by Adam Hall
"My mother was a nurse on Dr. Weismoeler's special medical staff. That's why I was there. With the Goebbels family there were seven of us in the Bunker, children I mean, and we didn't have much to do with the grown-ups. But I liked Uncle Hermann and he used to give me things, medals and things."
Hermann Fegelein, of the SS.
"I saw them bring him in. He had left the Bunker and they brought him back. I heard Hitler shouting at him, then they took him into the Chancellery garden and shot him and I didn't even cry. It was too much for crying. I kept asking my mother why they'd killed poor Uncle Hermann, and she said he'd been wicked. It was the first time I understood what death was: it meant that people went away and you never saw them again. Then the nightmare started and everything began going to pieces inside me. The grown-ups were acting strangely and I used to hide in cupboards and listen in the passages because I was desperate to know what was happening to everyone. At one time I heard a shot and later Frau Junge told me that the Fuhrer was dead; of course I didn't believe her: he was a god to me, to all of us; but there was the smell of burning, in the garden, and one of the Escort found me and sent me back where I belonged. But I didn't belong anywhere now. Even my mother was strange to me. Even my mother."
The first self-pity had passed and she spoke without emotion, sitting hunched with her arms across her knees, her body as black and angular as the chair behind. Her gold hair made the only softness in the room.
"The ground began shaking and people said there were Russian soldiers coming. The whole Bunker shook and there was nowhere to run. I stayed with the Goebbels children because the grown-ups frightened me now, but then my mother took me away from them and I never saw them again. I knew they were dead. I didn't know for a long time afterwards that it was my mother who had given them the capsules. Of course it was on the orders of Frau Goebbels. There were six of them. Six children."
She opened her eyes but didn't look at me. The wolfhound watched her, worried by the pain in her voice. "The grown-ups frightened me and now even the children had gone. I didn't know what to do. Once I ran to Uncle Guenther when I saw him standing alone at the end of a passage but he told me to go away. There was nowhere to go. Then I saw Goebbels and his wife come into the passage and walk past Uncle Guenther, who had a big can in his hand. I could smell petrol. When I heard the shots from the garden I screamed, but Uncle Guenther didn't even hear me – he simply went out to the garden. I didn't understand anything any more."
Guenther Schwaegermann had been Goebbels's adjutant. His orders had been to smother the bodies in petrol and cremate them.
"That night my mother took me away. We were with a lot of other people. The ground was shaking and the whole sky was red. There were four women in our party; one of them was the cook. She kept running ahead and the others kept pulling her back, because the Russians were shelling heavily and the whole length of the Friedrich-strasse was on fire. We got as far as the Weidendammer Bridge before I fainted; but I can remember water, and the smell of smoke."
She got to her feet so suddenly that the dog gave a low bark. The curtains were not drawn across the windows and the glow from the street lit her face as she stared down.
I waited, and went on waiting. I didn't move, even to ease the tension in my legs, because I knew the dog was on edge because of her voice. She was statue-still, her thin arms hanging loose from the shoulder, her head forward to stare at the scene below that she wasn't seeing.
"That was when the rot set in… In the Bunker. When they took Uncle Hermann out and shot him, my own life was altered, in that minute. When the grown-ups began to frighten me with their strangeness I ran back to the only people I could understand – the children. Then they were taken away from me and I knew they were dead too. With nowhere to run next, I felt the whole of the earth moving under my feet, and I knew that the soldiers were coming. But there had to be something I could reach for and trust in. Not my mother, because she was like the other grown-ups, strange and tormented, and I'd seen her coming out of that room where the children were, and knew what had happened. Only someone very powerful could help me now, someone who could never die and who would always be there to help. The only god I had ever been told about was the Fuhrer."
Suddenly she was looking down at me and because of the angle of the light from the street the lower part of her face shadowed her eyes, and I couldn't see their expression.
"It's called a trauma, isn't it? A psychic injury setting up a neurosis."
It seemed she really wanted an answer, so I said:
"I prefer the simpler phrase you used."
"What was that?"
"The rot setting in."
"It's the same thing."
"But a different attitude. The thing is to keep your feet on the ground instead of up on a couch."
"I don't go to psychiatrists any more."
"Then you're the only one in all Berlin who doesn't."
"I tried them."
"Gave them up?"
"Yes."
"Now you go to the Neustadthalle instead."
"Do you know why?"
"To rake muck with the rest of us, knowing that it's his muck. The only successful cure for alcoholism is the nausea drug that teaches you that you can't go on loving something that makes you sick."
I had to be careful not to touch on the question that would have to be answered before I left here. I wanted her to tell me without being asked.
"You understand me very well," she said.
"It's not a very complex situation."
She came and stood over me. She had a way of standing bullfighter-fashion in the black slacks, legs straight, buttocks tucked flat and thighs thrust forward, the hard line of her body curved and tensioned like a bow. In a more feminine woman it would have been provocative; with her it suggested challenge.
"Why did you come here?" she asked me.
"It was an alternative."
"To what?"
"Going to the police."
Her eyes narrowed to slits of light blue under the lids.
"The police?"
"I was a witness to an attempted murder. It was my duty to make an immediate report."
"Why didn't you?"
"Two reasons. You might have been suffering under delusions. That could have been what it looked like: an accident caused by a skid. Also I'm English and in England we tend to trot out our troubles to the nearest policeman because that's what he's there for and we know who he is. Inyour country you don't. I had to bear that in mind."
"You don't trust our police?"
"I'm certain they're a fine body of men but yesterday they arrested one of their highest officials on a mass-murder charge – the Chancellor's chief security man. It shows their strength. And their weakness." I stood up and found my glass. It was empty and she took it from me.
"You haven't explained why you came here."
"Again, it was an alternative. I suggested a bar. You suggested here."
"I wanted to talk to you."
'To someone. Anyone."
"Yes. It was a shock. Did you think I hadn't any friends?"
"I still think you haven't. People with friends don't want to talk to strangers." She gave me another drink and her face looked bleak. The arrogance had suddenly gone. I added: "The silliest people can't move for friends. You see them at parties all over the place."
Her body had gone slack. "You made it easy to talk to you. It must have sounded a little hysterical. Do you dismiss me as a psychopath with a persecution complex?"
"Hardly. Someone's just tried to kill you a second time and you didn't even mention it."
"There's nothing to say about it."
But I still had to get that question answered before I left. She didn't dodge it. She didn't even see that I must want to know.
Suddenly it came. "They've got their reasons."
"They?"
"The Nazi group."
"The Nazis have their reasons for exterminating someone who's hal
f in love with Hitler?"
"Must you put it like that?"
"Obsessed with the image of a dead god."
Her shoulders were still slack. The defiance was over. The catharsis of the confessional had left her exhausted. She said almost without interest: "I joined their group when I was just out of college. They call it Phoenix. It was a foster-parent to me because my mother never got to the other side of the Weidendammer Bridge that night. A piece of shrapnel hit her. Then I began growing up, and two or three years ago I defected and left the group. Not suddenly – I just stopped going to that house. They found me and tried to make me go back, because I knew too much. I knew what people had left the Fuhrerbunker alive, and where some of them went. I know where Bormann is now. I refused to go back but I swore on – on something they keep there that I would never talk. Either they think I've talked, or there's a new man there, or a new policy, because there was the trolley-stop incident a month ago, and the car tonight."
I finished my drink. I was going.
"Why do we have such an urge to do something we know we mustn't?" she asked suddenly.
"It's our friend the id. Wants to drive wild, hates the brakes. But keep them on. If it gets difficult, talk to a tape and then burn it. Or talk to Jurgen. But don't talk to strangers any more. You don't know where they'll go when they leave here. If it's straight to the CIA Office or some anti-Nazi organisation Phoenix won't stage any more accidents – they'll be up here within the hour and you can't rely on Jurgen because he's not bullet-proof."
I moved for the door and the wolfhound was on its feet.
"Should I leave Berlin?" she asked wearily.
"It would be safer."
She opened the door for me. Our eyes met and I saw the struggle she was putting up for her pride's sake. She lost.
"You're… not with CIA, or anyone?"
I said no. "But I could be. Don't forget it. Don't pick up strangers. You never know where they've been."
The street was icy after the close heat of the flat and I walked quickly. Snow got into the sides of my shoes and my breath clouded against my face. I thought about her all the time, and believed that what I had done was right. If there were any doubts they were automatically dismissed when, somewhere along the Unter den Eichen, I knew that I was being followed.
6: QUOTA
Austrian Union: 293. Plus 1¼
BMB Rubber: 106. Plus 1.
Bertram-Rand: 995¾ Minus 5¼.
Cinati: 185½. Plus 1½
Crowther Development: 344. Plus 6¼
D. R. Mining: 73. Minus 2.
Just before the corner of the Unter den Eichen and the Albricht-strasse I had walked at the same gait but with longer strides so that the spurt didn't show. The first cover down the Albricht-strasse was a parked beer-truck and I stood against its offside and used the long-stemmed driving-mirror to watch the corner. When he was past the truck, hurrying now, I crossed the street and bought an evening edition of Die Leute and carried it half-opened to alter the image. After a while he tracked back and I watched him take quick checks before trying the bar, the pharmacy and the newsagent's where I'd bought the paper.
He was worried now and stood on the pavement stamping his feet as if they were cold. It was frustration. Then he got going again and we rounded the whole of the Steglitz block before he gave up and made for a beer-house in the Schoneberg area. I held off for fifteen minutes but he never looked at his watch and no one turned up so I went in and sat down at his table and said:
"If I see you again I'll put such a blast through to Local that you'll end up washing the stairs."
He looked even younger than he was. He wouldn't even trust himself to speak until my beer came because he was so frustrated. Then he said:
"You know what happened to KLJ."
"It isn't going to happen to me."
"He was a damned good man." It sounded even more emphatic in German. He was angry about that death. His name was Hengel and I'd recognised him when I sat down.
His photograph, marked with the key-letter for Totally Reliable, had been in the memorandum. Pol had said:
"There are two people you can trust. An American, Frank Brand, and a young German, Lanz Hengel."
Before I'd recognised him I'd thought he was one of the adverse party and that Phoenix – if that was how they still styled their group – had set him to watch contacts of the Lindt girl. It would have tied in.
"Yes," I said, "he was a damned good man. But he was using cover and it didn't save him."
He said with a seething anger: "I was his cover."
"I know. Don't fret. That day in Dallas there were sixty Federal agents manning the inner ring."
"I was specially picked." He wasn't interested in Dallas.
"Then you're slipping." I'd had enough self-pity from the Lindt girl. "Five minutes' tag and I flushed you."
Polsknika A: 775. Plus 5.
Portuguese Canning: 389. Plus 2¼.
Py-Sulpha: 452. Minus 10.
Coming up.
I'd asked Hengel: "Whose orders, to cover me?"
"I had no orders."
At least he was honest. "What's your current term in this field?"
"Two years."
He volunteered nothing, but just sat biting his lip. He had a good face but there was no guile in him. He lacked the element most necessary to his needs: slyness. I wondered why they'd picked him to cover KLJ.
"You'll find plenty of games to play in two years, Hengel, but don't play any on my pitch. I told Pol no cover. It was called off as from last midnight."
If he had put up any argument I would have embarrassed him with a few facts. Where had he picked me up? He would know the address of my hotel but he hadn't picked me up from there or I would have sensed him. He couldn't have known I was going to the Neustadthalle because it was a last-minute decision: until I had Bourse clearance on Pol's photograph I wouldn't do anything active, so the Neustadthalle was a good passive search area for spending the day. He hadn't picked me up there, because I would have sensed him, and anyway he would have talked now about the crush attempt, especially as he was so desperate to cover me in the hope of saving my life and atone for the loss of KLJ. He'd never seen the crush attempt. He couldn't have known I went to the Lindt girl's flat or that I could be picked up from there when I left. There was only one answer: he's seen me, by chance, about half-way along the Unter den Eichen, or one of the staff had seen me and told him and he'd started out on his own initiative. Local Control Berlin has two rooms, each with two windows, on the ninth floor of the corner building at Unter den Eichen and Rhoner-allee, with front access through the passage at the side of the hat shop. The view of both streets is excellent and a lookout is normally stationed to make sure that any staff coming in has not been tagged to base by an adverse party. The lookout has a pair of Zeiss close-focus square 15's and can see the hairs on a fly at fifty yards. As one of the only three agents operating (in my case technically) from this base I couldn't go down either of these streets without being seen. It had been half-way down the den Eichen that I had sensed the tag.
Hengel hadn't only lost me within five minutes but had picked me up by sheer chance, and he knew it. If I told him that I knew it too he'd draw blood from his lip. If I told him he'd missed by ninety minutes an attempt on the life he was so eager to safeguard he'd bust a gut.
So I had just finished my beer and left him.
Back at the hotel I had some food and went up to tune-in to Eurosound. The Bourse was being read now. My signal was just coming up.
Quota Freight Tenders: 878¼. Plus 2½.
Rhone Electric: 626
1 switched off.
The ‘Communication Post and Bourse’ system is limited but foolproof. One of our cipher staff dreamed it up himself. It is relatively safe to entrust a signal to the ordinary postal services, and in the Federal Republic as safe as anywhere in the world. The agent doesn't stamp his letters because it might not be easy at any given moment (when lea
ving a theatre, for instance) to find a stamp. More important, an unstamped letter is virtually registered, since it must be handed personally to the addressee by the postman in order to collect the fee and tax. Thus, even if an agent is carrying a vital document and suspects he is being followed by an adverse party who might intend capturing the document at gun-point at the first chance, he can get rid of it readily at the nearest postbox and ensure its safety. We have a man at Eurosound to collect. Radio Eurosound is a perfectly genuine broadcasting station operating under the combined auspices of NATO and the Benelux Industrial Commune, and carries light music, U.S., British and French newscasts, and commercial programmes.
The Bureau has facilities not known publicly to exist for inserting into the twice-daily Bourse price announcements the name and movement of a fictitious stock, in my case Quota Freight Tenders. (At the time of the Zossen operation, ‘Quota’ was simply the call-sign (the memorandum being Q) and it could be varied five ways: Quota Freight Tenders in full, Quota Freight, Quota Tenders, Quota alone, and Q.F.T.) Each variation is in itself the key-word to one of four code-systems, and the agent normally uses the book, because the permutations of a single ‘price’ and ‘movement’ (878¼. Plus 2½in my case on that particular day) runs into thousands of signals the meaning of an 8 standing alone is different from that of an 8 appearing before a 7, and different again if it appears before 78. Also the fractions can change the whole of the signal given by the main digits. The ‘movement’ of the share can in its turn change the signal formed by the ‘price.’ I possess no code-book because a systematic permutation scheme can be committed to memory more easily than any random list of figures.
The Eurosound programmes are legitimately aimed at an audience demanding light music for housewives, up-to-the-minute news flashes and entertainment sponsored by the top Continental industrial concerns. That kind of audience does not want market news, and it would have been discontinued after the first probes by listener research, but the sponsors insisted on two daily readings of the Bourse because their stock was listed and it gave them free publicity especially when prices rose. The fact remains that since the inception of the Communication Post and Bourse system no listener has ever telephoned Eurosound to ask who the hell Quota Freight Tenders is and where the stock can be bought.