The briefing on this had been specific. “I was ordered to offer it to you, Kommandant.”

  “Ordered?”

  “Otherwise,” Martin told him in a low voice, “I would never have approached you.” He glanced toward the door, and Koch took the point.

  “But who—”

  “His name is not to be mentioned, Kommandant. But I can say that he is someone very close to the Reichsführer.”

  “Is that so . . .” He went on turning the diamond, making it reflect the light. Martin remembered a monkey he’d once seen at the zoo, playing with a piece of broken mirror.

  Martin took an instant to go over his briefing. The sweat had started pricking at his skin and he was aware of the room’s silence as he watched the brutish face close to his own, studying its reactions. He might not go for it right away, Haslam had said. He might decide there's more profit for him in making inquiries. You'll be attempting to bribe him, and if he refuses, he'll be in the clear and you'll be in a trap: he could report you for it and have your scalp—and become a hero, and trade on it. To let him believe this was an order from on high might be enough to scare him. If not, we're counting on the size of that thing to persuade him. We're working on fear and greed. But make no mistake: once you've offered the bribe you're committed, and you can't back out.

  “And what do they want of me?” Koch asked cautiously.

  Martin kept his voice low and his tone cool. “They want a certain prisoner.”

  “A prisoner?”

  Martin turned away and began to pace, hands clasped behind him, his tone lighter. “I agree it seems a fair exchange. According to the statistics, a prisoner’s body is worth on the average 200 marks, what with the dental gold, and the bones and ashes for use as fertilizer.” He deliberately glanced at his watch. “My superiors didn’t wish to be thought ungenerous.”

  ‘They want him dead?”

  Martin stopped pacing. “No. But that’s how it’s going to appear in the records, I imagine.” He paused for two seconds. “Of course that’s your business, Herr Kommandant, not mine.”

  Koch went to the window and looked out at the gray frieze of the mountains. Then he turned back and gazed at Martin from under his heavy brows.

  “Tell me his name. The man close to the Reichsführer.”

  “That’s impossible. He has my trust.”

  Koch put his large head on one side. “You seem to be well connected, Standartenführer Brinkmann.”

  “It may have occurred to you,” Martin said pointedly, “that I perhaps look rather young for my rank.”

  Koch narrowed his eyes, nodding slowly. “I’m beginning to understand the position.”

  “My superior told me you were a man of keen intelligence, Herr Kommandant.” He looked at his watch again. “I don’t want to hasten you in making your decision, but time is the essence of the arrangement. The prisoner would have to leave here shortly before I do.”

  Koch considered again. “I’d have thought someone in that high a position would have simply ordered this man’s release through the normal channels.”

  Martin had been waiting a long time for that; the Kommandant’s thought process was sluggish. “You can imagine how long that would take, through official channels. Time, as I say, is the essence.” He appeared to reflect for a moment, then took a step closer to Koch and lowered his voice to a murmur. “In your position, just as in mine, you’re aware that among the hierarchy of the SS there are certain opposing factions . . . power struggles ... as in any other massive organization. My superior doesn’t want his orders for the release of this man to be countermanded on their way through ‘official channels.* That’s another reason, and just as urgent.” He turned away with a shrug. “In any case, the diamond is a gift to you, and I’m instructed to invite you to keep it and enjoy it, whether you decide to reciprocate or not.” He went to the table for his gloves.

  Koch studied the stone again. “I suppose it might be considered ... my duty to cooperate, since you had your orders from a superior. I mean . . . he’s my superior too.”

  In a tone of admiration Martin said quickly, “I knew I could rely on you to grasp the chief essential, Kommandant. Though, for your own sake, I would have made a point of bringing it to your attention; after all, you have an enviable position here at Buchenwald, a fine house with all the comfort the charming Frau Koch can ask of life in wartime, and frankly I’d have felt badly if ... for some reason . . . you were transferred to a less convenient post. I really mean that.”

  Koch tossed the diamond into the air and slipped it into his pocket. “As I said before, Herr Standartenführer, we’re going to get along fine, you and I.”

  Twenty minutes later, at 11:35 by the clock on the Kommandant’s mantelpiece, Koch telephoned Weissenborn, his second-in-command.

  “I want a prisoner taken by van to Weimar station by one o’clock. His name is Max Schiendick. I don’t ~ know his number—you’ll have to find it. He’s to be left on the northbound platform of the station, alone, in civilian clothes. If anyone asks any questions, tell them to shut their mouth, on my orders.”

  Weissenborn said the matter would be attended to immediately.

  Koch rang off and stood, turning the diamond in the light. Then he picked up the receiver again and asked for the Gestapo Political Department.

  “I want you to check up on someone’s records for me. His name’s Standartenführer Martin Brinkmann, of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate. What? No, I’m just interested in him, that’s all.”

  Almost an hour later, at 12:31 by the clock on the wall of the Orderly Room, Corporal Trot came in briskly and slammed the door against the freezing wind outside. He went over to the Movement and Transfer Section and dropped a narrow buff-colored form on to the desk.

  “Prisoner 7932 Max Julius Schiendick.” He waited for the clerk to produce the relevant file. “Shot while attempting to escape. Got it?”

  At 12:55 the two men working on the track a few hundred yards from the railway station at Weimar, not far from the camp, heard a vehicle approaching from that direction. Looking up and leaning for a moment on the long handles of their sledgehammers, they saw it was one of the SS personnel transport vans they had often seen since they’d started work here yesterday afternoon.

  The plain black van with its wire mesh at the windows came to a stop outside the station, and two SS men, with a civilian between them, went quickly inside. Almost immediately the SS men came out again, and the men on the track could see the civilian standing alone on the northbound platform.

  They watched the van drive back to the camp, then started work again, lifting their hammers high and bringing them down against the burred iron wedges in the sleepers. The ringing of metal sounded as far as the station, where the civilian was waiting uncertainly, star- • ing around him as if he were unused to being in the open, all by himself.

  A few minutes passed, then the men heard another vehicle on the road. This time it was a black Mercedes coup£, its hood down and two SS officers sitting in the

  rear, muffled in their greatcoats and scarves. The car halted outside the station, and one of the officers climbed out and went inside.

  The two workmen leaned on their long hammers, looking to the right now, to the other side of the station building. The tall SS officer appeared and walked up to the civilian. The man seemed bewildered, and turned his head a couple of times to look in the direction of the workmen, half-hidden by the curve in the track. * Then he seemed to understand, and started walking along the narrow mud pathway that ran beside the track, vanishing now and then among bushes. The two workmen watched him as he made his laborious way toward them, stopping once or twice to get his breath; they could now see he was very tired, or maybe sick.

  He came right up to them, lurching clumsily over the rough winter-hard ruts at the edge of the track, and stood there swaying, his long narrow face bewildered, his veined skin blue from the cold. He was in a thin cotton jacket and tweed trousers, and clutched a worn brown bag.

  “Schiendick,” he said to them, trying to keep his balance on the uneven ground. The wind played with his wispy hair. “Max Schiendick.” He stared at them with hollowed eyes, uncertain of what he must do next.

  One of the workmen lifted his gaze and looked beyond the civilian, seeing the tall figure of the SS officer still there on the platform in the distance, watching them.

  “What else?” he asked.

  The man’s eyes showed bewilderment. “What else?

  I don’t know what you mean.” His voice was cultured, the ganger noticed.

  “Max Schiendick,” he said stonily, “and what else?” The two of them stood watching him, leaning on their hammers.

  The civilian realized he’d forgotten something, and

  made an effort to drive away the fatigue from his mind. Then his face cleared and he said, “Oh yes. Damocles ” The workmen moved, taking him with them toward the equipment truck at the edge of the road, helping him when he stumbled.

  13

  LOWESTOFT, ENGLAND, 15 NOVEMBER 1939

  Five men waited in the camouflaged hangar, sheltering from the wind. They were all in civilian clothes, their coats buttoned against the cold; one of them was the king’s equerry.

  They had been there since the early hours, arriving by their several routes from London, Bletchley Park and the RAF satellite airfield twenty miles from the coast. It would be dawn in an hour. From their shelter they could make out the milky glimmer of the sea under the lowering full moon, though the air was hazy.

  One of the men said: “They’re overdue.”

  Someone had to say it; they’d all been thinking it more than an hour ago. They felt perversely relieved to hear the bad news voiced.

  “Been diverted,” someone said, and turned his back on the wind to light his pipe.

  They stood huddled in a group, smelling the salt from the sea and watching the east, the direction of the Netherlands. The Lowestoft foghorn was still sounding, and not long ago they’d heard the quick whoop-whoop-whoop of a destroyer as it neared the harbor. It was a desolate place, without a light anywhere; there was the impression among the five men, flitting through their heads without the knowledge that they shared it, that

  they’d been washed up by the sea from a shipwreck, to be standing here in the dark, so isolated and so silent.

  The king’s equerry, lost in his big overcoat and deerstalker hat, was glumly thinking that in another hour he would have to call the Canadian, and say they’d been out of luck. The Canadian would be mortified; this one was so important to them all.

  “Listen,” someone said, and they turned their heads and cupped their ears, trying to pick up the sound. The wind fretted at them, making it difficult.

  “I can’t—”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ve got it.”

  They all straightened, and found themselves momentarily dazzled as the runway lights came on, spilling their glow across the grass. The men could all hear the aircraft now, and shielded their eyes against the wind, trying to see it. A radio was crackling inside the wooden shed where the windsock jockeyed against the moon. Then suddenly the aircraft was almost down, a single-engined high-wing Lysander, dropping and lifting, dropping again with a nasty slow yawing action that made the waiting men hold their breath as they watched it.

  “Bit clumsy, for God’s sake.”

  “He’ll make it.”

  The emergency vehicle was crawling from the end of the hangar, lights off, engine warming up in low gear.

  The Lysander hit the runway and bounced and yawed again, left and right, left and right, bouncing badly and starting to pitch, the tires giving a hollow screech each time they hit the ground.

  “I wish to Christ he’d—”

  “Give him time. That man’s an ace.”

  The aircraft lost speed as the wheels stayed on the ground long enough to give the brakes friction, but the last of the yawing action still carried momentum and the machine slewed around full circle and slid backward, slewed again and rolled forward to a stop within a hundred yards of the hangar.

  The men began running toward it through the blinding dark as the runway lights went out.

  The pilot dropped to the ground,'dragging his parachute after him. The escorting officer followed, catching his foot on the wheel cover and nearly falling; he was white-faced in the light from the cockpit, and stood holding his mouth for a moment, bent over. A third-man was in the doorway, looking down at the group of people; he was swaddled inside a fur-lined flying jacket and clutched a small brown bag. The escorting officer managed to straighten up and help the passenger to the ground.

  The king’s equerry stepped forward and spoke. “You’re most welcome, sir.” No names were to be exchanged. “I trust you had a good flight?”

  They heard the escorting officer give a hollow laugh.

  Haltingly the passenger asked with a thick German accent: “This, England?”

  “Yes. You’ll be all right now.”

  The pilot was making his lone way to the wooden shed, unsteady with fatigue, his parachute slung across one shoulder. Someone called out to him.

  “Many thanks—good show!”

  He turned. “What? Oh, pleasure. Tail got shot up a bit—I don’t always land like that.”

  BUCHENWALD, GERMANY, 16 NOVEMBER 1939

  Corporal Bockow sat with his feet straddling the black iron stove, a pile of letters on the table beside him.

  It is the right of the State to punish you, as you are now being punished, but it is the right of your family to forgive you and go on loving you as deeply as ever. If you should ever think otherwise, it would be so very, very wrong, and so very cruel, to yourself and to us. This, above everything else in the whole world, you must believe.

  Please write to us, as soon as you can.

  With my fondest love, as always,

  Hedda

  “Shit,” muttered Corporal Bockow. This one wasn’t from a girlfriend. He always looked for the ones from girlfriends, in case there were any randy bits. He checked the envelope again for money, but there wasn’t any, so he dropped the letter into the stove. If there was money in a letter, he took the money and gave the letter to the prisoner: he was a man of conscience. No money, the letter went into the stove—they shouldn’t be so bloody mean.

  He was still going through the mail when Corporal Trot came in an hour later, puffing against the cold, and slammed the door.

  “I’m up the creek,” he said, wiping a drip off his nose.

  “What now?” asked Bockow, sniffing a letter for perfume; he was partial to perfume, real elegance, went with lace knickers and all that, lovely.

  “Right up the fuckin’ creek,” said Corporal Trot, warming his hands over the stove. “That stupid prick Gerlach, remember? All his fault. Look at this.” He pulled out a crumpled blue form. “I got orders to send the idiot over to the privileged section—”

  “What, that clot that refused to go?”

  “Him, yes—”

  “Clean off his rocker!”

  “Thing is,” said Trot, “he got transferred out with that mob from C Block. I’ve just found out. He’s gone to bloody Kozuchow for mincemeat, and here’s—” “Reprisals, if you ask me, for that bomb attempt on the FUhrer. Serves ’em right.”

  “Thing is,” Trot said impatiently, “I should’ve got him into the privileged block.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Corporal Bockow was only half listening, because here was one from a girlfriend, real hot.

  “I chucked him back into barracks for a couple of days to teach him a lesson for refusing. That’s when they shipped C Block, him included. Christ, they’ll have my fuckin’ scalp.”

  “What?” Bockow looked up, caught by Trot’s anxious tone. “Gimme that form.” He looked at it and then dropped it into the stove before Trot could snatch it back.

  “Christ, what have you—”

  “What’ve I done with that form?” Bockow looked up at him bland-faced. “What form? I didn’t see it. Did you ever see it? Course you didn’t, for the simple reason you never had it, see. Got lost, see. Happens all the time. They goin’ to worry about just one more dead monkey?” He ripped open the next letter. “Take things too seriously, that’s your problem.”

  Kommandant Koch picked up the telephone.

  “Yes?”

  “Gestapo, Herr Kommandant. You were asking about the records of Standartenführer Martin Brinkmann.”

  “Well?”

  “Everything seems in order. He had new papers issued to him five days ago, November the 11th, along with several hundred other SS officers.”

  “Why?” Koch was listening carefully.

  “A lot of the personnel files got bombed, Herr Kommandant, in Berlin. The work of the Polish Resistance.”

  “How do they know?”

  “There was evidence. One of the bombs didn’t go off; it was Polish. And they found Polish cigarette ends lying around. Trying to cause confusion. There’s been more bombing since then, one in a Gestapo building.”

  “That’s the official explanation?”

  “Yes, Herr Kommandant.”

  “I see. ^nd you’re satisfied with Standartenführer Brinkmann’s papers?”

  “They’re all in order.”

  “All right. Much obliged for your help.”

  “It’s my honor, Herr Kommandant.”

  Koch put down the receiver and stared thoughtfully at the hairs on the back of his hand.

  BERLIN, 17 DECEMBER 1939

  In the peaceful flat in the Grünewald, Hedda lay on her bed with her eyes closed and her hands resting on the coverlet. The curtains were drawn, to black out the glow of the small Venetian lamp that burned on the pier table by the front door: Superintendent Vogel always liked to see what he was doing.