The following morning, Schlegel found himself deep in the heart of the Chancellery as if in the middle of a dream of malign intent, summoned there with no idea of what to expect.
Dunkelwert had confronted him in the office, telling him, ‘You are instructed to present yourself to Party Secretary Bormann at the Chancellery at eleven o’clock.’
Schlegel knew nothing of Bormann, except that he was known as the Brown Eminence. He looked at Dunkelwert for an explanation.
She repeated, ‘Eleven o’clock. Report back here afterwards. We have questions for you. And get a haircut. You can’t turn up looking like that.’
Schlegel was so fidgety during the barber’s shave that he got cut and had to be left in the chair, waiting for the bleeding to stop while avoiding himself in the mirror. He was still unsettled by Gerda’s announcement the night before. The matter had not been referred to again and when Gerda left she was back to her brisk, usual self. Schlegel wondered if she was more unstable or emotionally excitable than she let on.
The barber, annoyed at having his hand disturbed, proceeded to give Schlegel a brutal haircut when he had asked for a trim, leaving his ears sticking out.
He went home and ironed his least unpresentable suit using a damp cloth. He pressed the cuffs, collar and front of a once-white shirt, trying hard not to think.
Shoes were more of a problem as Schlegel had run out of polish and there was a shortage. He stopped off at the Adlon which still had a shoe-shine man. He had lost the best part of a leg and knelt on the stump. Schlegel watched as cardboard was stuck down the side of his shoes to protect the socks and the tired leather was coaxed into something resembling respectability. He was surprised in the end at how presentable he looked. His haircut gave him an altogether graver appearance, like a professional mourner or undertaker . . . about to attend his own funeral.
The scale of the government buildings performed their usual task of reminding all approaching outsiders of their puny existence. More marbled corridors of power. More unholy acolytes. Nothing frivolous. The Chancellery trumped even Dr Goebbels’ preposterous ministry in proclaiming itself the temple of orthodoxy.
Schlegel’s name was ticked off as he passed through several security locks that took him into the nerve centre of the building until he reached the Party Secretary’s office, where he was told by a frighteningly efficient secretary to wait in an outer sanctum the size of a tennis court and full of horrible practical furniture.
Schlegel sweated into his suit as he sat there in the forlorn hope that someone would come out and send him back after telling him it was a mistake.
The short man with a belly and a receding hairline who hurried in, cupping a cigarette on which he took a last drag before putting it out, Schlegel recognised immediately as the official standing attentively with agitated hands in the bomb-plot newsreel, and, before that, next to his stepfather in the photograph.
He introduced himself as Party Secretary Bormann. He seemed in a jolly mood, capable and friendly.
Schlegel gave his name in return. The other man took a step back, in surprise, and said, ‘You are different from what I was expecting.’
Expecting?
Bormann led the way to a tall window looking out onto the extensive Chancellery gardens. He lit another cigarette and motioned for Schlegel to join him. Schlegel doubted if he had been brought there to admire the view.
Bormann asked, ‘Why were you in Budapest last week?’
It was the last question Schlegel was expecting.
He could hear how doubtful he sounded as he said he had been delivering papers for signature and return.
Bormann looked crafty and amused. ‘And the Japanese gentleman who broke into your room?’
Schlegel’s knees sagged. How on earth did the man know about that? He considered and decided it wasn’t so surprising. The Budapest Astoria was a hotbed of international intrigue and no doubt Bormann was kept fully informed and probably knew more about why Schlegel had been there than he did.
‘He must have mistaken me for someone else. I had nothing worth stealing.’
Again, Bormann appeared amused as he said, ‘I will leave that to Dunkelwert.’
Christ! thought Schlegel. Was Dunkelwert working directly for Bormann as one of his apparatchiks? That put a completely different complexion on everything.
‘Fine view,’ said Bormann conversationally.
A couple of gardeners busied themselves with weeding. Fuel restrictions seemed not to have reached the Chancellery because Schlegel could hear a two-stroke mower.
He decided to offer a small gambit of his own, having nothing to lose. ‘I have a photograph of you with my stepfather.’
Bormann knew immediately what he was talking about. ‘Taken ages ago. Seven, maybe eight years.’
‘There’s a third man in the photograph.’
‘An American,’ said Bormann. ‘They were around then. Think carefully what you say to Dunkelwert about Budapest, given that two men wanted for conspiracy sent you. Of course, if you hear from your stepfather I would be obliged if you inform me directly.’
Schlegel had the sensation of being about to put his foot in a mantrap and watch it snap shut.
Bormann took Schlegel by the crook of the elbow and said, ‘As for your mother and that unfortunate business of harbouring a Jew, there are facilities elsewhere, better than her present ones, where confinement more resembles a sanitarium with medical attention and the guests are of a better class. I can arrange for her to be sent there.’
Depending on what? Was Schlegel being bought off in some obscure way?
There was no time to find out. The gardeners outside were making themselves scarce and the lawnmower stopped. Schlegel stood watching the empty view, then a man and a German Shepherd came into view. The man threw a stick for the dog to fetch. The dog broke off from its chasing to deposit a huge turd on the lawn.
Schlegel stared at the trademark forelock and moustache. It was obvious who it was. It was equally obvious Schlegel had been brought there to see it was.
His first impression was how stooped and aged the man was compared to the propaganda images. He even wondered for a moment if it really was the Führer, then realised it had to be because they wouldn’t show him such a decrepitlooking double.
The Führer was capless. Schlegel had heard the man’s eyes were light-sensitive but suspected it was probably just a story to enhance the impression of their glorious leader seeing the world more acutely than the rest of them; a benign version of the Nosferatu legend.
The doughy features reminded Schlegel of childhood gingerbread men before they got fired in the oven. Not the most appropriate image, and Schlegel thought he might yet break into peals of deadly, hysterical laughter, and Bormann would produce a pistol and put him down like a mad dog.
‘Well?’ asked Bormann. ‘Do you know why you are here?’
‘You want me to confirm I have seen the Führer.’
‘According to Müller, your mind has been in some doubt; turmoil, even.’
Schlegel understood. Bormann was showing him the Führer to put an end to any speculation. His role was a variation of a line-up witness identifying a party.
‘And your best theory?’ Bormann asked mildly.
Schlegel suspected Bormann was insatiable in his quest for knowledge in pursuit of power, which was why he wanted to hear Schlegel’s version. There seemed no point in not saying as he was probably as good as done for anyway.
‘I mistakenly came to believe the Führer was in a clinic at the time of the failed assassination.’
Schlegel decided his only plea was temporary insanity.
‘Which clinic is that?’
‘One in Westend. It burned down.’
The Führer and his dog were back to their stick games. After each retrieval the dog sat waiting to be rewarded with a treat and a pat on the head.
The Führer had a rather girly throw, Schlegel noticed as he said, ‘I saw a man falling from the roof of the clinic.’
‘Excuse me?’ asked Bormann, sounding properly surprised.
‘I foolishly thought the man falling from the roof was the Führer.’ He still did in a way, for all the evidence in front of his eyes.
‘Why on earth?’ asked Bormann.
‘I came to believe he had been abandoned. It was a time of great confusion.’
‘Yet the Führer walks before us.’
‘I see that now. I was wrong to have doubted.’
Schlegel suspected he was fighting for his life, and that Bormann knew what Schlegel was talking about and wasn’t telling.
‘You were deluded,’ said Bormann as he thought: Closer than you know, my friend.
‘The clinic had been evacuated. I thought at first it must be someone who had got drunk and passed out and woken up too late, then I didn’t know what to think because the falling figure appeared to be wearing a straightjacket.’
‘But you couldn’t have seen the body, otherwise you would have known.’
‘It was engulfed in the flames.’
Bormann laughed with what sounded like relief and asked, ‘What on earth led you to believe the Führer was alone in a blazing building?’
Schlegel said he didn’t know. He saw that wasn’t enough and hurried on. ‘There was a steel door and a secret section and the Führer was once seen in the corridor. Because of that . . .’
He trailed off. He supposed now – watching the man play with his dog – that the falling man had been more like some monstrous sacrifice to appease the gods. He was sure that the fact of talking to Bormann about it meant the two were connected.
Instead he said, ‘I questioned the Führer’s existence when I should not have done.’
Bormann gave him a lecture on doubt and misunderstanding while Schlegel retained the almost certainly misguided opinion that he was seen as more of a curiosity than a threat.
‘Is disloyalty hereditary?’ Bormann asked. ‘Your mother and stepfather have betrayed the regime. It is time you proved yourself.’
Schlegel ventured, ‘And my father before that?’
Bormann made a whistling noise. ‘An upsetting subject does not need further upset. Tread with great care as you climb down from the high and dangerous ledge you are on.’ Said in a way more friendly than not, it nevertheless left Schlegel in no doubt of the man’s brute force.
Outside, the Führer was passing under their window, glancing up at Schlegel with a look that said he might as well not exist. With that he was gone, like a vampire leaving no trace, his presence more like a visitation, representing not belonging, the messiah who sacrifices himself for his people. Schlegel found it impossible to connect the subdued, intense man playing with his dog to Rösti’s salacious tales of sexual scandal and the death of the Führer’s niece, and if she were somehow the man’s Achilles heel, where did that leave Anton Schlegel?
Schlegel didn’t expect to find himself reminded of the bodies in the clinic, yet the connection between what he had just been shown and their deaths made complete sense in that moment. The man’s eyes, in which Schlegel had expected to see the depths of something, had revealed nothing but pointlessness. Schlegel now understood how this superior indifference, and the machine’s response to that, ended in meaningless death.
The identity of the Führer was resolved. Whatever had gone on in the clinic could be written off and in exchange for Schlegel’s silence his mother would benefit. But it wasn’t that straightforward. If Bormann knew all the answers, Schlegel’s future was now in the man’s hands.
‘We understand each other?’ Bormann asked.
Did they? Whatever had gone on, equilibrium now looked to be restored and Schlegel could be counted on to sing the authorised version.
Unless of course it wasn’t over; or, rather, was over for him, being next in line, if his role was considered done. There was still the hurdle of Dunkelwert. They wouldn’t do anything before that.
Schlegel’s dismissal was like shutters coming down, within the space of time it took Bormann to tell him he could go. He could see he was forgotten before he had left the room.
There was one last unwelcome surprise in the anteroom: the odious Hermann Fegelein flirting with the secretaries. He looked up as Schlegel walked out as stiffly as an automaton. Schlegel stared, disconcerted by the sight of the man. He registered Fegelein’s flicker of recognition and the start of a sneer before he was blanked as the man brushed past him. Fegelein opened the door to the office and Schlegel heard Bormann on the telephone saying, ‘He’s all yours.’
He departed with the uncomfortable impression it was said deliberately loud enough for him to hear and that Bormann had meant for Fegelein to be in the room when he left.