Back at the apartment, he found her stretched on the chaise longue, the phone to her ear. The conversation was in Japanese. Dieter waited in the kitchen for it to end and then made a reappearance. The news that he was to become a display pilot at the behest of no less a figure than Generalfeldmarschall Goering sparked the ghost of a smile.
‘You’ll like that,’ she said.
‘You’re right. I will. And it means we can stay here.’
‘In the apartment?’
‘In Berlin. They’ll want this place back soon. I’ll find us somewhere else.’
Us? She didn’t say the word, but she didn’t have to. Dieter was looking down at the chaise longue. At length Keiko made room for him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
She shook her head. Didn’t want to answer. Dieter nodded at the telephone.
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Someone at the embassy. He’s been in contact with my father.’
‘News from home?’
‘More government contracts. My father works so hard he’ll explode. I need to write to him. I need to slow him down. These days that’s hard. There’s a madness in the air. I saw it in Seiji, too.’ She finally reached for him. ‘Maybe it’s good you had the accident.’
She wanted to know about display flying. Dieter tried to reduce the job to its essentials. After months in Spain trying to kill Russians, he’d be there to please the crowds.
‘You’re joining a circus?’
‘I am the circus. Just me.’
‘It’s dangerous?’
‘As dangerous as I want to make it.’ He moved a little closer. ‘But why would I want to hurt myself again?’
She looked at him for a long moment and then traced the shape of his lips with her finger. Over the last few days, to Dieter’s intense relief, they’d at last begun to make love. It was sex as he’d never experienced it before, lingering, prolonged, full of surprises. In some ways it felt like an extension of reiki, his therapist always in charge, always hanging over him, showing him new ways, new pleasures. Making love like this was intoxicating but Keiko’s degree of control raised a question or two. Was she fully committed? Was her surrender as complete as his own? In truth he didn’t know because she was a stranger to the world of endearments. The fact that she said so little either before or after their love-making had at first been an added excitement but after the conversation with Goering it was beginning to make him anxious.
She gestured for him to get out of his suit. Dieter didn’t move.
‘Tell me about Ribbentrop,’ he said. ‘What did you really think of him?’
The question seemed to amuse her.
‘Ribbentrop worries you? You think,’ she frowned, ‘he matters?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Goering says he’s sweet on you.’
‘Goering’s right. But Joachim only sees what he wants to see.’
‘Joachim?’
‘Joachim. I’m something new in his life, something exotic. Men are all the same. They think they know everything until it occurs to them that they don’t. You understand what I’m trying to say?’
‘Of course. You did it to me, too.’
‘Wrong. What I did to you was different. You had a problem. I tried to help.’
‘You cured it.’
‘Good. And now?’
‘I have another problem.’
‘Joachim?’
‘Ribbentrop.’
She withdrew a little into the corner of the chaise longue and tucked her legs in. She said she was good with men, especially men who couldn’t help themselves, men who’d let their ambition get out of control, men who refused to listen to their bodies.
‘Would that include me?’
‘You fell out of an aeroplane. That’s different.’
‘And Ribbentrop?’
‘That man’s in pain. A different kind of pain. He knows already about the reiki. He thinks I can help and he’s right, I can.’
‘How does he know about the reiki?’
‘Hiroshi Oshima told him. At the embassy.’ Oshima was the Japanese military attaché in Berlin. Dieter had met him twice, a small, squat figure with a passion for kirsch. He, too, didn’t bother to hide his appreciation of Keiko.
‘So you’ll be treating Ribbentrop?’
‘Yes.’
‘At his home?’
‘At the ministry. He’s ordered his staff to make time in his schedule. I told him that’s where his trouble begins. Time. Always time. He’s just like my father. He never listens. So that’s another challenge.’
‘You’ll teach him how to listen?’
‘I’ll teach him how to become a human being.’ He was frowning now. ‘Have I upset you?’
Dieter didn’t answer. He could picture the scene only too well. The door locked. Phone calls blocked. Ribbentrop flat on his back, offering himself to Keiko’s ministrations. Dieter saw no point in dressing up the truth.
‘He wants to fuck you,’ he said. ‘Whatever way he puts it, that’s where it begins and ends.’
‘And me? Do I get a say?’
‘Probably not.’
For a moment, Dieter thought he’d gone too far. But then Keiko put her hand over her mouth and started to giggle, something she’d never done before. For a brief moment she looked like the young girl she must once have been. Then she was in control again. She nodded towards the bedroom. She wanted an end to this conversation. Dieter was right about Joachim. The man was stupid beyond words. And pompous, too.
‘One question you haven’t asked me.’ She cupped Dieter’s face in her hands. ‘You know how much money he wants to pay me?’
Dieter shook his head. No idea.
‘Fifty Reichsmarks a session.’ She gestured around the apartment. ‘We can live wherever we want.’
12
PRAGUE, 18 MAY 1938
Tam had been in the cell for nearly ten hours before anyone came to see him. The cell was three paces by eight paces, roughly plastered walls, concrete floor, and a single barred window that didn’t open. The mattress on the iron bedstead was heavily stained and leaked horsehair where the thin fabric had ripped. Face to the wall, lying down, Tam could hear the faraway clanking of trains in a goods yard and just occasionally the rumble of a tram. His eyes open, he tallied the names scratched in the rough plaster: Duček, Kubik, Petr.
On the drive to Prague, none of the policemen had said a word. Police headquarters was guarded by armed soldiers. The uniformed officers at the front desk had booked him in without much visible interest. They’d put his passport in a drawer and made him sign a form he didn’t understand. He still had his own clothes but his stomach was empty and he badly needed something to drink. At the front desk he’d asked them to contact the military attaché at the British Embassy but the request had met with no response. Locked in the cell, he’d banged twice on the scabbed steel door and called for water but on neither occasion had anything happened. Being under arrest was the first shock. Finding himself adrift in this strange half-world was probably worse.
‘Herr Moncrieff?’
Tam jerked awake and rolled over. The plain-clothes figure by the door muttered something to the uniformed policeman and then gestured for Tam to sit up. He was an older man, bony-faced, thinning hair. The domed forehead and the carefully tended fingernails suggested a different occupation, an academic perhaps, or even a musician, but what impressed Tam most was an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. This man appeared to be fighting battles on countless fronts and to be losing them all.
The policeman was back with a chair. Then he stepped out of the cell again and Tam heard the door lock behind him.
‘This story of yours, Herr Moncrieff. Tell me again.’
His German was perfect. Tam repeated the account he’d offered to the policemen who’d arrested him. His visitor followed Tam’s story with his eyes half-closed. Finally, Tam got to the end. The revolver belonged to the man who’d held
him up at gunpoint. As did the car. He had nothing to do with the bloodstained gag in the boot. Neither could he account for the smell.
Tam’s inquisitor wasn’t impressed.
‘We think you’re a spy,’ he said carefully.
To Tam, this sounded about right. He shook his head, denied it completely. Foreign, yes. A visitor to this delightful country… undoubtedly. But a spy? Good Lord, no.
‘We’ve talked to the woman at the hotel where you were staying. You asked her lots of questions, mainly about Edvard Kovač. Why the interest?’
‘He’s a friend of mine.’
‘You know what he does? How much trouble he makes for us?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. I met him through another friend. Edvard knows the local area well. He offered to show me round.’
‘So why the questions about the American?’
‘Because that’s the way the woman at the hotel might have remembered him. I couldn’t give her a family name. I didn’t even know one. But I knew he’d met an American the previous evening.’
‘How? How did you know that?’
‘My other friend,’ Tam said lamely.
‘He? She?’
‘He.’
‘Name?’ A stub of pencil had appeared, along with a battered notebook.
Tam held his gaze. Then he shook his head.
‘You’ve forgotten the name? Of this friend of yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘That’s your choice.’
The inquisitor nodded, half-closed his eyes again, sucked the end of the pencil. At length he stirred.
‘Might her name be Renata Nováková?’
Tam blinked. The name came as a shock. These people were good, far better than he’d expected, and his own performance so far had been woeful. Proper spies were born liars. They had carefully prepared stories, trenches dug behind them in case they needed to retreat. Tam had taken none of these precautions but he was still determined to protect Renata.
‘I’ve never heard of her,’ he said.
The inquisitor smiled and scribbled something in his notebook before slipping it back in the pocket of his jacket. He didn’t believe Tam’s denial for a moment but the Britisher’s steadfastness appeared to have won him a moment of reprieve. Without a hint of a threat, or even any serious pressure, the pecking order had been established. Now what?
‘You were arrested near Terezín. That happens to be in our part of the country. Just. That makes you a very lucky man, Herr Moncrieff, because the Sudeten police have no patience at all. By now, my friend, you’d be heading for another beating. That’s if they hadn’t decided to dispose of you completely.’
‘Dispose?’
‘Put a bullet in your head.’ He sighed, picking at a cuticle on one of his nails. ‘We live in ugly times. The Germans are on the move across the border. That makes our Sudeten friends very excited. They’re expecting the Panzers in Karlovy Vary by the weekend. Just one reason why our President has been stirred into taking action.’
‘He’s mobilising?’
‘He’s called up the reserves. Put the Army on a war footing. Reinforced the frontier fortifications. Hitler isn’t amused, but that, I assume, is the point of the exercise. We’re not Austrians and we never will be. Slavs fight.’
‘And the French? The British?’ Tam was frowning. ‘The Russians?’
‘All parties will stand by their treaties. Should we be grateful? Of course we should. Will it be enough to stay the wretched man’s hand? We’ll have to see. In the meantime I understand you need a little water and maybe even something to eat.’
He pushed the chair back and stood up. Moments later, after calling for one of the guards to open the door, he’d gone.
Within minutes, Tam was looking at a bowl of something grey and hot, and a chipped mug brimming with water. He drank the water, sampled the soup, then left the bowl on the floor. Over the next hour or so the wail of air-raid sirens penetrated the thick walls. It was nearly dark by now and Tam sat in the airless warmth, braced for the first bombs. May, he thought, was the perfect time of year for any invading army: plenty of daylight, the ground dry and firm underfoot, the plump, spring-fed animals on every farm there for the taking. From what he’d seen on the frontier the Czechs would certainly make a fight of it but in the new world of fast-moving Panzer divisions, led by bold commanders, it would be child’s play to bypass the fixed fortifications.
Would the western Allies really stand by the orphaned Czechs? And if they did, would the war be over before they’d organised themselves? Hitler, after all, had become master of the lightning thrust, the killer blow. At whatever level you chose to kick over the order of things, simple possession was all it took to win the arguments that followed. The logic was brutal. What I have, I hold. If you want it back, come and get it.
Depressed by his own small part in this unfolding drama, Tam sat on the bed, his back against the wall, wondering what would happen if and when the Germans made it to Prague. Would they throw the cell doors open and let the prisoners run free? Or would they shoot the lot?
The latter proposition, he suspected, was all too likely but what would be worse was the failure of his own mission. Maybe he should have been frank with his inquisitor. Maybe he should have owned up to Ballentyne’s orders. Maybe he should have taken a liberty or two and painted himself as a friend of the Czechs, dedicated to somehow saving this little country before the grey hordes appeared in the west and broke it in half. That, at least, would have left him with a little self-respect. He stared down at the soup, tiny nameless particles swimming in the grey broth. Then he shook his head and lay full length on the bed again, still wondering about the bombers.
*
Stronge, the military attaché from the embassy, arrived at first light. A different policeman let him into the cell. Stronge had cut himself shaving and the wisp of cotton wool on the squareness of his chin gave him a strange vulnerability that added to Tam’s conviction that he’d stepped into a world he no longer recognised.
Tam started to tell Stronge what had happened but the military attaché wasn’t much interested. The main railway station, he said, was choked with reservists and the roads out of the city were full of trucks and light armour heading for the western frontier. Stronge had made representations on Tam’s behalf at the highest levels in the Foreign Ministry and was pleased to report that the Czechs had sensibly arrived at a decision. They accepted most of Herr Moncrieff’s story and were disinclined to pursue matters any further. His passport was now in Stronge’s safe keeping and he had twelve hours to leave the country. In return for this largesse, the First Secretary at the Czech Foreign Office trusted that Herr Moncrieff would have good things to say about the Czechs on his return to the West.
‘They’re quite prepared to fight for their country,’ Stronge said. ‘They have the means and they have the will. All they want from us is the courtesy of meeting our treaty obligations, a point you might make when circumstances permit.’
Overnight, Stronge said, the crisis had reached flashpoint. London and Paris expected war at any moment but he’d just read a Whitehall cable suggesting that Hitler – faced with the probability of real opposition – might decide to back off.
‘That’s speculation, of course. We can but hope.’
Tam tried to digest the news. Maybe, after all, he shouldn’t expect German bayonets at the end of the corridor. Then he remembered the moment when he lifted the boot of the Opel in search of a can of petrol, the moment when he realised something terrible might have happened.
‘You dropped me at Jáchymov,’ he reminded Stronge.
‘I did.’
‘I was looking for a man called Edvard. A Czech.’
‘Edvard Kovač.’
‘You know him?’
‘No. But the people downstairs have been more than helpful. The man’s gone missing. As you obviously know.’
‘And?’
&
nbsp; ‘He’s still missing. But there’s a woman he appears to be close to, a girlfriend. The Sudeten police have reported finding her body. That could mean anything. That could mean they killed her. Either way she ended up dead. Raped. Beaten. And then shot three times. You’ll be glad to know you’re in the clear. The good folk downstairs don’t think you did it.’
In the clear. Tam was staring at the wall beyond Stronge. The smell, he thought. The bloodstained scrap of sheet to gag her screams. Had Renata made her way back to Jáchymov? Found the hotel? Asked the same questions of the same woman? Been lured into the same lethal trap? He closed his eyes, shook his head. The news was incomprehensible. So young. So committed. So alive. And now gone.
Stronge was on his feet. Time, he said, was moving on. He’d booked Moncrieff on the morning flight to Vienna, and then onward to Paris. He had just one more question to get things a little clearer in his thick head.
‘That chap who jumped you? I understand you laid him out? Is that true?’
Tam barely heard the question. Just nodded.
‘Excellent.’ Stronge nodded towards the door. ‘Shall we…?’
13
BERLIN, 19 MAY 1938
On the morning that Tam Moncrieff was expelled from Czechoslovakia, Dieter Merz made his way to the Luftwaffe research centre at the Johannesstahl airfield from where he’d been flying the new Bf-109-E. Weekends were normally quiet on most Luftwaffe bases and he was surprised to find himself stepping into a gathering of test pilots in the spacious downstairs area that served as a briefing room.
The centre’s Kommandant, a quietly spoken veteran with a post-war degree in aeronautics, was standing beside a map of Czechoslovakia. The Sudetenland had been cross-hatched in red crayon but there was nothing on the map to indicate likely axes of advance. Instead, heavy blue circles indicated the most important of the airfields serving the Czech Air Force.
The briefing, it turned out, was highly provisional. In all probability, said the Kommandant, the so-called crisis was over. True, Wehrmacht divisions were still on manoeuvres close to the border, alarming the Czechs and triggering mobilisation, but there had never been any intent to turn a training exercise into a full-scale invasion.
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