I

      IN THE SPRING of 1944, I realized that I was not going to survive the war.

      There was, upon this revelation resisted for so long, a sublime unburdening of tension, a sensation of relief and release I had not enjoyed since being expelled as a boy from a Catholic public school in Vienna. After all, my survival until this point had been predicated upon a carefully executed waltz of luck and deception. But now, rather like a skilled player of Chemin de Fer who wins too long at the table, my good fortunes could not but fade, and my fatigue was draining my abilities to deceive.

      I should make it clear that I did not harbor what the famed Viennese psychologists then termed as suicidal tendencies. Quite the contrary, I was a survivor by strength of will and character. However, some factors made it clear that emerging in one piece from this worldwide conflagration, with myself at its epicenter, was highly unlikely.

      I was the young adjutant to an SS colonel named Himmel, whose actions reflected exactly the opposite of his heavenly moniker.

      I was also, on paper, a Catholic named Brandt, yet in fact the descendant of a great-grandmother named Brandeis.

      And finally, I was in love with the Colonel’s fiancée, a magnificent creature of my own age, who had just informed me that in fact my emotions for her were well requited.

      No, it was not likely that I was going to survive this war. But inasmuch as the practicalities of shelter, sustenance and personal security can so easily be spurned in exchange for youthful and mad romance, I no longer cared. It had become very clear to me in the early months of that year, that unless I plumbed the depths of my courage and found the well of a reckless swashbuckler, the postwar world would be a morbid and cold planet, unfit for living.

      And so, since I was unlikely to survive, I would make my dash for the gates with my love in hand. And, if I could hone every one of my strategic skills and adopt the soul of a thief, I would be very rich, to boot. Yes, in all likelihood, a rush of bullets would bring me to ground long before my escape.

      But, so be it...

      * * *

      Colonel Himmel was a war hero, which made my status as his adjutant an envious position, if one viewed such employ through the eyes of a dedicated Nazi patriot. However, I was merely grateful that I had come to fill my position late in the game, for at barely nineteen years old, until the previous year I had been ineligible for more than cannon fodder on the Russian front or service in the Hitler Youth. This fine, upstanding organization I’d been forbidden to join in Vienna, as my ethnic background was in question. As for the infantry, my number had simply not yet come up.

      Upon my expulsion from Gymnasium, I had been employed as a physician’s assistant in a Viennese hospital, which delayed my being swallowed up by the Wehrmacht. Yet it was there, while visiting a trio of his wounded commandos, that Himmel spotted me. He was a pure combat officer, decidedly apolitical, and I believe that what struck him was my appearance. I was a fine youth then, blond and blue-eyed and wiry, genetic gifts owing to the Balkan Semitic lineage of my great-grandmother rather than to any inheritance of an Aryan bent. He whispered a few inquiries to the doctors whom I served, and I was promptly whisked away to a new position and adventures I had not dreamed of, or wanted.

      I was thankful, however, for having come to Himmel’s side at this latter stage of his commando career, because throughout the war his résumé had been quickly filled up with daring raids against Allied troops, mountaintop rescues of captured officers, and the long-range executions of enemy generals. The Colonel had a tendency to reward his support staff by insisting they accompany him on most such ventures, and so, a long list of previous adjutants, company clerks and even cooks had been killed in action on a number of fronts. My recruitment to the Colonel’s staff in 1943 somewhat lessened the odds of my falling prey to foreign shellfire while shining the commander’s jackboots, but it was in any event a nerve-racking assignment.

      You see, Himmel had been twice awarded the Iron Cross, as well as the Knight’s Cross for exemplary valor, on one occasion by Adolf Hitler himself. I shall briefly digress to say that I am not proud to have been in attendance for that ceremony, but it was most certainly a surreal dinner soirée I shall never forget, for it is seared upon my mind’s eye. The awardees, more than two hundred officers from various branches of the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe, were invited to the Eagle’s Lair at Berchtesgaden. Of course, I use the term “invited” with tongue in cheek, for these weary men were ordered to appear on the given eve, despite their presently distant locations or battlefield predicaments.

      Thus, the towering antechamber of Hitler’s Schloss was awash with men in dress uniforms, yet one must realize that so many of these previously perfectly tailored tunics and jodhpurs had been stowed now for years in Panzer tanks, Heinkel bombers or U-boats. The courageous officers had done their best to shine cracked boots, polish rusted buckles and steam the wrinkles from moth-eaten wools, yet even so, it all appeared much like a costume ball in the tenth level of hell. The submariners’ beards were badly trimmed, the Luftwaffe pilots’ eyes gleamed with fatigue, and some of the infantry heroes actually had caked spots of blood on their cuffs and lapels, as their most recent wounds still oozed. I hardly think now that many of them remained ardent worshippers of their Führer, yet like Roman legionnaires in the presence of Caesar, they managed to effect erect spines and the gunshot clicks of heels.

      Hitler was customarily late, by I believe at least two hours, and I shall never forget his demeanor when he finally appeared. He seemed, quite frankly, completely surprised, and subsequently annoyed. He behaved like a man whose wife has invited guests to dinner without his consent, and it was only when Goering whispered a reminder in his ear that he dredged up the manners to stay the course.