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 naïveté 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 surprise and horror.

The sergeant’s attack on Probst spurred on the other three brownshirts. They all pulled their pistols and the room exploded with gunfire. Several more shots tore into Probst’s body, knocking him against his desk. He fell backward across it, arms outstretched, his legs dangling to the floor. Half a dozen bullet holes had chewed up his sweater. Blood began to ooze out.

Reinhardt held his hand over his mouth to trap his own scream of horror. He could do nothing for Probst, so he bolted down the stairs, his eyes darting back toward the rear door of the studio as he rushed down the steps sideways, expecting to see the Sturmabteilung assassins come after him. Instead he heard them smashing things in the print shop and in Probst’s studio. Then there was a dull thud and someone yelled, “Fire!”

My God, Reinhardt realized, they’re setting the whole building on

He slipped out the back entrance into the rainy afternoon crowd that scurried along the street and walked away as quickly as he could.

Ahead of him a woman on the street pointed behind him toward the building.

“Look,” she cried out, “that building is burning.”

Reinhardt didn’t stop or turn around. He tried not to run, not to be too obvious but he was overwhelmed with fear, fear that they were right behind him, fear that they would shoot him in the back. He half-ran, half-walked to the corner a block away, then he stopped to look back for the first time. Flames broiled out of the second-story windows of the freestanding building. Reinhardt’s heart was racing and his mouth was dry. He leaned against the building to get out of the rain and watched.

A few moments passed. Two brownshirts emerged from the back door, looked up and down the street. A Nazi command car, its red and black swastika flags flapping from the fenders, wheeled around the corner and stopped beside them. The ugly sergeant who had fired the first shot at Probst stood up in the open car and pointed up and down the rain-soaked street. His orders were interrupted by the arrival a fire truck.

Reinhardt squeezed tighter against the wall. Standing in the shadows, he watched as the firefighters dawdled setting up their hoses. Several SA stood around, encouraging them to take their time.

“Too late anyway,” one of them said. “The building is gone. Why waste water, eh? Let the rain put it out.”

They all began to laugh.

The roof of the building was now ablaze, the flames snapping up at the sheets of rain.

The brownshirts fanned out from the building, looking through the gathering crowd. Several of them had photographs which they showed to the people staring at the fire.

“Listen to me,” one of the SA yelled to the crowd while he held up a photograph. “You see this man, Felix Reinhardt? I know you recognize his picture. He is very famous. We have orders to arrest him for crimes against the Führer and the Fatherland. Anyone who hides him or fails to turn him over to us will be shot. Has anyone seen him? Speak up!”

Reinhardt hurried away from the scene. The nearest tram stop was two blocks away. A crowd was already gathered there, huddled under umbrellas. He headed straight for it, holding his head down against the driving summer rain. He could not return to his house, they would be watching it. Nor could he risk a taxicab. He needed the security of a crowd. A few more people gathered at the streetcar stop and he crowded in with them, holding a newspaper in front of his face, pretending to read as he peered over the top. He tried to slow his breathing but he had never been this afraid in his life.

Two blocks away the streetcar rounded the corner and crept toward them. It was still a block away when two brown- shirts started down the street in his direction. The rain began to slacken. They stopped and looked up and down the street, started to cross toward him, stopping occasionally to show the photograph to wet and annoyed pedestrians.

Sweat mingled with the rain dribbling down the side of Reinhardt’s face. He could feel its dampness under his arms, spreading down under his jacket.

The streetcar pulled up and he clambered aboard. It pulled away with a groan as the two brownshirts reached his side of the street. One of them walked briskly alongside the streetcar as it pulled away, peering intently in the windows. Reinhardt turned his back to the brownshirt, watching the SA’s reflection in the window as the stormtrooper walked the length of the car checking the pedestrians from outside. He could feel his own heart beating in his temples. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, exhaling slowly to calm down.

Thank God, he missed me.

He rode the bus for seven or eight blocks until the passengers began to thin out, then got off and flagged down a taxicab.

“Take me to the American embassy,” he told the driver. “It’s on the Munich highway.”

“Yes, I know it,” the driver said. He looked in his rearview mirror. “Are you an American?” he asked.

“No, no,” Reinhardt answered quickly. “I m a carpenter. They want me to do some work for them.”

“Make them pay good, eh?” the driver said with a smile.

“Oh yes, they will pay dearly,” Reinhardt answered, trying to look relaxed.

When they were two blocks from the embassy he saw the two touring cars parked across the street from its arched gate. Two men in black raincoats, their black felt hats pulled down over their eyes, were talking to the Marine guard at the gate. Four others sat in the cars across the street with the doors standing open.

The Gestapo.

“Stop here at the tobacco shop,” Reinhardt said suddenly. “I need to get some cigarettes.”

“Right. You want me to wait?”

“Not necessary. It’s only two blocks more. The walk will do me good.”

He paid the driver, entered the store and bought a package of cigarettes, then left, walked away from the embassy and turned a corner. He hurried to a phone booth halfway down the block and stood with his back to the Street as he gave the operator the American attaché’s private number. He was sweating again, his breath labored. He could taste fear in his mouth. It seemed forever before the secretary answered.

“Colonel Meredith’s office.”

“The colonel, please,” Reinhardt said as he checked both ends of the street.

“Who may I say is calling?”

Were the phones tapped? he wondered. Could he take a chance?

“Please, it is a matter of life and death. May I speak to the colonel.”

“Can’t you give me your name?” she asked.

He hesitated a moment then said, “No. Just give me the colonel, for God’s sake! Please.”

There was a pause. For a terrible moment he thought he’d been disconnected. Then he heard a click and a blessed human voice.

“This is Colonel Meredith. Who is this, please?”

“This is an old friend, Colonel. You told me if I ever needed help I could call you . .

“I recognize your voice, don’t say any more,” the colonel interrupted. “Are you close by?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Two blocks, three blocks?”

“Two blocks east. Side street phone booth.”

“Do you remember the place we went for frankfurters?”

Reinhardt looked over his shoulder. An American food store known as The Brooklyn Delicatessen was directly across the street.

“Yes,” he said, and wondered why he was whispering.

“Go there now. Immediately. I’ll have somebody there in two minutes.”

“Danke. Please hurry.”

Reinhardt walked briskly across the street and entered the store. As he walked in the proprietor was answering the phone. He listened for a moment, looked at Reinhardt, said something, hung up and jerked his head toward the rear of the store.

Reinhardt went straight down the aisle and through a set of curtains into a tiny, cramped office with a rear door, an old roll-top desk stacked high with correspondence, and shelves of canned goods lining one wall. He waited, peering cautiously through the curtains. He could see the phone booth across the street. Moments crawled by.

A Mercedes pulled up at the booth and four SA troopers jumped out. One checked the booth, the other three looked up and down the street. Then one of them pointed at the store.

Panic seized the tousled little man. He turned and rushed out the back door.

Two men stood just outside the doer, huddled in raincoats, hands stuffed in pockets, rain trickling off the brims of their hats. One held open the rear door of a sedan. A third man sat behind the steering wheel. Steam curled from the exhaust of the car.

“Herr Reinhardt?” one of them said.

Reinhardt’s terrified eyes jerked in their sockets.

“It’s all right, sir,” said the taller of the two, grabbing him by the arm. “I’m Major Trace, U.S. embassy. Get in the car, quickly.”

“They’re right behind me. The SA are right behind me!” he cried as he jumped in the backseat. The two Americans followed, one in the front, Trace in the back with Reinhardt. The car roared away before they got the doors fully closed.

“On the floor, please,” Trace said firmly. Reinhardt dropped on his knees on the floor and the major threw a blanket over him.

“No matter what happens, don’t move,” Trace said.

Huddled under the blanket, Reinhardt almost vomited with fear. He felt the car skid around a corner, heard its horn blaring. The next few seconds seemed like hours. He felt the car slow down for an instant, then stop. He could hear muffled voices outside the car.

My God, I am caught, Reinhardt thought. I am dead.

Then the car started up again. A few seconds later, Trace said, “Okay, sir, you can breathe easy, you’re on U.S. soil.”