The Nostradamus Traitor: 1 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  So many were dead—the small abstracts on Ramilies, together with his own notes; Joseph Wald; Maurice Roubert; Cecille Roubert (George had been right. She had died in Ravensbruck); Emile and Michelle Sondier, who had kept the house on Rue Cambon (blown and executed); Jean Fenice, died in 1952—Ramilies had gone quickly with a heart attack in mid-’48; Sandy Leaderer was still alive, an old man in some home—non compos the note said; Angelle Tours….

  Herbie read through her file again, very carefully, then put on the Mahler Sixth. He had promised himself that treat tonight anyway. The strings strode through his large speakers, the orchestra taking up the gawky march theme which so suddenly ceases to be gauche and becomes lyrical.

  Angelle Tours, thought Herbie. Then, on his knees he scrabbled around the documents again and retrieved the long file on Stellar, plus George’s full PF. He checked name against name. Rechecked George’s later work—mostly in the West, but he had done six or seven trips into the East in the late fifties. Quick bring-’em-back alive sorties. All smooth. Not a ripple.

  He consulted his notes on Ramilies and the little he had on Maitland-Wood, then looked down the list again. Michel Downay; Frühling; Fenderman—but he was later; Fenderman and von Tupfel did not hit their marks until after Wewelsburg.

  He had another vodka and repeated the names, silently, like a litany. So many dead. Old history. Hidden history. Now alive again. So alive that people were ready to kill for it.

  Jesus—the thought striking him horribly. He grabbed at the telephone. The DO again. Even if you have to use the bloody Special Branch put somebody on George and his wife, for Chrissakes; and Maitland-Wood. “I don’t care if he objects. Have someone there.” At least he must cover those who were left from the ashes of Stellar and, later, Wermut.

  Lastly he called Schnabeln. All was quiet. Any action at all? She had a visitor earlier. Male. No ID. Walked with a limp. Old. Used a stick, arrived in a taxi and left the same way. When? About an hour ago. Stayed fifteen minutes.

  Herbie tidied up the files and dumped them into the safe with the photographs. He’d had one more look at those—all five, spread out on the floor, rearranging them in different orders.

  He slept that night with the M 38H under his pillow. At nine Tubby Fincher rang to say the call to the Director was on. Seven o’clock from his end in St. John’s Wood.

  George Thomas arrived on the dot. Herbie provided coffee. This was the last, long crucial part of the Stellar business.

  “Straight on from where I left off?” George asked.

  “You arrived at Paderborn. They were all waiting with transport.”

  “Sitting comfortably?” George grinned. “Then I’ll begin.”

  40

  GERMANY 1941

  THERE WERE GREETINGS, HEIL Hitlers. Kuche produced the documents. The baggage—including the long boxes—was unloaded. The Waffen SS at the station were put through the hoop.

  Everyone was treated with great deference and taken out to the waiting cars. George was ushered into the first Merc, together with Michel Downay, Kuche, and the SS major who had been waiting at the station.

  Maurice Roubert—looking worried because his charge, Kuche, had slipped his lead—got into the second car. The bodyguard of fake Waffen SS were loaded into the first Opel truck. The baggage and the troops who had come down to meet the party travelled in the second.

  As the convoy moved off, Kuche introduced George and Downay to Major Flachs—Sturmbannführer Flachs, Second-in-Command to the Garrison of Wewelsburg. He smelled vaguely of eau de cologne and appeared to be a fastidious dandy. Colonel Streichman, the Garrison Commander, he said, was sorry he could not be there. “You understand…his duties at the castle…” He made a motion meant to convey that the colonel was occupied with things of greater importance. “Which of you is the Frenchman Thomas?”

  George signified that it was him and Flachs nodded, looking pleased. He then turned to Michel and stated the obvious, that he must be the Herr Doktor Downay. The Reichsführer was waiting for them.

  The pause was a shade long before Flachs quietly said they were expecting the Reichsführer a little later. He added that Himmler had been detained in Berlin with the Führer himself until very late on the previous night.

  “The Reichsführer SS is a very busy man,” Downay said, as though chiding George.

  “There it is.” Kuche, sitting in front with Flachs on the outside, half turned his head, his gloved right hand pointing forward. “The Reichsführer’s Camelot.”

  Ahead of them loomed the great solid walls of Wewelsburg castle. Huge and triangular, with its high circular, almost phallic, tower eclipsing the two smaller towers which went to make up the massive three-sided fortification of stone and brick. It was little wonder that legend said this would be the last bastion of Westphalia. It had an indestructible look: impregnable, flagrant, brooding in the morning light.

  Gazing at it in its haze of early marsh mist, George felt that unseen eyes watched them from the serrated battlements with concentrated malevolence.

  As they drew closer, so the physical presence of the place grew more awesome in his imagination. Panic stirred in George’s guts and sweat trickled down from his armpits, even in the cold of early morning. All the ancient fears stored in the collective memory of man seemed to be focused on his body, triggered by the castle.

  As a child, George had hated fairy tales, but loved the illustrations. This was no storybook illustration, except in the sense that it was the kind of place in which the giant lived, or one which brought restless dreams of unnamed horrors.

  By the time the convoy passed through the gateway and into the large, triangular, cobbled courtyard, George felt physically sick, very tired, and weary of the whole charade.

  It was darker once they were through the ornate stone arch: the walls of the castle, the towers, rising on all sides, hemming them in and giving an immediate sense of claustrophobia.

  Their driver turned sharp right, still going quite fast, taking the car in close to the base of the huge main tower. George glanced back. The rest of the convoy had followed, the other Merc stopping about ten feet behind them, and the Opel trucks fanning left and right so that the whole set of vehicles stood in the shape of a letter T, blocking them into the top of the triangle.

  Flachs was out of the car first, and, as his door opened, they could hear the clatter of boots as the troops leaped from the trucks. The doors of the car directly behind them slammed shut.

  At the base of the tower there was a small flight of stone steps leading to a heavy door. The door swung back to reveal a short, portly officer, his greatcoat collar turned up and the cap set square on a bull head. He came down the steps slowly, turning the toes of his boots slightly inwards, the long coat flapping, even in the shelter of the castle walls. He wore the insignia of a full general.

  Kuche inhaled sharply. “God. Frühling,” he said quietly, his hand reaching for the end of the seat just vacated by Flachs. “My commander, General Frühling.”

  The driver got out, holding the door open on Downay’s side. Michel Downay turned and smiled at George. “Yes,” he muttered. “The Herr General Frühling. SS Oberstgruppenführer Frühling, who, like all the Reichsführer’s chosen ones, has his own coat of arms above his chair set at the round table in that incredible room up there in the tower.” He swung himself out of the car with surprising agility.

  George opened the door on his side and stepped out next to Kuche, his right hand automatically moving towards his hip pocket and the Luger.

  “Keep your back against the car,” Kuche murmured, low.

  Several other officers had now appeared behind Frühling, following him down the steps. One in particular was pushing his way forward, a smile lifting the corner of his arrogant mouth, a wisp of blond hair showing under the angled cap, one hand placed carelessly on the buckle of his belt.

  George thought, for a second, that he was in the grip of another hallucination.

  “None the
worse, then, Joseph,” Michel Downay spoke in German.

  The officer touched the blood on his right sleeve and flexed his hand, which showed no marks or wounds. “Nothing that my batman cannot put right,” replied Obersturmführer Joseph Wald as he came towards the car.

  Michel Downay chuckled and lifted his ebony cane, bringing it down with a thump on the cobbles. Like a thousand nightmare sounds, George heard the click-clack of weapons being cocked ready for use. He felt Kuche’s shoulder against his.

  They were surrounded. Not just by the troops who had met them at the station, but also by Michel’s men in their purloined uniforms. The circle was unbreakable, a crescent of the evil eyes which were machine-pistol muzzles; a break in the ranks, then Roubert with a Luger; a Waffen SS sergeant with another Luger to the right. In front of them the group of officers all looking at Kuche and George with the interest of scientists seeing some rare species for the first time.

  Downay clumped his way over to General Frühling and raised his right arm in salute. “Heil Hitler,” he said. “I have brought them to you, just as I promised.”

  They shook hands, and the tubby Frühling chuckled, “And not a moment too soon.”

  Kuche gave a sigh, followed by a curse.

  “I am sorry, Sturmbannführer Kuche.” Michel Downay waved his cane towards them. “And to you also, George Thomas. A slight deception; a little magic; a trick of the light here and there.”

  Hands were already disarming them, pinioning their hands behind their backs. Roubert was among those doing the work.

  “Perhaps,” General Frühling spoke. “Perhaps you will both join us inside the tower so that we can offer you an explanation, and then give you the full details of what is going to happen here. What is to happen both to yourselves, and to the chief guest at our party—the owner of this magnificent castle. He should be putting in an appearance here, a brief appearance, within the next twenty-four hours.”

  41

  WEWELSBURG 1941

  FOR A MAN OF his bulk, General Frühling had a soft voice: the timbre of butter. “Reichsführer Himmler,” he said with a smile of contempt that traced his lips like a breeze rippling a pond, “bought this castle for one Reichsmark. He’s spent millions on it—as you have seen, gentlemen.”

  They had seen the steps which led down to the crypt under the huge north tower, and it had been explained that the crypt was of special significance to Himmler and the Order of the SS. They had also seen the huge dining room with its great circular oak table, around which the chair, upholstered in pigskin, stood at intervals—each bearing the coat of arms designated to its owner: Himmler’s chosen aides, his Oberstgruppenführers.

  Frühling even proudly pointed out his own chair and, in passing, placed his palm on the back of another, saying that it belonged to Himmler’s right hand—to Reinhard Heydrich—patting the chair and nodding as though conveying this was of special significance.

  They were also shown through the massive library in Himmler’s own quarters and had seen the long gallery with its collection of weapons lining the walls. As they walked, Frühling explained the significance of the crypt. It was the holy of holies. When one of the chosen Oberstgruppenführer died, or was killed in battle, his coat of arms would be burned in the crypt. Specially constructed vents would carry the smoke up the tower and out of the roof, in a single plume. The dead warrior’s ashes would be placed on a column in the crypt.

  “As it happens, the chance is that the first shield, and the first ashes, will be those of our beloved Reichsführer SS himself.” The laugh was like rancid fat.

  So, General Frühling himself conducted Kuche and George around the building. He was backed up by Wald, the garrison commander—Streichman—and his second-in-command, Flachs, plus a pair of Waffen SS sergeants—one of whom George identified as a Downay man from the French train. Michel Downay was with them, of course, as was George’s stepfather, the sinister scent-maker, Roubert. They all appeared to be quite at home with one another.

  Lastly they arrived in a room which overlooked the courtyard. George guessed they had left the fat north tower and were now situated within one of the battlemented adjoining blocks that ran from it.

  The room was functional, with high doors, a large desk, some maps and chairs. Kuche and George were invited to be seated, and the remaining officers ranged themselves around the room. Frühling sat at the desk.

  “I may as well tell you that the fact of Heinrich Kuche’s treachery has been known to us for a long time,” the general continued, switching from his guide-book manner back to a more military and businesslike brusqueness. Kuche, he added, had been marked almost since the first moment the British enticed him.

  “It is only fair to say also that Herr Doktor Downay has been a loyal member of the Party, with an honorary SS rank, since”—he paused—“since when, Michel?”

  “I was recruited by agents of Oberstgruppenführer Heydrich himself in 1936, Herr General.”

  George thought that Ramilies had said it all. Now if it was that bastard Heydrich. Heydrich, the blond beast, the cold and calculating right arm of Reichsführer Himmler; the intelligence behind the whole conception of the police forces of the Third Reich. More, the architect of the Nazi espionage system, and the man whose logic inexorably led to the ideal of a state purged of its enemies by death—purged of bad blood by extermination. So, Michel Downay, psychologist, French traitor and expert on the occult and Nostradamus, had been recruited into Heydrich’s intelligence services over four years ago. George loudly voiced his opinion that Roubert, his stepfather, was probably of the same breed.

  Roubert nodded and smiled, benignly. “Ah, even more so. My father was German. Your mother had no idea, by the way. I’m so sorry about that, Georges. I really did care for her. But one must think of one’s country before…”

  Downay interrupted him. “The story is that the Reichsminister of Propaganda got his ideas about the Nostradamus quatrains from his wife. In fact it was a shade more complicated than that.” He smiled, the pride showing. “I had quite a lot to do with it myself.”

  Frühling tapped the desk, bringing everyone to order. “I think we should make it clear that many things are double-edged. Downay, you see, was instructed to infiltrate the Communist elements in France—in Paris. He was also given orders to make contact with any possible subversive British elements. In some ways that is how Kuche was brought into play. We knew who had recruited him, so we merely placed Downay in his path. He hit the bait; and you arrived, Georges Thomas—complete with a new set of quatrains. Quite a clever move that—to set the Wehrmacht at adds with the SS. Clever, but not difficult. However…” He looked around the room and explained that there were better games to be played than setting the SS against the Wehrmacht. For a long time, he told them, a faction of the SS had looked for change—drastic change. Now that change was coming. Thomas and Kuche should feel honoured. They were to be a part of that change. Things were about to happen which even Nostradamus could not foresee.

  There was no doubt concerning the allegiance of the SS, he went on. They were totally behind the Führer, Adolf Hitler. But what if something should happen to the Führer? What if his great and glorious plans did not mature? If something went wrong, Germany would be at the mercy of Hitler’s beloved Heinrich Himmler—“Our own Reichsführer SS; or Chief of Police.” A large section of the senior SS officers were quite content at the thought. Happily, though, there were those gifted with a more far-sighted perception. Himmler had his mysticism (“You can feel it all around you here in this castle”); what was really needed was someone with cold and concentrated logic.

  A man like Reinhard Heydrich, George thought—the cashiered naval officer whose driving force behind Himmler had played such a huge part in the personal success of the Reichsführer SS.

  As if reading his thoughts, Frühling said, “We need at our head a man like Reinhard Heydrich. A man who has enthusiasm, vision, and extraordinary organising ability.” He gave his bu
ttery laugh. “Not a bungling chicken farmer like Himmler. You—the traitor, Kuche, and the English spy Thomas—have been chosen to rid us of the chicken farmer, so that Oberstgruppenführer Heydrich can take what is truly his.”

  He went on, but George was back thinking of Ramilies. The Rammer, in his little talks at the Abbey, had been at pains to lecture him about the in-fighting within the forces of the Third Reich. He was remarkably well informed. Reichsführer Himmler has blind faith in Hitler. Heydrich does not share that faith. On another occasion he quoted Heydrich directly: I shall be the first to do away with the old man if he makes a mess of things.

  “You are both marked for death, of course. At the moment.” Frühling’s voice broke through the memories. “Kuche will go quickly and soon. It is best. He has fulfilled his purpose, both for the British and ourselves. You, Thomas, will undergo a certain amount of interrogation. I suspect that the new Reichsführer might even tend towards leniency if you co-operate.” There was not a hint of sincerity in his voice. “You must have some information at your disposal. The arrangements London is making about bringing agents into Fortress Europe. We shall see.”

  He continued: dabbling in the Nostradamus quatrains intrigued Himmler. They had intrigued Goebbels and Hitler as well, but the way in which they had been presented to the Reichsführer had led Himmler to ask for a special meeting here at Wewelsburg. The time and place were right. Also the dramatis personae.

  “It is envisaged like a play, you see”—beaming broadly. “If you are not spared, Georges Thomas. For instance, how were we to realise that an academic Frenchman like yourself, Georges Thomas, had designs on the Reichsführer’s life? That is one way it can go. Also, what a shame that Sturmbannführer Kuche had to the at your hands trying to defend his chief. There is an irony about the fact that—if it is to be—Kuche will probably get a hero’s funeral. It’s the best we can think of at the moment. Heydrich will, naturally, rush to his Führer’s side to comfort him on the loss of his most loyal friend and comrade. Heydrich will be the first to hear. Tomorrow morning—after it is done. By tomorrow night I should imagine his appointment as Himmler’s natural successor will be ratified.”