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Overview
Walter Wolff, an officer in the US Army’s art recovery unit, has been assigned to track down a priceless collection of gold coins stolen from a monastery in Austria. General Eisenhower believes the treasure could be melted down and used to finance the escape plans of high-ranking Nazi officials, including Adolf Hitler’s private secretary, Martin Bormann.
So Wolff sets out in pursuit of Bormann’s right-hand man, Rudolf von Zell, the last person known to possess the coins. His only lead is von Zell’s beautiful, enigmatic wife, Konstanze. But as Wolff works to win Konstanze’s trust, he finds himself falling in love with her. As their relationship intensifies, so too does the pressure to fulfill his mission—only at what cost?
Inspired by real events involving one of the Monuments Men, The Nazi’s Wife is an “outstanding story” featuring “exceptionally good writing” (The Daily Telegraph).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504046862 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
| Publication date: | 11/28/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 333 |
| Sales rank: | 631,351 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
He has published three exposés on the world of art and antiquities, twelve books of nonfiction, and seven novels—some under the pen name Mackenzie Ford—and from 1997 to 2007 was a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. Watson lives in London, where his interests include theatre, opera, and fishing.
Peter Watson has been a senioreditor at the London Sunday Times, a New York correspondentof the London Times, a columnist for theLondon Observer, and a contributor to the New YorkTimes. He has published three exposés on the world ofart and antiquities, and is the author of several booksof cultural and intellectual history. From 1997 to 2007he was a research associate at the McDonald Institutefor Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.He lives in London.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
1
I can only explain why I knew Konstanze was lying by going back to the very beginning. And that, I suppose, was the day I drove from Nuremberg to Frankfurt feeling just a little too pleased with myself. In Nuremberg I had recovered an entire collection of things which, I knew, would make all my colleagues emerald with envy. In an air-raid shelter, eight floors down, in the center of the city, I had located nothing less than the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, removed from Vienna in 1938. The collection included the Golden Scepter, the Imperial Sword, the Imperial Cloak, studded with diamonds, the Imperial Orb and Charlemagne's crown itself, in all its eleventh-century glory, with raw sapphires, rubies, amethysts and tipped with a jeweled cross. I could talk about nothing else and, if the story I am about to relate had not intervened, I would no doubt be talking about it still.
Frank Wren, my commanding officer, had congratulated me warmly on the phone when I had told him about the coup, and promptly relayed the facts to the press. Although I hadn't seen the stories, I knew I had made the papers in England, New York and France, as well as Germany and Austria. For a day I was famous. Like many people, I had learned to drink seriously during the war, and as I drove my jeep too fast between Nuremberg and our headquarters in Frankfurt, I was looking forward to a celebratory glass or two of Wren's wine. His job in real life was as a professor of classics at Harvard and he was a good deal smoother than I, a real New Englander. Tall and laconic, with that fine blond hair which, mysteriously, always stays in place, he wore a discreet blond mustache and the confident gentleness that comes from being raised among well-paid servants. And he always kept a stock of red Bordeaux, which, like the British, he referred to as claret.
It didn't work out as I hoped. "Walter, I have some bad news and I have some good news," Wren called out as I stepped into his office around five that afternoon. "The bad news is that I am requisitioning your jeep; I need it for someone more important." Who could be more important than me? I wondered humorously. I was the man who had just restored the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire, single-handed. "The good news is parked just under that window."
Our headquarters in those days were rather more sumptuous than they should have been. We were billeted in offices on the second floor of a building which had once belonged to the electrical giant I. G. Farben, and which, obligingly, the RAF had failed to bomb. The construction was made of pure white stone with lots of runnels and buttresses and that made it look rather like the bottom tier of an enormous wedding cake around a central courtyard. It was this courtyard which Frank Wren's office overlooked.
I stepped over to the window and peered out. Underneath were a row of bicycles, a wheelbarrow and a lawnmower. Wren had a sense of humor for there was also a dark blue 1938 BMW convertible about a hundred yards away.
He chuckled. "It's the one work of art I was allowed to loot. It used to belong to an SS man who's missing. I hope your legs aren't too long for it."
"It's beautiful," I said. And it was: a long low hood, shiny chrome radiator, those sweeping mud guards that you hardly see any more, a cream-colored leather top, what looked like a proper walnut dashboard and huge headlamps, each one about a foot across. All it lacked was Zelda Fitzgerald in the passenger seat.
But Wren never did anything without good reason, so I asked calmly, "Where am I going in it?"
"Aha!" he purred, pleased that his trap had worked.
"Salzburg. Ever been?"
I shook my head.
"A beautiful city. Pretty river, dramatic gorge, baroque churches galore, snowy mountains, Mozart, of course, and saibling — a lake trout you must try. Lucky man."
"There has to be a catch."
He waved me toward a chair by his desk and held up a sheet of paper which I could see was a long telegram. "This is from my opposite number in Salzburg, a Major Hobel. Down there they call it the von Zell affair. If you can sort this one out, you might just get a medal. Three interrogators have failed already. Even Ike himself is interested in the outcome."
In this manner I was introduced to the events which were to have such a profound effect on my life. At the time, which was late March, our intelligence people were just getting wind of stirrings in the Nazi underground to the effect that the conduit set up in the months following the end of the war was now active and that some leading characters who, until then, had been lying low, were now on the move, bound for safety in South America.
"If von Zell is running this conduit, and has melted the coins down to pay for it, then he has virtually unlimited funds. All sorts of people could get away. You can see why our side is so worried." Wren handed me a sheaf of documents. "Eisenhower has signed your orders personally, giving you all sorts of power, should you need it."
I looked down at the papers. Sure enough, the signature on the bottom of each sheet was General Eisenhower's, a bold, flowing hand, in fountain-pen ink. I still have those orders, framed, here in my bedroom. Next to Konstanze's picture.
"Why me?"
"The Crown Jewels. The general read the newspapers."
Flattering. But it also meant I'd be watched. That there would be no room for failure. I would live to regret the notoriety which the Crown Jewels affair had brought me.
"When do I start?" I was still hoping to taste some of Wren's claret.
He inspected his watch. "In your new car, it's an eight or nine-hour drive to Salzburg. I told them you'd travel overnight and report to Hobel some time tomorrow morning."
Terrific. But I was not exactly bashful in those days, not backward in coming forward, as our British colleagues used to say. "I was hoping I might have earned a glass or two of your Château Croque-Monsieur, sir. A celebration."
Wren's eyes sparkled wickedly. He stood up and walked to the window. "There is a claret known as Château Croque-Micholte, Wolff." He looked at me sideways. "I have a case or two and delicious it is. But Croque-Monsieur, I believe, is a sandwich. Sorry." He grinned as I hurried out, blushing despite myself.
I filled the BMW with gas from the depot and drove back to my quarters, still smarting. I would never be as smooth as Wren. At that time I had rooms with someone named Maurice Ghent, another art recovery type, an Englishman from Cambridge and an expert on Italian paintings. We lived in Offenbach, just outside Frankfurt, in the top half of a large, rambling house surrounded by conifers. The bottom half of the house was uninhabited but we shared the place with three squirrels — red ones, which are rare now but were less so then. One had a black smudge on its upper lip so we had named him Adolf. The other two, naturally, became Hermann and Eva.
After a day baking in the sun, the conifers gave off a sweet tang which permeated the house as I climbed the stairs. I let myself in with the key we kept hidden in a German SS helmet we had found in the attic of the house. The helmet was the only bone of contention between Maurice and me. SS helmets were quite rare and we both wanted to take it home as a souvenir. Sooner or later we would fight over it. As I opened the door I heard the panicky rustle of squirrel feet escaping through the hole underneath the washbasin in the kitchen.
There was a note from Maurice propped against the mantelshelf: "Congrats, on HRE Crown Jewels," he had scrawled. "Shall be in Vienna for a few days or weeks, staying at the Palace Hotel. People at the Kunsthistorisches Museum have discovered yet more things missing. Phone me — sorry, call me — if you get the chance. Join me if, by some miracle, you get leave. I can get opera tickets and that gives a man, even you, sex appeal in Vienna." It was signed "M" but there was a postscript. "Dear boy, have a good look at Hermann next time he comes over to eat our shirts. I'm no biologist but I'm sure he's pregnant."
Grinning, I packed fresh socks and underwear, and took some chocolate, cigarettes and nylons from a little store which Maurice and I kept in the house; in our line they often proved useful "gifts" when people were not being quite as cooperative as they might. There was a little whiskey left, two gulps of which swamped the memory of Wren's Château Croquewhatever, and I took the rest to the bathroom, where I soaked myself for half an hour or more amid clouds of steam.
It was nearly dark when I left the key in the helmet and went back out to the car. Being March, the air was already cooling, although the smack of the conifers still hovered in the air, promising yet warmer days ahead.
I put up the convertible's top, relishing my luck. I might have an all-night drive in front of me but the BMW was practically brand new. There were fewer than 10,000 kilometers on the clock and, once I was behind the wheel, my nostrils were swept with the smells of new leather and polish. The gear lever slid around in its box with smooth yet positive efficiency, like an elbow or a shoulder joint.
At that time, in Europe, the roads at night were just as busy as in daytime, the only difference being that most of the traffic was army trucks, shaking the ground as they wound along in convoy. There was also a great deal of hitchhiking — soldiers rejoining their units at the last minute or civilians traveling around looking for work. A BMW was a luxury most of them had never known, so just before I joined the main autobahn outside Frankfurt, I stopped to pick up two figures holding a board with "München" written on it. As I drew alongside them my heart sank, for I noticed how small they were and concluded they must be Italians. I didn't speak the language very well in those days and a six-hour journey in such company was not a pleasing prospect. I disliked Mussolini's Italy almost as much as I loathed Hitler's Germany. I was just about to accelerate off into the darkness when I noticed that one of the "Italians" had long hair, very long hair. They were both wearing trousers but they were women. That was quite different. I stopped the car.
The one with long hair spoke in German. "Anywhere toward Munich will help, sir." Despite the "sir," she wore a proud, rather arrogant expression on her face, which had high cheekbones, a pointed chin and a slightly crooked nose. But sensuous lips that never quite closed — an alluring if not a classically attractive face. She also had what, in the darkness, looked like an enormous bosom. As she leaned forward to talk to me, her breasts hung, beneath her white shirt, round and smooth and impossible to hide. She saw my eyes stray involuntarily from her face, and a strand of embarrassed contempt slid across her features.
"I am going to Salzburg," I said quickly. "Via Munich. Please, get in."
She turned and said something to her companion that I didn't catch. Then she got in the front with me. The other girl, who had severely cropped blond hair and was as flat as the first girl was big, clambered into the back with their luggage, which, I noticed, wasn't much. Perfume was hard to come by in Germany in those days, but as the girls got into the car, the BMW filled with the unmistakable odor of women, sweet, warm and, in some indefinable way, cleaner than it had been.
The blonde in the back introduced herself as Elisabetta and her companion as Inge. She had a much deeper voice and, as the journey progressed, showed herself as the more dominant of the two. Inge, or more probably Inge's bosom, got them the lifts but then Elisabetta took over.
They were, it transpired, art students at Munich University who had just been north to see some medieval paintings that had recently been excavated at a church in Lübeck. They were, naturally, very interested when I told them I was with the ARU, and, as it happens, they had read about my recovery of the Holy Roman Crown Jewels. Inge's field was medieval painting — which is why they had been to Lübeck — but Elisabetta, like me, was interested more in architecture, churches and monasteries mainly.
Inge and Elisabetta are not central to my story, but I enjoy recalling our encounter. Our joint interest in art led all three of us into bed together the next morning in Munich — the only time I have enjoyed the favors of two women or of lesbians. And, I also mention them because of something Elisabetta said that night in the car, something that was to prove vital much later on.
Our escapade made me arrive very late in Salzburg and got me off on the wrong footing with my new commanding officer, Major Maximilian Hobel.
2
The major could have been more welcoming, though, in fairness to him, I didn't exactly hurry to report. To begin with, I was feeling pretty happy about my good luck in meeting Inge and Elisabetta. I was also aching with hunger, lovemaking having taken the place that day of breakfast. And it was, in any case, such a golden day when I parked my car on the Franz Josef Quay, overlooking the Salzach River, and so close to lunchtime, that I sauntered in the sun across the cathedral square to where I could see a small brasserie. There I tasted my first saibling, the fish recommended by Frank Wren, and sank three, or maybe it was four, glasses of beer. So, by the time I strolled into the local offices of the recovery unit, across the river on Schwartzstrasse, it must have been 2:30 in the afternoon and I suspect there was beer on my breath.
"I expected you this morning, Wolff!" Hobel squealed. "First thing. What happened? Just because you've been written about in the newspapers doesn't mean you can come and go as you please. I repeat — what happened?"
If I had told him the truth I doubt whether it would have improved the situation. Hobel was a small man, in all senses. He was bald and fat and, as if that was not already horrible enough, he had a squeaky voice and viscous, bulging eyes that seemed dangerously big for their sockets. I quickly realized that Hobel was the type of person who was happy only when he was unhappy. Nothing could please him, certainly not the kind of morning I had just spent with Inge and Elisabetta. I made up a story.
"I was stopped by the police, sir. The German police."
He sucked in air, like a puzzled goose.
"Yessir. Because of my car. I have a fairly new BMW, a convertible. Major Wren gave it to me yesterday — temporarily, of course, until he can get another jeep for me. But it's an unusual model and, as I say, fairly new. It used to belong to an SS officer who has disappeared so it's perhaps not surprising that the police thought I had stolen it. Anyway, I was stopped near Ingolstadt and it took hours to convince them that the car really did belong to me."
It was extraordinary how, once you were embarked on a lie, it took on a life of its own. You didn't have to make it up; it was as if it was there, waiting to be uncovered, like the smooth sculptures embedded in one of Michelangelo's rough pieces of stone.
Hobel was looking at me in a strange way, staring fixedly, as if I had just told him Hitler was alive, after all, and living happily ever after with Eva Braun in South America.
"You ... have ... a BMW ..." he choked. "A brand-new ... convertible. All to yourself." It was clear that it would not be easy to get on the right side of Maximilian Hobel. He had taken a dislike to me from the moment he set eyes on me, and over the next few weeks nothing I did pleased him. I soon gave up trying.
Still, while he was busy being jealous about my good fortune with the BMW, at least he seemed to have accepted my excuse for being so late. It was not mentioned again.
He pressed a button on his desk and a woman sergeant stuck her head around the door.
"Lucy, tell Lieutenant Hartt to step in, please."
The commander looked back to me. "You'll share an office with Hartt. There's a desk in his room that you can use and he is the officer most familiar with the von Zell affair." I judged his accent as somewhere out Chicago way. He lifted his feet onto the desk between us. "They say you're a crack interrogator, Wolff. You'd better be. Mrs. von Zell is one tough lady. She's been interrogated three times already and there's been no progress. The last guy came back convinced that she has no idea where her old man is. It's a mess." Hobel uncrossed and recrossed his legs, loosening his tie at the same time. "I understand General Eisenhower is personally interested in this case?"
I nodded. "He signed my orders."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Nazi's Wife"
by .
Copyright © 1985 Peter Watson.
Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
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