Into Darkness

by Anton Gill

  Footsteps outside, and a rap at the door. Hitler grimaced, tapping the air with a finger near his ear, and yelped an order. A pale SS officer entered - did any of them ever see daylight? - clicked his heels and saluted. Hoffmann's interview was at an end. He was aware of how seldom the Führer saw anyone alone any more, and was unsure how to interpret the honour; but after he had saluted and prepared to go, Hitler called him back, the sly look on his face again. 'Hagen will brief you further,' he said.

  15

  Hoffmann screwed up his eyes against the sunlight, but breathed the air hungrily. It was cooler here than in Berlin, but his uniform was too warm, and after the airless chill of the bunker, he started to sweat.

  He thought about the Commission Hitler had mentioned. Kiessel was a glacial functionary whom you couldn't imagine ever having been a child. Stawizki had built a reputation over the past two years for his ability to extract information from a suspect within twenty-four hours, while still leaving them sufficiently intact to die slowly on the gallows for the benefit of the Führer's home movies. Neither was known for his investigative experience. There'd be mass arrests and many deaths.

  And Hoffmann wasn't in Berlin. Two days now was an eternity. Why had he been sidelined? He wondered if he could risk ringing Brandau. Better not. He re-joined Kessler in the temporary office that had been consigned to them in a hut near the centre of the main compound. Kessler was reading the contents of a red file.

  'This has arrived for us.'

  'What is it?'

  Kessler handed it over. 'Update of their preliminary report on their investigation here. The SS security unit did it.'

  'Give us anything?'

  Kessler shrugged. 'They've done a good job. I'd say we were scarcely needed.' He paused. 'The would-be assassins used a plastic explosive. One packet, just under a kilo. In a briefcase. They used two tetryl detonators and there was a time-pencil with a ten-minute delay. Completely silent. Interesting to know where they got that from.'

  'We'd better find out, said Hoffmann. 'What else?'

  'They found another, similar bomb - without a fuse - in the undergrowth just beyond the compound. The conspirators must have chucked it out of the car as they drove away. I guess they intended to use it too, but they were interrupted before they could prime it.'

  'Two bombs would have done some real damage.'

  Kessler pushed his glasses back up his nose. 'Two bombs that size would have done the job, even if the meeting had been in the open air.'

  There was a pause. Hoffmann thought: why hadn't they just stuck the second bomb in with the first and prayed that one fuse would trigger both?

  Kessler looked at him. 'How is he?'

  Hoffmann remembered that Kessler had never met the man. 'He's making a remarkable recovery. Where's Schiffer?'

  'He said he'd meet us here, sir. Had to go to a meeting.'

  Must have been important, thought Hoffmann, as Schiffer was supposed to be keeping an eye on them. But it was perfectly possible that he had other agendas.

  It was hot in the wooden block though the windows were open and a breeze was sweeping the compound from the woods. There was a table, around which stood three chairs. On the table, a telephone, a typewriter and a pile of paper in a tray. A calendar on the wall. 21 July 1944. Its only adornment was a quotation from Mein Kampf. There'd be one for every day of the year. Today's was: Thus did I now believe that I must act in the sense of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jews I am doing the Lord's work.

  'What do we do, sir?'

  'Get a list of the people who were in the hut when the bomb exploded, and find out who can be interviewed. Talk to them. And talk to the people in Communications. Who was working in the radio room at the time, if there are any left who haven't already been arrested. And get a list of all the men who have been. Where are they? We must interrogate them as well.' Hoffmann made for the door.

  'What about Schiffer?'

  'He can catch up with us. I want to know who's been arrested here.' A thought struck him: 'They should have given us the lists already. Off you go. And throw your weight around; we've got the boss's mandate.'

  Kessler hesitated.

  'What is it?'

  The younger man looked at him and smiled. 'This isn't the time.'

  'What is it?'

  'I wondered how Emma was.'

  'She's fine. You know that.'

  'So -' Kessler obviously didn't know how to go on '- Nothing's changed?'

  'Nothing.'

  Kessler hesitated again. His eyes were dark. 'Sir … '

  'What?'

  'I'm on your side. I have to tell you that. Whatever happens.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about. And you're right, this isn't the time. Now get on.'

  Kessler nodded and walked off quickly. 'You fool,' he told himself angrily. 'You picked the mother of all wrong moments. You should have known.' But he also knew that he couldn't keep his personal anxiety bottled up any longer. Now he'd have to bide his time and let Hoffmann make his own approach. If he ever did.

  Extra guards had been posted, and there was a cordon round the bombed building, which squatted, broken-backed, twenty metres away. The communications people would be busy, making sure everyone in the remains of Greater Germany knew nothing had changed. The war hadn't stopped; the fight went on.

  16

  Hoffmann watched Kessler make his way to the Commandant's offices. He looked around the scattering of buildings moored in the sand, between which men were hurrying with papers and briefcases under their arms. The wind brought a scent of cigar smoke. The scent of a good cigar in the open air. Hoffmann was reminded for a moment of the business quarter of Berlin in the old days.

  The door of a hut near the innermost barbed-wire fence opened. Two men emerged. One was Schiffer. The other, in a dark suit, was tall, Hoffmann's height, and solidly built. He moved lightly. He carried himself like someone used to power. Schiffer had noticed Hoffmann immediately. He spoke briefly to the other man and hurried over to him, his boots kicking up sand. The other man stayed where he was. He rocked on his heels, and looked about him idly.

  'Check the route from here to the aerodrome,' Hoffmann told him, brushing his apologies aside. 'And find the car that took the conspirators there, and the driver. Go over the car, and question him. Get him to drive you along the route. Slowly.'

  'I think that's already been done, sir…'

  'Do it again.'

  'I'm here as an observer.'

  'This is an emergency. You are a good investigator - at least you used to be. You're probably rusty, but you were one of my best men and there's -' He chose his words carefully, since he was well aware whom Schiffer might report them to: '- likely to be material the people here haven't picked up. It's our job to find it.'

  Much as all his own police instincts were aroused, Hoffmann knew how improbable this actually was. The ground would have been stamped over by hundreds of feet, crucial evidence destroyed. And in any case the less they found the better. Not that anything they did find would change much now. He knew that matters had gone too far for any formal investigation to be worth shit. At best, Hitler wanted more material, more paperwork, to justify his actions to himself. The man still clung to the illusion that he was running a legitimate state, an attitude which all his close associates except perhaps Goebbels had long since abandoned. If police work was to be done, however, he'd see that it was, however futile its effect.

  He squared his shoulders and walked towards the hut where the civilian stood. It had been years since their paths had last crossed. Hoffmann was trembling. He dug his nails into his palms as he walked. The other man's face was bland, agreeable.

  Hoffmann found himself able to salute and shake hands. 'Hagen.'

  'Commissioner. It's been a long time.'

  The two men entered the hut together. Hagen closed the door behind them and waved at one of two wicker armchairs. Hoffmann's eyes sought out the stump of his enemy's lef
t ring finger. The top two joints had been shot away, Hagen had explained, in a dogfight in 1916. In fact they had been sliced off by a flick-knife in a club brawl in 1921. The heavy signet ring he wore sat next to the stump, on the little finger. Hagen had never flown a plane in his life, and was no more a fighter ace than the cabarettist, Paul Linke.

  The chairs stood either side of a low table on which was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. Two glasses shone in the sunlight. An electric fan cooled the room.

  In a corner was a desk on which were an intercom, two telephones, a pen set and a blotter. A large photograph of Hitler on one wall glared across at a Werner Peiner landscape depicting robust, half-clad peasant girls gathering apples.

  'Champagne? Or is it too early for you?'

  Hagen's tone was exactly as Hoffmann remembered it. Bantering, confident, and faintly patronising. He wondered what Hagen and Schiffer had been discussing. Maybe Kessler would be able to coax something out of Schiffer. They were old colleagues too, though scarcely friends. Co-stars of the so-called Hoffmann Academy, the bunch of young cops taught by the master a handful of years ago. A few were still around.

  'Dom Perignon,' Hoffmann said.

  '1933,' replied Hagen in his plump voice. 'Not the best ever, but good enough to mark the occasion.'

  'Which is?'

  Hagen looked surprised. 'Our reunion, my dear Max.' He picked up a napkin and folded it round the shoulder of the bottle. 'Will you?' Without waiting for a reply, his tongue pushed between wet lips in concentration, he drew the bottle from its icy bath and wrung its neck expertly, at the professional barman's forty-five degree angle, so that the cork yielded with a gracious clop, and no wine was split. He filled the crystal flutes with all the élan of the Adlon's sommelier, and held one of them so close to Hoffmann's hand that he had to take it. Hoffmann looked at him.

  Hagen suspected nothing, Hoffmann decided. Hoffmann must be a better actor than he'd thought. Unless of course it was Hagen who was the better actor.

  'If we don't drink to our reunion, then we certainly must to the miraculous delivery of our dear Führer from the jaws of death.' Hagen's meaty but manicured hand grasped the stalk of his flute, raised it, and tilted it, ready to clink glasses.

  'Why not to both?'

  They drank, and sat down. They looked at each other. Hoffmann could read nothing but cameraderie in Hagen's sky-blue eyes. The face was rounder than it had been, well-shaved, and the golden hair and even the golden eyebrows were well groomed. He wore a lightweight suit of dark-blue English wool, a pale blue shirt and a burgundy tie with a paisley motif. His shirt-cuffs, projecting an even centimetre from his jacket sleeves, discreetly displayed thin gold links. The backs of his hands were covered in soft golden hair.

  Hoffmann was used to taking in detail. Hagen's feet were sheathed in burgundy socks and highly-polished black brogues. There was not a speck of dust or a drop of sweat on the man. He was covered with a patina of wealth. He was an elegant, softer reproduction of Hoffmann himself.

  The champagne was too cold, but Hoffmann couldn't taste it anyway.

  'Cigar?'

  'Wasted on me.' Hoffmann lit a cigarette and watched Hagen perform a fussy little ritual with a big Cohiba. Few people smoked in the compound. It was said the Führer could smell tobacco at fifty metres.

  Hagen was untouchable, a man who believed in his own myth. Unless it was just that all these expensive props in some way served to justify the man's existence to himself. Hoffmann could scarcely believe that he was really there, opposite this creature, drinking good champagne. He wanted to take out his gun and blow the man's head off.

  'And how did you find dear Adolf?' Hagen pulled at his Lancero and let the smoke out slowly through his mouth and nostrils.

  'He told me you'd fill me in on the background details.'

  'Is that so?' Hagen raised an eyebrow. 'Quite the joker, our Führer, isn't he? He told me that you were to interrogate me and that I should hold myself in readiness - his very words. But really just a piece of whimsy, wouldn't you say? To bring us together again?' He paused, enjoying his cigar, too strong for the subtle wine.

  Hoffmann knew the man was buying time.

  'How long has it been?' said Hagen.

  'Nearly ten years,' said Hoffmann.

  'Oh dear. And so much has happened since.' He raised his glass again. 'To the success of your investigation. We'll crush these General Staff bastards as surely as we'll crush the enemy.'

  Hoffmann raised his own glass.

  17

  The apartment was small, neat, impersonal, and, above all, undisturbed. Hoffmann had checked for microphones, as he always did, before unpacking his case. Nothing. And no-one had been there during his absence.

  The walls of the L-shaped living-room were covered with an unassuming collection of Dutch land-and- seascapes, all except the longest, which was hidden by bookshelves, untidily crammed with legal works, art books, and a handful of novels, plays and poetry. A copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works, in English, was sandwiched between Volume II of Schiller, and a copy of Goethe's Elective Affinities. There was also a number of permitted foreign works, by men like Steinbeck, Caldwell, Robert Graves and Thomas Wolfe, all pushed well back on the shelves, along with Voltaire, Calderón and Machiavelli.

  The bookshelves dominated the room, which contained a fairly new sofa and armchair, and a cabinet containing bottles and glasses. There was a telephone on a small table near the door. In the foot of the 'L' was a small dining table, seldom used, piled with books and papers, and two chairs. The window revealed the apartment block opposite, beyond a row of sycamores, but if you leaned out and looked to your left, you had a distant view of Pariser Platz and a corner of the Hotel Adlon. So, not a bad address. The block Hoffmann lived in had one other advantage for anyone who valued their privacy: there was no porter. Porters were informers.

  Apart from a small kitchen, in which nothing much more serious than coffee had really ever been made, and a slightly larger bathroom, there were two further rooms. A single bedroom, and a double - which Hoffmann used as an office. The office contained a desk and chair, and another bookcase which held dictionaries, a handful of religious works, an encyclopaedia, and several banker's boxes, each marked with a number referring to old cases, pre-1933, which Hoffmann had been involved in. A typewriter on the desk was covered with dust. The room had once contained a double bed, but some years earlier Hoffmann had ceased to have any use for it. In the single room was a wardrobe and a chest-of-drawers, each only half-full, and beside the bed a table bore another untidy load of books, together with a brass alarm clock, a bottle of aspirin, a soda syphon, a tumbler, and a small automatic pistol. A reading light with a green glass shade bowed over this collection.

  His apartment. Not far from the office, and comfortingly impersonal. The kind of place you could lose yourself in, hide in, and at the same time close the door on behind you when leaving forever, without a trace of regret, though he would miss the books.

  This place had never felt like a real home. Hoffmann had moved here after his wife's death, inheriting some of the previous tenant's furniture. These days he spent little time here, other than to sleep, read, and, occasionally, eat; but the eating was always done standing up, walking about, and the food was always brought in, cold snacks, bread and cheese, Knackwurst, a glass of beer. Coffee was a luxury now. He rationed himself ever more strictly as his precious hoard of the real stuff dwindled. Colleagues, he knew, laughed at him behind his back, called him 'the monk'. In his position he could have done as they did, for there was no lack of French champagne and Russian caviar, American cigarettes and English shoes if you had the money and the influence to acquire them. But Hoffmann couldn't take that advantage any more.

  It wasn't the thought of the frozen men on the East Front, dressed in uniforms made of wood-pulp, drinking acorn coffee and eating their own dead horses, that stopped him. It was his life that stopped him. He had lost his appetite. There was only the game
left.

  Ten years. It had lasted too long for all of them. He remembered the first disillusionment. Then, struggling with the mental shackles of his upbringing, education and professional training, and not always succeeding, he had, with others, put on what his friend General von Tresckow had called the Shirt of Nessus. Something that seared your skin and would kill you in the end.

  Hoffmann had received the message while he was still at the Wolf's Lair, from the East Front, encoded and sent on via his Berlin office, but still an insane security risk, given its contents, though no doubt his subordinates there thought it was something to do with the investigation. The news was that General Tresckow had killed himself.

  Tresckow had tried to kill Hitler a year or so earlier. The bomb had been planted on the Führer's plane. It had failed to go off because at high altitude the cold had prevented the detonator from working.

  Hoffmann thought of his friend, fighting a losing battle with the Russians on the East Front, probably guessing that he'd be a marked man now - he wasn't known for his uncritical devotion to the Führer in the Reich's darkest hour.

  The officer who'd sent Hoffmann the news hadn't been discreet. The coding had been hasty. Only the chaos had permitted Hoffmann to read and destroy it before anyone else cottoned on.

  Tresckow, according to the message, had taken the news of the Wolf's Lair attempt calmly. 'As God once told Abraham that he would spare Sodom if he could show Him ten just men there, so let us hope God will not destroy our country, because we stood firm for it. Not one of us can complain that we must die. Everyone who joined us put on the Shirt of Nessus.' Tresckow had gone out into No-Man's -Land, carrying two grenades. He knew that by ending his life in that fashion, he'd be reported killed in action.