Winter, page 60
‘That the Führer has promised. Yes, the miracle weapons. I wonder what kind of miracles they will perform, and how long we will have to wait for them.’
‘Are you really so despondent, Alex?’
‘Fritz is right, Pauli. Perhaps the war is not yet lost; but the war cannot be won. If only the people at the top would make the Führer see it.’
‘The Führer is determined,’ said Pauli.
‘Then perhaps someone must make the Führer step aside, and do it on his behalf,’ said Alex Horner.
‘What do you mean, Alex?’
‘I see divisions mangled every day. The German army is being destroyed. Our losses are gigantic, Pauli. Germany is losing its soldiers: and with such wholesale conscription, its soldiers are its entire male population. We can’t go on like this. Germany is dying. Dying, Pauli!’
‘But what can we do?’
‘Have you ever heard of the opposition groups?’
‘The Kreisau Circle?’ said Pauli.
‘Yes,’ said Horner guardedly.
‘Or do you mean what Goerdeler and Beck are doing?’
Horner was silent and like the skilful interrogator he’d become, Pauli gave his friend a few moments to reflect. But then he continued the pressure. ‘Are you one of them, Alex?’
‘I’ve been approached, Pauli,’ said Alex Horner.
‘Oh my God, Alex. How can you be such a fool?’
‘Turn me over to your Gestapo if you like, but you’ll get nothing out of me.’
‘I’m not going to turn you over to anyone, you fool. But how can you get mixed up with treason? You didn’t tell Fritz any of this?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Cut your connections with these people, Alex. We’ve had the Beck-Goerdeler group and the Kreisau Circle under observation for months. Just go sick or think of some other way to do it.’
‘Is that your best advice?’
‘Beck is too old and Goerdeler too indiscreet. They’ll talk and talk until their activities can’t be ignored any longer, and then they’ll be thrown into a camp. They won’t do anything. It’s all for nothing, Alex.’
‘I’m glad I talked to you, Pauli. You didn’t mind, did you?’
‘Those people have been under observation for over a year. “Gestapo” Müller was bragging about it only last week, when I was over there. He was showing us his dossiers and playing the wiretaps. He knows all about those people.’
‘I feel better now, Pauli.’
‘Depend on the Führer,’ said Pauli. ‘Some people are too ready to discount him, but he’s never been wrong yet.’
‘Race you to that clump of trees?’
‘Let’s go.’
Both men swung up into the saddle with such energy that the horses reared. Then they pounded across the fields, their horses neck and neck.
Pauli felt good, really good; this time he’d done something useful to help his friend.
‘And?’ said the old man who sat waiting for General Horner in the back pew of the empty church.
‘He’s a careful one,’ said Horner.
‘He won’t join us?’ said von Munte. He fiddled with the strap of the field glasses.
‘No, but he’ll keep it to himself. I would trust him with my life.’
‘You have,’ said the old man dryly.
‘He knows about the Kreisau Circle and the Beck-Goerdeler group. The Gestapo know, too. He says they have recordings of phone calls and everything.’
‘Poor devils. But nothing about us?’
‘I’m sure he would have mentioned it.’
‘It’s been worth all the trouble to maintain security.’
‘But now I am compromised,’ said General Horner.
‘Yes, we should assume that your friend will betray you. It’s safer that way. But it doesn’t matter, General. You will be in Berlin. There will be no need for you to do anything until the Führer is dead.’
‘Wipe out these vermin’
‘You’ve been working hard, Koch.’
‘Yes, Herr Deputy Minister,’ said Koch, his doleful expression unchanging. He was becoming more canine every day, thought Fritz Esser as he looked at the little man hunched in the centre of the sofa. Koch’s dark-ringed eyes and bushy eyebrows made him look like a dutiful wolfhound waiting for the command to bite.
Fritz Esser picked up the papers that Koch had spread over his antique desk and piled them together. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Esser picked up the phone that connected him to his secretary in the outer office and said, ‘Send Herr Doktor Winter in.’ He looked up at Koch. ‘Leave now, Koch.’ He nodded to the other door, which led to the corridor. ‘I want your part in this kept secret.’
Koch had to move fast to pick up his Tirolean hat and leather coat and get out through the door before Pauli arrived. Koch was not surprised at this instruction. Fritz Esser’s obsession with secrecy was well known. His assistants made jokes about it when he was not around.
It was the first time that Pauli Winter had seen Fritz Esser’s new accommodation. Far more comfortable than any previous office, it had room for a leather sofa in addition to matching black leather armchairs. And there was a low table so that Esser could sit with his visitors and drink coffee when he wanted an atmosphere of informality that could not be achieved from behind his magnificent desk. On his desk now, alongside the dossier that Lothar Koch had brought, was a loosely wrapped brown paper parcel.
They shook hands and exchanged greetings. Pauli had promised himself that Inge’s infidelity would make no difference to his friendship with Fritz. Fritz had said the same thing a million times. But it did make a difference. Pauli saw Fritz in a new light these days. He was aware of the deviousness and cunning that were hidden under Fritz’s noisy, outspoken friendliness. Hunched over his desk, this man whom Pauli had always likened to a moth-eaten bear looked like a toad. ‘It’s wonderful, Fritz,’ Pauli said, looking round at the modern lithographs on the wall – a series of National Socialist heroes, from a tank commander to a shapely swimming champion – and the silver-framed photo, signed with fraternal greetings from the Führer, that had a place of honour on the side table.
‘Yes,’ said Fritz Esser awkwardly, ‘you haven’t seen it before, have you?’ Pauli realized that the decoration must have been arranged by Inge. The carpets, the tapestry that hung behind his desk and the lithographs: it was all very much Inge’s style. Some of these items were things she’d always wanted Pauli to have in his office.
The windows were big and the view of Unter den Linden high enough to see over the famous lime trees. Across the road, men were repairing the two badly burned upper storeys of a building that had been hit by a cluster of incendiary bombs. Nowhere was safe from the Allied bombers now. ‘I came as soon as I could,’ said Pauli.
‘Yes, good,’ said Fritz. ‘Drink?’
‘No thanks.’ It was the usual routine, but Fritz always offered. He reached for the bottle and topped his own drink up. ‘I have some new reports on the conspiracy.’
‘Better than the last lot?’ said Pauli, referring to some hysterical rumours that informers had brought here in January, and which had provoked first alarm and then anger from SS-Reichsführer Himmler.
Fritz ignored this remark. He said, ‘Would you believe that the army – Army Group Centre, those rattlesnakes around Kluge – are preparing a coup?’ He said it without much anger in his voice and looked up to see how Pauli reacted.
‘Any evidence?’ said Pauli. He’d heard such stories before. Berlin was full of rumours these days, and Pauli encountered most of them in his rounds of the Gestapo building and the ministry.
Fritz sighed at his ‘lawyer’s reaction’. ‘They have a bomb: two bombs, in fact.’
‘They have?’ said Pauli.
‘British bombs.’
‘Is the army so short of bombs?’ said Pauli.
‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Fritz Esser sternly and then, having said it so sternly, found he couldn’t keep a straight face. Collecting himself, he said, ‘These British devices are dropped for the terrorists. I have a sample one here.’ He unwrapped the parcel that was on his desk. There were two metal cylinders inside, and Esser grabbed one to show him. When Pauli showed some alarm Fritz reassured him: ‘These have been emptied. But let me show you how they work.’
‘Very well,’ said Pauli. Fritz Esser did not have the sort of brain that could cope with the intricacies of mechanical engineering, but these bombs were simple enough for him to understand the way they functioned, and he proudly explained the workings to Pauli. ‘You press here and the little bottle breaks. Then acid eats into the restraining wire until the wire …There, that’s it – see? Lets the spring bring the…Wait a moment. Yes, that’s it. The striker there hits the detonator. Detonator explodes and up goes the bomb. What do you think?’
‘Very crude. It looks as if a schoolboy made it. Is this the best the British can do?’
‘Crude, yes. They make them by the thousands, and it costs them almost nothing. They drop them into France, Belgium, Holland, Norway and so on. These hoodlums use them against us while the British rub their hands and laugh.’
‘Are you saying there’s to be an attempt to kill the Führer?’
‘It’s silent. That’s what you’ve missed, Pauli. No ticking or whirring of clockwork. Absolutely silent. And this wire can be changed so that the timing can be anything you want, from ten minutes to an hour or two.’
‘Can I ask how you came by this infernal machine?’
‘The Abwehr have intercepted thousands of them.’
‘The Abwehr.’ Since February 18, the army’s intelligence service had been amalgamated with the SD, the SS intelligence service, and now came into Himmler’s ever-growing empire.
‘The Abwehr are a part of the conspiracy against the Führer. Sometime last year there was a conference of intelligence officers at Smolensk – Army Group Centre – and two of these bombs were taken there. That’s where the army swines did their plotting. They might have already tried and failed. We have trouble infiltrating these army circles, of course. They close ranks against us.’
‘What do they plan?’ asked Pauli.
‘I don’t know, but there has already been some contact between certain of these traitors and the Western governments.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The Ausland-SD and the Gestapo both agree on that.’
‘Will there be arrests?’
‘Not yet,’ said Esser. ‘The SS-Reichsführer says that nothing is to be done until we are quite ready.’
‘The Führer’s life is in danger,’ said Pauli, appalled at the risk.
Fritz drank some of his drink. It was brandy; Pauli could smell it. Then Fritz leaned forward and in a low voice said, ‘Suppose I told you that the SS-Reichsführer himself has been in contact with the Americans?’ Pauli was not shocked; he didn’t believe it. It was one of Fritz Esser’s stories.
‘To discuss making peace with them?’
‘He sent Dr Carl Langbehn – a Berlin lawyer – to Switzerland to talk to an American named Dulles who claims to speak on behalf of President Roosevelt.’
Was it true? Could it be? ‘I can’t believe it. But Langbehn was arrested….’
‘Listen, Pauli, listen. Langbehn went to Switzerland with the SS-Reichsführer’s blessing. But the Gestapo monitoring service picked up a radio broadcast. No one knows how, why, or what the source was, but the British have always opposed any dealings with the SS-Reichsführer, so it looks like the British wanted to sabotage the Langbehn talks and sent the message so it could be monitored by our listening service…. The Gestapo sent the intercepted message to Führer HQ, and we had no alternative but to arrest Langbehn and send him to a camp.’ Fritz grinned to reveal his bent teeth. ‘The SS-Reichsführer was very worried. Yes, I’ve never seen Heini so scared. Since then he’s had no contact at all with any other of the groups.’
Pauli was overwhelmed. His world was falling to pieces. ‘This is all true? I can hardly believe it.’
‘Well, believe it: it’s true, every word. But Heini’s problem has always been his oath to the Führer. He wouldn’t listen to any plans that included doing harm to the Führer.’
‘I should think not,’ said Pauli.
‘And yet, while the Führer is there, no one will be allowed to do what has to be done.’ Fritz Esser leaned forward across his desk and touched his fingertips together while he smiled. ‘But suppose something like this…’ He touched the bomb delicately, as if it might explode. ‘Suppose the person we’re talking about was no more.’ Even Fritz couldn’t bring himself to say it in plainer words. ‘Then we could arrest the culprits and provide the SS-Reichsführer with the mission that I believe is his.’
Pauli looked at Fritz Esser as he realized what Fritz meant. He wanted the Führer to be assassinated, to make way for Himmler. What a hypocrite he was, and what a cynic. How much of this had come from the SS-Reichsführer, and how much of it had been planted in Heini’s mind by the cunning Fritz? But it made sense – it was crude and cunning but it made sense – and what Fritz had told him fitted together with other things he’d come across in his official duties.
‘Why are you telling me this, Fritz?’
‘I want you to take over the investigation of these treacherous opposition groups.’
‘Me?’
‘You’ll have all the authority and all the staff you need.’
‘No, Fritz, no. Please.’
‘Pauli, it’s got to be someone I can trust.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘No.’
‘I want you to wipe out these vermin, whether they are in the army, the Abwehr, the church, the universities, or anywhere else. Even if they are in the SD or the Gestapo, you will have authority to question who you like. No one will be empowered to challenge your authority. I want the Führer to know that the party’s police apparatus is in control of the state.’
‘You want me to smash these organizations?’
‘Investigate them,’ Fritz corrected him gently. ‘There are influential people involved: high churchmen, field marshals and aristocrats. Don’t underestimate their power. There will have to be a proper trial. The party can’t afford to look foolish in court.’
‘So I shall bring them to trial?’
‘Yes, but not too quickly.’ He smiled that inimitable cunning smile. ‘Give them time to do something we can charge them with.’
Across the road the workmen were boarding up the top storeys of the ministry; the upper part of the building was being closed and abandoned. It was eyeless, its boarded-up windows here in the Government Quarter a reminder to every passer-by that the Allied bombers could bring the war to the heart of the Reich.
‘Do you understand?’ asked Fritz.
‘I understand,’ said Pauli.
‘We don’t need any help in killing Hitler’
Before the coming of the Nazi regime, the inhabitants of Berlin’s Wedding were reliably communist in sympathy. It was a district of huge old apartment blocks, barracklike buildings that had been hurriedly built in the previous century to house the seemingly endless waves of peasants who swarmed into Berlin looking for jobs in the new factories. Since they were designed in a honeycomb style, shafts of daylight could sometimes reach into their courtyards and scatter light into their tiny, squalid rooms, where men crowded together in dozens. Now these apartment houses were not so crowded or so squalid as they once had been, but there was no comfort here in the grim stone monoliths, and the inhabitants were thankful that summer was coming, bringing with it more light and warmth.
A room at the very top of one such building was, on this chilly spring evening, occupied by two men. One was some sort of foreign seaman, a tall, cheerful man, about thirty-five years old, with a large moustache and steel-rimmed circular glasses, excellent German – usually an impossible language for foreigners to master – and a clever way of making rude jokes that were particularly berlinerisch. With him there was a German fellow, getting on for fifty, with wavy grey hair and the sort of Berlin accent that you’d expect to hear in Grunewald, rather than in a grimy place like this.
Living together in the same room for nearly two weeks had not made the men friends. The stress did not help, nor did the smell from the toilet on the landing, the dirty sheets on the bed, and the stuffy atmosphere of this room in which they slept, ate, played cards and tried not to argue.
‘What’s the time?’ said Peter Winter, the elder of the men. He was wearing a dark-grey suit. It was baggy and in places thread-bare, but it was one of the few suits that had fitted him when the Special Operations Executive in London offered him their selection of German-made clothes with German labels. It might help him sustain the fiction that he was the senior costing clerk that his forged identity papers described. But respectable-looking clerks were not easily provided for. Most of the clothes available came from refugees, and refugees are not noted for their sartorial elegance.
‘Twenty-five minutes past,’ replied Brian Samson testily. It was the third time Winter had asked him that question in the previous quarter of an hour. Samson had a white roll-neck seaman’s sweater and brown corduroy trousers and heavy boots with studs that in the last resort he could use as a weapon. He was sitting immediately under the light, darning a sock while holding it stretched over an empty tumbler.
‘They should have sent someone by now.’ Winter looked at the radio transmitter in the corner. If they were caught with that, and the antenna that was fixed to the guttering outside the window, they’d be executed without trial. He looked at Samson. There was no anxiety to be seen; it wasn’t nerves that made him so bad-tempered. If the door crashed down now, Brian Samson would smile and do his Swedish seaman act and get away with it, with laughs and salutes all round. Samson had the ‘common touch’ and Peter Winter envied him that gift. In the dangerous game of espionage, the ‘common touch’ could be a trump card.
‘Perhaps Hitler cancelled the meeting and went back to Wolfsschanze,’ said Samson. He said the name of the Führer’s headquarter’s with unconcealed contempt. ‘Wolf’s Lair’ – the name that Hitler had given to his headquarters – was a measure of the fantasy world in which these madmen lived.
