by Chris Petit
Rösti closed the folder. ‘A lot of muckraking went on over the Führer’s love life. It was widely put about that he was a secret homo. His obvious devotion to his niece was taken as a way of disproving that. Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this. Are you shocked?’
‘Surprised. I hadn’t realised the depths to which his enemies could stoop.’
‘A dirty bunch. You can see why the press had to be tamed.’
‘Does anyone know where Huber is now?’
‘Scattered to the four winds is the thinking, but rumours persist that somewhere in a safe exists his completed account of the niece’s death, with sworn affidavits.’
‘Is this the document you were referring to in terms of Huber being relevant again?’
Rösti wouldn’t confirm that but added smoothly, ‘There is more.’
Schlegel suspected with Rösti there always was.
‘What do I tell Christoph?’
‘Tell him there is a signed confession.’
‘Whose?’
Rösti smirked, refusing to say.
‘Regarding the niece? A broken nose, you said.’
‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Are you saying the man confessed to killing the niece?’
‘It would be a sensational document, even as mischief and a fake.’
‘Why would anyone be interested in a forgery?’
Rösti spoke very slowly as though he were addressing a dim pupil. ‘Because someone would have to have been au fait enough to create a plausible version. We are all familiar with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’
Schlegel dutifully parroted that it was taught in schools as an example of the Jewish plan for global domination.
‘Quite so,’ said Rösti. Except the original text was a series of fabrications by Tsarist Russia’s secret police, so it was a deliberate act of misinformation which is still taken for fact.’
It was like being in a hall of mirrors, thought Schlegel, were it not for one obvious link between Rösti’s story and recent events: on both occasions, the Führer was supposed to have been in two places at once. On 20 July in his field headquarters or in a Berlin clinic. And on the night of Friday, 18 September 1931 – away, as claimed, or at home with his soon-to-be-dead niece. Schlegel knew enough of the world to know if a lie works once it’s worth repeating. He watched Rösti moisten his lips with his tongue and wondered if he was being dragged into something that was perhaps a splinter of the current conspiracy, and the two plot lines, past and present, would meet and join.
He asked, ‘Was there any motive to get rid of the niece, if Huber is right?’
Rösti sighed. ‘Who can say? Perhaps the most poignant detail: a pet canary, called Hansi, was found dead with her. Two birds, as it were, stopped from singing.’
He slopped drink down his front, sniggered and raised his glass. ‘Cheers! It is interesting that you are here.’
‘How so?’
‘In terms of timing. You are an innocent from what I can see but I am bound to note the name.’
‘With regard to Anton Schlegel?’
‘Fredi Huber, Anton Schlegel – neither one meant anything a week ago and now you pop up here just as so many rumours are surfacing.’
‘Is there more?’
‘Oh, yes. Stories of private pornographic drawings made by him of the niece, and a highly indiscreet letter to her, oh-la-la.’
‘Why now?’ Schlegel asked.
‘The drawings are said to be in play after all these years, but no one knows why or where they are. Now there’s even talk of the girl’s lost diary which, if she could string two sentences together, could be quite a bombshell. Some say it was the current mistress, Miss Quiet as a Mouse, that stole the diary.’
Schlegel decided the whole thing had the air of a confidence trick. But again why now and why was he being told? He decided to volunteer something of his own and said, ‘I have a photograph of the niece taken in a restaurant with the Führer. Would that be of value?’
Rösti waggled his hand. ‘That would have been Hoffmann, the Führer’s official photographer. Two-a-penny, I am afraid.’
‘It’s not a formal photograph, it’s a snapshot and badly taken. The Führer is caught in the middle of blinking.’
Rösti sat back seemingly overawed. ‘There are no unofficial pictures of the man. I would need to see it. It might be worth a small fortune.’
‘How do you account for this renewed interest in the niece?’
‘Let’s look at what there is. Huber’s so-called exposé; the niece’s so-called diary; various attributed artefacts . . .’
‘The drawings and the letter.’
‘Yes, and the confession so-called.’
‘All “so-called”?’
‘It’s a grey area. The fact of its existence makes the right object collectible, even if inauthentic, and was perhaps even forged deliberately, with a view to enticing such interest.’
‘Is it coincidence, all of these items coming up now?’
‘I would say it is almost certainly a controlled exercise.’
Schlegel was slow to gather the point. Rösti patiently had to explain that it was important to identify which was the key article in question. ‘Let us say it is the girl’s diary and, for the sake of argument, it is a fake, but the hope is to pass it off as real. The other material is put around it to build interest in that particular item. Of course, it is not out of the question that any such diary has been fabricated for subversive reasons, with the purpose perhaps of it surfacing abroad, don’t you think?’
‘Are you saying one person is behind all this?’
‘Or a small group. It’s called controlling the market. You have to admit you became more interested the more you were told.’
‘Are you behind it?’
‘Dear heart! Of course not. This is coming out of Munich and we’re sitting here in Berlin.’
Schlegel questioned Christoph’s motives in introducing him to Rösti, who was enticing him with a lot of alluring nonsense about secret diaries, improbable confessions, indiscreet letters and salacious drawings . . . At the same time, he suspected the higher in the Party, the greater the stakes and the dirtier the gossip. Any of the material being floated by Rösti would be of value to the Führer’s political rivals and take on an almost talismanic quality, if possessed. As for a ‘confession’ in which the man purportedly admitted killing the girl . . .
Schlegel asked, ‘The Führer last saw his niece after lunch on Friday the eighteenth but Huber disputed this?’
‘Not very successfully. The Führer’s car was issued with a speeding ticket the next morning.’
‘Then he had a cast-iron alibi. What’s to question?’
‘Huber insisted there were inconsistencies to the man’s schedule. In the official version, the Führer returned to Munich only on the Friday morning but Huber maintained the Führer was in town all along and on the Thursday he dined out with her until very late with her in a private room in a favourite restaurant. They were reported arguing and the Führer, unusually for him, was drinking alcohol.’ Rösti raised his glass. ‘Cheers!’
Schlegel said, ‘The Führer’s published statement denied a big fight on the Friday “or anytime before”, so, if that was a reference to the Thursday row, who was the source?’
‘The restaurant owner.’
Fuck, thought Schlegel. He knew the answer. Rösti confirmed that it was the Bratwurst Glöckl and Herr Zehnter. Schlegel asked himself if that was the real reason for Zehnter’s name being on the same list as his father’s.
They sat in silence until Rösti pulled a mournful face and announced that he had been perhaps a tad disingenuous.
Schlegel protested. ‘On the contrary, you have told me everything I have asked.’ Quite why, he couldn’t tell.
‘I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.’
‘What?’
‘Anton Schlegel.’ Rösti stared at the ceiling before going on. ‘The death of the n
iece was a dirty business. Political opponents exploited it. The lies surrounding everything only grew. It wouldn’t surprise me if the girl’s diary turned out not to exist.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
‘Most items surrounding the case are old hat. Stories about Huber’s document go back years, the letter and the drawings too. The other stuff is new, suspiciously so.’
‘I still don’t see.’
‘Probably hot air, but that’s the point. Whatever is passed on by word of mouth can contain nuggets of planted information yet to be revealed.’
‘And the confession?’
‘Too good to be true, wouldn’t you say? The story has been peddled for years that he did her in but nothing stuck. That lot in Munich at the time couldn’t keep a secret if their lives depended on it, so stories of any confession would have circulated from the beginning.’
‘And Anton Schlegel?’
‘Another new rumour. In among all this you sometimes hear that the supposed confession is wrongly ascribed. It is not the Führer confessing, but Anton Schlegel.’
‘Saying he killed the girl?’
Rösti shrugged. ‘Stories carry on the wind.’
Schlegel’s first thought about what he had just been told was: Well, that makes sense. It was doubtless just another addition to the farrago of surmise being peddled by Rösti, but even if it weren’t true it did at least make sense to Schlegel. Perhaps he wanted it to be true. Perhaps he wanted his father to have crossed a line that made any hope of reclaiming him irretrievable.
‘What do you think?’ Schlegel asked.
‘If either confession ever existed someone, against the run of play, was very good at keeping secrets.’
‘But something is going on.’
‘Something is definitely going on.’ Rösti looked at him with amusement. ‘You must come again. I must say a package for sale involving Anton Schlegel’s Mein Kampf, your photograph of the niece and a copy of Anton’s confession would make for a mouthwatering collection.’
Schlegel felt suddenly quite giddy. He couldn’t decide if it was the drink or overall bamboozlement at what he had learned that day: first, casting calls for the Führer and now being pitched back into a phantasmagorical past, with his father being paraded as the possible murderer of the Führer’s niece. In contrast to all the usual censorship and oppression, it was quite exhilarating.
The answer to his next question left him sober and surprised. He asked what more Rösti could tell him about Anton Schlegel.
Rösti took his time answering. ‘When his name first came up not long ago, I did some checking. Dark horse. No trace, apart from an archivist in Munich who was surprised I was asking as no one had enquired after the man in years. He said in those days Anton Schlegel was the only one that did not come to the Führer. The Führer went to him.’
‘His role?’
‘Unspecified. But according to my man, Anton Schlegel was the man who made the Führer what he is.’
As Schlegel left, Rösti asked if he could ‘borrow’ the Mein Kampf as there were a couple of wealthy customers he had in mind. Schlegel said he wasn’t sure. In the end he was too drunk to care. Cajoling resulted in Rösti promising he would guard the book with his life. On the train back Schlegel sat wondering if he was being conned and decided instead that he was pleased to be rid of the thing. It wasn’t just his briefcase that felt lighter.
*
The following morning, none of what Rösti had told Schlegel counted in the cold light of day as he sat down to begin his report on that dull Sunday. He stared at the blank page, nursing a crashing hangover. The previous afternoon felt like an unpleasant interlude presided over by a comic but malignant presence. Anton Schlegel, Huber and all the rest were of no help to the task in hand. It even crossed Schlegel’s mind that the episode was a prank set up by Christoph; that’s what his hangover told him as he glumly contemplated what he should write in his report. Besides, even if Anton Schlegel had been involved with the Führer’s niece, it was not a stone Schlegel was about to overturn, through choice or opportunity. He sighed and addressed himself to the blank sheet of paper.
They were now expected to work every other Sunday, according to a roster. A week ago, Schlegel had been at the lakes with Gerda. He had a message to call Frau Busl. He got no answer. Did it matter? Dunkelwert wasn’t in, he was pleased to see. It was being said she was spending more time in important Party meetings. She seemed to have the office whipped into shape. Schlegel had heard the first remarks of grudging respect: tougher than any man. Everyone was giddy from the number of arrests. Cells were so full that a temporary holding centre had to be set up. Colleagues smacked palms together in shows of celebration as if their team had won.
As for his predicament, Schlegel identified two different motions at work: they suck you in then they hang you out to dry. He suspected he had been marked all along. The same arguments flew around his head: malign intent versus incompetence, currents of subterfuge so deep they would buckle the plates on a bathysphere; all interpretations equally valid.
He continued to stare at the empty page, incapable of writing. How many Führers were there? Several had been auditioned. Given that the agent Busl knew too much, what had become of them since? If there was a pattern of secret duplicates or stand-ins or doubles or decoys, were they sent to the clinic to emerge more Führer-like? Schlegel supposed the point was to fool the enemy into believing the Führer was in several places at once.
The more he stared at the blank sheet the more he was left wondering whether there was even an actual Führer, and if he hadn’t become a phantom, leaving only an image to be manipulated by others. Perhaps the man was long gone, either dispatched or in secret retreat as stated in the letter which claimed he had been gone since 1943 and could now be found working in the Vatican library. An absurd notion suddenly no longer seemed so far-fetched. The man hadn’t been openly seen in years and had barely uttered a word in public for eighteen months.
In terms of the various Führers, Schlegel noted the one that had narrowly avoided being blown up and whether he was a stooge as suggested by the Allied newsreel. Second, there was the one briefly glimpsed standing in the clinic corridor by the cleaning woman. Schlegel had an impression of many Führer secrets being kept behind the clinic’s steel door in some kind of scientific laboratory. Third, there was the invisible man who had checked into the clinic on the Tuesday.
Schlegel found himself unable to dismiss the falling man and whether that had been some terrible image of the abandoned Führer. Who else would warrant such a cover up?
Schlegel stared at the still empty page. He could hardly write that the fate of the clinic was indistinguishable from the identity of the Führer.
19
The next morning, Schlegel was in Müller’s office within minutes of arriving, picked off by Dunkelwert.
‘Upstairs,’ she said, giving nothing away.
Müller was perched on the secretary’s desk in his outer office and the two were giggling, a sight so astonishing that Schlegel gawped. The woman was such a hatchet face she looked like she had never cracked a smile in her life.
Müller stood and motioned for him to follow. He seemed in a good mood, which lasted all of ten seconds.
Standing behind his desk, Müller asked, ‘Do you have anything to say?’
Quite a lot actually, Schlegel thought, and said, ‘No, sir.’
He felt the air being sucked out of him while Müller looked at him like he was a bug that deserved squishing.
‘What am I supposed to do with you?’
Schlegel stared hard at the floor.
Müller flicked through Schlegel’s report. ‘Writer of anonymous letter, unidentified. A suggestion that a man seen checking into the clinic on the Tuesday may have been the Führer.’ Müller gave Schlegel a sarcastic look. ‘Not an appointment confirmed by the Führer’s diary. I checked with Party Secretary Bormann. The day passed in transit. Security prevents me from s
aying more.’ He returned to Schlegel’s document. ‘And your extraordinary assertion that Dr Goebbels spent the morning of 20 July interviewing actors who could pass for the Führer. What are we to make of that? You don’t say.’ Müller tossed the paper aside. ‘A report that is remarkably short of conclusions. Are you aware of any talk of Dr Goebbels staging an assassination attempt as a publicity stunt?’
‘To rally support for the Führer? Not in so many words.’
‘Then what?’ asked Müller irritably. ‘Don’t try and do clever fencing with me.’
Schlegel had cold sweats.
‘The British newsreel said as much.’
‘Then you did hear it in so many words.’
‘I put that down to enemy propaganda.’
‘Then why does the good doctor indulge in a casting call on the morning the Führer is due to be assassinated?’
Schlegel had no answer to that. He was in danger of visibly shaking.
Müller snorted, ‘I trust what you’ve got isn’t catching.’
‘I sometimes get dizzy spells.’ He didn’t add: Since shooting a lot of people in a ditch.
Müller said, ‘Let’s hear what Dr Goebbels has to say.’
*
Goebbels made Schlegel wait an hour in the outer office. Sometimes he emerged, waving papers, was charming to secretaries, ignored Schlegel and went back in. Schlegel, having spent the walk over gazing in a state of disbelief at ordinary life going on, thought he should usefully spend the time reviewing his options and gave up as he didn’t seem to have any.
‘Explain,’ Goebbels ordered when at last Schlegel was shown in, his mind dead from churning anxiety.
Goebbels was sitting behind his huge desk, the size of a small atoll.