It was fifteen minute's walk to my hotel on dry pavements. Tonight it took just short of thirty. The ice crackled underfoot. Only four of my cover men were within sight, picking me up at the Neukomodietheater and tailing at a distance. They worked well but they were useless because the system was useless. Once inside a theatre you were meant to be safe, but Pol could have easily been one of the adverse party and could have slipped a knife into me and no one the wiser. Useless.
There were fresh placards along the Bulow-strasse and I saw Peters's name, and bought a late edition. Ewald Peters, Chancellor Erhard's chief personal security man. Only last month he'd been in London, protection for the Chancellor in case anyone threw a tomato. Now they'd arrested him. Charge: mass murder of Jews. He was a senior official in the Federal Kriminalpoliiei and responsible for the security of the Chancellor, the President of the Republic, and visiting statesmen in Bonn. How much had Erhard known? Nothing. He'd resisted pressure recently at the Party Congress, insisting on continuing the trials and refusing the plea for an amnesty that would release a score of Nazis from the cells. If he'd suspected his chief bodyguard he'd have turned the man over right away.
It was the Z Commission who'd nabbed Peters. I admired them for that – they were more bulldog than dachshund. There was already a lot of unrest inside the department, because their job was exclusively to hunt down the Nazi remnant, and since there were several Nazis in the hierarchy of their own section they risked losing promotion with every arrest they made. A very odd way to run an eisenbahn.
Yesterday they'd got Hans Krueger, West German Minister for Refugees. Charge: serving as a judge at a ‘special’ Nazi court in Poland. In a few days' time there'd be a new name on the placards, because the Z-Polizei were just now tying up the loose ends. Franz Rohm, Secretary of the Road Safety Committee. It had taken me three weeks to find him. I was pleased with that one because suicide was among my subjects and I knew Rohm would kick a chair from under him any day now. I didn't hold with capital punishment; it had been abolished in West Germany since 1949, and that was good; but these men were infectious and there was one thing worse than that they should hang it was that they should live, and infect others.
The snow crackled under my feet.
I turned into the north end of the Kreuzberg Garten and passed the fountain; it was a frozen ice-cake. Another dozen yards and there was some shadow cast by shrubs, and I melted, waiting. When the first one came past I moved into the light of the lamps and stopped him, saying in German:
"For local Control, please. I've met Pol. Spelt P-O-L. From now on they're to call off all cover, fully urgent. They can find me Post and Bourse."
He lit the cigarette I'd put between my lips.
"I shall have to confirm before I leave."
"The sooner the better," I said. "The others can stay until you've confirmed. Then call them off. I want a clear field from midnight."
I thanked him for the light and walked on, flicking the cigarette away as soon as there was a chance. Nearing the hotel through the Schonerlinde-strasse where the pavement was being cleared of snow I heard an airliner go surging up from Tempelhof less than a mile away, and turned to watch its lights.
In the morning I would have to cancel my reservation on Lufthansa 174, because it was written between the lines of the thrice-accursed memorandum that I must stay.
Naumann: the snowman. Sickert: sick at heart. Kalt: cold. Helldorf: held off. Kielmann: kill a man. Hansnig: hands. Edseclass="underline" easily.
Shuffle.
Helldorf. Sickert. Kalt. Naumann. Kielmann. Edsel. Hansnig.
Try it.
I held off, sick at heart to see the cold snowman kill a man so easily with his hands.
There were forty-odd names on a single sheet of the memorandum, each one a possible contact of Heinrich Zossen. In half an hour they were locked in my memory and the sheet was added to the pile for burning. My habit was to travel light; by morning the complete memorandum would be cremated.
A mental note: keyword 'whale.' Tell Control to turn the heat off the big fish so that they relaxed their vigilance while I got within range.
It was only the smaller fish I'd netted so far. They'd sent KLJ after the big ones and now he was dead. The big ones were people like the Hitler deputy Bormann, and Mueller, and General von Rittmeister. They'd got out of Berlin under fire from the Russian batteries in ' 45, a whole gang of them running for Obersalzberg and beyond, while their Fuhrer's short round-shouldered carcass was smothered in petrol-soaked rag and set alight. Some of them had taken off in Himmler's four-motor plane from the Flughafen a mile from here through a dawn sky dark with smoke. I could see the runway lights from this window now.
I went across to it. Outside the night was still and the city frozen in sleep. The present and the past lay buried under the snow. What made us rake like this among the ashes of that distant hell after twenty years? They said it was to help a nation to its feet. The new young Germany had heard too many tales of the war that had raged above its unborn head, and wanted to know the truth, and face it and then forget. That was the reason.
It wasn't mine.
'Have we a minute,' they said, 'to chant a prayer?' He shook his head.
My breath made a bloom on the window's glass. The room was too hot and I turned the radiators off, working for another hour. With half the memorandum shuffled, linked and recorded in my mind I left the hotel and walked on the snow to clear my lungs for sleep. The street was empty.
Even in the instant of deciding I'd take over from KLJ the main plan had presented itself to me, just as a player sometimes gets an overall vision of the board before he makes his gambit. Therefore I'd told Poclass="underline" 'I'm going in alone.' Because it had to be a fast operation or nothing, a blitzkrieg on their own terms. I could stick this city another month, no more. In a month I'd have to find him or get out.
There were two ways to do it: the slow and the quick. The slow way was to flush those men one by one – Helldorf, Sickert, Kalt and the whole forty-odd of them – in the hope that they'd lead me to Zossen. Pol had played too fair with me, calling Zossen no more than 'a part of the search area'. The first quick reading of the memorandum told me that Zossen was the whole of the area. Knock him down and the rest would skittle over. To get to him by first calling on those forty-odd contacts would bring a great deal into the light, and that was what the Bureau wanted. It was the slow way. But the quick way would get the same result. Go straight to Zossen and strike.
The quick way was to reverse the order of things. To find one man among three and a half million I must let him find me. Let him know I was here and here to get him. Draw his fire, so that he'd show himself. Then try to finish him off before he finished me. Hope for an overkill.
So I'd told Pol I must work alone. The only way was the quick way and I didn't want it cluttered up with a motley crew of cover men who'd trip me and get killed in the process.