Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'Wouldn't German gold be held in the Reichsbank?'

'Now you're asking me questions which I can't… which I don't have the knowledge to reply to… or the authority. I am merely an SS-Gruppenführer, after all.'

By 11.00 a.m. they had drawn up outside an unmarked building in Basel's business district. There was nothing inside or out to indicate what happened in this building. There was a handsome woman in her thirties sitting behind a desk with a single telephone on it. A large marble staircase spiralled behind her. Lehrer talked to the woman quietly. Felsen only heard a single word-'Puhl'. The woman picked up the telephone, dialled a number and spoke briefly. She stood and set off on strong legs up the stairs. Lehrer indicated that Felsen should wait while he followed the legs.

Felsen sat in a densely packed leather armchair. The woman returned and sat at her desk without looking at him. She folded her hands and waited for the next high point in her day. It took Felsen half an hour and several cubic feet of charm to find out that he was in the lobby of the Bank of International Settlements. The name meant nothing to him.

At one o'clock Felsen and Lehrer were sitting at a table in a restaurant called Bruderholz. Only other men in dark suits ate in this place and at tables well-spaced from each other. There were four petits poussins between the two men and a flat plate of boulangère potatoes. Lehrer was holding a glass of Gewürztraminer and rolling the stem between his thumb and forefinger.

'It's so good to have Alsace back in the German fold, don't you think? What magnificent country, magnificent wine. The meat of the poussin will be a little delicate for this, we should have ordered goose or pork, hearty Alsatian fare, but I can't have too much fat, you know. Still… the fruits of summer in the dead of winter. Your health.'

'Was that a particularly successful meeting, Herr Gruppenführer?'

'Tell me what you think of the Gewürztraminer?'

'Spicy.'

'I'm sure you can do better than that. I was always told that you were very appreciative of the good things in life.'

'Boldly fruity, but clean and dry. The spice holding from the top to the bottom, as long as an Atlantic cruise.'

'Where did you get that from?' Lehrer laughed.

'It's not true?'

'It's true… but not as boring or as dangerous as an Atlantic cruise,' said Lehrer. 'I think a heavenly brioche is called for after this.'

They ate the poussins and drank two bottles of the Gewürztraminer. The restaurant emptied. They ate the brioche with a half-bottle of Sauternes. They ordered coffee and cognac and sat in the fading light of the darkening afternoon with cigars growing inches of concertinaed ash. The staff left them and the bottle and retired. The two men were well loosened up. Lehrer's cigar arm swung off the back of his chair and Felsen's legs were spread wide, a foot on either side of the table legs.

'A man,' said Lehrer heading for some pontification, pointing Felsen up with his cigar, ash still intact, 'must always do his important thinking alone.'

'What's a man's important thinking?' asked Felsen, licking his lips.

'Where he wants to be, of course… in the future,' he sifted through the air for some more words, 'I mean, on your way you must gather your intelligence, you may ask opinion, but when you are determining your own place in the world… this is your private, your secret thinking… and if you are to be a man… a man of difference, then this thinking must be done alone.'

'Is this the start of an essay entitled "How to become an SS-Gruppenführer "?'

Lehrer waggled his cigar in the negative.

'That is my position only. A badge of the success of my thinking but it is not the ultimate purpose. A small example. You won the poker game the other night because your ultimate purpose was greater than mine. The adjutant told you to lose because I like to win. You wanted to stay in Berlin… ergo you win. My intelligence, as you indicated to me last night, was not good enough to have played that game with you.'

'But you did win. I'm here. You lost a little money, that's all.'

Lehrer smiled broadly, his eyes glistening with drink, amusement and triumph.

'Perhaps you're thinking now why you're so important to me,' he said. 'Don't. My ultimate purpose should be no concern of yours.'

Except that it involves me, thought Felsen, but he said: 'Perhaps I should have one of my own.'

'My point entirely,' said Lehrer shrugging massively.

'This Russian campaign…' Felsen started and Lehrer held up his hand.

'You will get your intelligence by degrees,' he said. 'Let me ask you something first. What happened in the skies over England last summer?'

'I'm not sure we can read the precise truth in the Beobachter or the 12-Uhr Blatt.'

'Well, the precise truth,' said Lehrer leaning over and whispering into his brandy, 'is that we lost a great air battle. Goering will tell you otherwise. Goering has told me otherwise, but we all know how he keeps his distance from reality…'

'Excuse me, sir?'

'Nothing,' said Lehrer, straightening himself with a belch. 'The loss of a great air battle. What does that mean to you?'

'But we haven't been bombed in Berlin for nearly two months.'

'Berliners,' said Lehrer, despairing, 'even new Berliners, my God, man, believe me, we lost it. Now come on, tell me what that means.'

'If it's true, then we are exposed.'

'In the west and in the air.'

'So if we open up on an Eastern…'

'That's enough. I think you've understood something.'

'What is England with the Channel in between,' said Felsen. 'They're no threat.'

'I'm not being defeatist,' said Lehrer, 'no, no, no. But listen. We let them get away at Dunkirk. If we'd smashed them on the beaches then we'd be having this meal in London and we'd have nothing to worry about. But the English are determined. They have a friend across the Atlantic. The biggest economic force in the world. The Führer doesn't believe that, but it's true.'

'Perhaps we'll all join forces and smash the Bolsheviks.'

'That's a hopeful reading of the situation. Here's another,' said Lehrer putting down his glass and screwing his cigar in between his teeth. He chopped down his left hand on the table and said: 'The United States and England.' He removed his cigar, chopped down his right hand and mouthed the word: 'Russia.' He pressed them together. 'And all that's left is a thin scraping of liverwurst in the middle.'

'Totally and utterly fantastic,' said Felsen. 'You're forgetting…'

Lehrer guffawed.

'That's the thing about intelligence. It's not always what you want to hear.'

'But do you believe that?'

'Of course I don't. It's just a thought. Don't trouble yourself with it. We will win the war and you will be in a perfect position to become one of the most powerful businessmen in the Iberian Peninsula. Unless, of course, I've misjudged you and you're a complete fool.'

'And if we lose, as you've suggested we possibly might?'

'If you're in Berlin and you listen to the Berliners, you'll be jam in the bottom of a bomb crater. But out there on the edge of the continent you will be far away from the disaster…'

'Then I have every reason to thank you for forcing this job on me, Herr Gruppenführer.'

Lehrer raised his glass and said: 'Prosperity.'

They'd drunk the best part of half a bottle of cognac and when the fresh evening air hit the older man he breathed it in deeply, backed himself into the rear of the Mercedes and collapsed with his head thrown forward on to his chest. Felsen tried to think his way through their conversation while listening to the air whistling in and out of the other man's nose. It was like piecing together a jig-saw with too much sky and it wasn't long before his cheek was picking up the indent of the piping round the leather upholstery.