The traitor, p.13
The Traitor, page 13
‘I’m so glad. Unfortunately our friendship must end here, as these two gentlemen from the Gestapo would like to take you in for questioning. Believe me, Captain, I tried as hard as I could, but they were most insistent that they become your new guardians.’
Lockhart continued with his insincere smile. Part of him relished the fact that Dietrich had been overruled by these two policemen. His attempts to make light of it were pathetic, childish even.
‘So it’s goodbye, Lockhart,’ said Dietrich, holding out his hand. ‘I wish you the very best of luck.’
Lockhart loosened some phlegm at the back of his throat, and spat solidly in Dietrich’s face. The Gestapo men and Fasshauer made a grab for the insolent prisoner, but Dietrich was there first, punching Lockhart in the jaw.
As he was marched, beaten and kicked towards the Gestapo’s car, he knew that a handshake would have hurt a lot more.
‘HERAKLION 65 km’ read the sign. Lockhart knew the town well from his summer at Knossos. He also remembered the road, which followed the coast and then cut inland to Crete’s capital. The journey would take two hours, two hours of more discomfort, wedged between the two Gestapo officers. They spoke neither to Lockhart nor to each other, simply staring ahead as the car’s shadow started to lengthen in front of them.
He had often come down this road with Anna. During a break in the digs they would disappear as quickly as possible, despite Worstead’s complaints of abandonment, and find a village beside the sea where they could rent a room. Afterwards, they would take a dip in the sea to cool off. Once, Anna had taken off Lockhart’s shorts when they were swimming, and had run back towards the dunes with them. At least twenty Cretans had seen him streaking across the beach until he had caught up with her, rugby-tackling her to the ground.
They reached the imposing Canea gate on the south side of Heraklion by five o’clock. Their progress was slowed by a churning mixture of Cretans carting produce and Germans attempting to direct them. Lockhart recalled that everything had moved much more smoothly ten years ago. Curious faces looked in through the windows, and still the Gestapo officers stayed coolly silent. The bustle and the noise reminded him of Cairo, as did the smell of drains.
It took fifteen minutes to reach the Platia Venizelou, Heraklion’s main square. Every building of note carried a swastika flag, flapping lazily in the mild early-evening breeze. The square too was crowded, although mostly with German officers, making their way to the many bars around the fountain. Apart from the ‘guests’, little had changed in the past decade. He and Worstead had spent many drunken evenings here, which often incurred Anna’s wrath. Lockhart would defend himself by saying that he was on holiday, and Anna would tell him that wasn’t an excuse to behave boorishly.
The car pulled up to an archway at the end of the square – the entrance to the old town hall, Lockhart recalled. His heart began to quicken. How could he ever have expected that one day the Heraklion town hall would cause him such fear? He longed for Anna, and, closing his eyes, prayed that he would see her again, and for the strength to endure what was about to happen.
However, there was no torture – only questions, insistent questions. He would remember little of the next seventy-two hours. The interrogation was certainly insistent, but there was nothing in it that Lockhart had not already been asked by Dietrich and Fasshauer. His inquisitor made much of ‘the deal’ and whether Lockhart would continue to co-operate in the future. Lockhart replied that that would depend on whether they could guarantee Anna’s safety. It would be looked into, said his inquisitor.
After the first few hours, delirious and finally overwhelmed by thirst and hunger, Lockhart had collapsed. They had tried to revive him, but it was impossible. At first they thought he was dead, but there was a pulse, and they took their prisoner’s emaciated form to a damp cell, where they poured water through his cracked lips. After that had woken him, they had given him a bowl of cold stew and a blanket. He had begged for another blanket, and to his surprise they obliged. They didn’t want him to die, he had thought – there was still hope. It was the beginning of a two-day pattern of interrogation punctuated by small amounts of sleep and food.
On his third morning, the two Gestapo officers who had picked him up from Rethimno entered his room. They threw an unmarked Wehrmacht tunic and a pair of grey breeches on to the bed. A pair of boots was dropped on the floor. Lockhart noticed that the laces had been removed.
‘Get dressed – you’re going.’
‘Where?’ asked Lockhart.
‘Berlin.’
Because they refused to tell him their names, Lockhart christened his Gestapo escorts Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Assuming that they were not allowed to kill him, he took the liberty of insolently addressing them by their nicknames. It appeared that they had read little or no Lewis Carroll, and looked nonplussed whenever he used the names on the week-long trip to Berlin.
It started easily enough, with a two-hour flight in a Junkers 52 from Heraklion to Athens. Lockhart guessed the plane was a veteran of the paratroop invasion in May 1941, as it still carried the scars of battle, with patches of canvas covering a score of bullet holes. Although short, the flight was freezing, and the Wehrmacht tunic provided little protection. Tweedledum kindly secured him an army greatcoat in Athens, which caused Tweedledee some annoyance. It was the nearest the pair got to an argument, but Tweedledum said the train would be cold, and he didn’t think it would be wise if Lockhart fell ill, as it would only cause them more hassle.
Tweedledum was right – the train was little better than the plane, often stopping for hours while a vast Balkan snowdrift was cleared, or because the Wehrmacht were mopping up a band of partisans. Their route took them from Athens to Skopje and then on to Belgrade, where they changed trains. The journey up to this point brought back many memories of the same journey taken with Worstead ten years ago, although much of that innocent trip had been spent in an alcoholic haze in the dining car. Apart from into his reminiscences, Lockhart had no chance of escape, as one of his escorts always stayed awake. They even made him use the lavatory with the door open, which Lockhart reasoned was more unpleasant for them than it was for him.
They did not stay long in Belgrade; a train to Vienna was leaving two hours after their arrival. Lockhart noticed the swastikas were multiplying, appearing on buildings, passengers’ arms, even on flagpoles in people’s gardens. Tweedledum and Tweedledee began to grow more relaxed as they approached the Austrian capital, although Lockhart felt the opposite. All that gave him cheer were the first signs of bomb damage, but it looked nugatory compared to what he had witnessed in the Blitz. They spent that night in Vienna, Lockhart having to endure a cell in the Gestapo headquarters, although he was given both blankets and food. By the next evening they were in Prague, where they changed for their final train, which took them through the night to Berlin.
Lockhart noticed the devastation as soon as he woke up. He was becoming an expert at sleeping on the hard wooden seats, although some part of his body was always knocked in the middle of the night by either Tweedledum or Tweedledee. As he rubbed his sore neck with one hand, he wiped the condensation off the window to reveal a scene of snow-covered chaos.
The train was passing through the suburbs, where around a quarter of every street had been bombed out. Families gathered around makeshift braziers in the rubble, while others rooted through the mess for any surviving possessions. Just like London, thought Lockhart. Other passengers were also frantically wiping away at the glass, and were passing shocked comment to their neighbours.
So much for Hitler’s promise that Berlin would never be bombed. He expected his fellow passengers were thinking it too, but they wouldn’t dare express such views in public. Tweedledum and Tweedledee were also looking, their hitherto motionless faces registering a hint of concern.
‘So how does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine?’ asked Lockhart.
‘What?’ replied Tweedledee, still distracted by the view from the window.
‘I asked – how does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine?’
Tweedledee scowled at him.
‘This is nothing compared to what we’ve done to your cities,’ he replied.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve seen the newsreels and photographs – they never lie.’
‘Is that so? Well, if your Luftwaffe is so successful, how come they can’t stop us coming through?’
A pause.
‘We’re winning the war elsewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Last month we took two Greek islands, and we’re driving you back out of Italy.’
‘Not true, my friend – you’re the ones being kicked out, not us. And let’s not forget what the Russians are doing to you. I’d heard they’d retaken Kiev. And how about the seventeen U-boats we sank last month? And now you’ve got all this bomb damage . . .’
Tweedledum turned from the window.
‘Shut it,’ he ordered menacingly.
Lockhart did so, but with a smile – the moral victory had been his. He looked through the window again. So this was it, the heart of the great Third Reich, a crippled black-and-white world, the omnipresent red swastika banners like drops of blood in the snow. Up till now, Berlin had seemed a mythical place, a place so evil and otherworldly that it didn’t seem to exist. And yet here he was, entering what for many back home was a city of the imagination, no more real to them than Troy, or Knossos for that matter.
Although he hadn’t expected lines of goose-stepping troops and cheering crowds, Lockhart felt their absence. The city just seemed so ordinary, like a city in Britain, albeit with different architecture. But the smokestacks, the roads, the flats and little houses, the nativity scenes in bombed-out shop windows – all these were the same. What made this place so evil? Lockhart looked at the passengers. What made them want to take over the world? What was it that these people lacked?
The conductor entered the carriage – even he was wearing a swastika.
‘What time do we arrive at Anhalter Bahnhof?’ asked Tweedledum, showing his pass.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ the conductor replied.
‘No – what?’
‘Anhalter was completely destroyed nearly three weeks ago – we’re coming into Lichterfelde instead. We should be there in ten minutes.’
Lockhart smiled as the two Gestapo men exchanged concerned glances. Suddenly the train came to a violent halt.
‘What’s going on?’
The conductor didn’t answer Tweedledum’s question. Instead, he wiped the window.
‘What is it?’
The conductor started back – his face had lit up.
‘The Führersonderzug!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s coming right past us!’
The words had the immediate effect of causing the passengers to scramble over to the right side of the carriage. ‘Can you see him?’ people were asking – even Tweedledee and Tweedledum were caught up in the excitement. It was not every day that Hitler’s special train went past.
Lockhart looked through the window and saw the dark violet carriages fifty feet away, slowly trundling in the other direction. The windows were large, and underneath them, running the length of each carriage, were two white stripes. He could see the occasional face, but many of the windows had blinds pulled down. Was Hitler himself really behind one of them? Lockhart felt helpless – to be this close to him, and yet unable to do anything.
He counted the carriages – there were ten, with platforms containing quadruple AA guns at either end. Two streamlined locomotives hauled the train, their sooty smoke partly obscuring the view. In the unlikely event of him getting back to Britain, somebody would want such information. There must be plans somewhere in Whitehall to kill Hitler, but Lockhart had never had access to them. Someone at his club had told him that the top brass wanted to keep the Führer alive, as he was a usefully inept military commander. That had been at the end of January, just after Stalingrad had been won. Perhaps the brass had a point, but it seemed too arch. Kill Hitler, and surely the madness would end, or at least abate? They couldn’t all be maniacs like him. But that same someone had added that killing Hitler ran the risk of making him a martyr, rejuvenating Nazi fanaticism.
The Führersonderzug had now gone, but the joy on the faces of the passengers remained. The women looked the most ecstatic, in a state of rapture. Everybody was smiling, even Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Would it be the same in England, Lockhart thought, if a train with Churchill on it had gone past? He had to admit that it would, and yet . . . This was different. When people cheered for Churchill or the King, it was out of respect and reverence, but on these faces it looked more like adulation. The entire population was like a teenage girl admiring someone’s big brother. They reminded Lockhart of Lizzie Potts, the housekeeper’s daughter, who would swoon over Richard when he came back from Marlborough for the holidays. Was the German population really so unsophisticated? ‘A feudal society with capitalism and modern technology’ – that was how Anna had described it. She was right, and now she was a victim of it. These people, right here on this train, these were the people who had put her away, taken away his Anna. He hated them for it – the whole lot of them.
The train jerked forward, and crawled the rest of the way into Lichterfelde. Tweedledee snapped a pair of handcuffs on to Lockhart’s wrists. They were too tight, and Lockhart complained, but he was ignored. As he was pushed on to the huge smoke-filled platform, he wondered if that was the last time in his life he would take a train.
‘You appear to love your wife very much, Captain Lockhart.’
‘Of course I do, don’t you?’
‘Forgive me, but I do not have a wife.’
‘There’s a surprise.’
The comment was ignored.
‘It’s my understanding that you’re willing to help us if we keep her alive. Yes?’
A pause.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s quite something, putting your wife before your country. You wouldn’t catch a German doing that – that’s why we’ll win, because we’re more brutal than you.’
‘You haven’t had a very good year for a side that’s supposed to be—’
‘Temporary setbacks. We are regrouping and soon Moscow will be in our hands. And then England will finally be invaded. A pity. Bolshevism is the real enemy, not each other. The Russians and the Jews are the real scum in this war, not the English and the Americans.’
‘That’s kind of you to say so.’
‘It’s the truth, Lockhart.’
Another pause.
‘I hear that your wife was captured in Holland in 1941. She was part of an underground printing press, publishing nonsense and sedition. Why was she doing this?’
‘She’s never been one to hide her opinions.’
‘Even if they are lies? Even if they are dangerous?’
‘She’s a very headstrong woman.’
‘So it would seem. And now she is in a camp wearing a nice red triangle on her chest. That means she is a political prisoner – her opinions have no place in the Reich. You know she was lucky not to be shot?’ I hope her luck lasts . . . you understand me, Lockhart?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, if you don’t help, well, I wouldn’t like to say . . .’
‘How do I know she’s really alive?’
‘You have to trust me.’
Lockhart stared at his latest inquisitor, sitting behind his desk in a sumptuous office in Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. The face was anything but trustworthy – deep, dark eyes that occasionally looked up, and a small, thin-lipped mouth. The hair was short, nearly shaven, which accentuated his already large ears. He was wearing a well-cut black double-breasted suit, a swastika armband around the left arm. The face, Lockhart was told, belonged to none other than Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo. Lockhart had heard of him – but he remembered the intelligence file on him was thin. Müller had successfully shunned the limelight, watching and planning, slowly rising through the ranks. He had taken over from Göring’s man, Rudolf Diels, in 1934, and had survived the shake-up after the assassination of Heydrich in June 1942. There was little else in the dossier, not even a photograph.
‘Could I write to her?’
‘No.’
‘Could she at least write to me?’
Müller looked up briefly.
‘If it’ll make you more co-operative.’
‘It might.’
‘Don’t push your luck, Lockhart. I could have both of you shot tomorrow morning. I have far more important things to do than worry about you. If you act up, you could even watch her being raped and tortured. How about that, eh?’
Lockhart clenched and unclenched his fists by his sides. The fucking bastard. He wanted to kill Müller, right there and then. He could grab the letter knife from his desk and stick it in his badly shaven neck before the guard had time to react. Wouldn’t killing him partly make up for his mistakes? Another scalp, after Heydrich, for SOE? And then he thought of Anna – he would be signing both of their death sentences, not just his. Besides, chop this Müller’s head off and another would grow in its place. No, if he was going to make this double-cross work, then he would need to make the risk worth it. The stakes were too high just to play at killing overblown functionaries. What difference had Heydrich’s death made? None. Lockhart took a deep breath and spoke.
‘It would make me more co-operative, yes.’
‘Good. I shall see what can be arranged. Now go.’
The letter arrived three days later. Lockhart’s new residence was a cell in the Columbia-Haus, a monolithic five-storey edifice that had once been a concentration camp. Much of the building was empty, but a few cells remained in use – an overflow for headquarters. He had been given a minimum amount of food, but he counted himself lucky when he looked at the stains on the walls. The letter had arrived with his breakfast of stale rolls and even staler water. He had ignored the food and torn open the envelope, on to which his name and rank had been typed. The letter too was typed, which aroused his suspicion.
