The Secret of Spandau

by Peter Lovesey

  Churchill decided to summon him to Ditchley. His own car was sent to meet the Duke at Kidlington airport.

  Dinner was almost over when the Duke was admitted. Churchill stood to shake his hand. ‘My dear Douglas, what a pleasure this is! Have you eaten?’

  ‘Not yet, sir, but—’

  ‘Then you must certainly join us.’ Churchill beckoned a servant. ‘A chair for his Grace, if you please.’ Then, turning back to the Duke, ‘You have whetted our appetites, too. Something certain to amaze us, we were told. What is this all about?’

  ‘Sir, it is of a highly confidential nature.’

  ‘Classifiable?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Churchill took a deep breath. ‘I see.’

  Tactfully, the other guests started putting their napkins on the table.

  Churchill said, ‘I should like the Secretary of State for Air to remain.’

  ‘Of course.’

  In a moment, the Duke was alone with Churchill and Sir Archibald Sinclair. They waited for the doors of the dining room to be closed.

  ‘Well, Douglas?’

  ‘Sir, last night a German airman crashed his plane and baled out over Scotland. He was picked up and taken to Glasgow. He was wearing the uniform of a hauptmann in the Luftwaffe and he gave his name as Horn. He repeatedly asked to be allowed to speak to me. I was asked to interview him at Maryhill Barracks this morning, and I did. As soon as we were alone, he identified himself as Rudolf Hess.’

  Nothing was said for several seconds. Churchill stared at the Duke of Hamilton in open disbelief, as if deciding whether this visibly exhausted man were suffering from hallucinations brought on by too much flying.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that the Deputy Führer of Germany is in our hands?’

  ‘That is my conclusion, sir. The man I saw this morning bears a striking resemblance to Hess. He was carrying these photographs of himself and, I presume, his wife and child.’

  Churchill put on his glasses and examined the photographs. He passed them to Sinclair. After another long pause, he pushed back his chair and said, ‘Well, Hess or no Hess, I am going to see the Marx Brothers.’

  6

  Jane Calvert-Mead was in bed in her second-floor flat in Brook Green when the doorbell rang. She pulled the duvet around her ears and moaned. Caught again. A hangover: an occupational hazard for a newspaper diarist. But it should never have happened. If a peer of the realm so adored his daughter that he had hired Hever Castle to announce her engagement, wouldn’t you think he would use genuine champagne in the bucks fizz?

  One of the tenants downstairs could answer it.

  Jane stretched and turned on to her stomach. Then there crept into her mind a recollection of something said earlier in the week when she was on her way down with the milk bottles. Both sets of people below were away for the weekend. Bugger. No one else was going to answer that bell.

  It rang again. Bloody cheek, disturbing people on a Sunday morning. Probably boy scouts collecting jumble. How they ever grew up into passably attractive men, she couldn’t imagine.

  It was going like a fire alarm. Little fiends!

  She couldn’t stand it any longer. She hurled aside the duvet, wrapped her bathrobe around her shoulders, shuffled across the room, let up the blind, opened the window and looked out. The cold air made her sneeze.

  The guy on the doorstep moved back towards the gate and stared up. He was like an advert in Horse and Hound: peaked cap, tweed suit with leather sections on the shoulders, dark green cravat and pale lemon shirt. She had no idea who he was. If he hadn’t said, ‘Miss Calvert-Mead?’, she would have shut the window and gone back to bed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Richard Garrick.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’m here to pick you up.’

  ‘Is this a joke? Some sort of singing telegram?’

  ‘Didn’t you get the message? Cedric Fleming assured me he would tell you.’

  ‘Cedric? God! You’re …’

  ‘Dick Garrick. Your lift to Henley.’

  ‘What time is it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Eleven-thirty. Well, nearer eleven-forty now.’

  ‘But we’re not expected for lunch, are we?’

  ‘Exactly. I thought we’d eat on the way.’

  ‘Hold on. I’d better come down and let you in.’

  She came away from the window, pulled the bathrobe properly on, snatched up a hairbrush and tried to coax her short, blonde hair into something approaching the style that Serge had fashioned the previous Thursday. It was a lost cause without lacquer. She tossed down the brush, opened the curtains in the living room, carried a couple of unwashed plates into the kitchen, and went down the two flights of stairs to open the door.

  He had the pale colouring that usually goes with red hair and is liable to break out into crimson blotches in moments of stress. He touched his cap and held out his hand. She extended hers, feeling ridiculous.

  ‘I know you by sight, of course,’ he said as they started up the stairs. ‘Never had a chance to speak. It’s all incredibly breathless on the sportsdesk.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘I was told about this around midnight. I recorded a message on your answerphone this morning, but obviously …’

  ‘Mm,’ said Jane. ‘I had this down as a morning off.’

  ‘You were told to expect a lift?’

  ‘Yes, Cedric promised someone would call. I assumed after lunch.’ She pushed open the door of her flat. ‘Give me twenty minutes. The kitchen’s through there if you’d like to make some instant coffee.’

  ‘Thanks. I don’t drink coffee in any form.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say no.’

  He turned gratifyingly red. ‘Of course.’

  Her cup was waiting when, showered, dressed in a white lace blouse and black trouser suit, and as alert as she was capable of being within a half-hour of waking, she rejoined him. ‘Any idea what this is about?’

  ‘Only that it has nothing to do with sport.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Jane. ‘I spend half my working life knee-deep in mud and horse-droppings.’

  She followed his rapid glance around the room, at the stuffed toys on their shelf, the fencing mask, the family snaps of her father, her two sisters and the dogs, the wooden plaque with the arms of Selwyn College, the skis, the print of Charles I on horseback, the Ecology Party poster, the bookshelves and the family tree, and she sensed that if she didn’t think of something fast, Dick Garrick would start on his Sherlock Holmes routine.

  She gulped a mouthful of the tepid coffee he’d presented her with, and said, ‘I think we should do something about getting to Henley.’

  7

  A worried man arrived at the Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s mountain villa at Obersalzberg, on the morning of Sunday 11 May 1941. He was Hauptmann Karlheinz Pintsch, the most trusted adjutant of Rudolf Hess, and he had travelled overnight from Augsburg in Hess’s private railway carriage. On arrival at Berchtesgaden station at 7.00 a.m., he had phoned the Führer’s adjutant, Albert Bormann, the brother of Martin Bormann, and requested an immediate appointment. Bormann was unimpressed. Everyone who came to the Berghof wanted priority and, as he frequently denied it to Reichsministers, he saw no reason to make an exception of a mere adjutant. He promised nothing except that a car would be sent to collect Pintsch from the station.

  The approach to Hitler’s private mountain was through a series of checkpoints in a forest thick with SS guards. A nine-mile perimeter fence enclosed other fences, barracks, garages, a hotel and the Berghof itself, an extension of Wagnerian proportions to the simple wooden house Hitler had built from the royalties of Mein Kampf in the 1920s.

  Bormann was in the entrance hall when Pintsch arrived and reiterated the urgency of his request. Bormann told him that the Führer’s schedule was already full. A day’s appointments had been telescoped into three hours to make way for a reception for Admiral Darlan – the representative of the Vi
chy French, and the real power behind Marshal Pétain. Hitler was looking to the French for a stronger commitment to military collaboration, and he expected to get it that afternoon from Darlan.

  The best Pintsch could extract from Bormann was a promise to try to fit him in at some point during the morning. Resignedly, he took his place in the crowded anteroom at the foot of the main staircase. Three hours later, he was still waiting. Among those who had arrived were Dr Fritz Todt, the Minister for Armaments, and Albert Speer, the Inspector General of Buildings. Pintsch, ‘pale and agitated’ as Speer recalled him, asked each of them if he might be permitted to precede them to deliver the letter from Hess. While he was with Todt, a sudden commotion put a stop to conversation. People had sprung to attention and clicked their heels.

  Hitler was coming downstairs. He wore a grey uniform without insignia, but the magisterial way he deported himself stamped him unmistakably as the Führer.

  Pintsch took a step forward. ‘My Führer –’

  With a limp hand, Hitler waved him away. ‘Wait your turn. Dr Todt is due to see me next.’

  ‘My Führer, Dr Todt has graciously consented to my delivering this letter from the Stellvertreter.’

  ‘A letter from Hess?’ Hitler took it and strode through the anteroom to the salon.

  Pintsch, after a moment’s hesitation, followed. He stopped in the doorway, intimidated, as every visitor was, by the proportions and furnishings of the room. Sixty feet ahead was a picture window, reputedly the largest in the world, with a breathtaking view of Berchtesgaden and Salzburg. In front of it was a table made from a twenty-foot slab of red marble, quarried from the Untersberg across the valley. There were tapestries, paintings by Italian and German masters, a cabinet filled with priceless china, a sideboard practically as big as the table, and a bronze bust of Wagner mounted on an ornamental chest.

  Hitler was standing at the window, facing the view. He had handed the letter to Air General Bodenschatz, Göring’s adjutant, to open. Bodenschatz picked up a paper-knife, slit the envelope and took out the several sheets of writing paper.

  Hitler took them and began to read:

  My Führer, when you receive this letter, I shall be in England. You can imagine that the decision to take this step was not easy for me …

  The muscles at the back of Hitler’s neck tensed.

  Pintsch felt his own muscles tauten.

  … And if, my Führer, this project – which I admit has but very small chance of success – ends in failure and the fates decide against me, this can have no detrimental results either for you or for Germany; it will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility. Simply say that I was crazy.

  Hitler screamed: ‘an inarticulate, almost animal outcry’, as Speer heard it from the anteroom.

  Bodenschatz exchanged a nervous glance with Pintsch.

  Without turning, Hitler said, ‘You had better tell me what has happened.’

  ‘My Führer –’ said Pintsch.

  ‘Speak up!’

  ‘The Stellvertreter took off from the airport at Augsburg yesterday at 1810 hours. He left me written orders. If he had not returned after four hours, I was to open them and read them. I was instructed to deliver the letter personally to you. I travelled overnight to get here.’

  Hitler swung round and snapped at Bodenschatz, ‘You hear that, Herr General? Hess has flown to Britain. What does the Luftwaffe have to say about that? Fetch Göring at once.’

  ‘My Führer, he is at home in Nuremberg.’

  ‘Get him here!’

  ‘Yes, my Führer!’ Bodenschatz snatched up a phone.

  Hitler pressed a bell-push.

  Albert Bormann, alerted by the scream, came instantly into the room.

  ‘Where is Reichsminister von Ribbentrop?’

  ‘He is about to go to lunch with Admiral Darlan, my Führer.’

  ‘Get him out. I want to speak to him.’ Hitler shouted across the room to Bodenschatz, ‘Have you told Göring?’

  ‘I am trying to reach him, my Führer.’

  ‘Get Air General Udet as well. Get the whole of the Luftwaffe if necessary! I want to know what’s been going on behind my back. And you, Hauptmann Pintsch …’ Hitler softened his voice to a level that was more menacing than the shouting, ‘… you also will join us for lunch.’

  Pintsch bowed, clicked his heels and withdrew. When he got outside, he found that the anteroom had been cleared and everyone sent upstairs. Then Martin Bormann, whom he knew well as Hess’s deputy, appeared and took him to one side.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Pintsch explained.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ said Bormann. ‘Don’t involve me, will you?’

  Lunch at the Berghof was never notably conducive to the digestion. Members of the SS bodyguard in waiters’ dress attended on the table. Hitler, a vegetarian teetotaller, frequently harangued his guests about their eating habits. But on this occasion, the food passed from plate to mouth uncommented upon, and practically unnoticed. Grouped around the table in addition to Hitler were his mistress, Eva Braun; Hess’s deputy, Martin Bormann; Air General Bodenschatz; Air General Ernst Udet; the Press adviser, Otto Dietrich; one of von Ribbentrop’s adjutants, Walther Hewel; Dr Todt; and the unenviable Pintsch.

  Hess had put no constraint upon Pintsch about telling what he knew, so when Hitler asked for a full account, he was given it. Pintsch described the preparations: the work on the Messerschmitt; the practice flights; the daily weather reports; the arrangement with the Air Ministry to provide a radio beam; the three unsuccessful missions; and the detailed events leading up to the fateful take-off.

  ‘This whole business stinks!’ said Hitler. ‘I trusted Hess. I took him for a man of honour. My God, I know him better than any of you. We were prisoners together in Landsberg Castle. I made him my Stellvertreter. He gave me a solemn promise not to do any flying. And now this!’

  Pintsch cleared his throat.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘As he explained it to me, my Führer, the promise he gave you was in September 1939.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He said he pledged to do no flying for the period of one year, my Führer. He considered that after September 1940, he was free to fly again.’

  Hitler sat back in his chair and rested his chin on his hand, making an effort to remember.

  Martin Bormann, silent until this moment, quietly remarked, ‘My Führer, last year, you put out an order for the duration of the war banning all Reichsministers from piloting their own planes.’

  Hitler snapped his fingers. ‘Correct! He defied my order. And others conspired with him. The Luftwaffe. Air General Udet, what do you know of this business?’

  ‘Only this, my Führer: Herr Hess came to me last autumn and asked to do some flying from Tempelhof.’

  ‘What was your answer?’

  ‘I told him I would need to see a permit signed by yourself. He went away and I didn’t hear from him again.’

  ‘He went to Augsburg,’ said Hitler, ‘and he was provided with a Messerschmitt. We shall be looking into that. Well, Herr General, with due allowance for the conditions and the ability of Hess, what is your professional opinion of his chances?’

  ‘Of reaching England, my Führer?’

  ‘Scotland, Herr General. He was planning to visit the Duke of Hamilton. That is to say, near Glasgow.’

  ‘Glasgow? That is out of the question, my Führer. Even if he was not shot down by the British, he must have come down in the sea. A flight of that distance in an Me 110 would test the best of our Luftwaffe pilots, with all the advantages of modern training and equipment. How would he land after dark? It’s quixotic. I am afraid the Stellvertreter is dead.’

  ‘That is the opinion of the Luftwaffe?’

  ‘Anyone with a knowledge of flying would agree, my Führer.’

  ‘We shall see if you are right,’ said Hitler, as he took a last sip of mineral water. ‘You and I may see this from different
points of view, Herr General. You know flying: I know Rudolf Hess.’ He turned to Eva Braun. She nodded to indicate that she was ready to leave.

  Everyone rose and stood to attention.

  Before leaving the room, Hitler spoke briefly to Martin Bormann, who followed him out.

  The sense of relief was shortlived. Bormann returned with two officers.

  ‘Hauptmann Pintsch, I have to advise you that you are under arrest.’

  8

  In its 10.00 p.m. news bulletin on Monday 11 May 1941, Munich Radio broadcast the following statement:

  It is officially announced by the National Socialist Party that Party Member Rudolf Hess, who, because he has been suffering from a progressive illness for several years, had been strictly forbidden by the Führer to engage in any further flying activity, was able, contrary to this command, to come into possession of an aircraft again.

  On Saturday 10 May at about 6.00 p.m., Rudolf Hess set out on a flight from Augsburg from which he has not so far returned. A letter he left behind unfortunately shows by its distractedness traces of a mental disorder, and it is feared that he was a victim of hallucinations.

  The Führer ordered the immediate arrest of the adjutants of Party Member Hess, who alone had any knowledge of the flight, and did nothing either to prevent or report it, in contravention of the Führer’s command, of which they were fully aware.

  In the circumstances, it must be presumed that Party Member Hess either jumped out of his aircraft or has met with an accident.

  At 11.23 p.m. the same evening, the following statement was issued by the Ministry of Information in Great Britain:

  Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer of Germany and Party Leader of the National Socialist Party, has landed in Scotland in the following circumstances.

  On the night of Saturday the 10th instant, a Messerschmitt 110 was reported by our patrols to have crossed the coast of Scotland and be flying in the direction of Glasgow.

  Since an Me 110 would not have the fuel to return to Germany, this report was at first disbelieved.