by Anton Gill
His thoughts dragged him back to the RAF prisoners who'd haunted his mind only days ago. The business had taken place four months earlier, a lifetime ago.
***
He'd had filing cards with their details inscribed on them stacked on his desk, and after two days of harsh choice he had divided them into two piles, the damned, as he thought bitterly, and the saved. The orders, stemming from the Führer himself, had to go out. He had delayed as long as he could.
But the coded telexes carrying the orders were failing to reach their destinations, the Gestapo offices wherever the recaptured prisoners - only a handful had got clean away - were being held in police custody. Fifty of the airmen were to be executed. The telexes were sent using a simple code, based on prime numbers, which was shifted around every few days. It was unlikely that the enemy had tapped into it. So what was going wrong?
Hoffmann summoned his assistant, Alfons Martens, a young lawyer, who was supposed to be relaying the information without knowing precisely what it implied. When he entered the office, Martens was running his hands through his hair and sweating into his collar.
This wasn't going to be a hard interrogation.
'What's going on, Martens?' Hoffmann asked.
'Sir?'
'The telexes. They're fucked.'
Martens looked even more flustered. 'I'll look into it.'
'You'd better. Müller's breathing down my neck.' Hoffmann leaned forward. 'Sit down.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Worried?'
'No, sir.'
'You do know how to set codes, don't you?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Of course you do. You've been with us three months.'
'Yes, sir.'
'It's your responsibility. What's going wrong?'
Martens hesitated. 'I don't know.'
'I'll ask you again.'
Silence.
Hoffmann remembered that he'd stood up and walked slowly towards the window, drawing a finger along the edge of his desk. There was no way he could take Martens into his confidence, but if Department Four got wind of what Martens was doing - and he was doing it so clumsily that even they would work it out soon - the whole house of cards would come down. If Martens had to be thrown to the lions, so be it.
'Tell me,' he'd said, his back to the room, looking out over the misty city, grey as always, greyer under this March sky.
Martens swallowed. 'I've nothing to say.'
Hoffmann rounded on him. 'Listen, you filthy little arsehole, don't you fucking patronise me. You know who you're talking to? You think I can't tell when some fucking little cunt like you is lying? Tell me!'
Martens looked down, trembling. Good middle-class boy. Not used to language like that. How old was he? Not thirty, certainly.
Hoffmann resumed his seat.
'They haven't got this office wired. Tell me why you are messing up the codes.'
Martens didn't conceal the distaste in his eyes as he gave up. 'It's a barbarous act. It's unworthy of any country, let alone ours. It spits in the face of the Geneva Convention.'
So Martens had found out. Hoffmann didn't blink. 'Atrocities are committed by all sides, in all wars.'
'And that fact justifies them?'
Hoffmann leaned forward. 'Our military situation is critical. These airmen are key personnel. They are already bombing our cities, deep within the country. Haven't you seen the statistics? Tens of thousands of our women and children - not soldiers, women and children - are being killed on the orders of that pig-eyed sack of shit, Churchill, and that bloodthirsty fucker, Arthur Harris.' Hoffmann paused. 'They're not even hitting military targets.'
Martens would not look at him.
'Look,' Hoffmann had said. 'Each bomber pilot is an expert. So is his navigator. So is his bomb aimer. Each bomber, each Lancaster, each Wellington, controlled by these three men, has the potential to kill hundreds, maybe more, on each raid. Such men cannot be allowed to get home, and return to murder more of us.'
'I have read the statistics. One per cent of escaped prisoners ever make it back. In this case, most of the airmen have been recaptured.'
'That's not the point. The point, in your situation, is whether you would rather be sent to a concentration camp, or hanged right away at Plötzensee. You are a saboteur.'
Hoffmann walked on through the morning, angrily remembering.
'I'm not ashamed,' the young lawyer had said, though his lip was trembling. He knew all about the gallows at Plötzensee.
Hoffmann looked at him. Martens' eyes were staring. He was close to tears. He was looking at his own death, a brutal one, within a day.
Hoffmann considered the situation. No-one else yet knew precisely what was going on. Sometimes despatches were held up, signalling systems broke down. The delay on this one was not yet really suspicious, but it would be well to nip suspicion in the bud. Already Hitler's attention was elsewhere, though it would return; the man never forgot.
'I'm dismissing you,' Hoffmann had said at last. 'You give me no choice. Go home and await orders.'
Martens looked at him angrily, in disbelief, then - almost - in hope. But he wiped that out of his eyes fast. He couldn't bank on being off the hook, even if Hoffmann hadn't ordered his immediate arrest; and his contempt for his superior was boundless.
'You studied criminology as well as jurisprudence, didn't you?'
'Yes.' Martens was ready to bolt, despite himself, just as scared as everyone else.
'At Freiburg, wasn't it?'
'Yes.'
'That's all. Clear your desk on your way out. And Martens - '
'Yes?'
Hoffmann let enough warmth into his voice to give the man hope. 'Don't do anything foolish.'
He followed Martens to the door and watched him cross the outer office, which he shared with the secretary. A woman then, Heidrun Silber. Once Martens had gone - it didn't take him long to scoop his few personal bits and pieces into his briefcase - Hoffmann had Frau Silber place a call to Freiburg University. He returned to his office. After only five minutes she was able to put him through.
He spoke at length. It was fortunate that Professor Pallenberg hadn't left: he was good at wool-pulling too, and he owed Hoffmann a favour. When he had finished, Hoffmann put his head round the door. Frau Silber looked up, her face, as usual, carefully expressionless.
'Frau Silber, Dr Martens is being redeployed to the Department of Criminal Studies at Freiburg. He should leave by the end of this week. Please arrange his travel warrants and send them, and the usual official letter informing him of this change, by special messenger today. And get Dr Palitzsch over here. I'm transferring Martens' duties to him. But, Frau Silber,' he had added, noticing his secretary's mask slip, 'I don't need Dr Palitzsch to change offices. He can stay where he is. He just has to report to me. It's a temporary assignment.'
Frau Silber smiled - just a trace.
Palitzsch was a good Nazi. Someone would have to do the job, and it might as well be him. Besides, if Department Four noticed the appointment of a hard liner, any possible suspicion of Hoffmann might be deflected. But neither he - nor, apparently, Frau Silber - could stand having the man physically near them.
Hoffmann had done his best, all he could - from the filing cards he'd selected the young men with families to be returned to prison camp. As for the other Allied airmen, the Gestapo had received their orders, and the job had been done.
106
It was a fine day, though colder. Summer was losing to autumn.
Was saving Martens all he could think of, saving that handful of airmen, or at least selecting those to be spared who had most need of life - as if he was in any position to judge at all? He had supplied Oster with papers from his department, abetted three attempts on Hitler's life and obscured the investigations which followed them, a hard thing to do if he was to retain his reputation in the Führer's eyes at the same time.
How hard it was to go against the grain, like a musician having to pretend to p
lay badly. For ten years he had gone on like this, little jobs, bigger jobs, never, any of them, culminating in what he was striving for. But he and his colleagues had persevered, some for private reasons, some on principle, some against all their training and learned loyalty to the State, right or wrong. Hitler had been no fool when he'd got the Army to swear an oath of personal loyalty to him.
Hoffmann's own motives had been mixed, but he knew in his heart that the one of them was simple revenge. It had been a long wait, the outcome was still uncertain, and during it he had become a monster.
He remembered the investigation that had followed Kara's death. How their quarry was untouchable. How after months it had dwindled, how he had been obliged to run it down, how his personal interest in it, however well-disguised, had drawn unwelcome attention. Kessler had said nothing, but the work forged a bond between the two men that nothing could break. And meanwhile the killer flourished and his henchmen dispersed, into the SS, into the forces, to disappear in the turmoil of war.
Ten years. Like a dream. Another dream. Wherever it took him, soon it would be finished. Hagen had made a career for himself, iron ore from Sweden, money transfers to the Swiss; he'd even had a hand in selling off the modern art which Hitler loathed for knockdown prices in Lausanne in exchange for the hard currency the Party desperately needed, taking five Picassos for himself. But that had been nothing compared with what had happened after 1942, when he'd been one of the Party's middlemen in the construction and supply of the death camps. He'd creamed off a discreet one per cent of every sales deal he'd made, and on the poison gas shipments alone he had become a millionaire.
But as long as there was money to be made from poison gas, Hagen was probably still in the country. Had he gone to ground in Bamberg, his home town, where he knew the ground and could be confident of protection? American and English bombers were smashing German cities to pulp, but the army was still holding the bastards on the ground. And there was no sign of the death camps closing. In early July, 400,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz. And the enemy wasn't bombing any of the railway lines to the camps.
Hoffmann cleared his head. Make sure Stefan was safe first. He looked at his watch. The countryside was beginning to look familiar. He'd be there soon.
It was silent. A handful of women working in the fields. It had grown hotter. His clothes were sticking to his back.
He quickened his pace as the road curved over a low hill. From its crest, only a couple of kilometres away to the north east, half-hidden by the dark trees of its driveway, Hoffmann saw at last the yellow walls and red roofs of Tilli's mansion.
107
They were about to leave Coburg when the bike was reported missing.
'It belongs to someone called Zimmermann. Big farmer round here,' said the local cop. 'He's furious.'
'I'm sure,' said Kessler.
'Any idea what direction it's gone?' asked Kleinschmidt.
The local cop shook his head. 'Not yet. We've sent patrols towards Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Bayreuth and Erfurt. But there are no tyre tracks and whoever it was could be anywhere by now.'
It was six o'clock in the morning. Kleinschmidt yawned vastly as they left the police station, and, coughing and hawking, lit a cigar. 'So, what do we do? Hang around until they come up with something?'
'Could take days,' said Kessler, wondering which way Hoffmann had gone, having a fair idea.
'If it's our man, he won't have gone north, so that rules out Erfurt.'
'If it's our man.'
'Well, we've got to do something.'
'Frankfurt?'
'No.' Kleinschmidt considered. 'You said we should check out Bayreuth and Bamberg. Means going south-east and then back west.'
'Why not Frankfurt?'
'Enemy's in that direction. But he'd have to be a born bloody optimist to think he'd get as far as them. They're in north-western France. We'll push 'em back into the fucking sea.'
'Plenty of contacts in Frankfurt.'
Kleinschmidt shrugged. 'You're the boss.'
Kessler had his own plans. He lit a cigarette. 'We'll go south. Forget about Bayreuth. We'll head straight for Nuremberg. Bamberg's on the way. It's not that big, we can talk to the local people there, see if they've picked anything up.'
Kleinschmidt sucked his teeth. 'Long shot. Both those towns are stiff with Nazis. Would he be likely to stick his head in the lion's mouth?' He paused. 'But, like I said, you're the boss.'
'Then let's go.'
'You'd better phone in first. Let Berlin know what you're up to.'
It hadn't slipped Kessler's mind; he was just sorry that Kleinschmidt had reminded him.
108
The Blucher motorbike was still missing twenty-four hours later, when Schiffer arrived in Coburg, tired, dirty, and irritated to have lost so much ground. He'd wasted time in the village too, rooting around for himself, going over the burnt-out BMW and the damaged baggage Hoffmann had abandoned, convinced an overlooked clue would reveal itself. However, there'd been too much trampling over the ground, the bike had been moved, no-one had expected another investigator to turn up, and Bauer resented the presence of another Gestapo man even more than he had the presence of the regular police.
Schiffer had no Hitler-Order either, and had to keep his real job - keeping Kessler under surveillance - quiet. He had no business to be doing any direct investigation at all, though he burned to do so. He longed to steal a march on that cocky little academic, and run Hoffmann to ground himself. But despite his desires, his former colleague hadn't put a foot wrong yet; if he had, he'd concealed it well.
Which was probably why, when he'd rung Berlin from Leipzig to apply for permission to arrest Kessler and take over the job himself, he was sharply turned down and, moreover, rebuked, despite the way he'd described the situation, painting Kessler in the worst possible light. He hadn't liked the rebuke. It had humiliated him; he saw in it the implication that Kessler was the better man.
The rebuke also reminded him of his position. He'd overreached himself, played his hand far too soon, let his ambition rule his reason, maybe even let his promotion go to his head. The fact was, he was still an underling. This was a job carrying a great deal of trust with it, he knew; but he knew why he was there: he was another Hoffmann-trainee. But he was an also-ran. They hadn't given the actual task of hunting Hoffmann to him.
Schiffer calculated his position, and with it, his future. After his gaffe, he'd have to work hard to redeem himself. Did Kessler know he was being shadowed? He'd have considered the possibility. Kessler had told Scholtz that he was making his way to Coburg, and he'd told them in the presence of his sergeant, so it was probably true. Schiffer was certain that Kessler would contrive not to corner their old boss. The men were too close, had been for years, Kessler wasn't even in the Party. He should have been given the job, he knew how Hoffmann's mind worked too. He felt slighted.
Maybe, Schiffer thought again, despite himself, he'd taken the wrong career turn with the Gestapo. At the time, the move seemed a better option than remaining in the police. Quicker promotion, greater standing, more clout, more money. And when he'd worn his uniform on formal occasions, what a tart-trap that had turned out to be.
Not that he cared much. They were all tarts, women. He never seemed to have much luck with them, and, once it was over, he quickly lost interest, hated the sweaty sheets, the smell. He wanted to be with one person, to be true to her. He wanted a family, a quiet life, a future. He wanted so many things. Above all, he wanted his integrity back. He could have wept for its loss, but could not see how he might make his way back.
He wanted to leave. He'd been fighting the niggling thought down for months, it had been that business with the RAF men that had started it off. He'd been detailed to one of the assassination parties. Total bloody cock-up that had been, up near Danzig. They'd driven four of them out into the countryside, one of them Free French, the others Brits, and shot them in a field. Schiffer hadn't recovered from that
, but he'd never believed in Party principles anyway, and, although he had no love for the enemy, especially enemy airmen, shooting them in the back and not even making clean kills disgusted him.
What was there left to believe in? Some of them, back in Berlin, still thought that Jews and Communists and Freethinkers were a menace to society, and that cleansing it of them was the only principled thing to do, but they were like people clinging to planks in the sea after a shipwreck, clinging to ideas like that. Was he one of them, only without whatever conviction they had?
He wanted to leave, but he didn't know how to get away. He was trapped in his job; the only way out would be to desert, and that would mean death if he was caught. He'd be lucky if all they did was shoot him. Kessler was the lucky one. Kessler got the girl and what turned out to be the plum job. In an obscure way too, Schiffer realised that Kessler was more of a survivor than he was. But if Kessler wasn't around to taunt him with his success, maybe he'd breathe more easily.
His thoughts churned. He'd made the wrong choices. He was a loser. He didn't like facing these ideas, but during his time on the road alone they came to him thick and fast. He struggled against self-pity; it was hard late at night when he lay in bed, vulnerable as the child he could hardly believe he'd once been, but still feeling like a frightened eight-year old. It was hard, too, when he woke before dawn, eyes gritty with sleep, longing to return to it, beset by thoughts which would not let him go.
There was one ray of light. One line of escape that might be available to him if he chose to take it. It was not one his better self would have chosen, but he was so mired now that his better self was half-forgotten; and the door was open, and the light that came from beyond it seemed warm and welcoming. In the meantime, he had his job to do.
He decided he would hang around in Coburg until early afternoon, in case news of the stolen bike came in, though he hadn't much hope. He needed to rest, and he needed to talk to his Gestapo colleagues. From the outset he had decided to avoid unnecessary contact with the regular police, for fear they'd let news of his presence slip to Kessler. No point in giving the bastard any rope, he was too clever as it was.