He did worse, and I watched him do it.
A guard shouted as one of the three hundred men broke from the ranks and came towards the Obergruppenfuhrer. He was not riddled where he stood because Zossen had raised his gloved hand, curious to know why the man had left the ranks. He had once been bigger than Zossen; his frame, outlined beneath the skin, was wide at the shoulder; but now he was smaller, because most of the flesh had gone and he looked as if made of paper. This batch, as I knew, had lived for months on acorns, crusts and rancid water. It would be impossible to judge how long it had been since they had eaten what anyone could call a meal.
The Jew walked up to the Aryan in black and came to a lurching stop. The effort of walking ten yards had brought the breath hissing in his mouth, and his rib-cage pulsed beneath the skin that hung from the bones like loose yellow silk. I heard him ask Zossen if it were allowed that they all might chant the Khaddish, the prayer for the dead. The Obergruppenfiihrer did not knock him down for his impudence, as I had expected. He was an officer. He looked at the watch on his wrist, considered a moment, and shook his head. "There is not enough time. The roads are bad and I am due back in Briicknerwald in one hour, for luncheon." He signalled his Stiirmbannfuhrer and the machine-guns opened up.
Heinrich Zossen. I remembered him.
Normally one would keep such a memory to oneself for the sake of decency but as a leading witness for the prosecution at the 1945Tribunal I was obliged to recount this event, among many others. The others were no better, but it was mentioned afterwards that throughout my testimony totalling fifteen weeks I spoke calmly and objectively, with one brief lapse. This was when I spoke of Heinrich Zossen. Even now, twenty-one years later, in a Berlin where you could hear the singing from the synagogue rising freely, I was unable, when in a restaurant, to open a menu headed with that word, Mittagessen. Luncheon.
Pol was still silent, knowing that he'd played the ace. Zossen was in Berlin.
"Then I hope you get him," I said.
Still silent. Playing my own game. I said:
"But I think you're wrong. They say he's in the Argentine."
Now we both talked and I knew that he knew that he'd won. He said:
"He was seen in Berlin a week ago."
"Who saw him? "
"A witness at the trial."
"I'll talk to him then."
"He fell from the tenth floor of the Witzenhausen Hof the day after he had told us."
"Olbricht?"
"Yes."
"He could have been mistaken."
"He knew Zossen well. You know that."
"Is that part of the search area, then? Zossen? "
"It has become part of it."
"So you're roping me in."
"Yes."
"Because you know I'd like to see him on trial. No go. They don't hang them any more." I suddenly said a terrible thing, because I believed Pol was genuine and my guard was down. "Give me a rope, though, give me a rope and ask no questions."
His silence was disapproving.
I said: "I'm tired, that's all."
"Of course. After sixmonths' work -"
"Don't talk to me like a bloody nurse."
He was silent again. The hum of voices was loudening under the domed roof as the people left the bars and went back to their seats.
"Come on then, Pol – you haven't got long. Finish me off."
He said immediately as if I'd switched on a tape: "There are thousands of Nazis still living in Germany with false papers and even the Federal Intelligence Services are riddled with them. The U.S. Gehlen Bureau quietly released hundreds of Army and SS officers from internment when General Heusinger dictated his terms to NATO andthey have since reorganised the German Army, which is now the largest and best equipped in Europe. The German Air Force is at present ahead of the RAF in striking power. The German General Staff has made secret non-NATO deals with Spain, Portugal, Egypt and African countries and established its own bases with ground-to-ground missiles. Scores of Hitler's officers have returned to power and influence in both civil and military key positions, and their, posts were granted them in the full knowledge of their past activities. In the General Staff itself there is a military microcosm of dedicated Nazis, a hard core prepared for an explosive expansion when the opportunity comes. If -"
"Pol," I said, "did the Bureau give you this stuff? "
"I am an executive, like yourself, not an administrator."
"If I decided – and I haven't – to take over this new operation without even a day's break I'd have to be convinced of their argument. It would take days. I think the German GGS is no more likely to make a war than the Ku-Klux-Klan."
"Let me remind you how the U.S. prosecutor put it at the Nurnberg Tribunaclass="underline" ‘German militarism will tie itself to any new creed in order to regain the power of making war.’ There are new creeds emerging now in Egypt, China, Cuba. Further, they realise the huge potential of the GGS and its value as an ally, given the right ground: aworld on the brink."
"You can't start war without people."
"People never start war. Politicians and generals start them. As long as ten years ago – and only ten years after the bloodshed stopped – there was a rally of ex-Nazi soldiers in honour of Kesselring. The people protested but the police pushed them back and kept order."
"The people are still protesting, by means of the trials."
"And now the trials are becoming more and more difficult. Convicted war-criminals are no longer hanged, but witnesses are being shot. The tide is on the turn."
I sat with my eyes shut. The auditorium had gone dark. Music was playing. A girl sang.
Pol was silent. He knew that in persuasion one must pause, so that the subject is given time to dwell.
"Political polemics," I said wearily. "Keep them. Shove them down the next man's throat."
His silence was disapproving.
"I don't claim, Pol, to have my finger on the pulse of the human condition or to know what future mankind has, if it has any. And I'm tired. You chose the wrong box, just as I told you in the beginning."
He was moving about and I opened my eyes. From somewhere he'd taken a plastic briefcase. It must have been under his jacket. I would have seen it before, otherwise. He put it on my knees.
"I am to leave this with you," was all he said.
I let it rest there without touching it. "Damn your impudence, Pol."
"We have arranged a cover man for you," he said softly, "and a front."
"I don't want a cover."
"What happens if you get into a corner?"
"I'll get out again."
"You know the risks, Quiller."
"Did KLJ use a cover man?"
"Yes, but it is difficult to cover anyone from a long range shot."