Berlin Red (25 page)

When the telephone rang, Fegelein was standing on the little balcony of Elsa Batz’s apartment on Bleibtreustrasse. He was smoking a cigarette and gazing down at the street below, where the caretaker of his building, an old man named Herr Kappler, was sweeping the pavement with a twig broom that looked as if it should be ridden by a witch. The soothing rhythm of the twigs against the concrete was shattered by the ringing of the telephone.

‘It’s for you,’ Elsa called from the living room.

‘Who is it?’ he asked without turning around.

‘Inspector Hunyadi,’ she replied.

Fegelein flicked his half-finished cigarette down into the street, narrowly missing Herr Kappler, and walked back inside the apartment.

He took the receiver from her hand. ‘Hunyadi?’

‘Yes. I’m calling to see if that offer of help is still on the table.’

‘Of course,’ answered Fegelein. Then, seeing that Elsa was lingering in the room and doing her best to eavesdrop on the conversation, he frowned and shooed her away.

She turned up her nose and wandered off into the kitchen.

‘What kind of help do you need?’ asked Fegelein.

‘I would rather talk about it in person, if you don’t mind.’

‘When? Now?’

‘Yes. As soon as possible.’

Fegelein glanced at his watch. ‘Do you know Harting’s restaurant?’

‘Yes. On Mühlerstrasse. It’s practically across the road from me.’

‘Can you meet me there in half an hour?’

‘I can,’ confirmed Hunyadi.

‘I’m on my way,’ said Fegelein. ‘If you get there before me, just tell the manager you are my guest.’

The door to Harting's restaurant swung open, and Leopold Hunyadi stepped in out of the rain.

The head waiter approached him, a menu clutched against his chest. ‘Do you have a reservation, sir?'

‘I am a guest of Gruppenführer Fegelein,' answered Hunyadi.

The man cocked an eyebrow. ‘One moment, please,' he said. Then he spun on his heel and vanished back into the kitchen.

While he waited, Hunyadi looked around at the dark wood tables, slotted into booths separated by screens of frosted glass into which elaborate floral designs had been carved. Except for the fact that the windows facing the street had been spider-webbed with tape to prevent them shattering from the concussion of falling bombs, the restaurant showed no sign of having prepared itself for the Armageddon that was coming. He wondered what would be left of the place by the time the Red Army had finished with Berlin.

Now Herr Waldenbuch, the manager, appeared, sweeping wide the leather-padded double doors which led into the kitchen. He was a man of medium height, with a bristly moustache, small, darting eyes and a round belly precariously contained within a linen waistcoat. Before he spoke, he paused to wipe the perspiration from his face with a dark blue handkerchief. Then he stuffed the handkerchief into his waistcoat pocket and offered his sweat-moistened hand for the detective to shake. ‘A friend of Hermann Fegelein, you say?'

‘A guest,' Hunyadi corrected him.

‘Follow me, if you please,' Waldenbuch said quietly and escorted the detective through the kitchen where, Hunyadi could not help but notice, he was studiously ignored by the staff, and brought him to one of several locked doors at the back of the restaurant. From a bundle of little brass keys, Waldenbuch selected the one he needed, opened the room and gestured for Hunyadi to enter.

‘I have not seen you here before,' remarked Herr Waldenbuch.

You might have done, thought Hunyadi, if one meal here didn't cost a man like me his salary for the week. But he kept that to himself and only nodded.

‘The Gruppenführer is often late,' confided Herr Waldenbuch.

‘In that case,' replied the detective, ‘and since he will be picking up the tab, you might as well bring me some lunch.'

‘What would you like?' asked the manager.

Hunyadi shrugged. ‘After where I've been, Herr Waldenbuch, anything at all would suit me fine.'

Waldenbuch bowed his head sharply and left.

Alone now in this airless little room, it occurred to Hunyadi that this could all be a part of a trap. Fegelein's attempt to re-ingratiate himself with Hitler's entourage might have nothing to do with helping this investigation and everything to do with getting him arrested on charges of conspiracy. If that is the case, thought Hunyadi, I'll be on my way back to Flossenburg before this meal is even on the table.

To take his mind off these grim thoughts, Hunyadi studied the pictures hanging on the walls. They showed the restaurant in earlier days – men in high-collared shirts and women with complicated hats staring with bleached-looking faces through the persimmon-coloured light of old sepia prints.

He wondered if these pictures would survive the coming fight. Lately, Hunyadi had become morbidly obsessed with trying to guess whether the objects that passed through his life were doomed to perish in the flames which would engulf this city, or whether they would be carted back to Russia as souvenirs, or if perhaps they would remain here, untouched, to decorate the walls of whatever city rose up from the ashes of this war.

At that moment, Fegelein arrived. He wore a brown leather greatcoat over his uniform, the hide darkened across his shoulders by the rain that was falling outside. ‘Welcome to my private dining room,' said Fegelein as he shrugged off the coat and draped it over an unused chair.

‘Yours?' asked Hunyadi.

‘There are three things a gentleman needs in life,' said Fegelein. ‘A good barber, a good tailor and a table at his favourite restaurant. I went one further, and made sure it came with a room.' He settled himself into a chair opposite Hunyadi. ‘Now then, Inspector, what is it I can do for you?'

Both men fell silent as Herr Waldenbuch entered with bowls of carrot and fennel soup, the deep orange colour seeming to radiate its own light in the confines of that windowless room. He placed them down before the men, bowed his head, and left.

Hunyadi wondered where on earth such food could still be found in this beleaguered city.

As soon as they were alone again, Hunyadi reached into his pocket, withdrew a crumpled sheet of paper on which the agent's coded message had been written and slid it across the table to Fegelein. ‘I was hoping you might be able to make sense of this.'

Fegelein picked up the document and stared at it. ‘This is some kind of military code.'

‘That much I've already guessed,' said Hunyadi.

‘And did you also guess that it isn't one of ours?'

‘More or less.'

Fegelein laughed quietly. ‘And you think I know how to read it?'

‘Probably not,' answered Hunyadi, ‘but I imagine you know someone who does.'

‘It has to do with your investigation?'

‘It does.'

‘Where did it come from?'

Hunyadi paused to clear his throat. ‘For now, Herr Gruppenführer, the help I'm asking for will have to be a one-way street.'

Neatly, Fegelein folded the page and tucked it away in his pocket. ‘I'll see what I can do.'

From the distance came a wail of air-raid sirens, the sound muffled by the thick walls of the restaurant. Instinctively, both men stood up to leave, each one calculating the distance to the nearest of the city's many bomb shelters, the locations of which had long ago been branded on their minds.

As they made their way out, they found that the main dining room was already empty. Food lay uneaten on plates. Mozart played softly on the gramophone.

The men stepped out into the street. It was almost dark now and the sirens were much louder here, the rising, falling moan shuddering into their bones. People hurried past them, clutching cardboard suitcases already packed for the hours they knew they would spend below ground.

Now they could hear the heavy drone of bombers in the distance, and the dull thump of anti-aircraft fire from the outskirts of the city.

‘It must be done quickly,' urged Hunyadi. ‘I don't think there's much time. And the discretion you promised . . .'

Fegelein patted the pocket where he had stashed the message. ‘It goes without saying, Inspector.'

Arriving at the Pankow district police station, Pekkala went in to find Hunyadi, while Kirov remained out of sight in an alleyway across the road.

The rising, falling wail of the air-raid sirens filled the streets.

The duty officer at the front desk sent Pekkala up to the receptionist on the next floor, where Hunyadi’s office was located.

‘You’d best be quick,’ said the duty officer. ‘You’ve only got about ten minutes before the bombs start falling.’

The receptionist was an elderly woman named Frau Greipel. She had worked on that floor of the police department for many years and considered it her personal domain. The men who worked here, aware of just how miserable she could make their lives if she wanted, knew better than to question her authority.

As a rule, Frau Greipel did not take kindly to strangers, and most of them were sent packing down the stairs much faster than they had come up, especially if air-raid sirens had already begun to sound.

But she did not chase away Pekkala. There was something in the bearing of the man which was both familiar and strangely comforting to her, as if he knew his way around the place, even though she was certain he had never been there before.

Frau Greipel escorted Pekkala to Hunyadi’s office, knocked on the door, opened it and found the room empty. ‘He must have gone to the shelter already,’ she said. ‘Would you like to leave a message?’

‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Please tell him I have come about the Diamond Stream.’

Back at her desk, Frau Greipel made him repeat the words as she wrote them down. ‘Are you sure he will know what that means?’

‘I believe so,’ said Pekkala.

‘And your name?’

‘Pekkala.’

She made him spell it out.

‘And what kind of name is that?’ she asked. ‘Where does it come from?’

Receiving no answer to her question, Frau Greipel looked up and realised that the man had already gone.

As she had done many times before, Frau Greipel locked her desk drawer, put the key in her pocket and after making sure that she was the last one on the floor, she turned out the lights and made her way downstairs, heading for the shelter across the road.

In the gloom of the darkened police station, Pekkala appeared from a storage closet and made his way to the office of Inspector Hunyadi. Once inside, he turned on the desk lamp and began searching for anything which might reveal the man’s home address. It did not take more than a moment to locate the pile of unopened mail, addressed to Hunyadi’s flat in Pradelstrasse.

Tucking one of the envelopes into his coat pocket, Pekkala left the room.

Out in the street, Kirov was waiting. ‘Did you find him?’

‘Not yet, but I know where he is.’

‘Where to?’ asked Kirov.

Before Pekkala could answer, the deep thud of anti-aircraft guns sounded from the west. Layered beneath that sound was the rumble of aircraft engines – hundreds of them by the sound of it.

‘For now, we follow them,’ answered Pekkala, nodding towards the stream of people heading down into a concrete staircase, above which, in large white letters, they could read the word ‘Luftschutzraum’.

After leaving Harting's restaurant, Hunyadi made his way down the stairs of the public air-raid shelter on the corner of Köpenicker and Manteufelstrasse.

He had been here many times before, since the shelter was the closest to his office. Each shelter had its own character. Some always seemed to be filled with crying babies. Others featured music played on violins and accordions. A few served food. This shelter was a relatively quiet place, perhaps due to the fact that it absorbed the entire population of the police station every time there was a raid. Hunyadi had come to recognise many of the regular inhabitants, some of whom he never saw except down in the shelter. Berlin had become a place where each person had two neighbourhoods; one above ground and one below.

Now, as Hunyadi plodded down the steps among dozens of others seeking refuge from the approaching raid, he noticed two men in front of him, neither of whom he had ever seen before. One was tall and broad-shouldered and wore a heavy, hip-length coat. The other was thin, with narrow shoulders and rosy cheeks. Neither man spoke to the other, although it seemed clear to Hunyadi from that they were travelling together. The other thing he noticed, from the particular rumple of their coats beneath the arms, was that both men appeared to be armed. Men that age who weren't in military uniform, and carrying guns to boot, could only mean one thing, thought Hunyadi. Secret State Police. Gestapo. He wondered whether they had come to make an arrest or had been on their way somewhere else and got caught in this part of town when the sirens went off. Whatever the answer, Hunyadi knew better than to ask.

Fegelein did not go to a shelter.

As the first bombs began to fall out on the western edges of the city, he made his way to the Salon Kitty club. The place had only just opened its doors for the evening when the sirens sent both dancing girls and their clientele of high-ranking officers scuttling for the shelter, except for Fegelein and one solitary figure sitting at the bar and drinking a glass of beer.

The stranger’s name was Thomas Hauer and he was a former agent of the German Spy Agency known as the Abwehr. His former boss, Admiral Canaris, who had once controlled this powerful branch of German Military Intelligence, was at that moment a prisoner in the same cell at Flossenburg prison that Hunyadi himself had occupied only a few days before.

The path which had led Canaris to Flossenburg was not nearly as direct as Hunyadi’s.

The German Intelligence apparatus had once comprised two branches, one being the Abwehr, managed by Admiral Canaris, the other a rival service known as the Sicherheitsdienst, run by Heinrich Himmler’s SS.

As these competing services vied with each other for control, Himmler personally set out to destroy the Abwehr. By 1944, Himmler had finally succeeded.

On a freezing February afternoon, both Field Marshal Keitel and General Jodl arrived at Abwehr Headquarters in Security Zone II of the Zossen military complex outside Berlin. The two high-ranking officers made their way to a camouflaged bunker set among a stand of tall pine trees. There, they informed Canaris of Hitler’s decision to merge the Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst. In the meantime, Canaris was to ‘hold himself in readiness’ at the remote castle known as Burg Lauenstein in a mountainous region of southern Germany known as the Frankenwald.

In spite of the veiled language, Canaris had no illusions about the fact that he was, in reality, being placed under house arrest. The charges against Canaris stemmed from his suspected contacts with British agents, as well as providing information to Vatican officials, but the real reason for his removal had more to do with the scheming of Heinrich Himmler.

Within hours, Canaris had vacated his office and departed south, in a Mercedes staff car driven by his faithful chauffeur, Ludecke.

In the coming weeks, Canaris was left to stroll about the grounds of the castle in the company of his two dachshunds. He received almost no information about what was going on in the outside world and was simply left to contemplate his doom.

In late June of that year, to Canaris’s surprise, he was abruptly released and allowed to return to his home at 14 Betazeile in Berlin, where he soon realised just how busy his adversaries had been during his stay at Burg Lauenstein. By the time Canaris emerged from his gentle incarceration, the network he had so painstakingly assembled had been effectively dismantled. All Abwehr departments had been absorbed by their counterparts in the SS and Abwehr field agents were recalled, reassigned or dismissed according to their relevance in Himmler’s future undertakings.

The final blow for Canaris came several months later, when a safe was discovered at the Zossen complex which contained irrefutable evidence that Canaris had been aware of a plot to assassinate Hitler in July of 1944. The attempt had ended in failure and resulted in the executions of numerous high-ranking German officers.

Convicted of treason, Canaris had been sent to prison to await his execution. Unlike Hunyadi, he would never leave Flossenburg alive.

Back while Canaris was still wandering the ground of Lauenberg Castle, Himmler had given Fegelein the task of reassigning all remaining Abwehr agents to posts in the newly formed Reich Intelligence Service.

During the course of this task, while rummaging through the admiral’s private papers in the hopes of finding something he might be able to use as blackmail against some high-ranking official, Fegelein discovered a list containing the names of a dozen agents whom Canaris had never registered with the Abwehr. These young men and women, who had been trained by Canaris himself, were kept in reserve for missions which, for one reason or another, it was better to keep off the books.

Rather than simply hand the list over to Himmler, Fegelein sought out these agents on his own, sensing an opportunity more lucrative than the half-hearted thanks of his employer. Of the dozen agents, some were known to be dead, others had never returned from missions and were presumed lost and two committed suicide when they learned that Fegelein was on their trail. Only one man, Thomas Hauer, had proved practical enough to stay alive. And Fegelein assured him he could stay that way, and even prosper by it, provided he could prove his worth. In the short time they had known each other, Hauer had done this many times over.

Now the former agent glanced across as Fegelein entered the room. ‘Nice of them to give us the place to ourselves,’ he said. ‘Anyone would think you planned the air raid.’

‘I didn’t have to,’ answered Fegelein, as he walked behind the bar, searched through the bottles until he found the one he wanted. ‘The Royal Air Force have been hitting us almost every night for a month and they are admirably punctual.’ With that, he poured himself a glass of Pernod. ‘I acquired a taste for this in Paris,’ he said, holding up the honey-coloured drink as if to gauge its clarity. Then he added a splash of water from a pitcher on the counter and the Pernod turned a cloudy yellow colour.

‘It smells like liquorice,’ remarked Hauer.

‘A distant relative of absinthe,’ said Fegelein. ‘They say that it opens the mind.’ He took a drink.

‘Is that what it’s doing to you?’

‘Unfortunately, not enough to help me translate this.’ Fegelein tossed the page of code on to the counter.

Ignoring the shudder of bombs, which had now begun exploding in the centre of Berlin, Hauer took the page and spread it out before him, pinning it to the table at each corner with his thumbs and index fingers. ‘Why come to me with this?’ he asked, studying the page as he spoke. ‘Why not bring it to the Reich Intelligence Service?’

‘Because I have a nasty suspicion that they might already know what it says.’

‘Then this is an internal investigation.’

‘That’s a good way to describe it.’

‘Well,’ said Hauer, ‘at first glance I would say this is a Goliath cipher.’

‘Goliath?’

Hauer sat back on his stool, releasing the pressure of his fingertips from the page. As he did so, the paper seemed to flinch as if it was in pain. ‘How much do you know about cryptography?’

‘Enough to know when I need help from you.’

‘The Goliath cipher is one of several codes used by the Allies,’ explained Hauer. ‘It was developed by the British in the first years of the war. Nowadays it is considered somewhat antiquated, although it’s still reliable and often used by agents who have been in the field a long time. Each message possesses its own branch code, without which it is virtually impossible to unravel the message.’

‘Well, where do they keep the branch code?’ asked Fegelein.

‘On a piece of silk,’ replied Hauer. ‘It’s about the size of a handkerchief and can be folded or crumpled into something the size of your little finger. Printed on the silk are dozens of little squares, each one containing the numbers for a separate branch code. As each one is used, the radio operator simply cuts it out of the handkerchief and destroys it with a match. Or else the whole patch of silk can simply be dissolved in a combination of vinegar and hot water.’

‘So,’ Fegelein muttered with a sigh, ‘without the silk, there is nothing to be done.’

A bomb exploded two blocks away. The lights flickered.

‘Not necessarily,’ answered Hauer.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Over the course of the war, the Abwehr amassed quite a collection of these silk sheets, either captured from agents who didn’t have time to destroy them before they were arrested or else from supply canisters dropped by the Allies over our territory, which we got to before the agents did. What we discovered was that some of these branch codes repeat and, by experimenting with various algorithms, we have been able to apply a variety of branch codes to messages we’ve intercepted. It doesn’t always work, but we have met with some success.’

‘And do you have those algorithms? Are you able to decipher this?’

‘The answer to both questions is maybe.’

‘You do have them, don’t you?’

‘Let’s put it this way, Herr Gruppenführer. Admiral Canaris was not so naive as to think that even though his headquarters might be safe from enemy air raids, it was proof against the scheming of the SS.’

‘You mean that there are still Abwehr files out there some place?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Hauer, ‘although you’ll never find them, and if you want my help with this you won’t even bother looking.’

‘Fine!’ Fegelein exclaimed irritably. ‘I don’t have time for that now, anyway.’ He reached across and tapped his finger against the page. ‘Decoding this is all that matters, and it’s got to be done now. Tonight.’

Hauer took one of the cardboard beer mats scattered across the counter, flipped it over and copied out the message with the stub of a pencil that he fished out of his pocket.

‘Why are you doing that?’ asked Fegelein.

‘It’s a standard precaution,’ replied Hauer. ‘If something happens to me, then you won’t lose the message, just the messenger.’

‘Abwehr logic,’ muttered Fegelein.

Hauer paused. ‘If you don’t like it, then you can find somebody else.’

‘No,’ said Fegelein, ‘you can do this however you want. Just get it done.’

‘I didn’t say for certain I could do it.’

‘I have great confidence that you will,’ said Fegelein, ‘because you know that I will pay you generously, and not in German currency which is about to become worthless.’

Now that Hauer had copied out the message, Fegelein took the original, folded it up and tucked into his chest pocket.

‘I know you’ll pay me,’ Hauer replied calmly, ‘right up until the day that you don’t need me any more. And then I will be dead.’

Fegelein raised his Pernod and clinked Hauer’s glass. ‘We’re both going to hell, my old friend,’ he said. ‘It’s only a question of when.’