Estocada

  The thought pleased Dieter. In his own life he’d always believed that the angels of death would strike unannounced. That’s what his father had always told him. That they were ever-present in every dogfight, in every take-off, in every crosswind landing. Some small mistake, he’d said, some tiny oversight, some faraway misalignment of the stars, and the game would be over. Older now and wiser, Dieter knew that his father had been right. Would you see your own death coming? Probably not. Would you have time – maybe just milliseconds – to realise that this was the end? Sadly, yes. Only now was different. Because ending his life this way would be a conscious decision, an act of will.

  He checked the fuel gauge again and then peered up through the Perspex canopy, trying to work out exactly where he’d hit the big silver bird. As he’d anticipated, the deadliest impact would be a metre out from the wing root. That way he’d smash one of the engines, puncture the fuel tank and probably rip the entire wing from the body of the fuselage. Retaining any kind of control under those circumstances would be impossible. Probably on fire, the aircraft would plunge earthwards.

  And the Emil? Dieter thought quite suddenly of Seiji and the conversations they’d had out in Japan about the Ivans. These were the craziest pilots in the world. Over Spain, and now over China, they’d cheerfully expend every last bullet trying to bring down the enemy, and if that didn’t work then they’d turn the aircraft itself into the crudest of projectiles, smashing the target aircraft to pieces. Was there some strange satisfaction in ramming another aeroplane? In watching it grow fatter and fatter in your windscreen until nothing on earth could prevent a collision? In knowing that this next heartbeat, a second before impact, would be your last?

  Dieter shook his head, knowing that questions like these were beyond resolution. Even asking them, even acknowledging their existence, was an act of madness.

  And yet. And yet.

  The needle on the fuel gauge gave him another thirty minutes in the air. If this thing was to happen, it had to happen soon. If not, then his only other choice – getting back to the airfield intact – would vanish.

  Dieter closed his eyes a moment, aware that he was contemplating his own death. Then he shook his head. Keiko, he told himself. This is about Keiko. If I bring down the aircraft, if I kill the Führer, then whoever takes his place may spare her. Otherwise, I and she and maybe millions of others are in the hands of Hitler and Himmler and evil Untermensch like Julius Streicher.

  Dieter eased the throttle again. He needed a little space to accelerate properly, to hold the Führermaschine at arm’s length, to toy with it for a moment or two, to savour that brutal moment of violence that might, God willing, make a difference to Germany and to the wider world. He was half a kilometre behind now, still slightly lower than the Junker. Then Baur dipped a wing, a sudden turn to starboard that took Dieter by surprise and wrecked his angle of approach. He banked the 109, trying to reposition the aircraft, but he was closing far too fast and the angle was completely wrong. He overshot, cursing himself, and instinctively pulled the 109 into a steep climb, realising the moment he’d started the manoeuvre that Baur would see him.

  Seconds later the radio cracked into life.

  ‘Compadre?’

  Dieter stared down at the Führermaschine. Already it was a silver speck against the greens and browns of the Franconian forests, readjusting its course, still heading north.

  ‘Georg?’ Dieter’s finger had found the transmit button.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Where’s Baur?’

  ‘Food poisoning. Too much bloody eel.’

  ‘And Hitler?’

  ‘He’s gone to the Berghof.’ Dieter heard Georg laughing. ‘Change of plan.’

  *

  That same morning Tam Moncrieff booked out of his hotel and walked the half mile to the Hauptbahnhof. He left no message for Bella, neither did he make contact. Last night he’d asked Schultz whether there might be a place for him in one of the aircraft returning to Berlin but the answer from Goering’s office had been no. The implications were plain. Regardless of whatever plot he’d dreamed up, Tam had failed.

  The next train for Berlin left at eleven o’clock. The platform was thick with uniforms, party apparatchiks returning to work after their week in the Bavarian sun. Tam found a window seat in a compartment towards the front of the train. The journey felt interminable, conversation returning again and again to what might happen next in Czechoslovakia. The mood was buoyant. Victory – justice – was already assured because the Führer had said so. The only calculation that mattered was whether or not the French and the British would ruin the party. Most thought not. France was full of children and old men. The last war had robbed them of an entire generation of serving soldiers and there’d be no appetite for more slaughter.

  And the British? Tam closed his eyes and swayed with the motion of the train, listening to opinion after opinion. The British were fickle. You’d never trust them. The British cared only about themselves and their empire. The British were happy to hide behind their Navy and their damned English Channel. Then came a lone dissenting voice. Tam opened his eyes. He was a small man, alert, with a pockmarked face and a thin black moustache. Unusually, he wasn’t wearing a uniform.

  ‘The British are just like us.’ He was looking directly at Tam. ‘We’re brothers, we’re family. The real mystery is why they don’t accept it.’

  Maybe they do, thought Tam, closing his eyes again.

  *

  Berlin. Early evening, back in his hotel off Wilhelmstrasse, Tam was packing his bag when the phone rang. It was Bella. She wanted – needed – to see him. She gave him a time and the name of a restaurant and rang off. No debate. No small talk. Just be there.

  Tam walked the half-mile to the restaurant. At Tam’s request, Ballentyne had booked a ticket on tomorrow morning’s flight to London. In twelve hours, God willing, he’d be leaving this place. For the first time in days, he didn’t bother to check to see whether he was being followed.

  Bella was already at the restaurant. She’d found a table tucked discreetly beside a tank full of ornamental fish. She gave Tam a wave and beckoned him over. She looked exhausted.

  ‘I’ve ordered already,’ she said. ‘I hope you like pork belly.’

  Tam shrugged. The last thing on his mind was food.

  ‘Why the rush?’

  ‘Time waits for no woman. Least of all me. Someone told me last night that this was history in the making and I was lucky to be here. I think he was trying to help but it doesn’t feel that way.’

  ‘So what’s happened?’

  ‘It’s over. It’s finished. The French panicked this morning. Yesterday’s speech alarmed them. As far as the Sudeten is concerned they think Hitler means it and they’re right. They’re on the hook for the Czechs and they don’t like it. The least you deserve is a peek at this. It came in this afternoon from London. Henderson took it to Ribbentrop.’

  She produced a single sheet of paper from her bag. The typed note, a carbon copy, ran to six lines. Having regard to the increasingly critical situation, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was proposing a personal visit to Germany to meet with the Führer. He would be coming by air and he asked, with some urgency, for Hitler’s thoughts about a time and a place.

  ‘Is this usual?’ Tam looked up.

  ‘Far from it. The game’s called diplomacy and you’re talking to an expert. It normally involves hundreds of people and squillions of meetings and aeons of time. This is one man thinking he can make peace by himself. Alas, our friends here won’t play ball. All they’ll see is the rabbit bolting from the hole. They can’t wait to pounce.’

  ‘And Hitler? He’s back in Berlin?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s gone to the Berghof. That’s his hideaway in the mountains.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To prepare himself for the meeting.’ She smiled at last, nodding down at the note. ‘To light the stove and sharpen the knife and get the saucepan re
ady.’

  Bella was certain that Hitler would eat Chamberlain alive, that he’d bang the table and play the madman, that he’d blow hot and cold, muddy the waters, agree a timetable, then change it, then tear the whole thing up. People at the embassy, she said, good people, bright people, had been watching this circus for years. They were familiar with the routines. They knew the script by heart. In the end, comforted by some meaningless concession or other, Chamberlain would trail back to London and proclaim victory or at least peace.

  ‘At what cost?’

  ‘Czechoslovakia. Obviously. That’s where all this begins and ends. For now.’

  ‘And later?’

  ‘Later it will happen all over again. Open the map. Close your eyes. Stick a pin in. It doesn’t matter. In the end Hitler will own the lot. This shouldn’t be a surprise, by the way. He told us years ago.’

  ‘And the conspiracy? Schultz’s lot? The plotters?’

  ‘I’m told they’re running around Berlin trying to work out whether this is the time to strike. It’s far too late, of course. Hitler wants the Sudetenland on a plate and Chamberlain will be happy to oblige. When it comes to negotiation, it’ll be no contest. Whatever the cost, the Führer always gets his way. There’ll be no war with France, no Royal Navy blockade. How many Germans out there are going to argue with that? And how many of our own people for that matter? The plotters have nothing left to plot. They’ll fold their tents and steal away.’

  Tam could only nod. He was thinking of the civilian in the train compartment. The British are just like us. The mystery is why they don’t accept it. Tam put the thought to Bella.

  ‘Perfectly reasonable,’ she said wearily. ‘Nobody wants to get bombed.’

  *

  At Bella’s suggestion they abandoned the meal and returned to Tam’s hotel. She anticipated nothing but chaos in the days and weeks ahead and wanted to make the most of the briefest lull before the going got really tough. In the restaurant Tam had mentioned tomorrow morning’s flight but it turned out she hadn’t really been listening. The sight of his open suitcase on the bed came as a surprise.

  ‘You’re leaving me?’

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not needed any more.’

  ‘No Seville?’

  ‘Seville will always be there. It’s part of its charm.’

  ‘No us?’

  Tam didn’t answer. He took her in his arms and looked down at her face and then kissed her forehead the way you might kiss a child before turning out the lights.

  He felt her body stiffen. She resented this. She really did.

  ‘No?’ She was looking at the bed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Care to tell me why?’

  ‘Because you’re right. Because the game’s over.’

  ‘And that’s what it was? A game?’

  Tam didn’t answer. He felt empty, sickened. Hitler was stronger than ever. The Czechs were doomed. Nothing had worked. Not even this.

  Tam was looking at the door. Bella, after a moment’s uncertainty, reached up and cupped his face in her hands.

  ‘Life is all negotiation,’ she said softly. ‘And you know what? I thought I was close to a deal.’

  28

  BERLIN, 14 SEPTEMBER 1938

  Tam was late getting to the airport. He’d woken at seven, after a restless night. He washed, shaved, vacated his room in a hurry and came downstairs to find a large parcel with his name on it in the care of the receptionist. It had been dropped off, she said, by a courier from the embassy. Slightly irked, he’d retreated to a corner and opened it on the spot. Inside was a black bear, slightly overweight but beautifully made. With it came a note. It was from Bella. A souvenir from Berlin, she’d written. At least something gets to share your bed.

  Something? Was he that tough? That impersonal? He showed the present to the receptionist and when she said it was lovely and explained that the bear was the city’s official mascot, he told her to keep it. Pocketing Bella’s note, he left the hotel and made for the waiting taxi.

  At the airport he had minutes to spare before they closed the gate to London-bound passengers. At first he took no notice of the two men flanking the Lufthansa desk. Only when one of them blocked the path to the departures door and demanded to see his passport did he give him a proper look. Medium height. Belted raincoat. Impassive expression. Dead eyes.

  ‘I’m late.’ Tam nodded at the waiting plane. ‘Who are you?’

  The man produced an ID card, discoloured from heavy use. Kriminalpolizei.

  ‘Your papers?’

  There was no hint of aggression in the demand but the implication was clear. Without a look at his passport, Tam was going nowhere.

  Tam surrendered his passport. The man took his time, leafing carefully through. At length he nodded at his colleague and then his eyes settled once again on Tam.

  ‘You speak German, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sie sind festgenommen.’

  ‘I’m under arrest?’ Tam stared at him. ‘Why?’

  The policeman didn’t answer. His colleague had produced a pair of handcuffs. The girl behind the Lufthansa desk watched them heading across the concourse towards a suite of offices. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the waiting plane and lifted a telephone.

  Tam had been in these offices only recently when he’d arrived from London to be met by Schultz. He recognised the carefully framed Hitler portrait on the wall and the souvenir poster for the ’36 Olympics. At the end of the corridor was an exit to a parking space. Amongst the marked Polizei cars was a black van. The policemen brought Tam to a halt beside the van. At length the passenger door opened and another figure got out. Medium height. Skinny. Pockmarked face. Poor-quality suit. He looked Tam up and down and then nodded.

  ‘Ja,’ he said.

  It was the civilian from yesterday’s train journey. Tam held his gaze until he turned away and got back into the van. Judging by the reactions of the two policemen, he seemed to be in charge.

  They put Tam in the back of the van. There was a faint smell of disinfectant, with a hint of exhaust fumes from a hole in the floor. Once the doors had been slammed shut it was dark and claustrophobic. Tam felt his way around, wedging his back against the bare panels as the van began to move. His suitcase was still at the Lufthansa desk, his passport still with one of the two policemen. Already he felt helpless, stripped bare by whoever these people might be. It was so easy, he thought, to disappear in this country.

  They seemed to be out of the airport now. Tam had no idea about the destination or even the direction of travel. He did his best to anticipate the sharper bends and the moments when the driver hit the brake but twice he was sent sprawling, fighting the fumes and the darkness and a growing sense of dread.

  Finally the journey came to an end. He heard the passenger door open. Then came a muttered curse, much closer, and suddenly the rear doors were wrenched open. Two guards, uniformed this time, SS. One of them reached in and the moment Tam took the extended hand he found himself hauled out of the van and dumped on the paving stones. The other guard kicked him hard in the belly, then stamped on his hand. He heard himself screaming, more in anger than pain, and then he was suddenly upright between the two guards, still fighting for breath. They were in a parking area behind a sizeable building that towered above them. Tam could hear the bell of a tram slowing for a junction. Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, he told himself. Gestapo headquarters.

  It had started to rain. The guards half-carried, half-dragged him towards a door that was already open. Inside stood the man he’d seen earlier, the figure from the train. One of the guards addressed him as Kriminaldirektor. He peered at Tam for a moment, the way you might assess cattle before bidding at an auction. Evidently satisfied, he nodded towards a flight of steps that descended to the basement below.

  It was colder here and Tam recognised the smell again. Definitely bleach. The country runs on it, he thought. Bl
each to wash away your sins. Bleach to make some brief chemical peace with all the shit that’s gone before. Everywhere, bleach. Would he find Dieter’s Keiko down here? As bleached as everything else?

  At the bottom of the stairs, corridors extended in both directions. Every few paces were cell doors, steel-faced, with heavy glass inserts. From somewhere close came the screams of someone begging for his life. The guards were pushing Tam now. Then, on some hidden signal, they stopped him dead. The Kriminaldirektor stepped past and turned to look up at Tam.

  ‘Watch,’ he said simply.

  The guards hauled Tam round and pressed his face against the heavy glass. The glass gave everything a yellowish tinge. Inside the cell a man was strapped in what looked like a dentist’s chair. His chest and lower torso were bound with thick leather straps and there were more ties around his legs and ankles. Beside the chair stood a figure in a white coat. He might have been a doctor. He might have been some other kind of medic. But his real specialisation was pain.

  He had a small electric drill in his hand, the lead snaking away to a point on the wall near the floor. On the other side of the chair was a bigger man in an SS uniform. He was sitting on a stool and as Tam watched, he stifled a yawn. Then came a nod to the man with the drill. He bent to the figure in the dentist’s chair. Blood was already running down his face from puncture wounds around his eyes. The drill began to whirr, high-pitched, unmistakeable, and the man in the chair began to scream again, trying to convulse as the drill bit into the flesh around his eyes, and into the ridges of bone beneath. The man in the white coat worked the drill carefully, taking his time, looking for fresh bundles of nerves, and the body heaved in one final spasm before everything went suddenly still.

  ‘OK?’ The Kriminaldirektor’s gaze was locked on Tam. It was a meaningless question and both men knew it. All that mattered was the helplessness and agony of the man in the dentist’s chair. We can do anything we like, went the message. OK?