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“An older weapon,” said Hermann Göring. “Not the Kar 98s our troops are using now. But a reliable sniper rifle. The shooter probably fought in the first world war. Or it’s the best weapon he could get hold of.”
The room went silent. Bormann knew the next question.
“But was it him?”
These words came from the corner of the room, where the Führer, Adolf Hitler, stood with his left arm curled behind his back.
“Was it him?” he repeated. “The same man who tried to kill me at Berchtesgaden? The man who nearly blew me up the Bürgerbräukeller? What is the name they call him—der Jäger? Was it him?”
Bormann cleared his throat. “Mein Führer, to answer that, we will want to recover the bullet from your body double’s skull. We have yet—”
“You told me that would-be assassin was dead!” The Führer was furious. “You told me that the man who tried to kill me at Berchtesgaden was dead!” He paced the small, poorly lit room with its concrete walls. “You told me you found too much blood on his escape path, that he couldn’t have survived! You told me this, Heinrich!” he said to Himmler. “You told me this, Hermann!” to Göring. “You, Martin, told me this!”
The men bowed their heads. They’d never guaranteed to their Führer that the man at Berchtesgaden had perished. They’d allowed him to believe it, but the truth was that the SS and Gestapo had searched high and low for der Jäger—“the hunter”—to no avail.
“Why do you fail me like this?” Hitler mumbled, continuing to pace with his halting, stooped shuffle, the veins nearly popping on his forehead. “Perhaps you wish it had been me whose head just exploded on that balcony?”
The others quickly denounced the thought, assuring Hitler of how grateful they were that Providence spared him once more, how eagerly they would trade their lives for his.
“It was him. I know it was him. I can…” Hitler stopped, cupped his right hand. “I can feel it. It was him.” He turned to Himmler. “I want this man found.”
“We will find him, mein Führer,” said Himmler, snapping to attention. “We will find him and fill his body with bullets.”
“No. No, no, no!” Hitler slammed his hand on a table. “You will find him and bring him to me.”
105
May 1943
Jodenbuurt
Nieuwe Kerkstraat Amsterdam
IN A FLAT LOCATED on Nieuwe Kerkstraat in the center of the Jodenbuurt, or Jewish Quarter, Lars von der Haas lifted his head from the pillow. He blinked himself out of his sleepy trance and tried to focus on the words coming from the street outside.
“Alle Joden moeten zich voorbereiden op hun vertrek!” a male voice bellowed.
Lars looked over at his wife, Annika, who had not stirred. In the corner of the room, their eleven-year-old daughter, Dahlia, also remained in blissful slumber.
Lars moved to the window in the den and pulled the curtain that looked out from their ground-floor flat onto the street. A truck rolled slowly by with a loudspeaker on top. Walking alongside it were men carrying rifles and automatic weapons. The Ordnungspolizei—the Order Police, shorthanded as Orpo by some, by others as the Grüne Polizei or Green Police for their uniform color.
“Niemand mag zonder begeleiding op straat zijn!” blared the voice through the loudspeaker. “Alle bruggen in de wijk zijn verhoogd!”
Lars felt something sink in his chest. It was happening. He always knew it might. The Jews, already confined within the Jewish Quarter, were now being rounded up for departure to labor camps. And though the entire Jewish Quarter was enclosed by a fence, the Nazis were announcing that they’d pulled up all the bridges, too, to prevent any escape.
Lars craned his neck to see the end of the street, where he confirmed that the Magere Brug, the narrow bridge over the Amstel River, was raised to nearly ninety degrees.
“What’s happening?” asked Annika, pulling on a housecoat.
Lars tried for a grim smile. “It’s time.”
The door to the other bedroom opened. Lars’s father, Diederik, his wispy white hair standing on end, squinted at his son. “They’ve come for us? This is it?”
“It will be all right,” said Lars, trying to convince himself as much as the others. “We have made this decision.”
The decision was not to run, not to hide. Jews who tried to hide, when caught, had met with certain death, when the Nazis invaded and easily captured the Netherlands in 1940. And running and hiding with their young daughter—not to mention his parents, who’d already fled Germany following Hitler’s rise to power ten years earlier in 1933—would be exceptionally difficult. His mother, Verena, had terrible asthma and needed considerable medical attention. And his father was not in the best of health, either.
The decision, instead, was to keep their heads down, draw no attention to themselves, and try to live a normal life—as normal as one could while wearing yellow badges on their arms with the Star of David, being forced from their chosen occupations (Lars, a university physics professor; Annika, a pediatrician), remaining locked in a ghetto, forbidden from driving to work or using telephones, not to mention enduring daily insults and occasional beatings.
