West Berlin, Germany—1987
They called him the loneliest man in the world.
He found that amusing. Loneliness was not the same thing as being alone, and in any cases, he was not truly alone. He had not known the peace of true solitude for many years, but here in his little summer house in the middle of the courtyard, he could at least enjoy the illusion of privacy.
He had been the only resident for more than twenty years, and yet he was never alone. Prisoners were never truly alone.
Although the century-old fortress had at one time imprisoned six hundred inmates, after Hitler’s defeat and the Nuremberg Trials, it was reserved for just seven—men like himself who were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to prison terms rather than the gallows. Of the seven, three had been released early for humanitarian reasons, and three had served out their full terms, leaving only him. Prisoner number seven. The last.
The post-war division of authority between the four Allied powers—America, Britain, France, and the USSR—ensured that no one government would be given total control of the prisoner, which meant that every month, a new set of jailers would arrive. The Soviets were the worst, not merely denying him simple pleasures but subjecting him to harsh and humiliating treatment—the Russians had made an art form of imprisonment—but he needed to endure their presence only for three months out of the year.
As time passed and the memory of what Hitler’s armies had done in Stalingrad gradually faded, the Russians seemed more interested in gaining access to West Berlin for purposes of espionage than in making him suffer. The others, particularly the Americans, were far more sympathetic or at least purported to be. Some of them claimed to be part of a new international movement, dedicated to the same philosophy as he—they called themselves ‘the Dominion’—but he was wary of their overtures. It had the feel of a trap.
He was always suspicious of kindness. The Russians, with their brutality, were far more honest.
Aside from his prison guards, he saw many other people—doctors, psychiatrists, interrogators, and even political leaders.
No, he was never alone.
He had been at his loneliest during those early years, when he was forced to share the ordeal of imprisonment with the others. He despised them all and was grateful when the last of them were set free. Of course, by that time, he was an old man, sick, in constant pain, but things were easier now that he was by himself. He could read, watch movies and television, putter about in the garden if it pleased him. The guards no longer even bothered to lock him in a cell at night. Best of all, the dreams no longer haunted him as they once had.
There were worse ways to spend the gloaming of his life. He was ninety-three years old; his sentence would soon be over.
He settled into his chair, opened the book and began to write.
Writing, he had discovered, was the only way to find peace, to purge himself of the visions.
“Guten tag, mein herr.”
The prisoner looked up in surprise and alarm. He had not realized that he was not alone. It took a moment for his old eyes to focus, and even then he could not make out the face of the man standing in the shadows. “Wer bist du?”
The man took a step forward, out of the darkness. He was young, but then everyone looked young to the prisoner. The man’s face was no more recognizable that his voice. “Forgive me,” he said in English. “That’s the extent of my German, but I understand you speak English?”
“You are American?”
The man returned a wry smile. “By birth, if that’s what you mean.”
“A curious distinction. Who are you? Why are you here?”
The stranger did not answer right away but continued advancing until he was standing right in front of the prisoner, then reached down and snatched the book from the latter’s hands. He turned it and began flipping idly through the pages.
“What?” The prisoner’s confusion only deepened. “You have come for my diaries? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” the man replied. He gave a harsh brittle-sounding laugh. “I can’t read German, either.”
He closed the book abruptly, slamming it shut with a noise like a gunshot. “Tonight, your sentence—your life sentence—ends.”
He raised a hand, made a “come along” gesture, and another figure emerged from a different corner of the little room. The second man wore the uniform of a prison guard, but the prisoner did not recognize his face. The ersatz guard circled around behind his chair and knelt down, out of the prisoner’s view.
His reading lamp abruptly flickered off. The guard had just pulled the plug.
Late afternoon sunlight still streamed in through the windows, but the removal of the artificial light plunged the room into deep gloom. The man in the guard’s uniform did not reappear but stayed behind the prisoner.
His mental faculties were no longer as sharp as they once were, but he knew what was happening. “You don’t need to do this,” he pleaded. “I’m an old man. I will be dead soon enough.”
The stranger shook his head. “No. Not soon enough. That’s the rub. No one believed you would live as long as you have. The bleeding hearts are crying for your release on humanitarian grounds, and their voices are growing ever louder. They would set you free to die with your family at your bedside. That cannot happen, you understand. The world must never hear what you have to say about the real reasons for that war.” He leaned closer. “I’ve always been curious about something though. Why did you do it? Why did you turn yourself over to the British? What made you do it?”
The prisoner pursed his lips together, shook his head. “It was a mistake. One that I’ve paid for dearly. Half my life—forty years—wasted because I read the signs wrong.”
“The signs? What signs?” The young man held up the diary. “Is the answer in here? Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter. There is no good answer,” the prisoner insisted. “I was a fool.”
The man regarded him a moment longer, then straightened and looked away, nodding to his unseen accomplice.
The reality of what was about to happen settled fully upon the old man, filling him with dread. There had been so many times during the long years of his sentence when he had longed for this release, but now, with the end in sight, he was terrified. “Please. I don’t want to die.”
Something brushed past the old man’s face, a loop of rope or wire...
It was the electrical cord, he realized, as the makeshift noose tightened around his throat, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain. The plunge into darkness was so swift he didn’t even think to claw at the garroting wire.
He did not hear the final whispered words of the stranger standing before him. “No one ever does.”