‘The answer is he’s lying. He’s not staying there at all. He’s staying at some fleapit place further out of town he can just about afford. But he wants to impress me and he wants something else, too. He’s a stubborn man. He’s a proud man. He wants to leave Germany with his head held high. And I like that. I like that a lot. The people at the other tables, the people watching us, don’t frighten him. Not in the least. He’s made his decision. He’s got control of his life. He’s turning his back on all this madness. He’s determined to make a new start.’
‘Just like you.’
Stefan acknowledged the point with the faintest smile.
‘It must be in the genes,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why I paid for the tea.’
*
They came for Gómez in the middle of the night. He was still sitting on the plinth, his eyes open, his huge hands knotted in his lap. Hearing the approach of footsteps in the corridor outside, he didn’t move. Then came the clank of keys and a muttered curse before the door opened and a dim light threw the shadow of two men into the cell.
Gómez didn’t resist. They gestured him to his feet, then handcuffed him. Only upstairs, heading for the street, did he ask where they were taking him. One of them spoke English, heavily accented but OK.
‘Nice hotel,’ he said. ‘Not this pile of shit.’
A battered old van was waiting at the kerbside. Gómez clambered into the back. One of the escorts sat beside him, the other joined the driver in the front. The exhaust was blown on the van and they deafened one area after another as they headed out of town. At three in the morning there was no traffic. Gómez sat back, staring out of the window. An old man asleep on the sidewalk. A silhouette behind a curtain at a first-floor window. Cats prowling the shadows. Enjoy, Gómez told himself. This may be the last time you get to see the outside world for a while.
Finally, the driver slowed. It was a prison. It had to be. The looming bulk of the building behind high concrete walls topped with barbed wire. Armed soldiers at the gate. Some fucking hotel.
He was processed through a series of offices. Most of the staff were asleep. He gave his name and address and once caught sight of his passport in the hands of the guy who appeared to be in charge. He was comparing Gómez to his mugshot. Already he had a three-day growth of stubble. In a couple of months, he thought, I’ll be unrecognisable.
‘Lawyer?’ he said. ‘Abogado?’
He might have been asking for a four-course meal. The guy behind the desk didn’t even register the question. No shrug. No apology. No explanation. Nothing.
‘You have water? Agua?’
Again, nothing. At length, a shouted command brought another man in from the neighbouring office. He was huge, bursting out of his Army fatigues. He stood behind Gómez’s chair. Gómez could feel the heat radiating off his body. The guy behind the desk nodded at the corridor, muttered something Gómez didn’t catch, then looked him full in the face. He, too, spoke English.
‘Enjoy yourself, Señor Gómez,’ he said. ‘No one will be watching.’
Enjoy yourself? Gómez got to his feet, mystified. The guard made to push him towards the door but Gómez shook him off. Out in the corridor were two warders. They flanked Gómez as the guard led the way through a maze of badly lit passageways, past cell after cell. He was familiar with the soundtrack that went with a big prison at this time of night. The mutter of men talking to themselves. Sudden demented cries. A cackle of laughter as some lunatic warmed the chill of his cell with a private joke. Finally, they paused at a flight of steps. Another basement, thought Gómez. The first circle of hell.
At the bottom of the stairs, the corridor was in semi-darkness and there was a heavy smell of shit. Gómez could feel the greasiness of the stone slabs underfoot. At the end of the corridor, last door on the left, they stopped. The guard produced a bunch of keys, wrestled with the lock. Finally the door swung open. The guard stepped back, sweating in the half-darkness. He nodded into the cell.
‘Buenas noches. Que duermas bien,’ he said. Night, night. Sweet dreams. One of the warders laughed.
Gómez stepped into the cell and the door banged shut behind him. It was pitch-black. For a long moment, he could see nothing. Then he made out the shape of two plinths, one either side of the cell. He reached out and touched the walls. Flaking plaster, soaking wet. From the ceiling, hanging on a flex, was a single bulb, no switch. Then he became aware of a body humped on one of the plinths. He stared at the shape for a moment. Dead? Alive? Asleep? Watching? Waiting? He hadn’t a clue.
‘Hola,’ he muttered. Nothing.
This was bad. This was worse than bad. These people could do anything with him. For ever. He lowered himself on to the plinth. At least he could stretch his body full-length. He pillowed his head on his arms, closing his eyes, wondering whether sleep would ever come. Mercifully, it did.
Hours later, he awoke. The light was on above his head. He stared up at it, moved his head a little. Spanish names inches from his eye, scratched into the plaster. Felipe. Angel. Manuel. A roll-call of the damned. He rolled over, remembering the body on the other plinth, then froze. The face was puffy and swollen, thick lips, one eye half closed, scabs of blood above the other, but the smile was unmistakable. Ramón. The maricón whose life he’d saved.
*
After the bar, the escorts drove Stefan and Erwin back to the legation. On the upper floor was a room bigger than the rest. It appeared to be used for formal receptions. The ceilings were tall, with a big rose moulding around the chandelier, and there were thick gold curtains at the window. A framed photograph of the Führer hung over the ornate fireplace and another wall was dominated by a pair of crossed standards, complete with swastikas.
On a smallish table beside the window stood a decanter of something red, plus a couple of glasses. By now it was late, nearly midnight. They’d had more tapas at the harbourside bar and slowly the evening had taken a different direction. Stefan had evidently satisfied Erwin that he had the guile to invent this new presence in his life, to invest Sol Fiedler with all the tics and mannerisms that would make him real, to add light and shade to the bare bones of the rapidly ageing metallurgist in the photographs he’d seen. That had come as a surprise to Stefan, this slightly alarming ability to fabricate a story that had never happened, but what was even more of a shock was something that felt like a genuine rapport between himself and his guardian. He liked this young protégé of Schellenberg’s. They had a great deal in common. And as the evening went on, the conversation ranged way beyond Sol Fiedler.
‘You’d like some port?’ Erwin had eased the glass stopper from the decanter. He poured two glasses. ‘To peace,’ he said.
No Heil Hitler. None of the usual Nazi gibberish. Just that. To peace.
If only, thought Stefan, lifting his glass. In the street, driving back, they’d been talking about the Jews again. As a kid back home in Hamburg, Jews had never really registered with Stefan. He knew Jews at school, even had the odd Jewish friend, kids he fooled around with in the summer when they swam in the canals, and it wasn’t until he was fifteen that he realised that something he’d taken for granted had changed.
It was winter, snowing day after day, and the ice on the Alster thick enough for skating. A bunch of his friends had gone out on the ice. One of them was Jewish, obviously so, swarthy, plumper than the rest, and wobbly on his skates but always ready with a joke and a grin. Somehow he got detached from his mates and when he realised Daniel wasn’t around, Stefan went looking for him. For a while he drew a blank. Then he spotted a figure sprawled on the ice.
It was Daniel. He was lying on his back, trying to struggle upright. His lower leg had been gashed in three places by skate blades and there was fresh blood against the whiteness of the ice. At first, Daniel didn’t want to talk about it. He was embarrassed. It was nothing. Just an accident. A couple of guys too busy or too careless to have seen him flat on his arse on the ice. But then, slowly, the real story came out.
&n
bsp; How these men – much older, maybe even in their twenties – had seen him fall. How they’d circled him, taunted him, called him a fat kike. And how, before they sped off, they’d stamped on his legs with their skates until the blood flowed. Stefan had helped Daniel back to the shore, then back to his home in Wandsbeck. He’d respected Daniel’s pleas not to mention the incident to his parents – both doctors – but what really stuck in his mind was something else. There had been hundreds of skaters on the ice that morning, and not one of them had stopped to help.
‘Ugly,’ Erwin had agreed in the car. ‘We should have watched. We should have listened. All the clues were there. Instead we did nothing.’
‘Because the times were good?’
‘Of course they were. That was the whole point. Food in your belly. Nice uniforms. Whole countries falling over like skittles. Austria. The Sudetenland. The rest of Czechoslovakia. All ours for the asking. A tap on the door and in we went. Did the French make a fuss? No. Were the English going to stop us? Nein. And why? Because Hitler was a gangster of genius. He looked these people in the eye and he took their measure and then he helped himself. You knew it couldn’t work but it did. You knew it shouldn’t work but there it was. The spoils of war. Beg for something you get a kick in the teeth. Put a gun in someone’s face, they’ll give you anything. Never fails.’
‘Until now.’
‘Ja. Maybe.’
In the back of the car, Stefan had put Erwin’s frankness down to the beer and the wine. They must have sunk a couple of bottles of Rioja between them. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe this, too, was part of the script. Either way, telling himself he had nothing to lose, he had to find out.
‘You really think we’ll get through this?’ he asked. ‘The British on the Rhine? Patton at Metz? Our people chased out of Brest? No more U-boat pens? Non-stop bombing at home? Entire cities wrecked? You really don’t think it’s over?’
‘I know it’s not.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘I am. And you know why?’ He was toying with his glass. ‘Sol Fiedler.’
‘How? How can that man make a difference?’
Erwin looked up. So far he’d been concentrating on the relationship between Stefan and this new half-brother who had stepped into his life. How they’d bonded. How they’d written to each other. How they’d kept in touch after Sol had made it to England, and then to the States. The letters had kept coming, full of domestic news from the Fiedlers’ new home in Chicago until Pearl Harbor and America’s abrupt entry into the war. After that, nothing.
‘He went to a place in New Mexico,’ Erwin said. ‘Los Alamos. The people who work there call it the Hill.’
Stefan nodded. New Mexico was in the Southwest. Down near the border. That’s all he knew.
‘So what’s he doing there? Sol?’
‘They’re building a bomb. An atomic bomb. A bomb like the world has never seen.’
Atomic bomb? Stefan had heard the phrase before. A weapon so secret no one dared talk about it. A weapon that came out of the same cupboard as the V-1 buzz bomb, and the V-2 rocket, and – God help us – the new Elektro subs.
‘He’s building a bomb? For the Americans?’
‘He’s one of hundreds of people, thousands of people, just like himself. This is what our leader calls Jewish science. People like Sol. Clever physicists. Men of genius. Men who’ve worked out what happens when you split the atom. Men we’ve frightened so badly that they’ve taken all their brains and their learning and their calculations and gone to join the enemy.’
‘In Los Alamos.’
‘Ja. On the Hill.’
Stefan reached for his glass. Bits of the puzzle were slowly slipping into focus.
‘You’re telling me we have this bomb?’
‘Not quite. Not yet. But nearly.’
‘And what will this bomb do?’
‘It will wipe out whole cities. London? New York?’ Erwin snapped his fingers. ‘Gone.’
‘Christ …’ Stefan felt his blood icing. It wasn’t clear how you’d get an atomic bomb to New York but he knew London because he’d been there as a naval cadet, and the thought of someone as psychotic as Hitler having access to a weapon like this was beyond his comprehension. ‘Crazy,’ he muttered. ‘Insane.’
‘I’m afraid you’re right. But it’s going to happen. The Americans have been ahead of us. They’ve been working with the British. But we’re not far behind.’
‘And Sol?’
‘Sol helped make that possible. Without Sol, without that half-brother of yours, we wouldn’t even be in the race.’
‘He’s been leaking secrets?’
‘He has. Through Mexico. From there he has letters posted to ex-colleagues in Göttingen and Berlin. They’re on the program. He knows what they want. His data has made all the difference.’
‘You said not far behind. What does that mean?’
‘It means months. At the most.’
‘Months from what?’
‘From testing it. And then using it.’
‘And where is all this happening in Germany?’
‘I can’t tell you. Because I don’t know.’
‘And the Americans are even closer?’
‘We think so, yes.’
‘So they’ll use it on us?’
‘Yes. Unless they think we also have the bomb. In that case, no one pulls the trigger. And who knows? Maybe we’re suddenly looking at peace.’
‘On whose terms?’
‘A very good question. At the moment we face unconditional surrender. You’ll know that. They are Roosevelt’s terms. Think about that. Unconditional. No ifs, no buts. We simply lay down our arms, open all the doors, and let these people in.’
‘These people?’
‘The Americans, the British …’ Erwin looked briefly away, ‘and the Russians.’
‘Which is why we need the bomb.’
‘Of course.’
‘Which takes us back to Sol.’
Erwin nodded, and reached for the decanter. His capacity for alcohol, thought Stefan, is impressive. Maybe that’s how he keeps the regime – the madness – at bay. By pickling his brains and his conscience in the name of a good night’s sleep. And all paid for by the Reich. Neat.
Sol Fiedler. America.
Two years ago, before he became a Kapitän, Stefan had been serving as First Officer in another U-boat in what his Kameraden called the Great Turkey Shoot. U-689 had been one of the VII Class: trusty, strong, dependable. They’d crossed the Atlantic and taken up station astride the shipping lanes in New York Bay. That first night they’d surfaced to await a target and Stefan remembered standing in the conning tower, dumbstruck by his introduction to the New World. Although war had come to America, there was no blackout. He could see cars on the coastal freeway, soaring hotels along the beach, funfairs, Ferris wheels, and further away the glow of the city itself reflected off the belly of the clouds. Now he described that moment to Erwin.
‘It was so alive,’ he said. ‘So big. Everything was happening. Those people were naïve to keep the lights on. They had no idea what war was about. And there were so many of them. They were so powerful. How could we ever compete with a nation like that?’
Later in the voyage, they’d headed south to Cape Hatteras. Target after target went to the bottom, always silhouetted against the lights onshore. In all, they scored nine kills. The following year, a Kapitän with his own boat, Stefan had returned to the hunting grounds off the eastern seaboard. By now the Americans were beginning to catch up and the killing was tougher but they still returned to Lorient with a decent score. On the radio, President Roosevelt had described the Nazi U-boats as ‘the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic’ and so – a day away from Lorient – Stefan had surfaced at night and ordered one of the crew to paint a rattlesnake on the conning tower. Later the following day, back at last in Lorient, the boast had won an extra-loud cheer from welcome-home crowd.
‘That was the Happy Time,’ Stef
an said. ‘Before the tide turned.’
Erwin tipped his glass in salute. He seemed genuinely interested, genuinely impressed.
‘You miss those days?’
‘Yes. Of course. At sea you live in a world of your own. Your own rules, your own priorities. You depend on each other. You respect each other. And it has to be that way because otherwise you’ll die. Often there isn’t a Nazi among you, not a real carpet-eating crazy. You’re just there to do your job, to do it well, to make it tough for the enemy, and to get back in one piece. That’s why the last voyage went wrong from the start. Submariners are superstitious. We had strangers aboard, people we didn’t much like. A lot of the crew thought we were cursed because of them and you know what? They were right.’
‘That’s why you hit the rocks? Killed the crew? Because of Huber and his little gang?’
‘No. We hit the rocks because the boat was Scheisse. Because the design wasn’t right. Because everything had been rushed. Because it was thrown together by people who didn’t know what they were doing. In this war you can get away with a lot, believe me, but with engineering that bad, even the weather will find you out.’ He paused a moment, reaching for the decanter. ‘I just hope this bomb of yours has been thought through. Otherwise it’s Götterdämmerung all over again …’
Stefan lifted his glass in a mock salute. Then another thought occurred to him, something else that didn’t make much sense.
‘This half-brother of mine,’ he said, ‘this brilliant scientist we drove out of Berlin. Why is he sending secrets back to a regime he hates?’
‘The secrets aren’t going to the regime. The data goes to people he trusts. Fellow scientists. Ex-colleagues.’
‘But it’s the same thing. Everyone bends the knee to the regime because they have to, because there’s no choice unless you want to end up behind the wire.’
Erwin seemed to accept the point, one elegant finger circling the rim of his glass. Then he bent forward.
‘It may not be that way,’ he said softly.
‘Why? How come?’
‘Because there are people back in Germany who know the end is coming. People who know – at last – they have to act.’
Finisterre Page 24
