by Robert Ryan
Harry knelt down in front of him. ‘Come, come, I saw worse than that in Lyon. And in Foch. Stings, doesn’t it?’
The man was considering spitting in Harry’s face, but the thought of more blows stayed his mouth. Natalie emerged from the kitchen and handed Harry a drink. He sipped. Gin.
‘All we need are the names of your SS colleagues in the camp, and you can go back. We know they are in there. This was a Werewolf rendezvous point, after all. Just pick them out for us.’ Harry was fishing now. He had heard rumours of Werewolf, the plan for die-hard SS units to continue the fight as saboteurs and terrorists, but part of him thought it was pure fantasy.
‘They’ll kill me if I do,’ the German said through split lips.
Harry indicated the Frenchmen, their chests still heaving from their exertions. ‘Look, I wouldn’t bank on what these guys will do if you don’t tell me. And if you do, you don’t have to go back to the camp. We’ll get you shipped up to Stuttgart. Names. That’s all I need. Names.’ He paused. ‘Oh, and where you keep your ratfunds. You know, the little nest egg you put aside in case this day ever came.’
‘Ratfunds? What are you talking about?’
Harry smiled and turned towards the door. Hervé moved in again and he heard the German say: ‘Wait.’
‘I have some names.’
‘And some funds?’
A slight inclination of the head.
‘Good, very good.’ Harry fetched a pen and paper.
Every one of the SS officers had something hidden away somewhere: paintings, gold, cars, cash, jewellery. Harry’s deal was hard to resist. You offered them a clean bill of health, approval from this British-led International deNazification Unit, if they handed over something worthwhile. Otherwise you labelled them an SS war criminal and threw them into the court system. It wasn’t surprising that many of them merely came to see it as a tax on their war booty, a form of reparation.
Wolkers entered just as Harry wrote down the last of the fifteen names and grabbed the list from his hands. ‘Bullshit.’ He slapped the man across the face and he reared up in protest. ‘This is shit. He hasn’t got the main one on here.’
‘What main one?’
‘I’ve just been down the camp. I was given a tour of the officers’ quarters. He’s here.’
‘Who is?’
‘Diels. Our old friend SS Sturmbannführer Bernd Diels of Avenue Foch is here.’
The first blow took Bernd Diels by surprise. He fell off the chair and onto the floor and looked up at Wolkers. ‘How dare you?’ he shouted. ‘After all I did for you. What right have you to do this?’
‘Do you box, Bernd?’ asked Wolkers.
It was late now. The room was lit with gloomy wall lights and almost everyone, with the exception of Diels, was drunk. The girls were sitting, watching the show, Suzy perched on Hervé’s knee, Natalie on Jean’s. Jeff Hardman was sleeping off a lunch-time binge on the settee, a Thompson submachine gun laid across his lap. Harry was perched on a chair by the kitchen entrance, detached, strangely depressed by the scene. Diels, he reasoned, had done plenty of unspeakable things to others. So why was it giving him this sour feeling in his gut?
‘Well, do you, Bernd?’ Wolkers repeated. ‘Box?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Diels struggled to maintain some dignity and held up his handcuffed hands.
Wolkers pretended he was in the ring, punching and feigning. ‘All we want is a share. A percentage. We know you SS boys have got lots of loot. You especially, Bernd. I was there when you were ordering all that art to be crated up. All those fine wines. All that couture jewellery. I was there. Say, sixty per cent?’
‘That was all for others. For Kieffer. Kaltenbrunner. Not me.’
Wolkers went in with the old one, two, a left and a right, sending the German reeling back.
‘Total war, Bernd, remember? You told me I’d learn the meaning of total war. Well, this is total peace.’ He hit him again, generating a mist of blood. ‘And we want some of it.’
‘I did nothing,’ insisted Diels. ‘I took nothing.’
Wolkers unleashed a flurry of blows, so hard and fast that Harry recoiled. He could hear bone cracking and still they came, landing one after another, body and chest and head, wherever Diels couldn’t cover with his manacled hands. Harry knew the Dutchman was out of control, but was powerless to stop him.
Suddenly Diels sprang at Wolkers, scooped his arms over his head, and twisted him round, working the cuffs under Wolker’s chin and pulling, digging the chain into his throat.
Wolkers began to gurgle. Harry searched the low table for his Walther pistol. One of the women screamed.
The noise of the Thompson machine gun engulfed everything and they watched as Diels twitched under the bullets. He fell to the floor, dragging Wolkers with him, hitting the ground with a force that sent an arc of blood high into the air. The pair lay still, wisps of smoke drifting over them. Hardman stood swaying, the empty submachine gun at his side, a stupefied look on his face.
Wolkers’s bloody tongue was protruding from his mouth. It was hard to say whether Diels had succeeded in strangling him before the stray .45 bullet had passed through his head. Harry stared at Hardman and said, ‘Look what you’ve done now, you dozy fuckin’ Yankee cunt.’
Thirty-five
Paris, May 1945
ODILE HAD JUST MADE herself that most decadent of luxuries, a hot chocolate, when she heard the sound beyond the door of the small apartment, a breathy, metallic noise. She pulled the gown around herself, opened the door and froze when she saw the familiar slouch, one hand steadying himself on the outside wall. She felt that if she looked down she would see her heart beating through her robe, coming right out like one of those silly American cartoons. She shivered and he put a finger to her lips and eased her back inside.
In his hand was a trumpet, dull and worn.
‘Listen,’ he said softly.
She nodded, walked over and replaced the blown bulb in the small lamp by the window and switched it on, turning off the main light. The light was green, giving Harry a sickly look.
‘In 1936, when Mussolini went—’ he began.
‘Harry.’
‘Stop it. Just listen. No, not Mussolini. Let’s say that when Hitler said he was going to annexe the Sudetenland, Chamberlain and all the other statesmen of Europe turned round and said: No. Enough, Adolf. We know what you are up to. OK, maybe it is time to reconsider some of the elements of the Treaty of Versailles. Let’s talk sea corridors and ethnic Germans. But step out of line and we’ll slap you down. Imagine that? What happens next? Nothing. No war. No Blitz. All the cities that would be intact. Berlin included. No occupation of Paris. No round-up of Jews. Maybe no extermination camps. Well, not on the same scale. Nineteen thirty-nine comes and goes. Over in England a chap called Harry Cole decides he has had enough of the bent life. He can play trumpet a bit.’ He held up the instrument. ‘Play a lot, really, if he practises enough. But he really only had time for that in prison. So, he knuckles down, he learns his scales.’ Harry put the trumpet to his lips and played a quick, slurred arpeggio.
‘Ssshh … The concierge. She’ll kill us both. And then sell the trumpet to pay for the cleaning bill.’ Odile found herself soothed by his voice, deeper than she recalled, but with the same rhythms, a few of the coarser edges knocked off from years of affecting other men’s accents.
‘Harry starts a band. The Harry Cole Hot Five. He goes on tour, all the best places. Bournemouth, Blackpool, Brighton, Torquay, Café Royal, Café Anglais, and then—the Continent. Le Touquet, Dieppe and eventually, Paris. There, he plays a little club in Montmartre, Bricktop’s, say, and who should be in the audience but Odile, a nurse out on a date with a jazz-loving colleague. But she soon forgets the lemon next to her, because she only has eyes for the trumpeter, with his high licks and fast finger work. In the interval, she slips him a phone number. They get together two nights later, go dancing, and fall madly in love. They marry, he gives up th
e jazz life and becomes a mechanic, the best car mechanic in Paris, and she has three kids. Two girls and a boy, who looks just like his dad. They both die old and in bed and blissfully happy in, oh, the 1980s. How’s that sound?’
‘It sounds pretty good, Harry.’
‘You told me once about those tales with shadow stories, remember? Alternative endings, other paths, just like life. I wish this one had had a different ending.’
She moved towards him and put her arms around his neck and he leant forward and kissed her, as softly as he could, trying to convey a promise never to hurt her again. Odile let him take her across to the bed and he sat her down, not wanting to rush things.
‘I need to tell you my story, Odile.’
‘Do you? Now?’
They kissed again, and he wanted to pull back the robe and feel her breasts again, and lower her onto her back and slide, as lightly as he could, on top of her, but he had to explain things first.
He stood and began pacing, the metre of his steps quickening as the words spilled out of him. He started at Lille, with what he did for King, and took her through step by step, to the noose on the hillside, the forged letter, the dismantling of the ratline, and as he reached the part in Lyon where she denounced him, Odile felt tears forming. Harry sat down again and stroked her hair. He carried on, slower, his voice flatter, emotionless, and brought her almost up to date.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Diels jumped your man …’
‘And we had to shoot him. Well, an official inquiry was inevitable. Death in custody. Plus Wolkers, there would be questions about him.’ He held her hand tightly. ‘You have to understand, Odile, the odds were against me. The Americans would have notified SHAEF who would have contacted London, London would have found out who I really was. With my track record, I’d be finished. Even you think … thought I was a traitor.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘We buried the two bodies in the forest and disbanded. Sent the American back to his unit. Hervé drove me to Paris. I had to see you. I’m not asking you to start again.’ He looked down, and said, in disbelief: ‘You still have the ring.’
She looked down at her hand, the band of gold loose on her bony finger. ‘I never took it off.’
‘All over Europe people are making a fresh start, walking out of old identities into new ones, swapping sides from the bad guys to the good guys. We could do it, Odile. You were the only one who made any sense in my life. You could do it again.’
‘Harry, I’m sorry.’
‘What have you got to be sorry about?’
The door whiplashed back with a crack and the cup of hot chocolate smashed to the floor. Harry tried to get up, but three pairs of hands grabbed him, fingers expertly finding pressure points in his neck and arms, and he felt his knees give way.
The three Redcaps supported his weight while Major Donald Darling of MI9 looked him up and down. Odile could see that the Major’s hand was twitching, that it was taking a great effort of self-control not to strike Harry. In the end, he just spat out: ‘Take him to the Paris Detention Centre. Get him out of my sight.’
Harry tried to look back at Odile, but he was bundled out of the door. Darling took off his cap and dropped it onto the bed, brushing his hair back. ‘You all right?’
Odile nodded, then from beyond the door, she heard the slap of baton on bone. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Making sure he doesn’t run off. Don’t worry, hurts like hell for twenty-four hours, that’s all. Sorry it took so long. She called,’ he pointed a thumb to indicate the concierge, ‘as soon as she saw the green light in the window, but she had no idea how long it had been there. Said she’d dozed off.’
‘You were fast enough.’
‘It was the right thing to do. To come to us when you got that letter from Cole. Absolutely the right thing.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘Oh, a trial. Depositions. Witnesses. Then …’ He drew a finger across his throat.
She got up and shakily poured herself a small Dubonnet. ‘It all sounded, the way he told it, so …’
‘True?’
‘Yes, true.’
Darling said: ‘Harry Cole is a con man, Miss. It’s his job to be plausible. You and I know what’s the truth. He doesn’t. Which is why he can make lies sound so convincing. Look, I’m going to leave a man in the street outside, just to make you feel better. If you have any problems or would like a hotel for the night …’
‘No, really, thank you. You’ve done more than enough. I can sleep tight, knowing you’ve got him.’
‘We’ll get the door fixed first thing.’ Darling picked up his cap from the bed and touched her arm. ‘I’ll tell Neave in the morning. They’ll be cracking open the champagne in London at the news.’
As the door closed behind Darling, Odile noticed the trumpet on the floor, partially hidden under the bed. She picked it up. The bell was bent and the mouthpiece had come out. She found herself face down on the bed hugging the broken instrument, crying with huge sobs that racked her chest.
Thirty-six
Paris, June 1945
NEAVE FOUND MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE and Kim Philby taking an early dinner in Fouquet on the Champs Elysées. The refurbished restaurant was gleaming—the gilt ceiling had been re-covered, the tired red drapes renewed, the chandeliers given brighter bulbs, the mirrors polished and filled with the reflection of the uniforms of a dozen nations, majoring on the US and Great Britain. The maître d’ was being especially unctuous, perhaps aware that some others in his position had been accused of collaboration for being equally servile to the Germans.
It had taken Neave a week to disentangle himself from his work at the Awards Bureau in Brussels, then he had flown back to London to see his wife, and now, ten days after the man’s arrest, he was finally going to get to confront Harry Cole.
He had been instructed to call on Malcolm Muggeridge before proceeding with his interview. Quite why, Neave wasn’t sure. This was an open-and-shut case. Lord Haw-Haw, John Amery, Harry Cole. They would all have the same end. Seeing Muggeridge, whose thankless task in Paris was to co-ordinate the activities of the various British security services, was just protocol, he supposed, something he was having to re-learn after the freewheeling months in France, Holland and Belgium.
When he called at the Army Intelligence Corps Liaison Office, which was located in the George V hotel, he learned that Muggeridge was with Philby, who had come over to see if Muggeridge could be of any help with his new Section Nine. As a reward for his work on various desks throughout the war, and unswerving loyalty, Dansey had given his protégé the anti-Russian desk, ready for the next stage of the ongoing global conflict.
By the time Neave arrived the two former journalists were a bottle down, with another already opened, and looked oddly relaxed in each other’s company. On one side of the table, the austere, emaciated Muggeridge was picking at an omelette, whereas Philby seemed to have selected every exotic dish on the menu. They found Neave a chair and a glass.
‘I have to say,’ said Muggeridge, ‘I thought my friend Stepson was going to get Section Nine.’
Philby grunted. ‘Did you really? Or are you just saying that?’ Neave noticed the stutter had almost gone, although his face was showing considerable drink damage. ‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you?’
Muggeridge nodded. ‘I suppose I am. He was bloody useless in Mozambique.’
‘Well, he was worse than that in London. Don’t you think, Neave?’
‘I never ran into him,’ said Neave, truthfully. He raised his glass. ‘But belated congratulations, Philby. On the Nine desk.’
‘Cheers. So, what’s your brief here? Drink the wine and fuck the women like the rest of us?’ Philby grinned and Neave found himself actively disliking him. A look of distaste flickered across Muggeridge’s face, too.
‘Oh, I have a few awards to dish out, a bad sort to interrogate, that kind of thing.’ He was unwi
lling to elaborate. ‘Finish my Nine’s business.’
‘MI9,’ said Philby with sudden sarcasm. He sniffed his wine. ‘How many flyers did you get out, Neave?’
‘Nobody has done the sums yet. A guess? Three thousand.’
‘Will anyone do the sums on how many French lives that cost?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘By my reckoning every single man you got out cost the life of a French man or woman. Maybe more. But one to one sounds about right to me.’
‘If that is so,’ Neave replied as calmly as he could, ‘it is thanks to traitors—’
‘Doesn’t matter what the reasons are. Traitors, informants. You didn’t expect the Germans to sit back and let you operate under their noses, did you? It’s like with SOE. They claim to have sent in brave saboteurs and resistants, whereas the Germans gave us filthy underhand spies. A touch of the double standards there, I think. A spy is a spy is a spy. Anyway, I just wonder when they trot out the noble history of your Nine, whether those poor sods who died in the camps or up against walls will get a mention, or if it will just be the story of the brave British flyers who got away.’
Neave leant over and gripped Philby’s forearm tightly. ‘Those poor sods are the reason I am in Paris. To make sure someone pays for them. I’d thank you to keep your opinions to yourself until you know the facts.’
‘No offence meant, Neave. Just a hobby-horse of mine. Nobody remembers the men at the coal face.’
‘I do. Every one,’ said Neave. Somehow, he couldn’t quite square the thought of Philby as a defender of the oppressed and neglected with the man before him, tucking into a meal that must be costing all of five pounds.
‘Sorry. Have another drink,’ slurred Philby. ‘Speaking out of turn.’
Neave turned to Muggeridge. ‘How did you get on with Plum?’
Muggeridge sent the remains of his omelette away and ordered cheese and fruit. The noise in the room was rising now, and Muggeridge had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Wodehouse? The man is guilty of nothing more than being naïve. Anthony Powell agrees. And that chap Orwell. Miserable bugger. But he’s going to write an article in Plum’s defence.’
