Bad Company

with the SS sounds just about right.”

Kelly and von Berger waited to give them a chance to slip down through the edge of the forest and move behind the church into the graveyard. Von Berger watched for movement through the glasses.

“Now,” he said, and Kelly drove them down the hill and parked beside the other vehicles.

Von Berger led the way up the steps, pulling on his leather gloves, and Kelly followed, holding the Thompson across his chest. Von Berger eased open the door and stepped in, followed by Kelly.

The Ukrainians were scattered around the room, some sitting at tables, a number standing at the bar, a couple behind the bar serving drinks. The leader was a Hauptsturmfuhrer, a brute of a man in a soiled uniform, his face dirty and unshaven. He had a young woman on each knee, their clothes torn, faces bruised, eyes swollen from weeping. One by one, the men noticed von Berger and stopped talking.

There was total silence. Von Berger stood there, his legs apart, his hands in the pockets of the black leather coat, holding it apart, displaying that magnificent uniform, the medals.

“Your name?”

“Gorsky,” the Hauptsturmfuhrer said, as a kind of reflex.

“Ah. Ukrainian.”

It was the way von Berger said it that the Ukrainian didn’t like. “And who the hell are you?”

“Your superior officer, Sturmbahnfuhrer Baron Max von Berger. It was my wife, Baroness von Berger, and my son, along with fifteen others, that you butchered at Schloss Adler and Neustadt.”

Men were already reaching for weapons. Kelly lifted his Thompson, and suddenly Gorsky pulled the two girls across his knees in front of him so that only half his face showed.

“So what are you going to do about it? Take them, boys,” he shouted.

Von Berger’s hand came out of his right pocket with the Luger and he shot Gorsky twice in the left side of the skull, narrowly missing the girls, who dropped to the floor as Gorsky went backward in the chair.

The carnage began, Kelly spraying the bar area. A side window crashed open and Ritter and Hanson fired through. Some of the Ukrainians turned to run and flung open the doors to the kitchen, only to find Hoffer and Schneider. There was an exchange of fire, but not for long. There were dead men everywhere, just a few still moving. Hanson had stopped a bullet in the shoulder and Schneider in his left arm.

Von Berger took the Mauser from his other pocket and tossed it to Hoffer. “Karl. Finish them.”

“For God’s sake,” Kelly said.

“It is his right.”

Hoffer found five men still alive and shot each one in the head. The girls had run for it, screaming. Ritter had opened a battle pack and was putting a field dressing on Hanson, while Schneider waited.

“So that’s it?” Kelly surveyed the bodies.

“No. Now we go home and bury our dead. After that, we are yours to dispose of.” Von Berger put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “I am in your debt eternally. I will repay you.”

“Repay me?” Kelly was mystified.

“A matter of honor.”

He was, of course, handled personally by top officers in both British and American intelligence, since he had been one of Hitler’s aides in those last few months in the Bunker. His account of events was fascinating and recorded in the smallest detail, but for Allied intelligence there was a problem with Max von Berger. On the one hand, he was unquestionably SS, and a commander. On the other, he was a brave and gallant soldier who seemed never to have involved himself in the more unsavory aspects of the Nazi regime. Never involved himself in anything remotely connected with the Jewish pogroms. In fact, it was soon established that he had had a dangerous secret all along – one of von Berger’s great-grandmothers on the maternal side had been Jewish.

He had also never been a member of the Nazi Party, though it was true that most of the German population had also not been members of the party.

Which left only the question of the flight out of Berlin. Obviously, von Berger mentioned nothing to them of his interview with the Fuhrer. Indeed, he had put together a reasonable story with Ritter, while they were still together.

The story was this: Ritter had been ordered to Berlin in the Storch as a backup plane in case there were problems with the Arado assigned to fly out the new Luftwaffe commander, von Greim. There had been no problems, however. Von Berger, as one of Hitler’s aides, knowing that the plane was languishing in Goebbels’s garage and that the end was only hours away, had seized the opportunity to get out and had taken two of his men with him.

It was a perfectly simple explanation. There was no reason not to accept it, and Ritter backed it to the hilt, and so, in the end, that was that. As prisoners of war, they were disposed of in various ways. Many were sent to England for farm work. Amongst them was Max von Berger, who was posted to a camp in West Sussex. The regulations were minimal and each day he was allocated to a local manor house and its home farm, along with several other prisoners. There was nothing unusual in this. Officers up to the level of general found themselves working in such a way.

The truth was that the other prisoners deferred to him, called him “Herr Baron” with respect, and the owner of the estate, an aging lord, soon realized he had someone special on board, and not only that, a countryman by nature.

Before long, he was running things. The war was over, the villagers in Hawkley were decent people, and gradually the Germans were accepted, even for a pint in the pub. And then, at the end of 1947, German prisoners began to be returned home, and amongst them was Max von Berger.

It was snowing when he arrived in Neustadt off the local bus. It drove away and, a bag in his hand, he went up the steps and entered the inn, the Eagle. Local men were in there drinking beer, some eating, and he saw old Hartmann by the bar and Karl Hoffer and young Schneider at a table nearby eating stew. Someone turned and saw him.

“My God, Baron.”

Everyone turned, the entire room went still. Hoffer moved first, jumping up, running to meet him, in an excess of emotion, embracing him.

“Baron, we wondered where you were. I’ve been back six months and brought Schneider with me. His entire family was killed in the bombing in Hamburg.”

Von Berger put an arm around Schneider, who was actually sobbing. “Come on, boy, we got out of Berlin, didn’t we? There’s nothing to cry about.”

He called to the landlord, “The bill’s on me, my friend, let the beer flow.”

He turned to Hoffer. “I’m so pleased to see you. Let’s sit down.”

In a corner booth, they talked, young Schneider listening. “We’re getting by,” Hoffer said. “It’s mainly subsistence farming, but we’re all in it together. Everyone is taken care of.”

“And you?”

“Well, I act as bailiff. It gives me something to do.”

“You haven’t…”

“Found someone? No, Baron.”

“What about the Schloss?”

“We had the Americans for two years, so it’s in good condition. The thing you don’t know about is the… situation with Holstein Heath.”

“And what would that be?”

“When the border between the East and West was agreed on by the Allies, we should have been inside the Eastern zone, and Communist.”

“I thought we were in the Western zone?”

“Well, no, that’s it. We aren’t there either. The whole of the estate isn’t in either of the zones. Someone made a mistake drafting the map.”

Max von Berger was astonished. “You mean we’re a kind of independent state?” He laughed out loud. “Like