Hess’s theme for the evening was the struggle in the early years that had finally taken the Nazis to power. He wasn’t a gifted speaker, nothing compared to Hitler or Goebbels, but he took care not to insult the intelligence of his audience by pulling any of the usual tricks. This wasn’t a harangue. In fact he barely raised his voice at all. Neither did he rely on crude attacks against traditional enemies like the Bolsheviks or the Jews. Instead, with some patience and not a little humility, he described his own experiences trying to come to terms with a Heimat he barely recognised after his service in the last war. In city after city, he said, there was nothing but brawling and chaos. Germany had lost its compass. In the face of yet more bloodshed, there had to be a better way.
The years spooled by. Hess was back here in his home city. Then, one night, he found himself spellbound by a voice he’d never heard before. Someone with a vision. Someone with belief. Someone who knew the real meaning of the word ‘destiny’. Mention of the twice-decorated Austrian corporal from the List Regiment in which Hess himself had served brought the audience to its feet. They knew this story by heart.
‘Heil Hitler!’ they roared.
Afterwards, with Hess still disentangling himself from the press of Party veterans, Dieter found himself in the back of Hess’s personal Mercedes. His adjutant, Karl-Heinz Pintsch, was at the wheel. Waiting for Hess, he eyed Merz in the rear-view mirror. They’d never met before but Pintsch, like everyone else around Hess, was a byword for loyalty among the Berlin chieftains.
‘The older guys want to drink with him all night,’ Pintsch nodded towards the Bierkeller. ‘They can’t understand why he never touches alcohol. They think it’s one of Goebbels’ little lies. An Alter Kampfer, one of the old warriors, without a taste for booze? It makes no sense.’
At length, Hess appeared in the street. His calf-length leather coat was the perfect match, thought Dieter, for those wonderful boots. Pintsch was already out of the car, opening the passenger door. Hess ducked inside. Once again, he didn’t look round.
‘Merz?’
Dieter acknowledged the greeting, extending a hand over the back of the seat. He felt the lightest of touches, flesh on flesh, then the car began to move.
‘We go home. You will stay the night. We must feed you, make you welcome. It’s the least we can do.’
The matter appeared to be settled. There was nothing left to say. Already, Hess was talking to Pintsch. Tomorrow he had business in Augsburg. Might his adjutant be ready with the car by seven o’clock?
Hess lived in Harlachen, a suburb of Munich much favoured by Party bigwigs who’d made the journey from the pitched street battles of the early twenties and who still lived in the city. Pintsch pulled the big saloon to a halt outside a secluded villa in a street off the tram route. Munich, like Berlin, was under compulsory blackout and in the darkness, waiting for Hess to emerge from the car, Dieter could make out the shape of the property behind the hedge. With its shuttered windows and boxy silhouette, it was neither grand nor tiny. It called no attention to itself. Much like its owner.
Hess led the way to the door. His wife must have heard the car because she was waiting inside the open front door. The house smelled lightly of bleach and furniture polish. The door closed, she pulled a curtain across and switched on the light.
‘Ilse,’ Hess murmured. ‘My wife.’
The handshake was warm. No Heil Hitler. Ilse led the way down the hall. Little Wolf, she told her husband, was still running a temperature. She thought he had a bad cold, nothing worse, but she couldn’t be sure.
‘He’s still awake?’
‘Ja.’
Hess disappeared upstairs. Merz followed Ilse into the drawing room. It was less formal than he’d been expecting and a log fire was burning in the grate. One wall was covered entirely by bookshelves containing hundreds of volumes, and small occasional tables were home for little nests of framed photographs, a mix of family moments and more formal occasions.
Ilse apologised for the lateness of the hour. She’d prepared a little goulash. This was no time to be eating but she hoped that Merz was hungry. Her husband, she said, had no fondness for either meat or fish. She’d learned to live with his dietary fads, as a good wife should, but she wouldn’t inflict Rudolf’s tastes on any guest.
Dieter said it didn’t matter. The lateness of the hour was no fault of hers. She smiled at him, seemingly lost for words. She was a plump woman with lustrous chestnut hair and there was a hint of the Jewess in her features. Quietly spoken and attentive, every gesture suggested a motherliness that could only have been instinctive. Did this protective urge extend to Hess himself, Dieter wondered. Was the Deputy Führer sheltered from the regime’s harsher moments by this wife of his?
Hess returned with his young son. Dieter was no expert when it came to children, but he judged the infant Wolf to be two or three years old. Cradled in his father’s arms, he regarded Merz with interest. His face was flushed with fever, but he kicked his chubby little legs and reached out for this stranger in the family home.
‘He trusts everyone,’ Hess was frowning. ‘These days it’s a habit we might have to cure.’
Ilse served the meal in a smallish dining room next door. Hess had his son in a high chair beside him and paused between mouthfuls of his own to try and coax a thin, pink liquid down his tiny throat. Dieter was tempted to ask what Hess was eating. His first guess was semolina, but he wasn’t at all sure. Hess was explaining their guest’s role over the weeks to come. Ilse, with a fetching smile, said she needed no introductions. Like every other housewife, she knew exactly who young Dieter was.
‘You’re going to teach my husband to fly?’
‘No need, Frau Hess. He’s been flying far longer than me.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ She turned to Hess. ‘So tell me again. You drive to Augsburg. You meet Uncle Willi. And then what?’
‘I get in a new aeroplane, a different aeroplane. Two engines. Believe me, it makes a difference.’
He turned to Merz for confirmation. Dieter nodded, said nothing. Then came an abrupt change of subject. Ilse had forgotten a call that had come earlier. Something evidently important.
‘Albrecht telephoned,’ she said. ‘He said he’s going to be late tomorrow.’
‘At Augsburg, you mean?’
‘Yes. And he wanted to know whether you’d talked to his father yet.’
‘This morning,’ Hess said. ‘I told him about Wolf. He suggested throat pastilles if the linctus doesn’t work. It seems Albrecht had the same problem. He said the child was always ill.’
Dieter slept in a guest bedroom under the eaves of the house. The goulash had settled nicely and he’d enjoyed a brief fireside chat with the Deputy Führer before retiring for the night. Hess had been more than complimentary about Dieter’s reputation in the air. Alas, he’d never seen any of der Kleine’s legendary displays but he had it on good authority that Dieter Merz was up there with the angels when it came to the Reich’s top flyers.
He asked a series of searching questions about the performance of the 109 against the British, leaving Dieter in no doubt about the depth of his own knowledge, and asked for his thoughts on the 110. Dieter obliged as best he could. The 110, he said, was a tough old bird. Establish the right rapport, and it was an aircraft that would always look after you. The phrase sparked a rare smile from Hess and, as Dieter drifted off to sleep, he wondered yet again what had prompted the need for a busy man to subject himself to all the demands of a conversion course. There were a number of single-engined aircraft that could take the Deputy Führer to any corner of the Reich. Why this added complication?
Next morning, up early, Merz descended to the sharp tang of real coffee. Hess was already at the table, carving himself the thinnest slice of black bread. Wolf, it seemed, had enjoyed a peaceful night and was still asleep. The pink linctus appeared to have done the trick.
Pintsch arrived minutes later and Ilse waved them goodbye from the front gate. D
ieter, she made a point of saying, was welcome at their little house whenever he needed a bed and in the meantime he was to keep a sharp eye on her husband.
‘My husband takes on far too much,’ she said. ‘Maybe the flying is good for him.’
The drive to Augsburg, on one of the new Autobahnen, took less than two hours. Dieter knew that Hess’s passion for flying had led him to enter the famous Zugspitze race around Germany’s highest peak, an event that would pose a serious challenge for any pilot. On his first attempt, a year before the Nazis came to power, Hess had been runner-up but when Dieter pressed for details he seemed almost embarrassed. He’d made careful preparations, he said, and once he was in the air he’d simply followed the pilot who he knew would win. It had certainly been cold up at three thousand metres, and there’d been an intermittent problem with high cloud, but completing the Zugspitze was nothing compared to flying over Everest.
‘Everest? You mean the Himalayas?’
‘Ja.’
‘You’ve done that, too?’
‘Not me. A friend of a friend of mine. An English flyer. My friend calls him Duglo. Properly, one should call him the Duke of Hamilton. He’s a Wing Commander now, in the RAF. And I suppose one day we might fly against each other. Such are the fortunes of war.’
‘And he flew over Everest? This Duke?’
‘He did. I met him afterwards, very briefly, in Berlin. He was there for the Olympics. The flight itself was a couple of years earlier. 1933. And he did it in a biplane. Can you believe that? You have to hand it to the English. Not only did they conquer half the world, but they produced men like Hamilton who can survive at nine thousand metres. Remarkable. Anyone who underestimates the British is a fool.’
Willi Messerschmitt was waiting for them at Augsburg. With him was a square-jawed civilian in his late thirties. He had a thick, black moustache and wore a tweed jacket over an open-necked white shirt. In a world of uniforms, to Dieter, this made him unusual.
‘My friend Albrecht Haushofer,’ Hess did the introductions. ‘Dieter Merz.’
Dieter shook the proffered hand.
Hess took Haushofer aside. Never less than intense, the Deputy Führer did most of the talking. Twice, he consulted his watch. Dieter, in the meantime, was talking to Willi Messerschmitt. Hess, it appeared, had been allotted a brand new Me-110, but in the way of these things the aircraft had developed a hydraulic fault. The Deputy Führer’s schedule had called for a two-hour training sortie, and with the company’s Chief Test Pilot otherwise engaged, the role of instructor would fall to Merz. Alas, yet another complication had just recalled Hess to Berlin and so Willi Messerschmitt was about to kill two precious birds with one stone by proposing that der Stellvertreter take another 110 and head north with Merz in the rear seat.
They took off nearly an hour later. Rain pebbled the glasshouse canopy and a vicious crosswind buffeted the aircraft on take-off. Given the circumstances, Hess coped without hesitation and as they climbed up through a thousand metres of cloud Dieter offered his congratulations. In certain situations, twin-engined aircraft needed a delicate touch at the controls as well as an iron nerve. On both counts, Hess had done extremely well.
‘I’m flattered, Merz,’ he grunted. ‘Don’t hesitate to speak your mind.’
There was no need. Above the thick canopy of cloud, the sun shone in a clear blue sky. The wind was still strong but Hess, who’d taken care to do his computations on the ground before take-off, offset for the strong easterly drift, and when the time came to start the descent Merz had no doubts that they’d find themselves over Berlin once they broke into clean air again.
And so it proved. Not just the grey sprawl of the Reich’s capital but the sight of Tempelhof airfield bang on the nose. From the rear seat, Dieter applauded. Oddly enough, the sound of clapping broke Hess’s concentration but seconds later he’d nudged the aircraft back onto the track that would take them onto the runway’s threshold. For the second time in the flight the crosswind posed a problem but Hess reduced the flap setting, eased the throttle forwards and powered the aircraft into a perfect three-point landing.
‘Wunderbar,’ Dieter murmured. And meant it.
*
Tam Moncrieff occupied a claustrophobic flat on the first floor of a property on Woburn Square. The letter arrived shortly after dawn in the hands of a postman new to the Bloomsbury round. Moncrieff descended from the first floor, edging around his bicycle parked in the narrow hall, and retrieved the envelope from the mat. The handwriting was familiar. Cathy Phelps. The chance discovery who’d brought both laughter and order to the enveloping chaos of the Glebe House.
Back upstairs, Moncrieff settled briefly at the kitchen table to read the letter. Cathy wrote the way she talked: voluble, winning, a Cockney voice – a presence – that never failed to raise his spirits. She hoped he’d weathered the journey south. She worried a bit about the bombing raids and the reports on the radio about all the damage. She hoped he was looking after himself and keeping warm. And above all she begged him not to take what followed at anything but face value.
Face value?
Moncrieff frowned, checking his watch. He was due for a meeting in the Director’s office at a quarter past eight. It was already twenty-five past seven and he’d yet to wash and shave. If he pedalled fast he could make St James’s Street in twenty minutes. He returned to the letter.
Cathy had received a visit from a member of the Royal Household she’d known at Balmoral. His name was Jack Riordan and he’d carried all sorts of responsibilities when it came to finding the right people to staff the many outposts of the Royal Court. She’d liked Jack, she wrote. He’d always been fair in his dealings with the below-stairs staff and when her dalliance with the young Communist footman had raised a few eyebrows, he’d protected the pair of them from the wrath of more powerful figures.
Moncrieff smiled. Jack Riordan was a name he recognised. This was the man who’d penned a glowing reference for Cathy once she’d decided to leave Balmoral. Among the adjectives he remembered were ‘diligent’, ‘tireless’ and – twice – ‘spirited’. In all three cases, nearly a year later, he’d been proved right.
Moncrieff returned to the letter. Jack, Cathy wrote, was briefly back in Scotland after a recent posting to Buckingham Palace where he held a new job as Master of the Household. A vacancy had come up in Housekeeping and he thought this might be the perfect opportunity for someone with Cathy’s talents. She’d served there before and she knew how the place worked. The wage was nearly twice what she’d been earning at Balmoral and her responsibilities would allow her plenty of time to explore the capital’s many attractions. While candidates for the job were obliged to undergo a couple of formal interviews, Jack had made it plain that the post was Cathy’s for the asking. It seemed, in Jack’s phrase, that she’d turned a head or two at Balmoral and left her mark where it mattered.
So what shall I tell him, Cathy asked at the end of the letter. I love it here, you know I do. But I could certainly use the extra money and if it felt right we might see a little more of each other.
If it felt right.
This was a woman, thought Moncrieff, who held a fascination for certain kinds of men. Jack Riordan was plainly one of them. The War Secretary, in God’s name, was another. Archie Gasgoigne was a third. And Moncrieff himself knew exactly what kind of impact she made. Her smile alone lingered a long time in the memory. Only days ago, Moncrieff had felt a pang of deep regret as he’d boarded the train south. Under different circumstances – no war, no summons to St James’s Street – he might have stayed at the Glebe House. They might have talked deep into the night, tossed another log on the fire, abandoned all caution, woken up next morning in a different relationship, exactly the way Archie had counselled. Might have. Might have.
If it felt right.
Moncrieff checked his watch for a third time, wondering whether he might phone her later. The first of his worries should have been the house itself. Who else could he find t
o fill her shoes? Yet he knew with total certainty that she’d never abandon the modest Moncrieff estate without finding someone equally suitable to take her place. That’s what made her so unique, so dependable. And it was that same brimming self-belief that had led her to put an unspoken intimacy down on paper.
If it felt right.
Bold, he thought, heading for the tiny bathroom. Bold, and more than welcome.
*
The Director was already at his desk when Moncrieff rapped on his door. Unusually, Guy Liddell didn’t bother with the usual exchange of courtesies. Instead he wanted to know about Hesketh.
‘What happened? What did you make of him?’
Moncrieff described the meal they’d shared, their hasty evacuation to the Lower Bar and the conversation they’d resumed over glasses of Armagnac once the raid was over.
‘And?’
‘He seems to know Lisbon well. He’s been there a while. He certainly speaks Portuguese because he bumped into a businessman from Mozambique as we were leaving.’
‘And his connections? In Lisbon?’
‘To be honest, I lost count. We started with another businessman, Santo Silva. Then came the German Ambassador, our old friend Schellenberg, a handful of agents working for the Abwehr, two Russians he claims knew the Romanovs, and then a host of smaller fry, mainly rogues on the make. All evening I got the impression he was trailing his coat for our benefit, but I suspect he genuinely likes rough company.’
‘I see.’ Liddell reached for his fountain pen and scribbled himself a note. ‘So where, precisely, do our interests lie?’
‘He thinks something big’s in the offing.’
Raid 42 Page 8
