Katastrophe, page 21
Minutes later, there was a stir of movement on the terrace. The Allied Generals turned their backs on the view, and advanced cautiously towards another figure who’d just emerged from the villa. He was tall, handsome, erect. Like the men he’d come to meet, he was wearing a suit, and like them, he radiated a natural authority. Moncrieff had seen photos of Wolff, back in London, and he recognised the set of his face, the high dome of his head, the sweep of thinning silver-grey hair.
‘Wolff,’ he whispered, as De Vries slowly panned the camera.
The three men were introducing themselves, the taller of the two Allied Generals taking the lead. A couple of aides had appeared with Wolff, and they, too, got a handshake. From where Moncrieff was standing, the grouping was perfect, every face visible, and there was even a hint of sunshine as the clouds began to part. If Anneke De Vries could do justice to a family of tiny coots then Moncrieff had absolutely no doubt that her wildlife talents would capture the scene below.
The woman who’d appeared earlier had returned to the terrace and was pouring what looked like coffee into proffered cups. The taller of the two Allied Generals had evidently asked for tea, and another woman appeared with a china pot. This had to be the Brit, Moncrieff concluded, General Airey. He spooned sugar into his tea and gave it a stir as the American – General Lemnitzer – clapped his hands and delivered a short speech. The villa was too far away for Moncrieff to catch the details, but Wolff was looking pleased and delivered a brief reply. By now, the three of them had formed a little circle of their own, Wolff full-face, the Allied envoys in profile, and Moncrieff was aware of De Vries awaiting the moment that would tell the whole story. The roll of film she was using offered only eight exposures. It was obvious that she needed nerve as well as patience, and watching her bending to the camera, her forefinger motionless above the shutter button, Moncrieff realised again how wildlife photography must have been the perfect training for a challenge like this. Finally, after a sequence of shots, she leaned back from the tripod and shot him a glance over her shoulder.
‘Done,’ she said.
*
They climbed the hill as carefully as they’d made the descent, De Vries in front, following a path that led diagonally across the face of the hill, away from the villa. At the main road, they stayed in the shelter of the trees until there was no traffic, and then headed for the cover of the forest on the other side. Back beside the Topolino, De Vries stowed her equipment, and then drove back to Locarno. Instead of returning to her apartment above the rowing club, Moncrieff found himself in a maze of streets behind the town’s centre.
‘Come.’
They were parked beside a modern-looking apartment block with exterior stairs to a basement. De Vries was nursing her camera and Moncrieff followed her down. The door at the bottom of the steps was already slightly ajar, and De Vries stepped inside.
‘Hannalore?’ she called.
A woman’s voice answered from the depths of the basement, and moments later Moncrieff was looking at a tiny woman with barely any hair. She must have been De Vries’s age, maybe a year or two older. She was wearing an artist’s smock and a pair of gipsy earrings, and her feet were bare on the parquet floor. The smock, on closer inspection, was scabbed with paint and she’d pinned an enamel butterfly to one shoulder.
She extended a hand for De Vries’s camera and led the way down the hall. Moncrieff could already smell the developing chemicals the forgers used on the top floor at St James’s Street, and was last into the darkroom at the end of the hall. With the door shut, it was pitch-black inside and Moncrieff listened to Hannalore loading the exposed film into the developing tank. Then came a click as she closed the lid on the tank, and the room was suddenly bathed in a deep red glow from a single bulb high on the wall.
‘Lock it, please.’ De Vries nodded at the door.
Moncrieff did her bidding and settled down for what he knew would be a longish wait, content to settle in a chair in the corner and listen to the two women talking. They were obviously friends. Most of the chatter was gossip. Not once did De Vries mention the villa by the lake.
Finally, after half an hour to dry, the roll of negatives was ready for inspection. De Vries peered at the film through a magnifying lens, moving slowly from shot to shot until she settled on the one she wanted.
‘There,’ she murmured. ‘That one.’
Heidi had already prepared another bath of developer for the print.
‘Size?’
‘15 x 10.’
Hannalore nodded and slipped a sheet of photographic paper onto the work bench. Within minutes, his seat abandoned, Moncrieff was watching three faces swim up through the soup of chemicals, first ghostly, then bolder, then in perfect resolution General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, General Terence S. Airey, and SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, all three of them smiling. Moncrieff had asked De Vries to record a moment that might alter the course of the war. And there it was: one of the regime’s top SS Generals, a man with the Warsaw ghetto on his conscience, busily plotting an end to the madness of these years.
*
At Moncrieff’s insistence, they celebrated at a restaurant two streets away. By now it was lunchtime. Moncrieff insisted on a table at the very back of the room, away from prying eyes, and after he’d ordered a beer for himself and a glass of blueberry juice for De Vries, he slipped the print from the thickness of the cardboard envelope and examined it for the first time in full daylight. If you were looking for evidence that Operation Sunrise had produced a truly remarkable moment, then here it was. These were men, Moncrieff thought, who plied the same trade. They spoke the language of modern warfare. They knew how to muster large bodies of men, how to move them around, how to deploy them to maximum advantage. They understood the lethal potential of artillery, of close ground support, and they applied the dark arts of modern warfare to battlefield after battlefield. They dealt in the currency of men’s lives, thousands of lives, feeding the bonfires that had scorched an entire continent, but they were human, too, and it showed in their faces, in the seeming warmth of their smiles, in the small courtesies that had already marked this morning’s meeting. Moncrieff had no idea what next awaited these men, but he knew that kind of speculation was beyond his pay grade. What he had to do now was to get this single image, plus supplementary shots, back to London.
Moncrieff and De Vries lingered over pasta with a marinara sauce. It would be at least an hour before Hannalore printed the rest of the roll, and De Vries didn’t want to hurry her. She had also sensed the importance of what was happening down beside the lake, and she was delighted by what she called her own small role in the unfolding drama. Moncrieff, whose eyes kept returning to the envelope, told her not to be so modest. Without a photographic record, especially images of this quality, the meeting at the villa might never have happened. It could be erased from the record, like so much else in the intelligence world.
‘To this morning.’ Moncrieff raised his glass. ‘You did better than well.’
They were back outside the apartment block minutes later. This time, the door was wide open. At Hannalore’s request, De Vries had picked up a huge slice of cheesecake from the restaurant, and now she carried it, carefully wrapped, into the gloom of the basement.
She called Hannalore’s name, said they were back. No response. De Vries hesitated, tried again. Nothing. She took another step down the hall towards the darkroom at the end, but Moncrieff pulled her back.
‘Leave this to me,’ he said.
‘Leave what?’ De Vries was frowning now.
Moncrieff didn’t answer. At the end of the hall, as he’d half expected, was another open door. The darkroom, still bathed in red light, lay beyond it. He balled a fist, lacking a weapon of any kind, then stepped inside. In the murky light, at first glance, it was hard to be sure, but then his eyes adjusted, and he knew he’d been right to fear the worst. The shape on the floor beside Hannalore’s head was unmistakeable. It had to be an ice pick.
He felt a movement behind him. De Vries, he thought. He turned towards her, blocking her path as she tried to push past him.
‘Don’t,’ he said, pulling the door closed behind him.
15
That same afternoon, Werner Nehmann arrived in Berlin, handcuffed to a Feldgendarmerie Sergeant in the back of a mud-encrusted Kübelwagen. This was the first time Nehmann had seen the capital of the Reich since the Christmas of 1942, and three years of increasingly heavy bombing had transformed a city he’d grown to love.
This could be a film set, Nehmann thought, staring out at yet another ruined street: windows without glass, balconies hanging over mountains of rubble, addresses chalked on pitted walls for the redirection of mail, spindly kerbside trees stripped bare by blast damage. The last time Nehmann had seen anything like this was at Stalingrad, and years before that in one of the basement editing rooms at the Promi where Goebbels would arrive in a gust of new leather and eau de cologne, his brisk attention drawn to raw footage from Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and countless other enemy cities gutted by the Luftwaffe, images that would be edited within the hour and despatched to cinemas nationwide.
The Kübelwagen, under its sagging canvas roof, was draughty as hell, and Nehmann could smell the sour breath of these familiar Berlin streets – ashes, brick dust, poorly repaired sewers – lingering evidence of months of bombing. It was from here, back in 1940, that the regime had exported violence on the grandest scale. Those early campaigns had gifted the Fatherland with a Greater Reich, thanks to undreamed-of conquests across an entire continent, but it might have been wise – Nehmann thought – to have pondered the consequences just a little bit harder because the enemy had obviously learned the lessons that mattered. Berlin, five long years later, had become a nightly punchbag for RAF bombers, and a city of ghosts in the cold light of day. Even the pigeons, pecking listlessly at the spill of contents from a paper bag, seemed skinnier.
At Nehmann’s request, they were driving to the Wilhelmplatz in the city centre. Last night, the Lieutenant who was riding up front in the passenger seat had finally made contact with superiors who had connections to Herr Goebbels. It appeared that the Minister of Propaganda now bore additional responsibility as Reich Defence Commissar for Berlin, and to the Lieutenant’s surprise Nehmann’s story turned out to be true. Yes, he knew the little Georgian. Yes, he’d put his considerable talents to the service of the Promi. And, yes, the Minister would be very happy to meet him again.
The Kübelwagen swept under the Brandenburger Tor, and then turned onto the Wilhelmstrasse, the heart of the Reich.
‘The Führer’s in residence.’ The Lieutenant gestured at the Chancellery. ‘Do you know him, too, by any chance?’
Nehmann followed the pointing finger. The Lieutenant was right. Guards outside the doors to the Chancellery, he remembered, were always doubled when Hitler was in town. Then, as the Kübelwagen slowed beside the Wilhelmplatz, Nehmann stiffened. The Ministry of Propaganda, with its tall windows and pillared portico, had always been one of the regime’s more elegant buildings, well-mannered, a happy compromise between classical proportion and raw power. Some of Goebbels’ staff referred to it as the White Palace, a term that Nehmann himself had always regarded as quaint given the blackness of the lies it generated, but even he – especially in the early days – had succumbed to its enchantments.
The Kübelwagen came to a halt and Nehmann found himself tugged out of the open door and into the fitful late afternoon sunshine.
‘Release him.’
The Sergeant did the Lieutenant’s bidding, and Nehmann muttered his appreciation, massaging the blood back into his wrist as he gazed at the ruins of Goebbels’ pride and joy.
‘When did this happen?’
‘Last week. Nine days ago, to be precise. Those fucking Mosquitos is what I heard.’
Mosquitos, it seemed, were plaguing Berlin night after night: fast, twin-engined English bombers that stole in from the darkness, weaving between the searchlight beams, and laid their eggs on targets like these.
‘And Goebbels?’
‘Elsewhere. The way I hear it, he wants a rocket up Goering’s arse. We used to have an air force but those days have gone. That man should be careful. Goebbels still matters, especially in this city.’
‘That man?’
‘Goering.’ The Lieutenant nodded towards the remains of the Ministry. ‘If Goebbels wanted a firing squad to teach the Fat One some manners, he’d be spoiled for volunteers.’
Nehmann was looking at a little kiosk in the middle of the plaza. Like the Brandenburg Gate, it had so far been spared by the bombs, and he watched a youngish woman fumbling for change under the gaze of the proprietor. It was here, three years ago, that eager visitors could buy postcards featuring cosy gemütlich shots of the Nazi chieftains. Of Goering, with his daughter Edda on his shoulders; of Ribbentrop, relaxing beside his swimming pool; of Goebbels and his wife, with their proud muster of six children. Nehmann shook his head and turned away. In bed, as everywhere else, the Minister was never less than busy.
‘There used to be a traffic policeman here,’ Nehmann told the Lieutenant. ‘He wore a cap and a belted white jacket. He knew everyone, and he had all the time in the world for a conversation. He said his name was Siegfried but that had to be a lie. Goebbels loved him.’
‘You want to take a look?’ The Lieutenant nodded towards the Ministry.
Nehmann fell into step beside him. Uniformed police were guarding the steps that had once led to the front door. The Lieutenant returned a salute. He and his colleague were welcome to explore a little further but only at their own risk.
‘Well?’ The Lieutenant had turned to Nehmann.
‘Nothing changes,’ Nehmann was looking at a sheaf of Promi forms among the rubble, streaked with soot and brick dust. ‘Working here was always life or death.’
The Lieutenant held his gaze for a moment, uncertain quite how to react, then shrugged and headed up the steps. A path of sorts had been cleared where the main door had once been, and Nehmann – gestured onwards by the Lieutenant – picked his way carefully inside. Steel beams had been scorched and twisted in the heat of the explosions, and he recognised the charred remains of wooden panelling among the tumble of brick and shattered marble.
‘So what happened here?’ The Lieutenant had suddenly become a tourist, gazing round at the devastation, then upwards towards a glimpse of sky through the blackened rafters.
‘Here was the switchboard.’ Nehmann was making it up. ‘The women were magicians. They could take you anywhere in the world.’
‘How many lines?’
‘Hundreds. The Minister loved a conversation.’
‘You were really close to him?’
‘I was, for a while.’
It was true. From the moment they’d met, Nehmann had sensed a kinship with the Reich’s master puppeteer, a joint fascination about the sheer numbers of strings you could pull, responses you could trigger, directions you could flag for the millions of Germans already in love with blood and treasure.
Here, in the White Palace, Goebbels ran a tight ship. He’d appear, promptly, at nine o’clock, ascend to his study, the glad prisoner of his unvarying schedule. There’d be an immediate round of meetings with key courtiers, triggered by the sheer pace of events, followed by an hour or so of calls to check on overnight events. Then, at eleven o’clock, would come the morning conference, always held around the long table beneath the hanging thirties chandelier – important faces from the military, from the world of film production and news-gathering and live theatre. Debate around the table was perfunctory, compliance signalled by nods and murmured agreement, and much later in the day, with the Ministry already half-empty, Goebbels would summon Nehmann to his study, take a break from the pile of film scripts awaiting ministerial approval and share a bottle of Gewürztraminer and perhaps a fat slice or two of white Bavarian sausage.
Goebbels, Nehmann had known from the start, was a solitary, a loner, a man without the burdens of friendship, but his fierce intelligence brooked neither opposition nor incompetence, and he’d built an empire and a power base which gave him immense reach. This spider’s web extended to every corner of the Reich. To be in the very middle of it was an experience that Nehmann would never forget, regardless of where it had finally taken him, and when the Lieutenant stooped to retrieve an object in black Bakelite from the pile of rubble at their feet, Nehmann held it in his hand for a moment, happy to give it a name.
‘It’s a microphone,’ he said. ‘We had a system that allowed the Minister to interrupt any broadcast, at any time, to address the nation. He could do it from here, in the Promi. Sometimes it was scheduled. Other times, it wasn’t. Imagine having that kind of power. Get the right words in the right order…’ he glanced down at the microphone, ‘… and we could do anything.’
‘We?’
‘We. Did it last? Sadly not. Did his role in my life save me from a bullet after you arrested me? I suspect the answer is yes.’ Nehmann broke off to peer more deeply into the wrecked belly of the building, then he shook his head. Of the Theatre Hall, the Throne Room and the Blue Gallery – all the period gems so precious to Goebbels – there were no remains. Neither, at first glance, had any of the antique furniture survived.
