The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “I can’t—I have to meet my father. Family business.” Making plans to kill the Fuehrer.

  “Helmut—” Her tone softened, she sounded afraid. “I don’t want to have an abortion.”

  More family business: killing a foetus. “Are you a Catholic?” She shook her head. “Do you want the baby?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, I think I might.” The handkerchief was just a handful of shreds now. “Oh, I don’t know!”

  He put his arms round her and she began to sob. The set was dark now, but he could see some of the crew looking at them from the other end of the sound stage. Karl Braun was pacing up and down and he knew that in a moment the shrill petulant call would come. It did: “Helmut, do you mind? We’ll call off the rest of the day’s shooting if it’s important to you and little Fräulein Hayes—”

  Helmut waved that he was coming, kissed Melissa on top of her head. “I should be home by eleven. Here’s a second key to my flat. Let yourself in and wait for me.”

  “Helmut—” She made the mistake of a woman truly in love with a man she isn’t sure of: “I’ll do anything you say. If you don’t want me to have the baby—”

  “We’ll talk about it tonight.”

  He got through the rest of the day only because he was a professional; there are bonuses besides money to knowing one’s trade. When he left the studio at six-thirty he felt like a man who hadn’t slept for 48 hours or more. He was not unaccustomed to responsibilities; he had worked as chief cameraman on too many films to have dodged those. But he had had no personal responsibilities; it occurred to him only now that he had led a charmed life. Everything had been so easy: the only child of a rich, distinguished father; a smooth, almost too-smooth career in films; girls who had been in love with him but never troublesome . . . He drove back to the city in what seemed to him a deeper light than yesterday’s. He remembered the poet Goethe’s death-bed last words, “More light!” It was the cry of desperate cameramen; or anyway of this one. He smiled, but anyone riding in the Opel with him might have mistaken it for a grimace of pain.

  An hour later he picked up his father and Romy at their rendezvous, outside the Café Möhring. They got into the back seat, sat well back. The General was wearing his hat brim turned down all round, not his usual style, and Romy had on a broad-brimmed hat. They looked like conspirators chosen by the UFA casting director.

  “We made sure we weren’t followed from the hotel. It would be comical to have the Gestapo following us while we were mapping all their stations.” The General was gravely excited, a schoolboy about to murder the headmaster. He was back in harness, though this time the killing was to be more personal, something not usually done by generals.

  “Where do we go first?” Helmut asked.

  Romy had spread out a large map on her lap. “We’ll start at their headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse and work east.”

  “We have planned our reconnaissance on a grid system,” said the General.

  “Where did you get these addresses?” The lights were coming on along the Kurfürstendamm as Helmut drove along it. More light! But Goethe had been dying, not spying.

  In the driving mirror he saw his father and Romy exchange glances. Then his father said, “We must take him into our confidence—we owe him that much.”

  “Of course,” said Romy and looked at Helmut in the mirror. “The head of one of our biggest insurance firms is on our side. Or rather his wife is. She gave me the list.”

  “You mean the Gestapo has insured all its stations? What against?”

  “The usual, I suppose,” said Romy, who, being married to an industrialist, was more commercial-minded than the General, who, being a soldier, had never concerned himself with the cost of replacement of anything. “Fire, theft, riots—”

  “Theft?” Helmut laughed; and all at once the two in the back seat also laughed. They were suddenly all more relaxed, at least with each other if not with their situation.

  Helmut drove them around for two hours while Romy, like a good aide-de-camp, made marks on the map and the General sat beside her, nodding appreciatively at the staff he had assembled. He complimented Helmut on knowing the city so well.

  “It comes of being a worker, Father,” he said good-humouredly. “You just never got around to the right places.”

  The General nodded, also in good humour. “It’s too late now . . . No, perhaps it isn’t. When this is all over and everything is settled down again, you must show me the real Berlin.”

  “And me, too,” said Romy.

  Helmut looked at them in the mirror; their optimism was almost naïve. “It’s a promise,” he said and tried to sound truthful.

  He dropped them outside the Café Möhring. “Will you be staying on in Berlin?”

  “Of course. We must act within the next few days. He—” no names must be mentioned, not even amidst the traffic noise of the Kurfürstendamm “—will be coming back here any day now. There is to be a review of troops.”

  “We must have dinner together when it’s all over,” said Romy; she loved the social side of life. “Bring a nice girl. You do have one?”

  “Yes,” he said and drove on home to the waiting Melissa.

  IV

  Extracts from the diaries of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels:

  22 August 1939:

  The announcement of the Pact with the Russians has created a world sensation. The Allies have been left stunned; it has been a master-stroke on the part of the Fuehrer. How I wish I had been more involved in it! It stabs me deeply that so much credit is being given to the champagne salesman Ribbentrop. But he cannot sell it to the German people. That task has been left to me. I started today with a story in Angriff. Most convincing, I think, considering how I must explain our about-face. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in what was written—“a natural partnership.” After all, I was a communist all those long years ago. History is full of ironies . . .

  The Fuehrer called all the military leaders to Obersalzberg today. So far I have not heard how the meeting went. I do not trust most of them. Like all military men they do not understand the needs of their own country. Though I do agree with them—we are not yet fully prepared for war.

  I spoke to the Fuehrer on the telephone this morning before the generals arrived. He said he spent a sleepless night on Sunday waiting on word from Moscow—the Russians dragged everything out till the last minute. I wondered where Germany would have gone if the Russians had said no to our proposals. But I did not ask such a question of the Fuehrer. I have too much respect for his feelings. I always have too much respect for other people’s feelings. It is a weakness.

  . . . How I wish war were not so imminent! I should have more time to concentrate on Cathleen. I think of her constantly. I, like the Fuehrer, have sleepless nights—but for a different reason. I should love to telephone her, hear her voice, talk to her as I used to talk to Lida. Erotic talk. But I fear my telephone may still be tapped, as it was when I was with Lida. Why cannot we trust each other? I must bring up the subject with the Fuehrer when we are next alone. But these days we are so rarely alone. It will be worse in the coming days. He is surrounding himself with the military, none of them true Nazis. Just arse-kissers like Keitel . . .

  Spoke on the telephone with Magda and the children. How sweet they all are! Magda says the Bogensee house is coming along too slowly, the workmen are still there finishing it off. What has happened to the German workman? He does not work as hard as he once did. Have we made life too easy for them? I shall have to see there is a piece in Angriff telling them we need more effort. If war comes everyone will be expected to work as hard as he ever has in his life . . .

  Magda asks me if war is now inevitable. She is concerned for the children. Does she think I am not? I tell her she should be concerned for the English and French children. They will be the ones to suffer. Theirs will be the countries which will lose the war . . . I hope I a
m right . . .

  7

  I

  ADMIRAL CANARIS had flown down to the Obersalzberg that morning. There had been others on the plane: Admirals Raeder and Boehm, Generals Witzleben and Thomas; but Canaris, true to form, had sat alone at the back of the plane. As they had been driven up to the top of Hitler’s private mountain he had looked out at the domain Martin Bormann had created here for the Fuehrer. Farms had been bought up and their buildings demolished, wide tracts of state forest confiscated, roads laid; the fence round the inner area was two miles long, that round the outer area nine miles long. Bormann, a man with no respect for nature, had turned paths through the forests into paved walks. Nature, it seemed, could not be trusted. Bormann, an un-trusting and untrustworthy man, had run true to his own nature.

  The winding precipitous road, which always made Canaris queasy, ended abruptly beneath the rock on which the Berghof was built. Canaris got out of the staff car, took a pill from among the dozen or so in his pill-box, followed the others across to the elevator built into the rock, and hoped his stomach would have settled before the Fuehrer got down to one of his interminable harangues.

  The Berghof was not one of Canaris’ favourite houses; he always thought of it as a mountain asylum designed by one of the inmates. He knew that Speer, the Reich’s principal architect, abhorred it but hadn’t had the courage to say so; it had been based on an impromptu design by the Fuehrer himself and furnished by Bormann, Hitler’s administrator. Neither expense nor bad taste had been spared; Canaris felt depressed every time he entered the house. The servants were all members of the SS, a fact which did nothing to lighten his mood. The only item about the whole estate that pleased him was its huge debt, something known only to a self-selected few. There are malicious joys in being a spy that only spies know . . .

  Hitler was waiting for them as they all entered the main salon. Bormann stood just behind him, looking what he was: a peasant who had made good cultivating a different field. Hitler appeared to trust him completely and the man’s arrogance towards everyone but the Fuehrer reflected the knowledge of that trust. He stood there in the background, burly as a bull, face as insentient as a fist. Canaris, like most of the other military men, ignored him, but the snubs seemed to have no effect on Bormann. He knew who was the court favourite, the court jester who had no jokes but had more tricks than a zoo of monkeys.

  “Gentlemen!” Hitler was moving up and down on the balls of his feet; he seemed ready to bounce. Occasionally he gave his characteristic peculiar kick back with his right leg. Canaris had never seen him so bubbling with excitement, and groaned inwardly: they were in for another long harangue. He took out another pill, surreptitiously popped it in his mouth, wishing it were a sleeping pill “What did you think of our coup?”

  Everyone left it to General Keitel, the yes-man, to answer for them. He had a rosy-cheeked, soft face with a fair moustache that looked like a complement to the Fuehrer’s dark one; he always struck Canaris that he would not argue the state of the weather unless he had a battery of howitzers behind him. “A master stroke, Fuehrer! It is a pity we could not have seen the looks on the faces of Chamberlain and Daladier when they got the news.”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  Canaris smiled to himself. The roles had been reversed: Hitler was playing yes-man to Ja-Ja.

  There was a stir at the back of the large group and Goering came into the big room. He was adjusting his trousers under his blue double-breasted tunic. “My apologies, Fuehrer. A call from nature . . .”

  Hitler laughed, turned round and walked with his jerky stride round to stand behind a large table on which were spread out some maps. It seemed that nothing could dent his ebullient mood, not even the rude late entrance of his second-in-command. Then, as Canaris had seen so often before, in public and in private, his mood abruptly changed.

  “I have called you together to give you a picture of the political situation in order that you may have some insight into the individual factors on which I have based my irrevocable decision to act and in order to strengthen your confidence . . .”

  Though he was not sneering openly there was no mistaking the fact that he considered them all political novices. None of them, except Goering, had fought in the streets: the streets were for parades, not political battles. They sat there, none of them below senior staff rank, like cadets in a military academy being lectured by a veteran field commander. The corporal from the Great War had realized the ambition of all non-commissioned officers: he was giving the brass the rough end of the grenade.

  “. . . Essentially, all depends on me, on my existence, because of my political talents. Furthermore, the fact that probably no one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people as I have. There will probably never again in the future be a man with more authority than I have. My existence is therefore a factor of great value . . .”

  Such conceit, thought Canaris. How wonderful it must be not to be burdened by modesty. Unburdened, the Fuehrer took off on wings of rhetoric; his listeners, those with musical imagination and an ear for flat notes, could hear Wagner rising and falling in the background. Canaris, sitting by the huge, wound-down picture window, overcome by the smell of petrol fumes coming up from the vast underground garage and the constant din of the Fuehrer’s voice, felt himself falling into a queasy doze. He straightened up in his chair and then, bent over like a white-haired, hunch-backed monkey, began to creep away from the window.

  Hitler stopped in mid-harangue: “Where are you going, Admiral Canaris?”

  “I am getting closer, Fuehrer,” said Canaris, still bent over but changing direction, “to hear you the better.”

  He heard the faint snigger of those closest to him and, completely out of character, he winked at them and slid embarrassedly onto a vacant chair. Hitler went on, picking up as if he had no more than stopped to brush away a fly. At times like this he lived in a world of his own voice.

  The meeting, or rather the monologue, droned on. Then abruptly the Fuehrer said, “Now we shall have lunch,” and instantly his mood changed again. He smiled, became the quietly modest host. Bormann, the major-domo, took charge and ushered everyone, like a sullen, nasty dog herding sheep, into the huge dining room.

  Lunch was as Canaris’ stomach liked it: simple. There was soup, a roast and vegetables, an apple tart with cream; to drink there was mineral water, bottled beer from Berlin, not Munich, and a cheap wine that most of those who had ordered it left in their glasses. Canaris, partly as a gesture, partly because of his upset stomach, which he was sure now was the beginning of cancer, ordered the same vegetarian dish as Hitler. The Fuehrer, looking down the long table at him, gave him a gentle smile. The way to his heart was through a vegetable patch . . .

  After lunch there was a break. Canaris was standing out on the wide terrace admiring the view across to the Untersberg on the other side of the valley, when Goering came out and stood beside him. He could smell the Reichsmarschall’s perfume and his quick eye caught the gleam of the painted fingernails; but, this being a working day, there was no rouge on the plump cheeks.

  “Did you enjoy your vegetable hash, Canaris? Every time I come here I promise myself that next time I’ll bring my own picnic basket. Something substantial, with some good wine instead of that sweet piss. Well, what do you think of our chances?”

  “Of getting good wine here or going to war in Poland?” He did not like this vain fat man, but at least one could talk to him without being harangued. He had also been a good flier, in the last war, a good officer, not a corporal.

  “We’ll walk into Poland—there’ll be no opposition there. No, what do your agents tell you about England and France?”

  “Nobody there wants war.” Nobody here but the fools wants war, either. “They aren’t prepared. Especially the English. The Luftwaffe should have no opposition at all.”

  “Now all the waiting is over, I’m actually looking forward to it.” He didn’t say the war, but Canaris knew what he meant. T
he Reichsmarschall was staring out across the valley, as if he could see the sky filled with his beloved air force. “I just wish I were young enough to fly again. And slim enough.” He laughed and patted his belly beneath the tunic. “It’s a pity we have to age, Canaris. Do you ever pine to go back to sea?”

  “Not really. I don’t think I have the stomach for it any more.”

  He had not meant to make a joke, but Goering threw back his head and laughed. He patted the tiny man on the shoulder and, still shaking with laughter, said, “I don’t think you have much of anything, old man.”

  Canaris smiled weakly, hating the gross Reichsmarschall, and turned away with relief as Bormann came out on to the terrace and announced that the Fuehrer was ready to resume his meeting.

  Hitler took up where he had left off. He rambled on, piling lie upon lie like straw bricks; Canaris recognized them for lies and waited for someone senior to himself to query them, but no one did. The Fuehrer began to work himself up, fury steaming through his words: he was addressing the world at large, not just this room full of his own generals and admirals. Canaris, bored by the repetition, let his mind wander back to work that lay on his desk in Berlin. Then he thought of the thin file locked in an office drawer and, his mind taking off on a flight of fancy as it sometimes does when trying to avoid falling asleep, wondered what Goebbels was doing at this very moment. Was he sending more flowers to the Jewish actress, did he know or care where the mother was? Should I go to him? Canaris wondered; and pictured the scene. Two small men facing each other like bantams . . .

  He came back to the Berghof with a start. He heard Hitler, calmed down again, say, “The order to march will be given later. It will most probably be next Saturday, the 26th.”

  Goering stood up, began applauding. Everyone else in the room got to his feet, some quickly, some slowly, as if they could not quite believe what they had heard. The applause spread round the room, gathering volume like that of hail on the roof of an empty house. Canaris put his hands together, but they felt like two sheets of paper being flapped against each other.