Two Brothers

happen and I lost everything. Everything except my two darling protectors. That and a dedication to survive. A dedication that began on the pavement outside my father’s store in 1933 and which I’ve carried with me every since.’

‘You stole Paulus’s life,’ Otto said.

‘He wanted me, Otto. He got me. All of me. I didn’t ask him to love me.’

‘But you told him you loved him.’

‘So what?’ Dagmar demanded, her voice brittle now, almost shrill. ‘Not such a very big lie in the scheme of things. I’d have done a lot more than that to survive. I would have done anything. Pretending to love Paulus was easy — he was a wonderful boy, handsome and kind, and I didn’t deserve him. But you might as well know I’d have killed him if I’d had to. The Nazis had already got my mum and my dad. I was the last Fischer and I was damned if they were going to get me!’

‘You did kill him, Dagmar. He could have gone to England but instead he died at Moscow because of you.’

‘Well, if you want to put it that way,’ Dagmar snapped bitterly. ‘If I killed him, I saved you. That’s even, isn’t it?’

‘I didn’t want to be saved.’

‘That’s your problem, Ottsy. And it’s also why you were no use to me. Because you say things like that. And because you’ve spent the last seventeen years of your life forcing yourself to stay in love with a girl who rejected you. I needed… a pragmatist.’

Otto got up and walked around the bench, trying to order the confused, tumbling thoughts and emotions ricocheting around his head and his heart.

‘So that day at Wannsee,’ he said, ‘when I ran off, before the Hitler Youth kids turned up — you asked him to stay? To swap identities with me?’

‘Don’t be silly, Ottsy. That’s what you would have done but I’m clever like Paulus. All I did was what you know. I kissed him in the rain and told him that I loved him, not you. That I loved him but that I knew he had to go. That I wanted him to go. To live while I died. I knew that would be enough. That he’d do the rest. I knew Pauly’s mind, you see. I didn’t need to make the plan for him because given the right incentive he’d come up with it himself. And he did.’

The girl and boy ran past again. She was leading him a merry chase. He’d have earned his kiss if he got it. Otto found himself hoping she’d turn out to be worth it.

‘Did you ever tell him?’ he asked. ‘After. When you were in Berlin living together.’

‘Of course not. I didn’t want to hurt him. Why would I? He was the best of men. I’ve told you, I adored him. Besides, I needed his dedication. I needed him to remain obsessed with protecting me. Silke suspected, though. I think she did from the very start and I believe she hated me for it. She loved you, you see, Otto, and when I stole Paulus for myself, I also stole you from her.’

The mention of Silke was like a light bulb turning on in Otto’s brain.

Silke? Where was she?

Silke Krause. The woman whom MI6 knew to have worked for the Stasi since the war.

And why had Dagmar summoned him to Berlin? She didn’t love him. She had never loved him. And it seemed she had no wish to defect.

‘Why am I here, Dagmar?’ Otto asked, his voice suddenly harder.

‘Don’t hate me, Ottsy,’ Dagmar replied, surprised, it seemed, by the change in his tone. ‘I couldn’t bear it. Of course I know that now you’ll finally have to stop loving me, which is a shame because not many girls get to be loved as long as I have by such a good man. But please don’t hate me, Ottsy. Try to understand and to like me still. To love me still, at least a little.’

‘Why, Dagmar? Why should I understand? And why should I love you?’

‘Because you were never forced to lick a pavement while your mother dry-retched in the dirt beside you.’ Dagmar almost pleaded. ‘I was thirteen, Ottsy.’

‘There’s been a world of pain, Dagmar. Everybody’s had a share.’

Dagmar’s face, which had softened so entirely as she absorbed the fact that Otto’s ancient promise to love her must finally be broken, hardened once more.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right about that. There’s been a world of pain.’

‘Why am I in Berlin, Dagmar?’

‘You know why, Otto,’ she said coldly. ‘You may not be as clever as Paulus but you’re not stupid. You’re being entrapped. We want you, just like your people want me. They’re going to force you to work for us.’

‘And how will they do that, Dags?’

‘Dags?’ Dagmar laughed. ‘Long time since I heard that.’

‘Blackmail, I suppose,’ Otto went on. ‘The usual dirty tricks.’

‘Yes, I was supposed to get you into bed. An FO official photographed having sex with a known Stasi agent would not go down well with your employers.’

Otto almost laughed. The one ambition of his life had been to make love to Dagmar. And now it turned out he’d been so close.

‘I told them I wouldn’t do that to you, Ottsy.’

‘Well, there’s a comfort.’

‘I told them I’d get you here but that I’d prefer it if they did their own dirty work. They never mind doing that.’

‘So I’m to be drugged, am I? Put in bed with a couple of naked rent boys, Kremlin-style? Spy for us or we’ll send the pictures to your bosses and the press?’

‘That sort of thing. Yes.’

‘Personally I preferred their first plan,’ Otto said, ‘the one where you did the dirty work.’

‘Would that make things any better? Shall I sleep with you? I will if you like. I suppose it’s the least I can do.’

A lifetime of faithful passion and pure devotion reduced to the offer of a compensation fuck, with the East German Secret Service recording the event for future blackmail. Otto actually laughed.

‘Don’t hate me, Ottsy,’ Dagmar said once more.

‘What happened, Dagmar? In the war. To my mother. To Pauly. Where’s Silke?’

German Hero Berlin and Russia, December 1941 and January 1942

A CRIPPLED SOLDIER, his feet lost to frostbite, hobbled on his crutches up the steps of a townhouse in the district of Moabit and rang the bell of Paulus Stengel’s apartment. Stitched into the lining of his cap was a letter, a letter from a dead comrade which the crippled man had promised on his life to either deliver or destroy.

‘Paulus was the best of men,’ the soldier said to Silke as he completed his task and turned away. ‘A damn good soldier too.’

It was late January. The army telegram informing Silke of Paulus’s death had arrived just after Christmas. His last letter was dated 6 December 1941.

My darling Mum, my darling Dagmar,

It is minus 40 degrees and we are halted before Moscow. Ivan has finally stopped us in our tracks and now the German Army struggles for its very existence.

We are told that if we can only hold our ground then Germany will survive to fight again next year. That may be so. But I must tell you both that I will not.

You know of course that my plan has been these last two years to be a good soldier of Hitler that I might best be in a position to help you both.

Now I find that I must change my plan. The evil that I have witnessed during these six months of campaigning on the Russian front leaves me no choice. The Devil and the Devil alone could have conceived of what