The Valhalla Exchange

16

It was almost dawn in La Huerta when Canning finished talking. Rain still tapped against the window of the bar, more gently now, but when I got up and looked out the square was quiet and deserted.

Canning threw another log on the fire. 'Well, Mr O'Hagan — what do you think?'

'Such a waste,' I said. 'Of good men.'

'I know. They were all that. Not Strasser, of course. He was the devil walking, but Jack Howard, Ritter, Sorsa and those Finns…'

'But why?' I asked. 'Why did they persist in going through with it? Why didn't they simply tell Strasser or Bormann or whoever to go to hell?'

'Well, Sorsa and his Finns are possibly the easiest to understand. As he said, they were fighting for wages. They'd taken the gold, if you like to look at it that way, pledged their word and stuck to it — until the final carnage, anyway.'

'And Ritter?'

'He was like a man in deep water, swept along by the current, able to go only one way. He and Jack Howard were a lot alike — opposite sides of the same coin. At the end of things, I believe now that they'd both had enough. After what they'd been through, the things they'd done for their separate countries, the future held nothing. Didn't exist, if you like.'

'You mean they were looking for death, both of them?'

'I'm certain of it.'

'And Strasser, or should I say Bormann?'

'That's the terrible thing — not being sure. Remember Berger, the pilot who brought them out of Berlin? The guy who flew the Dakota out of Arnheim in the end? I found him in Italy fifteen or sixteen years ago. Dying of cancer. He was in the kind of state where a man just doesn't give a damn.'

'And?'

'Oh, he thought Strasser was Bormann all right. Last saw him in Bilbao in June of forty-five. In the ensuing years they gave him plenty of work to do, the Comrades. They looked after him.'

'I'm surprised he didn't get a bullet like the rest.'

'Well, he was something special. A pilot of genius. He could fly anything anywhere. I suppose that had its uses.'

'But all those facts,' I said, 'about what took place in the bunker. Where did they come from?'

'Erich Hoffer,' he said simply. 'He's still alive. Runs a hotel in Bad Harzberg, and when a Russian infantry unit checked out Eichmann's hideout they found one of the assistants still alive, a man called Walter Konig. He pulled through after hospital treatment and spent twenty years in the Ukraine. When he was finally returned to West Germany he wasn't too strong in the head so they didn't take much notice of his story at his interrogation. I heard about it from a contact in German Intelligence.'

'Did you go to see this Konig?'

'Tried to, but I was just too late. He committed suicide. Drowned himself in the Elbe. But I managed to get a look at the report. The rest, of course, is intelligent guesswork.'

'So, where does it all leave us?' I asked.

'I don't know. Was it Strasser at Arlberg and Bormann in the bunker or the other way round? That's what's plagued me all these years. Oh, I told it all to the Intelligence people immediately after the events.'

'And what did they say?'

'I think they thought I'd been locked up too long. As far as they were concerned, Bormann was in Berlin right to the bitter end. Strasser was something else again.'

'And what did happen to Bormann then, according to history?'

'He left the bunker at 1.30 a.m. on May 2nd. As far as we know, he didn't attempt to disguise himself. It seems he wore a leather greatcoat over the uniform of a lieutenant-general in the SS. He met his secretary, Frau Kruger, by sheer chance on his way out. He told her there wasn't much sense in any of it now, but that he'd try to get through.'

'And from that moment the myth began?'

'Exactly. Was he killed on the Weidendammer Bridge as Kempka, the Fuhrer's chauffeur, said…?'

'Or later, near Lehrter Station, where Axmann said he saw him lying next to Stumpfegger? Those two bodies, as I recall, were buried near the Invalidenstrasse by post-office workers.'

'That's right, and in 1972, during building work, they found a skeleton which the German authorities insist is Bormann's.'

'But wasn't that refuted by experts?'

'One of the greatest of them put it perfectly in perspective. He pointed out that Bormann couldn't be in two places at once. Dead in Berlin and alive and well in South America.'

There was a long silence. Rain continued to tap at the window. General Canning said, 'As we know, that bizarre condition is only too possible. I need hardly point out that it would also explain a great many puzzling features of the Bormann affair over the years.'

He went to the bar and poured himself another drink.

'So what now?' I asked him.

'God knows. All of a sudden I feel old. All used up. I thought I was close this time. Thought it would finally be over, but now…' He turned on me, a surprisingly fierce expression on his face. 'I never married, did you know that? Never could, you see. Oh, there were women, but I could never really forget her. Strange.' He sighed. 'I think I'll go home to Maryland for a while and sit by the fire.'

'And Strasser — or Bormann?'

'They can go to hell — both of them.'

'It would make a beautiful story,' I said.

He turned on me, that fierce expression on his face again. 'When I'm dead, not before. You understand me?'

It was an order, not a request, and I treated it as such. 'Just as you say, General.'

I hadn't heard the car draw up, but there was a quick step in the hall and Rafael entered. 'They have sent the taxi for you from the airstrip, Senor Smith. Your pilot says it would be possible to leave now, but only if you hurry.'

'That's for me.' Canning emptied his glass and placed it on the bar. 'Can I offer you a lift?'

'No thanks,' I said. 'Different places to go.'

He nodded. 'Glad we met, O'Hagan. It passed a lonely night at the tail-end of nowhere.'

'You should have been a writer, General.'

'I should have been a lot of things, son.' He walked to the door, paused and turned. 'Remember what I told you. When I'm gone, you can do what the hell you like with it, but until then…'

His steps echoed on the parquet floor of the hall. A moment later, a door slammed and the taxi drove away across the square.

I never saw him again. As the world knows, he was killed flying out of Mexico City three days later when his plane exploded in midair. There was some wild talk of sabotage in one or two newspapers, but the Aviation Authority's inspectors turned over the wreckage and soon knocked that little story on the head.

They buried him at Arlington, of course, with full honours, as was only proper for one of his country's greatest sons. They were all there. The President himself, anybody who was anybody at the Pentagon. Even the Chinese sent a full general.

I was still in South America when it happened and had a hell of a time arranging flights out, so that I almost missed it, and when I arrived at Arlington, the high and the mighty had departed.

There were one or two gardeners about, no one else, and the grave and the immediate area was covered with flowers and bouquets and wreaths of every description.

It started to rain and I moved forward, turning up the collar of my trenchcoat, examining the sentiment on the temporary headstone they'd put up.

'Well, old man, they all remembered,' I said softly. 'I suppose that should count for a lot.'

I started to turn away and then my eye caught sight of something lying close to the base of the stone and the blood turned to ice-water inside me.

It was a single scarlet rose. What some people would call a winter rose. When I picked it up, the card said simply: As Promised.