The Quiller Memorandum

19 : THE SEPULCHRE

He said: "You would never get out alive."

Inga was still shivering.

I picked up the file and he lifted his hand at once, saying, "I beg you not to go. But if you go, I beg you not to take the file with you."

"Don't worry, I won't say where I got it."

"You don't understand my position, Herr Quiller. They'll start an immediate inquiry at the highest level to find out who stole the file. They'll examine it for fingerprints, and mine are on it – so are Inga's." He held his hands limply. "Please," he said.

"All right." The file hit the table with a slap. "But you'll make it available to me when I get back?"

He sighed. "You will not get back." He looked at Inga for help but she turned away and in a minute she came back with a coat on, a military-style trencher buttoning at the right. With her bright helmet of hair and the martial coat she looked all the things she was: man, woman, hermaphrodite, transvestist, a pagan Joan of Arc. She said " I'll go with you."

Braun closed his eyes. "Inga…" he said hopelessly.

He was standing like that when we went into the passage together. A man was closing the door of the lift but saw us coming and waited so that we could go down with him. We let him make his way ahead of us through the hall as a return of courtesy. Our footsteps echoed; the place was mostly marble, and sounds carried.

We turned along the pavement and there were steps behind us. It was Braun, trotting to catch up. "Herr Quiller," he said plaintively. "Inga… " We didn't say anything so he gave it up, signalling a taxi from the rank and getting in with us.

The night was cold and clear and I watched the city as we passed along its streets. People were about, and the lights burned brilliantly as if they had never gone out nor would ever go out again; but not far away where the Wall stood I had often seen rabbits bobbing among the rubble of no-man's land, in and out of the tank-traps and barbed wire and the shadows of the machine-gun posts. In London you would see Piccadilly on one side, Leicester Square on the other, and in between a tract so desolate that rabbits ran there, safe from man.

I had told the driver: "Grunewaldbruck."

The house was there. The address was in the last report from Kenneth Lindsay Jones. He'd been closing in on the enemy, with ‘a line on base’. Things were ‘very tricky’ and he had warned Control that he ‘might not signal for a time’ or even ‘receive Bourse’. He had followed that line and they'd killed him off before he got too close to their base. They had shot him and dropped his body into the Grunewald See: the nearest place. It was from the Grunewald Bridge that they had dropped me, into that same water.

We were going there now, to the house by the bridge with the single plantain tree outside, the tree I had seen through the window when I had sat trapped in the silk brocade chair.

The glint of water under starlight was now on our left and I began counting the streets on the other side, with the Verder-strasse as a reference. Then suddenly Braun shifted forward and told the driver to pull up.

"I will not go with you," he told us. "I would die of fright, waiting for you to make a slip and give me away. For God's sake don't make a slip… " He got out. On the left was now the bridge, spanning the neck of the lake and a single star. The house was humped on the other side, most of its mass in darkness. A street lamp marked the plantain tree. I told Inga:

"We can walk from here."

She sat stiffly and her face looked bloodless in the shadows. I got out and waited for her, paying the driver. Her foot buckled over on a stone as she left the taxi and I knew how she felt. There was no strength in her legs.

She seemed about to tell me something but we weren't alone. The taxi had gone and Braun had gone, but certain shadows moved and the night was too calm for even a murmur not to carry. Sounds were on the cold air, audible in the intervals of our footsteps. She walked with me through the gates of the drive and a man came down from the curve of steps that were lit by the lamp above the doors; his shadow reached us first. Another man came from behind us and we all climbed the steps in silence.

When I heard the doors close I knew I had made my throw and would have to stand by it.

Nobody seemed to be clear about what to do with us; three men stood in dark suits, each by a doorway, staring at nothing. There was no baroque here: the hall was immense and furnished as bleakly as a monastery. I said to Inga:

"Show me the shrine."

It would be good for her to let me see it.

Her eyes were large, their pupils dilated in the artificial light. She took a step back from me and then another. "Do you believe," she asked me, "that you'll leave here alive?"

She'd begun shivering again.

"Yes."

She seemed to accept it, and the shivering stopped. Her lips parted to say something more but footsteps were fading in from the marble distances. Two men were advancing on us, marching on us, their feet in unison; they were the kind of men who had never learned to walk.

"You will both accompany us," said one of them.

Fifteen stairs, a mezzanine, ten more stairs. This data was filed mentally with the rest: six average paces from the plantain to the gates, gates twelve feet high and locked back with ball-levers, twenty-seven paces from the gates to the curving steps, reasonable shrub cover, two balconies on the face of the building… nineteen paces from the double doors to the staircase… so on.

More doors, with our shadows grouped against them.

Permission to enter was begged and received in staccato fashion, correct to the last heel-click, and then I heard the comic and terrible pig grunt that I had not heard for twenty years: " Heil Hitler! " And as the doors opened I knew that they opened on to the Third Reich.

It wasn't the same room. This was Operations. The map of Europe was thirty feet wide and reached to the ceiling where a battery of spotlights was trained on it.

The main plotting-table took up a quarter of the room; a dust-cover masked it. The huge curtains were made of blackout fabric and there was the insignia on each of them in white and scarlet: the swastika.

Above the desk where the man sat was a portrait in oils floodlit by concealed lamps in the edge of the jutting frame; not a bad likeness, though the weakness of the mouth had been delicately altered and the eyes had humanity in them. The words were embossed in gold Gothic at the base of the portrait: Our Glorious Fuhrer.

There were six other men apart from the fat one who sat at the desk. All wore black shirts with a gold swastika on the breast. One was Oktober.

He came towards us. The others didn't move.

Inga pulled the black-covered file from her trenchcoat pocket and gave it to Oktober. "He's read it," she said. "All of it."

Oktober held the file in both hands. For the first time I saw him hesitate before speaking, and although his blank glass eyes were directed at me there was the impression that he was also looking behind him at the man at the desk. Oktober was in the presence of a superior.

"Make your report," he told Inga. She stood away from me, and looked only at him.

"I received a visit, Reichsfuhrer, from Braun. He had managed to get hold of the file and wanted Quiller to see it and pass it to his Control." She spoke, I thought, a little like Oktober himself, her harsh Berliner accent whittling at the words. The peripheral glow from the map-lamps brightened the gold of her hair and she stood very straight with her heels together. "There was nothing I could do, Reichsfuhrer. My orders were to continue operating in the role of defector, whenever in contact with Braun. He – "

"Stop." The word came from the man at the desk like a soft pistol shot. I studied his face. It was simply an eater's face, a devourer's face, the eyes watchful for prey, the mouth long and thin and set between pouches, like a stretched H. "Bemore precise."

She had stiffened. "Yes, Reichsleiter. Braun contacted me and asked to meet Quiller. I reported the request to Reichsfuhrer Oktober and was told to allow the meeting. I contacted Quiller and asked him to visit me. Braun came first. A few minutes before Quiller arrived, Braun showed me the file and said he meant to let Quiller have it. There was nothing I could do since it was impossible to contact the Reichsfuhrer by phone in front of him. I was not too worried because I knew there was heavy cover and Quiller couldn't hope to reach his Control with the file -"

"Wait." She stopped immediately. "It must have occurred to you that there was a risk involved. You knew that there was heavy cover. You knew that you had only to use the telephone to ask for situation orders. Well?"

"Both Braun and Quiller would have realised at once that my role of defector was false and that I was in opposition to them. My standing orders to get their confidence and particularly to seduce Quiller morally and physically were of great importance to me, Reichsleiter. I was forced to make my own decision." She paused.

"Proceed."

"Thank you, Reichsleiter. I decided that when Quiller left the apartment I would report the situation at once by phone. With heavy cover in the vicinity I could have passed on any orders without delay and he could have been caught and put under immediate restraint, and the file taken from him. This was unnecessary. He told us he intended to come here himself, to confirm the information on file. I was unable to understand his reasons but I believed he meant it. I therefore came with him, so that if he made any attempt to contact his Control I could signal cover and prevent him. I beg you to consider, Reichsleiter, that my actions were dictated by the highest concern for the success of my personal mission."

Oktober had watched her intently and now seemed satisfied. He was directly responsible for this agent, and any lapse in her efficiency would reflect on him.

The others present also relaxed. The Reichsleiter sat brooding for some seconds, and now he turned his gaze on me.

"You are said to have read the file."

There were three ways to play it: obstinate, worried, or dumb. The first way would be the most expected, with my record of obstinacy with Oktober.

"Yes, I've read it."

"Why did you decide to come here?"

"To get confirmation. The info might have been false. I'd never heard of Braun and I wanted to get him confirmed as well."

"And now you have done that."

"I have."

"What gave you the impression that you could leave here as freely as you came?"

"Experience. I've been trained to get out of places."

He sat with his hands bunched loosely on the desk; they were a child's hands, pink-fleshed, podgy, designed to clutch at whatever they touched, to possess the world piecemeal so that it need no longer be feared. A ring clung to one finger like a dead blue eye. He said without expression:

"A short time before you arrived there was a signal from our agents in North Africa. The nuclear test will be set in operation at 23.00 hours. That is in twenty minutes from now. It is a night operation designed partly to test the effects of radioactivity and its fringe properties in the total absence of sunlight." He got to his feet and moved heavily across to the plotting-table. "Sprungbrett is similarly a night operation. That is why we are able to avail ourselves of this supreme opportunity. For seven hours the entire Mediterranean area will be in darkness and – according to news reports – under a shroud of radioactive fallout. We shall thus be in sole command of that area even before the operation is launched, since news of that nature will of course create mass confusion and panic."

He took a corner of the dust-cover and jerked it from the plotting-table. "You may study the situation for yourself."

I moved to the table. Mediterranean area Longitudes 7°W to 3 5°E, Latitudes 32°- 42° in relief. All units in red counters assembled eastern seaboard Spain, seaboard Egypt and the toe of Italy. Blue areas Gibraltar, Algeria, Libya, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Sicily. The indications were magnetic-tab.

I gave it a couple of minutes. When I looked up he was gazing at me with his pale-blue glittering eyes.

"What do you think, Herr Quiller?"

I checked the wall-clock. "He left it too late. Braun."

"That is so. He had no indication of our timing, and of course it doesn't appear on the file. At this moment our forces are standing-by in the operational areas. Within sixteen minutes from now the nuclear test will take place. Within ninety minutes of the news that it has misfired, ten times that many units will have reached the area by troop-transport. German officers-commanding are awaiting the signal at this moment." He turned away from the table. " So there is nothing you can do. Nothing. Seven years' meticulous planning has brought us to the brink of this operation, and it cannot be arrested in a quarter of an hour. You have the intelligence to see that."

It had become very quiet in the room.

I said: " I'm not convinced."

He turned to face me squarely and the pale eyes became sparks of light in the pouchy flesh. "It is not my concern to convince you, Herr Quiller. You are a mote in the sandstorm that is about to blow. But I am proud of Sprungbrett. It was my conception and I have nurtured it to maturity. It will thus please me to convince, you of its invincibility. In a few minutes we shall receive the news that will touch off our operation. From that same instant you will be free to leave. Then you will be convinced that there is nothing you can do. You are powerless. You are useless to me and to your Control. You are not, Herr Quiller, worth the expenditure of a single bullet."

He went back to his desk.

It was Inga who spoke, and not to me. She was standing in front of the desk. Her voice was rough. "Mein Keichsleiter… Let me convince an unbeliever. Let me show him Der Reliquie! "

The man said nothing. He seemed uninterested in her sudden outburst, but he gazed at her for a moment and then moved a podgy hand, granting the request.

She waited for me and I followed her to the far end of the room where I had noticed the curtains. They were a fall of black velvet with the swastika emblazoned on it. She stood erect in her military trenchcoat, the pride shining from her face.

"You asked me to show you the shrine."

Someone must have operated a switch; the velvet was split and its two halves drew apart. The niche was lighted by a single flame in a bowl of red marble. The relics were cradled in a vessel of clear crystal, and were pure white.

There are various reports on this subject. Witnesses were hard to locate in the holocaust of Berlin at the time. The most authoritative evidence was presented by British Military Intelligence in 1945. It was established that the corpses, of Hitler and Eva Braun were burnt in the garden of the Chancellery on the evening of April 30th, but no trace was found of the charred remains. These were removed in secret. A statement by Frau Junge (who was in the Fuhrerbunker during the last hours) said that the cremated relics were collected in a box and secretly taken to the Hitler Youth leader Axmann. The sacred relics would thus be passed on to the next generation, represented by the Hitler Youth.

The light of the small flame was reflected in the crystal, so that the bleached remains were seen as if enwrapped in fire.

Her face was there too, distorted by the curves of the glass and the flame's movement. She was staring into it. I remembered something she had said when she had first spoken to me of her childhood and the later years when she had defected from Phoenix. They had tried to make her go back. "I refused to go back, but I swore on something that they keep there that I would never talk." I had known it must be some kind of shrine, something sacred. She had also said: "The only god I had ever been told about was the Fuhrer."

Here was the holy sepulchre.

I watched her face in the crystal. She couldn't move; she could only stare. I knew how many times she must have come here before, to stand silently in communion with those who had peopled her child's world: the ‘grown-ups’ of the doomed Fuhrerbunker, Uncle Hermann, Uncle Guenther, her own mother… and her god. She had known them and loved them, and they had turned, before her child's eyes, into creatures stranger than the fiends of a fable; and she herself had become as suddenly a changeling, first a child, then a freak, a werewolf with a child's face.

This much remained of all that she had known as home cold bones and bitter ash, cradled forever in the chill of glass.

Then her face was suddenly gone and all I could see was her reflected hand, raised and held palm-flattened. From behind me her voice came, a soft screech – "Heil Hitler!"

There were other voices, breaking to a murmur of approval, and I turned to see the group of men who stood watching her, moved by her cry of faith.

The black velvet came together silently.

Unnervingly, a telephone began ringing. It was the Reichsleiter who answered. He listened for a few seconds and then nodded, saying only: "Good. Very good." He lowered the receiver tenderly. To the others he said "Gentlemen, we must wish ourselves good fortune in our endeavours."

They closed around the desk and one of them took his hand. Oktober spoke to him and was answered. He turned towards me and I watched the steel trap of his mouth open and shut on a shouted order to the man who had never left his post at the doors.

"The prisoner will leave. He will not be molested. The order will be passed on."

I looked at Inga before I crossed to the doors. She said nothing. She turned and joined the throng of men at the Reichsleiter's desk.

The guard stood aside for me to pass, and spoke to others outside. The order was passed on as I went down the ten stairs and crossed the mezzanine, went down the fifteen stairs and reached the hall, took the nineteen paces to the entrance-doors and walked through them unchallenged.

The night struck deathly cold against my face. The lamps cast my shadow along the street as I went my way alone. I was free.

I was as free as Kenneth Lindsay Jones had been on the night he had walked out of that house.