SS-GB

by Len Deighton

  ‘I’ll just say I was drunk,’ said Pip.

  And then suddenly it came to Douglas. The Abwehr were every bit as cunning and devious as any of the rest of them. They did know about the negatives – and that was why they were still talking to Mayhew – but by keeping it a secret they would be able to verify, to some extent, the bona fides of the other side. They’d talk to Mayhew, and anyone else about documents but they were waiting for someone to say the magic words ‘35mm film negatives’. Douglas drank the hot tea greedily. Then he switched off the lightbox, rolled the dried film back into a cassette and put it in his pocket.

  ‘Here, that’s the way to get scratches,’ objected his friend.

  ‘I’m not planning to do exhibition prints for the Royal Photographic Society exhibition,’ said Douglas, using a favourite remark of Pip’s. He drained his tea and put the cup on the window-ledge. ‘Thanks for everything, Pip.’ In the street below, the coalman had the circular cast-iron cover in his hand as he kicked the last few pieces of coal down into the dark cellar.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Londoners called it ‘the night of the buses’ but in fact the mass arrests and selective round ups, of people classified as IAa all the way to IIIEa, continued for two nights and well into the third day. As well as this, certain categories were ordered to report to the nearest police station. Posters and whole-page newspaper advertisements to this effect resulted in many people going voluntarily into custody.

  Wembley Stadium was used as a holding centre for west London, and the Earls Court Exhibition Hall – with the Albert Hall as an overflow – was the place to which people arrested in east London were taken. The tenants of that vast riverside apartment block, Dolphin Square, were turned out into the streets, with only two hours’ notice, so that their flats could be used for hundreds of simultaneous interrogations.

  To obtain interrogators every unit in Britain was scoured. As well as the professionals from the Geheime Feldpolizei units, SD men, Gestapo and people from the big Abwehr building in Exhibition Road, there were men with no other qualification than a working knowledge of the English language. These included waiters from the Luftwaffe Officers’ Club, two chaplains, a flautist from the German army’s London District symphony orchestra, seven telephonists and a naval dentist.

  ‘Keep the boys at home today, Mrs Sheenan,’ Douglas told her at breakfast, on the morning following the explosion. She put another slice of toast on his plate, and nodded to show that she’d heard him. The bread was stale but covered with meat dripping it became a luxury beyond compare. Douglas waited to be sure there was enough for everyone before biting into it.

  Mrs Sheenan poured more tea for all of them. ‘Did you hear the lorries last night?’ she said. ‘They must have been arresting people across the street. The noise they made! I thought they were going to break the door down.’

  ‘It’s going to be the biggest series of arrests I’ve heard of,’ said Douglas. ‘Perhaps the biggest in modern history.’ She raised her eyes to him. Awkwardly he added, ‘I’m not admiring it, Mrs Sheenan, I’m simply stating a fact. Thousands of people will be taken into custody. Goodness knows how the Germans will sort them all out.’

  ‘I can’t see how it will help them catch the men who planted that bomb at the cemetery.’

  Douglas agreed but did not elaborate on it. He said, ‘And if you and the boys just happened to be walking along the wrong street at the wrong time, you could easily get caught up in the muddle. And who knows where you might end up.’

  ‘In Germany,’ said Mrs Sheenan. ‘Eat up your toast, boys, and drink that tea. We mustn’t waste anything.’

  ‘Yes, in Germany,’ said Douglas. That was where her husband had ended up.

  ‘Are you arresting them?’ said Mrs Sheenan’s son.

  ‘Don’t talk to Mr Archer like that,’ said Mrs Sheenan. ‘And don’t talk with your mouth full, I’ve told you before about that.’ She smacked the boy lightly on the arm. There was no force behind the blow but coming from such a mild-mannered woman the gesture surprised all of them. Her son sat back in the chair and cuddled his knees as tears came into his eyes.

  ‘No, it’s nothing to do with the CID, thank goodness,’ said Douglas, glad of the chance to disclaim all connection with it. He drank his tea. ‘I could give you something in writing, Mrs Sheenan,’ he offered. ‘It wouldn’t be official of course, but on Scotland Yard notepaper…something like that might be useful.’

  She shook her head. Douglas guessed she had thought of that idea already. She leaned across to her son and kissed him. ‘Drink up your tea, that’s a good boy. It’s the last of the sugar ration until next week.’

  She turned to Douglas and politely said, ‘What use would a piece of paper be to me? By the time I needed it, it would be too late…and suppose someone found it? They’d probably think I was –’ She stopped. She’d been about to say ‘informer’ but now she said, ‘…something to do with the Germans.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Douglas stiffly.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that, Mr Archer,’ she said. ‘You’re a policeman. You have to have dealings with them. What would we do if we didn’t have our own policemen? I’m always saying that.’

  Douglas realized that she was often saying it because she was often trying to explain why she had a lodger who worked for the Huns. Douglas tucked the napkin into its wooden ring, and got up. ‘Leave the shopping for as long as you can – the baker’s man and the milkman call, don’t they? By the weekend the excitement might be dying down a bit. There simply won’t be anywhere to put the prisoners.’

  She nodded, pleased that he’d not taken offence at the clumsy way she’d expressed herself. From the cupboard drawer she got a newly knitted pullover. It was white cable-stitch, with the colours of the police cricket club at the vee neck. It was wrapped in prewar tissue paper. ‘It’s cold,’ said Mrs Sheenan. ‘Winter has really begun now.’

  She held out the pullover for Douglas but he hesitated before accepting it. He knew she’d knitted it for her husband – a noted slow bowler in the cricket team in those days before the war.

  ‘The post office won’t accept parcels containing clothes or food,’ she explained. ‘It’s a new regulation, and they always look inside every parcel.’ She opened the tissue and held the shining white pullover up. She was proud of the way she’d knitted it. ‘We both want you to have it, Mr Archer,’ she said, looking at her son. ‘You can always give it back when his father comes home.’

  ‘I’ll put it on right now,’ said Douglas. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I never thought of you as a cricketing type,’ said Huth sarcastically as Douglas came into the office. The room was dark, the morning sky as hard and expressionless as gunmetal, and little daylight got through the heavily leaded windows. Huth was in uniform, his grey jacket over his chair-back, and his rumpled brown SS shirt loosened at the collar. He was unshaven and Douglas guessed that he’d been sitting here at his desk half the night. In front of him there was an empty bottle of Scotch whisky, and the air held the smell of dead cigars. ‘Shut the bloody door, can’t you.’

  Douglas closed the door.

  ‘Pour yourself a drink.’ It was as if he’d lost track of time.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘It’s an order.’

  ‘The bottle’s empty.’

  ‘Plenty more in the cupboard.’

  Douglas had never seen Huth in this sort of mood, or even thought it possible. He got another bottle of whisky from the cardboard box, ‘Specially bottled for the Wehrmacht’, opened it and poured a measure into the tumbler that Huth produced from a drawer. ‘Water?’ said Huth and pushed a jug across his desk, carelessly enough to slop water over the muddle of papers there. Huth picked up one of them, a telex message, and let the water drip off the corner of it, giving it that childlike attention with which drunks survey their world. ‘Casualty lists,’ he explained, ‘they keep dying…’

  ‘The explosion?’

  H
uth waved the wet sheet of paper, with its closely printed list of names. ‘The explosion – that’s right! Dig up old Karl, after half a century in the phosphate-rich soil of north-west London, and don’t be surprised if he farts in your eye – right?’

  Douglas didn’t respond, but by that time he’d been able to read some of the names on the sheet that Huth was waving at him. The teleprinter message had come from the SS Hospital at Hyde Park Corner.

  SPRINGER, PROF. MAX. SS-GRUPPENFüHRER. NR. 4099. STAB RFSS. DIED OF WOUNDS 02.33.

  ‘Yes, they keep dying,’ said Huth.

  ‘And Professor Springer was killed there?’

  ‘We’ve lost a good friend, Superintendent.’ He reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink, adding water to it with exaggerated care, like a stage drunk.

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘He was my friend at the court of King Heinrich,’ said Huth. ‘The Reichsführer-SS had given him a free hand to find a way in which the SS could take over the nuclear experiments from the army.’ Huth’s fist clenched hard. ‘My authority came through Springer.’ Huth looked at his fist. ‘I gave him a place at the back, near the Naval Staff, but the bloody fool had to move closer to the grave, to see better. A piece of masonry fell on him.’

  ‘Does it mean your investigation might be stopped?’ said Douglas. He sipped at the whisky but drank very little of it.

  ‘Not a chance of that, thank goodness,’ said Huth. He was still looking at himself. His trousers were muddy and one knee was torn. Douglas guessed that he’d been one of the working party who extricated Springer from under the fallen stonework.

  ‘You’ve known Professor Springer a long time?’

  ‘I could tell you stories, Archer. Things you’d never believe. I was with Springer that weekend, when we killed the brownshirt leaders. I met him at Tempelhof when he landed on the special flight bringing Karl Ernst from Bremen. Springer had arrested him in his hotel that morning. Karl Ernst was Röhm’s second in command, Reichstag Deputy and Counsellor of State, but he submitted to arrest as meek as a lamb.’ Huth sipped his whisky. He was more relaxed but frowning slightly as if making an effort to remember the weekend of the ‘putsch’.

  Huth smiled. ‘They didn’t know what was happening to them, those SA men. They couldn’t imagine that the Führer might have told us to execute them. Ernst was typical. He thought it was an uprising against the Führer. Just before our firing squad let him have it, he squared his shoulders and shouted “Heil Hitler!” and they fired, and killed him.’ Huth closed his open hands over his face as Douglas had seen asthma sufferers do, and like them he breathed slowly and carefully. ‘Funny, eh?’

  ‘Not very funny,’ said Douglas.

  ‘It taught me a lesson,’ said Huth bitterly. ‘I watched that fool die and I vowed that I would never listen to any kind of political claptrap ever again.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Do I look like an idealist, Archer?’

  Douglas shook his head but didn’t answer lest he spoil Huth’s mood for talking. He’d known other men like this. He’d heard them confess to terrible crimes, and, like Huth, such men spoke of themselves with a strange impersonal detachment.

  ‘It was easy to see the Nazis would win,’ said Huth. ‘The Nazis were the only ones with the brains and determination. And the only ones with the organization. I like winners, Archer. My father liked winners too. He was a ruthless bastard, my God how I detest him still. Being at the top of the class was the only way to win my father’s affections, so I made sure I was at the top of the class. Nazis are winners, Archer, don’t be tempted into working against them.’

  Douglas nodded.

  ‘Next week I’ll be in Berlin. I’ll talk to the Reichsführer-SS and perhaps to the Führer too. They’ll have to give me Springer’s job because there is no one with all the information,’ he tapped his head, ‘and eventually I’ll get Springer’s rank too. Cheer up! Kellerman’s days are numbered, Archer. We’ll be rid of him before next month’s out. I’ll have him upstairs, sitting in a chair, answering a lot of difficult questions about his bank account in Switzerland and the bribes he’s getting from some of the contractors building the new prisons.’

  The surprise showed on Douglas’s face.

  Huth said, ‘I’ve got a file this thick on Kellerman. Why do you think he’s so keen to get a chance of searching through my documentation? He’s not interested in taking over the atomic bomb programme, he’s just anxious to save his skin.’ He drank water. ‘Do you want to stay with me, Archer?’

  ‘On your staff?’

  ‘There’s not many of Springer’s personal staff that I will want to keep. If you stay with me, you can come all the way to the top. I’ll make you a German citizen and bring you into the SD immediately – no more rationing, travel restrictions or finance control.’ He looked at Douglas.

  ‘I thought you only liked winners,’ said Douglas.

  He gave a thin smile. ‘Not as a personal assistant,’ he said.

  Perhaps his offer was well meant. To what extent it was a spontaneous and clumsy Teutonic attempt at flattery, and to what extent a carefully planned proposition, Douglas could not decide.

  Huth got up and went to the window. ‘You didn’t talk to Mayhew yesterday?’ he said without turning round.

  ‘I’ll find him,’ said Douglas.

  Huth was silhouetted against the light and Douglas saw the way in which his fingers fluttered nervously at his side, as if he was trying to remove dirt, or glue or memories from the tips of them. ‘Mayhew is an educated man,’ said Huth as much to himself as to Douglas. ‘A cultured, reasonable individual.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Douglas.

  ‘He has no personal quarrel with me, does he? What’s he looking for? Prestige and the respect of his equals. That’s what motivates all normal men. Between us we can come to some kind of arrangement. And the result will reflect credit upon both of us, and elevate us in the way we wish. Can you tell him that from me?’

  It was breathtaking cynicism, even by Huth’s standard. ‘And what guarantees do I have?’

  ‘You have that wonderful excuse that you only obeyed orders. Be grateful for that, my friend.’

  ‘I’ll be a contact,’ said Douglas, ‘but not an informant.’ Even as he said it he recognized the rationalization as something he’d heard from countless men he’d used – and despised – in the past.

  There was a knock at the door. Huth bellowed ‘Come in’ and a porter entered with a bucket of coal and began to build a fire in the grate. Huth nodded Douglas’s dismissal.

  Douglas got to his feet, and thanked the Providence that Huth was not one of those Germans who went through the ritual of saying ‘Heil Hitler!’ at the end of each such meeting. In front of the old porter it would have been just more than Douglas could have endured.

  A mass of paperwork was piled up on Douglas’s desk and Harry Woods was late. Douglas cursed him for an inefficient fool. Today of all days he could have used his help. He looked at Harry’s desk diary and found an appointment with the Superintendent Crime at 9.30 A.M. Douglas phoned the clerk and invented a story about Harry being ill. The clerk made a joke of it; Harry’s inability to be punctual was well known.

  Douglas sent a civilian clerk to look for Harry in Joe’s Café. It was too early for the ‘dive’ of the ‘Red Lion’, or the CID’s ‘tank’ across the road. Douglas phoned the desk Sergeant at Cannon Row police station next door, to see if Harry was in there gossiping.

  When all the answers were negative, Douglas phoned Kellerman’s chief clerk. He asked him for the address of the arrest team collecting point in the Islington district where Harry Woods lived. It took him fifteen minutes to get the answer: York Way Goods Depot, behind King’s Cross Station up until last night at 10.30 P.M. After that, they began using the Caledonian Road Cattle Market as an overspill.

  Douglas phoned Huth in his office. ‘Standartenführer. I think it’s possible that Harry Woods has been pi
cked up by one of the arrest teams.’ There was no reply. Douglas added, ‘He didn’t come in this morning, in spite of an appointment with the Superintendent Crime.’ After another long period of silence, Douglas said, ‘Are you there, sir?’

  ‘I can’t think how Woods stayed free so long,’ said Huth. ‘Well, you’ll have to get yourself another Detective Sergeant. Can you find someone who speaks German?’

  ‘I’m going to look for Harry,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Huth. ‘But make sure there is someone behind that desk by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. This is no time to work with a depleted manpower.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Douglas and hung up the phone.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Harry Woods lived in Liverpool Road. At one time they’d had the whole house but now its upper two floors were rented to another family. Harry Woods and his wife Joan ate their meals in the basement kitchen and that’s where Douglas sat while Joan made him a cup of tea.

  He guessed what had happened as soon as Mrs Woods opened the door. She was still in her dressing-gown, her hair uncombed and her eyes red with crying. She was much younger than Harry. At one time she’d been the prettiest typist in her office typing pool, where Harry Woods met her while investigating a theft at a factory. Now her blonde hair had gone colourless and her face was pinched with the cold. She smiled as she passed the weak unsweetened tea across the table, ran a hand through her dishevelled hair and self-consciously pulled the neck of her dressing-gown together.

  They had arrested Harry Woods at three o’clock that morning. The German officer arrived with his team of twelve soldiers. The very young Metropolitan police Constable, from some outlying Division, had never heard of Harry Woods. ‘He’d never heard of Scotland Yard either if you ask me,’ added Joan Woods bitterly.

  ‘Didn’t Harry show them his warrant card, Joan?’

  ‘The German officer glanced at it, thanked Harry very much and put it in his pocket. He was polite enough, the officer…he regretted it, he said. But he spoke hardly any English, and you know Harry’s just no good at all with this German, Mr Archer. If you’d been here it would have all been different. You know how to speak with them, Harry always says that.’