flying again.' I was trying to back off a little from what, unwisely perhaps, I'd already put in his mind. 'What kind of plane was it, sir?'
Heydrich hesitated as if debating the idea in his own mind. 'A Messerschmitt,' he said quietly. 'The Bf 110. It's not considered a very agile plane.'
'Well, there are you. I can't think why I mentioned such a thing. I certainly didn't mean to imply that you aren't a good pilot, General. I'm sure they wouldn't let you get in the cockpit unless they were quite satisfied the aeroplane was airworthy. Me, I've never even been off the ground, but I should still want to be quite sure it wasn't anything mechanical before I went up again.'
'Yes, perhaps you're right.'
Schellenberg was nodding now. 'It certainly couldn't do any harm, Herr General. Gunther's right.'
He had a curious, high-pitched voice with a slight accent I found hard to place; and there was something very neat and dapper about him that reminded me of a butler, or a menswear salesman.
An attractive-looking SS secretary – what we used to call a grey mouse – came in carrying a tray with three coffee cups and three glasses of water, just like we were in a cafe on the Ku-damm, and thankfully we were distracted from the subject of Heydrich's accident – Schellenberg by the woman herself and Heydrich by the sound of the gramophone that was coming through the open door. For a moment he stamped his boots on the floor in time with the song and grinned happily.
'That's a marvellous sound, isn't it?'
'Wonderful, Herr General,' said Schellenberg, who was still eyeing Heydrich's secretary, and the comment might just as easily have been about her as the music.
I could see his point. Her name was Bettina and she seemed too nice by half to be working for a devil like Heydrich.
When she went out again the three of us started to sing. It was one of the few SS songs I didn't mind at all, since it couldn't have had less to do with the SS or even fighting a war. And, for a moment, I forgot where I was and who I was with.
On the heath there grows a little flower
And its name is Erika.
A hundred thousand little bees
Swarm around Erika
Because her heart is full of sweetness
And her flowery dress gives off a tender scent
On the heath there grows a little flower
And its name is Erika.
We sang all three verses, and by the end we were in such a jolly mood that Heydrich told Bettina to fetch us some brandy. A few minutes later we were toasting the fall of France, and then Heydrich was explaining the real reason for my presence in his office. Handing me a file, he waited for me to open it and said:
'You recognise the name on the file, of course.'
I nodded. 'Erich Mielke. What about him?'
'You saved his life and then he and an accomplice murdered two policemen. And then his arrest was bungled by the Jew in charge of the investigation.'
'You mean Kriminal-Polizeirat Heller,' I said. 'Yes, I remember him. Wasn't it Heller who successfully investigated the murder of that young SA fellow in the Beussellkeitz? The one who was stabbed to death by some communist thugs. What was his name? Herbert Norkus?'
'Thank you for the history lesson, Gunther,' said Heydrich, patiently. 'None of us is likely to forget Herbert Norkus.'
This was hardly surprising, as the murder of Norkus had been the subject of the very first Nazi propaganda movie, about the Hitler Youth. I hadn't seen the movie myself but I thought it unlikely that Heller's part had even made it into the script. All the same, I thought it best not to push this detail any further with Heydrich.
'You'll be glad to know that Foreign Intelligence has managed to keep track of Mielke since you and Heller allowed him to slip through your fingers,' he said. 'Walter, why don't you bring the chief inspector up to date with what we have on him now.'
'I'd be delighted, sir,' said Schellenberg. 'In Moscow we know Mielke attended the Lenin School under the name of Walter Scheuer. Then he was given the name Paul Bach, and we assume this was the same Paul Bach who gave evidence against many of the German communist cadres following the Stalinist purge at the Hotel Lux in May 1935. Naturally the Gestapo was at the same time monitoring the Mielke family home; and soon after the murders of Anlauf and Lenck the family moved from the Stettiner Strasse apartment to an address in Grunthaler Strasse where, in September 1936, Mielke's younger sister Gertrud received a postcard from Madrid. This seemed to confirm what we already suspected, which was that Mielke had gone to Spain as a Chekist. During the civil war he was going by the name of Captain Fritz Leissner and was assigned to a General Gomez, whom we know rather better as Wilhelm Zaisser, another German communist. It seems these bastards spent more time killing other Republicans than they did killing any Nationalists, and it's no accident that the 13th International Brigade, also known as the Dabrowski Brigade, mutinied soon after the battle of Brunete in July 1937 because of the appalling casualties inflicted on them as a result of the incompetence of their officers.
'Following the Republican defeat in January 1939, Mielke was one of thousands who crossed the border into France. The French started locking them up almost immediately. In October 1939 one of our agents, who was posing as a member of the French Communist Party – they were also interned in the same concentration camps as the German communists – met a man he believed to have been Erich Mielke at the Buffalo Sports Stadium, in the south of Paris, which the French were using as a provisional camp for undesirable aliens. He said that Mielke told him he'd been transferred from another provisional camp, the Roland Garros Tennis Stadium. Soon after that Mielke was transferred to one of two rather more permanent concentration camps in the south of France: either the camp at Le Vernet, in Ariege, near Toulouse, or else to Gurs, which is in the region of Aquitaine. We believe he's still in one of these camps. He knows we're looking for him so naturally he'll be using a false name. And while conditions in these camps are generally held to be abominable, nevertheless, since the Soviet Union signed the non-aggression pact with Germany, they might actually be the safest place for him. Stalin has already sent back here several German communists in order to demonstrate his good will toward the Fuhrer. And it's quite likely he would do the same with Erich Mielke. So, with France now in the hands of the Third Reich, this is our best chance in almost a decade to capture him.'
'And,' said Heydrich, 'since you're the only man in Sipo who's ever had the pleasure to have met Mielke, that makes you uniquely qualified to go to France and make the arrest. The French are already proving to be extremely cooperative in this regard. They're as anxious to get rid of some of their German undesirables as we are to get hold of them. And you certainly won't find that you're the only police officer making the journey down there to arrest a fugitive from German justice. Merely one of the most important ones. Because, make no mistake about it, Gunther, Erich Mielke is very near the top of our wanted list.'
'I have some questions, sir,' I said.
Heydrich nodded.
'First of all, I don't speak French.'
'That's not a problem at all. In Paris you will liaise with Hauptmann Paul Kestner, whom I believe you know from your time together in Kripo. Kestner is from Alsace and speaks fluent French. He's ordered to offer you any assistance that you require. The two of you will report to my own deputy, General Werner Best of the Gestapo. Together with Helmut Knochen, who's the senior commander of security in Paris, he'll assign you some French police to assist in your mission, codenamed FAFNIR.'
I nodded. 'Fafnir, right you are, sir. I'm glad you didn't say Hagen.'
It didn't happen very often but Heydrich looked puzzled.
'In the Ring cycle, sir,' I explained, 'Hagen kills Gunther.'
Heydrich smiled. 'Well, I'll kill you if don't find Mielke,' he said. 'Understand?'
I was glad he was smiling. 'Yes, Herr General.'
'He'll need a uniform, sir,' said Schellenberg.
