‘I don’t understand.’
‘Who would take over?’
‘The generals, in the first place.’ He was frowning. ‘Are we talking about a coup?’
‘No.’
‘Something else?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Someone else?’
‘Yes. And I need to know he’d be safe.’ He frowned. ‘Afterwards.’
*
Goering threw a party that night at the Altes Rathaus. Dieter didn’t want to go but Georg made it plain that he didn’t have a choice. His performances over the Zeppelinfeld, opening and closing the Party Rally, had won glowing plaudits from every corner of the party machine and Goering himself had murmured that Der Kleine’s absence was unthinkable.
The Town Hall dominated a square in the northern quarter of the Altstadt. Dieter, again at Georg’s insistence, had borrowed a Luftwaffe dress uniform but the trousers and the jacket were half a size too big and simply added to his growing sense of dislocation. He shouldn’t be here, in this city, in this company. After the victory roll over the Zeppelinfeld he should have kept going north, hopscotching from airfield to airfield until he was safely back in Berlin. Shooting Hitler down wasn’t something you’d ever do lightly. Before making a real commitment, he needed to pause and take stock.
Goering’s party occupied a suite of rooms on the ground floor. Tall doors had been folded back, revealing a handful of musicians on a raised stage. Beside them were tables laden with plates of local wurst, piles of glistening sauerkraut, endless breads, and huge tureens of something that looked like goulash. This was the food that Goering adored, food that you’d fall upon after a good day’s hunting, and he expected his hundreds of guests to do it justice.
Dieter gazed round. Already he was on his fourth glass of Sekt and he’d lost touch of the sheer number of compliments he’d been offered. His face ached with having to smile and respond, and add a little joke or two about the perils of spending half your working life upside down. The newsreels had turned him into public property, an experience he was beginning to resent.
The centrepiece of Goering’s party was an eagle with the globe in its claws, sculpted in ice. Every time Dieter eyed it afresh, it was melting a little faster. Holding court nearby was the unmistakeable figure of Julius Streicher. He was dressed in a uniform Dieter didn’t recognise, his trousers tucked into high leather boots. He had a woman on each arm and beads of sweat glistened on the bareness of his shaven scalp.
As Gauleiter for Franconia, Streicher had been the top Nazi in the region for years and he revelled in making life impossible for the Jews. The paper he’d founded, Die Stürmer, was a cesspit of obscene cartoons. Jews, Streicher insisted, were no better than vermin. They were filth, responsible for everything from inflation to prostitution and ritual murders. Dieter had once viewed Streicher as a bad joke. Now, on closer inspection, he loathed him.
Both men were drunk. Georg tried to head off the confrontation, but failed. One of Streicher’s women, a blonde beginning to run to fat, didn’t bother to hide her interest in Goering’s young display pilot. A space had been cleared in the middle of the room. The woman extended a hand and suggested they dance. She was taller than Dieter, a fact that appeared to amuse Streicher.
‘You want to borrow my boots, little man? And maybe get yourself a uniform that fits?’
Streicher slapped his thigh at his own joke. Ignoring the woman, Dieter stepped a little closer. All he could think of was Sol Fiedler and the stuffy apartment in Pankow.
‘I’ve known parrots that were funnier than you,’ he said.
Streicher blinked, trying to work out whether he’d just been insulted. He had a reputation for violence, as many of his opponents had discovered to their cost.
‘I own this fucking city,’ he said at length. ‘If you don’t like a good party, you know what to do.’
Dieter stood his ground. ‘Shit always sticks,’ he said softly. ‘And you’re the living proof.’
The woman stared at Dieter a moment and then began to laugh. Streicher slapped her hard, then turned on Dieter. He wanted to kick this little pansy’s arse. He wanted to teach him a lesson he’d never forget. Dieter said he was happy for him to try. Either here or outside. Then came a pressure on his arm. Georg.
‘Leave me alone.’ Dieter tried to push him off.
‘This way, compadre.’
Georg was strong. Still protesting, aware of the stir he’d caused, Dieter found himself beside the tables of food, where Hans Baur was wolfing a plate of grey-looking fish.
‘You like eels?’ Baur was oblivious of the incident with Streicher.
‘Not for me.’
At Georg’s request a waiter was spooning something hot on to a plate. Moments later, Dieter was looking at a huge helping of goulash.
‘Eat,’ Georg told him. ‘You drink too much.’
They stayed with Baur while the party resumed. Tomorrow, Hans said, he was flying the Führer back to Berlin. Take-off, mercifully, wasn’t until noon. For once he was looking forward to a proper night’s sleep.
Georg asked about Hitler. Surely this party had been for him, another of Der Eiserne’s surprise presents?
‘He’s busy,’ Baur grunted. ‘Always busy, always in conference, always talking. God never taught him how to relax. Maybe that’s the secret for getting on in life. How’s the goulash?’
Dieter shrugged. Already he was looking for another drink. Georg intercepted him as he made for the nearest waiter. A turn to the left took them into the vast entrance hall. Footsteps echoed on the polished marble floor.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Georg was angry.
‘Nothing you’d understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? You drink like a fish. Another scene like that and you’re done. It’s over.’
‘It’s over anyway.’
‘This is about Keiko?’
‘Everything’s about Keiko. Is that something else you want to hold against me?’
‘I hold nothing against you. She’s gone. You’re trying to get her back. In the end it will happen. Believe me.’
‘You know that?’
‘Of course I don’t. I’d be lying if I said I did. But I know something for sure and when one day you wake up sober, you’ll know it too.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like stop tormenting yourself. Like stop pretending it’s you against the world.’
‘You’re telling me it isn’t?’
‘I’m telling you it will be if you don’t take things in hand.’
Take things in hand.
Dieter stared up at Georg.
‘You’re right,’ he said at last. ‘That’s exactly what I should do.’
*
Tam watched the city beginning to empty. He’d been sitting at this café table for over an hour, waiting for Bella, but so far she hadn’t turned up. At the far end of the square he could hear the sound of dance music. It came from the Alte Rathaus, rising and falling in volume as a door opened and closed.
Tam glanced at his watch. Nearly ten o’clock. Soon the restaurant kitchens would be closing and in any case it was beginning to get cold. The rising wind was stirring the banners hanging from the Rathaus and couples hurrying across the square were wearing coats.
Earlier, in the car with Schultz, Tam had resisted pressure to reveal details of the operation to kill the Führer. Schultz wanted a name and some indication that this wasn’t a fairy tale on Tam’s part, a fiction to compensate for his failure to tempt Goering into the conspirator’s camp, but Tam had shaken his head and insisted that secrecy, imparting nothing, was the key to whatever might follow. All that mattered was that Tam had faith in the contact he’d made. All he needed now was Schultz’s assurance that this mysterious figure would be looked after, should Hitler be killed.
Schultz, once again, had demanded more detail but Tam was unmoved. He’d learned a trick or two these last
few weeks. Discretion, he’d murmured, was what kept you alive in Hitler’s Reich.
Now Tam decided to give up on Bella, settle his bill and go back to his hotel. He finished his drink and got to his feet. As he turned his back on the square to step into the bar a diminutive figure in full dress Luftwaffe uniform emerged from the Rathaus and ghosted away.
27
NUREMBERG, 13 SEPTEMBER 1938
Dieter rose at dawn. To his surprise, he’d slept well. His flying suit was hanging in the cheap wardrobe behind the door. He rinsed his face in the tiny sink, ran a brush over his teeth and packed the bag he’d brought from Berlin. He knew the engineers on the base started early, tackling the backlog of repairs that never seemed to get shorter. He made his way downstairs and then stepped into the first rays of the chill autumn sunshine. The maintenance hangar lay beyond the line of parked aircraft. His own 109, his precious Emil, was closest to the huge double doors.
Access to the hangar at this time in the morning was through a side entrance. Inside, a lone engineer was deep in an engine on one of the Ju-52s. He looked up, a spanner in his hand, hearing footsteps. The fact that it was Dieter put a smile on his face. The little flier had brought this corner of the Reich nothing but the best of news. To work on an aircraft flown by a genius like this was a privilege.
Dieter had a favour to ask. He was back to Berlin this morning but he wanted to make a detour to the firing ranges near Paderborn to keep his logbook up to date. Might the engineer have access to the base armoury?
‘What are you after? Shells or bullets?’
The Emil had two wing-mounted cannon and a pair of machine guns in the nose. The Oerlikon cannon shells, especially at short range, could tear a target aircraft apart.
‘Both,’ Dieter said. ‘And I want fuel, too.’
The engineer nodded, then checked his watch. He needed another hour at least to finish working on the engine, maybe two. And in any case the keys to the armoury were held by the Maintenance Chief who rarely turned up before nine.
‘There’s fuel over there if you’ve got time on your hands and you want to make a start.’ He nodded at a line of jerrycans beside the door. ‘But I’m afraid the ammunition has to wait. It’s not just the key. It needs the Chief’s signature as well.’
‘What if there’s a war?’ Dieter was smiling.
‘There won’t be. Not until Hitler says so.’
‘Next week, then. Make sure the Chief’s up in time.’
Dieter spent the next forty minutes hauling fuel out of the hangar. Normally he’d be using a bowser but under the circumstances he told himself he didn’t have a choice. He wanted the plane at least half-fuelled in case Hitler’s plans changed. His weeks on the Führer squadron had taught him never to rely on anything that appeared on a schedule.
Each jerrycan held twenty litres of fuel. The Emil, barely a quarter full, would need hundreds of litres to top up the tanks. It was hard work. Each full can weighed nearly twenty kilos and Dieter was sweating heavily by the time the gauge in the cockpit had even begun to move. Emptying the last can, he heard the trill of a phone from the hangar.
The engineer had finished the conversation by the time Dieter appeared at the open door. He was shaking his head.
‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘The Führermaschine’s leaving early.’
The Führermaschine was Hitler’s personal aircraft, a specially modified Ju-52 that was parked at the other end of the line.
‘When is it off?’
‘Soon. Thank Christ we prepped it last night.’
‘And the Chief?’
‘He won’t be here for at least an hour.’ He was checking his watch. ‘You’ll just have to wait.’
‘Right.’ Dieter nodded. He was thinking fast. Aware of the engineer watching him, he did his best to muster a shrug.
‘Forget the ammunition,’ he said. ‘I have to roll with the Führermaschine.’
Dieter needed to know exactly when Baur planned to take off. The squadron mess was five hundred metres away. When Dieter got there, it was locked and empty. Confused, he set out again for the hangar. A hundred metres short, he became aware of a convoy of cars moving at speed towards the Führermaschine. Then came the cough of an engine, then another, then a third. Dieter began to run. When he got to the hangar, the engineer was wiping his hands on a rag.
‘You’ll help me outside? They’re here already.’
The engineer followed him into the sunshine. He was an older man, forty at least, but he ran as fast as Dieter. Dieter had already opened the canopy earlier, leaving his helmet on top of the dashboard, and now he scrambled on to the wing and lowered himself into the cockpit. The engineer was doing a lightning exterior check – prop, flaps, wheels, rudder – and then appeared on the wing beside the cockpit. He reached in, making sure Dieter’s harness was fast, then helped him on with the helmet. Dieter plugged in the radio lead, aware of the engineer probing into the depths of the cockpit.
‘No parachute,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’
‘Shit. I forgot.’
‘It’s a scrub, then. You can’t fly without a chute.’
Dieter looked up at him. Then he put his hand on the engineer’s arm.
‘Trust me.’
The engineer didn’t want to. Dieter could see it in his eyes. Yet Dieter Merz was Dieter Merz, the closest this man had ever been to a legend, and what kind of engineer argued with a god?
‘You’re sure?’ he said.
‘Absolutely. Kein Problem.’
The engineer hesitated a moment longer. At the other end of the line, Baur was running up the Führermaschine’s engines, a prelude to departure. Dieter glimpsed two of the cars returning to the perimeter track that would take them out of the airfield.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Now.’
*
The Führermaschine had appeared from behind the line of parked aircraft, bumping over the grass towards the threshold of the runway. Turning into the wind, Baur paused for a moment, running up the engines again and holding them at maximum power against the brakes. Dieter had fired up the 109, checked that the prop was set to fine pitch for take-off, and was now signalling for the engineer to pull the parking chocks away. A burst of throttle turned the aircraft to starboard before it began to move forward, Dieter keeping the Führermaschine in sight through the canopy’s side window. It was still early, barely nine o’clock, and the tail of the big Junkers threw a long shadow over the shimmering grass.
Hitler normally occupied the seat at the back of the cabin on the right-hand side. That’s where Dieter had briefly paused to be introduced on the flight to the West Wall. He remembered the flabby handshake and the pasty upturned face and a spark of recognition in the piercing blue eyes. Hitler’s a creature of habit, he told himself. Same seat. Same restless hands. Same impatience to have the journey over and done.
Baur slipped the brakes and the Ju-52 began to move. On the ground it looked ungainly, the three big piston engines disfiguring the clean lines of the monoplane, but the moment the tail lifted and the main undercarriage parted company with the runway, it became a thing of grace. Dieter watched Baur climbing away before wheeling the 109 on to the runway. A last check – controls fully free, flaps set, brakes off – and he pushed the throttle lever to the limits. The beat of the engine deepened at once and the aircraft began to surge forward.
The ride on the Emil was stiff. Taking off and landing you felt every bump on the runway but Dieter enjoyed moments like these: the groan of the airframe, the quickening blur of the markers that edged the runway, a split-second glimpse of a hare, a brown dot bounding away towards the distant hangar.
Dieter pushed the control column, lifting the tail. Beyond the end of the runway, suddenly visible, lay a farmer’s meadow and then a line of houses. As ever, the 109 was pulling to the left but a bootful of right rudder was enough to keep the oncoming meadow on the nose. This take-off, Dieter told himself, might be his last. Best to make it perfect.
Still climbing, carefully throttled back, Dieter hugged the inside of the turn, keeping behind and beneath the Ju-52. Earlier, bent over his maps in the hangar, Dieter had done the key calculations about his precious fuel load and the likely reserve he’d need to make it safely to a foreign airstrip. This computation had given him a window of just seventeen minutes within which he had to shoot down the Führermaschine. After that he’d have to risk a landing at some Luftwaffe base kilometres short of the border, or simply wait until he ran out of fuel. Both options were grim but now his situation was infinitely worse.
Dieter was eyeing the fuel gauge. The chaos of the sudden departure had wrecked his plans. No parachute. No ammunition. Nothing to attack the Führermaschine and send Hitler to his doom. The silver tri-motor was above him now, maybe three hundred metres ahead, still climbing. Dieter watched it carefully as it wallowed upwards through the quickening wind, aware that his options were narrowing fast. The 109, with its tanks barely half-full, would never make Berlin. Either they could maintain formation until Dieter was forced to peel off and hunt for fuel or he’d have to find another way of bringing down the Führermaschine.
The latter challenge grew clearer and clearer, taking shape and body in his mind, resolving itself into the simplest of propositions. If he wanted to kill Hitler, he’d have to destroy the aircraft above him. And to do that would mean taking his own life.
Baur had reached his cruising height now, slightly under seven thousand feet, and the big Ju-52 had levelled off. Dieter’s left hand found the throttle lever and he reduced speed to maintain perfect formation. From the cockpit of the Führermaschine there was no way that Baur could see the 109. The lurking Emil, with the Reich’s favourite display pilot at the controls, was invisible.
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