Estocada

by Graham Hurley

  ‘The man?’

  Schultz shook his head. One of the conditions on meeting at all was the preservation of anonymity until the last possible moment.

  ‘Then he’s waiting,’ Tam pointed out. ‘On events.’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  ‘In case anything changes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘It depends. Things can happen in Prague, in Karlovy Vary, and they probably will. But things can also happen in London and Paris.’

  ‘Which is where I come in.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He put a meaty hand on Tam’s sleeve. ‘Let’s just hope you’re right, eh?’

  He drove Tam into the city centre and dropped him off at a modest pension in the warren of alleys behind the Hauptmarkt. He’d be in touch later but didn’t specify how or when. Tam booked in, left his bag at reception and returned at once to the street.

  He’d never been to Nuremberg before and already he was impressed. Centuries of wealth had settled on the Altstadt and within the city walls it was easy to half-close your eyes, block out the traffic and imagine the way life must have been. This, after all, was the ancient treasure chest of the old German Empire, the city of Dürer, and of generation after generation of traders and artists and clerics whose fierce pride had given rise to churches and monuments and the soaring, half-timbered civic buildings it was still possible to glimpse behind the curtain of Nazi banners.

  Wherever you walked there were new streets to explore, more cobblestones underfoot, yet another café where the pastries looked sumptuous and the coffee smelled irresistible. It was lunchtime now, the hour for serious eating, and the restaurants were packed with party functionaries bent over plates of Schnitzel mit Kartoffelsalat, poring over their schedules for the coming week. The place oozed self-confidence. Germany was on the move. Germany was pleased with itself. No wonder Nuremberg, with its beguiling mix of quaintness and raw, Nazi energy, had become the cradle of the new regime.

  Tam ate alone at a shadowed café within touching distance of the Hauptmarkt. Before he’d stepped out of the aircraft Dieter had pressed a folded note into his hand. It contained the name and address of a Bierhalle where he and Georg planned to share a beer or two in the early evening. Tam was very welcome to join them.

  Tam left the café in the early afternoon and plotted a long, circuitous route back to his hotel. This was a city preparing for the carnival of parades, speeches, concerts, meetings and celebrations that would fill the week to come, and the place was already tuning up. There was music everywhere – from brass bands to a lone singer in a long cotton skirt performing outside a café bursting with Nazi uniforms. She was dark and Italian-looking with a face that might have belonged to a gypsy, and she sang excerpts from Bizet arias with a deep brio that drew waves of applause from the watching crowd. Tam loved Carmen, always had done, and he was mouthing the words from the ‘Habanera’ when he first became aware that he was being followed.

  He’d seen the man before. Twice. He was thin, sallow-faced. He was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt open at the neck. There were stains on the shirt and his shoes badly needed a clean. He was carrying a copy of Völkischer Beobachter. He might have been a clerk in an enterprise that had seen better days. Or a Gestapo stooge, semi-submerged in the swirl of a busy afternoon.

  Tam left the singer and headed back towards the hotel. Twice he paused at a street corner and on both occasions he turned quickly enough to spot his new friend ducking into a shop or a nearby café. Approaching the hotel, the man was still there, still in attendance, still watching, and Tam toyed with sauntering back and offering a formal introduction but decided there was no point. This was something he should expect, he told himself.

  Up in his room, lying full length on the narrow bed, he shared the thought with Bella, who was still in Berlin. Last night, anticipating telephone conversations like these, they’d agreed a number of crude code words. Thunder would indicate a problem of some sort. Rain was the moment when the problem became serious. Hans-Christian was the mystery person he’d been despatched to see.

  ‘Strange weather,’ he told her. ‘Everywhere I go there’s thunder.’

  ‘You should be flattered.’ She was laughing. ‘It doesn’t happen to everyone. It’s a sign of importance. Rain, too?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  ‘Have you got your coat?’

  ‘Of course. But I doubt I’ll need it.’

  ‘And Hans-Christian?’

  ‘Busy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So what do you do with yourself?’

  He described the singer outside the café and began to sing to her down the phone.

  ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle

  Que nul ne peut apprivoiser,

  Et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle,

  S’il lui convient de refuser.’

  He came to a halt, forgetting the next line, and heard Bella clapping.

  ‘Seville,’ she said. ‘For sure. We’ll spend Christmas there. We’ll go to Granada. We’ll visit the Alhambra. No thunder. No rain. I promise.’

  Seconds later she was gone, leaving Tam with the sun on his face through the open window. He napped for a while and then woke up, wondering whether this meeting of his would have happened before he saw her next. She was due to take the train south with embassy colleagues on Friday, leaving plenty of time to get organised before Hitler’s big winding-up speech on Sunday. This was the moment, according to Bella, when the rest of the world would know whether or not to reach for their gas masks. In the light of what Tam had just seen in the streets, this was a difficult thought to comprehend. The city was bursting. So much laughter. So much music. But if the days of peace were truly numbered, then maybe Bella should take an earlier train. Like tonight. Or, at the latest, tomorrow morning.

  *

  Tam left the hotel at six. To his relief, the Watcher seemed to have disappeared. Following directions from the woman at the reception, he found the Bierhalle without difficulty. Stone steps led from the street to a basement. There was a poster for a Bruckner concert on the door and the promise of a ten per cent discount on production of a party membership card. It was dark inside and it took a moment or two for Tam to get his bearings. Faces swam out of a gloom laden with the heady fug of beer and cigar smoke. For once, there wasn’t a uniform to be seen.

  He found Dieter at a table near the back. So far, he hadn’t laid eyes on Georg. At first glance he was nearly as tall as Tam himself.

  ‘So you’re this morning’s pilot?’

  Georg nodded but didn’t say anything. Tam noticed that Dieter hadn’t got a drink.

  ‘You want a beer?’ Tam had signalled a woman with fistfuls of the big steins, busying from table to table.

  ‘He’s flying tomorrow,’ Georg grunted. ‘If you think I’m his keeper you’d be right. Fall out of an aeroplane once and you never want to do it again. True, compadre? Or am I making this stuff up?’

  ‘Never.’ Dieter was swaying gently on his bar stool, as if the entire bar was afloat. ‘Tomorrow we’ll have a proper night of it, I promise. We think you’re a spy, by the way. Please don’t disappoint us.’

  ‘He thinks you’re a spy.’ Georg reached for his beer. ‘Me? I was reserving judgement.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘A spy. For sure. Every other nation on earth tries to make their spies hard to spot. Only the English save you the trouble of working it out for yourself.’

  Tam’s gaze went from face to face. Dieter was drunk. That much was obvious. Under the circumstances, Tam’s best defence was to play along with the joke.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I am a spy.’

  ‘And you’ve come for the big show?’ Dieter asked. ‘The animals? The clowns? One half of the nation thinking they’ve seen God? The other half with its trousers down?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then welcome.’

  Tam stopped the woman with the steins. He passed one
beer to Georg and took another for himself before proposing a toast.

  ‘To God,’ he said. ‘And the Czechs.’

  ‘More bloody trouble than they’re worth.’ Dieter again, his head lowered. ‘The good guys are the Sudetens. Why? Because they speak German. The bad guys are the Czechs. Why? Because they don’t. Blacks and whites. Your face fits or it doesn’t. I think I want to throw up.’

  Dieter put a hand on Tam’s arm, the lightest touch, and then slipped off the stool and made his way towards the lavatory. Georg and Tam exchanged looks.

  ‘He’s really flying tomorrow?’ Tam asked.

  ‘Mid-afternoon. Over the Zeppelinfeld. After the opening ceremony.’ He began to count the fingers of his left hand. ‘That’s twenty hours, give or take. Lots of water. A night’s sleep. He should be OK.’

  Tam was staring at him. He couldn’t get the memory of the little fighter over Berlin out of his head. The tiny silver fish in the blueness of the sky.

  ‘Does this stuff go with that kind of flying?’ Tam nodded at Georg’s stein.

  ‘Only once. Unless you’re lucky.’

  ‘And your friend?’

  ‘He’s lucky.’

  ‘So it happens a lot?’

  ‘No. Only recently. Very recently. You want to take notes? Or you have a spy’s memory?’

  ‘I remember the important stuff. Always. In perfect detail. The rest I put out with the rubbish.’

  ‘Very wise. Your German is excellent, better than most of my friends. But then everyone will tell you that.’

  ‘You’re kind. And it’s not true.’ Tam held his gaze. ‘So why is your friend drinking so much?’

  ‘That’s not a question I should be answering. Not to you.’

  ‘Because I’m an Englishman?’

  ‘Because you’re not family. Merz has no one. That should be obvious enough.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Suit yourself. He happens to like you, which is a very considerable compliment. Merz is a man who lives on his nerve ends. He has excellent reflexes, which is no surprise at all, but he also relies on his instincts. Those instincts rarely let him down, especially where other people are concerned. He can smell a phoney like a dog can smell a fox, and he can do it from many metres downwind. He doesn’t work it out. He doesn’t put all the clues together and draw the appropriate conclusions. He just knows.’

  ‘Is that why he thinks I’m a spy?’

  ‘In a way, yes. But he knows something else as well. The man’s a spy, he told me. And he’s shit at it. For Merz, that’s a mark in your favour. He thinks you’re miscast. And he’s intrigued to know why you let that happen.’

  It was a very good question. Tam had asked it himself on a number of occasions.

  ‘Maybe I’m a patriot,’ he said. ‘Would that help?’

  ‘We’re all patriots. Every country is a mother and we all have one. But in the end, thank God, there are closer ties. I’ve known Merz for years, which has been a pleasure as well as a privilege, and there have been moments when we saved each other’s lives.’

  ‘His more than yours?’

  ‘Yes. But mine, also.’

  ‘And is now one of those times?’

  ‘It is, yes. Tomorrow will be no problem. Shortly, I will take him back to where we sleep. I shall stand guard like the trusty dog I am and make sure he drinks only water. He has a strong body, strong guts. The problem is up here,’ he tapped his head, ‘and in here,’ a hand cupped his heart. ‘Merz is a very emotional man and just now that puts him in a very dangerous place. The fact that he likes you, trusts you, suggests to me that you, too, have some of this instinct, this awareness, that can make life so tough.’ His eyes strayed to the corner of the bar where the lavatories lay. Dieter had emerged. His face was pale and he was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Georg watched him for a moment and then returned to Tam. ‘This conversation never happened. We agree on that?’

  *

  Tam was in the huge crowd out at the Zeppelinfeld when he next laid eyes on Dieter. The arena was the one display area to have been completed, a gigantic stage where the Reich could mount spectacular parades of martial prowess, and Tam had found himself a seat on one of the banked stone terraces amongst tens of thousands of others. Below him, column after column of uniformed infantry seemed to stretch for ever, untold divisions of Germany’s finest, hundreds of thousands of shock troops. Helmets gleamed in the sun. Hundreds of swastika flags rippled in the soft wind. Arms rose, palm down, at the faintest mention of the Führer. Sieg Heil! yelled the distant figure behind the bank of microphones. Heil Hitler! came the answering roar from half a million men.

  Tam had just sat through a series of interminable speeches about martyrdom and motherhood, about the nation’s birthright and the nation’s destiny, about the sacrifices and the glory that lay ahead. Everywhere there were huge black loudspeakers and the voices from the tiny figures on the tribune in the far distance echoed and re-echoed across the vast arena. After the speeches came marching bands, a cavalry charge, and finally a parade of tanks, each commander standing upright in his turret. The dust was settling when a stir went through the arena and faces looked skywards as the growl of the lone 109 stilled the crowd.

  The display, to Tam, was magnificent. It was hard to associate the succession of dives and rolls and dizzying loops with the hunched figure in last night’s bar. This was a plane in the hands of someone of rare genius, of someone who’d broken the fragile ties that bound normal beings to Mother Earth. The plane, with its bold swastika on the tail, soared into yet another climb, rolled off the top of the loop and then headed south-west in what many mistook for the end of the display. Wrong. Seconds later, out of the sun, it was back again, passing low over the arena, maximum speed, its little pilot clearly visible, lifting the nose an inch or two to clear the oncoming saluting tribune. The tribune was white with upturned faces and Tam watched the shadow of the plane race over the crowd before the beat of the engine began to fade.

  There was a moment’s silence before a portly new figure steadied himself behind the microphones. Tam recognised the voice at once. The father of the Air Force. The Luftwaffe’s patron saint. The one-time commander of the Richthofen Squadron. Herman Goering.

  He asked for the crowd’s support and he got it. The Luftwaffe had taken the first of the Reich’s young warriors into action, he reminded them. They’d shown the Communists just what Germany could do. Over Spain, in the shape of young pilots like Dieter Merz, they were giving the Reds a spanking they’d never forget. Millions of foreigners from London to Paris to New York to Tokyo were witnessing an epic battle that could, in the end, have only one outcome. The likes of Dieter Merz were sweeping the enemy from the skies and in so doing cleansing the soul of Spain. This was what was possible. And this is what the rest of the world should expect.

  The crowd loved it. Thanks to German engineering, German daring and German courage, Goering roared, there would be no escape, no quarter. Hands on hips, he thrust out his chest. In the air, he said, the Reich spoke only the language of conquest. At the heart of the Luftwaffe, the long arm of the bomber force. Protecting those brave men, fliers like Dieter Merz. What other nation on the face of the earth could resist a power like that? He glared out at the ocean of faces, letting the question hang in the heat of the afternoon, then he thrust a uniformed arm towards the crowd. Heil Hitler! came the answering incantation. Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!

  Afterwards, Tam badly needed a drink. This week’s events marked the tenth anniversary of the Nuremberg Rally. He already knew from Bella that each one had been themed. That was the way that Goebbels liked to play it, tossing sixty million Germans fresh chunks of propaganda to whet their appetite for what lay ahead. The theme to this year’s rally was Grossdeutschland, Greater Germany, a week-long homage to the guile and sheer guts of a leader who’d already delivered Austria without firing a single bullet, and as Tam fought to keep his place in the flood of spectators pouring out
of the Zeppelinfeld, he wondered what surprises next year’s rally might offer. Would the Czechs have folded? Would the Poles? The French? The English? Where did it end? And what new stunts might Der Kleine pull to celebrate yet more victories?

  He found him hours later, sitting alone at a table at the very back of the same Bierhalle. After the display there’d been plans to whisk him away for a reception at the Deutsche Hof, Hitler’s hotel, but he had no taste, he said, for Goebbels’ brand of celebrity. The movie that had won him a national following had been fine in its way but the worship of millions of Mädchen was a joke, a fantasy. These women knew absolutely nothing about him. The darkness and the anonymity of the Bierhalle was therefore more than welcome, a place of sanctuary and of solace, somewhere he could briefly call his own.

  When Tam offered, he said yes to a drink. His next flying display was two days away and there was no Georg to keep an eye on him.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Back in Berlin. He flew a full load this afternoon. Georg is a lucky man. He likes sleeping in his own bed.’

  ‘He’s married?’

  ‘Very. And she’s perfect for him.’

  Dieter began to talk about Beata. Then he described the wedding celebrations and the Jew Sol Fiedler and the dark presence of the Reichsminister for Foreign Affairs.

  ‘Brickendrop was there?’

  ‘Who?’

  Tam explained the term. Dieter was delighted.

  ‘Brickendrop.’ He tried the word out in his mouth, the way you’d taste something you didn’t entirely trust. ‘It means idiot, you say?’

  ‘Fool. Buffoon. The man made lots of enemies in London. People laughed at him.’

  ‘Here, too. Except he lives in the pocket of the Führer, which puts him beyond reach. Without Hitler, he’d be nothing. Maybe less than nothing.’

  Tam nodded. He wanted to know what it felt like to be doing what Dieter had done this afternoon over a crowd that large. Speaking personally, he couldn’t begin to imagine it.

  ‘It had to be half a million people,’ he said. ‘At least.’