The Hunt

Felix Reinhardt dashed through the summer shower from the streetcar stop to the two-story building on the edge of the last art colony in Berlin—if it could be called that—most of the artists and writers having left the city in the wake of the Nazi putsch. He huddled in the vestibule of the gaily painted building, a short, serious man, on the stout side, his black hair and mustache shaggy and uncut, his deep-set eyes peering out from behind thick glasses, his suit rumpled. The rainstorm had come up suddenly, catching him without an umbrella, so now he shook the rain off his jacket.

Reinhardt climbed the stairs to the second-floor studio. A bell over the door tinkled gently as he entered the bright, cheerful loft. Partially complete sculpture littered the big room which was lit from above by two enormous skylights. He closed the door and began whistling the chorus of the “Blue Danube Waltz.”

In a small compartment off to one side of the studio, Oscar Probst peered through a small hole in the wall. He wore an apron over his gray pants. He pulled off the apron, using it to wipe ink off his hands before draping it over one of the two tables that contained the fonts for his ancient, foot-powered Angerstadt printing press.

In the studio, Reinhardt heard the ceiling-high bookcase in one corner groan as Probst slid one side of it away from the wall and stepped into the studio. The bookcase hid the entrance to the tiny printing shop.

“Felix, you are early,” Probst said with a smile. He was a cheerful man, younger than Reinhardt, handsome and clean shaven with short-trimmed blond hair and an air of optimistic naivete that was a sharp contrast to Reinhardt’s persistently dark and gloomy countenance.

“I have some changes in the lead story,” Reinhardt said, taking a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket. “Not much, just a few things.”

“It is no problem,” the younger man answered. “The foot pedal broke on me again. I’m afraid the o-ld press is about to give up for good. Anyway I’m behind about half an hour.”

Every two weeks Probst printed a four-sheet underground newspaper called The Berlin Conscience. It was one of the last free voices left in the city. Its editor was Felix: Reinhardt. Probst also manufactured passports for political dissidents escaping from Germany. In fact, Probst was probably the best passport counterfeiter in the country.

Both the Conscience and his passport service were extremely dangerous enterprises. In public, Probst professed to be an ardent Nazi, a sham that had enabled him to escape detection by the Gestapo. Reinhardt was internationally famous. His articles appeared in newspapers in London, Paris, and New York, occasionally in The New Republic. He had escaped the wrath of the Gestapo only because he was so well known internationally but his situation grew more precarious by the day. His telephone was tapped and he was often followed. The Gestapo was looking for any reasonable excuse to silence Reinhardt forever.

Both men knew they were marking time with disaster. The Berlin Conscience was high on the Gestapo’s hit list and both men knew they would be killed if they were caught.

“One more issue,” Probst would say every other Thursday. “We have to stop, Felix, they’re getting too close.”

Reinhardt knew Probst was right. Every issue drew them closer to disaster. Yet every fortnight brought new revelations, new atrocities and decrees that both me-n felt compelled to reveal to the people, so they continued their dangerous enterprise. Sometimes Reinhardt would awaken sweating in the middle of the night, his discomfort caused by the hot breath of the Gestapo, whether real or imagined.

“So, the pedal is fixed,” Probst said. “Give me the corrections and I’ll make them. Go have a beer. Come back in thirty minutes.”

“Can I bring you something?”

“No, thank you. Go out the back way to the Hofbrau across the street. You won’t get too wet.”

“Danke,” Reinhardt said.

Felix Reinhardt could not have known when he left that his best friend had less than a minute to live. In fact, if Probst’s printing press had not broken down, Reinhardt would have died with him.

As they spoke, a gray command car pulled up in front of the building and four Sturmabteilung jumped out. The brownshirts were led by a stout, granite-faced sergeant, his nose streaked with the broken blood vessels that are the sign of a heavy drinker. They moved quickly, entering the stairway to the second floor and taking the steps two at a lime.

Reinhardt was on his way down the back stairs when the SA crashed into Probst’s studio.

“Oscar Probst?” he heard a gruff voice demand.

“What do you want?” Probst answered.

Reinhardt sneaked back up the stairs when he heard the commotion. He peered through the half-open door just as one of the brownshirts grabbed the tall oak bookcase at the rear of the artist’s studio and sent it crashing down. He kicked open the hidden door behind it and stalked into the small printing shop, looked around, picked up several sheets of copy from a table and quickly read them.

With a roar of anger, he tossed the papers in the air and putting a shoulder under the edge of one of the two tables where type fonts were stored, hefted it over. It smashed to the floor and hundreds of lead letters cascaded out.

“No, no!” Probst said and rushed toward the big man in the brown uniform. The brownshirt grabbed Probst by the shirt front.

“Traitor,” he snarled and shoved him back across the room. Then he turned over the second table.

“You swine!” Probst screamed.

They were his last words. The SA sergeant entered the studio and marched to the door of the printing room. As Probst charged forward again, the sergeant drew his Luger and shot him. The bullet tore into Probst’s chest and knocked the artist backward. His knees buckled but he didn’t fall. He looked at the SA sergeant with a mixture of