Brandenburg (63 page)

Volkmann looked at Schmeltz’s face.

He didn’t wait for the reply.

The Beretta exploded.

•   •   •

When he came to, he was lying on a stretcher.

He was aware of the ghostly swirl of flashing red and blue lights in the thinly falling snow; he heard the wailing sirens, and a harsh, metallic clatter of blades somewhere overhead. A babble of loud and desperate voices faded in and out, orders being shouted and carried on the icy wind.

When he tried to look around, he saw ghostly figures in white arctic fatigues appear out of nowhere, weapons at the ready, but then they began to blur and he lay back again.

A rugged-faced man in white fatigues and with a Heckler & Koch machine pistol draped around his neck loomed over him suddenly, looked down into his face. He smiled briefly, and his hand touched Volkmann’s shoulder as if to reassure him. Volkmann tried to speak, tried to tell him about Weber, tried to tell him about Erica, but the words would not come.

The man looked away. There was a voice, telling him something, then a burst of gunfire from somewhere out in the whiteness and the man grimly barked an order, and he was gone.

And then all life seemed to go from Volkmann again. A feeling of lightness in his head, as moments later he felt the stretcher lifted, or so it seemed, and he was suspended in midair.

And then a wave of intense pain washed in and smothered him.

•   •   •

It took Konrad Weber three minutes to walk to his private office on the third floor of the Reichstag.

Werner Bargel accompanied him and his two bodyguards.

When they reached the office, Weber unlocked the door and stepped inside, then locked it again, leaving the three men outside in the hallway. In the oak-paneled room, he crossed to his desk and sat down. His hands were shaking as he opened the drawer and removed the remote-control transmitter, placed it in the palm of his left hand.

As he clenched the fingers of his free hand, he took a deep breath.

•   •   •

The phone buzzed in Werner Bargel’s hand.

Bauer’s voice, frantic. “Where are you, Bargel?”

“Outside the vice chancellor’s office.”

“Bargel, listen to me, for heaven’s sake . . .”

Konrad Weber heard the frantic voices in the hallway, heard the crash of splintering wood as the door burst in, saw the SIG pistol in Bargel’s hand.

As Bargel raised the pistol to aim, Weber grinned and touched the button.

The distant explosion, when it came a split second later, cracked through the Reichstag like a clap of thunder.

58

Volkmann came awake in the private ward in Munich General Hospital a little after 10:00 a.m. two days later.

He heard a radio on somewhere, music beyond the closed door.
“Tannenbaum.” The carol that had always made his father cry, and he wanted to cry, too, not because of the music, but because he was breathing, alive.

He was connected to tubes, probes wired to his arms and chest and linked to a machine, his heart beating in tandem with white blips on a green screen. He touched the cotton dressing on his numbed right hand, the hard bond of white plaster around his right arm.

Werner Bargel was seated at the end of the bed. A nurse appeared out of nowhere, a sudden rush of activity. He heard Bargel’s voice.

“How do you feel?”

His lips stuck together; it was an effort to part them. “Lousy.”

It was another twenty minutes before Bargel spoke again, after the doctors had been called and examined him, after the nurse had offered sips of cold water to wet his cracked, parched lips. A couple of yellow pills to swallow. A damp cotton cloth dabbed on his face and neck. Refreshing. Cool.

He saw Bargel talk with the doctors out of hearing range, and then the room emptied, and he and Bargel were alone.

Bargel sat in the chair beside the bed. “The doctors assure me you’ll make a speedy recovery. But for a while there, it was touch-and-go. You’d lost a lot of blood. You put more stress on your body than it was designed to take.”

Volkmann raised himself, then slumped back in pain. The throbbing in his right temple became a blinding ache.

“Take it easy, Joe. They’ve given you something to ease the pain, so it should take effect soon.”

Volkmann said, “Erica . . . ?”

Bargel sat forward. “She’s in a private room a floor below us. The medical team got to her in time. Don’t worry, Joe, she’s going to be all right.”

He saw Bargel smile faintly, and he went to turn his head, tried to take in the room, but there was a fuzzy quality to everything.

Bargel said, “I don’t know what she must have thought when you staggered into the room up on the mountain, but I suspect she was
glad to see you.” He smiled. “And she was worried sick . . . you were a bloody mess. It was a miracle you stayed conscious. And then when you waved her off when she tried to help, she thought you must have lost your mind.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Volkmann admitted.

“As for her,” Bargel continued, “she went through an ordeal of her own. They’d pumped her full of that truth drug, scopolamine, to make her talk . . .”

“Did she tell you that she saved my life?”

“No, she didn’t.”

Volkmann explained.

Bargel leaned closer. “She’s a terrific woman, Joe. But I suppose you know that. And when two people with such conflicting pasts like yours can find reconcilement, it tells me that there’s always hope.”

“She told you about Schmeltz?” Volkmann asked then, changing the subject.

Bargel nodded, his face pale and serious. “She told us everything she knew. The rest we were able to piece together.”

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“Two days.”

“Tell me what I missed.”

It took ten minutes to explain. Dollman and the cabinet were dead, except for Weber, who was in a high-security cell in Moabit Prison. The president had taken over the duties of chancellor, and formed a caretaker government. A list of conspirators was found in the safe in Grinzing’s study. All known extremist neo-Nazis and their supporters were under arrest. The terrorist Lubsch and one of his men were killed in the assault; the others escaped into the mountains before the all-weather choppers landed.

When he mentioned Ivan Molke, Bargel saw the look of pain on Volkmann’s face.

“Ivan was a good man, Joe. And a good German.” Volkmann looked away, toward the white wall. Bargel’s voice brought him back.

“And so was Lubsch,” he went on, “in his way. What he and his friends did for you—for all of us—was heroic.” Bargel leaned forward. “When the woman told me about Schmeltz, at first I didn’t believe her. It sounded so crazy. I thought she had cracked after her ordeal.”

“What made you believe her?”

“One of the people on Grinzing’s list talked. Everything you deduced, everything Erica told us, it’s true. Geli Raubal had a son. The Schmeltz couple took him to South America.”

“What about the body?”

“It’s been disposed of, secretly.”

“Where?”

Bargel shook his head. “Even I can’t tell you that, Joe.” Bargel paused. “The army’s on the streets, restoring order. Most people don’t know what’s happened. We’ve imposed a newspaper blackout until things are under control. The measures are extreme, but we want to make certain there’s no chance of this country repeating history.”

“I don’t get it. Erica’s father was Leibstandarte SS. Why wasn’t she contacted like the others?”

Bargel nodded. “She was on their list but was only one of many. It seems it was Winter’s job to make an approach to her but he didn’t make it a priority. Maybe because he knew her personally, and that she wouldn’t be the kind to help.” Bargel shrugged. “Whatever the reason, it probably saved her life.”

Bargel saw the strain on Volkmann’s face and stood. “We’ll talk again, Joe. For now, get some rest. I owe you a great debt of gratitude. Not only me, but the country. I just want you to know that.”

Bargel crossed to the door and smiled. “I’ll tell her you’re awake. She’s anxious to talk with you.”

•   •   •

The snow started to fall as they traveled in the taxi from Heathrow, but by the time they had reached the neat square of Victorian houses, it had stopped.

Everywhere white, deserted. New Year’s Eve.

The flight from Frankfurt had been delayed, and when he telephoned and told her he was coming, he heard the surprise in her voice, saying how good it was to hear from him.

When he told her they’d have an extra guest staying for a few days, he recognized her excitement, like the young woman on the beach in Cornwall he always remembered, with her hair tied back, always a smile on her lips, an aura of happiness about her that made him know why his father had married her.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon when the taxi pulled up at the top of the square. Darkness was falling, the gates of the tiny park were open, branches heavy with snow, here and there footprints where a child had strayed and an adult followed. But no one there now. Empty.

He led Erica in through the park gates, placed the two overnight bags beside the bench, brushed away snow. As she sat beside him, through the trees he could see the house, lights on already, a plume of gray smoke rising faintly from the chimney.

There were lights on in other houses, too. Candles burning, Christmas trees winking in the twilight through fogged windows, the vestige of Christmas. Another eight hours and a new year.

A pigeon cooed in the branches above. A fir tree rustled. The sound of beating wings.

Erica asked, “Which house is yours? You never told me which one.”

Volkmann pointed to the redbrick house, and she studied it for a long time.

“It suits you.”

“How?”

She smiled. “Solid. A little old-fashioned. But dependable.”

He smiled back and Erica looked about the park.

“This is where you played when you were a boy?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes and said, “I can picture you, you know. From the photograph I saw in your apartment.”

“Tell me what you picture.”

“A boy who is quiet and very serious. A loner, but curious. And a boy who loved his father and mother very much.”

“You see all that?”

She smiled again. “It’s what I picture.” She opened her eyes, brushed a strand of blond hair from her face, looked across at him. At the handsome face she wanted to touch as he looked silently about the snowy landscape. She said, as if reading his thoughts, “This place is special for you, isn’t it, Joe?”

“I used to come here with my father.”

He felt the touch of her hand, the silky warmth of her fingers twining through his. Comforting. He wondered how he had ever doubted her.

She said, “His pain has been repaid now. And the pain of all the others who suffered.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes, I believe it. Because you stopped it from happening all over again. And now you can bury your father’s pain.”

Volkmann looked at her face. He took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, kissed the cold fingertips. “I’d like to believe that.”

Through the trees, he could see the house. His mother would be waiting. He looked down at the blue eyes watching him.

“Come. She’s expecting us. And I’d like you to meet her.” Volkmann picked up their bags, and they started to walk back across the park toward the row of redbrick houses.

•   •   •

The suite on the top floor of the Hilton hotel had a clear view to the mountains beyond the city. It was a cold, clear New Year’s Day in Madrid, and both men sat by the window.

The younger of the two was in his early thirties, lean and fit-looking. His briefcase was open, and a sheaf of papers lay on the coffee table in front of him.

The second man was in his early fifties. His tired face looked haggard after almost two days without sleep. The hotel recorded his
name as Federico Ramirez, but as a precaution the man changed passports twice in the last twenty-four hours during his connections from Asunción.

He wasted no time on small talk, nor did he offer his young visitor a drink. “The number of arrests and detentions, you have the latest figures?”

The younger man glanced briefly at his notes. “We estimate twenty-three thousand, as of midnight last night.”

The older man betrayed no emotion at the figures, and his visitor carried on talking.

“But the situation is still fluid, and the figures may increase. Apart from those on the list, the authorities are simply pulling in those with a strong past record of support, so it’s likely they’ll be released if charges can’t be pressed.”

The older man said impatiently, “And the cells, how are they holding up?”

“In the eastern region, they remain pretty much intact. The other three points of the compass are the ones really affected. But the damage isn’t that great. We’ve been relatively lucky.”

The older man stood up and said sharply, “Lucky? What happened, Raul? How the devil did it go wrong? We were that close.” The older man held up two fingers, the tips close together.

The younger man sighed at his superior. “You got the preliminary report in Asunción. I’m afraid it’s the best we can do for now. Over the next few days we ought to have a clearer picture. Certainly the man and the woman, Volkmann and Kranz, were largely responsible.”