Dominion (36 page)

David took half a step back, nearly tripped on the kerb. He thought, she’s guessed
.

She reached through the window and took his hand, holding it in a tight grip. ‘Who else knows?’ she asked.

‘Nobody.’ David’s heart was throbbing violently. ‘Only my father. It was my mother who was Jewish, an Irish Jew. Her records were destroyed, during the Troubles in
Ireland. My father is sure. He’s a lawyer. I’ve lied on my census returns, said my parents were both Catholic.’

‘And he is in New Zealand now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your wife doesn’t know?’ She sounded surprised.

‘No. How did you guess?’

‘Like I said, I have seen how people react. Some are pleased when the Jews are taken away. Some don’t care, or don’t want to get into trouble. Some hate it. But I think only
those who are themselves at risk show the fear, the sorrow I saw on your face today. And –’ she smiled, an unusually hesitant smile – ‘I often watch your face. Your
expression.’

He asked, ‘Will you tell them? Jackson, his people?’

‘Our people.’ She hesitated. ‘No, I will not tell them, though I should. You should tell them yourself.’

He looked at her hard. ‘You said you married a German. In your country.’

‘There was more to the story than that.’ Her mouth twitched suddenly. Then she pressed his hand with surprising strength. ‘Be careful.’

‘I’ve been careful for years.’

‘I know.’ Natalia bit her lip, then rolled up the window again and drove slowly away.

G
UNTHER CALLED
S
ENATE
H
OUSE
from a telephone box just outside Birmingham, leaving Syme in the car.
Gessler had been waiting for the call, and told him to report for a full debriefing immediately when he returned to London. A little over two hours later, Syme dropped him off at the embassy and
Gunther went straight up to Gessler’s office. The senior man listened while Gunther gave his impressions of Muncaster, as a man consumed by fear but evasive and secretive. He told him, too,
about Muncaster’s other visitors, who had been at the flat before them and, he believed, had searched it.

Gessler frowned, his black eyebrows almost meeting in the middle. He was worried. ‘Were they Resistance?’

‘I think they could be. Why else carry out a search of the flat?’ Gunther laid the photographs he had removed on the table and pointed. ‘If they were university friends,
they’re in there.’

‘Damn it!’ Gessler burst out. Gunther was surprised; on Friday he had seemed like a man who kept his emotions in check. He told Gunther to write his report, then go home and return
early the following morning. Gessler himself would talk to Berlin overnight.

Gunther sat in the little office he had been given along the corridor and wrote quietly and steadily in his small, neat hand. The office was bare apart from the obligatory desk, chairs and
filing cabinets, and a wardrobe where he kept his Gestapo uniform. He wore it seldom, thought he looked fat in it, the puffy shapelessness of his face emphasized by the uniform’s clean, hard
lines. He resented that Gessler looked trim in his SS uniform, though he was ten years older. There were pictures of Hitler and Himmler on the walls, photographs of his brother and his son on his
desk. The window behind the desk had a panoramic view of London, the same as Gessler’s office. After an hour he walked back to the flat, dead tired.

He had something to eat and watched the news, followed by a repeat of Mosley’s broadcast. It was good the British had done this at last, but Gunther wondered why now. Before going to bed
he read his son’s letter again. Gunther had been to Krimea to visit Michael last summer, two days on the train clacking through the Belorussian forests and swamps then across the Ukrainian
plains, manned concrete guard-posts at every mile on the track. Michael had been happy to see his father again, and they had gone to the beach almost every day. His son was energetic and
enthusiastic, blond and athletic. He had Hans’ undisciplined enthusiasm too and, perhaps, the beginnings of his dead twin’s physical grace. Michael had turned eleven in October; all he
had been able to do was send a present and a card. He went to bed and slept uneasily, tossing and turning. He had a confused dream of being with his brother again in the forest, the night Heydrich
had addressed them by the lake. Hans was looking away from him, over the water, infinite sadness in his handsome face.

He returned to the embassy at eight the next morning. When he entered Gessler’s office the SS man was staring out of his window, down over the city. His eyes were
bloodshot and, remarkably for such a neat man, he was unshaven. He must have been up all night. There was a cold, leaden sky again today, a touch of fog in the air. Gessler waved him to a chair. He
was frowning, tense with anxiety and excitement, quite different from Friday.

Gunther still felt the flat sadness of the evening before in himself. He didn’t try to fight it; it helped him stay distanced, objective. He noticed that the report he had prepared last
night was lying on Gessler’s desk, alongside the photograph of Muncaster’s university group.

To break the silence, he said, ‘The papers this morning are full of the Jews being moved. The government are congratulating themselves on a smooth operation.’

Gessler turned and gave him a nod and a thin smile, like a stern schoolteacher acknowledging a pupil whose work was good. ‘That is your line of business at home, isn’t it? From what
I understand the British operation wasn’t entirely without problems. And of course,’ he added contemptuously, ‘some of the preachers are making a fuss, trying to organize
protests. If only England were Catholic; the Pope knows the Communists are his real enemy.’

‘But they’ve all been gathered in?’

‘Nearly all. Almost 150,000. I knew it was going to happen, of course, but unfortunately I couldn’t tell you.’ The old self-importance was back in Gessler’s voice.
‘The operation had to be kept very secret for it to succeed.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘It was part of a larger deal between the governments. Up to now the British have always resisted our pressure. But now –’ he gave a wintry smile – ‘we may be able
to get a Jew-free Europe at last. We’re talking with the French, too, about a final clear-up over there.’

Gunther nodded. ‘What’s going to happen to the British Jews now?’

‘They’ll be sent to the Isle of Wight, then out East. Hopefully soon. Arrangements are being made for their reception in Poland. Getting the Auschwitz ovens up to full
capacity.’ He smiled again. ‘Beaverbrook’s never been that much of an anti-Semite, but he knows what side his bread’s buttered on.’

‘He’s effete and corrupt. Like Laval, like Quisling. We’ll need better men to build the new Europe.’

Gessler nodded agreement. ‘Yes. General Franco’s the only one with any real spine. He shot all his enemies at the first chance.’ He sighed and scratched the bald crown of his
head. Then he said quietly, ‘I spent a lot of time talking to Berlin last night. The Führer is very ill indeed. I was told he could die at any time.’ He leaned forward.
‘I’m authorized to tell you this because when he does die there will be a struggle for control. Those loyal to the SS must be ready.’

Gunther suddenly felt cold. ‘Ready for what, sir?’ he asked.

‘A power struggle between us and the army. Things aren’t good in Russia, and we think the Russian winter offensive this year will be a big one. And there’s been an outbreak of
bubonic plague among our troops in the Caucasus. The army want a settlement, the Russians keeping everywhere east of Moscow and north of the Caucasus.’

‘What? With the Communists? Zhukov and Khrushchev?’ Gunther answered bitterly. ‘Because that’s what they are, however they fudge it and talk about their Great Patriotic
War.’

‘No. SS Intelligence think the army are already lining up other factions in Russia. The criminal element that’s always existed under the Communist state – some of them have
made money now the Russians have brought limited markets back. And some in the Russian Security Police, old NKVD people who made friends in our army during the Nazi-Soviet Pact. It’ll be a
criminal state, ruling the old Russian ethnic areas.’

‘We’ll be in eternal danger.’ He thought of his brother Hans. ‘Is that what five million Germans have died for?’

‘That’s why we have to be ready. In case, God forbid, the SS has to fight the army.’

‘What about the Party?’

Gessler shook his head. ‘Divided. Speer is with the army. Reichsführer Goebbels is the biggest Party figure now Göring’s dead and poor Rudolf Hess is in a madhouse:
he’s the Führer’s nominated successor. He could make things go one way or the other. He’s strengthening his position. That’s what this deal with Beaverbrook is all
about. Strengthening his ties with Britain, giving them economic support we can’t afford in exchange for getting rid of the Jews.’

‘Goebbels has always been totally sound on the Jews.’

‘He’s wobbly on Russia, though. This could be a manoeuvre to link Germany to England and through them to the US. There’s talk that Stevenson might embargo trade relations with
Europe; if he does it would hit us hard. Goebbels is loyal to the Führer but with the Führer gone—’

Gunther considered. ‘With the British Jews actually deported, the Americans would have no choice but to accept that reality. They would no longer be a possible bargaining issue for
them.’

Gessler said, ‘If there is a battle for control of Germany it could ripple through this embassy.’ He shook his head. ‘After all our victories, I thought, we can’t lose,
we’re omnipotent. But now—’

‘We still can be, if we keep our courage,’ Gunther countered. ‘SS power has been growing for twenty years.’

Gessler said, more to himself than Gunther, ‘If there is a struggle and the SS lose, I suppose they can’t shoot all of us. I expect we’ll all be demoted and redeployed.’
His manner softened unexpectedly, became confidential. He took off his pince-nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I wonder where. I was in Leningrad in 1942, you know. After the army cut
the city off completely and starved them all to death over the winter. The Wehrmacht has never hesitated at what has to be done in Russia, some of them will pretend to scruples if they argue for
peace but I’ve seen the army lads in action out there, seen how they deal with the Russians. But more and more of the senior officers have lost the spine for it. Weakness in the face of the
enemy.’ He sat still, reflecting. ‘I was with the first SS group into Leningrad, in April, to question some of the few survivors – mostly Communist Party officials, they had what
few supplies were left by then, though even they were like walking skeletons. God, the city stank, what our artillery and bombing had left of it. Three million bodies, rotting in that rubble. The
corpses could be dangerous, you know, especially if there was a pile of them – they decomposed fast when the snow went. The gases would build up inside and they’d explode. You’d
hear them banging off, at night. Wolves had come in to forage, and there were rats everywhere. No water, no sewage – we all had to clear out again after a month, the troops were coming down
with typhoid – it’s all still cordoned off. At least in Moscow we took the city without a long siege; kicked the population out and put them in camps to starve quietly. The Führer
wants to demolish the buildings and build a lake there when we win. But I never want to go east again; it was disgusting.’ He wrinkled his face with distaste, sighed, then focused on Gunther
again. ‘I see from your file you’re divorced, Hoth.’

‘Yes, sir. But I have a son in Krimea.’

‘I have a wife, two daughters, in Hanover. I taught physical education in a school there, when I came back from the Great War. Then I joined the Party, then the SS. I did well.’

A little golden peasant, Gunther thought, not wanting hard times back again. ‘We’ll win through, sir,’ he said quietly.

Gessler slammed his hand on the desk, his mood turning in a moment. ‘Of course we will! None of us must doubt it!’ He took a couple of deep breaths, replaced his pince-nez, then
spoke calmly again. ‘Don’t repeat anything of what I said to anyone.’

‘Of course not, sir.’

‘Besides, it may be mostly rumours. You know what HQ’s like.’

‘Yes, sir.’ But Gunther still felt cold.

‘Now, these visitors Muncaster had,’ Gessler said, businesslike again. ‘Do you still think they could have been Resistance? After sleeping on it?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s not certain but it is possible.’

‘Why didn’t Dr Wilson tell you other visitors were coming?’

‘I think he didn’t know, sir.’

‘He’ll be phoned this morning.’ Gessler shook his head. ‘If they were Resistance, how would they know about Muncaster?’

‘The obvious answer is through the Americans. The brother will have told them all about what happened.’ Gessler nodded. Gunther thought,
all about what? What exactly did Muncaster
know? And how much did Gessler know of it?

‘And the old man definitely reported Muncaster as saying “The Germans mustn’t know”.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Given how important this could be, Berlin agrees Muncaster should be brought here and questioned. He would fold quickly, I am sure; we would soon find out whether he actually knows
anything important.’

Gunther said, ‘I think locking him in the basement and telling him a few details about what we can do should be enough.’

‘Good. Actual interrogation of a British citizen is politically tricky. They like to keep things in their own hands.’

‘I know.’

Gessler frowned again, tapping his fingers on the desk. ‘And that is our problem. What I would like to do is send an SS squad into that hospital and just take him. But the orders from
Berlin are that we must avoid doing anything that would cause a stir. If the British authorities realize Muncaster’s importance they may want to keep him. We don’t want the British
secret services anywhere near this; they’re unreliable, full of wild adventurers. And if the Resistance people are onto Muncaster, too, it is vital they know nothing of our involvement; they
might try to snatch or kill him first.’