Berlin Red (22 page)

After travelling along the pot-holed forest trail for half an hour, the Field Police truck carrying Kirov and Pekkala emerged from the woods and pulled out on to the highway leading into Berlin. The road was wide and empty and scattered with burnt-out vehicles, which slowed their progress considerably. In the distance, they could make out several towns, their black church spires propping up the egg-shell-white sky.

By mid-morning, they finally reached the outskirts of Berlin.

Here, they saw the first signs of the Allied bombing campaign, which had reduced much of the city to ruins. They could smell it, too – a damp sourness of recently extinguished fires, mixed with the eye-stinging reek of melted rubber.

Pekkala watched crews of women and old men pulling yellowy-grey bricks out of the wreckage of destroyed houses, loading them into wheelbarrows and carting them away. The dust of these pulverised structures so coated the clothing and the faces of these clean-up crews that they seemed to be made of the same dirt as the bricks. It gave the impression of some vast, wounded creature, slowly piecing itself back together. As Pekkala looked out at the ruins, which stretched as far as he could see in all directions, such a task seemed all but impossible. The Red Army, with its terrible desire for vengeance, had not even set foot inside the city yet. And if the defenders of Berlin were anything like the boy who sat before them now, there would be nothing left at all by the time the fighting was over.

The truck turned sharply off the road, and pulled into a courtyard where several other vehicles stood parked against a high wall, on which pieces of broken glass had been embedded in a layer of cement.

‘Welcome to the Friedrichsfelde Reform School,’ said Andreas, ‘which is now the headquarters of Major Rademacher.’

They piled out into the courtyard.

Berthold and Andreas marched the two men into the building.

Major Rademacher was eating his lunch, which consisted of a pickled egg and a raw onion, sliced and mashed together upon a slice of pumpernickel bread. He washed this down with some powdered milk, which he swilled from an oval-mouthed canteen cup.

It irritated the major to eat meals so hopelessly cobbled together by his adjutant, Lieutenant Krebs, who doubled as his cook, his house cleaner and his valet. He could not blame Krebs for his choice of food. To have found an onion was a triumph, and an egg, even if it was pickled, was nothing short of miraculous.

But he was still in a bad mood about it and, when the two half-trained Field Police privates arrived with their latest set of prisoners, they were doomed to feel his wrath.

Rademacher shoved his plate of food aside, snatched the Hungarian identity books from Berthold’s outstretched hand. He glanced at them and then tossed them back on to the desk, where Andreas had carefully laid out the guns belonging to Pekkala and Kirov, like duelling pistols ready for selection. ‘What are you doing to me?’ he groaned. ‘I send you out to catch deserters and this is what you bring me? Two Hungarian shoe salesmen?’

‘The captain . . .’ Andreas began.

‘Oh, shut up!’ ordered Rademacher. ‘You always blame everything on him.’

‘But it’s his fault,’ protested Berthold. ‘He told us to bring them to you.’

‘What you have done’, explained Rademacher as if addressing children even younger than they were, ‘is provide these . . . these . . . what the hell is a rude name for Hungarians?’

‘I don’t think there is one,’ said Andreas.

‘It’s bad enough just being Hungarian,’ added Berthold.

‘Well, all you have managed to do’, continued Rademacher, ‘is provide them with a taxi service into the city, using up valuable fuel in the process.’ As he paused for breath, Rademacher’s gaze snagged upon the pistols. He snatched up the Webley and brandished it towards Kirov and Pekkala. ‘What the hell were you planning to shoot with this, anyway? Elephants?’ Disgustedly, he tossed it back on to the desk.

‘What should we do with them?’ asked Berthold.

‘How should I know?’ demanded Rademacher. ‘They’re not my problem.’

‘We could hang them,’ suggested Andreas.

‘No, you idiots!’ boomed Rademacher. ‘Just get them out of here and then get out, yourselves.’ With the movements of a magician, he waved his hands over the guns on his desk, as if to make them disappear before their eyes. ‘And take these with you!’

Kirov and Pekkala retrieved their papers, holstered their guns and then the four men shuffled quickly out into the hallway.

Rademacher pulled his plate back in front of him. For a moment, he stared at the pulp of egg and onion smeared upon the dirty-looking bread. Then, with a growl, he shoved it away once again.

‘I told you,’ Andreas said to Pekkala as they made their way back to the courtyard. ‘There’s no law but what he says there is, and what he says is different every time.’

‘You were right about the fuel, anyway,’ said Pekkala.

The two boys climbed back into the truck. Driving out of the courtyard, they slowed down as they passed Kirov and Pekkala.

Andreas leaned from the open window of the cab. ‘Next time,’ he said, and then he smiled and clamped his fingers to his neck.

Pekkala and Kirov emerged from the courtyard on to Rummelsburger Street and began walking west, towards the centre of the city.

‘Well, Inspector,’ said Kirov. ‘You have one day before the scheduled rendezvous. Surely you can see we have no chance of finding her at all, let alone within twenty-four hours.’

‘I am inspired by your faith in me,’ remarked Pekkala.

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ replied Kirov. ‘Now would you mind sharing with me exactly what the hell you plan to do?’

‘If we can’t find her,’ explained Pekkala, ‘we find the man who will.’

It took a moment for this to sink into Kirov’s brain. ‘Hunyadi?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And how do you propose to do that?’

‘I have a pretty good idea,’ replied Pekkala.

Hunyadi was in his office, staring at a map of Berlin. With a magnifying glass, he studied the layout of the streets in the eastern quadrant of the city, as if to find in it some hint as to the whereabouts of the radio transmitter.

A gentle knocking on the door made him look up. Through the blurred glass pane, Hunyadi could see that his visitor was a woman, even though he could not make out the features of her face.

‘Come in,’ he said.

The door opened, and an expensively dressed lady stepped into the room. She wore a knee-length navy-blue skirt, with a matching jacket piped in white, with large white buttons. Her hair was startlingly blonde. Freckles dappled her round face, making her look younger than she was. It was her eyes that gave her away. They looked strangely lifeless, as if they had witnessed more misery than one person should see in a lifetime.

Slowly, Hunyadi climbed to his feet. ‘I think you might have the wrong room,’ he said.

‘Inspector Hunyadi?’

‘It seems you’re in the right place, after all.’ He gestured at a chair on the other side of his desk. ‘Please,’ he said, gently.

The woman looked at the chair, but she did not sit down. ‘My name is Elsa Batz,’ she said, unbuckling her handbag to remove her government-issued identification book.

As she did so, Hunyadi caught a glance of a small pistol in her bag, jumbled in amongst a hairbrush, a tube of lipstick and several crumpled scraps of paper, which appeared to be restaurant receipts.

Elsa Batz handed him the identification.

Hunyadi opened the flimsy booklet and inspected the even flimsier pages inside. He noted that she lived on Bleibtreustrasse, not far from the notorious Salon Kitty nightclub. ‘How may I help you?’ he asked, returning the booklet to her outstretched hand.

‘I hear you have been looking for a spy,’ said Elsa Batz.

Hunyadi felt his stomach muscles clench. ‘Fraülein Batz,’ he said, ‘what gave you that idea?’

‘There is a chauffeur,’ replied Elsa Batz, letting her tongue rest upon the last word as if unable to conceal her disgust for the profession. ‘She works for Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein.’

‘And her name?’

‘Lilya,’ she replied. ‘Lilya Simonova.’ And then she added contemptuously, ‘She used to be his secretary.’

‘Simonova,’ repeated Hunyadi. He began to take notes on a piece of paper.

‘He calls her “Fraülein S”.’

‘And you suspect her of treason?’

‘I do.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘I just do.’

Hunyadi paused and glanced up from his writing. ‘That isn’t much to go on, Fraülein Batz.’

‘Sometimes a hunch is enough,’ she replied.

‘Are you, perhaps, an acquaintance of the Gruppenführer?’

She nodded. ‘Which is why I know that my hunch is correct.’

We all do what we have to in order to survive, Hunyadi thought to himself, and I think I know exactly what you do. ‘Herr Fegelein has perhaps expressed his doubts to you about this Fraülein S?’ he asked.

‘No!’ spat the woman. ‘He thinks she’s wonderful. He even fired his driver so that she can drive him around the city instead.’

‘I see. And this is what makes you suspicious?’

‘Yes!’ she called out in exasperation. ‘She could be running a whole circus of spies and he wouldn’t even notice.’

‘A circus?’

‘Well, whatever you would call them, then.’

‘But you have no actual proof,’ remarked Hunyadi. ‘Only . . .’ he paused, ‘intuitions.’

‘That’s right,’ she answered defiantly, ‘and they have served me very well so far.’

‘I promise to look into it,’ said Hunyadi, rising to his feet to show that this little interview was at an end. But he wasn’t quite finished with her yet. ‘One more thing, Fraülein Batz,’ he said.

She raised her sculpted eyebrows. ‘Yes?’

‘If I could just take a look at the gun you are carrying in your handbag.’

Her cheeks turned red and she immediately became flustered, but she did as she was told, retrieving the gun from her bag and placing it upon the desk in front of him.

It was a Walther Model 5, a small 6.35 mm automatic of a type often carried by high-ranking officers for personal protection, rather than for use in combat. A tiny eagle, with a three-digit number beneath, had been stamped into the metal slide and also into the base of the magazine.

‘This is a military-issue gun,’ remarked Hunyadi.

‘I suppose it must be,’ she replied.

‘And where did you get it?’

‘From Hermann,’ she told him, and then, as if that were not formal enough, she added, ‘from Gruppenführer Fegelein. He also gave me a permit.’ Rummaging in her purse, she produced a small card, which she now handed to Hunyadi.

The permit was genuine, but it had been issued by Fegelein himself, which he lacked the authority to do, no matter how high his rank.

Hunyadi glanced at Elsa Batz.

She sensed his hesitation. ‘Keep it if you need to,’ she told him. ‘I never use it anyway, and I’m tired of carrying it around.’

Fegelein had given her the gun soon after they began seeing each other. On what she recalled as their first official outing, he drove her to the ruins of a house on the outskirts of the city. The building had been destroyed earlier in the war by a stray bomb. Fegelein walked her into what had once been a neatly tended garden but was now completely overgrown. From the skeletal frame of an old greenhouse, he removed three earthenware flower pots, placed them on the garden wall, then stood back ten paces and motioned for Elsa to join him.

‘A present for you,’ said Fegelein, holding out the gun on the flat of his palm.

‘What do I need that for?’ she asked, refusing to take the weapon from his hand.

‘I won’t always be around to protect you,’ Fegelein told her, ‘and there’s no point having one of these unless you know how to use it.’

He showed her where the safety catch was, and how to aim, and how to level out her breathing just before she pulled the trigger.

Her first shot ricocheted off the wall, leaving a pink gash on the red brick. The second and third shots also missed.

‘Well, it’s a good thing I don’t have you for a bodyguard,’ laughed Fegelein.

He had a particularly annoying laugh.

Elsa was already feeling annoyed that Fegelein had brought her here, instead of to some charming restaurant, but to hear the stuttering hiss of Fegelein’s laughter so enraged her that she strode forward to the wall, set the barrel of the gun against each flower pot and blew them all to pieces one by one.

This only made him laugh more. ‘That’s one way of doing it!’ he shouted.

She wheeled about. ‘I don’t want it! Can’t you see?’

The smile had frozen on his face, and all amusement vanished from his eyes.

It was only in this moment that Elsa realised she was pointing the gun right at him. She lowered it at once, immediately terrified of what he might do to her now.

But Fegelein only sighed and told her to put it away.

Since then, she had kept the gun in her purse, letting it rattle around amongst the spare change and cosmetics.

‘Keep it,’ she repeated to Hunyadi.

‘No,’ replied the inspector, returning the weapon and her permit. ‘I’ve seen all I need to see.’ He knew that, technically, he should have confiscated the gun, but right now there were more important things to do.

After Elsa Batz had departed, leaving behind the faint odour of perfume, Hunyadi picked up the phone and called General Rattenhuber at the bunker.

Rattenhuber did not sound pleased to hear from him. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded. ‘Make it quick! I’m very busy.’

‘Is Fegelein on the premises?’

‘Probably,’ snapped Rattenhuber. ‘The midday briefing is about to start and Fegelein is scheduled to be there. Why? I thought you’d already spoken to him.’

‘I did,’ confirmed Hunyadi, ‘and now I need to speak to his secretary.’

‘What? You mean the pretty one who chauffeurs him about?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Do you want me to put her under arrest?’ asked the general.

‘No!’ Hunyadi answered quickly. ‘Just tell her to report to Pankow district police headquarters before the end of the day.’

‘Fegelein’s not going to like this,’ muttered Rattenhuber. ‘He’s very protective of her.’

‘Is that going to be a problem for you?’ asked Hunyadi.

‘Not at all, Inspector,’ replied Rattenhuber. ‘I’d be happy to make that man squirm.’