The traitor, p.31
The Traitor, page 31
‘Shit! Stop that! Jesus, you’ll pull it off! A year’s pay! Everything!’
She loosened her grip and kissed him on the cheek.
‘That’s more like it,’ she said.
‘Thanks for giving me my cock back.’
‘Mon plaisir, Herr Hauptsturmführer.’
They lay in silence for a few moments, catching their breath.
‘How’s your bureaucratic nightmare?’ she asked, running her hand through his hair.
‘Do we have to talk about that?’
‘No, of course not. I just wondered, that’s all. The last time you were here it sounded as though you were having a dreadful time.’
‘It’s better now. There’s much less paperwork, and the men are more or less behaving themselves.’
‘That’s good.’
‘It is. My British officer seems to be knocking them into shape, as he calls it. The unit’s turning out to be almost competent.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Who?’
‘The officer.’
‘He’s good. But I’m keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.’
‘Stupid? What sort of stupid?’
‘I don’t know, but I have to make sure.’
‘But how can you keep an eye on him?’
‘Well I don’t exactly. One of the men does.’
‘One of the men?’
‘Yes, someone in the unit . . . All these questions, Leni! Anyone would think you were a spy!’
Leni laughed as naturally as possible. Even though Strasser was joking, the accusation unnerved her.
‘I’d make a very bad spy,’ she said.
‘Really? And why’s that?’
‘Because,’ she said, rolling on top of him, ‘I like men too much.’
‘Surely not all men.’
‘No, but men who know what they’re doing.’
And with that, she kissed him, not a whore’s kiss, but a lover’s kiss. And she hated herself for it.
Lockhart couldn’t concentrate. During the lunch, a semi-formal occasion one Saturday, he found himself sitting next to a somewhat drunk Sturmbannführer Parsch, the head of the Haus Germanien. Parsch was in his mid-fifties, bald, his cranium rippling with throbbing veins. He was quizzing Lockhart about the digs on Crete – which was far better than the lecture he had been expecting on the superiority of the Nordic peoples – but Lockhart’s mind was filled with thoughts about Anna, about whether she was alive. Coupled with that, Stafford had told him that they still hadn’t had a reply from ‘Hattie’, even though other members of the unit had received post from back home, from families who still thought their men were suffering the privations of POW life.
But a chance comment by Parsch snapped Lockhart out of his reverie.
‘I’m surprised that you don’t have something similar to the Ahnenerbe in Britain,’ said Parsch, slurping noisily on a goblet of wine, a goblet that Lockhart idly reflected was in bad taste.
‘What do you mean?’ Lockhart asked.
‘I’m surprised that there isn’t a single organisation that is responsible for unearthing and examining the prehistory of your people – the Ahnenerbe is an immensely successful operation. We have even mounted expeditions to Tibet.’
‘Tibet?’
‘Quite so. One has to travel far to learn about one’s racial heritage! When the war is over, there is so much learning that our two nations will be able to share.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, for example, we have conducted a vast amount of research on the European peoples, and we have discovered enormous differences between them – just by measuring their skulls.’
‘Skulls? Where are these skulls from?’
‘Oh,’ said Parsch, his voice unconcerned, ‘I don’t think we need concern ourselves with things like that! The Ahnenerbe has its fingers in many pies. It is like an octopus!’
Lockhart would normally have winced at the mixed metaphor, but he let it go.
‘What else does it do?’
‘You name it! Archaeology, medicine, all branches of science, and, recently, even weaponry!’
‘Weaponry? Why weaponry?’
‘Oh yes! Didn’t you know there was a war on? We all have to do our bit. Why do you think that even I, a humble professor, am wearing a uniform like this? Anyway, you can assume the Ahnenerbe is concerned with most elements of life in the Reich.’
Lockhart sipped his wine thoughtfully, trying not to appear excited. Parsch had used the word ‘recently’. Whatever it was that the professor had just learned, it would probably exist on paper, and that paper would be somewhere in his office. Lockhart knew that he had to take a chance. Tonight, he would pay a visit to Parsch’s office. He would need a thief to help him, and he had just the man in mind.
It was four in the morning when he and Stafford approached Parsch’s door. Stafford had told him that four was the best time for a burglary, because not even early risers got up that early. His chest had swollen with professional pride when Lockhart had asked him whether he would be willing to assist, telling Lockhart that there wasn’t a lock in Germany that he wouldn’t be able to pick.
Parsch’s office was at the top of a tower, which made Lockhart uncomfortable. Their only escape route was back down the stairs, unless they fancied their chances climbing out of one of the windows and lowering themselves on to a steeply pitched roof below. Even in daylight, such a manoeuvre would be foolhardy, but at night it would be reckless in the extreme.
‘Never mind.’ Stafford had grinned when Lockhart had told him of the situation. ‘We’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught.’
‘If we do,’ Lockhart had replied, ‘we’ll be looking at something far more severe than four years in Pentonville.’
Stafford produced a few short strands of thick wire from his pocket and set to work on the lock. Lockhart looked back towards the winding stone staircase they had just climbed. As each second passed, he readied himself for the sound of footsteps echoing up it, but none came.
‘How are you doing?’ Lockhart whispered after a very long minute.
‘Nearly there.’
Lockhart listened intently, straining his ears for even the slightest sound. Nothing. It seemed to him as though Stafford’s lock-picking was making a racket, but he knew the corporal wouldn’t be able to make it any quieter.
‘How much longer?’
Stafford grunted.
‘Can you do it?’
‘It’s a bit of a bugger . . . ah!’
And then a click which put a smile on both their faces.
‘You little beauty,’ Stafford whispered.
Lockhart turned from the staircase and joined Stafford at the door.
‘Will you be able to lock it again?’ he asked.
‘Should be able to.’
‘Good.’
Lockhart turned the handle and started to push the heavy oak door open. It creaked so loudly that he immediately stopped.
‘Do it quickly,’ Stafford whispered. ‘Less noise.’
Lockhart took a deep breath and pushed hard. The creaking seemed loud enough to fill the entire building. Surely everybody would wake up? Lockhart brushed the concern aside and stepped into the office, his eyes trying to make out what lay in front of him. He briefly turned on a small torch, one of two that Stafford had wangled from God knows where.
‘Shit,’ he whispered, and turned off the torch.
‘What?’
‘The place is a mess! There’s paper every-bloody-where. Stacks of it! Typical bloody academic.’
‘Shall we go then?’
It was tempting, because Lockhart knew that they might need all night. No, five minutes, he would give it five minutes, and told Stafford as much.
‘You stand guard here,’ Lockhart continued, ‘and let me know when my time is up.’
Stafford nodded in the darkness, while Lockhart set to work.
Recently. To Lockhart that suggested that the piece of paper would be on the desk. He walked softly over to it – a vast affair, covered in piles of paper and books. Where to begin? He turned the torch back on and held it in his mouth. The stack of paper to the right looked promising. The stack to the left was crowned by a dusty book, which suggested that the pile might not have been disturbed for weeks.
He picked up a large handful of sheets and started flicking through them. Viking burial ground uncovered . . . Special report on the skull sizes of Russian commissars . . . Hysterectomies on Jewish twins . . . Christ almighty, thought Lockhart, this was unbelievable, but keep looking, keep looking . . . Effects of high-pressure chambers on ear, nose and throat . . . Some interesting new comments on Jewish bastardy . . . Haus Germanien report on Dutch SS recruits . . . Racial theory: some new pointers . . . Dear Sturmbannführer Parsch, I am looking for a position as . . . Results of medical experiments by the discredited Dr Sigmund Rascher, January 1943 . . .
Shit. There was nothing here, thought Lockhart, or rather there was everything. In just one handful of paper he had uncovered enough evidence of Nazi insanity to make him forget where he was, to make him gasp out loud.
‘What is it?’
It was Stafford.
‘Nothing,’ Lockhart mumbled back, the torch obscuring his speech.
He picked up another handful of papers, and kept flicking through them. Some were marked TOP SECRET, and were to do with the Haus Germanien. Others were papers of some sort or another outlining policy as regarded different races. This was madness, Lockhart kept repeating to himself, pure lunacy.
‘One more minute!’
Surely not – he hadn’t even scratched the surface. He decided, for no good reason, to transfer his attention to the stack on the left. He moved the dusty book and picked up some papers from underneath it. Again, the same mixture of cod science, evil science, bureaucratic requests and denials, and academic papers on Nordic prehistory. Perhaps Parsch wasn’t the typical shambolic academic, and had actually filed away the really sensitive material.
‘That’s five minutes!’
‘All right,’ Lockhart mumbled.
One more handful. Just one more. He picked up a few more sheets.
‘Come on, sir!’
Lockhart ignored Stafford’s urgent request. Damn, damn. More of the same nonsense. He hadn’t seen one thing about weaponry. What was in this lot? The Nordic inheritance . . . Moslem members of the Waffen-SS . . . Transfer of A4 project . . . Conference agenda for 18 July 1944 . . . Notes on the subhuman tendencies of the Russian Jew . . .
‘Sir!’
Lockhart looked up.
‘Let’s go!’
Just as Lockhart was about to put the papers back down, his mind went back to one of them. He rifled through them once more, and extracted it: Transfer of A4 project. It was so bland, but look where it was from! He skimmed over the contents of what was nothing more than a short memorandum.
From: The Office of the Reichsführer-SS
MOST SECRET – Transfer of A4 project
To: Senior officers of the German Ancestral Heritage Society for the Study of German Prehistory
With immediate effect, the responsibility for the implementation of the A4 project passes to the Ahnenerbe. This marks a new direction for the organisation, but the transfer will ensure that the project is brought fully under the efficient command of the SS.
Signed
SS-Brigadeführer Hans Kammler
29 March 1944
Was this it? What else could ‘a new direction’ refer to? He quickly read it once more and then put it back, deciding that stealing it would be pushing his luck.
‘Sir!’
‘All right, I’m coming,’ said Lockhart, and switched off the torch.
Although he had not seen much of it back in December, the Berlin Lockhart saw now in May was a noticeably different city. What he had then taken for devastation had merely been, in comparison, some light damage, for now much of the capital of the German Empire was a blasted heap of rubble. Even when there wasn’t an air raid, just being in the city was perilous enough. At any moment, a building could collapse, obliterating scores of Berliners shuffling through the masonry of their past lives, attempting to salvage some shards of hope from the ruins. And it smelt, thought Lockhart, smelt of decay, human decay.
On Sturmbannführer Parsch’s order, Strasser had reluctantly given Lockhart a few days’ leave. Lockhart had asked Parsch if he could visit the headquarters of the Ahnenerbe, feigning an immense interest in the organisation and its archaeological work. Parsch had been delighted that Lockhart was so keen, telling him that it was a pleasure to have such a cultured English gentleman with him at the Haus Germanien, and that he must visit his old friend Dr Erich Rudolph, the deputy head of the Ahnenerbe. He would arrange an interview immediately. That was too kind, Lockhart had said. Think nothing of it! Parsch might not have expressed such a sentiment if he had known that Lockhart’s real reason for the visit was an attempt to get closer to the nature of A4. It could be a red herring, have nothing to do with sarin, but then again, he couldn’t believe that it was unimportant.
As he made his way to the interview, Lockhart realised that he had been cooped up for too long, his head addled with a cloying uncertainty about whether Anna was alive. He knew that he couldn’t escape from that in Berlin, but he hoped that he would at least be able to distract himself. The wreckage of the city and the suffering of its population had provided that.
For the first time, Lockhart began to feel, if not at home, neither wary nor afraid. Berlin gave him anonymity, and even if the Union Jack patch raised the occasional eyebrow, he was left alone. Worstead had been desperate to join him, but Lockhart had refused, not wishing to endure the persistent sleeve-tugging of Anna’s ‘wheezing windbag’. What was he going to do there? Worstead asked. Mind your own business, Lockhart had told him. Would he be all right on his own? Of course he bloody would be, he wasn’t a child.
There were islands in Berlin that had remained almost unaffected by the privations of rationing and the bombardment. One such island was the Hotel Adlon, a vast white shrine to luxury near the Brandenburg Gate. Strasser had recommended it, telling him that it was worth every pennig. Lockhart had accumulated around five hundred marks, and, intending to use them on eating well and drinking likewise, had followed Strasser’s advice. Strasser had also given him a book of matches from Kitty’s, insisting that he should visit the brothel, that it was an experience not to be forgotten. And if he should see a certain young courtesan by the name of Leni, would he pass on Strasser’s best wishes? Lockhart, reminding Strasser that he had a wife, told him that it was unlikely he would be visiting Kitty’s, but if he did, he would be sure to say hello.
‘Oberführer Dr Rudolph, please.’
Lockhart showed his Ausweis to the functionary at the desk. He had entered a large atrium, in the middle of which was a vast marble statue of an idealised Nordic family of four – robust of form, fine-featured, and clad in national costume. Flags showing swastikas and every variety of rune shuddered slightly.
‘You have an appointment, Hauptsturmführer . . . Lock . . . Lockhart?’
The functionary was clearly a little unaccustomed to dealing with SS officers with British names. Lockhart extracted a letter from Rudolph from inside his tunic. He passed it towards the functionary with a sigh.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘At twelve o’clock.’
The functionary picked up a phone, and exchanged a few confirmatory words with a secretary at the other end.
‘All right,’ he said, handing back the Ausweis, ‘You can go up. It’s on the first floor. Up the main stairs, turn right, and it’s at the end of the corridor.’
‘Dr Lockhart! How good of you to come!’
Dr Rudolph greeted Lockhart as though they were old friends. Like Parsch, he was in his fifties, but he was short, overweight, and was wearing a smart blue suit, a swastika armband around his left arm. Lockhart shook his hand.
‘It’s very good of you to see me, Oberführer.’
Rudolph brushed the appellation aside.
‘Please! Call me Doctor! When I’m with a fellow academic, I prefer to use our academic titles! Professor Parsch tells me that your doctorate is in Minoan history – is that right?’
‘Quite so. You are very well informed.’
‘I am afraid I know very little about your speciality, but I’m sure we’ll have plenty on it in our excellent library here. Perhaps you would care to look at it?’
‘That would be most kind, Dr Rudolph.’
‘I’ll sort you out a reader’s ticket. Anyway, come into my office – I want to hear all about you! I can’t deny I’m most fascinated about how an Englishman ends up in the SS. And in return, you can ask me all about the Ahnenerbe. And later, perhaps some lunch?’
In another time, Lockhart would have found a meeting like this most congenial. A pleasant chat with a fellow academic, lunch, and then an afternoon pottering in a library – what could be better? No doubt there would be some papers in the library that would interest him greatly, but they would just have to stay unread.
He spent the next half an hour telling Rudolph how he had joined the BFC, seeing no reason to hide anything from him, because Rudolph would already have been told everything by Parsch. Besides, Lockhart wanted to cosy up to him, earn his trust. He knew that Rudolph would never tell him what A4 was, but perhaps he might let something slip. Even if today’s meeting came to nothing, then at least he would have made a start.
They had lunch in Rudolph’s office, and after Lockhart had been told a potted history of the Ahnenerbe, washed down with a bottle of Mosel, he summoned up the courage to ask Rudolph a slightly more sensitive question.
‘I gather from Professor Parsch, Herr Doctor,’ he began, ‘that the organisation is even extending its reach to the most unlikely fields of research.’
Rudolph put down his coffee cup.
‘And what did Professor Parsch tell you?’
Lockhart shrugged.
‘Nothing much – he merely said that the Ahnenerbe was working in medicine, weaponry – all sorts of areas. I was just a little surprised, that’s all.’
