In the same fortnight after the cancellation of Seelowe — Sea Lion — on October 12th, certain units of the XIV Panzer Division, the division's Panzergrenadier Brigade and the Panzeraufklarungsabteilung — the armoured reconnaissance unit — had also been moved from Holland to the Brest area of Brittany. Lastly, the recce company, the three parachute rifle regiments, and the engineer-signal units of a Fallschirmjaeger — Parachute — Division had been detached from their headquarters in Poland and been reassigned to guarding certain airfields in northern France on behalf of the Luftwaffe. Such a wasteful employment of highly-trained, elite troops that McBride had lumped it with the other evidence.
What he had gathered was sufficient proof that a small, highly mobile invasion force had been assembled in Brittany during late October, 1940. Smaragdenhalskette was a reality in terms of the deployment of units.
It remained without a target, an objective.
This was not something that disappointed McBride. Just as he accepted that what lay now under his hand had come spilling out of dusty files when required, so it would go on. He knew that somehow he was meant to find the documents relating to Emerald Necklace, and that it would all be in his book, and that the book would be a big one. One slight regret — he would have liked an eye-witness, or more than one.
He sipped at his coffee, the warm liquid spreading like the warmth of self-satisfaction in his stomach. Goessler, when he popped his head round the door of the room, found McBride still studying the documents as if they were already fine-print contracts, and sipping at his coffee.
"Herr Professor McBride—" Goessler seemed so much more bumbling at moments, yet so much sharper at others now that he was in on the money side, that McBride wondered what kind of mind kept slipping in and out of focus behind the rubicund, smiling face. "Working on the unit designations—" He sat down beside McBride, hand on the younger man's arm immediately in a conspiratorial gesture, voice lowered. For five per cent, Goessler was apparently only too willing to subordinate himself to McBride. McBride nodded, amused. "I have so far traced one man living in Berlin here who was with XLV Division in France during the — critical time."
"You're sure of this?" McBride smiled, saw a moment of calculation in Goessler's eyes, dismissed it, and added: "Can I meet him?"
"That is being arranged — by my secretary. Possibly this afternoon. The records are very sketchy. I think we are lucky to find this one man. There may be others, of course."
"If he knows enough, it may not matter—"
"Of course — your visa terminates tomorrow—"
"Shit, yes."
"You can rely on me to continue — our work, Thomas." Goessler smiled at the introduction of the Christian name. For him, it seemed to seal something.
"I'll get this stuff duplicated, Klaus." McBride indicated the documents with a wave of his hand. "Thank you."
Goessler bowed his head in a bird-like eating movement towards McBride.
"It is exciting — and it will be remunerative, Thomas. Much more interesting than the early years of the German Communist Party, I assure you."
Goessler's laughter — which caused the beavering team of students to look up in unfeigned surprise — seemed to bellow in the quiet of the Archives Department of the university library.
He was the janitor for A block of flats out on the Greifswalder Strasse, well into the north-east suburbs of East Berlin. A fifties built, unrelievedly grey area of workers" apartments in ugly, duplicated blocks. No trace of history prior to the war and the peace and the Communist Party of the DDR, as if the erasure of the past had been deliberate, final. He had been a Funkmeister — a Signals sergeant-major — with the Signals Abteilung of XLV Infantry Division, and his name was Richard Kohl and he was now an upstanding, clean-nosed member of the Communist Party — and undoubtedly an HVA "unofficial" set to monitor the behaviour, visitors and domestic life of the occupants of his block of flats — having been an eager member of the Nazi Party since 1936. He'd transferred from the Wehrmacht to the Waffen-SS in 1942, and ended up at Leningrad for his pains. A short prison sentence after he was caught on the outskirts of Berlin by the Red Army, a process of 'reeducation", and he was fit for service in the new DDR.
He was thin, in his early sixties, and with a padded, complacent mind. As he talked of 1940, however — undoubtedly remembering forward through the remainder of the war — a gritty quality of survival seemed to emanate from him and McBride could no longer simply despise him.
"Yes, we were transferred to the Brest area late in October — if you say the twenty-sixth, sir, I won't argue. Near Plabennec, sir, that's correct."
Goessler had insisted on accompanying McBride, but remained carefully silent during the interview. McBride and Kohl might have been alone in the simple, comfortable janitor's apartment. Kohl's wife had been sent shopping. Pictures of party leaders on the wall, a small TV set, patterned carpet which clashed with the flowered curtains, a solid, plain three-piece suite, a square-edged, dark dining-table, the flimsy chairs of which were covered with the material from the curtains. Flowered wallpaper. McBride allowed one part of his mind to indulge itself seeking an analogous room. He finally found it in British films of the 1940s — there was something old-fashioned about the room, as if the consumer-boom of the fifties and sixties simply hadn't happened. It hadn't here, he reminded himself.
"I remember those weeks — we were taking it turn and turn about in tents and billets, sir," he added, smiling with the recollection. Then he shook his head. "Officers had billets in the villages around — we had tents a lot of the time, or barns, or outhouses, sheds."
"Why were you there, Herr Kohl? Wasn't such temporary billeting strange for France at that time?"
"Yes, it was. But we were just told — special assignment. And that meant you didn't ask questions, just did it."
McBride restrained the temptation to glance in Goessler's direction. Kohl seemed unaware of the German academic in one corner, perched on a dining-room chair, occasionally making his own notes.
"What was that assignment — what did you do during those weeks?"
"Played around with radio-gear, ran signals exercises — as we always did."
"Nothing — special"?" McBride's disappointment- was evident.
"No, sir. More intensive practice, a whole new range of codes to learn — though we didn't use them in practice — but not much more than that."
"Your briefing — what was your briefing?"
"I — sir, I never had a briefing. I was in hospital, caught influenza sleeping in those tents. Hospital in Brest—"
"How long?"
"Late November — perhaps even early December when I rejoined my unit."
"And where was your unit then?"
"Stood down, sir. Rest and recuperation, regrouped around the Rennes area. Proper billets—"
McBride's face screwed up in frustrated disappointment.
Then he said very slowly: "And what happened while you were away?"
Kohl thought very carefully. "XLV Division never moved — no, they did, sir. One of my pals told me they'd all been shipped down to Brest, by lorry. Now, when was that?" He screwed up his thin face with the effort of recollection, rubbed his pale forehead beneath the thin grey hair, tapped his pursed lips, then said: "Sorry, sir — late in November, but I don't remember—"