Berlin Blind

by Alan Scholefield

  He picked up his Tyrolean hat. ‘Just one - ’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just look at this. I have come a long way to see you.’

  Spencer took the fourth photograph. It was blurred and seemed to have been taken with a telephoto at extreme range. It showed a man in a street about to enter the doorway of a building. It was winter, for he was wearing a heavy leather coat with a fur collar. He was a large man with thinning light hair, the ends of which had been brushed sideways over his scalp to hide his bald patch. Although his body was turning away from the camera his face was full and it seemed he was either looking down the street to see if he was being followed, or else had spotted the photographer. Spencer knew he was looking at a photograph of Bruno Gutmann.

  ‘Let me tell you something about this man before you answer,’ Hoest said. ‘In Germany we have two kinds of terrorism. You may call one political terrorism and the other criminal terrorism. You must have heard of the Baader-Meinhoff gang: Gudrun Enslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, Holger Meins, Irmgrad Moller...’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘These are political terrorists who bum stores and rob banks and kill people to make a more beautiful world. And they are helped all over Germany by what we call there the schili: what you perhaps call the chic Left. Middle-class left-wing people with money who want the thrill of associating with terrorists.

  ‘They have supplied a network of couriers and safe-houses all over Germany where the terrorists can hide. They also supply them with money, clothes, cars. Naturally this makes our job very difficult. Now say to yourself, Herr Spencer: what if ordinary criminals could be looked after by such a group of people? They, too, rob banks and kill people but they have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Would it not be nice if a whole section of the population sympathized with them and hid them and looked after them and gave them money and cars. Heaven, not so? The promised land! Well, that is what this man thought. As long ago as 1969 he organized the bombing of a store in Cologne and killed six people. It gave him credibleness — is that the word?’

  ‘Credibility.’

  ‘Ja. Credibility as a terrorist among the schili. In 1972 in Hanover he burnt another store. This time three people were dead. His gang has robbed banks in Hamburg, Dortmund and Munich and possibly Bremen, but we are not sure. We think four, we are sure of three. And in these robberies two people were shot dead. You see, we have known about this man — he uses many names now — for a long time.’

  ‘You’re going too fast,’ Spencer said. ‘You mean he’s not a political terrorist. That he bombed and killed - ’

  ‘So that it would appear so. To give himself a terrorist background,’ Hoest said. ‘This is not so strange. Many young people start off by being “political”. They rob and kill, they claim, for “political” reasons. But then they become used to it. They become used to having money they did not earn, of riding in Mercedes cars they did not buy. It is corrupting, ja! We know it has happened in Germany and in Italy and France too. Many of the kidnap gangs started out as “politicals”. Now it is their way of life.’

  ‘And this man is a criminal?’ Spencer said, indicating the picture.

  Turely criminal. We know very little about him. We know that before he operated in the West he was in the Eastern zone and we know he spent some years in the early sixties in England.

  ‘For a long time his gang did what they liked. When they robbed, some of the schili took them in, hid them, moved them, looked after them. In such circumstances it is almost impossible to trace them. But then, about four months ago we had some luck.

  ‘For a long time we had been trying to infiltrate our people into the terrorist underground. One of them made contact with this man. He spent nearly two months with the group, but they discovered who he was and they killed him. They killed him here in your house, Herr Spencer.’

  ‘Riemeck?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘But what was he doing in England?’

  ‘Checking on this man.’ He tapped the picture.

  ‘And why did they torture him?’

  ‘We think to find out what he had already passed on about them.’

  ‘Had he passed on anything?’

  ‘Very little. He was only beginning to gain their confidence. You see, what we really wanted to know was where their headquarters are. Most of the time they are living somewhere ordinary, spending their money, having a good time. Then they rob a bank and for months they are in hiding. If we knew where their base was we would have a chance of catching them. Do you understand?’

  Spencer said nothing.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Hoest said. ‘You have become mixed up in something very complex. I want to warn you that anything can happen. Just as it happened here in this house. I don’t want to open the trunk of a car one day and see your dead body. Now, look closely at the photograph.’

  Spencer looked and then shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’

  That night he lay awake for a long time. What did it amount to? They had found the collar patch in the Volkswagen but there was nothing to connect him with that since he had long ago destroyed the other one. It must have been identified in Berlin; no ordinary person — and that included the German police — would have been familiar with so recondite an organization as the British Free Corps. After it had been identified, Hoest had done some research on the whole question of the Free Corps. Hoest knew, because Spencer had told both the British and German police, that he had been a prisoner of war in Germany. Spencer had not mentioned Berlin. But Hoest knew he had been sent there? Would he be digging in Berlin?

  If he had told Hoest the whole truth the German police would have had a reasonable chance of finding Bruno but even as he considered such a thing his body twisted and turned in protest. His whole life had been devoted to keeping the secret, to blotting it out, living as though it had never happened. He had never mentioned it to Margaret and sometimes he wondered if that was the reason, when their family was wiped out, they had nothing left to give each other. Had he built a wall around himself to hide behind? And he had never told Sue. Being so much younger she was doubly or trebly removed from the meaning of his action, but his shame had always held him back. And this was why he had to deal with Bruno; there was no one else who could help him and when one finally worked things out, everything came back to Bruno.

  *

  ‘Not the entire German Army, not the whole of the Reich, not the Fiihrer himself knows what to do with him!’ Bruno said, laughing. ‘We can overcome the world, but what to do with John Spencer?’

  ‘I’m sure it cannot be so difficult as that,’ Mrs Gutmann said. ‘You always exaggerate.’

  The year was 1944, the place was a house in Graf Speestrasse, just off the Tiergarten in Berlin. It was a much grander house than any Spencer had been in before, even though some of the walls were cracked and wooden beams held up the ceiling.

  ‘From the bombs,’ Bruno explained.

  ‘Your British bombs,’ Mrs Gutmann said, severely.

  ‘Not his any more, mother, he’s one of us now.’ He caught Spencer by the arm and took him to the window. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘They cannot hit us.’ A house across from the Gutmanns’ villa was a pile of rubble, others had been damaged and trees more or less severely splintered. Spencer turned back into the room. It was on the ground floor of the house, large and well-proportioned, and if it hadn’t been for the baulks of timber shoring up the moulded ceiling, it would have been elegant. It was packed with furniture, heavy black oak chairs and cupboards, three clocks, one a long-case, the others wall clocks, one of which was inlaid with mother-of-pearl; heavy maroon velvet black-out curtains. By the door stood a bucket of sand, one of water, and a stirrup-pump. Around the walls were heavily framed portraits in the Van Dyck manner. After he had been in the house a few days he learnt why this room was so packed. A bomb, which had demolished one of the nearby houses, had made the dining-room unsafe so all its furniture had been brought into the drawing-
room.

  ‘Take him up and show him his sleeping place,’ Mrs Gut-mann said.

  ‘Come on, Johnnie,’ Bruno said, ‘follow me.’ He bounded up the stairs. ‘We’re sharing, isn’t it?’ he said, as they reached the landing. His English was good but Spencer noticed every now and then he used a phrase which didn’t fit.

  It was a fair-sized bedroom with two beds, a dressing-table, chest-of-drawers, an old-fashioned wash-stand with basin and jug, and an enormous double wardrobe. One wall was dominated by a lithograph of Hitler framed by two Nazi flags. There was a cluster of photographs on another wall grouped around a second portrait. To Spencer the face was almost as familiar as that of Hider. A similar portrait had hung on the wall of their sitting-room in Bromley.

  Bruno pointed at the second portrait. ‘You know who that is?’

  Spencer nodded. ‘Sir Oswald Mosley.’

  ‘Ahh...’

  ‘We had one like it. My father is a Blackshirt.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘He used to march in the East End of London.’

  ‘That’s incredible! You really are one of us! Look, that’s my father there.’ He pointed to a photograph of a British Union of Fascists East End rally. Mosley, in his black shirt and arm-band, was talking into a microphone. Bruno indicated a figure seated on the platform to his left. ‘My father, Lionel Boyse. That’s my real name: Boyse. But we have taken my mother’s family name now. My father was on the executive. Just think, your father and my father might have been in the same crowd.’

  As they looked at the photographs he put his arm around Spencer’s shoulder. ‘You’ll like it here, Johnnie. You’re safe now.’

  Spencer said nothing. He was somewhat confused by his own motives. He had hated the fascist movement in Britain and had been ashamed of his father. Now he was identifying with them. He could not rationalize his position — sixteen was too young — he only knew that the fear and despair of the past five months were beginning to fade.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ Bruno said. ‘Sit down. Sit on the bed. Your bed.’ He reached up on to the top of the great wardrobe, pulled down a square flat cardboard box and opened it. Spencer could see a field-grey uniform jacket. Bruno began to put it on. Spencer sat on his own bed — so different from the hard bunk of boards which he had been used to — next to his small parcel of belongings which were all that had been saved when the ship went down, and watched.

  Bruno, Spencer was later to learn, was nineteen years old, three years older than he, and was large, fair-haired, pinkskinned and somewhat plump. He had blond eye-brows and pale blue eyes and in some lights this gave him almost a sinister appearance. His hands, as he did up the buttons, were delicate and chubby. When he had finished he looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror and turned, very slowly.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he said. ‘Waffen SS uniform but you see they’ve taken all the insignia off. Now look.’ He pulled from one pocket a Union Jack armband and slipped it on. ‘And these go here,’ he said. He took out two patches and held them up to his collar, where they would eventually be sewn. It was the first time Spencer had ever seen the patches with the three heraldic leopards. ‘You’ll have a uniform, too, Johnnie, we must see to it. Oh. And here. On the cuff. This must be sewn on the cuff.’ He held up another patch. This had gothic lettering on it which read: BRITISH FREE CORPS.

  ‘There are Norwegian, Dutch, French, Swedish, even Spanish units. Now we’re going to have a British one to fight the Russians. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To fight the Russians?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re all brothers, you know. The Germans and us. I think of myself as an Englishman really. Why should we be fighting each other? The Führer has always said he cannot understand why Britain and Germany should be at war when the common enemy is Russia.’

  ‘Bruno!’ The call came from downstairs.

  ‘You want to wash your hands?’ Bruno said. ‘Then we will eat.’

  They ate in the kitchen at the rear of the house and here, too, if he looked from the window, Spencer could see the piles of rubble where the bombs had hit. They ate a cabbage soup with dumplings; he could taste occasional minute pieces of meat and after what he had been used to it was like a banquet. Mrs Gut-mann followed his eyes to the window. ‘We are next,’ she said. ‘They bomb us every night, your people. How can we escape?’

  ‘Not his people, mother,’ Bruno burst out. ‘I told you he’s one of us. His father is a Blackshirt. He may even have known Daddy.’ Mrs Gutmann was a female version of Bruno, slightly above medium height and big-boned, with flaxen hair and a broad pink face with high cheek bones.

  ‘Did you go to the rallies?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘I did,’ Bruno said. ‘On my father’s shoulder.’

  ‘My father went,’ Spencer said, remembering the short angry man who would come home on a winter Saturday evening, with his clothes torn, sometimes with livid weals on his face.

  ‘My husband was political,’ Mrs Gutmann said.

  ‘Sir Oswald Mosley was the natural leader of England,’ Bruno said. ‘There would have been none of this,’ he waved his hand to indicate the war, ‘if he had been in charge.’

  A tall and rather stooping man came down the stairs and into the kitchen. He looked at Bruno, smiled and raised his hand and said, ‘Heil Hitler!’

  ‘Don’t be funny,’ Bruno said. ‘You can get into trouble for that.’ A look which Spencer had not seen before crossed his face: it was petulant and vicious.

  ‘The uniform, Bruno. I was saluting the uniform. Isn’t that why you dress up?’

  ‘He’s always dressing up,’ Mrs Gutmann said. ‘This is another one.’ She indicated Spencer.

  ‘You’ve come to fight the Russians too, have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ the man said, taking his place at the table. Though the expression was mocking, his eyes were not unkind. But Spencer felt uncomfortable.

  ‘This is Mr Lange,’ Bruno said. ‘He comes from Africa.’

  ‘Where did you spring from?’ Lange said to Spencer, as he began his soup.

  Before he could answer, Bruno said, ‘He’s only sixteen and already he’s been torpedoed, isn’t it, Johnnie?’

  He made Spencer seem almost glamorous: the torpedoing on the North Atlantic convoy, sole survivor of his ship, picked up by the U-boat that had done the damage. The weeks aboard the Heide, then the months in the camp near Bremerhaven. It had sounded romantic the way he told it. As Spencer listened it was as though Bruno was describing someone else: a young Siegfried, perhaps, gone out to conquer the world.

  The frugal meal came to an end. Lange said, ‘And how many of you gallant Britishers have joined this... what’s it called? Free Corps?’

  Mrs Gutmann said: ‘Always dressing up. How he expects me to keep up with the washing and ironing I can’t tell. Hours in front of the mirror up there in his room; first his father’s old uniform from England, now this one.’

  ‘Well, I must say I feel relieved that when the Russians break through the eastern perimeter Mr Spencer here will be at the barricades,’ Lange said.

  ‘The Russians will never break through,’ Bruno said. ‘Never. The Führer has said there are weapons that will...’

  ‘Ah, the secret weapons,’ Lange said. ‘They are going to bring England to her knees. I wonder whose bombs these are that keep falling on our heads.’ He finished his meal and opened a small bottle of pills.

  ‘I’ll get your water, Norbert,’ Mrs Gutmann said, going to the tap. ‘How is your stomach today?’

  ‘Much better now that I know I’ll be safe.’

  ‘You’re being very funny,’ Bruno said. ‘I’m warning you, you can get into trouble for saying things like this.’ He was staring angrily at Lange. There was a sudden silence. Even Lange looked uncomfortable. He threw two white pills into the back of his mouth and drank some water. Then he rose and left the table.

  Spencer neve
r got to know Lange very well. He saw him at meal times, which they always took in the kitchen, and sometimes on the stairs or coming out of the bathroom. But slowly he put together his biography. He knew that Lange worked in the Rundfunk editing copy that went out on the English Broadcast Service. He knew that he came from the old German colony of South-West Africa, that he had been lecturing at a University in Germany when war broke out, and that he boarded with Mrs Gutmann just as he, Spencer, boarded there, except that Spencer’s fees were being paid by the Foreign Office. And though it was clear that Mrs Gutmann was several years older than Lange, it was also clear that she had her eye on him.

  After that first meal Bruno took him for a walk. He had seen some of the bombing around the Zoo Station on his arrival that morning but had been too confused to take it in. Now, as they walked along the edge of the Tiergarten, down towards the canal and into Kurfurstenstrasse, he could see the devastation. Whole streets seemed to lie in ruins. In the Wittenbergplatz they found an old man circling a letterbox trying to insert his letter.

  ‘You cannot do it,’ Bruno said to him.

  ‘What? Can’t post a letter? You’re mad!’

  Bruno shrugged and the two walked on. ‘They closed the post boxes to save petrol collecting the mail. A good thing, too, it doesn’t hurt anyone to walk to the post office. Leave the old fool, he knows so much.’

  They turned and began to walk back towards Graf Spee-strasse. Bruno was in his uniform and drew curious and sometimes admiring glances. He carried himself very straight.

  ‘Don’t let Lange upset you,’ he said. ‘The Führer has said that next month the Allies will suffer the greatest defeat in their history.’ The streets were getting dark now and they were walking along the deserted banks of the canal. Bruno took Spencer’s arm. ‘The Führer has said there is a new secret weapon so powerful that England will be plunged into chaos. She will not be able to emerge without Germany’s help. Then in April next year we will use our whole strength against Russia. In fifteen months she will be in our hands. We will eradicate Communism and clear out the Jews. In the summer of 1946 German U-boats will be equipped with a new secret weapon that will destroy the British and American navies. By September Japan will rule China, Australia and South East Asia and under German leadership, Europe will enter a new era.’