The Grave of Truth (10 page)

E.B. The girl who had escaped with him from the Bunker had used those initials but they hadn't registered. He'd forgotten them until he started reading the Allied reports and Trevor-Roper's definitive account of the last days in Berlin.
Eva Braun
. Eva Braun had tried to save the man from execution. Adolf Hitler hadn't yielded. He brought himself very near to Otto Helm.

‘Who was he?'

‘Eh? Who? I don't know—I don't remember things. Where's Trudi—I want the bottle.'

‘You can pee in a minute,' Max Steiner said. ‘When you think back. The Bunker, the last day—who did E.B. try and save, Otto? Come on, you tell me and I'll get Trudi for you.'

The eyes were looking into his, and there was a clear intelligence in them. ‘Fegelein. He was trying to escape—betray us. I never told them about that. They put me away for all those years.… I never said anything about that.'

‘No,' Max said. He felt as if he'd been winded. Fegelein. Herman Fegelein. The man who had whispered to him to find Janus had been Eva Braun's brother-in-law.

He got up, and went to the door. ‘I'll get Trudi for you,' he said.

He found her in the sitting room, watching television. She looked up and smiled. ‘You haven't been long,' she said. ‘Was Dad able to help?'

‘No,' Max shook his head. ‘I didn't worry him too much. He's pretty confused.'

She stood up and there was something awkward about her. ‘He was in prison more than nineteen years,' she said. ‘I was eight when he went inside. My mother kept things going till she died. I don't know what he was supposed to have done, Herr Steiner, and I don't care. He's my father and I'm not ashamed of what he was. There are people around here who'd spit on us if they knew he'd been in the SS.'

‘He wants the bottle,' Max said.

‘Oh, God,' she said. ‘Why didn't you say so?' She hurried out. He looked round the pleasant little room. More potted plants, photographs of herself and her husband on a skiing holiday, outside the Mayor's office after their wedding; modern furniture and bright colours. All his preconceived ideas about Otto Helm's family were ludicrously wrong. The house didn't belong to them; they were tenants, not owners, a young couple, not long married, looking after the wife's invalid father. He remembered so vividly that it sickened him the last time he had seen Otto Helm, standing over the bound and bleeding victim in the Chancellory yard. He had been right not to mention that incident to his American interrogators. He might have been hanged instead of going to prison. To his daughter, and probably to her decent young husband too, he was a sick and helpless old man who had been punished for serving his country.

There was nothing he could say to Trudi Mintzel that made any sense now. He let himself out of the flat and began to walk slowly down the road. He was booked on the ten-thirty flight to Hamburg the next day.

Minna Walther had promised to meet him at the airport; it was understood that there would be an exchange of information. He went on walking; there was a tightness in his stomach that followed the nightmare, only he wasn't dreaming now. He took a bus to the sector where his hotel was. A pretty girl sat next to him and smiled; the atmosphere was genial, different from his remembrance of the city where he had been born. But then he only remembered the war, and the grim years afterwards when he had paid a visit to Berlin before taking up his post in London. The people had rebuilt out of the ruins; they lived with the Wall running through the city like a scar, and behind it lay the dead heart of Nazi Germany, the site of Hitler's Chancellory, now razed to the ground by the Russians. The Bunker itself. The dead heart of Nazi Germany. It was a good phrase, and he could use it one day. But that heart was beating still; the murder of Sigmund Walther proved that. He and Fegelein had died because of Janus. Whoever or whatever Janus might be. He went to his room and put through a call to Ellie in London. Tim, the solicitor answered. Ellie and his wife and the children had gone to the cinema. They were all fine and enjoying their stay. He sounded offhand, and Max could imagine what Ellie had told them. He left affectionate messages and rang off.

Hamburg tomorrow. His wife and children, the disapproval of Tim, the good family man—he'd forgotten them as he put the phone down. The tension in his stomach kept him awake; when he dozed images chased through his uneasy sleep. The crippled old man in the chair, Minna Walther by the window in the Crillon with the sunlight on her face, the crack of shots in the Chancellory garden that became the gunfire in a Paris street. Janus. A Roman god. A God with two faces. The symbol of Deceit.… At twenty minutes past eleven the next morning, Max Steiner walked through the domestic arrivals gate at Hamburg airport and found Minna Walther waiting for him.

Curt Andrews arranged to meet the Inspector who had given Max Steiner his list of names and addresses in a restaurant in the Old Tempelhof district for an early lunch. Andrews no longer looked like an American tourist. He wore German casual clothes and when he took his table his accent was South German. He ordered beer and waited for the Inspector to come. There had always been a close liaison between the CIA and the West Berlin police and Intelligence services. His check with the Inspector had produced a surprising reaction. Something of interest had come up, and the Inspector wanted to talk to him urgently. They had arranged to lunch in an inconspicuous place where they could discuss their business without interruption. Or bugs, as Andrews thought cynically. Not even a police station was safe in West Berlin. It was one of the most sensitive areas in the world, penetrated and counter-penetrated by agents of East and West. The policeman was on time; Andrews had arrived early. He liked to look over a rendezvous before he used it.

He listened quietly while his informant talked. ‘What's the information on Steiner—any political tie-ups?'

‘Not that we know,' the Inspector said. ‘When he gave me this list of names I thought, Christ, here we go again, another Nazi scare story. But when he said it was tied in with Walther—then I knew you'd be interested.'

‘We are,' Andrews said. ‘That's why I'm here. We want to know who killed him and why. So does Steiner, if he was telling the truth. It won't be hard to check. But this list of names—how do you figure them?'

‘I don't,' the policeman said. ‘But they all have one common denominator. They're all people who were in the Bunker when Hitler died. Except for Kramer, the industrialist.'

Andrews lit a pipe. ‘So it looks as if the snow-white knight Walther had some Nazi connections after all? My Director never believed in him.'

‘It could be anti-Nazi,' the Inspector suggested. ‘We have a theory that he was murdered by the extreme right. It could be he had started to get close to something certain people mightn't like discovered. He had a lot of political enemies with his pro-East attitude.'

‘And German reunification,' Andrews puffed hard. ‘The Soviets wouldn't like that. If you put it all down, pretty near everyone on both sides had a reason for getting rid of him. The right and the left.'

How about the CIA, the policeman thought but didn't say. You've put a few people away.… He watched the American. He knew the type. Thorough, cold-blooded, ruthless bastards. But a deal was a deal and allies were allies.

‘Is there anything we can do to help?'

Andrews paused; a waitress was passing their table. ‘One of those was a Berlin address,' he said. ‘You could find out if Steiner's made contact, and what sort of questions he asked. I'm going over to Bonn. You'll be able to contact me at the Königshof Hotel.'

‘I'll send someone round,' the Inspector promised. He left before Curt Andrews, and made no attempt to pay the bill.

The two Swiss businessmen had asked for adjoining rooms. They had flown from Geneva to Munich via Frankfurt, hired a car at the airport and driven to a
pension
. The proprietress looked at the booking, and briefly at them. She was used to homosexuals, although neither of them gave that impression. They signed the register: Stanislaus Kesler, Maurice Franconi. They had booked in for a week. They were shown to their rooms, and when they were alone in Kesler's bedroom Franconi brought out his road map. They studied it together.

‘Berchtesgaden—we take the Ell, branch off here'—Franconi's finger traced the red line of the autobahn—‘the last exit in Germany at Bad Reichenhall, and we should reach it in about two hours.'

Kesler frowned. ‘We could start at the convent,' he said. ‘Settle the one at Berchtesgaden and then go on to Berlin.'

‘I don't fancy the convent,' Franconi said. ‘I was brought up by nuns.'

‘She's not a nun,' Kesler pointed out. Franconi shrugged and went back to the map. It had taken exactly twenty-four hours to locate the people they had undertaken to murder. Their contact was a detective agency in Cologne with informants in Interpol and the major European police headquarters. A sum of money substantial enough to satisfy the agency's principal contact in the Federal German police had produced the addresses to fit the names.

‘I think we should start at Berchtesgaden,' Franconi persisted. ‘It's a nice drive. I'd rather get to hell out after we've dealt with
her
.' The tip of his finger touched a name.

‘All right,' Kesler agreed. ‘We'll set off as soon as we've unpacked. We can have lunch on the way.'

‘I like Bavarian food,' Maurice said. ‘But it's terribly fattening.'

‘You don't have to worry,' Kesler protested. ‘I'm the one with the belly.'

Within the hour they were driving their rented Opel through the centre of Munich and on to the autobahn Ell, heading towards the majestic range of the Bavarian Alps. The tops of the mountains were crowned in snow, and they sparkled in the clear sunshine. The countryside was green and wooded; they left the autobahn, drove through picture-book villages and stopped in one at a roadside café to eat a large lunch. At four in the afternoon they arrived in the small hamlet five miles outside Berchtesgaden. Franconi parked the car in the little square opposite the church. They began to walk at a leisurely pace along the quaintly cobbled street with timbered houses on each side. They stopped at the fourth down on the right, glanced at each other, smiled, and knocked on the door.

An elderly woman answered. She held the door open and said, ‘Yes?'

Kesler was spokesman. His German was flawless. ‘We've come to pay our respects to Herr Schmidt,' he said softly. ‘My friend and I have travelled from Munich. Would you tell him we're here?'

‘He's not expecting you,' she said. She looked uncertain. Kesler had spoken with authority. ‘I wrote to him,' Kesler said. ‘Hasn't he received the letter—' He took a step forward and she let him pass through into the house. Franconi followed.

‘I'm his cousin,' the woman said. ‘I look after him. If you'll wait in the front room, I'll go and see—What's the name, sir?'

‘Fritsche, Colonel Hans Fritsche. I've brought Captain Emden with me. How is Herr Schmidt—not sick, I hope?'

‘No, no,' she was becoming more flustered, because Franconi had managed to get in front of her and she didn't like to push past him. ‘He's quite well, considering.'

She hesitated. When Schmidt was first released from the Soviet prison camp, there had been a stream of visitors. Newspapermen, sightseers, old friends. And that was after the Allied military authorities had released him from their long interrogation. Those were the days when the controversies about how the Führer had died and whether Bormann had in fact escaped alive were breaking out all over the world. Herbert Schmidt had been the first man to see his master's body. Everybody wanted to hear his version. But that was years ago. Nobody had been near the house for a long, long time.

‘Take us to him,' Kesler said. ‘Please?'

She passed the young, good-looking man, trying not to brush against him in the narrow passageway. She led them to a small room at the back of the house. The man who had been the personal valet to Adolf Hitler got out of his chair as Kesler and Franconi came in. ‘These gentlemen have come to see you, Herbert,' the woman said. ‘They wrote you a letter—you didn't tell me about it. I'd have got the front room ready.…' Kesler saw the bewildered look on the old man's face, and hurried forward. ‘Colonel Hans Fritsche. My comrade Captain Emden. We did write, but obviously the letter went astray. It's good to see you, Schmidt.' He reached out and shook the man's hand. Franconi clicked his heels and gave a slight bow. Herbert Schmidt had spent eleven years in Soviet captivity. The frame was that of a big man, with broad shoulders, but the body had shrunk away, leaving the large skeleton in clothes that hung loose. The face was lined and taut, the eyes had a glaze of suffering in them which was a permanent memory. Franconi and Kesler observed this, and Kesler thought quickly that he was very feeble and wouldn't be difficult to kill.

The woman went out, and Herbert Schmidt asked them to sit down. He was embarrassed because of the letter. Kesler offered him a cigarette, but he shook his head. ‘Gentlemen,' he said, and the voice was husky and trembled, ‘what can I do for you?'

‘My friend, Captain Emden, would like to know about your time in the Russian labour camp,' Kesler said. ‘And I want you to accept this; your services to our Leader have not been forgotten.' The gold pencil gleamed in Kesler's fingers as he held it out. Herbert Schmidt reached towards it, and Kesler brought it up level with his face and thrust it so close that it almost touched his mouth. The tiny deadly puff of cyanide caught his breath.

Franconi held him as he collapsed and lowered him into his chair. Kesler counted three minutes on his watch, and kept up a loud monologue in case the woman should be listening. He nodded at Franconi, who felt for a pulse in Schmidt's neck. There was no sign of life. Together they flung open the door and shouted for Schmidt's cousin. She was running down the street to the post office to telephone for a doctor as Kesler and Franconi quietly left the house. She told the doctor, when she got through to him, the same as Kesler had told her. Herbert Schmidt had suffered a heart attack, and she couldn't be sure but she thought he was dead.…