Free The Secret Agent by Stephan Talty Page B

astonishment:
The Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Certificate:
    â€œHerr Eric Siegfried Erickson is traveling to undertake urgent business conferences in the interests of t he Reich. … Herr Erickson is well known to us. Secret police security regulations in regards to restricted areas are to be waived on his behalf.”
    This was the moment Erickson had been working toward for years. He could hardly believe his luck. “It guaranteed that I was above suspicion.”
    Soon after getting his all-Germany pass, Erickson made a research trip to the capital and stayed, as usual, at the Hotel Eden. The trip was another plant-finding mission and, though the usual dangers existed, the American saw no cause for alarm. His driver picked him up at the hotel, as he always did, and began navigating Berlin’s crowded streets. After a few minutes, Erickson looked out the window and realized that, instead of taking him to a factory outside the capital, the driver was heading toward the inner city. Erickson stared in confusion at the unfamiliar landmarks.
    The car pulled up to the gate of an enormous brick building. It was surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence with guard towers at each corner. Erickson’s heart raced.
    Moabit prison.
    â€œIt’s over,” he thought. “They know who I am.”
    Erickson escorted inside the prison, a huge complex that housed as many as 3,000 prisoners at any one time. “I was ushered into a large conference room which faced the prison courtyard,” he remembered. His escort left him alone, and closed the door. Through a window, the spy could see out into the courtyard. He spotted a gallows in the center, empty nooses dangling down. For the second time on his mission, Erickson prepared himself for death. “I was left alone for six or seven minutes, but in that time practically everything that I had done in my life passed before my eyes.”
    Soon his escort reappeared and led him from the conference room and down into the courtyard. Erickson was surprised to find about forty other people sitting there on benches, facing the gallows. The scene struck Erickson, despite his rising anxiety, as bizarre. It was as if he had been invited to a theater to watch a play.
    He took his seat. A group of men appeared. They marched, under guard, from their cells. Erickson studied the faces of the prisoners as they shuffled in, dressed in drab prison uniforms. He took a deep breath, and exhaled. There was no one he knew.
    Then a second batch of inmates, including some women, entered. With an electric shock, Erickson spotted a familiar figure. The chestnut-brown hair. The thin, elegant neck. It was Anne-Maria.
    She looked at Erickson, then quickly turned away. She took her place in line and was marched with the others up the gallows steps.
    â€œIt’s hard to portray what goes on in the mind of one who is about to witness the execution of a person so near,” Erickson said, of the experience. “It was agony.”
    Erickson watched in shock. “It was horrible. I couldn’t show any sentiments or how sad I was.” Even as his mind whirled, he couldn’t help thinking that Anne-Maria had confessed his part in the OSS mission. “I felt certain she’d given me away. I didn’t know if I was next.”
    An SS officer dropped the rope over Anne-Maria’s head and pulled it tight around her neck. Erickson wanted desperately to look away, but there were SS officers walking up and down the aisles, studying the audience’s reaction. “I felt they were testing me, using the execution as a means to make me confess about the operation.” An officer approached the set of portable steps under Anne-Maria feet—there was no trap door—bent down, and jerked it away.
    Erickson watched as his lover’s body swung on the end of the rope, struggled for a few moments, and went still. Convinced this was a macabre SS trick, he remained