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pheasants,” Uwe had pronounced when a trio of the civilians walked taciturnly by near the
gasthof
. Golden pheasants meant Nazi Party functionaries, derided for their handsome brown uniforms with gold insignia on a red field at their collars and on their caps. The Party officials were never popular with the troops; they wore uniforms without having earned the honor by fire.
“They aren’t pheasants,” I chastised Uwe, “they’re wearing suits.”
Uwe snickered and lowered his voice. “How many of the dainty Party boys do you figure are strutting around in uniforms and high boots these days with the Russian bear pawing at the door? They’ve probably burned anything with a swastika on it and have managed to get a ride south where they can fall on their knees to the Amis instead of the Ivans. Worthless louts.”
I shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t worth arguing. Still, I doubted that the Waffen-SS would just agree to provide escort to Party hacks trying to dodge the Russians. This wasn’t a delegation at the level of Goebbels or the Bormann brothers. And there was something else. These people looked intelligent in the way that professors and Jews often do. These weren’t politicians.
As our second evening in the village approached and the first strain of darkness insinuated itself, we packed our kits and preparedto move out. A noncom insisted that we check our weapons and keep a round in the chamber; we would have done it anyway, like breathing. We tossed our sleeping bags into the truck bed and that was when I thought about the crates. Our truck, like all of the others, had three or four large wooden crates tied down with rope. There were numbers stamped in black ink across them, but nothing to betray the nature of the contents. We wedged our belongings in next to the crates, and I began to think about what sort of cargo we were carrying south. It occurred to me that it was the cargo—not us—that was important.
I was curious enough to seek out the weary but decent
Scharrfuehrer
we had encountered the previous evening. I found him smoking a pipe across the rutted lane from the
gasthof
, in the shadows of an old oak. He looked up with cavernous eyes as I approached. I asked what was in the crates and a thin smile traced itself across his lined visage.
“You don’t really think a
Scharrfuehrer
would be privy to that kind of information, do you?”
“Maybe not, but you might have heard something from the officers.”
He pulled the pipe from his mouth and studied it. “I don’t have a clue what’s in those boxes. Not munitions, the boxes aren’t marked that way and it wouldn’t make sense to transport explosives south. Could be documents. Don’t forget we were in Berlin, which is getting the hell blasted out of it. Documents would make sense, from the
Reichskanzlei
or OKW Headquarters. Maybe historical items written by the Fuehrer. Who knows? Get the stuff to safekeeping in Bavaria, in some alpine fortress maybe.”
I nodded and dragged a boot through the viscous, clutching mud. He was right, documents made sense.
The
Scharrfuehrer
replaced the pipe in his mouth, shifted his position and added a few sentences. “There’s another possibility, but I wouldn’t mention it too loudly if I were you. Where did we leave from? The Reichsbank. You know, keepers of the imperial gold among other things. The reichsmark isn’t worth a damn anymore,but gold is always valuable. And if the war is to continue in some mountain redoubt in the south, money will be needed. Put two and two together. Enough said.”
He looked at me again with an expression that was either indifferent or fatalistic. Then he wandered off toward the column of trucks.
Gold made more sense than documents. Why would we have otherwise gathered at the bank? To protect the transfer of gold bars from the vaults to the convoy. And to send it south to Munich or Upper Bavaria, the first home of the Party and now it’s last bastion. As I walked back to the