Stutze was the most outwardly concerned. To him would fall the actual job of digging the vermin out. The Jews had shown great ingenuity in hiding themselves, and with an entire winter to dig in he would need more help.
“You are, of course, aware that the Jews are subterranean,” Stutze said. “One can walk in the streets of the ghetto for hours without a sign of life. They live like moles. According to their Civil Authority records, there are forty to fifty thousand of them left. And one cannot overlook the fact that they have been arming themselves.”
Funk cut Stutze short “You do not suggest that Jews will fight?”
“Of course not, Oberführer,” the Austrian said too quickly. “But you yourself said that criminals and Communists have taken refuge in the ghetto.”
“I have full faith that your Reinhard Corps will be more than equal to the situation,” Funk concluded abruptly.
Stutze blanched. Funk had put him in such a position that he could not request additional troops. “Of course, Oberführer.”
“Fine ... fine,” Funk said. “Tomorrow evening I should like to hear your plans for completion of the liquidation.”
“Of course, Oberführer.”
“You, Dr. Koenig, shall submit your requirements to have the machinery in your factories transferred.”
Koenig nodded.
“Until tomorrow evening, gentlemen.”
They came to their feet sharply.
“Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler.”
“Herr Sauer ... a moment please.”
The Gestapo chief returned to his seat. Horst von Epp also remained. When the others were gone, Funk turned to Sauer.
“On this matter of the archives in the ghetto of which I spoke to you on my last visit. What have you been able to ascertain?”
“Not too much. The Jews protect these historians with an uncommon devotion. Not even their Militia will inform on them. Fear of retribution, I suppose.”
“What’s this about?” Horst asked.
“The Jewish mania for diaries. We have unearthed thousands of them in reservations around Poland and particularly in the special-treatment camps. We have long been aware of an entire organization here writing records.”
Well, well! Horst thought.
“We cannot proceed with the final liquidation of the ghetto until these records have been found,” Funk continued. “Hitler himself gave me specific instructions to see that these Jew lies are found. We cannot permit their distortions to be published.”
Sauer was unmoved by Funk’s double talk. The general sensed it. “Isn’t it enough,” Funk pressed, raising his voice to a sharper pitch, “that this filthy pack of lies about our labor camps was smuggled out of Poland?”
“Perhaps,” Sauer said softly, “the Führer should take the matter up with our Italian friends to learn how this was done.”
“It is the job of the Gestapo to learn these things and stop them before the crime is committed.”
Horst became fascinated at the sudden sharpness of argument. Someone had to give.
“We want positive information on these ghetto archives,” Funk snapped.
“Certain people,” Sauer answered, “were in such a hurry to cover their business transactions, they did away with the Big Seven prematurely and in a single fell swoop destroyed my entire system of informers.” The implication was obvious. Half of Warsaw’s Nazis wanted Max Kleperman’s lips sealed.
The policeman rubbed his eyes and meditated, speaking as if to himself. “If anyone in the ghetto knows about these papers it would be Alexander Brandel, but he has not been seen all winter. We know there is a bunker under Mila 19. We have not been able to determine the entrance.”
Funk, anxious to oversimplify the matter and get rid of Sauer, whom he could not bully, made an abrupt decision. “I shall have Stutze find this Brandel immediately. Then we can proceed with the liquidation of the ghetto.”
Later that evening Horst walked down two flights in the Bristol Hotel to where a brace of SS guards flanked the door leading to Alfred Funk’s suite. Funk’s orderly let him in.
“The Oberführer is taking a bath,” the orderly Said. He mixed a drink for Von Epp and disappeared into the bedroom.
Funk bathing again. Funk bathed before and after all conferences. Some days he took five or six baths. Often, when a good party was moving into its second stages and the women were getting deliriously vile, Funk would excuse himself and run off to a shower.
Reading the Jew Freud was legally banned, but Horst had brought several volumes to Warsaw nevertheless. Freud’s interpretations afforded him a never-ending, amusing list of clues to the strange behavior of his Nazi cohorts. Alfred Funk’s mania for cleanliness, he concluded, was an unconscious effort to wash his soiled soul with soap. However, the ersatz soap was of a very poor quality these days.
Horst reflected on the bizarre reactions at the earlier conference. He had attended many conferences at long polished tables where Funk and other Nazis announced dogma and sent everyone on his merry way with crisp “Heil Hitlers.” But today there was a roomful of unusual performances. The first cracks. The minute trace of doubt and fear.
Rudolph Schreiker loosened with a dozen audible sighs of relief that the ghetto was to be liquidated.
One could see the wheels of Koenig’s mind spinning to shift his fortune to Argentina, which alone showed a friendship for the Nazis.
Stutze was afraid to execute the final liquidation. In a moment he showed outright cowardice.
Sauer. A fine chap, like myself. Sauer never wavers. Knows his job. Plods on. He and I are true stalwarts.
It was Funk who had put on the real show, reflecting Berlin’s panic over some obscure Jewish archives. Funk had backed down from Sauer, something he had never done before.
Funk bundled himself into a large towel robe and padded, still dripping, into the living room.
“You look tired, Alfred,” Horst said. “I have just the relaxation the doctor ordered.”
Funk’s orderly was all over him, trying to dry his master’s hair. He dismissed the man curtly and lit a cigarette and flopped into a big chair, stretched his legs and arms, opening the top of his robe enough to reveal the double streaks of lightning tattooed under his left armpit, the mark of an SS Elite.
“I’ve got a pair of Czech sisters just in from Prague. They come highly recommended. They’re not much to look at, but I understand they do fantastic contractions.”
“Good. I need a little sport.”
Funk left the room with a drink, leaving the bedroom door ajar so that they could speak.
In the beginning of their relationship, Funk had detested Horst von Epp. His cynical attitude, his snide mockery and obvious lack of sincere devotion to Nazi ideals and his constant barbs at the conferences irritated Funk no end. Then Horst began to grow on him.
Horst von Epp ran his office with enviable German efficiency. Moreover, he was the best officers’ pimp in Europe, and once one got used to his sense of humor it lost much of its offensiveness. Funk came to understand that Von Epp was actually berating himself most of the time through his jokes.
He liked Von Epp for another reason too. He was reluctant to admit it, but he liked to talk to Horst. Since he had joined the party in 1930 he was in a league of tight-lipped, humorless men who considered it dangerous to speak one’s inner thoughts or even admit to having them.
He had taken vows as harsh as those of a monk in one of those silent ecclesiastical orders.
After the first shocks of Von Epp’s curt observations of the Nazis subsided he found himself looking forward to coming to Warsaw. With Von Epp he could share thoughts, speak, fence verbally, confide frustrations. He could indulge himself in a way he dared not, even with his own wife and children.
Horst leaned against the doorframe while Funk primped himself to his blond Aryan best before the mirror.