‘It was three years ago-and I tell you not because it is the only time I have seen life slip through my fingers-but because it was the most vivid, the closest. After the Anschluss I went into Austria with Hitler. I was favoured. A fellow Austrian, he wanted me to feel the thrill of the joining together of the two Germanys. It was a privilege. Heydrich told me so himself, the Fuhrer had asked for me personally. I was in a good position. I was alone with him half a dozen times. I could have shot him like a mad dog on any one of a dozen occasions. I did not. It was not my role. My role was to learn all I could and feed it back to you or someone like you. A few days later-March 19th to be precise, I cannot forget the date-I decided to walk in the old neighbourhood. The SS had Jews on their hands and knees scrubbing the pavements. At first I looked in the crowd to see if I knew any of those onlookers, the passively guilty. I did not. Then one of the Jews looked up. He knew me at once and I him. A school-friend from the twenties. At first I thought the moment would pass like a secret between us, but then he rose up cried “Wolf”. Took a step towards me. And an SS trooper shot him dead. Then the man holstered his gun, turned the body over with the toe of his boot and saluted me. I returned the salute and walked away. I have never been able to walk away from Turli Cantor since. His “Wolf” meant “save me”. I didn’t have the chance, and if I had I would no more have done it than I would have shot Hitler. Now, Calvin, do you understand what I’m saying? Could I save Turli Cantor? Could we either of us save Walter Stilton? Do you really think you will spare the life of a single Russian soldier?’
Cal felt swamped, buried alive in the torrent Stahl had unleashed upon him.
‘I… I…’
‘Would I have been the better man if I had dropped the pretence and stepped in to save the life of Turli Cantor? If I had been for once the man I thought I was, not the man I pretended to be? Are we any of us who we think we are? Or do we become who we pretend to be? Pretence is the dangerous game.’
‘Jeezus… I…’
Cal turned to look into the room. The light from the window was too bright. He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose where they pinched. He pulled his feelings together and looked to Stahl again.
‘Wolf?’
Stahl had vanished. Cal rushed to the window. Stahl was falling without a murmur, eyes wide, looking back at Cal, arms outspread like Christ crucified, falling to earth.
§ 93
They-whoever they were-Cal was no longer sure whether he was at the beck and call of his own people or the British-they kept him waiting. He passed the time scanning the Herald, The Times and the Manchester Guardian. How did the British manage to keep things so secret? A man jumps to his death from a window smack dab in the middle of London-and no-one records the fact, no newspaper so much as hints at it. Whatever else it was-class-bound, dank, obsessive-Britain was, above all, a secret society-Stahl had been right about that-and that, he thought, had little to do with the war. That was simply the way they were.
He placed a bet with himself that when someone finally shoved the door open it would be Ruthven-Greene, with a bullshitting yarn to spin him. It wasn’t. It was Gelbroaster.
‘Son,’ he said simply. ‘Mind if I pull up a chair?’
They were both on foreign territory.
‘Be their guest,’ said Cal.
The general smiled at this. Lowered himself into the only other chair in the room with an old man’s sigh, rested his hands a moment on his knees, then sat back. Rolled an unlit cigar between his fingers. Thought better of it. Stuck it back in his top pocket.
‘You’ve done a man’s job, my boy. They found pages and pages of notes in Stahl’s room-he’d filled a legal pad. The British are well pleased.’
‘You know, sir,’ said Cal, ‘I can hear the “but” coming.’
‘But… there are one or two chiggers in the shoo-fly pie.’
It was a Stilton moment without Walter. Cal had always half felt that Walter made up some of his English turns of phrase. He was damn sure Gelbroaster had just made up an American one.
‘Such as?’
‘The information you unearthed about the Soviet Union is… prickly.’
‘Prickly?’
‘Spiky as a saguaro in the Arizona desert. How we, how they, use it is going to be a delicate matter. Kind of thing you only pull out with tweezers.’
Gelbroaster was labouring the point. Cal already had the message.
‘You mean they’re not going to tell the Russians.’
Gelbroaster looked faintly surprised at this.
‘Perceptive of you. But yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The decision’s been taken. What you and Reggie found out will be kept a secret. Wasn’t my decision, you understand. But I’m going to go along with it.’
‘Who’s decision was it?’
‘Churchill’s.’
‘Are we bound by what the British do? The Germans have three million men poised to rip all hell out of Russia-and we’re not going to tell them?’
‘If it were up to me I would, but we’re in the army, we take orders. Churchill has spoken to the President. He’s the commander-in-chief, and his orders are we don’t tell ‘em. I’ve never questioned a presidential order. I don’t intend to start now.’
‘And I don’t mean to question your orders either, sir. But they’re going to massacre the Russians and those they don’t massacre they’ll turn into slaves.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But Churchill wants Russia in the war on his side. He wants no loophole that would let Stalin pull off one more deal with Hitler. It may sound heartless, but this way the Russian entry into the war is guaranteed.’
Cal got out of his seat. Ready to leave.
‘Heartless? It’s murder!’
Gelbroaster waved him back down.
‘Sit down and hold your fire, son. There’s more to come.’
Cal stood.
‘Such as? I don’t see what more they can do. Walter Stilton died getting us that information. Stahl died for it, in his own mad way. I damn near got killed myself. And they’re just going to throw it away?’
‘Sit down.’
Cal sat.
‘It’s this. With Stahl dead, your mission in Zurich is over. So we’re flying you back to Washington.’
‘You mean they’re flying me out of here because I know too much?’
‘Churchill insisted on it. He wants nothing to get out. Believe me, son, there’s no disgrace. There’s even a promotion. You’ll go home a major and there’ll be a good job for you at the War Department.’
Gelbroaster paused.
‘And?’
‘This is the hard bit. You know who I mean by Fritz Kuhn?’
‘Sure, everybody’s heard of him. He led the German-American Bund. He got nailed for embezzlement about two years ago.’
‘His successor in the Bund was a guy named Wilhelm Kunze. Kunze fled to Mexico earlier this year and the Bund has kind of fallen apart. It’s no real threat to anyone any more. But-and this is a huge but-there’s no denying that a fifth column back home was a dangerous thing for a while. Mostly assholes who liked fancy uniforms and parading up and down doing idiotic salutes. Get ‘em in every town, particularly when there’s nothing worth hunting and nothing much else to do. What mattered was who they’d got in power. Nobody much cared if a potato farmer from Idaho dressed up like a Nazi at the weekend-what mattered was who mattered. If you catch my drift. Feds have been trying to crack the Bund for a while. Pick up the messy trail Kuhn and Kunze left. Well, they finally got their hands on the Bund’s files. A lot of it’s coded, in a crude kind of way-fake names, that sort of thing, box numbers rather than real addresses, nothing a high school kid couldn’t crack overnight. Mostly it is potato farmers in Idaho-but it also seems fairly certain that they’ve identified Frank Reininger as a member.’
‘Jesus!’ Cal said softly. Then, ‘How long have you known?’