labourers swarmed round the giant pits that made up the largest building site on earth. A few always died during the day and Gunther saw the hands and feet of corpses sticking out from underneath a tarpaulin to one side. Police patrolled with their rifles; they were vastly outnumbered by the labourers but one man with a gun can command many without.
He noticed that fewer passers-by wore their Nazi Party badges these days. The streets that weren’t being rebuilt looked increasingly shabby. Cheap imports from France and the occupied east had kept German living standards up until a couple of years ago, but they were falling now as the Russian war ground on; five million Germans dead and more announced each week. It was daily talk in Police Intelligence that morale was falling; many citizens didn’t even give the German greeting ‘Heil Hitler’ to each other any more.
Back home in his flat he ate his usual lonely dinner at the kitchen table, then sat and listened to the radio. He opened a beer and began thinking of his wife and son. Four years ago Klara had left him for a fellow police officer; they had taken his son, Michael, and gone to live as subsidized settlers in Krimea, the only part of Russia that had been completely cleared of the original population and, an easily defensible peninsula, it was deemed safe for Germans. Gunther knew, though, that the thousand-mile-long railway the Germans had built to it was under constant partisan attack.
He switched off the radio – Mozart was playing and he found his music effete and irritating – and put on Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. He liked the confident, crashing beat, even though Tchaikovsky was Russian and disapproved of. The music stirred him but when it was over the sad empty bleakness that came over him sometimes crept back. He told himself it was the times; those who believed in Germany had to pay a hard price for the future.
The telephone’s ring made him jump. The call was from Gestapo headquarters. He was to come in at once, to see Superintendent Karlson.
Karlson had a large office on the top floor of the building on Prince Albrechtstrasse. There were thick carpets and pictures of eighteenth-century Berlin on the walls, little figurines on the desk and tables. They had probably been taken from Jews; Karlson had been in the Party since the twenties and enjoyed all the privileges. He was one of the ‘golden peasants’. He was large, with an air of cheerful bonhomie, and like many old Party men he was coarse but clever. Another man sat beside the big desk, under the portraits of Himmler and the Fuhrer. The stranger was tall and slim, in his forties, with black hair and sharp blue eyes, immaculate in his SS uniform, the swastika in its white circle on his armband standing out against the black uniform. Karlson, too, wore his uniform today, though usually he wore a suit; as did Gunther, whose work involved moving in the shadows, unnoticed. Gunther saw the stranger had a file open on the knees of his immaculately creased trousers.
Karlson greeted Gunther warmly and waved him to a chair in front of the desk. He said, ‘Thank you for coming at such short notice.’
‘I wasn’t doing anything particular, sir.’
Karlson then turned to the stranger, a deferential note in his voice. ‘Allow me to introduce Obersturmbannfuhrer Renner, from Division E7.’ Gunther thought, an SS Brigadier from the section of the Reich Security Office responsible for Britain; they’re after someone important. Karlson continued, ‘Sturmbannfuhrer Hoth is one of my most prized officers. He is in charge of ferreting out the Jews still left in Berlin. He caught three today.’
The dark-haired man nodded. ‘Congratulations. Are there many left, do you think?’
‘Not many in Berlin. We’re near the end now. Though I hear that Hamburg still has a few.’
‘Maybe more than we know,’ Karlson said. ‘They’re like rats; you think you’ve got rid of them, and then back they come, gnawing at your toes with their little sharp teeth, right?’ He’s playing to the gallery, Gunther thought.
‘No,’ Renner answered quietly. ‘I think Sturmbannfuhrer Hoth is right, there are not many left here now.’ He looked at Gunther with interest. ‘I believe you have met Deputy Reichsfuhrer Heydrich.’
‘A few times only. When I first joined the Hitler Youth.’
Renner nodded thoughtfully. He still seemed to be weighing Gunther up. He asked, ‘What do you think you will do, Sturmbannfuhrer Hoth, when the Jews are all gone from Germany?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I’ve some years before I retire. I thought I might go to Poland, I hear there is still work to be done there.’ He had thought, maybe if he did that the spark of energy would return; if not, perhaps the partisans would get him, as they had Hans, and the family sacrifice would be complete.
Renner said, ‘You have an interesting history, Hoth. A university degree in English, a year spent living there, then when you returned Party membership and five years serving in the Criminal Police Department.’
‘Yes, sir. My father was a policeman, too.’
Renner nodded, the silver skull-and-crossbones badge on his black SS cap glinting as it caught the light. ‘I know. In 1936 you were recruited to Gestapo Counter-Intelligence, under Brigadefuhrer Schellenberg as he then was, and worked on intelligence matters involving England, including the blueprint for its occupation, although fortunately as it turned out that was not needed.’ He smiled coldly. ‘Then five years in England after 1940, working from our embassy with the British Special Branch, helping build up their counter-subversion programmes.’ As he spoke he glanced at the folder on his knees and Gunther realized he was referring to his own personnel file. Renner looked up at him with a puzzled expression. ‘And yet in 1945 you applied to return to Berlin, to join Department III. And here you have remained ever since, working on ethnic matters and, for the past few years, tracing hidden Jews. Never seeking promotion.’
Gunther said, ‘I had had enough of England, sir. My wife more so. And my current rank is enough for me.’
‘Your wife left you, I see.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Renner’s expression softened. ‘I am sorry, I sympathize. Your work record is exemplary, you have done a great deal for the Reich. It says here you have a great gift for analysis, for noticing patterns other officers miss.’ Renner looked at Gunther again for a long moment, weighing him up, then turned to Karlson.
‘Yes,’ Karlson said. He sat back in his chair, examining Gunther with his large, red-veined eyes. ‘Obersturmbannfuhrer Renner’s section has had a request from some very senior people at the London embassy. They need someone there for a –’ he smiled – ‘a task, of some importance. You speak English, you went to university there and you worked in Police Liaison at Senate House for five years. They would like you to go over for a week, perhaps two.’
Gunther hesitated, then said, ‘Of course. If I can be of use.’
‘Though you are not fond of England?’ Renner asked.
Gunther answered, ‘I know Britain is our ally but I don’t like or trust the British. I’ve always thought them – decadent.’ Renner nodded. ‘And Beaverbrook is a joke,’ Gunther added.
Renner nodded again. ‘I agree. But Mosley’s not strong enough to take over yet. Though being Home Secretary in England gives him great power. The English are Aryans, yet despite their achievements they do not really think racially. And yes, they are decadent, they cannot even keep control of their Empire any more. And Churchill’s people are making more and more trouble.’
‘So I have heard.’
‘Beaverbrook’s in France now, talking to Laval.’ Renner gave a wintry smile. ‘Then he comes to Berlin. He wants closer economic links with Germany and to recruit more troops for India. The British cannot make their Empire pay so now they seek crumbs from our table. They will have to pay a price for that.’ He looked at Karlson, who linked his pudgy hands together on the desk and leaned forward.
‘The operation we wish you to assist with is SS. We know you are loyal to us. You will work with our Intelligence man in London. You will say nothing to Ambassador Rommel’s staff, nor to any of the people you used to know, nor any of the army people the embassy is crawling with.’
So it’s part of the SS–army secret war, Gunther thought, a war that has been going on for years. The army saw themselves as the historic guardians of Germany while the SS believed they were the men of the future, the ones who would police the lesser races of Greater Germany until they died off, and who would guard and preserve the future of the race. Hitler had favoured the SS, had raised them up from nothing, but now he was ill, some said seriously, and neither the army nor the SS seemed able to bring victory in Russia. The rumours in the Gestapo were that the army wanted to end the Russian war, keep Ukraine and Western Russia and the Caucasus and let the Russians set up a ragtag corrupt country of their own to the east. But Himmler knew that for Germany to be secure,
