XPD

13

East Anglia is the lost continent of Great Britain. Windy and rainy, it is not a part of the industrialized north nor of the more prosperous south. This is fenland, some of it below sea level, drained by elaborate dykes and ditches built by Dutchmen whose names can still be found in every local telephone directory. No great motorway networks serve this part of England, and grass grows through the train tracks. Here are endless fields of potatoes and peas, ducks and turkeys-all the bounty of the freezer-with rainswept holiday trailers huddled together as if sheltering from the elements. Its horizons are little changed since medieval times, the blunt towers of its flint churches buttressing the turbulent clouds. And yet a short walk off the roadway in almost any direction will bring you to derelict control towers, ruined operations blocks and cracked hardstands. For long, long ago, this was ‘ Little America ’. From here the great bomber fleets went out to attack Hitler’s Germany, and young men from Tacoma to Tallahassee called these East Anglian villages home.

Boyd Stuart saw the spire long before he found the road sign for Little Ashfield. He turned off the Thetford road and went through the villages of Elmstone and Great Wickmondgate. He felt happier in his own car; better an ancient dented Aston, he reasoned, than a factory-fresh Datsun. The village he sought was no more than a dozen small box-framed houses with a flint rubble church. The sky above it was slate grey and there was a trace of rain in the air.

‘I’m looking for Franz Wever’s house,’ Boyd called to an old woman in a floral-patterned pinafore. She was hanging over her garden gate watching her small mongrel puppy gnaw a bone.

‘He’ll be in the church,’ she said. ‘What do you want him for?’

‘In the church?’

She laughed. It was a shrill laugh. ‘The church. Polishing, not praying,’ she said. ‘Every week, regular as clockwork, old Mr Wever is in the church, polishing the pews and sweeping the floor. He’s a dark horse, that one!’

‘Thanks,’ said Stuart, and drove to the end of the village street and parked by the lych gate. It was a fine old church, its great roof a maze of king posts, hammer beams and rafters. Wever was there: a small bespectacled man with a bony pointed nose and thinning fair hair which had still not gone completely white. His eyes were bright blue and his skin untanned but leathery-it was the face of a man who had spent his life outdoors.

‘Mr Wever?’

‘Is it the eggs for the Rendezvous des Gourmets?’

‘Is it what?’

Wever resumed sweeping the floor. ‘I thought you were from the new restaurant on the main road. I had trouble starting my van this morning.’

‘I’m from London, Mr Wever. I was told that you could help me with an inquiry we have about a wartime movement of German archives.’

Wever raised his eyes quickly, his movement frozen. ‘So they sent you,’ he said wearily. ‘Is there no end to their questions?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said Stuart.

‘1945 again. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve told you all I know, over and over again.’ Wever picked up the dustpan and his jacket. ‘Will it take long?’

‘I can’t tell at this stage.’

Wever sighed. Stuart followed him through a vestry door and along a corridor to a broom closet. He watched him collect together his polishing rags and dusters and pack them away. ‘I came here as a prisoner of war in 1945,’ said Wever. ‘I have been here ever since. Always a prisoner, in a manner of speaking.’

‘You regret it now, do you?’ Stuart asked. ‘Prefer the old country?’

Wever looked at him contemptuously. ‘I’ve never been back there, Mr…?’ The German accent was easier to hear now that he was angry.

‘Stuart. Boyd Stuart.’

‘Mr Stuart.’ Wever washed his hands at a small washbasin, dried them carefully and put on an old green tweed jacket and a soft cap.

‘I imagine you have a car, Mr Stuart? My wife is using our vehicle. Friday is a busy day for her. The restaurants, hotels and boarding houses all want our chickens and eggs before the weekend business.’

Wever followed Stuart out to the elderly sports car. He made no comment until the engine started. ‘It has a roar like a tank. Is that what you like?’

‘Yes,’ said Stuart. ‘Which way do we go?’

‘We have twenty-three acres on the back road to Elmstone. Follow this road and turn right after the Red Fox.’

‘Chickens?’

‘ Rhode Islands. We get fine brown eggs from them. People prefer them to white ones but there is no difference really.’ Wever seemed talkative, as if he could keep 1945 at bay by discussing the present day. ‘Nearly lost the whole lot when we began.’ Wever sat silent for a moment. ‘They peck each other to death, you know. We have to chip the beaks off.’

‘Right at the Red Fox, you said?’

Wever did not answer him. ‘We’ve got them in proper batteries now. Factory farming they call it; over two thousand of them, that’s nearly five thousand eggs a week. Then we’ve got a bit of barley. It’s hardly worth the price we get, but it’s insurance. You can be ruined overnight by one of these diseases that the hens get.’

Stuart turned off after the Red Fox, a dilapidated old pub with a broken billboard depicting girls in swimsuits drinking Martini. The countryside was more rolling now: a promise of the sort of landscape that Constable and Cotman found here.

‘A hard life,’ said Stuart after another long silence. He wanted to keep him talking.

‘We have milk from a cow and vegetables from the garden, while a pig provides us with the only meat we get.’ Wever’s English, although imperfect, was precise and sometimes pedantic.

‘He goes to the butcher?’

Wever snorted. ‘Why should I share my meat with a butcher? I kill them myself. I kill all the pigs hereabouts. With four children and only a few acres from which to scratch a living, you cannot be squeamish about killing pigs, mister.’

The Wevers lived in an isolated timber-frame house separated from the road by a quarter of a mile of muddy cart track. The bottom half of the building was of flint rubble construction; the upstairs part was covered in stained and broken weatherboarding. At the back some new brickwork showed where two extra rooms had been added but the toilet was an outdoor shack; there was no mains sewer.

Boyd Stuart parked his car on a gravel patch just off the lane, and they walked up the muddy path between some stunted apple trees and a line of freshly erected beanpoles. Chicken wire was nailed to the front wall so that sweet peas could climb it; their bright pinks and reds made the only colour in the drab landscape. Just outside the front door, there was a collection of rubber boots and a large toy tractor with its front wheels missing. A dog barked at the sound of their footsteps. Wever shouted to it but the barking continued.

Mrs Wever was already at home. She was a muscular woman; ruddy cheeked and bucolic, she was about ten years younger than her husband. Her dark hair was drawn tightly back into a bun, and her eyes were quick and clear. She was making pastry on the kitchen table, measuring flour and chopping butter with the speed that comes with boredom and impatience.

‘This is Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. ‘He’s come down from London to talk to me.’ The grey, overcast sky and the tiny windows made it dark inside the kitchen. Wever pulled up a chair for Stuart and it screeched on the lino. The woman reached for the kettle. It made a loud roaring noise as she filled it from the brass tap. She placed it on the solid-fuel cooking range, lifting the stove lid so that the hot coals let a red glow strike the ceiling. She set three mugs down on the fresh newspaper which covered the big table, and dumped an almost empty bag of sugar alongside.

‘Take off your coat and sit down, Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. His voice was soft, as if he were embarrassed at the silent hostility which filled the room. The only other sound was the tick-tock of an old long-case clock.

‘Where are your children then?’ said Stuart. It was an attempt to be friendly. He took off his blue anorak and put it over the back of the chair.

‘The eldest is the second engineer on a super-tanker,’ said Wever. ‘Two daughters are married and live locally. Only the youngest is still here with us.’

‘He must have seen young Johnny’s tractor,’ said the woman, as if the visitor were not present. Her voice was hard and marked with a strong local accent.

‘My grandson,’ explained Wever. ‘He spends the day with us sometimes.’ In another voice, ‘You delivered the eggs to the Rendezvous des Gourmets, did you?’

‘They want to pay by the month. I said they would have to talk to you about it.’ She smiled. ‘They’ll never make a go of that place. They’ll be the third owners it’s had in three years. Trying to make it fancy,’ she said spitefully. ‘Trying to call it French names and serve wine. They’ll run up a bill with us and leave us without a penny if we’re not careful, Franz.’

‘They paid you?’ Wever leaned forward, loosened the laces in his heavy boots and then twisted each foot to make more space for his toes.

‘I said I’d take the eggs back if they didn’t.’ She smiled. ‘They knew I meant it. And the chickens too.’ She opened the purse which was on the table in front of her and selected some pound notes. She folded them into a tight packet and put them on the dresser, ‘That will be for the last payment on the rotovator,’ she said.

The kettle began to sing. She put water into the brown teapot, cradled it to feel its warmth and then tossed the water into the sink. The tea was measured into the pot: three people, three level spoons of tea. The boiling water sizzled as it passed over the hot metal of the kettle spout. She put a knitted cover on the teapot and reached for a jug of milk from the pantry. ‘Would you like a piece of toast, Mr Stuart?’ she said. The anticipation of the tea seemed to put her in a better mood. ‘We don’t have biscuits or any fancy cake in this house.’

‘Just tea,’ said Stuart.

The woman tipped some water into the bowl of flour and fat, and pummelled it fiercely. Then she sprinkled flour over the clean newspaper and tipped the soft pastry on to it with a loud plop. She reached for a rolling pin and began rolling the pastry. Her movements were energetic and determined, like someone completing physical exercises that she didn’t enjoy. She pursed her lips and stared down at the ever expanding sheet of cream-coloured pastry.

‘I never heard a shot fired in anger,’ said Franz Wever suddenly. ‘I wore a uniform and saluted my superiors and drew my rations, but most of the work I did in the army could have been done by a civilian.’

‘And what was that?’

‘I am a Berliner,’ said Wever. ‘I left school when I was fifteen. I learned shorthand and typing and worked in the Berlin office of the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line until I was drafted into the army. After basic training I went to the army signals school in Halle and became a teleprinter operator with Army Group 6 HQ in Hanover. I worked in that communications room for about a year. I was the only professional operator in the place-most of those kids had never even seen a teleprinter until they went to the signals school; they had to use me for anything important. Naturally I wanted to be near my parents and eventually I got a posting to the signals company of Wehrkreis III (Berlin-Brandenburg). Then I went to Zossen… ’ He raised his eyes quizzically, to see if Stuart had heard of Zossen.

‘The general staff headquarters. Its communications room handled every order the German army ever got.’

Wever nodded. ‘It was a boring job. Everything was in code… meaningless jumbles of letters and numbers. Even working for the Hamburg-Amerika line was more interesting than that.’ Wever spooned three large spoons of sugar into his empty cup. ‘Pour out the tea, Lucy. It’s brewed.’

The woman finished rolling out the pastry. Briskly she rubbed the flour from her red-knuckled hands. Then she slapped the pastry onto a dish of cooked rhubarb, cutting the overhanging edges away with deft movements of the knife. ‘Why can’t you men pour out your own tea?’ she muttered, but she did it for them. Stuart realized that what he had at first thought was hostility to him was really her response to their talk of war. It was a part of her husband she could never share-like the happy moments of some previous marriage.

‘I’ll do the milking,’ said the woman accusingly. She put the teapot back onto the warm stove. ‘Someone will have to do it before it gets dark, and you’ll be talking about the war.’ Wever did not reply. The woman climbed into a battered sheepskin coat, her movements jerky and violent as if to demonstrate her anger. She turned up her collar before facing the bad weather, and banged the door after her.

‘Sugar?’ said Wever.

‘I’m trying to lose weight,’ said Stuart.

The bag was almost empty. Wever tore it open in order to release the final grains of sugar from its folds. He tipped them into his cup with care. ‘My wife loves that clock,’ he said.

‘It’s a fine piece,’ said Stuart. It was probably the only valuable item in the entire kitchen; virtually everything else seemed improvised, plastic or broken.

‘Obsessed with it,’ explained Wever. ‘Wouldn’t hear of selling it, not even when we needed money to buy seed a couple of years ago. It belonged to her father. She nursed him through those last few months.’ There was a silence in which the tick of the clock seemed to be louder than ever. ‘Nothing is too good for that clock,’ said Wever with a brief and bitter laugh. ‘No tractor oil for that mechanism; special oil from a shop in Norwich. Only yesterday she had someone come and replace one of the chimes. It had been on order for over two months.’ He drank some of his tea but could not take his eyes off the clock. ‘I can’t stand the sound of that ticking,’ he confided. ‘And the damned thing is always slow.’

He brought out a large linen handkerchief and blew his nose with studied care. Then he drank some tea and resumed his story. ‘From Zossen I was selected for duty with the signals detachment at the Wolfsschanze. Only the very best operators were sent there,’ said Wever. Even over such a long passage of time his pride was still evident. ‘That was the Führer’s headquarters in the Görlitz forest. It was a great honour… ’ Wever wiped his nose again. ‘But I wasn’t too pleased at the time-no more weekly visits to my parents, no more cinemas, dances and all the pleasures of Berlin. The Wolfsschanze was in the middle of nowhere. The Görlitz forest is in a swampy area, sweltering hot in summer and plagued with mosquitoes; in winter it’s buried in deep snow, and in between times you get the rain and fog. My parents were pleased about it; I was made an officer soon after that, in charge of the Fernschreiberkompanien. And they were pleased because all of us permanent personnel knew we would never be sent to the Russian front.’

‘Why?’

‘It was a special order of the Führer. He was frightened that the Russians might capture one of us and obtain information about him and the day-to-day life at the headquarters.’

‘You were close to Hitler?’

‘Sometimes I would see him every day. It was in February that the signals officer of Hitler’s private train-the Führersonderzug-went into hospital and I was assigned to it. Of course, there were drawbacks to the job. Every uniform had to be well pressed and spotless. No swearing, no smoking, and my communications staff were overworked.’

‘And whose job was it to look after the records?’

‘One man could not have handled the paperwork,’ said Wever wearily. ‘It’s difficult to explain it to you.’ He folded his handkerchief and pushed it back into his pocket ‘The Führersonderzug was like a travelling circus. The train always carried a dozen aides and adjutants, two or three secretaries and two physicians, as well as a surgeon. Then there would be the press men, Hoffmann, Hitler’s photographer, two or three people from the Foreign Office, and Hitler’s personal staff-three valets and two drivers-a dozen or more railway employees, and just as many catering staff, five railway policemen and three officials of the post office. There were two girls who did nothing other than keep the silver clean and polished and counted! And all that is without his military bodyguard or his SS bodyguard, or the aeroplanes and dozens of motor cars that followed the train to be ready in case Der Chef wanted them en route. Then there was the day-to-day paperwork of the army personnel, flak-gun crews, field kitchen, military police… Can you imagine how much paper was being filed away?’

‘I want to know about Hitler’s personal documents,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m trying to discover where they went in the last days of the war. My people say you know about this.’

Wever gave no sign of having heard him. Dabs of rain hit the window. It was growing darker in the kitchen, but electric light-like remnants of pastry and the last traces of sugar-was carefully husbanded in this household. Franz Wever’s head settled deeper into his hunched shoulders and he almost disappeared into the gloom.

‘I was with Hitler almost until the end.’ Wever drank some tea. ‘On December 10, 1944, at 1700 hours we took the Führer’s special train out of Berlin to a place near Giessen where a convoy of cars took him to Adlerhorst, his headquarters. I was asked to take the place of the signals officer of the FBB-the army escort battalion. He’d been on leave in Berlin on the night of December 9 and was killed in an air raid.’

Wever was still, his eyes closed. In the wretched little kitchen, the daylight fading, he seemed to be asleep. When he spoke again it was enough to make Stuart start in surprise. ‘The train returned to Berlin on January 16, 1945. The Führer was bent and seemed unwell. We arrived about ten o’clock in the morning. The fleet of black three-axle Mercedes cars was waiting in the forecourt of the railway station. A small crowd had gathered but the police were keeping them moving. There were growing fears about another attempt on his life. Now that the Third Reich was nearly finished, there was anti-Nazi talk in the bars and Berliners had invented some bitter jokes about the Nazi leaders taking gold to South America. There had always been anti-Nazi jokes in Berlin -it was renowned for them-but the jokes were different now…

‘Once we were back in Berlin Der Chef spent more and more time down in the underground bunker where he eventually died. The American bombers would arrive just before lunch and the RAF about midnight.

‘For a few days the Führer kept his apartment in the small Old Chancellery building and continued to hold his military conferences in the big new Chancellery which Speer had designed. It had suffered several direct hits but the Führer’s study and dining room were intact. On Wednesday, March 21, when the news was coming in that Patton’s infantry were entering Ludwigshafen, Der Chef sent for me. By that time the tapestries and valuable paintings had been removed for safekeeping and we had to detour through side passages because of the damage. Many of the windows were broken and had been crudely closed off with heavy cardboard which rattled noisily with the wind from the garden. It was depressing for anyone who remembered it as it had once been.

‘I arrived at the entrance together with Colonel General Guderian and his adjutant. They had to go through exactly the same security checks that I was subjected to, and there were armed sentries every ten paces. The whole Zitadelle-the part of Berlin where all the government buildings were-was teeming with troops. A company of the Führer Begleit Batallion was moved out of the Lichterfelde barracks at short notice and put into the Chancellery with the SS Begleit Kommando. It was chaos because the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Wache Reichskanzlei was still there with no room to spare.

‘At the end of every corridor my papers were checked against a log-book entry. When we got to the ante-room I took my pistol from its holster and gave it to the Waffen SS guards. There was a table filled with them, each gun tagged with the name of the owner. Even Guderian and his adjutant had to hand over their briefcases for the guards to examine inside and out. There were no body checks but I don’t think anyone with a lumpy uniform would have got into the ante-room.’ Wever smiled.

‘Once inside the ante-room I saw all the big brass waiting for the daily conference. There was Keitel, Donitz, Jodl, some of Himmler’s RSHA people and, sprawled in the armchair looking miserable, I saw Göring himself. I sat down on one of the embroidered gilt chairs feeling out of place, then the study doors opened and Günsche came into the ante-room.’

‘Günsche was Hitler’s adjutant,’ said Stuart to display his newly acquired knowledge. ‘His SS adjutant.’

‘Hitler had dozens of SS adjutants,’ said Wever, showing no admiration for this interjection. ‘Four SS persönliche Adjutanten-it was bureaucracy running wild… ’ He brushed aside the interruption with a movement of the hand and sipped some more tea. ‘But SS Sturmbannfuhrer Günsche was one of them and combat commandant too. At the end it was Günsche who soaked Hitler’s body in petrol and set it afire. He beckoned to me, and told the others-including Göring-that the Führer would receive them in five minutes. They looked at me as I was ushered into the study to see what it was that made me so important. I was trying to guess. As always in this sort of situation it is guilty fears that predominate. I wondered if I was going to be executed for telling some anti-Hitler joke or complaining about the dehydrated cabbage. Everyone had heard me complain about that cabbage.

‘Günsche took me through the enormous study, with the painting of Bismarck and Hitler’s gigantic desk, to a side room where they stored documents of the sort the Führer might require at short notice during his daily conferences. It was a small room and Hitler stood in the middle of it. As I came closer to him I could smell the medicated sweets he used whenever he had a sore throat. He had a pathological fear of contracting a disease of the throat.

‘He was a shocking sight. You must remember that I had seen him often. On the train I would sometimes be giving him teleprinter messages by the dozen. When things were going well, the Führer would exchange a few words. He remembered the names of my parents and my mother’s birthplace- Linz in Austria. Now I could hardly recognize him. His face seemed to have aged forty years, his eye sockets were deeply sunken and the skin of his cheeks dark, as if bruised. He was stooped and seemed to have lost the use of his left arm, which trembled constantly. His voice was very low and hoarse and almost unrecognizable to anyone who had heard his speeches of earlier years-and which of us had not! When he spoke he leaned forward and used his right hand to grasp his throat, as if to help his vocal chords.

‘Der Chef was wearing his usual plain grey, army-style jacket. But this day I noticed that there were stains on the lapel. You can’t imagine how amazing it was to see him in anything except carefully pressed, spotlessly clean clothes. I looked at his plain black trousers and civilian shoes but these were not up to his usual standard either.

‘The Führer was standing against a small table and I noticed that he put his weight against it, as if to steady himself. This confirmed the rumours I’d heard of a loss of balance and dizzy spells. Under his direction, Günsche was sorting the papers and documents into separate heaps. Against the wall there were half a dozen metal filing boxes painted dark green. FHQu was stencilled on each box, together with the word persönlich and a six-figure letter-number combination.’

Stuart almost shouted with excitement. What had looked like BBO on the box of Dr Morell’s papers was actually FHQu-Führerhauptquartier-and the shiny patch next to it was the place from which the word ‘personal’ had been removed.

‘The Führer smiled. I’m afraid my face must have registered my horror at his appearance. I stood transfixed, giving the Heil Hitler, arm upraised. But he did not respond to my salute.

‘ “Captain Wever,” he said. Even in those last days he hadn’t lost his trick of remembering names. But he lowered his eyes, and that surprised me, for he usually fixed his visitors with an unyielding stare that was almost hypnotic. I lowered my arm. He motioned his head impatiently, to indicate that I should not stand at attention. “I have an important task for you, Captain Wever.” He looked up and stared me straight in the eyes again. “A very important task.” I knew him well enough to understand that I was not expected to reply until asked a direct question. I said nothing. “The enemy is now using his heaviest weapons against me in Berlin.” I noticed particularly that he said “against me” as if it were a personal vendetta. “There are certain personal documents that I have decided should not be risked. And, in the interests of history, must not be destroyed. I have therefore decided that these documents-which I have personally selected for this purpose… ” Hitler indicated some piles of papers which were separated from the others, “should be put into safekeeping for future generations. It is a great trust that I place into your hands, Captain Wever.”

‘ “Yes, my Führer.”

‘ “Günsche will provide you with all the necessary paperwork that will ensure you cooperation from the Reichspost, the Reichsbahn, the armed forces and my SS. You will leave Berlin tonight, using my train.”

‘ “The Führersonderzug, my Führer?”

‘Hitler nodded. “To Frankfurt am Main. There will be cars and an armed escort there to take you onwards. Your exact orders and subsequent destination will be given to you later; you will unseal them on the train. You will use the train’s communications to keep me informed of progress-the necessary codes and ciphers will be included in your orders-and if the train is stopped or delayed by enemy action you can call upon whatever resources you require from the appropriate authority. Is that clear, Captain Wever?”

‘ “Yes, my Führer.”

‘And there it was,’ said Wever with a self-deprecatory smile. ‘That was my grand meeting with the twentieth-century Napoleon, and what had I contributed: “Yes, my Führer”, repeated over and over again. It was like that with all the people who met him: generals, admirals, inventors, U-boat captains, kings and presidents. He had you in the palm of his hand, and yet you came out of the study thinking that you’d just persuaded a highly intelligent man to do something you’d been planning all your life. That’s how it was with those damned papers.’

‘So you went back to the train as its sole passenger?’ Stuart asked.

‘You don’t understand the devious nature of the higher command,’ said Wever. ‘Hitler had instructed Günsche to prepare my movement orders and documentation. The SS sturmbannführer did it in consultation with Kaltenbrunner, head of the RSHA, who ran the Gestapo, the Kripo and Sicherheitsdienst: one of the most powerful people in the Third Reich. Not the sort of man who would let an army captain take personal charge of top-secret papers, just because the Führer had decided that the mission required a highly experienced communications expert.’

‘He flouted Hitler’s orders?’

‘Not at all. He provided an SS officer to accompany me. The orders instructed the Reichsbahn and the Reichspost officials-“in the name of the Führer” rather than the more usual “in the name of the Reich”-to provide the SS officer with facilities required, so that Captain Wever and his “special baggage” could be transported. The wording of those orders ensured that my role was little more than a baggage porter. It was the SS that would call the tune.’

‘Who was the SS officer who went with you?’

‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me,’ said Wever. ‘This Leibstandarte officer was an old friend of mine. It wasn’t the rank and file who were wasting valuable time in these ridiculous power-plays and devious games; we knew the end was near… He was only a junior rank-Obersturmführer, like a first lieutenant-but he was an old time regular. He’d been through the peacetime SS Junkerschule at Bad Tölz, and that was no picnic. I’d known Breslow since childhood, he was a decent man.’ Wever smiled at another recollection. ‘You can imagine that I wanted to visit my parents before we journeyed south. The way things were going with the Allies and the Russians so close, I had the feeling that I might never see the old people again. My home was near Tietz department store; I could be there in five minutes. I got out using my day pass but ran into the guard commander when I returned. He was a pig. He kept me in the guard room and phoned the military police. Luckily, Max Breslow came to my aid. He got one of the SS adjutants to straighten it out… but it was a narrow squeak for me, and I owe my thanks to Breslow. I could have been shot.’ Wever drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Did you ever try to give up smoking, Mr Stuart?’

‘Frequently.’

Wever pushed his hands deep into his pockets as if to punish them for drumming on the table. ‘Breslow was practical. When we departed he had brought two pistols-he knew I didn’t have one-and was wearing an MP 40 on his shoulder. He was right, of course-how could we have undertaken that sort of responsibility without guns? He had put a Führerhauptquartier cuff-band on his sleeve too. I was surprised-almost everyone had ceased wearing them long before-but Breslow said it would impress the country yokels. You see,’ Wever added, ‘Breslow was a Berliner.’ His tone of voice suggested that this accolade explained everything. Stuart had known many Berliners, and liked the distinctive sort of roguish wit-Schalkheit-that the city seemed to beget. But Berliners were not renowned for modesty or simplicity. How much of Wever’s story was window dressing, designed to hide something else? ‘The family lived in a big house in Pankow, his father was Georg Breslow, the actor, a famous man in Germany. He was the one who anglicized the family name. Breslow’s mother had been a soprano with the Berlin State Opera.’ Wever reached into his pocket for a tin, tapped it on the table and then put it back into his pocket again.

‘Yes,’ said Wever. ‘Breslow was wearing his Führerhauptquartier cuff-band. I was wearing a reversible winter camouflage jacket. It was a combat soldier’s garment. I’d never been anywhere near the front line, and that bothered me, so I wanted to wear that jacket and look like a fighting man. Even so, Breslow, in his battered leather overcoat, and an old peaked mountain cap crushed on his head, looked more like a fighting man than I ever could.’

‘Breslow had been a combat soldier?’

‘He was wounded at Kharkov in the winter of 1943. The Leibstandarte was part of the SS Panzer Corps. Breslow was badly shot up and lost some toes with frost-bite. When he came out of hospital he was permanently assigned to the Chancellery guard. Breslow had a chestful of awards: Iron Cross first class, assault badge, wound badge and so on. Nothing grand, but he was a man who could take his overcoat off-as we said in the army about men who had awards on their jackets.’ Wever smiled. ‘So it’s Breslow you are interested in?’

‘Were there no other special passengers on the train that night?’

‘Just me and Breslow. He went aboard before the loading began. He sent for the train commander and all the officers. He received them in the Führerwagen-actually in the Führer’s sitting room: sitting in the best armchair, his hat thrown on the writing desk as if he owned the place. He had his overcoat wide open so that they could see that he was a fighting soldier. Until then the Führer’s sitting room had been a sanctum which very few of us had entered; now it was crammed with curious faces. There were the marks of muddy boots on the carpet, and tobacco smoke in the air for the first time. Tobacco smoke! We all knew that the Führer would never board his train again.

‘It was dark in Berlin that night. The air raids were bad enough to make the blackout regulations very strict. Even the railway men had to work with the merest glimmer of operating lights. I stayed with Breslow and we checked the manifest to be sure that the boxes were loaded safely. The Führer’s personal papers were not the only freight on the train that night. The Foreign Office building had been badly hit a few nights previously, and a railway wagon of Foreign Office documents was attached to the train.

‘Breslow said that we would send a signal when the train passed Halle. It was then that we would open the sealed orders. Since our message was going to be in cipher, we would have to halt. No top-secret-Chefsache-messages could be transmitted by radio for fear of interception by enemy monitoring services. I went and warned the communications officer that a signals mechanic must be ready to connect the teleprinters to the Reichspost landlines when we stopped the train at Halle. Then I told the senior railway official aboard of the intention to stop, and told the train’s military police commander that his men must be ready to provide the normal security screen round the halted train.’

‘You sent the message from Halle?’

‘No. There was only a single line working for ten miles north of Halle -it’s a big junction and the Allied bombers had hit it again and again-the train was rerouted through Leipzig. We opened the sealed orders there.’

‘And?’

‘Our orders were to take the Führer’s personal papers to a salt mine at Merkers in the Thüringer Wald. An infantry regiment stationed at Hersfeld, not far from the mine, would provide us with help and assistance. The sealed orders specified that the papers were to be referred to as “songs”, the military escort as “pianoforte”, the movement of the material to the mine was a Lied mit Klavierbegleitung, song with piano accompaniment.’

‘Curious code names,’ said Stuart.

‘You cannot call such words code,’ said Wever pedantically. ‘They give very little security to a message. Such words are intended only for convenience and brevity. The German word Begleit means escort as well as accompany-the FBB was the Führer Begleit Batallion. It would not require a team of cryptographers to guess what we were doing, always providing they had an Enigma decoder.’

Wever reached into the pocket of his coat and got out a cigarette machine. He dumped a tin of dark tobacco on the table and then a packet of papers. ‘Even so, Breslow was most particular about the security of the messages to Berlin and to the army at Hersfeld.’ Wever pinched some tobacco and rolled it into the machine before feeding a paper into it, licking the gummed edge and rolling it some more. ‘You need two operators to work one of those old Enigmas, three to be really fast. It’s like a typewriter, but the letters light up instead of going onto paper. Breslow helped me with it. He called out the letters as they came up.’ Wever continued rolling the machine as if he had forgotten what he was doing. Then suddenly he clicked it open to release the newly made cigarette. He picked it up and carefully tucked a few loose strands of tobacco back into the open ends. Then he studied it, as if pleased with the result of his handiwork. He lit the cigarette and inhaled gratefully with that very deep breath which marks the tobacco addict. Then he blew smoke and smiled with satisfaction.

‘How far did you get with the train?’ Stuart asked.

‘We couldn’t get beyond Erfurt,’ said Wever. He smoked the cigarette with a furtiveness which suggested that his wife would not have approved of his weakness. ‘A railway bridge was damaged. The engineers said it could not bear the weight of the Führer’s train which was specially constructed with tons of lead in the bogies to give an extra-smooth ride. And there was the weight of all our special equipment and the Flakwagen at front and back. It would have been too much for the buckled girders. Moving it across piecemeal would have meant several hours delay. And there were hospital trains coming back up the line as well as troop trains going westwards. Erfurt was close to the autobahn, so we called Hersfeld-which was also on the autobahn-and asked them to come and get us. What a fiasco!’ Wever got up in order to tap his ash into the stove. ‘We couldn’t reach them by teleprinter, no operators on duty. The Americans were heading directly for Hersfeld and the regiment had moved out. Next we tried telephoning them. Eventually, after a long and acrimonious conversation with a half-witted major who refused to believe that we were engaged on a special mission for the Führer, they sent us two trucks and a platoon of infantry.’ He inhaled and looked at the cigarette again.

‘When they arrived they were more like walking wounded than infantry: old men, kids, cripples and rejects. Even the trucks the major sent us were in such poor mechanical condition that the drivers had to nurse them to keep them going.

‘When we got to the mine at Merkers there was no one ready to accept the papers. It is a bleak and dirty place, the yard was muddy and littered with broken boxes and rubbish. Some of the mess was the outer packing from other treasures which had been put into the mine. There was another truck there when we arrived. It contained Reichsbank Director Dr Frank and a Reichsbank procurist-the official who was in charge of all newly printed paper money. It was Dr Frank who signed for our consignment, and eventually let me go.

‘I wanted to get back to my parents in Berlin. The railway was still working-it was just the heavy trains, transporting big guns and tanks, that could not get through Erfurt. Breslow said he wanted to find the nearest Waffen SS outfit and get back into the fighting. It was probably true, but at the time I suspected that he was merely looking for some way of changing his SS papers and uniform for those of an ordinary army officer before surrendering himself to the Americans, who were getting closer every hour. There was a railway transport officer at Merkers who agreed to give me top-priority orders to rejoin my unit in Berlin. Anything less than a top-priority movement order would expose me to the risk of being given a rifle and sent into action by any military police patrol that stopped me and asked for my papers. There was a delay while I got a photo for the movement order.’

‘But you had top-priority papers from Hitler,’ said Stuart. ‘What could be better than that?’

‘These were dangerous times, Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. ‘The American armies were very close and the Red Army pressing nearer day by day. I would have been a fool to carry any document associating me with the Führer’s immediate entourage. I wanted very ordinary military papers that showed that I was going to the Berlin signals office-no mention of the Reich Chancellery assignment-just a teleprinter specialist returning to special duty. I got hold of the army photographer but by the time the papers were all ready the American soldiers had arrived… that was April 4. I was interrogated by an American military police office but he thought I was part of a military escort provided for the gold from the Reichsbank. It was a perfunctory interrogation and after that I went to a POW cage and eventually to England.’

‘And more interrogations?’

‘Everyone wanted to know about the gold. They kept asking me about the origin of the gold-was it from the Reichsbank, was there any gold still in Berlin, were there shipments of foreign gold? France, Holland and Norway were already asking for the return of the gold that had been taken from them. I knew nothing about any of this, and eventually the interrogators lost interest in me.’

‘And what happened to Hitler’s papers?’

‘They went down into the mine. There were only six boxes of them. I went down into the shaft with Reichsbank Director Frank. He had the keys of a vault which had been built to protect the gold and foreign currencies. It was very light; the low roof of the salt mine had been strung with hundreds of electric light bulbs. Frank warned us that the atmosphere of the salt mine was too dry to be suitable for the long-term storage of archives. He had similarly warned the museum officials who sent valuable documents there. He said that more than six months in the mine could result in permanent damage. Breslow said that he did not expect that they would remain there that long.’

‘I’ve been through the statements, interrogations and reports about the mine, Mr Wever,’ Stuart told him. ‘But I don’t recall anyone named Frank. Certainly there is no record of a Reichsbank director of that name.’

Wever looked into space and nodded. ‘I always suspected that Frank was not his real name.’

‘Why?’

‘Breslow was not the sort of officer who would so readily hand those secret papers to a civilian in return for a scribbled receipt. I believe Breslow had secret orders to make contact with this man who called himself Reichsbank Director Frank. I think Frank was a Sicherheitsdienst official working for Kaltenbrunner so that they could be quite sure where the documents were.’ Wever nodded as if to confirm this idea to himself. ‘And Breslow spent a lot of time with Frank-meetings from which I was excluded.’

‘And this man who called himself Frank had access to the gold too?’

‘And also to the foreign money that was there-Swiss paper money, Swedish paper money, US dollars and British pounds. All foreign money, including that acquired by the SS, the army or anyone else, had to be sent to the Foreign Notes Department, Reichsbank New Building, Berlin. It was unlawful for a German to possess foreign money. The procurist was in charge of all foreign paper money, another Reichsbank director-Herr Thoms-was in charge of all the gold. Now-in 1945-virtually all the gold and foreign money was in a salt mine, and Herr Frank had the key.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that this gold and foreign currency was placed there to finance the escape of the Nazi leaders?’

‘All I know is that, when the American soldiers arrived at Merkers, Reichsbank Director Frank was nowhere to be found, and neither was my old friend Breslow.’

‘You think that they had taken gold from the mine?’

‘I have no theories to offer,’ said Wever. ‘I am simply telling you what happened.’

‘Did you look at the documents?’

‘Breslow took one,’ said Wever. ‘It was a long train journey. One of the boxes was unlocked; we couldn’t resist looking. Each metal filing box was divided into compartments, with thickly wadded brown manilla envelopes jammed into each. We opened one of them. Inside there were two shorthand notebooks, the pages crossed through diagonally by someone as the notes were typed up. The shorthand was hastily written but still easy enough to read. At the back of the file there were typewritten sheets which had been completed. They were the Lagebesprechungen-the Führer’s military conferences, two each day normally.’

‘And Breslow took one?’

‘As a souvenir, I suppose. It was a mad thing to do, but that final part of the war was a mad time. People did crazy things.’

‘Not you, Wever,’ said Stuart. ‘You never did a crazy thing in your life.’

Wever stared at him. ‘I don’t risk my life for ridiculous pieces of waste paper, if that’s what you mean. The fact that it had Führerkopie at the top of the page meant little to me. I could never understand those fools, fighting in Russia as if they were on some wonderful crusade. What did they get out of it?’

‘We know what they got out of it,’ said Stuart. ‘The lucky ones got twelve years in a Russian work camp.’

The telephone rang. There was something inappropriate about the sound of it in that mean little room, smelling of mildew and farm manure. Wever rose from his chair with a crack of stiff bones. ‘Hello?’ he said, reaching into the gloom for the telephone.

There was a gabble of conversation at the other end. Wever said ‘Ja’ but changed it to ‘yes’ by the time there was a need for a second affirmative. ‘Yes’ and ‘yes’ again.

Suddenly Wever’s patience snapped. He broke into rapid German, its consonants sharp and brittle as only Berliners speak. ‘Damn you and damn the rest of them. For years no one cared and now suddenly… You tell them I sent it almost a week ago. Negative.’ He nodded to himself. ‘The only negative. Tell them to stop their silly little games.’ Wever’s tirade stopped and he bent his head as if trying to hear better. He stood framed against the oppressive rain clouds which pressed with a leaden weight upon the landscape through the window. He lowered the phone from his ear, and it purred for a moment before he hung up.

‘Is there anything else?’ said Wever.

‘Not for the moment,’ said Stuart. ‘Thanks for helping me.’

‘There is no alternative,’ said Wever. ‘When your people arranged all my permits and permissions thirty years ago, they made it clear that they could withdraw them just as quickly.’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Mr Wever,’ said Stuart. ‘By now you are one of us.’ ‘

Wever grunted as he bent over to retie his bootlaces.

‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’

‘No,’ said Wever. ‘Go ahead. And mind the patch of mud near the shed; the baker’s van got stuck in that last night. Took him half an hour to crawl out of it.’

‘Thanks, I will,’ said Stuart, and tucking his head down he hurried through the rain to his car. The motor started at the first touch of the key and he switched on all the lights so that he could negotiate the muddy lane without sharing the baker’s fate.

Stuart was almost at the Red Fox when the explosion occurred. The flash lit up the grey countryside like lightning, and the force of it made his ears pop even before he heard the noise. He turned his head in time to see the column of smoke. It was not the oily black smoke that stunt crews make for war movies. This was the real thing: a wraithlike smudge which dissipated almost immediately.

Stuart heaved on the brake as a hailstorm of wood chips and metal fragments splashed into the puddles round him and nicked his car’s paintwork. He opened the door and got to his feet in the pouring rain. This part of the country had long since had its hedgerows ripped away by cost-conscious farmers. The open fields gave Stuart a view of the Wever house. There was little left of it; the merest trace of smoke hung over the scattered stones and a large piece of the roof was leaning upon the nearest of the chicken houses.

Stuart returned to his Aston Martin. There was no sense in going back there. Even now there would be police cars and ambulances on the way. Furthermore, the standing instructions gave a strong warning against field employees becoming involved in police inquiries of any kind. The Secret Intelligence Service got no pleasure from sending high-ranking department officials across to the Home Office, cap in hand. In spite of all this, he turned his Aston in the car park of the Red Fox and went back.

The clock, thought Stuart. Perhaps the man who had come to mend the chimes had not been installing new ones. Perhaps he had planted explosive in the long case. It was that part of the house which had suffered most. But who had phoned Wever, and was it a warning?

The kitchen was the scene of the greatest damage. Only a close scrutiny by explosives experts would reveal whether the bomb had been placed in the clock, and they would have to search a long time to piece it together. The smell was almost overwhelming. He spat the soot from his mouth.

Wever must have been standing near the stove. There were hardly any signs of damage on his face or his clothes but he was bundled up like a rag doll in a toy box, and was unmistakably dead. Stuart went through his pockets but there was nothing there that one would not expect to find on a hard-working chicken farmer who was too old to cope with the work demanded of him and had cash problems that required him to put aside the payments on a second-hand rotovator.

So that was the man who had brushed shoulders with Hitler. Well, there were worse fates than ending up on an East Anglian chicken farm. There was no sign of Wever’s wife. He stepped carefully over the wreckage of wood splinters and broken glass to get to what had once been a bedroom. There was a cot in the corner. He picked up the woollen blankets. There was no sign of a baby.

The rain was still coming down steadily, soaking into the broken furniture, hissing upon the hot stove and dampening down the dust of the broken plaster. He turned back towards his car, glass cracking underfoot. It was as he stepped over the broken wall of the bedroom that he saw it. The rain had made the metal box shine and he stooped down to inspect the object more closely.

It was an expensive wall safe, built right into the brickwork of the bedroom, in a wall added to the house by the enterprising handyman, Franz Wever. The front of the safe was intact and its door firmly locked. It was the back of the safe that had sprung open with the collapse of the wall. He prised the metal back as if it had been the bent lid of a half-opened sardine can. His hand went into the gap and he found some bundles of papers.

There was an insurance policy, some letters from the local planning office giving permission for building new chicken houses. There were Wever’s permits and a West German passport stamped only twice for visits to Berlin. He had lied about never going back-what other lies had he told?

With this bundle there was another one, wrapped in the black plastic from which fertilizer bags are made, held tight with two rubber bands. Stuart snapped the fastenings off and unwrapped the packet. There was Wever’s old German army pay book, some souvenirs of foreign paper money dating from the war, and a medical form dated September 18, 1944, certifying him fit for infantry duties. Nothing of importance, thought Stuart, and looked at his watch. The police would surely be here any moment. There were houses and farms nearer than the Red Fox, and even there the sound had come like a thunderclap.

It was as he was about to rewrap the pay book that he saw the envelope tucked in amongst the ancient paper money. He ripped the flap open. There it was-Führerkopie, a page from one of the Lagebesprechungen, Hitler’s daily military conferences, with the names of Jodl, Göring and Hitler down the left-hand side. A script of some demented screenplay which played to packed audiences for six long nightmare years. So it had not been Breslow who was so obsessed by the contents of the tin boxes that he had to steal a souvenir, but Wever himself, the arch cynic to whom Hitler meant nothing.

There were other things too: a GPO receipt for a registered letter addressed to ‘General Delivery, Terminal Annex, Post Office, Los Angeles, California 90054 ’, dated almost one week earlier; a battered Reich Chancellery pass, stamped each month and signed up to the end of 1944. It was a good souvenir. There was a sepia, postcard-size photo, taken in some provincial studio by the look of it, the photographer’s name and an Austrian address in flamboyant script on the back. A young child posed stiffly in front of a painted backdrop of snow-covered mountains. One could almost hear the anxious father calling to the child to hold still.

The other photo was unmistakably amateur: a grubby snapshot from a cheap camera, the print now cracked and dog-eared. Three men were standing self-consciously in what looked like a factory yard. Behind them posts or perhaps factory chimneys and, beyond those, low rolling hills. The reproduction was too grainy to see any detail but one jackbooted young man in leather overcoat and mountain cap looked like Max Breslow. Alongside him, Wever stood in an awkward jokey pose, his elbow resting on Breslow’s shoulder, the other hand on his gun holster which was worn over a mottled camouflage jacket. The third man was in civilian clothes: a long black overcoat and, in his hand, a wide-brimmed felt hat. On the back of the photo ‘Max’, ‘Franz’ and ‘Rb. Dir. Dr Frank’ were written in pencil.

Stuart put the passes, the Führerkopie of the sheet of minutes and the photographs into his pocket before putting the rest of it back into the broken safe. Then he clambered over the debris and ran back to his car. Even before he started the engine, he could hear the wail of the police and ambulance sirens. By the time his car was at the main road he could see the flashing blue lights twinkling through the haze of rain as the police cars bumped along the track that marked the end of Wever’s few acres.