Major Harry Male swung open the double doors of the Department for International Policy Development and strode confidently into the outer office, jacket still slung over his shoulder, smouldering cigarette between two fingers.
“Morning, ladies!” he announced without breaking step to the pool of sixteen typists who sat eight on each side, hammering away on their machines in synchronised word-bashing.
“Morning, Harry,” came the similarly synchronous reply, although only one or two deigned to look up from their work which carried on unabated. Through another set of doors, he entered Operations, an oak-panelled room containing a dozen desks arranged in facing pairs, each with its own lamp, filing cabinet and telephone. Metal-framed windows and venetian blinds ran along the entire length of the right-hand side of the room, the left filled with an array of filing cabinets topped with stacked wooden trays. The wall ahead of him sported a number of maps in varying levels of detail of East and West Germany as well as Berlin. Most of them were new, recently redrawn to accommodate the physical separation of the city. The same wall had windows into the radio room where several men wearing headphones sat in front of consoles and continuously rotating tape recorders. Another door led through to the conference room and the directors’ suites.
Johnny Bristow was in his usual place, poring over a sheaf of papers, sleeves rolled up, jacket slung over his chair, cigarette in one hand, its smoke wafted away by one of six ceiling fans working at full speed to compensate for the heat.
“Morning, old man,” he said without looking up.
“Morning, Johnny, what news from the Oval?”
“Fifty-three for six at close. Chasing three hundred and five on the last day. We’re getting a right kicking from the Windies.” Harry wasn’t really interested in cricket but he knew it was a religion to Johnny and always made for a good opener, so to speak.
“Ah well, all to play for then? Anything interesting happen overnight?” he ventured innocently.
“Nothing I know of, a lot of hubbub from the other side, so I understand, but it’s still being transcribed and translated.”
Harry’s phone rang before he could sit down. “Male,” he answered, stubbing out his cigarette. He recognised Cynthia’s voice immediately. “Yes of course, be right there.” Johnny looked up from his papers, interested. “I’m wanted in the nerve centre.”
“Good luck.”
***
Cynthia showed Harry into the opulent room that served as an office for Commander Eric Laughton. Whenever he entered this room, he couldn’t help imagining its previous occupant: a Wehrmacht Feldmarschall perhaps, surrounded by his Generals and Obersts poring over military maps, watched over by a giant portrait of Mein Führer framed between two leaning flagpoles bearing swastikas.
Commander Laughton was sitting behind a magnificent oak-carved, leather-topped desk, an antique that had survived both wars but from which all traces of Nazi insignia had been judiciously and subtly removed. He looked up briefly when Cynthia announced Harry’s presence.
“Ah, Male, come in.” Harry took his cue to walk the thirty feet from the door to the desk and cleared his mind of past imagery. Mein Führer had long since been replaced by a coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth, flanked on her right by a brooding, cigar-smoking Winston Churchill and on her left, a proud and imperious Harold MacMillan, looking every inch the man who’d never had it so good. “Take a seat.”
“Thank you, sir.” Harry sat on a rigid unpadded seat as Laughton removed his glasses and leaned back in his plush leather swing armchair.
“We had an incident last night. At the Wall.” Laughton wasn’t much on pleasantries and it suited Harry just as well but he had to stifle the urge to jump in. Laughton didn’t like clever dicks and anyway, the “incident” he was referring to could well be something entirely different, so he kept quiet and let Laughton finish.
“Chap called Klaus Bergmann. Assistant to a junior minister in the East German politburo. We already have a thin file on him. Came over the Wall last night, er” – Laughton replaced his glasses and leaned forward to point at a spot on a map in front of him – “fairly close to your apartment, I believe?” The question was phrased as if Laughton was simply curious at the coincidence, but they were both professionals and took nothing and no one for granted. Harry didn’t hesitate.
“Yes, sir. Heard the commotion and saw the MPs take him away right beneath my window.” He knew being deliberately economical with the truth put him on dangerous ground but he wanted to avoid mentioning why he’d just happened to be staring out of his bedroom window at 3 a.m. He didn’t want to get into a discussion about insomnia, recurring dreams or anything that could possibly be construed as psychological. If Laughton wanted to know exactly what and how much he saw, he would of course respond in full, but for the moment, he judged a brief acknowledgement would suffice. He felt four pairs of eyes on him, intimidated not only by his boss, but also by the reigning monarch, a national hero and the current prime minister, and he had to concentrate on returning Laughton’s stare.
The pause was no more than four seconds, but he knew Laughton. It was stage-managed to keep a professional distance between them and to confirm, as if Harry needed reminding, that Laughton assumed nothing. In this business, no one could or would be trusted.
Laughton sat back. “We knew he was coming. It was set up a few days ago but we only got confirmation last night that it was on. He made a remarkable escape.”
Harry saw an opportunity to expand a little on his testimony. It gave nothing away but eased his conscience a little. “Yes sir. I heard the shots. I can’t believe they missed him.”
“Well they didn’t actually. Took two rounds in the back but he had some sort of bullet-proof vest on under his coat. The boffins are examining it now. Much better than anything we or the Americans have, so if nothing else, we’ll benefit from that.”
Harry was feeling more comfortable now and dipped a toe in the water. “I, er, presume he didn’t come across to show us their fancy new body armour?”
“No, indeed he didn’t.” Laughton paused for effect. “You were at Montellano, weren’t you?” The question sounded superfluous, the tone academic. Laughton was already fully aware of his service record and had probably examined it again before their meeting. Harry tried to keep his answer neutral and his face impassive but his damned left eye betrayed him, blinking once of its own volition.
“Yes, sir.”
“But you were badly injured.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And never returned to active service.”
“No, sir.”
“How much do you remember?”
Harry frowned. Remember what? The bombing? The filth and the squalor? The freezing cold? The corpses? The rats and the lice and the cockroaches? The utter incompetence of those in command? The obscene and universal disregard for common humanity? What I was having for breakfast during a mortar attack or the entire bloody fiasco? How long have you got, sir? And for the most part, he’d forgotten all of it, expunged it from his memory or at least given it the rose-tinted treatment and moved on. It seemed such a long time ago. But Alfredo’s farmhouse, young Isabella and tiny Catalina, their misery, torture and murder? That was only last night and it was raw, visceral and only too real.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand, sir.”
“Do you remember a place called Santa Cristina De Lago?”
Harry thought for a moment. It was one of many villages they’d encountered on the outskirts of Montellano. They’d had barracks there. Together with New Zealanders, Indians and Gurkhas, they’d taken it from the Germans and it put them within striking distance of Montellano. The villagers had welcomed their liberators and although they had little food, shared it as best they could until supplies could be brought up through the mud.
But within days, before the next push could begin and just as had happened elsewhere in that god-forsaken country, the Germans had counterattacked, the Allies had been pushed back, forcing them to regroup and try all over again. Hundreds of lives wasted, zero ground taken.
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“Bergmann claims to have amateur film footage of a massacre. He says when the Germans retook the village they rounded up the men and butchered them all for collaborating with the enemy. The wives and children had other uses, apparently.”
The wives and children did what they needed to do to survive… sir.
Harry could have wept. He’d never gone back. His war had ended at Alfredo’s farmhouse, so he hadn’t returned to the village. He just had vague memories of humility, gratitude and euphoria; of smiling people, women holding babies and men throwing their hats in the air.
The war may have ended but had never gone away. Stories like this had surfaced time and time again over the years, before Nuremberg and after, and the hunt for the Nazis who perpetrated such crimes continued all across the world to this day. Their frequency was diminishing, but somehow took on a greater significance as time passed, even more heinous than they had seemed at the time, incomprehensible in this modern age. They would never be allowed to forget.
“And has he produced this… footage?”
“He brought with him a single nine-and-a-half-millimetre film reel, sewn into his coat. Lasts about four minutes. The tech boys are working on restoring it because it’s fairly poor quality, but already they’re saying it contains some horrific images. About a hundred and fifty men and boys shot dead in front of their families.”
Harry bristled, the anger and dismay he felt at the alleged atrocity magnified by Laughton’s air of insouciance.
“So what does Bergmann expect in return. A medal?”
“Hardly. He got the film, or rather stole it, from one Gustav Klein, the junior minister for whom he worked. He says Klein was planning to use it to advance his career and get into the politburo.”
“Not sure what you mean, sir.”
Laughton paused. “Because the SS commanding officer back in forty-four, the one who ordered the massacre and who, he says, is clearly identifiable in the film, is now a senior member of the politburo.”
“Blackmail,” said Harry, thinking out loud. “Who is it?”
“It doesn’t matter for now.” Harry’s first instinct was to protest and probe further, but he recognised Laughton’s tone. No need to know, just yet. “Bergmann says he was horrified when he found out about the footage and decided it needed to be in the hands of the Western powers.”
Harry looked dubious; his default position was always scepticism. “So he sacrificed his cosy career, his luxurious apartment and his all-expenses-paid lifestyle amongst the communist elite, abandoned his family and risked his life dodging bullets on a mission to bring a Nazi war criminal to justice.”
“Apparently.”
“Bullshit. Er, sorry, sir.”
“Quite. There’s no doubt he decided there was commercial value in the material, but we’ve only had a preliminary chat with him and haven’t interrogated him in depth. There’s been no time and he’s still rather shaken up, having fallen badly. Broken arm, I think. We need the full story, Harry.”
“Yes, sir.”
“First, we need you to confirm if you can, that the place in question is indeed Santa Cristina De Lago. German military records, assuming they weren’t destroyed, will show which officers were there and we should be able to establish from the film the identity of the man in charge.”
“That could be dynamite, sir.”
“I wouldn’t bank on it, Harry.”
“A senior politburo member indicted as a war criminal?”
“I’m more interested in what other use Bergmann can be to us. If he’s expecting to emulate his comfortable lifestyle here in the West and for us to keep him out of harm’s way, then he should be able to provide plenty of juicy detail about the inner workings of his erstwhile employers. We haven’t had such a high-profile defection for a while. We should be able to use it against Klein as well. Once he realises we know what he was up to we should be able to put pressure on him and, who knows, maybe turn him as well.” Laughton sat back with a look of satisfaction. The possibilities evidently pleased him.
Harry felt his anger rising and couldn’t stop himself. “Surely, sir, if we can bring a war criminal to justice, and he happens to be a member of the communist regime, we win on both counts?”
Laughton’s smile dropped and Harry knew straight away he’d gone too far.
“Let’s leave politics to the politicians, Male.” The reversion to surname was deliberate and pointed. “Our job is to find things out so others can decide how best to deal with them.” The reprimand was thinly veiled and unmistakeable.
“Yes, sir.”
“Put your arm round Bergmann. Tell him what a hero he is, that we’re extremely grateful for his sacrifice and that he’s most welcome here in the free West. Find out as much as you can about his background, who and what he came into contact with and tell him he’ll stay under our close personal protection until we find him a new name, a nice place to stay and a full-time job.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s still in the army hospital with MPs on guard but I’m told he’ll be out in a couple of days when he’ll be moved to a safe house. I’ll let you know.” Laughton passed two manila folders across his desk. “This is as much as we have on him at the moment. And this is Klein.” The intercom buzzed and a light came on. Laughton leaned over and pressed a button.
“Yes, Cynthia.”
“It’s raining heavily at the Oval, sir.”
“Excellent!”
***
Harry sat on a bar stool in the Kronestube, cigarette in hand, sipping a Weißbier. He’d ordered a wiener schnitzel and potato salad but wasn’t much looking forward to it. What he really craved was fish and chips or bangers and mash – proper food as he called it – but despite the preponderance of British ex-pats the Germans had never made much of an effort to cater for their customers’ dubious culinary predilections.
After seventeen years of occupation, he wouldn’t be surprised if the locals were wondering when they would get their country back, if ever, so he guessed they persisted in serving up foreign muck to encourage the Brits to go home. He knew there were plenty of burger joints in the American sector and fancy French restaurants to keep the frogs happy in their own little patch of Berlin, so why not us?
The pretty blonde barmaid with pigtails and breasts that threatened to burst out of her dirndl offered to refill his glass and he nodded. Despite the food there were some consolations at the Kronestube.
He’d spent the afternoon examining the files on Bergmann and Klein and, as Laughton had alluded, they were short on detail, but had references to their military service and several photos. There were official mug shots and service IDs and a picture of Bergmann as a twelve-year-old in the Hitler Youth dated 1943. There were also group shots of East German officials at political rallies or meeting their Soviet masters, fuzzy images of Klein and Bergmann circled in red, the former in the second rank, the latter, one row behind.
He’d then gone into the basement archives to bring up maps of Central and Southern Italy, particularly the mountains and villages around Montellano and photos from the Italian campaign. It was a sobering experience and by the end of the day, he’d decided he needed a drink. He’d taken Petra’s advice and casually suggested to Bristow that he join him, but Johnny had had other plans and that was fine by him. They were prohibited from discussing work outside the office and Johnny would just go banging on about the bloody cricket so it was hard to see what else they could discuss that was of any interest. At least he could tell her he’d tried, but the fact was he was perfectly content with his own company.
He was in two minds about Bergmann. He always looked forward to quizzing a runner and the guy certainly wasn’t a nobody, but he’d already proven his treachery and given his history, Harry would take some convincing his motives were honourable. He’d be no pushover either. Anyone who held a reasonably senior role in the upper echelons of the East German regime and managed to execute a highly perilous escape, surely had a trick or two up his sleeve. But the circumstances of his defection were also disturbing and brought back memories Harry would rather have left buried.
The schnitzel arrived: a plate-sized circle of fried veal in breadcrumbs with the appearance of an Olympic discus and a texture like leather, with a dollop of slimy, pungent potato on the side. Harry thought twice about staying, but stubbed out his cigarette, picked up his knife and fork and went bravely in to bat.
***
He was in bed when Petra got home and he heard her tiptoeing around the apartment as if to avoid waking him, but he was already wide awake, his mind buzzing with Nazis, massacres and communist infiltrators as well as anticipating the recurrence of his own dream.
“How was the meeting?” he said as she climbed stealthily in beside him.
“Oh. Sorry, did I wake you?”
“No. You’re a bit late?”
“Yes, sorry. Some of the girls wanted to have a drink and then we had some food and then, well, you know how we girls like to chat. Forgot the time completely.” Her hair smelled of someone else’s tobacco and made him want a cigarette, but he dismissed the thought.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Oh. You know.”
“Yes I know.” He would never answer other than in generalities, they both knew it and that fact alone would always put distance between them. “Wonder what happened to that guy who came over the Wall?”
“Don’t know.”
She kissed his cheek and turned over. “Night.”