Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [65]
“Thank you, Cornelia Hollingshead.”
“The whole thing starts to take on the aspect of a legalized lynching.”
“But what the hell are you going to do about it, Major? You can’t stand up against this kind of brass.”
Sean put Hansen’s letter into the big crystal ashtray, lit a match to it, and watched it burst, flicker, and crumple into a hundred charred bits.
A few moments later he entered the prison cell of Emma Stoll and dismissed the guard. She knew nothing of the stories raging around the world that had made her symbolic of the evil of Nazism. He had met her before, many times. Emma, sloppy and dowdy, glowered at him with a return of some of her former arrogance.
The Americans had not killed her or Klaus and therefore they revealed their weakness. The SS had known how to rid itself of Germany’s enemies. The Americans were weak ... weak.
“You are about to be brought to trial, Emma. The only chance you have of living is by answering my questions.’’
“You are trying to trap me.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“You lie!”
“Emma, you’re not being logical. I said that you were as good as dead. What do you have to lose by telling the truth?”
It was a puzzling proposition, indeed, to the shopgirl. Lie or truth ... what difference did it make now? They’d get her if they wanted to ... but, “Why are you going out of your way to protect me? Why?”
“Not to protect you, Emma. To protect the name of my country.”
The slow-witted girl was baffled. This Major O’Sullivan was a baffling man. Was he really as soft as she suspected? What meanings were there that she could not comprehend? “What is it you want to know?” she asked cautiously.
“I have only a few questions. None of them are tricks. Just give me straight answers. First, did you know what was going on inside Schwabenwald?”
Emma was about to make an automatic plea of innocence. She stopped herself short. She had planned to scream out her ignorance of Schwabenwald to the end ... but ... now ... he did say she was good as dead. She sulked, and slumped to her cot. All the jacked-up, painted-on, manufactured attempts to be sexy had split apart in the dank cell. Her hands held a head of uncombed dirty hair. “I lived outside the actual camp,” she said slowly. “You must remember that I am a German woman, a German wife. In Germany, the men run things. My husband never spoke to me about business inside the camp and I never asked him. I am a German wife.”
“Did you suspect?”
“Suspect what?”
“The exterminations.”
She looked up at him pitifully, wrung her hands, dropped her head again. “We all suspected.”
Sean was excited by the knowledge that he had either baffled her or gained her immediate confidence or ... that she was playing a wild gamble to hang onto life. “How much did you see of the camp?”
“Only ... only the outer camp. My husband’s office, the area around the SS barracks ...”
“How about the medical experiment center?”
Emma sealed her lips.
“The center was in that immediate area, Emma. Did you ever go inside the experimentation center?”
“Yes,” she said almost inaudibly.
“And the Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters?”
“I answered these questions a hundred times for Lieutenant Arosa.”
“The Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters?”
“I don’t want to speak any more! Get out!”
“Last time, Emma. It’s the end of the line for you. Were you ever in Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters!”
“Get out!”
“Okay, Emma. No more questions.” Sean walked toward the solid iron door to thump for the jailer.
“I was in Gestapo,” she said.
Sean turned back to her. “How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“Forty?”
“Maybe.”
“Fifty?”
“Yes ... fifty ...”
“And you beat prisoners and forced them to perform sex acts.”
“Only Jews and Slavs!”
“And you went to the inner camp and you watched the exterminations!”
“No! No! Never! I swear! Never! I was never in there! I swear I was never in there!”
Sean knelt quickly alongside the cot, where she was weeping, mumbling prayers to God,