The Whip Hand

by Victor Canning

  She took her time over answering, smiling at me.

  “Because I love you – truly, I do. I want you near.”

  “But if you married this type? What then?”

  “I have plenty of money. I travel. And we could see each other. You and me. Have little good times together.”

  “You think I’d stand for that?”

  “Maybe you would. Why not? For me, nothing is black and white. I don’t say Yes, I don’t say No, until the last moment. How can I tell what I will do tomorrow until it comes? You are not like that?”

  She sat there as pretty as a pin-up and said it, laying out the whole Katerina philosophy and expecting me to go along with it.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t you ever think about anyone else? If you marry Alois, then Lottie gets dropped into a lake! You’d know about that. You couldn’t keep that secret as the price of marrying him. Could you?”

  For a moment she hesitated, and then she shook her head.

  “No. But I did not know all this. You sound so angry.”

  “Well, you know now. And I’m getting both of you out of here. There’s big and dangerous trouble behind it all. Get that into your head! It’s big enough to have people like Malacod spending money to ferret it out, and others spending government money. If it suited the book, both you and Lottie could finish up in the lake.” I stood up, and I was angry, angry because I was afraid for her and Lottie, and also because of what she had said about me, that I would have accepted the “little good times together” if she had married this Alois.

  “Darling, I like you when you get angry.”

  I pulled her up to me, holding her tightly by the shoulders.

  “From the moment I saw you on that pier I knew exactly what I wanted. From now – if it takes the rest of my life – I’m going to knock some sense into you. Do you understand?”

  I shook her shoulders a little. She nodded her head slowly, and my arms went round her, holding her, and it was at this moment that I heard the sound of the helicopter.

  It roared overhead as though all the girders were falling out of heaven, and the window-panes rattled until I thought they were going to crack.

  I let Katerina go, ran across the room and switched off the small table-lamp that was burning, and then went to the window. I jerked the curtain partly aside.

  In the courtyard below, the lights around the ornamental water basin were turned on and pointed upwards. I was just in time to see the great clumsy dragonfly affair swing in from the lake, hang poised, racketing and whirring, and then drop gently to the gravel. The moment it touched the ground the lights went out. The motors died and there was the quick movement of people passing, shadowy and vague, across the gravel.

  Close behind me, Katerina said, “That is the way I come here. Lottie also. Inside the helicopter you see nothing because the windows are covered. We do not know where we are; though we guess Austria or Germany. Also, tonight we are told there is a special conference and not to mind the noise of the helicopter.”

  “Special conference?”

  I saw the great hall with its velvet catafalque and the dim blue lighting. Because I had a memory stuffed like a jackdaw’s nest with odds and ends, I remembered a book I had read, and knew then that one’s mind never knocks off working, clicking away quietly in the subconscious. Alois. Had it been Alois? Yes, I was sure it had.

  I turned and looked at Katerina, and I was thinking that the whole thing was just too fantastic for words.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE ASHES OF ATONEMENT

  We went to the conference. I took Katerina with me along the ventilator passage to the large grille that looked down into the main hallway. She looked through and then turned back to say something to me. I put my hand gently over her mouth. Acoustics could be tricky right up under a dome. Crouched behind the grille Katerina and I could hear every word that was said without any difficulty.

  The great door to the hall was shut and both guards were on duty, standing one each side of it, sub-machine guns cuddled across their arms, their black silk shirts fresh pressed and their boots shining ... stirring memories from old newsreels and documentaries.

  Since I had last seen the place two rows of gilt chairs had been placed between the door and the marble platform. There was no sign of the catafalque. Under the cold blue light that drifted down from the heavy hanging silks of the dome a cold, unearthly atmosphere of fantasy seemed to possess the place.

  Standing at the foot of the marble platform were Professor Vadarci and Alois Vadarci. The professor was dressed in an ordinary lounge suit, but Alois was in the same rig as the guards. Instead of a sub-machine gun for a weapon, I noticed, he had a dagger with an ornamental handle tucked into the top of his breeches. In his hand was the whip I had seen in Madame Vadarci’s room.

  Sitting on the chairs were about ten men; with them was Madame Vadarci, swathed in black silk, gently pluming her fan in front of her face. They were mostly middle-aged, and a couple were well over sixty. The youngest one there, I guessed, was Manston. He sat at the end of a row, monocle screwed into one eye, one hand toying with its black silk cord, and wearing a well-cut suit of soft tweed. He was listening to what Alois was saying and nodding gently to himself in approval. I knew then that under the cover of being Sir Alfred Coddon, K.B.E., C.V.O. – who had certainly been put away for the time being in ice-cold iron-bound storage – he had worked his way into the centre of the web by a direct route. His only trouble would be that, although he sat now in the centre, he would not know its location on the map. The Vadarcis and their helicopter made that security tight. Next to Manston sat the white-haired old boy with the tin leg whom I had seen at the Chalet Papagei. He had his thick walking-stick between his legs and was leaning forward, resting his chin on it, his eyes never leaving Alois. Malacod had had the same idea as Sutcliffe – a personal representative straight to the unknown centre.

  As for the rest of the bunch, they all looked prosperous, hard-bitten types who had long ago worked things out and knew just how to handle the delicate and complicated business of getting the most out of life for themselves. You could tell it from their good clothes, the silk shirts, the polish on their hand-welted shoes ... from the way they sat, almost from the way they breathed. They understood about men and employing them, about deals and swinging them, about compromises, and profits ... about nice, clean commercial murders, and the way to push them out of mind and conscience when they went back to the bosom of their families. I didn’t have a moment’s thought that they might be here simply because they enjoyed playing at secret societies or being members of archaic guilds with elaborate rituals. They were here on business. They were the kind of men who often employed me.

  I put out my hand and held Katerina’s. It was good to have her beside me. It was going to be good to take her out of this fantasy and keep her by me for good ... or, at least, for as long as I could.

  Alois was speaking in English but after each few sentences he would stop and then translate his words into German, pause, and then give it all again in French.

  Alois was saying—

  “Until now, all of you – and scores of others who are not here tonight – have been approached individually. All of you are trusted and influential members of our party. Not from Germany alone – but from other countries where, when the moment of trial comes, your support will be invaluable. You are men, too, who, in the past, when you have seen change coming, have known how to accommodate yourselves and your interests to the change....” He paused, went into his translation act, and then went on: “At some stages of a party’s development it is wiser to talk obliquely, leaving wise men to read between the lines. But tonight a direct statement is going to be made.”

  He had a good strong voice, spoke well, and standing there, blond hair shining, a blue sheen running like liquid metal over his black shirt, he was a commanding figure.

  “The Sühne Partei at the moment – and I admit it frankly – is noth
ing. It is a wishy-washy organization for doing good. The world is crammed with similar organizations. But ours has one difference. The day is coming when it will be given its true birth, its true strength, which will make it a power in Europe, and in the rest of the world. No great party can run on logic alone. It must have a great dream behind it, a splendid promise ahead of it, and a soul, and a legend to defend.”

  He was a great talker, and he had them hanging on every word.

  “You are all men of different countries, men of influence in commerce, industry, the law. Let us be frank, you are men who control politicians, men whose activities are only nominally subject to government because you are the government. When you go from here you will take with you a secret knowledge, the certainty of an inevitable development. You have pledged yourselves, and I have pledged myself, to one end – a new Europe. In a very few days we shall have our rally – from that moment forward there will be no turning back. I have only one dream – the reunification of my country; complete, unshackled national reunification. Soon this hand will put the match to the powder, and thenceforth every hour of my life will be dedicated to one end.”

  He paused, one hand held aloft.

  Beside me Katerina whispered, “What is it all about?”

  I put my lips to her ear, kissed it, and then whispered back, “Maybe he wants to knock down the Berlin wall.”

  “So....”

  I smiled to myself. It was a good comment.

  As Alois’s hand dropped, Manston spoke.

  He said, “None of us here, I am sure, have any argument with what you have said. We all, too, can see the difficulties involved – unless these facts you promise are entirely beyond question. Even then, there will be attempts to discredit them.”

  Alois said sharply, “The facts are incontrovertible. When they are presented at the rally – then no one in Germany will doubt them.”

  Manston said, “Could we have the facts?”

  I don’t think Alois liked being rushed. After all, this was his big scene. He frowned. Then without a word he went up one step of the marble platform. Somewhere the stage manager must have picked up his cue. The black marble slab at the top slid aside and slowly the draped catafalque rose from the ground. Beside me I heard Katerina’s breath sigh in surprise.

  Alois said flatly, without emphasis, “I have to tell you that I am the son of Adolf Hitler.”

  It knocked Katerina. I felt her grab my arm, the fingers biting home.

  Nobody in the hall batted an eyelid. I would have given a lot to know Manston’s thoughts. The only reaction from him was to take his monocle out and slowly polish it on a silk handkerchief.

  “By whom?” It was said in German and I didn’t need the translation, and the voice of the old boy who spoke was as unemotional as though he were making an office query. They were a tough lot and they had to be. Each of them ran a full stable of political and industrial horses and they knew all about nobbling and fixing and ringing.

  “My mother was Eva Braun. Before you leave here, you will each be given a statement, drawn up by Professor Vadarci, setting out all the facts and dates, and also photostatic copies of all the relevant documents and certificates, including a statement made in writing by my father, signed by Eva Braun in the presence of two witnesses, both of whom are still alive, and whose affidavits are also attached. After our rally these facts will be made public.”

  A bald-headed man wearing a black stock with a large pearl-headed pin in it said, “Votre jour et lieu de naissance?”

  Alois said, “The Bergof, Obersalzberg, the 16th June, 1942. The birth was kept secret. I was named after my grandfather, Alois Hitler. I am the only child and was, of course, legitimized by the marriage of my father to Eva Braun in 1945. For reasons of state at the time of the birth, and ultimately for dynastic and political reasons at the time of the collapse of the Third Reich, clearly foreseen by my father, the birth and my existence were never made public. I was placed in the care of Professor Vadarci, and was brought up under his name.”

  He went on, “All the evidence is set out incontrovertibly in the statement. If this is contested, the people involved, who are still living, are prepared to come forward. Let it not be forgotten that in our people there was and there still is a loyalty to the Third Reich and to my father which he alone commanded and which, at his death, became mine to command.”

  Manston crossed one leg over the other, and said in a mild voice, “He is incontestably dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Martin Bormann?”

  “I am not at liberty to answer that question.” He began to speak very deliberately now, translating after each few sentences. “There are only two pertinent facts – I am my father’s son, and my father is dead. As for my father’s death you will also be given the full facts before you leave here. I do not propose to go into them now, or to discuss the validity of the evidence of people like Guensche, Linge, Rattenhuber, Baur or Mengerhausen, names which will be familiar to you if you have taken any interest in those last days in the Chancellery Bunker. The facts are set down for you to examine and test. Much more pertinent is the importance that was placed on the identification and whereabouts of my father’s body. The Russians were the only people who were in a position, during the months of May and June 1945, to establish these. Let me remind you that, in early June, they first said that the body had been recovered and identified with fair certainty. A few days later Marshal Zhukov, in a public statement to the Press, described the last days in the Chancellery – but on the vital question of the death and the whereabouts of the body he said, ‘The circumstances are very mysterious. We have not identified the body of Hitler. I can say nothing definite about his fate’. Later, in September, they were openly accusing the British of harbouring my father and my mother somewhere in their zone of Germany. And Stalin himself assured people like the American Secretary of State at the Potsdam Conference that he believed Hitler to be alive and probably in Spain or the Argentine. From those days to these, governments and private individuals have talked, written about, and investigated this mystery. And the purpose behind it is very clear. No government ever found the body. But every government which had fought the Third Reich wished to know him dead. They wanted nothing left on which myth or legend could be built, no relics, no pilgrimages, no proof even that he died a soldier’s death, at his own hand, with a soldier’s weapon, rather than surrender. It is for this reason that it has been said that he poisoned himself, a coward’s refuge. My father shot himself.”

  He paused, breathing hard. And he had reason. It was some performance.

  Suddenly he raised the whip aloft, and went on, “Let it be frankly understood – my father died a soldier’s death, but he was a tyrant! It is not the Third Reich we wish to bring back – but a new Germany, a new Europe. My father’s death ended a tyranny. But when tyranny is done, there comes atonement. The atonement of a whole people, the demand of a people to be whole again, to seek their true destiny, their true greatness against odds no matter how great. And it is then that they demand the myth, the holy relic, the reminder of greatness, the shrine on which can be focused the memory of a black past and from which they can draw the strength for a glorious future. Be assured then that I, the returning son, shall give to the people of Germany the shrine they need, the tyrant soldier dead, the fires of oppression now turned to the ashes of atonement. This I promise to do. This I can do – for that shrine is here. Here is the body of my father!”

  He stepped a little aside and turned to the catafalque. I felt Katerina shiver beside me, but whether it was from cold, excitement or fear I did not know.

  The stage manager took over again and the velvet drapes slid away from the catafalque, revealing a large glass case. As the curtains fell away, lights came on inside the case.

  He was lying there, raised on a small gold bed, dressed in full uniform.

  I crouched there with Katerina and we watched them. Each man got up, one at a time with no rus
h, slowly, almost as though each were bowed with some great, unseen burden which they knew they would have to carry for a long time. Each man went up to the catafalque, looked, walked around it, and then went back to his gilt chair. And while it all went on the guards stood at the door, staring over the heads of the men, over the top of the catafalque, soldiers on duty, remote, but alert, crystallized by their last orders, waiting until the next should set them in motion.

  I remembered Malacod saying to me about politicians, “Expediency is the only god they acknowledge.” The rally at Munich in a few days’ time would put a bomb under the table of every cabinet room in the world. Vadarci knew what he was talking about in Stigmata. “Atonement could be as good a rallying cry as ‘Death to all infidels!’ I knew then, too, why Manston and my friend with the tin leg had worked their passage into this company, understood why Howard Johnson and Frau Spiegel had been set on this trail. The news had leaked, but there wasn’t one security service that trusted another. They all wanted the same thing – to stop any shrine being set up. But they each worked separately for fear that, at the last moment, if one were successful in laying hands on the catafalque, then a moment of expediency might intervene, destruction of the body be delayed, maybe, even the shrine set up, for some suddenly burgeoning political advantage. And Malacod – he was a Jew. German Fascism, Atonement Party, Neo-Nazism ... the whole list of names only echoed other names right back through the ages, and he had seen the danger to his people, and now worked on his own account, bent on destruction of the shrine, just as the others were, but trusting none of them.

  Down below Alois was talking again. Now, he was interrupted by question after question, as he set out the details of the way the body of Hitler had been taken from the Chancellery Bunker, the trail confused, the body embalmed and hidden.... The sound of the voices washed into my ears. I listened, fascinated, and knew – as though I hadn’t before – that the witness men give can never be truly checked.