Berchtesgaden 1939: The Kehlsteinhaus
The Tea House sat 183 metres at the top of the Kehlstein mountain, accessed either by the 131 metre elevator bored into the mountain or the specially commissioned road. Hitler chose the road. As the motorcade swept up through the winding tunnels, its progress was observed by Martin Borman and Albert Speer from the sun terrace,
The head of Hitler's security detail strode up, 'He wants to look around.'
‘Let’s hope he likes it,’ said Speer, taking in the view. The clouds danced beneath them around the peak of the nearby Hochter Goll,
‘He’d better,’ replied Borman, his eyes never leaving the road. ‘It cost enough to build.’
The motorcade, all black with red flags fluttering, pulled into the main driveway. Hitler’s Mercedes was flanked by SS outriders on powerful motorbikes. Borman rose from leaning against the terrace balcony. They walked through the lavishly decorated main dining area to the reception. An SS honour guard was preparing to greet the entourage. The head of Hitler’s personal bodyguard, Schaedle, strode up to them.
Hitler ascended the steps to where Borman, Speer and Goebbels stood waiting in the doorway. The alpine air was refreshing and he stopped to admire the Alps. Removing his fedora, he closed his pale blue eyes, enjoying the sensation of sunlight on his face. He breathed deeply, his throat tingling from the crisp tang of the air. As he started toward the reception, a wave of vertigo swept over him. He steadied himself, inwardly furious that his followers could see this.
Once inside, the Fuhrer marvelled at its craftsmanship. They walked as Speer explained its construction in detail. ‘As you can see, mein Fuhrer, from the two windows here in the main dining area you can observe the Watzman and Hochkalter mountains.’ They paused to admire the peaks. Speer then guided Hitler through each room, some panelled in rare cembra pine or sand-blasted oak. Hitler was impressed; nodding quietly, stopping, examining, and inquiring, with hands clasped firmly behind his back when he wasn't shaking the hands of each of his household staff, beaming and joking awkwardly in the main reception area.
Then he was ushered to his private chamber off the main dining room. Speer's scaled model of New Berlin, moulded according to Hitler’s vision, almost filled the entire room. Hitler leaned into it closely, holding his breath in wonder.
Das Museum von gebesiegt — The Museum of the Vanquished — caught his eye and made him smile. He envisioned the British Crown Jewels, French Impressionist works, Faberge eggs and Mozart’s manuscripts. And in pride of place, Lenin’s mausoleum.
‘Perhaps,’ Goebbels suggested, ‘Stalin’s head in a jar of formaldehyde or mounted like a hunter’s trophy?’ They all roared with laughter.
The rest of the guests arrived and the four men left the room to attend Hitler’s 50th birthday party. Goebbels paused, looking back at the model citadel. Eradicating Communism was a personal crusade for Hitler; what if they managed to snatch Lenin's body sooner rather than later? It would be a sensational bargaining chip. He began to hatch a plot, an idea so brazen that, if it was pulled off, it would change the world. But before that could happen, there would have to be a war.
The following morning, Himmler drove directly to his new headquarters in Berlin, SS Hauptampt. The city had a freshness to it he hadn’t noticed before. The population moved about their business around the thriving Potsdamer Platz, the facades gleaming and the skies a cloudless blue. Everywhere around the capital gave the sense of success and order. He nestled himself deeper into the leather depths of his seat.
Across from him were two Waffen SS: General Rolf Metzger and a young impossibly beautiful Aryan Captain, Thor Schenker. All three were perusing a manila folder stamped at the highest level of confidentiality.
Metzger’s grey-steel eyes twinkled as he completed his review. ‘If this goes wrong, Reichsfuhrer …. ’
Himmler’s eyes narrowed behind his wire frame glasses, a faint smile danced around his lips, making his moustache twitch.
‘This is why we selected you, General. It won’t go wrong,’
Schenker’s head snapped up. It reminded Himmler of an obedient Doberman. He found he was unable to look away from this Adonis. Hitler was right; this boy was a prime specimen.
‘I can’t foresee any problems.’ His cultured accent and his refined sense of dress confirmed he was born to wear the uniform. Himmler felt himself dumpy in this beautiful boy’s presence. He tried to concentrate on the dossier. He tried not to blush.
Metzger lit a cigarette. Himmler tried to wave the smoke away with a tailored leather glove.
'My concern is that we get a local policeman who just happens to be thorough.'
Himmler afforded himself a small smile as the limousine turned off Prince Albrecht Strasse down into a cavernous parking lot below the SS Hauptamt building.
‘The nature of this will be so heinous that the Gestapo, Waffen SS and Diplomatic corps will want it. It is imperative that we execute this plan efficiently to forward the Fuhrer’s plan.’
The limousine pulled up alongside an army truck painted in a gun-metal grey, the number plates and registration erased. Metzger and Schenker alighted and, with Himmler, strode to the rear of the truck. Pulling the tarpaulin window aside, a group of soldiers acknowledged the three of them with the briefest of nods. All looked like hardened street fighters, Metzger’s personal detail.
‘Excellent,’ said Metzger.
Himmler touched his elbow and whispered into his ear, ‘If you pull this off, General, I can promise you a most excellent theatre of operations,’
Schenker whistled slowly, and began to follow the General’s lead. His smile almost stretched his jaw.
It was the dogs barking in the yard that woke farmer Rupert Lowe. He reached for his glasses and sat upright in the bed. The vast bulk of his wife Gertrude shifted and groaned as she tried to settle into a more comfortable position. He stared into the darkness, the window shutters rattling slightly again, the barking, then a shrill cry from one of the hounds. A quick succession of whinnies, shrill barks and cries rang out, then silence.
Lowe slipped out of the bed, his feet dancing on the cold floor. His stomach churned in fear. He could hear movement outside. The farm was two miles away from the Polish border and there had been reports of strange occurrences over the past few days. In two nearby farms, machinery had been vandalised in the night, some buildings had also been subjected to arson. The tension between the two countries was beginning to spill into the countryside. At the market last weekend a row had broken out between two German and Polish families who for years had traded amicably. The Gestapo had appeared out of nowhere, broken it up, and forcibly beaten the Polish family across the border.
Lowe loaded his shotgun quietly. His daughters Lottie, Dorothy and Anna peeked out at their father from their loft bed. Lowe raised his finger to shush them and went down the staircase he had built and installed a month after his wedding, fifty years ago. He opened the front door and spread his still broad form across the threshold, gun raised. He kept all the lights off, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom quickly.
Two figures scampered across between the barn and his tool shed.
‘Who’s there?’ he shouted out into the darkness. He was met with silence.
Then a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him turn. He fired the shotgun’s double-barrels into the night, the report booming. His dogs should have been raising hell by now.
Then he heard automatic machine gun fire. His legs buckled beneath him, white hot light flashed, consuming his vision, and a sweat drenched his nightshirt, mingling with his blood. He tried to rise up but was kicked back by a man in army fatigues whose design he didn’t recognise. The man looked mature, grey haired with cold grey eyes. He pointed a pistol into Lowe's forehead. The last thing Lowe saw was the man smiling. It was a warm smile as he pulled the trigger. Faintly in the distance, Lowe could hear his daughters screaming.
Metzger made his way up into the loft where the three women huddled. Wiping his brow, he smiled at his incredible good fortune. How did the saying go? ‘Country girls, country appetites’. He vaulted into the bed, brandishing a bayonet. ‘Now ladies, who’s first?’
Schenker moved through the house while Metzger and the other ten SS entertained themselves up in the girls' loft. His heart was racing with the excitement; the hapless farmer having been his second ever kill. He moved through the kitchen and came suddenly upon the crouching form of the dead farmer’s wife. Gertrude launched herself at him, a vast nightgown swooping toward him with a banshee howl. She flattened him onto the cold floor, his head striking the stone tiles making him see stars. She straddled him, he couldn’t breathe, she produced a huge carving knife from her sleeve and, deftly changing hands, flipped the blade toward him.
He wrestled his Luger free from its holster and fired point blank. Gertrude’s head flipped back, spraying blood all over him, the walls and the ceiling before she collapsed forward, her dead weight pressing like a vice on his lungs.
He lay there for minutes, his breath coming in short gasps. He thought about his strict catholic upbringing in Bavaria, the nuns, the mystery of the sacraments and his gift, his trick. As a child he liked to maim little animals. Starting with insects, he quickly moved onto feral kittens, birds and mice in the privacy of his room. He’d derived exquisite pleasure in baiting and torturing the neighbour’s dachshund that had annoyed him. He had tricked the noisy little bastard into his family’s barn and fixed a leash to its neck, the other end wrapped around the steel leg of his father’s work bench. He set to work on it with the knives from the cook’s pantry. He found it hard not to rush to the finale and learned over the years how to drag out the exquisite torture.
After each of these animals had been slain, little Thor would extend out his arms like the saviour and pray for these poor animals' souls and he would bury them guiltily under his mother’s rose bushes when left alone with his aged nanny.
This gift he brought to the SA, then the SS. His rigorous attention to detail during the Kristallnacht brought him to Himmler’s attention. He believed from an early age he had the power to grant life or death, that he was in effect the hand of God.
This gift he had bestowed on the elderly shopkeeper who had come out protecting his shop front from Schenker’s charges. Schenker had shot him in the head, citing self-defence. The man was armed only with a sweeping brush hurling insults in Yiddish. That night Schenker had found his calling, inspired by the words of Hitler, taking Goebbels propaganda as Gospel, an avenging angel of death for the Reich. The people rounded up that night were handed over for him and his cohorts to interrogate. In the police cells in the wee hours of the morning, Schenker’s skills were honed. These thoughts floated around as the vast expanse of Gertrude expired, slumping and pushing him harder against the floor.
Her blood was flowing in thick bursts onto him. He was going to be found dead under this woman. He started to scream for help. His voice was lost in the screams of the girls above. Eventually Metzger’s head appeared amid the woman’s blood-matted hair. Looking at Schenker he called back to the troop behind him, ‘Looks like he’s finally popped his cherry.’ Amid the laughter, Gertrude was hauled off him and he gasped the air around him.
An army radio barked into life on the kitchen table. For a radius of two miles, Metzger’s forces were attacking local German farms. Somewhere in the distance a farm was being torched, the horizon beginning to glow from the blaze. Schenker rose unsteadily to his feet, smelling like a butcher’s block.
Metzger was covered in blood, his men also. They had a sweaty high coming off them; they were all panting like hounds. Schenker retched onto the floor and onto his highly polished boots.
Metzger looked at him in disdain. ‘Christ, Schenker, pull yourself together.’
He picked up Schenker’s Luger and handed it to one of the younger men. The soldier looked at it in puzzlement until Metzger, reaching down, picked up the carving knife on the floor and plunged it to the hilt into the soldier’s chest. Pulling the stunned man closer onto the blade, he twisted it repeatedly, then threw the soldier onto the floor. The rest of the men stood stunned.
Metzger turned to them. ‘He will receive a funeral you could only dream of. He will join the great fallen German soldiers who are about the shed their life’s blood for the Reich. Remember him well, gentlemen. He is a hero.’
He then pulled documentation from his tunic, drenched in blood, and checked the photograph on it. Satisfied that it matched the man he had just stabbed, he placed the documents into the dying soldier’s tunic.
They headed out into the courtyard.
Metzger turned to Schenker. ‘Torch the outbuildings, leave the farmhouse standing.’ Schenker, recovering his composure, saluted straight-armed. Metzger spoke slowly, ‘Leave the farmhouse standing.’ Metzger prayed this idiot wouldn’t be drafted to his units when the battles proper started.
The following morning, the local constabulary made their way between the ravaged farms. Lowe’s farm was the worst the district investigator had ever had to deal with. His men were traumatised and stood in huddles in the courtyard smoking and whispering.
The dogs had had their throats cut and had been eviscerated with some kind of large knife. Their entrails were strewn around the yard. The farmer’s body had been dumped in the well; he was like a rag doll as they hoisted him up onto the ground. The outer buildings had been burnt down, the livestock slaughtered with automatic weapons. Spent casings lay scattered everywhere.
The girls loft though was nothing like anything they had ever seen. The pathologist arrived with his team from Berlin, then the Gestapo, police and representatives of the Fuhrer, followed by the press. Cars began to block up the roadway, interfering with the investigation.
Then officials from the Propaganda Ministry arrived.
Whatever evidence was around was now utterly contaminated as film cameras were set up and mounted, and Gestapo operatives took photographs.
The investigator saluted the Gestapo plain clothes officers smartly. It was an honour to have these men come all the way from Berlin. He led the two men into the kitchen. Tables and chairs lay overturned and there, in the middle of the room, the immense bulk of Gertrude lay. Beside her lay a man with a carving knife buried up to its hilt in his chest. The man was wearing a Polish Officer’s uniform. Documentation showed he was Polish Army.
‘Looks like the old bird got one,’ said the investigator, lighting up a cigarette. It killed the smell, but only just.
The Gestapo men looked around, taking everything in. Two SS stepped in and stood alongside them, summoning the investigator over. He stood, slightly stooped, fidgeting with his hat, clearly out of his depth.
‘Thank you for your assistance and prompt request for us. We will handle this awful incident from here on. Please submit all your findings directly to me,’
The investigator was handed a card listing the address as Himmler’s headquarters in Berlin. They saluted and the investigator responded after a pause. He hadn’t contacted any Gestapo; he'd only got the call himself a few hours earlier.
The Polish Ambassador to Germany, Jozeph Lipski, re-read Von Ribbentrop’s communique. After initial diplomatic success and high level discussions with the Axis powers, Lipski was now completely isolated. For months he had been trying to meet Von Ribbentrop face-to-face, only to be rebuffed at every diplomatic level, the same with Molotov in Moscow. Both nations were behaving as if his country didn’t even exist. The Italians had promised to assist, but so far nothing from them either. The British and French were making enquiries on Poland’s behalf with equally limited success. Every newspaper, newsreel and radio broadcast reported on Molotov, Von Ribbentropp, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Hitler ad nauseum. Lipski occasionally appeared in newsreels, receiving column inches in the newspapers, but was never mentioned in the film commentaries.
The Polish government, fearful of Germany regaining territories ceded after Versailles, had despatched cavalry columns to the disputed regions. Horse cavalry and bicycle-mounted troops, bows and arrows against the coming lightening.
The country was put on a war footing and had its embassies in friendly countries discreetly looking for assurances of support. The communique in Lipski’s hand was stamped ‘strictly confidential’. Polish Special Forces had been caught slipping over the border and attacking peaceful neighbouring German farms. He skimmed through the rhetoric to the final sentence which stated, ‘Any further attacks will be considered a hostile act of a nation state and will be dealt with accordingly.’ Attached were facsimiles of identity documents found on a dead Polish officer, killed during an attack on a farm. With the communiques was a package containing film footage and forensic photographs taken at the Lowe farm by the Propaganda Ministry,
Lipski watched them in revulsion. As a footnote, the ammunition retrieved was from British-issue machine guns. Were British commandos operating with these men? Was Poland deliberately precipitating a crisis in the hope of dragging England into an avoidable conflict? Lipski began making a series of phone calls. The first was to the Polish Army Command. Who the hell was this man whose the identity papers had were being cited?
In London, Chainbridge, Liddell and Kell reviewed the recent dispatches with a sense of impending doom. The Polish army attacking peaceful German villagers with British supplied weapons, Thompson M1928s to be precise, according to the dispatch lying on the table in front of them. Also, a communications tower in Germany had been attacked by Polish special Special Forces, though verification was sketchy.
The German High Command was preparing a dossier. According to the embassy in Warsaw, German tanks and heavy Panzer divisions had been spotted moving toward the Polish border. The German war machine was now springing into life despite reassurances to the contrary from Von Ribbbentropp and Hitler. They were being deployed to specific regions to protect the Germans living close to the Polish border, Berlin was now telling the world.
‘Panzers, motorised divisions and Luftwaffe support to protect a couple of dairy farmers, that doesn't quite add up,’ observed Kell dryly.
The room was heavy with cigarette smoke and, beyond, a beautiful summer’s day tried vainly to get through the window pane. There was nothing from the Moscow bureau about any evacuation plan, though armament production was shifting up a gear.
Lipski had sent several ‘eyes only’ level messages concerning the German accusations to the governments of England and France. There had been absolutely no Polish forces anywhere near the German border, but now they were mobilising army and cavalry units in response to Germany’s manoeuvres. The German’s weren’t responding at all, a wall of silence descending around Berlin.
Chainbridge peered over the edge of his glasses. ‘It appears, Gentlemen, we are on the brink of war.’
‘Hitler’s a master of brinkmanship,’ countered Kell, the unease carrying through his voice as if he didn’t really believe what he was saying.
‘Could be sabre-rattling, looking for more concessions. It’s the Foreign Office and our French counterparts' desire that we keep Hitler and Stalin at each other’s throats. The Foreign Office believes that Hitler will more than likely strike east, whatever pact those two lunatics have struck,’
Chainbridge held his gaze, ‘Hitler wants a war, it’s as simple as that, and he sees us as the biggest threat to his ambitions. We’ve committed to defending Poland, should he invade. He’s going to invade.’
‘Stalin?’ Kell toyed absently with his glasses as he spoke and continued sipping the cold dregs from the tea cup. The room began to feel stifling in the summer heat.
‘Poland is about to become the first acquisition of Russia’s ‘Near abroad’. Stalin’s keen to start expanding the revolution.’ De Witte had an operative in Moscow who had confirmed that the Soviet Union was moving large numbers of armoured columns and troops to Poland’s borders. Molotov and Stalin were using the term ‘a zone of privileged interest’ when referring to Poland and, glancing at the map, that could also encompass Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland.
On Chainbridge’s advice, the British Government had beefed up its security at its embassy in Helsinki after the peace negotiations between Finland and Russia. Should Russia invade again, which was becoming more likely, this would give Stalin a toehold in the Scandinavian countries. The problem politically was that Finland was friendly with Germany. If England went to war with Germany, the embassy was vulnerable with its small garrison.
Chainbridge lit up from the stub of a previous cigarette. It wasn’t Hitler he was worrying about now, it was Stalin. ‘We have intelligence out of Moscow that the army’s ‘on manoeuvres’ on her borders with Poland. The bear has woken up.’
A pall hung in the room. The second part of the intelligence was that the rail link to Tyumen had been completed and Gulag labour in the Urals had increased two-fold. Again nothing concrete, but it appeared that some heavy manufacturing equipment was moving toward the Urals which suggested they were preparing for war.
‘I’ll inform the Prime Minister and I’ll contact the Army, see if any of the arsenals have been compromised. We probably sold those bloody guns to the Poles anyway.’
Kell rose, his demeanour deflated. He left, leaving Liddle and Chainbridge to their thoughts. Chainbridge had to get news to Eva in Berlin.
In Krakow, Warsaw and all the major cities, the intelligentsia were being listed by the Gestapo and dossiers were being created on them. Henk Molenaar’s name was already included. German spies were preparing the groundwork for invasion. British and French spies were feeding the information back in the hope of keeping things in check.
Chainbridge picked up the phone and asked the operator to find the hotel in Berlin where Donald T Kincaid was staying. Then he contacted De Witte who was in Cambridge sourcing new intelligence operatives, instructing him to return to London immediately.
He returned to his chambers where Meenagh awaited him. His drive through the London rush hour was a hot, uncomfortable ride. The late summer heat was oppressive and the rank smell of the Thames permeated the air. In the gridlock he watched the people walking, wrapped up in their daily lives. Mothers, babies and toddlers mingled with a stream of business men in bowler hats. They flowed across the bridges of London from Threadneedle Street, a uniform sea of black and white, giving a sense of stability and security. The gloom had broken to reveal a beautiful late summer evening, he thought as he stepped through the front door of his chambers. For the first time in years, Meenagh saw her husband visibly depressed. As always, he lightened up as she stepped toward him, eyes lowered, arms open in welcome. He ran his fingers through her greying hair and kissed her. They retreated to his study and he put a shellac disc onto the turntable.
As Mozart’s Piano Sonata Number 11 hissed and crackled through the speakers, they held each other tightly, with the same intensity as the night they had met in Bombay ten years previously.
The restaurant off the Potsdam Plaza was exclusive to high ranking Nazi party members. Kincaid was mingling with Goebbels, his wife Magda, and their ‘dear friend’ Eva Braun. Hitler was unable to attend, excusing himself with a migraine. Bormann was at another table and, nearby, the erudite Speer was holding court, discussing architecture and other topics close to an aesthete's heart.
Eva Braun was light hearted tonight. She had laughed in a sisterly fashion, observing that there were now two Evas at the table, referring to Eva Molenaar as the second. Goebbels remarked at how beautiful they both looked as he assembled a champagne glass tower and filled it with expensive champagne, creating a waterfall effect from the top glass down. Kincaid, squeezing Eva closer to him, said she was going to be a great star of the silver screen. The table toasted her. All around, the revellers were almost frenzied in their enjoyment of the cabaret, the room a sea of black uniforms, leather webbing and scarlet armbands.
Eva left the dinner party, excusing herself after a waitress had whispered an urgent message into her ear. In the restrooms, an attendant handed a slip of paper punched in Braille point. The pit of her stomach gripped in fear — her grandfather’s name was on the list of targeted intellectuals. The attendant offered her a cigarette and set light to the message for her at the same time, flushing the ashes down the toilet. Eva thanked the girl and tipped her before leaving.
She came back to the table where Goebbels was laughing. ‘Did I miss something?’ she asked smiling,
Kincaid rubbed his hands together in a sudden burst of hilarity. The gesture made the rasping sound characteristic of calloused hands, the hands of a labourer.
‘We’re just talking here. Seems that the tanks are goin’ to roll any day soon. It’s as we say in my part of the world — ‘’It’s a slam dunk!’’ — the Polacks and Brits won’t know what hit them!’
The table reduced to laughter as Goebbels repeated, ‘Slam Dunk! Ja! — slam dunk!’
Eva laughed along with them, tears of anguish only just held back. The darkness that had haunted her peripheral vision for years seemed to close in further. She could hear Kincaid shouting over the din of the party as he rose with a champagne glass raised, ‘Heil Hitler!’
The club, taking his cue, all rose and chanted it. Eva Braun, Goebbels and his wife were crying tears of euphoria. The voices rose to the rhythmic chant and the band stamped and struck out a beat. Eva’s thoughts were of her grandfather and De Witte, and for a split second she thought she saw Jonas moving through the crowd. He drew nearer and Eva’s heart began to race, but the vision passed and the man she thought was Jonas turned out to be a waiter.
Leaving the party telling Kincaid she felt unwell, she returned to the hotel floor reserved for special guests of the Propaganda Ministry. Kincaid had been given access in Berlin to an immense penthouse suite fitted with several phone lines allowing him access to his various interests in America. It wasn't as homely as the mansion in Martha's Vineyard, but she judged that she had a better chance of uncovering some intelligence here as his guard was down amid his Nazi companions. It had taken nearly a year for him to accept her and their relationship as she gradually built up his trust.
Kincaid didn't returned that night and, with the apartment empty, it gave Eva a chance to slip into the study where Kincaid spent most of his time. It had two clocks on the wall, one set to German time, the other indicating the time on the West Coast of the USA, an eight hour difference, meaning Kincaid spent between 4pm and anywhere close to midnight here in this study most days. The room was lushly furbished with comfortable black leather settees, large enough for Kincaid to stretch out on, chairs and a sturdy plain writing desk. There was a large silver screen which could be pulled down from the ceiling and, opposite, an alcove containing a film projector. A stack of film reels were placed in a cabinet, the two stacks marked ‘WIP’ or ‘Fin’.
Pinned up on the walls of the room were various drafts of posters for movies and promotional literature. On the desk was a tidy pile of scripts at various draft stages, a pen and ink set in silver of an Eagle, and a half-empty bottle of Jameson whiskey. One drawer in his desk was locked, the key attached to the chain of his pocket watch. Eva removed two hairpins from her hair and forced the lock deftly.
She flipped through the various documents and envelopes — nothing. Then, as she was closing the drawer, it caught on something. Running her hand under it, she felt an envelope. She removed the drawer carefully and, stacking its contents on the desk, turned it over. The envelope was fixed to the base with glue. She opened it, running a finger nail beneath the flap. Instinctively she paused, frozen, listening for the tell-tale click of his key in the front door.
She held her breath and opened her mouth, fractionally improving her hearing. Silence.
In the envelope was a communique between Hitler, Himmler and Goering to Kincaid’s studios. It was an itemized bill for Kincaid’s services. Eva flattened it out and read it carefully. It totalled to nearly a million dollars. She ran into her private quarters, grabbed her box brownie and took photographs of the flattened sheet. She replaced everything as she found it, sliding the drawer back. She gave a cursory glance around, double-checking that nothing looked untoward.
She left through the bustling foyer and walked to the central train station. From Berlin Central she paid for her ticket in cash, giving a good, but not ostentatious, tip to ensure she had a private sleeping berth for the five hundred and thirty five miles to Krakow. Kincaid was by nature generous and she had a sizeable amount of dollars at her disposal without his asking questions as to how she spent it.
Over the past few months, he had schemed and promoted a heavy weight boxing match in Berlin with newsreel rights exclusively for the American market. German heavyweight champion Max Schmeling versus Joe Louis at the Berlin Olympic Stadium; billed ‘The Battle of the Bombers’. He’d negotiated a huge amount of advance money from the American networks for the rights and film reels to be produced by Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.
Ticket sales sold the Stadium out for an event which Kincaid knew full well would never transpire. After Jesse Owens had won a gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games, Hitler was cagey about having coloureds beating white German athletes in sporting events. Under his pressure, the plug was pulled on the whole thing and everyone walked away with a sizeable profit, only the backers and fans getting stung.
Kincaid had pulled a similar stunt in the early 1930s in New Jersey and had to flee for his life, breaking speed limits through the turnpike running from the mob. After that, he always carried a gun, a Smith and Wesson, in a shoulder holster.
From this latest scam, Kincaid had handed Eva a bundle of US dollars to do with whatever she wanted which she had used to secure a berth on a ship departing Gdansk for Southampton for her grandfather and immediate family under the name of De Witte. Then she had obtained travel permits for them from the German underground which had formed once Hitler had taken power.
These perfectly forged papers had been paid for in cash by her and arranged for collection in one of the deposit boxes in the station. The key was slipped to her as she purchased her rail ticket by a female underground operative standing in the queue beside her.
Checking in her compact to ensure she wasn’t being followed, Eva went to the line of boxes and quickly found the locker. She removed the permits, ensuring her black fur stole and hat covered her face. In their place she left the brownie camera and four reels of Braille correspondence concerning her recent meetings. In the ladies toilets she handed the key back to the operative who was pouting into a mirror re-adjusting her make-up.
Before she boarded the train, Eva placed the hat and stole in a refuse bin. From her handbag she produced a beret and brightly coloured neck scarf, making sure she mixed with porters, milling passengers and the clouds of steam billowing from the locomotive.
Once settled into her compartment, she began to relax momentarily. She tipped the steward, ensuring she was not to be disturbed, and showed him her racial papers with Goebbels' stamp on them. He saluted straight-armed and promised her a peaceful journey, thrilled to be dealing with someone so close to the Reich's most powerful men. It was an early morning departure and not fully booked, mostly businessmen reading newspapers, but worryingly with a few SS, Gestapo and German Army officers dotted about the aisles.
On more than one occasion she was stopped in the Pullman lounge and her papers requested with a polite smile. Once they saw Goebbels signature clearing her racial status, they blanched and moved on from her with the briefest of salutes.
She sat alone at a pre-reserved table in the dining car and smoked, watching the countryside slip by, drinking coffee and reflecting. As the German countryside transformed into the Polish countryside, she watched the shimmering sunset across the fields and farms, glinting off farm machinery, buildings, streams and lakes. Whole communities passed her, some stopping from their labours to watch the steam train rush clattering past them.
She retired to bed. Beneath her pillow she kept a small thin stiletto in its sheath. Also, as a precaution, she jammed her overnight bag against the door. Being a light sleeper it would give her time to react if someone was to try to force the door.
Her grandfather’s house looked derelict, the facade and gardens in poor repair. She realised she hadn’t been home in two years. The neighbouring houses were pristine but his house itself reflected the demeanour of its occupant. Henk Molenaar shuffled to the door and opened it. Eva was taken aback. Her once tall, robust grandfather was now stooped and bedraggled. She could smell a blend of body odour, tobacco and whiskey upon him.
‘Oh Dziadzio,’ she whispered as he held out his arms. His bones seemed to be pushing out through his skin, his shirt and his cardigan. He summoned a smile from inside his beard. ‘Eva, my dear, what a surprise.’ His voice was a rasping whisper. ‘I was about to make some coffee.’
She guided him into the kitchen where unwashed pots, pans and crockery lay strewn across the counters and sink. He lit a cigarette, a racking cough arising from his lungs. Absently he spat on the floor. Agneska would have given him a reproachful look, but her absence was felt throughout the house.
Eva felt immense guilt for not having attended the funeral six months earlier while she tried to remain a cold dispassionate spy. Old cobwebs hung from window panes. The curtains had remained open since the funeral, and the windows were grimy. Henk had grown a beard in mourning. It sat about his face and chest unevenly, stained with tobacco around the mouth and nostrils. In the afternoon light, his skin looked seer, his eyes white balls with pinprick irises.
Opening every window, Eva cleaned the kitchen, swept the stone floor, and washed and laundered every piece of clothing and bedding. Then she ran a bath and tenderly bathed the old man, letting him sleep as she sat by the bed, reading to him and holding his hand. In the fading light, he seemed transparent on the pillow. She thought she could detect its intricate lacework beneath his features as his breathing came in short gasps.
‘Why didn’t you contact me, Grampy?’ she whispered, but understood after Aga’s death he had ceased living, enduring a lingering death that was taking longer than expected. Talking to neighbours, they told her that he rebuffed them at every opportunity. They eyed her suspiciously, this beautiful woman abandoning her family, her blood, then reappearing near the old man’s death.
She had organised to meet her cousins in St Mary’s Basilica in Krakow that afternoon, so she wrapped herself in Aga’s old great coat. It was dusty and still carried about it the faintest whiff of her favourite scent. A wave of nostalgia brought a smile to her face as she arranged a headscarf about her head and caught the bus to the city.
The Basilica’s interior shimmered in the candlelight. An organ was playing quietly, its mellifluous sounds echoing about the vaulted ceiling. Eva recognised the piece as being by Bach as she spied her two cousins — both girls — Michaela and Silvia — peeping out beneath modest shawls kneeling in pews in the shadows just off the main apse.
Eva genuflected for the first time in years in front of Wit Stowsz’s grand altar, reflecting on whether there was a place for someone like her in heaven, before slipping in beside them without making eye contact. The altar was quiet, the host covered, and the altar boys and deans went about their solemn duties. There were a few people sitting and kneeling in afternoon meditation, mostly elderly, though, possibly parents praying to God in whispered prayers for their children’s future.
Eva quickly explained her plan to the girls. They were to leave the day after next and get themselves and their families to Gdansk and on to England. She handed over the documentation. Silvia noted they had the stamp of the German Eagle. Eva told them that the invasion was imminent. No-one was going to question these papers once the shooting started,
‘What about Grandpa?’ Eva asked, mindful that they were the only ones in the pews within earshot. Still she pitched her voice to the lowest whisper, looking furtively around. She thought she saw the figure of a man slip back into the shadows behind them.
‘He’s turned everyone’s help down,’ whispered Michaela. A strand of pure blonde hair fell over her eye and she angled her head so it would fall away, Eva thought she was a real beauty, a heart-breaker.
‘I’ll help him then. You two go. Go now and do not talk to anyone. Good luck.’ She kissed them both and left them without looking back. As she reached the last pew, she genuflected again, looking up at the cross and the exquisite stained glass windows, and asking God for the strength to endure the years to come.
Peering through the gloom, she could no longer see the girls and assumed they had slipped out through another door. She paused, checking and re-checking that no one had followed her, then left as silently as a ghost, walking through the market square, head down, scarf pulled tight about her, avoiding any eye contact.
No one seemed to realise what was going to happen, what horrors were about to befall them should Germany invade their country.
The stall holders were breaking down their pitches for the night and the square was beginning to clear. Eva felt as if she was a modern-day Cassandra and prayed to God that her family would believe her.
As she left she heard the mournful bugle call of the Hejnal from the Basilica. It was a sound she heard every night in her dreams, and would continue to do so until her dying day.
The house was quiet when she entered. She called out her grandfather’s name and made her way through every room searching for him. No lights were on. The old floorboards creaked under her steps as she ascended the staircase. The library was the last room past the bedrooms and a light shone underneath it. She looked in.
Henk Molenaar lay slumped at his desk, the lamplight washing his features white. Eva touched his arm and found it cold, she felt for a pulse in his neck and his wrist. Nothing. He was dead.
Eva gently kissed his cheeks and said her goodbyes, running her fingers through his hair. These past days it had regained its old sheen and texture. It felt like the hair of young man. He was smiling peacefully and his arm was held out across the desk, the fingers coiled as if holding someone else’s hand.
Eva climbed the ladder that swung across the shelves to the volume she was seeking. It was a large Bible, sturdily bound with a heavy hide cover and an extremely valuable illuminated codex.
Henk had told her it was an original Coptic Bible, possibly first century Roman, almost priceless. Moving about the house and through Henk’s writing desk, she located the house deeds. Every legal document was placed between the Bible's perfect ancient pages. She located his cashbox and removed all of the bank notes. She then went through Aga’s dusty unopened jewellery box. She found a diamond ring, and several gold bracelets and pearls. She put them all on, covering them with her dress.
Discovering her old bicycle, she rode to the train station, leaving the dead man behind in his favourite place. A man who had once gotten drunk with Rimbaud in Paris, fenced with Ezra Pound and debated with Freud was now at peace. At his favourite writing desk, he was holding his beloved Aga’s hand surrounded by his treasured tomes.
Eva was grieving, but she couldn’t show it. Her life as she had known it was gone. it was a sensation she couldn’t shake. As the train hurtled overnight toward Berlin, she said goodbye to Krakow and Warsaw, to Poland, and to the ghosts of Henk, Aga and Jonas. Absently, her thoughts drifted to Theo. Had he ever become the artist he had aspired to be?
Her conscience juggled the fact that she was saving lives but losing her very essence. Tomorrow she would drape herself in the finery that Donald T Kincaid would lavish on her. She would dine, drink and dance with the men who were engineering a war. There were plenty of girls like her, pretty little moths drawn to the flame of power, basking in its dangerous rays and loving every moment of it.
When she arrived in Berlin, she purchased sturdy brown paper. Wrapping the bible in it with the valuable documents between its pages, Eva took it to a bookstore off the Potsdam Plaza.
Amid the lines of books she found the clerk; Hugh O’Connor, an Irish friend of Chainbridges. She handed him the parcel, giving him the code word ‘Tome’. He took it and smiled. He’d have it sent to Chainbridge’s shop immediately.
One week later, at 4.45 am on Friday September the 1st 1939, the guns of the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the city of Gdansk on Hitler’s orders. The warship was stationed in the harbour, supposedly on a good-will visit and rained down its shells upon the population indiscriminately whereupon German Army Group North, under the command of General Von Bock, and Germany Army Group South under the command of General Von Rundstedt, commenced the invasion.
Two days later, the United Kingdom, its Commonwealth countries and France declared war on Germany. Seventeen days later, Generals Kovalev and Timoshenko poured their armoured divisions into Poland from the Russian borders. The speed of the German advance had caught everyone by surprise, and Stalin didn’t want to be left behind.
The British and French had estimated that Poland could hold out for two months, giving them time to prepare assistance. The invasion by Germany and Russia from the North, South and West, committed two million men against the Polish army numbering only 950,000.
The invaders captured every moment on film. Night after night the cinemas screened the newsreels across Germany. Eva would sit with Kincaid as the martial marching music and belligerent commentary boomed out. The audience around them would cheer and applaud at the images of their soldiers, their tanks and their fighter aircraft. These scenes would jump-cut to Hitler reviewing the progress of the invasion with his generals and sweeping his arm across maps of Poland, appearing to make brilliant decisions.
Eva flinched with every shell fired from German 88s, followed by the thick blooming explosions of Polish soil. Within a fortnight, the Polish Army had been routed once the Luftwaffe had gained air superiority. The film reels in the cinemas now showed the German armoured divisions driving through the streets of Warsaw, cutting to bombers' sights dropping their payloads onto the cities below. Eva lost contact with her cousins, all communications cut by the invasion. Then word filtered back from Gdansk that people boarding ferries were being turned away as German warships and U-Boats were now blockading the harbour and the seas around the coast. Her family never made it to the ships outward bound to England.
Thor Schenker sat nervously waiting for his meeting with Himmler. He noted that over Himmler’s door was a sign that read ‘No Jews Are Welcome Here’. Three motorised Waffen SS divisions had left without him for Poland under Metzger’s command. The SS headquarters were moving at a different pace now; communications were a constant stream, the staff going about their duties in terse silence. After the Lowe farm, he and Metzger had attacked two more isolated farm houses, repeating the massacre and ensuring that the Gestapo was involved.
Schenker had done better on these subsequent occasions. Instead of killing an old lady, he had come up against someone nearer his own age. The boy, no more than eighteen, had surprised him in a barn, brandishing a scythe. Schenker, in a panic, fired off a round before the Thompson's breech jammed, the bullets missing the boy. They wrestled to the ground, grunting, gouging and punching, the machine gun becoming wedged under Schenker’s back. The rising dust had made Schenker’s wind pipe contract so that he wheezed throughout the struggle. With tears clouding his vision, he fought with all of his strength, managing to roll on top of the boy, the muscles in his arms twitching with the strain. He looked momentarily down at him, the mouth twisted back revealing perfect white teeth, the hair tousled. He wrenched the scythe away when the boy, distracted, twisted his head up at the sounds of machine gun fire outside, and buried it into the boy's chest repeatedly.
Breathless he looked into his dying victim’s eyes, rose up onto his knees and, head tilted back, commended his soul to the almighty. Running his fingers gently through the boy’s hair, Schenker bent down and kissed him on his lips stained with blood. The sensation of that moment came back to him every time he replayed the scene in his mind.
His thoughts were broken as he was summoned into the office. Himmler was standing looking out at Berlin’s skyline. He spun on his heel as Schenker entered. The blond hair was shorn tight. Himmler thought, why did he shed those beautiful tresses?
‘Sit down, Captain.’ Himmler indicated a leather chair in front of his desk.
He studied the young man, his poise, the ease of youth as he strode across the room. Schenker's personal file lay open on his desk; three generations of Aryan blood verified on both sides of the family, excellent health and loyal party member. Risen through the ranks of the SA as a teenager, informing on the officers targeted during the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and then rising meteorically through the ranks of the Waffen SS.
He had distinguished himself during the Kristallnacht pogrom, co-ordinating and commanding attacks on the Jewish mercantile zones. He had displayed a ruthless streak during this operation, dispatching an eighty year old man with a Luger; this action led to him being promoted to Captain. General Metzger had mentioned him in dispatches, citing him as a future SS General.
Behind Himmler’s desk, on a small ornate table, stood a hand-made SS-Allach tea and coffee service. It had been produced to Himmler’s specifications. To him it embodied simple perfection like all things Aryan. He gestured to Schenker, who nodded, and poured two coffees from the plain coffee pot, handing one to Schenker. He admonished himself for allowing the cup to rattle on its saucer in the presence of such beauty and avoided making eye contact with the boy. They were eyes he could swim in.
‘No doubt, Captain, you’re missing the heat of battle with your comrades,’
Schenker nodded with real conviction. He had a taste for blood now, imagining himself a rabid attack dog of the Reich. Himmler moved away from the window and took his seat. The first thing that struck Schenker was the man’s desk. Everything was neat, orderly and arranged almost like a chessboard.
Himmler cleared his throat delicately. ‘Our glorious forces will annihilate everything before them. You will, Captain, have your chance to strike a blow for the Reich. Before that, I have a very special operation for you.’ Himmler afforded himself a beguiling smile. ‘You will prepare yourself for a mission we are developing which requires your particular skills.’
Schenker’s heart sank at the prospect of being desk bound and training in a field somewhere until he heard what Himmler actually had to say when suddenly it seemed that this visit was going to be very, very worthwhile. He leaned in closer hanging on his leader’s words.
The couriers travelled as a pair of military attaches hand-picked by Beria himself. They stepped out into the freezing night when every other Muscovite with half a brain was in bed. They were being dispatched from the Kremlin to Tyumen in the Urals on a 4am flight with highly classified documents.
The attache case containing these documents was locked with a heavy set of hand-cuffs to the wrist of the one who occupied the passenger seat. Both men were armed and the car itself was an armour-plated NKVD Zil. They drove from the Kremlin out onto the main prospeckt in the direction of the airport. The wide lanes were deserted and the first early frost smattered the highway, making the heavy Zil swerve occasionally. The two men didn’t speak, fully focused as they were on their mission. In the rear view mirror, the driver could make out the lights of a similar vehicle a hundred yards behind. Obviously the Politburo was taking no chances this morning, he thought. The lights drew closer in the mirror as the car accelerated, over-taking them and racing ahead until its tail lights disappeared into the night.
Both men exchanged a glance — an escort car? The passenger decided to use the radio.
‘Is there an escort car with us?’
There was no sound on the other end apart from a faint electronic crackle. The passenger cursed. This car was probably produced near the end of the production month when there were no parts left to use and it was just hammered together. He removed his gun from its holster and let the weapon, with its comforting weight, rest on his lap. The driver, picking up on the other man's unease, accelerated, keen to get to the military airstrip along the empty prospeckt as quickly as he could. The road was completely deserted. The brilliant Spasskaya Red Star glowed over the arabesques of the Kremlin skyline in the rear view mirror. Another light from an approaching motorcycle loomed up and appeared in the side mirrors. The driver noted too late that there was a side-car passenger armed with a machine gun mounted on the front. The pillion fired into the Zil’s rear tyres in a short accurate burst. The driver struggled to control the vehicle, twisting the wheel and letting it flow through his fingers as the front tyres tried to compensate. The motorcycle raced ahead and the side-car rider fired directly at the windscreen and front headlights. The first wave of bullets glanced off, then slowly, under sustained fire, the window began to crack.
The motorcycle weaved back and forth in front of the driver who was accelerating to hit it. The side-car rider opened fire into the windscreen and then the Zil’s front tyres. The passenger tried the
radio again. Nothing but static. The windscreen imploded, throwing chunks of glass onto the men. The passenger fired out at the motorcycle as it weaved and bobbed, the side-car rider no longer firing. The driver saw the other car ahead of it too late. The car that had passed them was stopped in the middle of the highway.
On impact, the two couriers were hurled through the shattered window, glancing off the stationary vehicle, and sliding across the tarmac. The motor cycle swerved back and pulled up alongside the injured driver who was lying prone. The side-car rider fired his machine gun into the man. The passenger tried to rise up and fire his revolver, but was killed by a sustained burst of machine gun fire. The side-car rider climbed out of his vehicle and walked up to the dead passenger. Rolling up his coat sleeve, he removed his hand with a blow from a cleaver.
He brought the attache case to the other car and the occupants who had been standing by the roadside joined them. They rifled through the case's contents quickly and thoroughly, but didn’t find what they were looking for. Then they searched the two dead men. Stuffed down the front of the driver’s shirt they found their prize.
The motorcycle bearing only its main rider, the document tucked into his weather-proof coat, turned and tore off into the night. The side-car rider and the two other men opened the boot of the stationary car, dragged the dead couriers over and hoisted them in. After the impact, closing the boot was impossible, so they fashioned a rope with their ties and closed it. They pushed the vehicle over to the side of the road and one of the men produced an incendiary device. He lobbed it into the car. They left, heading away from the airport, leaving the smashed Zil blazing in the Moscow night.
By early morning the lone motorcycle rider, a former White Army Cossack loyal to the late Tsar Nicholas' family, had ensured the documents had arrived safely at the German Embassy. Its Charge d' Affaires, Tippelskirch, handed over written assurances in return, signed by Von Ribbentrop personally, that an independent Cossackia would be established after Germany had conquered Russia.