Read Online The Old Boys by Charles McCarry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles McCarry
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blood. Slaps, kicks, punches.Pimply nancy boys fumbling at one’s bedclothes.
Five years of that
.”
“But you did learn to be an English gentleman, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.”
“Oh, quite. Monkey see monkey do, as my schoolmates used to put it. They knew I was a Jerry, you see. My father was posted to Manchester for many years as a representative of the German steel industry. Naturally the British regarded him as a spy.”
You see what I mean about the benefits of a good shake. He would never have been this frank had he not made the mistake of pointing that pistol at me. You never know in an interrogation what will open the floodgates. Out of dumb luck I had pushed the right button by going around Robin Hood’s barn to the gates of Worksop College instead of coming right to the point.
“Rings true,” I said. “But it must give you deep satisfaction to know that passing through this ordeal made it possible for you to serve the Reich.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Obviously your command of English, your ability to pass as an Englishman if necessary—knowing how to dress, how to joke, knowing enough to eat your fish with two forks instead of a knife and fork like a navvy. Surely that attracted the notice of persons in high places?”
“It was people in high places who sent me to Worksop in the first place. I was regarded as an investment in the future.”
He had stopped playing the eccentric Brit and was now quite openly his real self, a German Anglophobe with a bad past and a light conscience.
I will paraphrase what he told me by way of introduction. Hawk came back to Germany in the summer of 1934 as a nineteen-yearold. His father had given him a letter of introduction to a chum at ThyssenKrupp AG who was a secret member of the Nazi Party. Notwithstanding the disadvantage that Hawk’s English education represented in German eyes, this man arranged for his admittance to Marburg University. In due course Hawk was awarded, withhonors, a doctorate in what Americans would now call the history of art. By this time he was a dedicated member of the Nazi party. An assistant to the Gauleiter of Hessen took a liking to Hawk and gave him a letter of introduction to an art lover in Berlin. He was invited to dinner at a grand house near Unter den Linden and spent the greater part of the evening talking about art to the guest of honor, a tall blond long-faced man who, except for his rather large bottom, could have posed as the ideal Aryan for a Nazi poster.
“I need not tell you who this man was,” said Hawk.
“Ah, Simon, but I’m afraid you must.”
He hesitated for seconds before he spoke the name. “Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich security police and chief deputy to Himmler,” Hawk said at last. “He wore evening clothes, not his uniform. He was perfectly charming, but a relentless questioner. He extracted fact after fact as if my mind were a safe to which he knew the secret combination. Mainly he wanted to know what were the most beautiful, what were the most valuable art objects in the world. And where, exactly, were they?”
Next morning, early, Heydrich sent two men to fetch Hawk to Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. After an interminable wait he was marched into Heydrich’s office, where the great man greeted him with a curt nod. He was all business today in a pinch-waist black uniform whose short tunic and tight riding breeches unfortunately emphasized his wide, almost feminine hips. Without preamble but with impressive solemnity, he offered Hawk the equivalent of an
Oberleutnant
’s commission in the Schutzstaffel.
“Heydrich wanted me to join his personal staff as his artistic consultant,” Hawk said. “My first job was to draw up a complete annotated list of great and near-great paintings and sculptures in private hands in Czechoslovakia and Poland. After that, Belgium, Holland and France.”
“And by ‘private hands’ Heydrich meant Jews?”
“Not
Five years of that
.”
“But you did learn to be an English gentleman, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.”
“Oh, quite. Monkey see monkey do, as my schoolmates used to put it. They knew I was a Jerry, you see. My father was posted to Manchester for many years as a representative of the German steel industry. Naturally the British regarded him as a spy.”
You see what I mean about the benefits of a good shake. He would never have been this frank had he not made the mistake of pointing that pistol at me. You never know in an interrogation what will open the floodgates. Out of dumb luck I had pushed the right button by going around Robin Hood’s barn to the gates of Worksop College instead of coming right to the point.
“Rings true,” I said. “But it must give you deep satisfaction to know that passing through this ordeal made it possible for you to serve the Reich.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Obviously your command of English, your ability to pass as an Englishman if necessary—knowing how to dress, how to joke, knowing enough to eat your fish with two forks instead of a knife and fork like a navvy. Surely that attracted the notice of persons in high places?”
“It was people in high places who sent me to Worksop in the first place. I was regarded as an investment in the future.”
He had stopped playing the eccentric Brit and was now quite openly his real self, a German Anglophobe with a bad past and a light conscience.
I will paraphrase what he told me by way of introduction. Hawk came back to Germany in the summer of 1934 as a nineteen-yearold. His father had given him a letter of introduction to a chum at ThyssenKrupp AG who was a secret member of the Nazi Party. Notwithstanding the disadvantage that Hawk’s English education represented in German eyes, this man arranged for his admittance to Marburg University. In due course Hawk was awarded, withhonors, a doctorate in what Americans would now call the history of art. By this time he was a dedicated member of the Nazi party. An assistant to the Gauleiter of Hessen took a liking to Hawk and gave him a letter of introduction to an art lover in Berlin. He was invited to dinner at a grand house near Unter den Linden and spent the greater part of the evening talking about art to the guest of honor, a tall blond long-faced man who, except for his rather large bottom, could have posed as the ideal Aryan for a Nazi poster.
“I need not tell you who this man was,” said Hawk.
“Ah, Simon, but I’m afraid you must.”
He hesitated for seconds before he spoke the name. “Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich security police and chief deputy to Himmler,” Hawk said at last. “He wore evening clothes, not his uniform. He was perfectly charming, but a relentless questioner. He extracted fact after fact as if my mind were a safe to which he knew the secret combination. Mainly he wanted to know what were the most beautiful, what were the most valuable art objects in the world. And where, exactly, were they?”
Next morning, early, Heydrich sent two men to fetch Hawk to Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. After an interminable wait he was marched into Heydrich’s office, where the great man greeted him with a curt nod. He was all business today in a pinch-waist black uniform whose short tunic and tight riding breeches unfortunately emphasized his wide, almost feminine hips. Without preamble but with impressive solemnity, he offered Hawk the equivalent of an
Oberleutnant
’s commission in the Schutzstaffel.
“Heydrich wanted me to join his personal staff as his artistic consultant,” Hawk said. “My first job was to draw up a complete annotated list of great and near-great paintings and sculptures in private hands in Czechoslovakia and Poland. After that, Belgium, Holland and France.”
“And by ‘private hands’ Heydrich meant Jews?”
“Not
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