David John - Flight from Berlin

It contained the two-page sworn affidavit of one Fritz Engelhardt, a former colonel of the List Regiment of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Army, notarised in Geneva and dated January 1930. The central passage read:

Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler served under my command as a dispatch rider stationed in the List Regimental Headquarters at Fromelles and Fournes from 1914 to 1918. The artistic drawings hereto attached were confiscated by Lieutenant Karl Lippert from Lance Corporal Hitler upon the latter’s return from furlough in January 1918. Subsequently, the drawings were submitted to me privately by Lt. Lippert pursuant to an application for promotion from Lance Corporal Hitler. I was unable to ignore the evidence of the drawings and as a result promotion was refused, despite Lance Corporal Hitler holding the Iron Cross 2nd Class.

Denham read it again. It took several seconds to sink in.

The next envelope contained a dense, typewritten statement, five pages long, titled Mend Protocol. As far as he could tell, it was a transcription of the evidence of one Hans Mend, also known as ‘Ghost Rider,’ a dispatch runner serving on the staff of the List Regiment, who had known Hitler between 1914 and 1920. On the third page someone had circled one paragraph with blue ink:

We noticed that he never looked at a woman. In 1915 we were billeted in the Le Febre brewery near Fournes. We slept on hay bales. At night Hitler lay down with Schmidl, his male whore. We heard a rustling in the hay. Someone flicked on his electric torch and muttered, ‘Look at those two fairy brothers.’ I myself took no further interest in the matter.

He was aware of Eleanor talking about the drawings, but he wasn’t hearing her. He opened the third envelope.

Inside it were around fifteen pages of yellowed notes, written on paper headed Pasewalk Military Hospital. Some sort of case notes by the look of them, but the crabbed, obsolete style of handwriting was almost illegible. This one would take some time to decipher. One thing stood out, however. Across the top of the first page another hand had written in ink: Dr Edmund Forster dismissed University of Greifswald Feb ’33. Arrested September ’33. Died police custody. Denham returned it to the envelope.

And then the final, fourth envelope.

It seemed to contain a series of arrest sheets, dating from 1920 and 1921. Mug shots. And pages and pages of witness depositions.

On 17 November, I, Jochen, nineteen years old, unemployed, met a gentleman of average height near the kiosk on the Marienplatz. He remarked that I was looking hungry and asked if I wanted a hot meal. As I had not eaten that day I accepted. He also paid for beer but he himself did not drink. Afterwards he asked me to accompany him to his home, and in return for five marks, to spend the night with him. I had been without employment for two months and there was no heating or food at home so I agreed to accompany the gentleman to his home. Signed: Jochen Krubel.

At the Alte Pinakothek museum in the Kunstareal district I, Heinz Peter, twenty-one years old, a bailiff’s clerk, was approached by a man wearing an old army greatcoat who spoke an Austrian dialect. I agreed to go to a cafe with him where he talked a great deal about a new order of German art that would represent the true virtues of the people. When he saw that I was interested in his remarks he wanted to show me paintings made by himself and books with plate photographs of the German masters which is why we went to his lodgings. Because it was late and the district trains had stopped running the man invited me to spend the night and I accepted. Signed: Heinz Peter Frank.

On a street near the university in the Schwabing district I, Michael, twenty-three years old, an apprentice sheet metal worker, met a man with whom I went for a walk in the English Garden and then for a meal in a small tavern. When I told him I had served as a private in the war and had hoped to become a sergeant he spoke for a long time about the need for Austria and Germany to unify. He urged me to join a new military-political force of ex-servicemen led by himself and asked if I was willing to agitate on its behalf, because Germany belonged to men such as myself and my comrades. After giving me cigarettes he invited me to his room but did not wish me to smoke there. The man wore a wide-brimmed felt hat and carried a short leather crop. One of his distinguishing features is a forelock falling over his forehead. Signed: Michael Schneider.

The mug shots, both face-on and profile, were glued to each charge sheet. A younger face, only thirty-one, but hard to mistake. The forelock and luminous stare. Arrested for soliciting, conveyed to the cells of the Munich vice squad on Ettstrasse, and charged under Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code.

‘What is all that?’ Eleanor said.

‘You won’t believe me if I tell you… I can’t believe it myself.’

On the cab ride home they held hands in silence on the backseat. Rain came down in lead rods, hammering the roof of the car and turning the gutters into sluices. Shop awnings along the Farringdon Road fashioned small waterfalls. There seemed to be an unending supply of bad weather.

Denham wiped a gap in the misted window and saw black umbrellas clustering around the bus stops like barnacles. He let his forehead rest on the cool glass.

It was as if pieces from separate puzzles were joining, bumping together like ice floes, and carrying him along. And he himself had no power to stop the drift.

He’d been played.

So pleased with himself, that day on the Hindenburg, for coaxing and cajoling the Hannah story out of a reticent Friedl. The story that had set him on a trail that led to Jakob and ultimately the dossier. Surely, no coincidence. Friedl was an actor, after all. For the second time Denham had underestimated him and felt foolish.

But why had he chosen Denham? He hadn’t given the password. He wasn’t Friedl’s intended contact.

The more he mulled this over, the more he thought how it didn’t matter now. The group had to achieve its mission any way it could. The damning dossier was now in the hands of a journalist who could ferret it from its hiding place and exploit it. But this realisation gave him scant satisfaction. He felt angry. He could have been beaten to death, thinking the whole thing had been a dreadful misunderstanding.

T he house was dim and cool. A dripping sound from somewhere in the eaves. Denham lit the fire in the sitting room and sat with Eleanor on the sofa, with the cat curled on her lap.

‘Where do we even start?’ she said.

‘With what I haven’t told you…’

For the next half hour he explained his unwitting role in the group’s mission. How his suffering at Rausch’s hands had nothing to do with interviewing Hannah. She had started to ask questions as he spoke but became sullen as the story went on, looking hurt and astonished in equal measure.

‘You couldn’t trust me with the truth?’ she said.

‘I couldn’t risk it. Telling you now is dangerous enough. British Secret Intelligence warned me that people with knowledge of this have a habit of dying-’

‘British Secret Intelligence?’

Denham looked away. He was on difficult ground now. ‘Our intelligence service is after it, too.’

They were silent for a long time, listening to the cat purring on Eleanor’s lap.

‘They want it to blackmail him,’ she said at last.

‘Yes… it’s almost too incredible, isn’t it? Diplomatic threats have no effect. But the dirt from Hitler’s past might actually contain him. Do what no army could. Assuming, that is, that the dossier’s genuine.’

‘You think it could be a forgery?’ she said.

Denham dropped his head onto the cushions and looked up at the old grandfather clock behind the sofa. Its hands had frozen at five past ten a lifetime ago. ‘It just seems too… too great a secret to keep hidden.’