Orders from Berlin (23 page)

But it was more than rage that they had in common – they shared a capacity to channel and direct their anger. Both were prepared to be extraordinarily patient in the pursuit of their goals; they did not take unnecessary risks but instead built slowly and carefully towards a position of power. For Heydrich, the policy had already paid dividends – he had complete power over the lives of everyone in the Reich through his control of the SD and the Gestapo. Seaforth’s rise had been slower, but the war had helped his cause with the concentration of MI6’s focus away from Soviet Russia and onto Germany, where his fictitious network of agents was located. With Seaforth’s help, Heydrich had been able to liquidate all the other high-level British agents operating inside Germany. He’d done it gradually, picking them off here and there so as not to give the game away either to Seaforth’s superiors in MI6 or to his own rivals in the Abwehr, the official Reich intelligence service run by Heydrich’s rival, the wily Admiral Canaris. But now, finally, Seaforth was the only MI6 spymaster receiving high-level intelligence from inside the Reich, and he was climbing the ladder of seniority inside the British Secret Service at a rate that would have been inconceivable two years earlier. One day soon he might become deputy chief, and MI6 would become an unwitting branch of the Gestapo.

Yet now, out of the blue, after all the years of painstaking groundwork, Heydrich’s prize agent was proposing to risk everything on one throw of the dice. The assassination plan was a good one, and Seaforth had the capacity to carry it out – Heydrich had no doubt on either of these scores. The scheme could certainly succeed, but it was opportunistic in nature and depended on a fair slice of luck. Heydrich wondered why Seaforth wanted to expose himself in this way, but then he turned the interrogation light onto himself and was even more surprised at his willingness to agree to the idea. There was the political answer, of course. Churchill’s removal could make all the difference, and Heydrich would gain immeasurably if he received the credit for knocking England out of the war. But it was more than that. The recklessness of the plan and the boldness of the stroke appealed to Heydrich at a gut level. It felt like flying into combat again, wheeling his Messerschmitt fighter through the sky towards the enemy aircraft. Leaning back in his chair with a faraway look in his eye, he felt a deep sense of kinship with this Englishman whom he hadn’t seen in over a year and might well never see again. Charles Seaforth was a man after his own heart.

At three o’clock Heydrich put on his cap, straightened his uniform, and walked out into Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. He preferred to walk; it was a beautiful day, and the Reich Chancellery was only two streets away. His two SS
bodyguards
fell into step behind him, but he paid them no attention. Heydrich had a deep-seated faith in his own inviolability that was to continue right up until the moment of his assassination in an unescorted, open-topped Mercedes staff car in Prague two years later.

He turned left into Wilhelmstrasse and walked past the long steely-grey marble façade of the massive Air Ministry building, thinking of Goering and the continuing inability of the Luftwaffe to win the air war over London. Heydrich had an acute sense of the shifting movements of power in Hitler’s court, and he had no doubt that Goering’s star was on the wane. If Seaforth’s plan succeeded, Heydrich had no doubt that he would eclipse not just Goering but all the other party bosses. The thought made him giddy and he had
to steady himself for a moment before he passed through th
e outer gates of the Chancellery and entered the Ehrenhof, the court of honour, leaving his bodyguards behind. The Führer had a way of seeing into people’s minds, and Heydrich knew that he needed to have all his wits about him during the coming encounter.

The great marble walls, lined with square and rectangular windows, reared up on all sides, defining in strict shape
the rectangle
of blue sky above. Not a curve or a flourish
had been all
owed to interrupt the stark symmetry of the
architecture
. The courtyard was not empty – helmeted, black-uniformed SS guards stood at exactly spaced intervals around the sides. But they were immobile, trained to rigid stillness, and the silence, broken only by the sound of Heydrich’s boots crossing the marble floor, added to the impression of overwhelming power that the construction was intended to convey. Heydrich felt it as a unique silence – not an absence of noise, but a presence in its own right, bearing down on him from all sides.

He climbed the steps leading to the entrance and went inside, passing through a dark, windowless hall inlaid with red mosaics and on into the long gallery, the famous centrepiece of the building, lit by a parade of high windows looking out over the Voss-Strasse. There was no furniture anywhere, not even a trace of carpet to relieve the severity of the design. Slippery marble floors were just the right surface for slippery visiting diplomats, according to Hitler.

The huge bronze doors at the end of the gallery beckoned and threatened, but Hitler’s office was halfway down on the right, with the intertwined AH initials of his name monogrammed above the doorway, where two steel-helmeted SS soldiers from his personal protection unit stood guard with their guns at the ready.

Heydrich was known and expected. The doors opened and he stepped inside. The office was vast, far larger and grander than any office he’d ever seen. Heavy tapestries and huge baroque paintings adorned the blood-red marble walls, and Hitler’s desk was placed intentionally at the far end, so that visitors would have a final journey to make across the thick carpet towards the dictator’s presence. It was a room designed to intimidate, but that was not Hitler’s intention today. He wasn’t sitting at his desk; instead he was standing in front of a large marble-topped table positioned under one of the tall windows looking out over the Chancellery gardens, examining an architectural model of a building that Heydrich did not recognize. He was bareheaded, wearing a black tie and a brown military jacket with a swastika armband.

‘Do you know what this is, Reinhard?’ asked Hitler, looking up at his visitor and acknowledging his raised-arm salute with a nod of his head. Heydrich was encouraged by the Führer’s use of his first name. Hitler was notoriously unpredictable, and Heydrich needed him to be in a receptive mood.

‘No. Please tell me,’ said Heydrich, pretending to be interested. He knew nothing about architecture but was aware that it was a subject dear to the Führer’s heart.

‘It is a design for my mausoleum. It will be built in Munich across from party headquarters. You can see it is modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. See, here is the rotunda and in the roof directly above the sarcophagus, you have the oculus,’ said Hitler, pointing.

‘What’s that?’ asked Heydrich. It was a word he’d never heard before.

‘The round opening, the eye. And just like in Rome, there is no glass. The sunlight and the rain, even the snow in winter, fall onto the tomb, connecting it to the elements. It is perfect.’

Hitler clasped his hands together, a characteristic gesture when he was pleased. But Heydrich was horrified. There was so much to do, yet here was the Führer planning his own funeral.

‘Don’t worry, Reinhard,’ said Hitler, laughing as he sensed Heydrich’s discomfort. ‘I am not dying just yet. But nor do I feel that I will live to be an old man, which is why I am in a hurry. Perhaps when we have accomplished all that we need to do in the world, then there will be time for me to return to architecture. I would like to build, but first we have to destroy,’ he said wistfully. There was a faraway look in his eye.

‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ said Heydrich after a moment, when Hitler showed no sign of abandoning his examination of the mausoleum. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the assassination plan we discussed before. I have heard from our agent in England this morning …’

‘Yes,’ said Hitler, shaking his head as if dismissing his dreams. ‘I am eager to hear what he has to say. Come, let us sit down and you can tell me all about it.’

Hitler walked over to the fireplace and sat in an armchair. Heydrich sat at right angles to the Führer on an enormous sofa the size of a small lifeboat. He took off his SS cap a
nd held it i
n his hands. A valet came in and served tea and cakes. Hitler gestured with his hand to the plate, and when Heydrich declined, he ate one of them himself with obvious enjoyment.

Heydrich glanced up at the portrait of Bismarck hanging over the fireplace, rehearsing what he had to say while he waited for the valet to leave the room. He knew that the picture was there to underline Hitler’s legitimacy as leader of the Reich, succeeding the man who had achieved the unification of Germany seventy years before. But Bismarck had wanted nothing more, trying to keep peace with the Russian bear through a complex system of alliances, whereas the Führer was itching to send his armies east into the steppes. Only the war with England was stopping him. Hitler rightly wanted to avoid the Kaiser’s mistake of fighting on two fronts, and Heydrich believed that he had the means to ensure that that would not be necessary.

‘So, tell me – how does Agent D intend to rid us of fat Mr Churchill?’ Hitler asked. His mocking tone belied his obvious interest in the answer to his question. He sat rigid in his chair, looking hard at Heydrich.

‘He suggests that we provide him with sufficiently valuable intelligence to ensure he gets another summons from Churchill, and then, once he’s inside the room, he proposes to shoot Churchill with a handgun from close range and then turn the gun on his superior, a man called Alec Thorn,’ said Heydrich, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. ‘This should take no more than a few seconds, and then when people hear the gunshots and rush into the room, D will say that Thorn shot Churchill and that he killed Thorn while he was wrestling the gun away from him. If all goes well, the end result should be that Churchill will be dead and our agent will get the credit for having tried to save him. And then with any luck, he will replace Thorn as deputy head of MI6.’

‘And Halifax will replace Churchill as prime minister and will straight away make peace with Germany,’ said Hitler. ‘It sounds too good to be true. How is our man going to get a gun past Churchill’s guards?’

‘He says he wasn’t searched when he was called in to discuss the Operation Sea Lion intelligence that I sent to him. He was issued with a special pass, and apparently that got him through all the security barriers.’

‘And this Thorn man – why should they think he wants to kill Churchill?’

‘Our agent is working on a cover story. Thorn ran agents in Germany for years until D identified them for us and we dealt with them. He used to spend a lot of time here, although less so recently. Our aim is to have Thorn unmasked as the double agent working for us. With my help, D can make it sound plausible.’

‘Aim, you say! There is a great deal of difference between aiming a gun and hitting the target,’ Hitler said dubiously. ‘How do we know that Thorn will accompany our man to this get-together?’

‘He did before, and Churchill told them at the last meeting that if our agent receives significant new intelligence about the invasion, he will want to see them both again. Thorn hates our man, apparently, and contradicts everything he says, and Churchill likes to hear the two different points of view.’

‘Very democratic,’ said Hitler with a sneer. ‘All right, let’s say for the sake of argument that he can get the gun into Churchill’s office and take this other man along with him. That still doesn’t explain how he’s going to get Churchill on his own. What about the bodyguards? How is our agent going to deal with them?’

‘He won’t have to,’ said Heydrich. ‘Churchill told his bodyguard to leave and shut the door behind him when he saw D and Thorn last time. He wants to keep secret intelligence secret. It’s not that far-fetched if you think about it. Look at us now – there are no bodyguards in the room with us, and I haven’t been searched.’

‘But you are not an assassin, and it is not appropriate for you to talk as if you are one,’ Hitler said sharply.

‘I am very sorry. Please forgive me,’ said Heydrich, cursing himself for his stupidity. He had been resolute in his determination to choose his words carefully before the interview began.

But he needn’t have worried – Hitler waved away the apology. He was too interested in what Heydrich had to say to let himself be distracted by a momentary irritation.

‘Where is all this going to take place?’ he asked. ‘In 10 Downing Street?’

‘Perhaps, although Churchill’s underground bunker is also a possibility. That’s where D saw him last time. It’s in the same area of London.’

‘So Churchill’s in a bunker,’ said Hitler, smiling that same wolfish grin that appeared whenever he was particularly pleased or amused. ‘Is he living in it?’

‘I believe so,’ said Heydrich, who knew perfectly well that a large air-raid bunker had been constructed for the Führer’s use less than five hundred yards away from where they were sitting.

‘Driven down into the sewers like a rat while the bombs fall on his precious Downing Street – bombs that he’s brought down on his own stupid head. And he must be dealt with like a rat, dispatched without a second’s thought,’ Hitler continued in a louder voice, rubbing his hands in anticipation. ‘I like your plan, Reinhard. I like it very much. You have done well. Radio your agent and tell him to go ahead. The sooner Churchill is out of the way, the better for all of us.’

‘We can’t use radio,’ said Heydrich. ‘D says that the British intercepted the message that I sent to him after I saw you at the Berghof, although the good news is that my message was short and simply asked for details of his plan without giving away anything about the plan’s purpose.’

‘Was there an investigation?’

‘Not one that went anywhere. One man started asking questions, apparently, but D got rid of him before he could do any damage.’

‘And you’re confident that’s the end of it?’