What goes on within these walls?
Looking so innocent, yet inspiring such terror.
October 3rd – 1935 Berlin.
It had taken him more than two weeks to sort out the various links and hints of the file, get a team together and go through each lead, to figure out where it would end up. It was all gathered around him now, in a four room office in the uppermost basement floor of the Gestapo HQ.
Beyer, sitting at his desk at the back of the room, slowly let his eyes follow the lines on the blackboard, from where they started, at the dead spy, to where they each vanished into the unknown. No matter the fact that Gestapo had information on everybody, there was only so much to derive from papers describing the past. Now it was time to act, although with a velvet touch, so as not to reveal their hand prematurely.
“
What do you think Kurt?” He asked his partner, who was a natural part of the team, since Dietrich wouldn’t even consider doing something as dangerous and delicate as this without the one man, he absolutely trusted, by his side.
“
It’s risky, but it needs to be done, if we want to get anywhere.” Kurt replied.
Beyer agreed with him. It had to be done. Mentally, he ran over the list of events outlined in the file, which was locked safely within the big box beside his desk. At first glance, it all seemed so simple:
Lenz Eichmann, 47, a senior functionary of the Reichsbank, the German national bank had committed suicide, or at least, so it seemed.
The initial police investigation, standard procedure for a man of Herr Eichmanns position, seemed to indicate that nothing was out of the ordinary, except for the fact that Herr Eichmanns widow, Amelia Eichmann, continuously claimed that her husband would never commit suicide and that their life was a happy one. This last statement seemed credible, based on the Eichmann home, which was a beautiful small house, filled with fine furniture, art and silverware. In fact, so nice was the interior of the home that one of the officers got suspicious about how the Eichmanns could possibly afford such luxury, since even though Herr Eichmann was a
senior functionary, his salary could not possibly account for the money spent here.
At first, it was suspected that Herr Eichmann might’ve committed fraud in the bank and that this might in some way have led to his suicide, but a careful examination of his records as well as all accounts under his jurisdiction at the bank, brought no evidence of such actions to light, in fact, quite to the opposite, it was discovered that Herr Eichmann had created several accounts under various aliases, but all leading back to himself, with a large sum of money, completely out of his economical reach, which seemed to have been fed
into the bank, not taken out of it. This, of course, baffled the investigators, who sent a request to the Gestapo for all information available on Lenz and Amelia Eichmann, as well as any family and close friends of the couple. Little was found in the files and since it didn’t conflict with the Gestapo’s area of interest, or so it was believed, the files were sent to the investigators. What they found, however, most definitely fell within the area of interest of the Gestapo.
Lenz Eichmann had a very close friend, Otto Ritter, 51, whose nephew, Florian Ritter, 26, worked and lived in Britain. This in itself wasn’t particularly special, although it did catch the investigators’ interest and they looked into it. After a lot of digging, the necessity of which seemed rather odd, the investigators found that the nephew worked at the Bank of England.
On the theory that this might in some way be a case of company espionage, although the funds in the hands of Herr Eichmann seemed to indicate something even more serious, the investigators continued to dig and found that Herr Ritter’s sister, the mother of Florian, died at his birth and that he was then brought up in England with an aunt, Herr Ritter’s Fathers Sister, Johanna Ritter. At this point, being thorough professionals, the investigators approached the Abwehr and asked them to, discreetly, obtain information about Frau Ritter and Florian Ritter’s life in Britain. It was soon discovered that Johanna Ritter had died many years ago. This again could have been rather innocent, but when another employee of the Bank of England was approached on the matter of Florian Ritter, it was discovered that although his name was registered there as an employee, no-one there had ever heard of him, not even in the department where he was supposed to work.
At this point, it was discovered that Florian Ritter was, in fact,
not in Britain, he was in Germany, presumably on holiday, although he had not, at any point, been seen at the Ritter residence and Herr Ritter claimed he had not seen his nephew in some years. The investigators called the Gestapo and presented the case to them, since it seemed more and more clear that the case was outside of their jurisdiction and belonged in that of the State Police. However, when two agents of the Gestapo went to Florian Ritter’s address to question him, they found him in his bed, dead from an overdose of morphine. A thorough search of his rented apartment led to the discovery of several sets of identity papers, all either bearing the name of Florian Ritter or his image. One in particular was of interest, since it identified him as a member of MI6, the British intelligence service. Why he had brought such identification with him confounded the agents, but they reasoned that there had to be some reason for it, even if they didn’t what it was supposed to be. At least not yet.
Fact was however, that Florian Ritter had undeniably been identified as a British Spy and it stood to reason that his uncle either knew about it or was somehow involved with it. When the agents returned to Herr Ritter’s home however, they found clear evidence that he had fled in haste. Still, it took them little time to track him down, but before they could arrest him, he met with a man, unknown to the agents. As they moved in to arrest both men, the unknown person drew a gun and fired upon them, while Ritter tried to run for it once more.
Unfortunately the unknown man was killed in the shootout, which also saw the death of some civilians, but he was later identified by the Gestapo as Jürgen Keller and much more disturbingly, as an agent of the Abwehr.
After the shooting, one agent pursued Herr Ritter, who in his desperation hurled himself out in front of a car, to avoid capture. He is currently held under guard at a state hospital, lying in a coma from which it is unknown, whether or not he will awake. He does however, apart from being in a coma, only have minor injuries.
The most troubling part of this affair however, is the fact that the body of Jürgen Keller and all paperwork associated with him have disappeared from Gestapo keeping. At the same time, one of the two agents responsible for his death have had a fatal accident in his service car, while the other very narrowly survived what is suspected to be an attempt at poisoning. Whoever is involved in this is unknown, but it seems obvious that someone at the Gestapo Headquarter must be involved.
Kurt meanwhile, knowing his friend and superior had kept quiet, allowing him to think in peace. He looked at the wall instead, mentally tracing the different clues and links, the team had uncovered in the last couple of weeks:
Several employees within the Reichsbank had been arrested by the Gestapo and questioned, most of them found to be of little or no interest. Two however stood out above the rest, the first being Meinhard Abt, a friend and colleague of Eichmann, who, it was discovered, had supplied Eichmann with access to the highest levels of financial secrets of the Reich. Those secrets and dealings of course, which the bank had been involved in, which was, unsurprisingly, most of them.
The other person was Ilsa Hahn, the private secretary of Walther Strauss, one of the members of the Board of Directors. Herr Strauss of course, had been thoroughly interrogated as well, but so far it didn’t seem as if he was involved. It didn’t make any difference of course. He would remain in the custody of the Gestapo for a very long time. As for Ilsa Hahn, she admitted to have had an affair with Eichmann for several years, something which several of her colleagues eagerly confirmed. Her part in the Eichmann Group, as the Reichsbank operation was now called, had been to keep an eye on the Board of Directors through her boss's private files, as well as, of course, providing access for Eichmann to Strauss’s and the BoDs papers. All in all, these three people seemed to have access to all the important information within the bank due to their jobs. It was a rather unpleasant surprise to discover just how vulnerable the Reich’s financial secrets really were.
This seemed to be the limits of the Eichmann Group, which was selling secret documents through Ritter and Florian to the British, in return for money, lots of money. But while this operation was serious enough and had dangerously weakened the position of the Reich, in and off itself, it was neither the most important nor the most dangerous discovery.
When they changed their focus from Lenz Eichmann to Otto Ritter, the team discovered that they had put their hand into the proverbial hornet's nest:
Herr Ritter had in his life held several positions within the pre-Nazi government and it seemed that during that time, he had made quite a few connections with various people, some of which continued to be part of the government structure, albeit in lesser places and some of which held positions, a few quite high, within the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. This was where it got really complicated, since a few of the names discovered in the search held titles of considerable power within the Third Reich. One name, however, stood out from the rest. Not because of the level of power possessed by the person, but rather because of the position that person held, a position within the Gestapo itself. It seemed they had found their traitor.
Getting hold of this person however, would carry immense risks, both personally to Mauer and Beyer, but also professionally, since the chance that this particular person operated alone within the Gestapo was literally none and neither Beyer nor Mauer dared to let their team dig into this anymore. They might already have gone too far, since whether or not the team-members themselves were somehow affiliated or knew some who were, was unknown.
What they, or rather what Dietrich had decided to do, left a sour taste in Kurt’s mouth. On one hand he didn’t really like involving any outsiders into this and on the other, it could backfire hard on the both of them.
But it had to be done.