by Anton Gill
The question was, what kind of report should he make to Müller? Could he get away with saying that he believed Hoffmann had killed himself, that the Mercedes should be retrieved, that there was nothing more to be done? But wasn't that too obvious? If he'd seen through it, why not someone else - Müller was on the scent; someone closer, like his former colleague, Ernst Schiffer, for example, would be even more likely to. And Kleinschmidt, too, had probably, if he could be bothered, formed some opinion of his own. And where was the body? The shore shelved off steeply. Was Hoffmann's corpse by now in the depths of the water, where it would take frogmen weeks to find it, if at all? Could Kessler set them on that kind of goose-chase? Would he dare to?
They might as well get the car back to the pool before it rusted: whatever happened, there was nothing more to be gleaned from these woods. He thought, too, that if he could persuade Müller to give him some time in Berlin, he'd be able - if they hadn't put a tail on him - to see Emma again and get her to a place of real safety. If Hoffmann was still alive, and Kessler imagined he was, he was pretty sure he knew where his old boss would go. The others would assume that he'd make for Sweden or Switzerland, where, with his contacts in their police forces formed over twenty years and more, he'd have no trouble at all getting in and to safety. But the others didn't know what Kessler knew.
So the problem was, how to pull as much wool as possible over Müller's eyes, without making himself look less sharp than an SS dagger, and without compromising himself? And he had only a few hours to get a copper-bottomed solution together. He also had his own problems. He'd never been a Party member himself, but he'd been closely associated with someone the enemy would see as a Nazi bigwig. Kessler knew that the curtain would fall in a matter of months, and certainly no more than a year. He had to be sure that when the time came, everything was covered; and he knew what his priorities were.
Waiting by their car, they found the policeman guarding the entrance to the track in conversation with an SS motorcycle courier. Both men doused their cigarettes and stood to attention as Kessler approached.
'To what do I owe this pleasure?' Kessler asked the SS-man as Kleinschmidt heaved his bag of not-too-promising evidence into the back of their car, himself lighting up as soon as he'd done so.
'Message from Department Four, sir.' The SS man produced a grey envelope from his saddlebag. What the hell did Müller want now? Kessler took the envelope and slit it with his finger.
The note wasn't from Müller but from Ernst Schiffer:
Sturmbannführer SCHIFFER, E., i.A.: Gruppenführer MÜLLER
Berlin, RSHA, Amt IV
to: Kriminalrat KESSLER, P.
Strictly confidential state material!
Heil Hitler!
You are commanded to return in order to make your report in person to the Head of Department IV immediately on receipt of this Order, and to receive further instructions. This Order applies equally to Detective-Sergeant KLEINSCHMIDT, A.
You are to proceed directly to Department IV under motorcycle escort.
I am further instructed to inform you that a parallel investigation into the whereabouts of the suspect HOFFMANN's daughter has been today instigated under my personal command.
Heil Hitler!
(signed) SCHIFFER
Kessler folded the order carefully and put it in his pocket.
'Anything wrong?' Kleinschmidt asked, at his elbow.
Kessler looked at the sunshine on the raindrops, as it turned them into drops of gold.
'Nothing at all,' he said, and, turning to the SS-man: 'We'd better get going.'
40
Enough time had passed. Hoffmann had managed to dip in and out of sleep for another hour, though it was a painful experience, for every time he began to drift, fear of the dream jolted him awake. Now there was no longer any point in trying.
He rose and made his way down the still-silent corridor to the narrow bathroom, where he took a cold shower - at least there was water. Shaving, he looked at himself in the stained mirror. His reflection stared back expressionlessly through a storm of brown mottling. The face was flabby with tiredness, the grey eyes dull. Peeling colour print around the edges of the glass celebrated the joys of weekends at Wörthersee, and how affordable they were. The advert made him think back to what now seemed like an age of innocence, though of course it had been nothing of the sort, and many Berliners had been ashamed of their city's reputation for sex and sleaze. But it had been vibrant, too, and free, and the world had been there, the British, French, Italians, Russians, Americans, spending their hard currency like water and living like kings on a dollar when a wheelbarrow-load of Reichsmarks wouldn't buy you a cup of coffee. And how the city had opened its legs to them.
Working in the drugs squad, then vice, then homicide, climbing fast through the ranks, married more to his work than his wife, Hoffmann had thought himself in a kind of inside-out paradise; but he knew that the train all these revellers were on was racing towards a cliff.
He thought about the twists of snow hidden in the lining of his jacket. He wouldn't take one now. Better to leave it until he really needed it. Now, he was only relatively tired.
Back in his room, he dressed carefully, checking that yesterday's shirt wouldn't give him away today. It felt stale as he put it on, but he'd have to make things last until he got to Tilli's country house. No way of getting things laundered here in the time.
He bit his lip, thinking again of the clumsy code he'd used when calling her from his office. But it was done now, and for all his anxiety he couldn't believe they'd find a trail there. He needed to get on. He would keep the car. He packed his bags and made his way downstairs. The staff were up, and the coffee, which smelled almost real, was made, but as far as Hoffmann could see, no other guest was stirring. He'd heard no noise from the surrounding rooms in the night. It could be that he was the only guest. He took a cup of coffee and a glass of water in the restaurant. The coffee even tasted almost real.
The elderly man who had checked him in the night before had been replaced at the desk by a large, comfortable-looking woman. She leaned forward as he approached and looked at him with dark, sardonic eyes.
'Going far?' she asked.
'Business, you know ... '
'Early start. Usually means a long journey.'
'No peace for the wicked,' he said lamely. She looked at him darkly, and then gave an easy and lazy laugh; she pushed her body back from the desk, put out her arms and stretched luxuriously, looking at him all the time. Hoffmann smiled. It'd been a long time since anyone had come on to him like that, and he was surprised to find himself aroused. But there was something else. She seemed familiar. Did he know her? In which case, was he familiar to her, despite the change in his appearance, which wouldn't fool any former acquaintance. No point in taking risks. He'd have to get out fast.
'I know what you mean,' she said, and laughed again. He hadn't heard such a laugh for years, so confident and cheerful.
No. There was no way their paths had crossed before. He'd know. he'd see through it. He would have liked to know what she thought of all this mess, but her wide, lovely face seemed untrammelled by thought; and maybe that was why she seemed so carefree. She was perhaps in her late thirties. She'd run this hotel before the destruction had started, he guessed, and she'd be running it when it was over.
As he paid his bill, filling in the usual official forms quickly, she lowered her voice to say, 'Come back and see us again one day, when you're not so busy.' But then she was distracted by the telephone and turned away to answer it. She would have reported his stay to the local police. The papers he was using identified him as an official of the Ministry of Aviation. Would she make any comment, would they ask her any questions, when she rang to report his departure? Did she know him?
He left quickly, while she was talking. Three or four people were in the small outer lobby and he had to brush past them. Their eyes followed him. Hoffmann tried to look impressive, a man on a mission,
on official business, the man he had always been until a handful of days ago, and still was, he supposed, in a different way. Of course the business wasn't official, now. He thought of his route. He would have to zigzag across country. Once they'd discovered the car, and discovered the suicide ruse, they'd send people north and south, towards the Baltic ports, Kiel and Lübeck for sure, and towards the Swiss border. But if they picked up any other trail, he'd have to be ready for it.
He got back to the car having passed no-one on the street but a road-sweeper. Tucking himself into a doorway, he watched the VW and the windows of the buildings around it for two minutes before crossing the open space to reach it. None of the other vehicles from the night before had moved. If a cop had been keeping an eye on the cars overnight, he wasn't there now; but the Maybach and the Horch were cars for higher-ups, no-one would dare tamper with them, or even come near. There was no-one about, no movement behind the windows, and although he could hear a dog barking furiously not far away, the sound was muffled, and got no closer. The animal must be behind a wall, probably chained.
No-one had filtered away his petrol. Breathing more easily, Hoffmann stowed his bags quickly, and threw his coat onto the back seat. He pushed the starter button and the engine fired immediately, quelling another knot of anxiety. He put the car into gear, slipped back to the street and then down it, out of town, accelerating as he picked up the main road. He was surprised by the degree of relief he felt at his departure.
His thoughts turned to Emma. His anxiety for his daughter overwhelmed him, the more so because he could do nothing more for her himself. He didn't even know for sure where she was now. He prayed that Kessler had managed to get her away in time, and kept her safe, but prayers can seem very impotent things. He hoped her own good sense and resourcefulness would protect her, and that she wouldn't come to harm because of what he'd done, because in that case all the resourcefulness in the world wouldn't save her.
He'd find out, he told himself, but he had to accept that it'd be a long time before he did.
Thinking of Emma made him think of Tilli, and the responsibility he'd given her - or she had undertaken. God help him if anything happened to her. And yet the thought of Tilli was comforting. His oldest friend.
41
He'd known Tilli since they were adolescents - their parents had been friends. There'd been some experimental knee-fondling and kissing on backstairs and in corridors, but no closeness until much later, when they were adults, and then there'd never been any question of anything more than friendship. By then she'd become a star. He'd been to one or two of the plays she was in, and had finally steeled himself to re-introduce himself to her backstage.
They'd become close almost immediately, but she was married by then, and, apart from her career, she cultivated a salon at the centre of artistic and literary circles in Berlin.
The world she moved in barely overlapped with Hoffmann's, but the Nazis brought them together again. Tilli's husband, Hartmut Cassirer, well aware of what would sooner or later happen to him as a half-Jew, left for Buenos Aires as soon as he could, managing to take most of his banking empire with him, and leaving Tilli to look after their property in Germany, transferring it to her name. Hoffmann had been able to smooth Cassirer's way as far as travel documents were concerned, and Brandau, for a percentage, had tidied his business affairs. Tilli had returned to acting for a while, and, obedient to the new anti-Jewish legislation, had divorced her spouse in 1936. The marriage, she told Hoffmann, had been in trouble anyway.
Hoffmann knew that Tilli wasn't a convinced National Socialist; she had never been interested in politics. What she was interested in, at least at the beginning, was keeping her career alive: if she'd been a musician or a painter, she might have joined the American exodus herself, but she was no Dietrich, she told Hoffmann, and she lacked the confidence, with her stumbling English, for Hollywood. She had the same kind of statuesque body as Zarah Leander, whose most ardent fan was Hitler himself; but in time she grew disillusioned with the crap she was forced to perform, and with the disillusionment came a lack of conviction and interest in her work. She didn't need the money, and she hated the increasing censorship and paranoia that ruled the city. She closed the huge flat in Charlottenburg, and, resisting attempts by both Göring and Goebbels to persuade her to stay, moved to her estate in the south. The loss of celebrity and attention hadn't bothered her in the least; she'd seemed to welcome it.
Hoffmann hadn't seen her now for several months, unwilling to put her in any unnecessary danger as the last storm gathered; but now risks had to be taken; and Tilli had taken the biggest risk of all, on his behalf, already.
Risks. He thought of himself as a boy, skiing with his father in the Bavarian Alps - down from the top of the Ochsenkopf through the dark trees, and of his eight-year-old's fear and exhilaration as the wooden skis sliced through the snow and screeched on the patches of ice, juddering over clumps of earth and rock which the snow hadn't covered.
'You've got to get down the slope, Max; off the mountain, back to the valley. You can't think of anything else until you've done that. You can't go back, and you can't walk it; there is only one way to get home, and that's by going on.'
He had never learned how to control the speed properly; and when he panicked, he fell. But he still had to get down the mountain, and he knew that even now he would only be able to reach home once the work was done.
42
At a crossroads whose roadsigns had been removed, he turned in what he hoped was the direction of Neuenstein, along a country road which had been rutted by caterpillar tracks a few months earlier. The rising sun in his rear-view mirror blinded him for a moment. Ahead there was a small, dark fir-wood which formed a crescent around a sweep of sloping grassland on which three fallow deer were grazing. Three the hunters hadn't got yet, incredibly. As the sound of the car reached them, they bolted into the trees.
There was no traffic at all. There was not even a labourer toiling along the verge. He lit another cigarette. He couldn't shake off the dream of last night, but harder to bear than the screaming in his skull, which he'd almost got used to, as far as you can accustom yourself to a kind of moral tinnitus, was the thought of Kara, who, though he had spent years trying to lose her, had never gone away, and who, now at the end, had returned to haunt him again. It was as if she had become the representative of all the ghosts.
He gave in to thoughts of her. A long, oval face, straight nose, and dark lips, the lower fuller than the upper; and large, serious brown eyes, so dark they were almost black. A long neck, smooth brown skin, straight, fine black hair. Keenly intelligent , defensive, difficult, and independent. He'd never thought he'd have a hope.
They'd met in 1932, at Tilli and Hartmut's annual beginning-of-season party - the last one ever, as things turned out, for just before Christmas Hartmut had left. Kara was wearing a white silk dress. She was talking to a man of about Hoffmann's size and build, dressed in a dinner jacket. A trendsetter, thought Hoffmann. Most of the male guests not in uniform were still wearing, as he was, evening dress.
'Nice, isn't she?' said a man at his elbow, whose voice he recognised. He turned to see the glittering eyes, broken nose, and sauroid face of his occasional friend and occasional enemy, Veit Adamov.
'Do you know her?'
Adamov's short arms spread out to embrace the throng. 'I know everybody.'
'She doesn't look like one of your starlets.'
'Far too intelligent for that. But we used to share political sympathies. Seriously, that's how we know each other. We were comrades. I don't believe she's quite given up the cause, either. We still meet from time to time, for a drink, or when I'm short of money.' Veit looked at him. 'You think I'm lying.'
'I haven't seen you for a while,' said Hoffmann.
'Not since this time last year.'
'Been busy?'
Adamov shrugged. 'Nobody wants the films I make any more. Well, only the lighter stuff. I think it's all part of this
New Dawn business.' He smiled and drew on his cigar. 'Time to think of a change of career.'
'Or a change of scene?'
Adamov shook his head. 'Not quite yet, I think. It's too interesting here.'
Their paths had crossed from time to time over the past decade, but usually only when the lightweight sex movies Adamov made went too far and attracted the attention of the Vice Squad. The director usually managed to get off any serious punishment by trading snippets of information about those underworld elements his work brought him into contact with, and, as vice was so often linked with drugs, the authorities found him more useful to them as a free man than banged up. The political units took the other films Adamov made, pro-communist documentaries, which his pornography subsidised, more seriously. Recently, fighting between communists and Brownshirts had escalated. There'd been many deaths. Adamov had joined the street battles at first, but lately he'd been keeping his head down. He wasn't working, either.
'Watch your step. We'd hate to lose you.'
Adamov took a generous swallow from his tumblerful of brandy-and-champagne. 'They can't catch me.'
'If they get into power, they will.'
'They'll get into power all right, but they won't last. This country would never accept shit like that - they even dress in the colour of shit, and not even very healthy shit either. Who could possibly take them seriously? Present company excepted, of course,' he smiled again.
Hoffmann didn't reply, responding to a wave from Hans Brandau, a lawyer he'd recently met through mutual dealings with Hartmut Cassirer. He noticed the young woman again; she was trying to extricate herself from the company of the man in the dinner jacket, who was leaning over her insistently.