by Anton Gill
Hoffmann looked at Hagen's left hand ring finger. Hagen followed his gaze.
'Of course I know why you're here,' he said. The photographs.'
'Not just because of them. But I am curious. Why did you do it?'
Hagen sat on the arm of one of the armchairs. His eyes flickered once towards the door behind Hoffmann's left shoulder. Hoffmann didn't sit down. He moved to the shuttered window.
Hagen sipped, placed his balloon on the miniature table beside him. 'I am sorry we could never be friends,' he said. 'We were after all on the same side, and no-one outside this wreck of a country is going to believe you if you tell them it is otherwise.'
Hoffmann was silent for a moment, then he said: 'I'm curious now - why didn't you have a crack at me long before this?'
'We tried, as you know perfectly well.' Hoffmann kept his voice even. His thoughts were nowhere but here in this room. 'Why else were you always so careful to keep as far away from me as possible? And you had better protection than Eichmann. But I knew I'd get you in time, and I had other work to do.'
Hagen smiled. 'My dear Max, do you think what you did for the enemy ever outweighed what you did for us? You were never anything more than a bunch of pathetic do-gooders, and now you've paid the price.'
'The whole thing's finished. For you, too.'
'Is it? I have money in Switzerland and a ticket for Buenos Aires. What have you got?'
'Nothing. But I did have Kara.'
141
Hagen looked at the floor. His cigar, neglected, had gone out in its heavy crystal ashtray. 'So it's just personal?'
'Don't make yourself ridiculous, Wolf.'
Hoffmann watched Hagen carefully. The man was getting angry. His brow and his palms were wet with sweat. His act was wearing thin. He started to clench his fists, but controlled himself, stood up, poured himself more brandy.
'You mentioned the photographs,' said Hoffmann. 'You must have known they'd lead me to you.'
Hagen didn't look at him. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, his upper lip. 'I am beginning to regret waiting for you,' he said.
'No you aren't. You're after one last little bit of satisfaction before you run.'
'You were just lucky - if that's the word.'
'Shut up,' said Hoffmann harshly.
Hagen ducked as if he'd been hit.
'You're a clever man,' continued Hoffmann. 'Why did the photographs get into Der Stürmer? You must have known. Why court the danger? Or did you really think you were safe enough to send me that kind of signal?'
Hagen spread his hands again. 'You won't believe this, but I loved her too.'
Hoffmann laughed.
'Don't laugh at me,' said Hagen. 'I don't like being shat on.'
'You've taken it from your masters long enough.'
'No-one ever shat on me!' Hagen controlled himself. 'With the Nazis, it was only ever business. I didn't care about their stupid ideas. I loved Kara and she treated me as if I'd crawled from under a stone.'
'You knew she had Jewish blood.'
'She would have been safe with me. She could have gone on working, if she'd wanted to. You took her away. You are as guilty as I am, but you can't see it.'
'The only thing that hurts you is your vanity.'
'How dare you tell me what my feelings are.'
Hoffmann let it go, looked past him into the room. On a sofa against the far wall was an open suitcase, black leather, full of neatly-stacked clothes. Next to it was a briefcase full of American bank notes and what looked like legal documents.
'Look,' said Hagen, drinking and refilling again, changing tack. 'We are brothers, in a sense, aren't we, after all? We even look like brothers!' He stood, walked about the room, glass in hand, cigar forgotten. 'Can't we get over the past? I know what you've done, but with my help, you could get out of here too. Left alone, who is ever going to believe you were on the side of the angels? Whoever picks you up, you're dead.'
'Why would you help me?'
'Because here are still hurdles you could help me over.'
Hoffmann knew this was rubbish, and put his hand on the gun in his pocket. Hagen was playing for time. 'Where? In Bern? You said twice no-one outside Germany would believe me. Or aren't you sure?' Hoffmann wondered where the flight to Buenos Aires was leaving from. If Hagen's ticket existed. Hagen was silent, put his glass down, faced him.
There was the sound of a motorbike in the street.
'Why did you authorise the photographs?' Hoffmann asked.
Hagen sat again. 'I really thought the pictures were too blurred to give anything away, and I never noticed that my stump of a finger registered. Foolish, eh?' Hagen looked at Hoffmann. Then his expression hardened. 'But you are right - I decided to take the risk. I knew how clever you were, you and that little shit of a sidekick you have.' He paused, looked up with hard eyes. 'Of course I wanted you to know.'
'Yes.'
'You bastard. You took her away from me.'
'She was never yours.'
'She chose you!'
'Did killing her change that?'
Hagen looked at him. 'You could have been over the border by now. Why are you still here?'
'To kill you.'
'And make sure your little bastard was safe? Another thing Schiffer fucked up for me. I hadn't known about him. That was clever.' Hagen reached for his glass again. 'Your bloody love-child. But they'll get him for me now, whatever happens here. Fucking Jewish brat. They found the car, you know? They'll find him and they'll fucking kill him, the little shit, they'll rip his fucking heart out. Then that'll be every trace of dear little Kara gone.'
Hoffmann took out his gun and pointed it at Hagen. He'd had enough. What was the point of listening to anymore?
Hagen looked at the little Walther. He drank some more. He was agitated; the liquid ran down his chin. 'No. Not with that pop-gun. Most you could do is wound me, even at this range.' He made an attempt to pull himself together. 'You and I are brothers, Max. I made money out of this shitpile, and you helped it more than you harmed it. Time to face facts, my friend. I think I got the better deal.'
Hagen glanced for the second time towards the door. Hoffmann turned in its direction just as a slim young man with a revolver in his hand appeared in it.
Hoffmann, moving fast, fired first, and the man staggered, but recovered enough to get two shots of his own off before falling. One of the bullets hit Hoffmann squarely in the chest, but he kept on his feet and turned back to face Hagen.
'You didn't seriously think I was alone, did you?' said Hagen, smiling.
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Hoffmann still had his hand on his own gun. Hagen came very close.
He thought he had won. Hoffmann's legs were weakening. He only had seconds. He brought the Walther up and shot Hagen between the eyes, at a range of ten centimetres. Blood fountained over him as Hagen fell backwards, his hands, already dead, jerking upwards in response to the last message sent by the brain to protect what could no longer be protected.
Hoffmann’s gave way and as he went down he felt another bullet hammer into his back, not far from the first.
But the job was done. Through the blurred lens of one eye, he could see Hagen crumpled against the skirting board, hands halfway up to a face that wasn't a face at all anymore.
He let his body lie down. He heard feet pummelling upstairs, then other gunshots.
Then, someone cradling him, someone lifting his head from the floor.
'I'm too late,' said Kessler. Was he crying?
Hoffmann recognised the voice. 'You have a knack of cropping up when you're needed,' he said. 'But you need to work on your timing. Who was it?'
'Bodyguard.'
'Didn't finish him. What a fool I am.'
'Why did you let them take you?' Kessler was sobbing, no doubt about it. Was he angry with him, Hoffmann thought. Why?
'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'How did you know I'd be here?'
'You know that.'
Hoffmann realised that it was getting harder and harder for him to breathe properly. He clutched Kessler's sleeve, tried to look up. 'Find them for me.'
'We'll do it together.'
Cradling Hoffmann's head, Kessler reached for a cushion and pressed it hard against Hoffmann's chest wound to staunch it, but the blood would not stop pumping out with every slowing heartbeat, and Kessler could do nothing about the wound in Hoffmann's back. He thought desperately that he might be able to get his boss to the sofa, make him comfortable, ring a doctor, something...
'Don't do anything,' said Hoffmann. 'If you do, they'll get you too. Get away, now. Or you won't be able to help me.'
Kessler breathed hard. 'I'll find them for you,' he said.
'Thank you,' said Hoffmann, holding Kessler's wrist with his right hand. 'Now go. Now.'
He was still conscious, but only enough to know that his senses were drifting. He saw Kara before him, standing in the room, in her coat, with their suitcase ready, smiling, ready to leave with him; but he knew she was not there, not there really, not ever again. There was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing he could do about anything anymore, but if he felt anything in as the moments darkened, it was relief. The laughter and tears, the hope and tension, and the horror, too, were leaving him, letting him go, into silence. And all the time his little boy's arms held him tight.
143
Tilli had known she'd have to abandon the Maybach fast.
She'd always known what to do. Ten kilometres from her estate was a farm owned and run by a childhood friend and her husband.
She had to stay inside the house for nine months. It nearly drove her mad, but there were plenty of books. It was easier for Stefan, once the Gestapo searches had swept over and past the farm. In the confusion of the collapse of the One Thousand Year Reich, the presence of one little boy, more or less, passed the notice of anyone in the countryside. The fact is, no-one cared any more, and Stefan, who was not naturally a country boy, seldom strayed further than the farmyard.
They celebrated Christmas 1944 together. Tilli took Stefan to the edge of the farm, among birch-trees glistening their branches in the wind, on Christmas Eve, to listen for Santa Claus' reindeer as they rode through the sky. Their sledge was made of clouds, she told him. He thought she was quite crazy but he didn't have the heart to tell her that.
Spring came, and they looked at the buds stubbornly pushing their way out of what had looked like dead twigs.
Tilli heard the news first, on the wireless. There had been an unconditional surrender.
She was relieved. She wondered what to do next. She wondered if Stefan was ready to be told the truth. She wondered whether to leave Germany, or stay.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Max Hoffmann has nothing to do with his First World War namesake; but he is loosely based on Arthur Nebe (1894 - ?1945).
Nebe was an early member of the Nazi Party and a member of the SS. He was a career policeman who rose to be head of the Criminal Investigation Department; and he was active in the Resistance against Hitler from 1934. On the run after the failure of the Stauffenberg Plot in 1944, he was arrested in January 1945 and hanged in March, after two months of torture and interrogation. It is a mystery why he did not leave Germany for Sweden or Switzerland, though the fact that was married with a daughter may have played a role. Some sources maintain that he escaped execution, and there have been reports of sightings of him in, among other places, Dublin and Milan, in the 1950s and early 1960s. A not necessarily reliable biography by his friend Hans Bernd Gisevius, WO IST NEBE? was published by Fackel in 1966. It has not, to my knowledge, been translated into English.
In my handling of historical background in this novel, some events, notably the 20 July bombing described in the Prologue, have been either simplified or streamlined without detriment to the essential truth of what is being described.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anton Gill was born and brought up in London but spent some of his early life in his father's home town of Bamberg, Germany. He was educated at Chigwell School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he read English, and later worked for the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, the Arts Council, the BBC and TV-am before becoming a full-time writer in 1984. Since then he has published over thirty books, mainly in the field of contemporary history, including the award-winning THE JOURNEY BACK FROM HELL, a study of the lives of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps; A DANCE BETWEEN FLAMES, telling the story of Berlin, 1919-1939; and AN HONOURABLE DEFEAT, which discusses the Resistance within Germany to Hitler, 1933-1944. He is also the author of a series of thrillers set in Ancient Egypt, which have been published in a dozen languages since their original appearance, and which have been re-issued by Felony and Mayhem in the USA. More recent work includes two thrillers for Penguin, THE SACRED SCROLL and CITY OF GOLD, and a horror story set in Nero's Rome, THE ACCURSED, for Piatkus. For more information, see: www.antongill.com