Occasionally Becker interrupted the narrative to say affectionately, almost in admiration, ‘He’s a bloody madman, you know.’
By the end, she knew he would do anything in his power to help, but the process of telling the story had brought home to her the realisation that there was little anyone could do now. Willi Becker was a reassuring listener, a comfort in adversity, but he was in no position to influence events inside the walls of Spandau Prison.
‘This Heidrun Kassner. You’re sure she is working for the Soviets?’
‘Red is just as sure as I am.’
‘And you are certain she has gone over?’
‘I watched her go.’
Becker shook his head. ‘Let’s face it – Red is finished. Don’t blame yourself. He was a crazy idiot. Cigarette?’
‘But he said if I came to you …’ Jane sobbed, and couldn’t go on.
‘I would try to help, huh? Because I’m a crazy idiot also?’ He put a cigarette to his lips and reached for a lighter. ‘I have to be crazy to go on smoking these things.’ He lit up and exhaled. ‘Would you pass me the phone? Let’s see who else is out of his mind in this crazy schizoid city.’
47
He had the look of a man who has heard a disturbance on his doorstep and comes outside to see who is responsible. Frowning, peering through his plastic lenses, he took in the scene. His face and forearms, tanned from the hours he spent each day in the garden, were differentiated sharply from his lily-white upper arms and shoulders, lank where the muscle had wasted. He seemed conscious of the exposure, and crossed his arms. Age had given him a slight stoop, but had left him with a good head of soft, white hair. Few traces remained of the stiff-backed, brown-uniformed figure with the swastika arm-band pictured so often at Hitler’s side or on the rostrum at party rallies.
Red scrutinised the face. Among the many strange theories about Hess was the elaborate one that this man was a fake, a lookalike substitute for the real Deputy Führer. Allowing that the old man had not yet put in his dentures, it was difficult to form an opinion, but it was possible to recognize an unusual characteristic of the man pictured in pre-war photographs: the width and angularity of his jawbone below the ears, tapering to a short, neat chin.
For Red, the features that fixed this aged man in carpet slippers beyond any doubt as the Stellvertreter were the eyes. Cavernous under still-dark, still-thick brows, they surveyed the scene without a flicker, penetrating and analytical. To be the object of their scrutiny, even briefly, was disturbing. Red was made to feel an unwelcome intruder into the humiliation of a man of high rank who had not entirely lost his pride. He resisted the impulse to back off.
Rudolf Hess didn’t speak. He turned and shuffled back into his cell without a word. Presumably, he had taken stock, formed his judgement, and retired. In his long imprisonment, he had seen and experienced a variety of human behaviour – cruelties and kindnesses, loyalties and betrayals. He was obliged to take whatever was handed out, but not always in silence. If the accounts were true, no one had protested as forcibly or as persistently as he about every aspect of the regime: food he regarded as poisonous, work in the garden growing tobacco ‘for the slaves of nicotine’, insensitivities from the warders and the other prisoners. Latterly, he had given up complaining. He had detached himself mentally, fatalistic, expecting nothing and accepting everything.
Unusually, Red hesitated. There was precious little time, but so much rested on getting this right.
The chief warder was at his side. ‘You see what I mean? He has been here so long that he’s become a brick wall himself.’
‘He thinks I’m a warder. Could you tell him I’m not one of the warders?’
‘Let him put his teeth in first.’
There was sense in that. Allow the old man some self-respect.
The chief warder glanced at the sub-machine gun and shook his head reproachfully. ‘You shouldn’t have attacked the guard. It means trouble.’
‘I was in trouble already. He would have shot me, wouldn’t he? Shaporenko would have buggered off and raised the bloody alarm.’
‘It won’t be long before the bloody alarm is raised, anyway,’ the chief warder pointed out. ‘I’m supposed to be taking Hess to the interview room. Russian generals don’t like to be kept waiting.’
‘Jesus, I’d forgotten the bloody general. Can we lock ourselves in?’
‘No. The locks are on the outsides of the doors.’
‘We’ve got the gun.’
‘I cannot agree to use the gun.’
‘Thanks. I needed some encouragement.’ Red started unbuttoning the tunic. ‘What’s your name, squire?’
‘Petitjean.’
‘OK, I’m Red Goodbody. Will you go in now and tell Hess I’m not a warder, I’m a journalist from England with important news for him? Then I’ll take over.’
‘You want me to leave you alone with him?’
‘Please. And keep watch at the cell-block door.’
‘What if the Russians come?’
‘Tell them I’m with Hess and I have a gun and I’ll use it if anyone else sets foot in this block. Now, shall we see if he’s at home?’
With a shrug and a sigh that said that in this situation it didn’t much matter how they spent the small amount of time remaining, Petitjean entered Hess’s cell, while Red, in shirtsleeves and tieless, lurked just inside the doorway.
It was a brighter place than Red had imagined, with a high, white ceiling equipped with strip-lighting. The walls were painted cream and green, with a horizontal dividing-line precisely half-way up, in the time-honoured style of public institutions. A black composition floor gleamed with many applications of wax. The furniture consisted of a bed with adjustable back-rest, provided by the British Military Hospital after Hess had been treated for a duodenal ulcer there; a brown table with an electric hotplate, Nescafé and a copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine; a straight-backed wooden chair; and shelves containing plates, two enamel cups, hair-brushes, a row of books and a portable television set. From the underside of the shelves were suspended his greatcoat and jacket. There was one picture attached to the wall: a chart of the surface of the moon.
Hess was now in a check shirt that he had buttoned to the neck and grey denim trousers. He stood with his back to the door, laboriously folding a blanket on his bed.
In German, Petitjean announced Red in the way he had requested. Hess continued with his task, apparently oblivious.
‘Is his hearing all right?’ Red asked.
‘Better than yours or mine,’ muttered Petitjean, passing close to Red on his way out.
The moment had come. Alone with Hess, not quite face to face, but working on it.
‘Herr Hess?’
Preoccupied, the old man squared off the blanket and started on another.
‘I got in here by impersonating Warder Moody, the American. He is dead. Yesterday he was murdered by the KGB.’
There may have been a slight hesitation in the blanket-folding routine. It was hard to tell.
‘I knew him,’ Red affirmed. ‘I won’t claim he was a friend, because I wanted to use him to get in touch with you for my newspaper.’
Red paused, priming himself for the disclosure that had to make an impression. ‘We have evidence about what happened in Britain in 1941, sensational evidence concerning Winston Churchill that has been suppressed all these years. We believe we know the true story of your peace mission and why it went wrong. Some things you may not even know yourself. I was counting on Cal Moody’s help. Then I discovered that the Russians had tabs on him. Yesterday morning, three of their agents followed him to an address in the Charlottenburg district.’
Hess stopped folding the blanket. He didn’t turn, or make any sound. He simply stopped what he was doing and stood staring at the blank wall.
‘I saw what happened. Cal went inside, and later came out again. One of the agents followed him. The other two went into the house and murdered the woman who lived there.’
Hess tur
ned and stared. The force of those strange eyes turned on Red was almost palpable. They were blue, pale blue, a discovery that made him aware that he had only ever looked at Hess before in black and white. They were disbelieving, unfriendly, angry, but at least they had reacted.
‘Her name was Fraulein Edda Zenk.’ Red paused. ‘They beat her up before they shot her.’
Hess rested his hands on the bed, and lowered himself awkwardly to a sitting position, as if his legs had suddenly refused to function. It appeared for a moment that he might be in pain, even possibly in the first stage of a heart attack. He seemed to be fighting for breath.
Red moved towards him. ‘Are you OK?’
Hess leaned forward and covered his face with his hands. He said in German, in a low voice breaking with emotion, ‘She was an innocent woman.’
‘You knew her, then?’
‘I asked Mr Moody to make sure she was safe.’
‘Safe from the Russians?’
He murmured some sort of confirmation.
‘Why? Why was she in danger?’
A sigh.
‘You knew if the Russians found her they would kill her. Is that it?’
Hess had retreated into silence.
Red tried the question again and still got nothing. He had to find some other lever. ‘A Russian General has come to the prison. His name is Vanin. I think he is KGB. He didn’t arrange it with the Allied Commission. He just picked up a phone and informed the Soviet director he was coming to question you. The chief warder is supposed to escort you to the interview room.’
‘I will not go,’ Hess flatly announced, sitting up straight as he spoke.
‘Do you know what they want?’
No answer.
‘But it must be connected with Edda Zenk?’
Hess looked away.
Desperation drove Red to say, ‘For God’s sake, Edda Zenk was pistol-whipped by the KGB. Whatever it is that you insist on keeping to yourself, the bloody Russians beat it out of that old lady before they killed her. They silenced her, they silenced Cal, and now they’re coming for you. What happens if they kill you, too? What will you have achieved?’
Hess remained silent, but seemed less obdurate; he was visibly pondering what Red had told him.
Perhaps, Red thought, I’m asking the impossible. His thinking is so rigid after all those years in solitary that he’s incapable of modifying it.
At last, Hess said, ‘Why should I believe you?’
It was a fair question. His experiences as a prisoner of the British in the war years could not have filled him with confidence.
‘Because I’m a newsman,’ Red answered. ‘I’m interested in reporting the truth, not suppressing it. I’m the only chance you have to tell the world what you know.’ Even as he was speaking, he was conscious of how much he was asking Hess to take on trust. He wasn’t carrying a notebook or a tape recorder. He didn’t even have his press-card with him.
Hess sniffed and looked away.
But fortune is said to favour the brave. Red was standing beside Hess’s table and his eyes happened to light on the newspaper. He snatched it up. ‘Is this today’s? Have you read it?’
Hess shook his head, but fortunately in response only to the second question.
Red opened it and flicked through the sheets looking for the regional news. ‘There!’ he told Hess, jabbing his finger at a news item at the foot of one of the inside pages.
It was a small paragraph listed miscellaneously with others from around the German regions:
BERLIN WOMAN MURDERED
Edda Zenk, 73, a former secretary, was found shot in her Fredericiastrasse apartment in Charlottenburg, West Berlin, yesterday morning. The police have started a murder inquiry.
Hess put on his reading glasses to examine it. His hand crept up his shirt-front and pinched at a fold of the wrinkled skin around the base of his neck. He took a deep breath, and put the paper aside. ‘So it is true,’ he admitted. ‘I will listen to what you have to say.’
Grateful for any concession, Red made an immediate switch to 1940. Tersely, picking out the salient facts, he took Hess through the discoveries Jane and Dick had made about the German peace missions that had come in through Dublin: the ferrying trips to Oxfordshire in Frank Perry’s Anson; the Transport Command sergeant who had seen Churchill’s car at each of the houses where he had to drive the Germans; Herbert Hoover’s statement that six such peace missions had come in through Dublin, a revelation Lord Halifax had swiftly attempted to discredit.
Without pause, he turned to the subject of Hess’s flight to Britain and the panic it had caused in high places: the chance interception of the phone call from the Duke of Hamilton to Sir Alexander Cadogan; the summons to Ditchley Park; the news blackout; the War Cabinet at each other’s throats while statements were cobbled up and thrown out; the decision to give no explanation at all of the Deputy Führer’s presence in Britain; Beaverbrook’s talk of the need to ‘strangle the infant’ and his invitation to the press to invent wild stories accounting for the flight.
Hess was listening with close attention, leaning forward, supporting his elbows on his thighs. Once or twice, he gave the nod to a detail, as if he remembered having heard of it.
Red moved into a still more sensitive area: the four years Hess had spent in custody in Britain. ‘Mytchett Place, do you remember? You spent the first year there with MI5 and a team of psychiatrists.’
He straightened up and Red thought he was about to make a response; but just as suddenly he folded his arms and looked away, as if something had distracted him.
‘Stop me if I get it wrong, won’t you?’ Red put in, not expecting to be stopped, but wanting to be reassured that he was getting through. ‘The official version is that they discovered you were mentally unstable, but there’s evidence that MI5 made it their business to confuse you and undermine you psychologically. No one but you, Herr Hess, can really say how successful they were.’
It was obvious from the way Hess was staring at the ceiling that he wasn’t proposing to throw any light on the matter.
Red felt increasingly uneasy as he went on, ‘The way I see it, they wanted to play up the idea that you were mad. And you encouraged them by saying you had lost your memory and suspected they were trying to poison you. Maybe you did lose your memory.’
There wasn’t a flicker of interest. Worse, there was no way of telling whether Hess had switched off mentally as a discouragement, or whether his mind was atrophied, unable to concentrate except in short intervals of lucidity.
‘They didn’t want you talking about the real reason for your flight to Britain,’ Red persisted. ‘The trial at Nuremberg was coming up.’
By good fortune, the mention of Nuremberg triggered a reaction. Hess locked eyes with Red and said with heavy irony, ‘Trial?’
It was as if he couldn’t resist the impulse to take a sideswipe at the proceedings in 1946, and it was profoundly encouraging to Red – because although it was just the voicing of a single word, it was an intelligent response, not a mindless repetition.
‘Your half-starved appearance at Nuremberg was a shock to everyone who knew you. That’s how everyone remembers you – looking mad, behaving oddly. But you had your reasons, didn’t you?’
No reaction. He was abstractedly tracing the raised blue veins on the back of one of his hands.
Red talked on staunchly in the hope that something else would light a spark. ‘Well, it suited someone who wanted you discredited. I’m thinking of Sir Winston Churchill.’
The hands stopped moving.
‘You wouldn’t have seen Churchill’s history of the Second World War. He described you as a medical case, a neurotic.’
Hess lifted his face and there may have been a flicker of amusement under the dark eyebrows.
Red hammered the point home. ‘He used the word “lunatic” to describe your flight.’
It provoked a response! The ghost of a smile from Hess, then: ‘Did you say it was histo
ry that Churchill is supposed to have written?’
This was the opening Red had been battling for. ‘What is the history, Herr Hess? Did Hitler send you to Britain to make a deal with Churchill?’
The mention of Hitler was unfortunate. It clearly disturbed him. His expression became vague and he muttered, ‘These things happened so long ago.’
Red had been a reporter too long to let him off with that kind of evasion. ‘But you remember them, because you have written about them.’
A sharp look from Hess. ‘Written what?’
‘Your published letters to your wife. You wrote that your mission failed because you miscalculated. You said Churchill no longer had the power to act freely or check the avalanche. What did you mean by that?’
A pause. Was it too much to hope that after all the years of silence he was ready to make a statement that would clarify the mystery of the flight?
Instead, he wanted to complain. ‘Letters!’ he said bitterly. ‘What use are letters?’
At least he was talking now, so Red did his best to encourage it. ‘You mean they are censored?’
Hess said with contempt, ‘I am permitted to write and receive one censored letter a week. This week, no letters at all.’
‘Why? What happened?’
He ignored the question. ‘Your people, the British, are still afraid of things I could say. A couple of years ago, my son, Wolf Rüdiger, came to visit me, with the usual audience sitting in. We are prohibited from discussing the past, the years of the Third Reich; or the present, the conditions in Spandau; or the future, my campaign to be released. So what is there to say? Wolf attempted to embrace me; the British reported it and made a formal complaint. You see?’
Red seized on this. ‘They thought you might pass him a statement for the press. Herr Hess, you have the opportunity now! I’ll see that whatever you say is published.’
‘Not yet,’ said Hess, with more force than anything he had spoken before. ‘It must wait until I am released.’ He added grimly, ‘One way or another.’
‘But you have to tell someone, for God’s sake!’
‘There is no need.’
The Secret of Spandau Page 30
