A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (14 page)

“They’re this upset with each over the weather?”

He hesitated, then confessed, “They’re arguing over the Purification.”

She frowned, confused. “The Purification? What do they disagree about over the Purification?”

“It’s not that,” Quinn said awkwardly. “It’s—they’re ascribing guilt.”

“Guilt?”

Quinn nodded. “To the German people.”

Ellie’s frown deepened, then, suddenly, her eyes widened and she looked at the tourists, then back to Quinn. “Are they Jewish?”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn said. “Well, they’ve given no indication either way.”

Her frown returned. “Then why are they so upset?”

To change the subject, Quinn said, “We have to decide whether or not we’re going to drive back to Berlin tonight.”

Ellie shrugged, accepting the change of topic without further comment. “I think that’s more up to you than me.” She gave him a pointed look. “
I
can’t contribute without knowing what’s going on.”

Quinn stared out the window next to their table. The rain continued to come down in a light but steady drizzle. “I don’t like the idea of driving in this weather,” he said. “Besides, it’s getting a little late to be setting out for Berlin.” The weather was a valid, if not insurmountable, objection, but they both knew that the time really was not. The real reason they had to stay the night was that Quinn could not leave until he had decided what to do about Garner.

They left the tavern at half past seven. Quinn could feel the beer manifesting itself in his overly delicate sense of balance as he followed Ellie across the room. She was a very small woman and had drunk as much as he had, so he imagined she must be feeling the effects of the alcohol as well. He found himself studying the sway of her hips as she walked, admiring the perfect curve of her waist and buttocks.

Stop it. That was the beer thinking.

It was too early for sunset at this time of year, but the overcast sky had brought on a premature dusk and they emerged from the tavern into a city under the blanket of an early night. They hurried quickly across the car park in the rain. They were halfway to the car when the street was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lighting, and simultaneously they were assaulted by a clap of thunder powerful enough to rattle the windows of the tavern behind them. Ellie yelped and jumped; instinctively, Quinn reached out and wrapped a protective arm around her.

Released by the lightning and the thunder, the rain was all of a sudden coming down in sheets. Ellie pressed herself against him, nestling her face against his chest. Quinn found himself willing to stand there as protection against the sudden downpour for a long time. She was indeed very small-framed; it only heightened her femininity.

But the contact was frustratingly fleeting. Abruptly she turned and dashed the last few yards to the car. Her pumps forced her to take short, mincing steps. Quinn followed, less hurriedly. He bent forward to unlock the passenger door for Ellie. As he did so, he felt the stiff bulk of Garner’s envelope in his inside pocket, and it sobered him a little. He opened the door for her and closed it behind her, then walked round and got in the
driver’s side.

They were both soaked to the bone. Quinn nodded towards a hotel across the street. It looked like the Hotel Udet, affordable without being ratty. “How does over there look?”

She followed his gesture, nodded in agreement. “Fine.”

The hotel had only a single vacancy, so they had to share a room. It had one bed, a small bathroom and no television, but it did have a radio. They took off their coats and hung them over the radiator to dry; Ellie showered to wash the cold, soaking rain off herself and emerged from the bathroom in the hotel’s bathrobe. Quinn sat on the bed and brooded. He would have preferred silence, but Ellie turned on the radio and filled the room with the sound of one of the Führer’s speeches.

Quinn recognized it after a few moments: it was his closing speech from the treason trial after the Munich Putsch—though it had not been recorded at that time. Rather, the recording that was playing now was part of a series made in the 1950s and 60s, when the Führer had recorded a number of his great speeches from his early career. The Munich Putsch speech, when the fringe Nazi Party had attempted to seize control of the Bavarian state government, was chief among them. During his consequent prison sentence, he had composed
Mein Kampf
, the Party’s testament.

“
I have hopes that the old cockade will be lifted from the dirt, that the old colors will be unfurled to flutter again, that expiation will come before the tribunal of God. Then from our bones and from our graves will speak the voice of the only tribunal which has the right to sit in judgment over us. Then, gentlemen, not you will be the ones to deliver the verdict over us, but that verdict will be given by the eternal judgment of history, which will speak out against the accusation that has been made against us. I know what your judgment will be. But that other court will not ask us: Have you committed high treason?
”

The voice went on and on. Quinn watched Ellie as she moved around the room. She bent over to open a drawer, and he admired the curve of her backside through the robe. She sat on a chair and rubbed her feet; she had been wearing her pumps all day. She got up again and reached up to turn on the wall lamp. He ran his eyes along the silhouette of her profile underneath her robe.

“
That court will judge the quartermaster-general of the old army, its officers and soldiers, who as Germans wanted only the best for their people and Fatherland, who fought and who were willing to die. You might just as well find us guilty a thousand times, but the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear up the motions of the state’s attorney and the judgment of this court: for she finds us not guilty
.”

The speech ended and gave way to the news report, detailing the ongoing preparations for the funeral the day after tomorrow. The Führer’s body was still in the Grand Plaza, protected by a detachment from the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler, the Führer’s personal bodyguard regiment of the Waffen-SS. Tomorrow the whole of the Leibstandarte’
s
mechanized arm would escort the Führer’s body on its public route from Berlin to Linz. Dignitaries were starting to arrive in the southern city for the funeral already. Ribbentrop, the former Foreign Minister, and Bormann, the Führer’s longstanding private secretary, had both arrived today, as had several rulers from the European satellites: General Franco, the fascist ruler of Spain; Kekkonen, the Finnish President, who as his country’s prime minister had negotiated the agreement whereby Germany returned the territories Finland had been forced to cede to the Soviet Union in 1940; and Count Ciano, son-in-law and successor to the late Mussolini.

Pope Lucius IV—who, the radio reminded the listener, was a German and the first non-Italian Pope to occupy the Papal See in four centuries—had issued a statement of condolence to the German people. The Führer’s mysterious final testament, containing the identity of his successor, was being held in a secure vault in his palace in Linz, under guard by both the Leibstandarte and a Guards regiment of the Wehrmacht’s Eastern Command.

This last confused Quinn when he heard it. Why would a unit from the Eastern Command be charged with guarding the Führer’s will? Then he understood. The Leibstandarte, as part of the Waffen-SS, was under the command of Himmler. But the Eastern Command was under the control of Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Commissar-General of the East. The presence of one of Heydrich’s regiments kept the will from falling
completely under Himmler’s control.

Heydrich and Himmler had begun as political allies. Heydrich’s rise to prominence had come through Himmler’s patronage; as Chief of the RSHA, the SS’s security service, he had been Himmler’s right hand man. Young, charming, tall, athletic, blond-haired and blue-eyed, Heydrich possessed all the lauded Nordic physical virtues that were conspicuous by their absence in the Party’s ruling clique: Hitler, Göring, Himmler, and Goebbels. It had been Heydrich’s place in the Führer’s good graces that had allowed Himmler to achieve the central position in Reich culture that he so coveted for his beloved SS.

When the Reich swallowed most of Czechoslovakia in two great bites in 1938 and 1939, Hitler had organized his new territory into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and given it as a fief to Reinhard Heydrich, who proceeded to rule it with an iron fist. In 1942 Czech nationalists, supported by the British government, had attempted to assassinate him. He had survived, but had been forced to retire to his estates for a time to convalesce. Himmler’s new protégé, Kaltenbrunner, had replaced him as Chief of the RSHA.

Eighteen months later, when the Führer had needed to find someone to begin the work of turning the newly conquered East into the fertile seeding ground for Aryan colonization that he envisioned it, his eye had fallen on Heydrich, now fully recovered from the botched assassination. He had appointed Heydrich Reich Commissar-General; and as the Führer’s health degenerated over the coming decades and he slowly retreated from public life, Himmler had gradually managed to tighten his hold on all aspects of life in western Germany, while Heydrich ruled as a military despot in the East. For several years the two former allies had been the principal rivals for the supreme power, and now that the Führer was dead that rivalry was coming to a head.

When the commentator concluded his report and announced that it would be followed by a selection of the Führer’s favorite pieces from
The Ring of the Nibelungs
, Quinn reached over and turned the radio off. Ellie, kneeling on the floor and resting her head on the bedcovers, looked up expectantly, thinking that he must want to talk. But he merely continued to brood silently. The only noise was the continuing downpour outside.

“Look,” she said after a minute, “if you don’t want to talk, that’s fine. But I don’t like this quiet. Either you tell me what happened with Garner, or I’m going to listen to the radio.”

He stared at her wordlessly.

“What did he say to you?” she asked. “Why did you just leave him there? Did he tell you why he defected?”

“No.” Quinn shook his head. “He didn’t tell me why. But he was so
sure.”
Garner had been so
sure
that whatever was in that envelope would turn Quinn as well that he hadn’t felt the need to justify himself; he had just handed the file over.

Ellie’s eyes widened slightly. “My God,” she said. “You’re scared. That’s it. Whatever he said to you, you’re terrified. And that’s why you haven’t looked at those documents.”

He looked at her bleakly and did not respond. She got up and sat next to him on the bed, nestling herself against him. Reflexively, for the second time this evening, he put his arm around her. His nostrils were filled with the scent of her damp, golden hair.

“What is it you’re scared of?” she asked.

“Of finding out what’s going on,” he murmured after a few moments. “Of understanding what he’s trying to do.”

“Why?”

Her question caught him short; he opened his mouth to respond but found that he was unsure of the answer.

Then he realized. “Because I think that once I do, I won’t be able to pretend anymore.”

“Pretend? What do you mean?”

He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “As long as Garner is just a defector, all I have to do is take care of him, and I can go. But I think if I find out what’s going on, I’m going to have to choose sides.”

“You’ll have to do what you think is best for England? Even if England turns against you for it?”

Her insight surprised him; he glanced down at her and smiled slightly, even though she could not see it.
“Yes.”

“Like joining the Resistance.”

He made no reply. After a moment she raised her head and looked up at him. He stared back at her, into those piercingly sharp blue eyes. Tentatively she leaned forward and kissed him. He kissed back. He liked the taste of her mouth. He knew he should think about the beer, and the stress they were both under, but instead he pushed them from his mind.

He felt the gentle pressure of her hand on his chest, pushing him back onto the bed. He allowed himself to be pushed and lay back. Her robe was starting to come open at the front, and he could feel the heat of her body, half on top of him, pressing against his through his damp clothes. He ran his hands down her sides and over her hips, feeling her soft, supple firmness through the flimsy robe.

They were still kissing. Her hand teased its way up under his shirt and ran along his abdomen; the hairs on his stomach tingled and he quivered. She giggled, kissing now along the line of his jaw toward his ear. The caresses from her hand moved downward, out of his shirt. Gently but firmly, she rubbed her palm back and forth across his crotch. He moaned.

Her fingers started to fiddle at the buttons to his trousers, pulling the first one free. Nibbling on his ear, she giggled again.

“I wonder if those Americans from the tavern are doing this now,” she whispered. “Or if they’re still arguing about the Purification.”

Suddenly he stiffened underneath, catching her by the wrist just as she reached inside his pants. He pulled his ear away from her tongue and looked her in the eye. “What does that mean?”

She stared at him, confused. “What? Well—nothing.” She smiled hesitantly. “I mean— It was just a joke.”

“Well, it wasn’t very funny.” He pulled out from underneath her and sat up on the edge of the bed.

He felt her get up onto her knees behind him and put her arms around his chest. “Come on,” she whispered in his ear. He could hear frustration and confusion in her voice, but she was also trying to rescue the mood. “What’s wrong all of a sudden?”

He broke free of her grasp and stood up, turning round to face her. The pleasant alcoholic mist he had allowed to fog his mind had suddenly cleared. “Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Perhaps
what
isn’t such a good idea?” she demanded. She thought she was being rejected now, and it was making her angry.