The Secret of Spandau (19 page)

‘I shall be here at my desk until nine this evening,' said Harald, smiling for the first time in an hour.

The afternoon session with the lawyers went particularly well. He could confidently commit the firm to a five million advance. He would, of course, dangle the bait and then make it conditional on publication within two years, irrespective of Hess's survival thereafter. Once the family had contemplated an immediate fortune, they would soon prevail on the old man to sign a new contract.

He tried to keep occupied as the evening closed in, but time still dragged. He had asked the switchboard to let all incoming calls come through to his office, which meant taking a few tedious enquiries from people who had tried to reach him in the day, but he cut them short with some excuse about a call from New York on another line.

By eight, he had the building to himself, and he was unable to concentrate on any kind of work. He sat by the phone, consuming claret left over from the last party. Across the room, his spade-bearded grandfather stared out of the portrait. Rolf Beer had been born only a few years earlier than Hess. He had once been Burgermeister. Very likely he had known the Hess family. There must have been some solid reason why Hess entrusted his memoirs to the house of Beer.

9.00 p.m. Nothing. Harald's nerves were on edge. He had promised himself not to phone Pröhl again. It would betray his eagerness. He was trying to cultivate the laid-back manner of the smooth negotiator.

A buzzer sounded.

He picked up the phone, but it was dead. For a moment he was disorientated, thrown by the unexpected. It was the intercom with the front door that had sounded.

He switched it on. ‘Who's there, please?'

‘Pröhl. We spoke earlier.' Clearly enough, it was Pröhl's voice.

Harald pressed the button that released the door. ‘I wasn't expecting you in person, but please come in. It's the door at the end of the hallway.' He quickly stowed away the claret bottle and glass just as the knock came on his door. ‘Come in, Herr Pröhl.'

The visitor was a good match for his voice: about thirty-five, a slight, compact figure, neat in his movements, elegantly dressed in a grey pinstripe and white shirt with a gold collar-fastening under the dove-grey tie. ‘In the end I decided it would be more practical to come in person,' he explained to Harald as they shook hands. He clicked his heels in the old-fashioned way. ‘These are highly confidential matters, and one hears such disquieting stories about telephone-tapping.'

‘True,' said Harald, gesturing Pröhl into an armchair. This was encouraging, now that he had taken it in. The indications were that the family was ready to do business. ‘Would you care for a drink?'

‘I don't take it, thank you.'

‘I must apologise for the state of the office,' Harald said, waving his hand towards the contracts stacked against the wall. ‘There is so much paper-work when one takes over.'

Pröhl nodded. The courtesies done, he appeared to be waiting to do business.

‘So you have passed on the offer I made?' said Harald, seating himself in the chair opposite Pröhl. ‘How is Herr Hess?'

‘I am here to verify one or two things, Herr Beer,' Pröhl said curtly.

‘Whatever you wish.'

‘First, your copy of the manuscript. It came into the possession of your firm some twenty years ago, is that correct?'

‘In 1964,' said Harald. ‘As a matter of fact, I noticed only today that Herr Hess signed the agreement on April 26.' He paused, but there was no reaction from Pröhl. ‘His seventieth birthday.'

‘Interesting. Tell me, how did it come into your possession?'

‘My father's, actually. I was not aware that the book existed until I found it a few days ago in the safe over there.'

‘I see.' Pröhl frowned slightly. ‘You understand that we would like to confirm its authenticity.'

Harald assumed a slightly hurt expression. ‘I can assure you that Beer Verlag deals only in authentic works, Herr Pröhl. You are not suggesting that the script in our possession is some sort of forgery?'

‘I'm sure Beer Verlag is irreproachable. However, one has to be on one's guard. You remember the lamentable affair of the so-called Hitler Diaries? The perpetrators fooled some eminent military historians as well as hard-headed journalists.'

‘There is a significant difference in this case,' Harald pointed out. ‘Herr Hess is still alive to verify the work.'

Pröhl made a dissenting sound with his lips and shook his head. ‘The authorities would not allow it. They are extremely agitated to learn of the existence of the book. Hess has been reprimanded by the directors and had his letter-writing privileges taken away. It is only thanks to a friendly warder that we are able to keep in communication.'

‘That is distressing,' said Harald. ‘I would not have wished to be the cause of any discomfort to Herr Hess.'

‘It may be for the best,' said Pröhl dismissively. ‘Tell me, do you have the original manuscript?'

‘His handwritten version? No. Presumably it was passed out of the prison on scraps of paper, as the Speer Diaries were. What we have is the top copy of the typescript. Would you care to examine it?' Harald went to the safe and took out the package.

‘But you have no idea who typed this?' said Pröhl as he took the script from its wrapper.

‘None whatsoever. My father dealt with it. That's the agreement on top of the script. You can see that Herr Hess signed it.'

‘Do you happen to know of the existence of any other copies?'

Harald shook his head. ‘I haven't even made any spares for myself. It's a very hot property, as you will understand when you get a chance to read it.'

Pröhl looked up sharply, and his brown eyes locked with Harald's. ‘What do you mean by that, Herr Beer?'

‘Some of it is explosive stuff. I can understand why the authorities are disturbed, if they have any idea what Hess has written.'

‘Such as …?'

‘The British are in for shocks when this is published. And the Russians will go berserk.'

‘The Russians? Why?'

‘Because of what he reveals about the massacre of Polish soldiers in the war. You've heard about the Katyn Forest graves?'

Pröhl nodded. ‘Hess knew something about that?'

‘Yes, indeed,' Harald went on with relish. ‘I dare say you know the salient facts. In 1943, the German Army found mass graves near Smolensk containing over four thousand corpses of Polish officers, each shot in the back of the head. They accused the Russians of the atrocity, because the area had been part of Soviet-occupied Poland. They said it took place in the spring of 1940. But the Russians made a counter-accusation, saying that the Germans had carried out the killings when they invaded the Smolensk area in July and August of 1941.'

‘Herr Beer, this argument has been going on for forty years,' said Pröhl. ‘The Germans deny responsibility and so do the Russians. The forensic evidence seems to point to the Russians, but so what? It was a tragic episode, but it's not an issue any more, except to the historians.'

Harald leaned forward challengingly. ‘With respect, Herr Pröhl, you could not be more wrong. I know Poland. I have many friends there. Katyn is still an open wound. Each Polish government since the war has endorsed the Soviet version – that it was a Nazi atrocity – but, believe me, the mass of the people are not taken in.'

‘They blame the Russians,' said Pröhl. ‘So?'

‘Four thousand bodies were buried at Katyn, but up to
fifteen
thousand Polish soldiers disappeared from the face of the earth in the early part of the war.'

‘Numbers get exaggerated in stories of this sort,' Pröhl commented, continuing to turn the pages of the typescript in a preoccupied way.

‘They were men taken prisoner by the Russians when they occupied Eastern Poland in 1939,' Harald proceeded as if he hadn't heard. ‘Over half of them were officers, the elite of the Polish Army. The Russians kept them in three large prisoner-of-war camps. They were permitted to write home until the middle of April 1940, when the letters suddenly stopped arriving. The camps were evacuated and the men transported in railway trucks to unknown destinations. The bodies at Katyn account for less than a third of the missing men.'

‘What does this have to do with Hess?'

‘Well, in 1940, he was head of the AO.'

‘The
Auslandorganisation
?'

‘Yes – which as you know was officially set up to strengthen links with Germans living in foreign countries, but was also set up as a cover for intelligence-gathering. If you study the chapter he has written on the events of 1940, you will see, Herr Pröhl, that he received reports from German agents that confirmed –'

Pröhl said mildly without looking up, ‘Katyn?'

‘Not only Katyn. Dergachi and Bologoye.' Harald noted with satisfaction the bemused expression on his visitor's face, before going on to explain, ‘The two other sites where up to ten thousand more of the missing Polish soldiers were murdered and buried by the Soviet NKVD.'

Pröhl raised his head in surprise. ‘These are places in Russia?'

‘Dergachi is ten miles north of Kharkov. The men from Starobelsk Camp were taken there. Bologoye, where the Ostashkov prisoners were liquidated, is on the main route between Moscow and Leningrad.' Harald got up from his chair, too wound up to remain immobile any longer, and paced the room. ‘God knows what will happen in Poland when the book is published. Those murdered men are coming back to haunt the Russians. With Solidarity barely suppressed, it's all that's needed to trigger an anti-Soviet uprising.'

A sniff from Pröhl indicated reservations. ‘Even if it's true, it won't ever be proved. No one is going to be allowed to dig for evidence in Russia.'

‘Don't you see?' Harald broke in excitedly. ‘This book provides overwhelming evidence. Turn up the chapter Hess has written, Herr Pröhl, and look at the precise dates, the locations, even the identities of the NKVD units responsible and the names of the officers in charge. And the whole point is that Hess was in custody in England when the Germans invaded Russia, so there can be no question any longer that the Russians carried out these terrible events.'

Pröhl put down the typescript and said, ‘Fascinating. But why didn't this come to light when it happened, and Hess got the information from his agents in Poland?'

Harald turned to face his visitor, using his hands to reinforce the point. ‘This was 1940. Remember? We were friends of Russia then. We had signed the Non-Agression Pact.'

‘So Hess kept the news to himself?'

‘He told Hitler and Göring, but it went no further. And at the end of the war, Russia was one of the Allies in judgement over the Third Reich. It was not the time to tell the truth about the killings. Plenty of people knew about Katyn, but it was conveniently brushed aside at Nuremberg. The Germans were in the dock, not the Russians.'

Pröhl appeared to have grasped the point now. ‘And Hess has lived with this secret since 1940?'

‘Right! The Russians are still not certain how much he knows, but they simmer with suspicion. The Soviet judge at Nuremberg was ordered to demand the death penalty, but it was over-ruled by the other judges. Hess played the amnesia card at the trial to fox the Russians. He said nothing about the massacre in his evidence. Yet his first years at Spandau were dominated by the secret. He suspected that the Allies would poison him if they learned what he knew. He didn't even dare discuss his knowledge with the other prisoners.'

Pröhl still seemed reluctant to be totally convinced, almost as if it were a point of family honour that was at issue. ‘If all this is true, I can't understand why he has waited so long to tell the world about it. Is he still in fear of being poisoned?'

‘You must read the book!' Harald almost cried out in his enthusiasm. ‘He is the most tenacious man I have ever come across. No, he isn't concerned about himself. He has old-fashioned ideas about honour and justice. He wants the facts to be known, so that the Third Reich will be absolved of any suspicion over Katyn and the missing thousands. If he is ever released –'

‘He will never be released now,' said Pröhl. ‘God knows, the family has tried to get him out.'

This was the very point that Harald had wanted Pröhl to make. He pounced on it. ‘But there is a chance if we publish now. The effect will be sensational. Everyone will clamour to read the book. This won't simply be his family and a few people holding banners outside the gate of Spandau Prison. The attention of the world will be focussed on his cause. The pressure to release him will be irresistible.'

Pröhl nodded. It might have been in confirmation.

‘Would you care to discuss my offer now?' Harald asked him civilly. As he spoke, he reached for the script. It was a gesture not without significance; the property had been licensed to him.

Pröhl's hand clamped down on the package first. ‘Before we do,' he said, moving it away from Harald, ‘there is something I must check, Herr Beer.' He got up and walked towards the door.

‘Just a minute!' said Harald in alarm. ‘Where are you going with the script?'

‘Oh.' Pröhl turned, smiled and rested the script on a table between them. ‘My mistake.' He continued to move towards the door.

‘Is there anything wrong?' asked Harald.

Pröhl opened the door a fraction and looked out, as if checking for an eavesdropper. Harald meanwhile picked up the Hess memoir and held it possessively to his chest. Possibly Pröhl had heard something outside. The old building sometimes creaked as the temperature dropped in the evening.

Pröhl stepped outside the door.

Suddenly a second man had replaced him in the doorway. Harald stared in petrified amazement. The man was wearing a strange mask. He was holding a hand-gun, a clumsy-looking weapon with a long barrel. He was pointing it at Harald's face. He squeezed the trigger.