“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Superintendent Bernstein.” She held up her warrant card. “Special Branch, Scotland Yard. This is General Charles Ferguson.”
“We’d like a word, my dear,” Ferguson told her.
There was immediate alarm on her face. “The police. What have I done?”
It was Dillon who interjected in excellent German. “Don’t worry,
“But about what?”
Every instinct told him to be honest. “About the Fuhrer Bunker, about those last few months, and particularly about what happened to
“Oh, my God,” she said in German. “You’ve come for me after all these years.” But she pulled the chain and opened the door. There was a little Scottie dog running around her ankles, yapping.
Dillon picked him up and fondled him, and the dog stopped barking and tried to lick his face. The old lady said, “I don’t understand, he never takes to strangers.”
“Oh, I have a way with dogs, ever since childhood. Benny, is it?” He handed the Scottie to her. “All we want is a few words. There’s nothing bad intended, I give you my word.”
She held the dog, looked at Dillon and touched his face with her other hand for a moment, and when she spoke it was in English. “What’s your name?”
“Dillon, ma’am.”
Her eyes became vacant for a moment. “Yes, I believe you. You’re a good man, Mr. Dillon, in spite of yourself.”
Dillon almost choked and took a deep breath. “Trust me. No harm will come to you on this earth, I swear it.”
“Then come in,” and she turned and led the way along the hall.
Newton and Cook pulled in farther down Brick Lane, close to the shop. “You stay here and I’ll take a look,” Newton said and walked back to the house. Ferguson’s chauffeur was on the other side of the road, smoking a cigarette and walking to the river. Newton quickly checked the brass plate, then returned to the car. “Sara and George Grant. I’ll have words in the shop.”
A middle-aged Indian was leaning on the counter, reading the
“I seem to be wasting my time as usual,” Newton said. “Can you help me? I’m a debt collector, and I was given an Anthony Smith as being behind in rental payments on a car. I’ve come to check the address I was given. Twenty-three Brick Lane, only it’s a Sara and George Grant.”
“You’ve been had,” Patel said. “A false address. The Grants have been there forever. Mr. Grant died five years ago, Mrs. Grant lives there on her own. Nice old lady, German, actually.”
“Is that so?”
“And she doesn’t own a car.”
“Really. And German, you say?”
“Definitely. She told me her name once. Hesser – Sara Hesser. Lived there more than forty years.”
“Another wasted journey, but thanks anyway.”
Newton went back to the car, rang Marco Rossi on his mobile and explained what was going on. Rossi said, “Stay there and I’ll be in touch.”
In the sitting room at South Audley Street, the Baron was going through some papers when Marco entered. “When you told me of your final interview with the Fuhrer, you mentioned a secretary, an SS auxiliary called Sara Hesser.”
“Is this important?”
“It is if she’s still in the land of the living and resides at twenty-three Brick Lane, Wapping.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Absolutely.” He told the Baron of the sequence of events. “The fact that they’ve gone straight to this woman’s house speaks for itself. Thank God this Indian shopkeeper knows her well or we’d have been totally in the dark. What do we do?”
“Nothing,” the Baron said. “If the woman tells what she knows to Ferguson, he will come and see me.”
“What do you mean?”
The Baron gave him a look. “It’s time I told you something, Marco. You know of the Hitler diary, but only what I’ve told you. You’ve never read it.”
“Yes, and I’ve often wondered why.”
“Because there’s a secret in it. In 1945, the Fuhrer entered into negotiations with President Roosevelt in an effort to promote a negotiated peace. The idea was for the Germans and Americans to turn on the Russians, to defeat a common enemy. Roosevelt didn’t buy it – but he did discuss it. Hitler sent General Walter Schellenberg of the SS to Sweden – and Roosevelt sent an American multimillionaire and senator named Jake Cazalet.”
There was a moment’s silence, then Marco said, “But that’s the name of the President of the United States.”
“And of Jake Cazalet’s father. He was a member of Roosevelt’s kitchen cabinet. Has it occurred to you how that would look? That Roosevelt, with Cazalet as his agent, actually had such dealings with Hitler? True, it didn’t come to anything, but what capital America’s enemies around the world would make of it! Cazalet would be finished.” He smiled. “I’ve held this secret for years, always certain it would eventually be of great importance.”
“It’s unbelievable.”
“So we wait for Ferguson.” The Baron smiled again. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a drink on it.”
The sitting room was crowded, not only with furniture, but with the bric-a-brac accumulated over a long life. An old grand piano stood in a corner, the top crowded with photos, some in silver frames, the largest of a handsome young man in the uniform of an army captain.
Ferguson picked it up. “Your husband?”
“Yes, that’s George. He was a military policeman. I was an interpreter. That’s how we met.” She sat down, clutching Benny on her lap. “I was interrogated, you know, by the intelligence people, about being on the staff in the Bunker.”
Ferguson nodded to Hannah, who said, “Tell us about that, Mrs. Grant.”
“There’s nothing really to tell. I was an SS auxiliary, a secretary, a typist. I was twenty-two years old. I was transferred from SD headquarters in Berlin. SD meant SS Intelligence, but I was, like I’ve told you, just a young office girl.”
“So you were there for six months? Until April ’forty-five and the final catastrophe?” Hannah asked.
“That’s right. I was a relief secretary, the most junior of all. I made the coffee, that sort of thing.”
Dillon was filled with an enormous compassion for this woman, already old and, more than that, old beyond her years, a woman who had been at the sharp edge of history, but also a woman who was lying.
“So you knew the Fuhrer?” Hannah asked.
“Of course, but the others were far more important than me, the other secretaries, I mean.”
Hannah nodded. “And
“Oh, yes.” The old lady stroked Benny’s head. “He was in the Bunker for the last three months. Wounded in Russia. He came to be decorated, and the Fuhrer took a fancy to him, made him an aide.”
“I see. Was there anything special about him?”
“No.” The old lady said. “The last couple of days were terrible, everything was confused. Then the Fuhrer and his wife committed suicide and we all scattered, ran for it. A lot of us went through the underground tunnels. Some of us made it. I reached the West and the Americans a couple of weeks later.” She shook her head, as if looking back into a past that she didn’t want to see. “But I went through all this with the British intelligence people all those years ago.”
Ferguson interrupted. “So you didn’t see anything of von Berger at the end?”
She shrugged. “He was there and then he wasn’t, but that was true of so many people.”
