it and Heydrich personally will have your balls for cufflinks, I guarantee you. Now: my ID.”
Doubt clouded the Orpo man’s face. For an instant he almost looked ready to drag March out of the car, but then he slowly returned the ID. “I don’t know…”
“Thank you for your co-operation, Unterwachtmeister.” March wound up his window, ending the discussion.
One minute past nine. Charlie and Nightingale were still talking. He glanced in his mirror. The cop had walked a few paces, had stopped, and was staring back at the car. He looked thoughtful, then made up his mind, went over to his bike and picked up his radio.
March swore. He had two minutes, at the outside.
Of Luther: no sign.
And then he saw him.
A man with thick-framed glasses, wearing a shabby overcoat, had emerged from the Great Hall. He stood, peering around him, his hand touching one of the granite pillars as if afraid to let go. Then, hesitantly, he began to make his way down the steps.
March switched on the engine.
Charlie and Nightingale still had their backs to him. He was heading towards them.
Come on. Come on. Look round at him, for God’s sake.
At that moment Charlie did turn. She saw the old man and recognised him. Luther’s arm came up, like an exhausted swimmer reaching for the shore.
Something is going to go wrong, thought March suddenly. Something is not right. Something I haven’t thought of…
Luther had barely five metres to go when his head disappeared. It vanished in a puff of moist red sawdust and then his body was pitching forward, rolling down the steps, and Charlie was putting up her hand to shield her face from the sunburst of blood and brain.
A beat. A beat and a half. Then the crack of a high-velocity rifle howled around the Platz, scooping up the pigeons, scattering them like grey litter across the square.
People started to scream.
March threw the car into gear, flashed his indicator and cut sharply into the traffic, ignoring the outraged hooting-across one lane, and then another. He drove like a man who believed himself invulnerable, as if faith and willpower alone would protect him from collision. He could see a little group had formed around the body which was leaking blood and tissue down the steps. He could hear police whistles. Figures in black uniforms were converging from all directions — Globus and Krebs among them.
Nightingale had Charlie by the arm and was propelling her away from the scene, towards the road, where March was braking to a halt. The diplomat wrenched open the door and threw her into the back seat, crammed himself in after her. The door slammed. The Volkswagen accelerated away.
We were betrayed.
Fourteen men summoned; now fourteen dead.
He saw Luther’s hand outstretched, the fountain bursting from his neck, his trunk exploded toppling forwards. Globus and Krebs running. Secrets scattered in that shower of tissue; salvation gone …
Betrayed…
He drove to an underground parking lot just off Rosen Strasse, close to the Borse, where the Synagogue used to stand — a favourite spot of his for meeting informers. Was there anywhere more lonely? He took a ticket from the machine and pointed the car down the steep ramp. The tyres cried against the concrete; the headlights picked out ancient stains of oil and carbon on the floors and walls, like cave paintings.
Level two was empty — on Saturdays, the financial sector of Berlin was a desert. March parked in a central bay. When the engine died the silence was complete.
Nobody said anything. Charlie was dabbing at her coat with a paper handkerchief. Nightingale was leaning back with his eyes closed. Suddenly, March slammed his fists down on the top of the steering wheel.
“Whom did you tell?”
Nightingale opened his eyes. “Nobody.”
“The Ambassador? Washington? The resident spy-master?”
“I told you: nobody.” There was anger in his voice.
This is no help,” said Charlie.
“It’s also insulting and absurd. Christ, you two…”
“Consider the possibilities/ March counted them off on his fingers. “Luther betrayed himself to somebody - ridiculous. The telephone box in Billow Strasse was tapped — impossible: even the Gestapo does not have the resources to bug every public telephone in Berlin. Very well. So was our discussion last night overheard? Unlikely, as we could hardly hear it ourselves!”
“Why does it have to be this big conspiracy? Maybe Luther was just followed.”
Then why not pick him up? Why shoot him in public, at the very moment of contact?”
“He was looking straight at me…” Charlie covered her face with her hands.
“It needn’t have been me,” said Nightingale. “The leak could have come from one of you two.”
“How? We were together all night.”
“I’m sure you were.” He spat out the words and fumbled for the door. “I don’t have to take this sort of shit from you. Charlie — you’d better come back to the Embassy with me. Now. We’ll get you on a flight out of Berlin tonight and just hope to Christ no one connects you with any of this.” He waited. “Come on.”
She shook her head.
“If not for your sake, then think of your father.”
She was incredulous. “What’s my father got to do with it?”
Nightingale hauled himself out of the Volkswagen. “I should never have let myself be talked into this insanity. You’re a fool. As for him” — he nodded towards March -’he’s a dead man.”
He walked away from the car, his footsteps ricocheting around the deserted lot — loud at first, but fast becoming fainter. There was the clang of a metal door banging shut, and he was gone.
March looked at Charlie in the mirror. She seemed very small, huddled up in the back seat.
Far away: another noise. The barrier at the top of the ramp was being raised. A car was coming. March felt suddenly panicky, claustrophic. Their refuge could serve equally well as a trap.
“We can’t stay here,” he said. He switched on the engine. “We have to keep moving.”
“In that case I want to take more pictures.”
“Do you have to?”
“You assemble your evidence, Sturmbannfuhrer, and I’ll assemble mine.”
He glanced at her again. She had put aside her handkerchief and was staring at him with a fragile defiance. He took his foot off the brake. Crossing the city was risky, no question, but what else were they to do? Lie behind a locked door waiting to be caught?
He swung the car round in a circle and headed towards the exit as headlights flashed in the gloom behind them.
THREE
They parked beside the Havel and walked to the shore. March pointed to the spot where Buhler’s body had been found. Her camera clicked as Spiedel’s had four days before, but there was little left to record. A few footprints were just visible in the mud. The grass was flattened slightly where the corpse had been dragged from the water. But in a day or two these signs would disappear. She turned away from the water and drew her coat around her, shivering.
