The Soul of a Thief Read online

  In the spring of 1944, I realized that I was not going to survive the war...

  Shtefan Brandt, adjutant to a colonel of the Waffen SS, has made it through the war so far in spite of his commander’s habit of bringing his staff into combat, and a pair of secrets that are far more dangerous than the battlefield. Shtefan is a Mischling and one of the thousands of German citizens of Jewish descent who have avoided the death camps by concealing themselves in the ranks of the German army. And he is in love with Gabrielle Belmont, the colonel’s French mistress. Either of those facts could soon mean his end, were Colonel Erich Himmel to notice.

  Colonel Himmel has other concerns, however. He can see the war’s end on the horizon and recognizes that he is not on the winning side, no matter what the reports from Hitler’s generals may say. So he has taken matters into his own hands, hatching a plot to escape Europe. To fund his new life, he plans to steal a fortune from the encroaching Allies. A fortune that Shtefan, in turn, plans to steal from him...

  Atmospheric and intense, The Soul of a Thief captures the turbulent emotional rush of those caught behind the lines of occupied France, where one false step could spell death, and every day brings a new struggle to survive.

  Praise for The Soul of a Thief

  “An old-fashioned ‘ripping yarn’ from a master writer who knows how to keep the characters vivid, the plot twisting, and the action coming hot and heavy.”

  —Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire

  “Steven Hartov takes us on an SS commando’s headlong rush across German-occupied Europe from France to the battlefield of Russia and back again just in time for D-day, in the company of a brutally efficient SS colonel and his decidedly non-Aryan adjutant. Hartov tells a story about Nazis and Jews on the same side of the front lines that few could have conceived but the likes of which had to have happened. Between the spring of 1943 and the summer of 1944 The Soul of a Thief packs a lifetime of human experiences into a year of European wartime.”

  —Alex Rosenberg, author of The Girl from Krakow

  “Hartov offers a novel and human perspective of the German side of the Second World War through the eyes of one young reluctant recruit and the enigmatic colonel whom he admires, fears and, ultimately, plots to outwit.”

  —Daniel Kalla, bestselling author of The Far Side of the Sky and Nightfall Over Shanghai

  “Steven Hartov’s WWII novel The Soul of a Thief is a literary tour de force on par with Mark Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky for three simple reasons: he knows his history, he writes with the beauty of Fitzgerald, and he loves his characters. This is an outstanding historical fiction novel illuminating a little-known aspect of the German war machine: the half- and quarter-Jews known as Mischlinge fighting, sometimes willingly, on behalf of Hitler’s Third Reich.”

  —Samuel Marquis, author of Bodyguard of Deception and Altar of Resistance

  “The Soul of a Thief is a war drama, a cat-and-mouse thriller and a coming-of-age love story, all wrapped into a terrific and compulsive read.”

  —Daniel Kalla, bestselling author of The Far Side of the Sky

  STEVEN HARTOV

  THE SOUL OF A THIEF

  A Novel

  Steven Hartov is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller In the Company of Heroes, as well as The Night Stalkers and Afghanistan on the Bounce, and the author of the espionage trilogy The Heat of Ramadan, The Nylon Hand of God and The Devil’s Shepherd. For six years he served as editor-in-chief of Special Operations Report. A former Merchant Marine sailor, Israel Defense Forces paratrooper and special operator, he currently resides in New Jersey.

  www.StevenHartov.com

  For my mother, Trudy, who survived, thrived and told me and Susie the stories. And for Lia, who loves and believes.

  Contents

  Author Note

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Afterword

  Historical Notes

  Author Note

  I DO NOT KNOW the origin of this story. One autumn night some years ago, I woke up and began to write it, as if compelled to do so. I am generally a practical man, but this tale flowed forth as if commanded by some otherworldly force, and I was just the vessel of its telling. Alarmed at first, I soon looked forward to each night of work, to hear the next part of the tale and honor it as best I could. I also realized then, that this memoir is more than an invention of imagination, as it first came to me in recurring dreams when I was still a child.

  There is no one to thank, except perhaps the ghost who told it through my fingers, and all those who indulged me, as I wrote and wondered where it came from.

  I

  IN THE SPRING of 1944, I realized that I was not going to survive the war.

  There was, upon this revelation resisted for so long, a sublime unburdening of tension, a sensation of relief and release I had not enjoyed since being expelled as a boy from a Catholic public school in Vienna. After all, my survival until this point had been predicated upon a carefully executed waltz of luck and deception. But now, rather like a skilled player of Chemin de Fer who wins too long at the table, my good fortunes could not but fade, and my fatigue was draining my abilities to deceive.

  I should make it clear that I did not harbor what the famed Viennese psychologists then termed as suicidal tendencies. Quite the contrary, I was a survivor by strength of will and character. However, some factors made it clear that emerging in one piece from this worldwide conflagration, with myself at its epicenter, was highly unlikely.

  I was the young adjutant to an SS colonel named Himmel, whose actions reflected exactly the opposite of his heavenly moniker.

  I was also, on paper, a Catholic named Brandt, yet in fact the descendant of a great-grandmother named Brandeis.

  And finally, I was in love with the Colonel’s fiancée, a magnificent creature of my own age, who had just informed me that in fact my emotions for her were well requited.

  No, it was not likely that I was going to survive this war. But inasmuch as the practicalities of shelter, sustenance and personal security can so easily be spurned in exchange for youthful and mad romance, I no longer cared. It had become very clear to me in the early months of that year, that unless I plumbed the depths of my courage and found the well of a reckless swashbuckler, the postwar world would be a morbid and cold planet, unfit for living.

  And so, since I was unlikely to survive, I would make my dash for the gates with my love in hand. And, if I could hone every one of my strategic skills and adopt the soul of a thief, I would be very rich, to boot. Yes, in all likelihood, a rush of bullets would bring me to ground long before my escape.

  But, so be it...

  * * *

  Colonel Himmel was a war hero, which made my status as his adjutant an envious position, if one viewed such employ through the eyes of a dedicated Nazi patriot. However, I was merely grateful that I had come to fill my position late in the game, for at barely nineteen years old, until the previous year I had been ineligible for more than cannon fodder on the Russian front or service in the Hitler Youth. This fine, upstanding organization I’d been forbidden to join in Vienna, as my ethnic background was in question. As for the infantry, my number had simply not yet come up.r />
  Upon my expulsion from Gymnasium, I had been employed as a physician’s assistant in a Viennese hospital, which delayed my being swallowed up by the Wehrmacht. Yet it was there, while visiting a trio of his wounded commandos, that Himmel spotted me. He was a pure combat officer, decidedly apolitical, and I believe that what struck him was my appearance. I was a fine youth then, blond and blue-eyed and wiry, genetic gifts owing to the Balkan Semitic lineage of my great-grandmother rather than to any inheritance of an Aryan bent. He whispered a few inquiries to the doctors whom I served, and I was promptly whisked away to a new position and adventures I had not dreamed of, or wanted.

  I was thankful, however, for having come to Himmel’s side at this latter stage of his commando career, because throughout the war his résumé had been quickly filled up with daring raids against Allied troops, mountaintop rescues of captured officers, and the long-range executions of enemy generals. The Colonel had a tendency to reward his support staff by insisting they accompany him on most such ventures, and so, a long list of previous adjutants, company clerks and even cooks had been killed in action on a number of fronts. My recruitment to the Colonel’s staff in 1943 somewhat lessened the odds of my falling prey to foreign shellfire while shining the commander’s jackboots, but it was in any event a nerve-racking assignment.

  You see, Himmel had been twice awarded the Iron Cross, as well as the Knight’s Cross for exemplary valor, on one occasion by Adolf Hitler himself. I shall briefly digress to say that I am not proud to have been in attendance for that ceremony, but it was most certainly a surreal dinner soirée I shall never forget, for it is seared upon my mind’s eye. The awardees, more than two hundred officers from various branches of the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe, were invited to the Eagle’s Lair at Berchtesgaden. Of course, I use the term “invited” with tongue in cheek, for these weary men were ordered to appear on the given eve, despite their presently distant locations or battlefield predicaments.

  Thus, the towering antechamber of Hitler’s Schloss was awash with men in dress uniforms, yet one must realize that so many of these previously perfectly tailored tunics and jodhpurs had been stowed now for years in Panzer tanks, Heinkel bombers or U-boats. The courageous officers had done their best to shine cracked boots, polish rusted buckles and steam the wrinkles from moth-eaten wools, yet even so, it all appeared much like a costume ball in the tenth level of hell. The submariners’ beards were badly trimmed, the Luftwaffe pilots’ eyes gleamed with fatigue, and some of the infantry heroes actually had caked spots of blood on their cuffs and lapels, as their most recent wounds still oozed. I hardly think now that many of them remained ardent worshippers of their Führer, yet like Roman legionnaires in the presence of Caesar, they managed to effect erect spines and the gunshot clicks of heels.

  Hitler was customarily late, by I believe at least two hours, and I shall never forget his demeanor when he finally appeared. He seemed, quite frankly, completely surprised, and subsequently annoyed. He behaved like a man whose wife has invited guests to dinner without his consent, and it was only when Goering whispered a reminder in his ear that he dredged up the manners to stay the course. So quickly did he dispense the medals, with scarcely a complimentary word and absently offering that embarrassingly limp handshake of his, that I imagined his primary motive here was to finish with it and hurry to the toilet.

  Of course, had I shared my view with a single soul, including any other young adjutant or even a castle cook, I most certainly would have found myself immediately en route to Smolensk, or worse. However, just after the Führer’s departure, I offered Colonel Himmel a champagne glass from a silver tray and congratulated him for his courage, which I had too often personally witnessed along with an accompanying clutch of my sphincter. The Colonel received his drink, nodded his gratitude, and very briefly rolled his single eye. He then smiled at me for a millisecond and quickly issued me an order of some kind, yet the moment had been shared.

  For an assassin, a brigand, a tyrant and a thief, my master did have his good points.

  To me, Himmel’s most endearing quality was that he never fully inquired as to my background. During the prewar years and throughout the conflict, it was incumbent upon elite Nazi officers to fully vet each member of their command, despite the assumption that the Gestapo had already done so. Yet Himmel had always been a career combatant, regarding Hitler’s anti-Semitic diatribes as nothing more than a rallying point around which to galvanize the populace. Having not a bone of fear in his body, he dismissed the regulatory racial codes with a snort, and assembled his company of Waffen Schutzstaffel based upon performance, and nothing else. Thus, his command was peppered with a number of racially questionable men of swarthy complexions and altered family names, and I would not be surprised if it included a gypsy or two.

  Of course, having none of this information upon being fairly kidnapped by the Colonel, I spent my first two months quivering in his presence. I was waiting for him to summon me and wave a Gestapo document in my face, some horrendously accurate accusation that there was, in fact, a wizened old Jewess concealed among the many branches of my family tree. That, in itself, would have been enough for any other such officer to have me shot. The full truth, in fact, was worse.

  My beloved father and mother were devout Catholics, which one might think a guarantee of my immediate lineage. However, one must also realize that devotion to God, under the Nazi reanalysis of religion, was not viewed kindly by the authorities. Adolf Hitler had become the New God of Germany and its protectorates, with Christ a poor third to the Führer and his pagan symbols, such as Albert Speer’s monolithic architectures and the towering iron statues of eagles, stag horns and the like. If you were a devout Catholic, you were expected to display your crucifix as nothing more than proof of your ethnic purity. In Vienna, the city of my birth and youth, the Anschluss had provided Germany’s Nazis with a pool of deeply fanatical followers. Those who claim that the Austrians were so much worse than the Germans themselves are correct, for there is no one more obsessive than a convert.

  My father would not, however, relinquish his religious beliefs. And although he supported the economic and political precepts of Nazism, he refused to rein in his attendance of Mass, regular confessions or charity efforts for the Church. Such behavior greatly frightened my mother, of course, who was edgy enough given our genetic status and the questionable position of her only son. Yet the authorities, recognizing my father to be a man of some age and granted eccentricities, declined to rigorously pursue his conversion to Hitlerism. That is, until he strayed too far.

  My father was, by trade, a book seller. Adolf Hitler was, by choice, a book burner. It required no more than one massive, flaming pyre of the classics to set my father’s inner rage alight, and thereafter he was a changed man. He quietly joined “O 5,” the Austrian anti-Nazi resistance movement. On the evening after Kristallnacht, during which every Jewish shop and synagogue in Vienna was burned to the ground by the Brown Shirts, along with approximately twenty thousand copies of both the Old and New Testaments, three members of that thugly gang were found murdered in the Tenth District. My father returned late that evening, exuding an odor of fear and adrenaline, and he packed a single suitcase, hugged myself and my mother to him, and informed us that he would have to leave immediately or endanger our lives.

  I never saw him again. But still today, there remains etched into the exterior of the great St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, a white scrawled carving of defiance, the figures “O 5.” I have been told that my father was the very chiseler of that message from the underground.

  So, you can well understand why my first few months with Himmel were so fraught with the constant urge to pee, even though he appeared to regard my history as irrelevant.

  The second trait which so endeared my master to me, as it were, was his choice of women. I refer not, of course, to the long line of prostitutes and desperately widowed wives we encountered in
our travels throughout Italy, the Rhineland or France. Some of these Himmel paid well as he invited them to bed, and some he spontaneously mounted in empty castle keeps and haylofts. These he regarded as the spoils of war and nothing more.

  The true measure of his good taste was revealed in the selection of Gabrielle. We had settled temporarily near Le Pontet, a village beside the fabled French town of Avignon, for a spate of rest and recreation. Much of the small ville had suffered from errant Allied bombs, and a large German field hospital had been erected in the meadows as a sort of waypoint and triage center for the wounded from all fronts. The slim bridges of the Rhone were constantly awash in horse-drawn wagons, with the local French girls essentially enslaved as nurses to transport and tend the injured. It was there, above the bloody river waters that would someday be bottled and sold by the shipload to American supermarkets, that Himmel spotted her.

  She was virtually a child, barely eighteen years of age, the daughter of Le Pontet’s mayor, who had been executed by the Gestapo. Despite the soiled appearance of all the other females employed by our army, Gabrielle’s skin was pure and translucent, her fingernails unbroken, the flaxen blond hair that framed her diamond blue eyes falling straight and true to her slim waist. As she sat upon the bench of a caisson that contained the writhing forms of three wounded panzer crew, her chin erect and her hands lightly snapping the reins of her horses, it was clear that she had inherited a strand of royal French genes. Himmel ordered the driver of his Kübelwagen to halt, and he immediately fell in love. He was done with whoring.

  The rest of how I came to know her, I shall leave for later telling.

  And finally, the Colonel’s third trait which I came to temporarily admire was his greed. Perhaps that is unfair, and a more generous description of his calculations might be called practicality. After all, his strategic assessments of any given situation were almost always correct, and his analysis of the war’s progress, despite his own personal victories, was untempered by emotion. By the time I joined him, Himmel knew that Germany was going to lose this war. He also knew that the Allies were about to mount a massive invasion of the continent, the furious tide of which would not be repulsed. Despite the erroneous hunches of Hitler and the endless arguments of the High Command, Himmel would regularly spread a map of Europe across any makeshift dining table or vehicle boot, jab a finger at the coast of Normandy and state, “Here. It will come here.”