Day turns into evening. Her eyes are hurting and her back aches from being perched on the edge of her chair. She’s falling asleep. She’s ready to call it a day. It’s all so maddening, so frustrating, and maybe she was wrong, maybe she’s been wasting her time and the information she needs isn’t even here. Then suddenly it is one in the morning, and she realises she must have dozed off, must have slumped down on the keyboard, but in the process she has somehow, inadvertently, given the right command. A really Zen piece of computer operation. She has summoned up a directory called LOCKROOM, a name that even in her weary state she can see is highly promising. She plunges into it. The directory contains a list of files with weird names like PRESLEY, MANSON, BUNDY, none of which she can quite understand, and then she sees it, the entry that makes sense of everything; a file called HITLER. DOC. She calls it up. The entry appears:
Item: Volkswagen automaton
Date of construction: 1938
Dimensions: 300×115×140 mm
Country of manufacture: Germany
Constructed of wood, metal, glass, semi-precious stone, human bone
Maker: Paul Loffler
Previous owner: Adolf Hitler
Value: priceless.
Location: Mrs Lederer
She almost swoons with pleasure.
♦
Here, finally, is Adolf Hitler in the Spring of 1938 in a timber cabin in the woods of Bavaria. He is here to relax from the affairs of state. Eva Braun sits beside him on a Biedermeier love seat, sipping Apfelwein and nibbling Mohnstriezel.
And here is Paul Loffler, one of Germany’s finest, most inventive makers of clocks and automata, and one of Hitler’s favourites. He is here to entertain the happy couple, to amuse and amaze them with his latest wonderful creation. In the past he has made cuckoo clocks out of which pop extinct or mythological creatures — cerberus, a gryphon, a tyrannosaurus rex, a dodo — or an automaton the size of a wedding cake on which lovingly hand-carved figures enact scenes from Wagner’s Ring, synchronised to music played on gramophone records.
Loffler enters carrying a large carpet bag which he places on a small occasional table in front of the Führer. He releases the clasps and opens the neck of the bag before reaching in and producing what looks like a small model of a Volkswagen Beetle, though at that time, of course, he would only have known it as a KdF-Wagen. It is carved from smooth, polished mahogany, with brass fittings for the hub caps, windscreen wipers, door handles and headlamps, and although it has a fabric sun roof, the windows are opaque, made of black glass. It is no more than a foot long.
Loffler holds it out to Adolf Hitler who takes it from him and eyes it carefully. He does not smile. He can see that it is a well-made and skilfully executed model of the car, but somehow he had expected more from Loffler.
Then he notices that there is a small brass winder protruding from the rear of the car, like a cranking handle, that just cries out to be turned, and Hitler duly turns it.
Slowly and smoothly the sun roof rolls back to reveal the interior of the car. There are seats and a steering wheel and a metal gear lever and foot pedals, but there are also two small figures, a man and a woman sitting beside each other on the rear seat.
“They’re carved from real human bone,” Loffler says confidentially.
Adolf Hitler peers at the two tiny figures. They are beautifully carved and they are articulated. They are able to move thanks to an intricate system of threads, wires and armatures, and as the handle turns, they begin to perform. But there is something disturbing about them. First, they are naked, a forgivable artistic licence perhaps since it shows off Loffler’s fine carvings of muscles and flesh; but what seems unforgivable, what in the circumstances would have previously been considered unthinkable, is the fact that the two white figures have been given the faces of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.
As Hitler continues to turn the handle, the female figure lowers her head towards the male figure’s crotch where a penis, flatteringly out of scale and disproportionately large, rises towards her mouth. The two bone automata mime an act of vigorous fellatio until, in a sudden rapid conclusion, the female pulls back her head and a shower of sparkling powder — “Genuine diamond dust,” Loffler explains — jets out of the automaton’s penis and coats the face of the miniature Eva Braun. Instantly the sun roof springs back over the car and conceals the two figures. Again it looks like a harmless model of a KdF-Wagen.
Paul Loffler looks extremely pleased with himself, but Adolf Hitler shows a more complex, more equivocal response. His face is not inert, rather it seems to be searching for an appropriate expression. Beneath the moustache, his lips twitch in an uncertain manner that Loffler certainly hopes will turn into an expression of uncontainable pleasure, and sure enough, at length, the Führer does allow his lips to bend into a thin, taut smile.
Later that same day, Paul Loffler is taken out into the woods and, in a spot well screened from the cabin by a row of silver birches, he is shot by a Gestapo officer called Hans Krauss. Adolf Hitler shows his appreciation by giving Krauss an early version of a Kraft durch Freudewagen, a full size one, a car that will eventually find its way, not into Carlton Bax’s locked room, but into Phelan’s bunker.
♦
Renata continues to stare at the entry on the screen. Now she understands. So this is what Phelan has been looking for so hard and so long, why he kidnapped Carlton Bax and Marilyn Lederer; because Bax had got Adolf Hitler’s toy Beetle, and because Phelan wanted to play with it. Ah well, boys will be boys. But what Phelan obviously didn’t know was where to find it, and frankly she’s not sure she’s much wiser for having seen this file. What on earth does ‘Mrs Lederer’ mean as a location? Could that be Marilyn’s mother, Charles Lederer’s wife? Would Carlton Bax really have left his priceless Volkswagen with his girlfriend’s mother? Why not just leave it in the famous locked room?
And then she turns around, away from the screen, and she nearly jumps out of her skin as she sees Phelan is standing behind her, and may have been watching her for who knows how long. His hands are folded casually in front of him and he looks controlled and serene.
“I hate it when people lie to me,” he says.
“I haven’t lied…” she starts to say.
“Yes you have. You said Marilyn Lederer had told you nothing. It looks like she told you more than enough.”
“She didn’t…I was…”
“It’s all right Renata. I’ve known for some time that you weren’t exactly what you appear to be.”
“I always intended to tell you where Hitler’s Volkswagen was.”
“What you intended doesn’t matter at all. You’ve found out what I wanted to know. You see, I want that Volkswagen rather badly. I believe it’s the final thing I need. Once I’ve got it I’ll be ready. I believe it contains serious magic, Renata. It’s my Grail, my lost ark. And thanks to you, Renata, I now know where it is. I ought to be grateful to you.”