A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (18 page)

The Parties agree that the Mediterranean Sea is a region of vital national interest to both the United Kingdom and Germany’s Warsaw Pact Allies Spain, Italy, and Croatia. The Parties also agree that their interests in the area are not mutually contradictory and that the achievement of either Party’s aims in the Mediterranean does not imply a concession of defeat by the other Party
.

In pursuance of this, Germany undertakes to use its influence with its ally Italy to end Italian and Egyptian claims to sovereignty over the Suez Canal Zone
.

Even this last was only half a victory; accepting that British interests in the Mediterranean were not “mutually contradictory” with Italian and Croatian interests would obviously entail the British Army’s withdrawal from Greece. And with President Kennedy continuing to provide only air and naval support to the Greek war effort while refusing to send in American troops on the ground, that would mean the certain collapse of the Greek army.

He felt the anger rising in his throat. Karl had died because of the war in Greece—Karl, who had never wanted to spy against Germany or even work for the Gestapo in the first place, but whom Quinn had blackmailed into it. And so had hundreds, even thousands, of men and boys: Greeks, Britons, Italians, Croats. And now the British Government was going to back meekly away with its tail between its legs.

He came to the last page, saw the lines awaiting signatures: the Führer and Himmler for Germany, the Prime Minister and the Earl of Home for Britain. Then he saw the date: 2 June. Monday. The Führer’s death had thrown everything into disarray with only another six days to go before the treaty would have been signed.

He went back to the beginning of the document and started to read it through, carefully. The car continued its way along the deserted autobahn through the storm and the night, and Simon Quinn’s world teetered on its axis.

THEY ARRIVED in Berlin shortly after dawn. It had rained in the capital, too, and the almost deserted city streets were damp and glistening in the bright sunlight of the early morning’s cloudless sky. The SS had blocked off the processional route for the funeral carriage, due to depart in less than an hour, forcing Quinn and Ellie to take a detour across the River Spree in order to get to Ellie’s flat. As they crossed the great stone expanse of the Josef Goebbels Bridge, Quinn glimpsed a rainbow floating over the water.

He was in the driver’s seat once more. After he had finished examining every detail of the Columbia-Haus treaty, Ellie had insisted on switching back so that she could read the German version for herself. They had driven in silence as she pored over it intently, reading and rereading every clause, just as he had done. Even after she finished her examination and replaced all three documents in Garner’s envelope, they still did not speak.

A man has already died for this
.

Now he faced the same dilemma as Garner: what to do next?

He parked along the curb outside Ellie’s building. He held out his hand and wordlessly, expressionlessly, she handed over the envelope. They got out of the car and headed inside. The decaying building’s lift was broken, so they had to walk up the three flights of stairs to Ellie’s flat. On the way, Quinn removed the two treaties and Garner’s letter from the envelope and folded them so they would fit into the inside pocket of his coat.

When they got inside Ellie put some bread in the toaster for breakfast, then went into the bedroom to change. Quinn stood by the living room window and stared down at the street below. It was the same view he had seen yesterday morning—and yet, it was completely different.

Ellie came out of her room and got the toast and margarine. Still without a word of conversation, she set it out on the table, sat down and proceeded to start eating. Quinn was aware that breakfast was out, but remained at the window, staring at the German capital’s rooftops.

Eventually he turned away from the view, crossed the room and joined Ellie at the table. He ate sparingly.

After a while she asked, “What will you do now?”

He thought for a moment, then reluctantly shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out all night.”

They finished eating and he helped clean up, then went back to the window.

He became aware that she was sitting on her settee, staring at the back of his head. He turned round to face her. For a long time they regarded each other silently. At last he said, “If there was something I
could
do, Richard Garner could have done it, too.”

She nodded. “You’re probably right.” She continued to stare at him.

“Well?” he said after a few more moments of this. “What do
you
think I should do?”

She shrugged. “It’s not up to me. You’re the Englishman.”

Now he turned fully towards her. “And if it
were
up to you?”

“It’s not.”

“But if it
were
.”

She looked him directly in the eye. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t do anything at all.”

He frowned and did not speak at first; the answer was so unexpected that it took him a moment to process it. At last he said only, “Pardon?”

She shrugged and looked away from him. “They sent you here to do something about Garner and to find
that file. That’s been done. You’re finished.”

He took a step toward her and leaned slightly forward; his sudden earnestness was in marked contrast to her deliberate nonchalance. “Didn’t you read that bloody thing? Britain is
surrendering
. This isn’t Germany winning. This is National Socialism winning. This is the Party you’re supposed to oppose guaranteeing itself hegemony in Europe.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. She was fiddling at a loose strand of fabric on the settee. It refused to come loose, and in a momentary instant of frustration she yanked at it, hard, ripping the cushion. In that moment he saw her offhand manner was just an act, a studied presentation for—what? To hide her nervousness? An excuse not to have to look Quinn in the eye as she said this?

He watched her consciously pull her hand away from the strand of fabric. “I don’t think so,” she repeated. “With this, the threat of nuclear war in Europe is over. The Cold War is over—the Americans have just lost their base of operations in Europe. Without the specter of the evil Jewish Western industrial democracies, the Party won’t have a threat to divert attention from what’s going on in Germany. People will be aware of their condition. They’ll want changes and reform, and the Party won’t be able to suppress it anymore. I think this treaty is good not just for the Party, but for Germany—and for England, too.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “This is the National Socialist Party, Ellie. They’re not going to just give in to a few dissatisfied student marches and dismantle forty years of totalitarian apparatus. And without an external threat any longer, they’re going to be able to concentrate even more on transforming the German people into their Master Race. If you thought
this
was repression, you’re in for a bloody surprise. You can’t reason with them, and you can’t capitulate to them. These are evil people.”

“Well of course someone like
you
would say that.”

She realized what she had said. Her hand flew to her mouth and she looked up at Quinn, wide-eyed. He simply gazed back at her. They were silent for several moments, then he spoke.

“Richard Garner knew this was wrong too,” he said evenly, “enough to die to stop it, and
he
wasn’t Jewish.” He pointed at the city outside the flat’s window.
“They
know it’s wrong. The British government knows it’s wrong. They know they need to hide it. They’re ashamed of it. They negotiated the bloody thing in secret. They killed Richard Garner because he wouldn’t keep their secret anymore. They knew that
I
would never accept it and yet they couldn’t find anyone else who would go along with them to do their dirty work, so instead they’ve been second guessing me since the moment I got here. They followed me to Munich and murdered Garner. They were following me at Den—”

He broke off in mid-sentence. He broke eye contact with Ellie and stared off at a point in space over her shoulder, his mind working furiously.

“What?” she asked. “Following you where?”

He did not reply. “
How did you know where I was?
” he had asked. “
How did you know there’d be trouble?
”

“
Your chaps got word through one of their usual sources that a raid was planned,”
Barnes had answered.
“So the embassy sent us out to look after you.”
Then he had changed the bloody subject. He had answered the second question, but never the first.

“Bloody hell,” he swore. He grabbed his coat from over the back of the settee, walked over to the front door, and opened it.

“Stop,” Ellie said. “Where are you going?” She was up and across the room in three steps. He had his hand on the outside doorknob and was swinging the door shut when she caught him by the forearm. “Stop,” she repeated.

He turned his head to look at her. “I thank you for your assistance thus far, mein Fraulein,” he said, icily formal. “I could not have accomplished what I have without you. But now our loyalties seem to have diverged. Good bye, mein Fraulein. I will probably be unsuccessful, but I am off to try to save Britain. And Germany.”

He shut the door firmly and, without hesitation, turned and started down the stairs. There was no sound of the door opening again behind him and her emerging in pursuit. He was unsure whether he regretted that.

“They followed me to Munich and murdered Garner
,” he had said, then had started to add,
“They were following
me at Denlinger’s flat.”

He emerged into the street. There were a few more people about, though it was still very early. The U-Bahn station was two blocks away. He started walking.

Barnes had neatly dodged the question
—”How did you know where I was
?”—and had then moved the conversation on to something else. Quinn’s heart had still been pounding at the prospect of the Gestapo catching them a few moments earlier at Denlinger’s. He had still been adjusting to the fact that he was here again, in Berlin, working for MI6; and, so soon after meeting Ellie, he had been acutely aware of her presence and was anxious to speak with her. Besides, after he had satisfied himself that Barnes really was who he claimed, he had trusted the man—they were supposed to be on the same side, after all. So the fact that Barnes had not answered the question had slipped his mind, and he had failed to return to it.

That had been a mistake. Worse, it had been an amateurish mistake, and he was cursing himself now for making it. Four years out of practice or not, missing such a basic point was an inexcusable blow to his professional pride, and Richard Garner might still be alive now if he had kept his wits about him for a few minutes.

Obviously, MI6 had known beforehand that he would be at Denlinger’s flat for the meeting. A squad of Royal Marines could not just have been following him around disguised as Waffen- SS storm troopers on the off chance he would get caught up in a Gestapo raid.

He paid the fare and entered the U-Bahn platform. It was almost empty at this time of morning; all the crowds were already in the city or making their way back home after seeing the Führer’s sarcophagus start its journey. A large movie poster advertised Leni Riefenstahl’s new film,
Charlemagne:
Max von Sydow, dressed in medieval armor, face covered in mud and blood and contorted in a scream of rage or victory, raised his sword above his head over the tagline,
A thousand years ago, the first great German swore to civilize the barbarian Slavs to the East—with his sword
.

Only two men had known that Quinn would be at that meeting. Of the two, he was certain that Denlinger was not working for the British. He was a talented judge of character—in his line of work, he had to be—and Denlinger enjoyed making dissatisfied noises about the need for change in Germany, but would never voluntarily take the risk of actually doing anything about it. His abject terror when the Gestapo showed up at his front door had convinced Quinn of that.

That left only one.

It was about twenty minutes on the U-Bahn to the Grand Avenue station, where he got off. He emerged from the U-Bahn terminal into the Grand Avenue, in the shadow of the Führer’s beloved Triumphal Arch, twice as large as Napoleon’s Arc d’Triomphe in Paris. The Avenue stretched away from him on either side, the centerpiece of the city-sized testament to National Socialism that Speer had built from the ruins of Berlin after the war and the center of the National Socialist Party bureaucracy that ruled Germany and all of Continental Europe.

The Grand Avenue was busy, but not so crowded as it would have been less than an hour before, when the procession bearing the Führer’s sarcophagus had left the Grand Plaza at the near terminus of the Avenue and passed solemnly beneath the Triumphal Arch and the Brandenburg Gate as it departed Berlin for Linz. Now many of the hundreds of thousands who had gathered to watch the Führer leave his capital for the final time were taking time to gaze at Speer’s magnificent monuments to National Socialism before returning to their homes, either in Berlin or in other cities in the western part of the Reich, in time for the funeral in Linz tomorrow.

The Grand Plaza and the Great Hall stood at one end of the Grand Avenue; the Führer’s Palace stood at the opposite, over a kilometer away. The intervening distance was lined with government ministries, theaters and opera houses, museums, the European Assembly and the embassies of Germany’s Warsaw Pact allies and satellites.

Quinn made his way through the bustling crowds towards the French embassy, a few hundred meters down the Avenue. It sat along the edge of a small square opening off the main thoroughfare, flanked on one
side by the Public Works Ministry and on the other by one of Berlin’s several art museums, filled with Europe’s cultural treasures imported during and after the war. In the center of the square stood a two-meter-tall statue of Pierre Laval, who had served for fifteen years as French Chief-of-State following Pétain’s retirement at the end of the war and had completed the transformation of France into essentially an external organ of the Reich.