by Adam Hall
It had become very quiet in the room.
I said: " I'm not convinced."
He turned to face me squarely and the pale eyes became sparks of light in the pouchy flesh. "It is not my concern to convince you, Herr Quiller. You are a mote in the sandstorm that is about to blow. But I am proud of Sprungbrett. It was my conception and I have nurtured it to maturity. It will thus please me to convince, you of its invincibility. In a few minutes we shall receive the news that will touch off our operation. From that same instant you will be free to leave. Then you will be convinced that there is nothing you can do. You are powerless. You are useless to me and to your Control. You are not, Herr Quiller, worth the expenditure of a single bullet."
He went back to his desk.
It was Inga who spoke, and not to me. She was standing in front of the desk. Her voice was rough. "Mein Keichsleiter… Let me convince an unbeliever. Let me show him Der Reliquie! "
The man said nothing. He seemed uninterested in her sudden outburst, but he gazed at her for a moment and then moved a podgy hand, granting the request.
She waited for me and I followed her to the far end of the room where I had noticed the curtains. They were a fall of black velvet with the swastika emblazoned on it. She stood erect in her military trenchcoat, the pride shining from her face.
"You asked me to show you the shrine."
Someone must have operated a switch; the velvet was split and its two halves drew apart. The niche was lighted by a single flame in a bowl of red marble. The relics were cradled in a vessel of clear crystal, and were pure white.
There are various reports on this subject. Witnesses were hard to locate in the holocaust of Berlin at the time. The most authoritative evidence was presented by British Military Intelligence in 1945. It was established that the corpses, of Hitler and Eva Braun were burnt in the garden of the Chancellery on the evening of April 30th, but no trace was found of the charred remains. These were removed in secret. A statement by Frau Junge (who was in the Fuhrerbunker during the last hours) said that the cremated relics were collected in a box and secretly taken to the Hitler Youth leader Axmann. The sacred relics would thus be passed on to the next generation, represented by the Hitler Youth.
The light of the small flame was reflected in the crystal, so that the bleached remains were seen as if enwrapped in fire.
Her face was there too, distorted by the curves of the glass and the flame's movement. She was staring into it. I remembered something she had said when she had first spoken to me of her childhood and the later years when she had defected from Phoenix. They had tried to make her go back. "I refused to go back, but I swore on something that they keep there that I would never talk." I had known it must be some kind of shrine, something sacred. She had also said: "The only god I had ever been told about was the Fuhrer."
Here was the holy sepulchre.
I watched her face in the crystal. She couldn't move; she could only stare. I knew how many times she must have come here before, to stand silently in communion with those who had peopled her child's world: the ‘grown-ups’ of the doomed Fuhrerbunker, Uncle Hermann, Uncle Guenther, her own mother… and her god. She had known them and loved them, and they had turned, before her child's eyes, into creatures stranger than the fiends of a fable; and she herself had become as suddenly a changeling, first a child, then a freak, a werewolf with a child's face.
This much remained of all that she had known as home cold bones and bitter ash, cradled forever in the chill of glass.
Then her face was suddenly gone and all I could see was her reflected hand, raised and held palm-flattened. From behind me her voice came, a soft screech – "Heil Hitler!"
There were other voices, breaking to a murmur of approval, and I turned to see the group of men who stood watching her, moved by her cry of faith.
The black velvet came together silently.
Unnervingly, a telephone began ringing. It was the Reichsleiter who answered. He listened for a few seconds and then nodded, saying only: "Good. Very good." He lowered the receiver tenderly. To the others he said "Gentlemen, we must wish ourselves good fortune in our endeavours."
They closed around the desk and one of them took his hand. Oktober spoke to him and was answered. He turned towards me and I watched the steel trap of his mouth open and shut on a shouted order to the man who had never left his post at the doors.
"The prisoner will leave. He will not be molested. The order will be passed on."
I looked at Inga before I crossed to the doors. She said nothing. She turned and joined the throng of men at the Reichsleiter's desk.
The guard stood aside for me to pass, and spoke to others outside. The order was passed on as I went down the ten stairs and crossed the mezzanine, went down the fifteen stairs and reached the hall, took the nineteen paces to the entrance-doors and walked through them unchallenged.
The night struck deathly cold against my face. The lamps cast my shadow along the street as I went my way alone. I was free.
I was as free as Kenneth Lindsay Jones had been on the night he had walked out of that house.
20 : BUNKERKINDER
I walked towards the bridge.
KLJ had been found in the water but they said he'd been shot dead before immersion. Somewhere here, among these shadows where I walked, was the precise spot where he had crumpled to the bullet.
I still believed in my certainties that had led me to make this final single throw, but if some of them were wrong, if only one of them, the smallest, were wrong, my place would be here too: not at home nor down the road at the crossing nor far across the face of the earth – but here, and now.
It is a feeling that we sometimes have, when we've taken a calculated risk. We think: this move could kill me, so if I assume that it will, if I assume I'm already dead and finished, I won't have to worry or be afraid.
Fear of death can worsen the risk of meeting with it, because of stomach-think.
Just as I reached the beginning of the bridge a car came from a side-street and got up speed and as it passed me my nape shrank. The mental (brain-think) decision to assume death and so remove fear is a useful exercise, but the stomach thinks for itself.
The bridge was quiet, a chain of lamps and a gleam of water below. When I heard the footsteps I kept on walking and didn't turn round. There was probably no danger; if they decided to shoot me down they wouldn't hurry to catch me up like this.
They were nearing. I kept on. Then I knew. It was a woman in soft shoes.
"Quill… "
I stopped. She looked up into my face, panting. She said: "I had to make a show in front of them."
"Of course."
She gripped my arm. "It must have sounded terrible to you."
"A fraction embarrassing."
Her eyes flickered beyond me, checking shadows. "Please trust me. It's what I came to ask. Trust me."
"I trust you."
If I survived the mission there would have to be a full report sent in to the Bureau. Under the heading Inga Lindt there would be facts summarised. Give or take a few details the report would read:
First encounter: at the Neustadthalle Berlin. It was noticed that Lindt left the courtroom just ahead of me. It was likely that the driver of the crush-car (see elsewhere) was waiting for a signal that I was coming into the open street, so that he would have time to start the engine and get into gear. It was not thought at the time that Lindt made that signal, but later experience indicated it.
(Oktober mentioned that a portrait parle had been made of me subsequent to my having been seen in the courts – though not in the Neustadthalle. I was thus recognised going in, and Lindt was sent in with orders to leave just ahead of me and make a signal to the crush-car. It will be remembered from the earlier sections of this report that the crush-attempt was in fact made by a wild-head group in the Phoenix organisation, so that Lindt's orders would have come from them, not from Oktober. The top directive wanted me alive, for questioning under dur
ess.)
Immediately following the crush-attempt, Lindt claimed that it was meant for her. This was an obvious line for me to follow. There was a conversation in her apartment during which she stated herself to be a defector from Phoenix. It is believed her description of early life and experiences in the Fuhrerbunker were perfectly true. It was now suspected, however, that she was still under the influence of Phoenix and might even be one of their operators.
This was confirmed by her mentioning to me that Rothstein was in Berlin. My immediate reaction was that (1) she knew I had once known him, (2) had been ordered to drop his name casually and (3) expected me to talk about him. I did not do this.
It was decided to visit Rothstein and discover if he knew of Phoenix, so that I could warn him that they knew his name. There were assistants in his laboratory and it was impossible to talk safely. He appeared to have a need to tell me something, but made no appointment to see me again.
The circumstances of Rothstein's death and my blame for it (by negligence) will be found under that heading. It is relevant to say here that in going to see him (as a direct result of Lindt's mention of his name) I exposed him to their increased suspicion. Had no visit been made, they might well have thought that there had never been any connection between us, and dismissed their suspicions. The fact of Lindt's mentioning his name led finally to his shooting. Thus I was now convinced she was a Phoenix agent.
It was decided that I should let her continue to play her part as a defector (anti-Phoenix) and that I should seem to continue to accept this. Certain personal feelings towards her were now intruding but they did not of course interfere in any way with the pursuance of my mission. It was in fact hoped that further contact with her might afford me information on Phoenix.
Concerning the attempt by Oktober to force admissions from me in Lindt's apartment by seeming to submit her to physical torture in my presence, the full details will be found under the relevant heading Interrogation. It should be noted here that I became aware that Lindt underwent – at this precise time – a psychological change. My own theories on this may be untenable to a psychologist but they should be detailed in this report, since the whole of my subsequent course of action stemmed therefrom.
Lindt was obsessed with the concept of total strength. As a child she had been given faith in Adolf Hitler and it was no less feverish than was found in millions of her own country-people. Following the Fuhrer's suicide, and her own psychical trauma caused by the final hours in the besieged Fuhrerbunker, she retained that faith and was ripe for subsequent indoctrination into the Phoenix creed, which derived its very name from the idea that the Fuhrer had risen from his ashes. He was therefore – to Lindt – still a god, and still totally strong. She allied herself with men whom she believed to be unbreakable. (The personality of Oktober – a Reichsfuhrer in the organisation – gave an impression of total unbreakable strength.) It was during Oktober's attempt to interrogate me under pressures induced by my fears for her while she was apparently being tortured in my presence that she met with a psychological confrontation that unbalanced her values. During this interrogation I was aware (1) that she was not in fact suffering distress but lending herself to a new method of inducing me to talk, (2) I must appear to believe that she was being tortured and (3) I must get out of the corner without revealing that I knew her to be an agent, in case I could use her later as a source of information. (Reference Point 2: the moment I realised that Oktober had come to simulate a torture-scene, I made myself believe in it, so that all my subsequent actions should appear consistent. This deliberate self-deception was an aid in throwing the faint.)
Having induced genuine syncope by artificial stimuli, I recovered to find Oktober gone, and Lindt sobbing.
It is my theory that when she heard me tell Oktober to go ahead and kill her slowly, but that he would fail to make me talk, she imagined she had found someone as unbreakable as he. (She would have heard of his failure with the narcoanalysis, an additional sign of my reluctance to yield.) The important point here is that although she had always allied herself with men whom she thought were totally strong (unbreakable) she had never seen this characteristic evidenced in the enemy. This experience came at a time when our personal relationship had recently developed to a degree where other psychological influences carried their weight. Thus she suddenly found herself allied to me and – since I was hitherto an enemy – opposed to Phoenix, and I believed her fit of sobbing to be rooted in bewilderment (because of severe change in psychic attitudes) and fear (of the retribution to which she was now self-exposed, and which an organisation as ruthless as Phoenix would be quick to mete out).
Untenable though this theory might be in the case of a stable personality, it was the most applicable among many others in the case of a woman long unbalanced by grave trauma in childhood (in the Fuhrerbunker).
For reasons of caution I kept my beliefs to myself and proceeded as she would have expected, telephoning her doctor and asking him to come at once. (He would be a member of Phoenix and she would simply explain to him that his services were not in fact required, as nothing more than simulated torture had been undergone.) Note: the presence of blood on her legs (as evidence to me that the torture had been genuine) had been produced by the slight cutting of the flesh behind one ear-lobe. At our next meeting I looked for the scar left by the incision and remarked it; healing was not by that time complete.
Before leaving the apartment I put my theory about her violent change of loyalties to the test, by writing a number on one of her Kleenex tissues and telling her that she could reach me there by phone if she wished. This number – that of a bar named the Brunnen – had been picked at random from the directory while I waited for the doctor to answer. The same night I checked the Brunnen Bar for observers or start-point tags and found none. It was to be expected that one or more would have been posted there if Lindt had given the number to her people. I felt it safe to assume that she had not given it, and her omission confirmed my theory: she was now allied with me.
It was concluded, at about the same time, that Oktober had decided to change his tactics after my exhibition of syncope. The narcoanalyst (Fabian: see under Interrogation) had described to Oktober a technique used at Dachau, whereby information was successfully extracted from people believing themselves to be threatened with certain death. They would be ‘reprieved’ and offered the promise of sexual congress at the height of stimulation (return of life and positive forces granted by ‘reprieve’). These particular circumstances were in fact my own, not long before I had been expected to go to Lindt soon after believing that I had been ‘reprieved’ (Grunewald Bridge episode, q.v.). Oktober, in my view, had been so impressed with Fabian's technique that when I passed out in the Lindt apartment he went in to her and told her to interrogate me herself on an implied promise of sexual congress. The prospect was the more hopeful since I was thought to be in a state of compassion for her, following the simulated torture session. (It was to increase my compassion that blood-drops were then taken from the ear-lobe and applied to the inside thighs, indicating to me that an attack had been made on the urethra, in line with classical method).
She was too distressed mentally by her bewilderment and fear (see foregoing) to tell me that she had now, in truth, defected from Phoenix. It would not have been easy for her to explain her position, since she believed that at that time I assumed her to have defected a long time ago. She would have simply told Oktober that she would try out the new tactics, and let him leave the apartment. Her actual breakdown came at that precise moment, leading to the fit of sobbing once we were alone.
From the time when I left her apartment that night there was a noticeable reduction in tagging and observation. Example: my meeting with Pol was unobserved and there had been no tag on my journey to the park. It was assumed the adverse party was giving me rope so that I should – being off-guard – try to visit Lindt again. She would then be expected to try their new tactics as ordered by Oktober. I did no
t go to see her. Their patience became exhausted and she was next ordered to contact me and ask me to see her at the apartment. I then went there and found the agent Helmut Braun. (Note: she had put on clothes of a vivid red. I had seen her only in black, before. I believed this to be an expression – not so much to me as to herself – of her radically-altered attitudes (red=life, black=death), and I accepted this as further confirmation of my theory that she was now allied with me and opposed to Phoenix. There follows the section on Helmut Braun.
I could hear the water lapping at the legs of the bridge.
Helmut Braun? It was difficult to think about him when I stood so close to her.
"There's no time, Quill, to talk. As long as you trust me."
I said: "I do."
She took my hand. Her eyes shone in the lamplight. She said: "Then I can come with you." "Are you walking out on them?"
"Running. I don't know when you found out I was working for them, but you know when I stopped."
"It hasn't been long."
"But it will be. They suspect me now – that's why I had to give that exhibition in there. I'll be safe if I go with you. Take me."
"I'm going to my Control. There might be time to stop Sprungbrett if there's a last-minute hitch. And I've seen their faces, and I know their names. So I've got to send a signal."
"Take me with you. Wherever you go I'll be safe. You're my life, Quill."