover, to reveal the picture of a man in his late-50s, running slightly to fat and with a far from artistically broken nose. His eyes were an icy blue and he had thinning silver-blond hair. There was certainly something about him which seemed familiar, but I couldn't immediately pin down what it was. The date on the back was 1963.
"I don't get it..." I said, looking at Laurence.
"Take a look at the next picture."
I did as I was bid, and then I saw what he was getting at. The picture had been taken at a formal dinner, and I was looking at the same man, but when he was in his prime, rather than gone to seed. The man's mess dress jacket had the insignia of a Brigadeführer on the lapel, and his arm was around a beautiful blonde woman. I recognised her smile, and memories of a beautiful two weeks, with a very ugly end, came unbidden to my mind.
"Oh shit."
"The picture was taken in August 1942, at the gala dinner to celebrate the return to active duty of Reinhard Heydrich, after the assassination attempt in Prague. That's von Ansbach's wife..."
"Greta."
"Greta Valerie Sachs, born 1912. Married Dietrich Ulrich in 1930, although by all accounts it was an arranged marriage, the way the nobility still did back then. Elder son, Alfred Dietrich Gerhard, born March 1932. Younger son, Wolfgang Dietrich Armand, born June 1936. She was declared missing, presumed dead, after a boating accident in August 1950, shortly after her husband retired from active duty to become Freiherr von Ansbach. Body never recovered."
"Did he kill her?"
"Unknown. There was an investigation at the time, but its results were inconclusive."
"Carry on..."
"One evening, many years ago, while you were still working for me in Berlin, we had a long conversation about the Nuremberg Laws. You said you'd been in Nuremberg the day Hitler announced them. So you were in Germany in September 1935. That got me thinking, so I dug a little deeper. There was a note in your file that around the same time, you were involved in a brawl over a woman in the bar of the Adlon Hotel. "
"It wasn't a brawl so much as biting off more than I could chew, and getting beaten down for it."
"But the woman in question was Greta von Ansbach. Did you know...?"
"That she was married? No. Not until her bastard of a husband turned up and went all caveman over her. Truly, he all but dragged her out by the hair."
"And about nine months later..."
"From what I saw of him, if he had the slightest inkling that she might have been carrying someone else's child, he would have killed her. Or at the very least made sure that she didn't carry it to term."
"Unless he was pragmatic. Or delusional. It's amazing how husbands can make themselves believe that their wife's child is theirs, if they try hard enough, as long as it isn't obvious. Or perhaps he didn't dare, as by doing so, he might have pissed off some very important people. He was, after all, in the Ancestral Heritage Division. How could he have explained his wife either dying, or even getting rid of a child, to his superiors, when they were trying to improve the Aryan stock."
"As you said, this isn't conclusive."
"No. After all, she might have already been pregnant before you had the affair, or become so shortly afterwards..."
"After he reclaimed her?"
"I wasn't going to put it quite like that..."
"But it seems like the sort of thing he'd do," I said, bitterly, "you said there was something else which led you to this conclusion."
"I did. As his handler, Gifford has been given access to Ulrich's medical records. Our young captain has the same blood group as you."
"My blood group's an exotic...not one of the usual classifications."
"Exactly."
"Oh boy," I said, thinking through what he'd said, "but there are something like 650 million people in Europe. That's pretty high odds against him and I randomly meeting over a body in Bucharest."
"But that's not allowing for whatever past lives link your souls."
"So have we been related in the past? Father and son? Brother? Friends?"
"It's a reasonable conclusion, and the possibility that you and Ulrich have had some kind of familial connection, or at the very least a strong bond of friendship, before fits the facts."
But there was something in his tone, or perhaps his body language, which made me think he wasn't telling me the whole story.
"And where does Ritter fit in? Am I related to him too?"
"Not in any way I can see."
"But I could be? If you follow the same reasoning."
"Possibly. On the other hand, the paths of the souls of several of the Group have crossed before, including yours, but the strength of this particular connection seems unique to you and Ulrich. And especially given what you told me Ritter said in the 'dream' you had on the plane."
"Which I still don't think was a dream. I just can't quite explain what it was."
"The hole in the fuselage of Gallagher's plane bears out the argument that he was, indeed, trying to kill you both, especially given how close it was to where Ulrich was lying. Much as he had a connection to you after Prinz Albrecht Strasse, he probably still has one to Ulrich, gained in very similar circumstances..."
"Poor Wolf," I said, quietly, "if he does get out of this, we're going to have to destroy those links, as we did with mine."
"You can show him the way."
"I'll have to tread carefully, though. He may have the makings of an Adept, but his belief system is currently Christian, as far as I can tell. He hasn't even bought into the SS-pseudo pagan stuff."
"That shouldn't be a problem."
"You know, Laurence, I'd never realised that the gods could be cruel before."
"What on earth do you mean?" he answered, genuinely surprised.
"Audrey and I wanted children, but it never happened. We didn't worry overmuch. We were both young, and we always thought that one day... But then she died, leaving me nothing of her to ease the pain. And sure, perhaps by now she's been given another turn on the wheel, but not with me. And yet an ill-advised affair in my youth, with a married woman no less, bore fruit."
"In the form of a young man with a lot of potential, who you believe is a true servant of the Light. Who you went to a lot or risk and trouble to bring to us because you knew it was the right thing to do. Who you have almost certainly saved, and from a cold, unpleasant death. How is that cruel? I would argue that the gods acted in kindness to bring you together...even when I thought you were crazy."
"All of which is irrelevant, if he gets tried as a war criminal and executed."
"Is that likely?"
"It's possible."
"Because of something he said to you in the hospital?"
I looked at him and nodded.
"But you'll defend him." It was a statement, rather than a question, "and that gives him a far better chance than if there was no-one to fight his corner."
I fell silent for a while, thinking and absently sipping my brandy.
"Is this why Gifford let me see him? Because he's my son?"
"It was a major factor in his decision," Laurence answered, "along with letting him see a friendly face. You can be an anchor for him, as he comes to terms with what happened."
"Should I tell him?"
"If you want my advice, don't rush that. Everything is up in the air for him now. Telling him he isn't who he was brought up to believe he is might be the final straw. But eventually, yes, I think you should, and my gut says you'll know the right time."
He downed his drink and stood up.
"And now, my friend, I should be going. It's getting late, and my good lady wife will be wondering where I am."
"I'll show you to the door," I said, putting my own glass down and then standing and going with him out into the hall, "and Laurence...thank you."
He smiled, and then opened the door and went out into the night.