by John Meaney
"A mabuah, nothing more. But with a way in to Black Path, we hope."
"Tell me."
NINETEEN:
MUNICH, March 1963
At two o'clock the following afternoon, my train was pulling into the main station, Hauptbahnhof München. Gouts of steam puffed from the engine as we slowed, brakes screeching, and pulled to a halt beside a grimy platform.
I am Larry Brown.
While I can pass for German, there was no need on this trip. My identity today was English but with a history different from my own, and if you think this business fosters paranoid schizophrenics, you might be right. Lugging my small leather case, with a copy of Korzybski's Science and Sanity in my other hand, I kept in the middle of the disembarking passengers, just one among the crowd. Ahead, beyond the ticket barriers, was a slight man who stood out: blaring yellow cravat, green plaid jacket, scarlet waistcoat.
"Larry, dear boy." His pale glance had flicked across the book's cover. "How absolutely delightful to see you."
"Clive. Thank you for coming to meet me."
"Wouldn't dream of letting you arrive without a welcome."
He offered his hand, limp at the wrist. We shook. There was some strength in his fingers. Perhaps this was going to work out.
Working alongside a mabuah – or any kind of asset who's not a trained case officer – is not the safest thing, not when you're inside enemy territory. This might not be far from my own country, and Black Path are certainly illegal here in Outer Germany, but there are signs on the walls warning against Fremdenhass – the hatred of strangers – and authorities only pass laws against activities that people actually carry out.
"Do you know where Left Luggage is, Clive?"
"Over there. We've plenty of time before meeting Schtüpnagel. You could leave the bag at your hotel."
"I'd rather we take our time getting to the FPDA."
The local headquarters of the Free Popular Democratic Alliance Party was several kilometres away. We could pick up a taxi, but preferably not from outside the station.
"Fair enough, old thing."
At the Left Luggage counter, a grey-haired man took my bag in return for a green ticket. I wondered whether he had worked for the railway twenty years ago, and what kind of shipments he'd seen loaded aboard trains, the ones whose destinations read Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and the only ticket needed was a Star of David sewn onto your coat.
Rogers and I walked.
Soon we were in Marienplatz, where the city hall looks restored to 1930s glory, but only from certain angles. The gargoyles and stone shields are back in place, along with orange-and-white façade panels, but the north side is a slope of rubble, where the heart went out of the restoration workers. Some people blame New Jerusalem for that, arguing that without the Elbe Strip and Jewish Berlin like twin tumours inside Germany, the allied powers could have rebuilt the nation in the same way that McArthur did Japan.
"What's your real name?" murmured Rogers
The cobblestones were slick with recent rain. Maybe they should have used modern materials, instead of trying to recreate the past.
"My name is Larry Brown," I said.
"Well of course, old dear. What was I thinking of?"
"Let's find somewhere to sit and talk."
"You fancy a tipple?"
"I was thinking of coffee."
"Oh, dear. I suppose we're working. And the tea in this town tastes dreadful, as I expect you know."
"Mm."
"Not that you can tell me about yourself. Though I expect you know all about me."
"Enough to understand why the FPDA might think you're on their side."
"If they'd ever met my father, he could tell them just how wrong that is. But there's no chance of that."
The old man had died last year. Clive Rogers had not attended the funeral. A handful of British fascists had.
"My God, Larry."
"What is it?"
Adrenaline created speckles of sensation on my back, the limbic system preparing for fight or flight.
"Just look at those gorgeous cream cakes. Shall we go inside?"
I exhaled.
"My treat, Mr Rogers."
As a mabuah, Clive Rogers was neither Jewish nor strictly a clandestine operative, but certainly an asset. His profile, stored in Berlin, rated him aleph, the highest grade. But there was more to his story than sympathy for New Jerusalem.
He had formed Albinic Films twelve years ago in London, after several years spent working for a medium-sized documentary company. As a young man in the war, Rogers had served in the RAF, a specialist in airborne photography. It was experts like him who helped the bombers cut the extended Nazi supply lines, eventually stopping Rommel and other generals in their tracks.
But Brian Rogers, Clive's father, was a fascist, an anti-Semite, and an alcoholic. He was drunk the night that he walked down the Strand yelling that Hitler was right, and the Blitzkrieg would stop as soon as Churchill resigned. The prison sentence was lenient – given the prevailing public mood.
A footnote in the file, written by a reviewing case officer, implied that Clive Rogers had been instrumental in setting up the Dresden raid. Making up for his father? asked a handwritten addendum.
Yet there was another side to Rogers' story. His mother had been French, a Parisienne who moved to England in 1935. Her younger sister, Clive Rogers' aunt Eloïse, had remained in Paris. And during the early days of the Nazi Occupation, Eloïse had fallen in love with a young Obergruppenführer called Schultz.
I knew (although the file did not mention this) that the occupying forces were initially composed of the best-educated men, particularly the officers, under strict orders to show polite behaviour at all times. And from the French viewpoint, collaboration was intended to be an honourable term, coined by the patriotic Marshal Pétain. Instead of annexing France into its own territory, Germany recognized France as a sovereign country and formed the Vichy Republic. It was a kind of victory... or so it seemed, at first.
But by the war's end, the realities of the Nazi regime were manifest, and Eloïse was one of many collabos horizontales who suffered afterwards. The head-shaving and the tarring-and-feathering were the public side of it. The rapes and beating which fractured Eloise's skull and changed her personality forever went unreported.
The file had said nothing about the fate of Obergruppenführer Schultz.
Whatever motivated Rogers to help New Jerusalem and Branch 7, he'd done sterling work on every operation he'd helped on, and his expertise with optical technology was superb. The file indicated that he wanted to be more of an active agent, and recommended that he be given increasingly responsible tasks, but not trained as a katsa, a case officer.
You could say that he was neurotic, but not insane enough to be one of us.
Right now, his background and talents gave him a double role: providing access to the political front that hid Black Path, and assisting with surveillance technology. But he was not a violent man.
And I was exposing him to danger.
We sat in one corner, next to the window. Rogers grimaced at the taste of his coffee.
"So what exactly are you after, Larry?"
"We call it a fast penetration."
"Hilde might like that." Rogers smirked, exaggerating the expression, then gave a serious smile. "That's Fräulein Schenck, whom you'll meet at the FPDA. You'll get on well."
He'd been to the offices before, but had not met Schtüpnagel, the local man in charge.
"Have you tried to establish a... relationship with this Hilde?"
"Not the way you mean." Rogers picked up his teaspoon, stared at it, then put it down. "There are some women I like to go shopping with, but that's not what you were thinking of."
"Um..."
"People like me" – he nodded to the cobbled expanse of Marienplatz beyond the window, his thin face sombre – "were taken away in the same kind of trains as people like you. Although" – with a sudden change in postur
e, he smiled – "the pre-war Berlin would have been right up my alley, wouldn't you say, dear?"
"I really don't know."
"Hilde Schenck is like the city hall out there." Rogers pointed. "Nice façade, damaged inside."
"That's too bad. How's the cake?"
"Delicious. You should try some."
"I'm on a diet."
"Ha. You're supposed to be a documentary writer, Larry Brown, but do you actually know anything about science and scientists?"
"I can wing it."
"Hmm. You know, I really don't want to make this documentary. Ex-Nazi scientists shouldn't be given comfortable jobs in the States, they should be taken out and—"
"That's fine, and there must be a thousand ways we can get the deal to fall through. Afterwards. Once I'm inside."
"Oh, I haven't forgotten why we're here. And this cake really is quite wonderful."
"Call it a perk of the job. All the Zahntorte you can eat."
Some kind of recompense for putting his life on the line, without even knowing our true objective.
It was all about the bomb, and had been since that night on the Hamburg dock, except that was just my part of the story. You might begin with Moshe's blowing up the van with his lover Rachel inside, or you could trace it further back, to the GRU's termination of their assassination programme, and Black Path's recruiting of a bunch of trained killers with scientific knowledge and connections.
Or back to Hitler, to the race to develop an atomic bomb in the 1940s, and the V-4 rocket intended to take out New York.
The computer tape I'd filched from Kowary Podgórze indicated that Black Path had stolen the uranium they needed. Pinchas had told me last night. The Nazis now had enough to make one weapon. Our analysts were certain.
I'd questioned this, because of the Black Path man who'd died trying to infiltrate the place using the fake ID intended for me, presumably obtained from a local Soviet asset. But Pinchas reported that there'd been a death among the plant workers, from radiation sickness despite what the autopsy file said, almost certainly the man who'd stolen the uranium to order. Call it karma, but not in time to stop the Nazi bastards from getting what they needed to blow up Manhattan. We had no way to find their planned location there. The only way in was to start at the German end and follow the trail.
Munich was one entry point. Schröder would have other operations mounted in parallel, their details unknown to me for obvious reasons. Thinking about this created an urgent tension deep in my core, at odds with the necessity to remain calm and civilized, to enter the Nazis' subculture by stealth instead of weapons thundering.
"—the same hotel?" Rogers was saying.
"Sorry, what was that?"
"I was wondering why you're not staying at my hotel. Or did someone tell you about the breakfasts? They are rather dreadful."
There was no reason not to tell him. I was likely to need his help.
"My hotel is in Thierschstrasse, quite legitimate, except that Black Path like to hold important meetings there. Small clandestine meetings, I mean."
"Meetings you'd like us to get invited to?"
"Just me," I said. "You'll be out of sight."
"Not on a plane to London?"
"I could do with your expert assistance."
"Well, that's something, old dear. One likes to be more than a pretty face."
"Er..."
Coffees finished, we caught a taxi in the square. It took us along Sendlingerstrasse, where the buildings had cream, yellow or cerise walls with decorative window shutters and carved eaves, all very Bavarian, then Müllerstrasse, where Rogers pointed out Einstein's former home, from the old days.
Three months ago, like a frozen, half-dead rat, I'd crouched in a plane's galley only feet from the great man. Another detail I couldn't share.
Finally, we pulled up in a clean street that was mostly residential. The air, when we climbed out, was clear. It was a fresh March afternoon.
Integrated into the apartment blocks, here and there, were small businesses at ground level: a dentist's office, a discrete hairdresser, a small electrical shop. Beside us, a square archway led into a courtyard. The side door, under the arch, was our way in.
Rogers used the buzzer, then spoke into the steel grille. The lock clicked open.
Inside, we climbed varnished wooden stairs, our footsteps echoing as we passed ordinary family dwellings until we reached the top landing. There, a small notice read: Free Popular Democratic Alliance Party.
The woman who opened the door was thin and ordinary-looking, and that's the problem with monsters and their supporters: they look like you and me.
She greeted us by name, and led us into a small reception area. The place was clean and elegant, with glass doors opening onto a rooftop balcony, several other doors leading to offices, and a central stairwell that led down to the next floor. Designed as an upmarket two-storey apartment, it was a good place for a small company or political extremists to set up office.
One of the doors was partly open. A slender man was sitting with his legs crossed. He was wearing a tweed suit. His face was out of view.
There was a blonde woman, lithe and strong-looking, carrying a tray laden with teapot, pastries and cups. She glanced at the receptionist, then at me – something odd about her grey eyes – and entered one of the offices. Inside, the man rose from his seat.
He started to speak in English.
"That's awfully kind of—"
"Ich hoffe das diese Tee OK ist. Ich habe—"
The door closed, cutting off her words.
Very interesting.
Behind the reception desk, the thin woman looked pale. Perhaps no one was supposed to know about an Englishman on the premises, other than Rogers or myself. If Schröder had a watch team outside, it would be interesting to find out who this might be.
Crossman.
The name was in my mind, just a word that I couldn't place, a disturbing word. Then the associations came back: a name in the dossier. Ignatieff had given us Zadok, and while that didn't mean the rest of information was true, we had some confidence in it.
One of the GRU-trained killers was called Crossman, and his nationality was English.
The receptionist's phone buzzed. She picked it up, listened, then said: "Ja, natürlich, Herr Doktor."
Then she rose and smiled at Rogers, and led the way to a dark hardwood door. The handle was gleaming brass. She opened it.
"Herr Doktor Schtüpnagel, here are Mr Rogers and Mr Brown."
"Thank you. Come please inside, gentlemen."
He came from behind the desk, jowls stretching in a nearly-smile, and we shook hands. His palm was damp.
In the dragon's lair.
Behind us, the receptionist left. The brass lock clicked into place.
Five minutes later, the formal greetings were over. We'd established not just that our journey from the United Kingdom had been uneventful – of course, mine had really started in Berlin – but we also knew exactly how long we had for the meeting, what we were going to cover, and that the coffee was going to arrive in another five minutes time.
Some people raised in muddle-along England – or in fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants America – find that Teutonic organization sets their teeth on edge. But there's this: you can be comfortable in mutual understanding of what's expected and what will occur. In Outer Germany, the phrase Alles in Ordnung means more than 'everything in order': it means the planets are in their rightful orbits and everything is just right. The thing is, I like the country. And there are parts of my own country, especially in Berlin, where I feel uncomfortable: those streets where every women's head is covered with a scarf or wig, and the men wear black hats and have long curls for sideburns.
Concentrate.
Schtüpnagel's bookcase contained an impressive collection. No sign of Mein Kampf – that probably came out when insiders were here – but Kant's Critique of Reason and Schrödinger's What is Life? were there, in both English and Germ
an.
That was when I saw the lampshade.
Hook my thumbs fast into his—
It was impossible. The standard lamp was ordinary, but mounted on it was...
—eyes, and rip to—
No. He couldn't dare.
—burst the eyeballs, edge of the hand into his—
Not now. Not these days.
—larynx, crushing the—
No one could get away with it.
—cartilage so he chokes—
Such monstrosity...
—to death.
But it wasn't just lampshades. Vellum has always been highly prized, not to mention versatile. So I wondered, as Schtüpnagel shifted his large self on his overstuffed chair, just how many dead Jewish women's hair kept the upholstery plump, because they didn't just take human skin, they took everything they could.
Kill him.
If you didn't know about the skin, you'd think the lampshade well made, even stylish.
Kill him now.
So in keeping with this well-polished place.
All of them. Kill all—
Then I did the hardest thing I have ever done.
—the bastards—
I smiled.
—now.
And spoke politely.
TWENTY:
MUNICH, March 1963
It seemed that Herr Doktor Schtüpnagel's degrees were in engineering, and that he divided his time – a nice phrase – between running the family firm and serving his country as best he could, meaning that he sat here and planned the return to power of madmen who'd already ruined the place once. Schtüpnagel's technical background meant that he was knowledgeable, and had even heard of some the films that Rogers had made.
"But actually none of your films are political, yes?"
"Not exactly, Herr Doktor," said Rogers, "but you know about my father, and what's happening in my country with immigration, coloureds and Irish everywhere. It's time to set the record straight."
His background was based on the truth of his father's affiliation to Moseley's fascists, while hiding all mention of the ways that son had rebelled against father. My own legend of Larry Brown was entirely fictitious, hard to check and therefore not as convincing, despite the detail that the Biographical Cover team had woven into my imaginary past.