Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

With shock still crackling like sparks along the branches of her nerves, she sat down on the bed.

Pekkala knelt before her and explained the situation they were in. But he paused before he had finished, unsure whether she had heard a single word he’d said. ‘Lilya?’ he asked.

‘Don’t ever leave me again,’ she told him.

He breathed in sharply, as if dust had been thrown in his face. ‘I swear that all the days which we have left I’ll spend with you,’ he said, ‘but what we must do now is leave this place. All hell is about to break loose.’

Hunyadi had been sitting in a chair by the empty fireplace, just staring at Lilya Simonova. ‘But you were never in the bunker!’ he blurted out suddenly, as if a conversation had been playing in his head this whole time and had just now transformed into words.

Lilya glanced at Hunyadi, then turned again to face Pekkala, a questioning look on her face.

‘It’s all right,’ Pekkala told her. ‘It doesn’t matter now. You can tell him, if there’s anything to tell.’

‘Everything I learned, I learned from Fegelein,’ she said.

‘He was the leak, and he had no idea,’ muttered Hunyadi. ‘The poor fool has been hunting himself!’

Kirov rested a hand upon Hunyadi’s shoulder. ‘It’s time to go,’ he said.

Hunyadi rose stiffly to his feet. ‘I thank you, gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘but after what I have just heard, I believe I’ve found a way to solve this case without ever mentioning the name of Lilya Simonova. Hitler will be satisfied, and he will never even know that you were here.’

‘The choice is yours,’ said Pekkala, ‘but what about your wife in Spain? What will become of her?’

‘She’ll be released,’ answered Hunyadi. ‘And as for me, although I’ve always wanted to see Moscow, I believe I’ll take my chances in Berlin.’

‘Fegelein?’ Hitler’s voice sounded hoarse and faint. His laboured breathing slid in and out of the static on the telephone line. ‘Fegelein is the leak?’

‘That’s right,’ answered Hunyadi. By agreement with Pekkala, he had waited several hours before telephoning the bunker. By the time Hunyadi placed the call, the others would already have escaped the city.

‘And can you prove this?’ demanded Hitler.

‘You should be able to correlate every piece of information broadcast on the Allied radio network with times when Fegelein was present in the bunker.’

‘I may require more proof that that, Hunyadi. He is Himmler’s liaison, after all.’

‘If you detain Fegelein and no more leaks emerge, then you’ll know that you have the right person.’

There was a long silence. ‘Very well,’ Hitler said at last. ‘I’ll send Rattenhuber to pick him up.’

‘I suspect that he will be at the house of his mistress, Elsa Batz.’

‘His mistress?’ Hitler’s voice rose suddenly in anger. ‘That man has a mistress?’

‘Yes, I thought you knew.’

‘Of course I didn’t know!’ shouted Hitler. ‘The bastard is married to Gretl Braun! Between you and me, Hunyadi, there’s a good chance he might soon be my brother-in-law!’ By now his voice had risen to a roar. ‘How the hell am I going to explain that to Eva? What’s this woman’s name again?’

‘Elsa Batz,’ repeated Hunyadi. ‘She lives at number seventeen Bleibtreustrasse.’

‘I’ll send Rattenhuber over right away. And thank you, Hunyadi, for everything you’ve done.’

‘My wife,’ said Hunyadi.

‘She will be released within the hour, and you are free to join her, my old friend.’

When Fegelein arrived at Lilya’s flat, he found the door unlocked and the room empty.

She must have panicked, thought Fegelein. I’m almost an hour late, after all. But where could she have gone?

The only place that made any sense to him at that moment was Elsa’s. Lilya must have been on her way there at the same time as I was coming here. With no other way of accounting for her absence, Fegelein hurried back to the apartment on Bleibtreustrasse. Inside the building, he stashed the briefcase in the little closet under the main stairs, where the caretaker, Herr Kappler, stored the witch’s broom which he used for sweeping the pavement.

Fegelein entered the apartment just as Elsa was getting out of bed. As always, the first thing she did was to go to her handbag on the side table and retrieve her lipstick. Then, looking in the little mirror which hung by the door, she daubed her lips a poppy red.

Fegelein never understood why she did this. The lipstick was made by the French company Guerlain and was from the last remaining stock in Berlin, making it ridiculously expensive. Most of it ended up on the rim of her coffee cup, requiring her to apply it again as soon as she had finished eating. But there was no time to think of that now.

‘Where did you go?’ she asked, still looking at her own reflection in the mirror.

Normally, Fegelein could have spat out a lie as quickly as speaking the truth, but he was so distressed at not finding Lilya that his mind had just gone blank. ‘I was taking a walk,’ he muttered.

She laughed quietly. ‘That’s a first.’

He didn’t care whether she believed him or not. ‘Has anyone been here since I left?’ he demanded.

She turned. ‘Why would anyone come here at this hour of the morning?’

Fegelein just shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, heading for the kitchen. He hadn’t had any breakfast and his stomach was painfully empty.

‘What’s wrong with you today?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’

Just then, there was a knocking on the door.

Fegelein’s stomach flipped over. Lilya is here, he thought. But now he had no idea how to explain what she would be doing at the apartment. Although Lilya often stopped here to pick him up in the car, she always called up from Herr Kappler’s phone at the front desk. He was afraid of the scene Elsa would make in front of Lilya, when she realised he was leaving her behind.

I’ll say there is an important meeting at the Reichschancellery bunker, Fegelein thought to himself. I’ll say the phone downstairs is out of order. That’s why she had to climb the stairs. If Lilya will just play along with me for a couple of minutes, we can leave this place without Elsa causing a commotion. Of course, she will figure it out soon enough, but by then Lilya and I will already be gone.

The knocking came again.

‘I’ll get it!’ said Fegelein, striding across the room towards the door.

But Elsa was standing right there and before Fegelein could do anything about it, she had already opened the door.

Fegelein stopped in his tracks.

It was not Lilya.

Instead, Herr Kappler had come to the door, stooped and smiling and holding out Fegelein’s briefcase. The gilded letters of Fegelein’s name glinted in the morning light. ‘Found this under the stairs,’ he announced. ‘Thought Herr Fegelein might want it back.’ Kappler handed the briefcase to Elsa, bowed his head in a quick bobbing motion and headed back downstairs.

When they were alone again, Elsa turned to Fegelein. ‘What is this?’ she asked, holding out the briefcase. ‘What have you got in here?’

‘Nothing!’ Fegelein blurted out.

‘It doesn’t feel like nothing.’ She placed it on the table by the door and flipped the latch.

‘Don’t open it!’ he commanded.

But it was too late. She flipped up the lid of the briefcase and stared at the tangle of gold chains, diamond rings and jewel-studded brooches. She reached into the hoard and picked out the two Swiss passports, which were held together by a rubber band.

‘Please,’ said Fegelein.

But she didn’t seem to hear him.