The Grave of Truth (17 page)

Kramer frowned, locked the little diary away, and began to dress. What did the CIA hope to gain from talking to Günther Mühlhauser? Least of all, why bother with a former SS man more renowned for his brawn than his brains? And then, as he got into the back of his car and directed his chauffeur to drive him to his office in the city centre, Albert Kramer saw the connection. He knew the records of the two men in every detail, though he had never met them face to face. The personal aide to Heinrich Himmler and the non-commissioned sergeant had one thing in common. They were both in the Bunker at the end. Sigmund Walther's murder had stirred up the ashes of the Führer's funeral pyre and that meant that the phoenix of National Socialist Germany was stirring in the flames which the world had thought put out for ever.

The child of Hitler and Eva Braun was still alive, and the reason the CIA had sent one of their top men to Heinrich Holler was to try and find him. Albert Kramer swore under his breath. If Mühlhauser or that numbskull Josef knew anything, Holler and the American would get it out of them. Nobody could have interrogated Mühlhauser about something which nobody in the Western alliance knew. If he had any knowledge of Hitler's heir, he had kept it from the principals of Odessa as well.

Kramer had made a mistake in alerting Mühlhauser and the other man. Neither must be allowed to talk to Holler, who was a traitor and a renegade, in Kramer's eyes, or to the highly skilled and ruthless operators employed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. He picked up the telephone in his car and began to make arrangements.

Minna woke while it was still dark. She lay quietly, listening, and then reached out with her hand. He had gone to his own room. She switched on the bedside light, blinking against it, and then sat up. Her hair was loose and tangled, cold sweat had dried on her naked body. She leaned her head back, and a tear seeped under the closed eyelids and ran down her face and neck. She didn't blame Max Steiner; she blamed herself, and she cried with shame and self-disgust. He was different from Sigmund, rougher, less sentimental. He had made her aware of passions which her husband hadn't aroused, and she had loved her sex life with him and been deeply satisfied. Now a new man had come, and, instead of easing the pain and the loss, he had created new longings which she couldn't sublimate in grief.

She threw back the sheet and went to the bathroom; her reflection in the glass was wild looking; she stared at herself and called the woman in the mirror bitter names. He was a stranger, a man who had come into her life because of Sigmund's death, and in the moment of self-knowledge, Minna admitted that from the first meeting she had felt powerfully attracted to him. And known that he felt the same about her. She had been able to stave off men while her husband was alive; she had never even been tempted, and opportunities to be unfaithful were always presenting them selves. Albert Kramer's hungry stare was easy to ignore; the tentative moves from friends and other women's husbands had been shrugged off with tact and determination. Her vanity had been satisfied because she knew she was still very desirable to men and this was important to her, but she had all she needed in her marriage. What had happened was not adultery, because she was a widow and her body was her own. But it was crude and disloyal, and she didn't love the man. She said that aloud. ‘I don't love him. I don't even know him.' It wasn't possible to feel love for someone else so soon after her husband's death.…

And he hadn't said he loved her. She was grateful for that: hypocrisy would have made it worse. She stepped into the shower and soaked herself, as if she were carrying out a cleansing ritual. She dried herself, and rubbed her wet hair.

The bed looked cold and uninviting; half the bedclothes were on the floor. It was six o'clock and light was showing through the curtains. She put on a dressing gown and went downstairs through the silent house to the kitchen. There was a gleam of electric light under the door. He was making coffee. He turned quickly and saw her there. ‘I couldn't sleep after I left you,' he said. ‘Do you want a cup?'

‘Yes,' Minna said. ‘No sugar.' They sat on opposite sides of the table, and he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her.

‘I'm not going to say I'm sorry it happened,' he said abruptly, ‘because I'm not. And you shouldn't be either. We're very good together.'

‘Yes, we are. But I've never felt ashamed before.'

‘He's dead,' Max said gently. ‘And you need to be loved.'

He held his hand out to her, palm upward, and after a moment she put her hand in it. Their fingers locked tightly. ‘Drink your coffee,' Max said. ‘It'll get cold.' Lying beside him in bed afterwards, Minna thought that he had said he loved her at one stage, but she was too close to sleep to be sure.

‘I have been thinking of becoming a Catholic for some time,' Stanislaus Kesler said. The elderly priest looked surprised. He was a round, bespectacled little man, with a circlet of white hair round his bald head. He had come down to the priests' parlour to see the unexpected visitor. It was a bare little room, sparsely furnished with hard-backed chairs and a polished table. The floors were polished wood and they were as slippery as glass. There was a strong smell of beeswax. A garish statue of the Sacred Heart rested on a plinth in one corner, with a little red devotional lamp gleaming at its foot. The place reminded Kesler of his youth in Poland. He had been to a convent school as a child, and he recognized the smell and the spartan surroundings. He smiled encouragingly at the priest.

Father Grunwald had been retired for five years; he was nearing his seventieth birthday, and he had a peaceful life after his years as a parish priest during the turbulence of the post-war period. He said Mass for the nuns in the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, heard their confessions and acted as spiritual adviser to the Reverend Mother, who frightened him to death. He suppressed a most un-Christian resentment at being called in at this late stage to instruct a stranger in the Faith.

‘That's very good,' he said. ‘But I think you should go to your local parish priest. He is the proper person to instruct you. May I ask why you came to see me? I'm retired now, you know.'

Kesler took a gamble; ‘Reverend Mother suggested it,' he said. ‘Her family and mine were old friends.'

‘Really?' Father Grunwald's white eyebrows lifted; the tufts peeking above the horn-rimmed spectacles made him look like a little barn owl. ‘Yes, well, that's very kind of her.…'

‘I gather she thinks a great deal of you, Father,' Kesler said. ‘It must make quite a change, looking after nuns. How often do you visit the convent?'

‘I say Mass three times a week, and on Sundays, of course.'

‘Do you hear confessions?' Kesler asked. ‘That's the one thing about the Church that worries me. What would a nun have to confess, for instance?'

‘They're not all saints by any means,' the priest said. ‘People tend to forget that nuns are human beings with human weaknesses. You mustn't worry about confession; most non-Catholics find it difficult to accept at first.'

‘I would very much like to talk to you about it, and about the Catholic Faith in general,' Kesler said. ‘But you might not have much time to give me. When do you go to the convent, Father?'

‘Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. And Sunday, of course. I'm there all day Sunday with Mass and Benediction, and most of Saturday morning, hearing confessions before Mass.' He grasped quickly at the excuse Kesler had offered him. ‘I don't think I could possibly instruct you; you really need to visit a priest every day and it usually takes at least three to four weeks before you could make up your mind to the preliminary stage. Becoming a Catholic takes time, you know. I really think you'd do better to go to your local parish priest.' He heaved himself up from the uncomfortable chair, and Kesler stood, with his hand held out. Father Grunwald shook it briefly. He had never been happy with middle-aged converts; he believed that the Faith took a stronger root in the young.

‘May God bless you,' he said, ‘and guide you. I'll remember you in my prayers.'

‘Thank you,' Kesler said. ‘I shall need the gift of Faith. Goodbye, Father.'

Outside in the street he walked to the car where Franconi was waiting. He slipped into the passenger seat. ‘Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday,' he said. Franconi started the engine.

‘Good,' he said. ‘Which day will you go?'

‘Thursday,' Kesler answered. ‘I don't want him talking to the Reverend Mother about me. I said she recommended me.'

‘That's tomorrow,' Franconi said. They were cruising along the street, and he turned right towards the centre of the city. ‘You'll have to get some clothes.'

Kesler frowned. ‘Not clerical clothes,' he said. ‘The first thing the police will do, if they suspect anything, is go to the clerical tailors and the theatrical costumiers. That could give them a lead. I've got a dark suit, and I'll buy a black silk muffler and a black homburg. That'll get me into the convent.' Franconi looked at him, and then back to the road ahead.

‘You don't think you can make it look like an accident?' he said. ‘That's worrying.'

‘I'll do my best,' Kesler said. ‘I'll use the pen again, but you've got to get right up close to them. If there's any difficulty, I'll just have to do what I can. Don't worry,' he added. ‘I won't take any risks. If I could persuade her to leave the building, all the better.'

‘I don't like this at all,' Franconi said. He shuddered suddenly, as a nervous
frisson
quivered up his spine. ‘You're quite sure she's not a nun?'

‘Frau Gretl Fegelein; works as a lay helper. That's what it said on the paper,' Kesler reassured him. ‘And you're not to be superstitious. Nothing will happen to me just because it's done in a convent. Let's go out and treat ourselves to a nice lunch. That'll take our minds off it. Bear left here; there's a very good restaurant down the next street. I looked it up in the Michelin guide last night.'

Günther Mühlhauser had come back from a labour camp in what was later known to the world as the Gulag Archipelago. The camps were full of Germans, prisoners of war, civilians captured during the Russian advance into Germany, SS criminals who had escaped the death sentence. Like himself. Mühlhauser hadn't expected to survive when he saw the conditions in which the prisoners were condemned to live and do hard manual labour.

They froze and they starved, and they died in their tens of thousands. The suicide rate was nearly as high as that for deaths from hunger and mistreatment. Men went mad, and were shot down like dogs; others died at their tasks, breaking the iron-hard earth to build roads which never ended, or mumbled their lives away in delirium. Mühlhauser was a very strong man and physically fit. He determined to live, because his sentence had a limit. That was the deal he had concluded with his Soviet interrogators. They wouldn't hang him, but they would send him to the slow death of the labour camp and it was up to him to survive if he could. He became a model prisoner; he co-operated with the guards and made it easier for them to supervise the other prisoners. He informed on three escape attempts, and consequently his rations were improved. He became so useful that the commandant withdrew him from work on the roads, and gave him an administrative job in the records offices of the camp. There Mühlhauser kept a tally of the dead, and of the pitiful few who managed to escape and were brought back and shot. He was gaunt and cold and underfed, but by comparison with those who resisted or failed to grovel to their guards, he lived well enough. At the end of fourteeen years he was suddenly summoned to the commandant's office and told that he was being sent south. They shook hands, and the Russian gave him some cigarettes for the journey. He packed his few rags of clothing into a bundle, and marched for two days with a group of Russian civilians who were going to the railhead. Nobody told him anything.

The journey took a week, and four people died of cold. Mühlhauser divided up their clothing between himself and the remaining five men; he persuaded the guards to continue the original ration. Otherwise, as he pointed out in fluent Russian, they would have nothing but corpses to deliver at the end of the journey. They arrived in Moscow, and all but Mühlhauser disembarked from the train. He was locked into the compartment, and it was the following day before they moved out of the station. Nobody would tell him where he was going, but he was given more food, and a change of clothes, including a heavy army greatcoat, and boots. Mühlhauser had tried hard to forget his experiences in the years that followed his arrival in what was now East Germany, but he couldn't stop odd incidents floating like jetsam to the surface of his mind. Most persistent of all was the meeting face to face with his principal interrogator when the train crossed the Polish frontier. He had opened the compartment door, and the two soldiers guarding him had jumped to their feet at the sight of the red flashes on the colonel's collar.

He hadn't changed much, except that his cropped hair had tinges of grey in it. Mühlhauser knew by his expression that he himself was almost unrecognizable. The Soviet colonel had sat opposite to him, given him a cigarette and said simply, ‘So you survived. I thought you would.'

‘Yes,' Mühlhauser mumbled. ‘Where am I going?'

‘Home,' the Russian said. ‘As I promised you. I always keep my promises.'

That was when Mühlhauser broke down and began to cry for the first time in fifteen bitter years. The colonel had got up and gone out of the compartment. He said nothing, and Mühlhauser never saw him again. He wondered whether the Russian knew that he was crying for shame as well as relief. He knew why he had been released. And the oath he had sworn, and violated to save himself, haunted him for many years. Until he married a second time, and his young wife had a daughter. He was settled in Hamburg; his name and background and his sufferings in Russia brought financial help and he knew very well where it came from. Also the offer of a job in a firm of textile importers.