Synopsis

In Chapter 1 (KTB #148) ERICH begins his career as a spy, and he lets us know of his love of beautiful women. In Chapter 2 (KTB #149), he was transferred home to Germany and his shipboard romance with Karen ended. In Chapter 3 (KTB #151) he began his training as a spy – and he learned that a spy who falls in love with an enemy spy – gets shot!

In Chapter 4 (KTB #152) we read where ERICH himself falls for a woman who turned out to be a German spy herself and her job was to lure German spies in training to betray themselves – and ERICH is nearly washed out of spy training. In Chapter 5 (KTB #153) we learned that ERICH was to be in charge of Operation PELIKAN, the plan to blow up the Panama Canal with two Ju 87 STUKA dive bombers brought over on two U-boats. At the last moment, it was thought by the German agency, that someone had tipped off the Americans to this plot, so the plan was scrapped. In Chapter 6 (KTB #154 and KTB #155) we read how ERICH and the Abwehr tried to find him a partner for his mission into the USA with the intended purpose of sabotaging the Manhattan Project – the atomic bomb project in the United States. In Chapter 7 (KTB #156) we read about the Atlantic crossing to the USA where ERICH and Billy were to be put ashore to assault the ‘Manhattan Project’. In Chapter 8 (KTB #157), the two agents landed on the coast of Maine, ready to begin their sabotage of the atomic bomb project. In Chapter 9 (KTB #158) ERICH gets the shock of learning that Billy has taken all the money and the diamonds, and deserted not only the mission, but ERICH as well.

In the first part of Chapter 10 (KTB #159) ERICH is trying desperately to find Billy – and get his $60,000 and diamonds back. In the balance of Chapter 10, we see how ERICH outwitted Billy and got his suitcases, filled with money and spy equipment back – at Billy’s expense but in the meantime to nobody’s surprise, ERICH has found another woman. In chapter 11, ERICH is doing well with this new woman, an old contact is going to tell him about the Manhattan Project - but his time is running out and Billy is about to betray him to the F.B.I.

In Chapter 12, ERICH was happily spending Christmas with Joan, but his tour of duty as a spy – and his life, were almost over. He was arrested by the F.B.I. and headed for the gallows. In Chapter 13, he's grilled by the F.B.I. In Chapter 14, he faces the probability of the hangman. In Chapter 15, he's sentenced to death.

Chapter 16 (I): Sized Up by the Hangman

In four days, the rope, thirteen times knotted in accordance with the grim rules of hanging, would encircle my neck. I had ninety-six hours left in which to think and breathe, and then the horror of the night, the waiting in the cell, the choking sensation in the throat, all that would be over.

I paced my wire cage at Fort Jay like a madman. The hours, the minutes now lay upon me as heavily as lead, now oppressing me, now rushing away from me – now standing still, now stretching themselves like some grim accompaniment to me fear of imminent death.

My forehead streamed with sweat, my tongue was as dry as a piece of old leather. I drank indiscriminately everything I was given, and I was given everything I asked for. The prison officials viewed me either with timid sidelong glances or with grinning embarrassment. They nearly all felt sorry for me, but with Americans sympathy often shows itself in strange guises.

I was an exhibition piece. Everyone was brought to see me before I was hanged – everyone that is, who was on good terms with Fort Jay and its commandant, everyone who counted for something in the Army. I was seldom alone. Nearly all my visitors shook me fiercely by the hand, told me things which I did not understand and wanted me to tell them things which I did not know. They asked me how I was and it sounded facetious but it was worse than that, it was just a habit.

The sun rose as on every other day, the hour had sixty minutes and the minutes had sixty seconds. The children played and the mothers laughed, and the men went to work as they always did. The typists arrived at their offices just as usual and told each other of their little adventures of the previous night. The lift boys said their ‘good mornings’, the recruits were marched up and down on the barracks squares. The world went its normal way, but for me, everything was abnormal. In five days’ time, I would know no more.

The verdict had been given just five weeks before. The judgment was clear. There could be no appeal. My counsel shook hands with me. Major Reagin said: “It was a privilege to represent you, Mr. Gimpel.”

He gave me a cigarette and offered me alight. My hands were already in chains. Just twenty seconds after the verdict had been made known, a military policeman had clapped the handcuffs on me. It appeared that they were to accompany me through the days which still remained to me.

"You made a good impression in Court,” continued Reagin. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s an abject defendant. You can’t imagine some of the cases I’ve had to handle.”

EDITOR NOTE – This doesn’t seem to be helping Erich’s situation or even to make him feel any better. He was going to die and his defense attorney is not helping at all.

I nodded.

“Keep your chin up,” said Reagin, “at any rate, while you can. The verdict will now go to the Supreme Court and will be examined to see if there have been any faults in the procedure, but I’m afraid they won’t find anything.”

“And then?” I asked.

“There’s still the possibility of a petition to the President.”

“But there wouldn’t be much point in that?”

“As good as none at all,” replied Reagin.

EDITOR NOTE - This attorney is just a bundle of fun, isn’t he?

“At any rate,” continued Reagin, “not while the war’s still on. But a petition has at least one advantage – it shows you’re not a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. Many men who’ve been sentenced could possibly have saved their lives if they had not been too proud to petition the President.”

“Would you prepare the petition?” I asked. I tried to smile but I don’t know if I succeeded.

“I’ll keep in touch with you,” said Reagin, “and let you know what’s happening. I’ll visit you every week. Let me know if you have any complaints about the way you are treated. I can always have something like put right at once.”

We shook hands.

“I should have liked to have spared you the handcuffs,” he said, “but I’m afraid that’s not possible. That’s a rule that can’t be changed.”

A week passed, then a second week, then a third and a fourth. I had reached the point when an official came to me for the address of my next-of-kin in Germany. I knew what that meant. The chef enquired what I wished to eat during the next few days. I knew what that meant. The Army chaplain enquired whether he could visit me, and I knew what that meant too………

When I gave them my father’s address, I had to pause for a few seconds to remember where my father was living. How far, how long, how hopelessly all my past life seemed to lie behind me.

I called to mind the man whose face, bearing, eyes and nose I had inherited, together with a liking for forbidden things. When I was three years old, I stopped beside my mother’s coffin, still too young to realize what was happening and I had grown up at Father’s side, in that silent, matter-of-fact comradeship which is often brought into being between father and son by the early death of the mother. As a boy, I had done all the things I ought not to have done. Once when I was playing football in the street, I scored a goal and the ball went right through a café window. I quickly retrieved my ball from the heap of broken glass before the proprietress shooed me off with her broom. I was two hours late getting home, and was full of the darkest forebodings. But when I arrived back, my father had already paid for the damage.

“You’re not frightened, are you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I admitted in a small voice.

“Don’t be silly,” continued Father. “Do you imagine I never did anything like that when I was a boy?”

What would he be doing now? Would he be thinking about me? He had never questioned me about my work.

“I just don’t want to know…..” he had said once. “You know what you’re doing and there’s only one thing I want. When the war is over, I want you back, sound and healthy.”

When the war is over…………….

Johnny, my warder, arrived and pushed a lighted cigarette through the wire mesh. “Hurry,” he said. “With you, you never know who might be coming along. Edward,” he called after a while – all the men called me by my assumed name – “things aren’t nearly so bad as you imagine.”

“I’m sure they are not,” I replied

“I read a book recently,” continued Johnny, “written be a schoolmaster. It was about the American War of Independence.”

“Very interesting,” I replied.

“But listen,” said Johnny. “A man was condemned to death and they hung him on a tree. He was already strung up when the pardon came through. They cut him off the rope again.”

“Do you think that’s what might happen with me?”

“I must admit it’s improbable,” answered Johnny. “but I’m telling you about it for this reason – afterwards the man wrote a book on what it felt like to be hanged. He said that you feel terribly afraid at first and then suddenly you don’t feel anything more. Suddenly everything becomes soft and gentle and easy and you feel you’re already in another world and that the last moments of your life are far more beautiful than you’ve ever imagined……only,” continued Johnny, “when they cut him off the rope and tried artificial respiration on him he suffered the most terrible pain.”

I tried not to listen to any more. Johnny was a fool, but he was harmless and good natured. He really was trying to comfort me, but his comfort was horrifying. He had a frank, youthful face. One finger of his left hand was paralyzed through an injury which got him his cushy job at Fort Jay. He wrote letters to all his friends and relatives, telling them about me. I was the adventure of his life. But the adventure was to come to an end in ninety-six hours.

I felt I would go mad at the thought of it.

A sergeant entered my cell. I had never seen him before. He was a frail-looking fellow with a sharp little face and a certain nonchalance about his dress that you could almost call slovenliness. He shook hands with me, at the same time looking past me out of the window. He had small, dark eyes which could not keep still. He came just about up to my shoulder.

“Is there anything you want, Mr. Gimpel?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Is the food to your liking?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“Yes.”

I took it. The man observed me from the side. He looked at me in a sort of business-like way, carefully sizing me up. I took one or two quick draws on the cigarette, wishing the fellow would go to the devil. “He’s had his look at me now,” I thought. “And he’s had a word with me. Now he can go and write his postcard to his girl friend.”

But he stayed on and walked all round me. When I took my eyes off him, his stealthy sideways glance was there again. I felt instinctively that he wanted something of me, something uncanny, something horrible, something shudderingly frightful.

“Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to give you anything to read,” he said. “That’s a very strict rule here. That is, nothing but the Bible.”

“I have the Bible already.”

“Well, so long,” he said. He shook hands with me, looked past me once again and walked off.

“Hi you!” called Johnny. “Do you know who that was?”

“Of course I don’t”

Johnny was all excitement. “That was the hangman,” he said. “He came to get an idea of your weight and measurements so that he’ll know what he’s got to do. He’s taken your measurements for sure. Didn’t you notice him? Didn’t you know that everyone in here gets a new rope? Money’s no object here.”

He laughed. He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He kept pushing cigarettes through the wire mesh to me, just blabbing out whatever came into his mind. He was a fool, such a fool, but an honest, well-meaning fellow.

“Johnny,” I said, “how much longer have I got to live?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “You never know the exact time until one night before, but I think they’re coming for you on April 15th. I heard something of the sort.”

At eleven o’clock, they called me to the Commandant. For a moment, I was relieved of my handcuffs.

“Mr. Gimpel,” he said. “I have something to tell you. The President has rejected your petition for pardon. That means that the death sentence can now be carried out. You will be told twelve hours before execution when it will be.”

He had a small mouth, a straight nose and a round head. I kept repeating this description to myself so as not to lose my grip.

“So far you have borne yourself like a man. Keep it up. Good morning.”

I was back in my cell again, alone once more. Once more a prey to time and idle chatter. What was my life? Would it not be all to the good for it to be brought to an end? A saying came to my mind and I kept repeating it aloud to myself.

“Better an end with fear than fear without end.”

It would soon be all over. They would carry me out in a simple wooden coffin and my body would be used for purposes of anatomical research. “Here gentlemen, you see the liver, the spleen and the gall bladder,” the professor would lecture. “The heart was quite sound. How does one reach that conclusion, Mr. Miller?”

Never again would I see the cherry trees in bloom, never again would I hold a woman in my arms, never again would I sit at the wheel of a car, never again would I hear the trumpet of Louis Armstrong or the trombone of Tommy Dorsey. Never again……. never again……..never again………..

The women in my life passed through my mind. I stood at the rail of the DROTTINGHOLM – it was 1940 – and at my side stood the blonde Swedish girl Karen S., in a wispy summer dress, the wind playing with her hair. “Come with me. I know my father will like you. He likes your type. We can get married. I’m not badly off and the war will then be over for you. If you love me, come with me.”

“I do love you,” I replied.

“You don’t love me.”

I kissed her. Later I said, “When the war’s over.”

When the war’s over – what nonsense…..

And then I saw Margarete, my pert little Berliner. “Don’t be crazy,” she said. “Stay here. Don’t go to America. Everyone says you’ll never come back. You’re mad to go. Just look at this Billy, look at his ape-like arms, look at his shifty eyes. He’ll give you away, you can be sure of that. A woman feels these things. Stay here in Germany, stay with me.”

How many of fate’s warning lights had I ignored!

Spy for Germany

Chapter 7: To America by Submarine (KTB # 156)
Chapter 8: The Landing in America (KTB # 157)
Chapter 9: Tricked by Billy in NYC (KTB # 158)
Chapter 10 (I): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 159)
Chapter 10 (II): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 160)
Chapter 11 (I): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 161)
Chapter 11 (II): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 162)
Chapter 12 (I): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 163)
Chapter 12 (II): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 164)
Chapter 13 (I): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 165)
Chapter 13 (II): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 166)
Chapter 13 (III): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 167)
Chapter 14 (I): In the Shadow of the Hangman (KTB # 168)
Chapter 14 (II): In the Shadow of the Hangman (KTB # 169)
Chapter 15 (I): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 170)
Chapter 15 (II): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 172)
Chapter 15 (III): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 173)
Chapter 16 (I): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 174)