A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (6 page)

At last, Denlinger said, “Yeah, he came to a few of our meetings. I don’t know which of the group he might know.”

“I’ll need to speak to them,” Quinn said.

Denlinger looked at him in horror.
“All
of them? That’s not possible.”

“I’m afraid it has to be, Herr Denlinger. I’ll need their names and phone numbers from you. And addresses, if you have them.”

Denlinger shook his head, but Quinn stared at him implacably. “No, no,” he said, trying to draw strength from the repetition of the word. “No, I can’t.” He tried to meet Quinn’s gaze but couldn’t. He hesitated, then conceded, “But we’re having a meeting tonight. You can come, if you want.”

Quinn nodded. “All right. Where is it?”

“At my flat, a couple of blocks from here.” He looked down and patted the pockets of his coat, then looked up. “Do you have a pen and paper?”

“I do,” Beauchamp said. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, pulled out a small notepad with a pen clipped to it and handed them to Denlinger.

Denlinger took them, flipped the pad open, and scrawled something across the top sheet. He ripped it off the pad and handed it to Quinn.

“That’s my address,” he said to Quinn. “Be there at seven this evening.”

Quinn nodded. “I will.”

“SO, WHAT did you do?”

Ellie Voss looked up from the memorandum she was typing. Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “Exactly what he deserved,” she said. “I threw my wine in his face and took the U-Bahn home.” Katerina giggled. “Oh, I wish I could have seen his face. I’ve always thought Herr Department’s Youngest Investigator needed to be taken down a peg.”

Ellie allowed herself a small smile but said nothing further, instead brushing a lock of golden blonde hair from her face and going back to her memorandum. It had been a very satisfying moment, it was true, but she knew that her mother would be mortified that she had so treated one of the rising young stars of the Gestapo’s Department A. She could just hear the reproving voice now:
Elspeth, by the age of twenty-four, a dutiful Aryan daughter of the Reich should have already presented the Führer with her first future soldier or matron. Why, by the time I was your age, your father had spent most of our marriage at the Eastern Front, but we already had a son and a daughter. And to treat such a distinguished young officer that way!

Down the corridor, the door to one of the investigators’ offices opened, then closed again, followed by the approaching click of boot heels on the linoleum.
Sturmbannführer
von Hart appeared in the entranceway, half a dozen thick brown folders under one arm. He placed the folders on Ellie’s desk. Paper-clipped to the top folder was a scrap of paper bearing a handwritten list of six names.

Von Hart smiled at her without any warmth. “You can return these files to Central Records, Ellie.” He tapped the scrap of paper. “And if you would be so good as to fetch these others while you’re down there? Thank you.”

“Of course, Herr Sturmbannführer.” Gracefully, Ellie rose, skirted her desk and picked up the files. Von Hart did not step out of her way, and she had to lean in close against him as she reached for them. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked over to the door and opened it. She paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder; von Hart did not exhibit the slightest embarrassment at being caught staring at her rear. “I’ll just be a few moments, Herr Sturmbannführer,” she said. “I’ll bring the files to your office when I get back.”

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later, having dropped Beauchamp off back at the Purification Museum, Quinn found a quiet alley where he could change into his black SS uniform. He stood across the street from the mammoth building before him and stared up at it: No. 8 Prinz Albrechstrasse, inner lair of the Gestapo.

He was curious about these meetings Beauchamp had mentioned, between the SS and the British embassy staff, and at the moment he had no better leads. Gnawing at the back of his mind was a desire to know why he had not been told of them. If Garner had attended, it could only have been as the representative of MI6, which meant the old man had to know about them. Even if they really were unimportant, their attendees were important men. It just did not feel quite right.

He headed across the street. Two Waffen-SS troopers were posted at the main entrance. They snapped to attention when they saw Quinn approach in his black lieutenant colonel’s uniform. Quinn checked their insignia: one was a sergeant, the other a private. He addressed the sergeant.

“Good day,
Unterscharführer
,” he said with a polite, if superior, nod.

The sergeant saluted in the Nazi style, his right arm held stiffly before him, with elbow, wrist, and fingers all ramrod straight.

“Herr
Obersturmbannführer
, sir,” he said.

Quinn gestured to the Amt III insignia on his uniform. “You see this?”

The sergeant glanced at it and became even stiffer and straighter, if such was possible. “Yes, Herr Obersturm-bannführer.”

Quinn reached into the inside pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out the photograph of Richard Garner. “This man is a known British secret agent working at the Berlin embassy. Have you seen him before?”

The sergeant peered dutifully at the picture, obviously not understanding why he was being asked this question, then shook his head. Quinn showed the picture to the private but got the same response.

“I have reason to believe,” he said, “that this man attended several meetings between members of the RSHA chain of command and officials from the British embassy. Do you know of such meetings?”

The sergeant faltered, his ingrained German fear of drawing attention to himself warring with his ingrained German fear of authority. The meetings were classified, and for a lowly soldier whose only knowledge of them came from whispered rumor, discussing them on the record was obviously something that caution dictated as unwise. Quinn could see this fear on his face, struggling with what would surely be an almost reflexive fear of Amt III.

Amt III won out. “I . . . have heard, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” he said at last.

“Heard what?”

“About these meetings, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

“What about them?” Quinn pressed.

“Simply that they occur,” the sergeant said. He fell silent, obviously not wanting to volunteer more than he had to. Wise, under the circumstances. Quinn simply stared at the man, and finally he conceded, “They happen, I am led to believe, about once a month. Have done so for the past year or more. The British officials arrive unobtrusively, through the entrance to the parking bay in the basement, in cars with darkened windows.”

“And who attends these meetings?” Quinn asked.

Finally, though, the other fear had asserted itself. The sergeant hesitated, then said, “Men, Herr Obersturmbannführer, whom I would prefer not to name, if it is all the same to you. Men whose names I am sure you already know, if you already know of these meetings. One never knows who might be listening when one speaks of such matters.”

Quinn nodded, not wanting to press the point. “Quite right, Unterscharführer. You are a very judicious man.” He turned to the private. “Is there anything you have to add?”

The private shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Very well, then,” Quinn said, putting Garner’s photo back in his pocket and turning back to the sergeant. “You have been very helpful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir,” the sergeant said, visibly relieved that the interview now appeared to be over.

Quinn entered the building and emerged into the main lobby. It was a large, imposing, impersonal room, intended to make any newcomer to the inner sanctum of the world’s most feared secret police feel suitably puny. The floor, a sea of green linoleum tiles, stretched away from him, combining with the whitewashed plaster walls to provide the room with a distinctly antiseptic, dehumanized flavor. At the opposite end of the lobby, a wide staircase led up to an archway leading to Prinz Albrechstrasse’s upper levels. There were similar archways leading into the labyrinthine innards at the ground level, two framing the staircase and one set into each side wall.

Quinn looked around, taking in the place in all its linoleum and plaster glory. He watched the people who would emerge from one of the archways, generally with manila or brown files under their arms, and walk purposefully to disappear through another, heels clicking smartly on the tile: male Gestapo officers in their feared all-black uniforms, female clerks in black skirts and white blouses.

There was an information desk to Quinn’s right, with a female clerk seated behind it. Quinn walked up to it. “Where is the records office?” he asked.

The young woman flicked a glance at his Amt III insignia and pointed to one of the archways that framed the staircase. “Down that corridor, third door on the right, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

Quinn nodded. “Thank you, mein Fraulein.”

He took the archway she indicated and soon came to a doorway over which hung a cream-colored sign with “Central Records” stenciled on it in businesslike black letters. He turned into the doorway—and collided with a young female clerk carrying a stack of files against her chest.

The clerk stumbled backwards, and her files went flying. They hit the floor and slid along the linoleum tile with a hiss, their contents scattering down the corridor. The clerk was on her knees instantly, collecting folders and papers.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Quinn said. He crouched down to help her gather them up. “I apologize, Fraulein—”

She glanced at him briefly, then returned her attention to the floor. She was startlingly beautiful—short blonde hair reaching to the bottom of her ears, cut in long bangs to frame her face; piercing blue eyes and fair skin. A poster girl for the Master Race.

“Think nothing of it, sir,” she said brusquely, obviously intending to put an end both to his apology and to any further conversation.

She got smoothly to her feet, her files cradled in her arms, and Quinn rose too and handed her the papers he had gathered up. He glanced at the nametag clipped to her collar—“E Voss”—and at the departmental badge beside it: IV-A2. Amt IV was the Gestapo, and Department A, Section 2 was—

“You work in Counter-Sabotage,” Quinn said.

She had taken a step forward as if to leave, but Quinn was blocking her exit into the corridor. She gave the slightest of sighs and reluctantly nodded.

Counter-Sabotage was one of the sections that would deal with student resistance movements. Quinn fished Garner’s picture out of his pocket. “Have you ever seen this man, mein Fraulein?”

ELLIE RECOGNIZED Garner’s face immediately, of course. Nevertheless she studied it dutifully for several seconds, then shook her head. “No—” she glanced at the officer’s rank insignia “—Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. “He’s a British diplomat with contacts in the White Rose,” his voice took on the slightest tinge of disgust, “and other such groups. You might have seen his photograph in a surveillance file.” He was in his middle thirties, athletic and well-built, but there the resemblance ended between this Amt III Lieutenant Colonel and what one would expect of a senior investigator from one of the RSHA’s elite divisions. He was darkhaired, dark-eyed, and dark-complexioned, with a prominent hook nose that a Propaganda Ministry missive would have to describe as patrician, while particularly unkind professional rivals might even resort to calling it Jewish. His hair was unkempt, and his face was unshaven.

She looked at the photograph again with an expression intended to convey that there was no possibility of her changing her answer. “No, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” she said. “I have never seen this man, either in person or in a photograph.” She affected an air of boredom and condescension. “With all due respect, sir, I am a clerical worker, not a Department Investigator. Rarely do my duties entail the study of surveillance photos of Reich undesirables. Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

“I see,” he said, the hint of an amused smirk at the corners of his mouth, and returned the picture to his pocket. He opened his mouth, apparently about to ask her something else, but thought better of it. “My thanks, mein Fraulein, and again, my apologies.” He shifted his body slightly to the side, moving out of her way.

She nodded curtly, brushed past him and headed down the hall, her heels clicking smartly on the tile. She had seen him notice her when they were both crouched on the floor and she glanced back over her shoulder, expecting to find him staring after her as she retreated down the corridor, but he was not. He had disappeared inside the Central Records office. She frowned, surprised and vaguely disgusted with the slight twinge of disappointment she felt, then shuffled all that aside and continued on her way.

DENLINGER’S APARTMENT was not difficult to find, and his wristwatch had reached only five to six when Quinn rapped authoritatively on the door, now dressed once more in civilian clothing. The flat was located on the second floor of a decaying tenement nestled amongst a colony of decaying tenements a few blocks from the university.

Quinn had spent the afternoon at Prinz Albrechtstrasse, most of that time in Central Records, but had been able to unearth almost nothing about Beauchamp’s meetings. What he had managed to turn up consisted only of oblique references—room reservations and a missive regarding the need for a “trustworthy” English interpreter to be made available. Only one document had caught his attention: a memo regarding the urgent need—Quinn suspected that haste had been the reason it was missed by whoever was being so careful that no other evidence of these meetings ended up in Central Records—to set up a meeting with a British representative to discuss the implementation of certain problematic aspects of the “Columbia-Haus protocol.” Quinn had no idea what the Columbia-Haus protocol might be, but he was sure it was something he should find out. He was almost positive the phrase was a codeword of some kind. Columbia-Haus had been a Gestapo prison in the Reich’s early days, but it had been abandoned as such, even before the invasion of Poland, and now stood derelict on the outskirts of Berlin.