Secrets of the Last Nazi

ONE

Werner Stolz’s eye squinted at the lens of the telescope. His failing vision blurred the image into two small crescents. But they were definitely planets, and they were exactly where they were meant to be: together, just above the western horizon.

It was confirmation. His eye retreated, but he knew there was no escaping what he had seen.

Sitting alone in the dark, he removed the bookmark from his ephemeris and let it close..

Slowly, he reached towards the table lamp. As the light came on, Stolz caught himself in the mirror. Shadows made the lines on his face seem even deeper. With only one side of his head illuminated, his image had split in two. One half revealed skin marked by a lifetime of wrinkles. The other half was still hidden.

For a hundred-and-three years he had known that face. He had watched it grow, mature and wither. Now his head had lost its hair and his skin had lost its colour.

Only his eyes remained fully alive. They glowered back at him, one last time. They had kept both his secrets well.

He looked up at the pictures framed on his wall. A photo from when Germany was winning the war: the young Stolz, with his new SS uniform and a cocky grin. Then another, taken several years later, soon after he had been released from the custody of the US army — Stolz looked much thinner.

Then the image of him retiring young, opening champagne in a Sixties shirt. He often wondered whether he should have given up so soon. He could have earned so much more. But every time he wondered, he always concluded the same thing: he had retired at exactly the right time. Retiring was the only way he could keep both his secrets. If he had tried to win too much, he would have lost it all.

Stolz cleared his throat. It became a cough. Gently, he thumped his chest to stop the spasm. Then he waited for his body to settle, and allowed himself several minutes to become calm.

He listened to check no one was outside.

No one — not yet.

Careful to control his breathing, Stolz twisted off the bottom of the table lamp. The pill case was still there. He plucked it out, and wiped the enamel cover with his thumb.

He remembered receiving it — within sight of the Reichstag, just as the centre of the capital had come under artillery fire for the first time. Others shuddered as the shells blasted around them, but he knew he’d be safe.

Now, just holding the small container gave him pleasure. He inspected it. No one would manufacture a lid like that anymore. The design was antique, and the crooked cross on it — a tiny Swastika — had been outlawed in the new Germany. The little tin belonged to an age gone by.

Just like SS Captain Werner Stolz himself.

Then he noticed some rust around the rim. He scratched it in disappointment. Just like the Reich, the tin would not last a thousand years. The war had forced his great nation to make steel which decayed.

Germany will be great again, and the time will come soon.

He knew exactly when it would become great again — the day, month and year — and how it would once again lead all of Europe.

He wished he would be alive to see that day. But he knew he wouldn’t.

Stolz gripped as tightly as he could and tried to prise off the lid. Applying all his strength, and his much greater determination, he succeeded.

He peered inside, perturbed to find the liquid in the sealed glass tube was no longer translucent. Now it was dark and opaque, a murky brown colour.

Would it still work?

He picked it up and wondered, rolling it on his palm.

Then he remembered his ephemeris, the computer, the telescope…

Yes, it would work.

Quivering, he lifted the glass vial towards his mouth. Carefully, he placed it between his teeth, and closed his lips around it.

Stolz turned out the light and waited for the footsteps he knew would come.

TWO

Myles didn’t turn his head to see the mock-up of the trenches — complete with duck-boards, theatrical mud and artificial smells. The vintage machine guns, both German and British, which had caused so much slaughter in the Great War, didn’t register with him at all. He even ignored the Spitfire hanging above him, the old German Jagdpanther tank, and the V1 and V2 ‘Wonderweapons’ used by Hitler in his desperate last months.

That was all history. An outdated vision of war. Misleading, even. War wasn’t like that, not any more, as he told his students in some of Oxford University’s best attended lectures.

Myles knew. He’d been there.

Even the Cold War had been distorted. The superpower confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union wasn’t what most people said it was. Myles walked right past the big photo-posters showing scenes from 1989, when the Berlin Wall disintegrated in the bright glare of TV lights. Frozen in time, some faces were celebrating, while East German police stood around, not believing the impossible had come true.

The only scene he couldn’t ignore was the most sinister: a faded photograph, blown-up into a large display, which showed a bureaucrat in front of a queue of Jewish refugees. The man was sitting at a table, registering details from the families as they offloaded from the cattle trucks. The bureaucrat and his paperwork were in control. The refugees clutched their suitcases and precious possessions, leaning forward to speak to the man at the desk, trying to help him with information. The poor men and women were oblivious that they had only minutes left to live.

Myles shook his head in disgust, cursing the bureaucrats…

He walked on. He had not come here to browse, but to help Frank, his old university friend of almost twenty years.

Myles held the glass door open with his foot as he heaved the last cardboard box inside. ‘When do the public arrive?’

‘Ten,’ replied Frank. ‘We’ve still got time.’

Myles nodded, as he continued through the main entrance area. ‘Downstairs with the rest?’

‘Yes — thanks. I’ll come with you.’

With Frank limping behind him, Myles led the way down the metallic stairs, careful to duck his head under the beam. The museum’s walkways had been designed for children, not tall university lecturers. Frank pointed to a pile of other possessions, and Myles placed the box beside them.

‘Cheers, Myles,’ said Frank, tapping the box with his walking stick. ‘That’s the last one.’

Together they stared at the cardboard dump. Half a lifetime: just three boxes.

‘Really, that’s all you’ve got?’

‘It’s all I could salvage before it sank — but on the bright side, if I’d been asleep when my houseboat started leaking, I might have drowned!’ Frank tried to laugh, but the chuckles came out flat.

‘You sure the museum won’t mind you using their space, Frank?’ Myles asked.

Frank held his stick while he pushed his glasses back into place. ‘I hope not — I am the curator. And if they do sack me, I’ll have to ask you for advice…’ Then the curator’s face reacted, as he had another thought. ‘In fact, I think…’ He started to limp along the underground corridor, looking up at the small cards which explained what each storage unit contained. He stopped opposite a tall cabinet labelled Terrorism — UK, then climbed on a small stool to retrieve a box file. He called back to Myles. ‘We’ve still got it somewhere…’

Myles’ fingers rubbed his forehead. He didn’t want it. ‘It’s OK, Frank. I’ve seen it before.’

But Frank had already pulled out the file. He hobbled back down the ladder, and unfolded the tabloid as he returned to Myles.

The headline still screamed at him, all those years later.

Frank was grinning. ‘You see — we still have all sorts of war records!’ He paused with a half-smile, realising he’d just told an unfunny joke. Then he folded the newspaper back up and patted Myles on the back, realising he needed to change the subject. ‘You did well to recover. Very impressive.’

Myles didn’t respond. ‘Impressive’ didn’t matter to him.

Frank nudged him. ‘Come on — how’s it all going?’

Myles tipped his head to one side. ‘Predictable, sometimes.’

‘Predictable bad or predictable good?

Myles paused to frame his thoughts, tried to explain. ‘Most people have very set ideas. Military history just means Hitler to most of them. Even the open-minded ones aren’t open to anything too challenging.’

‘So you’re looking for something else, Myles?’

‘Maybe,’ accepted Myles. ‘Not looking very hard though…’ Myles was distracted by the large vaults looming above them both. ‘So what’s the Imperial War Museum planning next?’ He could see his old friend become enthused.

‘My new exhibition: War and the Natural World.’

Myles raised his eyebrows. ‘Interesting…’

‘It’s joint with the Science Museum — you know, for kids,’ explained Frank. ‘We’re trying to show how natural events have a big impact on war.’ Frank hobbled around, guiding Myles towards a half-finished display called World War Two and the Moon. Then he gave Myles a handout to read.

Myles was impressed. ‘Looks like fun.’

‘Yes — and the displays go right back to Alexander the Great. The eclipse just before his greatest battle was an omen that the Empire of Persia would be defeated — and it was!’

Myles smiled, only half buying it. He let Frank continue.

‘And it wasn’t just ancient times,’ lectured Frank. ‘The Crusades, the Korean War — even World War One began with an eclipse, too. Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘That’s right — in August 1914, on the day that German and British troops first clashed. And the centre of the eclipse was exactly over where the first big battle took place. It was probably the most important battle of the whole war.’ Frank lifted his stick towards a map of Europe.

‘Battle of Tannenberg?’

‘Correct — and World War Three started with an eclipse, as well.’

Now Myles knew he was being ribbed. ‘We haven’t had World War Three.’

Frank chuckled. ‘No — but we almost did. Remember 1999, when the NATO commander ordered his troops to take Kosovo’s main airport — the one held by the Russians? The attack was only stopped when a subordinate refused to obey. He “Didn’t want to start World War Three”, he said. Well, I discovered the centre of the big eclipse in the summer of 1999 was just a few miles from… wait for it… Kosovo!’

Myles looked sideways at his friend, wondering whether Frank was taking the eclipses too seriously. Frank hadn’t noticed — he was too absorbed.

‘… And there was also a very local solar eclipse, exactly over Iceland in October 1986, when Reagan and Gorbachev held their big summit there. Some people say it was the summit which ended the Cold War. Did you know that?’

Myles didn’t answer, as he realised his old friend had become even more eccentric with the passing years. Trying to find sense in the movement of planetary bodies was not a good sign.

Ting…

The faint metallic noise came from far off, further down the corridor. They looked at each other, surprised.

Both men remained silent for a moment.

Frank shrugged, but Myles couldn’t dismiss it. He started walking, then jogging towards the noise — along the underground corridor, to where the lighting wasn’t so good.

He stopped to listen again.

Nothing.

His instincts were confusing him. He halted, tried to sense what could have caused the sound, then wondered if he had imagined it. He was about to turn back when he noticed an empty box file on the vault floor.

He picked it up and called over to Frank. ‘Was this you?’

Frank indicated it wasn’t.

Myles looked the label on the empty file.

De-Nazification interviews, 1945 — box 4

It must have fallen down somehow — although that didn’t explain why it was empty.

He peered into the darkness, looking for a shelf with a space on it.

Something didn’t seem right. The shelves were messy, as if someone had been rummaging through the archives. But there was something else, too.

Myles froze, and heard movement close by.

Someone was there.

He peered into the gloom, searching for whatever he could find, whatever didn’t belong.

Then he saw them: a pair of eyes.

Scared eyes.

They were looking straight back at him.

Suddenly a man rushed out, ramming into Myles who tumbled to the floor, box files raining down on his head.

He could see the intruder running away. The man had something clutched in his hands. He was heading back towards the stairway.

Myles called out, ‘Frank — stop him!’

But Frank was too shocked to react. The thief fled past him.

Myles jumped back to his feet and started chasing him down the corridor, pounding up the museum’s metallic stairs three steps at a time. His clumsiness made him trip, but he recovered.

Myles raced back past the trench exhibition, ducking under the beam as he ran up the main staircase and towards the ground floor.

He heard Frank’s call out behind him. ‘I’ll get the police…’

But it was no time to get the police.

Myles stumbled again as he reached the top of the stairs, falling onto the polished surface of the main hallway. Quickly he pushed himself back up.

He scanned the exhibits: rockets, the American army jeep, tanks, information displays, a submarine… The museum was full of hiding places.

Then he heard a clank: the outside doors.

Myles swivelled to see the exit doors were still moving — the thief must have just barged through them and escaped.

Myles dodged a donations bin near the entrance and grappled with the heavy glass door which swung back in his face, slowing him down. Finally he reached the park outside. At last he could see the thief again. The man was racing away from him — passed the souvenir section of the Berlin wall, over the well-kept grass, towards the main road…

Myles tried calling. ‘Hey you…’

The thief turned around to see Myles’ tall frame at the entrance of the museum, and his eyes filled with terror.

Quickly he turned and kept running.

Myles sprinted on as fast as he could. Gradually he was catching up. He could see the thief’s rucksack. The man’s canvas jacket. His trainers…

The thief was approaching the end of the path, forced to slow down as he approached the busy road. The rush-hour traffic was too fast to cross. Myles had him trapped.

Myles saw the man turn and face him again, his eyes flickering around in panic. Myles was getting closer, still running straight at the man. His arms reached out to grab him, but the thief swiftly stepped aside and Myles stumbled, off balance again.

Myles saw the man dash into the traffic. A small car braked as the thief ran in front of it. Back on his feet, Myles manoeuvred around the stopped car. An angry commuter honked at him, but Myles kept on, still chasing the thief.

Their eyes connected again.

That was when Myles felt the huge force of a van smash into his side. He felt his leg bend, and his body twist away. For a moment, he was weightless as he was flung high into the air.

Then agony surged through his leg.

Cars stopped around him, and backed up all along the road. People climbed out and moved towards him.

But Myles soon realised the people were not interested in him. He tried to see through the crowd, through the cars and through the pain and saw people helping the thief, desperately trying emergency medical procedures on his blood-covered face. None of them were any use.

The man Myles had been chasing was dead.

THREE

The breakfast maid who discovered Werner Stolz’s body was not shocked by it. It was the third dead body she had found in three weeks. People came here to die, she’d been told, so dead bodies were only to be expected.

Still, she didn’t want to look at the corpse too closely. That was for the nurse. Calmly, she pressed the buzzer and waited.

Stolz hadn’t left much, so there wasn’t much for her to tidy. There were a few framed pictures on his desk. She made sure they were arranged neatly. She recognised America in one — the middle-aged Stolz seemed to be enjoying a holiday. She tilted her head to see the pictures of Stolz as a young man in military uniform. He had been quite handsome back then, she thought.

Then she saw his computer, and his ‘ephemeris’ book. She flicked through it: lots of tables and numbers, with dates and funny symbols. Old Werner had been reading some odd things before he died.

Her thoughts were disturbed by footsteps in the corridor. A nurse appeared.

The nurse acknowledged the maid with a nod, then moved straight to the body. She knelt down, ready to place two fingers on his neck and check for a pulse. It was a routine confirmation: the old man was obviously dead, but she had to follow procedure, just to make sure…

Then she noticed his ear. It was bloody. And behind it was a small dark red hole. She turned Stolz’s corpse on the floor, to reveal a much greater mass of body fluids on the carpet underneath him.

A gun tumbled from the dead man’s hand: an old 7.65 mm Luger pistol with a long silencer.

The breakfast maid felt the need to leave immediately. ‘Entschuldigen Sie,’ she apologised, hiding her eyes from the sight by staring down at her cleaning trolley.

The nurse held the door open for her, and waited until the maid had gone. Then she began the next test on Werner Stolz’s body.

Quietly, she bent down to examine the dead man’s mouth. She peered closely and, as she expected, the dead man’s lips were blue and covered in a white froth.

She nodded to herself, her diagnosis confirmed. Like so many men of his generation, one-time SS Captain Werner Stolz had chosen to die a short time before death was inevitable. And his preferred method of death, a cyanide pill followed closely by a self-administered bullet through the brain copied the most famous suicide in history: Adolf Hitler’s.

It was only as the nurse was leaving that she noticed a scratch on the door frame. The nurse looked closer: the mark looked clean. It must have been made recently. Then she saw the metal doorframe was buckled, as if the door had been barged open.

Someone had broken in.

FOUR

Father Samuel lowered his knees onto the cold marble, and allowed his ample midriff to flop into his lap. Eyes closed, he bowed his head, and kept the rosary wrapped tightly around his wrists. He was sure he didn’t have long to wait.

Faintly, he heard the chapel door open, and heard the clipped sound of shoes approaching.

‘Father Samuel.’

Samuel concluded his prayer, pocketed his rosary, then turned to see the familiar face. He judged the man’s expression, and guessed his prayers were being answered even sooner than he had hoped. ‘So, how is the Last Nazi?’

‘Dead, Father.’

Samuel absorbed the information, celebrating silently to himself. Then he sensed the man had more to tell. ‘Anything else?’

‘Stolz killed himself.’

Father Samuel stared at the man, trying to understand the news.

The man nodded slowly.

Father Samuel paused and frowned. ‘Why would a man who has already lived such a long life choose to cut it short?’ He closed his eyes in contemplation, tensing his jaw as he thought. Then he stared directly at the man obediently waiting his next instructions. ‘We’re still missing something — you understand?’

The man bowed his head in acknowledgement and walked briskly out of the chapel once again.

Father Samuel returned to prayer, far less happy at the announcement of Stolz’s death than he had expected to be.

FIVE

The accident had happened not long before the peak of the morning rush hour. The A3202, the main road outside the Imperial War Museum and one of London’s main thoroughfares, was blocked.

Within a minute, traffic had backed up half a mile to the river Thames. Several of the drivers stuck in the jam had called for an ambulance, and just four minutes later a team of paramedics was on the scene.

Myles was checked, loaded onto a stretcher and quickly driven to nearby St Thomas’ Hospital. Then he was rushed through a series of procedures: X-rays, an MRI scan, blood tests, an injection, a drip… Finally, Myles’ trolley was pushed into a private room.

Myles was oblivious to it all — he could only think about the thief. What had the man been trying to steal? What had been worth rushing into the traffic to protect?

The door creaked open. Frank poked his head in. ‘Myles, I’m so sorry.’ Frank’s face was sweaty and apologetic.

Myles waved his hand. ‘No need to apologise.’

‘What do the doctors reckon?’

‘Might just be a ligament thing,’ said Myles, looking down at his leg. ‘No real damage. But there’s also something to do with the brain scan. They won’t say what.’

‘If that’s your only injury, then you’ll just be limping around like me.’ Frank raised his own polio-ridden leg, trying to make a joke of it.

Myles smiled, then felt a shot of pain from his tibia.

Frank looked apologetic again. ‘You better stay still,’ he said. ‘They’ll put something on it soon.’ Frank was about to tap Myles’ leg in sympathy but, when his hand was mid-air, he decided not to — just as both of them realised it would hurt.

Frank looked embarrassed again, still out of his depth. Same old Frank — he’d always been that way, ever since Myles first met him.

‘Frank, can you get Helen for me?’

‘Your American woman? Yes, I’ll get her,’ nodded Frank.

Myles watched as Frank limped off to make the call, then wondered exactly what it was about his brain scan which had interested the doctors so much.

SIX

Zenyalena Androvsky stopped in the middle of Smolenskaya Square to admire the twenty-seven-storey building in front of her. She felt comforted by the Stalinist architecture: it was a steadfast monument to Soviet glory which had never compromised with capitalism; a single finger poking up into the Moscow skyline, telling the defeatists where to go.

Then she felt her orange trousers swish in the wind, and saw the security men at the entrance to the Ministry react to her femininity. She flirted back. It felt good to be home.

She was soon in her new office, back in the European Affairs Directorate after assignments in Cuba and Venezuela which had seemed more like distractions than proper foreign affairs work. Anonymous staff had already unpacked her effects, right down to the picture taken in 1987 of her father in his full uniform kissing goodbye to Zenyalena, then a gawky teenager. The photograph was the last image of Colonel Androvsky alive. Just ten days later, his helicopter had been eviscerated by a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile, fired up by a lucky Mujahedeen guerrilla. Zenyalena had never blamed the Afghan who pressed the initiator. Responsibility for her father’s death, she was sure, lay with the cowardly organisation which had supplied the hardware: the CIA.

Eager to work and to make her mark as quickly as she could, Zenyalena Androvsky spent just a few moments leafing through the general briefing pack which had been left for her. Then she pressed a buzzer.

An older man entered, grey-suited and pale, refusing to notice Zenyalena’s bright clothing. ‘Ms Androvsky — welcome to your new post.’

‘Don’t tell me what I know already.’ She tossed the briefing pack to a distant part of her desk. ‘What’s happening in Europe today?’

Trying not to undermine his new boss’s authority, the man reached into the discarded briefing pack to pull out a one-page list of news items. ‘Your headlines for today, Madam.’

Zenyalena ignored the slight — her eyes were already devouring the list. Single-sentence headlines outlined events in Ukraine, Spain, Liechtenstein… she stopped when she reached an item two-thirds of the way down the page. ‘What’s this? And who was ‘Werner Stolz’?’

The older man turned the page towards him to check the name, ‘Er, I can find out for you, Ms Androvsky.’

‘Please do — this morning.’

It took only an hour for the pale man to return clutching a hefty pile of documents. Some looked even older than him, their yellowed edges straying out of the tattered cardboard.

Zenyalena swiftly filleted the files. Within minutes she had spotted yet another opportunity to embarrass the Americans. She called her secretary back in.

‘Ludchovic. You read the stuff in these files about Lieutenant Kirov, right?’

Ludchovic indicated that he had.

‘Tell me — how do you think he died?’

The grey-suited man looked at Zenyalena’s desk as he answered. ‘On balance, I think the American report is probably true, Ms Androvsky. Soviet interrogators also experienced SS captives grabbing weapons and going wild.’

Zenyalena’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, but we never let one kill a liaison officer working for a foreign power.’ She pulled out another sheet with Soviet-era typewriting on it. ‘And look: Kirov died just days before he flagged this Captain Stolz as “special interest”. The Nazi even spent time living in the States after the war. I tell you: this one smells.’

Ludchovic accepted her superior logic. ‘How do you want to proceed, Madam?’

Zenyalena sank in her chair, fully aware that the best information about Stolz would have been lost in the turmoil of post-war Germany, seventy years ago. But there was still a chance to win one over on the Yanks.

‘Ludchovic: I want you to prepare a Demarche. Demand a full investigation of Stolz. If the Americans refuse, we’ll know they’re hiding something. Send it today.’

The secretary understood. ‘To be delivered by our embassy in DC?’

Zenyalena was about to agree, but then stopped herself, her lips pursing into a mischievous grin. ‘No — New York. We’re going to do this through the United Nations. The old United Nations.’

SEVEN

A serious-looking man in an open shirt and white coat breezed into Myles’s room, then paused before he spoke. ‘Mr Munro?’

Myles nodded.

The doctor approached Myles’ trolley-bed, then exhaled, as if he had some difficult news to tell. Myles remained silent.

‘Mr Munro — er, can I call you Myles?’ asked the doctor.

‘If it makes it easier. Yes. Myles is fine.’

More silence.

‘How do you feel, Myles?’

Myles raised his eyebrows — how did he feel? ‘Er, well, I feel pain. I feel a little thirsty. I feel like I don’t like hospitals much…’ He mused some more. ‘… I feel you’re about to tell me.’

Myles watched as the doctor tried to explain.

‘You see, Mr Munro, we did a scan,’ began the doctor, barely managing to speak to Myles’ face. ‘Two scans, actually — an X-ray of your leg, and an MRI. A brain scan…’ The doctor paused again. ‘Well, Mr Munro, in a way it’s fortunate that you broke your leg, because it allowed us to look inside your head.’

Myles nodded, thoughtfully. ‘So what did you find there?’

‘Mr Munro — Myles — you see, I’ve heard of you. You’re the military history guy with the unusual theories about war, right?’

Myles didn’t respond. He didn’t care about his reputation. His silence confirmed the doctor was right.

The doctor checked Myles’ bandages as he continued. ‘… And you see, Mr Munro, every brain is different. They’re unique — like fingerprints. And yours is unique too.’

Myles tried to understand the diagnosis. ‘So my brain is unique, like everybody else’s?’

‘Yes. But yours is very unique — different,’ said the doctor. ‘Let me show you the images, to explain.’

Myles waved his hand, ‘Don’t bother with that, just tell me what it means.’

‘Well, you might think in an unusual way, Mr Munro.’ The doctor watched to see Myles’ reaction. There was none; Myles just stared back at the doctor.

Myles already knew he was odd. ‘Highly gifted but too ready to challenge authority’, was one official description. Some had said he was a misfit. Others said he was clumsy, couldn’t spell and had a problem reading aloud. His memory was extraordinarily good for abstract facts and dates, but hopeless for normal things, like where he’d left his keys.

‘So I’m different. So?’ asked Myles.

The doctor nodded, calmly observing Myles’ face. Then he tried to cushion his words. ‘It means, Mr Munro, that you may experience life a little differently to other people.’

‘Everybody experiences life differently — don’t they?’

The doctor was stumped, and started picking at his white coat. ‘If we may, we’d like to put you on a research programme. We think there might be a link between the shape of people’s brains and the lives they lead. We want to study you — to see if there’s a match between your brain and your behaviour…’ The doctor could see Myles was unsure about the idea. ‘…Oh, and we’d pay you.’

The offer of money had no impact on Myles. ‘Would I have to come back here?’

‘Probably,’ confirmed the doctor. ‘Yes.’

Myles started shaking his head. ‘Then, Doctor, the answer is no.’

The doctor nodded his understanding. ‘You’re probably still in shock from your accident. Let me know if you change your mind. It’s actually quite amazing that you’ve not had problems before. Anyway, I think you’re booked for another examination in about half an hour, in the fracture unit in the east wing, ground floor. I’ll check.’ The doctor retreated from the room, humbled.

Alone again, Myles thought more about the doctor’s offer. Research — Myles did enough of that in his university job. But research for him meant reading — or at least trying to read, since he was not very good at it. Myles would dig up old military facts from obscure sources and try to make sense of them. He’d never been the subject of research before. Apart from that one time, when the media had decided to research everything about him.

Although Myles was usually curious, nothing made him curious about himself. There were so many more interesting things to discover.

But deep down, Myles knew the real reason he didn’t want to be ‘researched’.

He looked up at the hospital ceiling. It was antiseptic white. Dead white.

He remembered coming to a room just like this one when his mother was thin. Deathly thin, like all those concentration camp survivors liberated from the horrors in 1945. His mother had died just a few days later — at the hands of the medical establishment. Cancer. They had said it was treatable. All the statistics, all the odds, all the numbers said she should have survived. It was a minor cancer — treatable, removable. Curable.

Yet they had all failed.

They’d put her on a drug trial. A double-blind, randomised control trial — funny pills twice a day, given to her and lots of other desperate people. Only after his mother was dead did Myles learn her pills were only placebos. Fakes. Had her death helped to prove something? Had she helped the numbers? To the teenage Myles, it seemed more like his mother had been sacrificed for the statistics.

No calculus of chance and statistics was going to dictate his life. Not any more — the drug trial had already dictated his mother’s death, and that was enough. As the nurses came to collect his trolley, Myles knew he would refuse to take part in the research.

And if the doctors really could use a scan of his brain to predict his behaviour, then they should have predicted his answer already.

EIGHT

Flight Lieutenant Jean-Francoise Pigou exhaled in disgust, shaking his head and tutting loudly at the TV. The only customer in the café, he raised his hand at the screen, inviting the café manager to red card the referee with him.

The café owner smiled: Pigou might not be the most gifted military secondee ever to stride through the ornate halls of France’s Foreign Ministry, the Quai D’Orsay, but he could be relied upon to keep everyone up-to-date with the progress of the Paris St Germain football team. The flight lieutenant’s enthusiasm for the game had filled the whole café more than once. He had charm, even if he was completely undiplomatic. It would be a pity when Pigou’s secondment ended, and the officer would return to his normal work, with the French air force.

Jean-Francoise’s anger at the referee’s decision evaporated when a young, professional-looking woman came towards him, a thin folder of papers in her hand. Jean-Francoise stood up to meet her. ‘Carine — you’ve come to watch with me?’

Carine smiled, but sat down with her back to the TV. ‘No, but I knew I could find you here. Is the game over yet?’

‘Not yet,’ said Jean-Francoise, gesturing, ‘but the result is known’

‘Good, then I can give you this.’

The flight lieutenant took the folder with a puzzled expression. ‘Thank you. What’s inside?’

‘A short trip for you — to Berlin.’

Jean-Francoise tipped his head in gratitude. ‘Tell me more.’

Carine settled herself in her seat as she explained. ‘There’s a very old German guy, Werner Stolz, who just died. He used to be SS. The Russians démarched the Americans about him.’

Pigou had just learned enough from his immersion in the Foreign Ministry to understand that a démarche was an official reprimand issued by one country to another, diplomat to diplomat. ‘So how did I win a trip to Berlin?’

‘The Americans agreed to an investigation, calling the Russian’s bluff. I reckon it means there must be nothing to investigate. Your assignment could be short.’

Jean-Francoise chuckled, ‘I understand: I am the perfect choice for an unimportant mission.’ He made clear he wasn’t at all insulted. ‘I like Berlin. But why do they want a Frenchman?’

Carine’s face reacted to show that even a French career diplomat could be surprised occasionally. ‘Well, you see, the Russians have been a bit clever. They did their démarche through a very old protocol — from the Yalta conference, of 1945. It means the United States have to give equal status to Russia, and equal access to all assets of the defeated Germany, including all the Third Reich’s information. As a side-effect, it means there’s also a role for the other Allied powers, France and Britain.’

‘So this treaty means I’m going along as a side-effect?’ queried the French airman.

‘Yes, Jean-Francoise, but I’m sure you’ll put yourself in the centre of things.’

NINE

Simon Charfield, assistant deployments manager at the British Foreign Office, arrived back at his computer, still eating his sandwich. He entered his password one-handed, and waited for the new emails to load up. Meanwhile, his eyes drifted out of the window — towards the queue outside Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. The bunker from which the British Prime Minister had sheltered from the Blitz always drew tourists. As a human resources specialist in the diplomatic service, Simon often wondered what the holidaymakers did for work, and whether any of the British ones might just be suitable for the ‘ad hoc assignments’ it was his duty to fill.

The manager turned back to the screen, and immediately discounted the diplomatic telegrams — ‘Diptels’ — which analysed events around the world. The Middle East peace process, the latest news from Zimbabwe, details about a key election in the Far East — none of it was for him. There was another email chain, all about a British secondee whom he had selected recently for the border monitoring mission in Georgia, which he just ignored. The most important email, he understood quickly, was one from UKMIS — the British diplomatic mission to the United Nations in New York.

Simon read the email and understood quickly: a UK national was required to join a team also comprising nominees from the US, France and Russia. The Briton on the team, the email reckoned, would add most value if he or she was expert in military history, able to travel swiftly to Germany, and felt comfortable accepting a US lead. Immediately, he knew who he should send.

He double-clicked on his database icon, and a separate window opened on the screen. Simon whizzed through the fields, ticking boxes for ‘short-term assignment’, ‘Europe’, and ‘previous experience of multi-national work’, then, in the box for additional criteria, typed in the words, ‘military history expert’. As ever, the computer took less than a second to check through the thousands of pre-cleared deployable civilians on the database. But, because Charfield had added the extra requirement of ‘military history expert’, it meant far fewer names came up than usual. In fact, just one name:

Myles Munro.

Just as he had expected. And because there was only one candidate and the appointment was urgent, he wouldn’t even need to bother with an interview.

Other processes, though, would still have to be followed. Dutifully, he clicked on the name. More information came up, which he scrolled through:

Charfield had put the asterisk there himself, a reminder that there was a story about the person which was too sensitive for the computerised records. Usually, he scribbled it on a removable yellow post-it note. If ever there was a Freedom of Information request about the individual, he could peel off the note, so it didn’t need to be submitted. He kept reading.

Another asterisk? He’d hadn’t noticed the second asterisk on Munro’s file before. Succumbing to his curiosity, he moved over to the filing cabinet and fetched out the slim cardboard cover which bound together the sheets of A4 on Myles Munro. The first yellow note fluttered out as he opened the folder. It was the note he had scribbled himself:

Simon Charfield laughed at his own wit, but quickly sensed others in the office were turning towards him, so he pretended to cough instead, and buried his head in the folder.

He searched for the other note. What was there on file about Myles Munro’s ‘authority issues’? He looked, but couldn’t find it. All he could see was something else handwritten — again, in his own handwriting — slipped into the ‘previous assignment’ parts of his notes. It bore just one word:

It was true. Myles Munro had been accused of terrorism, and lambasted by the newspapers for it. There were probably people who still thought he was guilty. But Charfield knew the truth: Myles Munro was the most effective individual on his database. Even if he was sometimes a little bit too individual.

Charfield knew he had to confirm Myles Munro’s security clearance for an assignment like this. He checked: Munro had been tested, and passed. The only remark listed under ‘noteworthy risks’ referred to his long-term partner, who was a journalist and a foreign national. The assistant deployments manager recognised the woman’s name — he’d seen her interviewing important people on TV, usually ripping them apart. Then he remembered the words from the Diptel: ‘Candidate must… be comfortable accepting a US lead’. Munro was perfect for the job.

He flicked to the contact details. Stuck over the address and telephone number for Munro’s college in Oxford was yet another small peel-off square of yellow. He had found the missing note on ‘authority issues’ — more hand-written words, this time written in a loopy, feminine script, from one of his predecessors:

He wondered about the words. What if Myles Munro turned down this assignment?

Simon glanced outside again and, watching the queue of tourists outside Churchill’s war-room bunker, an idea came to him — a plan which would make sure Myles Munro said ‘yes’.

TEN

Helen thanked the nurse for directing her to the room then, when she saw Myles was asleep, crept in as quietly as she could. She stood over him and examined the small cuts on his face, until she was satisfied the damage was only superficial.

She squeezed his hand and held it for a moment. When there was no reaction, she whispered into his ear. ‘Myles, it’s me, Helen.’ Then she kissed him.

Myles rolled his head on the pillow, squinting as he turned towards the lissom silhouette standing next to him. Helen put her hand on his forehead. ‘Well, your brain’s still together.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So — you looked left when the traffic came from the right, huh?’ She still found it funny that Myles had trouble with his left and right.

Myles smiled. ‘I didn’t have you looking after me,’ he said, touching her forearm. ‘No, I was chasing someone.’

Helen nodded. ‘And your leg? The doctor told me you’d need a special bandage…’

Myles’ expression made clear what he thought of the doctor.

‘When you’re better… no more thief chasing please.’ She moved to sit down beside him.

Myles motioned his eyes towards the medical file on his bedside table. ‘What did the doctor say about my scan?’

Helen smiled. ‘He asked me about your personality. He said, “We know he’s very intelligent, but do you have any evidence of Mr Munro being odd?”’ She tried her best to emulate the English doctor’s accent. ‘I told him it was a silly question. Looks to me like the oddball is the doctor…’

‘They’re trying to do research on people,’ Myles explained. ‘Using brain scans to predict personality.’

Helen screwed up her face in revulsion. ‘I hope you said no — I don’t want you to be experimented on, Myles.’ She paused. ‘Although it would be interesting to see what the research said.’

The door opened. Frank’s head appeared, flustered, as usual. He was carrying a bag which bulged and made it hard for him to walk with his stick. ‘Helen — I’m not interrupting, am I…?’

Helen welcomed him in and gave up her chair.

Frank sat down and placed his walking stick on the floor. ‘So they put something on your leg, then, Myles?’

‘Yeah — a flexi-thing.’ Myles lifted up the grey wrapping around his knee, turning it in curiosity. ‘What do you think?’

Frank nodded in appreciation of the medical handiwork. ‘You’ll only be limping for a few weeks. After that you’ll be fine.’ Then he delved inside his bag and pulled out some papers. ‘Myles — I remembered what you said about your day job. History’s all happened, and all that? Well, I got you this.’

He passed a printed-out email to Myles, who held it for Helen to see. ‘It’s a job,’ explained Frank. ‘A short-term assignment — in Berlin… I’ve been asked to see if you might be interested.’

Myles frowned, already looking sceptical. ‘Why didn’t they ask me directly?’

‘Something about last time, I was told,’ replied Frank, baffled. ‘It’s from a friend of mine in Whitehall.’

‘Simon Charfield?’ suggested Myles.

‘Yes — how did you guess? Anyway, they need a military historian — someone British — to join a Frenchman, a Russian and an American.’

‘The old Allied war powers?’

Frank nodded.

Helen read through the text with her eyebrows raised. ‘So, a Brit, a Frenchman, a Russian and an American go to Berlin…’ She smirked at Myles. ‘It sounds like the beginning of a joke.’

Frank wanted them to take it seriously. ‘Come on, it’s easy work. There’s some guy who died. An old Nazi. Russia’s insisting that an old protocol means the man’s papers have to be looked at again, now he’s dead.’

Myles and Helen didn’t answer immediately. They kept reading the page. Helen finished first. ‘It doesn’t say what was so special about this guy,’ she said, looking up at Frank. ‘Er…’ She scanned the email for the old man’s name. ‘… Captain Werner Stolz. Why him?’

Frank shrugged his shoulders.

Myles was looking pensive. ‘So this means getting inside the head of an old Nazi bureaucrat?’

‘Yes, Myles. You’d get an insight into how the Nazi system really worked.’ Frank hoped his words might sell the idea to Myles. Instead, they put him off.

It wasn’t just that Myles hated bureaucracy — he didn’t like studying the Second World War at all. It meant accepting the old-fashioned theory of war: that war was between countries, not people. War as described by most TV documentaries, including their obsession with World War Two, was misleading. Worse than that, it was dangerous. Most modern wars are inside countries, not between them, as Myles lectured his undergraduates. Students loved Myles for his radical views.

Myles put the paper down, next to the image of his brain scan. ‘Thanks Frank. But I’ll pass for now.’

‘Are you sure, Myles?’ Frank was surprised Myles was turning down the offer. ‘It’s work you can still do with a bad leg… It’s just, if you are interested, Whitehall will need to know in a day or two.’

‘Yes, Frank, I’m sure.’

Helen tried to change the subject. ‘Any idea what that guy was trying to take from your museum?’

Frank stretched his face in an expression which said, I can help with that one. He dug into his bag again and fished out some papers, which he placed on the table. ‘Here.’

Helen looked at them, not sure how to react. ‘These are what he took?’

‘Yes. The police gave them back to me.’ Frank turned his head to look at the file as he spoke. ‘They’re papers from my new exhibit, mainly. All about how the natural world impacts on war. But one, I know will fascinate both of you…’ Frank opened a cardboard file with some ceremony, and revealed a single sheet of typewriting.

Myles still looked bemused. ‘What is it, Frank?’

‘It’s a real “Hitler letter”,’ Frank answered, proudly. ‘It’s a note which allows the bearer to draw on “All Resources of the Reich” in the performance of their duty. And look: here’s the signature.’ Frank pointed to an illegible squiggle near the bottom of the page. The dictator hadn’t put much effort into writing his name.

Myles sat up in bed. ‘So you think the museum thief was a trophy hunter?’

‘Could have been — working for a private collector, maybe. An Adolf Hitler signature can earn quite a bit at auction,’ explained Frank. ‘Funny to think that Hitler — probably the most evil man in history — is still causing people to die.’

Even Frank was still fascinated by the dead dictator. Like so many of Myles’ pupils, Frank was drawn in by the Hitler myth.

Myles refused to look at the signature. Instead, he focussed on the small print at the bottom. He pointed out a name.

‘“SS Captain Werner Stolz”, it says. Is that who this “Hitler letter” was for, Frank?’

Frank peered closely at the name, then slowly pulled his face back. ‘Yes, the same guy who just died in Berlin,’ he said, mildly amused. ‘Well, isn’t that funny?’

Helen and Myles looked at each other. Neither of them believed it was a coincidence.

Myles turned towards the other papers, and thanked Frank with his eyes. ‘Reading material for while I get better, huh?’ He flicked his thumb up the edge of the pages, glimpsing the material inside. Most of the documents were in German — a language he couldn’t read. ‘Simon Charfield should get a German speaker for this — not me,’ he said.

He waved to Frank, who stood up to leave. Helen showed the museum curator out of the room. By the time she returned, Myles was asleep.

Helen sat back down and started leafing through the papers. A page slipped out and fluttered to the floor. The paper had yellowed and the words on it were from an old-fashioned manual typewriter. As she bent down to collect it, she saw the title was simply ‘Communism’, and began to read:

This was history she knew well: March 1989 was when non-communists were first allowed to take their place in the Russian Parliament. On 3^rd and 4^th June 1989 the government of communist China cracked down on democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square. And the evening of 9^th–10^th November was when the Berlin Wall tumbled down, taking with it communism in Eastern Europe.

She turned it over, searching for a date. When she spotted it at the bottom, Helen found herself involuntarily shaking her head at the information in front of her.

She tucked her hair behind her ear, trying to remain calm as she realised she wasn’t holding a report about world events. It wasn’t a report at all. It was far, far more important than that. The papers she was holding had the potential to shape world events.

ELEVEN

On the fourth floor of St Thomas’ hospital, while Myles slept, Helen started to rifle through the rest of the file — papers a thief had tried to steal from the Imperial War Museum, at the cost of his life.

The first few pages seemed to be a series of newspaper clippings. All about Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s trusted second-in-command, until he mysteriously flew to Scotland in 1941 and tried to cut a peace deal.

Next were documents about how weather forecasts helped Eisenhower plan D-Day, then some typed letters between an American Corporal Bradley and his major from 1945.

She checked the front of the file. A small white sticker had the words ‘World War 2 — war/natural world’ scribbled on it. The documents were background research papers for Frank’s new exhibition.

Then she returned to the page marked, ‘Communism’ and rubbed the old paper between her fingers. If it was a hoax, it had been done very carefully. She peered closer to notice the paper had been torn. She was holding only part of the page — the bottom half had been ripped away. Someone had taken the prediction seriously enough to tear it in two.

Suddenly she jolted upright.

The movement made Myles stir. ‘Helen?’ He was still drowsy.

Helen put her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

Myles took a moment to focus, then hauled himself upright, into a sitting position to listen.

‘The papers. They’re from World War Two, but they seem to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall…’ She showed him the document. ‘… See — November 1989. How did they do that?’

Myles shrugged. ‘One of Frank’s practical jokes, I guess.’

He glanced at the rest of the papers. Most were in German — he couldn’t read them.

Then he was drawn to the correspondence between Corporal Bradley and his superiors, and started to read.

He turned the page to see a short reply from the Major.

Then another letter from Bradley, this one dated a fortnight later.

The word ‘must’ had been underlined in pen — probably by Bradley himself. Myles was growing to like Corporal Bradley: the man shared his own disrespect of authority. The letter was following by a curt military telegram:

Myles imagined Bradley being taken off his work, and shook his head. Poor Bradley — he had lost his battle, and the bureaucrats had reassigned him to freezing Alaska as a punishment. ‘Helen, do you reckon you might be able to track down this guy, Corporal Bradley?’

Helen’s face opened up at the possibility. ‘I could try, if he’s still alive. He’d be very old by now.’

Myles wondered. Whoever Bradley was, he had found some reason to think the German SS Captain Stolz was very important. Myles didn’t care for the Second World War, and worried even less about satisfying the governments of Britain, France, the USA and Russia. Helping Bradley beat the bureaucrats, though — that made sense. ‘So, what do you reckon about taking up Simon Charfield’s assignment, and following up on Bradley’s advice — seventy years late?’

Helen nodded. ‘Yep, I think you should.’ Then she looked again at the ‘Communism’ page, with its eerie predictions about 1989. ‘Be careful, Myles.’

Using Helen’s mobile, Myles called Simon Charfield directly to accept. Relieved that he had his man, Charfield printed off a standard Contract of Short Term Assignment, or COSTA, and carried it along Whitehall, across Westminster Bridge, and into the hospital.

He passed the contract to Myles, with a pen, and waited. Only when he had the signed COSTA, and was about to leave to arrange air tickets, did he ask, ‘Were you persuaded to come along by the Bradley letters?’

‘You put them in the middle deliberately, didn’t you,’ answered Myles.

‘I did, yes,’ admitted Charfield. ‘To make you feel like you’d found something.’

Myles accepted the answer, then shook his head. ‘It wasn’t the letters from Bradley which persuaded me,’ he said. ‘It was the replies.’