Aftershock & Others Page 12

  But why were they running? What was spurring the stampede?

  And then he heard a voice, shouting, faint and far off at first, then louder: “Alle Juden raus!” Over and over: “Alle Juden raus! Alle Juden raus!” Louder and louder as they approached until Karl had to clasp his hands over his ears to protect them.

  “ALLE JUDEN RAUS! ALLE JUDEN RAUS!”

  And then they were upon him, mobbing him, knocking him to his knees and then flat on his face in their panicked flight through the darkness, oblivious as they stepped on him and tripped over him in their blind rush to nowhere. He could not regain his feet; he did not try. He had no fear of being crushed because they weighed almost nothing, but he could not rise against their numbers. So he remained facedown in the darkness with his hands over his head and listened to that voice.

  “ALLE JUDEN RAUS! ALLE JUDEN RAUS!”

  After what seemed an eternity, they were past. Karl lifted his head. He was alone in the darkness. No…not alone. Someone else…a lone figure approaching. A naked woman, old, short, thin, with long gray hair, limping his way on arthritic knees. Something familiar about her—

  “Mother!”

  He stood paralyzed, rooted, unable to turn from her nakedness. She looked so thin, and so much older, as if she’d aged twenty years. And into each floppy breast had been carved a Star of David.

  He sobbed as he held his arms out to her.

  “Dear God, Mother! What have they done to you?”

  But she took no notice of him, limping past as if he did not exist.

  “Mother, I—!”

  He turned, reaching to grab her arm as she passed, but froze in mute shock when he saw the mountain.

  All the gaunt living dead who had rushed past were piled in a mound that dwarfed the Alps themselves, carelessly tossed like discarded dolls into a charnel heap that stretched miles into the darkness above him.

  Only now they had eyes. Dead eyes, staring sightlessly his way, each with a silent plea…help us…save us…please don’t let this happen…

  His mother—she was in there. He had to find her, get her out of there. He ran toward the tower of wasted human flesh, but before he reached it the blacks and whites began to shimmer and melt, bleeding color as that damned voice grew louder and louder…“ALLE JUDEN RAUS! ALLE JUDEN RAUS!”

  And Karl knew that voice. God help him, he knew that voice.

  Adolf Hitler’s.

  Suddenly he found himself back in the Burgerbraukeller, on his feet, staring at the man who still stood at the rostrum. Only seconds had passed. It had seemed so much longer.

  As Hitler finished his proclamation, the triumvirate of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser were marched off the stage at gunpoint. And Hitler stood there with his feet spread and his arms folded across his chest, staring in triumphant defiance at the shocked crowd mingling and murmuring before him.

  Karl now understood what he had seen. Hitler’s hate wasn’t mere rhetoric. This madman meant what he said. Every word of it. He intended the destruction of German Jewry, of Jews everywhere. And now, here in this beer hall, he was making a grab for the power to do just that. And he was succeeding!

  He had to be stopped!

  As Hitler turned to follow the captured triumvirate, Karl staggered forward, his arm raised, his finger pointing, ready to accuse, to shout out a denunciation. But no sound came from his throat. His lips were working, his lungs pumping, but his vocal cords were locked. Hoarse, breathy hisses were the only sounds he could make.

  But those sounds were enough to draw the attention of the Nazi storm troopers. The nearest turned and pointed their rifles at him. Ernst leaped to his side and restrained him, pulling his arm down.

  “He’s not well. He’s been sick and tonight’s excitement has been too much for him.”

  Karl tried to shake free of Ernst. He didn’t care about the storm troopers or their weapons. These people had to hear, had to know what Hitler and his National Socialists planned. But then Hitler was leaving, following the captured triumvirate from the bandstand.

  In the frightened and excited confusion that followed, Ernst steered Karl toward one of the side doors. But their way was blocked by a baby-faced storm trooper.

  “No one leaves until the Führer says so.”

  “This man is sick!” Ernst shouted. “Do you know who his father was? Colonel Stehr himself! This is the son of a hero of the Argonne! Let him into the fresh air immediately!”

  The young trooper, certainly no more than eighteen or nineteen, was taken aback by Ernst’s outburst. It was highly unlikely that he’d ever heard of a Colonel Stehr, but he stepped aside to let them pass.

  The drizzle had turned to snow, and the cold air began to clear Karl’s head, but still he had no voice. Pulling away from Ernst’s supporting arm, he half ran, half stumbled across the grounds of the Burgerbraukeller, crowded now with exuberant members of the Kampfbund. He headed toward the street, wanting to scream, to cry out his fear and warn the city, the country, that a murderous lunatic was taking over.

  When he reached the far side of Rosenheimerstrasse, he found an alley, leaned into it, and vomited. After his stomach was empty, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and returned to where Ernst waited on the sidewalk.

  “Good heavens, man. What got into you back there?”

  Karl leaned against a lamppost and told him about the vision, about the millions of dead Jews, and Hitler’s voice and what it was shouting.

  Ernst was a long time replying. His eyes had a faraway look, almost glazed, as if he were trying to see the future Karl had described.

  “That was the absinthe,” he said finally. “Lautrec’s earthquake. You’ve been indulging a bit much lately and you’re not used to it. Lautrec was institutionalized because of it. Van Gogh cut off one of his ears under the influence.”

  Karl grabbed the front of Ernst’s overcoat. “No! The absinthe is responsible, I’ll grant that, but it only opened the door for me. This was more than a hallucination. This was a vision of the future, a warning. He’s got to be stopped, Ernst!”

  “How? You heard him. There’s a national revolution going on, and he’s leading it.”

  A steely resolve, cold as the snow falling around them, was taking shape within Karl.

  “I’ve been entrusted with a warning,” he said softly. “I’m not going to ignore it.”

  “What are you going to do? Flee the country?”

  “No. I’m going to stop Adolf Hitler.”

  “How?”

  “By any means necessary.”

  Germany is having a nervous breakdown. There is nothing sane to report.

  —Ben Hecht, 1923

  The rest of the night was a fearful phantasm, filled with shouts, shots, and conflicting rumors—yes, there was a national revolution; no, there were no uprisings in Nuremberg or the other cities.

  One thing was clear to Karl: A revolution was indeed in progress in Munich. All through the night, as he and Ernst wandered the city, they crossed paths again and again with detachments of brown-shirted men marching under the swastika banner. And lining the sidewalks were men and women of all ages, cheering them on.

  Karl wanted to grab and shake each one of them and scream into their faces, You don’t know what you’re doing! You don’t know what they’re planning!

  No one was moving to stop the putsch. The Blue Police, the Green Police, the Reichswehr troops were nowhere in sight. Ernst led Karl across the river to the Reichswehr headquarters where they watched members of the Reichskriegsflagge segment of the Kampfbund strutting in and out of the entrance.

  “It’s true!” Karl said. “The Reichswehr troops are with them!”

  Karl tried to call Berlin to see what was happening there but could not get a phone connection. They went to the offices of the Munchener Post, a newspaper critical of Hitler in the past, but found its offices ransacked, every typewriter gone, every piece of printing equipment destroyed.

  “The putsch is not even a day old and they�
�ve started already!” Karl said, standing on the glass-littered sidewalk in the wan dawn light and surveying the damage. “Crush anyone who disagrees with you.”

  “Yes!” a voice cried behind them. “Crush them! Grind them under your heel!”

  They turned to see a bearded middle-aged man waving a bottle of Champagne as he joined them before the Post offices. He wore a swastika armband over a tattered army coat.

  “It’s our time now!” The man guzzled some of the Champagne and held it aloft. “A toast! Germany for the Germans, and damn the Jews to hell!” He thrust the bottle at Karl. “Here! Donated by a Jew down the street.”

  Icy spikes scored the inner walls of Karl’s chest.

  “Really?” he said, taking the half-full bottle. “Donated?”

  “Requisitioned, actually.” He barked a laugh. “Along with his watch and his wife’s jewelry…after they were arrested!”

  Uncontrollable fury, fueled by the growing unease of the past two weeks and the horror of his vision in the beer hall, exploded in Karl. He reversed his grip on the bottle and smashed it against the side of the man’s head.

  “Karl!” Ernst cried.

  The man stiffened and fell flat on his back in the slush, coat open, arms and legs akimbo.

  Karl stared down at him, shocked by what he’d done. He’d never struck another man in his life. He knelt over him.

  “He’s still breathing.”

  Then he saw the pistol in the man’s belt. He gripped the handle and pulled it free. He straightened and cradled the weapon in his trembling hands as he turned toward Ernst.

  “You asked me before how I was going to stop Hitler. Here is the answer.”

  “Have you gone mad?”

  “You don’t have to come along. Safer for you if you return to the hotel while I search out Herr Hitler.”

  “Don’t insult me. I’ll be beside you all the way.”

  Karl stared at Ernst, surprised and warmed by the reply.

  “Thank you, Ernst.”

  Ernst grinned, his eyes bright with excitement. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

  Throughout the morning, conflicting rumors traveled up and down the Munich streets with the regularity of the city trolleys.

  The triumvirate has thrown in with Hitler…the triumvirate is free and planning countermoves against the putsch…the Reichswehr has revolted and is ready to march on Berlin behind Hitler…the Reichswehr is marching on Munich to crush this putsch just as it crushed the communist attempt in Hamburg last month…Hitler is in complete control of Munich and its armed forces…support for the putsch is eroding among some police units and the young army officers…

  Karl chased each rumor, trying to learn the truth, but truth seemed to be an elusive commodity in Munich. He shuttled back and forth across the river, between the putsch headquarters in the Burgerbraukeller on the east bank and the government offices around Marianplatz on the west, his right hand thrust into his coat pocket, clutching the pistol, searching for Hitler. He and Ernst had separated, figuring that two searchers could cover more ground apart than together.

  By noon Karl began to get the feeling that Hitler might not have as much control as he wished people to think. True, the putschists seemed to have an iron grip on the city east of the river, and a swastika flag still flew from a balcony of the New City Hall on the west side, but Karl had noticed the green uniforms of the Bavarian State Police gathering at the west ends of the bridges across the Isar. They weren’t blocking traffic, but they seemed to be on guard. And Reichswehr troops from the Seventh Division were moving through the city. Reichswehr headquarters on the west bank was still held by units of the Kampfbund, but the headquarters itself was now surrounded by two Reichswehr infantry battalions and a number of artillery units.

  The tide is turning, Karl thought with grim satisfaction.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to use the pistol after all.

  He was standing on the west side of the Ludwig bridge, keeping his back to the wind, when he saw Ernst hurrying toward him from the far side.

  “They’re coming this way!” he shouted, his cheeks red with the excitement and the cold.

  “Who?”

  “Everyone! All the putschists—thousands of them. They’ve begun a march through the city. And Hitler’s leading them.”

  No sooner had Ernst spoken than Karl spied the front ranks of the march—brown-shirted Nazis carrying the red and white flags that whipped and snapped in the wind. Behind them came the rest, walking twelve abreast, headed directly toward the Ludwig Bridge. He spotted Hitler in the front ranks wearing his tan trench coat and a felt hat. Beside him was General Ludendorf, one of the most respected war heroes in the nation.

  A crowd of putsch supporters and the merely curious gathered as the Green Police hurried across to the east side of the bridge to stop the marchers. Before they could set up, squads of storm troopers swarmed from the flanks of the march, surrounding and disarming them.

  The march surged across the bridge unimpeded.

  Karl tightened his grip on the pistol. He would end this here, now, personal consequences be damned. But he couldn’t get a clear view of Hitler through the throng surrounding him. To his dismay, many bystanders from the crowd joined the march as it passed, further swelling its ranks.

  The march streamed into the already crowded Marianplatz in front of City Hall where it was met with cheers and cries of adulation by the thousands mobbed there. A delirious rendition of “Deutschland Uber Alles” rattled the windows all around the plaza and ended with countless cries of “Heil Hitler!”

  At no time could Karl get within a hundred yards of his target.

  And now, its ranks doubled, the march was off again, this time northward up Wienstrasse.

  “They’re heading for Reichswehr headquarters,” Ernst said.

  “It’s surrounded. They’ll never get near it.”

  Ernst shrugged. “Who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to fire with General Ludendorf at Hitler’s side and all those civilians with them?”

  Karl felt his jaw muscles bunch as the memory of the vision surged through his brain, dragging with it the image of his elderly, withered, unclothed, bleeding mother.

  “I am.”

  He took off at a run along a course parallel to the march, easily outdistancing the slow-moving crowd. He calculated that the marchers would have to come up Residenzstrasse in order to reach the Reichswehr building. He ducked into a doorway of the Feldherrnhalle, near the top of the street and crouched there, panting from the unaccustomed exertion. Seconds later, Ernst joined him, barely breathing hard.

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  Ernst smiled. “Of course I did. We’re witnessing the making of history.”

  Karl pulled the pistol from his coat pocket. “But after today someone other than Adolf Hitler will be making it.”

  At the top of Residenzstrasse, where it opened into a plaza, Karl saw units of the Green Police setting up a barricade.

  Good. It would slow the march, and that would be his moment.

  “Here they come,” Ernst said.

  Karl’s palms began to sweat as he searched the front ranks for his target. The pistol grip was slippery in his hand by the time he identified Hitler. This was it. This was his moment in history, to turn it from the horrors the vision had shown him.

  Doubt gripped the base of his throat in a stranglehold. What if the vision was wrong? What if it had been the absinthe and nothing more? What if he was about to murder a man because of a drunken hallucination?

  He tore free of the questions. No. No doubts. No hesitation. Hitler has to die. Here. Now. By my hand.

  As he’d predicted, the march slowed when it neared the barricade and the storm troopers approached the Green Police shouting, “Don’t shoot! We are your comrades! We have General Ludendorf with us!”

  Karl raised the pistol, waiting for his chance.

  And then a passage opened between him and Hitler’s trench-co
ated form.

  Now! It has to be now!

  He took aim, cautiously, carefully. He wasn’t experienced with pistols. His father had taken him hunting with a rifle or a shotgun as a young man, but he’d never found much pleasure in it. He found no pleasure in this, only duty. But he knew how to aim, and he had the heart of this strutting little monster in his sights. He remembered his father’s words…“Squeeze, don’t pull…squeeze…be surprised by the shot…”

  And while Karl waited for his surprise, he imagined the tapered lead cylinder blasting from the muzzle, hurtling toward Hitler, plunging into his chest, tearing through lung and heart, ripping the life from him before he could destroy the lives of the hapless, helpless, innocent millions he so hated. He saw Hitler twist and fall, saw a brief, violent spasm of rage and confusion as the milling putschists fired wildly in all directions, rioting until the Green Police and the regular army units closed in to divide their ranks, arrest their leaders, and disperse the rest. Perhaps another Jew hater would rise, but he would not have this man’s unique combination of personal magnetism and oratory power. The future Karl had seen would never happen. His bullet would sever the link from this time and place to that future.

  And so he let his sweat-slick forefinger caress the curve of the trigger…squeezing…

  But just as the weapon fired, something brushed against his arm. The bullet coughed into the chill air, high, missing Hitler.

  Time stopped. The marchers stood frozen, some in midstride. All except Hitler. His head was turned Karl’s way, his pale blue eyes searching the doorways, the windows. And then those eyes fixed on Karl’s. The two men stared at each other for an instant, an eternity…then…Hitler smiled.

  And with that smile time resumed its course as Karl’s single shot precipitated a barrage of gunfire from the Green Police and the Kampfbund troops. Chaos erupted on Residenzstrasse. Karl watched in horror as people ran in all directions, screaming, bleeding, falling, and dying. The pavement became red and slick with blood. He saw Hitler go down and stay down. He prayed that someone else’s bullet had found him.