That she could ever be a threat, an enemy determined enough and talented enough to bring them down, had apparently never crossed their minds. Actually, she knew that it had never crossed her mind either, until that so fortuitous encounter with Clive Bartley – which had happened only three days after her punishment, when her body and her mind were still a molten mass of pain and anger. Clive had known nothing of her, had concluded that she was either a Gestapo agent or a German fortune huntress who had managed to marry into the British aristocracy and who therefore had to be regarded with suspicion by any conscientious member of the Secret Service. But he had been able to discern that, for whatever reason, the glamorous Honourable Mrs Ballantine Bordman was in a highly distressed state. He had set out to seduce her, she suspected, with utter cold-bloodedness. She was still not certain, after more than two years, whether after he had been to her bed and learned the truth about her he regarded her more as a woman he could potentially love, or simply as the most ruthless and deadly – and therefore immensely valuable – secret agent he had ever encountered.
She could not feel that way towards him. For the first time since her arrest by the Gestapo in March 1938, Clive had brought a ray of hope into her life. She did not know if she loved him. She did not know if she was capable of love any more. She was keeping her parents and her sister alive by faithfully working for the Nazis – as far as they knew. But as that was all they could be allowed to know, Johann and Jane Fehrbach had totally rejected her as a traitor and a whore. As for men, she had been trained only to seduce and then destroy. As the seduction involved the ability to make her victims feel she loved them, she had no idea if she would recognize the real thing if she ever experienced it. But Clive had made her feel that she was more than just a robot trained to kill; that she, with him and his superiors, had a vital part to play in restoring the world to better times. That was all she had to live for, until those times arrived.
‘Are you nervous, Countess?’ the Captain enquired, bringing her back to the present as the car pulled into the courtyard.
‘Why should I be nervous?’ Anna asked as the door was opened.
*
She was, in fact, less anxious than preoccupied, with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. Although she had committed several horrendous crimes in the name of this man, and undoubtedly at his bidding, she had never actually met Hitler, had only ever seen him from a distance. This was the first time she had even entered the Chancellery. And to do so now in such a state of dishabille . . . She had taken off the towel in the car, but her hair was still wet, clinging to her neck and down the back of her shirt, and she wore no make-up and only the shabbiest of clothes. If she had no doubt of her beauty, she also believed in enhancing it whenever possible, and had never before allowed herself to appear before her employers as anything less than perfectly turned out – with the exception, of course, of Heydrich, who had explored her naked body often enough.
She half expected to be turned away by one of the smartly dressed and immaculately groomed young female secretaries who peered at her as she entered the building, taking off her sunglasses and blinking in the sudden gloom. Instead one woman, older than the rest, her severely handsome face exposed as her hair was drawn back in a tight bun, came forward. ‘Countess von Widerstand? I am Frau Engert. Will you come with me, please?’
Anna fell into place at her side as they approached the wide staircase leading up to the first-floor gallery. ‘I am sorry about my dress. I was given no time to change.’
‘I was told you would look delightful in sackcloth, Countess. I was not misinformed.’
This was promising. They reached the steps and started up them; a guard at the foot stood to attention, and Anna reflected that he could not possibly know who she was, and therefore he had to be acknowledging her companion’s rank. But Frau Engert was very simply dressed as a secretary, in black skirt and white blouse, black tie and black stockings, and black court shoes. There was no visible evidence of any rank. ‘You are . . .?’ she ventured.
‘I am Herr Hitler’s private secretary. One of them.’
‘I see. So would you know why he has sent for me so urgently?’
‘The Fuehrer does most things urgently, Countess. This morning he wishes to meet you.’
Anna wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but they had reached the gallery and were entering a large, high-ceilinged lobby. Here there were several desks, seated at which were more secretaries who regarded Anna with interest. At the rear of the room was another pair of enormous doors, stretching very nearly to the ceiling, in front of which were two armed SS guards. They stood to attention, and then one of them opened the doors.
‘Frau Engert, my Fuehrer.’
Frau Engert gave a brief nod of the head, and gestured Anna into the room. They stood together as the doors closed behind them, and saluted. ‘Heil Hitler!’
Anna blinked in the sudden bright light streaming in through the huge windows behind the desk. It was a relief to see that Reinhard Heydrich, her master in all things, was still there. Tall and blond, his yellow hair brushed back from his forehead, only his thin gash of a mouth and the coldness of his blue eyes robbed his face of handsomeness. She was not so pleased at the presence of Heinrich Himmler, overall commander of the Secret Services, and therefore her ultimate commander as well. She had only met him twice before, and found him disconcerting because his eyes, no less cold, were half obscured behind rimless glasses, and his face, large and bland, with its small, curiously irrelevant pale moustache, was utterly expressionless. She could not imagine what he would be like when angry, or in the throes of passion. If such a man could ever feel passion. But he, she knew, was the ultimate arbiter of her fate, at least until the Allies won the war . . . supposing that was ever going to happen.
But neither of these men, so ruthlessly powerful in their professional capacities, mattered the least when in the presence of the ultimate arbiter of their fates, and the fates of everyone in Germany, not to say Europe. Anna was not surprised by Hitler’s appearance – she had seen enough photographs of him to expect the dark, un-Aryan hair, one lock drooping over his forehead, an obviously deliberate style, the carefully trimmed black moustache. His clothes were as nondescript as she had expected, certainly when compared to the pristine black uniforms of his two henchmen; he wore a simple brown tunic over black pants, his only decoration the Iron Cross First Class at his neck, legitimately earned, she knew, as a despatch rider in the Great War.
What did surprise and disconcert her was his complexion – which was mottled red and white, suggesting that he was not in the best of health – and his height. At five feet eleven inches in her bare feet, Anna was taller than most men. One of the reasons she had first been attracted to Clive Bartley was that he was six feet two. But Hitler was several inches shorter than that. She wondered if this would upset him, but he was smiling as he came forward, both hands outstretched.
‘Countess! I have heard so much about you.’
Anna hesitated, uncertain whether she was about to be embraced, but as this did not happen, she extended her own hands, and had her fingers grasped and squeezed. ‘You flatter me, my Fuehrer. I must apologize for my appearance. I was working out in the gymnasium and was told to come at once.’
‘A beautiful woman is a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, Countess. It is not necessary to gild the lily. And working out! Anyone can see that you are superbly fit . . . Yes, yes, Engert.’
The secretary had apparently left the room after escorting Anna into it, but had now returned with a silver tray on which were a glass of water and two rather large capsules. ‘It is nine thirty, my Fuehrer.’
‘Already?’ But he swallowed the pills. ‘They fill me full of this rubbish,’ he explained. ‘There is a pill for this, a pill for that, and a pill for something else. Come, sit down.’ He led Anna to a chair in front of his desk, and then, still holding her hand, sat beside her, another chair having been hastily placed there by Heydrich.
From the click of the doors behind her she gathered that Frau Engert had again withdrawn. ‘You are an Austrian.’
‘I have an Austrian father, my Fuehrer,’ Anna said carefully.
‘And an Irish mother.’
Another surprise: he had not referred to any notes. ‘Yes, my Fuehrer.’
‘Who managed to escape the British clutches after the Easter uprising of April 1916.’
‘Ah . . .’ Anna had to make an immense effort to stop herself glancing at Heydrich, who was standing on her other side. He certainly knew the truth, that her mother had had no part – and as far as Anna knew, no interest – in the Irish Independence Movement, had indeed worked and gained her reputation as an investigative journalist with a London newspaper and had amazed both her employers and her friends when, on being sent to Vienna in 1919 to cover the many horrendous tales of starvation and indeed cannibalism reputed to be taking place in that erstwhile capital of empire, so devastatingly isolated from food and succour in those traumatic days following the end of the Great War, had stayed there to marry a relatively obscure Austrian editor. But if her boss had chosen to tell his boss something different . . . ‘She does not like to talk about those days,’ she said, with absolute truthfulness.
‘Oh, quite. I can understand that. And you were born in Vienna, which makes us fellow countrymen. I lived for a while in Linz, and I intend to retire there when my task here is finished. It is a lovely place.’
‘But you also lived in Vienna,’ Anna ventured.
A shadow passed across Hitler’s face. ‘It was necessary to earn a living. But it was not a happy time. Vienna is the most beautiful city in the world. But not all of the people are what one might hope, or expect. Still . . .’ His expression brightened. ‘Those days are history. I am told that you are one of the most faithful servants of the Reich. That there is nothing you would not do for the Fatherland.’ He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. ‘That means for me, you know.’
Oh, my God! Anna thought. Sleeping with Heydrich was an ongoing purgatory, but at least she was used to it by now. Sleeping with this man was unthinkable.
‘Even if you are not always successful,’ Hitler remarked gently.
Anna stiffened. The interview had been going just too well, whatever the undercurrents.
‘Tell me about Marshal Stalin. He is still alive, is he not?’
‘I was betrayed before I could carry out my mission, my Fuehrer.’
Hitler nodded. ‘Those scum have been dealt with. But tell me, why were you betrayed? By your own people. My people!’
Anna turned her head to gaze at him. ‘Both men wished to have sex with me, my Fuehrer. I did not wish to have sex with them. So they avenged themselves by handing me over to the NKVD.’
‘You did not like these men? Or is it that you do not like any men?’
Anna felt that she was picking her way through a minefield; there was no way this man could be snubbed as easily as she had snubbed Stefan. ‘I did not like those men, my Fuehrer.’ Again she was sticking to the absolute truth.
‘Yet did you not once save the life of Herr Meissenbach by killing two would-be assassins with two shots?’
His knowledge of her past was encyclopaedic and alarming. ‘It was actually four shots. That was in the line of duty, my Fuehrer; it was my business to protect Herr Meissenbach. He had not yet revealed any . . . wish to know me better.’ Now that was a lie, but she did not see how even Hitler could know that.
He smiled. ‘Although perhaps the event created that wish. But that too is history. It is the future that matters. I have in mind to entrust you with a most important mission.’ Anna held her breath, but he again surprised her by asking, ‘What is your feeling towards the Jews?’
The sudden change of direction was disconcerting. But reading Mein Kampf had been part of her training, and she had a photographic memory even greater than his appeared to be. ‘The Jews are the enemies of the Reich, my Fuehrer.’
‘Quite. But I would like to know your personal opinion of them.’
‘I do not know any Jews, my Fuehrer. I am a Roman Catholic.’
‘Of course.’ To her consternation, he released her hand to hook his finger in the chain of her crucifix and gently pull it out from beneath her shirt. ‘This is very beautiful. It matches its owner, and would appear to live a most fortunate life.’ He peered at her. ‘Do you ever take it off?’
Even sitting down, Anna felt that her knees were turning to water. Those eyes had a magnetic quality she had never experienced before. ‘Not as a rule, my Fuehrer.’
‘What a lucky charm.’ Carefully he dropped the crucifix back inside her shirt. ‘Do you know, I am also a Roman Catholic? When I have the time. But I would like you to think about the problem. Because it is a problem. The Jews are like weeds in a beautiful garden. Unchecked, they will strangle all the flowers. But merely cutting them back is not a solution. They simply sprout again, more profusely than before. And unlike weeds, they do not just exist in our garden. They are everywhere. Tell her, Himmler.’
The Gestapo chief spoke for the first time. ‘It seems there are more Jews in Russia than anywhere else. We have had to detail special squads – we call them Einsatzgruppen – to shoot these people. But it is an exhausting business. And morale suffers, you know. These men are highly trained members of the SS. They would happily die for the Fatherland, for their Fuehrer. But even they find the business of having to line up a hundred or more Jews – men, women, and children – almost every day, make them strip naked, and then dig a vast pit and force them to stand on the edge of it, and then shoot them so that they fall into the pit . . . it’s a demoralizing business. I have had men breaking down under the stress.’
Anna wondered what stress the victims felt, just before being shot. She felt slightly sick, especially at the thought that, from his detailed description of what happened, Himmler had obviously personally attended at least one of these executions, and probably been titillated by it.
‘Why are they made to strip?’ Hitler asked, interested.
‘Well, my Fuehrer, their clothes are often extremely useful.’
Hitler did not look entirely convinced, while Anna was trying to work out why she was involved in such a conversation.
‘And of course,’ Himmler went on, now in full complaining flow, ‘it is such a tedious business. There is no end in sight. Do you realize, my Fuehrer, that it is estimated there may be as many as five million Jews in Russia? Even if we shoot a hundred a day, we are still talking of, well . . .’ He scratched his ear.
‘Just short of a hundred and thirty-seven years,’ Anna said absently.
The three men all turned to look at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It just slipped out.’
‘But that is marvellous,’ Hitler said. ‘Absolutely marvellous. Do you realize what you have here, Heydrich?’
‘I do, my Fuehrer. However, Anna’s genius merely highlights the problem. There are also several million Jews here in Germany, and probably an equal number in the rest of Europe. On that basis, if the Reich really is going to last a thousand years, most of them will be used up before the problem is finally solved.’
Hitler patted Anna’s hand, then got up, and sat behind his desk. ‘I do not find that amusing.’
‘But it is true, sir. One cannot argue against mathematics. However . . .’ He paused.
‘Yes.’
‘It is possible to alter the figures.’
‘I do not understand. What are you proposing to do? Take a zero off the end and proclaim that there are really only several hundred thousand instead of several million?’
‘No, sir. The only figure that can be altered is the number of Jews that can be disposed of every day. If, instead of a hundred, we got rid of a thousand a day, that would bring the required time down to thirteen years. Is that not correct, Anna?’
Anna stared at him. These people are talking about human lives, she thought. As if they were unnecessary sheets of pape
r. She heard herself say, ‘As far as Russia goes, Herr General.’
‘And,’ Heydrich went on, ‘if the figure is raised to ten thousand a day, we are talking of little more than a year and a half.’
‘A year and a half,’ Hitler mused. ‘That would be wonderful. And say another year and a half for the rest. The Jewish question solved, in under four years.’
‘With respect, my Fuehrer,’ Himmler said, ‘that proposition is absurd. I have just explained that maintaining, much less recruiting, my Einsatzgruppen squads is proving increasingly difficult. Now you are asking me to expand them a hundredfold? We happen to be fighting a war. I simply do not have the men.’
Hitler looked at Heydrich, and then at Anna, as if supposing she might have the answer to that question as well. But for one of the very few times in her life Anna’s brain was paralyzed.
‘With respect to you, Herr Reichsfuehrer,’ Heydrich said. ‘You are approaching the business from the wrong end. You are treating it as a military problem, whereas it is really a civil problem, and as such, should be dealt with by the police.’
‘You are expecting the police to go around arresting Jews and shooting them? Not even the Gestapo are trained for anything like that. You would have a morale problem that would make mine irrelevant.’
‘I am not suggesting that the police shoot anybody,’ Heydrich said patiently. ‘But the Gestapo are surely capable of arresting people. Have them arrest every Jew they can find, and incarcerate them.’
‘The outcry would be enormous.’
‘Not if it is done properly. You simply announce that all Jews are to be resettled, somewhere in the east. There is no need to be specific.’
‘And where in the east are you proposing to send them? We are still at war in Russia. Even after the victory, there will be a great deal of cleaning up to be done.’
Angel of Vengeance_The thrilling sequel to Angel in Red Page 3