Into Darkness

by Anton Gill

  Schiffer brought his face close.

  'Where is he?' he said.

  There was no-one in the street when, fifteen minutes later, the three men emerged again, two of them half-carrying the woman. They'd put a flour sack over her head and upper body. They shoved her into the car and drove off, back in the direction of Nuremberg.

  115

  He'd approached the house carefully, seen no sign of any Gestapo, and, thank God, Tilli's dogs remembered him. She greeted him at the door, leaning against the jamb, arms folded, smiling drily as always. She was thinner, wore a sensible country tweed skirt, white blouse and Loden jacket. A brooch at the neck.

  Not her style at all, really, but a very good costume, and absolutely in character for the role she'd cast herself in. She done her job almost too well: she looked like a country matriarch, but she'd have killed anyone who'd suggested that there was a real resemblance.

  'Welcome,' she said. 'I didn't think you'd make it.'

  'Everything all right?' He had seen at once that she was troubled.

  'Sure,' she said. 'Come in. What the hell do you look like? You need to wash and change, you stink, but first you must have a drink.' Three years earlier, Hoffmann had left some clothes and shoes at Tilli's, concealed among others belonging to her husband. He looked forward to wearing his own stuff again. It marked a small milestone. He had got this far.

  'Where's Stefan?'

  'Studying geography,' she said, as she led him through the hall to a small sitting room with a view down the drive. 'For what it's worth, these days. He'll be pleased to see you.'

  'I hope so.'

  She gave Hoffmann a glance. 'Are you going to tell him, at last?'

  'Tell him what?'

  'That you're his father.' She was exasperated.

  'When it's all over, I will.'

  'That moment may never come, Max.'

  'It will'

  She pursed her lips, but said nothing. It was his decision. 'He's lonely. A new face will do him good.'

  'Will he remember me?'

  'Yes. He asks after Emma as well, and it's two years since he saw her.'

  'I hope he doesn't do that when you have visitors.'

  'No. And visitors are few and far between.'

  'I want to see him.'

  'Drink first. And a cigarette? Or a little snow? Perk you up?'

  'Yes to the drink and the cigarette. Whiskey.'

  She took him into the morning room, fetched ice from a bucket and clunked it into two big tumblers, splashed in Jameson's, and passed him one, followed up with a Du Maurier from a red lacquer case.

  'I didn't know what to tell him.' Tilli hesitated, then said, 'I have news too - good news, I think. But we need to talk. See Stefan first. When you've eaten, when you've changed, we must sit down together.'

  'Give me the gist. Then I must see him.' Hoffmann was trembling. He couldn't control it. Tilli had no children. Could she understand his urgency?

  Sensing his mood, she spoke quickly. 'We've had a visitor. Your friend Brandau sent him from Bern. And I've made preparations. But it's complicated. It can wait until after you've seen Stefan.'

  He was suddenly tired, but this wasn't journey's end, and he could not afford to think that it was; nor, despite the familiar, comfortable surroundings, that any one of them was safe. It was bizarre to be here, where nothing seemed to have changed, and where everything had.

  'Give me the details after I've seen Stefan.'

  'After we've eaten,' decided Tilli, firmly. 'You'll need your strength for this, and we need to decide what to do. I'll get Stefan now.'

  'From Brandau, you say?'

  'Yes. Don't worry. It's not any kind of trap.' She was gone.

  So Brandau had made it. But he didn't find it hard to put thinking about that away. The most important thing was to see Stefan.

  The few minutes' waiting for his son was hard. Hoffmann smoked his cigarette and drank his drink. He was more nervous than he'd expected to be. He was awkward with Stefan, always found himself wanting to say more than he could, to hug him harder than he dared, remembering how the little body became tense when he did so, and how the boy hardly responded, though he was always polite, and never unfriendly. But he was not a demonstrative child, except towards Tilli, and even then he was guarded.

  Hoffmann had not been able to allow himself to think about his children too deeply. Now, safe for a few moments, able to breathe, lulled despite himself by his surroundings, he had to give in to a pressing need. He ached for Emma, and he yearned for Stefan, who was still a child, and who bore the extra vulnerability that his mother's race had bequeathed him. He yearned to play with him, to teach him, to watch him grow, and above all, to protect him. But his case was no worse than that of many other people; indeed, he was in a much happier position than many others. He could still see his son. His son was still alive. And in his son, though the thought had never fully formed in his mind, lay a sense of what he could leave in the world, that which, of Kara and himself, might survive and flourish, that which united them, that which might even redeem him, that which would carry forward what was left of the good in him.

  He rolled the whistle Kessler had given him round in his hands. He hadn't been able to wrap it. Children liked presents they could unwrap. He had, as a boy. He polished the thing on his sleeve.

  The door opened to admit Tilli, and preceding her, a dark child with large eyes in a pale, serious face. He was dressed in rust-brown corduroy shorts and a light, sleeveless pullover over a white open-necked shirt. Hoffmann held out his hand and Stefan shook it.

  'Hello, Stefan.'

  'Hello, sir.'

  'It's been a while. Do you remember me?'

  116

  'Of course I do.' The boy smiled. 'I've been doing geography. Canada. Do you know, there can be up to fifty thousand caribou in a herd?'

  'Really?'

  'A big stag can weigh up to three hundred kilogrammes, and they can run at eighty kilometres an hour.'

  'Amazing.'

  'I wouldn't mind being a caribou. Only you've got to watch out for the wolves.'

  'I've got something for you.' Hoffmann produced the whistle and handed it over. 'Hope you like it.'

  'It's great,' said Stefan, turning it over in his hands, but Hoffmann could see that his interest was no more than polite. 'It's got my name on it. Is it a police whistle?'

  'Sort of.'

  'Is that what you do?'

  'I used to have something to do with them.'

  'I'll leave you for a bit,' said Tilli. 'Chase up lunch. Help yourself,' she added, nodding at the decanter and the cigarette case.

  Left alone together, they found it harder to talk. Hoffmann poured himself more whiskey, lit another delicious English cigarette, and learned a little more about Canada; but he didn't know enough about the place to ask the kind of question which would have kept the conversation going, and Stefan scorned any talk of reindeer and Santa Claus.

  For his own safety, Hoffmann told himself, he must not know who I am yet. Just the godfather. Just the family friend. Tilli's ward. His mother dead when he was still a baby. Emma his half-sister. His father - absent. That was all he needed to know. He didn't know Hoffmann's real name. Hoffmann ached to tell him, fought down the thought that he himself might die before he could tell his son the truth.

  He wondered what effect that would have on Stefan, if he ever did get the chance to tell him. Would he understand why the deception had been necessary? Would he forgive him?

  It was a relief to them both when Tilli returned.

  They ate in the breakfast room, Hoffmann ravenously, ashamed of his appetite, though his mind was more on Tilli's news than on what he was putting into his mouth. It was a quiet meal. Stefan said little, smiled shyly when Hoffmann spoke to him - how he reminded him of Kara - and soon after he had finished, asked to be excused. Frau Ziegler, who'd looked after the place with her husband for thirty years, had served potatoes and cold beef. God alone knew where she
'd got that from, but Tilli, even after ten years' absence from the stage, still had her admirers.

  The Zieglers were safe, there was nothing to fear from them. The couple had a large flat within the mansion, and they were well paid. Tilli's influence had ensured that both their sons retained desk jobs far from the Front. All Utz and Adi Ziegler risked were air-raids; and air-raids were a risk no-one could guard against.

  Now, the meal over, clean, shaved, dressed in some of his own clothes, a fresh cigarette in his hand, and a glass of very cold Sylvaner at his elbow, Hoffmann sat in a damask-covered armchair in a long, well-lit drawing-room whose tall windows looked out over a terrace, beyond which a lawn sloped down to a lake fringed with trees. Even the inner wounds hurt less, for now.

  The colours of the room were blue, cream and green. Outside, the late afternoon sunshine bathed the garden in golden light and produced deep shadows where it hit the trees. He remembered sitting in this chair, in this house, years ago. Now, he was waiting for Tilli to join him. She'd gone to her study to fetch a letter he had to see. She seemed increasingly excited, and he knew her well enough also to know that she couldn't resist the drama of the moment.

  How was he going to look after Stefan and Tilli? They had identity papers, but even though Stefan was registered in Tilli's family name, Hoffmann wasn't sure that they would be sufficient to get them across any border without signed and dated travel documents, and even then the risk would be great. The nature of those documents was constantly changing, or he would have organised them himself.

  He hardly dared hope that what Tilli had to tell him would provide a way out of the maze.

  117

  When he'd left his clothes, he'd also left identity papers for himself, identifying him as a personnel officer for a chemical plant associated with I.G. Farben. He also had the Swedish passport. He couldn't use the two sets of documents in conjunction, but he was loath to let the passport go in case he managed to get out of the country. It was too risky to hang onto the telephone engineer's papers any longer. His own clothes, though they hung a little looser on him than they had in 1941, made him feel more like himself again than he had done almost since leaving Berlin.

  He stood up and paced the room. He still had work to do in Germany, but he had to get the others out if he could. He was increasingly uncertain that he could bank on their being able to sit the war out in safety where they were.

  Tilli had been right. They needed to have a serious conversation.

  She placed the letter on his lap, and drew up a chair near him while he read.

  'This is too good to be true,' he said at last.

  'But it is true. Your friend is a good friend.'

  'Yes,' said Hoffmann. He had underestimated Brandau. Brandau had picked up the signals, and he had acted on them. But suspicions still remained. 'Who was the messenger?'

  'A man of about sixty, I'd say. Portly, bearded, grey eyes, grey hair, might have been handsome once. He spoke perfect German - maybe a hint of a Schwabian accent, I don't know.'

  'Credentials?'

  'He just gave me this. I know, I shouldn't have kept it. I was going to wait until Sunday. Then I was going to burn it. Brandau knew all about your escape, something about a faked suicide - does that make sense?'

  'Yes.' Had Brandau really made it, or had they caught him and tortured it all out of him? Was the visitor an American agent, or a Gestapo spy? Hoffmann looked hard at the letter. It promised three travel documents. Only the dates, and the names of the travellers, would need to be filled in. The same man who'd brought the letter would return with them as soon as they were ready.

  Brandau must have set this up the minute he'd got to Bern, and relied on some inspired guesswork, though he knew where Tilli lived, and the only option open to him would have been to make contact through her. So not such a long shot, though it made Hoffmann realise how much better the lawyer had read him than he had imagined.

  'Burn it now,' said Tilli.

  He read the letter again. It was designed to reassure whoever received it that it wasn't bait for a trap. He recognised Brandau's handwriting and signature. They weren't fakes and the writing showed no abnormal sign of stress - the first thing he looked for.

  He reminded himself that the Gestapo would never go to the trouble of setting a trap as elaborate as this - his imagination was running away with him. They simply weren't that sophisticated, they had no need to be. If they had been suspicious, they would simply have set a watch on the house, and pounced when they were ready.

  He took the letter to the empty fireplace, drew the summer screen aside, stooped, held a match to the letter and when it had burnt out, crushed the carbonised pieces to dust in his hand and pushed them through the grate to join what remained of last winter's ashes. He wiped his hands on his handkerchief, accepted another cigarette, finished his glass of wine, and sat down again.

  'Did he say when the travel passes would come?'

  Tilli leant forward in her chair. 'In two or three days.'

  Hoffmann closed his eyes. So, enemy agents were crossing and recrossing the border with Switzerland almost as easily, it seemed, as if it were peacetime again. The ghost of a part of him was annoyed. What had happened to security? How could his country have decayed so much? For a brief moment he had to remind himself that his own country had become the enemy.

  'And he delivered this when?' he asked.

  'Two days ago. Don't worry about transport. The car's still OK in the garage, and Ziegler's been stockpiling petrol since 1940. I've got five ten-litre cans full in the boot. Enough to get us to America, let alone Switzerland!'

  Hoffmann smiled. 'Then we're up and running. If your man makes it back.'

  'He didn't seem to think there'd be any difficulty.'

  'Tell me what the news is.'

  'You mean on the wireless? In the papers? All enemies of the Party have either been arrested, or they're on the run. You are dead, a cowardly suicide to avoid justice. They've arrested thousands of people, more have disappeared, but it doesn't make a ripple.' She frowned. 'Some of my best friends are dead, my marriage is destroyed, but look at me - I live in this oasis and they tell me that even my flat in Berlin has been spared the enemy's bombs. And I never had children, so I don't even have that to worry about. I am supremely lucky. But, do you know, Max, I am getting a little bored with this country life, it's taking it out of me, I'm forty-two years old, my best decade as an actor has been totally fucked, I haven't had sex since I can't remember when, except with myself of course, so I need some adventure.'

  'You've cared for Stefan.'

  'Kara was my friend. Have you noticed how much he looks like her when he smiles?'

  'Yes.'

  'He looks even more like her when he's angry. Not that he's angry often. I sometimes wish he was a bit more volatile.'

  'That might be dangerous.'

  'Who cares? Long live danger! I've been cooped up here so long, playing safe, that I've created my own prison.'

  'I never expected you to make such a sacrifice.'

  She smiled. 'Please, Max, let me just play my part, let me have my little scene. I'm still here, I may just survive. I'm the luckiest girl alive, and when this is over, I am going to come out of retirement and I am going to give them my Mother Courage! And now, if you don't mind, I think we could both do with another drink.'

  Hoffmann stopped her. He said: 'If the papers arrive, you'll get your adventure. I'm not coming with you. You've guarded Stefan this long. You'll get him to safety.'

  She stopped in her tracks. 'Of course you're coming with us.'

  'No. I will stay to make sure you get away safely. And I will keep one of the travel documents Hans has promised us. But I have something to do before I leave. Stefan was the most important thing for me. If I know he's safe, and I pray that fate has been kind and he will be, and you, too; then I can finish the job I'm working on.'

  'And that is?'

  Hoffmann smiled. 'I've always disliked Wagner, s
o it seems a miserable thing to cast myself as one of his heroes. But I'm a kind of small-time Siegfried, and I have a small-time dragon to kill.'

  She laid a hand on his arm. 'Don't be daft, Max. Help me look after your son.'

  'I have to do this. Perhaps I have to do it for Stefan, too.'

  'Why?'

  'It's the only way - ' he found it difficult to explain - 'It's the only way to find peace.'

  118

  As Kessler had guessed, the Munich address was a decoy. The old man who answered the door was frightened, but it was obvious that he knew nothing about Hoffmann. He showed them a handful of campaign medals from the last war, swore five or six times he had never wavered in his loyalty, and begged them not to arrest him. His wife was bedridden, he explained, and had no-one else to depend on but him. Unfortunately for him, his wife put in an appearance before they left, a strapping, moon-faced woman twenty years his junior, laden with net bags full of turnips. His confusion was so complete at being caught out that he had an asthma attack. His wife explained that he'd been gassed in the war, at Loos. She'd been his nurse.

  Kessler left them alone. He would find an excuse to stay in Munich. That would give him time to get to Dachau, to find out if he could what had happened to Emma. But first he'd have to lose Kleinschmidt. For the moment at least he could send his sergeant off to the Praesidium to announce their arrival, and file a progress report to Berlin. Kleinschmidt didn't like it much, but Kessler sent him on his way. It was not yet noon, and he had no doubt that Kleinschmidt would soon be consoling himself with a Weißes and some Weißwurst for his second breakfast somewhere on the way to police HQ. Kleinschmidt always seemed to have an uncanny ability to find food when no-one else could.

  Paul Kessler had his contacts in the underworld, and he knew which gangs had decamped here from Berlin. Their networks were far more sophisticated than anything the authorities had, and they were designed to continue to function in adversity. The problem for him was making contact, in a strange city, where he couldn't trust the local police. But he did know the places to look, and the right districts, no problem there, always close to the main station; and he struck lucky in a beer garden on the Arnulfstraße. Naturally, the dour man unseasonably dressed in black refused to look at him at first, but this was an old contact of Hoffmann's, a big gun in the Schlemmer Outfit, and Kessler was confident of winning him round. But the man had smelt cop immediately, drained his beer, and started for the door.