Katastrophe, page 22
Nehmann turned back to the Lieutenant. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘So where next?’
*
The Chain Dogs took him to a Feldgendarmerie barracks beyond the Anhalt station. There, barefoot after the turnkey had taken his boots and socks, Nehmann found himself locked in a cell that stank of bleach. There was a coil of fresh shit in the bucket in the corner, and in the dim light though the high window Nehmann peered at the graffiti on the neighbouring wall. One hand had transcribed three lines he recognised from Rilke. They addressed solitude, beauty and terror. Another warned against any contact with the Kartoffelsuppe. A third, in a crabbed hand, had managed a single word: Heil!
Was this ironic? And if so, would the brighter recruits among the Chain Dogs have the wit, or even the patience, to understand this sharp little dig in the Reich’s bony ribs? On the evidence of this single word, which seemed to have been incised with something sharp, Nehmann couldn’t even hazard a guess, but Kolyma had taught him the benefits of concentrating on a single thought, one intense little flicker of speculation, and within minutes – stretched full-length on the concrete plinth – he was asleep.
*
He awoke in darkness, hearing voices outside the door. Then came the turn of a key in the lock and the beam of a torch settled on his face. Instinctively, he shielded his eyes. Goebbels would never set foot in a hole like this. Had he fallen into a trap? Was all the talk about a meeting with the Minister yet another lie? Was he en route to some pitted brick wall and a line of waiting Chain Dogs with a bullet apiece?
‘Kommen Sie.’
‘Where to?’
Hands pulled him roughly to his feet. His boots and socks were returned, and silence fell as he struggled to put them on. Then he was out of the cell and shuffling down the corridor which led to the stairs out of the basement. A courtyard, he knew, lay beyond the building’s main door. Was this where his luck would finally run out? The push in the back? The untidy sprawl at the feet of these men? The cold muzzle on the nape of his neck as a Chain Dog stooped briefly to finish the job?
He paused at the top of the steps that led down to the courtyard, sucking the cold air deep into his lungs, steadying himself for whatever might happen next. Then he became aware that a vehicle, a Mercedes this time, was waiting in the darkness. Nehmann recognised the face of the Lieutenant in the back, moving over to give him room on the rear seat as unseen hands pushed him down the steps and into the car.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked again, his pulse beginning to settle.
‘Bogensee,’ the Lieutenant grunted. ‘Where else?’
‘And he’s there? Waiting?’
‘He is.’
Nehmann nodded. Bogensee was one of Goebbels’ three properties. Bogensee was where the Minister had mourned the ruins of his affair with Lida Baarova. Christmas at Bogensee, three years ago, had been Nehmann’s last glimpse of his protector. He closed his eyes, settling back against the plump leather, flooded with relief.
The Mercedes left the city centre and headed north, the familiar frieze of pine trees a blur in the dim blue throw of the headlights. Half an hour later, Nehmann recognised the turn that took them through the tall iron gates and into the property itself. The house was low, single-storey, built around a paved area, and as the Mercedes came to a halt in front of the imposing entrance, Nehmann remembered the little contemporary touches, tiny points of detail that had made Goebbels so proud of this ministerial bolthole. The subtle pattern of coloured bricks that formed the columns of the building, the carefully sited planters in Bauhaus concrete, the entwined Aryan couple in mottled grey stone, visible from every front window. Back when Nehmann had helped sprinkle the gladdest tidings over a grateful nation, the occasional summer afternoon out at Bogensee was when he and Goebbels had hatched their best ideas, but now the house was in darkness, the windows shuttered, no signs of life.
‘You told me he’d be here.’ Nehmann was standing beside the car.
‘He is.’ A grunt from the Lieutenant. ‘The power must be out.’
He escorted Nehmann towards the broad spread of the porch. A polite tap on the door produced nothing. He rapped again, forceful this time, and through the tiny glass panes Nehmann caught a flicker of light at what he remembered as the far end of the hall. It was a candle, the light spilling onto a knitted blue sleeve. Goebbels liked working in his cardigan, Nehmann remembered. This had to be him.
The door opened, and Nehmann took a tiny involuntary step backwards. Goebbels was holding the candle higher, inspecting his visitor at close quarters, his teeth white in what might have been a smile. Nehmann knew about candlelight, knew about the tricks it could play, the shadows it cast, but he knew at once that time and events had been unkind to the Reichsminister. He was thinner, paler, more distraught. His face, as deeply seamed as ever, was a mask. The blackness of his eyes spoke of sleepless nights and constant pressure and when his hand briefly settled on Nehmann’s arm, it was blotched and angry with eczema. This was a face, Nehmann thought, that he might have glimpsed from the Kübelwagen in Berlin’s ruined suburbs. He looked, in a word, beaten.
‘Not what you expected, Nehmann?’ Goebbels could still read him like a book. He held the door open, ordered him inside, dismissed the Lieutenant.
‘You don’t want us to wait, Herr Reichsminister?’
‘No.’
Goebbels shut the door, still nursing the candle, and Nehmann suddenly realised that this man had become the Reich’s caretaker. In its dying days, he would nurse it to the end, whisper in its ear, stroke the back of its hand, and switch off the lights once it was gone.
Wrong again.
‘The hour of our calling, Nehmann.’ Goebbels was leading the way deeper into the house. ‘You couldn’t have arrived at a better moment. Perfect timing. As always.’
Nehmann thought he caught a chuckle as the Minister rounded the corner at the end of the long hall. They were walking in file, one behind the other, and Nehmann was briefly entranced by the spill of light onto the polished marble floor. Everything else was in deep shadow but Nehmann recognised a picture or two on the wall. His favourite had been a Corot looted from a château in the Loire, chalky cliffs rising from the untidy greens and greys of the Englisch-Kanal, but it seemed to have disappeared. Goebbels’ study used to be at the back of the house, and nothing had changed.
‘You’re here alone?’ Nehmann asked.
‘Magda and the children have gone to the Obersalzberg. The cook has a headache. The guards Himmler lent me are probably asleep. So, yes, Nehmann. You find me, once again, alone.’
Magda, Goebbels’ wife, was a stern presence in his life who seemed to have won Hitler’s undying admiration. There’d been some in the ministries along the Wilhelmstrasse who’d suspected something even closer between Frau Goebbels and the Führer. Before Stalingrad, when he knew he was in trouble with Goebbels, Nehmann had looked hard but spotted nothing conclusive.
‘Something to drink, Nehmann?’ Goebbels had settled behind his desk. He kept his drinks on a small trolley but Nehmann could see only schnapps. He topped up the glass at Goebbels’ elbow and then helped himself. Goebbels had stationed the candle beside a pile of film scripts. One of them was open on the desk at what looked like the final scene and very little of the dialogue had survived the attentions of the green ink from the ministerial pen. Was this what you did while the Reich was in flames, Nehmann wondered? Make meaningless changes to a script that would never see the light of day?
‘So you became a Stalinpferd, Nehmann.’ Goebbels was still looking at the script. ‘And I’m guessing he worked you half to death.’ Stalinpferd meant Stalin’s donkey, German for ‘camp dust’.
‘You know about what happened?’ Nehmann swallowed a mouthful of schnapps.
‘Of course. Those Chain Dogs of yours sent me a full account. The gold mines? In Kolyma? Is that true? Or did you make it up?’
‘True, I’m afraid.’
‘And Stalingrad?’ Goebbels at last abandoned the pen.
‘Stalingrad no one will ever talk about. Not for generations. Unless you were there, no one could possibly understand.’
‘Because?’
‘Because it was beyond description. No words can do it justice.’
‘Not even yours?’
‘Not even mine.’
‘I find that hard to believe, Nehmann.’
‘You shouldn’t. Ask anyone, anyone who was there.’
‘I meant you, Nehmann, not the battle. When it came to words, language, lies, wit, bravado, sheer – dare I say it – chutzpah, you never let me down. I sometimes wondered whether you were a Jew. Ja…’ he reached for his glass, ‘… that clever.’
Nehmann shrugged, said nothing. Goebbels’ compliments were always barbed, but he’d never gone quite this far. Jewish? Was Goebbels serious?
‘The Chain Dogs tell me you met Stalin,’ Goebbels murmured. ‘Is that also true?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘He wants to know how you might feel about a conversation.’
‘To what end?’
‘I got the impression he wants to go back to 1939.’
‘The August pact? Non-aggression? All quiet on the Eastern Front? Quaint, I must say, but not without logic.’ Goebbels looked away into the darkness. In candlelight, thought Nehmann, this was a face that might have belonged on a Caravaggio canvas: deep shadows, a face hollowed by something fiercer and more menacing than simple exhaustion. At length, his gaze returned to Nehmann. ‘You’ve been away a while. Things have changed. Back last year I composed a long memorandum for the Führer’s attention. Our Allied friends are united in a number of ways but unconditional surrender is the most important. They mean to bring us to our knees. They mean to send us back to the Stone Age. That must not happen, Nehmann, and to that end I composed my thoughts and sent them to the Chancellery.’
‘And?’
‘The Führer never got to read the memo. Bormann is a primitive but cunning as a fox. He put it at the very bottom of his in-tray and kept it there. I have it on good authority that, in the end, it went into the fire.’
When Nehmann left Berlin, Martin Bormann had been serving as Hitler’s personal secretary, controlling every aspect of his working day, a post he evidently still occupied. Nehmann shook his head. For the first time, he began to wonder whether Goebbels was drunk. The Minister was famed for his iron self-control. Only the wilder reaches of his imagination would ever betray him.
‘So Stalin?’ Nehmann enquired. ‘What did you say in the memo?’
‘The thrust was simple. I pointed out that Stalin was the only enemy worthy of our respect. Roosevelt is a Jew lover. Churchill is a drunk. Only Stalin has the patience and the courage to bide his time. There’s no amount of blood he won’t spill for victory.’
‘Ours?’
‘Of course, but his as well. You have to admire that, Nehmann. You have to applaud the man’s unbending will. That’s what happened at Yalta, by the way. Read the accounts. Stalin kept his counsel while Churchill blathered on and Roosevelt devoted what time he has left to dying. If you don’t believe me just look at the results. Stalin got his way on every issue. He has millions of men under arms. Everything east of the Oder belongs to him. These are facts on the ground, Nehmann. No court of law, no priest, and no army can take that away from him. Thanks to Bormann, the moment for negotiations – him and us – has probably gone.’
‘Stalin thinks the Anglos are going behind his back.’
‘He’s right,’ Goebbels nodded. ‘They are.’
‘Where?’
‘Firstly in the Italian theatre. There’s an SS General down there who wants to make peace. That’s because he’s got his back to the Alps and he thinks it’s over. Then Stalin has another problem. Barbarossa put him in bed with the Anglos, but this time it’s Himmler who seems determined to screw him. Our chicken farmer friend is sniffing around the Swedes. He thinks there may be a separate peace on offer with the Anglos but he’s wrong. When they say unconditional surrender, they mean it, but that man has always had problems with the real world.’
‘That man?’
‘Himmler. You weren’t around when Hitler gave him an Army Group to play with. A whole Army Group, Nehmann, just imagine that, half a million men. And you know what happened? Himmler settled down in that nice train of his and made sure his every need was properly attended to. A doctor on call day and night? A chef who understood Bavarian food? Decent French wines? From what I heard, the Reichsführer-SS liked to sleep in the afternoon, hated being disturbed. In the meantime, the front was folding and the Russians were helping themselves. I understand the Chain Dogs picked you up in Pomerania, Nehmann, so you don’t need me to tell you that we’re well and truly in the shit. The only sane question is what happens next.’
‘And?’
‘We fight. We carry on fighting. Will the Russians make it to Berlin? Of course they will. But we’ll fight until there’s no Berlin left. Because that, Nehmann, is what it means to be a true German. We followed the Führer into this adventure and we were glad enough when he delivered us a country or two. More than that, he made us feel good about ourselves. He made us forget the last war and the Jew-peace that followed, and it would be very bad manners to forget the obligation we owe him. He was always our leader, Nehmann, our Führer, and he still is. People here, Germans everywhere, would be well advised to remember that. Because otherwise, believe me, there will be consequences.’
Consequences?
Nehmann could only nod. Listening to this tormented ghost of a man, with his ever-lengthening list of responsibilities, it was impossible not to realise where the tides of defeat had left him. He’d always worshipped power. That kind of power, raw, indivisible, was vested in only one figure. Joseph Goebbels had worshipped Adolf Hitler since the day he’d first signed up with the Brownshirts and found himself listening to the man in a Munich beer hall. He’d described that evening to Nehmann early on in their relationship, and nothing appeared to have changed.
Except. Except.
‘The Russians will be here in weeks.’ Nehmann gestured towards the shuttered window. ‘And what then?’
‘We fight. I’ve just told you.’
‘But what with? The way I hear it, you’re running out of everything. Including bodies.’
‘Never. German breath? German blood? As long as our hearts are still pumping, no matter how old, no matter how young, we can still defend ourselves. Better to die on your feet than submit on your knees, Nehmann. You know who said that?’
‘Stalin. That’s how the Gulag got built.’
‘Exactly. But consider the possibilities. We still have men to spare. You’ve been away, Nehmann. You don’t understand our resilience, our determination, the lengths we’re prepared to go to. We’ve created a new army. We’ve called it the Volkssturm. Can we even afford to supply uniforms? In many cases, no. Does that matter? Not at all. Because these people, these lions, represent the will of the people, and that’s all that matters. With a Panzerfaust and a bicycle you can take on the world, no matter what age you may be. And the world, my friend, will be watching.’
Nehmann nodded, letting the storm across the desk blow itself out. In the Kübelwagen, en route to Berlin, the Chain Dogs had been happy to tell him about the Volkssturm. They called it der Eintopf, the casserole, a despairing mix of old meat and green vegetables, sitting ducks for Soviet tanks. His mates in the T-34, Nehmann thought, would eat this new army alive, a mere snack between proper meals.
Goebbels had at last paused for breath. Nehmann remembered another bone the Reich had tossed to the Chain Dogs.
‘People are talking about secret weapons,’ he murmured.
‘Of course.’ Goebbels was leaning forward again, his long fingers steepled on the desk. ‘Our rockets are falling every day on London, on Antwerp, on wherever we choose to send them. These are terror weapons, Nehmann. The fastest, the V-2, is the wrath of God, it arrives unannounced, you never even hear it coming. Just a huge bang as your world blows apart. That’s science, Nehmann. That’s what we’re good at. German science. German genius. We have chemical weapons, too, nerve gas, Tabun, Sarin, a thousand times better than anything we used in the last war. Something else, too. You know the KWI?
Nehmann nodded. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was out at Dahlem, the home for hundreds of physicists.
‘They’re working with uranium, Nehmann. Uranium is a killer. If you get the science right, I’m told you’re looking at the biggest bang ever, but even if you grind it fine and drop it over a city you seed radioactivity everywhere. Just think about it. Generations condemned to endless mutations. Every living thing poisoned forever. This is total war, Nehmann. Totalerkrieg. We die on our feet while the enemy perish in their own good time.’
‘And the Führer has agreed this?’
‘He will. Because he’ll have no choice.’ He paused, then emptied his glass. ‘Be honest, my friend. Has any of this come as a surprise?’
Nehmann shook his head, partly because the schnapps was beginning to fog his brain, but mainly because he was starting to wilt under the sheer weight of Goebbels’ mania. Sturm und Drang. Raw emotion at boiling point. Coupled with a murderous pledge to go down fighting.
‘You have ways of getting in touch with the Russians, Nehmann? With Stalin?’
‘No. He gave me the impression that wouldn’t be necessary.’
‘Because?’
‘Because you had access to channels of your own.’
‘Meaning that I’ve been talking to them already?’
‘Meaning that you know how to, should the opportunity present itself.’
Goebbels held Nehmann’s gaze. Then, very softly, he began to laugh.
‘You should be a diplomat, Nehmann. That was a perfect answer. Is it true that we have spies working for us? Of course it is. Do we tolerate these people because one day they may prove useful? I’m afraid the answer is yes. Tomorrow, Nehmann, I will arrange for you to be introduced to a man called Erich. He’s a film editor of genius. You’ll love him. He can take rushes from a battlefield where we’ve had our arses kicked and turn the bloodbath into the sweetest of victories. You’ll recognise his gifts, his talents. You did something similar in print at Stalingrad. I want you to work with him. I want you to write commentary. The Russians have yet to make their final push, but our cameramen are shooting what they can. Make friends with Erich. Enjoy the man. Because he can talk to Moscow and one day soon we may need him.’
