Hart shifted on his now familiar bench at the Gasthof Zur Post. In the past ten minutes it had begun to feel like the miscreant’s bench at the Old Bailey. ‘I think it’s the best way to get the information we need. It’s a gift.’
‘It sort of fell into your lap, you mean?’
Hart closed his eyes. ‘It means I’ll be right where I need to be if anything happens.’
‘What if nothing happens? You’ll just force yourself to go on sleeping in her bed until something does?’
‘Amira. Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.’
Amira attempted to light a cigarette. A passing waitress pointed at the No Smoking sign on the table and made a sad face. Amira thrust the pack back into her satchel, and then threw the still smouldering cigarette and the lighter in after it. ‘What if I started an affair with Wesker? What would you think about that?’
Hart groaned. Part of him wanted to fish around in Amira’s handbag and turf out the cigarette before it set something alight. Another part of him recognized that such an act might, in the present circumstances, prove suicidal. ‘I’d think you and Wesker were made for each other. I’d hang the Do Not Disturb sign on your door myself.’ Instead of the expected slap, Hart saw Amira’s eyes clouding up with tears. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Amira. I’d feel wretched. How do you think I’d feel?’
‘Well, at least you’d be feeling something. Rather than this numbness you seem to be feeling now. I can’t understand you any more, John. How can you pretend with that woman? How is it possible for you to do that?’
Hart had arrived at the unknown frontier. The point of no return. He’d known it was coming, but he was still unprepared for it. ‘Because I’m not pretending.’
Amira’s pent-up tears finally overflowed and cascaded down her cheeks. She ignored them, as if the tears were being shed by some other woman, sitting in the same place, and facing the same man.
‘What do you mean you’re not pretending? She’s a Nazi. Pure and simple. A bigot. A racist. She’s the filth stuck in the filter at the bottom of the sink. The crud the cat leaves behind after he has eaten the mouse. You can’t be so blind. You must see her for what she is?’
‘I don’t think it’s as easy as that. I think she’s the partial victim of her background.’
Amira dashed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘So your blow-up sex doll is a partial victim, is she? Quite unlike those people who get firebombed out of their homes by her people? Or who get their bones broken on her say-so? Or who get blackmailed out of their jobs by her thugs? No. Those aren’t the true victims. But Effi Rache is.’
Hart offered Amira his handkerchief. She gave him such a wrathful look that he hastily replaced it in his pocket. He had an unwanted vision of himself sprinting for the emergency exit, with the chairs toppling behind him like dominoes.
‘She’s not involved in any of that. I’m sure of it. Plus she played no part in the murder of my father and Colel Cimi. I checked her passport, just as I told you I would. She hasn’t been to Guatemala. Or anywhere close.’
‘You’ve got a fake passport. Why shouldn’t she have?’
‘Because she hasn’t. She’s not who you think she is, Amira.’
‘She isn’t a whore, you mean? The sort of woman who steals other women’s men?’
‘She doesn’t know who you are. She doesn’t even know you exist.’
‘Well, that’s a surprise.’
Hart took the letter and the torn-off piece of notepaper out of his jacket pocket. He decided to hold the letter back in case he might need something to bargain with further down the line. There were moments when Amira scared him with the intensity of her feelings – with her utter lack of self-control – and he needed to think strategically, not in response to passion.
‘This is a list of Effi Rache’s investments and bank account details. I copied them from documents in her personal safe. At considerable personal risk, I should add. I thought they might be of interest to you.’
‘So you’re still pretending you’re on the side of the good guys?
‘Yes. I’m still pretending.’
‘Then what’s that other piece of paper you are hiding in your hand?’
Hart laid the single sheet on the table. ‘It’s a letter from Adolf Hitler to Effi Rache’s grandfather. Dated twenty-ninth of April 1945. The day before Hitler committed suicide. The day he ordered my grandfather and grandmother to fly the Holy Lance out of Berlin a few hours ahead of the final Russian push. I found it in Effi’s portable safe. I need to get it back there tonight, or my cover will be blown. The letter’s probably meaningless. But I can’t even start to interpret it. My primer didn’t teach me how to read German Gothic script.’
‘Spread it out for me.’
Hart spread out the letter.
Amira set her phone to ‘photographing documents’. She took a series of shots, with and without flash. ‘Now turn it over.’
‘There’s nothing on the other side.’
‘Turn it over. Then hold it up against the light so I can get the watermark.’
Hart did as he was told. Sometimes he forgot how professional Amira was.
‘I’ll forward this to my editor. She’ll get a specialist to translate and authenticate it. At least as far as we can from a photograph. But the provenance is spot on, I’ll give you that much. From one Nazi to another.’ Amira glanced up from her phone. ‘I’m going to take you at your word. About being with us on this.’
Hart raised an eyebrow, but he kept his mouth shut. The storm appeared to be over. For the time being at least. He didn’t want to risk rekindling it with one of his snap remarks.
‘I want you to take this spare phone. If your Marlene Dietrich clone asks you where you got it, say you bought it today. That you wanted to be able to send her lovey-dovey text messages, or something equally inane. Here’s the receipt. I’m sure she’ll be grateful to have some means of contacting you when you’re out of her sight. Or video calling you when she gets the itch. If you have to phone either me or Wesker, wipe the record. Don’t keep us in your contacts either. If you text us, wipe the text. Here are our numbers. Memorize them on your way back across the lake and then destroy them. And use a password. Something complicated. Not your birthday. Or the anniversary of your first fuck-a-Nazi day.’
Hart’s face was stiff with the strain of not responding to Amira’s barbs. ‘You’re talking as if I am a spy. As if I belong to some Mission: Impossible team.’
‘You are a spy, John. And in the enemy’s camp. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here. Of believing you when you say you are still with us. Please don’t let me down. Effi Rache isn’t worth the spit on your toecap. You’ll realize that some day. Probably when it’s too late.’
Hart stood up. He took the phone from Amira’s outstretched hand. As he did so she turned his hand over and brushed him lightly with her fingers across the knuckles. Hart snatched his hand back as if her touch had burnt him. His muscles ached and his temples throbbed. He felt as if he had just passed through an Iroquois gauntlet line.
‘Do you have any money left?’
‘More than I should have. Around four hundred euros. Frau Erlichmann refused any payment for my room. I feel wretched about that. But it helped the exchequer. Considerably.’
‘You’d better take this, then. In real life, barons are rarely broke. I have a strong suspicion that your mincing little Barbie doll will be high upkeep. I would hate for her to go short of the basic necessities.’ Amira handed him a roll of notes.
Hart accepted it because he knew she was right. But it cost him to remain silent.
‘You charmed Frau Erlichmann, John, just as you charmed me and the Barbie. You’re a serial charmer. That’s just the way it is. But charm can only take you so far in this life. You’d best watch your back from now on in. Wesker tells me he’s seen Zirkeler lurking outside the house at night spying on you both through the windows.’
‘He’s what?’
‘You heard me. Wesker’s taken the room next to your old one at the Alpenruh. He has night-vision glasses. I told him to note whoever goes in and out of the house. But don’t worry. He tells me he can’t quite see inside your bedroom.’
Hart stood frozen to the spot, too stunned to utter a word.
‘Oh, and Frau Erlichmann is being paid this time. By the newspaper. Wesker isn’t nearly as charming as you are, apparently.’
FORTY-SIX
Frau Erlichmann took the grinder from Hart’s hand. She transferred the ground coffee into the filter with a scoop, levelling each measure punctiliously. ‘I’ve baked a käsekuchen for us today. What you would call in England a cheesecake. I thought it would be nice to ring the changes.’
‘How did you know I would come, Frau Erlichmann?’
‘I didn’t. But I take my coffee at this time whatever the season. With the benefit of company or without. And your associate, Herr…?’
‘Wesker.’
‘Yes, Herr Wesker. It doesn’t seem to me that he is the sort of man to drink coffee.’
‘Only after a hangover. And instant, probably.’
‘Oh.’ Frau Erlichmann looked shocked.
Hart suspected that Frau Erlichmann’s shock was less at the thought of the alcohol and more at the prospect of the instant coffee. ‘I have to be honest with you. I came here for a purpose.’
‘You always do, Baron.’
‘You know I’m not a real baron. You shouldn’t call me that.’
‘I know that you are. I had a schoolgirl crush on your grandfather, remember? You have the same eyes he had. The same hairline. The same nose.’ Frau Erlichmann smiled. The expression behind her cataract-clouded eyes seemed unutterably far away. ‘We are all the products of those who bred us. And those who came before them. We cannot escape who we are. It is lunacy to try to do so.’
‘But I am not that person you describe.’
‘Not yet. But you are fast becoming him.’
Hart sipped his coffee. He ate a forkful of cheesecake. Then he took another sip of his coffee. He was aware that the old lady was watching him. Weighing him up. Measuring him in the balance. ‘I have something I would like you to look at, Frau Erlichmann. Something written in what I take to be old German script. I cannot come near to translating it myself. I was hoping you might help?’ He held up the letter.
Frau Erlichmann fixed Hart with her gaze. It was impossible to tell what she could see and what she couldn’t. How much of his facial expression she could make out, and how much of it faded away into the woodwork behind him. ‘You should pass it on to your woman friend – the one you were involved with before you met the Rache girl – and not to me. She will arrange to have this done for you far better than I. And it will please her to do it. Of this I am sure.’
Hart hid his discomposure with a shrug. ‘I’ve done that. She’s photographed it from every angle. She’ll have already sent a copy back to England to be investigated and verified. Watermarks and so forth. But all that takes time.’ Hart took a deep breath. ‘I need to know what it says now, Frau Erlichmann. For myself. Before I return to Haus Walküre tonight. Before I put the original back in Effi Rache’s strongbox.’
Frau Erlichmann looked at Hart for a long time. ‘Will I really wish to see this letter, young man?’
Hart shook his head. ‘Probably not. I will fully understand if you refuse my request.’
The old lady held out her hand. Hart handed her the sheet. She raised the glasses that hung around her neck and held them to her eyes. ‘I see badly today. I can make out nothing. This is impossible.’ The hand holding the letter began to shake. Frau Erlichmann offered the letter back to Hart.
Hart stood up. He could see from across the table that Frau Erlichmann’s glasses were thickly encrusted with egg white, flour, icing sugar, and whatever else she had been baking with that morning. ‘Please. May I?’ He lifted the glasses gently from around her neck, spat on them, and cleaned them vigorously with his handkerchief. ‘Now. Please. Try again. I’m very sorry to have to ask this of you, but it may be important.’
Frau Erlichmann gave a long, succussive sigh. If Hart had heard the sound coming from inside a locked room, he might have been fooled into thinking it was sexual. But the expression on Frau Erlichmann’s face was gaunt, not ecstatic. She looked like a woman who has just happened on a massacre. ‘I recognize the signature, John. That much goes without saying. In fact, I recognized it even before you cleaned my glasses for me. It is burnt into my memory like a brand. I saw it printed on a thousand official documents and proclamations.’
‘This is the real thing, though. Not a simulacrum.’
‘Are you sure of this?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘And the date is?’ Frau Erlichmann held the letter very close to her face. ‘The lettering is far too small for me to read.’
The movement Frau Erlichmann made echoed that made by the bearded man in Syria when he was trying to read Amira’s press pass. Hart froze in the act of raising his finger to the page. For a split second the train of events that had led him to this precise moment threatened to overwhelm him.
‘The letter is dated the twenty-ninth of April 1945. The day before Adolf Hitler committed suicide.’
‘And sent to?’
Hart hesitated. This was the part he had been dreading. ‘Your neighbour. Heinrich Rache.’
Frau Erlichmann closed her eyes. The hand holding the letter drifted towards the table. She took off her glasses. ‘It is nearly seventy years since my parents were murdered. But when I hear the name of the man who denounced them, it still turns my heart to stone. The pain is almost too much to bear.’
‘I am sorry to ask this of you, but I have no one else. No one to turn to. You must see that.’
Frau Erlichmann smiled. She patted Hart’s hand. Her skin had the colour and consistency of aged vellum. ‘Yes. I do see it. And you need not be sorry, John. I am the right person to ask.’ She hitched her shoulders. Then she threw back her head and took a succession of deep breaths, followed by a series of shallow breaths like a woman in labour. When she opened her eyes again, her face was calm. Reconfigured. ‘Forgive me. I had a brief moment of cowardice after you mentioned that name. A moment in which I remembered the power such people used to have over us. It frightened me a little. I had thought I was beyond all that.’ She settled the glasses more firmly on her nose and raised the letter so that it was about six inches from her face. ‘There is a magnifying glass on my desk out in the lobby. Will you fetch it for me, please?’
Hart hurried out. He returned a moment later with the magnifying glass and placed it in Frau Erlichmann’s hand.
‘This is better. Much better.’ Frau Erlichmann’s head began to move with the action of reading. ‘Yes. Modern-day Germans will have difficulty with this script. But I grew up writing like this. Even though Fraktur was replaced by Antiqua in 1941, it was already too late for me to change. I was taught Kurrent at school. Although they called it Sütterlin by that time.’
‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’
‘I am speaking of the old Gothic script. The script we Germans have been using, without problem, since the sixteenth century. Hitler despised it. He called it un-modern. So the Nazis banned all black letter writing in 1941. Martin Bormann called it Schwabacher Judenlettern – Jewish letters Schwabach-style. From that moment on we were all to use Normalschrift – what you would call “normal script”. And yet here, in this letter, we see Adolf Hitler returning to the sort of lettering he would have been taught as a child in Austria.’ Frau Erlichmann allowed the magnifying glass to fall away. ‘Don’t you see, John? The man who wrote this was frightened, sick and angry. And he was reverting to old childhood mannerisms in an instinctive search for comfort.’ She sat back on her chair. ‘It pleases me very much to see how he was suffering. I am Evangelisch. What born Catholics like Hitler would term a Lutheran. We believe in a doctrine of justification. “By grace alo
ne through faith alone because of Christ alone. Sola Gratia. Sola Fide. Solus Christus.” We also believe in heaven and hell. I hope this man is rotting in hell because of the torment he inflicted on millions of innocent people.’
Hart waited. There were times to talk and times to remain silent. This much he knew.
Frau Erlichmann drew the letter back towards her eyes. She slid the magnifying glass across its surface like a cursor. Slowly, in a surprisingly strong voice, she began to read.
Dear Heinrich,
This is a sad day for Germany. But all is not lost. Though we seem beaten now, like the Phoenix and the Salamander, we will arise from the ashes of our defeat. I am sending you a package from Berlin through my emissary, Colonel von Hartelius. If you receive it directly from his hand, you will know that it comes from me. By the time you read this note I shall be dead. But this should be of no concern to you. What must concern you is this. My scientists at Raubkammer have devised a new nerve gas. It is a mutant variation of Tabun and Sarin. Petscher writes to me that he has force-tested it on human guinea pigs at the Truppenhubuensplatz and it has proved itself to be infinitely more powerful than Trilon 83 and Trilon 146. And far more concentrated. He calls it Trilon 380. The process can be made into a jelly. In two separate sections. If kept apart, the jelly is harmless. The microbes will not multiply. If mixed, and subsequently waterborne, it becomes pathologically lethal within six hours. You know that until now I have always resisted using chemical warfare. This is due to my temporary blinding by a British mustard gas attack on the Ypres Salient on the 14 October 1918. To my eternal shame I only heard of Germany’s false defeat whilst recovering at Pasewalk Hospital. Later, I vowed never to use such stuffs on the battlefield. I now believe that the rape of our country by the Russian hordes negates this vow. You will receive both the Holy Lance and the new formula for Trilon 380 alongside this letter. Use both in any way that you see fit. You have a chemical factory. You know where to find our buried stock of Trilon 83 and Trilon 146. Being a chemist yourself you will understand, thanks to this new formula, how to distil and concentrate these two entities into Trilon 380. You still have access to planes and to the men who can fly them. The ability to turn this war around is now in your hands, Heini. This letter is my final Führer command to you. If the actions you are forced to take mean the destruction of our own people alongside the enemy, you must do this. DO NOT HESITATE. I am dying for Germany; why should not they? It will be a sacrifice worth making. The Reich is doomed. Let us take our aggressors down with us. Let Frederick Barbarossa finally awake from his long sleep in the Kyffhaüser Mountains. Let the ravens fly again! My greetings to your beautiful wife Elfriede and to your little Hansi.
The Templar Prophecy Page 19
