Orders from Berlin

CHAPTER 10

Trave sat in the office he shared with Quaid at Scotland Yard and waited for the inspector to return, expecting the worst. Now that it was too late, he bitterly regretted going back to Broadway again. He’d been a fool to think he could track Seaforth without being seen. The man had eyes in the back of his head.

Trave had been careful this time, remembering the lessons he’d learnt at the police training school and trying not to repeat the mistakes he’d made the day before. From the moment he’d followed Seaforth into the Underground station, he’d kept himself at maximum distance from his target, staying close to other travellers and waiting patiently at the top of each set of escalators and at the turning of every passage until Seaforth had disappeared from view, and only then hurrying forward until he had caught sight of him again. And there had been no sign that Seaforth knew he was being followed. He’d walked at a brisk pace, turning left and right without a backward glance until he’d finally come to a halt halfway down the westbound platform and stood waiting for the train, examining a government information poster on the opposite wall with apparent rapt attention.

Suddenly there’d been a whistle and a rush of wheels as the train rolled into the station, and Seaforth had got in. He’d looked as if he had no idea he was being followed. Trave had waited until the last moment and then jumped aboard a carriage two away. The air-operated doors had closed and the train moved off, and there on the platform was Seaforth, standing just where he’d been before, watching with a smile as Trave was borne away into the tunnel heading for Victoria.

Trave had never stood a chance; he realized that now. Seaforth had eyes in the back of his head because he was a spy, just like everyone else who worked in 59 Broadway. There was no other explanation. But Trave knew that the knowledge wasn’t going to do him any good. Seaforth held all the cards. He’d wasted no time complaining to Quaid the day before, so why would he not do the same today? And Trave knew what would happen then — he’d be transferred out of Scotland Yard and he’d never have any more dealings with this case ever again, or any case at all, for that matter, if Quaid had anything to do with it.

Trave had been pacing the office backwards and forwards like a prisoner in his cell as he reflected on his position, and now he banged his head against the door in frustration. But there was nobody to take any notice, just the clock on the wall ticking away the minutes until Quaid’s return. With a sigh and a sore head, Trave sat down and began to work his way through the backlog of paperwork that had been building up on his desk over the last few days. It had always been the part of his job that he least enjoyed — he hadn’t worked hard to become a detective in order to turn himself into some kind of glorified postal clerk. He wanted to be out in the field pursuing leads, not sitting here immured in some faraway corner of Scotland Yard writing up reports and listing evidence exhibits. But he’d better get used to it, he thought bitterly. He’d be lucky to be doing even that once Quaid had finished with him.

The inspector arrived back on the stroke of twelve. And he was not alone — he had Bertram Brive in tow, squirming in the grip of a burly uniformed policeman with bright red cheeks and small mean eyes. His name was Twining, and he had a reputation at the Yard for doing whatever Quaid told him to do, no questions asked.

‘Book him in, Constable,’ Quaid ordered, speaking to Twining. ‘Make sure he hasn’t got any hypodermic needles hidden up his sleeves.’

‘This is an outrage. I want my solicitor-,’ Brive began indignantly.

‘What? The same one you used to cook up old Morrison’s will?’ asked Quaid with a grin, cutting him off. ‘Don’t worry — you’ll have your chance to tell us what you’ve been up to in a little while, but Constable Twining here is going to process you first. We need to do everything properly, you know. I’m sure you wouldn’t want it any other way, now, would you, Doctor?

‘Soften him up a little too. That never did any harm,’ said Quaid, turning to Trave with a wink once Brive had been dragged away, his protests still dimly audible from the other end of the corridor. ‘A good morning’s work if I say so myself,’ he said expansively, sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction in the expensive swivel chair that he’d had installed behind his desk and stretching out his legs. ‘Case cracked and should be case closed by the end of the afternoon once we’ve got our confession. And then I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate. They keep a good Islay malt whisky for me under the counter at the King’s Head over the road, a nice chaser for a pint of their London ale.’

‘What happened?’ asked Trave, feeling more than a little disoriented. He’d been expecting summary dismissal from his boss, not an invitation to a party.

‘Ava, the victim’s daughter, gave us the break. Full credit to her — the bastard’s been trying to dispatch her too, from what I can gather. She searched her husband’s desk this morning after he’d gone out and found the cuff link that matched the one we recovered from off the landing outside Morrison’s flat.’

Quaid said nothing about Seaforth’s role in facilitating the search. He knew that Bertram would be less likely to confess if he could claim the evidence had been planted, so it wasn’t information that he intended to disclose to the doctor when he interviewed him. And if Trave didn’t know what had happened, then there would be no risk of him blurting it out to Bertram.

‘And the cuff link’s not all we’ve got, either,’ Quaid went on happily. ‘I went through Brive’s desk myself while we were waiting for him to come back, and guess what — he’s being blackmailed.’

‘Blackmailed! For what?’

‘Sex. That’s what it’s usually about, isn’t it? Turns out he’s homosexual and someone somewhere’s got photographs to prove it. Look, here’s one that the blackmailer sent him with his first demand — standard stuff, but not very pleasant,’ said Quaid, handing Trave a photograph that he’d extracted from one of the evidence bags he’d deposited on his desk when he came in. It was a grainy picture no bigger than a snapshot, but there was no mistaking Brive, naked apart from a sheet pulled hastily across his lower body. He was lying next to a younger man on an unmade bed in what looked like a cheap hotel room somewhere. The shock and terror on Brive’s face were palpable. The flash photograph had obviously been taken at the moment of discovery.

‘He knew he’d be ruined if it came out, and so he’s been paying the blackmailer off for over a year,’ Quaid continued. ‘Borrowing money right, left, and centre to do it, but then recently whoever it is has got a bit more greedy, just like they always do. Result was our doctor friend couldn’t come up with the money, and not just that, he started defaulting on interest payments on the debts he’d already run up. So his creditors started to call in their loans, which must have scared him quite a bit because he’s in hock to some pretty unpleasant people, south London sharks of the worst kind. Anyway, the whole house of cards was just about to come tumbling down when Albert Morrison conveniently broke his neck, since when Brive’s been able to use the promise of his inheritance to stabilize his debts and get the blackmailer off his back. Everything’s here. All the dates match up,’ said Quaid, tapping the evidence bags. ‘All we need now is his confession.’

‘And you’re sure it’s him?’ Trave asked. He had to admit that the new evidence sounded compelling, and it made him uncomfortable to realize that he was disappointed by the new developments. He didn’t want Brive to be guilty. He wondered whether his obsession with 59 Broadway and its occupants had warped his view of the case.

‘I’m positive he did it — have been from the first time I clapped eyes on the bastard,’ said Quaid expansively. ‘Some people have got a nose for a good wine; I’ve got a nose for guilt. You know me — I rely on my instincts, and they haven’t failed me yet.’

One thing Trave had to admit about his boss was that he was a skilled interrogator. It wasn’t just instinct that Quaid relied on to get results. He was an expert at pushing his questioning powers to the legal limit. He knew when to press a suspect hard and when to pretend to be his friend, and he was prepared to be patient if necessary, and flexible too. He adapted his tactics as he went along.

Trave was impatient to find out what Brive had to say, but Quaid insisted on waiting until after lunch to start the interview — enough time for Brive to have been softened up by the extra unpleasantness that Quaid had ordered to accompany the booking-in procedure. The strip search was humiliating; it undermined the suspect’s mental defences. And the wait in the windowless holding cell was calculated to induce panic.

‘First things first,’ said Quaid, rubbing his hands together in anticipation while he and Trave waited for Brive to be brought to the interview room. ‘We need to get our doctor friend to waive his right to counsel. That’s vital. We’ll never get anything out of him once he gets his solicitor here.’ Quaid sounded like a professor giving a master class to a specially chosen student.

‘This is an outrage. I’m innocent of all charges,’ said Bertram angrily, resuming his protest where he’d left off before as soon as he’d sat down, pushed into the waiting chair by Constable Twining. ‘I want my solicitor.’

‘Why?’ asked Quaid.

‘Why? Because I’ve got rights. Don’t tell me I haven’t.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing so, Doctor,’ said Quaid, sounding like the living embodiment of the voice of reason. ‘I just wanted to know why you feel you need a solicitor. I mean, if you’ve got nothing to hide …’

‘I don’t have anything to hide.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. But then I don’t quite follow why you need representation. You’ll be telling us the truth whether you have a solicitor here or not, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Bertram. ‘What do you take me for?’

‘Well, then, wouldn’t it be simpler for you just to do that and then we can all go home?’ Quaid asked pleasantly. ‘I’m sure you’re a busy man, Doctor, and that you’ve got better things to do than sit around in that cell twiddling your thumbs while we wait for your lawyer to get here. Transport is very bad today after the bombing last night, but I think you already know that. It could take hours.’

‘Oh, very well,’ Bertram said crossly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Quaid showed no sign of excitement at having got what he wanted. He continued asking his questions in the same level, even-handed way that he’d adopted at the start of the interview, and Bertram didn’t seem to know how to respond. It was as if he’d expected rudeness and aggression from Quaid, following on from their encounters in Albert Morrison’s flat on the night of the murder and then in his own earlier that morning, and now didn’t know how to handle this new polite and reasonable version of the inspector.

Quaid began by summarizing the demands from Bertram’s creditors. He showed Bertram the dates on their letters and demonstrated how the pressure had built in the weeks leading up to Morrison’s death, and then he laid out the blackmail letters one by one on the table and held up the incriminating photograph that he’d shown Trave before the interview began. Bertram flushed and turned away, hiding his eyes with his hand. Trave could sense his growing desperation.

‘How old is the young man beside you on the bed?’ asked Quaid.

‘I–I don’t know,’ Bertram stammered.

‘Fair enough. I’m sure we can find out for ourselves if it should prove necessary,’ said Quaid.

‘What do you mean, necessary?’

‘Well, the blackmail will be important prosecution evidence if there’s a trial. I’m sure you can understand that. The letters and the photograph explain your state of mind, and if the young man was under age, then that just makes it more likely that you’d resort to desperate measures to keep the blackmailer from going public-’

‘But I didn’t resort-’, Bertram began.

‘Hear me out, Doctor,’ said Quaid, holding up his hand. ‘There’s another side to the coin. If you plead guilty, then the letters and the photograph don’t need to come out. They could be our secret. If you like, I could even pay a visit to whoever it is who’s been persecuting you for the last twelve months. A few carefully chosen words of warning and that would be an end of the matter. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be. I can assure you of that.’

‘But I can’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do,’ said Bertram, squirming in his chair. There was a plaintive note in his voice now, almost a wail.

‘But you did do it, Doctor. Look at this cuff link your wife found in your desk this morning. It matches one found on the landing outside your father-in-law’s flat, just near where you pushed him over the balustrade.’

‘That’s not mine,’ said Bertram sharply.

‘Not yours! Then what’s it doing in your desk?’

‘I don’t know, someone must have put it there. I’m being framed,’ Bertram said shrilly. ‘That’s what’s happening here. You’ve got to listen to me — whoever put that cuff link in my desk is the one who killed Albert. You need to find out who’s been in my flat. You need to ask Ava.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Quaid. ‘It’s your desk, and your wife found the cuff link in the top drawer this morning. I assume you’re not suggesting she put it there?’

‘No, of course I’m not-’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Quaid, cutting Bertram off even though he looked like he had more to say. ‘And what about your sudden appearance at the murder scene?’ he continued, piling on the pressure. ‘How do you explain that? No one called for your assistance.’

‘I was concerned about my wife …’

‘And yet you’d never gone over there to see if she was all right before. The Blitz had been going on for more than a week and she’d been over at least four times to check on her father when there were raids, without any sign of you showing up. Why did you choose that particular night to pay a visit?’ asked Quaid. ‘And why did you run up the stairs and try to interfere with the evidence in your father-in-law’s flat the first chance you got?’ he pressed when Bertram did not answer.

‘I was looking for the will,’ Bertram said. ‘I admit that. But I didn’t kill him. I swear it.’

‘Okay, so let me see if I’ve got this right: you needed his money and you got him to change his will to leave it to you, but then you had nothing to do with his death. That singular piece of good fortune just happened to fall into your lap at the very moment when you needed it the most. Is that really what you’re telling us?’ asked Quaid, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

‘Yes, you’ve got to believe me-’

‘But I don’t,’ said Quaid, cutting Bertram off. ‘I don’t have to believe you. I’m a rational man just like Detective Trave here, and what you say makes no sense, no sense whatsoever.’ Quaid paused, scratching his chin with his forefinger as he maintained his observation of Bertram, who was continuing to squirm about in his chair. The inspector reminded Trave at that moment of some cold-blooded scientist watching the effect of an experiment on some miserable laboratory animal.

‘Listen, Dr Brive, I think you need to carefully consider your position,’ said Quaid, looking as if he had come to a decision. ‘If we can’t reach an accommodation, you and I, then you’ll be tried for murder — premeditated murder — and you don’t need me to tell you what the sentence is for that. Maybe you’ll get lucky and you won’t hang, but then again maybe you will. It’s a nasty way to die, Doctor, I can assure you of that. The noose is supposed to break your neck, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Strangling on the end of a rope, twisting around in mid-air, trussed up like a turkey … I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.’

Quaid paused, letting his words sink in. Bertram’s face had turned white as alabaster. He was gripping the table in front of him with both hands.

‘But it doesn’t have to be that way,’ Quaid continued. ‘If you’re man enough to own up to what you’ve done, then I’ll make sure you’re only charged with manslaughter. You’ll be sentenced on the basis that you didn’t set out to kill your father-in-law but that you pushed him over the balustrade during an argument that got out of hand. You’ll serve a few years and then you can come out and carry on with your life, and no one need know about the blackmail problem. I’ve already told you I’ll see to that. Now what do you say? No one could say that that’s not a fair offer.’

Bertram was writhing more than squirming now, and he kept putting his hand up to his neck, pinching the skin around his Adam’s apple. It was as if he were unconsciously seeking the bow tie that Twining had removed from him during the strip search and had not given back. Or maybe he was thinking about the noose, Trave thought with sudden understanding.

‘I need some time — time to think,’ he said eventually.

‘Certainly,’ said Quaid. ‘A very reasonable request. You can have as long as you need.’ Turning, he pressed a buzzer on the wall, and within moments Constable Twining appeared in the doorway.

‘Take Dr Brive to his cell,’ Quaid ordered. ‘And give him a cup of tea and a ham sandwich. He looks like he needs it.’

Quaid seemed in no hurry to resume. He read his newspaper from cover to cover and then methodically worked his way through a pile of official papers on his desk until Twining reappeared. An hour and a half had gone by — Trave had timed it on the clock.

‘The prisoner is asking for you, sir,’ Twining said deferentially. ‘Says he wants to talk.’

‘All right, bring him back,’ said Quaid with a sigh. ‘Let’s see if he’s willing to listen to reason.’

Bertram looked as nervous as before when he came into the interview room, but he seemed determined too, as though he’d come to a decision and was resolved to go through with it.

‘You’ll put what you told me in writing, will you?’ he asked Quaid. ‘So you can’t go back on it?’

‘Certainly,’ said Quaid. ‘I’ll sign my undertaking at the same time as you sign your confession. Detective Trave here can witness our signatures. Will that work for you?’

Bertram nodded. He looked like a beaten man. ‘I don’t want to see my wife if she comes here looking for me,’ he said. ‘I can’t face her, not any more.’

BERLIN

Heydrich dismissed the Lisbon courier with a cursory salute and slit open the package with a silver paper knife adorned with an eagle and swastika — a present from his wife on the occasion of his last birthday. The report was in English but he could read the language fluently. He grimaced at one point, but then nodded twice at the end as if satisfied with its contents and picked up the telephone. He was in luck. The Fuhrer was in Berlin and would see him that afternoon.

Heydrich sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to travel back six years to when he’d first met Charles Seaforth on a warm September day just like this one, with the sun shining down on Berlin. It was a good time, full of promise. Hitler had succeeded to the chancellorship a year earlier, and the transformation of the country was already under way. The currency was stabilized, rearmament had begun, and you could sense the country’s new-found sense of purpose wherever you went. Heydrich’s star was on the rise, following that of his master. Three months earlier, Ernst Rohm and Heydrich’s other rivals in the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, the SA, had been dispatched on the Night of the Long Knives, and his power base in the Gestapo and the SS was now unchallenged. Years of consolidation lay ahead as the party took control of every facet of life in the new Reich, but the way ahead was clear.

Seaforth had come to Germany ostensibly on a covert operation to recruit agents for the British Secret Service, but his real purpose had been to seek out Heydrich and enlist in the service of the Fuhrer. Heydrich had never encountered an enemy agent who displayed such a single-minded eagerness to betray the country of his birth. He had wanted money, but not an excessive amount, and Heydrich had sensed from the outset that the motive of financial gain was entirely secondary to his new recruit’s passionate, overarching desire to hurt England. This was what mattered to him — he appeared to have no great intrinsic interest in or enthusiasm for National Socialism and the new order in Germany. The resurgence of German power was important to him because he believed that it would lead to war. His certainty on this point had surprised Heydrich. War with England had seemed far from inevitable back in 1934, with a sympathetic government at the helm in London and the Fuhrer moving cautiously step by step to consolidate his power. But Seaforth had been proved right, and his accurate prediction of the future had increased Heydrich’s respect for his new agent.

Seaforth’s hatred for his country was the reverse of everything that Heydrich stood for. Heydrich prided himself on his patriotism, but here he was, placing his trust in a man who wanted to commit high treason. Why? Partly, of course, because Seaforth’s story made sense. Heydrich had verified the details, and Seaforth certainly had no reason to love England after all that had happened to him. But Heydrich also instinctively recognized that the wellspring of anger that drove each of them forward was essentially the same, even if it led them in opposite directions. Heydrich had been enraged by the November criminals who had signed away the fatherland in 1918, just as Seaforth abhorred the British generals and politicians who had sent their people to die in droves year after year in the mud of Flanders and northern France. Only their conclusions separated them: Heydrich wanted to change his country, whereas Seaforth wanted to destroy his.

But it was more than rage that they had in common — they shared a capacity to channel and direct their anger. Both were prepared to be extraordinarily patient in the pursuit of their goals; they did not take unnecessary risks but instead built slowly and carefully towards a position of power. For Heydrich, the policy had already paid dividends — he had complete power over the lives of everyone in the Reich through his control of the SD and the Gestapo. Seaforth’s rise had been slower, but the war had helped his cause with the concentration of MI6’s focus away from Soviet Russia and onto Germany, where his fictitious network of agents was located. With Seaforth’s help, Heydrich had been able to liquidate all the other high-level British agents operating inside Germany. He’d done it gradually, picking them off here and there so as not to give the game away either to Seaforth’s superiors in MI6 or to his own rivals in the Abwehr, the official Reich intelligence service run by Heydrich’s rival, the wily Admiral Canaris. But now, finally, Seaforth was the only MI6 spymaster receiving high-level intelligence from inside the Reich, and he was climbing the ladder of seniority inside the British Secret Service at a rate that would have been inconceivable two years earlier. One day soon he might become deputy chief, and MI6 would become an unwitting branch of the Gestapo.

Yet now, out of the blue, after all the years of painstaking groundwork, Heydrich’s prize agent was proposing to risk everything on one throw of the dice. The assassination plan was a good one, and Seaforth had the capacity to carry it out — Heydrich had no doubt on either of these scores. The scheme could certainly succeed, but it was opportunistic in nature and depended on a fair slice of luck. Heydrich wondered why Seaforth wanted to expose himself in this way, but then he turned the interrogation light onto himself and was even more surprised at his willingness to agree to the idea. There was the political answer, of course. Churchill’s removal could make all the difference, and Heydrich would gain immeasurably if he received the credit for knocking England out of the war. But it was more than that. The recklessness of the plan and the boldness of the stroke appealed to Heydrich at a gut level. It felt like flying into combat again, wheeling his Messerschmitt fighter through the sky towards the enemy aircraft. Leaning back in his chair with a faraway look in his eye, he felt a deep sense of kinship with this Englishman whom he hadn’t seen in over a year and might well never see again. Charles Seaforth was a man after his own heart.

At three o’clock Heydrich put on his cap, straightened his uniform, and walked out into Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. He preferred to walk; it was a beautiful day, and the Reich Chancellery was only two streets away. His two SS bodyguards fell into step behind him, but he paid them no attention. Heydrich had a deep-seated faith in his own inviolability that was to continue right up until the moment of his assassination in an unescorted, open-topped Mercedes staff car in Prague two years later.

He turned left into Wilhelmstrasse and walked past the long steely-grey marble facade of the massive Air Ministry building, thinking of Goering and the continuing inability of the Luftwaffe to win the air war over London. Heydrich had an acute sense of the shifting movements of power in Hitler’s court, and he had no doubt that Goering’s star was on the wane. If Seaforth’s plan succeeded, Heydrich had no doubt that he would eclipse not just Goering but all the other party bosses. The thought made him giddy and he had to steady himself for a moment before he passed through the outer gates of the Chancellery and entered the Ehrenhof, the court of honour, leaving his bodyguards behind. The Fuhrer had a way of seeing into people’s minds, and Heydrich knew that he needed to have all his wits about him during the coming encounter.

The great marble walls, lined with square and rectangular windows, reared up on all sides, defining in strict shape the rectangle of blue sky above. Not a curve or a flourish had been allowed to interrupt the stark symmetry of the architecture. The courtyard was not empty — helmeted, black-uniformed SS guards stood at exactly spaced intervals around the sides. But they were immobile, trained to rigid stillness, and the silence, broken only by the sound of Heydrich’s boots crossing the marble floor, added to the impression of overwhelming power that the construction was intended to convey. Heydrich felt it as a unique silence — not an absence of noise, but a presence in its own right, bearing down on him from all sides.

He climbed the steps leading to the entrance and went inside, passing through a dark, windowless hall inlaid with red mosaics and on into the long gallery, the famous centrepiece of the building, lit by a parade of high windows looking out over the Voss-Strasse. There was no furniture anywhere, not even a trace of carpet to relieve the severity of the design. Slippery marble floors were just the right surface for slippery visiting diplomats, according to Hitler.

The huge bronze doors at the end of the gallery beckoned and threatened, but Hitler’s office was halfway down on the right, with the intertwined AH initials of his name monogrammed above the doorway, where two steel-helmeted SS soldiers from his personal protection unit stood guard with their guns at the ready.

Heydrich was known and expected. The doors opened and he stepped inside. The office was vast, far larger and grander than any office he’d ever seen. Heavy tapestries and huge baroque paintings adorned the blood-red marble walls, and Hitler’s desk was placed intentionally at the far end, so that visitors would have a final journey to make across the thick carpet towards the dictator’s presence. It was a room designed to intimidate, but that was not Hitler’s intention today. He wasn’t sitting at his desk; instead he was standing in front of a large marble-topped table positioned under one of the tall windows looking out over the Chancellery gardens, examining an architectural model of a building that Heydrich did not recognize. He was bareheaded, wearing a black tie and a brown military jacket with a swastika armband.

‘Do you know what this is, Reinhard?’ asked Hitler, looking up at his visitor and acknowledging his raised-arm salute with a nod of his head. Heydrich was encouraged by the Fuhrer’s use of his first name. Hitler was notoriously unpredictable, and Heydrich needed him to be in a receptive mood.

‘No. Please tell me,’ said Heydrich, pretending to be interested. He knew nothing about architecture but was aware that it was a subject dear to the Fuhrer’s heart.

‘It is a design for my mausoleum. It will be built in Munich across from party headquarters. You can see it is modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. See, here is the rotunda and in the roof directly above the sarcophagus, you have the oculus,’ said Hitler, pointing.

‘What’s that?’ asked Heydrich. It was a word he’d never heard before.

‘The round opening, the eye. And just like in Rome, there is no glass. The sunlight and the rain, even the snow in winter, fall onto the tomb, connecting it to the elements. It is perfect.’

Hitler clasped his hands together, a characteristic gesture when he was pleased. But Heydrich was horrified. There was so much to do, yet here was the Fuhrer planning his own funeral.

‘Don’t worry, Reinhard,’ said Hitler, laughing as he sensed Heydrich’s discomfort. ‘I am not dying just yet. But nor do I feel that I will live to be an old man, which is why I am in a hurry. Perhaps when we have accomplished all that we need to do in the world, then there will be time for me to return to architecture. I would like to build, but first we have to destroy,’ he said wistfully. There was a faraway look in his eye.

‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ said Heydrich after a moment, when Hitler showed no sign of abandoning his examination of the mausoleum. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the assassination plan we discussed before. I have heard from our agent in England this morning …’

‘Yes,’ said Hitler, shaking his head as if dismissing his dreams. ‘I am eager to hear what he has to say. Come, let us sit down and you can tell me all about it.’

Hitler walked over to the fireplace and sat in an armchair. Heydrich sat at right angles to the Fuhrer on an enormous sofa the size of a small lifeboat. He took off his SS cap and held it in his hands. A valet came in and served tea and cakes. Hitler gestured with his hand to the plate, and when Heydrich declined, he ate one of them himself with obvious enjoyment.

Heydrich glanced up at the portrait of Bismarck hanging over the fireplace, rehearsing what he had to say while he waited for the valet to leave the room. He knew that the picture was there to underline Hitler’s legitimacy as leader of the Reich, succeeding the man who had achieved the unification of Germany seventy years before. But Bismarck had wanted nothing more, trying to keep peace with the Russian bear through a complex system of alliances, whereas the Fuhrer was itching to send his armies east into the steppes. Only the war with England was stopping him. Hitler rightly wanted to avoid the Kaiser’s mistake of fighting on two fronts, and Heydrich believed that he had the means to ensure that that would not be necessary.

‘So, tell me — how does Agent D intend to rid us of fat Mr Churchill?’ Hitler asked. His mocking tone belied his obvious interest in the answer to his question. He sat rigid in his chair, looking hard at Heydrich.

‘He suggests that we provide him with sufficiently valuable intelligence to ensure he gets another summons from Churchill, and then, once he’s inside the room, he proposes to shoot Churchill with a handgun from close range and then turn the gun on his superior, a man called Alec Thorn,’ said Heydrich, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. ‘This should take no more than a few seconds, and then when people hear the gunshots and rush into the room, D will say that Thorn shot Churchill and that he killed Thorn while he was wrestling the gun away from him. If all goes well, the end result should be that Churchill will be dead and our agent will get the credit for having tried to save him. And then with any luck, he will replace Thorn as deputy head of MI6.’

‘And Halifax will replace Churchill as prime minister and will straight away make peace with Germany,’ said Hitler. ‘It sounds too good to be true. How is our man going to get a gun past Churchill’s guards?’

‘He says he wasn’t searched when he was called in to discuss the Operation Sea Lion intelligence that I sent to him. He was issued with a special pass, and apparently that got him through all the security barriers.’

‘And this Thorn man — why should they think he wants to kill Churchill?’

‘Our agent is working on a cover story. Thorn ran agents in Germany for years until D identified them for us and we dealt with them. He used to spend a lot of time here, although less so recently. Our aim is to have Thorn unmasked as the double agent working for us. With my help, D can make it sound plausible.’

‘Aim, you say! There is a great deal of difference between aiming a gun and hitting the target,’ Hitler said dubiously. ‘How do we know that Thorn will accompany our man to this get-together?’

‘He did before, and Churchill told them at the last meeting that if our agent receives significant new intelligence about the invasion, he will want to see them both again. Thorn hates our man, apparently, and contradicts everything he says, and Churchill likes to hear the two different points of view.’

‘Very democratic,’ said Hitler with a sneer. ‘All right, let’s say for the sake of argument that he can get the gun into Churchill’s office and take this other man along with him. That still doesn’t explain how he’s going to get Churchill on his own. What about the bodyguards? How is our agent going to deal with them?’

‘He won’t have to,’ said Heydrich. ‘Churchill told his bodyguard to leave and shut the door behind him when he saw D and Thorn last time. He wants to keep secret intelligence secret. It’s not that far-fetched if you think about it. Look at us now — there are no bodyguards in the room with us, and I haven’t been searched.’

‘But you are not an assassin, and it is not appropriate for you to talk as if you are one,’ Hitler said sharply.

‘I am very sorry. Please forgive me,’ said Heydrich, cursing himself for his stupidity. He had been resolute in his determination to choose his words carefully before the interview began.

But he needn’t have worried — Hitler waved away the apology. He was too interested in what Heydrich had to say to let himself be distracted by a momentary irritation.

‘Where is all this going to take place?’ he asked. ‘In 10 Downing Street?’

‘Perhaps, although Churchill’s underground bunker is also a possibility. That’s where D saw him last time. It’s in the same area of London.’

‘So Churchill’s in a bunker,’ said Hitler, smiling that same wolfish grin that appeared whenever he was particularly pleased or amused. ‘Is he living in it?’

‘I believe so,’ said Heydrich, who knew perfectly well that a large air-raid bunker had been constructed for the Fuhrer’s use less than five hundred yards away from where they were sitting.

‘Driven down into the sewers like a rat while the bombs fall on his precious Downing Street — bombs that he’s brought down on his own stupid head. And he must be dealt with like a rat, dispatched without a second’s thought,’ Hitler continued in a louder voice, rubbing his hands in anticipation. ‘I like your plan, Reinhard. I like it very much. You have done well. Radio your agent and tell him to go ahead. The sooner Churchill is out of the way, the better for all of us.’

‘We can’t use radio,’ said Heydrich. ‘D says that the British intercepted the message that I sent to him after I saw you at the Berghof, although the good news is that my message was short and simply asked for details of his plan without giving away anything about the plan’s purpose.’

‘Was there an investigation?’

‘Not one that went anywhere. One man started asking questions, apparently, but D got rid of him before he could do any damage.’

‘And you’re confident that’s the end of it?’

‘Yes. And besides, the loss of the radio link doesn’t really affect us now. We will need to provide D with an intelligence briefing, like before, that contains enough quality information to ensure that Churchill wants to discuss it with him in person. We couldn’t do that in a radio message even if it was secure.’

‘How, then? I have already told you time is of the essence. We must strike while the iron is hot and before someone else starts asking questions. Can we use an aeroplane drop for the papers like we did before?’

‘No, it would require a radio message to D to tell him to collect the package, and we can’t risk that. We have to use the Lisbon route. With luck it’ll take less than a week. It’s usually quicker with messages going to London than when they are coming back. I can bring more pressure to bear on the Portuguese in Lisbon than I can on their embassy in London, and you can be sure I will use all my influence.’

‘A week,’ repeated Hitler, looking disgusted, but then after a moment he shrugged. ‘Very well, it seems we have no choice. What about the information to tempt Churchill into a meeting? There are areas that are off-limits. I hope you understand that, Reinhard?’

‘Of course. The intelligence should relate to the invasion, I think. Like before. But this time it needs to be something new-’

‘The invasion is dead in the water,’ Hitler interrupted irritably. ‘Goering has seen to that. I have ordered an indefinite postponement.’

‘But the British don’t know that,’ said Heydrich. ‘D says that they are still expecting a landing any day. Churchill will be thinking about nothing else. And he now believes that D has a source with access to our highest-level military conferences, ones at which you are present. We can say that you are considering cancelling Operation Sea Lion and that there is a debate going on inside the high command about whether or not to proceed. I already have most of what I need to tell D mapped out. Churchill will want to know more, and he will be tempted to think that he can influence the argument through leaked radio messages and the like for which he will need Secret Service advice.’

Hitler had listened carefully. He stared at Heydrich for a few moments after the Gestapo chief had finished speaking and then got up without a word and went and stood at the window with his back to his visitor, looking out at the Chancellery gardens.

‘It’s reckless,’ he said, turning around. ‘A gambler’s throw, but we need to trust in chance sometimes. If hazard is what it is,’ he added musingly. ‘Because sometimes I think that it is more than chance that governs my destiny. You know where I was thirty years ago?’

Heydrich shook his head, even though he knew the answer. He realized that it was the Fuhrer’s turn to talk now and his role was to listen.

‘I was homeless, sleeping on a park bench in Vienna, barely able to keep body and soul together, painting pretty pictures for tourists. And now look where I am,’ he said, indicating the grandeur of the room with a sweep of his hand. ‘Heir to Frederick the Great and Bismarck; leader of a new Reich; the most powerful man in the world. This is no accident, no trick of fate. It is beyond chance. I’ve said it before — “I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.” And this wild plan of yours feels like it is meant to work partly because it is so improbable. So, yes, Reinhard, you have my agreement. Now make it happen — rid me of this stupid Englishman who thinks he can obstruct the march of history.’