“Make your report,” he told Inga. She stood away from me, and looked only at him.

  “I received a visit, Reichsfuhrer, from Braun. He had managed to get hold of the file and wanted Quiller to see it and pass it to his Control.” She spoke, I thought, a little like Oktober himself, her harsh Berliner accent whittling at the words. The peripheral glow from the map-lamps brightened the gold of her hair and she stood very straight with her heels together. “There was nothing I could do, Reichsfuhrer. My orders were to continue operating in the role of defector, whenever in contact with Braun. He - “

  “Stop.” The word came from the man at the desk like a soft pistol shot. I studied his face. It was simply an eater’s face, a devourer’s face, the eyes watchful for prey, the mouth long and thin and set between pouches, like a stretched H. “Be more precise.”

  She had stiffened. “Yes, Reichsleiter. Braun contacted me and asked to meet Quiller. I reported the request to Reichsfuhrer Oktober and was told to allow the meeting. I contacted Quiller and asked him to visit me. Braun came first. A few minutes before Quiller arrived, Braun showed me the file and said he meant to let Quiller have it. There was nothing I could do since it was impossible to contact the Reichsfuhrer by phone in front of him. I was not too worried because I knew there was heavy cover and Quiller couldn’t hope to reach his Control with the file -“

  “Wait.” She stopped immediately. “It must have occurred to you that there was a risk involved. You knew that there was heavy cover. You knew that you had only to use the telephone to ask for situation orders. Well?”

  “Both Braun and Quiller would have realised at once that my role of defector was false and that I was in opposition to them. My standing orders to get their confidence and particularly to seduce Quiller morally and physically were of great importance to me, Reichsleiter. I was forced to make my own decision.” She paused.

  “Proceed.”

  “Thank you, Reichsleiter. I decided that when Quiller left the apartment I would report the situation at once by phone. With heavy cover in the vicinity I could have passed on any orders without delay and he could have been caught and put under immediate restraint, and the file taken from him. This was unnecessary. He told us he intended to come here himself, to confirm the information on file. I was unable to understand his reasons but I believed he meant it. I therefore came with him, so that if he made any attempt to contact his Control I could signal cover and prevent him. I beg you to consider, Reichsleiter, that my actions were dictated by the highest concern for the success of my personal mission.”

  Oktober had watched her intently and now seemed satisfied. He was directly responsible for this agent, and any lapse in her efficiency would reflect on him.

  The others present also relaxed. The Reichsleiter sat brooding for some seconds, and now he turned his gaze on me.

  “You are said to have read the file.”

  There were three ways to play it: obstinate, worried, or dumb. The first way would be the most expected, with my record of obstinacy with Oktober.

  “Yes, I’ve read it.”

  “Why did you decide to come here?”

  “To get confirmation. The info might have been false. I’d never heard of Braun and I wanted to get him confirmed as well.”

  “And now you have done that.”

  “I have.”

  “What gave you the impression that you could leave here as freely as you came?”

  “Experience. I’ve been trained to get out of places.”

  He sat with his hands bunched loosely on the desk; they were a child’s hands, pink-fleshed, podgy, designed to clutch at whatever they touched, to possess the world piecemeal so that it need no longer be feared. A ring clung to one finger like a dead blue eye. He said without expression:

  “A short time before you arrived there was a signal from our agents in North Africa. The nuclear test will be set in operation at 23.00 hours. That is in twenty minutes from now. It is a night operation designed partly to test the effects of radioactivity and its fringe properties in the total absence of sunlight.” He got to his feet and moved heavily across to the plotting-table. “Sprungbrett is similarly a night operation. That is why we are able to avail ourselves of this supreme opportunity. For seven hours the entire Mediterranean area will be in darkness and - according to news reports - under a shroud of radioactive fallout. We shall thus be in sole command of that area even before the operation is launched, since news of that nature will of course create mass confusion and panic.”

  He took a corner of the dust-cover and jerked it from the plotting-table. “You may study the situation for yourself.”

  I moved to the table. Mediterranean area Longitudes 7°W to 3 5°E, Latitudes 32°- 42° in relief. All units in red counters assembled eastern seaboard Spain, seaboard Egypt and the toe of Italy. Blue areas Gibraltar, Algeria, Libya, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Sicily. The indications were magnetic-tab.

  I gave it a couple of minutes. When I looked up he was gazing at me with his pale-blue glittering eyes.

  “What do you think, Herr Quiller?”

  I checked the wall-clock. “He left it too late. Braun.”

  “That is so. He had no indication of our timing, and of course it doesn’t appear on the file. At this moment our forces are standing-by in the operational areas. Within sixteen minutes from now the nuclear test will take place. Within ninety minutes of the news that it has misfired, ten times that many units will have reached the area by troop-transport. German officers-commanding are awaiting the signal at this moment.” He turned away from the table. ” So there is nothing you can do. Nothing. Seven years’ meticulous planning has brought us to the brink of this operation, and it cannot be arrested in a quarter of an hour. You have the intelligence to see that.”

  It had become very quiet in the room.

  I said: ” I’m not convinced.”

  He turned to face me squarely and the pale eyes became sparks of light in the pouchy flesh. “It is not my concern to convince you, Herr Quiller. You are a mote in the sandstorm that is about to blow. But I am proud of Sprungbrett. It was my conception and I have nurtured it to maturity. It will thus please me to convince, you of its invincibility. In a few minutes we shall receive the news that will touch off our operation. From that same instant you will be free to leave. Then you will be convinced that there is nothing you can do. You are powerless. You are useless to me and to your Control. You are not, Herr Quiller, worth the expenditure of a single bullet.”

  He went back to his desk.

  It was Inga who spoke, and not to me. She was standing in front of the desk. Her voice was rough. “Mein Keichsleiter …. Let me convince an unbeliever. Let me show him Der Reliquie ! “

  The man said nothing. He seemed uninterested in her sudden outburst, but he gazed at her for a moment and then moved a podgy hand, granting the request.

  She waited for me and I followed her to the far end of the room where I had noticed the curtains. They were a fall of black velvet with the swastika emblazoned on it. She stood erect in her military trenchcoat, the pride shining from her face.

  “You asked me to show you the shrine.”

  Someone must have operated a switch; the velvet was split and its two halves drew apart. The niche was lighted by a single flame in a bowl of red marble. The relics were cradled in a vessel of clear crystal, and were pure white.

  There are various reports on this subject. Witnesses were hard to locate in the holocaust of Berlin at the time. The most authoritative evidence was presented by British Military Intelligence in 1945. It was established that the corpses, of Hitler and Eva Braun were burnt in the garden of the Chancellery on the evening of April 30th, but no trace was found of the charred remains. These were removed in secret. A statement by Frau Junge (who was in the Fuhrerbunker during the last hours) said that the cremated relics were collected in a box and secretly taken to the Hitler Youth leader Axmann. The sacred relics would thus be passed on to the next generation, represented by the Hitler Youth.

  The light of the small flame was reflected in the crystal, so that the bleached remains were seen as if enwrapped in fire.

  Her face was there too, distorted by the curves of the glass and the flame’s movement. She was staring into it. I remembered something she had said when she had first spoken to me of her childhood and the later years when she had defected from Phoenix. They had tried to make her go back. “I refused to go back, but I swore on something that they keep there that I would never talk.” I had known it must be some kind of shrine, something sacred. She had also said: “The only god I had ever been told about was the Fuhrer.”

  Here was the holy sepulchre.

  I watched her face in the crystal. She couldn’t move; she could only stare. I knew how many times she must have come here before, to stand silently in communion with those who had peopled her child’s world: the ‘grown-ups’ of the doomed Fuhrerbunker, Uncle Hermann, Uncle Guenther, her own mother … and her god. She had known them and loved them, and they had turned, before her child’s eyes, into creatures stranger than the fiends of a fable; and she herself had become as suddenly a changeling, first a child, then a freak, a werewolf with a child’s face.

  This much remained of all that she had known as home cold bones and bitter ash, cradled forever in the chill of glass.

  Then her face was suddenly gone and all I could see was her reflected hand, raised and held palm-flattened. From behind me her voice came, a soft screech - “Heil Hitler!”

  There were other voices, breaking to a murmur of approval, and I turned to see the group of men who stood watching her, moved by her cry of faith.

  The black velvet came together silently.

  Unnervingly, a telephone began ringing. It was the Reichsleiter who answered. He listened for a few seconds and then nodded, saying only: “Good. Very good.” He lowered the receiver tenderly. To the others he said “Gentlemen, we must wish ourselves good fortune in our endeavours.”

  They closed around the desk and one of them took his hand. Oktober spoke to him and was answered. He turned towards me and I watched the steel trap of his mouth open and shut on a shouted order to the man who had never left his post at the doors.

  “The prisoner will leave. He will not be molested. The order will be passed on.”

  I looked at Inga before I crossed to the doors. She said nothing. She turned and joined the throng of men at the Reichsleiter’s desk.

  The guard stood aside for me to pass, and spoke to others outside. The order was passed on as I went down the ten stairs and crossed the mezzanine, went down the fifteen stairs and reached the hall, took the nineteen paces to the entrance-doors and walked through them unchallenged.

  The night struck deathly cold against my face. The lamps cast my shadow along the street as I went my way alone. I was free.

  I was as free as Kenneth Lindsay Jones had been on the night he had walked out of that house.

  20 : BUNKERKINDER

  I walked towards the bridge.

  KLJ had been found in the water but they said he’d been shot dead before immersion. Somewhere here, among these shadows where I walked, was the precise spot where he had crumpled to the bullet.

  I still believed in my certainties that had led me to make this final single throw, but if some of them were wrong, if only one of them, the smallest, were wrong, my place would be here too: not at home nor down the road at the crossing nor far across the face of the earth - but here, and now.

  It is a feeling that we sometimes have, when we’ve taken a calculated risk. We think: this move could kill me, so if I assume that it will, if I assume I’m already dead and finished, I won’t have to worry or be afraid.

  Fear of death can worsen the risk of meeting with it, because of stomach-think.

  Just as I reached the beginning of the bridge a car came from a side-street and got up speed and as it passed me my nape shrank. The mental (brain-think) decision to assume death and so remove fear is a useful exercise, but the stomach thinks for itself.

  The bridge was quiet, a chain of lamps and a gleam of water below. When I heard the footsteps I kept on walking and didn’t turn round. There was probably no danger; if they decided to shoot me down they wouldn’t hurry to catch me up like this.

  They were nearing. I kept on. Then I knew. It was a woman in soft shoes.

  “Quill … “

  I stopped. She looked up into my face, panting. She said: “I had to make a show in front of them.”

  “Of course.”

  She gripped my arm. “It must have sounded terrible to you.”

  “A fraction embarrassing.”

  Her eyes flickered beyond me, checking shadows. “Please trust me. It’s what I came to ask. Trust me.”

  “I trust you.”

  If I survived the mission there would have to be a full report sent in to the Bureau. Under the heading Inga Lindt there would be facts summarised. Give or take a few details the report would read:

  First encounter: at the Neustadthalle Berlin. It was noticed that Lindt left the courtroom just ahead of me. It was likely that the driver of the crush-car (see elsewhere) was waiting for a signal that I was coming into the open street, so that he would have time to start the engine and get into gear. It was not thought at the time that Lindt made that signal, but later experience indicated it.

  (Oktober mentioned that a portrait parle had been made of me subsequent to my having been seen in the courts - though not in the Neustadthalle. I was thus recognised going in, and Lindt was sent in with orders to leave just ahead of me and make a signal to the crush-car. It will be remembered from the earlier sections of this report that the crush-attempt was in fact made by a wild-head group in the Phoenix organisation, so that Lindt’s orders would have come from them, not from Oktober. The top directive wanted me alive, for questioning under duress.)

  Immediately following the crush-attempt, Lindt claimed that it was meant for her. This was an obvious line for me to follow. There was a conversation in her apartment during which she stated herself to be a defector from Phoenix. It is believed her description of early life and experiences in the Fuhrerbunker were perfectly true. It was now suspected, however, that she was still under the influence of Phoenix and might even be one of their operators.

  This was confirmed by her mentioning to me that Rothstein was in Berlin. My immediate reaction was that (1) she knew I had once known him, (2) had been ordered to drop his name casually and (3) expected me to talk about him. I did not do this.

  It was decided to visit Rothstein and discover if he knew of Phoenix, so that I could warn him that they knew his name. There were assistants in his laboratory and it was impossible to talk safely. He appeared to have a need to tell me something, but made no appointment to see me again.

  The circumstances of Rothstein’s death and my blame for it (by negligence) will be found under that heading. It is relevant to say here that in going to see him (as a direct result of Lindt’s mention of his name) I exposed him to their increased suspicion. Had no visit been made, they might well have thought that there had never been any connection between us, and dismissed their suspicions. The fact of Lindt’s mentioning his name led finally to his shooting. Thus I was now convinced she was a Phoenix agent.

  It was decided that I should let her continue to play her part as a defector (anti-Phoenix) and that I should seem to continue to accept this. Certain personal feelings towards her were now intruding but they did not of course interfere in any way with the pursuance of my mission. It was in fact hoped that further contact with her might afford me information on Phoenix.

  Concerning the attempt by Oktober to force admissions from me in Lindt’s apartment by seeming to submit her to physical torture in my presence, the full details will be found under the relevant heading Interrogation. It should be noted here that I became aware that Lindt underwent - at this precise time - a psychological change. My own theories on this may be untenable to a psychologist but they should be detailed in this report, since the whole of my subsequent course of action stemmed therefrom.

  Lindt was obsessed with the concept of total strength. As a child she had been given faith in Adolf Hitler and it was no less feverish than was found in millions of her own country-people. Following the Fuhrer’s suicide, and her own psychical trauma caused by the final hours in the besieged Fuhrerbunker, she retained that faith and was ripe for subsequent indoctrination into the Phoenix creed, which derived its very name from the idea that the Fuhrer had risen from his ashes. He was therefore - to Lindt - still a god, and still totally strong. She allied herself with men whom she believed to be unbreakable. (The personality of Oktober - a Reichsfuhrer in the organisation - gave an impression of total unbreakable strength.) It was during Oktober’s attempt to interrogate me under pressures induced by my fears for her while she was apparently being tortured in my presence that she met with a psychological confrontation that unbalanced her values. During this interrogation I was aware (1) that she was not in fact suffering distress but lending herself to a new method of inducing me to talk, (2) I must appear to believe that she was being tortured and (3) I must get out of the corner without revealing that I knew her to be an agent, in case I could use her later as a source of information. (Reference Point 2: the moment I realised that Oktober had come to simulate a torture-scene, I made myself believe in it, so that all my subsequent actions should appear consistent. This deliberate self-deception was an aid in throwing the faint.)

  Having induced genuine syncope by artificial stimuli, I recovered to find Oktober gone, and Lindt sobbing.

  It is my theory that when she heard me tell Oktober to go ahead and kill her slowly, but that he would fail to make me talk, she imagined she had found someone as unbreakable as he. (She would have heard of his failure with the narcoanalysis, an additional sign of my reluctance to yield.) The important point here is that although she had always allied herself with men whom she thought were totally strong (unbreakable) she had never seen this characteristic evidenced in the enemy. This experience came at a time when our personal relationship had recently developed to a degree where other psychological influences carried their weight. Thus she suddenly found herself allied to me and - since I was hitherto an enemy - opposed to Phoenix, and I believed her fit of sobbing to be rooted in bewilderment (because of severe change in psychic attitudes) and fear (of the retribution to which she was now self-exposed, and which an organisation as ruthless as Phoenix would be quick to mete out).