The Soul of a Thief Read online

  “Where are your comrades, Shtefan?” She looked over my shoulder and around the establishment, and I confess that my heart sank a bit. I did not expect this pretty young woman to volunteer herself on my behalf, but her question clearly indicated a wish to change the subject.

  “I am only here with Edward, the commander’s driver,” I answered, as I glanced over my shoulder and jutted my chin in his direction. He was yet perched in his comfortable corner, downing his third stein of beer.

  “Is that him?” Francie pointed. “The gray one with the belly?”

  “Yes.”

  Francie dismounted her stool and smoothed her dress, and without saying another word to me, she made off from behind the bar. I watched her with a frown, having not a clue as to her intentions. Yet, as she made her way through the crowd toward Edward’s table, I could only imagine some sort of horror. Was she a Gestapo agent? Was she determined to relay my dismay at the unfair commandments of my master? Did she have some sort of ticket book in which she had to maintain a recorded quota of inebriated betrayals?

  The facts, which I did not know until much later, were thus. Francie marched right up to Himmel’s driver, smiled and offered a small curtsy.

  “Edward, where does Shtefan have to be tonight?”

  He was apparently quite drunk, his eyes shot through with crimson spiders and his lips drooling. “Shtefan? He has to be buried in something...or wind up really buried in something!”

  “Where is the commander headquartered, Edward?” Francie was a patient girl, having dealt with thousands of drunkards.

  “At the Reichenhall,” he slurred.

  “Shtefan shall be there in the morning.”

  And with that she walked away from him and returned to the bar. Somewhere en route, she had recovered a white shawl, and she hooked her fingers in my elbow and stood still for a moment and smiled at me.

  “Come, Shtefan,” she said firmly, though with her gentle smile. “Apparently, someone has sent you a gift...”

  * * *

  Francie lived in a single room, at the rear of a large house that had once been a luxurious private home, but was divided up into apartments for the course of the war. She had her own entrance, and it revealed a small hallway, a small bath and a cozy salon in which her perfectly made-up bed was the overbearing feature. Absolutely everything was neat and in place, from her books to her framed family photographs to her rack of pressed clothes and a small dresser of her private things. I confess that at the time I did not really take much of this in, as en route to her abode along the silent cobblestone streets my heart was keeping up a drumbeat. We had hardly spoken at all, while she held my hand and seemed as light-footed as I was light-headed.

  When we entered her room, we stood for a moment, very still. Next to me, she held my fingers lightly, and we faced the bed. It was very silent here, save for the occasional vehicle swishing by outside, and at last she nearly whispered, “This is a safe place for you.”

  And I believed her. She turned to me then and reached up her hands to touch my face. She was shorter than I, and she came to her tiptoes and lightly brushed her lips over my furrowed brow. And then, her hand removed my cap, while the other held my chin, and she touched her mouth to mine. I closed my eyes. Her lips were like warm silk, and my own lips seemed to melt slowly into hers, like bars of cold pewter surrendering to a blacksmith’s fire.

  She kissed me deeply on the mouth, for a very long time, and at last I allowed my fists to open, and my hands to venture up to her waist. She pulled me somehow closer, and I felt her hand reach for mine, and when she placed it, gently upon her breast, I felt a shudder flash from my knees to my neck.

  Somehow, she never really stopped kissing me, as she managed to pull her dress up and over her head, and as she deftly helped me to lose my uniform. She was young, but precociously wise as I view her now, for she knew that my attention would be focused on her mouth, while by way of sweet deception she revealed the secrets I had heretofore so feared. It was not long before we stood there without any clothes at all, and the very first true caress of my body to a woman’s, that incredible softness of her full breasts pressed against my chest, is a sensation that comes only once, no matter how often it be repeated in life.

  She did not touch me below the waist, until we lay together upon the bed for a long, long time. She helped my fingers explore her body, moving with each new moment of my learning, and if her quickened breathing was a practiced strategy I did not care, and all of it soon had its effect. And when at last she reached down for me, the touch of her cool fingertips caused me to fairly leap to her attentions, and before I knew what was happening I was inside her, and I groaned as if my last breath was being expelled from my lungs.

  She hugged me then with all of her strength, and she swayed beneath me and used her folded legs to help me, and she kissed my mouth and my cheeks and my ears, and as I lost control and the room swayed and a profound joy and dizziness overtook my body, she whispered hoarsely, “Yes, Shtefan. Yes.”

  And it seemed that the explosive release that then coursed through my entire being was matched only by her happiness that, somehow, she had managed to find one good thing about this war...

  IV

  IN SEPTEMBER OF 1943, my master became a hero.

  It was in the autumn of that year that we made our pilgrimage to Berchtesgaden, during which my commander was dubiously blessed by the personal, though quite absentminded, bestowment of the Knight’s Cross by the Führer himself. The summer months had been deceptively languid, while interspersed with four more lightning raids into Pantelleria, Palermo, the Italian Alps and Corfu, where Himmel’s reckless courage seemed only to blossom further. The men of the Commando whispered that he would surely be rewarded very soon.

  Yet given the dismissive and disappointing nature of this coronation of the nation’s bravest men, I felt a certain sorrow for Colonel Himmel, that he should give so much of himself and receive barely a nod in return, despite the medal itself. Yet in viewing the graceful manner in which the commander absorbed this reality of state, I realized that he, most certainly like all the officers present, had long ago accepted the fact that his courage was simply an integral part of his makeup. He most probably knew, already as a child, that he would accomplish great deeds of daring, and the trappings that would someday result were to be thought of as no more than diplomas. Medals were merely signatures upon the histories of dutiful deeds, which would have transpired with or without them.

  And so, with the black Maltese medal and ribbon draped about his collar, Himmel withdrew from this elaborate and melancholy ceremony as quickly as protocol would allow. Edward and I had to fairly chase after him as he fled the Schloss and quick-marched down along the curving entrance drive, slapping his leather gloves into his palm and smacking his jackboots on the cracked concrete. He reached the staff car, hopped into the compartment without opening the door, turned and raised his arms high.

  “Schnell! Back to work!” he yelled, and I thought that his grin was twisted up at its edges by force of will. It was difficult even for a man such as Himmel to accept the clay feet of his mentors.

  We drove now to Bad Tölz, that quaint Bavarian town astride the Isar, where the Waffen SS held its headquarters and central barracks. In preparation for some special assignments, the unit had been relocated to this hub of commando activity, awaiting further glories. The trip from Berchtesgaden, while less than 150 kilometers, began after midnight and required considerable maneuvering over pocked peasant roads. I sat next to Edward, with the commander perched in his proper place behind me, and after an hour I began to nod off despite the trundling of the wheels over deep ruts. Himmel swatted me on the back of my cap.

  “You shall not sleep, my corporal, while your commander plots!”

  I snapped my head up, rubbed my eyes and saluted smartly without turning. I was also grinning, as was Edward, and I k
new my master was doing the same. This had become rather a joke between us, for our strange trio had traveled thousands of kilometers together, and our humors had found a way to intersect despite the ranks.

  Our quarters in Bad Tölz were not inside the SS buildings nearby the ancient spa, for our unit’s tasks were considered exceptionally secret even within this environment. Unfortunately, this meant that the Commando temporarily resided in a row of giant field tents, and although these were outfitted with iron woodstoves and sufficient bedding upon our canvas cots, the now constant rains chilled us from our boots to our bones. To a man, myself included, we were anxious to receive a new assignment and an improved residential position, even if that meant a shattered bunker at some remote and thunderous front.

  As we finally approached the encampment this night, it was clear that something strange was afoot. Rising from the eastern valleys along the curving cattle road, there was a strange glow in the sky above the camp, and as we neared it an enormous bonfire appeared amid the horseshoe arrangement of tents. Torches had been fired up and staked about the perimeter, and all three of us sat up in our seats as we squinted at an honor guard comprised of the men.

  They embraced the final roadway entrance to the camp, standing stiffly at attention in two long rows, face-to-face. Their jackboots and black helmets were polished, their buckles sparkling and bayonets held high to form a nuptial canopy. I could see the corpse of a fat wild boar being turned on a spit above a crackling fire, and a large plotting table had been laid out with bowls of fruits, piles of cakes and kegs of beer.

  If Hitler himself had casually dismissed the courageous exploits of my master, Himmel’s men had not. The Colonel raised a fist and whispered something, and Edward stopped the car. The commander slowly disembarked, smoothing his tunic and setting his SS officer’s Death’s Head cap as he would hardly do for any officer of the General Staff. He carefully pulled his gloves onto his hands, and I swear I saw him swallow hard as he began to march toward his men, and they began to sing the Horst Wessel song with enormous and fervent power, their voices echoing off the surrounding hills.

  Edward and I slid out from the staff car, looked at each other, and fell into pace behind our master, though at a respectful distance. He marched crisply up along the access road, approaching his roaring honor guard, and the sight of these warriors under a black sky tinged with fire would have imbued even Leni Riefenstahl with a chill. Before Himmel reached the mouth of this canopy of bayonets, a ginger-haired lieutenant named Schneller stamped up to his side, saluted smartly and spun to escort the Colonel through the steel cordon. Simultaneously, at the far side of the tunnel of troops, Captain Friedrich mounted an ammunition crate. In one hand he clutched a large SS banner mounted on a makeshift flagpole. With the other, he snapped and unfurled a small scroll.

  The men finished their chorus. Himmel stopped before Friedrich, clasped his gloved hands behind his back and looked up at the captain. Friedrich began his recitation, and from my position well back of the ceremony, the scene was reminiscent of a wedding, contrived by Dante.

  “A Colonel by rank, a King by courage,

  A Shepherd to wolves, an Angel of warriors,

  Lead us forth into temptations, of blood and fire,

  Have no doubts of our duty, sacrifice or desire,

  Be there medals or none, until death’s final knell,

  We shall follow you, Commander, to the bowels of Hell.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Clearly, the captain was a crude poet, yet the men thrice shouted, “To hell!” in thunderous unison as Friedrich stepped off his perch and presented Himmel with a perfectly polished Prussian cavalry sword. He also handed him the scrolled recitation, signed by each of the unit and now bound by Schneller with a crimson ribbon, and all three men saluted each other and clicked their boot heels.

  Himmel turned to his complement of commandos. I could see, even at a distance, that his smile quivered a bit, and his one eye shone as if he had imbibed a liter of alcohol. It seemed that he wished to speak, but he could not manage it, and so instead he thrust the cavalry sword high into the air and the men shouted and cheered and surrounded him, each clasping his hand and gesturing at his Knight’s Cross. Lieutenant Gans, who had a scar across his full lips that foiled every smile, grinned as I’d never seen, and the giant Sergeant Meyer’s soft brown eyes and baby face glowed with admiration. They then raised the Colonel upon their shoulders, like the captain of a champion soccer team, and carried him to the table of food and drink.

  From somewhere a hand-cranked gramophone began to crackle Bavarian folk bands into the chilled air, and the party carried on for over two hours. There was considerable taking of beer and wine, and the men joked and danced and even held an impromptu wrestling match between a pair of light machine gunners, and wagers were made and lost and I was certainly pleased to be well included as a member of the troop. “Drink, Fish!” became a constant rallying cry as so many in turn forced a steel cup of beer into my hand, and before long I was laughing and celebrating as if I had been born into this brood of unpredictable panthers.

  At 3:00 a.m., a dispatcher on motorcycle interrupted the festivities. The roar of his BMW approaching the fires quelled the laughing and shouting, and he dismounted, raised his goggles, marched straight to Himmel and offered a stiff-armed “Heil Hitler.” The Colonel, who was now sweating and red-faced from spinning out a Bavarian jig, immediately stilled himself, scowling as he tore open the envelope.

  He stepped closer to a torch and squinted for some time at the missive. Then, he folded it and placed it into his tunic pocket. The men watched him, quietly drinking their beers, and he shrugged and smiled wanly as he dismissed the messenger.

  “Well, my comrades,” he said at last. “There is a time to laugh, and a time to kill...”

  * * *

  The Commando traveled from the onset of dawn, and all throughout the following day and well into the evening. With our staff car in the lead, we first set out northeast for Regensburg, then made northwest for Erlangen, and Himmel hardly spoke at all but to issue short directional orders. Save the cook, Heinz the armorer and a single private, the entire complement was along, yet none of us but the master knew our destination. This in itself was unusual, for once a mission was afoot, the Colonel customarily shared each detail that might aid success in martial tactics. Yet on this terribly long day, Edward and I suffered in his silence, left to ponder only the bomb-ravaged countryside and count the horses drawing caissons and supply carts toward the distant fates of other men.

  I had, by this juncture, enough experience to assess a task by virtue of its preparation. When the Colonel ordered lightweight loads of personal battle harnesses, weapons and field caps, it was likely to be a lightning effort and mercilessly short. And by counterpoint, should he insist on satchel explosives, support mortars and helmets, my bowels cringed with the certainty of artillery and heavy resistance. However, on this day the unit was posting far from its headquarters, and it might well be tasked additionally while en route, so everything but the kitchen trough was aboard our trucks, making an educated guess quite impossible.

  However, what chilled my spine and set my mind to racing over every imaginable fantasy on this excursion was the order Himmel had snapped at me just prior to embarkation.

  “Leave your pistol, Shtefan.”

  I had looked at him then, touching the butt of my holstered weapon possessively. The sidearm that I had so initially despised had become something of an amulet.

  “Might I not need it, Herr Colonel?” I asked.

  “Leave it. I do not want you to have it today.”

  I obeyed, of course, and had reluctantly relegated the tool to my footlocker. And based upon some instinct, I did not even attempt to carry the Leica that had made itself a necessity heretofore.

  With dusk, we were on the road to Schweinfurt, carrying on deeply into the heart of Germany. With each
kilometer, we extended the range from any possible front, a fact that further stirred my curiosity into a whirlpool of discomfort. At last, and sometime close to midnight, the moon rose above the hills and hued the high, frothy clouds with fringes of silver, and we turned from the main road and wound our way up into the deep forests of the Hassberger. There, thousands of pines stabbed at the pale night sky with black and spiny spears, and it seemed that there was nowhere left to go but the looming cap of a windswept mountain.

  A pair of dim headlights flashed then, a signal that briefly illuminated a broken road among the forest. Edward slowed the staff car and picked his way along this rising passageway, its shoulders eerily shadowed by the towering trunks and needled branches of the enormous trees. Our headlights then fell upon the flanks of a similar car, yet unlike our own field Kübelwagen, this one was enameled in a deep and polished black, its swastika emblem perfect and unmarred, its chrome fixtures buffed to a gleam. Four officers sat like expressionless mummies inside the car, their heavy leather coats and black peaked caps the calling cards of Gestapo. One of them raised a gloved finger and crooked it, and their car turned and made up the slope, and we followed.

  We broke into a large grassy clearing at the crest of this height. A cold wind ruffled the wild meadow, and the moon made its greenery into a ghostly pale blue, and in the distances far below the dim lights of townships flickered like star clusters in undiscovered galaxies.

  The Gestapo vehicle halted at the fringe of this clearing. Edward parked a bit to its rear and flank, as if avoiding some sort of infection by contact. Our lorries slowly gathered to the left, and I could hear the canvas flaps snapping up and the men mumbling and stretching their cramped limbs as they hopped to the wet ground. For some unexplained reason, there were no shouts of command, only whispers as if in a rectory.

  Edward and I stayed in place as Himmel got out of the car, meeting his Gestapo counterpart halfway between the vehicles. My master pulled his orders from his pocket, and the conversation that was carried to me on the wind I shall not forget.