by Anton Gill
Whom would they send after him, once they'd found out?
And Emma? Would he ever know if Kessler had succeeded? If they got her, and thought she might know where he was ...
He couldn't think about that. Kessler would get her away. He would get her away. No doubt of that.
He shook his head to clear it. Even so, unbidden, Kara's face appeared in his mind.
He hadn't been able to give himself time to think about Kara since dreaming of her on the flight to the Wolf's Lair.
Now he spoke to her quietly, reassuring her that he hadn't forgotten, that she ought to know that he hadn't forgotten.
Kara. Kara. I love you.
He thought of the call he'd made to Tilli Cassirer. Had he been rash? What if they'd logged it? Had it been foolish to speak in French, and use such a clumsy code? The people he was up against weren't all fools.
But he'd needed to take some action. If there was the slightest chance that Hagen knew, it would mean the end, and no chance of saving what remained of his self-respect, let alone anything else.
The car banged violently as he hit a pothole. Brandau, who had been staring silently ahead, lost in his own thoughts, looked across at him sharply. No damage, but a lesson. Concentrate.
'Got a gun with you?'
'Yes,' said Brandau.
'Size?'
'Standard 7.65.'
Hoffmann nodded. He hoped they wouldn't need to use guns. If it came to it, he had his service automatic, his own 7.65, and the little Walther Model 9 which his grandfather had given him in 1921 when he'd graduated from police college. Not much bigger than a cigarette case and about the weight of a glass of wine, it was powerful enough to keep him out of trouble, and it was the gun he'd hang onto until the end. And of course the third pistol for the fake suicide, if they had time to set it up.
The Gestapo investigators wouldn't buy it for long; but it'd give them perhaps three days.
25
They came to a junction, and looking to the left, Hoffmann recognised a landmark, a battered and neglected roadside crucifix, half life-size. Beyond it he should be able to rejoin his original route. Luck was smiling on them. He looked at his watch, and accelerated. Back on the right road.
Rose grey light in the sky now. Are those storm clouds to the south? Where is the wind coming from?
The engine purred. Nice and quiet. Farmland beginning. Empty.
What might have once been potato fields. Or beet. Balance the time between having enough light to find the right spot, and the time when the farmers got up and started moving about, chasing the last bony cattle out into the fields, casting an eye around their territories.
Beside him Brandau had begun to doze, lulled by the rhythm of the car, but jerking himself awake every time his head fell forward.
***
They used to shoot looters, Hoffmann remembered, thinking of the farmers, about twenty years ago, when times were hard. As a young homicide cop he'd arrested a farmer who'd shot an entire family, father, mother, and three children, all starving, for trying to steal potatoes from him. That was a bad case. The farmer had shot the man first, then the woman as she knelt over her husband. The kids had just stood around, too hungry and cold and bewildered to do anything else, and he'd picked them off one by one; a girl of eight, and two boys, ten and five.
Hoffmann had seen the man hanged. Jaw set, eyes front. Open until the moment when they put the sack over his head, and open under the hood, no doubt, until the end.
It was then that Hoffmann started to take an interest in the Party. It was the only thing that seemed to offer a way out of the tottering Republic, which had never got under way, never got out from under the shadow of the last war, which he himself had lived through as a teenager, just in time to enlist for the last year, seen his father go away to it, a quiet maths teacher, come back even quieter, spend every hour he could in his study, hardly ever speaking; his mother always pale, the house later sold, the money worthless in days because of the inflation then. And the Left was a house divided against itself, leaving a gap for the Party. So he joined. Some kind of structure and what looked like a solid socialist plan that might work.
So it goes.
In the end there was nothing particularly socialist about the National Socialists. Political plans that look big always boil down to the same thing, Hoffmann supposed. But you survive, if you're lucky, and you bury your principles, and you learn to turn a blind eye. You do your job and you keep your head down. Unless in the end you can't live with yourself without doing something about it.
Brandau was staring ahead, eyes dead. Hoffmann tried to think of something to say, but couldn't. Hardly a friendship, but they depended on one another. Apart from that, and the battle, what had they had in common?
Hoffmann dug in the breast pocket of his tunic and pulled out his packet of cigarettes, offering it to Brandau, who shook his head. Hoffmann lit one, felt better. The snow he'd rubbed onto his gums had kicked in. He glared into the coming day. The road ran straight ahead now. Another half an hour, maybe less. They'd have to start looking soon. For the moment, they might have been alone on the planet.
Was it only two years since he'd first had to listen, over cigars and cognac, to the big fish discuss the best way of getting rid of the Jews? The Chancellor had hoped to get control of Madagascar and send them all there. Then there'd been a plan to send them into exile anywhere, but only the Danes would take any, and they couldn't take them all. In the end there had been a conference at Wannsee, and what began experimentally in the backwoods of Poland later became a major, formal operation.
Hoffmann knew all about that. He'd been part of it.
From the beginning of 1941, plenty of those who were detached to the east to do the dirty work began to drink. A simple escape, unless you were one of the ones who were actually mad, who thought the killing was ideologically sound, or you were one of those who couldn't afford to lose control, like Hoffmann himself. For most of the rest, there was the bottle.
Hoffmann thought again of the dead family in the potato field. Twenty years ago. But in those days, dark though they were, the city stood, the hospitals functioned, the nation was one among fellow nations. It was a pariah now, and amidst the wreckage, the farmers' fields yielded little or nothing.
Why had so few risen up against the Party? After the first euphoria, when it became clear to anyone with eyes to see that the angel of salvation had black wings, and talons that dripped blood?
There were abandoned cows in distant fields in Poland and he had seen them wandering, their udders distended, moaning in pain. There was no-one to milk them. The noise they'd made was the most desolate of all the desolate sounds which haunted his memory.
26
He felt a hand on his arm.
'The car's veering,' said Brandau. 'Let me drive.'
'I'm all right. We'll be there soon.'
Brandau peered off to his right. 'There's open water over there,' he said. 'And a sand-bar.'
Hoffmann pulled over and looked past the lawyer into the gathering light. The sun was above the horizon now, and the clouds to the south has disappeared. A sand-bar didn't sound good. No, it had to be the place he had chosen. There was still time to find it. He put the car into gear and drove on.
The road narrowed. Tall clumps of reeds grew at the very edge of shallow lakes. Some of these lakes, you could walk out hundreds of metres and still only be up to your knees, though you had to beware of quicksand. The lake they needed shelved sharply, and was deep enough to drown a man in, for a corpse to be lost in.
Brandau swivelled in his seat, reaching for the leather case they had brought with them.
'What are you doing?'
Brandau looked at him. 'I thought, a little of the brandy ... '
'No.'
'A centimetre or so won't make any difference.'
'No. Have a drink after we've got rid of the car. When we get to the village. This has got to look convincing, at least to the people
who find it.'
'They'll loot it anyway. All this good stuff.'
'As long as it convinces them.'
The track to the lake would appear any minute now. Then perhaps thirty minutes' walk to the priest's house. Hoffmann pulled the car round a corner, sweating in his uniform as he changed gear to cope with a sudden abrupt slope which took them up onto a brown plain, dotted with copses and, black against the skyline, the wood they'd been looking for, the branches of the wind-twisted trees like a madman's hair at this distance.
'There!'
Heavy as it was, the car lurched as the wind gripped it. They were out of the lee now. The country road was stony, so they could move fast across the plain, the Mercedes sending pebbles flying but leaving no other trace. Hoffmann drove fast, racing the rising sun. As they reached the wood, which the road skirted, they could see low houses half a kilometre away. They seemed part of the earth.
'Look for a track on the right.'
Brandau looked at his companion, hunched over the wheel. He peered into the black trees.
'There!'
Hoffmann stopped on the road and climbed out, walking round the car, gently kicking stray leaves and twigs over the verge, and frowning at the impression the Mercedes' wheels had left. The lane that led into the wood was firm enough to support the weight of the car. They were still in the game.
He'd left the engine running, but though it scarcely made any noise above a purr, he squinted over to the distant houses, looking for any sign of movement. There were dim lights in one or two windows, but otherwise nothing, and no dog barked.
He climbed into the car again and they nosed down the track. Two, three hundred metres. Then a cave-like opening appeared between arching trees to one side. A smaller lane. Hoffmann turned the car more cautiously this time, and he felt the tyres crunch on the ground beneath. The new lane was surfaced with crushed seashells from a time when this part of Germany had been under an ocean. He slowed to walking speed, barely able to prevent the car from stalling, his leg muscles straining with the tension of balancing clutch and accelerator. He was smiling now. Let the bastards from Gestapo HQ in Fürstenberg sort this out, he thought. He was pleased to feel the old excitement rise in him again. This might work.
The track - it was so narrow, and so crowded with trees, damp all year round, that it might have been in a tunnel - led down to a narrow strip of beach at the edge of the lake - his lake. The sun was up now, but here it remained dark, and secret. They pushed on for another hundred metres or so, following the track as it wound through the trees. Both men strained their ears, listening to the sound the tyres made. Sooner or later they'd hit sand. They'd have to stop then.
Hoffmann hit the brake and disengaged the gear the moment he felt the wheels slip.
'Here.'
He reversed gently, back along the shell path for about five metres. On the left, there was another track, even narrower, sloping off into the undergrowth. there was a kind of man-made gulley, ancient, some kind of prehistoric quarry perhaps, down there. Hoffmann edged the car towards it until the track gave out. He pulled over into the crowded wood, crushing saplings. Other young trees arched their branches over the 770 like protecting arms.
He killed the engine and the lights.
'Stay where you are for a moment,' he told Brandau, who nodded, lighting a cigarette. The leaves rustled like tissue paper in what little wind could reach this spot. He climbed out, placing his feet carefully on the ground, which was covered with moss and loose stone. They'd leave no traces here, and what disturbance they made would quickly be obscured by the wind and the light summer rain which once again had begun to fall. The only clues Hoffmann intended to leave were ones which would convince his pursuers that he'd come here alone. If all went according to plan, Brandau would be drinking hock in Bern before the Gestapo picked up his trail, and they'd drag the lake for Hoffmann's body. After all, suicide would be the logical way out. Not even unusual. But he knew that whoever was sent after him would be able to second-guess his every move. After all, they'd be people he'd trained himself. He couldn't count on anything else. Her made a shortlist in his mind.
'Pass me the car papers.'
Brandau took them from the glove compartment.
'Thank you. Now, edge over here and get out this side. Try not to disturb anything.' Hoffmann knew he was being over-cautious, but he could no more change his own habits than he would underestimate whoever was sent to track him. Brandau climbed over the driver's seat to join Hoffmann. Without the engine's hum and the car's comfort to buffer them, the wind and the trees were alien and wild. Near at hand, some water-bird shrieked, and something scurried in the undergrowth.
Hoffmann had opened one of the rear doors. On the back seat was his black leather greatcoat. He leant in and pulled the small brown suitcase out from behind the driver's seat. He opened it and checked its contents with care. Brandau knew what treasures there were: a half kilo of real coffee, a bar of Hershey chocolate, a bottle, three-quarters full, of Napoleon cognac, a silver hip-flask of Irish whiskey, two packets of Player's, one open, a Walther service pistol, and a packet of American condoms. Also, a change of underclothes, a green shirt, a box of birdshot, and a towel stolen from the Hotel Kaiserhof.
The essentials that Göring or any other high-up would take on a shooting party. Hoffmann hoped the trail he was laying would be suitably confusing. They'd link it to him in the end, but that would take them time. Then, with luck, they'd think he'd set it up to disguise his own suicide. They'd think he'd deliberately wanted to tie them up for a day or two so that his associates and family could get away.
If they bought it. Hoffmann couldn't count on Gestapo numbskulls being set on his track. Everyone knew how his mind worked.
All he took from the case was three packets of oval Muratti cigarettes, which Brandau had brought him some time ago from Switzerland.
Around them, the wild duck were stirring. Brandau watched through the trees as a trio of them scampered across the lake, scattering the water with their wings and their feet as they took off, hurting his eyes with their freedom.
Hoffmann placed the birdshot on the back seat. He stowed the case back behind the driver's seat, leaving one of its straps trailing onto the passenger seat to betray its presence, but discreetly. Removing the anonymous greatcoat, he closed the doors quietly and went round to the boot. Then he locked the car and, motioning Brandau to precede him, moved away from it, kicking the ground and the grass into some kind of shape, leaving only his footprints visible where they made any impression at all. He didn't imagine they would last, but he couldn't guarantee how long it would be before the car was found. The locals would know these woods as well as he did. Nothing could be left to chance.
They made their way to the point where they had turned off.
'Follow the path back to the edge of the wood. Tread carefully. Keep to the verge. When you get there, stay just inside the trees.'
Hoffmann watched Brandau disappear up the track, and took stock. He wondered again how much time the set-up would buy them. Some forester would find the car within a day or two. The longer the better. If their luck went the other way, a farmworker would stumble across it later that morning, but he doubted if that would happen. Either way, there'd be hesitation and delay before anyone reported it to the local police. More fear, hesitation and delay then, but finally the cops would open the car and see what was in it. They wouldn't touch it at first, wouldn't do anything. No-one at first would dare to assume that it had actually been abandoned.
They might think Reichsmarschall Göring had gone duck shooting to take his mind off things. Stranger things had happened.
They'd keep the car under observation, but they'd inform the Gestapo, who would run a check on the registration number and solve the mystery. But that would take a while. The bureaucracy was like tangled undergrowth. Then, the Gestapo would raise the alarm. Then, they would start to look for Hoffmann's body.
27
It wa
sn't by any means perfect, but once they'd finally traced the car to him, and they knew he was part of the conspiracy, they might just think for a minute that he'd killed himself.
He didn't have much time to set up his suicide. He rolled his shoulders, relaxing the tension, put on the greatcoat, and walked down to the lake.
He skated his feet across the ground to leave as little mark of his passage as possible, just to make things more confusing; but when he came to the sandy beach he no longer bothered. No footprints here would last more than half-an-hour - there was enough tidal flow in the lake to ensure that.
He reached the water in two minutes. He took out the spare Walther service pistol, checked it, and fired one shot. No-one would hear it at this distance, and the noise was whipped away by the breeze. Then he threw the automatic a few metres into the lake, to ensure they'd find it with just enough difficulty. He hurled his holster and gunbelt after it. Then he took out the car papers and threw them into the wind. No suicide note, nothing too clever - a man who's about to kill himself isn't going to care what traces he leaves; but a man who's faking his suicide needs to organise them.
He took off the gloves at the shore and washed his hands. A relief. He threw the gloves into the shallows. Another clue for them to play with.
He re-joined Brandau. On the way, he flung the car-keys into the undergrowth, on the other side of the path from the car.
The rain still fell, no more than a light drizzle, but the sun was hazy and the storm clouds were back. The wind began to gust again. The farmers, hopefully, would stay indoors.