A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (21 page)

Talleyrand tapped the sheaf of paper contemplatively against his lower lip, staring off into space. Then his eyes settled once more upon Quinn’s. “I think,” he said slowly, “that whatever ‘safe place’ you’ve found for the other copy of this treaty, it will stay there, even if I kill you now.”

Quinn shrugged. “Maybe. You have only my word that that’s not true. But you tried that gamble last night, remember? You killed Richard Garner, and assumed that treaty would simply lie wherever he must have hidden it, undiscovered. And look where that’s got you now.”

For several long moments the old man stared into his eyes, appraising him. Then at last he shrugged. “Very well.” He sounded tired. “It seems you leave me no choice.” He took a cigarette lighter from his pocket and struck it, then held the corner of the English copy of the treaty in the flame for a brief moment until the fire took. He watched the flames licking at the sheets of paper for several seconds before letting go of them. They fluttered slowly to the ground and came to rest on the tarmac. The two men watched them burn.

At last Talleyrand turned back to Quinn. His hand fluttered in the direction of Quinn’s car. “Take the girl home, Simon. Then proceed directly to Hanna Reitsch Airport. I’ll have a ticket waiting for you at the Lufthansa terminal for the next flight to Istanbul. When you arrive at Istanbul, you’ll have a chartered flight waiting to return you to that little Greek city where I found you.” He smiled in that maddeningly unflappable way of his. “I suppose our relationship has now of necessity reached its end, if not quite as amicably as I should have hoped.” A hint of steel flashed in his eyes. “You’ll be under constant observation, of course. I wouldn’t recommend any sort of deviation from your course. Drop her off and get to the airport, my boy.” He shrugged. “Besides, even if you
were
inclined to take some sort of action with your remaining copy of the treaty, it’s not like there’s anything you
could
do. The British government has committed itself; the German government has committed itself.”

Quinn nodded. His bluff had worked—he had kept himself and Ellie alive. But he felt no relief, only anger. He wanted to say something, wanted to scream at the bastard for betraying Britain and her allies and the millions like his brother who had died fighting the Germans. Instead he only nodded impassively and turned to go.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Talleyrand step quickly forward as he turned, and the old man touched him gently on the sleeve. He stopped and turned his head to look at him.

“You’ve lived up to every expectation I’ve had of you so far, Mordechai,” Talleyrand said, softly but earnestly. “You’re doing well.”

Quinn said nothing, just stared at him bleakly, but inside his mind was reeling. The old man stepped back, and his face was once more inscrutable, save for the reappearance of that smug faint smile of his. “Oh, and do be a good lad,” he said, “and leave the car unlocked and the keys in the glove compartment. Just one of those simplicities that makes life a little easier.” Lost in thought, Quinn turned away and started walking towards the Focke-Wulf and Ellie.

She was waiting for him in the front passenger seat. He got in, started the car, put it in gear, and pulled away.

“What’s going on?” she asked as they passed through the airfield’s gate.

“I’m taking you home,” he said. “Then I’m leaving for Greece.”

“Just like that?
Now
you’re just conceding defeat?”

“It’s not like I have much of a choice,” he said.

They lapsed into silence. He soon picked up their tail in the rear view mirror. He had expected the Daimler, but instead they were just using an unobtrusive, nondescript Volkswagen KdF-Wagen. It was definitely Barnes and the other man behind the wheel, though. They must have had it waiting for them in the hangar.

Eventually they reached her tenement. He pulled up to the curb outside the front entrance and put the car in park. He saw Barnes pass him, then pull up to the opposite curb ten or fifteen meters ahead of him. He turned to face Ellie.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. You followed your convictions.
I’m
sorry. I pushed you into this against your will, and I shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have had to go through what you have, and there’s no adequate apology I can give you.”

“No,” she said, “I’m sorry about last night. About the way I reacted. You’re just—you’re not what I would
expect a Jew to be.”

She realized that was not what she wanted to say and opened her mouth to try and rephrase it but hesitated, unsure of how to say it. He held up his hand to forestall her.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I understand.”

She smiled gratefully at him, hesitated and then leaned forward, and they kissed. He was aware of her hand clutching desperately at the front of his shirt.

After a while the kiss ended and she stared at him with her soft blue eyes until he broke the gaze by glancing down at where her hand still tightly clasped his shirt. Her cheeks flushed as she realized, and she smiled shyly and released him. Without a word she turned and opened the car door, climbed out and shut it behind her.

He put the car into gear and pulled away. She stood on the curb, staring after him. He watched her in the rear view mirror till he also saw Barnes and his goon pulling into the street after him.

HIS CAR wound its way slowly through the Berlin streets. The old man’s words rang in his ears.
“You’ve lived up to every expectation I’ve had of you so far, Mordechai. You’re doing well.”
Mordechai. He had never thought MI6 had any idea.

He brooded all the way through the city center and out to Reitsch, in the outer suburbs on the northeast side of the city. He was stopped for his first security clearance at the airport gate, a bored-looking SS corporal accompanied by a trooper in the blue uniform of the Luftwaffe, toting a rifle. He knew that procedure dictated they open his boot and briefly check through all his luggage; the threat of terrorism in the Reich loomed especially large at transit centers such as airports. But at the sight of Quinn’s Amt III ID the corporal straightened to attention and waved him through.

He was inspected again as he entered the parking garage adjoining the terminal. The Luftwaffe sergeant here was a little more alert and tried to insist on checking the Focke-Wulf even after Quinn had flashed his ID, as this was the last checkpoint a car had to pass before its driver left it for an indeterminate amount of time while he flew out to his destination; but a long, silent, disdainful stare sufficed to make him pale and convince him to simply let Quinn through. He noted with amusement that Barnes, who probably had a diplomatic pass, had considerably more difficulty getting the sergeant to let him through in a timely manner.

After he found a parking space and turned off the engine, he sat with his hands resting on the wheel for several minutes, staring at the concrete wall in front of him. He did not know what to do. He was still unsure how he could stop the Columbia-Haus treaty, though Beauchamp had given him the beginnings of an idea. But more immediately, he had to avoid getting on the plane that was waiting for him. He glanced over his shoulder at where he had seen Barnes when Barnes had followed him in, wondering how he was going to get past the Royal Marines captain and his companion and get back into the city.

The thought of his two minders made him realize that they would probably be getting antsy by now, waiting for him to get out of his car. He removed the German copy of the treaty from the glove compartment and slipped it into his coat pocket, then, leaving the car keys in the glove compartment as promised, he got out.

Barnes and his crony were leaning against their car on the other side of the car park, staring in his direction with an entirely unconvincing impersonation of nonchalance. He gave them an ironic salute and headed for the nearest stairwell.

At the entrance to the terminal he had to undergo another check. Here was the largest checkpoint he had encountered so far: an SS lieutenant with four Waffen-SS storm troopers, all uniformed in black, attended by a sergeant and two privates in Luftwaffe blue, each of the privates with a German shepherd on a leash, sniffing luggage. There were similar checkpoints throughout all the airports in the Reich, always SS and Luftwaffe together: the Luftwaffe to provide physical security, against bombs or other forms of terrorism, and the SS to provide political security, checking the identity of every passenger who passed through a German airport.

The four SS troopers sat along one side of a long table, checking the name and passport number of everyone entering the terminal against a typed list of all of today’s passengers and their destinations, and against another list, this one of the few thousand most wanted political fugitives at large in the Reich today. The trooper Quinn ended up with blanched when he saw the Amt III ID and immediately waved over his lieutenant.

The lieutenant was extremely apologetic but implacably insistent that
all
entering passengers must undergo the passport check. Quinn nodded his acquiescence, but made it clear that he thought his time was
being wasted by an extremely junior officer.

While he waited for the trooper to check his name against the list, Quinn gazed idly at the Luftwaffe sergeant and privates standing a couple of meters away with their rifles slung over their shoulders. After being cleared by the SS, arriving passengers had to submit to having their luggage sniffed by the privates’ German shepherds.

At first glance Quinn thought the sergeant was the same as the one who had halted him as he entered the parking garage, but then decided he was not. The resemblance was caused purely by the uniform—one did not look at the face of a man in military dress in National Socialist Germany, only the uniform below it.

“Herr Obersturmbannführer?”

The voice penetrated his reverie, and he came back to the here and now with a slight start. He realized the lieutenant had been speaking to him: nervous, trying to appease Quinn’s air of dissatisfaction at this unnecessary inconvenience.

“Your pardon,
Untersturmjuhrer?”
he said.

Apparently Talleyrand had done his work quickly—Quinn’s name had already appeared on the passenger list. “I was remarking that your destination is listed as Istanbul, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” the lieutenant repeated himself timidly, regretting now having spoken at all. “You travel as a tourist, or on state business?”

“As a tourist.”

“Ah yes. To admire the architecture, no doubt?”

Quinn nodded absently. “Yes,” he said, preferring to agree rather than engage in conversation. The uniforms. The anonymity of the uniforms.

“Magnificent architecture,” said the lieutenant. “I was there as a child.” They lapsed into silence. The lieutenant looked awkward. As if worried that he had somehow said the wrong thing, he blurted, “But decadent. An excellent example of what decadence can do to a culture. Twice, Herr Obersturmbannführer. The Ottomans should have known better. After all, it was they who had overrun the decadent Byzantines. A lesson in the necessity of keeping a culture trim and strong, is it not?”

“Indeed,” Quinn said. He was still staring at the Luftwaffe uniforms, and also at the SS uniforms. No one ever saw a soldier of the Wehrmacht or SS as a man, only as a uniform.

The rest of his identity check proceeded without incident. He carried no luggage and therefore was able to bypass the Luftwaffe riflemen and their dogs. Morbidly the notion flashed across his mind that perhaps Nazi dogs would be able to smell his Judaism. He walked calmly away from the checkpoint and into the terminal, but glanced back over his shoulder two or three times at the men in uniform.

The airport bustled with people leaving the city following the departure of the Führer’s sarcophagus. It was also thick with security, even more so than would usually be the case: Luftwaffe privates strolled around the terminal in pairs, rifles slung over their shoulders, one of each pair typically holding a German shepherd by a leash.

First Quinn went to the Lufthansa check-in desk, where his ticket waited for him. Then he stopped at the cafeteria and bought himself a bratwurst, a paper cup of beer, and a copy of this morning’s
Berliner Tageblatt
. Instead of finding a seat inside the cafeteria, though, he settled himself on a bench in the terminal’s main area, facing the entrance to the men’s lavatory.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Barnes and the other man take up their own positions, watching him from next to a public phone ten or fifteen meters away. Barnes had picked up a newspaper of his own somewhere along the way. Quinn ignored them, pretending to read the
Tageblatt
while keeping an eye on the men entering the lavatory across the way, then emerging again a few minutes later.

The front page bore a huge, eerie black and white photograph of the Führer’s sarcophagus at the foot of the steps of the Great Hall in the pre-dawn dark during the ceremony with which it had begun its journey to Linz, illuminated only by flickering torchlight. Half a dozen Leibstandarte-SS riflemen, their lower bodies shrouded in the darkness cast by the sarcophagus’s shadow, stood at rigid attention along the length of the bottom step.

Himmler and Heydrich were both there, each carrying a torch: the foci of the Reich’s two rival political
poles, each about to accompany their late Führer on his final journey. They stood at opposite ends of the sarcophagus, staring solemnly at each other along its length, the Führer separating them. To Quinn it seemed appropriately symbolic.

He flipped idly through the paper. One page bore a roundup of the German publishing industry. The German language publisher of
The Day of the Jackal
, a bestseller in England and America about a minor SS officer’s desperate race to stop an English mercenary from assassinating the Führer, had decided to postpone publication of the book’s German edition indefinitely in light of the Führer’s death. The same publisher was also trying desperately to bring forward by five weeks the publication of
Reichsminister
Albert Speer’s memoir of the war, so as to release it within two weeks of the Führer’s funeral.