He stared at it. The skull reminded him of something.
5
The restaurant in the new British Library on Euston Road was not the most private of places to have a meeting. The high-ceilinged, modern, white-walled space was utilitarian, open plan. Its tables offered little protection from the gaze of onlookers.
But there was one good thing about it. The buzz of conversation in the final minutes before it closed at six that Friday evening gave Isabel the opportunity to speak to the man she had come to meet, without being overheard. She knew to meet InfoFreed contacts only in a public place. She didn’t need any one telling her about basic self-protection tactics, though she appreciated Sean’s concern for her security when he did ask questions about her meetings.
She couldn’t stop him being obsessed with her and Alek’s security, even if she wanted to. Recently, he’d even visited the home of the childminder they used now, where Alek, their son, was at that moment, to check up on the woman.
She felt an odd sensation at the back of her head. Someone was watching her. She turned quickly, didn’t see anyone staring at her. Was she being over sensitive, simply because she was meeting someone she didn’t know, as he claimed he had information to leak?
This wasn’t going to be Edward Snowden turning up, but she still had to be careful.
The two other people she’d met so far, in similar circumstances, since she’d taken the position at InfoFreed, were friends of friends she’d felt an obligation to talk to. Another possible whistle blower, who’d contacted her, she’d referred to the InfoFreed office on Oxford Street, for one of her colleagues to deal with.
But this invitation, to meet Fred Corbett, had been impossible to turn down. So now, here she was, twisting her head slowly, wondering where Fred was. She was about to look behind her again, when a voice called out.
“Don’t get up”. The voice was weak.
Isabel looked around. The man standing behind her was in his eighties, at least. He had a gray moustache, thin gray hair, and translucent skin. Purple veins threaded through it, like a map drawn on his cheeks. But he had an upright, military air, and the hand that shook Isabel’s was surprisingly firm.
“I saw you coming in,” he said. “I just waited to be sure there was no one following you.”
“Why would someone be following me?” said Isabel, looking around, as Fred sat down.
He moved closer to her as he replied. His eyes had the intensity of a man half his age, and his lips were pursed. Isabel caught a musky whiff of a strong, old-fashioned after shave.
“We don’t have much time, Mrs Ryan.” He gripped the edge of the table. “As I said in my email, I am here because of your grandfather.” He smiled just a little. His teeth were yellow.
Isabel bit her lip. It was the first time someone had used her grandfather, James Sharpe, to arrange a meeting. She wasn’t sure how to react.
“Did you know my grandfather?”
Fred licked his lips. “In 1947 I drove Major James Sharpe to the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg every morning, for six weeks. Then I was transferred to Paris.” He straightened himself in his seat, coming to attention. “I’ve lived in France, on and off, ever since.”
He paused, as if expecting her to comment. When she didn’t he continued. “My parents died in the Blitz, in September, 1940.”
Isabel did a quick calculation. He had to be in his early nineties.
“You must have been very young then.”
“I was. I was eighteen when I met your grandfather in Nuremberg.”
An odd sensation, like travelling back in time, came over Isabel. She imagined a younger Fred, what he might have looked like. The chatter of the restaurant around her diminished. Not even her own father had known Major James Sharpe. He had died soon after the war, and her father, being a young child at the time, had no memories of him.
“What was my grandfather like?”
Fred straightened himself in his seat. His knuckles protruded, ebony-white and bony, against the edge of the table.
“Do you have any idea what your grandfather’s job was in Nuremberg, my dear?” He seemed agitated, his eyes darting.
“No, not really. He was on protection duties or something.” She looked down. She’d never pressed her father on the details. He’d never seemed happy talking about the war and its aftermath.
“You are right, my dear, but do you know who he was protecting?” He stopped.
“No.”
He shook his head sadly. “You were told how he died?” He paused, opened his mouth. It seemed as if he would cough, but then he licked his lips slowly, with a large and very pink tongue.
“I know he killed himself.”
Her words came out slowly. It had been a painful fact she’d pushed out of her mind for a long time. Thinking about it brought up unwanted feelings, mostly of aching helplessness. They made something dark open up inside her, as she wondered if suicide could run in a family.
He stared at her. His eyes were pink rimmed. “I was reading about InfoFreed. You want the real truth about wrongdoing to come out, without damaging the people who leak such truths. Is that right?” His lips pressed together.
“Yes.”
“Has that ever happened?”
“Has what happened?”
“That the people who leak something don’t get damaged.”
She thought back over the cases she’d worked on in the few months she’d been with InfoFreed.
“Why don’t you tell me whatever it is you came to tell me?”
He stared at her for a good half minute before answering. She kept her expression neutral, but anticipation tensed inside her.
“Your grandfather was a good man. What happened to him was wrong, terribly wrong.” A troubled look passed across her face.
“Do you know why he shot himself?” he said, softly.
A vein pulsed in her neck. A warm flush passed through her.
“I heard he was affected by what he saw at Nuremberg.” She looked down at the table, then away across the room at the diners chatting, oblivious, cheerful. “That’s all I was told. That it was something to do with the trials.”
“You know they were fixed, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?” She stared into his eyes. He’d have to come up with some pretty strong evidence before she swallowed that theory.
“Are you a practicing Catholic, Mrs Ryan?”
It was a long time since someone had asked her about her religion. She shrugged.
“My father was, but he lapsed. I never took to any of it, despite being sent to a Catholic school. So the answer is no, I’m not.”
“I see.” His eyes widened.
For a moment Isabel wondered if she was dealing with someone who was mentally damaged.
“Do you know why Hitler attacked Russia and lost the war, Mrs Ryan?”
She didn’t reply.
“You do know that if he’d kept to his treaty with Stalin, the Normandy landings would have failed, or never have happened?”
She shrugged. She hadn’t thought about such a question since she was in school.
“Didn’t he attack Russia because he was running out of oil?”
Fred shook his head.
“No.” He put a purple veined finger in the air between them. “That is not the reason. That’s what they tell us the reason is.” He glanced over her shoulder.
Isabel twisted in her seat. The old woman at the table behind them was staring openly at her.
“Is that your wife?”
Fred nodded. “She doesn’t approve of me talking to you.”
“Why?”
He leaned closer, so close she could smell his breath, a faint toothpasty smell, warm on her hands in front of her.
“She thinks I should have destroyed everything I have a long time ago.”
“What do you have?”
“Come to our hotel. I’ll show you.” He waved at his wife. “It will be worth it, I promise you.”
“I’m not sure.”
Even if he did have some information relating to the war, she wasn’t at all sure if she should go with him. It was better to do these sorts of things in public.
He reached into his inside pocket, pulled out a note written on yellow hotel paper. He handed it to Isabel. There were two sentences on it, and a signature. When the time is right, please make sure what we spoke about reaches the public. In the name of all that is dear to us.
Underneath was a scrawled Major James Sharpe. The date, December 12, 1947, was beside the signature.
It had been written the month before her grandfather had died. She remembered her father’s drinking binges each January. An image of circles closing came to her. Her fingers trembled. She passed him back the note.
“We could meet again tomorrow.” She shouldn’t accept being rushed.
“My wife asked a priest what we should do, about what I want to show you, before we die.” Both his hands came up. They shook in front of her. “Since then we’ve received odd telephone calls. Strange men have turned up at our apartment block in Paris.” He threw his hands in the air.
“But who would care now why Hitler attacked Russia?” He shook his head. “If you were Russian, Mrs. Ryan, a relative of one of the twenty million who died in the Second World War perhaps, you would not say that. There’s a lot of interest in such things these days, as the Soviet archives are finally opened.”
“Why don’t you hand over what you have to the authorities?”
He shook his head. “If the authorities get hold of what I have, it will be suppressed or destroyed. Every last atom.” He was agitated again. “Your grandfather’s wish will not be fulfilled. The truth will never come out. The truth about why your grandfather died. And why so many millions died in that terrible war. Many of the people who enabled all those deaths have never been prosecuted, never mind punished, Mrs Ryan!”
“So this is the right time for everything to come out?” She was thinking about what her grandfather had said in his note.
“Yes, society has changed. People question things now. They are more open to the truth.” He leaned toward her. “There are other reasons too. If you come, I will tell you.”
The thought of making one of her grandfather’s wishes come true was hard to resist. She had to make a decision.
“I have to make a call first.” Her voice was firm. “If our childminder can take our son for another few hours, I’ll go with you.”
Fred was shaking his head.
“You must come, Mrs Ryan.” He held his hand out to her. It was jerking, as if he was ill.
Isabel had her phone to her ear. She smiled at him.
It was a few minutes before her call finished. By that time Fred’s wife was sitting beside him. She was talking in French to her husband.
6
Sean was back in his hotel within two hours of the incident in the lane. A quick visit to the bar and a large shot of whiskey had steadied his hands. A dull thumping in his jaw and in his side told him he’d had enough fun for one night.
The following morning, he had breakfast in the Spartan hotel restaurant. As he watched a harried husband taking a plate of eggs and cheese slices to his much larger wife, he remembered the fundamental truth about German life, which had been taught to him one night by a colleague at the institute, who was from Hamburg.
“Schiller is our God. Obedience the first duty. That was his number one saying. If you want to understand us Germans, understand that.” He’d leaned towards Sean as he’d said it, as if he’d just imparted something profound.
“Which is why I love Oxford,” he’d continued. “I am free to bend the rules here, with only consequences as my guide.” He’d beamed at Sean then.
He could even remember the man’s perfect teeth as he’d smiled.
Sean put his fork in his mouth. One thing he couldn’t argue with was the quality of Nuremberg sausage.
He headed for the reception desk as soon as he was finished. He’d arranged to meet a professor of modern history, Eleni Kibre, from the Free University of Nuremberg, at nine thirty. It was exactly that time when she walked into the small, but gleaming reception area.
“Sean Ryan! It’s a wonderful blessing to see you,” said Eleni. They hugged. The coolness of the Germanic way of life hadn’t taken away one little bit of her Zambian warmth. They hugged for at least thirty seconds. They’d dated when Sean was in college in London. His memory of her was of a sensuous, fun-loving woman who’d disappeared back home to Lusaka when her conservative Christian family had found out that she was staying over in his room almost every weekend.
Now she was an academic rock star, the only African professor of modern history in Germany. She had controversial ideas, too. She argued them well in the German media, as well as through academic papers. Too well in some people’s view.
They’d met again at a conference in Cambridge the previous summer. Sean had invited her and her partner to meet Isabel in London.
“How is that wonderful wife of yours, and your beautiful son?” were Eleni’s first words after she’d hugged him.
“All good.”
She kept hold of his wrists, pulled away and looked hard into his eyes.
“You’ve put that beautiful family of yours through a lot.”
Her smile widened playfully. Eleni was one of the main reasons he’d agreed to attend the award ceremony and conference in Nuremberg. He looked forward to seeing her, to experiencing her light hearted free spirit.
“How’s your book on the dark side of human behavior going?” she asked.
“Slowly,” he replied.
They talked all the way to the car park. She stopped at a battered green BMW. It was the oldest car in the area.
“I get people staring at me all the time in this.” She laughed. “But we’ll get to our destination in fifteen minutes, exactly the same time as if I had a sparkling new Mercedes.” She buckled her seat belt. “Come on, tell me everything that has been happening at the institute. I want to know all the dirty little secrets. Who is sleeping with who?” Her gaze flickering toward him as she moved the car out of its space.
“Nobody’s sleeping with anyone right now, Eleni. Not that I know. But I’m always the last to find out about those things.”
“You disappoint me. I was hoping for some juicy gossip,” said Eleni.
They talked about old times as they passed under a bridge and across railroad tracks, and trundled over tram tracks.
After twenty minutes she pulled into a parking space near the front of the giant former Congress Hall of the Nazi party, the place where the Nuremberg rallies had been held. The building was surrounded by a ring of tall plane trees. They lined the nearby streets and stretched away far into the distance.
The Congress Hall reminded Sean of the Colosseum in Rome, but this was a concrete version, with three tiered archway levels, one above the other, each smaller than the one below. The building was curved, as if it would form a circle, though only half the circle had been constructed. Whatever the plan had been, the building must have been capable of holding tens of thousands of spectators.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it,” said Eleni, as they got out and looked up.
“There are seven square miles of rally grounds here,” said Eleni. “Those Nazi’s knew how to manage big events.”
“Can visitors go inside?” said Sean.
Eleni pointed to the left. “There’s a visitor center over there, but that’s not what we’re here for. I promised you a visit to something the public never gets to see, and I never break my promises. You know that.” She nudged him and winked.
They walked under the trees, heading for the cliff face of the Congress Hall looming above them. The concrete colour matched the dark gray lid of clouds that filled the sky. The smell of something burning hung in the air.
The lower level of the building was a slightly lighter shade of concrete than the ones above. Green steel doors circled the
building at ground level, about twenty feet apart. Above ground level there was a railing and a set of tall arches, embedded into and circling the building.
The door they stopped in front of had the words - Eintritt verboten – in red letters printed on it.
“Are you sure we’re allowed to go in?” said Sean.
“Don’t worry,” said Eleni. “Everything is forbidden in Germany, unless you have permission.” She tapped the small, black leather bag tucked under her arm. “I have permission in writing to visit this and some other interesting sites I can tell you about.”
Inside the door was a long bare corridor lit by a window high above the door they had just come through. Eleni put a hand to a bulky yellow light switch. Lights flickered on above their heads.
“This passage runs to the center of the building, right below where the main stage would have been. It was a quick way for speakers to get in and out.”
They walked down the corridor, their footsteps echoing into the distance. Sean asked Eleni how they were treating her at the university.
“The admin staff are wonderful, really, but I hate it there these days,” she whispered, leaning towards him. “Some of the new students make my skin crawl. You’d be shocked if I told you what I’ve had to listen to.”
7
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be breathing. I should be dust.
He stared out of the window. A group of old women were talking in the cobbled square below, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was seeing something else. Something from a nightmare.
A nightmare as clear as any memory. Skeletons were walking toward him. Bony faces with eyes so sunken he could see the oval sockets. Each mouth was open. Blood dripped from their lips, achingly slowly, dropping from chins onto chests, splattered red already.
Voices, a shrieking jangle of words he couldn’t understand, echoed through his mind, rising and falling. An ancient smell, a stinking odor of shit and blood and sweat, twitched at his nostrils. He closed his eyes tight, crinkling his face. The skeletons were still there. He shook his head, tried to rise, to get away, but his legs wouldn’t work.
The Nuremberg Puzzle Page 2