A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter V

26th February 1941, SS Barracks, Unter den Eichen, Berlin-Lichterfelde Felsen sat in the polished corridor outside Lehrer's office, watching two soldiers in vests and fatigues cleaning the corners with brushes too small for the job. Twice in the last fifteen minutes a sergeant had dropped by to kick their arses and salute Felsen, who was sitting uncomfortably in the uniform of an SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer.

An adjutant came out of Lehrer's office and waved him in. Felsen saluted the Gruppenfuhrer. Lehrer nodded him into in a high-backed chair on the other side of a desk with black leather inlay. Felsen took out his cigarettes, screwed one in his mouth and Lehrer reminded him that permission was required to smoke in front of a superior officer.

'You'll get used to it,' said Lehrer. 'You'll even grow to like it.'

'I'm not sure how.'

The greatest burden…' he said, fixing him with the glare of his full authority, 'the true burden, which is responsibility, is the cast-iron yoke across my shoulders. Your actions are an added weight. You, on the other hand, have the lightness of being of a man unencumbered in the field.'

'Following orders.'

'You'll find yourself with more of a free hand than most.'

'Now that I'm a fully paid up member of the SS…'

'It's only a mark a month off your salary and it all goes into the Spargemeinschaft-SS so you can draw interest-free loans and…'

'A mark a month isn't my problem. What am I being paid to do? Am I allowed to know yet?'

'I wasn't trying to bore you Hauptsturmfuhrer Felsen, I was merely trying to give you a practical instance of what I've been talking about… what I mentioned in the car last night.'

'The SS as an economic power in the new Germanic Reich, spreading from the North Cape of Scandinavia to the Pyrenees and the tip of the Brest Peninsula to Lublin.'

'Don't leave out Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, the Ukraine, the Black Sea states and on and on and on,' said Lehrer. 'The big picture, remember.'

'I'll settle for a thumbnail sketch for the moment. It's the peasant brain, sir.'

'You probably know the SS runs various businesses.'

'I've only supplied couplings to the railways which are heavily used by the SS, but I don't know much about their other business interests.'

'We have brickworks, quarries, potteries, cement factories, building material plants, soft drinks factories, meat processing plants, bakeries and, of course, military armaments and munitions factories. There are a lot of other enterprises, but that gives you the idea.'

'I don't see where my expertise fits in, sir.'

'Let's talk about munitions. What's the difference between this war and the last one?'

'It's an aerial war, an aerial bombardment war.'

'All Berliners think about is air raids,' Lehrer sighed. 'I'm talking about the war. The offensive.'

'There are no static fronts. It's a mobile war. Blitzkrieg. "

'Exactly. It's a mobile war. It requires machinery, machine tools, artillery. It's also a tank war. Tanks have armour. To stop a tank you have to penetrate the hardened steel of its armour and that requires what is known as solid-core ammunition.'

'The shell heads are hardened with an alloy-tungsten, I believe… so are the machine tools, the gun barrels and tank armour.'

'Otherwise known as wolfram or wolframite,' said Lehrer. 'Do you know where that comes from?'

'China… most of it, and Russia. Sweden has some, not much, even though they invented the word tungsten, and…' Felsen slowed as the cogs clicked, '…the Iberian Peninsula.'

'You know your stuff.'

'I learnt a lot from Wencdt.'

'Wencdt?'

'My General Manager, he's a metallurgist,' said Felsen. 'You mentioned the Ukraine and the Black Sea states earlier.'

'Ah…' said Lehrer leaning back, steepling his fingers, savouring his own lips, 'the bigger picture.'

'I was under the impression that we had signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1939. I'm not expecting you to confirm that that pact will be broken, but it hasn't escaped the Berliners' attention that factories are churning out massive amounts of material and it's all heading in one direction.'

'Let's hope Stalin's not as perspicacious as the Berliners.'

'All he'd have to do is hang around the Bierstuben and Kneipen of Kreuzberg and Neukolln and offer to buy a few beers and he'd get all the military intelligence he needs.'

'A worrying thought,' said Lehrer, totally unconcerned. 'Keep talking, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer, you're doing very well.'

'The wolfram we're getting from China… does it come via Russia?'

'Correct.'

'And when we break the non-aggression pact we'll be cutting ourselves off from the biggest wolfram suppliers in the world.'

'Now you understand why I wanted you in uniform before I told you about the job.'

'Susana Lopes,' said Felsen, nodding at Lehrer. 'You want me to use my lover's Portuguese to buy wolfram.'

'Portugal has the largest reserves in Europe and you didn't get the job just because you speak Portuguese.'

'What was wrong with Koch?'

Lehrer fanned the name away like a nasty fart.

'Not subtle enough,' he said. This job requires finesse, an understanding of people, a sort of games-playing skill, you know, a genius for bluff, a talent for dissimulation, that kind of thing. Skills of yours we have already seen in action. And anyway, he wasn't what Susana would call simpatico was he?'

'Am I buying this wolfram for the SS?'

'No, no, you're buying it for Germany, but the Supply Department is headed by Dr Walter Scheiber who, apart from being a great chemist, is an old Party member and a true SS man. In this way, the Reichsfuhrer Himmler wants to make sure that the SS gets the credit for the campaign and in return we'll take more of the munitions production. That is nothing to do with you. Your task is to get your hands on every kilo of uncontracted wolfram there is.'

'Uncontracted wolfram? What's already under contract?'

'The biggest mine is British. Beralt-production 2000 tons per annum. The French own the Borralha mine-production 600 tons. The United Kingdom Commercial Corporation signed a contract with Borralha last year but we are being successful, through the Vichy government, in preventing it from working. We control a small mine called Silvicola, maximum production a few hundred tons. The rest is on the open market.'

'And how much do we need?'

'Three thousand tons for this year.'

A clock ticked behind Felsen's head. Snow shifted on the roof overhead and dropped in a flurry past the window.

'May I smoke now, sir?' asked Felsen, Lehrer nodded. 'Didn't you just say that the biggest mine produced two thousand tons a year?'

'I did. And that's not the least of your problems. The UKCC will institute pre-emptive buying offensives. You will have to manage vast quantities of "free" labour as well as your own men and any associated Portuguese agents. You will have to secure stockpiles, arrange shipments. You will have to be… how shall I put it… unconventional in your methods.'

'Smuggling?'

Lehrer stretched his fattening neck out of his collar.

'You will need information about your competitors' movements. You will need to stiffen your labour force's resolve, keep foreign agents in line.'

'And the Portuguese Fuhrer-Dr Salazar-how does he…?'

'He has a tightrope to walk. He is ideologically sound but there's a long history of cooperation with the British which they are keen to invoke. He will find himself torn but we will prevail.'

'And when do I leave for Portugal?'

'You don't, not yet. Switzerland first. This afternoon.'

'This afternoon? And what about the factory? I haven't organized a damn thing. That's totally impossible, out of the question.'

'These are orders Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer,' said Lehrer icily. 'No order is impossible. A car will pick you up at one o'clock this afternoon. You will not be late.'

Felsen stood outside his apartment building at exactly 1.00 p.m. He was in uniform but with one of his own coats over the top and watching grimly as an overalled worker pasted a huge black and red poster on to the wall by the pharmacy opposite. It said 'Fuhrer, we thank you'.

He'd phoned Eva all morning and got no reply. Finally, after he'd packed and finished talking things over with Wencdt, he'd run round to her apartment and banged and shouted outside her windows until the same man who'd told him to shut up the night before stuck his head out to do so again. He stopped short on seeing the uniform under the coat and became excessively polite. He told him in sticky sweet German that Eva Brucke had gone away, that he'd seen her getting into a taxi with suitcases yesterday morning, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer.

An old woman who'd been working her way up the frozen pavements of Nurnbergerstrasse drew level with the huddled Felsen and saw the poster and the sick look on his face. She gave the Berliner Blick up and down the street and pointed her cane across to the pharmacy.

'What have we got to thank him for?' she said, emphasizing her clouds of breath with her spare fur-cuffed gloved hand. 'The National Socialist coffee bean? How to bake cakes with no eggs? The only thing we've got to thank him for is that the Volkischer Beobachter… it's softer than the National Socialist toilet paper.'

She stopped as if she'd been knifed in the throat. Felsen's coat had fallen open and she'd seen the black uniform. She ran. Her feet suddenly as sure as a speed skater's on the sheet ice of the pavement.

Lehrer arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. The driver loaded the cases into the boot. They drove past the skittering old lady who still hadn't made it to the Hohenzollerndamm and Felsen mentioned her.

'She's lucky she didn't meet someone more severe,' said Lehrer, whacking his gloved hands together. 'Perhaps you should have been more severe. You'll need to be.'

'Not with old ladies in the street, Herr Gruppenfuhrer.'

'Selective severity weakens the whole,' he replied, and wiped the window with the back of his fat black finger.

They headed south-west out of Berlin to Leipzig and then across the whitened countryside to Weimar, Eisenach and Frankfurt. Lehrer worked out of a briefcase all the way, reading documents and drafting memos in a spidery unreadable hand. Felsen was left to think about Eva but couldn't find any discernible change in the pattern of things-long nights drinking and laughing and listening to jazz-bouts of lovemaking in which she couldn't seem to wrap her arms around enough of his body-terrible arguments which started because he wanted to have more of her but she wouldn't give it, and which only stopped when she threw things at him, normally her shoes, never the china unless she was in his apartment and there was some Meissen available.

There was nothing… except for the incident with the Jewish girls. For days after she'd found out about them, she'd been like the sole survivor from a direct hit-pale, vacant and fluttery. But it had passed, and anyway it didn't have anything to do with him, with them. He looked across at Lehrer who was humming to himself now and staring out of the window.

They arrived at a Gasthaus on the other side of Karlsruhe just as the light was failing. Felsen lay down in his room while Lehrer borrowed the manager's office and made telephone calls. At dinner they were alone but Lehrer was distracted until he was called to the telephone. He came back in an expansive mood and demanded brandy in front of the fire.

'And coffee!' he roared. 'The real stuff, none of this nigger sweat.'

He rubbed his thighs and warmed his arse. He took in his surroundings as if it had been far too long since he'd been in a simple roadside inn.

'I've never seen you in the Rote Katze before,' said Felsen, testing some untrodden ground.

'I've seen you,' said Lehrer.

'Have you known Eva long?'

'Why do you ask?'

'I just wondered how you knew about my old girlfriends. She introduced me to all of them… including the poker player.'

'Who was that?'

'Sally Parker.'

'She didn't mention her.'

'If she had you wouldn't have proposed the game.'

'Yes, well… I've known Eva for some time. Since she had that first club. Where was it now, Der Blaue Affe? '

'I've never heard of it.'

'Back in the twenties when she first started out.'

Felsen shook his head.

'Anyway. Your name came up. I recognized you. I asked Eva, who spoke very highly of you which she knew very well was not what I wanted. Then, of course, she was as discreet as she could be but, I'm an SS-Gruppenfuhrer and… and that's it,' he said, taking the brandy off the tray. 'You weren't…?'

'What?'

'Fraulein Brucke wasn't one of the reasons you didn't want to leave Berlin, was she?'

'No, no,' said Felsen, annoyed at himself for snatching at it.

'I was going to say…'

The wood hissed in the fire. Lehrer moved his hands over his buttocks to warm them.

'What were you going to say, sir?' asked Felsen, unable to stop himself.

'Well, you know, Berlin clubs… the women… it's not…'

'She wasn't a hostess,' said Felsen, tamping his anger.

'No, no, I know that, but… it's the culture. It's not conducive to…' he waited to see if Felsen would fill in the word for him and reveal some more of himself, but he didn't, '…stability. Very artistic. Very free. Very easy. Permanent attachments are rare in a night-time culture.'

'Wasn't the most famous Party rally of all time held at night?'

'Touche,' roared Lehrer, throwing himself into an armchair, 'but that was just so the camera wouldn't pick up the fat sods in the Amtswalter and make the Party look like a bunch of Bavarian pigs. And, may I remind you, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer, that glibness is not an approved National Socialist attitude.'

They went to bed shortly after that, Felsen feeling outmanoeuvred and sick. He lay on his cot and stared at the ceiling smoking through his cigarettes, turning over Eva's dismissal of him, the slickness with which she'd set him up and pulled it off.

'Ah well,' he said out loud, crushing his last cigarette into the ashtray on his chest, 'just another in a long line.'

It took him two hours to go to sleep. He couldn't get rid of a picture in his brain and a thought. The sight of his father's bare feet and ankles, swaying minutely at eye height, and why did he take his shoes and socks off? 27th February 1941 They wore suits to breakfast. Lehrer's was single-breasted thick wool, dark blue and heavy. Felsen felt flashy in his Parisian cut, double-breasted bitter chocolate suit and a regrettable red tie.

'Expensive?' asked Lehrer, his mouth full of black bread and ham.

'Not cheap.'

'Bankers don't believe you unless you wear dark blue.'

'Bankers?'

'The bankers of Basel. Who did you think we were going to see in Switzerland? You can't buy wolfram with chips.'

'Or Reichsmarks apparently,' said Felsen.

'Quite.'

'But Swiss francs… dollars.'

'Dr Salazar was a professor of economics.'

'And that entitles him to be paid differently to everybody else?'

'No. It just entitles him to the opinion that in wartime it's best to have strong gold reserves.'

'You're sending me down to Portugal with a consignment of gold?'

'A problem is developing. The Americans are being difficult about letting us have our dollars so we've started paying for what we want in Swiss francs. Our suppliers in Portugal exchange those Swiss francs for escudos. Eventually, through the local banks, the Swiss francs find their way to the Banco de Portugal. And once they've accumulated enough, they use them to buy gold from Switzerland.'

'I don't see the problem.'

'The Swiss don't like it. They're worried about losing control of their gold reserves,' said Lehrer. 'So, we are experimenting.'

'How do we move this gold?'

'Trucks.'

'What sort of trucks?'

'Swiss trucks. There'll be armed soldiers with you all the way. It's taken some organization I can tell you. You don't think I enjoy having my head in my briefcase all day, do you?'

'I didn't realize gold was physically moved. I thought it was accounted for on paper by national banks.'

'Perhaps Dr Salazar likes… physically… to sit on his gold,' said Lehrer, thinking some more, but he left it at that.

'Whose gold is this?'

'I don't follow your question.'

'Wouldn't German gold be held in the Reichsbank?'

'Now you're asking me questions which I can't… which I don't have the knowledge to reply to… or the authority. I am merely an SS-Gruppenfuhrer, after all.'

By 11.00 a.m. they had drawn up outside an unmarked building in Basel's business district. There was nothing inside or out to indicate what happened in this building. There was a handsome woman in her thirties sitting behind a desk with a single telephone on it. A large marble staircase spiralled behind her. Lehrer talked to the woman quietly. Felsen only heard a single word-'Puhl'. The woman picked up the telephone, dialled a number and spoke briefly. She stood and set off on strong legs up the stairs. Lehrer indicated that Felsen should wait while he followed the legs.

Felsen sat in a densely packed leather armchair. The woman returned and sat at her desk without looking at him. She folded her hands and waited for the next high point in her day. It took Felsen half an hour and several cubic feet of charm to find out that he was in the lobby of the Bank of International Settlements. The name meant nothing to him.

At one o'clock Felsen and Lehrer were sitting at a table in a restaurant called Bruderholz. Only other men in dark suits ate in this place and at tables well-spaced from each other. There were four petits poussins between the two men and a flat plate of boulangere potatoes. Lehrer was holding a glass of Gewurztraminer and rolling the stem between his thumb and forefinger.

'It's so good to have Alsace back in the German fold, don't you think? What magnificent country, magnificent wine. The meat of the poussin will be a little delicate for this, we should have ordered goose or pork, hearty Alsatian fare, but I can't have too much fat, you know. Still… the fruits of summer in the dead of winter. Your health.'

'Was that a particularly successful meeting, Herr Gruppenfuhrer?'

'Tell me what you think of the Gewurztraminer?'

'Spicy.'

'I'm sure you can do better than that. I was always told that you were very appreciative of the good things in life.'

'Boldly fruity, but clean and dry. The spice holding from the top to the bottom, as long as an Atlantic cruise.'

'Where did you get that from?' Lehrer laughed.

'It's not true?'

'It's true… but not as boring or as dangerous as an Atlantic cruise,' said Lehrer. 'I think a heavenly brioche is called for after this.'

They ate the poussins and drank two bottles of the Gewurztraminer. The restaurant emptied. They ate the brioche with a half-bottle of Sauternes. They ordered coffee and cognac and sat in the fading light of the darkening afternoon with cigars growing inches of concertinaed ash. The staff left them and the bottle and retired. The two men were well loosened up. Lehrer's cigar arm swung off the back of his chair and Felsen's legs were spread wide, a foot on either side of the table legs.

'A man,' said Lehrer heading for some pontification, pointing Felsen up with his cigar, ash still intact, 'must always do his important thinking alone.'

'What's a man's important thinking?' asked Felsen, licking his lips.

'Where he wants to be, of course… in the future,' he sifted through the air for some more words, 'I mean, on your way you must gather your intelligence, you may ask opinion, but when you are determining your own place in the world… this is your private, your secret thinking… and if you are to be a man… a man of difference, then this thinking must be done alone.'

'Is this the start of an essay entitled "How to become an SS-Gruppenfuhrer "?'

Lehrer waggled his cigar in the negative.

'That is my position only. A badge of the success of my thinking but it is not the ultimate purpose. A small example. You won the poker game the other night because your ultimate purpose was greater than mine. The adjutant told you to lose because I like to win. You wanted to stay in Berlin… ergo you win. My intelligence, as you indicated to me last night, was not good enough to have played that game with you.'

'But you did win. I'm here. You lost a little money, that's all.'

Lehrer smiled broadly, his eyes glistening with drink, amusement and triumph.

'Perhaps you're thinking now why you're so important to me,' he said. 'Don't. My ultimate purpose should be no concern of yours.'

Except that it involves me, thought Felsen, but he said: 'Perhaps I should have one of my own.'

'My point entirely,' said Lehrer shrugging massively.

'This Russian campaign…' Felsen started and Lehrer held up his hand.

'You will get your intelligence by degrees,' he said. 'Let me ask you something first. What happened in the skies over England last summer?'

'I'm not sure we can read the precise truth in the Beobachter or the 12-Uhr Blatt.'

'Well, the precise truth,' said Lehrer leaning over and whispering into his brandy, 'is that we lost a great air battle. Goering will tell you otherwise. Goering has told me otherwise, but we all know how he keeps his distance from reality…'

'Excuse me, sir?'

'Nothing,' said Lehrer, straightening himself with a belch. 'The loss of a great air battle. What does that mean to you?'

'But we haven't been bombed in Berlin for nearly two months.'

'Berliners,' said Lehrer, despairing, 'even new Berliners, my God, man, believe me, we lost it. Now come on, tell me what that means.'

'If it's true, then we are exposed.'

'In the west and in the air.'

'So if we open up on an Eastern…'

'That's enough. I think you've understood something.'

'What is England with the Channel in between,' said Felsen. 'They're no threat.'

'I'm not being defeatist,' said Lehrer, 'no, no, no. But listen. We let them get away at Dunkirk. If we'd smashed them on the beaches then we'd be having this meal in London and we'd have nothing to worry about. But the English are determined. They have a friend across the Atlantic. The biggest economic force in the world. The Fuhrer doesn't believe that, but it's true.'

'Perhaps we'll all join forces and smash the Bolsheviks.'

'That's a hopeful reading of the situation. Here's another,' said Lehrer putting down his glass and screwing his cigar in between his teeth. He chopped down his left hand on the table and said: 'The United States and England.' He removed his cigar, chopped down his right hand and mouthed the word: 'Russia.' He pressed them together. 'And all that's left is a thin scraping of liverwurst in the middle.'

'Totally and utterly fantastic,' said Felsen. 'You're forgetting…'

Lehrer guffawed.

'That's the thing about intelligence. It's not always what you want to hear.'

'But do you believe that?'

'Of course I don't. It's just a thought. Don't trouble yourself with it. We will win the war and you will be in a perfect position to become one of the most powerful businessmen in the Iberian Peninsula. Unless, of course, I've misjudged you and you're a complete fool.'

'And if we lose, as you've suggested we possibly might?'

'If you're in Berlin and you listen to the Berliners, you'll be jam in the bottom of a bomb crater. But out there on the edge of the continent you will be far away from the disaster…'

'Then I have every reason to thank you for forcing this job on me, Herr Gruppenfuhrer.'

Lehrer raised his glass and said: 'Prosperity.'

They'd drunk the best part of half a bottle of cognac and when the fresh evening air hit the older man he breathed it in deeply, backed himself into the rear of the Mercedes and collapsed with his head thrown forward on to his chest. Felsen tried to think his way through their conversation while listening to the air whistling in and out of the other man's nose. It was like piecing together a jig-saw with too much sky and it wasn't long before his cheek was picking up the indent of the piping round the leather upholstery.

They woke up in the Bundesplatz in central Bern. Lehrer was groggy and on the verge of ill temper. They passed the parliament building and the Swiss National Bank before leaving the square and pulling up outside the Schweizerhof. A doorman and two bellboys rushed the car.

Their rooms were on different floors and as they went up in the lift Lehrer told Felsen he had business to attend to that night and he could have the evening to himself.

'You'll need it to read these,' he said giving him a folder from his briefcase.

'What are they?'

'Your orders. I go back to Berlin first thing in the morning. You may have some questions. Prepare them. Goodnight.'

Felsen ran a bath and flicked through his orders which started at the Swiss National Bank at 8.00 a.m. He soaked in the bath but still felt dull from the lunch. He dried off, redressed and went out into the sub-zero temperature to walk off his head. In a few short minutes he was freezing. A bar next to the railway station looked warm and he saw it contained Lehrer's driver.

He bought two beers and joined the driver.

'I envy you,' said Felsen, chinking glasses. 'You'll be back in Berlin by tomorrow night.'

'Not quite.'

'You've got the whole day, once you get on the autobahn…'

'We go down to Gstaad first for a few days. He likes the mountain air and… other things.'

'Oh yes?'

'When they're away they always like to play… even Himmler and you wouldn't think anyone would want to play with him. Power,' said the driver staring into his beer, 'it does it for the ladies, I can tell you.'

Felsen finished his drink and headed back to the Schweizerhof. Lehrer was still in his room. Felsen sat in the bar until he saw him coming through the reception and going out into the night. He decided to gather his own intelligence, rather than let Lehrer serve it to him in portions, and fell in behind him. They walked through the streets of the old city. There were few people about but it was easy to follow him down the dark pavements overhung by the green sandstone houses. Finally Lehrer turned down a street and when Felsen arrived at the corner there was nothing but a single lit sign which said Ruthli in red. He felt foolish. It meant nothing that Lehrer had a girlfriend in Bern. But curiosity drew him on.

He went into the club, handed over his hat and coat and took a table in the dark. A fat man with black brilliantined hair was playing the piano while a girl with a long red wig stood in a spotlight and sang something sad in Swiss German. He ordered a cognac. He couldn't see Lehrer. The cognac arrived and a few minutes later a girl sat down next to him. They spoke in French. His eyes got used to the dark and he found Lehrer sitting at a table close to the stage with a woman who was blocked out by the big man's shoulders.

The club filled up. The girl asked him to buy her a drink. It arrived in a bucket of ice. She was very young and too thin for his taste. She moved closer with her drink and stole one of his cigarettes. The red-wigged girl slipped off the stage with her sad song and fat pianist. There followed a drum roll and spotlights flashed around the club catching people unawares. One spot hit Lehrer's companion fall in the face. She closed her eyes to it and turned her head but not quick enough. It brought Felsen out of his seat and tipped the girl's glass across the table. Cymbals clashed. The audience faded to black. The spotlights stilled on a red curtain which split and revealed a man in a top hat and tails. But there was no mistaking what Felsen had seen. The white face in the spotlight had been Eva Brucke's.