A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (29 page)

Remer was the last through the door, and he strode across the room to join Galland and Heydrich at the desk. The scene—the two men flanking, Heydrich in the center—tugged something in the back of Quinn’s mind, but he could not place where he recognized it from.

The eye was naturally drawn to Heydrich, dressed all in black between the two men in field grey and military blue flanking him, for he still wore the black SS uniform to which he was entitled. Even though Himmler and the SS had become his greatest political foes, his official rank remained that of SS-
Oberstgruppenführer
, or SS field marshal, the highest rank the organization could bestow. Only Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, outranked him in the SS hierarchy, and only his successor as head of the Gestapo, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, had ever received the same rank.

The Commissar-General nodded to Meier. “Thank you, Hauptmann.”

Meier snapped his heels together and saluted, then wheeled about and strode from the room, closing the door after him.

It was on Heydrich that they all had their attention fixed, and he returned it curiously but coldly, resting his eyes on each of them in turn with his famous intent, unnerving gaze. Beside Quinn, Ellie shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny. When Heydrich turned to regard Quinn, he met the stare levelly, refusing to flinch. Time began to stretch away as they held each other’s gaze, and Quinn understood how this man inspired such fear—and such loyalty. But he stubbornly refused to give in.

And suddenly Quinn realized what he found so familiar about the image of Heydrich flanked by Galland and Remer—the statues outside the Purifcation Museum in Berlin. Three men: Adolf Eichmann and Hans Frank on either side, and in the center Heydrich, ultimate overseer of the Purifcation.

Unbidden, another face seemed to superimpose itself over Heydrich’s—shriveled, malnourished, shaven-headed. Its sunken, black eyes stared at Quinn accusatorily. Involuntarily, Quinn took a step back, closing his eyes.

When he opened them again, Heydrich straightened up over his desk, the slightest hint of a satisfied smile on his face. The Commissar-General pulled his tunic straight at the waist and sat down in his chair.

“So,” he said at last. “You are the four English spies the Gestapo has been so desperate to apprehend for the past twelve hours.” It was not a question. “Though my sources have been unable to ascertain why they are so concerned about you. I must confess, I am surprised to find you here in Linz, which on this day of days must be the most heavily guarded city in the Reich. But now to learn that you are here to find
me?
I am flattered.” His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward. “Tell me why I should not promptly hand you over to the SS for interrogation.”

Quinn still felt a little shaken by the image that had come unbidden into his mind, but he spoke up. “You already know why, Herr
Generalkommissar
.”

Heydrich regarded him for a moment, then glanced back at the rest of the group. “Ah. Ah yes. This supposed ‘assassination.’ A rather curious claim, certainly noteworthy for its brazenness, though perhaps not for the weight of evidence supporting it.” He sifted through some of the papers on the desk before him and pulled one closer to him, scanning it briefly. “According to what we have been able to monitor from the Gestapo—and for foreign spies, you do seem to be awfully well known to them—two of you are English
soldiers, including one commissioned officer.” He looked back up at Quinn. “You, I would imagine?”

Barnes stepped forward before Quinn could respond. “Captain James Barnes, Royal Marines, sir.”

Reluctantly, Heydrich turned from Quinn to Barnes. “Well, Captain,” he said after a brief pause, “you are out of uniform in German territory. You are aware, I have no doubt, that under the terms of your own Geneva Convention, I can have you summarily executed.”

Barnes did not blink. “Germany has always made her adherence to the Geneva Convention . . .
selective
, Herr Generalkommissar, and in my experience, she has never needed a reason to shoot someone.”

Heydrich’s eyes flashed but he bit back any angry retort; instead, he pursed his lips meditatively. Finally he said, “Still, you have not provided me a reason not to turn you over to the Gestapo.”

Quinn cut in. “You seem to have excellent sources of intelligence, Herr Generalkommissar. I would imagine that you are aware already that the Führer’s will names you as his successor?”

Heydrich regarded Quinn, re-evaluating him now, and Quinn wondered what was going on behind those cold, magnetic eyes. At last the Commissar-General said, “Your own sources of intelligence would seem to be . . . not unsatisfactory. What is your name,
Kamerad?
”

“My name is Simon Quinn, Herr Generalkommissar, and I am an agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Three days ago I was tasked to locate and neutralize an official of the British Embassy in Berlin who had disappeared with some sensitive documents, we believed in preparation for defection. The official was—” He paused, and out the corner of his eye he saw Barnes glance at him. “The official is now dead,” he continued neutrally. “This is the document he was carrying.” He nodded to Barnes.

Barnes pulled the Columbia-Haus file from his inside pocket and stepped forward to hand it to Heydrich, but Remer stepped out from beside the desk, blocking his path. Remer took the treaty, ran his gloved fingers quickly over it, then passed it to the Commissar-General, who began leafing through it.

He perused the treaty silently for several minutes, glancing up at Quinn periodically but then returning once more to the document. Galland and Remer waited patiently on either side of him, neither trying to glimpse the pages over his shoulder.

Eventually Heydrich passed the treaty to Galland, who began looking through it, and looked back up at Quinn. “It seems,” the Commissar-General observed dryly, “that my intelligence is not quite so effective as I should like. My agents have been attempting to secure a copy of this document for some months now without success—assuming, of course, that this is genuine.”

“It’s genuine,” Quinn said.

“Supposing for the sake of argument that I accept that,” Heydrich said. “I see no reason to believe the accusation you made to Hauptmann Meier.”

“Himmler plans to produce this treaty at the ceremony this afternoon,” Quinn said, “where he will use the resultant confusion to overturn the will and have himself proclaimed Führer. In such a situation, Herr Generalkommissar, I would imagine the
best
possible fate you could suffer at Himmler’s hands would be arrest and internment in a concentration camp.”
But far more likely, death
, he left unsaid.

Galland had finished scanning the treaty and had handed it to Remer, who was leafing through it. Heydrich looked at the two of them. “Well?” he asked. “What do you two think?”

“About the veracity of the document?” asked Galland. “If it’s a ruse, it seems a rather elaborate one. But the rest? About Himmler overturning the will?” He tapped his marshal’s baton contemplatively on Heydrich’s desk. Göring, the Luftwaffe’s first Reichsmarschall and, after the Führer, the most powerful man in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s, had worn a gaudy white uniform as a symbol of his rank. After his death, the Führer had appointed as Göring’s successor his aide Erhard Milch, a sycophant whose career had been spent at the Air Ministry and whose Air Force rank was purely political. He had adopted Göring’s white uniform as his own. But Galland was a soldier, a veteran fighter pilot who had received decorations for valor in both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, and when he had been promoted to Reichsmarschall following Milch’s retirement he had chosen to retain the standard military blue uniform of the Luftwaffe, used by all its other officers and men.

“I am only a soldier, Herr Generalkommissar,” he said at last, “and I prefer to confront my enemies directly. I have always found strength and daring to be the weapons that come most naturally to me, and the ones most likely to secure victory. But in my experience, the Reichsführer-SS abhors these tactics, preferring subterfuge whenever possible. So such a plan as this,” he made a vaguely disdainful gesture in Quinn’s direction, “this
Englishman
claims does not seem to me to be at all implausible.”

Heydrich nodded thoughtfully, but Remer added as he set the treaty down on the desk, “The Reichsmarschall is right, sir. The Reichsführer-SS is a master of subterfuge, intrigue, and deceit, and I wouldn’t hesitate to credit him with such a plan. But for the same reason I also wouldn’t hesitate to believe that he could concoct this entire scenario to provoke you into action. If you storm publicly into the Führer’s funeral, Herr Generalkommissar, and arrest the Reichsführer-SS and proclaim him a traitor, and this treaty proves to be fictitious—then you will have hanged yourself for him.” He glanced at Quinn and the others. “After all, even if this is all true, why are these Englishmen here, betraying their own country?”

“This is the only way to stop this treaty,” Quinn said, then pressed on unhesitatingly, “We have dedicated our careers and our lives to defending Britain from Nazism, and this is the only way we can stop her from surrendering to National Socialist Germany.”

Heydrich stared at him for a long time; Quinn could not tell whether the Commissar-General was regarding him with respect or disgust. At last, Heydrich turned back to Remer. “You have a valid point,” he said, but then grinned wolfishly, the first hint of emotion he had exhibited. “Tricking me into discrediting myself at the Führer’s funeral—before all Germany and the world—
would
accomplish all Himmler could ever hope for. But for the Gestapo to carry through such a plan would require not only deceit, but also imagination—and that is something Heinrich Himmler does not have.”

The door cracked open, and the lieutenant from outside stuck his head in. “It is time to leave in five minutes, sir,” he said.

“A change of plan, Manfred,” Heydrich said. “We will be delayed momentarily.”

The lieutenant nodded without apparent surprise. “Very good, sir.” He vanished, closing the door once more.

Heydrich rose. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we do not plan a coup here. We leave such action to the Reichsführer-SS and his staff. We seek instead merely to preserve the will of the Führer and see that those who wish to execute his final directive to the German people can do so faithfully. Should the funeral go as planned, and the Führer’s final testament be honored and our new Führer acknowledged, then we need take no action. We act only to ensure that no one subverts the Führer’s wishes.” He turned to Remer. “What forces do we have available us?”

Remer shook his head. “Right now? Almost none. We are far from the Commissariat-General. If the will proclaims you the new Führer and Himmler tries to suborn that, then we will have the entire Wehrmacht with us. But by then it will be too late. In the city we have only our escort—a single battalion, against at least five divisions of Waffen-SS who are no doubt on high alert. We’re outnumbered forty to one—conservatively. A military action would be hopeless. Besides, except for the company here at the hotel, even our battalion is barracked on the far side of the river.”

“But if we can gather them at the communal hall,” Heydrich said, “we’d have enough to hold it through the funeral, by which time we’d be able to start bringing in reinforcements. And we’d have surprise on our side. They might already be expecting a fight, but they’re not expecting
us
to be expecting one, too. Besides, this is a very risky deception Himmler is planning. It’s entirely possible that simply by arriving in force, showing him we know what he’s trying to do, that he might be intimidated into not playing his hand.”

Remer looked at him skeptically. “But I doubt it.”

Heydrich sighed. “Yes, so do I.”

“He knows he can’t last long in a regime with you as Führer.”

Heydrich nodded and turned to Galland. “Adolf, do you have anything available to you that can be of assistance?”

Galland shrugged. “The Luftwaffe would be of use to you if you wanted to
destroy
the city, Herr Generalkommissar, but I am not sure what we can do in a situation like this. There is an airfield a few miles from the city; it might have a small police detachment, but it won’t be more than a few dozen men. And the aerodrome at Salzburg might have a division of combat helicopters.”

“Whatever you can give us, Adolf,” Heydrich said. He pressed a button on the phone on his desk, and a moment later the door opened and Manfred came in. “Manfred, Colonel-General Remer needs to speak with our battalion commander at the city barracks, and the Reichsmarschall will need to contact the Luftwaffe bases here and in Salzburg. And notify the captain commanding our motorcade escort that his troops are to be on high alert, prepared for combat. We’ll leave for the communal hall as soon as all the orders have been issued.”

Manfred did not even blink. “Right away, sir.”

He turned to leave, but Heydrich called after him, “Oh, and Manfred. Give our guests here a room where they can wait comfortably for the next few hours, and see that any requirements they might have are met.”

Manfred nodded. “Yes, sir.” He turned to the four of them and held his hand out in the direction of the door. “If you’d care to follow me?”

MANFRED LED them back through the antechamber and down the hall. Though he gave no sign that he was tracking which doors they passed, he stopped unhesitatingly at one that was near the end of the corridor and opened it, leading them inside.

They found themselves in a well-appointed, two-room suite. The first room contained two large settees, a coffee table, and four gilt and velvet chairs around a larger dining table, all matching the hotel’s ornate décor, as well as a kitchenette, television, and radio. A door opened into the second room, through which could be seen the foot of a four-poster bed.

“You should find both the kitchen and the toilet stocked with necessities,” Manfred said. “I will have a guard posted outside within a few minutes; notify him if you lack anything.” He looked them up and down, a tired, unwashed group, and his eyes lingered on Quinn’s jackboots and torn uniform trousers. “And I’ll have changes of clothes sent in for all of you, as soon as we can find something,” he added. “Now please excuse me, I have urgent duties.” He snapped his heels together and left, closing the door behind him. Quinn heard the key turn in its lock.