JACK HIGGINS

THE VALHALLA EXCHANGE

Contents

Title Page Publisher’s Note Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen About the Author Also By Jack Higgins Copyright About the Publisher

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE VALHALLA EXCHANGE was first published in the UK by Hutchinson & Company in 1976 under the authorship of Harry Patterson. The author was in fact the writer familiar to modern readers as Jack Higgins. Harry Patterson was one of many names he used during his early writing days. The book was later published in paperback as a Jack Higgins novel but has been out of print for a number of years.

In 2007, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a good story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back THE VALHALLA EXCHANGE for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.

For my mother and father, who helped me more than a little with this one

Whether Martin Bormann survived the holocaust that was Berlin at the end of the Second World War may be arguable, but it is a matter of record that Russian radar reported a light aircraft leaving the vicinity of the Tiergarten in Berlin on the morning of 30 April, the very day on which Adolf Hitler committed suicide. As for the remainder of this story, only the more astonishing parts are true – the rest is fiction.

1

On the Day of the Dead in Bolivia children take food and presents to the cemetery to leave on the graves of the departed. An interesting blend of the pagan and Christian traditions and highly appropriate the way things turned out. But even the most superstitious of Bolivian peasants would hardly expect the dead to get up and walk on such an occasion. I did.

La Huerta was a mining town of five or six thousand people, lost in the peaks of the high Andes. The back of beyond. There was no direct passenger flight from Peru, so I’d flown in from Lima in an old DC3 that was doing some kind of cargo run to an American mining company.

It was raining hard when I arrived, but by some dispensation or other there was a cab standing outside the small terminal building. The driver was a cheerful Indian with a heavy moustache. He wore a yellow oilskin coat and a straw hat and seemed surprised and gratified at the sight of a customer.

‘The hotel, señor?’ he asked, as he seized my valise.

‘The Excelsior,’ I said.

‘But that is the hotel, señor.’ His teeth gleamed in the lamplight. ‘The only one.’

The interior of the cab stank, the roof leaked, and as we started down the hill to the lights of the town I felt unaccountably depressed. Why in the hell was I here, doing the same thing I’d done so many times before? Chasing my tail for a story that probably didn’t exist in the first place. And La Huerta itself didn’t help as we turned into a maze of narrow streets, each one with the usual open sewer running down the centre, decaying, flat-roofed houses crowding in, poverty and squalor on every side.

We emerged into a central plaza a few minutes later. There was a large and rather interesting baroque fountain in the centre, some relic of colonial days, water gushing forth from the mouths and nostrils of a score of nymphs and dryads. The fact that it was working at all seemed a small miracle. The hotel was on the far side. As I got out I noticed a number of people sheltering under a colonnade to my right. Some of them were in carnival costume and there was the smell of smoke on the damp air.

‘What’s all that?’ I asked.

‘All Saints’ Day, señor. A time of festival.’

‘They don’t look as if they’re enjoying themselves too much.’

‘The rain.’ He shrugged. ‘It makes it difficult for the fireworks. But then this is a solemn occasion with us. Soon they will go in procession to the cemetery to greet their loved ones. The Day of the Dead, we call it. You have heard of this, señor?’

‘They have the same thing in Mexico.’

I paid him off, went up the steps and entered the hotel. Like everything else in La Huerta, it had seen better days, but now its pink, stucco walls were peeling and there were damp patches in the ceiling. The desk clerk put down his newspaper hurriedly, as amazed as the cab driver had been at the prospect of custom.

‘I’d like a room.’

‘But of course, señor. For how long?’

‘One night. I’m flying back to Peru in the morning.’

I passed my papers across so that he could go through the usual rigmarole the government insists on where foreigners are concerned.

As he filled in the register he said, ‘You have business here, señor? With the mining company, perhaps?’

I opened my wallet and extracted a ten-dollar American bill which I placed carefully on the counter beside the register. He stopped writing, the eyes dark, watchful.

‘It was reported in one of the Lima newspapers that a man died here Monday. Dropped dead in the plaza, right outside your front door. It rated a mention because the police found 50,000 dollars in cash in his suitcase and passports in three different names.’

‘Ah, yes, Señor Bauer. You are a friend of his, señor?’

‘No, but I might know him if I see him.’

‘He is with the local undertaker. In such cases they keep the body for a week while relatives are sought.’

‘So I was informed.’

‘Lieutenant Gómez is Chief of Police in charge of the affair and police headquarters are on the other side of the plaza.’

‘I never find the police too helpful in these affairs.’ I laid another ten-dollar bill beside the first. ‘I’m a journalist. There could be a story in this for me. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Ah, I see now. A newspaperman.’ His eyes lightened. ‘How may I help you?’

‘Bauer – what can you tell me about him?’

‘Very little, señor. He arrived last week from Sucre. Said he expected a friend to join him.’

‘And did anyone?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘What did he look like? Describe him.’

‘Sixty-five, maybe older. Yes, he could have been older, but it’s difficult to say. He was one of those men who give an impression of vitality at all times. A bull of a man.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Powerfully built. Not tall, you understand me, but with broad shoulders.’ He stretched his arms. ‘A thick, powerful neck.’

‘A fat man?’

‘No, I don’t remember him that way. More the power of the man, an impression of strength. He spoke good Spanish, with a German accent.’

‘You can recognize it?’

‘Oh, yes, señor. Many German engineers come here.’

‘Can I see the entry in the register?’

He turned it round to show me. It was on the line above mine. There were the details from his passport entered by the clerk, and beside it Bauer’s signature, a trifle spidery, but firm, and the date beside it, using a crossed seven, continental style.

I nodded and pushed the two bills across. ‘Thank you.’

‘Señor.’ He snapped up the twenty dollars and tucked them into his breast pocket. ‘I’ll show you your room.’

I glanced at my watch. It was just after eleven. ‘Too late to visit the undertaker now.’

‘Oh, no, señor, there is a porter on duty all night. It is the custom here for the dead to be in waiting for three days, during which time they are watched over both night and day in case …’ Here, he hesitated.

‘… of a mistake?’ I suggested.

‘Exactly, señor.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Death is a very final affair, so one wants to be sure. Take the first street on the left. You will find the undertaker’s at the far end. You can’t miss it. There’s a blue light above the door. The watchman’s name is Hugo. Tell him Rafael Mareno sent you.’

‘My thanks,’ I said formally.

‘At your orders, señor. And if you would care to eat on your return, something could be managed. I am on duty all night.’

He picked up his newspaper and I retraced my steps across the hall and went outside. The procession had formed up and started across the square as I paused at the top of the steps. It was much as I had seen in Mexico. There were a couple of characters in front, blazing torches in hand, dressed to represent the Lords of Death and Hell. Next came the children, clutching guttering candles, some already extinguished in the heavy rain, the adults following on behind with baskets of bread and fruit. Someone started to play a flute, low and plaintive, and a finger drum joined in. Otherwise, they moved in complete silence.

We seemed to be going the same way and I joined on at the tail of the procession, turning up the collar of my trenchcoat against the heavy rain. The undertaker’s was plain enough, the blue light subdued above the door as Mareno had indicated. I paused, watching the procession continue, the sound of that flute and drum strangely haunting, and only when they had turned into another alley and moved out of sight did I pull the bell chain.

There was silence for quite some time, only the rain. I was about to reach for the chain again when I became aware of a movement inside, dragging footsteps approaching. A grille opened at eye-level, a face peered out, pale in the darkness.

‘Hugo?’

‘What is it you want, señor?’ The voice was the merest whisper.

‘I would like to see the body of Señor Ricardo Bauer.’

‘Perhaps in the morning, señor.’

‘Rafael Mareno sent me.’

There was a pause, then the grille was closed. There was the sound of bolts being withdrawn, the door creaked open. He stood there, an oil lamp in one hand, very old, very frail, almost as if one of his own charges had decided to get up and walk. I slipped inside, he closed the door.

‘You will follow me, please?’

He led the way along a short passage and opened an oaken door and I could smell death instantly, the cloying sweetness of it heavy on the cold air. I hesitated, then followed him through.

The room into which I entered was a place of shadows, a single oil lamp suspended from a chain in the centre supplying the only light. It was a waiting mortuary of a type I had seen a couple of times before in Palermo and Vienna, although the Viennese version had been considerably more elaborate. There were perhaps a dozen coffins on the other side of the room, but first he led me up some steps to a small platform on which stood a desk and chair.

I gazed down into the shadows in fascination. Each coffin was open, a corpse clearly visible inside, the stiff fingers firmly entwined in one end of a string that went up over a pulley arrangement, across to the desk where the other end was fastened to an old-fashioned bell that hung from a wall bracket.

He put down his lamp. I said, ‘Has anyone ever rung that thing?’

‘The bell?’ I saw now that he was very old, eighty at least, the face desiccated, the eyes moist. ‘Once, señor, ten years ago. A young girl. But she died again three days later. Her father refused to acknowledge the fact. He kept her with him for a month. Finally the police had to intervene.’

‘I can see how they would have to.’

He opened a ledger and dipped a pen in an inkwell. ‘Your relationship to Señor Bauer, señor? I must enter it in the official record.’

I took out my wallet and produced another of those ten-dollar bills. ‘Nothing so formal, my friend. I’m just a newspaperman, passing through. I heard the story and thought I might recognize him.’

He hesitated, then laid down the pen. ‘As you say, señor.’ He picked up the lamp. ‘This way.’

It was the end coffin on the back row and I received something of a shock as the old man raised his lamp to reveal red lips, a gleam of teeth, full, rounded cheeks. And then I realized, of course, that the undertaker had been going to work on him. It was as if a wax tailor’s dummy had been laid out for my inspection, a totally unreal face heavy with make-up, resembling no photo that I had ever seen. But how could he hope to, thirty years on? A big, big difference between forty-five and seventy-five.

When the bell jangled, I almost jumped out of my skin and then realized it had sounded from outside. Hugo said, ‘You will excuse me, señor. There is someone at the door.’

He shuffled off, leaving me there beside Bauer’s coffin. If there had been rings, they’d taken them off, and the powerful fingers were intertwined on his chest, the string between them. They’d dressed him in a neat blue suit, white collar, dark tie. It really was rather remarkable.

I became aware of the voices outside in the corridor, one unmistakably American. ‘You speak English? No?’

Then the same voice continuing in bad Spanish, ‘I must see the body of the man Bauer. I’ve come a long way and my time is limited.’

Hugo tried to protest. ‘Señor – it is late,’ but he was obviously brushed aside.

‘Where is the body? In here?’

For some reason, some sixth sense operating if you like, I moved back into the darkness of the corner. A moment later I was glad that I had.

He stepped into the room and paused, white hair gleaming in the lamplight, rain glistening on his military raincoat, shoulders firm, the figure still militarily erect, only the whiteness of the hair and the clipped moustache hinting at his seventy-five years.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so totally astonished, for I was looking at a legend in his own time, General Hamilton Canning, Congressional Medal of Honour, DSC, Silver Star, Médaille Militaire, the Philippines, D-Day, Korea, even Vietnam in the early days. A piece of walking history, one of the most respected of living Americans.

He had a harsh distinctive voice, not unpleasant, but it carried with it the authority of a man who’d been used to getting his own way for most of his life.

‘Which one?’

Hugo limped past him, lamp held high, and I crouched back in the corner. ‘Here, señor.’

Canning’s face seemed calm enough, but it was in the eyes that I saw the turbulence, a blazing intensity, but also a kind of hope as he stood at the end of the coffin and looked down at the waxen face. And then hope died, the light went out in the eyes – something. The shoulders sagged and for the first time he looked his age.

He turned wearily and nodded to Hugo. ‘I won’t trouble you any further.’

‘This was not the person you were seeking, señor?’

Canning shook his head. ‘No, my friend, I don’t think so. Good night to you.’

He seemed to take a deep breath, all the old vigour returning, and strode from the room. I came out of the shadows quickly.

‘Señor.’ Hugo started to speak.

I motioned him to silence and moved to the entrance.

As Canning opened the door, I saw the cab from the airstrip outside, the driver waiting in the rain.

The general said, ‘You can take me to the hotel now,’ and closed the door behind him.

Hugo tugged at my sleeve. ‘Señor, what passes here?’

‘Exactly what I was wondering, Hugo,’ I said softly, and I went along the passage quickly and let myself out.

The cab was parked outside the hotel. As I approached, a man in a leather flying jacket and peaked cap hurried down the steps and got in. The cab drove away through the rain. I watched it go for a moment, unable to see if Canning was inside.

Rafael wasn’t behind the desk, but as I paused, shaking the rain from my coat, a door on my left opened and he emerged.

He smiled. ‘Were you successful, señor?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Did I see the cab driving away just now?’

‘Ah, yes, that was the pilot of Mr Smith, an American gentleman who has just booked in. He was on his way to La Paz in his private aeroplane, but they had to put down here because of the weather.’

‘I see. Mr Smith, you say?’

‘That is correct, señor. I’ve just given him a drink in the bar. Could I perhaps get you something?’

‘Well, now,’ I said. ‘A large brandy might be a sensible idea, considering the state I’m in.’

I followed him, unbuttoning my trench-coat. It was a pleasant enough room, rough stone walls, a well-stocked bar at one side. Canning was seated in an armchair in front of a blazing log fire, a glass in one hand. He looked up sharply.

‘Company, señor,’ Rafael said cheerfully. ‘A fellow guest. Señor O’Hagan – Señor Smith. I’ll just get your brandy now,’ he added and moved away.

‘Not a night for even an old tomcat to be out,’ I said, throwing my coat over a chair. ‘As my old grannie used to say.’

He smiled up at me, the famous Canning charm well in evidence, and stuck out his hand. ‘English, Mr O’Hagan?’

‘By way of Ulster,’ I said. ‘But we won’t go into that, General.’

The smile stayed firmly in place, only the eyes changed, cold, hard, and the hand tightened on mine with a grip of surprising strength considering his age.

It was Rafael who broke the spell, arriving with my brandy on a tray. ‘Can I get you another one, señor?’ he asked.

Canning smiled, all charm again. ‘Later, my friend. Later.’

‘Señores.’

Rafael departed. Canning leaned back, watching me, then swallowed a little Scotch. He didn’t waste time trying to tell me how mistaken I was, but said simply, ‘We’ve met before, presumably?’

‘About fifteen minutes ago up the street at the mortuary,’ I said. ‘I was standing in the shadows, I should explain, so I had you at something of a disadvantage. Oh, I’ve seen you before at press conferences over the years, that sort of thing, but then one couldn’t really specialize in writing about politics and military affairs without knowing Hamilton Canning.’

‘O’Hagan,’ he said. ‘The one who writes for The Times?’

‘I’m afraid so, General.’

‘You’ve a good mind, son, but remind me to put you straight on China. You’ve been way out of line in that area lately.’

‘You’re the expert.’ I took out a cigarette. ‘What about Bauer, General?’

‘What about him?’ He leaned back, legs sprawled, all negligent ease.

I laughed. ‘All right, let’s try it another way. You ask me why a reasonably well-known correspondent for the London Times takes the trouble to haul himself all the way from Lima to a pesthole like this, just to look at the body of a man called Ricardo Bauer who dropped dead in the street here on Monday.’

‘All right, son,’ he said lazily. ‘You tell me. I’m all ears.’

‘Ricardo Bauer,’ I said, ‘as more than one expert will tell you, is one of the aliases used by Martin Bormann in Brazil, the Argentine, Chile and Paraguay on many occasions during the past thirty years.’

‘Martin Bormann?’ he said.

‘Oh, come off it, General. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Head of the Nazi Party Chancellory and Secretary to the Führer. The one member of Hitler’s top table unaccounted for since the war.’

‘Bormann’s dead,’ he said softly. ‘He was killed attempting to break out of Berlin. Blown up crossing the Weidendammer Bridge on the night of May 1st, 1945.’

‘Early hours of May 2nd, General,’ I said. ‘Let’s get it right. Bormann left the bunker at 1.30 a.m. It was Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur, who saw him come under artillery fire on that bridge. Unfortunately for that story, the Hitler Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, crossed the Spree River on a railway bridge, as part of a group led by Bormann, and that was considerably later.’

He nodded. ‘But Axmann asserted also that he’d seen Bormann and Hitler’s doctor, Stumpfegger, lying dead near Lehrter Station.’

‘And no one else to confirm the story,’ I said. ‘Very convenient,’

He put down his glass, took out a pipe and started to fill it from a leather pouch. ‘So, you believe he’s alive. Wouldn’t you say that’s kind of crazy?’

‘It would certainly put me in pretty mixed company,’ I said. ‘Starting with Stalin and lesser mortals like Jacob Glas, Bormann’s chauffeur, who saw him in Munich after the war. Then there was Eichmann – when the Israelis picked him up in 1960 he told them Bormann was alive. Now why would he do that if it wasn’t true?’

‘A neat point. Go on.’

‘Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, always insisted he was alive, maintained he had regular reports on him. Ladislas Farago said he actually interviewed him. Since 1964 the West German authorities have had 100,000 marks on his head and he was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death in his absence.’ I leaned forward. ‘What more do you want, General? Would you like to hear the one about the Spaniard who maintains he travelled to Argentine from Spain with Bormann in a U-boat in 1945?’

He smiled, leaning over to put another log on the fire. ‘Yes, I interviewed him soon after he came out with that story. But if Bormann’s been alive all these years, what’s he been doing?’

‘The Kameradenwerk,’ I said. ‘Action for comrades. The organization they set up to take care of the movement after the war, with hundreds of millions of gold salted away to pay for it.’

‘Possible.’ He nodded, staring into the fire. ‘Possible.’

‘One thing is sure,’ I said. ‘That isn’t him lying up there at the mortuary. At least, you don’t think so.’

He glanced up at me. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I saw your face.’

He nodded. ‘No, it wasn’t Bormann.’

‘How did you know about him? Bauer, I mean. Events in La Huerta hardly make front-page news in the New York Times.’

‘I employ an agent in Brazil who has a list of certain names. Any mention of any of them anywhere in South America and he informs me. I flew straight down.’

‘Now that I find truly remarkable.’

‘What do you want to know, son? What he looked like? Will that do? Five foot six inches, bull neck, prominent cheekbones, broad, rather brutal face. You could lose him in any crowd because he looked so damned ordinary. Just another working stiff off the waterfront or whatever. He was virtually unknown to the German public and press. Honours, medals meant nothing to him. Power was all.’ It was as if he was talking to himself as he sat there, staring into the fire. ‘He was the most powerful man in Germany and nobody appreciated it until after the war.’

‘A butcher,’ I said, ‘who condoned the final solution and the deaths of millions of Jews.’

‘Who also sent war orphans to his wife in Bavaria to look after,’ Canning said. ‘You know what Göring said at Nuremberg when they asked him if he knew where Bormann was? He said, “I hope he’s frying in hell, but I don’t know.”’

He heaved himself out of the chair, went behind the bar and reached for a bottle of Scotch. ‘Can I get you another?’

‘Why not?’ I got up and sat on one of the bar stools. ‘Brandy.’

As he poured some into my glass he said,

‘I was once a prisoner-of-war, did you know that?’

‘That’s a reasonably well-known fact, General,’ I said. ‘You were captured in Korea. The Chinese had you for two years in Manchuria. Isn’t that why Nixon hauled you out of retirement the other year to go to Peking with him?’

‘No, I mean way, way back. I was a prisoner once before. Towards the end of the Second World War, the Germans had me. At Schloss Arlberg in Bavaria. A special set-up for prominent prisoners.’

And I genuinely hadn’t known, although it was so far back it was hardly surprising, and then his real, enduring fame had been gained in Korea, after all.

I said. ‘I didn’t know that, General.’

He dropped ice into his glass and a very large measure of whisky. ‘Yes, I was there right to the bitter end. In the area erroneously known as the Alpine Fortress. One of Dr Goebbels’s smarter pieces of propaganda. He actually had the Allies believing there was such a place. It meant the troops were very cautious about probing into that area at first, which made it a safe resting place for big Nazis on the run from Berlin in those last few days.’

‘Hitler could have gone, but didn’t.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And Bormann?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The one thing that’s never made any sense to me,’ I said. ‘He was a brilliant man. Too clever by half to leave his chances of survival to a mad scramble at the final end of things. If he’d really wanted to escape he’d have gone to Berchtesgaden when he had the chance instead of staying in the bunker till the end. He’d have had a plan.’

‘Oh, but he did, son.’ Canning nodded slowly. ‘You can bet your sweet life on that.’

‘And how would you know, General?’ I asked softly.

And at that he exploded, came apart at the seams.

‘Because I saw him, damn you,’ he cried harshly. ‘Because I stood as close to him as I am to you, traded shots with him, had my hands on his throat, do you understand?’ He paused, hands held out, looking at them in a kind of wonder. ‘And lost him,’ he whispered.

He leaned on the bar, head down. There was a long, long moment in which I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but waited, my stomach hollow with excitement. When he finally raised his head, he was calm again.

‘You know what’s so strange, O’Hagan? So bloody incredible? I kept it to myself all these years. Never mentioned it to a soul until now.’

2

It began, if it may be said to have begun anywhere, on the morning of Wednesday, 25 April 1945, a few miles north of Innsbruck.

When Jack Howard emerged from the truck at the rear of the column just after first light, it was bitterly cold, a powdering of dry snow on the ground, for the valley in which they had halted for the night was high in the Bavarian Alps, although he couldn’t see much of the mountains because of the heavy clinging mist which had settled among the trees. It reminded him too much of the Ardennes for comfort. He stamped his feet to induce a little warmth and lit a cigarette.

Sergeant Hoover had started a wood fire, and the men, only five of them now, crouched beside it. Anderson, O’Grady, Garland and Finebaum who’d once played clarinet with Glenn Miller and never let anyone forget it. Just now he was on his face trying to blow fresh life into the flames. He was the first to notice Howard.

‘Heh, the captain’s up and he don’t look too good.’

‘Why don’t you try a mirror?’ Garland inquired. ‘You think you look like a daisy or something?’

‘Stinkweed – that’s the only flower he ever resembled,’ O’Grady said.

‘That’s it, hotshot,’ Finebaum told him. ‘You’re out. From here on in you find your own beans.’ He turned to Hoover. ‘I ask you, Sarge. I appeal to your better nature. Is that the best these mothers can offer after all I’ve done for them?’

‘That’s a truly lousy act, Finebaum, did I ever tell you that?’ Hoover poured coffee into an aluminium cup. ‘You’re going to need plenty of practice, boy, if you’re ever going to get back into vaudeville.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Finebaum said. ‘I’ve had kind of a special problem lately. I ran out of audience. Most of them died on me.’

Hoover took the coffee across to the truck and gave it to Howard without a word. Somewhere thunder rumbled on the horizon.

‘Eighty-eights?’ the captain said.

Hoover nodded. ‘Don’t they ever give up? It don’t make any kind of sense to me. Every time we turn on the radio they tell us this war’s as good as finished.’

‘Maybe they forgot to tell the Germans.’

‘That makes sense. Any chance of submitting it through channels?’

Howard shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t do any good, Harry. Those krauts don’t intend to give in until they get you. That’s what it’s all about.’

Hoover grunted. ‘Those mothers better be quick or they’re going to miss out, that’s all I can say. You want to eat now? We still got plenty of K-rations and Finebaum traded some smokes last night for half a dozen cans of beans from some of those Limey tank guys up the column.’

‘The coffee’s just fine, Harry,’ Howard said. ‘Maybe later.’

The sergeant moved back to the fire and Howard paced up and down beside the truck, stamping his feet and clutching the hot cup tightly in mittened fingers. He was twenty-three years of age, young to be a captain of Rangers, but that was the circumstances of war. He wore a crumpled Mackinaw coat, woolknit muffler at his throat and a knitted cap. There were times when he could have passed for nineteen, but this was not one of them, not with the four-day growth of dark beard on his chin, the sunken eyes.

But once he had been nineteen, an Ohio farmer’s son with some pretensions to being a poet and the desire to write for a living which had sent him to Columbia to study journalism. That was a long time ago – before the flood. Before the further circumstances of war which had brought him to his present situation in charge of the reconnaissance element for a column of the British 7th Armoured Division, probing into Bavaria towards Berchtesgaden.

Hoover squatted beside the fire. Finebaum passed him a plate of beans. ‘The captain not eating?’

‘Not right now.’

‘Jesus,’ Finebaum said. ‘What kind of way is that to carry on?’

‘Respect, Finebaum.’ Hoover prodded him with his knife. ‘Just a little more respect when you speak about him.’

‘Sure, I respect him,’ Finebaum said. ‘I respect him like crazy and I know how you and he went in at Salerno together and how those Krauts jumped you outside Anzio with those machine guns flat zeroed in and took out three-quarters of the battalion and how our gracious captain saved the rest. So he’s God’s gift to soldiery; so he should eat occasionally. He ain’t swallowed more than a couple of mouthfuls since Sunday.’

‘Sunday he lost nine men,’ Hoover said. ‘Maybe you’re forgetting.’

‘Those guys are dead – so they’re dead – right? He don’t keep his strength up, he might lose a few more, including me. I mean, look at him! He’s got so skinny, that stinking coat he wears is two sizes too big for him. He looks like some fresh kid in his first year at college.’

‘I know,’ Hoover said. ‘The kind they give the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster to.’

The others laughed and Finebaum managed to look injured. ‘Okay – okay. I’ve come this far. I just figure it would look kind of silly to die now.’

‘Everybody dies,’ Hoover said. ‘Sooner or later. Even you.’

‘Okay – but not here. Not now. I mean, after surviving D-Day, Omaha, St-Lo, the Ardennes and a few interesting stopoffs in between, it would look kind of stupid to buy it here, playing wet-nurse to a bunch of Limeys.’

‘We’ve been on the same side for nearly four years now,’ Hoover said. ‘Or hadn’t you noticed?’

‘How can I help it with guys going around dressed like that?’ Finebaum nodded to where the commanding officer of the column, a lieutenant-colonel named Denning, was approaching, his adjutant at his side. They were Highlanders and wore rather dashing Glengarry bonnets.

‘Morning, Howard,’ Denning said as he got close. ‘Damn cold night. Winter’s hung on late up here this year.’

‘I guess so, Colonel.’

‘Let’s have a look at the map, Miller.’ The adjutant spread it against the side of the truck and the colonel ran a finger along the centre. ‘Here’s Innsbruck and here we are. Another five miles to the head of this valley and we hit a junction with the main road to Salzburg. We could have trouble there, wouldn’t you say so?’

‘Very possibly, Colonel.’

‘Good. We’ll move out in thirty minutes. I suggest you take the lead and send your other jeep on ahead to scout out the land.’

‘As you say, sir.’

Denning and the adjutant moved away and Howard turned to Hoover and the rest of the men who had all edged in close enough to hear. ‘You got that, Harry?’

‘I think so, sir.’

‘Good. You take Finebaum and O’Grady. Garland and Anderson stay with me. Report in over your radio every five minutes without fail. Now get moving.’

As they swung into action, Finebaum said plaintively, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, I’m only a Jewish boy, but pray for us sinners in the hour of our need.’

On the radio, the news was good. The Russians had finally encircled Berlin and had made contact with American troops on the Elbe River seventy-five miles south of the capital, cutting Germany in half.

‘The only way in and out of Berlin now is by air, sir,’ Anderson said to Howard. ‘They can’t keep going any longer – they’ve got to give in. It’s the only logical thing to do.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Howard said. ‘I’d say that if your name was Hitler or Goebbels or Himmler and the only prospect offered was a short trial and a long rope, you might think it worth while to go down, taking as many of the other side with you as you possibly could.’

Anderson, who had the wheel, looked worried, as well he might, for unlike Garland he was married with two children, a girl of five and a boy aged six. He gripped the wheel so tightly that the knuckles on his hands turned white.

You shouldn’t have joined, old buddy, Howard thought. You should have found an easier way. Plenty did.

Strange how callous he had become where the suffering of others was concerned, but that was the war. It had left him indifferent where death was concerned, even to its uglier aspects. The time when a body had an emotional effect was long since gone. He had seen too many of them. The fact of death was all that mattered.

The radio crackled into life. Hoover’s voice sounded clearly. ‘Sugar Nan Two to Sugar Nan One. Are you receiving me?’

‘Strength nine,’ Howard said. ‘Where are you, Harry?’

‘We’ve reached the road junction, sir. Not a kraut in sight. What do we do now?’

Howard checked his watch. ‘Stay there.

We’ll be with you in twenty minutes. Over and out.’

He replaced the handmike and turned to Garland. ‘Strange – I would have expected something from them up there. A good place to put up a fight. Still …’

There was a sudden roaring in his ears and a great wind seemed to pick him up and carry him away. The world moved in and out and then somehow he was lying in a ditch, Garland beside him, minus his helmet and most of the top of his skull. The jeep, or what was left of it, was on its side. The Cromwell tank behind was blazing furiously, its ammunition exploding like a firework display. One of the crew scrambled out of the turret, his uniform on fire, and fell to the ground.

There was no reality to it at all – none. And then Howard realized why. He couldn’t hear a damn thing. Something to do with the explosion probably. Things seemed to be happening in slow motion, as if under water, no noise, not even the whisper of a sound. There was blood on his hands, but he got his field-glasses up to his eyes and traversed the trees on the hillside on the other side of the road. Almost immediately a Tiger tank jumped into view, a young man with pale face in the black uniform of a Sturmbannführer of SS-Panzer Troops, standing in the gun turret, quite exposed. As Howard watched helplessly he saw the microphone raised. The lips moved and then the Tiger’s 88 belched flame and smoke.

The man whom Howard had seen in the turret of the lead Tiger was SS-Major Karl Ritter of the 3rd Company, 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion, and what was to take place during the ensuing five minutes was probably the single most devastating Tiger action of the Second World War.

Ritter was a Tiger ace with 120 claimed victories on the Russian Front, a man who had learned his business the hard way and knew exactly what he was doing. With only two operational Tigers on the hillside with him, he was hopelessly outnumbered, a fact which a reconnaissance on foot had indicated to him that morning and it was obvious that Denning would expect trouble at the junction with the Salzburg road. Therefore an earlier attack had seemed essential – indeed there was no alternative.

It succeeded magnificently, for on the particular stretch of forest track he had chosen there was no room for any vehicle to reverse or change direction. The first shell from his Tiger’s 88 narrowly missed direct contact with the lead jeep, turning it over and putting Howard and his men into the ditch. The second shell, seconds later, brewed up the leading Cromwell tank. Ritter was already transmitting orders to his gunner, Sergeant-Major Erich Hoffer. The 88 traversed again and, a moment later, scored a direct hit on a Bren-gun carrier bringing up the rear.

The entire column was now at a standstill, hopelessly trapped, unable to move forward or back. Ritter made a hand signal, the other two Tigers moved out of the woods on either side and the carnage began.

In the five minutes which followed, their three 88s and six machine guns left thirty armoured vehicles, including eight Cromwell tanks, ablaze.

The front reconnaissance jeep was out of sight among the trees at the junction with the road to Salzburg. O’Grady was sitting behind the wheel, with Hoover beside him lighting a cigarette. Finebaum was a few yards away, directly above the road, squatting against a tree, his M1 across his knees, eating beans from a can with a knife.

O’Grady was eighteen and a replacement of only a few weeks’ standing. He said, ‘He’s disgusting, you know that, Sarge? He not only acts like a pig, he eats like one. And the way he goes on, never stopping talking – making out everything’s some kind of bad joke.’

‘Maybe it is as far as he’s concerned,’ Hoover said. ‘When we landed at Omaha there were 123 guys in the outfit. Now there are six including you, and you don’t count worth a shit. And don’t ever let Finebaum fool you. He’s got a pocket full of medals somewhere, just for the dead men he’s left around.’

There was the sudden dull thunder of heavy gunfire down in the valley below, the rattle of a machine gun.

Finebaum hurried towards the jeep, rifle in hand. ‘Hey, Harry, that don’t sound too good to me. What you make of it?’

‘I think maybe somebody just made a bad mistake.’ Hoover slapped O’Grady on the shoulder. ‘Okay, kid, let’s get the hell out of here.’

Finebaum scrambled into the rear and positioned himself behind the Browning heavy machine gun as O’Grady reversed quickly and started back down the track to the valley road. The sound of firing was continuous now, interspersed with one heavy explosion after another, and then they rounded a bend and found a Tiger tank moving up the road towards them.

Finebaum’s hands tightened on the handles of the machine gun, but they were too close for any positive action and there was nowhere to run, the pine trees pressing in on either side of the road at that point.

O’Grady screamed at the last moment, releasing the wheel and flinging up his arms as if to protect himself, and then they were close enough for Finebaum to see the death’s-head badge in the cap of the SS-major in the turret of the Tiger. A moment later, the collision took place and he was thrown head-first into the brush. The Tiger moved on relentlessly, crushing the jeep beneath it, and disappeared round the bend in the road.

Howard had lost consciousness for a while and came back to life to the sound of repeated explosions from the ammunition in another burning Cromwell. It was a scene from hell, smoke everywhere, the cries of the dying, the stench of burning flesh. He could see Colonel Denning lying in the middle of the road on his back a few yards away, revolver still clutched firmly in one hand, and beyond him a Bren-gun carrier was tilted on its side against a tree, bodies spilling out, tumbled one on top of another.

Howard tried to get to his feet, started to fall and was caught as he went down. Hoover said, ‘Easy, sir. I’ve got you.’

Howard turned in a daze and found Finebaum there also.

‘You all right, Harry?’

‘We lost O’Grady. Ran head-on into a Tiger up the road. Where are you hit?’

‘Nothing serious. Most of the blood’s Garland’s. He and Anderson bought it.’

Finebaum stood, holding his M1 ready. ‘Heh, this must have been a real turkey shoot.’

‘I just met Death,’ Howard said dully. ‘A nice-looking guy in a black uniform, with a silver skull and cross-bones in his cap.’

‘Is that so?’ Finebaum said. ‘I think maybe we had a brush with the same guy.’ He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and shook his head. ‘This is bad. Bad. I mean to say, the way I had it figured, this stinking war was over and here some bastards are still trying to get me.’

The 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion, or what was left of it, had temporary headquarters in the village of Lindorf, just off the main Salzburg Road, and the battalion commander, Standartenführer Max Jäger, had set up his command post in the local inn.

Karl Ritter had been lucky enough to get possession of one of the first-floor bedrooms and was sleeping, for the first time in thirty-six hours, the sleep of total exhaustion. He lay on top of the bed in full uniform, having been too tired even to remove his boots.

At three o’clock in the afternoon he came awake to a hand on his shoulder and found Hoffer bending over him. Ritter sat up instantly. ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘The colonel wants you, sir. They say it’s urgent.’

‘More work for the undertakers.’ Ritter ran his hands over his fair hair and stood up. ‘So – did you manage to snatch a little sleep, Erich?’

Hoffer, a thin wiry young man of twenty-seven, wore a black Panzer sidecap and a one-piece overall suit in autumn-pattern camouflage. He was an innkeeper’s son from the Harz Mountains, had been with Ritter for four years and was totally devoted to him.

‘A couple of hours.’

Ritter pulled on his service cap and adjusted the angle to his liking. ‘You’re a terrible liar, you know that, don’t you, Erich? There’s oil on your hands. You’ve been at those engines again.’

‘Somebody has to,’ Hoffer said. ‘No more spares.’

‘Not even for the SS.’ Ritter smiled sardonically. ‘Things really must be in a mess. Look, see if you can rustle up a little coffee and something to eat. And a glass of schnapps wouldn’t come amiss. I shouldn’t imagine this will take long.’

He went downstairs quickly and was directed, by an orderly, to a room at the back of the inn where he found Colonel Jäger and two of the other company commanders examining a map which lay open on the table.

Jäger turned and came forward, hand outstretched. ‘My dear Karl, I can’t tell you how delighted I am. A great, great honour, not only for you, but for the entire battalion.’

Ritter looked bewildered. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘But of course. How could you?’ Jäger picked up a signal flimsy. ‘I naturally passed full details of this morning’s astonishing exploit straight to division. It appears they radioed Berlin. I’ve just received this. Special orders, Karl, for you and Sturmscharführer Hoffer. As you can see, you’re to leave at once.’

Hoffer had indeed managed to obtain a little coffee – the real stuff, too – and some cold meat and black bread. He was just arranging it on the small sidetable in the bedroom when the door opened and Ritter entered.

Hoffer knew something was up at once, for he had never seen the major look so pale, a remarkable fact when one considered that he usually had no colour to him at all.

Ritter tossed his service cap on to the bed and adjusted the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves that hung at the neck of his black tunic. ‘Is that coffee I smell, Erich? Real coffee? Who did you have to kill? Schnapps, too?’

‘Steinhager, Major.’ Hoffer picked up the stone bottle. ‘Best I could do.’

‘Well, then, you’d better find a couple of glasses, hadn’t you. They tell me we’ve got something to celebrate.’

‘Celebrate, sir?’

‘Yes, Erich. How would you like a trip to Berlin?’

‘Berlin, Major?’ Hoffer looked bewildered. ‘But Berlin is surrounded. It was on the radio.’

‘Still possible to fly to Templehof or Gatow if you’re important enough – and we are, Erich. Come on, man, fill the glasses.’

And suddenly Ritter was angry, the face paler than ever, the hand shaking as he held out a glass to the sergeant-major.

‘Important, sir? Us?’

‘My dear Erich, you’ve just been awarded the Knight’s Cross, long overdue, I might add. And I am to receive the Swords, but now comes the best part. From the Führer himself, Erich. Isn’t it rich? Germany on the brink of total disaster and he can find a plane to fly us in specially, with Luftwaffe fighter escort, if you please.’ He laughed wildly. ‘The poor sod must think we’ve just won the war for him or something.’

3

On the morning of 26 April, two Junker 52s loaded with tank ammunition managed to land in the centre of Berlin in the vicinity of the Siegessäule on a runway hastily constructed from a road in that area.

Karl Ritter and Erich Hoffer were the only two passengers, and they clambered out of the hatch into a scene of indescribable confusion, followed by their pilot, a young Luftwaffe captain named Rösch.

There was considerable panic among the soldiers who immediately started to unload the ammunition. Hardly surprising, for Russian heavy artillery was pounding the city hard and periodically a shell whistled overhead to explode in the ruined buildings to the rear of them. The air was filled with sulphur smoke and dust and a heavy pall blanketed everything.

Rösch, Ritter and Hoffer ran to the shelter of a nearby wall and crouched. The young pilot offered them cigarettes. ‘Welcome to the City of the Dead,’ he said. ‘Dante’s new Inferno.’

‘You’ve done this before?’ Ritter asked.

‘No, this is a new development. We can still get in to Templehof and Gatow by air, but it’s impossible to get from there to here on the ground. The Ivans have infiltrated all over the place.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Still, we’ll throw them back given time, needless to say. After all, there’s an army of veterans to call on. Volkssturm units, average age sixty. And a few thousand Hitler Youth at the other end, mostly around fourteen. Nothing much in between, except the Führer, whom God preserve, naturally. He should be worth a few divisions, wouldn’t you say?’

An uncomfortable conversation which was cut short by the sudden arrival of a field car with an SS military police driver and sergeant. The sergeant’s uniform was immaculate, the feldgendarmerie gorget around his neck sparkling.

‘Sturmbannführer Ritter?’

‘That’s right.’

The sergeant’s heels clicked together, his arm flashed briefly in a perfect party salute. ‘General Fegelein’s compliments. We’re here to escort you to the Führer’s headquarters.’

‘We’ll be with you in a minute.’ The sergeant doubled away and Ritter turned to Rösch. ‘A strange game we play.’

‘Here at the end of things, you mean?’ Rösch smiled. ‘At least I’m getting out. My orders are to turn round as soon as possible and take fifty wounded with me from the Charité Hospital, but you, my friend. You, I fear, will find it rather more difficult to leave Berlin.’

‘My grandmother was a good Catholic. She taught me to believe in miracles.’ Ritter held out his hand. ‘Good luck.’

‘And to you.’ Rösch ducked instinctively as another of the heavy 17.5 shells screamed overhead. ‘You’ll need it.’

***

The field car turned out of the Wilhelmplatz and into Vosstrasse and the bulk of the Reich Chancellery rose before them. It was a sorry sight, battered and defaced by the bombardment, and every so often another shell screamed in to further the work of destruction. The streets were deserted, piled high with rubble so that the driver had to pick his way with care.

‘Good God,’ Hoffer said. ‘No one could function in such a shambles. It’s impossible.’

‘Underneath,’ the police sergeant told him. ‘Thirty metres of concrete between those Russian shells and the Führer’s bunker. Nothing can reach him down there.’

‘Nothing?’ Ritter thought. ‘Can it be truly possible this clown realizes what he is saying or is he as touched by madness as his masters?’

The car ramp was wrecked, but there was still room to take the field car inside. As they stopped, an SS sentry moved out of the gloom. The sergeant waved him away and turned to Ritter. ‘If you will follow me, please. First, we must report to Major-General Mohnke.’

Ritter removed his leather military greatcoat and handed it to Hoffer. Underneath, the black Panzer uniform was immaculate, the decorations gleamed. He adjusted his gloves. The sergeant was considerably impressed and drew himself stiffly to attention as if aware that this was a game they shared and eager to play his part.

‘If the Sturmbannführer is ready?’

Ritter nodded, the sergeant moved off briskly and they followed him down through a dark passage with concrete walls that sweated moisture in the dim light. Soldiers crouched in every available inch of space, many of them sleeping, mainly SS from the looks of things. Some glanced up with weary, lacklustre eyes that showed no surprise, even at Ritter’s bandbox appearance.

When they talked, their voices were low and subdued and the main sound seemed to be the monotonous hum of the dynamos and the whirring of the electric fans in the ventilation system. Occasionally, there was the faintest of tremors as the earth shook high above them and the air was musty and unpleasant, tainted with sulphur.

Major-General Mohnke’s office was as uninviting as everything else Ritter had seen on his way down through the labyrinth of passageways. Small and spartan with the usual concrete walls, too small even for the desk and chair and the half a dozen officers it contained when they arrived. Mohnke was an SS Brigadeführer who was now commander of the Adolf Hitler Volunteer Corps, a force of 2,000 supposedly handpicked men who were to form the final ring of defence around the Chancellery.

He paused in full flight as the immaculate Ritter entered the room. Everyone turned, the sergeant saluted and placed Ritter’s orders on the desk. Mohnke looked at them briefly, his eyes lit up and he leaned across the table, hand outstretched.

‘My dear Ritter, what a pleasure to meet you.’ He reached for the telephone and said to the others, ‘Sturmbannführer Ritter, gentlemen, hero of that incredible exploit near Innsbruck that I was telling you about.’

Most of them made appropriate noises, one or two shook hands, others reached out to touch him as if for good luck. It was a slightly unnerving experience and he was glad when Mohnke replaced the receiver and said, ‘General Fegelein tells me the Führer wishes to see you without delay.’ His arm swung up dramatically in a full party salute. ‘Your comrades of the SS are proud of you, Sturmbannführer. Your victory is ours.’

‘Am I mad or they, Erich?’ Ritter whispered as they followed the sergeant ever deeper into the bunker.

‘For God’s sake, Major.’ Hoffer put a hand briefly on his arm. ‘If someone overhears that kind of remark …’

‘All right, I’ll be good,’ Ritter said soothingly. ‘Lead on, Erich. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next act.’

They descended now to the lower levels of the Führerbunker itself. A section which, although Ritter did not know it then, housed most of the Führer’s personal staff as well as Goebbels and his family, Bormann and Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger, the Führer’s personal physician. General Fegelein had a room adjacent to Bormann’s.

It was similar to Mohnke’s – small with damp, concrete walls and furnished with a desk, a couple of chairs and a filing cabinet. The desk was covered with military maps which he was studying closely when the sergeant opened the door and stood to one side.

Fegelein looked up, his face serious, but when he saw Ritter, laughed excitedly and rushed round the desk to greet him. ‘My dear Ritter, what an honour – for all of us. The Führer can’t wait, I assure you.’

Such enthusiasm was a little too much, considering that Ritter had never clapped eyes on the man before. Fegelein was a one-time commander of SS cavalry, he knew that, awarded the Knight’s Cross, so he was no coward – but the handshake lacked firmness and there was sweat on the brow, particularly along the thinning hairline. This was a badly frightened man, a breed with which Ritter had become only too familiar over the past few months.

‘An exaggeration, I’m sure, General.’

‘And you, too, Sturmscharführer.’ Fegelein did not take Hoffer’s hand but nodded briefly. ‘A magnificent performance.’

‘Indeed,’ Ritter said dryly. ‘He was, after all, the finger on the trigger.’

‘Of course, my dear Ritter, we all acknowledge that fact. On the other hand …’

Before he could take the conversation any further the door opened and a broad, rather squat man entered the room. He wore a nondescript uniform. His only decoration was the Order of Blood, a much-coveted Nazi medal specially struck for those who had served prison sentences for political crimes in the old Weimar Republic. He carried a sheaf of papers in one hand.

‘Ah, Martin,’ Fegelein said. ‘Was it important? I have the Führer’s orders to escort this gentleman to him the instant he arrived. Sturmbannführer Ritter, hero of Wednesday’s incredible exploit on the Innsbruck road. Reichsleiter Bormann you of course know, Major.’

But Ritter did not, for Martin Bormann was only a name to him, as he was to most Germans – a face occasionally to be found in a group photo of party dignitaries, but nothing memorable about it. Not a Goebbels or a Himmler – once seen, never forgotten.

And yet here he was, the most powerful man in Germany, particularly now that Himmler had absconded. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Secretary to the Führer.

‘A great pleasure, Major.’ His handshake was firm with a hint of even greater strength there if necessary.

He had a harsh, yet strangely soft voice, a broad, brutal face with Slavic cheekbones, a prominent nose. The impression was of a big man, although Ritter found he had to look down on him.

‘Reichsleiter.’

‘And this is your gunner, Hoffer.’ Bormann turned to the sergeant-major. ‘Quite a marksman, but then I sometimes think you Harz mountain men cut your teeth on a shotgun barrel.’

It was the first sign from anyone that Hoffer was more than a cypher, an acknowledgement of his existence as a human being, and it could not fail to impress Ritter, however reluctantly.

Bormann opened the door and turned to Fegelein. ‘My business can wait. I’ll see you downstairs anyway. I, too, have business with the Führer.’

He went out and Fegelein turned to the two men. Ritter magnificent in the black uniform, Hoffer somehow complementing the show with his one-piece camouflage suit, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. It couldn’t be better. Just the sort of fillip the Führer needed.

Bormann’s sleeping quarters were in the Party Chancellery Bunker, but his office, close to Fegelein’s, was strategically situated so that he was able to keep the closest of contacts with Hitler. One door opened into the telephone exchange and general communication centre, the other to Goebbels’s personal office. Nothing, therefore, could go in to the Führer or out again without the Reichsleiter’s knowledge, which was exactly as he had arranged the situation.

When he entered his office directly after leaving Fegelein, he found SS-Colonel Willi Rattenhuber, whose services he had utilized as an additional aide to Zander since 30 March, leaning over a map on the desk.

‘Any further word on Himmler?’ Bormann asked.

‘Not as yet, Reichsleiter.’

‘The bastard is up to something, you may depend on it, and so is Fegelein. Watch him, Willi – watch him closely.’

‘Yes, Reichsleiter.’

‘And there’s something else I want you to do, Willi. There’s a Sturmbannführer named Ritter of the 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion on his way down now to receive the Swords from the Führer. When you get a moment, I want his records – everything you can find on him.’

‘Reichsleiter.’

‘That’s what I like about you, Willi, you never ask questions.’ Bormann clapped him on the arm. ‘And now, we’ll go down to the garden bunker and I’ll show him to you. I think you’ll approve. In fact I have a happy feeling that he may serve my purpose very well indeed.’

In the garden bunker was the Führer’s study, a bedroom, two living rooms and a bathroom. Close by was the map room used for all high-level conferences. The hall outside served as an anteroom, and it was there that Ritter and Hoffer waited.

Bormann paused at the bottom of the steps and held Rattenhuber back in the shadows. ‘He looks well, Willi, don’t you agree? Quite magnificent in that pretty uniform with the medals gleaming, the pale face, the blond hair. Uncle Heini would have been proud of him: all that’s fairest in the Aryan race. Not like us at all, Willi. He will undoubtedly prove a shot in the arm for the Führer. And notice the slight, sardonic smile on his mouth. I tell you there’s hope for this boy, Willi. A young man of parts.’

Rattenhuber said hastily, ‘The Führer comes now, Reichsleiter.’

Ritter, standing there at the end of a line of half a dozen young boys in the uniform of the Hitler Youth, felt curiously detached. It was rather like one of those dreams in which everything has an appearance of reality, yet events are past belief. The children on his right hand, for instance. Twelve or thirteen, here to be decorated for bravery. The boy next to him had a bandage round his forehead, under the heavy man’s helmet. Blood seeped through steadily, and occasionally the child shifted his feet as if to prevent himself falling.

‘Shoulders back,’ Ritter said softly. ‘Not long now.’ And then the door opened. Hitler moved out flanked by Fegelein, Jodl, Keitel and Krebs, the new Chief of the Army General Staff.

Ritter had seen the Führer on several occasions in his life. Speaking at Nuremberg rallies, Paris in 1940, on a visit to the Eastern Front in 1942. His recollection of Hitler had been of an inspired leader of men, a man of magical rhetoric whose spell could not fail to touch anyone within hearing distance.

But the man who shuffled into the anteroom now might have been a totally different person. This was a sick old man, shoulders hunched under the uniform jacket that seemed a size too large, pale, hollow-cheeked, no sparkle in the lack-lustre eyes, and when he turned to take from the box Jodl held the first Iron Cross Second Class, his hand trembled.

He worked his way along the line, muttering a word or two of some sort of encouragement here and there, patting an occasional cheek, and then reached Ritter and Hoffer.

Fegelein said, ‘Sturmbannführer Karl Ritter and Sturmscharführer Erich Hoffer of the 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion.’ He started to read the citation. ‘Shortly after dawn on the morning of Wednesday, April 25th …’ but the Führer cut him off with a chopping motion of one hand.

There was fire in the dark eyes now, a sudden energy as he snapped his fingers impatiently for Jodl to pass the decoration. Ritter stared impassively ahead, aware of the hands touching him lightly, and then, for the briefest of moments, they tightened on his arm.

He looked directly into the eyes, aware of the power, the burning intensity, there again if only for a moment, the hoarse voice saying, ‘Your Führer thanks you, on behalf of the German people.’

Hitler turned. ‘Are you aware of this officer’s achievement, gentlemen? Assisted by only two other tanks, he wiped out an entire British column of the 7th Armoured Division. Thirty armoured vehicles left blazing. Can you hear that and still tell me that we cannot win this war? If one man can do so much what could fifty like him accomplish?’

They all shifted uncomfortably. Krebs said, ‘But of course, my Führer. Under your inspired leadership anything is possible.’

‘Goebbels must have written that line for him,’ Bormann whispered to Rattenhuber. ‘You know, Willi, I’m enjoying this, and look at our proud young Sturmbannführer. He looks like Death himself with that pale face and black uniform, come to remind us all of what waits outside these walls. Have you ever read “Masque of the Red Death” by the American writer Poe?’

‘No, I can’t say that I have, Reichsleiter.’

‘You should, Willi. An interesting parallel on the impossibility of locking out reality for long.’

An orderly clattered down the steps, brushed past Bormann and Rattenhuber and hesitated on seeing what was taking place. Krebs, who obviously recognized the man, moved to one side and snapped his fingers. The orderly passed him a signal flimsy which Krebs quickly scanned.

Hitler moved forward eagerly. ‘Is it news of Wenck?’ he demanded.

He was still convinced that the 12th Army under General Wenck was going to break through to the relief of Berlin at any moment.

Krebs hesitated and the Führer said, ‘Read it, man! Read it!’

Krebs swallowed hard, then said, ‘No possibility of Wenck and the 9th Army joining. Await further instruction.’

The Führer exploded with rage. ‘The same story as Sunday. I gave the 11th Panzer Army to SS-General Steiner and all available personnel in his area with orders to attack. And what happened?’

The fact that the army in question had existed on paper only, a figment of someone’s imagination, was not the point, for no one would have had the courage to tell him.

‘So, even my SS let me down – betray me in my hour of need. Well, it won’t do, gentlemen.’ He was almost hysterical now. ‘I have a way of dealing with traitors. Remember the July plot? Remember the films of the executions I ordered you to watch?’

He turned, stumbled back into the map room followed by Jodl, Keitel and Krebs. The door closed. Fegelein, moving as a man in a dream, signalled to one of the SS orderlies, who took the children away.

There was silence, then Ritter said, ‘What now, General?’

Fegelein started. ‘What did you say?’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Oh, go to the canteen. Food will be provided. Have a drink. Relax.’ He forced a smile and clapped Ritter on the shoulder.

‘Take it easy for a while, Major, I’ll send for you soon. Fresh fields to conquer, I promise.’

He nodded to an orderly, who led the way. Ritter and Hoffer followed him, up the steps. Bormann and Rattenhuber were no longer there.

At the top, Ritter said softly, ‘What do you think of that, then, Erich? Little children and old men led by a raving madman. So, now we start paying the bill, I think – all of us.’

When he reached his office, Fegelein closed the door, went behind his desk and sat down. He opened a cupboard, took out a bottle of brandy, removed the cork and swallowed deeply. He had been a frightened man for some time, but this latest display had finished him off.

He was exactly the same as dozens of other men who had risen to power in the Nazi party. A man of no background and little education. A one-time groom and jockey who had risen through the ranks of the SS and after being appointed Himmler’s aide at Führer headquarters, had consolidated his position by marrying Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl.

But now even Himmler had cleared off, had refused every attempt aimed at returning him to the death-trap which Berlin had become. It occurred to Fegelein that perhaps the time had come for some definite action on his own part. He took another quick pull on the brandy bottle, got up, took down his cap from behind the door and went out.

It was seven o’clock that evening and Ritter and Hoffer were sitting together in the canteen, talking softly, a bottle of Moselle between them, when a sudden hubbub broke out. There were cries outside in the corridor, laughter and then the door burst open and two young officers ran in.

Ritter grabbed at one of them as he went by. ‘Hey, what’s all the excitement?’

‘Luftwaffe General Ritter von Greim has just arrived from Munich with the air-ace, Hannah Reitsch. They landed at Gatow and came on in a Fieseler Storch.’

‘The general flew himself,’ the other young officer said. ‘When he was hit, she took over the controls and landed the aircraft in the street near the Brandenburger Tor. What a woman.’

They moved away. Another voice said, ‘A day for heroes, it would seem.’

Ritter looked up and found Bormann standing there. ‘Reichsleiter.’ He started to rise.

Bormann pushed him down. ‘Yes, a remarkable business. What they omitted to tell you was that they were escorted by fifty fighter planes from Munich. Apparently over forty were shot down. On the other hand, it was essential General von Greim got here. You see, the Führer intends to promote him to Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe with the rank of Feldmarschall, Göring having finally proved a broken reed. Naturally he wished to tell General Greim of this himself. Signal flimsies are so impersonal, don’t you think?’

He moved away. Hoffer said in a kind of awe, ‘Over forty planes – forty, and for what?’

‘To tell him in person what he could have told him over the telephone,’ Ritter said. ‘A remarkable man, our Führer, Erich.’

‘For God’s sake, Major.’ Hoffer put out a hand, for the first time real anger showing through. ‘Keep talking like that and they might take you out and hang you. Me, too. Is that what you want?’

When Bormann went into his office, Rattenhuber was waiting for him.

‘Did you find General Fegelein?’ the Reichsleiter inquired.

‘He left the bunker five hours ago.’ Rattenhuber checked his notes. ‘According to my information, he is at present at his home in Charlottenburg – wearing civilian clothes, I might add.’

Bormann nodded calmly. ‘How very interesting.’

‘Do we inform the Führer?’

‘I don’t think so, Willi. Give a man enough rope, you know the old saying. I’ll ask where Fegelein is in the Führer’s hearing later on tonight. Allow him to make this very unpleasant discovery for himself. Now, Willi, we have something far more important to discuss. The question of the prominent prisoners in our hands. You have the files I asked for?’

‘Certainly, Reichsleiter.’ Rattenhuber placed several manilla folders on the desk. ‘There is a problem here. The Führer has very pronounced ideas on what should happen to the prominenti. It seems that he was visited by Obergruppenführer Berger, Head of Prisoner of War Administration. Berger tried to discuss the fate of several important British, French and American prisoners as well as the Austrian Chancellor, Schuschnigg, and Halder and Schacht. It seems the Führer told him to shoot them all.’

‘Conspicuous consumption, I would have thought, Willi. In other words, a great waste.’ Bormann tapped the files. ‘But it’s these ladies and gentlemen who interest me. The prisoners of Arlberg.’

‘I’m afraid several have already been moved since my visit, on your instructions, two months ago. Orders of the Reichsführer,’ Rattenhuber told him.

‘Yes, for once Uncle Heini moved a little faster than I had expected,’ Bormann said dryly. ‘What are we left with?’

‘Just five. Three men, two women.’

‘Good,’ Bormann said. ‘A nice round number. We’ll start with the ladies first, shall we? Refresh my memory.’

‘Madame Claire de Beauville, Reichsleiter. Age thirty. Nationality, French. Her father made a great deal of money in canned foods. She married Étienne de Beauville. A fine old family. They were thought to be typical socialites flirting with their new masters. In fact her husband was working with French Resistance units in Paris. He was picked up in June last year on information received and taken to Sicherheitdienst headquarters at Avénue Foch in Paris. He was shot trying to escape.’

‘The French,’ Bormann said. ‘So romantic.’

‘The wife was thought to be involved. There was a radio at the house. She insisted she knew nothing about it, but Security was convinced she could well have been working as a – pianist?’

He looked up, bewildered, and Bormann smiled. ‘Typical English schoolboy humour. This is apparently the British Special Operations Executive term for a radio operator.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Rattenhuber returned to the file. ‘Through marriage, she is related to most of the great French families.’

‘Which is why she is at Arlberg. So – who’s next?’

‘Madame Claudine Chevalier.’

‘The concert pianist?’

‘That’s right, Reichsleiter.’

‘She must be seventy at least.’

‘Seventy-five.’

‘A national institution. In 1940 she made a trip to Berlin to give a concert at the Führer’s special request. It made her very unpopular in Paris at the time.’

‘A very clever front to mask her real activities, Reichsleiter. She was one of a group of influential people who organized an escape line which succeeded in spiriting several well-known Jews from Paris to Vichy.’

‘So – an astute old lady with nerve and courage. Does that dispose of the French?’

‘No, Reichsleiter. There is Paul Gaillard to consider.’

‘Ah, the one-time cabinet minister.’

‘That is so, Reichsleiter. Aged sixty. At one time a physician and surgeon. He has, of course, an international reputation as an author. Dabbled in politics a little before the war. Minister for Internal Affairs in the Vichy government who turned out to be signing releases of known political offenders. He was also suspected of being in touch with de Gaulle. Member of the French Academy.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Something of a romantic, according to the security report. Joined the French Army as a private soldier in 1915 as some sort of public gesture against the government of the day. It seems he thought they were making a botch of the war. Flirted with Communism in the twenties, but a visit to Russia in 1927 cured him of that disease.’

‘What about his weaknesses?’

‘Weaknesses, Reichsleiter?’

‘Come now, Willi, we all have them. Some men like women, others play cards all night or drink, perhaps. What about Gaillard?’

‘None, Reichsleiter, and the State Security report is really most thorough. There is one extraordinary thing about him, however.’

‘What’s that?’

‘He’s had a great love of ski-ing all his life. In 1924 when they held the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix, he took a gold medal. A remarkable achievement. You see, he was thirty-nine years of age, Reichsleiter.’

‘Interesting,’ Bormann said softly. ‘Now that really does say something about his character. What about the Englishman?’

‘I’m not too certain that’s an accurate description, Reichsleiter. Justin Fitzgerald Birr, 15th Earl of Dundrum, an Irish title, and Ireland is the place of his birth. He is also 10th Baron Felversham. The title is, of course, English and an estate goes with it in Yorkshire.’

‘The English and the Irish really can’t make up their minds about each other, can they, Willi? As soon as there’s a war, thousands of Irishmen seem to join the British Army with alacrity. Very confusing.’

‘Exactly, Reichsleiter. Lord Dundrum, which is how people address him, had an uncle who was a major of infantry in the first war. An excellent record, decorated and so on, then in 1919 he went home, joined the IRA and became commander of a flying column during their fight for independence. It apparently caused a considerable scandal.’

‘And the earl? What of his war record?’

‘Age thirty. DSO and Military Cross. At the beginning of the war he was a lieutenant in the Irish Guards. Two years later a lieutenant-colonel in the Special Air Service. In its brief existence his unit destroyed 113 aircraft on the ground behind Rommel’s lines. He was captured in Sicily. Made five attempts to escape, including two from Colditz. It was then they decided that his special circumstances merited his transfer to Arlberg as a prominento.’

‘Which explains the last and most important point concerning the good Earl of Dundrum.’

‘Exactly, Reichsleiter. It would seem the gentleman is, through his mother, second cousin to King George.’

‘Which certainly makes him prominent, Willi. Very prominent indeed. And now – the best saved till last. What about our American friend?’

‘Brigadier General Hamilton Canning, age forty-five.’

‘The same as me,’ Bormann said.

‘Almost exactly. You, Reichsleiter, I believe, were born on the 17th of June. General Canning on the 27th of July. He would seem typical of a certain kind of American – a man in a perpetual hurry to get somewhere.’

‘I know his record,’ Bormann said. ‘But go through it again for me.’

‘Very well, Reichsleiter. In 1917 he joined the French Foreign Legion as a private soldier. Transferred to the American Army the following year with the rank of second lieutenant. Between the wars he didn’t fit in too well. A troublemaker who was much disliked at the Pentagon.’

‘In other words he was too clever for them, read too many books, spoke too many languages,’ Bormann said. ‘Just like the High Command we know and love, Willi. But carry on.’

‘He was a military attaché in Berlin for three years. Nineteen thirty-four to thirty-seven. Apparently became very friendly with Rommel.’

‘That damn traitor.’ Bormann’s usually equable poise deserted him. ‘He would.’

‘He saw action on a limited scale in Shanghai against the Japanese in 1939, but he was still only a major by 1940. He was then commanding a small force in the Philippines. Fought a brilliant defensive action against the Japanese in Mindanao. He was given up for dead, but turned up in a Moro junk at Darwin in Australia. The magazines made something of a hero of him, so they had to promote him then. He spent almost a year in hospital. Then they sent him to England. Some sort of headquarters job, but he managed to get into combined operations.’

‘And then?’

‘Dropped into the Dordogne just after D-Day with British SAS units and Rangers to work with French partisans. Surrounded on a plateau in the Auvergne Mountains by SS paratroopers in July last year. Jumped from a train taking him to Germany and broke a leg. Tried to escape from hospital. They tried him at Colditz for awhile but that didn’t work.’

‘And then Arlberg.’

‘It was decided, I believe, by the Reichsführer himself, that he was an obvious candidate to be a prominento.’

‘And who do we have in charge of things at Schloss Arlberg, Willi?’

‘Oberstleutnant Max Hesser, of the Panzer Grenadiers. Gained his Knight’s Cross at Leningrad where he lost his left arm. A professional soldier of the old school.’

‘I know, Willi, don’t tell me. Held together by guts and piano wire. And who does he have with him now?’

‘Only twenty men, Reichsleiter. Anyone capable of frontline action has been taken from him in the past few weeks. Oberleutnant Schenck, now his second-in-command, is fifty-five, a reservist. Sergeant-Major Schneider is a good man. Iron Cross Second and First Class, but he has a silver plate in his head. The rest are reservists, mostly in their fifties or cripples.’

He closed the last file. Bormann leaned back in his chair, fingertips together. It was quiet now except for the faintest rumblings far above them as the Russian artillery continued to pound Berlin.

‘Listen to that,’ Bormann said. ‘Closer by the hour. Do you ever wonder what comes after?’

‘Reichsleiter?’ Rattenhuber looked faintly alarmed.

‘One has plans, of course, but sometimes things go wrong, Willi. Some unexpected snag that turns the whole thing on its head. In such an eventuality, one needs what I believe the Americans term an “ace-in-the-hole”.’

‘The prominenti, Reichsleiter? But are they important enough?’

‘Who knows, Willi? Excellent bargaining counters in an emergency, no more than that. Madame Chevalier and Gaillard are almost national institutions and Madame de Beauville’s connections embrace some of the most influential families in France. The English love a lord at the best of times, doubly so when he’s related to the King himself.’

‘And Canning?’

‘The Americans are notoriously sentimental about their heroes.’

He sat there, staring into space for a moment.

‘So what do we do with them?’ Rattenhuber said. ‘What does the Reichsleiter have in mind?’

‘Oh, I’ll think of something, Willi,’ Bormann smiled. ‘I think you may depend on it.’

4

And at Schloss Arlberg on the River Inn, 450 miles south from Berlin and fifty-five miles north-west of Innsbruck, Lieutenant-Colonel Justin Birr, 15th Earl of Dundrum, leaned from the narrow window at the top of the north tower and peered down into the darkness of the garden, eighty feet below.

He could feel the plaited rope stir beneath his hands, and behind him in the gloom Paul Gaillard said, ‘Is he there?’

‘No, not yet.’ A moment later the rope slackened, there was a sudden flash of light below, then darkness again. ‘That’s it,’ Birr said. ‘Now me, if I can get through this damned window. Hamilton certainly can pick them.’

He stood on a stool, turned to support himself on Gaillard’s shoulders and eased his legs into space. He stayed there for a moment, hands on the rope. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind, Paul?’

‘My dear Justin, I wouldn’t get halfway down before my arms gave out.’

‘All right,’ Birr said. ‘You know what to do. When I get down, or perhaps I should say if I do, we’ll give you a flash. You haul the rope up, stick it in that cubbyhole under the floorboards then get to hell out of it.’

‘You may rely on me.’

‘I know. Give my regards to the ladies.’

‘Bon chance, my friend.’

Birr let himself slide and was suddenly alone in the darkness, swaying slightly in the wind, his hands slipping from knot to knot. Home-made rope and eighty feet to the garden. I must be mad.

It was raining slightly, not a single star to be seen anywhere and already his arms were beginning to ache. He let himself slide faster, his feet banging against the wall, scratching his knuckles, at one point twirling round madly in circles. Quite suddenly, the rope parted.

My God, that’s it! he thought, clamping his jaws together in the moment of death to stop himself from crying out, then hit the ground after falling no more than ten feet and rolled over in wet grass, winded.

There was a hand at his elbow, helping him to his feet. ‘You all right?’ Canning said.

‘I think so.’ Birr flexed his arms. ‘A damn close thing, Hamilton, but then it usually is when you’re around.’

‘We aim to please.’ Canning flashed his torch upwards briefly. ‘Okay, let’s get moving. The entrance to the sewer I told you about is in the lily pond on the lower terrace.’

They moved down through the darkness cautiously, negotiated a flight of steps and skirted the fountain at the bottom. The ornamental lily pond was on the other side of a short stretch of lawn. There was a wall at the rear of it, water gushing from the mouth of a bronze lion’s head, rattling into the pool below. Birr had seen it often enough on exercise. ‘Okay, here we go.’

Canning sat down and lowered himself into the water, kneedeep. He waded forward, Birr followed him and found the American crouched beside the lion’s head in the darkness.

‘You can feel the grille here, half under the water,’ Canning whispered. ‘If we can get that off we’re straight into the main drainage system. One tunnel after the other all the way down to the river.’

‘And if not?’ Birr inquired.

‘Short rations again and a stone cell, but that, as they say, is problematical. Right now we’ve got about ten minutes before Schneider and that damned Alsatian of his come by on garden patrol.’

He produced a short length of steel bar from his pocket, inserted it in one side of the bronze grille and levered. There was an audible crack, the metal, corroded by the years, snapping instantly. He pulled hard and the entire grille came away in his hands.

‘You see how it is, Justin. All you have to do is live right. After you.’

Birr crouched down on his hands and knees in the water and switching on his torch crawled through into a narrow brick tunnel. Canning moved in behind him, pulling the grille back into place.

‘Don’t you think you’re getting a little old for Boy Scouts, Hamilton?’ Birr whispered over his shoulder.

‘Shut up and get moving,’ Canning told him. ‘If we can reach the river and find a boat by midnight, we’ll have six or seven hours to play with before they find we’re gone.’

Birr moved on, crawling on hands and knees through a couple of feet of water, the torch in his teeth. He emerged after a few yards into a tunnel that was a good five feet in diameter so that he could actually walk if he crouched a little.

The water was only about a foot deep here, for the tunnel sloped downwards steeply, and the smell was not unpleasant, like old leaves and autumn on the river in a punt.

‘Keep going,’ Canning said. ‘From what I found out from that gardener, we emerge into the main sewer pretty quickly. From there, it’s a straight run down to the Inn.’

‘I can smell it already,’ Birr told him.

A few minutes later the tunnel did indeed empty into the main sewer in a miniature waterfall. Birr flashed his torch at the brown foam-flecked waters which rushed by several feet below.

‘My God, just smell it, Hamilton. This really is beyond a joke.’

‘Oh, get in there, for Christ’s sake.’ Canning gave him a shove and Birr dropped down, losing his balance and disappeared beneath the surface. He was on his feet in an instant and stood there cursing, still clutching his torch. ‘It’s liquid shit, Hamilton. Liquid shit.’

‘You can have a wash when we get to the river,’ Canning said and he lowered himself down to join him. ‘Now let’s make time.’

He started down the tunnel, torch extended before him, and Birr followed for perhaps sixty or seventy yards and then the tunnel petered out in a blank wall.

‘That’s it then,’ Birr said. ‘And a bloody good job too as far as I’m concerned. We’ll have to go back.’

‘Not on your sweet life. The water’s got to go somewhere.’ Canning slipped his torch into his pocket, took a deep breath and crouched. He surfaced at once. ‘As I thought. The tunnel continues on a lower level. I’m going through.’

Birr said, ‘And what if it’s twenty or thirty yards long, you idiot – or longer? You’ll not have time to turn and come back. You’ll drown.’

‘So I’ll take that chance, Justin.’ Canning was tying one end of the rope about his waist now. ‘I want out – you understand? I’ve no intention of sitting on my ass up there in the castle waiting for the Reichsführer’s hired assassins to come and finish me off.’ He held out the other end of the rope. ‘Fasten that round your waist if you want to come too. If I get through, I’ll give it a pull.’

‘And if not?’

‘Winter roses on my grave. Scarlet ones like those Claire cultivated in the conservatory.’ He grinned once, took a deep breath and disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

Justin Birr waited. The electric torch gave only a minimal light, barely sufficient to pick out the slime on the ancient stone walls or the occasional rat that swam past in the dark water. The stench was frightful – really most unpleasant – and by now the cold had cut through to his very bones, or so it seemed.

He was aware of a sudden tug and hesitated, wondering for the moment whether it was simply imagination. There was another tug, more insistent this time. ‘All right, damn you,’ he said and extinguished the torch and put it in his breast pocket. His hands felt under the water for the edge of the arched roof. He took a deep breath and went down.

His feet banged against the stonework, but he kicked desperately, aware of the rope tugging at his waist, and then, just when he was convinced he couldn’t keep going any longer, he saw a faint light ahead and surfaced, gasping for breath.

Canning, crouching out of the water on the side of a larger tunnel, reached down to pull him up. ‘Easy does it.’

‘Really, Hamilton, this particular small jaunt of yours is getting out of hand. I smell like a lavatory gone wrong and I’m frozen into the bargain.’

Canning ignored him. ‘Listen – I can hear the river. Can’t be far now.’

He set off at a fast pace, slipping and sliding on the slope of the tunnel, and Birr got to his feet wearily and went after him. And then Canning was laughing excitedly and running, splashing knee-deep in the brown water.

‘I can see it. We’re there.’

‘Indeed you are, gentlemen. Indeed you are.’

A brilliant spot was turned on, flooding the tunnel with light. Birr hesitated, then went forward and dropped on his hands and knees beside Canning who crouched at the large circular grille which blocked the end of the tunnel. Schneider knelt on one knee at the other side, several armed men behind him.

‘We’ve been waiting for you, gentlemen. Magda was growing impatient.’

His Alsatian bitch whined eagerly, pushing her muzzle between the bars. Canning tugged at her ears. ‘You wouldn’t hurt me, you silly old bitch, would you?’

‘All right, Sergeant-Major,’ Justin Birr said. ‘We’ll come quietly.’

Oberstleutnant Max Hesser leaned back in his chair, got out his cigarette case and opened it one-handed with a skill born of long practice. Oberleutnant Schenck waited at the other side of the desk. He was dressed for duty, a pistol at his belt.

‘Extraordinary,’ the colonel said. ‘What on earth will Canning get up to next?’

‘God knows, Herr Oberst.’

‘And the note you received telling you that the escape attempt was to take place. You say it was unsigned?’

‘As you may see for yourself, Herr Oberst.’

He passed a slip of paper across and Hesser examined it. ‘“Canning and Birr escaping through the main sewer tonight.” Crudely done in pencil and block capitals but perfect German.’ He sighed. ‘So there is a traitor in the camp. One of their friends betrays them.’

‘Not necessarily, Herr Oberst, if I might make a suggestion.’

‘But of course, man. Carry on.’

‘The general’s knowledge of the sewer and drainage system must have been gained from somewhere. One of the soldiers or a servant, perhaps.’

‘Ah, I see your point,’ Hesser said. ‘Who took a bribe, then slipped you that anonymous note to make sure the escape attempt would prove abortive.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it, Schenck. It leaves a bad taste.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, I suppose I’d better have them in.’

Schenck withdrew and Hesser stood up and moved to the drinks cabinet. He was a handsome man in spite of the deep scar which bisected his forehead, curving into the right eye which was now glass; the uniform was trim and well-fitting, the empty left sleeve tucked into the belt.

He was pouring himself a brandy when the door opened behind him. He turned as Schenck ushered Canning and Birr into the room, Schneider behind them.

‘Good God in heaven,’ Hesser said.

They indeed presented a sorry sight, barefoot, covered in filth, water dripping on to the carpet. Hesser hurriedly filled another two glasses.

‘From the looks of you, I’d say you needed it.’

Canning and Birr slopped forward. ‘Very civil of you,’ Birr said.

Canning grinned and raised his glass. ‘Prosit.’

‘And now to business.’ Hesser went back to his desk and sat down. ‘This is a nonsense, gentlemen. It must stop.’

‘The duty of an officer to make every attempt to achieve his liberty and rejoin his unit,’ Canning said. ‘You know that.’

‘Yes, under other circumstances I would agree with you, but not now. Not on the 26th of April, 1945. Gentlemen, after five and a half years, the war draws to a close. It’s almost over – any day now. All we have to do is wait.’

‘What for – an SS execution squad?’ Canning said. ‘We know what the Führer told Berger when he asked about the prominenti. He said shoot them. Shoot all of them. Last I heard, Himmler agreed with him.’

‘You are in my charge, gentlemen. I have tried to make this plain many times before.’

‘Great,’ Canning said. ‘And what happens if they drive up to the front door with a directive from the Führer? Will you pull up the drawbridge or order us to be shot? You took the soldier’s oath, didn’t you, just like everyone else in the German armed forces?’

Hesser stared up at him, very white, the great scar glowing angrily. Birr said gently, ‘He does have a point, Colonel.’

Hesser said, ‘I could put you gentlemen on short rations and confine you to your cells, but I won’t. Under the circumstances and considering the point in time at which we all stand, I shall have you returned to prisoners’ section and your friends. I hope you will respond in kind to this gesture.’

Schenck placed a hand on Canning’s arm and the general pulled himself free. ‘For God’s sake, Max.’ He leaned across the desk, voice urgent. ‘There’s only one way out for you. Send Schenck here in search of an Allied unit while there’s still time. Someone you can surrender to legally, saving your own honour and our skins.’

Hesser stared at him for a long moment, then said, ‘Have the general and Lord Dundrum returned to their quarters now, Schenck.’

‘Herr Oberst.’ Schenck clicked his heels and turned to the two men. ‘General?’

‘Oh, go to hell,’ Canning told him, turned and walked out.

Birr paused. For a moment it was as if he intended to say something. Instead, he shrugged and followed. Schenck and Schneider went after them. Hesser went back to the cabinet and poured himself another drink. As he was replacing the bottle, there was a knock on the door and Schenck came back in.

‘Would you care for one?’ Hesser asked.

‘No thank you, Herr Oberst. My stomach takes kindly only to beer these days.’

He waited patiently. Hesser walked across to the fire. ‘You think he’s right, don’t you?’ Schenck hesitated and Hesser said, ‘Come on, man. Speak your mind.’

‘Very well, Herr Oberst. Yes, I must say I do. Let’s get it over and done with, that’s my attitude. If we don’t then I greatly fear that something terrible may take place here, the results of which may drag us all down.’

‘You know something?’ Hesser kicked a log that rolled forward back into place in a shower of sparks. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’

Canning and Birr, followed by Schneider, two soldiers with Schmeissers and Magda, crossed the main hall and mounted the staircase, so wide that a company of soldiers could have marched up line abreast.

‘I was once shown over MGM studios by Clark Gable,’ Birr said. ‘This place often reminds me of Stage Six. Did I ever tell you that?’

‘Frequently,’ Canning told him.

They crossed the smaller, upper landing and paused at an oaken, iron-bound door outside of which stood an armed sentry. Schneider produced a key about a foot long, inserted it in the massive lock and turned. He pushed open the door and stood back.

‘Gentlemen.’ As they moved in he added, ‘Oh, by the way, the upper section of the north tower is out of bounds and, in future, there will be two guards in the water garden at all times.’

‘That’s really very considerate of you,’ Birr said. ‘Don’t you agree, General?’

‘You can play that vaudeville act all night, but I’ve had it,’ Canning said and started up the dark stone stairway.

Birr followed him and the door clanged shut behind them. They were now in the north tower, the central keep of the castle, that portion to which in the old days the defenders had always retreated in the last resort. It was completely isolated from the rest of Schloss Arlberg, the lowest window fifty feet from the ground and heavily barred. It made a relatively secure prisoners’ section under most circumstances and meant that Hesser was able to allow the inmates certain freedom, at least within the confines of the walls.

Madame Chevalier was playing the piano, they could hear her clearly – a Bach prelude, crisp and ice-cold, all technique, no heart. The kind of thing she liked to play to combat the arthritis in her fingers. Canning opened the door of the dining hall.

It was a magnificent room, a high arched ceiling festooned with battle standards from other times, a magnificent selection of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century armour on the walls. The fireplace was of baronial proportions. Gaillard and Claire de Beauville sat beside the log fire, smoking and talking quietly. Madame Chevalier was at the Bechstein.

At the sight of Canning and Birr, she stopped playing, gave a howl of laughter and started into the ‘Dead March’ from Saul.

‘Very, very humorous,’ Canning told her. ‘I’m splitting my sides laughing.’

Claire and Paul Gaillard stood up. ‘But what happened?’ Gaillard said. ‘The first I knew that there was anything amiss was when men arrived to lock the upper tower door. I’d just come down after securing the rope.’

‘They were waiting for us, that’s what happened,’ Birr said. ‘Dear old Schneider and Magda panting eagerly over Hamilton as usual. He’s become the great love of her life.’

‘But how could they have known?’ Claire demanded.

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Canning said.

‘I should have thought it obvious.’ Birr crossed to the sideboard and helped himself to a brandy. ‘That gardener, Schmidt. The one you got the information about the drainage system from. Maybe a hundred cigarettes wasn’t enough.’

‘The bastard,’ Canning said. ‘I’ll kill him.’

‘But after you’ve had a bath, Hamilton – please.’ Claire waved a hand delicately in front of her nose. ‘You really do smell a little high.’

‘Camembert – out of season,’ said Gaillard.

There was general laughter. Canning said grimly, ‘The crackling of thorns under a pot, isn’t that what the Good Book says? I hope you’re still laughing, all of you, when the Reichsführer’s thugs march you out to the nearest wall.’ He walked out angrily during the silence that followed. Birr emptied his glass. ‘Strange, but I can’t think of a single funny thing to say, so, if you’ll excuse me …’

After he’d gone, Gaillard said, ‘He’s right, of course. It isn’t good. Now if Hamilton or Lord Dundrum had got away and reached American or British troops, they could have brought help.’

‘Nonsense, this whole business.’ Claire sat down again. ‘Hesser would never stand by and see us treated like that. It isn’t in his nature.’

‘I’m afraid Colonel Hesser would have very little to do with it,’ Gaillard said. ‘He’s a soldier and soldiers have a terrible habit of doing what they’re told, my dear.’

There was a knock at the door, it opened and Hesser came in. He smiled, his slight half-bow extending to the three of them, then turned to Madame Chevalier.

‘Chess?’

‘Why not?’ She was playing a Schubert nocturne now, full of passion and meaning. ‘But first settle an argument for us, Max. Paul here believes that if the SS come to shoot us you’ll let them. Claire doesn’t believe you could stand by and do nothing. What do you think?’

‘I have the strangest of feelings that I will beat you in seven moves tonight.’

‘A soldier’s answer, I see. Ah, well.’

She stood up, came round the piano and moved to the chess table. Hesser sat opposite her. She made the first move. Claire picked up a book and started to read. Gaillard sat staring into the fire, smoking his pipe. It was very quiet.

After a while the door opened and Canning came in, wearing a brown battledress blouse and cream slacks. Claire de Beauville said, ‘That’s better, Hamilton. Actually you really look rather handsome tonight. Crawling through sewers must be good for you.’

Hesser said, without looking up, ‘Ah, General, I was hoping you’d put in an appearance.’

‘I’d have thought we’d seen enough of each other for one night,’ Canning told him.

‘Perhaps, but the point you were making earlier. I think your argument may have some merit. Perhaps we could discuss it in the morning. Let’s say directly after breakfast?’

‘Now you’re damn well talking,’ Canning said.

Hesser ignored him, leaned forward, moved a bishop. ‘Checkmate, I think.’

Madame Chevalier examined the board and sighed. ‘Seven moves you told me. You’ve done it in five.’

Max Hesser smiled. ‘My dear Madame, one must always try to be ahead of the game. The first rule of good soldiering.’

And in Berlin, just after midnight, Bormann still sat in his office, for the Führer himself worked through the night these days, seldom going to bed before 7 a.m., and Bormann liked to remain close. Close enough to keep others away.

There was a knock at the door and Rattenhuber entered, a sealed envelope in his hand. ‘For you, Reichsleiter.’

‘Who from, Willi?’

‘I don’t know, Reichsleiter. I found it on my desk marked Priority Seven.’

Which was a code reference for communications of the most secret sort, intended for Bormann’s eyes alone.

Bormann opened the envelope, then looked up, no expression in his eyes. ‘Willi, the Fieseler Storch in which Feldmarschall Greim and Hannah Reitsch flew in to Berlin has been destroyed. Get on to Gatow at once. Tell them they must send another plane by morning, one capable of flying directly out of the city.’

‘Very well, Reichsleiter.’

Bormann held up the envelope. ‘Know what’s in here, Willi? Some very interesting news. It would appear that our beloved Reichsführer, dear Uncle Heini, has offered to surrender to the British and Americans.’

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