by Alex Gerlis
There wasn’t much to the village, which lay on the north shore of the lake: just houses, and what appeared to be a hotel or two close to the water. More houses were dotted on the hill rising on the north side of the road, with mountains looming high above them.
Frau Egger crossed the road from the bus stop and stopped to put on her scarf and gloves. She walked faster than Hanne would have expected, up a road with large houses arranged on either side, then turned right up a narrower road with only the occasional house on it. As the road became steeper, she paused once or twice but didn’t turn round. Hanne slowed her own pace, allowing the distance to increase between her and the older woman. It was bitterly cold; the air fresh from the lake and the mountains, and the sun cast the area in an almost blinding light. At one stage Hanne turned round and noticed a couple behind her, clearly hikers out for a day on the mountains. They didn’t seem to notice her.
Frau Egger stopped outside a high metal gate and appeared to press a bell. As Hanne walked past, a young man opened the gate and hurried the housekeeper in. In the brief moment before the gate closed, she spotted a drive leading to a small but smart-looking white house. She carried on walking up the hill. The house had been the last one on the narrow road, and now she was in the countryside, the wind sweeping down from the mountain. The hikers walked past her, wishing her a good morning.
She waited until they’d disappeared and then walked through the gorse to circle round until she had a view of the house. She noticed now that the trees on the lower slopes of the mountains reached as far as the rear of the house. Despite not being dressed for the rough terrain and the biting cold, she carried on. At the start of the treeline, a well-maintained wooden fence barred entry into the woods. She managed to climb over and felt safer once in the cover of the trees. She moved through them, closer to the house. Soon parts of a white building with a red-tiled roof became visible. As she paused to catch her breath, she noticed a wire fence just a few feet ahead of her; the top strand was barbed wire. Avoiding the fence, she moved further round towards what she guessed was the rear of the house. It was then that she spotted a tree with a long branch just four feet from the ground. She pulled a log across and managed to haul herself onto the branch, from where she had a much better view of the house.
She could see a high fence surrounding its perimeter, and beyond that a glimpse of snow-covered grass leading to the house. The windows were all shuttered. As she craned her neck, she caught a movement: a man carrying what appeared to be a sub-machine gun walking along the side of the house with a large black dog by his side.
She glanced at her watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. It would be some hours before Frau Egger would leave, but her visit had served its purpose. She was sure she’d identified the house. She had no doubt this was a stopping point on the Kestrel Line. She would return to the town and brief Captain Hart, and they’d return in force once it was dark.
At that moment, she became aware of a noise beneath her, and before she could look down, she felt a tap on her ankle and heard the click of a safety catch being released on a gun.
‘Climb down very slowly, please.’ It was a man’s voice, speaking German.
‘And when you reach the ground, keep your arms in the air.’
Chapter 20
Berlin, December 1945
It was the great paradox of Kommissar Iosif Gurevich’s war, and more particularly its aftermath.
He’d spent over four years either in enemy territory or fighting them every day. It was reasonable to assume that once the war was over, there’d be a sense of absolute relief and of pleasure at life returning to normal.
And for the first few weeks – perhaps until the end of June – this had indeed been the case. He’d relished the absence of danger and enjoyed the considerable trappings of victory. But as the summer took hold of Berlin, the city began to shake itself down and the Allied powers staked their various claims, his feelings began to change. It dawned on him how much he missed living with danger. He realised how the unique sense of exhilaration that came from risking his life had become an urgent physical desire.
Sometime in August, a young officer from one of Marshal Konev’s mechanised brigades had gone mad, climbing onto the table in the officers’ mess and shouting about peasants and Nazis as he fired his revolver at the ceiling before blowing off his own head.
Konev had been persuaded that this could well have been a direct consequence of the psychological effect of the war, and he realised the Red Army couldn’t risk a recurrence. As a result, a group of psychiatrists had been dispatched from Moscow with orders to interview all senior officers.
Kommissar Iosif Gurevich had been blasé about his own appointment. There was, after all, nothing wrong with him. He’d survived the war and had since been promoted, and he was absolutely fine, especially since he’d tracked down the SS officer who’d murdered his family in Minsk and wrought his revenge. Seeing the psychiatrist would be a mere formality, something he was only doing because he’d been ordered to. It would be like the visit he’d made to the dentist the previous week.
The dentist had turned out to be a rather beautiful woman from Leningrad who he was convinced had allowed her hands to brush his face: he’d even arranged another visit. The psychiatrist could not have been more different: a tiny man with thick spectacles and a slightly startled expression. But there was an unspoken connection between the two of them: the Jewish psychiatrist from Moscow, the Jewish commissar from Minsk.
‘Tell me about your family, Comrade.’
It was Gurevich’s turn to be startled. He’d only mentioned in passing that they’d been murdered by an Einsatzgruppen, and he was hoping the session would shortly come to an end with the psychiatrist assuring him he was fine.
But instead he found himself talking about his family’s murder, and how he had no one left other than a brother, and how much he regretted ditching a fiancée many years ago in order to save his career. By now he was pouring his heart out, and tears were running down his cheeks.
He stopped talking and apologised and assured the psychiatrist he had no idea what had got into him, but the man from Moscow said not to worry, it was good he was talking, and assured him this would not reflect badly on him at all.
‘It’s the ones who don’t react with any emotion that I worry about. You need have no concerns about my report, Comrade.’ He’d smiled: the unspoken connection.
Then Gurevich mentioned how he missed the sense of danger he’d experienced during the war, the sheer exhilaration of facing down death every day: was this… odd?
‘Not at all: it was your way of coping with the stress of war and with the personal traumas in your life. Subconsciously you felt you had little to lose and therefore you were able to be reckless: it was as if you were finding a way of redeeming yourself. But a consequence of this behaviour was that this sense of risk and the excitement became like a drug. You became addicted to it.’
‘I miss it dreadfully sometimes, like I’m drawn to danger.’
‘Of course you will be – it’s an addiction, as I said, and you are experiencing what we call withdrawal symptoms. It will take time to get over; you will need to be patient. If you occasionally flirt with danger, that may help, though do be careful.’
Iosif Gurevich said this all made sense and thanked the psychiatrist very much. As he prepared to leave, the psychiatrist came over and spoke quietly in his ear.
‘On a personal note, Comrade, if you want my advice, stay here as long as you can. Things are really not good for us in Moscow.’
* * *
Now Kommissar Iosif Gurevich was taking the doctor’s advice and flirting with danger. He’d crossed into the British sector, the risk increased by the fact that the British knew who he was but mitigated by not having shaved for a few days and being dressed in shabby civilian clothes. To add to his cover, he was accompanied by a female NKVD officer called Yulia, who provided a useful extra set of eyes and ears as they walked arm in
arm through the city.
‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her, ‘our papers are very good. We’re Polish Germans, a married couple from Poznań, trying to escape the damned Russians!’
He laughed, but she looked nervous: even jokes could be dangerous. Just look down, he told her. ‘Avoid eye contact; look for cigarette butts on the ground. Keep coughing: they’ll think you’re ill and will want to move you on.’
Their destination was on Cornelius Strasse, just south of the Tiergarten. He told Yulia to wait in the shell of a bombed-out building opposite. Lean against the wall, look exhausted; if any British soldiers say anything, ask them for money. They’ll soon leave you alone then!
Of course he could have asked them to come to him in East Berlin. It would have been more of an order than anything else and they’d have been obliged to do as he said. It was like that with these people: you were meant to be on the same side, but when one was a master and the other in effect a servant, relationships were more fraught.
The main reason he’d crossed the city to see them was that he didn’t want his own people to know what he was up to. They’d benefit in the long run – possibly – but in the meantime it was best to be discreet. That familiar sense of excitement, which had been building up all day, was now even more pronounced. His heart beat faster and his senses sharpened, and he felt more alive.
He told the guard on the door who he was, and a senior officer was called who spoke good Russian. He was led up to the top floor, through part of the building that seemed to have taken a direct hit from a shell and had no windows and little in the way of walls.
The man whose office he was shown into was someone he’d met since they’d captured Berlin, and although there was an atmosphere of distrust, it was one born of uncertainty more than anything else.
They were, after all, meant to be on the same side.
Kommissar Gurevich said he didn’t have long; he wanted to cross back into the east before it was dark. He explained the purpose of his visit. ‘Come closer, come round here and have a look. This is them, and here… look at this map… and this photograph too.’
As he explained in more detail what he wanted, the other man remained expressionless, giving the impression that he understood what Gurevich was saying but wasn’t too sure what it was that he was asking.
Kommissar Gurevich had spotted this and took two large cigars from his jacket pocket. They were intended as bribes at difficult checkpoints, but he decided this was as good a time as any, and they had the desired effect: the man looked very impressed and asked where he’d got them from, and Gurevich said it was a good job the Nazis were like magpies, and both men laughed heartily, the tension now broken.
Gurevich explained again what he wanted, and when he had finished, he took out another cigar and placed it on the desk between them.
‘What I’m saying is that it’s as much in your interests as it is in ours.’
The other man had already pocketed the cigar and was nodding. Both he and Gurevich knew full well that if anything, it benefited him even more.
Chapter 21
England, December 1945
In the shocking moments immediately after Tom Gilbey had spoken, Richard Prince felt himself reeling, his instinct to find something mundane to concentrate on as he absorbed the appalling news. Outside, flurries of snow that had appeared beautiful and almost balletic just minutes earlier as he’d walked through St James’s now had a decidedly violent quality to them. They looked like they were in conflict. He knew how they felt.
It occurred to him that he wasn’t sure how much more bad news he could take. His first wife and daughter had been killed a few years back in a car crash; then his son had gone missing, and Hanne too. He chewed hard on his knuckles in an attempt to retain some kind of composure.
Pop in for a chat, would you, Richard – later this morning, perhaps?
On reflection, Gilbey had sounded far too casual. And ‘Richard’: he should have remembered that the man reserved the use of his first name for serious matters.
‘Did you hear what I said, Richard? That I’m terribly sorry to say that Hanne has disappeared in Austria – that town in Carinthia.’
‘Yes, I heard you the first time, sir.’
‘I didn’t see you react.’
‘And how would you like me to react, sir?’
He watched Gilbey move awkwardly in his chair and felt an odd sense of indestructibility: his boss could hardly discipline him for insubordination when he’d just announced his wife was missing.
Gilbey shrugged, looking at his desk as if that would provide him with something to say. ‘It might not be such bad news; it’s possible it’s not as sinister as it sounds.’
‘Oh really, sir – in what way exactly? That it turns out Hanne was having such a good time that she decided to go and explore the countryside and her postcard telling us is delayed in the post? She was in Villach to try and pick up the trail of the Kestrel Line. By the sounds of it, she may have done just that, and now the Nazis have captured her.’
Gilbey nodded. It was hard to disagree.
‘What about the Field Security Section – weren’t they meant to be looking after her?’
‘They were, Richard. In fact it was Captain Hart from the FSS in Villach who raised the alarm. He—’
‘I mean, shouldn’t they have been with her all the time? It’s not as if she was looking for a jewel thief: she was hunting for escaping Nazi war criminals, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Come on, Richard. One realises this is distressing news, but perhaps a sense of calm might be helpful. I can assure you Hart’s commanding officer in Klagenfurt, Major Stewart, is hopping mad about this, though he does say that apparently Hanne showed a tendency to operate on her own.’
‘Well she was hardly going to drag the Home Guard around the town with her, was she, sir?’
‘Somewhat unfair, Prince.’
‘What do we know?’
‘Evidently on the Tuesday afternoon Hanne went to see a Frau Winkler, who may have had information about recent suspicious Nazi activity in the town. According to Frau Winkler, she told Hanne that a Nazi acquaintance of hers called Frau Egger was working at a house overlooking the Ossiacher See, which is a lake just outside the town. She said she’d been hired by a man from Vienna and the house had armed guards. Hanne never told Hart about this. Early the following morning, one of Hart’s chaps spotted her getting on the bus to Bodensdorf, which would have stopped close to the house.’
‘And nothing from then on?’
Gilbey shook his head. ‘And before you ask, yes, the FSS are combing the area around the house, but they need to be discreet – they don’t want to alert whoever’s holding Hanne. The feeling is that if they know we’re looking for her, it may blow whatever cover she was using.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘You’d better get out there as soon as possible.’
‘That goes without saying, sir.’
‘Shame, though, Prince, what with you making such good progress with the gallery.’
* * *
The accountant’s name was Slater, and with his stooped stance, common in tall men, along with a miserable expression, he was the kind of person one had to resist the urge to tell to cheer up.
As one of MI5’s specialist accountants, he’d been investigating the two business accounts of Bourne and Sons and the personal accounts of Bourne and Ridgeway. That morning, just a matter of hours before Prince had been summoned by Gilbey, he had followed Prince into his office looking almost excited.
‘Mind if I pull up a chair?’
He noisily dragged one across the floor and sat slightly closer than Prince felt comfortable with. Despite the heaters being on, and everyone else in shirtsleeves, Slater was wearing a heavy suit and a thick pullover. Prince couldn’t help noticing that his nose had a perpetual drop hanging from the end of it, which he occasionally wiped with the cuff of his shirt.
‘I think we may have a develo
pment.’ He coughed and laid some curled sheets of paper on the desk.
Prince glanced at them and told Slater it might be easier if he explained.
‘You remember that our examination of the various bank accounts – business and personal – associated with Bourne and Sons was not fruitful? Well, we have been keeping an eye on all four accounts, and the people with whom we liaise in those banks know to contact us as a matter of urgency if any approach is made from their clients or if there are any unusual transactions.’ Slater paused and coughed noisily before pulling a large handkerchief from his top pocket.
‘The London clearing banks have to adhere to wartime regulations, which are still in force. For cash withdrawals over twenty pounds, one full working day’s notice is required in writing, along with the name of the person who will be making the withdrawal. That person is required to bring their national identity card and further proof of identity. For withdrawals over fifty pounds, the requirement is for three working days’ notice. However, there is an exception to the latter requirement…’ Slater shifted his chair even closer to Prince and licked his thumb prior to turning over one of the sheets of paper. ‘If the withdrawal is to be made from the main branch of a bank in the City of London, then only one day’s notice is required, whatever the sum.
‘Last Thursday, the main branch of Martins Bank in Lombard Street was informed that a Miss Myrtle Carter would be making a withdrawal of one hundred pounds in cash from the Bourne and Sons account the following day. Unfortunately, by the time we were informed of this, that withdrawal had already been made. As a consequence, we contacted the Midland Bank, who hold the other Bourne and Sons account, and instructed them to be especially alert to that account. Just fifteen minutes ago, I received a telephone call from our contact at the bank to say that a request had been received for a Miss Myrtle Carter to withdraw the sum of one hundred pounds in cash from their Threadneedle Street branch tomorrow.’
