by Vic Robbie
‘I wish I could help, Alena.’ He glanced at his papers and paused before adding: ‘But there’s nothing I can do.’ Pleased with himself, he played at blowing a couple of smoke rings. ‘Many people were caught up in underhand things during the war. That’s all over now. It’s best to forget all that nonsense.’
‘We need help. Our lives are in danger. We’ve no one else to turn to.’
With an insincere expression of concern, he sat upright. ‘Please, listen to me, we’re not who you think we are. But if it helps, tell me.’
She recounted the Germans’ arrival in Shetland and that they intended to take Freddie.
‘Why in heaven’s sake would so-called Nazi agents go all the way there just to kidnap your son?’
‘Afraid I can’t say. You work for SIS, you should know. If you don’t, the information is confidential.’
For what seemed minutes, he studied her, and the sound of street traffic drifted up. ‘I think you’re over-egging the pudding. You’ve been on a remote island for a few years. Not used to seeing strangers, so you put two and two together...’ He nodded, wanting her to accept his reasoning.
‘They’re assassins,’ she said, and he noticed a hardening that almost spoiled a beautiful face. ‘I had been expecting them for years.’
‘These days we’re all wary of Johnny Foreigner. Hearing an unfamiliar accent and thinking the worst. Natural, I suppose.’
‘Didn’t hear their accents.’
‘So there, just imagining it.’
‘They were Nazis. I lived with them for longer than I cared.’
‘Quite, quite.’ He consulted his wristwatch. ‘Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll ask around in case anyone knows of this Smee chap. In the meantime, go to the police. They will sort everything out.’
‘They can’t.’
He smiled as though she had validated his point. ‘Where can I contact you? If I learn anything, I’ll be in touch.’
In exasperation, Alena scribbled the address of the hotel, although the only suggestion it was a hotel was the sign hanging over the entrance. This may be MI6, but they were not going to give her any help.
The realisation she was alone and defenceless hit her hard. It added to her fatigue, and for the first time she couldn’t fight back. She needed to return to her room to sleep. Perhaps when she awoke, she might be able to rationalise the problems mounting around them.
‘Sorry couldn’t be of more help.’ He appeared apologetic and shook her hand at the door and ruffled Freddie’s hair. ‘I’m sure everything will sort itself out,’ he said, relieved to be rid of them.
On the way out, the receptionist gave her a wry smile. He didn’t believe she had a chance either.
Outside, the sun made the pavements steam and as people bustled about, getting on with their lives, she felt she had stepped into a different world, and what they had endured was of no significance.
Bartley put his feet up on the desk and lit another cigarette and puffed on it until smoke wreathed his face. He stretched in his chair and screwed up the yellow sheet of paper on which Alena had written the reason for her visit. He placed it in his trouser pocket. Didn’t want to leave incriminating evidence lying where anyone could find it.
He opened the file again and read the report from Lerwick and tutted. He hated loose ends, but he could settle this to his benefit.
A rap on the door brought him back to the present, and a head with black curls clinging like mussels to a rock poked around. ‘Go as expected?’
‘More or less, but if she goes to the coppers, we must stop her.’
‘Would have been useful to have had Pickering’s take on this.’
‘Impossible,’ Bartley said. ‘At the moment, he is nowhere to be found.’
9
Argentina
The estancia lay just over an hour’s drive from Buenos Aires past Belén de Escobar. Beyond the town, they turned off the Ruta Nacional 9, which starts on Avenida General Paz in Argentina’s capital and runs more than a thousand miles to the border with Bolivia, and took a narrower, rougher road towards the Paraná River. They drove alongside the brown waters for almost a mile before police stopped them at a checkpoint. To put Harald Klein at his ease, the driver turned with a smile. ‘No se preocupe,’ he said, waving a hand to show everything was okay.
The police also smiled, and relief flowed through him. Although he had visited before, he did not trust the cops who always made him nervous. Another wearing sunglasses fired up his motorcycle and escorted them up the road for another half a mile until they came to a gate in a high wire fence. On the other side, two surly guards got up from their seats and opened it. Glancing in the car, they exchanged words with the driver and waved them through.
From here, the estancia couldn’t be seen as the drive wound up a slight incline and through a grove of pear trees, their white flowers welcoming, before it dipped into a valley. The main house was impressive and sat behind the calm waters of a sizeable lake that mirrored the trees bordering it. The one-storey building of European design dominated the landscape and its ochre brickwork and red-tiled roof didn’t look out of place. A veranda with a series of arches ran its width and, to the left, was a cluster of outhouses. At one time the property’s lands stretched for miles with gauchos tending herds of cattle. Then they switched to breeding polo ponies, and there had been at least two fields, and every year they hosted a tournament in which the best players in Argentina and from elsewhere in the world participated. Even the Prince of Wales attended during a State visit before the war.
That stopped when the new occupants arrived as did the number of visitors although occasionally black limousines with motorcycle outriders drove down the road to the house, carrying members of the government. The staff, mostly from the Japanese section of the town, were bussed in as needed. The present occupants were thought to be German, but the locals could not be sure.
At the back of the house, men with carbines patrolled the high wire fence that was much closer to the buildings, perhaps fifty yards away. Security was important. The country’s rulers protected them, but there was always the threat of agents from overseas penetrating the compound.
As he neared the house, his muscles tensed as if about to pop through his skin. And he was already counting the hours until he could leave.
After he had lost his tail in New York, he had made the usual checks to make sure no one else had followed him and only when satisfied had he left Buenos Aires for the estancia.
They directed his car to a parking area at the side of the house, and two men took away his briefcase and searched him. They were polite, but they were not the kind to antagonise. Another led him through the building, cooled by large overhead fans, into an enclosed courtyard open to the sky. Ten men sat at a long table finishing lunch. At the head, the host stood up with a smile of welcome as he entered, but he knew that countenance could change in an instant.
‘Willkommen, kamerad,’ the host said. ‘I trust your journey was uneventful.’ Tanned and looking as if on vacation, he wore a short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck so that tufts of grey chest hair protruded. But his thin lips and piercing eyes bored into him as a reminder that you underestimated this man at your peril. Every word had to be presented with care as he would use it against him. Even out of uniform, he was formidable. Klein knew of his methods and felt a knot of fear in his gut each time they met. He recognised most of the men around the table, former SS officers of high rank who had used the ODESSA ratlines to escape to South America. On the host’s left sat a man who made the others nervous even though they had been involved in many of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. His work was the stuff of nightmares that not even the most hard-bitten could stomach. Dr Josef Mengele watched him as he would one of his laboratory rats, and his skin crawled as images of his experiments, on twins, in particular, flashed through his mind. At least, Klein thought, he had blue, grey eyes.
Mengele didn’t speak, picking the remains of a l
arge sábalo from his teeth and washing it down with the local torrontés white wine. Unlike most of the others in the organisation, he continued to use his name in the arrogant belief he was beyond the reach of those who would punish him for his war crimes. To the host’s right, a man with a pointed chin and a small moustache and duelling scars that traversed his left cheek observed the gathering. When the host wanted something done, he arranged it. He was the one Klein admired most. Wilfried Steinling was reputed to be a favourite of the Führer’s and a war hero having been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves for outstanding bravery behind enemy lines. A tall man at well over six feet, he had many contacts in the Argentinian hierarchy and was said to be close to the dictator’s wife, Eva Perón. The others followed orders depending on whoever was in charge.
As he stood, rolling his Panama hat between his fingers, they all studied him. He swallowed hard and ran a hand over his face, wiping sweat from a nose broken once too often. He accepted the waiter’s offer to guide him to a seat at the far end of the table, and they turned to watch him.
‘You all know Klein,’ the host said as though he were a neighbour visiting for lunch. ‘Our head of operations in England.’
They acknowledged him, their gazes not leaving his face and waited, eager to hear his report.
He got to his feet, clicked his heels and gave the salute. ‘Heil, Hitler.’
‘Okay, okay,’ the host said, waving a hand. ‘No need of that here.’ To many in Argentina, he was ordinary Henry Miller, a wealthy manufacturer and landowner who had fled Austria before the outbreak of war. The assembled knew him as Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo and the highest-ranking Nazi to have eluded the clutches of the Allies. ‘There will be a time for that.’
The men at the table murmured their assent.
Müller’s intimidating stare swept the group, and he added with a tight-lipped sneer: ‘We’re just expatriates retiring in the sunshine.’
Someone laughed, but he silenced it. ‘We must not waste time. I will study your papers, Klein, and we will discuss them in detail, but first, tell me what news of Projekt Wunderkind?’ He resumed his seat, gesturing for him to proceed.
Klein gathered himself. ‘We have at last identified the location of the subject.’
Irritated that it wasn’t more, Müller glowered at him. ‘No need to talk in code, we are friends here.’
He glanced at those around the table who, relieved of the necessity to look good in uniform, had let their middle-aged paunches expand and wondered if they were friends. True, they were all Germans. Nazis who had found exile in Argentina. However, their devotion to the cause was different by degrees. Some were content to save their skins and live out their lives. Others, more fanatical, wanted to continue the fight. He cleared his throat and continued: ‘We have found the woman and the boy.’
It puzzled Müller. ‘I have never understood why the British did not exploit their potential.’ He waved a hand as though swatting a fly. ‘Never mind. Continue.’
‘I sent two men to the island.’
‘Which island?’
‘Shetland.’
‘Only two men?’ Müller played with a bread knife, slicing cheese into thin strips.
‘More than two might have aroused suspicion,’ he said and began to doubt himself. ‘And they are two of my best.’
‘Gut, it is your responsibility. Continue.’
‘The boy is staying at a croft with his mother.’
‘What?’ Mengele asked.
‘A farm, a small holding.’
‘Ah.’ Satisfied, he turned away and crossed his legs.
‘There are no guards?’ Müller asked.
‘A couple live with them, but they are simple people. They should present no problems.’
‘The woman, Alena?’
‘The Führer’s huan.’ Another diner sniggered.
Angry that his colleague had referred to her as a bitch, Müller silenced him with a scowl. ‘When will we know?’
‘I’ve instructed my people to cable me as soon as they succeed.’
Although basking in the warm afternoon sunlight, Müller’s smile chilled him to the bone. It was impossible to tell whether he was satisfied or pleased that he had discovered something he could use against him later. ‘You have had a long journey, kamerad. We will talk, but first, you should eat and then rest. There is much work to do.’
If Klein’s men succeeded, the plan could be put into action. Müller allowed himself a swig of his torrontés, and it tasted all the sweeter.
‘Why is the boy so important?’ A voice silenced the buzz of conversation. ‘Surely kidnapping him alerts the Allies to our existence.’
He studied the speaker. He had always doubted his compatriot’s support for the project. ‘That is the risk we must take to achieve our goal. That some of us escaped Germany is no secret. The Americans gave our escape plan the codename ODESSA and they and the British and French are looking for us as we speak and could well have pinpointed our location. Even those dirty bastard Juden.’ He spat out the words as if he had swallowed a fly. ‘We must continue with our quest. The Führer’s dream lives on in us all. It is our duty to see it does not wither and die.’
‘But we lost the war.’ The speaker, a man with a shock of white hair, regretted the words as soon as he uttered them.
‘Not the war, just a battle.’ Müller turned, his face contorted, struggling to contain his anger. ‘Our beliefs as Nazis do not disappear because we lost. We will always believe in the future of the Aryan race. We are superior in every way, and we must prevail for the sake of civilisation. The flame still burns. It is a case of regrouping to channel our interests in a different direction. Many millions support us, and they need a leader to follow.’
One diner shouted ‘Heil, Hitler’, hoping to end the discussion.
But the white-haired man persisted. ‘He is only a boy; how can he lead us? He may not want to play your game.’
‘Enough,’ Müller answered. ‘Whether the boy is with us or not is immaterial. As long as we have him, we can manipulate him as we wish. The movement will have a new figurehead, but we will pull his strings.’
‘Or you will,’ Mengele added with a smirk that suggested a compliment rather than an accusation. ‘But what of these rumours that the Führer is not dead?’ he added, trying to change the subject.
There was a collective snort of disbelief.
‘Nonsense,’ Müller said and waved a dismissive hand. ‘The Russians dug up skeletons at the bunker in Berlin. As everyone knows, those were the remains of the Führer and Eva Braun.’
‘Some in French Intelligence don’t believe that,’ Mengele persisted.
Müller frowned. He dare not put him down as he had the others. ‘The conspiracies of war. One of their operatives wants to promote that story because it provides support for her continued efforts to track us down. Many in Europe have lost their appetite for finding a few old German generals, but if they thought the Führer was alive, it would be a different matter. It is nonsense. Do not forget; I found their bodies. I can assure you these claims are just make-believe.’
‘You know this woman?’ Mengele asked.
Irritated that he was continuing with this subject, Müller answered: ‘No one is taking this black hure seriously, least of all her superiors. Her father died in the war. She wants revenge.’
‘All French pigs deserve to die,’ the white-haired man said and the others agreed.
‘Talk like this still throws the spotlight on us,’ interjected Steinling who had remained silent throughout. ‘Perhaps we should arrange an accident.’
His lack of judgement disappointed Müller. ‘If she died in suspicious circumstances that would only strengthen her claims and draw more attention to us.’
‘What about Alena?’ Mengele asked. ‘Her disappearance might also affect us.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Klein spoke up, and they turned to him. ‘It will look as if she a
nd her child left of their own free will. Our contact in British Intelligence says they are no longer protecting her and this will make it easier for our men.’
Steinling appeared dubious. ‘I cannot understand that this asset, once regarded by MI6 as of vital importance, is now of no interest to them.’ He shook his head. ‘It makes little sense. Is the woman useful?’
‘Apart from helping to convince Freddie to behave himself, she is expendable.’
‘Sir,’ a man stepped out onto the terrace and bustled up to Müller with an anxious expression. ‘My apologies for interrupting you, gentlemen.’ He glanced around the gathering as if expecting them to bite. ‘We have discovered an intruder in the grounds.’
10
Paris
The city was the same but different. The cafés on the Champs des Elysées once again thrummed to people talking loud and laughing with the forced gaiety of mourners at a wake. Relieved to have survived, yet scarred by encounters with the invaders. Like dust, a veneer of distrust and shame still covered Paris. The occupiers had been driven out, but the pain of four years of oppression lingered, and the survivors accepted the city could never belong to them again. The faces of those who had endured starvation under German rule were no longer gaunt but, like animals freed from a cage, their eyes were still suspicious of freedom.
She sat at a café, sipping a Pernod and observing Parisians attempting to restore normality to their lives that would take more than a lifetime to achieve. Spring had come late, and the scent of the horse chestnut trees with their white flowers in full bloom mingled with the aroma of coffee. It gave her a false sense of security, reminding her of childhood. But there could be no going back. The conflict had moulded her into a person she didn’t wish to be. Once the danger had passed, people became brave enough to judge, forgetting that war turned some into monsters, capable of abhorrent acts to survive. War degrades everyone, good and evil alike, so they will never feel clean again. She was tired of battles, fatigued by slaughter, weary of living. What you did stayed with you until death. Now there were recriminations, and those whom the Germans had coerced into helping them were answering to fellow citizens.
