by Ken Follett
The radio operator, an electrical engineer named Mann, read off a set of co-ordinates, and Wagner drew a line on a map with a pencil and rule. Richter put the van in gear and set off again.
The pianist continued to broadcast, his beeps sounding loud in the van. Macke hated the man, whoever he was. ‘Bastard Communist swine,’ he said. ‘One day he’ll be in our basement, begging me to let him die so the pain will come to an end.’
Werner looked pale. He was not used to police work, Macke thought.
After a moment the young man pulled himself together. ‘The way you describe the Soviet code, it sounds as if it might not be too difficult to break,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Correct!’ Macke was pleased that Werner caught on so fast. ‘But I was simplifying. They have refinements. After encoding the message as a series of numbers, the pianist then writes a key word underneath it repeatedly – it might be Kurfürstendamm, say – and encodes that. Then he subtracts the second numbers from the first and broadcasts the result.’
‘Almost impossible to decipher if you don’t know the key word!’
‘Exactly.’
They stopped again near the burned-out Reichstag building and drew another line on the map. The two met in Friedrichshain, to the east of the city centre.
Macke told the driver to swing north-east, taking them nearer to the likely spot while giving them a third line from a different angle. ‘Experience shows that it’s best to take three bearings,’ Macke told Werner. ‘The equipment is only approximate, and the extra measurement reduces error.’
‘Do you always catch him?’ said Werner.
‘By no means. In most cases we don’t. Often we’re just not quick enough. He may change frequency halfway through, so that we lose him. Sometimes he breaks off in mid-transmission and resumes at another location. He may have lookouts who see us coming and warn him to flee.’
‘A lot of snags.’
‘But we catch them, sooner or later.’
Richter stopped the van and Mann took the third bearing. The three pencil lines on Wagner’s map met to form a small triangle near the East Station. The pianist was somewhere between the railway line and the canal.
Macke gave Richter the location and added: ‘Quick as you can.’
Werner was perspiring, Macke noticed. Perhaps it was rather hot in the van. And the young lieutenant was not accustomed to action. He was learning what life was like in the Gestapo. All the better, Macke thought.
Richter headed south on Warschauer Strasse, crossed the railway, then turned into a cheap industrial neighbourhood of warehouses, yards and small factories. There was a group of soldiers toting kitbags outside a back entrance to the station, no doubt embarking for the Eastern Front. And a fellow-countryman somewhere in this neighbourhood doing his best to betray them, Macke thought angrily.
Wagner pointed down a narrow street leading away from the station. ‘He’s in the first few hundred yards, but he could be on either side,’ he said. ‘If we take the van any closer he’ll see us.’
‘All right, men, you know the drill,’ Macke said. ‘Wagner and Richter take the left-hand side. Schneider and I will take the right.’ They all picked up long-handled sledgehammers. ‘Come with me, Franck.’
There were few people on the street – a man in a worker’s cap walking briskly towards the railway station, an older woman in shabby clothes probably on her way to clean offices – and they hurried quickly past, not wanting to attract the attention of the Gestapo.
Macke’s team entered each building, one man leapfrogging his partner. Most businesses were closed for the day so they had to rouse a janitor. If he took more than a minute to come to the door they knocked it down. Once inside they raced through the building checking every room.
The pianist was not in the first block.
The first building on the right-hand side of the next block had a fading sign that said: ‘Fashion Furs’. It was a two-storey factory that stretched along the side street. It looked disused, but the front door was steel and the windows were barred: a fur coat factory naturally had heavy security.
Macke led Werner down the side street, looking for a way in. The adjacent building was bomb-damaged and derelict. The rubble had been cleared from the street and there was a hand-painted sign saying: ‘Danger – No Entry’. The remains of a name board identified it as a furniture warehouse.
They stepped over a pile of stones and splintered timbers, going as fast as they could but forced to tread carefully. A surviving wall concealed the rear of the building. Macke went behind it and found a hole through to the factory next door.
He had a strong feeling the pianist was in here.
He stepped through the hole, and Werner followed.
They found themselves in an empty office. There was an old steel desk with no chair, and a filing cabinet opposite. The calendar pinned to the wall was for 1939, probably the last year during which Berliners could afford such frivolities as fur coats.
Macke heard a footstep on the floor above.
He drew his gun.
Werner was unarmed.
They opened the door and stepped into a corridor.
Macke noted several open doors, a staircase up, and a door under the staircase that might lead to a basement.
Macke crept along the corridor towards the foot of the stairs, then noticed that Werner was checking the door to the basement.
‘I thought I heard a noise from below,’ Werner said. He turned the handle but the door had a flimsy lock. He stepped back and raised his right foot.
Macke said: ‘No—’
‘Yes – I hear them!’ Werner said, and he kicked the door open.
The crash resounded throughout the empty factory.
Werner burst through the door and disappeared. A light came on, showing a stone staircase. ‘Don’t move!’ Werner yelled. ‘You are under arrest!’
Macke went down the stairs after him.
He reached the basement. Werner stood at the foot of the stairs, looking baffled.
The room was empty.
Suspended from the ceiling were rails on which coats had probably been hung. An enormous roll of brown paper stood on end in one corner, probably intended for wrapping. But there was no radio and no spy tapping messages to Moscow.
‘You fucking idiot,’ Macke said to Werner.
He turned and ran back up the stairs. Werner ran after him. They traversed the hallway and went up to the next floor.
There were rows of workbenches under a glass roof. At one time the place must have been full of women working at sewing machines. Now there was nobody.
A glass door led to a fire escape, but the door was locked. Macke looked out and saw nobody.
He put his gun away. Breathing hard, he leaned on a workbench.
On the floor he noticed a couple of cigarette ends, one with lipstick on. They did not look very old. ‘They were here,’ he said to Werner, pointing at the floor. ‘Two of them. Your shout warned them, and they escaped.’
‘I was a fool,’ Werner said. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not used to this kind of thing.’
Macke went to the corner window. Along the street he saw a young man and woman walking briskly away. The man was carrying a tan leather suitcase. As he watched, they disappeared into the railway station. ‘Shit,’ he said.
‘I don’t think they were spies,’ Werner said. He pointed to something on the floor, and Macke saw a crumpled condom. ‘Used, but empty,’ Werner said. ‘I think we caught them in the act.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Macke.
(vi)
The day Joachim Koch promised to bring the battle plan, Carla did not go to work.
She probably could have done her usual morning shift and been home in time – but ‘probably’ was not enough. There was always a risk that there might be a major fire or a road accident obliging her to work after the end of her shift to deal with an inrush of injured people. So she stayed at home all day.
In the end Maud had not had to ask Joachim to bring the plan. He had said he needed to cancel his lesson; then, unable to resist the temptation to boast, he had explained that he had to carry a copy of the plan across town. ‘Come for your lesson on the way,’ Maud had said; and he had agreed.
Lunch was strained. Carla and Maud ate a thin soup made with a ham bone and dried peas. Carla did not ask what Maud had done, or promised to do, to persuade Koch. Perhaps she had told him he was making marvellous progress on the piano but could not afford to miss a lesson. She might have asked whether he was so junior that he was monitored every minute: such a remark would sting him, for he pretended constantly to be more important than he was, and it might easily provoke him into showing up just to prove her wrong. However, the ploy most likely to have succeeded was the one Carla did not want to think about: sex. Her mother flirted outrageously with Koch, and he responded with slavish devotion. Carla suspected that this was the irresistible temptation that had made Joachim ignore the voice in his head saying: ‘Don’t be so damn stupid.’
Or perhaps not. He might see sense. He could show up this afternoon, not with a carbon copy in his bag, but with a Gestapo squad and a set of handcuffs.
Carla loaded a film cassette into the Minox camera, then put the camera and the two remaining cassettes in the top drawer of a low kitchen cupboard, under some towels. The cupboard stood next to the window, where the light was bright. She would photograph the document on the cupboard top.
She did not know how the exposed film would reach Moscow, but Frieda had assured her it would, and Carla imagined a travelling salesman – in pharmaceuticals, perhaps, or German-language Bibles – who had permission to sell his wares in Switzerland and could discreetly pass the film to someone from the Soviet Embassy in Bern.
The afternoon was long. Maud went to her room to rest. Ada did laundry. Carla sat in the dining room, which they rarely used nowadays, and tried to read, but she could not concentrate. The newspaper was all lies. She needed to cram for her next nursing exam, but the medical terms in her textbook swam before her eyes. She was reading an old copy of All Quiet on the Western Front, a German bestseller about the First World War, now banned because it was too honest about the hardships of soldiers; but she found herself holding the book in her hand and gazing out of the window at the June sunlight beating down on the dusty city.
At last he came. Carla heard a footstep on the path and jumped up to look out. There was no Gestapo squad, just Joachim Koch in his pressed uniform and shiny boots, his movie-star face as full of eager anticipation as that of a child arriving for a birthday party. He had his canvas bag over his shoulder as usual. Had he kept his promise? Did that bag hold a copy of the battle plan for Case Blue?
He rang the bell.
Carla and Maud had premeditated every move from now on. In accordance with their plan, Carla did not answer the door. A few moments later she saw her mother walk across the hall wearing a purple silk dressing gown and high-heeled slippers – almost like a prostitute, Carla thought with shame and embarrassment. She heard the front door open, then close again. From the hall there was a whisper of silk and a murmured endearment that suggested an embrace. Then the purple robe and the field-grey uniform passed the dining-room door and disappeared upstairs.
Maud’s first priority was to make sure he had the document. She was to look at it, say something admiring, then put it down. She would lead Joachim to the piano. Then she would find some pretext – Carla tried not to think what – for taking the young man through the double doors that led from the drawing room into the neighbouring study, a smaller, more intimate room with red velvet curtains and a big, sagging old couch. As soon as they were there, Maud would give the signal.
Because it was hard to know in advance the exact choreography of their movements, there were several possible signals, all of which meant the same thing. The simplest was that she would slam the door loud enough to be heard throughout the house. Alternatively, she would use the bell-push beside the fireplace that sounded a ring in the kitchen, part of the obsolete system for summoning servants. But any other noise would do, they had decided: in desperation she would knock the marble bust of Goethe to the floor or ‘accidentally’ smash a vase.
Carla stepped out of the dining room and stood in the hall, looking up the stairs. There was no sound.
She looked into the kitchen. Ada was washing the iron pot in which she had made the soup, scrubbing with an energy that was undoubtedly fuelled by tension. Carla gave her what she hoped was an encouraging smile. Carla and Maud would have liked to keep this whole affair secret from Ada, not because they did not trust her – quite the contrary, her hostility to the Nazis was fanatical – but because the knowledge made her complicit in treachery, and liable to the most extreme punishment. However, they lived too much together for secrecy to be possible, and Ada knew everything.
Carla faintly heard Maud give a tinkling laugh. She knew that sound. It struck an artificial note, and indicated that she was straining her powers of fascination to the limit.
Did Joachim have the document, or not?
A minute or two later Carla heard the piano. It was undoubtedly Joachim playing. The tune was a simple children’s song about a cat in the snow: ‘A.B.C., Die Katze lief im Schnee’. Carla’s father had sung it to her a hundred times. She felt a lump in her throat now when she thought of that. How dare the Nazis play such songs when they had made orphans of so many children?
The song stopped abruptly in the middle. Something had happened. Carla strained to hear – voices, footsteps, anything – but there was nothing.
A minute went by, then another.
Something had gone wrong – but what?
She looked through the kitchen doorway at Ada, who stopped scrubbing to spread her hands in a gesture that signified: I have no idea.
Carla had to find out.
She went quietly up the stairs, treading noiselessly on the threadbare carpet.
She stood outside the drawing room. Still she could hear nothing: no piano music, no movement, no voices.
She opened the door as quietly as possible.
She peeped in. She could see no one. She stepped inside and looked all around. The room was empty.
There was no sign of Joachim’s canvas bag.
She looked at the double door that led to the study. One of the two doors stood half open.
Carla tiptoed across the room. There was no carpet here, just polished wood blocks, and her footsteps were not completely silent; but she had to take the risk.
As she got nearer, she heard whispers.
She reached the doorway. She flattened herself against the wall then risked a look inside.
They were standing up, embracing, kissing. Joachim had his back to the door and to Carla: no doubt Maud had taken care to move him into that position. As Carla watched, Maud broke the kiss, looked over his shoulder, and caught Carla’s eye. She took her hand away from Joachim’s neck and made an urgent pointing gesture.
Carla saw the canvas bag on a chair.
She understood immediately what had gone wrong. When Maud had inveigled Joachim into the study, he had not obliged them by leaving his bag in the drawing room, but had nervously taken it with him.
Now Carla had to retrieve it.
Heart thudding, she stepped into the room.
Maud murmured: ‘Oh, yes, keep doing that, my sweet boy.’
Joachim groaned: ‘I love you, my darling.’
Carla took two paces forward, picked up the canvas bag, turned around, and stepped silently out of the room.
The bag was light.
She walked quickly across the drawing room and ran down the stairs, breathing hard.
In the kitchen she put the bag on the table and unbuckled its straps. Inside were today’s edition of the Berlin newspaper Der Angriff, a fresh pack of Kamel cigarettes, and a plain buff-coloured cardboard folder. With trembling hands she took out the folder and opened it. It contained a carbon copy of
a document.
The first page was headed:
DIRECTIVE NO. 41
On the last page was a dotted line for a signature. Nothing was penned there, no doubt because this was a copy, but the name typed beside the line was Adolf Hitler.
In between was the plan for Case Blue.
Exultation rose in her heart, mingled with the tension she already felt and the terrible dread of discovery.
She put the document on the low cupboard next to the kitchen window. She jerked open the drawer and took out the Minox camera and the two spare films. She positioned the document carefully, then began to photograph it page by page.
It did not take long. There were just ten pages. She did not even have to reload film. She was done. She had stolen the battle plan.
That was for you, Father.
She put the camera back in the drawer, closed the drawer, slipped the document into the cardboard folder, put the folder back in the canvas bag, and closed the bag, fastening the straps.
Moving as quietly as she could, she carried the bag back upstairs.
As she crept into the drawing room she heard her mother’s voice. Maud was speaking clearly and emphatically, as if she wanted to be overheard, and Carla immediately sensed a warning. ‘Please don’t worry,’ she was saying. ‘It’s because you were so excited. We were both excited.’
Joachim’s voice came in reply, low and embarrassed. ‘I feel a fool,’ he said. ‘You only touched me, and it was all over.’
Carla could guess what had happened. She had no experience of it, but girls talked, and nurses’ conversations were brutally detailed. Joachim must have ejaculated prematurely. Frieda had told her that Heinrich had done the same, several times, when they were first together, and had been mortified with embarrassment, though he had soon got over it. It was a sign of nervousness, she said.
The fact that Maud and Joachim’s embraces were over so early created a difficulty for Carla. Joachim would be more alert now, no longer blind and deaf to everything going on around him.
