Burnham delivered this neutrally, as though it were an empirical fact. Captain Donnell, who had presumably heard it all before, dutifully nodded.
‘And what was Fräulein Lubert’s reaction?’ Lewis asked, reaching for his cigarette case. He was more nervous than he should be, a little afraid of the coming confrontation.
‘She wouldn’t look at them. She insisted on staring at me.’
‘Who blinked first?’
‘Come again?’
‘Don’t worry. So, you think she is connected to all this?’
‘We know she is,’ Donnell said. ‘Here. This was found in the house.’ Donnell produced the demontage file that Lewis thought he had mislaid and pushed it across the table. ‘It was found along with plenty of other incriminating evidence.’ Donnell checked his notes. ‘It was a regular little Boots the Chemist. Ration cards, chewing gum, penicillin, quinine, saccharine, salt, matches, lighter flints, condoms. They had everything. Even a suitcase full of sugar tongs.’
Lewis looked at the file but didn’t touch it. He clicked his cigarette case open, tapped out a cigarette and lit it.
‘And this proves what?’
‘She confessed to stealing the file,’ Burnham explained. ‘But to quite a lot more besides.’
Burnham’s modus was interesting. Like a player in a game of cards, the stillness of his expression increased with the certainty of his advantage.
‘Frieda Lubert was part of a group led by your would-be assassin. Judging from the way she talked about him, they were close. She claims she knew nothing about his plan to assassinate you, but this seems unlikely. His name is Albert Leitman,’ Donnell said. He passed Lewis a photograph. ‘She was carrying this in her purse when we arrested her. At the end of the war he was stationed with the Alster anti-aircraft battery in Schwanenwik.’
Lewis looked at the photograph and felt wretched. Albert was dressed in the uniform of an anti-aircraft gunner, hair slicked with brilliantine, smiling proudly atop a firing platform. A proud, handsome young man, ready to defend his country.
‘It’s the only photograph that elicited an emotional response from Fräulein Lubert,’ Donnell added.
‘I see you recognize him, Colonel,’ Burnham observed. ‘You know this man?’
‘He’s looks more like a boy to me,’ Lewis said.
‘Man or boy, he shot your second-in-command. And we believe he and his gang are responsible for the hijackings of trucks and the stealing of CCG property. Their group matches the profile of other Werwolf-inspired insurgent groups in the zone.’
‘What profile is that, Major? Malnourished? Orphaned? Under sixteen? She’s just a girl with a grievance. She was manipulated by someone more powerful than her, someone who also had a grievance.’
‘The story of the entire nation: “We were manipulated, your honour!”’ Donnell joked.
‘She shows a remarkable lack of gratitude for someone who’s been shown so much kindness,’ Burnham said. ‘She blames us for destroying her country, her city, her mother. Stealing her house. She complained about everything – even your wife.’
‘Rachael’s made a great effort to be friendly.’
‘A little too friendly, according to the girl. Let’s see.’ Burnham looked for his interview notes. ‘“Frau Morgan tried to steal my father.”’
Lewis held his eyes on Burnham, waiting to see if the major knew anything more than he knew himself.
‘Obviously, she’s angry and delusional and her views are not to be taken too seriously,’ Burnham continued. ‘But it seems you have failed to win her over, Colonel.’
‘She’s fifteen.’
‘You and I both know that her age is no defence. The mark on her arm is enough to have her shot.’ He looked at his notes again. ‘“I can’t tell you where he is. Even if you kept me here for a thousand years I couldn’t tell you!” Have you noticed how fanatics always think in blocks of a thousand years?’
Lewis’s heart was pounding with anticipation.
‘Am I to assume from your silence, Colonel, that you have no interest in Leitman’s capture? In seeing him brought to justice?’
‘Tell me, Major. If you captured him, what would your sentence be?’
‘The law would sentence him to death.’
‘I mean, would that satisfy you?’
‘When caught, he will be executed.’
‘Albert Leitman has already been executed.’
Burnham’s smooth surface was finally disturbed: a ruffled forehead; an odd, sideways look at Donnell; a weary sigh.
‘I chased him on to the Elbe. He tried to get across but the ice began to break up. He fell in. I watched him die.’
‘You shot him?’
‘He drowned.’
Donnell stopped scribbling. ‘Let me get this clear, Colonel: you saw him die? You are certain of this? He didn’t somehow escape, or swim to the other side?’
‘I let him die. I’m not going to forget that.’
‘You forgot it when you reported the incident to the police.’
‘I was … in shock.’ Lewis found Burnham’s reaction to this – a contemptuous wince – oddly reassuring. He pressed on. ‘I recall you once said something about wanting to reconstruct the psyche of this brutalized people, Major. Wasn’t that what you said? The speech to Shaw? “Twelve years of ignorance and illiteracy has turned them into animals.”’
Burnham didn’t answer. He feigned a kind of boredom, which Lewis didn’t believe.
‘I take it you are still committed to this.’
‘In the case of Fräulein Lubert, there won’t be time.’
‘There’s time.’
‘Don’t be preposterous, Colonel,’ Donnell protested. ‘She assisted the assassin. We have proof.’
‘You will have her shot for stealing a file? Look. I’d like to propose a deal. If you let her go, I’ll reconstruct her psyche in a day.’ Lewis didn’t wait for a response. ‘I have two reports here that I have to submit to de Billier. Barker was working on both of them. They concern different things, but they are connected. This first is a register of missing patients in all the hospitals and hospices who have yet to be reunited with their families. It’s a substantial work, for which I claim only the credit of instigation. But it has led to the discovery that Herr Lubert’s wife is alive and in a Franciscan hospice in Buxtehude. Information I am sure you would not want to keep from a girl who thinks her mother is dead and who has set out on a course of action motivated by that belief. I’d like to show this to Frieda and then take her to see her mother.’
‘This is all very interesting,’ Burnham said. ‘But it doesn’t change the fact that Fräulein Lubert is an accessory to a crime, Colonel.’
It was time to play his full hand.
‘The other report is of more direct interest.’
Lewis produced a blue folder from his briefcase and pushed it across the desk. Burnham looked at the title: ‘The Unauthorized Export of Valuables from German Properties’. He opened the report, showing nothing of his inner reaction. He began to scan the relevant pages – helpfully highlighted by Barker. Lewis had been staggered by the quantities. The Burnhams hadn’t squirrelled away a discreet amount of goods; they’d plundered the lot. He waited for Burnham to say something.
The major kept his eyes down as he closed the report and, although his expression gave little away, Lewis felt the balance of power shift to his side of the desk. After a long silence, the major blinked. He then looked at Lewis. It was a curious look, one of genuine enquiry and bafflement. Burnham held the report in the palm of his hand, as though trying to guess its weight.
‘Your
capacity to … overlook … the wrongdoing of others knows no bounds. You really are … a mystery to me, Colonel.’
Fifteen minutes later, Lewis stood outside the heavy grille door of the detention-centre cell, looking at Frieda through the eye-gate. She was crouched on a bench, her knees pulled to her chest. She looked unscathed but utterly crushed; more fifteen-year-old girl than deadly insurgent. The medical officer had examined her and said he could not find any symptoms of malnutrition, oedema, TB, or any of the other ailments that beset her countrymen. But the stomach cramps he could explain.
‘It’s nothing to worry about, sir, although her parents might have other ideas,’ he said. ‘She’s pregnant.’
When Lewis entered the cell, Frieda flinched and cowered. To reassure her, he stayed in the doorway and held out his hand. Frieda moved back against the wall and pulled in her knees tighter. Her outer defiance and resentment peeled back to reveal a core of simple, animal fear.
‘I didn’t know … I didn’t know what he was planning.’
‘It’s all right. Come.’
‘Come where?’
‘Home.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Well, because that is where you should be.’
‘It is not my home any more.’
‘It’s better than this.’
‘But that man said I was going to prison.’
‘My car is parked on the Ballindamm. I’ll wait outside for you.’
Lewis left Frieda staring at the open door. He told the guard to let the girl leave in her own time and went outside. On the steps of the detention centre, he lit a cigarette and waited, watching two young men launch a sailboat out on to the thawed waters of the Binnenalster. The Jungfernstieg was alive with pedestrians, all of them going somewhere, moving with purpose. A hundred lives making decisions, mistakes, bargains, deals, trysts, promises.
A cigarette later, Frieda appeared at the entrance. She stopped a few yards away from him. Lewis heeled his stub, indicated to her where he was going, and set off. He walked a few yards ahead, checking that she was following him but letting her keep her distance, playing the game of pretending that they were not together so that she would not feel any more ashamed than she must already.
At the end of the Jungfernstieg there was a brand-new, white-painted wooden shop with a corrugated-iron roof selling sweets and newspapers. Lewis stopped and bought a bag of peppermints for the journey and a copy of Die Welt. The front cover showed an aerial shot of Heligoland under the headline ‘Island Prepares for Great Explosion.’ He scanned the first paragraph: ‘Remains of Nazi war machine to be destroyed in one mighty blast.’
Frieda had paused a few feet away. Lewis held on to the sweets, knowing that she would refuse them if he offered them in the open. A great convoy of trucks carrying rubble crocodiled back up the street. Flying dust and grit made little tinkling sounds on the road. They waited for the trucks to pass and crossed over to Lewis’s mud-brown Volkswagen. He held the door open for Frieda and handed her the sweets.
‘These are for you.’
She took them and got in.
They drove south then east, passing the mighty warehouses of HafenCity, following the waters of the Nordelbe until they reached the wasteland of Hammerbrook.
Frieda remained silent, curled up and facing away from Lewis. When they joined the autobahn to Buxtehude, she sat up.
‘This isn’t the way.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re going in the opposite direction. My home’s back that way.’
‘I know,’ Lewis said. ‘But we’re going to go a different way.’
‘But this is the wrong way. It’ll take longer.’
‘Trust me. It’s a better way.’
15
On his way to the certification office, Lubert passed the one remaining wall of the old art museum – the ‘Have-You-Seen-Wall’ – still crammed with requests, many overlapping earlier requests, for information concerning missing loved ones. A section of photographs had now been added, comprising lost children seeking their parents. A man and woman were bending down over it, painstakingly looking at each photo. In the months after The Catastrophe, when people were finally allowed back into the city, Lubert had come here nearly every day. Although it was autumn at the time, something strange had happened to the vegetation: trees and bushes that had been burnt in the summer raids suddenly bloomed again and, completely out of season, lilac and chestnut produced blossom. The new tolerance of the soil subjected to heat allowed for a freakish colonization of the ruins by plants and flowers: bulbous buttercup, chickweed, dwarf mallow and rosebay willowherbs were everywhere, growing from the ashes of loved ones. Lubert had refused to believe the eyewitness account of Claudia’s companion, Trudi, that she had perished in the fire-hurricane, and had insisted on adding a notice to the collage of a thousand similar notices. Today was the first time he’d walked past the wall without needing to look.
‘I hope you find them,’ he said to the searching couple then walked on to the office at the bottom of Steindamm.
Lubert’s own hopes were now focused on the granting of his clearance so that he might practise again. He tried hard to rein in his expectations. Not everyone who came to collect a certificate left happy; many were sent away empty-handed and told to come back for further questioning, often without knowing the reason why. Since Claudia’s return, though, he had started having ideas, fully formed visions of buildings arising out of the rubble: a new Rathaus, a bridge spanning the Elbe, a concert hall in the docks. They were fanciful and overambitious ideas, probably just the visual laments of a failed and frustrated architect, but they kept coming. Claudia told him to get out his old plans. He’d not looked at them since before the war and his juvenilia made him both smile and wince. The idealism and arrogance of his student days – it was a little like reading an old love letter. He found his plan for his ‘House Without History’, the workers’ village with gardens and canals, fountains and recreational spaces. The name was a youthful vanity: who had ever designed, let alone built, a house without reference to the past? Professor Kramer, his tutor at the institute, had dismissed his plans as ideologically tainted and too bourgeois. Lubert had been too green to argue with such a sophisticate, but now, twenty years on, he thought he saw something in the plans that seemed urgently relevant.
There were two people in the waiting room: a woman biting her nails and a man reading a novel. He took a space on the bench opposite them and, as he sat there, he tried to work out which of them was going to get their certificate and which wasn’t. He guessed that the woman, who kept looking at her feet to make sure they were in perfect parallel, was, despite her nerves, an acceptable shade of grey; whereas the man reading his book and turning the pages with his gloved hands looked too calm to be innocent. Lubert could easily imagine him in the immaculate strip of the SS, shining his death’s head every morning. He was surely dressing down from his former life. What was he even doing in the same room as this man?
‘How long have you been waiting?’ Lubert asked him, fishing for some biography that might confirm his suspicions.
‘I forget.’
The man didn’t even look up from his book.
‘What about you?’ Lubert asked the woman.
‘This is my third time here,’ she said, not answering his question. ‘I can only tell them so many times what they already know. We weren’t even married. We weren’t even lovers! I just went to the theatre with him a few times. And now they want to throw me into an internment camp.’
Lubert could guess the details for himself: the man must have been a Somebody in the Party, and she had been his innocent fl
oozie. It was a common enough story.
‘Calm yourself, woman,’ said Death’s Head. ‘The more you bang on, the less I believe you. Save your energy. Stick to your story. You have nothing to fear if you stick to your story.’ He went back to his book. Lubert was sure of it: this fellow was as black as his shoes.
The wait to be called dragged on. Perhaps it was part of the ploy: give them long enough for doubts to surface; let them sit in this fetid room with others who are tainted and wait for them to start accusing each other.
‘Rosa Turnweg?’
The woman hurriedly approached the counter, which resembled a bank till, with a window and a hole beneath it, through which the good or bad news was pushed. Lubert tried to listen to what was being said, but it was hard to hear. Something was passed across the counter to her.
‘What is this?’ the woman asked. She suddenly erupted with a shriek, slamming her hand on the counter. ‘No! No more interviews! Please God! There is nothing more. I have told you everything I can. I need this certificate! Let me live my life!’
No solace came from the official on the other side of the glass. Only silence. When the woman continued to protest, the duty guard stepped forward and ushered her away before she made more of a scene. Despite her triple rejection, Lubert felt sure the woman had been maligned.
Minutes later, the hidden official called Death’s Head.
‘Herr Brück.’
A sure-fire Party name if ever there was one. Herr Brück looks so very sure of himself. The bastard is in for a shock.
Death’s Head stepped up to the counter. The same muffled voice came from behind the glass, and something was pushed across the counter. Herr Brück looked at it and held it up. It was a certificate: a lovely pure-white certificate.
Claudia was right: he was too impulsive. Too quick to decide. It was – as Kramer had always told him – what made him both a very good architect and a very bad one.
Lubert had not contemplated being denied – he believed in his innocence and even in a nebulous concept of British justice – but now new doubts pressed in. Perhaps they had found something he wasn’t even aware of, made a connection to someone in the family somewhere, traced a cousin to Bormann, an uncle to Himmler. Perhaps they had discovered his adultery with Rachael.
The Aftermath Page 30