Len Deighton - SS-GB

The job was almost finished by the time Harry Woods arrived at 2 A.M. He’d been at the reception at the Savoy. Douglas noticed, with some apprehension, that Harry was slightly drunk.

‘Talk about a new broom sweeping clean,’ said Harry as he watched furniture being moved. ‘I haven’t seen this kind of activity since that night when the invasion started.’

‘Do you know where we can get this picture framed?’ Douglas asked him.

Harry Woods held the edge of the picture and looked at it. It was ‘The Flagellation’. Douglas knew the painting – a fine colonnaded piazza, flooded with overhead sunlight from a blue sky. In the background Christ is scourged. Three magnificently attired men – the Count of Urbino and his two advisers – turn their backs upon the scene and converse calmly together. In real life, the advisers depicted in the painting were suspected of complicity in the murder of the Count. For centuries art experts have argued about the hidden meaning of the picture. Douglas found it appropriate as a decoration for the office of this hard-eyed emissary from the Byzantine court of the Reichsführer-SS.

‘Funny bugger, isn’t he?’ said Harry, looking at the painting.

‘We’d better learn to live with him,’ said Douglas.

‘He’s down in number three conference room,’ said Harry, ‘talking to that squeaky-voiced little police Major that he took along to the mortuary. Who is he?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Douglas.

‘They’re talking together as if the world was about to come to an end.’ Harry brought out his cigarettes and offered them to Douglas, who shook his head. It was no longer done to accept a friend’s tobacco ration. ‘What’s it all about, chief?’ said Harry. ‘You understand all this double-talk. What’s it all about?’

‘I thought you might be able to tell me, Harry. I saw Sylvia today. She told me that you have a finger in everything that’s going on in town.’

If Harry guessed what Sylvia actually said, he gave no sign of it, but he didn’t seem surprised that Sylvia had turned up at Scotland Yard. Douglas wondered if she’d seen Harry too.

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Harry. ‘That little Major is nothing to do with pathology or medicine or anything like that. I’d like to know why he was at the mortuary. Do you think this bloke Huth let him come along just for a laugh?’

‘You’ll soon find out that our new Standartenführer is not that keen on laughs,’ said Douglas.

‘There are some bloody peculiar people about, you know that. I mean, letting that little wireless mechanic come along there was wrong. And I’d tell Huth that straight, and to his face. I’d tell him it was all bloody wrong. You think I wouldn’t but I’d tell him.’ Harry swayed slightly and steadied himself by gripping the desk.

‘Wireless mechanic?’

‘Hah!’ said Harry with the arch smugness of the slightly drunk. ‘I saw his file. He’s got a police uniform but that’s just for show. I phoned Lufthansa, and got his number from the flight manifest, then I went upstairs and looked up his record.’

‘You got his file?’

‘Just his card. Say you work for the Gestapo and you can get any bloody thing. Do you know that, Douglas?’

‘You don’t work for the Gestapo,’ Douglas pointed out.

Harry waved his hand in front of his face as if trying to remove a speck from a dirty windscreen. ‘Wireless mechanic, it said, a doctor of wireless theory. They’re all bloody doctors these Huns, have you noticed that, Douglas?…Studied at Tübingen. Only came into the police service one year ago, straight from lecturing at Munich.’

‘Wireless mechanics don’t study at Tübingen and lecture at Munich,’ persisted Douglas.

‘All right, all right, all right,’ said Harry. ‘I haven’t got your command of the German language but I can find my way through a record card.’ Harry gave Douglas a sly smile and, like a stage conjurer producing a rabbit from a hat, he pulled a record card from his inside pocket. ‘There you are, old lad, read it for yourself.’

Douglas took it, and read it in silence.

‘Come on, Super, give us a smile. You’re wrong and you know it.’

‘The Major,’ said Douglas, speaking slowly so that he could think about it himself, ‘is a physicist, an expert on radioactive substances. He was a lecturer on nuclear physics.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ said Harry, rubbing his nose.

‘Those burns on the dead man’s arm,’ said Douglas. ‘Sir John didn’t mention those last night. Perhaps the little Major went there to examine them.’

‘From a sun-lamp?’

‘Not from a sun-lamp, Harry. Those burns were bad ones, the sort of skin damage a man would suffer if he was exposed to the rays that come from radium, or something like that.’

There was another knock at the door. The SS guard commander came to say that SS Signals wished to report that four new telephone lines were connected and tested. No sooner had he said so than Huth’s direct line rang. Douglas picked up the phone on his desk and said, ‘Standartenführer Huth’s office, Detective Superintendent Archer speaking.’

‘Archer – oh, splendid. General Kellerman here. Is the Standartenführer with you?’ Douglas looked at his watch. That Kellerman should be telephoning here at this time was amazing. He was not noted for his long working hours.

‘He’s in number three conference room, General,’ said Douglas.

‘Yes, so I understand.’ There was a long pause. ‘Unfortunately he’s left orders that no calls should be put through to him there. That doesn’t apply to me of course but I don’t wish to make the operator’s life too difficult, and there seems to be something wrong with the phone in the conference room.’

Douglas realized that Huth had given the phone operator the ‘direct orders of the Reichsführer’ stuff, and then left the phone off the hook, but he had every reason to help the General save face. ‘The phone is probably out of use because the Signals staff have been changing the phone lines.’

‘What?’ shouted Kellerman in shrill alarm. ‘At this time of night? What are you talking about?’ He changed to German and became more authoritative. ‘Look here. What is this about changing phones in my office? Explain what’s been happening. Explain immediately!’

‘Purely routine changes, General,’ said Douglas. ‘The Standartenführer preferred that Sergeant Woods and myself were accommodated in the clerk’s office next to his. This meant putting in extra lines for us and bringing our outside line up here – it’s usual to keep an outside number unchanged during the process of an inquiry…informants and so on.’

From somewhere near the General’s elbow there came the petulant murmur of complaint. It was youthful and feminine, and Douglas found no resemblance to the voice of the General’s wife, who had flown from Croydon to Breslau to see her mother the previous week.

‘Oh, routine, you say,’ said Kellerman hurriedly. ‘Then that is in order.’ He paused with the phone capped at his end. Then he said, ‘Have you been with the Standartenführer this evening?’

‘I have, sir,’ said Douglas.

‘What exactly is the problem, Superintendent? He never arrived at the Savoy, you know.’

‘The Standartenführer has a great deal of urgent work outstanding, General,’ said Douglas.

At that moment Huth entered the room. He looked at Harry Woods who was resting against the desk with his eyes closed. Then Huth looked at Douglas and raised his eyebrows quizzically.

At the other end of the phone, General Kellerman said, ‘Do you think I should come over there, Superintendent Archer? I can rely upon a loyal and conscientious officer like you to assess the situation.’