Hohenegg, whom I met again that night, didn’t look too disappointed. “It’s the reality principle, my dear friend,” he declared. “That will teach you to try to play the romantic hero. So let’s go have a drink.” But the business was worrying me. Who could have denounced us to Bierkamp? It was certainly one of Turek’s comrades, who was afraid of the scandal. Or maybe one of them, aware of the trap being prepared, wanted to prevent it? It was hardly conceivable that Turek himself had had second thoughts. I wondered what he was plotting with Prill: nothing good, certainly.
A new burst of activity made this affair fade into the background. Von Mackensen’s Third Panzer Corps, supported by the Luftwaffe, was launching its offensive on Ordzhonikidze; the Soviet defenses around Nalchik collapsed in two days, and at the end of October our forces took the city while the tanks continued their push to the east. I asked for a car and went first to Prokhladny, where I met Persterer, then on to Nalchik. It was raining but that didn’t hinder traffic too much; after Prokhaldny, columns of the Rollbahn were bringing up food supplies. Persterer was getting ready to transfer his Kommandostab to Nalchik and had already dispatched a Vorkommando there to prepare quarters. The city had fallen so quickly that they had been able to arrest a lot of Bolshevik officials and other suspects; there were also many Jews, both bureaucrats from Russia and a large native community. I reminded Persterer of the orders from the Wehrmacht concerning the attitude toward the local populations: they were planning on quickly forming an autonomous Kabardo-Balkar district, and it was imperative not to damage good relations in any way. In Nalchik, I found the Ortskommandantur, still being set up. The Luftwaffe had bombed the city, and many houses and gutted buildings were still smoking in the rain. I found Voss there, sorting through some books in an empty room; he seemed delighted at his finds. “Look at that,” he said, holding out an old book in French. I examined the title page: On the peoples of the Caucasus and the countries north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Xth Century, or, The Journey of Abu-el-Cassim, published in Paris in 1828 by a certain Constantin Mouradgea d’Ohsson. I handed it back to him with an approving look: “Did you find a lot of them?”—“Quite a few. A bomb hit the library, but there wasn’t too much damage. On the other hand, your colleagues wanted to seize a part of the collections for the SS. I asked them what interested them, but since they don’t have an expert, they didn’t really know. I offered them the shelf on Marxist political economy. They told me they had to consult with Berlin. By then I’ll be done.” I laughed: “My duty should be to throw a spanner in your works.”—“Maybe. But you won’t do that.” I told him about the quarrel with Turek, which he found highly comical: “You wanted to fight a duel because of me? Doktor Aue, you are incorrigible. That’s absurd.”—“I wasn’t going to fight because of you: I was the one who was insulted.”—“And you say that Dr. Hohenegg was ready to serve as your second?”—“Somewhat against his will.”—“That surprises me. I thought he was an intelligent man.” I found Voss’s attitude rather annoying; he must have noticed my vexed air, since he burst out laughing: “Don’t make that face! Remind yourself that coarse and ignorant men punish themselves.”
