No Dawn for Men (13 page)

“It can’t be?” said Professor Shroeder, but indeed it was. The bison circled each other once and then suddenly were mating in the center of ring, while the crowd cheered. Bormann tossed his champagne glass at the male’s head as he rutted, and many others followed suit.

Professor Tolkien looked on in horror at the scene below, at Bormann and his wife seizing full glasses of champagne from a passing servant, a dwarf with a beard like Korumak’s, and throwing them at the cow this time. And across the room to Goering, who was smiling like a hyena and raising both of his arms in the air to acknowledge the adoring crowd below. The quiet, unassuming professor from Oxford knew in his bones that he was witnessing human beings at their very worst. Over the long remaining years of his life he would often ask God to forgive him for not turning away. He couldn’t. He had to see and absorb and imprint on his brain the many faces of evil in that room.

24.

The Bergspitze Inn, Deggendorf

October 7, 1938, 11:00 p.m.

“So, do you still trust Kurt?” Fleming asked Billie.

“Yes, I do.”

“If only
he
knew that your father and Tolkien had fled, then how did those troops come to be at the abbey?”

“Someone else must have . . .”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Honestly. But it can’t have been Kurt. I’m certain. Ian, do you think father is in the abbey? Has he been captured do you think?”

“I told you, I don’t think they’d go near the abbey. They may be college professors, but surely they must have realized that that would be the first place Himmler’s hounds would be sniffing around.”

“Perhaps they don’t know that they are being looked for.”

“I think they do.”

“Why?”

“Tolkien told me that your father was given an ultimatum. Perform the ritual on Monday or else.”

“Or else what?”

“You die.”

“
I
die?”

“Yes, you. Do you think Himmler would be squeamish about threatening to kill you? Or actually killing you if it came to it? That was how they managed to persuade your father in the first place. They are thugs, murderous thugs.”

Billie did not respond.

After seeing the troops at Metten Abbey’s gate, the ride back to their small inn on a hill on the outskirts of Deggendorf had been a silent one. The English gentleman in Fleming had kept him from denouncing Billie as a fool for ever trusting her so-called college friend. Now he was doubly glad he had kept his counsel. The shocked look on her beautiful face reminded him of just how much a child she was, a child thrown against her will into a pit of vipers, one of whom she felt surely was her friend. Perhaps her eyes were now opening.

“My dear Billie,” Fleming said, finally, “I envy your naïveté. I respect it, actually. There is a purity to it, a goodness that is rare in this world. But the Nazis have taken Austria, the Sudetenland, and made them into police states just as they have of Germany. Do you think Goering, Himmler, Goebbels and their ilk are patriots? No, far from it. They are indulging in personal fetishes and amassing fortunes, while gleefully enacting Hitler’s insane policies.”

“And Kurt?” Billie said. “You believe he is one of them?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t be . . .”

“He’s a Nazi through and through.”

“Ian . . .”

“I’m sorry.”

More silence, while Billie composed herself, pulled her face into a sort of mask of acceptance. Fleming’s heart melted at this effort of hers.

“I’ll light a fire,” Billie said at length, her voice low, close to a whisper. “It’s cold up here.”

“Good idea,” Ian said. “While you’re doing that I have something to attend to.”

Fleming had assumed that Himmler’s SS would be out in force looking for the Shroeder party, that Kurt Bauer was a liar and had played Billie for a fool. He had therefore insisted, despite Billie’s plea for speed, that they travel south via back roads. It would not do for the Nazis to intercept a car containing Franz Shroeder’s daughter and an English reporter heading toward Deggendorf. It had taken them almost eight hours as opposed to the five or six the trip south normally took, but he had been right. If troops were at the abbey, they were also covering the main roads and railroad stations along the way.

Putting these thoughts aside, the Englishman reached for the small canvas duffle bag he had lugged with him from Berlin and pulled out the two-way backpack radio that Bletchley had had made for him specially and that Hans the bartender had delivered to his room at the Adlon just before he and Billie had headed south. He could hear Billie’s movements behind him and the crackling of the kindling that their ruddy-faced innkeeper had left in the room’s large stone fireplace for them. The attic room, which Ian had specifically asked for,
was
cold, but soon it would be warm, at least in the vicinity of the fireplace.

He lifted the heavy radio by its side handles and set it down in the middle of the small room. Then he pulled up the antenna and set the frequency selector to random. Hans had said that the dry cell battery, which made the bloody thing so heavy, was fresh, but had packed him an extra one anyway. They last only thirty minutes or so at the most, his lab trainer at Bletchley had told him, so make the most of your time. When the neon indicator turns red, change the battery. Otherwise, just push the on switch, and speak your caller ID into the handset.

“What are you doing?” Billie asked.

Fleming had lifted the handset, but not turned the radio on. The moment has come, he said to himself.

“Frequency hopping,” he said.

“Frequency hopping?” Billie was eyeing the radio like it was something that had landed in the room from outer space.

“Yes,” Fleming said. “Do you know Hedy Lamarr?”

Silence. Then, “Do
you
?”

“I do, in fact. I met her in Paris in the spring. She was going through a divorce at the time.”

“Ian . . . What is that machine?”

“It’s a two-way radio. Half-duplex, point-to-point.”

“What in the world . . . ?”

“It’s a long story, Billie. I’m going to get us help.”

“But won’t the Nazis be listening? I understand they monitor all of the frequencies all of the time.”

“That’s where Hedy comes in. She and her first husband—she was divorcing her second in Paris—invented this frequency hopping thing. It’s based on a player piano.”

“A player piano?”

“Don’t ask me why or how.”

Silence, then: “You really
are
a spy.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Is that why you went out earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

“To scout out a meeting place.”

“Who are we meeting?”

“Not
we
, me.”

“Who?”

“Someone to help me find your father and Tolkien.”

“Is that who you’re contacting on that machine?”

“Yes, the Americans. They’re on the ground here.”

“How can they help?”

“You saw those troops ringing the abbey. We may have to storm the place.”

“Ian.”

“Yes?”

Billie had taken a step toward Fleming. She had removed the down quilt from the room’s four-poster bed and placed it on the floor in front of the fire, the pillows as well.

“Shall I get undressed? Are we . . . ?”

“Yes and yes,” Fleming replied. “Get under that quilt. I’ll join you in a sec.”

Billie smiled, reached around, and unhooked the back of her calf-length wool skirt. It dropped to the floor at her feet, revealing her long, shapely legs in garter belt, nylon stockings and black panties. Fleming devoured this sight.

“Go ahead,” he said, turning back to the radio and pushing the on button. “I’ll join you in a sec.”

25.

 Carinhall

October 7, 1938, 11:00 p.m.

Suddenly the room below was filled with smoke, huge white clouds of it quickly filling its four corners and billowing up to the loft railing. Tolkien caught a quick glimpse of Goering being pulled into a room by his aide, then felt himself being tugged violently from behind. “Put this on your face,” Trygg Korumak said, handing him a towel soaked in water. Another dwarf, a woman with braided auburn hair and deep-set green eyes, was pulling at Franz Shroeder and handing him a damp towel as well. “Follow us,” Korumak said, when the professors had their faces covered.

They did, scurrying along the side of the open loft hallway until they reached a recessed door, which the woman unlocked with a long bronze key. They entered a room the size of a large closet. A storage room, it seemed to Tolkien, who bumped into a bucket from which protruded several mop handles. “What was that?” Tolkien said, as the woman locked the door behind them.

“Not now,” Trygg replied.

The room was pitch black, but the woman had found a chain hanging from the ceiling and pulled down a set of collapsing stairs. “Up!” she said. “Go!”

“Drop the towels,” Korumak said, “you won’t need them now.”

On their hands and knees in the dark attic, they followed the small woman and Trygg, who were walking, for about a hundred feet. When they halted, Tolkien, whose eyes had adjusted to the darkness, watched as the woman opened a small window and looked out quickly. Turning to face them, she motioned
come
. Tolkien now realized that Franz Shroeder, who had not said a word, was breathing heavily. “Franz, are you alright?” he said to the old man, who was now kneeling with his head down.

“I’m . . .” Shroeder said, but before he could finish his sentence, Korumak was tugging at Tolkien.

“You first,” he said, pushing the Englishman firmly but gently to the open window. Looking out, Tolkien saw a rope ladder leading to a roof some twenty feet below. Standing on this roof, holding onto the nether end of the ladder, was the dwarf he had seen serving champagne to Goering’s guests not five minutes ago.

“Go!” the woman said.

26.

Berlin

October 7, 1938, 11:30 p.m.

“There is a message for you,” Hans said.

“From whom?”

“The caller ID was 007.”

As he spoke, Hans was pouring Rex Dowling his favorite drink, Glenlivet with two ice cubes. Now he placed it on an
ADLON
-embossed cocktail napkin and slid it gently toward the American, who was smiling as if they were discussing the weather, which had turned cold, or women, whom they both liked at warmer temperatures. Smiling, his face a mask of idle pleasantness, the reporter picked up the drink. As he sipped, the slight narrowing of his blue eyes over the rim of his crystal rocks glass transmitted a concise message to the bartender.
Go on.

Hans nodded and took a moment to scan the thickly carpeted, dimly lit room, its small, round, randomly placed tables and corner banquettes filled with people quietly talking and sipping drinks. Hans knew most of them, including the Gestapo agents in civilian dress who stopped by almost every night to glare at the overseas press contingent and intimidate any tourist or business traveler who might be thinking of undermining the Reich. No foreigner was really welcome in Berlin in 1938.

“How is your drink?” Hans asked. “To your liking?”

“
Ausgezeichnet
”, Dowling replied, “
danke
.”

“Your German is terrible, Herr Dowling,” said Hans, loud enough for the agents at the nearest table to hear, then, his voice lower, “007 needs firepower.”

“What kind?”

“Small arms, rifles, machine guns.”

“Men?”

“Yes.”

“Have you spoken to your uncle?”

“Yes. He will extract from Czechoslovakia, but otherwise 007 is on his own.”

“Leaving him high and dry?”

“Chamberlain just finished the Munich agreement. He wants no complications.”

“So Meppen is cancelled.”

“Yes.”

“Did 007 ask for me?”

“Yes.”

“Where do we rendezvous?”

“Rex, I didn’t think you really cared . . .”

“
Hans
.”

“In the forest in Deggendorf.”

“Do you have the coordinates?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Immediately, if not sooner.”

“Can you help?”

“Yes, my brother as well.”

“Weapons?”

“Yes, a few.”

“Men?”

“No, just Jonas and me.”