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I motioned him to silence and moved to the entrance.
As Canning opened the door, I saw the cab from the airstrip outside, the driver waiting in the rain.
The general said, ‘You can take me to the hotel now,’ and closed the door behind him.
Hugo tugged at my sleeve. ‘Señor, what passes here?’
‘Exactly what I was wondering, Hugo,’ I said softly, and I went along the passage quickly and let myself out.
The cab was parked outside the hotel. As I approached, a man in a leather flying jacket and peaked cap hurried down the steps and got in. The cab drove away through the rain. I watched it go for a moment, unable to see if Canning was inside.
Rafael wasn’t behind the desk, but as I paused, shaking the rain from my coat, a door on my left opened and he emerged.
He smiled. ‘Were you successful, señor?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Did I see the cab driving away just now?’
‘Ah, yes, that was the pilot of Mr Smith, an American gentleman who has just booked in. He was on his way to La Paz in his private aeroplane, but they had to put down here because of the weather.’
‘I see. Mr Smith, you say?’
‘That is correct, señor. I’ve just given him a drink in the bar. Could I perhaps get you something?’
‘Well, now,’ I said. ‘A large brandy might be a sensible idea, considering the state I’m in.’
I followed him, unbuttoning my trench-coat. It was a pleasant enough room, rough stone walls, a well-stocked bar at one side. Canning was seated in an armchair in front of a blazing log fire, a glass in one hand. He looked up sharply.
‘Company, señor,’ Rafael said cheerfully. ‘A fellow guest. Señor O’Hagan – Señor Smith. I’ll just get your brandy now,’ he added and moved away.
‘Not a night for even an old tomcat to be out,’ I said, throwing my coat over a chair. ‘As my old grannie used to say.’
He smiled up at me, the famous Canning charm well in evidence, and stuck out his hand. ‘English, Mr O’Hagan?’
‘By way of Ulster,’ I said. ‘But we won’t go into that, General.’
The smile stayed firmly in place, only the eyes changed, cold, hard, and the hand tightened on mine with a grip of surprising strength considering his age.
It was Rafael who broke the spell, arriving with my brandy on a tray. ‘Can I get you another one, señor?’ he asked.
Canning smiled, all charm again. ‘Later, my friend. Later.’
‘Señores.’
Rafael departed. Canning leaned back, watching me, then swallowed a little Scotch. He didn’t waste time trying to tell me how mistaken I was, but said simply, ‘We’ve met before, presumably?’
‘About fifteen minutes ago up the street at the mortuary,’ I said. ‘I was standing in the shadows, I should explain, so I had you at something of a disadvantage. Oh, I’ve seen you before at press conferences over the years, that sort of thing, but then one couldn’t really specialize in writing about politics and military affairs without knowing Hamilton Canning.’
‘O’Hagan,’ he said. ‘The one who writes for The Times?’
‘I’m afraid so, General.’
‘You’ve a good mind, son, but remind me to put you straight on China. You’ve been way out of line in that area lately.’
‘You’re the expert.’ I took out a cigarette. ‘What about Bauer, General?’
‘What about him?’ He leaned back, legs sprawled, all negligent ease.
I laughed. ‘All right, let’s try it another way. You ask me why a reasonably well-known correspondent for the London Times takes the trouble to haul himself all the way from Lima to a pesthole like this, just to look at the body of a man called Ricardo Bauer who dropped dead in the street here on Monday.’
‘All right, son,’ he said lazily. ‘You tell me. I’m all ears.’
‘Ricardo Bauer,’ I said, ‘as more than one expert will tell you, is one of the aliases used by Martin Bormann in Brazil, the Argentine, Chile and Paraguay on many occasions during the past thirty years.’
‘Martin Bormann?’ he said.
‘Oh, come off it, General. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Head of the Nazi Party Chancellory and Secretary to the Führer. The one member of Hitler’s top table unaccounted for since the war.’
‘Bormann’s dead,’ he said softly. ‘He was killed attempting to break out of Berlin. Blown up crossing the Weidendammer Bridge on the night of May 1st, 1945.’
‘Early hours of May 2nd, General,’ I said. ‘Let’s get it right. Bormann left the bunker at 1.30 a.m. It was Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur, who saw him come under artillery fire on that bridge. Unfortunately for that story, the Hitler Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, crossed the Spree River on a railway bridge, as part of a group led by Bormann, and that was considerably later.’
He nodded. ‘But Axmann asserted also that he’d seen Bormann and Hitler’s doctor, Stumpfegger, lying dead near Lehrter Station.’
‘And no one else to confirm the story,’ I said. ‘Very convenient,’
He put down his glass, took out a pipe and started to fill it from a leather pouch. ‘So, you believe he’s alive. Wouldn’t you say that’s kind of crazy?’
‘It would certainly put me in pretty mixed company,’ I said. ‘Starting with Stalin and lesser mortals like Jacob Glas, Bormann’s chauffeur, who saw him in Munich after the war. Then there was Eichmann – when the Israelis picked him up in 1960 he told them Bormann was alive. Now why would he do that if it wasn’t true?’
‘A neat point. Go on.’
‘Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, always insisted he was alive, maintained he had regular reports on him. Ladislas Farago said he actually interviewed him. Since 1964 the West German authorities have had 100,000 marks on his head and he was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death in his absence.’ I leaned forward. ‘What more do you want, General? Would you like to hear the one about the Spaniard who maintains he travelled to Argentine from Spain with Bormann in a U-boat in 1945?’
He smiled, leaning over to put another log on the fire. ‘Yes, I interviewed him soon after he came out with that story. But if Bormann’s been alive all these years, what’s he been doing?’
‘The Kameradenwerk,’ I said. ‘Action for comrades. The organization they set up to take care of the movement after the war, with hundreds of millions of gold salted away to pay for it.’
‘Possible.’ He nodded, staring into the fire. ‘Possible.’
‘One thing is sure,’ I said. ‘That isn’t him lying up there at the mortuary. At least, you don’t think so.’
He glanced up at me. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘I saw your face.’
He nodded. ‘No, it wasn’t Bormann.’
‘How did you know about him? Bauer, I mean. Events in La Huerta hardly make front-page news in the New York Times.’
‘I employ an agent in Brazil who has a list of certain names. Any mention of any of them anywhere in South America and he informs me. I flew straight down.’
‘Now that I find truly remarkable.’
‘What do you want to know, son? What he looked like? Will that do? Five foot six inches, bull neck, prominent cheekbones, broad, rather brutal face. You could lose him in any crowd because he looked so damned ordinary. Just another working stiff off the waterfront or whatever. He was virtually unknown to the German public and press. Honours, medals meant nothing to him. Power was all.’ It was as if he was talking to himself as he sat there, staring into the fire. ‘He was the most powerful man in Germany and nobody appreciated it until after the war.’
‘A butcher,’ I said, ‘who condoned the final solution and the deaths of millions of Jews.’
‘Who also sent war orphans to his wife in Bavaria to look after,’ Canning said. ‘You know what Göring said at Nuremberg when they asked him if he knew where Bormann was? He said, “I hope he’s frying in hell, but I don’t know.”’
He heaved himself out of the chair, went behind the bar and reached for a bottle of Scotch. ‘Can I get you another?’
‘Why not?’ I got up and sat on one of the bar stools. ‘Brandy.’
As he poured some into my glass he said,
‘I was once a prisoner-of-war, did you know that?’
‘That’s a reasonably well-known fact, General,’ I said. ‘You were captured in Korea. The Chinese had you for two years in Manchuria. Isn’t that why Nixon hauled you out of retirement the other year to go to Peking with him?’
‘No, I mean way, way back. I was a prisoner once before. Towards the end of the Second World War, the Germans had me. At Schloss Arlberg in Bavaria. A special set-up for prominent prisoners.’
And I genuinely hadn’t known, although it was so far back it was hardly surprising, and then his real, enduring fame had been gained in Korea, after all.
I said. ‘I didn’t know that, General.’
He dropped ice into his glass and a very large measure of whisky. ‘Yes, I was there right to the bitter end. In the area erroneously known as the Alpine Fortress. One of Dr Goebbels’s smarter pieces of propaganda. He actually had the Allies believing there was such a place. It meant the troops were very cautious about probing into that area at first, which made it a safe resting place for big Nazis on the run from Berlin in those last few days.’
‘Hitler could have gone, but didn’t.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And Bormann?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The one thing that’s never made any sense to me,’ I said. ‘He was a brilliant man. Too clever by half to leave his chances of survival to a mad scramble at the final end of things. If he’d really wanted to escape he’d have gone to Berchtesgaden when he had the chance instead of staying in the bunker till the end. He’d have had a plan.’
‘Oh, but he did, son.’ Canning nodded slowly. ‘You can bet your sweet life on that.’
‘And how would you know, General?’ I asked softly.
And at that he exploded, came apart at the seams.
‘Because I saw him, damn you,’ he cried harshly. ‘Because I stood as close to him as I am to you, traded shots with him, had my hands on his throat, do you understand?’ He paused, hands held out, looking at them in a kind of wonder. ‘And lost him,’ he whispered.
He leaned on the bar, head down. There was a long, long moment in which I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but waited, my stomach hollow with excitement. When he finally raised his head, he was calm again.
‘You know what’s so strange, O’Hagan? So bloody incredible? I kept it to myself all these years. Never mentioned it to a soul until now.’
2 (#uf8ee78d0-58a9-5ae4-8993-7620fb9e51ca)
It began, if it may be said to have begun anywhere, on the morning of Wednesday, 25 April 1945, a few miles north of Innsbruck.
When Jack Howard emerged from the truck at the rear of the column just after first light, it was bitterly cold, a powdering of dry snow on the ground, for the valley in which they had halted for the night was high in the Bavarian Alps, although he couldn’t see much of the mountains because of the heavy clinging mist which had settled among the trees. It reminded him too much of the Ardennes for comfort. He stamped his feet to induce a little warmth and lit a cigarette.
Sergeant Hoover had started a wood fire, and the men, only five of them now, crouched beside it. Anderson, O’Grady, Garland and Finebaum who’d once played clarinet with Glenn Miller and never let anyone forget it. Just now he was on his face trying to blow fresh life into the flames. He was the first to notice Howard.
‘Heh, the captain’s up and he don’t look too good.’
‘Why don’t you try a mirror?’ Garland inquired. ‘You think you look like a daisy or something?’
‘Stinkweed – that’s the only flower he ever resembled,’ O’Grady said.
‘That’s it, hotshot,’ Finebaum told him. ‘You’re out. From here on in you find your own beans.’ He turned to Hoover. ‘I ask you, Sarge. I appeal to your better nature. Is that the best these mothers can offer after all I’ve done for them?’
‘That’s a truly lousy act, Finebaum, did I ever tell you that?’ Hoover poured coffee into an aluminium cup. ‘You’re going to need plenty of practice, boy, if you’re ever going to get back into vaudeville.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Finebaum said. ‘I’ve had kind of a special problem lately. I ran out of audience. Most of them died on me.’
Hoover took the coffee across to the truck and gave it to Howard without a word. Somewhere thunder rumbled on the horizon.
‘Eighty-eights?’ the captain said.
Hoover nodded. ‘Don’t they ever give up? It don’t make any kind of sense to me. Every time we turn on the radio they tell us this war’s as good as finished.’
‘Maybe they forgot to tell the Germans.’
‘That makes sense. Any chance of submitting it through channels?’
Howard shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t do any good, Harry. Those krauts don’t intend to give in until they get you. That’s what it’s all about.’
Hoover grunted. ‘Those mothers better be quick or they’re going to miss out, that’s all I can say. You want to eat now? We still got plenty of K-rations and Finebaum traded some smokes last night for half a dozen cans of beans from some of those Limey tank guys up the column.’
‘The coffee’s just fine, Harry,’ Howard said. ‘Maybe later.’
The sergeant moved back to the fire and Howard paced up and down beside the truck, stamping his feet and clutching the hot cup tightly in mittened fingers. He was twenty-three years of age, young to be a captain of Rangers, but that was the circumstances of war. He wore a crumpled Mackinaw coat, woolknit muffler at his throat and a knitted cap. There were times when he could have passed for nineteen, but this was not one of them, not with the four-day growth of dark beard on his chin, the sunken eyes.
But once he had been nineteen, an Ohio farmer’s son with some pretensions to being a poet and the desire to write for a living which had sent him to Columbia to study journalism. That was a long time ago – before the flood. Before the further circumstances of war which had brought him to his present situation in charge of the reconnaissance element for a column of the British 7th Armoured Division, probing into Bavaria towards Berchtesgaden.
Hoover squatted beside the fire. Finebaum passed him a plate of beans. ‘The captain not eating?’
‘Not right now.’
‘Jesus,’ Finebaum said. ‘What kind of way is that to carry on?’
‘Respect, Finebaum.’ Hoover prodded him with his knife. ‘Just a little more respect when you speak about him.’
‘Sure, I respect him,’ Finebaum said. ‘I respect him like crazy and I know how you and he went in at Salerno together and how those Krauts jumped you outside Anzio with those machine guns flat zeroed in and took out three-quarters of the battalion and how our gracious captain saved the rest. So he’s God’s gift to soldiery; so he should eat occasionally. He ain’t swallowed more than a couple of mouthfuls since Sunday.’
