‘I want to know what made you people follow that man. Hamburg was solid. It paid its way. It was a merchant city. It was full of business. Then the Austrian appears. The man with the mad eyes. Forgive me, Mr Portisch, but what made a boy like you, a youth like you, believe in a man like that?’
‘You don’t believe. You’re young. You follow.’
‘Same thing.’
‘Not at all.’
They were back in the bareness of the big room on the first floor, all three of them. The blackout curtain had disappeared and it was, if anything, even colder. Grey fog at the windows. And a suspicion of ice where the condensation on the glass met the wooden frame.
‘Explain.’ It was an order. The colonel was still in his greatcoat. Had he slept at all? Stefan suspected not.
‘I was thirteen,’ he said. ‘The regime was everywhere. It was like gravity. It was like the weather. You accepted it. It brought good things. The shipyards were busy. My father’s job was secure. My mother had a little money to spend on sheet music. We laughed at the oafs in the uniforms. They knew nothing.’
‘They knew everything, Mr Portisch. The world was theirs. I ask you the question again. Why him? Why Hitler?’
The question was put with some force, as if the colonel was trying to crack some deep historical riddle. What has any of this got to do with me? Stefan asked himself.
‘Hitler came from nowhere,’ he said. ‘But he was different. You couldn’t ignore the man. He was everywhere, even in Hamburg. He was all over the papers, all over the streets. He controlled everything. What they taught us in school, the special days you had to put the flags out, even what kind of music you listened to. That was our world. Der Führer. Hitler. There was nothing else.’
‘The Communists?’
‘The Communists fought to begin with but then they went quiet.’
‘Would you describe your father as a Communist?’
‘He was a socialist. He belonged to a union. He believed in the people.’
‘But active? Am I right?’
‘Certainly, yes.’ Stefan remembered smoky evenings at the apartment in Hamburg, his father’s mates gathered to debate the latest campaign. They’d raised their voices for fairer wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, but when they took to the streets it guaranteed nothing but violence. ‘The Brownshirts broke the marches up,’ he said. ‘The regime was never very good at listening.’
‘They beat your father?’
‘He came back with a bloody nose, once, yes.’
‘And you remember that?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what did it teach you?’
‘It taught me these people would stop at nothing. They lied, too.’
‘In what respect?’
‘The party chiefs would come to town. Hitler himself came once. There was a huge rally, a hundred thousand people, maybe more. It was like a festival. That’s the trick they pulled. They made you believe you were on some kind of holiday. I even went myself. He promised us a new bridge over the Elbe. What we ended up with was rather different.’
‘Yet you went along with all this nonsense. Kiel Olympics? Naval College? A berth in the Reichsmarine? Special training for the submarine service?’
Stefan nodded. He couldn’t help but agree. This man wasn’t even reading the notes in front of him. He seemed to have absorbed every detail of Stefan’s career.
‘I was a patriot,’ he said wearily. ‘We knew there was going to be fighting. Either you get involved or the fighting comes to you. You fight for the Fatherland. You fight for your crew. I never fought for the Führer.’
‘But you were so good at it, Mr Portisch. That’s my point. You had an aptitude, a gift, and that’s what you put at the service of this clown.’
‘Clown’ triggered something deep in Stefan. He could think of a number of settings for Adolf Hitler but a circus wasn’t one of them. This wasn’t someone who’d ever make you laugh. Far from it.
‘I signed up,’ Stefan said simply. ‘If you’re asking whether I enjoyed it, then the answer is yes. Physically it was tough. I liked that. It made me feel good about myself. But it was a challenge in all kinds of other ways, as well. You’re underwater for most of your working life. That’s unnatural. That’s not where you belong. So you had to make that work for yourself. It was a world apart. You had to understand it. You had to adapt. It was a world you made your own.’
‘You and your crew.’
‘Of course.’
‘Men you fought alongside.’
‘Yes.’
‘Men you would have died for.’
‘Yes.’
‘Men you ended up betraying.’
Stefan stared at him, unblinking. ‘My men were dead,’ he said softly, ‘and there was nothing else left. The clown had seen to that.’
The colonel rolled his eyes and got to his feet. He was leaving Stefan in the hands of the major. He promised he would return later to see whether his colleague had managed to get any further than this claptrap.
Stefan watched him depart, then turned to the major. This was a man who appeared to have none of the colonel’s unbending aggression. He was soft-spoken, accommodating. He knew how to listen.
‘The colonel has respect for brave men,’ he said. ‘He thinks you were brave. Indeed, he knows you were brave. What he can’t account for is what happened at the end.’
‘He thinks I’m a coward?’
‘He thinks you were a deserter. In his book, that’s even worse.’
‘He’s right. Technically, I was. I am. That’s why I’m here. Another week or so in Spain and they would have caught me.’
‘They?’
‘The Spanish police. And they would have handed me over to the Germans. Think of it from my point of view. My men are dead. I want nothing more to do with the war. I’ve lost everything, absolutely everything. No family, no home, no past. All gone, erased, wiped out. You want me to tell you a little more about that?’
The major nodded, pulling his pad towards him. After nearly an hour, Stefan thought he’d done justice to his story and the major was looking at pages and pages of notes. About the early days of the war. About the Happy Time. About sitting in the cool blue light of the submarine and listening to the daily news broadcasts from Berlin. About beginning to suspect that the Führer’s glorious plans for the Thousand Year Reich might have gone a little awry. Stalingrad. El Alamein. Parts of the homeland bombed into oblivion. Hamburg consumed by the flames. His brother Werner vanished, wiped out, disappeared. Much like everything else.
‘So nothing left?’ The major was flicking through his notes. ‘No family at all? Have I got that right?’
Stefan nodded. His sister-in-law was still alive but would be helpless for the rest of her life. His grandparents, too, might still be working the farm but he couldn’t be sure. Then he paused, frowning.
‘One thing I never mentioned,’ he said. ‘I have a half-brother, a Jew called Sol Fiedler. And he had the good sense to get out in time.’
The major’s head came up. He did his best to mask his interest but Stefan could see it in his eyes. At last, a spark of light in the gathering darkness, a tiny morsel to offer the colonel on his return.
‘He’s still alive, this half-brother of yours?’
‘Yes, as far as I know.’
‘And where might he be?’
‘America.’
*
Back at the motel, Gómez went straight to the room. Yolanda had seen everything and so had the driver. The Mexican carrying the gun alarmed her.
‘What is this?’ She said. ‘Who was that woman in the car?’
Gómez shook his head. He wasn’t prepared to say. He wanted her to leave at once, head for the bridge across the Rio Grande, get herself back into the States.
‘Why?’
Gómez ignored the question. He told her to find the FBI field office in El Paso.
‘How do I do that?’
‘G
o to the regular police station. Give them my name. Ask them to make a call.’ He wrote out a phone number from memory. ‘This takes them to a guy called O’Flaherty. He’s with the Bureau, too. Works out of DC. He knows all about this. In fact, he sent me.’
‘I thought you said you were Army?’
‘I am.’
‘But you’re telling me this guy O’Flaherty is FBI.’
‘You’re right. It’s complex. Ride with the punches, eh? How much cash have you got?’
Yolanda stared at him a moment and then opened her purse and gave Gómez a wad of dollar notes. He counted them. Seventy-seven dollars.
‘This is all you’ve got?’
‘Yep.’
‘You can get more across the border?’
‘A little. Not much. You’re cleaning me out here, baby. And now you take my money, too.’
Her smile checked Gómez in his stride. He pulled her closer, kissed her.
‘Tomorrow, I promise you.’
‘Tomorrow what?’
‘Tomorrow we get married. That OK with you?’
‘Sure. But you’re telling me you’re staying here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why? Didn’t you find the guy you were after? Wasn’t he in the house?’
‘No. But he’ll come to me. I guarantee it.’
He produced three items from his jacket pocket. A couple were samples from the typewriter back at the house. He kept one and gave the other to Yolanda. She was staring at the third item.
‘What’s that?’
‘A Nazi ID card. The woman’s name is Lara Müller. You need to talk to O’Flaherty on the phone. Tell him to get his ass down to El Paso. Tell him to take a plane. He has to make it quick. Give him the ID and this other piece of paper. Tell him I can link Donovan to both the woman and the typewriter. That’s all he needs to know.’
‘Except you’re going to meet this guy.’
‘Sure.’
‘And then what?’
Gómez shrugged, said he didn’t know. He’d been sent to this shithole to find Donovan. The job was nearly done. Then he’d come north again.
‘You’re good with that?’
She wasn’t. But it was obvious too that she was beginning to know this man.
‘I guess I could say no.’ She gazed down at the ID card. ‘But would you ever fucking listen?’
Within minutes she’d gone. Gómez stretched full length on the bed. The border was a ten-minute drive away. Within the hour, she should be talking to O’Flaherty. O’Flaherty, in turn, would take the news to Hoover. A top atomic scientist was ferrying out the nation’s secrets not to the Soviets but to the Nazis, an irresistible invitation for J. Edgar to batter down a few more doors in DC and lay claim to an acre or two of the Army’s turf. How come these SOBs up on the Hill can’t keep the genie in the bottle? How come the fucking place leaks like a sieve? What if our Nazi friends have stolen a march on Mr Oppenheimer? What happens if their bang turns out to be bigger than ours?
Gómez, who had no taste for power politics, tried to visualise the consequences of Yolanda’s journey north. Hoover presumably had the ear of the President. That’s where he’d be headed, to the very seat of power. It would be Roosevelt who’d have to weigh the odds, to call for specialist advice, to try and figure out quite how far the Nazis had got with their own bomb. On the Hill, they called it the Gadget but this little piece of whimsy was gonna fool no one. With their own Gadget, the Nazis could bring this war to an end, a possibility that would explain a great deal about their fanatic resistance. Hold on, guys. Another coupla months and London could be history.
Gómez wondered about the possibility, tried to imagine an entire city vaporised in a second or two, the way it happened in space fiction cartoons, then checked the door and returned to the bed. Something about the typewriter was troubling him but just now he had no idea why.
*
In London, at the Centre, it was nearly midday. The overnight fog had burned off and during a brief break Stefan had taken the chance to limp across the interrogation room and stretch his legs. It was sunny outside and from the window he could see the first fallen leaves beginning to carpet the grass below.
‘Rain later, Mr Portisch. But I fancy the worst of the cold has gone.’
It was the colonel. He was back with his colleague and Stefan sensed at once that the major had briefed him about this latest development with their new charge. There was something different in his eyes, a hint of genuine curiosity, no less steely but definitely there.
‘Interesting story,’ he sat down. ‘Tell me about your mother.’
‘My mother?’
‘Your mother. She’d had this affair. She was a married woman. I know it was years before you came along but did that surprise you? Shock you?’
‘Surprise, definitely. I never thought she could be so emotional. She showed me Sol’s letter. She was in tears.’
‘What did the letter say?’
‘It was very polite. Full of hesitation. This was someone who’d never met my mother despite being her son. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her.’
‘So he failed.’
‘Not at all. I think he touched a nerve. I think she’d felt so much guilt over the years, just letting him go like that, and suddenly here he was, a voice she’d never heard.’
‘And your father? Wasn’t he just a bit …’ the colonel frowned, ‘… sensitive?’
‘He knew nothing about my mother getting the letter. I was the only one she told.’
‘How about Werner? Your brother?’
‘He was in the Wehrmacht. He’d already joined up. He was away.’
‘As you were.’
‘That’s right. But I was based at Kiel. That’s just a couple of hours by train. I could get home regularly. And I was closer to my mother, too. Closer than Werner.’
‘I see.’ The colonel scribbled himself a note. ‘Tell me about your father again.’
‘I asked my mother what she was going to do about this Sol. She said it had been a long time ago. Things were very different now. We were a family. We were happy, secure.’
‘And was that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘So?’
‘She said she’d think about it and maybe make a decision. Which is what she did. By the next time I came home, she’d told my father. She’d also been in touch with Sol, and everything was arranged. My father knew that Sol and his wife were going to emigrate. They’d got the permissions. It was going to happen. My mother wouldn’t be meeting Sol’s father. She didn’t want that, not after all those years, and neither did my dad.’
‘Was Sol’s father also in Berlin?’
‘I’ve no idea. I never asked.’
‘Really? I find that extraordinary. Why on earth not?’
‘Because it felt disloyal to my parents, my father especially. Sol? Yes, I wanted to meet him, to find out what he was like. My mother’s one-time lover? No thank you.’
More scribbling. The colonel gave him a long, searching look.
‘This letter of Sol’s?’
‘Gone. Along with everything else.’ Stefan risked a small, private smile. ‘Your fault, Colonel. Not mine.’
‘You’re blaming the firestorm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Neat.’
The word stopped Stefan in his tracks. Beware, he told himself. These people are past masters at sieving fact from fiction.
The colonel skipped forward in the story. The major had told him about that first meeting in the Atlantic Hotel, the way the two of them had bonded, the little pas de deux over the bill for afternoon tea.
‘Do you recall how much it cost by any chance?’
‘I do. Every last Pfennig.’
‘How much was it?’
‘One hundred and seventeen Reichsmarks. Half my weekly pay.’
Stefan watched the major writing the figure down. Thank God for Erwin, he thought. He’d made a phone call from Coruña, chec
king the figure out.
‘And afterwards? You told my colleague you met again.’
‘We did. I think Sol wanted me to believe that he was staying at the Atlantic but of course he couldn’t afford the place. In fact, he couldn’t afford any place. He had enough money for the train fare to Hamburg and back.’
‘So what happened?’
‘He stayed with a girlfriend of my mother. For nothing.’
‘Her name, Mr Portisch?’
‘Heidi.’
‘Family name?’
‘Brünner.’
‘Address?’
‘She lived in Hammerbeck. She was killed in the bombing, too. I can’t remember the address.’
The colonel removed his monocle out and gave it a polish. ‘You have a rare gift for erasing the evidence, Herr Portisch.’ He replaced the monocle. ‘One might find that troublesome.’
‘Not me, Colonel. I didn’t do that. Your people did.’
The colonel held his gaze for a moment, then returned to Sol Fiedler.
‘This half-brother of yours was half Jewish. Yet this Heidi was happy to give him house room?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why of course?’
‘Because she was my mother’s best friend. And that made everything possible.’
Stefan marvelled at the smoothness of the lie. Heidi didn’t exist but, airbrushed out of history by the English bombers, there was no way these men could ever be sure.
The colonel asked about subsequent meetings before Sol took the train back to Berlin.
‘We met the following weekend when I had leave. We met on the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday morning.’
‘You have an excellent memory.’
‘That’s because it had to be that way. The rest of the weekend I was on the train.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It all fits,’ the colonel said. ‘Don’t you understand? It all fits beautifully. In our line of business, Mr Portisch, we get to know about real life. Real life is messy. Very little of it fits. Unlike this little story of yours …’ He gestured at his notes and tossed his pen down.
‘You don’t believe me?’ Stefan was starting to lose his temper. ‘You think I’d meet Sol on Saturday morning when I was supposed to be on the train? How would that be possible?’
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