Роберт Харрис - Munich

‘ If! It’s always if !’

Their raised voices had been noticed. Beyond the wire, a guard with an Alsatian dog on a short leash started shouting at them. The probing finger of the searchlight swung across the parade ground, over the fence and on to the road. It advanced towards them. Suddenly the car was filled with brilliant blinding light. Hartmann swore. He switched on the engine and found reverse gear. He looked over his shoulder, one hand on the steering wheel, and they backed away at speed, swerving from side to side down the middle of the road until they reached a side street. He put the Mercedes into first gear, swung the wheel and they made a U-turn, sending up a spurt of dust and smoking rubber. The acceleration as they pulled away threw Legat back in his seat. When he checked behind them the searchlight was still weaving back and forth across the road, blindly searching. He said furiously, ‘That was a bloody stupid thing to do. Can you imagine the row if a British diplomat was arrested out here? I want to go back to Munich — now.’ Hartmann continued to stare ahead and didn’t answer. ‘Did you really drag me all the way out here just to make a point?’

‘No. It happened to be on the way.’

‘On the way to what?’

‘Leyna.’

So then, at last: Leyna.

She had wanted to set eyes on Hitler — not to hear him speak: she declared herself a communist; that would have been unthinkable — but just to see him in the flesh, this half-sinister, half-comical brawler and dreamer, whose Party only four years earlier had come ninth in the elections with less than three per cent of the vote, but who now was on the brink of becoming Chancellor. Most nights during the campaign, after addressing one of his huge rallies, he returned to the city. Everybody knew the address of his apartment. Her proposal was that they should go and stand outside it in the hope that they might catch a glimpse of him.

Hartmann had been against it from the start. He had called it a waste of a good day, a trivial bourgeois diversion (‘Isn’t that what you people call it?’) to focus upon an individual rather than upon the social forces that had created him. But there was more to his reluctance than that, Legat had realised afterwards: Hartmann knew what she was like, the sort of recklessness of which she was capable. She had appealed to Legat to use his casting vote in her favour, and of course he had done so — partly because he was curious to see Hitler himself, but chiefly because he was half in love with her: a fact of which all three were aware. They treated it as a joke, himself included. He was so much less experienced and worldly than Hartmann, still a virgin at twenty-one.

And so, after their picnic on the grass in Königsplatz, they had set off.

It was the first week of July, just after midday, very hot. She was wearing one of Hartmann’s white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of shorts, and walking boots. Her limbs were brown from the sun. It was more than a mile away, through the centre of the city. The buildings shimmered like fantasies in the haze of heat. As they passed the southern end of the Englischer Garten, Hartmann had suggested they go swimming in the Eisbach instead. Legat had been tempted but Leyna would not be put off. On they went.

The apartment was at the top of a hill, facing on to Prinzregentenplatz, a busy, drearily impressive half-cobbled square through which trams ran. By the time they reached it they were sweating and bad-tempered. Hartmann was hanging back in a sulk and Leyna had decided to goad him further by pretending to flirt with Legat. The building in which Hitler lived was a luxurious, turn-of-the-century block with a hint of a French chateau about its design. Outside it a gang of about a dozen Stormtroopers was loitering, closing off that portion of the pavement, obliging pedestrians to step into the road and walk around the Führer’s six-wheeled Mercedes which was drawn up waiting for him. Across the street, no more than twenty yards away, a small crowd of curious spectators had gathered. So, he was in residence, Legat remembered thinking — and not only that: it looked as though he was about to leave.

He asked, ‘Which is his apartment?’

‘Second floor.’ She pointed. A balcony ran between two bays with French windows. It was solid, heavy masonry. ‘Sometimes he comes out to show himself to the crowd. Of course, this is the place where his niece was shot last year.’ As she delivered the last sentence she raised her voice slightly. A couple of people turned to look at her. ‘Well, they lived together, didn’t they? What do you think, Pauli? Geli Raubal — did she kill herself or was she bumped off because of the scandal?’ When Hartmann didn’t reply she said to Legat, ‘The poor kid was only twenty-three. Everyone knew her uncle was fucking her.’

A middle-aged woman standing nearby turned and glared at her. ‘You should shut your filthy mouth.’

Across the street, the Brownshirts were coming to attention, forming themselves into an honour guard between the door of the apartment building and the car. The crowd shuffled forwards. The door opened. Hitler appeared. He was wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit. (Later, Legat decided he must have been on his way to lunch.) Some of the onlookers cheered and clapped. Leyna cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, ‘Niece-fucker!’

Hitler glanced over at the small throng. He must have heard — the Stormtroopers certainly had: their heads had all swung in their direction — but just to make sure, she repeated it. ‘You fucked your niece, you murderer!’ His face was expressionless. As he climbed into his car a couple of the SA men broke ranks and started coming towards her. They had short truncheons. Hartmann grabbed Leyna’s arm and pulled her after him. The woman who had told her to shut her filthy mouth tried to block their path. Legat pushed her out of the way. A man — a big fellow, her husband presumably — swung a punch and caught Legat just below the eye. The three of them ran out of the square and down a leafy residential road.

Hartmann and Leyna were in front. Legat could hear the boots of the Brownshirts thumping on the cobbles very close behind. His eye was stinging and already beginning to close. His lungs were searing as if they had been pumped full of liquid ice. He remembered feeling both terrified and entirely calm. When a side road appeared to the right, and Hartmann and Leyna ran straight past it, he swung down it, between big villas with front gardens, and presently he became aware that the Stormtroopers were no longer pursuing him. He was alone. He leaned on a small wooden gate to recover his breath, gasping and laughing. He felt almost ecstatically happy, as if he had taken a drug.

Later, when he got back to their hostel, he found Leyna sitting in the courtyard with her back to the wall. Her face was turned to the sun. She opened her eyes and scrambled to her feet as soon as she saw him and hugged him. How was he? He was fine: better than fine, actually. Where was Paul? She didn’t know — once the fascists had given up the chase and they were safe he had shouted at her and she had shouted back and then he had walked off. She inspected his eye and insisted on taking him upstairs to his bedroom. While he lay on the bed she soaked a hand towel in the basin and folded it into a compress. She sat on the mattress beside him and held it to his eye. Her hip was pressed against him. He could feel the hardness of her muscle beneath her flesh. He had never felt more alive. He reached his hand up behind her head and laced her hair between his fingers and pulled her face down to his and kissed her. She resisted for a moment, then kissed him back and swung astride him, unbuttoning her shirt.

Hartmann didn’t come back all that night. The next morning, Legat had left his share of the bill on the dresser and slipped away. Within an hour he was on the earliest train out of the city. And that had been the only great adventure in the carefully planned life of Hugh Alexander Legat, ex-Balliol College, Oxford, and Third Secretary in His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, until this night.